The Storm King: A Novel

by Brendan Duffy

  Mama was supposed to kill us, but she didn’t.

  Mama was supposed to kill us, but she couldn’t.

  Mama was supposed to kill us, and she should have.

  The woman followed Nate’s gaze to the odd note and snatched it off the wall with the speed of a cracking whip. She crumpled it into a ball and glared at Nate. “Get out, or I’ll call the police.”

  Nate squared his shoulders. The basement stank of fear, and it wasn’t his. He recognized something familiar in the woman’s face. Something beyond the knotted hair and leather countenance.

  “Do I know you?”

  The woman snorted. She trudged past him to close the exterior hatch. With Medea banished, the tight space became close and quiet.

  The woman’s presence tugged at something deep inside the archives of his mind. He flipped through faces in his head. She wasn’t a teacher or a store owner or the grandmother of a childhood friend. “How do I know you?”

  “Who says you do?”

  “You knew me well enough to yell at me last night outside the Empire.” Even then, Nate had sensed something when he’d looked at her.

  “Kids never saw me. Even when I wanted them to. And I wasn’t ever there except after hours.” She picked at the floor, collecting the black-red envelopes and tsking at their every crease and blemish. “You did your clubs—yearbook and newspaper and model UN and what have you—but stopped with the sports after what happened to your arm. Never saw me save a half dozen times in four years. Even then you didn’t see me. Didn’t see any of us, I bet. The invisible people.”

  “You were a janitor at the high school.”

  The woman shot upright in shock, as if she’d forgotten that she’d been speaking aloud. She muttered something Nate didn’t catch and continued her gathering.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Names, names. Everyone asks for names. It isn’t what you’re called that matters, it’s what you do that counts. Bea told me that herself.”

  “ ‘Bea’?” Now Nate was the surprised one. “Beatrice McHale? My grandmother?”

  The woman looked at him, and the folds of her face moved in a way that was impossible to read.

  “Bea’s a strong woman. Someone that strong can change the world. You could’ve changed the world, too, boy. And you have, haven’t you? But for better or worse?”

  “I’m an oncologic surgeon,” Nate said. He didn’t understand why this woman was talking about his grandmother any more than he understood this impulse to justify himself. “I help people every day.”

  “You didn’t always,” the woman said. “One bad thing grows upon another, doesn’t it? How much pain did you plant those years ago? What will the harvest be?”

  Nate remembered how the lady had berated him the night before. “What did you mean when you told me that I ruined everything?”

  “Now that I see your eyes, I wonder about you all over again. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that. Maybe it really is never too late to be good.”

  “What’s your name?” he asked again.

  “Been called all sorts of things. But the best name I’ve had is May. One of the two prettiest months.” Her lips twinged into a smile that might once have been sweet.

  “ ‘May.’ ” The woman was so unkempt that it was hard to narrow her age. She might have been a sun-damaged sixty or a miraculously fit ninety. But the black-red envelopes around the room were the same ones the Night Ship had used to mail their invitations. “Like May and June. The Night Ship Girls. Are you telling me that you’re Just June’s sister?” To someone from the Lake, meeting Just June’s sister was like stumbling upon a unicorn.

  There was something else in the woman’s smile now, and it helped Nate see the beauty hiding within her face.

  “You’re supposed to be dead. In all the stories they say that—”

  “ ‘Stories.’ ” The woman snorted again. “Here’s a town where even adults believe in fairy tales.”

  Morton Strong, Just June, the Boy Who Fell. The Lake loved its myths. Nate knew from experience that you didn’t want to be a character in one of them.

  “My whole life is made of stories.”

  “But what kind of story?” She pointed to the far end of the basement. Her swim must have limbered her muscles, but her gait aged as they cooled. Her steps to the rear of the cellar were mincing.

  The back wall was a mess of newspaper articles and photos and drawings. Here was the collage of obsessive insanity Nate had been prepared to find in the chief’s closet. The lair of a TV serial killer or the walls of a crime procedural situation room. Lines of red string branched in radiating webs that sprang from a single point, rippling across the walls like a cat’s cradle played among a nest of spiders.

  The woman picked at the wind-thrown magazines and clothes while Nate inched closer to the point of origin to which all the strings and images could be traced.

  The item in the center of the wall was so yellowed with age and so thickly covered with red string that he could barely make out the headline of the newspaper clipping.

  SOLE SURVIVOR OF HEADLANDS ACCIDENT

  Under and to the right of the headline, he could see the face of a boy from the top of his mouth to the shock of his dark hair. Nate felt the blood rush from his head. The cellar was cold, but he felt sweat prick across his arms.

  “Why?” His breath became short as his chest tightened. “How?”

  “Sit, Nate.” The woman was again right beside him. “I’ll tell you everything. Everything I can.”

  Nate’s body acquired the gravity of a larger, denser world. He fell onto a pile of lumpy upholstery. “What is this?” he asked. He stared at his picture and the wall of paper and images and string as if it was an oncoming train.

  “It’s like you said, boy. A story. But to get to the end, you need to understand the beginning.”

  THE LAKE BROKE red and gold as the sky wept its sparks.

  Fireworks launched from Blind Down Island cracked the summer night. This was the lake’s magic hour. Its one time a year when every rainbow shade gleamed across its undulating skin.

  The lake returns what it takes, yet did anyone but June notice that it never revealed anything of itself? Its waters were as vacant as a mirror, only reflecting the sights that dazzled above it. Armies of leviathans might assemble an inch below its surface, and the children who blazed its shore with sparklers and the revelers who pranced in their Night Ship silks would never see them coming.

  “Boss needs a refill, Junebug.”

  Carl ran the kitchen. He had the gut of a circus strongman and a face like an exploded engine, but he was always good to June. The girls snickered at her and poked fun at May, but Carl was like an uncle to the twins. He was family, just like the Night Ship was home. Now they had to leave it all behind.

  Strong was as particular about his beverages as he was about everything else. A special concoction of liquors, herbs, exotic fruits, and expensive vintages filled a silver punch bowl custom-made for his personal use. Old Morton entertained the VIPs in the Century Room. But no matter with whom he dined, this rich brew was rarely shared.

  The Harlot Queen herself pranced up to her with the boss’s empty bowl and dropped it next to where June was slicing strawberries for the baked Alaska platters. Garters barely concealed under a silk chemise, black heels half as high as the Night Ship’s spires, an ostrich feather–plumed fascinator pinned to a froth of golden hair. “Don’t get your filthy prints on it,” Scarlet said. June had seen her papers and knew her real name was Doris. She’d loosed this little nugget to the most gossipy of the whores, and scarlet, too, had been the wench’s rage.

  She’d replaced June as Strong’s second. She was as beautiful as June had been but hadn’t an eighth the gray matter. June suspected old Strong was going soft in the noggin himself. Anyone could see Scarlet was a poor substitute, but while June had shared Strong’s calculation and ruthlessness, Scarlet shared his bed.

  She was sure
Scarlet’s whispers and pouts had much to do with the fact that the twins would soon have to light out for territories unknown.

  The harlot cocked her head at June, daring her to say something smart. The girl had no concept of the game they played. She wouldn’t have understood the rules if June had written them out then read them aloud. June cracked a smile as sweet as the meringue that baked nearby. She held it until Scarlet tossed her head and sauntered back through the doors that swung out to the dance floor.

  Any one of the litany of humiliations June had recently sustained might have slumped her into melancholy, but she wasn’t built for brooding. Instead she stoked the fire within her into an inferno.

  Strong believed that turning the twins out on their behinds was a solution, but June intended for it to be just the beginning of his problems.

  “Have you seen the women’s dresses, June?” May bubbled into the room all skips and smiles. Not done up like the whores, she wore the same black pencil skirt and crimson blouse as June. They were the Night Ship Girls, and this was their costume. Regardless of their being on the brink of exile, Strong enjoyed the idea of identicals walking around. Other than the filthy apron fastened to June, the only visible difference between them was that May had a smile where June kept a frown. May adored the Fourth, and Strong let her walk around with a tray of canapés for the guests. “There’s this one the exact shade of Mama’s favorite lipstick.”

  May mentioned Mama at the slightest provocation. It’d been five years since she’d sickened and died. It’d left a hole in both of them, but May filled hers with fond remembrances, while June dug hers deeper with regrets and recriminations. If Strong had sent for the doctor sooner. If the air of the undercroft weren’t so damp. If she’d noticed the blood Mama hid in her handkerchief when she coughed.

  “And you won’t believe the sparklers and candles!”

  “They’re the same every year, May.”

  “But you must see them. They’re the most beautiful things.”

  “I will, dearest.”

  “Do you think Uncle Morton will let us visit next July? It’s like something out of Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty, isn’t it? So magical, you’d think anything can happen.”

  “When the singing woodland creatures show up, find out how they are with a paring knife then send them in here.”

  “I’ll help you, Juney.”

  “No, dearest. You’ll get juice on your blouse, and then they won’t want you on the floor.” June didn’t want May implicated in what happened next. “Listen.” She cocked her head as if listening. “I think they’re starting the finale—you don’t want to miss that.”

  May’s face broke into unfettered delight, and she kissed June on the cheek before scurrying back to the dance floor.

  June hoisted Strong’s silver bowl to the corner of the kitchen where she’d staged the array of bottles with which she’d already twice refilled the vessel. This batch would have some extra bite.

  Carl supervised the baked Alaska as the sous chefs plated a pyramid of cream puffs. Even if they’d been paying attention to June, with her back to the rest of the kitchen no one could see what she was doing.

  The cognacs first, followed by some bitters and a bottle of Dom Pérignon and a dash of Château Margaux. Bénédictine DOM and Sazerac Rye. Two sprigs of crushed rosemary, the juice of four blood oranges, paper-thin slices of star fruit.

  A dollop of amber honey was next, but antifreeze was nearly as sweet. A can she’d hidden earlier sat in the cabinet at her feet. It was the size of a paint tin; she’d pried its lid open during the party preparations. When she brought it to the counter, the venomous green of the poison brimmed to its lip.

  Morton Strong imbibed like others breathed. He had the tolerance of an oil rig worker, but a measure of antifreeze would set even him back a step or two. When Strong had dropped the bomb, he told June that she’d become an embarrassment. June would show him just what embarrassment looked like. A bout of unstoppable nausea among Greystone Lake’s finest would do that and more. Strong had grown up in the stinking canyons of the Lower East Side. Among those teeming streets the currency that mattered most was that of respect. Respect won by fear. And no one feared an aging nightclub owner who couldn’t hold his liquor.

  This was just a taste of what was to come. June had been Strong’s right hand for two decades, and she knew, both literally and figuratively, where a great many bodies were buried. She had the rest of Strong’s life mapped out for him, and he wasn’t going to like its destination.

  “Boss’s drink ready, Junebug?”

  Carl’s voice was closer than June expected. It startled her enough to drop the can into the punch bowl. The viscous slurry glossed the silver bowl in its noxious green. June retrieved the can as quickly as she could, but it was wet and slick. More than three-quarters of its contents had been added to the punch. Too much. Far, far too much.

  “I still have to add the Courvoisier,” June said. She mixed the sludge into the rest of the liquid to hide it, but knew she’d have to make it all over again.

  “Sure it’s fine as is, sweetness.”

  June barely had time to drape a dish towel over the can before he was alongside her.

  “This deep in, he won’t taste a thing anyway.” Carl grabbed a handle of the bowl. “I’ll have one of the girls take it to him.”

  “Should at least polish it up first,” June said. “You know how he hates smudges.”

  “You’re too good for all of us, Juney,” Carl chuckled as he carried the punch bowl away from her. “I’ll miss the pair of you, but it’s our loss and the world’s gain.”

  “I’ll bring it out, Carl,” June said. She hurried to catch him. She could stage a fall between here and the dance floor and use that as an excuse to make a fresh batch.

  “Boss doesn’t want a scullery troll like you with the guests.” Scarlet had appeared at the kitchen’s swinging doors. “And in that disgusting apron.” The whore sneered at June as if she were carrion. As if she were worse than nothing.

  “Maybe better to let Scarlet take it,” Carl said. “The boss being so particular and all.”

  June could still stop the punch from making it to the dance floor. If finesse and sycophancy failed her, she could dispense with the pretense and knock the bowl out of Scarlet’s hands.

  “Any man with two eyes would be particular about that serving them,” Scarlet said as she took the bowl from Carl.

  June could have stopped everything right there, but she didn’t. She let Scarlet disappear onto the floor with the gleaming bowl of poison. As the swinging doors shuddered to a close, June caught ever-diminishing glimpses of dancing sparklers and whirling silks. Howling brass and the buzz of conversations warbled and then were muted as the doors settled to a close.

  “Taking five, Carl,” June said. “Ask one of the boys to fetch May to our room?”

  “Sure, June. And don’t you listen to Scarlet. You know the type. Can’t feel good herself without bringing others low.”

  “Water off a duck’s back.” She got on her tiptoes to give the man a peck on the cheek. She realized in that moment that she would not see him again. She wouldn’t see any of this again. Allowing that silver bowl to leave her sight made this a certainty.

  From the kitchen, she took the staff passage to the undercroft. Footfalls from the dance floor above beat a rhythm through the ceiling. Beneath the bandstand, the bass shook June’s bones to the marrow.

  Once in their room, June pulled two suitcases from the closet, then went for the loose plank in the wall next to May’s bed. A fair amount of cash had flowed through the Night Ship in June’s day, and she wasn’t a dummy by a long shot: She’d skimmed her share. From the secret stash, Benjamin Franklin stared back at her in astounding multitudes.

  She used a straight razor to slit the linings of the suitcases and fed the thousands into them as if they were satin piggy banks. The stacks sagged in uneven lumps. June loathed sloppiness, but she didn’t have
time for a more thorough job. A glance at the clock told her she’d left the kitchen over twenty minutes ago. Carl would cover for her, but eventually someone would come looking. But being discovered in mid-escape wasn’t her biggest concern. Once that silver bowl had been sent on its way to Strong another kind of countdown had begun.

  A few quick stitches resealed the suitcase linings, then she began emptying entire drawers into the bags.

  “June, you’re not even folding,” May said from the doorway. “Mama would have folded first.”

  “Close the door, dearest. I have a surprise for you.”

  “A surprise?” May’s face lit up like the lake at dawn.

  “A trip. A vacation, just like we always talked about.”

  “To where?”

  “Wherever you like.”

  “The city? Oh, or the islands? Or maybe California!”

  “All those places. But we need to go tonight. We need to go now.”

  They’d have to keep moving. For a while, at least. But maybe forever. This was the path June had committed them to once she let that bowl leave the kitchen.

  “In the middle of the party? How will we say goodbye?”

  There was a noise upstairs. A scream that held a single note like the clear blast from a trumpet.

  “We’ll send them postcards. One for each place we go. Help me, now. Fetch our shoes. We can sort them later.”

  “Maybe we can go to the city first. I’d like to see Broadway, where Mama danced. They say you can see the lights for miles. I bet you can see them from the moon.”

  Upstairs, the music came to a halt like a crashing train. Now the screaming was impossible to miss. In the sound, June heard more than surprise and disgust. These were keening wails of terror.

  May glanced toward the hall. “Someone’s hurt.” Her face was an amalgamation of uncertainty and concern.

  “Stay here, dearest. Get the shoes. May. May!”

  May disappeared down the hall.