“No harm done,” Reg said expansively, suddenly noting Sam’s hand on his shoulder and slipping his own around her waist. It was a gesture completely unconscious, more paternal than affectionate, but she could not help noticing the abrupt narrowing of the boy’s eyes and the rigid way Vince sat up and stared across the room. The moment lasted no longer than it took her to recognize it and move deftly away. But she was startled, and somewhat flattered, that a simple gesture from someone like Reg Craig could produce such an intense reaction.
Maybe, she thought, she should take hospital breaks more often.
She almost laughed then, cleared her throat instead and squinted at the wall clock by her door. Problems, she realized; there could be problems here if I don’t watch out. Danny, for whatever reasons, was becoming increasingly possessive of late; and Vince . . . well, she did not want him thinking that Reg was something he wasn’t. And that idea amused her, too, when she realized that it mattered. Had mattered, in fact, even while Malcolm was alive and both young man and older were attempting to discourage her from seeing him. Vince and Daniel. This time she did grin.
“Listen,” she said, “if you all are going to debate the problems of the world, would you mind at least keeping it down to a dull roar? I have a lot of paperwork to catch up on yet, and I really don’t feel like taking anything home tonight.”
“Lord save the poor working girl,” Vince said.
“Spring fever,” Reg muttered, and slumped down in his chair. “Miss England,” Danny said then, staring down at his shoes almost buried by his trousers’ cuffs, “I got a . . . a friend’s car tonight. It’s a LaSalle. It’s a red one.” He looked up. Smiled. “Cary Grant’s over to Harley. With Betsy Drake, I think.”
She almost sputtered, tried not to scowl when she caught Vince’s amused expression, and she would have been curt had she not also seen Reg’s puff-chested condescension. “No,” she said gently, though she managed to keep her smile. “I’m really not up to it now. But thanks for asking.”
Danny shrugged. “That’s all right. Shaw’s going to be in Hartford, anyway. I guess I’d rather dance.” Immediately, he reached down for BarteIle’s wastebasket and carried it off, through the door that led into the alley.
“Pup,” Reg said, poking at the folders on his blotter. “Insolent. Don’t know why you hired him, Samantha.”
She lay a hand carefully atop his, her expression clear enough to make him leave his work alone. Then she smiled sweetly at him. “As I recall, Reginald, my dear, it was you who took him on. I remember further that you felt sorry for him, or words to that effect.”
“He’s still a pup,” the man said sourly. “Wanders around town all the time, never goes home . . . wouldn’t be surprised if he’s been picking up all those dogs and selling them in New York. Big black market in that sort of thing, you know.” He looked away from Sam’s astonishment and rose, forcing her back. “He’ll be drafted anyway, you’ll see. The Army will be good for him. Toughen him up. He’s . . . too pretty, if you know what I mean.”
She did not trust herself to reply. She had known Reg for nearly fifteen years, and had never heard him raise his voice except in an argument over politics; nor had she ever seen him struggling quite so hard for control. It puzzled her because she didn’t know why a boy, an office boy, should affect him so. Perhaps, she thought, he was mad because Danny had had the nerve to ask her out in front of him, and though she knew he was interested in her he had never once made what she could recognize as anything close to an advance. Unless the hand at her waist . . .
“It’s a crush,” Vince said as Reg headed back for the restroom. “What?” Reg turned slowly.
“A crush, man. Come on, Reg, you know what that is. The boy’s in love with every woman on the street. You should see him at work in the park sometime. He picks out a chick and follows her everywhere until she either tells him to get lost or . . .” He spread his hands and grinned.
“Oh. And I suppose you, Bartelle, don’t have to stoop to such tactics.”
Vince waved his cigarette in the air, drew on it, watched the smoke writhe toward Craig’s paunch. “I manage, old man, I manage.”
Reg snorted his disgust and stalked into the restroom, the door closing heavily, just this side of a slam.
“Good lord,” Sam said. “What’s gotten into him?”
“Asta.”
She blinked, slowly. “We were talking about Reg, not William Powell.”
He stubbed out his cigarette, pulled a copy of the Station Herald from his desk and tapped at a small article near the bottom of the front page. She read it quickly, an announcement that the Harley and Oxrun Station police forces were setting up a joint investigative team whose sole function would be to smash the apparent petnapping ring that was terrorizing the two communities.
“Terrorizing?” she said.
“Sam, you were born and raised here. You’ve been in homes where people think money is the reward you get for opening your eyes in the morning. And you’ve seen their pets. Pampered, spoiled, loved as though they were human, and worth, at times, in the thousands. How would you feel if it up and went on you?”
“All right, but what does that have to do with—” She stopped.
“Oh.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Last night. He and whatever he calls it, the terrier, were in the park. It took off on him, and he hasn’t seen it since.”
She put a hand to her forehead. “Brother. Then—”
A sudden clatter of trash cans in the alley interrupted her.
Danny returned to drop the wastebasket in its place. He said nothing to them, only walked briskly down the aisle toward the front, pausing just long enough to pinch Angie’s back before grabbing up a broom and leaving. A moment later she could see him swiping viciously at the pavement in front of the building.
The ticker tape in her office chimed to life, chattered, and stilled.
“Do you think he heard?” she said without looking away. “
He’d be deaf if he didn’t.”
“Oh, dear.”
“Mother to the world,” he said gently. “When are you ever going to learn to relax. Better yet, throw yourself into my arms and tell me you’re going to Southampton with me.”
“I thought you already had a . . . companion.”
“I could get a headache.”
“You could get fired.”
“Is that a hint or an answer?”
She grinned at him. “You’re the expert. You figure it out.” Then she returned to her desk, leaving the door open. She heard nothing while she worked for the next hour, nothing when she leaned back and stared blindly at the ceiling. It was time, she thought, something was done about Danny. It had been fun in the beginning, toying with him and knowing neither took the other very seriously. But today was the first time he’d ever broached the subject of an evening together. That worried her. It was wrong. And she had no intention of encouraging him if it meant his feelings would be hurt no matter how pleasant her rejection.
It was wrong, but her face sharpened suddenly into a mischievous mask.
On the other hand, accepting one of his proposals would certainly put him back into the pleasant mood he’d been in over the past two weeks; not to mention the apoplexy it would give Reg and the blow it would be to Vince’s ever so carefully manicured Harvard poise.
She put a hand to her mouth to muffle a laugh, renewed her attack on the portfolio and somehow managed to find that maddeningly lost key just before she realized she was alone in the office. She sighed and stretched, looking out through her door to the now-closed curtains, the dim lights beyond as Oxrun closed down for the night. The desks and partitions were formless and dark, reminding her for no reason of a painting she had seen, of a nights cape, a desert, rocks and buttes just after sunset. Though the sky was brilliant with the day’s afterglow, everything else had been done in shades of black.
An automobile backfired to accentuate the silence.
She wondered as she g
athered her things together if she should call Herb’s Taxi and ride out beyond the park to see her uncle. She was due for a visit, but she did not want the depression. He barely knew her, barely spoke unless the question was repeated three or four times. A year ago, two, she had wept each time she left; now, without any guilt, she hoped that his doctors would either give him his miracle and bring him back, or let him die. She would miss him. But her mourning was done.
No. Not tonight. Tonight she would take Vince’s advice: she would relax and read and listen to the radio and get to bed early before her weariness opened the gates for the dreams.
She checked the side door’s lock, fussed a bit with Angie’s desk and left.
Walked.
Thought May was the month for poets and lovers, and wondered if Byron or Shelley had had their best work done before the full heat of summer put a lid on simple dreaming.
At the police station, Tom Hancock was standing at the curb with two of his partners. They nodded to her as she passed, but she gave Tom a smile he took for himself. She almost stopped then to ask if he knew more about Malcolm, knew without asking he would tell her if he did.
And it was a measure of her mood that the thought did not slow her. It was too pleasant an evening and her step too light. Even the blandness of her dinner did not spoil her spring fever, and she was grinning still after washing the dishes, stacking them to air dry, wiping counter and table and folding the striped towel to hang over a chair. When she glanced at her watch she realized she’d missed the news, shrugged because she’d no desire tonight to hear about the fighting. It was too far away. Like sitting in the high balcony’s last row and watching a vague tragedy about people she didn’t know.
Tomorrow, she told herself; I’ll think about it tomorrow.
She lay a palm over the lightswitch by the hall door, pressed and let the room accept its ration of night.
And froze as though someone had nudged a blade against her spine.
Thee house was completely dark, a chill already seeping across the floorboards to her ankles. Slowly, she glanced over her right shoulder toward the back door. She had taken the blue curtains down the day before to clean them, and the six small panes were squares of suspended black ice that shimmered suddenly when an abrupt darting wind ricocheted off the house. She turned, and listened, as her arm dropped to her side.
A whispersoft sound, lingering, trailing, an impression of weight dragged across new moist grass.
She eased away from the wall, and with one arm slightly out to maintain her balance walked off her heels around the dark table.
Whispersoft. Circling.
She kicked a chair and stiffened.
Whispersoft. Fading.
With hands cupped and cold around her eyes she pressed her forehead against a pane and squinted, seeing nothing in the dark but the dim impatience of leaves twisting away from the wind.
She strained, and heard nothing.
Closed her fingers around the knob and opened the door.
The cold made her gasp, and she hugged herself tightly as she stepped out onto the narrow back stoop. The woodland on the left seemed closer and looming, the trees around the tool shed trembling and distant. Clouds butted the moon. The single window in the shed caught some of the light and winked at her. leering, before the light died. Her blouse was loose and was no protection, the hair that swept back from her face in set curl-rolls tugged at her face until she was grimacing.
A dog, she thought then, or that damned tom of Kramer’s.
It was a good enough answer that was no answer at all, and she backed inside to close the door quickly, hurrying into the hallway to stop at the telephone table at the foot of the stairs. Her teeth clicked together hard, and she stamped a foot to bring her warmth. But by the time the shuddering and the stamping was done she had decided there was no reason to call the police; and if she called anyone else they would think of Dave Creshton and the hospital on King and they would calm her and voice-smile and not believe her at all.
Believe what? she asked herself then. I heard a noise. A dog or a cat. The dogs were all gone. A dog or a cat hunting garbage to root through.
“Ridiculous,” she said, and was inordinately pleased at the calm in her voice. Then, whispering: “Please don’t let it come back.”
She walked into the living room and switched on a standing lamp, dropped into her favorite armchair and plucked a Collier’s from the cranberry-scoop magazine rack at her side. She crossed her legs at the knee. Again, the other way. Tugged at a stray curl. Pulled at her nose. Dropped the magazine to the carpet and reached for the newspaper before realizing she hadn’t stopped to pick one up.
“Samantha,” she warned herself.
She stared at the Emerson across the room, but it seemed suddenly too large, the speaker grilles in an arc around the central dial gaping mouths that spewed out the dark.
“Damnit!”
None of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for Vince and Reg. Their arguments in the office, the tensions they created with Danny in the center, all of it flooding her senses until they were numb. It was false, thinking she had managed to joke her way through the afternoon. She had done nothing but aggravate the situation. Reg. Vince. Danny. The stoic, the rake, the boy. She put fingers to her cheeks and rubbed them softly, pushed her hand back through her hair and felt the pins dislodge. It was their fault; she’d been doing fine until today.
Now . . . now, suddenly, she needed a voice.
She pushed herself out of the chair and walked back into the hall, grabbed the heavy black receiver and gave the operator a number. Her foot tapped impatiently. She kept her back firm to the kitchen.
“Hello?”
Damn. she thought, and could not understand how she’d gotten Reg.
“Reg, it’s Samantha.”
There was a pause she could not read, but when he spoke again his voice was soft.
“Samantha, for heaven’s sake. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Flustered, still muttering under her breath at her idiocy, she managed to blunder through something about the office and her work. Then she cut herself off and could sense him frowning.
“Samantha, are you all right?” Now the voice was deep. Paternal. She felt again the hand on her waist and she sighed, loudly.
“I’m fine, Reg,” she said. “Look, this is going to sound awfully silly, but I really wasn’t calling you.”
“Ah,” he said, as though he understood.
“I mean, I gave the wrong number to the operator. I was calling someone else.”
“Indeed.” A pause. “A couple of weeks ago I was trying to get hold of my mother in Greenwich. I ended up with the local police. I felt like a complete fool, believe me, calling the desk sergeant ‘Mother.’ ”
She twisted the wire in her left hand, and smiled. “Thanks, Reg.”
He laughed. “Hey, wait a minute, Samantha, I didn’t mean it that way.”
“I know. I was just teasing.”
Explain, she thought; the man has no imagination. She remembered the sound and wished she were the same.
“But listen, Samantha, as long as you’re on the line, would you mind telling me what . . .”
She frowned. “Reg? Reg, are you there?”
“Yes,” he said, seemingly distracted. “Yes, of course. There was something . . . Samantha, would you mind hanging on for a minute? I think there’s someone on the porch. Maybe he’s found Asta. Would you mind?”
She nodded, then blurted a “go ahead” though she knew he had already left her. Nice, she thought; very nice, Sam. One lousy dog taking a shortcut has galloped you into instant senility.
She was still chiding herself half-heartedly, her gaze drifting around the hallway, when she heard the shout. A man’s shout, full-voiced and high. A shout that became a scream, a scream sliced abruptly into silence.
“Reg?” Whispersoft. “Reg!”
The protestation of floorboards as something dragged over t
hem.
ghosts slipping over
The line breaking into a shrill wail that made her snap the receiver away from her ear. She stared at it, gaping, her lips working at words that would not come, while her breath came in quick, shallow bursts. The wailing died. She jabbed at the cradle frantically until the operator returned, snapped out Reg’s address and a demand for the police, and was in her coat and out the front door before there was a response.
She would not let herself think, would not let herself imagine. It wasn’t until she had swerved around the corner and was racing up King Street that she realized she hadn’t put on her shoes, that pebbles and twigs were digging into her soles. But she did not falter; instead, she welcomed them, and their swift stabs of pain: they kept her mind off the scream, off the sounds and the silence she had heard when the scream had died.
Another right turn and she was on Fox Road, slowing now as she approached the woodland wall four blocks distant. Stopping for a moment when she saw the cascade of light from Craig’s small home across the way, mirrored by those of his neighbors to either side. She stepped off the curb, arms folded over her stomach, hands gripping her elbows. Now that she was here she didn’t know what to do, could not bring herself to search the lawns for signs of- She froze, then, when a patrol car rushed past her and halted nose in to the curb. Four men scattered from the vehicle instantly, the last Torn Hancock, who turned and waited for her. Another car split them, another quartet, and floodlights from the roof turned the area a flat, dead white.
“You move fast,” Hancock said when she was close enough to hear.
“I . . .” She couldn’t. Her eyes would not move away from the front stoop, from the open door. Dimly she heard voices as people filtered onto their lawns, speculating and calling, driving back the night with ill-timed jokes and friendly jibes at the police.
A small, heavyset woman in a quilted bathrobe and furry pink mules came up to Hancock and pulled at his arm urgently. “The bums,” she said, voice cracking. Hancock gave her his best professional smile. “The bums,” she said again, jutting her chin toward the woods. Another woman joined her; they could have been sisters. “They come around at night, knocking over garbage cans, breaking windows, drunk all the time on that hooch they make by the tracks. You find them, Officer, you find your man.”
The Complete Short Fiction of Charles L. Grant Volume 1: Nightmare Seasons (Necon Classic Horror) Page 4
