of it, but knew well enough what the needles inserted in the chests of the babies were for.
“It’s only a little blood,” he’d told her. “It doesn’t hurt the children at all.”
Clarey knew better. What he was stealing from the children was not just their blood, but their youth.
Their youth, and their very souls, as well.
She knew—she’d watched them grow up, seen their empty eyes, watched them follow the Dark Man’s will, doing whatever he told them to do. No, it wasn’t merely blood he took from them.
It was the essence of their being, delivered to the men of Villejeune.
The men who paid the Dark Man, and did his bidding.
The men who should have died years ago, and were living on the youth of their own children.
The men she’d come to hate almost as much as she hated the Dark Man himself.
Kelly gazed up at the old woman who stood on the porch. The woman’s face was lost in shadows, yet despite the darkness, Kelly still felt a deep certainty that she knew this woman.
“Come up, child,” Clarey said, her voice rough with age. Kelly rose shakily and climbed up the ladder that led from the bayou’s surface up onto the porch six feet above. The woman turned toward her, and lamplight from the open door flooded onto her face.
Kelly gasped.
The skin of the woman’s face, dry as parchment, hung in deep wrinkles, and her thin hair was drawn back in a knot at the nape of her neck. She wore a black dress that hung loosely over her bony frame, and when she reached out toward Kelly, her hands, with their swollen knuckles and crooked fingers, had the look of a crow’s claws.
But though the hands and face of the woman were as grotesquely distorted with age as the image Kelly had seen so often in her dreams and her mirror, there was something in the crone’s eyes that instantly quelled the wave of fear that had risen inside her.
These eyes had no cruelty to them at all, gazing out of their deep sockets with a warm compassion that made Kelly want to put herself into the woman’s arms and be held by her.
“Come, my dear,” Clarey said softly, both her arms extended now. “Come and let me hold you again.”
Silently, Kelly moved to the old woman. As Clarey’s arms closed around her, she felt a sense of well-being come over her.
“So pretty,” Clarey crooned softly, her shriveled fingers gently stroking Kelly’s hair. “Always the prettiest. Always the sweetest.”
Kelly stood still, resting her head against Clarey’s withered breast, hearing the old woman’s heart beat softly within.
Again that strange sense of familiarity passed over her, as though this woman had held her before.
The low throbbing of an outboard sounded in the darkness, and then a second boat appeared. Its occupant cut the engine almost as soon as it came into view, and a moment later the craft drifted up to the house.
Jonas silently took the bow line from Michael, fastening it to one of the pilings. The two boys climbed up the ladder, and as they stepped onto the porch, Clarey released Kelly from her embrace, took her hand and led her into the house.
Michael and Jonas followed.
Clarey closed the door when they were all inside, then turned the lantern up so that its bright glow washed the shadows from the room. She turned and smiled at Kelly.
“Do you remember my little house?”
Kelly gazed curiously around the single room, which held a coal-burning stove in one corner, a sink and cupboard against the back wall, and a sagging bed in the corner opposite the stove. At the foot of the bed there was an old-fashioned iron bathtub, barely large enough for a single person to crouch in. There was a worn sofa against one of the walls, and a rocking chair sitting close to the stove. A braided rug, little more than a rag, covered the floor.
Never had she seen anything like the tiny house, and yet, like the woman herself, it seemed strangely familiar.
“I—I don’t know,” she faltered.
“Come here, child,” Clarey said, leading Kelly to the sink. She worked the handle of a pump, and water spurted into the sink. Taking a washcloth from a hook at the counter’s edge, she put it into Kelly’s hands. “You’ll be even prettier with the mud gone from your face.”
Kelly gazed into the cracked mirror above the sink. Her face was smeared with mud and slime, and her hair was caked with