The Orangefield Cycle Omnibus

by Al Sarrantonio

  “… everyone we talked to,” detective Grant was saying, “was sure your husband was killed last night in front of Loughran’s Bar at just before one o’clock in the morning …”

  Chapter Three

  How many days?

  She had no idea. Whatever they had given her worked too well. The wake, the funeral, the burial, all of it had been surrounded in fuzzy light. She felt as if she was packed in cotton candy. Janet, thank God, had acted like a commander in chief, leading her like a zombie, telling her when to sit, to stand, everyone else in the church on their feet and she was immobile, sitting down, staring at anything but the coffin. And then a soft tug, the hissed, “Get up, Marianne, for heaven’s sake,” and then a push here, a pull there, and then, finally, the empty house and even Janet gone.

  Only the pills left.

  How many days?

  It was sunny out, Indian summer. It had been raining the day of the funeral. At least one day, then. Had the burial been on a Monday or Tuesday? She didn’t remember.

  She sat up in bed, and groaned. As if Jack had never existed, she had already moved to the middle. She was staring at the red numbers of the alarm clock, staring at them, the bottle of pills next to the numbers—

  With a howl of pain she lashed out with her left hand, knocked the pills and the clock to the floor.

  “Dammit!”

  She sobbed, and kept crying, hands balled into fists against her eyes, rolling over onto her side of the bed and curling up against herself as she had that night.

  “Jack, Jack …”

  She opened her eyes and saw the blank face of the broken clock radio staring at her, the red numerals extinguished.

  “Oh God, oh God …”

  After another half hour she crawled like a zombie out of the bed onto the floor. She felt around until her hand closed on the bottle of pills, which had rolled under the bed.

  Something gently brushed over the top of her hand, like the tips of trailing fingers, and tried to take the bottle from her.

  “No!” she said, out of it, holding the bottle tight. “I want to!”

  She ripped the top of the bottle off and quickly shook a mountain of pills into her palm, then into her mouth.

  She crawled back into bed and slept again, still clutching the bottle like a precious keepsake.

  Chapter Four

  “That’s it. Enough is enough,” Janet announced.

  Marianne forgot that she had given her sister a key to the house. Through a very thick fog, she heard Janet storming around downstairs, then clumping up the stairs.

  She tried to feign sleep.

  “Get the hell out of bed,” her sister ordered.

  Marianne felt something in her hand, opened her eyes and stared at the empty pill bottle. Her sister was there, yanking the bottle from her and holding it up for examination.

  “How many of these damned things did you take?”

  “Lot …”

  “Goddamned idiot …”

  Janet threw the bottle down. Marianne heard her sister on the phone, the tap of three buttons before sleep came again …

  Chapter Five

  A brighter yellow light, sharp edged like the world.

  She opened her eyes and smelled starch. The sheets were still white in hospitals. There was a cool autumn breeze smelling faintly of pumpkins and leaves, an open window to her right. To her left was a white panel screen in sections that covered the length of her bed as well as the foot. The sound of a television behind it. A game show, The Price is Right. Audience laughter.

  She took a deep breath.

  As if on cue, the panel at the foot of the bed was folded abruptly aside and her sister was there, glowering.

  “About time,” Janet said. There was a chair behind her, Baby Charlie asleep in his stroller next to it. Two vases of unattractive flowers were set on a dresser behind the stroller. She could see the edge of the television now, mounted on the wall and swiveled toward her sister’s chair.

  “Catatonic in the other bed,” Janet explained, reading her mind. “So I bogarted the TV. Feel like watching?”

  “No.”

  “You’re not going to keep up this gloomy shit, are you? It’s getting tiring, and Baby Charlie’s been missing his play group.”

  “How long … ?”

  “You’ve been in this rat hole for three days. The candy machines don’t even work. But they take Jack’s insurance, thank God, and no one’s asked me to sign anything.” Her eyes dilated for a moment. “Except for detective Grant.”

  Memory failed Marianne, then kicked in. “Grant … ?”

  “The cop. They wanted to swab your business end, so I said go ahead.”

  She was more awake now, and frowned. “Why?”

  “Apparently detective Grant didn’t like what Jack’s buddies had to say when he talked to them. Especially that moron Bud Ganley. And since you were so insistent about …” She waved her hand, suddenly embarrassed. “You know.”

  Threads were slowly weaving together, her mind unfogging, a clear picture …

  “He thinks I was raped?”

  “Something like that. The detective thinks you may have been mixed up about the time, that ol’ Bud paid you a visit after he brought Jack to the hospital. You know Bud, always on the make. And since you and Bud had a history …”

  She was speechless, and Janet went on.

  “He’s a weird one, that detective Grant. Looks haunted, to me. And a lush, too. Remember Chip Prohman? In my class at Orangefield High? He’s a desk sergeant, now. I talked to him yesterday. He told me Grant’s wife is dead, and he’s been involved in some real weird stuff the last few years. You remember those Sam Sightings everyone talked about a few years ago? Folks tramping through the woods, looking for Samhain, the Celtic Lord of the Dead? The rumor was Grant was somehow mixed up in that. And all those rumors when the house at Gates’ Farm burned to the ground — he was in the middle of that, too, according to Chip. But Chip always was an asshole, so who knows … ?”

  Janet’s voice trailed off. Her unease hadn’t left her. She glanced briefly at Baby Charlie for help, but he was snoozing contentedly, head tilted slightly to one side, a river of clear snot flowing from one nostril.

  “Look,” Janet said, “I didn’t think it was a big deal. You were out like a light, and Grant was persuasive. He said they’d be lucky to get a sample after that much time, but apparently they did. A female nurse did it. I was right here, outside the curtain, the whole time. Took two minutes.”

  “You always hated Bud Ganley.”

  Janet’s unease evaporated. “You bet I’ve always hated him. What’s not to hate? And I wouldn’t put it past the prick …”

  “To come to my house and rape me after my husband had been hit by a car and killed?”

  Janet looked at the floor for a moment, then shrugged. “When you put it that way, it sounds pretty damn stupid.”

  “What did Petee say?”

  “You know Petee Wilkins. He’ll nod his head like a bobble doll at anything Bud says. He swears Bud was with him the whole time. That they put Jack in Bud’s car and drove right to the hospital. Then after they called you they went back to the bar.” She snorted. “That part sounds right.”

  “Bud told me on the phone from the hospital that they couldn’t handle what happened, that they had to have a drink. He was almost crying.”

  “So he and ol’ Petee get drunk and leave you alone to handle it. Like I said, that sounds about right. Well, detective Grant doesn’t believe either of them. He thinks Bud paid you a visit after they left the hospital.”

  “It was Jack who was with me!”

  Janet just looked at her.

  Baby Charlie came awake with a sudden intake of breath. Before he could start wailing, Janet expertly slid his bottle from its bag and plugged it into his mouth.

  “Like I said, Marianne, I’m not going to be able to keep doing this.”

  “You’ve already done too much.”

&nbs
p; “Tell me about it.” She locked eyes with Marianne, and her expression grew serious. “You still look a little out of it. You gonna try to kill yourself again? Can I stop worrying about that, at least?”

  “Yes. It was stupid. And the weirdest thing is, I think someone was in the room with me.”

  “Come again?” Janet asked.

  “A … spirit, trying to keep me from taking those pills. There was a hand …”

  Janet stared at her as if she had just landed from Pluto. “You think that was Jack, too?”

  Marianne looked away. “I don’t know …”

  There was a sudden chill in the room — as if clouds had pushed the sun away, and autumn had flipped over into winter. The pumpkin and fallen leaf odor had disappeared, leaving a chill. Marianne shivered, and looked at the window, which darkened for a brief moment, ushering in silence and cold, before snapping back to normal.

  Her arms, she saw, were covered with goose bumps.

  Her sister was speaking, fussing with Baby Charlie, making sure the straps on his stroller were secure.

  “I’ve gotta go,” Janet announced. “Now that you’re awake, they’ll probably want your bed and release you. I’ll talk to the nurse and come back later to bring you home. Your house is clean, most of Jack’s things are packed up and in the garage. You can decide what you want to do with them later. You’re having dinner at my house tomorrow night. No argument. And you’re going to call me before you go to bed tonight, and again when you get up tomorrow morning. And if I hear anything I don’t like in your voice, a slur from pills or alcohol, or even cough syrup, I’m going to come over to your house and strangle you. Got it?”

  Janet turned away from Baby Charlie to her sister, who was staring out the window blankly. “Earth to Marianne!”

  Marianne turned and gave her a weak smile. “I’ve got it, Janet. Again, thanks for everything.”

  “You bet.” She turned back to Baby Charlie and made a sudden sour face as an odor wafted upwards from him. “Whew, little man, we need to make a stop at the changing station on the way out.”

  Chapter Six

  She felt like a visitor in her own house.

  She remembered a similar feeling when she came home to her parent’s house from college the first time. Janet was already married by then, right out of high school the year before, and the bedroom they had shared, which was still essentially unchanged, looked almost strange, as if someone else lived there. Everything was where it had always been — her bed piled high with stuffed animals, the shelf over the headboard lined with books, the roll top desk open, a row of knickknacks, figures from the Wizard of Oz, across the top, the bed tables with the funny-shaded lamps, little gold pom poms hanging from the shade rims, two of them missing on her lamp, victims of their cat Marvel’s hunting ardor. She knew every inch of this space, the messy closet, the red and white curtains, the floral wallpaper. She had lived in this room since she was a little girl — and yet, today, it all looked new to her, as if she was visiting herself.

  That was how Marianne felt in her house today.

  But there was a difference, because she was not coming home to the same house.

  Jack’s half was … gone.

  It hit her immediately, when she looked at the hat rack in the front hallway and saw his baseball caps gone. There was only her own gardening cap, on its single peg. Normally it would have been hidden behind one of Jack’s hats, which had always annoyed her. There were certain places — the living room closet, stuffed with his golf clubs, baseball glove, bowling ball — where he tended to crowd her out. The garage had been his, the basement his, even though he had been promising her for years to set up her sewing machine down there.

  All of him was gone, now. The living room closet was nearly empty, three of her coats hanging forlornly. His side of the bedroom closet was bare. Even his muddy shoes and ratty sneakers had disappeared.

  Marianne sat on the made bed, folded her hands in her lap, and stared at the open closet door.

  Gone.

  A movement caught her eye in the corner of the room to her left. The room was dark, the window open a crack, October twilight descending outside. Light washed in from the hallway closet.

  “Jack?” she said, tentatively.

  The shadow thickened, seemed to take shape, then drew into itself and was gone.

  “Jack? Are you there?” She rose, walked to the corner of the room and put her hand out.

  Something trailed along the top of her hand like a bare caress, and melted away.

  “Marianne …” the faintest of faraway voices called.

  She stood staring at her hand, at the blank corner of the room, listening to the wash of distant traffic outside.

  Chapter Seven

  “He was there.”

  Janet was getting tired of rolling her eyes. Chuck Larson had been truly interested in the beginning, but now that the dessert and coffee was gone he just wanted to escape to his TV room and a baseball playoff game.

  “Honey—” he began, trying to rise.

  “Shut up and sit down, Chuck. Unless you want to put Baby Charlie to bed.”

  Chuck sighed, settled back into his dining room chair.

  Marianne looked from her sister to her brother in law. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be going on like this.”

  “What we’ve got here,” Janet said, “is you still trying to deal with your husband’s death. My own feeling is that it’s time to kick your own ass and move on. But you were never me, Marianne. So in the short run I’d say go with it. If it doesn’t stop, we’ll get you a shrink.”

  “I think it was really him.”

  Chuck, trapped in the sisters’ conversation, tried to revive his own interest. “But all you saw was a shadow, and felt something on your hand, and heard someone whisper your name?”

  “It sounded like Jack.”

  “Sounded like? Or was? Is there any of it that could have been something else? The shadow maybe from a passing car in the street? The touch on your hand a breeze from the open window?”

  Marianne said, “And the voice?”

  Chuck hesitated, shrugged. “In your head? A noise in the house, misinterpreted?”

  “It was the same kind of touch as when I took the pills, when the bottle rolled under the bed and I reached for it.”

  Janet snorted. “That was a dust bunny, kiddo. I cleared them out myself. By the way, don’t you ever clean that place of yours?”

  Chuck smiled, hoping the evening was over. His grin didn’t carry the room, however.

  “Honey—” he began again.

  “Yes! Please! Leave!” Janet said, exasperated. “Watch your damn game!”

  Relieved, her husband raised his bulk out of his chair and headed for the door.

  “But put the baby to bed first!” Janet commanded after him.

  He physically flinched, but kept walking.

  Janet turned back to her sister. “How did you sleep last night?”

  “Fine.”

  “Marianne — what the hell is it you aren’t telling me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Janet gave a grim smile. “You’ve never been able to hide anything from me. You know that. And you’re trying now.”

  Marianne tried a blank look, then gave up. “I’m glad you let Chuck go. I didn’t want to talk with him around.”

  “So he’s not around. Talk.”

  Marianne took a deep breath. “I think … I’m pregnant.”

  “What!”

  “I started throwing up this morning, and, well … I just know.”

  Her sister’s face grew florid. “I’ll kill Bud Ganley. So help me God, I’ll kill him with my bare hands.”

  Janet suddenly pushed herself away from the table and got up. Somewhere in the depths of the house, Baby Charlie was crying, Chuck’s voice trying to soothe him.

  “I’m calling detective Grant right now,” Janet said. “He may be weird, but he’ll take care of Bud Ganley.” She stomped off
toward the kitchen, and the wall phone.

  “Janet, don’t!”

  Janet stopped and turned around. Her face was flushed with anger. “Why the hell not! You were raped, and now you’re pregnant! And I want to watch that son-of-a-bitch Ganley swing by his balls in jail!”

  Chapter Eight

  Bud Ganley stretched out and crossed his long legs and wanted more than anything to put his boots up on the desk. But he instinctively knew that wouldn’t be a good idea. He had the feeling Grant would kick them off, and there were a half dozen other cops of various ranks in the room who would like to take a poke at him. He’d already gotten rid of his tobacco chaw at Grant’s insistence, and knew from the murderous look on the detective’s face that if he gave the old man reason enough to pound him, Grant just might do it. And every other cop in the place would surely look the other way.

  “Smells like paint in here,” Ganley said, stretching his arms over his head and yawning.

  “You know something?” Grant asked, tapping his pencil on the desk and staring at Ganley.

  “No,” Ganley said, looking at the ceiling.

  “Well, I’ll tell you anyway. The older I get, the more tired I get of guys like you. I’ve known you since you were, what, seventeen? And you’re still the same punk at thirty four.”

  Ganley smiled, showing white teeth through his thick handlebar moustache. “Thirty five next week, detective. You gonna throw me a party?”

  Ganley looked down from the ceiling. For a moment their eyes locked, and Ganley’s smile went away.

  Man, this guy has weird eyes, Ganley thought. The rest of him is a complete wreck, but those eyes have seen way too much—

  For a brief moment, a pang of something almost like pity went through the young man. Then that, too, went away.

  Ganley grinned. “Can we get to it, please? I’ve gotta be back at work.”