“Have you?” was all she could say.
“They like to get together and argue. Sometimes they get excited, but they never fight. That would be unbecoming to prophets.”
Burnfingers’s talk was starting to make her uneasy. Where the hell was Frank? To change the subject she pointed at his right wrist. “That’s such a beautiful bracelet.”
“So you’ve said.” He raised his arm so it would catch more of the light. A huge turquoise nugget was set deep in a thick band of sand-cast metal. “Skystone and silver.” With a finger he traced the recess in which the turquoise reposed. “This is called a shadowbox. The Navajo like to wear their wealth. I have more jewelry, but it can be awkward to travel with. This piece I wear because my father made it. He was very skilled. I keep it with me always.”
“Kind of like a talisman?”
“No. To remind me of him. Sadly, he was quite sane. Not like me. That’s what finished him. It is very difficult for an Indian to stay sane and live in your world, where insanity seems to be the normal state of affairs. Since I am mad, I have no difficulty coping.”
“You’ve had a hard life, then.” She’d moved nearer and was suddenly aware of his size and strength.
“I would say, rather, an interesting one. Many troubles I could have avoided, but to me boredom is the same as death. I would not have had it any other way.”
His black hair was inches from her hands and she found herself wondering what it would be like to stroke it, to run her fingers through it.
Abruptly she drew back. What was wrong with her? Here she was out alone in the middle of the night finding herself attracted to a madman. And he was attractive, dammit! The madness, the wildness she sensed in him, was part of it.
“I’ve got to go look for Frank,” she found herself muttering. “I guess he’s gone for a walk somewhere.”
Burnfingers knew that Mouse had also gone for a nocturnal stroll, but since he was not completely crazy he sensed that mentioning this would have had a deleterious effect on Alicia Sonderberg’s state of mind. So he kept quiet.
“Want me to come with you?”
“No. No, you stay here. I’m sure I’ll run into him any minute now. I’ll just go back to the room and wait.” She left him sitting on the lower step.
As she turned the stern of the motor home, she found herself confronting another male figure. “Frank! You startled me. Where have you b—?”
It wasn’t Frank. It was over six feet tall and thin as a rail, and though it was obviously straining to look like a man it was having a difficult time of it, as though trying something without sufficient practice beforehand. Multiple fingers kept appearing and vanishing on each hand, like the tentacles of sea anemones retracting and extending in the current. The left side of the face kept trying to melt.
“Good evening,” it said, the quavering voice a horrible parody of humanity. “Can I help you find your husbaaaand?”
Alicia took a step backward. As she did so a second figure appeared next to the first. It was much shorter and had stringy white hair that curled and contorted like a handful of worms.
“Is there a problem?” it inquired. It struggled to make itself taller.
She couldn’t find her voice.
“It’s all right.” The first figure lurched unsteadily toward her. Instead of walking it seemed to shudder from side to side like a shorter creature toddling on stilts. Long, thin arms reached for her, the fingers rippling bonelessly. “We can take you to him.”
Other shapes were materializing behind the first two. Alicia suddenly realized they were grotesque, distorted parodies of the motel manager and his wife. Only then was she finally able to scream.
“Burnfingers!”
The stringy fingers were grasping at her, pulling at her arms and robe, tugging her close. “No!” She tried to push them off, keep them away. “Go away, whatever you are, go away and leave me alone!”
Then Burnfingers was there, appearing like a wraith in their midst. He picked up the smaller of the first two things and threw it twenty feet into the night. Its companion growled and wrapped its arms around Alicia while two others jumped the intruder. Burnfingers ripped the first in half, cleanly, since there was no blood. The other climbed up his back, trying to get at his neck. The Indian leaped into the air, twisted, and landed on his back, crushing his assailant between his bulk and the pavement.
“Get inside!” he yelled at Alicia. “Get inside and lock the door!”
She fought against the monstrosity that held her tight, flailing at the thin body and trying to ignore the awful putrid smell that arose from it, the kind of smell she’d once encountered when she’d left some unwrapped chicken in the pantry for a week. The smell of death and rotten things.
Burnfingers was coming for her when a new shape silently emerged from the darkness behind him. The man-thing held a section of steel pipe in one hand. It made a sickening dull sound as it contacted the back of Burnfingers Begay’s skull. The Indian staggered and turned, only to catch the pipe across his forehead. His eyes rolled up and he toppled forward.
“No, no!” Alicia kept screaming despite the attempts of the creature holding her to muffle her voice with one jerky hand. The fingers stank of decay.
Burnfingers lay unmoving on the pavement, blood forming an expanding pool around his head. Fighting down her nausea, Alicia tried to bite the hand that was gagging her. Her teeth went halfway through the rubbery flesh. The thing turned to other motionless shapes hovering nearby and croaked a command, ignoring the wound.
“Get—the—others.”
Alicia redoubled her efforts, to no avail. Her teeth were stuck in the hand that muffled her screams. Despite the fact that she outweighed her captor, she couldn’t break free. It was like being entangled in a spool of runaway bailing wire.
Frank halted, staring in the direction of the motel. “Did you hear that? It sounded like Alicia.”
“I did hear it, yes, and I think it was your wife. Her voice was full of fear.”
“Christ.” He started running, somehow avoiding the trees that loomed up to block his path, trying to pace himself and not wanting to. Mouse kept up with him, her dress billowing around her slim form like a tormented cloud.
The motel was still there. It hadn’t fallen off the edge of the world. They hurried around the side and up the path where not so very long ago he’d gone searching for a song. Once he slipped, felt something complain in his left knee, but regained his footing. By the time they reached the double room he was breathing hard.
The door stood ajar. He flipped the light switch, blinking back the artificial brightness. “Alicia? Damn! Alicia!” She wasn’t in the bathroom, nor in the next room with the children. Wendy and Steven were also gone. There was no sign of a struggle.
“Burnfingers. I never should’ve trusted him. He said he was crazy. I should’ve taken him at his word and dumped him back on the highway.”
“I am not sure it was…” But Frank was racing past her, pounding toward the motor home.
A light appeared in the motel office as a door opened. The manager stood silhouetted by the glow from within, squinting into the night. “Hey! What’s going on out there? What’s all that yelling about?”
“Call the police!” Frank shouted at him, not caring what line of reality they were on.
“Police? What d’ya want with the police?”
He was around the back of the motor home then, nearly tripping over a large shape lying on the pavement. His thoughts, which had been settling into a nice, comfortable, vengeful mode, were abruptly busted to hell and gone all over again when he saw what lay at his feet. He stood there, staring. Mouse joined him a moment later.
“Jesus.” Considering the amount of blood, he was lucky he hadn’t slipped. Bending over, he lifted one big arm, let it drop limply back to the ground. With Mouse helping him they were able to roll Begay over onto his back.
“I think he’s dead.”
Mouse put an ear to Burnfingers’s chest, then wet two fingers and passed them across his lips. “Dead he is.”
“But if not him, then who …?”
She rose. “Servants of the Anarchis. The forces of Evil. Had we been here they would have taken us, as well.”
“I don’t give a shit about that. If I’d been here maybe they wouldn’t have taken anybody.”
“You are a truly brave man, Frank, but you are not a fighter. If Burnfingers Begay could not prevail against them—do not berate yourself.”
