"The point is," Colin said-he paused and looked at Hugh-"the point is, we're not in our world anymore. We're in Gran's now. And for the moment he's calling all the shots." His expression was grim. "All bets are off now. The rules we used to know aren't the rules anymore."
"What about Lilla?" Garve asked, though he needed no convincing.
"I don't know. I wish I did, but I just don't know."
"She isn't Lilla anymore," Peg said quietly, and they turned as one to stare. "She's not. Not the Lilla we used to know, that is. Maybe not Lilla at all. She was when she tried to warn us, she was when she tried to talk with Matt at the marina. But not anymore. Something happened, and if that business in the cell is any indication, she's… not. Right now, I don't know any other way to put it.
"Matt was right all along, too," Peg continued. "It was the songs. The ones we heard every night. She must have been using something-spells, maybe, or whatever you call them-that Gran taught her, to… I don't know, to bring him back, do something more? But I do know I'm right. She's either been driven crazy by Gran's influence and is doing these things without knowing what she's doing, or she's totally possessed.
"But whatever it is, Lilla is lost to us. We can't go to her for explanations. She just can't help us anymore."
"She's right," Colin said, crushing one cigarette beneath his sole while lighting another. "And we don't know enough. If we're going to get out of this, we have to know more. Jesus, we've got to know these new rules."
"And we have to tell the others," Garve reminded him, and looked angrily at the dead telephone. Hugh only shook his head sadly.
Colin strode to the desk and leaned over it, glaring. "What is wrong with you now, for God's sake?"
Hugh met his gaze with a glare of his own. "You're talking about Lilla being crazy, but have you been listening to yourself lately? Jesus Christ, Colin, I mean… really! Have you heard what you've been saying?"
He forced himself not to reach over and grab the doctor by the throat. "Look, Hugh, not one hour ago you were telling Peg about what happened with us and Tess. By God, you sure as hell believed then. What the hell happened?"
"Your so-called explanation," Montgomery said simply. "It's fantastic."
"Literally," Colin said. "You got a better one?"
"Give me time."
"Well, how much time do you think we have?"
The plywood shuddered, the venetian blinds on the outside clattering like musket fire.
Colin pointed toward the door. "The storm is starting to push in the tide. If we don't do something soon, we're going to be wading hip-deep in the damn ocean."
Hugh rubbed his eyes, pushed a hand across his lips. "You accept it all so easily."
"No," Colin assured him, "it isn't easy at all. But I don't have to meet more than one Tess Mayfair, or hear Lilla with Gran's voice, or see another demonstration like we did in the cell before I decide that evil isn't just another word in the dictionary. I'm a grown man, Hugh, but I'm scared shitless because there's a damn nightmare out there, and it ain't going away just because I say it isn't real."
The ceiling lights dimmed, grew bright again, and Garve stood and reached for his hat.
"Where are you going?" Hugh asked fearfully.
"If the phones don't work, I have to find out who's left in this place on my own, right? In the car."
"Crazy," the doctor whispered. He took hold of the ends of his handlebar mustache and begin to twist them, muttering to himself, sighing, jumping when something slammed into the plywood.
Garve left without a word, and Peg watched as he slid into the patrol car. He fussed with the sun visor, reached into the glove compartment, and stopped moving. She held her breath and waited, staring, until he left the car and returned to the office. He said nothing. He only threw a crumpled, soiled file card onto the desk. Colin frowned and smoothed it open.
"My God!"
Peg looked a question.
"This is a fingerprint card, from Flocks." He looked to Garve. "Is this what El went for?"
Garve nodded.
"Well, what?" Hugh demanded. He snatched the card away instead of waiting for an answer, and examined it. "Jesus. It's Gran's fingerprints," he said to Peg. "It was Gran's fingerprints on Warren's wallet."
"That son of a bitchin' old man," Garve said intensely. "That goddamned old man." He set himself in front of Peg, and she could barely meet his gaze. Colin wanted to intervene, but he waited instead. "You were closer to that family than any of us," the chief said tonelessly. "Can you help? Did Lilla ever tell you anything about Gran?"
She shrugged weakly. "I don't know. Not much. He… he wasn't from Haiti or any place like that. He was from one of the smaller islands, the Caicos, I think they were. Lilla told me once they're somewhere north of Haiti." She pursed her lips. "Haiti. Lord, you don't suppose this has anything to do with voodoo or something like that? It couldn't, right? I mean, it just couldn't." No one responded. Her voice lowered. "He had to leave there in a hurry, as I understand. A big hurry."
"Yes," Colin said, looking toward the cells. "When Lilla came to the cottage, she said something about him having to leave where he was. She said he did things wrong, and claimed they weren't wrong at all."
"Maybe he was a dissident," she said, looking at Hugh to be sure he was listening. "Or a blasphemer, something terrible like that. Voodoo's a religion, you should know that, and every religion has a few grumblers who think it's being done all wrong. Gran might have been one of them, and when he came here and didn't get rich right away… well, it's just like you said, Col. He got angry for all the wrong reasons."
"Great," Garve said. "Then he's still alive."
"No," Colin contradicted. "At least I don't think so. But he's still around, and he's using Lilla to help him."
"But how?" The chief grabbed at his hat and holster. His frustration was running high. "Jesus Christ, how?"
"Hattie Mills," Peg said then.
Garve turned and frowned. "What?"
"Hattie Mills, Garve. Hattie, for heaven's sake. We need to know more, and maybe she can help us. Good Lord, we've all gotten enough lectures from her about this god and that beast and what all the hell else. If anybody knows something about what's going on, she certainly has to."
"I saw Tess shot," Doc said helplessly, more to himself than Colin. "Shot twice, run over, she fell over a cliff." Still leaning against the desk, he took off his glasses and lay them on the blotter. One finger pushed them around until he could poke at the front of the lenses. "She's dead."
"She is," Colin said gently.
"Then we can't kill her again, can we?" He looked up and blinked. "My God, Colin, do you hear what I'm saying? That Gran has hold of the dead, and he's making them-"
"I hear you. And I can hear me, too. Don't you think I'm wondering if I've lost my mind? But I know what hate can do to a man. I know."
Though no one said a word, there was no silence. The wind had taken their voices and set them screaming.
Garve strapped on his gunbelt and pulled a box of cartridges from a drawer. He shoved it awkwardly into his pants pocket, and unsnapped the holster's flap. A hitch at his belt and he started for the door. "I better get moving."
"The Run," Peg said then.
He paused, staring.
"If you do find anyone, have them go to the Clipper Run."
"Right," Colin agreed. "It's bigger than this place, and it has fewer windows. If it comes to that we can… we can hold out until the storm's over." He grabbed for his jacket and pulled it on. "I'll get Peg and Matt over there now, then Doc and I will see what Hattie can do for us."
Without asking permission, he went to the gun cabinet and pulled down a rifle, turned and looked at Hugh. The doctor pushed himself wearily to his feet and retrieved his glasses. He blew on the lenses, examined them, put them on. Then he stroked his mustache and looked around slowly. When he saw Colin waiting, he nodded, and Colin tossed him the weapon and a cartridge box. Then he turned around and took a shotgun for himself.
"It didn't work on Tess," Hugh whispered.
"Well, I'll be damned if I'm going to spit in her eye," Colin said, and put his arm around Peg's shoulder. Garve left a moment later, and Matthew roused himself from his protection. He glanced around sleepily, saw the guns, and cringed. Colin winked and explained where they were going, took his hand firmly and led him to the door. Peg followed Hugh, and closed the door behind them.
The street was still fairly dry, but a needled spray in the driven air clung to them as soon as they gathered on the sidewalk. The wind bent them over, made talking impossible, and the glow over the island had shifted from uncertain daylight to a faint and soiled gold-gray. They had just reached the corner when the amber traffic signal over the intersection snapped loose from its guy wires and crashed to the blacktop in a scattering of glass and metal and a palsied whirl of colorless sparks. The wires lashed overhead, slapping against the road until they tangled against telephone poles, one curving until it fell into the Inn's parking lot to remain there, jumping.
Though the temperature hadn't dropped more than a few degrees, Colin clenched his teeth to keep them from chattering. He hoped Peg and the boy were getting some measure of strength from the pressure of his arm, the squeeze of his hand, but he was unable to find much of it for himself. Had this been a perfectly normal day, with a perfectly normal autumn sky, televisions and radios playing, kids shouting in backyards and the boats out at their trawling, he would have ordered Hugh to lock him up until he could be transported to a state hospital on the mainland for prolonged and extensive observation. But the wind that caused his ears to ache, the here-and-gone slap of his shoes on the pavement, and the continuing afterimage of the fog-serpent coiling around Lilla's legs and waist, made him as afraid as he had been on the day he had thought he was going to die.