Bad Men

The voice was distorted, as though the woman had just put her mouth right over the mike.

“This one’s for you, Carl,” said the voice, and then the first bars of “Freebird” commenced. “Freebird”: his brother’s favorite song.

“It’s all ‘Freebird,’ all night,” continued the DJ, and Carl knew the voice, recalled it from that night in the Old Port when his brother had leaned into little Jeanne Aiello as their voices rose in harmony over the sound of some piece of southern-rock shit playing on the jukebox.

Carl Lubey grabbed a crowbar and smashed the radio with one blow, sending the dead woman’s voice back into the void from which it had issued.

“Fuck!” said Dexter. The dummy was disappearing from sight. Even in his bright orange winter clothing he would soon be lost in the snow. Already he was little more than a blur among the falling snowflakes, but for some reason he was staying away from the woods. Instead, Dexter could see him silhouetted against the cliff edge some forty feet above the water, running with a strange, awkward gait, his elbows held rigid against his sides.

Dexter drew his bow from his back and notched one of the heavy Beman Camo Hunter arrows against the string. The head was triangular, with three blades extending out from the central point.

“What are you doing?”

Dexter felt Scarfe’s hand on his arm, distracting him from the coldness of the arrow against his cheek.

“Get your hand off me, man.”

“He’s handicapped. He’s no threat to us.”

“I said get your hand off me.”

“Do as he says.” It was Moloch.

Scarfe’s hand remained on the black man’s arm for a second or two longer, then fell away.

Dexter aimed, then released the arrow.

Richie could no longer hear the men behind him. Maybe he was safe. Maybe they were letting him go. He thought of his mother, and began to cry. His mother often told him that he wasn’t a little kid anymore, that he was a man, and that men didn’t cry, but he was frightened, and he wanted to be back at home, back in his bed. He wanted to be asleep. He wanted-

Richie felt a push at his back, as if a great hand had shoved him forward, and then a searing pain tore straight through the center of his being and erupted from his chest. He staggered, and looked down. His fingertips brushed the blades as his mind tried to register what he was seeing.

It was an arrow. In him. Through him. Hurt.

Richie did a little pirouette on the tips of his toes, then fell from the cliff into the waiting sea. The circuit was completed, and so it would begin as it had begun once before, many years ago, with the loss of a boy and the arrival of men upon the island. Sanctuary’s long wait was over. It was the beginning, and the end.

All over the island the power failed and the lights went out, and Sanctuary was plunged into darkness.

Carl Lubey knocked his beer from the rickety table by his easy chair and cursed the blackness. There was still a faint glow from the TV, which was always left on, but it was fading rapidly. The thick drapes were drawn on all the windows, as they always were, because Carl didn’t like the thought of anybody peering inside and seeing his business. He shuffled across the carpet, barking his shin painfully against the table and then catching his foot on a cable and almost sending himself sprawling on the floor, until his right hand found the switch on the wall and gave it a few futile flicks. Nothing. Not that he’d expected anything to happen, but Carl was kind of an optimist at heart and liked to think that sometimes the easiest solution was the best. To others, especially those who’d made the mistake of trusting Carl to fix their siding or pave their driveways, Carl was a lazy, corner-cutting creep. Carl preferred “optimist” himself. It had a nicer ring to it.

Carl had gone inside to pour himself a stiff drink, and then the lights had gone out. The incident with the radio had unnerved him, but the more he thought about it, the more he figured it was one of the island assholes jerking him around. He couldn’t figure out who it might be, or how they might have done it, but it was the only explanation he could come up with. Now, lost and disoriented in his own house, he vowed revenge on whoever it was.

In the kitchen he found a flashlight, but the batteries were dead. He rummaged in the drawers until he came across a pack of candles and a box of matches. He lit a candle and jammed it into the top of an empty beer bottle to keep the wax from dripping onto his hand.

Carl heard a fluttering sound against the window, then a shadow flew above him. It was a moth, excited by the light from the candle. Carl watched it until it came to rest briefly on the kitchen sink. It was a big bastard, its long body dotted with small yellow orbs. The moth had no right to be in Carl’s kitchen. Hell, it had no right to be alive at all, now that winter had come. He was so rattled that he failed to connect it with the moths he had glimpsed in the forest the week before, the moths that had briefly assumed the shape of a woman.