Part 18

The stranger's arm tightened around David's chest, briefly forcing the air from his lungs. Something dug into David's side. Only one arm was holding him, and that hand held the staff. The other still clutched the skull; the small blackened dome pressed against his kidney.

"They won't find us; I'll make sure of that. Just be silent..."

This was all happening to fast for David to think. He considered struggling, but the man's arm across his chest was like an iron bar. Ahead... and now above... David heard scuffling footsteps on flat hilltop they'd just vacated. Light spilled out onto the downward slope, illuminating the space that he and the stranger had just occupied seconds before.

The light came from a lamp. The lamp was held by a man, and that man's name was Segram Mills, a wealthy landowner that David's father hated. At the instant Mills appeared, David and the stranger twisted around behind the scraggly tree that David had spotted earlier. There, they halted.

"I saw something!" said Mills. "Mmm, yes indeed and it wasn't no boy."

"Where?" came another voice. David could no longer see the searchers, but he recognized the second voice as Harper Groll, one of his father's many drinking companions. Why would he and Mills be together?

"Down there," Mills replied.

"Hell. Hell if I'm goin down there-"

"We're goin' down there," Mills said gruffly. Then he raised his voice and called to someone else. "KEN! Go back down the cemetery and tell the others ta come up here! Then get yer ass ta town and tell everybody else. Tell 'em ta send some folks this way!"

Someone grunted a reply.

"Must be that stranger from town," said Mills. "Come on."

"That fella was dangerous; maybe we should wait-"

"Unless you wanna chase him out into the waste you'll come now."

David heard the scuffle of boots on the dry soil.

"Stay quiet and they won't find us," the stranger whispered. Then he said something else that David didn't understand... a long string of words that were so low that David barely heard them. The few he did catch weren't familiar at all. Together they had an eerie cadence like a song or chant.

Frightened, and not at all sure that he WANTED to stay hidden, David trembled in the strange man's arms. He stared down the slope of the hillside at the trees and patches of grass. There were strange shadows on the ground. Everything was dark-

-and getting darker.

Before his eyes, the surrounding landscape began to dim. David looked up at the moon; it, too, seemed to be losing its light.

And all the while, the footsteps of the men drew closer.

"I saw them go this way," said Mills.

The stranger reached the end of his chant, punctuating it by pulling David closer.

Suddenly Mills appeared beside them to David's left. Mills paused beside the tree and raised his lamp.

He looked down the hill. The looked to his left... then to the right.

His eyes found David's face...

...and kept moving, examining the ground around them, the tree behind them, even the grass on the other side of them. He saw all these things... STUDIED them with his full attention if only for a brief moment... but somehow failed to see the stranger and David less than three feet away from him!

"Hmph," Mills grunted. He took several steps forward and repeated the procedure, this time with David staring at his back. "They musta kept going. I'm goin further down, you look around up here."