Night & Demons Read Free Page B

consider quitting it in his. The smaller man hadn’t quite taken a swing as Deehalter had hoped he might.
    When the car began to scrunch down the drive past the new house, Wiener came loping toward them from the barn. He barked once every other time his forefeet touched the ground. The noise was more irritating than even a quick staccato would have been. The car windows were closed against the night’s damp chill. Deehalter’s finger was poised on the switch to roll the glass down and shout at the mongrel, when Wendy’s scream snapped his head around.
    The bank to the left sloped up from the drive, so the thing standing there was only in the edge of the lights. It was wire thin and tall—twice the height of a man at a fleeting glance, though a part of Deehalter knew that was the effect of the bank and the angle. A flat lizard-snout of teeth glittered sharply. Then the beast turned and the big car leaped forward down the drive as Deehalter floored the accelerator. Wendy was still screaming, her face buried in her hands, when the car banged over the slotted cattle-guard and fishtailed onto the gravel county road.
    Deehalter kept his speedometer dangerously above sixty for the first three miles, until they reached the tavern and gas station at Five Points. There he braked to a stop and turned on the dome light. The girl whimpered. Deehalter’s big hands gripped her shoulders and hauled her upright. “Shut up,” he said tightly.
    “W-what was it?” she blubbered.
    “Shut up, for Christ’s sake!” Deehalter shouted. “It wasn’t a goddamned thing!” He brought his face close to Wendy’s. The girl’s eyes were as fearful as they had been minutes before at the sight of the creature. “You saw a cat in the headlights, that’s all. You’re not going to get everybody and his brother tramping over my farm shooting my milking herd. You’re going to keep your goddamned mouth shut, do you hear?”
    The blonde was nodding to the rhythm of Deehalter’s words. Tears streamed from her eyes, and when she tried to wipe them she smeared the remains of her eye shadow across her cheeks.
    Deehalter released her suddenly and put the car in gear. Neither of them spoke during the rest of the ride to town. When the big farmer stopped in front of the girl’s apartment, she stumbled out and ran up the steps without bothering to close the car door. Deehalter locked it after he slammed it shut.
    He drove back to the farm at a moderate pace that slowed appreciably as he came nearer. The night had only its usual motions and noises now. Deehalter was waiting in his locked car an hour later, alone with nothing but a memory to disturb him, when Kernes came out of his house to start milking.

    After lunch—a full meal of fried steak and potatoes; Deehalter had cooked for himself and his father as well before Old John died—the big man walked down the drive and began searching the grassy bank to the left of it. Once when he looked up, he saw his sister watching him intently from the Kernes’ kitchen window. He waved but she ducked away. Toward three o’clock, Kernes himself came back in the jeep from inspecting the fences around the northwest pasture. Deehalter hailed him. After a moment’s hesitation, the ginger-haired man swung the vehicle up the bank and stopped.
    “Come look at this,” Deehalter said. The turf was marked fuzzily where he pointed. “Doesn’t it look like three claw prints?” he asked.
    Kernes looked at him strangely. “Claw prints? What do you mean, Dee?”
    “It—oh, Christ, I don’t know,” said the big man, straightening and lifting his cap to run his hand through his hair. He looked glumly back past the barn to the long bulk of Sac Ridge.
    “Haven’t seen Wiener today, have you?” Kernes asked unexpectedly.
    “Not since I took Wendy home this morning,” replied Deehalter, his own expression odd. “Barked at the car as usual. You must’ve heard him.”
    “Learned to sleep through it, I guess,”