He wanted to go in there now. While he was here.
The light drifted out of the air.
The clouds began to join to blot out the early stars.
A gust of wind made him pull up his collar, and he rubbed his chin against it thoughtfully.
When he took a third step backward his heel came up against a rock, and he pried it from the ground before he knew he had done it. But once done, he rushed around to the back and used it to smash through the pane on the door. Then he reached in and lifted the latch, shoved in the door and leapt inside.
A full minute passed before he was calm enough to move on, taking a box of matches from his coat pocket and lighting one, holding it over his head until, on a counter near the sink, he found an open box of candles.
It wasn’t much, but it would suffice, and he moved swiftly into the front room and stood in its center, stood on the hearth, stood near the window and looked out at the yard.
It didn’t make sense.
Someone had broken in by smashing down the door — why hadn’t they simply broken a window as he had done?
Ash shifted in the fireplace as the wind slipped down the chimney, hissing, rasping, snaking around his ankles.
For a brief moment he could have sworn he wasn’t alone; for a brief moment more he thought he heard footsteps outside.
He blew out the candle and waited, crouching in the corner between fireplace and front wall. Looking for shadows. Seeing instead the dark slide from the walls and cover the room as the clouds thickened outside and buried the moon.
There was thunder, and a faint flare of lightning behind Pointer Hill.
Finally, when he was positive it was only his imagination at work, he relit the candle and scanned the hundreds of volumes lining the walls, knelt and read the titles of those books stacked on the chairs and floor. Shaking his head; there was something wrong, something out of place. Moving on again, this time to the bedroom upstairs, where he discovered Reskin’ s toilet articles still in the bathroom. In the tiny bedroom a search of the wardrobe and dresser produced nothing but an idea that wherever the man had gone, he hadn’t taken any clothes.
Something wrong. Something missing.
The wind in the eaves.
“Damn,” he muttered as he returned to the living room and stood by the mantel.
And “Damn,” again when he realized what had been bothering him — though he’d come across a number of pens, full inkwells, and pencils during his look around, there were no notes left behind. No journals. No records at all of Reskin’s far travels.
The only desk was in the corner by the dining room entrance, and it was as clean as if Reskin had just bought it.
He checked the books again, this time opening them at random and shaking their pages to see if anything fell out. He pulled the few sticks of furniture away from the walls, checked behind the few paintings, went through every drawer and cupboard in the kitchen; he tested the hearth for loose bricks, the mantel and desk for springs that would reveal hidden drawers or spaces; he returned to the bedroom and checked under the mattress.
And he was halfway down the stairs when someone tried to open the front door.
The doorknob turned slowly; a muffled thump as if whoever was outside had kicked the nailed door in pique.
Cautiously he moved down to the last step, wincing at each creak, holding his breath and briefly closing his eyes. His hand grabbed on the newel post in readiness to swing him around in case he had to run for the back, and he stared hard at the door as if he might see through the wood to the person on the other side.
Silence.
He let himself breathe freely and took the last step to the floor.
And swore silently when he glanced toward the back — if whoever it was out there went around to the kitchen, they would find the broken pane. They would get in. And he had no good explanation of why he was here.
The doorknob turned again, harder this time.
The urge to call out and tell whoever it was that the door was sealed was strong, yet something stayed him. The feeling of standing too close to ice. The scent of something just past ripe. None of it was real, but his hand remained on the post until he heard a weight shifting impatiently on the other side of the door. He broke from his standing and hurried as quietly as he could along the hall, praying he’d have the time to get out before he was spotted.
His foot came down on a piece of glass, and he stopped with one hand grasping the latch, listening until the knob rattled a third time. Then he eased open the door, closed it silently behind him, and dashed across the yard into the trees.
A cloud split and the moonlight lay silver over the cottage and the grass, setting the windows deeper into the shadow.
He waited, crouched behind the stark trunk of a lightning-dead elm, the bark rough against his palms, his breath rasping no matter how hard he tried to keep it silent.
Thunder grumbled distantly to the south; the storm was finally moving off though the wind was rising again, snapping the higher branches and stirring the leaves on the ground.
The black behind him a weight on his shoulders, the cottage ahead shimmering when he found himself staring too long.
The wind grew damp.
He pulled his collar closer about his neck, about to dare leaving when he saw a pale shadow drift around the side of the cottage. Not very tall. Hooded. The hem of its cloak whispering over the grass. A single hand visible, holding the neck closed.
He stared so hard his eyes began to water, but the features he sought were invisible, and nothing about the shadow’s movements suggested anyone he knew.
It stopped at the door, and he heard a quick gasp, saw it whirl around to stare at the dark woods. Then it was gone, light footsteps running, and he leaned against the tree with a silent sigh of relief, a slow shake of his head. It would do no good to run after it; even if he managed to learn who it was, he had no ready explanation for his own presence here. Yet he was pleased that someone else shared his interest in Peter Reskin; it confirmed his instinct and made him feel less the fool.
He waited ten minutes more, then, in case a third party should appear, before deciding to take a shortcut through the woods to the Pike. He wasn’t afraid of getting lost despite the dark, and as long as he moved carefully neither would he embarrass himself by falling into a hollow and breaking a leg.
Fifteen minutes later, he began to wish he’d changed his mind.
The moon was inconsistent, and what light it did cast merely doubled the illusions his straining eyes provided. Twice he whacked his shoulder against trees he thought were shadows, and twice he stumbled into bushes because he’d sidestepped shadows he thought were trees.
Branches whipped at his face.
Nightbirds scolded him harshly.
The first clearing he reached was carpeted in mist that roiled and subsided like the surface of a boiling pot.
A twig snapped to his left; when he turned to face it, another snapped behind him.
Perspiration began to trickle down his spine and lay a sheen on his brow. He opened his coat and snapped down the collar, ordered himself to slow down, finally ordered himself to rest when a second clearing was reached, as filled with mist as the first, and as silent.
He leaned against a slender white birch and dried his face with a handkerchief, angry that he was unable to catch a clean breath, angrier still because he knew he was afraid.
With one hand still against the bole to steady himself he straightened and inhaled slowly, exhaled loudly, and saw a blackshadow figure standing across the way.
The mist rising behind it in spiderweb strands.
John didn’t think twice.
He ran.
The direction didn’t matter as he swerved to his right and ducked into the trees; all he wanted to do was get away from whatever it was that had come up on him so quietly, that stood there without moving, a giant of a figure so dark, so black, it seemed torn from the mist by a madman’s hand.
Panic made him gulp for air though he wasn’t moving that swiftly; panic tightened the movement of his heart and laced his ribs with stabbing pains; panic blurred his vision for only a moment, but it was enough to prevent him from seeing the dead branch.
When it struck him full across the chest, he sprawled to the damp earth, rolled over, and groaned. Blinking rapidly. Hugging himself. Moaning as he fumbled to his knees, to his feet, and wiped sweat from his eyes . . . and saw the body at his feet, twisted and broken, its face covered with dried blood and strands of shifting fog.
Its mouth was wide open in a perpetual scream, and its eyes were wide open and staring blindly at the dark.
“Oh my god,” he gasped, and staggered on, kicking up puffs of ground fog behind him. An arm out to fend off the grasp of the underbrush, the other arm pressed against the ache where the branch had hit him.
Tripping over a section of rotted log and spinning around until he was stumbling backward, spinning again to dodge a thorn bush that tore through his jacket pocket, and righting himself in time to find a clear trail that led straight ahead.
Caution abandoned, he ran as fast as he could, thunder above him and thunder in his chest, until he broke out of the woods so suddenly he fell again, sprawling on the verge of Williamston Pike.
“Jesus,” he said, pushing himself painfully to his feet once again.
A twig snapped.
A branch snapped.
A stone rolled to his feet and he looked up to see the blackshadow standing in the middle of the road.
Chapter 10
“It is my considered opinion,” said Sterling Avlock, “that Mr. Cleveland ought to step down and let someone who knows what he’s doing take this country out of its doldrums.”
He was standing imperiously before a huge marble fireplace, the brick hearth two steps above the Oriental carpeting, the mahogany mantel nearly ten feet long. His high forehead and widow’s peak added to the disdain that was his usual expression, and his left hand remained buried in his trouser pocket while the forefinger of his right constantly touched at and straightened his evening bow tie.
“A bit drastic, don’t you think?” Sydney Edmunds said from his chair by the bow window. “Or are you secretly a Bryant man after all?”
Avlock glared at him and turned deliberately away, to smile at Howard ThornbelI, seated on a brocade and velvet couch with Vera. “As a banker — ”
“I bank,” Thornbell returned with a cool smile. “And in the evenings, I relax. Sterling, for heaven’s sake, I can talk to you anytime, but how often do I get to flirt with your wife? Please, let an old man have some pleasures before he dies.”
Vera Avlock giggled, and Edmunds could not help but grin at the way Turnbell boldly eyed the woman’s neckline. She was certainly suited for the fashion, he thought a bit wistfully, and vividly recalled the days when such exposure was relegated to a barmaid like Mazie Gorvern and the others who worked the lower class taverns.
And one would certainly never mistake this cavern of a room for a tavern. Paneling, oil portraits, two electric chandeliers, a half-dozen fringed carpets no doubt thumped twice a day, and all of it shrieking at the money in Avlock’s private vault at the bank. Sterling did not believe in reticence when it came to spending on himself.
A brief argument broke out then over the wonders of the Chicago Exposition, which Sterling with thumb in patterned waistcoast applauded and Howard decried, and when Vera suggested that it wouldn’t be long before things like Blue Ribbon Beer would bring the local drunks to the estate’s very doors, it was the first time in ages Edmunds had seen the two men agree on anything.
Yet he knew it wouldn’t last, and a brief glance at his watch made him wonder when the damned fool was going to give them a meal. Eight o’clock. It was going to be a long evening, he thought wearily; I ought to be home in my bed.
Then, with some effort, he rose when Betty came into the room holding Jeffrey Isle’s arm. The young man had said barely a dozen words to either him or Howard since they’d arrived, but at least he was making small attempts to be civil.
He nodded; Isle nodded back and whispered something to Betty, who shrugged her nearly bare shoulders and left him, pointlessly announcing she would see about dinner.
Isle came over and stood beside him, and together they listened to Avlock denounce all who lived in Washington as liars and thieves, and perhaps it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that standing for office from the Station might be in his future. Vera applauded politely, and Thornbell was forced from his examination of her prominent chest to respond that he’d probably sooner have Eugene Debs in the White House.
“It isn’t going very well,” Edmunds remarked quietly when Sterling drew himself up for a retort. Isle sipped at a glass of sherry. “What do you expect when the fool invites only a handful of people, and they don’t much care for his company in the first place?”
“Then why did you accept?”
“My reasons,” he said shortly. “And you?”
“I was intrigued,” Edmunds confessed. “He’s up to something, and I couldn’t keep away.”
Isle laughed silently, set his glass down on the broad sill behind them, and frowned. “I assumed John would be here,” he said.
Edmunds raised an eyebrow. “So had I. Don’t tell me you’re worried, Jeffrey.”
“Far from it, Sydney. Believe me, far from it.”
Edmunds waited for the bitter remark, the caustic comment, and was surprised when there was none. For the past two years John and Jeffrey had been not quite announced rivals for Miss Jerrard’s hand, and the way Isle had been behaving lately, such rivalry would ordinarily have blossomed into all-out war.
“Life,” Sterling said then, slapping a hand on the mantel.
“Nonsense,” Turnbell replied. “Isn’t it nonsense, Syd?”
Edmunds, without having the slightest idea what was going on, lifted a hand to indicate he was unsure.
“Like hell,” said Turnbell, and immediately apologized to Vera for his language. “How can you say that?”
“I didn’t say anything,” Edmunds answered.
“Because there is nothing to say,” Sterling told them all. “The way to power and to wealth is through life itself. The longer you live, the more you have of both. And the most powerful man is the man who outlives his enemies and lives long enough to test and retest his friends.” His smile was feral. “Isn’t that right, Jeffrey?”
“Oh now really,” Turnbell protested.
“No, it’s all right,” Isle said with a smile. “As a matter of fact, I quite agree. The question is, of course, who will do the living and who will do the dying.”
“Precisely,” Sterling said.
“Yes,” said Isle softly, and Edmunds felt a chill that all but made him shudder.
At that point the butler stood in the entrance to announce the arrival of Yasfiera Bey.
And at the same time a woman screamed from deep within the house.
The cot in the cell was hard, lumpy, and Freddy couldn’t stop rolling side to side in an effort to find comfort. This wasn’t like he imagined jail would be at all, and though he didn’t like the red-faced man who had come in to yell at him for making so much noise, he thought it was almost fun.
He wasn’t a criminal. The little man in the brown suit told him that a lot after Mr. Vicar had left. But it might be a good idea, the detective had said, if Freddy stayed in a cell. Just for tonight. And in the morning he could go home.
He wasn’t too sure about that.
He would have to go to work; he would have to go to that place that made him remember the dreams.
But maybe, he thought, if he didn’t sleep he wouldn’t dream; and if he didn’t dream, tomorrow would be better and he wouldn’t get in trouble with Mr. Emmett.
A good idea, Freddy, he told himself as he sat up against the wall; sometimes, you know, you’re not so dumb after all.
In the stone room, a prayer, and the thunder retur
ned. Fire danced, shadows crawled, and the jackal-headed man turned on its gold base to face the dark man kneeling in the center of the floor.
In the stone room, a keening, and in a high corner a spider withered and died.
Betty sagged for a moment against the door frame, swallowing dryly, then pressing a hand to her forehead before reaching out to grab John’s arm and pull him inside. The kitchen staff had run to her when she’d screamed at the sudden sight of him in the doorway, and it took her several seconds to assure them she was neither being attacked nor was the house under siege. None looked convinced, but she held them off with a stern look and brought him into an empty side pantry where there was a sink and a stool. She made him sit while she opened a cupboard beneath the basin.
“I’m all right,” he said quietly.
“You look terrible. I’m going to call a doctor,” she said, holding a cloth under running cold water.
“No, please,” he protested. “I’m all right, really. Just a little tired.”
“Tired?” She looked askance at him. “You look as if you’ve been through a war, John.”
If he looked the way he felt, he had no quarrel with her. A glance at his reflection in the mirror over the basin made him wince. His face was grimy and scratched, his hair clotted with dust, blades of grass, and slivers of leaves, his coat torn at the pocket and streaked with dirt. There was a bruise on the back of his right hand as he tried vainly to make some sense out of his hair, and the rest of him was just as bad.
“Hold still,” she commanded as she began to clean his face. “Are you sure you’re not hurt?”
His smile was painful. “Some banged up ribs, that’s all.”
“John, what happened? You scared me to death.”
“Then we’re even,” he told her lightly.
“It’s not the same and you know it, John Vicar. Now hold still while I — ”
Then Avlock and the other guests rushed into the kitchen, and Betty looked heavenward for strength.
The Universe of Horror Volume 3: The Long Night of the Grave (Neccon Classic Horror) Page 7
