Jonathan Hemsworth's Arc

Chapter 6 of 7

They could not stay inside. The book lay in the dark bathroom, and Eva would not sleep in the same room as it. So Jonathan led her out the back door into the cold. The old attendant did not stop them. He stayed in his corner, watching the black doorway like it might open on its own. Outside, the ground was wet grass and broken concrete. A maple stood near an old stone well, its leaves red and gold under the moon. Jonathan gathered dry wood from under it. He stacked it, struck a match, and after three tries a small fire caught. He sat Eva down beside it. She stared into the flames and said nothing. The words were still in her head. He could tell by the way her lips moved when she thought he wasn't looking. "We'll wait for morning," Jonathan said. "Someone comes down that road eventually." He did not believe it. He said it anyway. He pulled the bottle of brown liquor from his coat and set it in the grass. He had carried it out but would not drink. Not tonight. Tonight he needed to stay sharp. Eva lifted her head. She was not looking at the fire. She was looking past it, at the treeline. "Jonathan," she said. Flat. Quiet. "There's a man." He followed her eyes. A shape stood at the edge of the trees, just beyond the firelight. Bald. A grey jumpsuit. A white hockey mask with two black holes for eyes. One hand hung at his side, and in it was a machete, long and dull in the moonlight. The man did not move. He had been standing there, listening. Jonathan stood and put himself between the fire and the stranger. His legs shook. "We don't want trouble," he called. "Our car broke down. That's all." The man in the mask tilted his head. "The fire was loud," he said. His voice was calm and even. "I heard it. I like the ones who run." He took one step into the light. Eva rose beside Jonathan. She did not run. Her voice came out of her in that same flat, steady tone from the bathroom. She was reading again, though there was no book. The twisted words poured from her memory into the night air. The man in the mask stopped. He turned his masked face toward her, as if the sound pulled at him. The air behind him changed. The grass bent the wrong way. Something was coming through the dark, drawn by her voice again, the way it had come before. Jonathan grabbed Eva's arm. "Stop. Please. You'll call it back." She did not stop. The man with the machete looked from Eva to the moving dark, and for the first time he took a step backward. Jonathan understood then. The book had not left them. It lived in his wife now, and it had just summoned something worse than the man in the mask.