I called her name, but the only answer was a torrent of shouts in an avalanche of feet in full stampede.
In the roar and rush and ranting, some soft flesh struck my arm, my face, my knee, and then it was gone as I cried, “You!” and “You!” again.
There was an immense roundabout, a thousand millraces of darkness from which a single flame ignited near my mouth and one of the strange beasts cursed, seeing me, and shouted, “You, you scared her away! You!”
And hands were thrust to snatch at me until I fell back.
“No!” I turned and leaped, hoping to hell it was toward the sea and not the ghosts.
I stumbled and fell. My flashlight skittered. Christ, I thought, if I can’t get it back—!
I scrambled on hands and knees.
“Oh, please, please!”
And my fingers closed on the flashlight, which resurrected my flesh, got me upright, swaying with the black flood behind, and I broke into a drunken run. Don’t fall, I thought, hold the light like a rope to pull you, don’t fall, don’t look back! Are they close, are they near, are there others waiting? Great God!
At which moment the most glorious sound cracked the channel. There was an illumination ahead like the sunrise at heaven’s door, a loud chant of car horn, an avalanche of thunder! A car.
People like me think in film-bit flashes, over in an instant, dumb in retrospect, but a lightning bolt of exhilaration. John Ford, I thought, Monument Valley! Indians! But now, the damn cavalry!
For ahead, in full plunge from the sea …
My salvation, an old wreck.
And half standing up front … Crumley.
Yelling the worst curses he had ever yelled, cursing me with the foulest curses ever, but glad he had found me and then cursing this damn fool again.
“Don’t kill me!” I cried.
The car braked near my feet.
“Not till we get outta here!” Crumley shrieked.
The darkness, lit by headlights, reared back. I was frozen with Crumley blaring the horn, waving arms, spitting teeth, going blind.
“You’re lucky this damn buggy made it in! What gives?”
I stared back into the darkness.
“Nothing.”
“Then you won’t be needing a lift!” Crumley gunned the gas.
I jumped in and landed so hard the jalopy shook.
Crumley grabbed my chin. “You okay?”
“Now, yes!”
“We gotta back out!”
“Back out!” I cried. The shadows loomed. “At fifty miles an hour?”
“Sixty!”
Crumley glared at the night.