The Grave - An Oxrun Station Novel (Oxrun Station Novels)

by Charles L. Grant

  "Nothing."

  "I didn't think so. Just so I know, Miller."

  "Felicity . . . Felicity, don't you have any curiosity at all? I mean, doesn't it bother the hell out of you that there are nine graves, give or take, out there in the middle of nowhere that aren't marked, that have been there for at least a century, and nobody knew it before now?"

  "Nobody we know about, you mean. The whole town may know it, for god's sake. It's not exactly something that comes up in everyday conversation, you know."

  "All right, point taken—nobody we know about. But that doesn't change anything. At least not for me. Lord, Fel, doesn't that—"

  "No. Absolutely not. Listen, Miller, one of us has got to keep an eye on the till, if you know what I mean. I honestly don't know how you managed to get along before I came around, but as long as I have something to say about things now, I'm going to keep reminding you until it sinks in that my income is now dependent . . . is more dependent on you than it was before."

  "I understand that, Fel, believe me. But listen—"

  "Don't interrupt, Miller. I'll do this thing, don't worry about it. I'll do it, okay? But Monday only, and it's the last time. If we come up empty when we compare notes, you're not going to waste another day on it. Let Reverend Harris or Father Hill get all excited. You, dear, have work to do. You promise? No hunting graves on company time after Monday?"

  "Yes. All right. Fel, I promise."

  "Good. Jesus, I should have listened to my mother. And Miller?"

  "Yeah?"

  "When you talk to Professor Williams tomorrow, give me a call, okay? It's the least you can do for waking me up."

  Josh listened to the dial tone for a moment before replacing the receiver and letting himself slip back into the hot, clear water. She was right, of course, and there was no question about it. He did have to stop letting his insatiable curiosity run away with his checkbook. On the other hand, this particular puzzle was right here in town and wouldn't cost him more than one day's work, if that. She would be doing most of the running around anyway.

  And he needed to know.

  First, because it was there, and he sensed it did not belong. He wished now he had taken the time to examine the clearing more carefully, to sweep through the underbrush for signs of a church, or a caretaker's cottage . . . anything that would indicate the history, and the setting. That he could do tomorrow. And he would, since the second reason was far more important—the work, and the day it would take, was something he had to have, something that did not relate in any fashion to the way he made his living. Something that would keep him from thinking of anything else. By rummaging through Williams' mind, then, and stalking the graveyard again, he would be clearing his own; and in clearing his own he might, just might be able to understand more clearly what was going on at the Murdoch house.

  He sank lower, the water lapping at the underside of his chin. He had already washed, had drained the soapy water and refilled the lions' claw tub with water as hot as he could stand it.

  His sigh was loud, and it made him grin mirthlessly.

  It wasn't the nameless old woman so much; he suspected it wouldn't be all that difficult to find out which neighbor she was. What nettled him were the lies that had sprung up around her. Murdoch's lies. And so blatantly transparent he could not fathom their purpose. The man certainly couldn't believe Josh was so blind as to miss them. Why, then? A stalling, perhaps.

  "Yes," he whispered, a slow smile breaking. "Yes."

  For reasons still unclear, Murdoch did not want him to marry his daughter. Therefore the argument before Josh had had a chance to solidify the commitment; Andrea had jumped the gun, and Murdoch had been taken so unprepared that he'd had no opportunity to formulate a better device.

  The smile to a grin.

  That commitment, nebulous before, was approach-able now without his wondering what it entailed.

  "Yes. Lord, yes."

  He laid his head back against the rim of the tub and stared at the tiled ceiling. The air in the bathroom was slightly hazed, but he could see through the slow-moving mist Andrea's bright smile.

  "Hell, yes."

  It was done. Backpedaling over, fears faced and vanquished, a very definite future charted and approved. Damnit, he would ask Andrea to marry him; he would invite her into his business and his life; and he felt pleasantly giddy because he knew she would accept. She had said it already; she had told her father where her heart lay and what her desires were. He disapproved.

  "Tough shit, old man. You can't stop progress."

  He laughed and slapped at the water, ran his hands lovingly along the outward curved rim. Of all the items in this oddly furnished house, the freestanding tub was unrivaled in his affection. He thought of the countless times, child and man, he had dropped soap bars between the porcelain and the wall, had groped for them giggling while his mother yelled from the hall to keep the floor dry; of the invisible oars and paddles he had used to propel the white oval creature through rough seas and across Loch Ness; of the winter afternoons when he had come up here to lie on the floor and stare at the heavy feet, touching the arched claws with one finger and imagining them gripping the tub in place.

  Andrea too would love it.

  The shower stall was for washing, quickly and efficiently. The bathtub was for cleansing, whether he used soap or not.

  Andrea. Mrs. Joshua Miller. Mrs. Andrea Miller. He smiled lazily and let the weight of his eyelids blot out the light, felt his arms dizzyingly buoyant, the water pushing up the backs of his knees. Andrea. He supposed he should feel more concerned, more alarmed, at leaving her alone with her father and, possibly, that strange old woman. He supposed he should be more the white knight champing to leap astride his impatient Arabian stallion and ride to the rescue. But though he did not see yet the connections between the writer and the woman, neither did he doubt her competence in handling what was, it was now obvious, not a physically dangerous situation. If she did not know about the woman, he would tell her tomorrow and they could track her down together; if necessary, they would pin Murdoch in place and demand explanations.

  No sense, he thought, in following the dictum of that old country saying and throw himself on his horse, only to ride off in all directions.

  No sense at all. As it was, after an afternoon that had both unnerved and bewildered him he was feeling remarkably fine. And he congratulated himself for not diving off the deep end, for taking the time (for a change, he reminded himself) to think things through and examine what he had, instead of what he thought he had.

  It was indisputably a hell of a better way to get things done.

  He felt the water cooling, then, and considered getting out and into bed. He pushed himself awkwardly to a sitting position and reached for the towel he had folded nearby, on the floor. Thought about leaving the warmth of the tub for the cold of the house, and pulled the hard-rubber plug. Waited. Replaced it. Ran the hot water again and squinted against the steam that billowed into his face. Lovely. Anybody who didn't know how to take a proper bath was missing out on the greatest and most indolent luxury ever devised.

  He had almost fallen asleep where he sat when the telephone rang. He started, the water swirling into wavelets as he pushed himself toward the back and grabbed for the receiver. His hand was too slippery; it dropped to the floor. Muttering to himself, he leaned over the rim and fumbled for it, finally snatched it up and jammed it unthinkingly hard against his ear.

  There was no one on the line.

  "Beautiful," he said. "The hell with you."

  The water level rose, and he turned off the faucet, delighting in the paradoxically cold feel of the anachronistic plastic-and-metal handle. But before he could resume his nearly submerged lounging, the phone rang again.

  "Goddamnit, who is it?" he demanded before the receiver had reached his mouth.

  "Hey, is that any way to talk to a slave?"

  "Sorry, Fel," he said. "You forget something?"

  There w
as a pause. "Miller, are you in that stupid tub?"

  He grinned at the far wall. "Sure. Naked as an innocent babe."

  "I'll let that pass. I am too far above cheap shots, especially near midnight."

  "God, is it that late?"

  "You started it."

  "So I started it. So . . . what?"

  "Manuscripts."

  He wiped a drop of water from his eye. "What, more?"

  "No. Those you picked up in the city, remember? I mailed them out, just like you told me, with invoices and everything."

  "Yeah, so?"

  "So they came back today, Josh, in the afternoon mail. All four of them. Weird."

  "What's so weird about putting on the wrong postage?"

  "That's not the problem," she said. "The addresses were wrong. I double-checked the ledger, and they're the same. Josh, I didn't make a mistake. I called around. The addresses were phony."

  He half rose out of the tub, staring blindly at the floor. "I don't get it."

  "Neither do I. I didn't blow it. Josh. I took down the addresses just like they were given to me. False. No such places in any of those towns."

  "Then—"

  "It was for nothing, right. All that time for nothing."

  He considered, then shook his head. "Well, it's done. A hell of a note, but it's done. We'll check it out again on Monday, okay?"

  "You're the boss. Sort of."

  He did nothing more than grunt, rang off, and slid back into the water, frowning. With a warm hand wiped the frown from his brow and closed his eyes; pranks he would deal with later, much later. Right now he had some Andrea-inspired daydreaming to do.

  Again he slipped down until the water lapped at his chin, let his hands slide down the glass-smooth inner wall until they were caught and held, knuckles breaking the surface. His left leg drifted to one side, his right to the other, while his feet pressed lightly against the tub's far side to keep himself from dropping under.

  But the mood was broken. He could not recapture the grand feeling he'd had earlier. Scowling at Fel's poor timing, he reached for the rim to haul himself up, snapping his eyes open when his fingers would not grip. He tried again, and the movement ducked his head beneath the surface. Sputtering, slapping, he rolled onto his side and tried again. This time, however, he could not reach the top . . . and his feet drifted down, far below where the bottom should have been. He felt himself sinking, the water growing warmer, hotter, and he flailed wildly, kicked viciously, saw the rippling ceiling above him as he climbed to the surface.

  The rim was at least four feet above him.

  And there was a roaring, a thundering, while the water grew hotter and his skin began to redden.

  The faucet was on, and the water flowing was black.

  He opened his mouth to cry out, and swallowed heat, and gagged. Had the presence of mind to swim in place until he could stop his lungs from working like frantic bellows. Then he reached out for the side again, and his hand slid off, all friction gone.

  Impossible, he thought. This is my tub, this is my bathroom, what the hell . . .?

  The water shaded to grey, and he could feel his skin puckering, the soles of his feet beginning to burn.

  A squealing of metal against metal. He spun around and saw the faucet turning. Slowly. Grinding. Until its mouth was aimed up, and there was a rain of liquid fire. Clouds of steam. Flames at his groin as he ignored what should have been truth and stroked for the back, pressing his palms against the porcelain in an effort to gain traction to keep himself from sinking.

  His hands slid again.

  The water turned black.

  He felt blisters on his heels, at his knees, at his elbows, felt the flesh across his buttocks split as though razored. He screamed and lunged upward, his eyes open wide as he almost caught the rim. Slipped down . . . and under . . . and felt the skin at his nostrils slit into flaps and his tongue begin to harden and his eyes begin to dry. Panic over reason as the pain slithered deeper, as his chest began to throb, as he felt his skin separate from his frame in tattered red. A desperate scissors kick and downward thrust of his arms, and the surface boiled with his passing; and he screamed as his fingers caught the rim . . . and held.

  Black water running down the deep crimson of his arms.

  Blood dripping from his nails, vaporizing and spitting.

  Andrea; he thought of Andrea and hauled himself upward, keeping his eyes tightly closed against the numbness below his waist. Keeping his eyes closed as he reached the top, sobbing, threw himself to the floor and rolled over to his back.

  Waiting to die . . . and feeling the cold of the tiles.

  Hearing the silence.

  And the weeping beneath it.

  An hour later, at the kitchen table, he finally shoved away the bourbon and wiped a towel over his mouth. Gingerly at first, until he remembered. The light was on. All the lights in the house. The trembling was over, and the racking coughs had subsided, coughs he kept telling himself were not part of sobbing. Twice he had started to return upstairs—to check, to remind himself he had only drifted off to sleep after talking with Felicity; and twice he had stopped at the foot of the staircase, peering up at the landing and feeling the heat, seeing the black, smelling the stench of his flesh boiling off him. He had thought to get himself drunk in an effort to bring sleep, but he could drink only in sips, each taste separated by more than a few minutes. He stared at the bottle, finally rose and capped it and shoved it back in the cabinet.

  And nearly laughed with joy when he broke into a yawn.

  Tomorrow, he decided; tomorrow he would try to examine the dream, see what similarities it might have with the fear he had of wasps. He was sure, now that he could think about it without feeling a chill, there had to be one. He had never feared water before, had on more than one occasion dozed off in the tub for a couple of seconds. This time was different. This time his subconscious was telling him something and, like the graveyard, he would learn its secret sooner or later.

  If nothing else, it would be a hell of a story to tell Andrea in the morning.

  He smiled and scratched at his scalp. One by one the lights were switched off and he made his way to the bedroom, not realizing the apprehension had gone until he'd slipped between the sheets.

  He woke only once, shortly before dawn.

  He could have sworn the faucet in the bathroom was dripping.

  Chapter 18

  Admonitions about dreams and foolishness and overreactions were useless; Josh grabbed his shaving gear and soap from the upstairs bathroom and washed in the kitchen sink, crouching down and using the polished side of the toaster when he was ready to take razor to lather. Tonight, he thought, he would be over the jitters. This morning, however, the faint sound of water plopping into the tub through the darkness was enough to reconstruct the dream more vividly than he wished. There was also the heat.

  He had felt it shortly before rising; a humid, lethargic heat that had insinuated itself into the village as the sun broke over the hills. A July heat. By noon it would be enough to wilt hedges and soften blacktop, make walking on the pavement like walking over a skillet, add a hunch to pedestrians' shoulders and lead to their shins. He grinned sardonically as he poured milk into a bowl of cereal, remembering the complaining he had done about the previous evening's chill. But at least he had the air conditioning, one of the few additions his father had made to the house that no one bothered to object to, not even when the electric bill scolded them for overuse. It hummed now, just below hearing, and made the glare of the sun more intense by comparison. And the idea of leaving the house to see Andrea seemed somewhat callously less appealing than it had the night before.

  He finished eating and lit a cigarette, using the plate beneath the bowl for an ashtray. He had already tried calling the Murdoch farm once and the line had been busy. He would give them another ten minutes and try again. He knew Andrea would be waiting for his call, knew too he would not ask to see her this morning as he'd planned, a
s he'd told her. He needed a clearer head than he had right now, one not bothered by remnants of his dream. And the first thing he would do, he'd decided, would be to tell her about the old woman. Somehow, he suspected, she was involved with Don's sudden physical decline, and whether it was blackmail of a sort or dependence on something exotic like drugs, Andrea would have to know about it. She would have to know about it today, before her father was forced into doing something stupid.

  He stared at the telephone affixed to the wall by the doorway leading into the study. Someday, he thought (as he did nearly every morning), he was going to have to knock a hole through the wall at the side of the staircase, so he wouldn't have to fight his way through the books and papers just to get to the refrigerator. There had been an entrance into the living room his father had plastered over, for reasons he now forgot . . . if, in fact, he had ever known in the first place.

  The cigarette smoldered brown on the plate. He glanced at it with distaste and stubbed it out, rose, and dialed Andrea's number. Busy, and he hung up quickly. Sighed and scratched at his throat. Moved to carry his dishes to the sink when the doorbell rang.

  The car. He had forgotten all about the car, and he apologized to it silently as he hurried to the front, slowing when he saw through the study window no truck at the curb, no Buick at the end of the drive. He pulled open the door, startled simultaneously by the slap of the day's heat and the sight of Lloyd Stanworth coolly suit-and-tied on the stoop. They stared at each other for a moment before Josh smiled and waved the doctor in.

  Stanworth headed immediately for the kitchen, a "you look like hell, Josh" floating back over his shoulder. Josh paused in the study to catch his reflection in a small mirror beside the rear window, grimly noting that his friend was right. Despite the shave and the wash, he looked as though he had been going for forty-eight hours in a bar whose name no one ever remembered. His hair was tousled, his cheeks and eyes still slightly puffed, and there was a pinched look to his nostrils, indication of a stench nobody else sensed.