The two words felt like a punchline to a bad joke. He might have been tempted to burst out laughing, if it wasn't for the fiery look in the boy's eyes and the deep crease between his brows. Danny was dead serious.
He had formed his guerrilla army to fight aliens. Very carefully, Denton said, "I see."
"Do you? Do you really?" Danny was breathing so hard through his nose, he was practically snorting.
The expelled air was warm and Denton's imagination provided a sickening spray on his skin. He pressed back into the chair eager to create some distance, but he couldn't budge it. Stuck there with the psychopath mere inches away, Denton forced himself to return the glare.
Eddie placed a hand on Danny's shoulder. "Forget about it, Dan," he said. "So, he's clueless. It's not our problem. What are we going to do about this Sherman guy?"
Danny stood there, smoldering with rage. No one in the room moved. After what felt like several minutes, he straightened up and pulled his shoulder away from Eddie's placating hand. He swept his hair back with both his hands and stepped over to the wall of photos. "Nothing we can do until morning." The fury that consumed him only a moment ago had vanished.
"And what do we do with him." Alvin stuck a filthy, gnawed fingernail an inch from Denton's face.
"Nothing for now," Danny said, in a business-like manner. "I may have more questions for him. Until we can locate the new target, he's not going anywhere. We'll watch him in shifts. I'll take the first one. You two get some sleep. It looks like we're going to have a busy day tomorrow."
Without a word, Eddie and Alvin headed up to the bedrooms on the second floor. Denton watched as Danny made a tour of the downstairs. He threw a few more logs on the fire and turned out every light, except for one by an old leather easy chair.
Denton was tempted to ask him about the aliens—probe him to see how deep the delusion went—but then he thought better of it. Danny was too volatile. A wrong word could cause another blow up. And without the others around, it might not end so well. For now, keeping quiet might be the best way to keep the madman calm and keep himself alive. There was nothing to gain from being curious. The details of the boy's fantasies were not important.
The night dragged on without any sleep. Denton zoned out a few times and everything disappeared into a forgotten dark haze, but real slumber never came. The pain from his jaw had spread and filled his entire head with a skull splitting throbbing. The chair was rigid and uncomfortable. His body grew increasingly sore with each passing hour sitting in it. And when he did start to doze off, he would slump down and the cords would cut deeper into his skin, or else his mind would whisper a new unwelcome thought to rekindle his terror.
In an attempt to stave off the burning sensation growing in his eyes from strain and fatigue, he tried to keep them closed as much as possible. But even that was a challenge during the first two watches. His guards were not easily ignored.
For most of Danny's shift, he sat in the chair by the lamp, playing with his revolver. Whenever he grew bored or the whim took him, he'd release the cylinder, slam it back into place, and spin it. The noise of its turning, filled the room with an ominous tick-tick-tick sound, like a ghoulish game of chance.
When it was his turn, Alvin spent the entire time pacing. His feet fell heavily on the floorboards as he thumped from one end of the room to the other. He carried on this monotonous path, as though he were a sentry on patrol.
To distract himself from his fears and the pain, Denton tried to work out the psychology of his captors.
Danny was the dangerous one. He was a paranoid schizophrenic and unquestionably delusional. He was also a narcissist and was very likely a sociopath. He had an absolute certainty about everything he did or said. Despite this, or perhaps specifically because of these traits, he possessed a fair amount of charisma, at least enough to sway others to his will. He was their natural leader. He was their own personal Jim Jones.
Alvin, on the other hand, was pure muscle. Although he was most likely sadistic, Denton didn't believe he suffered from any serious psychological disorders. However, he estimated Alvin's IQ to be significantly south of one hundred. He was clearly no mastermind. Rather, he was one of those cruel, insecure personalities who gravitated to people like Danny. He was a thug looking for any chance to exert power over others. He was a schoolyard bully who had outgrown the schoolyard.
Eddie was the wildcard. Although not precisely stable, he didn't exhibit any overt signs of psychosis. Denton had no idea how Danny could have convinced him to kill his own mother, but he theorized that the act of matricide had caused him severe psychological trauma. Whatever his belief in aliens was before the murder, he had no choice but to believe in them now. The alternative was to collapse under the weight of his guilt.
The boy was confused and deeply troubled. He would be the one to break.
Sometime in the predawn hours, it was finally Eddie's turn to watch him.
Denton was engulfed by complete exhaustion. He would have preferred to fall back into himself. Simply sink into that morass of pain and fatigue that had carried him through most of the night. But he might not get another chance with Eddie alone. So when Alvin was gone, and Denton was confident that he was in his room behind a closed door, he knew it was time to speak.
He asked in a low voice, "Please, would you explain it to me?" "What?" The boy was still groggy, his hair mussed from the pillow. He had no problems sleeping with a man tied to a chair downstairs. Perhaps he didn't have any more of a conscience than the others. Denton began to feel that his plan was doomed to fail, but he wasn't ready to accept his fate.
"The eights—I mean the circles, what do they have to do with aliens?"
"It's their symbol: the star and the moon. One of the aliens called them the eyes of power. And they draw them like you saw in the picture. They put the mark everywhere as a reminder."
"A reminder? How so?" Denton tried to keep Eddie speaking. This nonsense about aliens threw him for a loop. This was why he based his studies in analyzing people by their possessions. Real live psyches were far too strange.
"You know, like homesickness. They draw them to remind them of their home. Danny says it's what they see from their original planet, the one they came from before they sent the virus out to colonize the Universe."
"And your mother started painting this symbol?" Denton ventured. Cold, hard silence followed.
"But she painted moons and stars before, Eddie. I saw them on your stairway and in the studio. Isn't it just the celestial-sun symbol? Didn't she use that subject often in her work?"
"No, this was different," he said sharply.
"How?"
"Just leave her out of it. You have no idea what you're talking about." "Why don't you tell me? I'm a good listener. And I really want to know what's going on here." He spoke in a slow, calming voice. If Eddie had any bad experiences with therapists in his past, this could easily backfire.
He adjusted to a more confidential tone. "Come on, what could it hurt? I'll probably be dead tomorrow, once Danny decides he has no further use for me."
"You don't know that."
"Have you ever brought someone here, and they left alive?" He tried to say it casually, but the last word caught in his throat.
Eddie didn't say anything.
"Did you bring your mother here?" he asked. "I said leave her out of this!"
Eddie marched off into the living room. Denton watched him slump against the fireplace, his outstretched arms on the mantle, and his head cast down, looking at the fire. He didn't need glasses to see how troubled the boy was.
Denton sat there thinking about what to say next. He had to be careful. If he pushed him too far, too soon, he might shut down completely.
"I'm sorry," he finally said. "I didn't mean to upset you. That wasn't my intention."
Eddie continued to stand there, staring at the logs as they burned their way down to ash and embers.
"Sometimes it helps to talk about these things." Denton hoped his soft words would draw Eddie back over to him. "Everybody makes mistakes in their lives. Everybody does things they regret. What's important is that—"
"Do you really think I killed my own mother?" The question was filled with pleading. From the movement of his head, Denton could tell Eddie was watching him waiting for the answer.
"No. I never said that." Eddie took a tentative step toward him. "I don't think you did it, Eddie." The boy moved closer. His movements made it seem as though he were in a trance. "I know you loved your mother, didn't you?"
He was close enough for Denton to see him nod.
"It was Alvin, wasn't it? Or was it Danny?" He risked the cruel words. He let them hit the boy like two slaps, hoping they would open the wound that would turn him against his friends.
"You just don't get it, do you?" Eddie said through clenched teeth. He grabbed Denton by the shoulders. If he had been standing, it would have been an aggressive, threatening gesture. But with him strapped to the chair, there was something ridiculous about the way Eddie was awkwardly leaning over him.
"You keep saying that. Tell me. Make me understand." Denton tried but failed to keep his irritation from seeping through.
"She was already dead."
Denton tried to work out what Eddie meant. Had someone else killed her and they just disposed of the body?
"When Danny shot her, she was already dead. We were on the floor. She was on top of me." Eddie fell back into the chair opposite Denton and started crying into his hands. "She was trying to kill me."
Denton's mind went blank. He had expected some bizarre rationalization, but he wasn't even sure he comprehended what the boy had said.
"When you say dead...?"
"It wasn't her anymore. The infection had taken over completely," he said through his tears. "She was trying to kill me, trying to turn me into one of them."
"Turn you into one of them?" Denton was too stunned to do more than repeat what had already been said.
"The aliens. They infect us like a disease. It's true. I watched her change. I watched her turn into something else." The last few words were lost to sobs.
"Her personality changed, was that it?" Denton asked. "She changed her habits, started painting in a different style, that sort of thing?"
"Yeah." He sucked the snot back into his nose with a loud sniffle. "It started like that. She lost all interest in riding. I even got a call from the stable. She hadn't been by in weeks. Hadn't paid them. Hadn't seen her horses. But by the end, it wasn't her anymore, and she wanted to change me. If Danny hadn't shown up...." He shook his head despondently. "He took care of it. He took care of me. He takes care of everything."
The silence that followed was horrible in its depth.
So, was that what had happened? Agatha Radcliff had fallen under the strange spell of the eights—whatever that really was. But instead of scribbling eights, she put them in her paintings. No longer did she work with the single circle, half sun and half moon, but she used two circles to form the pattern. Just as the strange personality change had caused the shut-in to become social and the neat-freak to become messy, the New-Ager became violent. She attacked her son. Enter Danny with a gun and a crackpot explanation about aliens. He kills her, and then they dragged her body out to the old mill and burned it. Why?
"The infection. You set them on fire to stop the spread of the disease?"
"No." All trace of emotion was absent from Eddie's voice. "We burn them so they stay dead."
The eyes that looked at him were watery and empty. Denton needed to act before the boy pulled himself together. If he were going to do anything, he had to do it while he was still vulnerable.
"You know if I stay here, he's going to order one of you to kill me, right?"
"Yes," Eddie said, with a weak rasp.
"Do you want my blood on your hands?" Denton asked. "I'm not an alien. You can't so simply justify my death."
"There's nothing I can do."
"You can set me free." Denton dropped his voice and in a conspiratorial hush. "Let me out of here. Listen, I have friends in the police. I can explain it to them. They'll believe me. The three of you don't have to do this on your own. How can you stop an invasion by yourselves? Danny is well intentioned, but you can end this tomorrow with the police and the army on your side. Let us help."
There was no response.
"How long do you think it'll be until something happens to one of you?" Denton tried a new tactic. "What if an alien kills one of you or infects you? Think about it. What would happen if Danny got infected? Would you want to have to kill and burn him? If we get the military in here that will never happen. Danny's too proud to ask for help, you know that. But we can do it in secret. We can do it right now. Just untie these ropes."
Eddie pulled himself to his feet with one swift motion. There was menace in his movements. He pulled out something from his pocket. Even before it glinted in the light, Denton realized it was a knife by the way it was unfolded. He had gone too far and now he was going to pay for it.
"Stay quiet," Eddie whispered. Then, he started sawing through the ropes on Denton's left wrist.
Denton was unable to restrain his sigh of relief. He was actually going to leave here alive.
When the restraints were off, he got to his feet and tried to work the circulation back into his body.
"Here." Eddie tossed Denton his overcoat.
He had no idea where his sport coat was, but he had no problem leaving it behind. He would have gone out naked into the winter's night if it meant freedom.
He swung the coat on, while Eddie slipped into his boots by the door.
Denton felt around the pockets and found his scarf. He carefully draped it around his neck, not for warmth but just to feel it against his skin. The smooth wool lent him the comfort of memory and made him feel a little closer to Linda at that moment.
As he passed the table, he noticed a book sitting on it. The book Danny had waved around. Curiosity got the better of him and he picked it up. He brought it close enough to his face to see it clearly. The glossy cover was well creased. It looked as if it had been read a hundred times. Two garish red eyes looked out at him from the face of a demonic figure. It had large curved horns like a goat and sat on a throne of bones. In a dramatic gothic font was written: Curious Tales of the Supernatural by John Philip Gasher.
All this because of some dime-store horror story. If he lived to be a million, he would never understand people. "So this explains it all?" he said with bitterness, putting it back down. "It's in one of the stories." Eddie whispered loudly to be heard across the room. "The Spreading Evil. C'mon, we have to go." "No one's going anywhere."
Danny stood on the landing. The revolver in his hand extended over the banister.
"Get away from the door," he said to Eddie, as he started down the stairs, the pistol never wavering.