A darker patch of shadow lay huddled in the doorway that led to the front. The moonlight touched its fringe, crept over it, and moved on. The fringe was made of two pairs of shoulders . . . two pairs of shoulders that no longer supported heads.
Chapter 23
Oxrun Station was quiet, not silent. Leaves rasped in dark conversation, hedges shied at the passage of cats; trucks on Mainland Road lumbered toward Hartford, most of the drivers not noticing the village hidden behind the thick towering pines; the few neon signs on Centre Street crackled softly, buzzed off and on, while the converted gaslight lampposts popped softly to the explosions of moths. It was too late for walking and too early for trains, and only the Jaguar moved through the shadows.
Josh had no idea how he had managed to fish the keys from Randy's pocketbook. No memory of staggering out of the house to fall on his back to gasp for fresh air.
All he could remember were the flies that rose sluggishly from the bodies on the threshold. Rose and circled and settled again.
He had thought they were wasps.
And in driving—more slowly than a walk—did not understand why he had not stopped at the police station to report the murders. He had passed it, had glanced at it, and had kept on moving, up Centre Street to the pike and out toward the valley. His clothes were soaked, clinging to his skin like clammy, sometimes prickling fingers; his hair felt like a steel cap, and his tongue refused to stay away from his lips. He swallowed convulsively until his throat ached. The sedan swerved erratically, several times thumping alarmingly against the low curbing.
He began to choke, the onset of weeping. Not for the loss of the Stanworths, but for the utter and complete weariness that finally overtook him. No matter how hard he tried he could not drive straight, no matter how often he ordered his mind to go blank he could not ignore the dull pain that banded his chest and his legs, blurred his vision with dim sparks. He used Andrea, sweet Andrea, for the carrot to tempt him, danger of losing his life the stick to thrash him; none of it worked. He was human, nothing more, and his body was screaming for a time to rebuild.
The posts with the lions blind and enlarged. He swerved into the drive and winced when the right fender scraped the concrete. Sighed as he jounced over the driver's border and drove over the grass to the back of the mansion. It was better than nothing. So he thought as his hand fumbled with the door's handle, failed to hold a grip, and fluttered to his lap. He sat there, staring, and did not feel himself tipping, felt only the cool of the leather against his cheek and the protests fade under the blanket of black.
Hypnosis. Supernatural. Drugs.
Not a normal town.
. . . Josh . . .
Stiffly he slid out of the car, shading his eyes against the light glaring through the trees. His bladder was aching, his stomach filled with acid, and the right side of his face was creased with leather markings. The back door was still open. He dragged himself inside and used the bathroom, made himself a meal from the tinned goods in the cupboard and forced himself to eat it in spite of the efforts of his system to reject it. Slowly. So slowly it pained him. But he would do Andrea no good if he was still a cripple when he saw her—assuming, he thought sourly, that she was still alive when he got there. As immediately as he thought it, he pushed away from the table and rushed into the library, grabbed up the phone, and dialed the Murdochs.
Someone picked up the receiver on the fifth ring.
He listened, heard breathing, put the knuckle of his thumb between his teeth to keep from speaking.
"Hello?"
He sagged to the floor, head lowered, free hand gripping the back of his neck. "Andy," he said, "it's me, Josh."
"My god, where are you? I've had people calling me all day. Josh, where are you? Are you all right? What's—"
"Andrea, I know it. I know it all. Are you . . . has he done anything to you?"
A pause. Breathing.
"No."
A whisper.
"I'm coming out. He killed Lloyd and Randy. I don't know how but he did it. I found them . . ." He stopped, feeling the weakness slip over him again.
"Josh, tell me where you are and I'll come for you."
He was surprised. "You can get away?"
"If I hurry."
"Andy, don't stand there then. Get . . ." He listened hard, heard a door closing and Andrea catch her breath. "I'm coming," he said harshly. "Don't be afraid, I'm coming!" He slammed down the receiver and struggled to stand, changed his mind and called the police to tell them what they would find if they sent a car over to Fox Road. He rang off on a demand to identify himself, was out of the house and into the Jaguar, speeding across the lawn to the drive, before he realized with a sardonic grin that he was still holding a piece of toast in his hand. He shoved it into his mouth, squealed onto the pike, and jammed the accelerator as far down as it would go.
At the tracks he almost faltered, could not help a glance along the line and a slumping relief when he saw the tracks were clear.
It was adrenaline, he knew, that was dulling the aches that had sprouted over his body, and he only hoped it would last long enough for him to get Andrea out of the house and back to the police. It should be simple enough: Andrea, if she was still thinking clearly, was right now working on a way to leave, maybe only going out to the porch for a breath of fresh air. Murdoch would be watching her. She'd said there'd been calls, and there was nothing to guarantee that Murdoch hadn't taken any of them. Josh had to assume the man knew he was out of the hospital, had figured most of the plot out and was . . .
The Jaguar sped onto Cross Valley, skidded as it took the turn onto the spur road. The steering wheel wrenched side to side as the potholes jarred the tires. He thought of the Buick. He blessed Felicity for taking care of it while he had been working his way back from darkness. He swerved to the left side, back to the right, had the farmhouse in sight when he felt the first buffeting of a swiftly rising wind. The grass in the fields flattened, and the hills were in turmoil. He threw up one arm instinctively when a gout of twigs and leaves swarmed around the windshield. The sedan skewed, and careened off a sturdy fencepost, the crunch of metal like artificial thunder.
The engine stalled.
He was facing diagonally across the road, the nose of the car aiming toward the northern hills, the orchards and crops sweeping toward him in banshee agitation. Forcing himself to remain calm, and unable to keep himself from glancing repeatedly at the rear-view mirror, he turned the key over. Waited. Released it and tried again.
The wind increased and the automobile shuddered.
Something . . .
With one hand on the steering wheel to support him he leaned suddenly across the seat and stared out the passenger window. It had struck him that the distant woodland he'd been staring at was still. So were the hills that lowered toward the village from the south. But behind the farmhouse there was manic turmoil, branches stretching upward, straining, as though the wind were born of the earth itself.
Medication, he thought; it was residue of medication.
The air turned a deep spiraling grey over the trees. A faint cloud without definition, a tornado reversed, rearing above the foliage without casting a shadow, without blocking the moon, without dimming at all the sky's heat-soft blue. Rearing, twisting, riding above him in the belly of the wind.
He whirled to grab the back of the seat, saw the cloud-not-a-cloud writhe toward the Station. Bunching, narrowing, dropping out of sight.
Not me, he thought in congratulatory relief; my god, it wasn't me; and he buried his face in the crook of his elbow, shaking his head slowly and listening to the wind calm.
He turned around when the silence was too much to bear. Thumbed stinging from his eyes, swallowed, and reached for the key.
Not me.
And as abruptly as it had stopped, the wind returned, settling a chill in his blood that kept his hand from moving. Not me, he told himself and the wind; it isn't me, it isn't me. He felt a grin at his lips, the
rictus of a corpse.
Dervishes of pebbles spattered against the door. Dust rose and fell. He stared at the dashboard and tried the key a third time. The engine caught, and he laughed, was about to straighten the car and rush on when, quite without warning, he remembered a soft voice:
Rain or shine, it'll be a nice day.
"Oh my god," he whispered, his elation and relief dying, the hasty meal he'd prepared churning into acid.
He hadn't bothered to check on the date while he'd been in the hospital, hadn't seen a newspaper, hadn't listened to the radio. The medication he'd been administered had pacified and dulled him, had not been fully shocked from his system until he had begun fearing for Andy.
Andy; it was always Andy.
Blinding him, herding him, and only the wind—a ghostwind, he thought—told him in silence it was the first of July.
It was Felicity's birthday, and it was too late to save her.
He paid no heed to the road's condition; he gripped the steering wheel and stiffened his arms, bracing himself against the assault he would suffer as he plummeted through the windstorm, his head striking the roof, his teeth aching, his eyes no longer turning away from the debris that pelted and pitted the sedan. It wasn't hypnosis; he understood that now.
It hadn't been drugs.
And despite the logic that supposedly governed him, despite the laws he had been taught in school and in the service, he was ready to believe there were other laws working; and he wondered if his father had known of them, too.
Oddly, so much so that he smiled mirthlessly to himself as he approached the farmhouse, the thought of the supernatural didn't fill him with terror. It may have been because there were still too many questions that had to be answered, or because of the condition of his body, or the single focus on Andrea and the danger she was in. It was, simply, another field to be explored, another mystery to be unraveled, another obstacle to be overcome. At the same time, he knew the feeling would not last; as soon as emotion caught up with reason there was every possibility he would drive himself mad.
But not now. Not now. He had failed too many people since this horror began, and he wasn't about to fail the one who counted most.
The drive way was empty. The MG gone and the porch door swinging wildly in the last battering of the wind. He was out and running before the engine stopped turning over, tripping once on the walk and catching himself on the flats of his hands. He groaned, rolled, and was on his feet again. Running. Swallowing hard the call that he was here, Andrea, and everything was all right.
Stopped at the foot of the steps as though he'd run into a glass wall.
The screens along the front of the porch were rippling, shimmering, hiding the bulk or the house beyond.
There was no sense in counting; the wasps numbered in the thousands.
They sensed him; he knew it. They had been waiting for him, and he knew that, too. And they lifted from their post in a single black cloud, hovering and swirling and driving him back.
"Andrea!"
Their buzzing covered her name, covered his sobbing, and he whirled to flee to the safety of the car, veered madly away when the Jaguar rippled and shimmered and the wasps lifted to the air.
He ran.
They followed.
When he made for the road, a contingent clouded ahead of him, keeping several yards distant but their intent abundantly clear. Again he swerved, and ran, and sobbed, his arms pumping as his mouth gasped as the wasps in their droning shepherded him onward, away from the house and across the backyard, over the back fence and toward the first line of trees. And immediately he realized what they were doing he calmed; he could not keep his flesh from tightening nor his nightmares from intruding, but he knew they would not attack him until he was where he should be. So he slowed to an ungainly trotting until he was in the woodland, not looking at the massive escort as he headed for the graveyard. Tripping once and striking the ground hard with his shoulder, cringing when he heard the angry volume of the waspcloud increase as though it had settled above his ear. "Don't fight it," he muttered as he scrambled back to his feet. "Don't fight it, don't fight it." He didn't need the telling, but he needed the voice; he didn't need the urging, but he needed an excuse not to look around him. At the wasps crawling on the leaves, on the bark, over the grass and the rocks—a fragmented shadow of himself gone to terror. "Don't fight it, don't fight it." A twig jabbed his arm and he screamed, grabbed his elbow, and saw what had been done. His eyes closed, but still he ran. Another twig, another scream: "Don't fight it, don't fight it."
He fell into the clearing before he knew he was there.
He crawled on hands and knees into the center, sat cross-legged and began to whimper, his head low and covered by his shuddering encircling arms.
The wasps lifted to the foliage, and suddenly it was silent.
Without wind the heat increased; without wind the shadows stilled. He could hear nothing but the ragged and moist breathing that broke from his lips erratic and harsh. Could feel nothing but the ground beneath his buttocks, and the weight of the wasps as they waited for the killing. The train should have killed me, he thought; the train should have killed me. It isn't fair. It isn't goddamned fair! The train should have killed me.
"Well, well, well."
His arms were cramped from holding position so long; it was several seconds before he was able to take them from about his head and let them fall limply into his lap. His vision was blurred; there was salt caked on his cheeks and his eyelids; the sour odor of urine at his groin, and perspiration on his chest. If that was what rear was, he thought while he waited; if that is what fear does . . .
"Are you dead?"
A sleeve over his eyes, under his nose, across his lips.
Murdoch stood ten yards from him, arms folded loosely over his chest. His hair was gleaming with incredible youth, the jowls gone and the sagging stomach reduced. He seemed taller, more confident, and the working of his lips supplied the clearing with an unspoken arrogance born of an enemy long since defeated.
"I understand you know what's going on," the man said. And he shrugged.
"I thought I did," Josh said weakly, slowly straightening his legs. "I know it isn't natural." There was no sense in leaping to his feet; he could still feel the presence of the wasps waiting above him. And he had no doubt that a cabalistic word or a simple nod from Murdoch would be all that was needed to return Josh to that backyard jungle and let the wasps finish what they'd started. "But I don't know it all."
Murdoch laughed soundlessly.
Josh wiped his face again and looked around the clearing. Stopped when he saw the headstones and counted them quickly. Counted them again. As far as he could tell, now there were eleven. One of them marking a pair of closed violet eyes.
Then he looked at Murdoch, realized the man was standing at the mouth of an open grave, its headstone lying in place, a huge uneven block of freshly quarried granite.
"I hope that's for you," he said.
Murdoch laughed again. "It would be easier, wouldn't it, Joshua."
"I don't know. You tell me." Then he thought of the date again, and his hands snapped into fists. "Andrea."
Murdoch shrugged.
Josh used the ground to help him, used his rage for a crutch to haul him to his feet. Murdoch backed off a pace but did not drop his hands. "Well? Are you going to tell me why you brought me here?" He tried not to wince at the whining tone to his voice. This was when he was supposed to be a hero, not a child.
"You said something about this not being natural," Murdoch reminded him. "You couldn't be further from the truth. It is, in fact, the most natural thing in the world." He smiled; his teeth were yellowed, dark around the edges. "It's about life, Joshua, and continuing to live. It's about yearly cycles, miracles, freezing."
Josh listened carefully, but he could not understand. "Freezing?"
"Freezing."
"But it's . . ." He paused, frowning, caught in spite of himself in
the slow answering of all his whys. "Oh." He looked more closely at the man, at the grey still shot through the fresh black of his hair. He turned toward the graves, looked at Murdoch sideways. "You mean frozen in time, something like that."
Murdoch applauded mockingly, his hands not making a sound. "You are a bright little fellow, aren't you?"
"And I suppose there's some sort of a god, is that it?" He gestured toward the graves. "And these are sacrifices or something. Am I getting closer?" The train. The wind. The man with one arm. Josh grunted. Birthdays. "There's something special about a birthday, I take it." He couldn't help himself. "Bastard! You mean to tell me Felicity is the only one in this whole place with a birthday on the first?"
Murdoch shrugged. "It doesn't make any difference, Joshua. She knew, you see."
He glanced again at the open hole, the black earth that lined it, looked away to Murdoch. "Not for me," he said. "For Andrea. In three days."
"I admire you," Murdoch said. "I like the way you think. And you're right. About the birthdays, that is. It's silly, isn't it, how we try to forget them the older we get, try to pretend they're just one more day in the year and they don't matter. But we always remember, don't we, Joshua. Something when we first wake up in the morning tells us this day is special. This day is the one that culminates a lifetime and embarks on another. There's energy there, you know. Energy few of us realize. The old ones know about it, but they learn about it too late and they don't know how to harness it." He lifted a finger as Josh took a step toward him. "Don't, my friend. I may have found out about it at the age at which you see me now, but it doesn't mean I'm decrepit." He grinned. "I could break you in half."
"So . . ." Josh swallowed. "They die on their birthdays."
"Only every cycle," Murdoch said, as though it didn't matter. "Twelve years. Give or take."
"Depending on the victims you can get," Josh said bitterly.
The Grave - An Oxrun Station Novel (Oxrun Station Novels) Page 21
