The Charlie Parker Collection 2

by John Connolly

  And through the flames, I saw the marshes gleaming, and the moonlight picked out two shapes upon the water, shimmering in the heat of the fire. Then they turned away as others joined them, a host journeying onward, soul upon soul, until they were lost at last in the crashing triumph of dying waves.

  That night, as though summoned by the fire, Rachel rang the doorbell of the house that we once shared, driving Walter into a frenzy when he recognized her. She said that she’d been worrying about me. We talked and ate, and drank a little too much wine. When I woke the next morning, she was sleeping beside me. I did not know if it was a beginning or an ending, and I was too afraid to ask. She left before midday, with just a kiss and words unspoken on our lips.

  And far away, a car pulled up before a nondescript house on a quiet country road. The trunk was opened, and a man was dragged from within, falling to the ground before he was hauled to his feet, his eyes blindfolded, his mouth gagged, his hands tied behind his back with wire that had bitten into his wrists, causing blood to flow onto his hands, his legs bound in the same way above the ankles. He tried to remain standing, but almost collapsed as the blood began to flow through his weakened, cramped limbs. He felt hands on his legs, then the wire was clipped away from them so he could walk. He began to run then, but his legs were swept from under him and a voice spoke a single nicotine-smelling word into his ear: “No.”

  He was pulled to his feet once more and led into the house. A door was opened, and he was guided down a set of wooden steps. His feet touched a stone floor. He walked for a time, until the same voice told him to stop and he was forced to his knees. He heard something being moved, as though a board were being hefted away from something in front of him. The blindfold was undone, the gag removed, and he saw that he was in a cellar, empty apart from an old closet in one corner, its twin doors standing open to reveal the trinkets lying within, although they were too far away for his eyesight to distinguish them in the gloom.

  There was a hole in the ground before him, and he thought that he smelled blood and old meat. The hole was not deep, perhaps only six or seven feet, and scattered with stones and rocks and broken slates at its base. He blinked, and for a moment it appeared that the hole was deeper, as though the base of stones was somehow suspended above a far greater abyss beneath. He felt hands moving upon his wrists, and then his watch, his treasured Patek Philippe, was being removed.

  “Thief!” he said. “You’re nothing but a thief.”

  “No,” said the voice. “I am a collector.”

  “Then take it,” said Harmon. His voice rasped from lack of water, and he felt weak and sick from the long journey in the trunk of the car. “Just take it and let me go. I have money too. I can arrange to have it wired to anywhere you want. You can hold me until it’s in your hands, and I promise you that you’ll have as much again when I’m freed. Please, just let me go. Whatever I’ve done to you, I’m sorry.”

  The voice sounded by his good ear once again. He had not yet seen the man himself. He had been struck from behind as he walked to his car, and he had awoken in the trunk. It seemed to him that they had driven for many, many hours, stopping only once for the man to refill the gas tank. Even then, they had not done so at a gas station, for he had not heard the sound of the gas pump, or the noise of other cars. He guessed that his abductor had kept cans in the backseat of the vehicle so that he would not have to refuel in a public place and risk his captive making noise and attracting attention.

  Now he was kneeling in a dusty basement, staring into a hole in the ground that was both shallow and deep, and a voice was saying:

  “You are damned.”

  “No,” said Harmon. “No, that’s not right.”

  “You have been found wanting, and your life is forfeit. Your soul is forfeit.”

  “No,” said Harmon, his voice rising in pitch. “It’s a mistake! You’re making a mistake.”

  “There is no mistake. I know what you have done. They know.”

  Harmon looked into the hole, and four figures stared up at him, their eyes dark holes against the thin, papery covering of their skulls, their mouths black and wrinkled and gaping. His hair was gripped in strong fingers and his head was drawn back, exposing his neck. He felt something cold against his skin, then the blade cut into his throat, showering blood onto the floor and into the hole, splashing on the faces of the men below.

  And the Hollow Men raised their arms to him, and welcomed him into their number.

  Acknowledgments

  This book could not have been written without the patience and kindness of a great many people who gave me the benefit of their knowledge and experience without a murmur of complaint. I am particularly grateful to Dr. Larry Ricci, director of the Spurwink Child Abuse Program in Portland, Maine; Vickie Jacobs Fisher of the Maine Committee to Prevent Child Abuse; and Dr. Stephen Herman, M.D., forensic psychiatrist and fountain pen aficionado, of New York City. Without the assistance of these three most generous of souls, this would be a much poorer book, if indeed it existed at all.

  The following individuals also provided valuable information at crucial moments in the writing of the novel, and to them I am very grateful: Matt Mayberry (real estate); Tom Hyland (Vietnam and matters military); Philip Isaacson (matters of law); Vladimir Doudka and Mark Dunne (matters Russian); and Luis Urrea, my fellow, infinitely more gifted author, who kindly corrected my very poor attempts at Spanish. Officer Joe Giacomantonio of the Scarborough Police Department was, once again, decent enough to answer my questions about matters of procedure. Finally, Ms. Jeanette Holden, of the Jackman Moose River Valley Historical Society, provided me with great material and an afternoon of good company. I am also indebted to the Jackman Chamber of Commerce for its assistance, and the help of the staff at the research library of the Maine Historical Society in Portland. As always, the mistakes that undoubtedly crept through are all my own.

  A number of books and articles proved particularly useful for research purposes, including The Yard by Michael S. Sanders (Perennial, 1999); History of the Moose River Valley (Jackman Moose River Historical Society, 1994); Arnold’s Expedition up the Kennebec to Quebec in 1775 by H. N. Fairbanks (archive of the Maine Historical Society); South Portland: A Nostalgic Look At Our Neighborhood Stores by Kathryn Ones Di Phillip, (Barren Mill Books, 2006); and the Portland Phoenix’s award-winning reports on the use of the ‘Chair’ in the Maine Supermax facility, particularly Torture in Maine’s Prisons by Lance Tapley (Nov 11, 2005).

  On a personal note, I remain immensely fortunate in my editors, Sue Fletcher at Hodder & Stoughton and Emily Bestler at Atria Books, who have the patience of saints and the skills of literary surgeons. Thanks also to Jamie Hodder-Williams, Martin Neild, Lucy Hale, Kerry Hood, Swati Gamble, Auriol Bishop, Kelly Edgson-Wright, Toni Lance, Bill Jones and all at Hodder & Stoughton; to Judith Curr, Louise Burke, David Brown, Sarah Branham, Laura Stern, and everyone at Atria; and Kate and KC O’Hearn, without whom the Into the Dark CD would not have been possible. My agent, Darley Anderson, remains a rock of common sense and friendship, and to him and to Emma, Lucie, Elizabeth, Julia, Rosi, Ella, Emma, and Zoe I am indebted for my career. Finally, to Jennie, Cam, and Alistair, thanks for putting up with me.

  Finally, a word on Dave “the Guesser” Glovsky. Dave really did exist, and he did ply his trade at Old Orchard Beach, although it is my fervent hope that he never encountered a man like Frank Merrick. At one point, I had considered including a thinly disguised version of the Guesser in this novel, but that seemed unfair on this most unusual of men, so he appears as himself, and should any of his relatives encounter him in these pages, I hope that they will recognize it as the tribute to him that it is meant to be.

  John Connolly

  December 2006

  THE REAPERS

  John Connolly

  www.hodder.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 2008 Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK Company

  Copyright © John C
onnolly 2008

  The right of John Connolly to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  Epub ISBN 978 1 84456 837 6

  Paperback ISBN 978 1 444 7 0473 0

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.hodder.co.uk

  For Kerry Hood, without whom I would

  be very lost indeed, even with a map

  Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to reprint from the following copyrighted works:

  ‘Vision and Prayer’ by Dylan Thomas from Collected Poems, edited by Watford Davies and Ralph Maud. Phoenix, 2003. Reprinted by kind permission of David Higham Associates.

  Excerpts from James Dickey, ‘The Heaven of Animals’ from The Whole Motion: Collected Poems © 1992 by James Dickey and reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.

  Prologue

  All things are an exchange for fire, and fire for all things, as goods for gold and gold for goods.

  Heraclitus (c.535–475 BC)

  Sometimes, Louis dreams of the Burning Man. He comes when the night is at its deepest, when even the sounds of the city have faded, descending from symphonic crescendo to muted nocturne. Louis is not even sure if he is truly asleep when the Burning Man makes his presence felt, for it seems to him that he wakes to the sound of his partner’s slow breathing in the bed beside him, a smell in his nostrils that is both familiar yet alien: it is the stink of charred meats allowed to rot, of human fats sizzling in an open flame. If it is a dream, then it is a waking dream, one that occurs in the netherworld between consciousness and absence.

  The Burning Man had a name once, but Louis can no longer utter it. His name is not enough to encompass his identity; it is too narrow, too restrictive for what he has become to Louis. He does not think of him as ‘Errol’, or ‘Mr Rich’ or even ‘Mr Errol’, which is how he had always addressed him when he was alive. He is now more than a name, much more.

  Still, once he was Mr Errol: all brawn and muscle, his skin the color of damp, fertile earth recently turned by the plow; gentle and patient for the most part, but with something simmering beneath his seemingly placid nature, so that if you caught him unawares it was possible to glimpse it in his eyes before it slipped away, like some rare beast that has learned the importance of staying beyond the range of the hunters’ guns, of the white men in the white suits.

  For the hunters were always white.

  There was a fire burning in Errol Rich, a rage at the world and its ways. He tried to keep it under control, for he understood that, if it emerged unchecked, there was the danger that it would consume all in its path, himself included. Perhaps it was an anger that would not have been alien to many of his brothers and sisters at that time: he was a black man trapped in the rhythms and rituals of a white man’s world, in a town where he and those like him were not permitted to roam once dusk fell. Things were changing elsewhere, but not in this county, and not in this town. Change would come more slowly to this place. Maybe, in truth, it would never come at all, not entirely, but that would be for others to deal with, not Errol Rich. By the time certain people started talking aloud about rights without fear of reprisal, Errol Rich no longer existed, not in any form that those who once knew him could have recognized. His life had been extinguished years before, and in the moment of his dying he was transformed. Errol Rich passed from this earth, and in his place came the Burning Man, as though the fire inside had finally found a way to bloom forth in bright red and yellow, exploding from within to devour his flesh and consume his former consciousness, so that what was once a hidden part of him became all that he was. Others might have held the torch to him, or sprayed the gasoline that soaked and blinded him in his final moments as he was hanged from a tree, but Errol Rich was already burning, even then, even as he asked them to spare him from the agonies that were to come. He had always burned, and in that way, at least, he defeated the men who took his life.

  And from the moment that he died, the Burning Man stalked Louis’s dreams.

  Louis remembers how it came to pass: an argument with whites. Somehow, that was often how it started. The whites made the rules, but the rules kept changing. They were fluid, defined by circumstance and necessity, not by words on paper. Later, Louis would reflect that what was strangest of all was the fact that the white men and women who ran the town would always deny that they were racist. We don’t hate the coloreds, they would say, we just all get along better when they keep themselves to themselves. Or: They’re welcome in the town during the day, but we just don’t think they should spend the night. It’s for their own safety as much as ours. Curious. It was as hard then as it was now to find anybody who would admit to being a racist. Even most racists, it seemed, were ashamed of their intolerance.

  But there were those who wore such an epithet as a badge of honor, and the town had its share of such people as well. It was said that the trouble started when a group of local men threw a heavy pitcher filled with urine through the cracked old windshield of Errol’s truck, and Errol responded in kind. That temper of his, that fury that he kept bottled inside of him, had erupted, and he had tossed a length of two-by-four through the window of Little Tom’s bar in reprisal. That had been enough for them to act against him, that and their fear of what he represented. He was a black man who spoke better than most of the white people in the town. He owned his own truck. He could fix things with his hands – radios, TVs, air conditioners, anything that had a current flowing through it – and he could fix them better and cheaper than anyone else, so that even those who wouldn’t allow him to walk the town’s streets at night were happy to let him into their homes to fix their appliances during the day, even if some of them didn’t feel quite as comfortable in their living rooms afterward, although they weren’t racists either. They just didn’t like strangers in their home, particularly colored strangers. If they offered him water to slake his thirst, they were careful to present it to him in the cheap tin cup set aside for just such an eventuality, the cup from which no one else would drink, the cup kept with the cleaning products and the brushes, so that the water always had a faint chemical burn to it. There was talk that maybe he might soon be in a position to employ others like him, to train them and pass on his skills. And he was a good-looking man too, a ‘nigger buck’ as Little Tom had once described him, except that, when he said it, Little Tom had been cradling the hunting rifle that used to hang above his bar, and it was clear what being a buck implied in Little Tom’s world.

  So they hadn’t needed much of an excuse to move against Errol Rich, but he had given them one nonetheless, and before the week was out, they had doused him in gasoline, hanged him from a tree, and set him alight.

  And that was how Errol Rich became the Burning Man.

  Errol Rich had a wife in a city a hundred miles to the north. He’d fathered a child with her, and once each month he would drive up to see them and make sure that they had what they needed. Errol Rich’s wife had a job in a big hotel. Errol used to work in that hotel too, as a handyman, but something had happened – that temper again, it was whispered – and he had to leave his wife and child and find work elsewhere. On those other weekend nights when he was not seeing to his family, Errol could be found drinking quietly in the little lean-to out in the swamps that served as a bar and social hub for the col
oreds, tolerated by the local law as long as there was no trouble and no whoring, or none that was too obvious. Louis’s mama would sometimes go there with her friends, even though Grandma Lucy didn’t approve. There was music, and often Louis’s mama and Errol Rich would dance together, but there was a sadness and a regret to their rhythms, as though this was now all that they had, and all that they would ever have. While others drank rot gut, or ‘jitter juice’ as Grandma Lucy still called it, Louis’s mama sipped on a soda and Errol stuck to beer. Just one or two, though. He never was much for drinking, he used to say, and he didn’t like to smell it on others first thing in the morning, especially not on a working man, although he wasn’t about to police another’s pleasures, no sir.

  On warm summer nights, when the air was filled with the burr of katydids, and mosquitoes, drawn by the heady mix of sweat and sugar, fed upon the men and women in the club, and the music was loud enough to shake dust from the ceiling, and the crowd was distracted by noise and scent and movement, Errol Rich and Louis’s mama would perform their slow dance, unheeding of the rhythms that surrounded them, alive only to the beating of their own hearts, their bodies pressed so close that, in time, those beats came in unison and they were one together, their fingers intertwined, their palms moving damply, one upon the other.

  And sometimes that was enough for them, and sometimes it was not.

  Mr Errol would always give Louis a quarter when their paths crossed. He would comment upon how tall Louis had grown, how well he looked, how proud his mama must be of him.

  And Louis thought, although he could not say why, that Mr Errol was proud of him too.