Nightlight

by Michael Cadnum

  “Just don’t want to see anybody get hurt,” Ed said at last.

  “Neither do I.”

  “Some of these sick people do some terrible things.”

  “Terrible things happen all the time,” said Mary, growing very cold.

  “Like Estelle. A nice lady. Quiet, from what people could see of her when she came down into town. About your size, and looked a little like you.”

  Vineyards unfolded in all directions, black and dark red vines, and yellow vines, with here and there a house behind dark trees.

  “When she went mad she did something no one could have ever dreamed possible.”

  “What, exactly?”

  “I really don’t want to go into the details.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I want to know everything.”

  “Well, basically—”

  “Everything.”

  The road dipped and water arced on each side of the car. Water thundered beneath the floor of the car, and then the road curved over a rise, past a rusted truck on wooden blocks.

  Mary opened her purse and found her compact.

  Ed continued, “She broke an ice pick off in her sister’s head, and when that didn’t work she cut a big wedge out of her throat, like a piece of pie.”

  Mary’s own eyes looked into themselves, trembling with the movement of the car.

  “I had an interview with her after she did it. The courts still hadn’t decided she was altogether insane. In so many words. And we had always been friendly. Nod to each other outside church, that sort of thing. So one afternoon I drove down to the hospital to say hello, and maybe touch on a little business.

  “I was reluctant, to be honest. I felt real bad about her, but I didn’t want to talk to an insane person who had cut meat pies out of her sister’s throat. But I went. I am prone to fits of responsibility from time to time. Horrible habit. Drives my wife mad. I stuffed some papers into my briefcase, and I drove down to the state hospital. All the people down there know me. Lion’s Club drives and all that sort of thing. So they said, sure, she’s harmless, sit right down here and we’ll have the little lady out here in a jiffy.

  “She not only didn’t recognize me, I didn’t recognize her. She had a terrible grin, and walked hunched over like she thought someone was trying to tickle her. She sat across from me, and looked right at me, grinning. I opened my folder, and then closed it right up again. I talked the smallest talk you can imagine, and then nodded to the attendant.

  “There was no use. She was gone. Polished off as surely as if she had died. Ever since then, I’ve avoided the Parker cabin. I have a caretaker goes up there now and then, but he doesn’t like it. One tenant went up there to go fishing, and got so drunk he passed out and paralyzed his arm. Just like that. The house picks at you, like a dentist picking at your teeth, and if you’ve got a weakness, it’ll find it.”

  “But you continue to rent the place.”

  “Life is complex. Maybe I should destroy it. But I have to think of it as a building that people can rent for a weekend, or a week in summer. Now, some people have gone up there and had a great time. Never noticed anything wrong about the place at all.”

  A place like that would destroy Len, she thought. She said, “What do you think would happen to you if you stayed there?”

  Ed looked sideways at her. “You like to stir up trouble, don’t you?”

  “Well?”

  “You’re asking me to admit that I have a dark weakness.”

  “Doesn’t everyone?”

  “No, not everyone. Some people are solid. Oh, we’re all human. But some of us are capable of withstanding all kinds of horrible pressures.”

  “I have always assumed that you could break anyone if you really tried.”

  “Well, that’s a way of looking at it. I always thought you could withstand anything if you really tried. One of us would rather do the breaking, and one of us would rather survive.”

  Ed smiled, but Mary made a mental note: This was not a stupid man.

  29

  Ed asked her questions, which she parried, about her husband and where she lived. She explained that she was widowed and comfortable. At first she had the suspicion that Ed was interested in her in a bluntly sexual way, but then she recognized the garrulousness of a man who liked people and spent most of his time alone.

  A dog-eared multiple listing book fluttered at her elbow and small calendars advertising North Coast Realty scattered across the dash. A business card bearing a blue-tinted photograph of a thinner Ed Garfield floated in water on the floor.

  The car smelled of worn upholstery and the deep dust and oil scent that cars develop, as an attic develops the scent of mildew. A metal clip held a sheaf of notes in a scrawled hand, as if Ed had trouble remembering the small details of his life, and recalled all too vividly the larger ones, the families and the deaths.

  “What, exactly, is the trouble your wife is suffering from?” she asked gently.

  “Oh, a thousand things. A thousand things that might have killed a weaker woman a long time ago. But she’s a fighter. A real fighter. I wish I had a fraction of her spirit.”

  Fenceposts held barbed wire up into the rain, and No Trespassing signs were punched with bullet holes. Even the speed limit sign was gouged with ragged tears, and the skull of an animal, elegant and pale, stared off across the road as they passed.

  “Coyote,” Ed said.

  “I thought they should be larger, somehow.”

  “They’re small, really. Small and quick.” He said it as if sad, and when he turned off the road she thought that he had been overcome by a private grief.

  They passed a sign: McCORCKLE VINEYARDS. A gray horse watched them, and then turned away, up to his withers in gray grass. Ed stopped the car without any explanation and got out, squinting against the drops of rain that trickled down his face like sudden sweat.

  He motioned her to follow, and she did, extricating her umbrella from the back seat. Ed’s manners, she reflected, were a little shabby, but she could not manage to be offended.

  A huge place, dark, and smelling of wine. Or of the wine process: a sweet decay everywhere. Her steps resounded off the concrete floor, and were lost in the quiet of the barrels.

  “Ed,” echoed a voice.

  A young man put down a book, and Ed shook his hand and made a casual introduction. Complaints about the weather, the lack of business, and human frailty in general.

  “I sent someone out to the old Parker place a few days ago.”

  “I know,” said the young man, whose name was Randolph. “They stopped by and did some tasting. They bought some. Seemed pleased with it.”

  “Of course they were pleased with it. This is one of the very best. Bar none.”

  Randolph turned a page in his receipt book. “Two of our sauternes. I could tell he liked it from the moment he tasted it.” He looked from one to another of them. “There’s something wrong, isn’t there?”

  “That’s what we want to know.”

  “I hate that place!” said Randolph with such vehemence his voice resonated in the darkness above them. “I wish the place would burn, except burning would probably cast the evil all over the valley.”

  Mary was stunned.

  “Anyway, you won’t be able to get in there,” Randolph continued. “The road has never been much. More of a rough sketch than a road. There’s a landslide right where it meets the highway. Mud and boulders and roots. There’s no way.”

  “We can borrow your jeep,” Ed replied.

  “The jeep won’t make it over those boulders.” Randolph said this as if he didn’t want it to.

  “We can try,” Ed snapped.

  “I’ll be glad to compensate you for the trouble,” Mary said, twitching her purse.

  Randolph laughed. “There are limits to what a jeep can do. It’s not a helicopter. It’s not a magic carpet. This thing is just a battered tin can. A four-wheel-drive tin can, okay, but it has big miles on it, and you just can�
�t expect—”

  He met their stares, and looked down.

  “I’ll snap an axle,” he murmured, finally.

  “I’ll buy the jeep. Whatever you ask. Money is not an issue.”

  Randolph eyed her.

  “So, you see,” Ed said, clapping a hand on Randolph’s shoulder. “You can’t lose!”

  Randolph tossed the receipt book to the desk. “I can always lose.”

  “No time for pessimism. This lady’s worried about her son. You’ll loan the jeep, and you’ll drive it, too.”

  “The sheriff says it’ll take them a week, and they might as well not bother. They started to push at it, but the crew gave up, or got called somewhere else. Just scraped it off the main road like so much sh—” Randolph stopped himself, and for a moment Mary thought that under very different circumstances she might be able to tolerate him.

  “It’ll be dark in another hour,” Ed said quietly. “We might as well get started.”

  Randolph laughed. “Get started going nowhere.” But he picked up a yellow slicker lying on the floor in a puddle of its own making. “Get started letting my jeep sink to the bottom of a mud pile.”

  “You go on and get the jeep,” said Ed quietly, “and lock this place up, or whatever you have to do. We’ll be waiting outside.”

  They stood under the edge of the roof. The horse watched them, as if he could not believe they were real. He put his head down to the grass, and then looked up again, glistening with water.

  A sliding door groaned, and a lock rattled. Rain fell as far as she could see, until the hills across the road rose into the low clouds. An engine rumbled, and a white jeep rolled around the corner of the building.

  Except that it wasn’t entirely white. Rust holes gaped along the bottom of the chassis, and red rust divots scarred the hood. Rust had wept from the sores in the paint, and the tires were gouged. There was no top, and already water pooled in the valleys in the seats.

  Randolph grinned from under a yellow rain hat like an inverted dish. “You’ll see what I mean. We’ll be back in ten minutes.”

  Mary erected her umbrella, and sat in the back of the jeep, facing sideways. She gripped the umbrella hard, and lurched with the jeep as it bounded over ruts. She barely noticed where they were going.

  She found that she had closed her eyes. When she opened them, fenceposts blurred past, and she had to fight her umbrella and finally close it. Rain ran through her hair like icy fingers, but she didn’t mind it. She was going to be cleansed of all the bad things.

  The jeep wrenched to a stop. “See!” cried Randolph. “There’s no way.”

  The side of a mountain had collapsed, leaving a cliff-face like a sliced loaf. Gray-blue stones the size of human heads scattered across a pudding of smaller, more jagged stones, and black roots stitched the surface.

  30

  The deer head looked down upon them as they sat before the fireplace. Paul cradled the hatchet as if it were a delicate relic, and Lise stabbed another stick into the fire.

  “In a way,” Paul said, “I’m glad Len—or someone—hid the car.”

  Lise hefted the poker and glanced at him.

  “It makes it a criminal matter,” said Paul. “A matter for the police.”

  “And that pleases you?”

  “It brings it into the light of common experience. We aren’t afraid of an evil place, or an evil person. We are harassed by a thief.”

  “I find it difficult to be reassured.” Lise tried to be calm, even flippant, but Paul knew that her preoccupation with the fire was too intense. She constantly poked it, shoving logs, sending a train of gilt sparks up the chimney. She could not sit still.

  She wrestled another log over the hearth. She nudged the wood box with her foot. “I have some bad news.”

  Paul rose to help her.

  “This is the last log,” she said.

  A few scraps of wood, like monkey droppings, scattered across the dark interior of the box. Paul kicked the box, and it thumped like a large, empty trunk. “There’s a woodpile behind the cabin,” he said. “I’ll go get some more.”

  She clutched his arm. “You’re not leaving me in here alone!”

  Paul faked a laugh. “Then we’ll both go.”

  “He’ll come in while we’re gone.”

  Paul laughed again, almost genuinely. “For all we know he’s upstairs right now.”

  Their shadows quaked across the room.

  “So what difference does it make,” Paul continued, “whether we get wood together or not. Stand here, holding the hatchet, or come with me—”

  The ceiling groaned. They both looked upstairs, as if the ceiling were transparent and they could see through it into the rooms above.

  “If he’s up there,” she said hoarsely, “let’s find him before he finds us.”

  Paul pressed his thumb against the blade of the hatchet. It would be a vicious weapon. He realized that he had never actually picked up an object with the conscious determination to defend himself before tonight. He felt, suddenly, very weak.

  “You see,” she whispered. “We can’t do anything. We can’t even protect our fire.”

  A log settled with a sound like a foot crushing snow.

  Lise’s hands were sticky with sap, and smelled of pine. He kissed her fingers and said, “We’ll protect it. We’ll search the upstairs, and we’ll find him if he’s up there.”

  She looked away. “All right,” she whispered.

  “When I was a boy I was afraid all the time,” said Paul. “Every closet had to be shut, and the curtain completely drawn, not open even a crack, before I could sleep. I was afraid something would peek in at me. What, I have no idea.”

  He was aware, suddenly, of all the blank, black windows.

  “So what we are going to do is go up and make sure no one is in this cabin. And when we have determined that the population count is zero, we will consider all the closets shut, and all the curtains drawn, and we will go get some wood.” He liked the confident sound of his voice, and so he added, “And that’s all there is to it.”

  “We’ll stand guard tonight. Neither of us will sleep.” Her face was pale, and she looked, suddenly, too thin.

  “Ridiculous. We’ll both sleep in shifts.”

  “All right.”

  “So everything will be resolved, step by step,” he said, standing on the bottom step, as if to illustrate his point. Except that the hatchet in his hand belied the confident ring in his voice, and he felt his way up the steps, feeling his legs grow heavier and heavier.

  She joined him, the flashlight in her hand spilling a dim oblong of light on the bathroom door ahead of them. The doorknob was cold, and the door opened with a croak, but the faucet gleamed and the room was quiet.

  Paul touched the toothbrush. “So,” he said, eyeing the bristles. “This room is secure.”

  In Len’s bedroom Paul took the flashlight from her hands, and knelt beside the bed. A single dust mouse rolled over once with his breath. A button winked in the dull light, the button off a shirt, Paul guessed, a plain, white button, the sort of button that was always falling off one’s cuff when it was time to hurry.

  Had Len been in a hurry? Was he afraid to see Paul and Lise?

  A few clothes in the closet, clothes hangers glittering like fine bronze hooks. A belt curled in the corner of the closet, an object Paul had missed when he had peeked into the closet before. A plain black belt, with a row of holes for the buckle tongue. Only one hole had been used, the third, and it was distended into an oval.

  “What is it?” Lise hissed.

  “A belt.”

  “You were staring at it like it was a mystery.”

  “No mystery. I have two belts practically identical to this at home. It tells me simply that Len neither puts much weight on, nor takes much weight off. A constant fellow. Steady.”

  The belt made a loud snap when he dropped it, and the buckle dragged for an instant against the floor as a kink in the leather
relaxed.

  Paul knelt and hooked his finger into a slipper. He shook it, instinctively, perhaps to guard against scorpions, but it was empty. “A leather slipper,” said Paul. Gold-yellow words gleamed: Moss Brothers, London.

  The perfect contempt for cheapness expressed in this slipper was obvious. “Len is a simple fellow, but he enjoys a little quality.” The slipper dropped with a slap beside its mate.

  The doorknob down the hall twinkled, and neither of them moved. This last room was the one that seemed coldest as they approached it, and when at last Paul stood before it he could barely move.

  “Don’t open it,” Lise sobbed. “Please, Paul, I can’t stand it.”

  He gripped the doorknob, and turned it.

  The cot was set up against the wall. The single clothes hanger gleamed in the beam of the flashlight, its color faintly red, like Mars on a clear night. Because it was the only object of any kind in the closet, Paul touched it.

  It was icy. Plain metal, like any clothes hanger, twisted into a hook. “Ordinary,” said Paul, kneeling.

  “What is it?”

  “I heard it grind under my foot, or felt it. A safety pin.”

  Paul opened it, and closed it, and when he tossed it into a dark corner of the room it made a fine, dry rattle, and then was silent.

  They made sure all the doors were shut, regretting that they could not be locked, and then groped their way down the stairs. “That’s what is so striking about Len,” Paul said. “He’s so ordinary. I mean, apart from his odd hobby.”

  Lise stood in the entrance to the room that held the tape recorder. Although cluttered with equipment and tape cassettes, this room was plainly empty.

  “Apart from his odd hobby,” she repeated, and they held each other, suddenly weary.

  “He has sturdy clothes, but apart from his slippers, they aren’t anything special. A few photography books. Nothing special. He even drinks Folger’s and eats pork and beans. It’s not that he has bad taste. It’s like he has no taste at all.”