Ghost Point

by James A. Hetley

  That industrial-strength scowl was back, turning her face into the VC woman in the paddy. “Screw that. We’ve got to get her out of range.” She turned to Alice. “Can we move her to the House?”

  Alice blinked and thought for a moment. “You want to try to get her into your car? Girl, she’s never seen anything like that before, and I’d bet it looks a hell of a lot like some kind of trap. Even if she’s willing, I don’t want to be riding backseat with her the next time the Navy fires up that transmitter. We have to go a lot closer to the base before we get farther away.” She paused and listened, glancing back through the kitchen at the outside door and then at Dennis. “I’ll ask Aunt Jean. We can’t go anywhere tonight.”

  “Like hell we can’t. Whatever happened to protecting women? Whatever happened to lost and hurt and surrounded by strangers? She could have a stroke or heart attack, the way that signal is working on her. And radio works like light—inverse square law. Every foot we move away, the signal drops. We can drug her, haul her out on a sled.” She turned to Dennis. “You got some kind of toboggan to tow behind that Ski-Doo?”

  Dennis glared at her. “What’s with this sudden protective crap? You trying to pull some kind of trick, knock her out and haul her to a lab? Last thing I knew, you wanted to dissect her.”

  Tranh crouched and tensed like she was ready to spring and claw his eyes out. Alice shook her head and stepped between them, palms out to each of them, referee in the ring separating fighters at the bell. All she needed was the white shirt and bow tie. The swimmer looked from one to another of them, confusion all over that furry face. Damn clear, she wondered what the hell the ruckus was about.

  Alice shot another glance at the outside door. “I told you, we’re not going anywhere tonight. Weather. Can you guess how that signal is affecting her? Anything we can do about it?”

  Tranh gave a growl that would have done credit to the creature. “Fuck if I know. Give me a month in a library and a ton of scrap paper and I might come up with a theory to build an experiment around. Some animals have a sort of compass in their heads, organic iron compounds. Helps them migrate. I read about experiments with pigeons, the guys screwed up those little birdie-brains with magnets. Radio waves are electromagnetic radiation. That’s the best I can come up with off the top of my head.”

  She stood up and helped the swimmer to her feet. “Now, if you guys aren’t willing to move your butts and help, this Little Red Brown-assed Hen is going to do it all by herself. Fuck off!”

  Those glances Alice kept shooting at the door—Dennis stopped and listened, listened to the rattle of the stove damper and the creak of the boathouse around them and the whine of wind nibbling at cedar shingles. Years of living in this place made the wood talk to him. He’d taken it in without even noticing or thinking, just knew it was out there and made plans that took it into account. Weather. Bad weather. Bad Maine winter weather, kill you as soon as look at you. Apparently Alice could hear the message, too.

  He gave himself a mental swat above the ear. Hell yes she was used to listening to wind and wood and stone. That damned House of hers had been talking to Haskell Witches for centuries.

  But Tranh didn’t seem to hear the same wavelengths. She stepped through the kitchen and opened the door. Snow blasted in, carried on a biting wind that puffed smoke out of the stove-lids and sooted the flaring kerosene lamps. All the way in the next room, Dennis heard the boom of surf on the rising tide, the whine of spruce and fir and pine in the wind.

  “Tain’t a fit night out for man nor beast.”

  The beast had followed Tranh. She looked out. She nudged the biologist to one side, not hard, not insisting, but the woman stepped aside. The swimmer went out and stood in the night wind, a dark shape against the snow and forest, for a minute and then another, it looked like she was sniffing the air. She moaned.

  Then she came back in and closed the door. She had figured out doors already.

  The Swimmer walked back through the kitchen, back to squat in front of the stereo. She touched her ear. She pointed to the speakers.

  Dennis moved to start Bach up again. He barely noticed what he was doing. His thoughts focused on the weather forecast he’d heard earlier, on the mile between here and the gatehouse garage, and Tranh. Ms. Doctor Tranh. Fucking hell, I’m going to have to wait out a three-day blizzard with her trapped under my roof?

  XXII

  Alice sucked in a deep gulp of coffee, grimaced, and scowled across the table at Susan and then at Carlsson. She sighed. She shook her head.

  “If you two don’t quit bickering, I’m gonna whip up a couple of vervain omelets and send you off to play in bed. Only way to get some peace while I wake up.”

  Susan decided to ignore that. She didn’t know how to deal with Alice—the kid sometimes made her feel like she’d come to a battle of wits half-armed. She threw out innuendos like that, language and sexual insight Susan found . . . unsettling from a child of fourteen. And there was the witchcraft thing, which knocked her scientist world-view cockeyed. Vervain, hell—the whole bag made her feel as if someone had slipped LSD into her beer.

  Susan had slept in the treatment room, another foam pad unrolled on the floor next to She Who Swims, with the door locked between them and the rest of this madhouse. She trusted the animal more than she trusted Carlsson. She didn’t know or care where Carlsson and Alice had slept. Whatever she thought of that man, she didn’t think he was a pervert. And the kid didn’t need a guardian—anyone who crossed the line with Alice would end up dead. Susan had figured that out the first time she’d seen the kid shoot.

  Maybe the kid had made up a bed on the kitchen floor, maybe one of them had moved into that old sloop in the boat bay. It looked like it had a cabin under its rat-chewed tarp, and bunks.

  No heater, though. Wouldn’t want to bunk out there without someone comfy to share the sleeping-bag.

  And maybe Carlsson hadn’t slept at all. Every hour, day or night, just like he’d said, out into that storm, checking on the animals, their shelters, food, hot water in a gallon Thermos. Susan had “helped” a dozen times or so, and the wind had batted her around like a cat with a ping-pong ball. She’d thought she was tough, in good shape, and each round left her whipped. With snow blown clear into the crack of her ass. He’d just bent his head into the wind and slogged on, like that bear Aunt Jean said he was. On a plastic foot.

  Anyway, Alice had been frying up a mess of ham and eggs when Susan fumbled her way out into the coffee-smell this morning. So much for the kid still needing to wake up. She made strong coffee, boiled on the woodstove with an egg broken into it to settle the grounds, camp coffee. Susan had drunk far worse, and you sure couldn’t bitch about the caffeine dose per mug.

  Carlsson had been out feeding and checking on the animals again, in the tail-end of a two-day snowstorm, blessed peace and quiet. Now he was back. Hence, the bickering.

  “I still think we should take Grendel to Aunt Jean’s.”

  Carlsson rolled his eyes. “First off, Grendel was a male. If she’s tied into the Beowulf roots at all, she’s Grendel’s mother. Second, she doesn’t want to go. She’s made that plain. Guess she likes the fishing out in our bay, or something.”

  Actually, what Grendel had done was she’d walked out the door onto the snow-drifted porch, sniffed, turned, pointed at her nose, and pointed at the ruined house. “Door.” Pointed back inside the boathouse. “Safe.” Pointed at the bay. “Food.” Pointed down the hidden road toward the gate and her car. “Not door. Not safe. Not food.”

  Then she’d turned her back on the way out to the gatehouse. Pantomime, but it worked. And why she thought that wrecked summer “cottage” smelled like “door”, Susan hadn’t a clue.

  The Swimmer had then gone out and caught her own breakfast, lobsters to judge by her breath and the scraps of chitin she groomed out of her fur. She came back, walked in, and plopped her fishy-smelly self down by the stereo again. She wanted music. Right now she was listening to Beetho
ven, Ninth Symphony, but she acted like she’d be just as happy with The Doors or Hank Williams.

  Anything but fugues or rounds, works with multi-voiced simple themes and variations mingling like a dialog. After that first bit, once she’d found out that Bach wouldn’t answer her, she’d refused to listen to anything in that form. Susan guessed that it hurt too much.

  “If you don’t want to call her Grendel, dream up another name and get her to accept it. I’ve never read the poem, just offered her the name and she seemed to like it.”

  The Swimmer had turned and looked back at them when Susan spoke. She pointed to her chest. “Grendel. Name, Grendel.”

  She was smart, damned smart. As far as Susan could tell, Grendel had sorted out a vocabulary of a hundred words or so, nouns and verbs, short on adjectives and adverbs and conjunctions or other frills.

  She trusts Carlsson, damned if I can figure out why, but all the animals trust Carlsson. They like him. Almost makes a girl wonder . . . .

  Screw that.

  Susan popped the last chunk of fried ham into her mouth, savored its blend of apple-wood smoke and maple sugar cure, and swallowed. “I still think we should get her away from that goddamned transmitter.”

  Alice took a judo chop to the conversation, right hand into left palm. “Cut the crap. Okay, let’s try it this way. Aunt Jean thinks that this is the only place, the only way, we maybe can send the swimmer back to where she belongs. That ‘maybe’ is why we didn’t mention it before. No point in getting folks all wound up. But this is Spirit Point. She came here, and this is a place where spirits come and go. The only reliable place we know. If we take her away, we’ll just have to come back.” She turned to Carlsson. “You got enough of that tranquilizer to keep her under for a few more days? If the Navy gets chatty?”

  Carlsson hemmed and hawed for a few seconds. “Okay, a friend scored a warehouse bottle full. I have enough for a week, solid. Don’t ask.”

  That means Bouchard, and probably five felonies. No, don’t ask. And they aren’t going to budge.

  Susan frowned. “Okay. If you’ve finished that coffee, let’s get this show on the road. Aunt Jean said we have some unfinished business.”

  Alice and Carlsson exchanged one of their “insider” looks, shared info they weren’t sharing with her. As usual, that pissed Susan off.

  “I think . . . .” Carlsson paused, probably knowing just how much his thoughts mattered to her. “I think you’d probably be happier if you listened to Alice. Just drop her off and come back. I’ll start up the stoves in the gatehouse, get it warmed up and aired out. Then you won’t have to sleep on the floor. Or make such a show of locking the door.”

  If he hadn’t added that last bit . . . . “I think you’re as full of shit as a Christmas goose. This is about me, yes, about my midnight visitors?”

  She glared at Alice. Alice nodded, not happy but not lying. Not bothering to lie. The kid would lie like a goddamn Persian rug if she felt justified. Susan had already worked that out. And Alice would do a damn slick job of it, too.

  “If it’s about me, I want to be there. Fuck you very much. End of story.”

  Alice shrugged. “So mote it be, and upon your own head be it. At least this way, you won’t go asking silly questions afterward.”

  That did not sound good. Susan masked the chill she felt, getting up and gathering her backpack and checking the emergency gear and putting on jacket and boots and gloves. Carlsson had said the storm’s last snow had been warm and wet and heavy. The old ski wax might still work, or anyway serve as a base for softer. She stepped outside and grabbed a fistful of snow and squished it into a ball. Yeah, purple wax. And breaking trail was gonna be a slog, six to eight inches of new snow, right here on the coast. Hell of a lot more, inland, but a lot of it had just blown right over them, or come down as rain.

  Soonest started, soonest done. She clipped into her ski bindings and headed down the trail, letting Alice sort her own self out. Right now, she was in no mood for chatter with the kid.

  One of the wrangles this morning, Alice and Carlsson had decided they didn’t need to wait for Bouchard to take over the watch. Grendel had healed so quickly, that weird transfer of chi had given Carlsson so much strength, that the two of them could carry on now without help. More to the point, it looked like Grendel wouldn’t twist Carlsson’s neck and eat him the minute the two of them were left alone. Damned shame. Susan thought they were pushing, asking for trouble, didn’t see the need to rush.

  Bicker bicker bicker.

  Alice caught up with her a few hundred yards out, leapfrogged, and broke trail for a while. They kept that up, swapping leads, sweating their way through wet snow the rest of the way. No words. The kid apparently didn’t feel like talking, either. Standard-issue sullen teenage angst, found a zit on her nose, or something more?

  And Eagle didn’t put in an appearance, no guidance there. Susan quit looking up after the first quarter-mile, just kept her focus on the tips of her skis and shoving them through wet snow. So much for flying. Was Eagle against her leaving, or against her pig-headed demand to be in at the kill? Bad choice of words, Susan didn’t know where they were going or what would happen once they got there. Old Naskeag aunts didn’t need enforcers like the Mafia.

  But the way Alice handled that gun . . . .

  They reached the gatehouse. The side road hadn’t been plowed yet. Susan poked at the snow with her pole, decided the old Dart could handle it with those new snow tires, and pulled her car out of the garage anyway, rather than waiting. She locked up again behind her, clamped skis on the roof rack, and tossed poles and packs in the back seat. Alice buckled in without a word.

  Then, “You want me to check the road? County plow probably left a mess out there.” Strictly business.

  Susan just shook her head. If she got stuck, that would be an answer. And the county plow had left a mess, a fresh berm thrown two feet deep and maybe six feet wide from the first pass down the road, and she was just pissed-off enough to gun the Dart straight into it and to hell with any traffic claiming right-of-way out on the main road. The car slowed when it hit the crest and started to float on top of the packed snow but momentum carried them through with the rising whine of spinning tires and there wasn’t a loaded pulp truck barreling along at fifty with an old blue Dodge in its crosshairs.

  She stopped to breathe and let her heartbeat settle.

  “One thing to think about, while driving.” Alice had that let’s-tease-Susan look on her face again. “You can get a hell of a big charge of revenge by being on the inside of a humongous secret, and not talking. All those know-it-all tenured experts, and they don’t have a clue.”

  Oh, fuck. Am I that transparent?

  Susan took the main roads—no sneaking through the skidder trails and cow paths this time, no directions from Alice. Anybody saw her car, to hell with them. And that set the tone for the rest of the drive. Silence reigned on both sides, and determination. Or pig-headed obstinacy.

  Susan grunted to herself, shook her head, and dug out a cigarette and lit it, two-handed juggling act while steering with her knees. That took them to the last ridge and they rolled downhill into Stonefort and past the Mrs. Reverend’s convenience store and turned and turned again. Susan shook her head a last time and turned in at Aunt Jean’s driveway and parked.

  As always, the place felt safe, trouble would never reach here. Maybe she ought to stay and wait . . . .

  No. Evil must be faced. She’d learned one lesson from that sordid little robbery and Mom’s death. Mom had been her usual meek brown-skin self, had done everything the punks had told her. And then they’d shot her in the back of the head as she lay facedown on the floor. She’d clasped her hands behind her head like a good P.O.W—cop said the bullet went right through both palms.

  At least Susan had learned to shoot back. If she’d been her mother, she’d probably be dead by now.

  Alice had vanished, into the house. Susan shook off her dread and shut down
the Dart and sat for a moment, thinking. Screw this. With fresh snow on the roads, Aunt Jean will take that Wagoneer and four-wheel drive. Wherever they’re going, she’ll be driving. If I’m sitting in the car already, that’s a done deal. She’ll have to boot my brown ass out.

  The Jeep wasn’t locked. Folks in Sunrise County didn’t lock their houses, much less their cars. Susan still carried city habits, always locked, never left stuff lying out where it could be seen. That made her notice the country difference. She settled herself in the front seat and waited, watching the House.

  A couple of minutes only, the door opened and Alice came out, a lumpy purse-sized canvas satchel over one shoulder. Aunt Jean followed, ready to go so soon that this might have been an appointment penciled in on her calendar for all that they hadn’t called ahead.

  She saw Susan in the Jeep, paused, and shook her head. She shook her head again, walked more slowly now like an old fat woman who suddenly felt tired, crossed to the Jeep, opened the driver’s side door, and stood there, staring at Susan, not saying a word.

  Alice filled the silence. “She says that since this is about her, she has a right to be there.”

  Aunt Jean just stood there by the open car door, looking across the front seat at Susan. She studied Susan, not a kind look, not a gentle look. “The right, yes. Ma petit, I have many rights. I do not choose to follow some of them, because they are not wise things to do. Are you sure of this?”

  No, Susan was not sure. If it had just been Aunt Jean, just been Alice, she would have thought some more about it. But Carlsson . . . if Carlsson says I shouldn’t go, I’m damn well going.

  She nodded. She pulled the seatbelt across and buckled it, repeated for the separate shoulder belt. The metallic clicks sounded a lot like Alice chambering a cartridge in that automatic of hers. Bad image.