As she passes the sign Sue realizes, with mild surprise, that shehas heard of White's Cove before, the name itself so shamelessly bland that until she actually laid eyes on it, it didn't click. It's one of those communities like Plimoth Plantation or Colonial Williamsburg where the employees show up for work dressed in rigorously detailed period costumes, bonnets and buckles and waistcoats, the wooden buttons all stitched on by hand. They churn their own butter and call their children "rapscallion" and none of them are allowed to wear a digital watch on duty. The realization that this is where she's been headed all along-literally into the past-reverberates for a moment from her brain to her heart and back again like a cry in an empty street.
Off to the right, a sign with an arrow saysPARKING and points to a large, empty lot surrounded by drifts of snow. Sue drives past it, realizing only afterward that the road ends here, at least the paved portion of it. The Expedition thumps onto a dirt road packed with a layer of ice, skids a bit, and then finds its way without a problem.
And without any further warning she's driving straight down Main Street, circa 1802, past barns and old mansard-roofed houses, tiny dwellings with squinty little windows and doors that seem far too small for anyone to get in or out of. The narrow street presses in on either side of the Expedition, making it feel darker than it did before she stumbled into the village. It feels colder here too, as if somebody sealed the whole thing off in a bubble and pumped in dry-ice vapor. None of the gas lamps are lit, none of the storefronts open, and Sue isn't sure if they're closed for the season or it's just too early in the morning. The dirt road in front of her is clear, though, with great mountains of plowed snow heaped up shoulder-high on either side. She cruises along looking for some kind of street sign, but maybe they didn't have them back then, though apparently they had snowplows.
The road is headed steadily downhill and she looks ahead to what's in store. Spread out below her in the beads of sea gray dawn she can see the business part of the village leading into the square, and the wharf beyond it. This is no doubt the home of the requisite smithy and baker and butter churn and the wooden stockade where the kids can get their pictures taken with head and hands through the restraints.
To the right and left she can see several other roads coming down to converge at the low point like spokes on a wheel, and at the axis of the wheel-scarcely visible from here-is a dark statue standing atop a stone pillar.
Three guesses what that is.
Seeing it, she knows it doesn't matter whether she finds Ocean Street or not, because this is where she's going to be meeting the Engineer, where Isaac Hamilton will-or won't-trade Veda for the body of Phillip. This really is the end of the line.
Because this is where he killsyou,so he can take yourbody back to Gray Haven. This is where he gets what he's really after.
Behind her back, the thing wearing Phillip's skin starts laughing.
It is a revolting sound, chunky and clotted, like someone choking on thick chowder. The laugh keeps escalating in volume and intensity. Sue is about ready to put the Expedition in park and just get out,anything is better than listening to that laugh, when straight ahead of her in the middle of the road, she sees something half-buried in a pile of snow.
There's a shovel sticking out of the pile, as if someone was in the middle of burying it when she happened to come by. Then the wind picks up, a sharp gust that blasts the top layer of snow away, and Sue sees what it is.
It's a large wicker basket, the size of a washtub. And it's right there, so close, well inside her headlights but engulfed in snow. If she hadn't stopped when she did, she might have run it right over.
She opens the door and jumps down, reaching the basket in three steps, and yanks the lid off. Inside, staring straight up at her, looking very small and very still, is the body of her daughter.