During the hour or so while Fabrini and Cook were gone, Saks tried every argument he could think of to get Crycek to turn him loose. But it was no good. Menhaus had fallen asleep in the bow, which left him alone with Crycek. And Crycek just stared at him, listening, but never speaking, seeming to find Saks’s plight amusing.
Thirty minutes into it Saks began to threaten them, telling them how he was going to kill them when he finally got his hands free. Forty-five minutes into it he had lapsed into a glum, stony silence. Crycek kept watching him, burning holes through him with those crazy eyes of his. Menhaus ignored him. The graveyard stillness was what was eating away at Saks. Now and then there would be a slopping, sliding sound from off in the weed or a muted splash from out in the mist, but that was about it. Other than a mysterious droning sound that seemed to come from far off now and again, there was nothing.
Silence. Brooding and secret and infinite.
That and the sound of Menhaus snoring.
Finally, Crycek said, “Do you feel it, Saks? Do you feel it out there waiting for us?”
“Quit with the mind games, Crycek, it’s getting boring,” Saks told him.
But Crycek just smiled. “It’s getting stronger. I can feel it and so can you… closer all the time. We’re drifting closer to its black heart all the time.”
“We’re stuck in the weeds, you silly fuck, we ain’t drifting anywhere.”
“Still, we’re drawn closer. Closer to those teeth and eyes and that cold, ravenous mind. Can you feel its mind, Saks? Feel it trying to find a way in? Because it is, you know, all the time.” He looked out into the fog, then back at Saks. “Sometimes… sometimes it’s so close I can almost touch it. But it’s always scratching at the back of my mind, trying to find a way in”
Menhaus blissfully slept through the exchange.
Saks laughed without mirth. “It gets in your mind, it’s gonna find one big vacancy.”
“Is it already inside you, Saks? The thing? Is it inside you even now?”
“Shut the hell up,” Saks told him.
What he wanted badly right now was to get his hands free, because when that happened, Crycek was gonna be in a world of hurt. Saks hadn’t decided yet whether he was going to wrap those hands around his throat or just thumb the bastard’s eyes right out of their sockets. But something was going to happen. And Crycek wasn’t going to like it much.
Crycek suddenly gripped his head in his hands and out in that cloying mist, that weird droning rose up, faded away just as quick. “Jesus… it’s thinking about us, Saks. I can feel it… feel it in my head. It knows what we’re feeling and seeing… it can read our minds…”
Saks felt something cold under his skin now like a killing frost. “Read my mind?” he said. “Let it read my fucking mind. Hey! You out there! Read my mind right now! Go ahead… you ain’t gonna like what I’m thinking!”
But it was sheer bravado, a thin veneer and nothing more. For inside, Saks was cold and squirming and he badly wanted to scream. He had decided that Crycek was full of bullshit with this devil of his. .. yet, yet, he could almost feel something in his mind, a whisper of motion like the fluttering wings of a moth.
Two minutes later, he was certain he had imagined it all.
“Gone… it’s gone now, Saks,” Crycek said, chewing on the knuckles of his right hand. “But it’ll be back… maybe… maybe it already got Fabrini and Cook. Maybe that’s what happened.”
“They’ll be back,” Saks said, without much conviction. “Sure they will. When… when Cook gets tired of bouncing his balls off Fabrini’s chin, they’ll be back.”
But Crycek shook his head. “Maybe not. Maybe we’re already alone. .. just you and me, Saks. And Menhaus.”
“Be my fucking luck.”
Crycek laughed now, but it was a demented sort of laugh like a knife scraped over glass. “If they don’t come back… I wonder, I just wonder which of us that thing will take. Me or you? Maybe it’ll just want one of us.” Crycek’s eyes were blazing now. “Yeah… maybe it just wants a sacrifice, Saks, a human sacrifice. If that’s what it wants, maybe I’ll just have to give it one. I just happen to know a guy who’s already tied up…”