Darkness by John Saul Page B

sullenly at his lap. “It ain’t right,” he finally said.
    A great wave of pity washed over Clarey. No, it wasn’t right. None of it was right. But that it wasn’t right made no difference. It was the way things were. “Go on, Jonas,” she told him softly. “Go on and find somewheres to hide. And don’t you fret yourself none. Ain’t none of it your fault.”
    Jonas Cox frowned slightly, as if uncertain whether to believe her words or not. But at last he nodded as Quint Millard dipped the oars back in the water and leaned into them. Once again the little boat turned, and a moment later was swallowed up by the dense foliage.
    Clarey waited until Jonas and Quint were gone, then went back into her house. The kettle of water was boiling on the stove, and she threw a handful of coffeegrounds into the pot, then poured water over them. The grounds floated to the surface, and Clarey added a pinch of salt. In five minutes or so the grounds would sink to the bottom and the coffee would be ready, just the way she liked it.
    In the meantime, she had some thinking to do.
    She knew who the girl Jonas had seen was, and had prayed that this day would never come. But the girl had come back, and now the last of the children was in the village.
    The boy and the girl would find each other, recognize each other the minute they met.
    And when they did, they would begin to understand what they were.
    They would come looking for her.
    Her, and their brothers and sisters.
    And the Dark Man.
    They would be taken into the Circle, no matter the promises the Dark Man had made.
    The evil she had been able to contain for so long would finally begin to spread.
    The boundaries of the swamp would no longer restrain it, and once it was loose …
    She put the dark thought out of her mind. It had begun here in the swamp, and it would end here, too.
    For there were things Clarey understood that even the Dark Man did not.

    Tim Kitteridge pulled into the parking lot outside the clinic at a few minutes after eight that morning. He lingered in the car, putting off the moment he would have to go inside and look at the body in the back room that served as a morgue.
    This was the part of the job he hated most, and it didn’t seem fair that it had cropped up only a couple of months after he’d come to Villejeune. In fact, it was one of the reasons he’d taken the job as police chief of thelittle town in the first place. He’d considered it carefully, checking out the town thoroughly before making his decision. And he’d liked what he’d seen—a sleepy Florida backwater. Growing, but growing with retired people, a notoriously peaceful group. Not like San Bernardino at all, where the city was booming and the problems were growing even faster. The southern California city had changed in the years he’d been there, from a quiet farming town into yet another Los Angeles suburb. But with San Bernardino’s growth had come drug problems, and with drugs had come gangs. A year ago Tim Kitteridge had finally decided he’d had it, and begun looking for another job. He’d had two basic requirements: warm weather and little crime. The second condition had eliminated all the major cities of the South. Villejeune, though, had been perfect. Though he supposed there might be a little drug traffic in the swamp, it was just that. Little. With no good landing strips in the area, and the nearest metropolitan center fifty miles away, Villejeune held little attraction for drug lords.
    Indeed, after looking over the records, he had concluded that there was little crime of any sort in Villejeune. That was fine with Tim Kitteridge.
    Now, only two months later, a body had been pulled out of the swamp.
    Kitteridge worked himself out from behind the wheel and wondered, not for the first time, if he should have just retired. Still, at fifty-five he had another ten years in him, and though he could have lived on his retirement pay, it would have been tight. On the other hand,