Night & Demons Read Free Page A

stuff in there, too,” Kernes bubbled.
    “Then it’s mine,” said Deehalter sharply.
    “Did I goddamn say it wasn’t?” Kernes demanded. “And you can get it out for yourself, too,” he added, looking down at his shirt, muddied by dirt and perspiration.
    Deehalter said nothing further. He lay down carefully in the fresh earth and directed the spotlight past his head. He could see other bones in the shallow cavity. The explosion had shaken them, but their order was too precise for any large animals to have stripped away the flesh. Indeed, the bundles of skin and tendon still clinging to the thighs indicated that not even mice had entered the tomb. The stone-to-stone seal must have been surprisingly close.
    Metal glittered beyond the bones. Deehalter marked its place and reached in, edging himself forward so that his shoulder pressed hard against the ragged lip of the slab. He expected to feel revulsion or the sudden fear of his childhood, but the cavity was dry and empty even of death. His wrist brushed over rib bones and he thought the object beyond them was too far; then his fingertips touched it, touched them, and he lifted them carefully out.
    Kernes stopped studying the skull in the sunlight from different angles. “What the hell you got there, Dee?” he asked warily.
    Deehalter wasn’t sure himself, so he said nothing. He held the two halves of a hollow metal teardrop, six inches long. On the outside it was black and bubbled-looking; within, the spherical cavity was no larger than a hickory nut. The mating surfaces and the cavity itself were a rich silver color, untarnished and as smooth as the lenses of a camera.
    “One of them’s mine,” said Kernes abruptly. “The skull and half the rest.” He reached for one of the pieces.
    “Like hell,” said Deehalter, mildly because he was concentrating on the chunks of metal. His big shoulder blocked Kernes away without effort. “Besides, it’s all one thing,” he added, holding the sections so that the polished surfaces mated. Then, when he tried to part them, the halves did not reseparate.
    “Aw,” Kernes said in disbelief and again put a hand out for the object. This time Deehalter let him take it. Despite all the ginger-haired man’s tugging and pushing, the teardrop held together. It was only after Kernes, sweating and angry, had handed back the object that Deehalter found the trick of it. You had to rotate the halves along the plane of the separation—which, since there was no visible line, was purely a matter of luck the first time it worked.
    “Let’s get on home,” Deehalter said. He nodded westward toward the sun. Sunset was still an hour away, but it would take them a while to drive back. The ridge was already casting its broad shadow across the high ground to the east. “Besides,” Deehalter added, almost under his breath, “I don’t like the feeling I get up here sometimes.”
    But it was almost two weeks before Deehalter had any reason for his uneasiness . . . .
    * * *
    Despite the full moon low in the west and the light of the big mercury vapor lamp above the cow yard to the north of the barn, the plump blonde stumbled twice on the graveled path to the car. The second time she caught Deehalter’s arm and clung there giggling. More to be shut of her than for chivalry, the farmer opened the passenger door of the Chrysler and handed her in. Naturally, she flopped across his lap when he got in on the driver’s side. He pushed her upright in disgust.
    It was 3 a.m. and there were no lights yet in Alice and her husband’s house. Deehalter knew they had seen him bring Wendy home in the evening, knew also that Wiener would awaken them as he chased the car. Kernes had once complained to Deehalter, red-faced, about the example he set for his nephew and nieces by bringing whores home to their grandfather’s house. Deehalter had told him that under the will it was his house, and that when Kernes and Alice quit fucking in their house, he’d