At the House on the Island
"Of course this place is ours!" Fred proclaimed. "It certainly isn't his!" He nodded agitatedly to indicate the outside of the house, and the man he had been unable to find there.
"Jesus," Marie said. "I didn't mean it literally." She stopped, looked confused. "Maybe I did. I don't know. We've got to get away from here. Now! That's what I mean."
Fred had been leaning over, with his aims straight and his palms flat on the table. He straightened. "Damn it, Marie," he muttered. "Do you know what you're asking of me?"
"Yes,'' she answered immediately. "I do."
"At least it stopped raining," Jim offered, and he found that he was grinning vacantly. "We can light a fire, and dry our clothes over the stove, and then we can get out of here . . ."
Fred interrupted, "Well it's too much, Marie. Too damned much! Don't you realize what that guy's done? He's challenged me. He's said as much as 'Come out and prove yourself.'"
Marie said, "That's asinine. You're asinine!"
The fine mist around the house had grown thick and dingy gray in color. It vaulted high above the roof of the house and rolled toward the water; the miniature storms whipped into a silent frenzy in the tall grass; the grass did not move.
Seth watched without expression, his view of the mist a continuous thing because the emotions from within the house were so terrible now, and so strong.
Elena touched him lightly; she felt a tingle start in the tips of her fingers. The tingle became a dim paralysis that coursed up, through her arm, and into her brain.
Her other hand, lightly holding the wrist-sized branch of a tree, tightened involuntarily, in reaction to the emotion moving through Seth and into her. The branch snapped off. She groaned, as if in pain. "I want to kill you!" she screeched, because that, above all, was the emotion that was assaulting Seth, and so her, from inside the house.
"I heard something," Marie said. She held her hand up in a gesture designed to quiet her brother. "I heard something," she repeated.
"I think I heard someone scream," Jim said.
Fred looked around quickly at the door. "Is that locked?" he said, more to himself than to Marie or Jim. He saw that it wasn't locked. He ran to it, threw the bolt, backed away, glanced at his sister. "The gun, Marie. It's in my pack. Get it for me."
She hesitated only a moment, then said, "Yes, of course."
Jim said nervously, "Why do we need a gun? We don't need a gun. Someone's in trouble out there . . ."
"Shut up!" Fred hissed.
Marie pushed herself away from the table, stood, went into the bedroom. Moments later she returned, a blue, snub-nosed Colt .38 in her right hand, her arm bent at the elbow, the gun pointing at the ceiling.
"Bring it here," Fred ordered.
She crossed the room to him, hesitated. His back was to her. He still was looking at the door. He stuck his hand out stiffly behind him. "I said give it here, Marie, goddammit!"
He glanced around at her. She had straightened her arm; she was pointing the weapon squarely at his head.
"Shit!" he whimpered, and fell to the floor. She fired, her aim on the closed and locked door. "Shit!" Fred breathed. "Oh shit!" She fired again, and again, and again.
Jim found himself pushing the table over in his haste and panic, stumbling across the room to her, wrestling her to the floor.
Seeing this, Fred snatched the gun from her hand and scrambled to his feet.
She lay on her back, motionless, eyes wide. Fred, standing over her, held the gun pointed down at his side—she had emptied the gun into the door—and looked very confused. Jim had also rolled to his back; his eyes were closed lightly. "Jesus, God," he whispered, as if in prayer.
Darkness brought the motionless, silent cold of an Adirondack autumn with it. You'd stuff most of your body into a sleeping bag to protect yourself from that kind of cold. You'd curl up into a fetal position to protect yourself from it. And, almost without fail, a stiff, uneasy sleep would come quickly.
But Jim Hart was wide awake. He said to Fred Williams—in a chair on the other side of the living room, next to where Marie was lying in her own sleeping bag—"You think she'll be okay, Fred?"
"She's an epileptic," Fred answered.
Jim turned his head slightly to look at him. "I didn't know that."
"She had a seizure, Jim."
"Do you really believe . . ."
"I don't believe it. I know it. Now go to sleep."
"She never told anyone, Fred."
"Would you?"
"I'd tell my friends, Fred."
"How do you know she didn't?" It was a sharp, two-edged question, and it hurt.
Several moments later Jim answered, "From what I know of epilepsy . . ."
"Go to sleep, Jimbo."
"Go to hell, Fred!" But it was a tiny whisper, nearly too shallow for Jim himself to hear. He closed his eyes. He thought that somewhere, some time, in the last twenty-four hours, his life had taken a distinct and unpleasant turn. He didn't know exactly where it might be heading now, only that it would be impossible to go back.