[Oxrun Station] The Bloodwind

by Charles L. Grant

  A mile, and Hawksted broke from the forest.

  And there was so much ground-snow her eyes began to water before she had time to squint.

  The campus' main plant had been constructed on a deep step in the hillside. The central building was a three-sided rectangle whose base was well over a hundred yards long, its quadrangle reaching to the edge of the flatland and sweeping down through white-jacketed hickory and birch, elm and evergreen to the forest proper. It was of large-block brownstone with broad-silled casement windows, towers that split each of, the three sides into thirds and added a fourth story double-peaked and imposing. At the school's founding all the rooms had been used for classes; now they were dorms— front-to-back suites with a large room facing the quad and two bedrooms in back that held two students each. From the central tower east the rooms were occupied by women; west was reserved for Hawksted's men. There was also a belowground level marked by half-windows that never opened and a smothering view of sun-blotting shrubs. This was the home of several professorial offices, and classrooms for courses in business, religion, philosophy and logic.

  Aside from the main structure, and connected to it by underground tunnels well-lighted and walnut-paneled, were four additional buildings raised just after the school had begun its four-year program. On the left as Pat approached were two immense brick-and-turreted squares three stores high, one behind the other. The nearer housed English, History, and eleven foreign languages; the one in back belonged to all the laboratory sciences. On the right beyond the western arm was the Student Union behind, the refurbished auditorium and Fine Arts directly in front. Upslope of the Union was a glass-and-marble library so architecturally uninspired it made the rest of the facilities seem almost grand.

  A chapel on the hillside overlooking the campus. White stone and Gothic, cloisters and thick oak.

  The playing fields to the east, behind a wall of spruce, and used by the high school when Hawksted's teams were visiting. There was also a mammoth gymnasium, cold and generally damp, an unspoken reminder of where the school's sympathies lay.

  Pat hesitated as the road finally came to an end. Immediately to her left was a large circular parking lot already jammed. There was another alongside Fine Arts, but to use it would deny her a walk across campus. She thought of the dent and the jibes it would produce from those who'd seen her drinking, and spent the next ten minutes creeping between rows before she found a proper space.

  A moment, then, to pat the dashboard for luck, and she was out and walking briskly, up a dozen stone steps to the quad's inner sidewalk.

  A pause. She turned and looked back toward the woodland, caught the wink of a windshield far down on Chancellor Avenue. Frowned. Rubbed the back of her neck absently and turned back to face the quad.

  And smiled as if she'd just returned from an extended vacation, tucking her handbag against her chest and hugging herself warmly. It was quiet here, but of a far different degree than she felt in her home. A few windows were open and she could hear radios muttering; students were on the Walk, laughing, talking, scooping snow from the buried lawn and pelting it at friends. From the chapel she could hear the carillon in one of its morning concerts, the melody almost solemn, the bells sounding medieval. A quiet. A peace. A pleasant jolt to the nerves and a goading of the mind without opening a book or taking a lecture.

  In more ways than she found it comfortable to admit it was the perfect hideaway; a liberal arts school and one of the last where knowledge could be pursued for the pure sake of that knowledge, where the outside world was admitted only by invitation. With less than nine hundred students living in or commuting, it had developed a fierce pride in its independence that reached far beyond graduation. The faculty, too, was loyal, though neither blind nor hidebound, and the few individuals in both camps who found the intensity stifling seldom lasted longer than their first winter term.

  Suddenly she heard a voice above her shout "Fire!" She continued walking, though a blush reached her cheeks and her chin ducked toward her chest. It was a young man's shout, and a signal that a woman was on the Long Walk, a woman much older than the women who attended. Then another voice grumbled, "Hell, it's only a prof," and Pat lifted her head to laugh at the pricking of her ego.

  A beautiful day, she thought, in spite of the beginning, and with a mocking backward wave she passed under the archway in the far right corner.

  Stopped in her tracks when the Fine Arts building caught her.

  The Student Union was two stories and unadorned; Fine Arts, however, was a triplet of English and Science: dark brick with marble trim, a turret at each high corner, its most distinctive feature a white stone marquee curved around the front and supported by squared pillars. A series of double glass doors opened onto a crescent lobby done in soft reds and golds, centered by a chandelier now unlighted and teardrop. Directly across the black-and-white-checkered floor was the college's auditorium, giving Pat a constant impression of a squat, fat cylinder rammed down the building's throat. It was the home of film festivals, meetings of every description college and village, the school's vaunted amateur theater, and Ford Danvers' drama classes that seemed to her more often than not to be somewhat clumsy exercises in primal group therapy.

  To the left and right of the bulging wine wall were staircases that wound to the second and third floors; and against the far left wall a warren of postboxes behind narrow glass eyes. She checked her own apprehensively, released a quick-held breath when she saw it was empty. No pink slip. No memo. That had to be a good sign.

  She grinned self-consciously at herself as she unwrapped her muffler, hurried to the near stairwell and began the climb. Her boots cracked loudly on the metal-tipped stone, the slot-windows at the landing laddering the floor. The woolen cap was swept off and jammed into a pocket. Gloves next, and her topcoat unbuttoned. She shivered in spite of the warmth; she held the brass railing though there was plenty of light. She could hear muffled voices, a distant laugh, something falling. And when she reached the second floor she stopped and listened harder.

  She thought she heard her name. She looked back down, frowning, wondering, decided it was nerves.

  Coffee, she prescribed, and rushed along the corridor that wound round the auditorium's wall, heavy pine doors inserted there and chain-locked. Around the outside were the lecture halls, offices, and in the back a handful of studios that hadn't been relegated to the uppermost story.

  She didn't like the silence. It was too expectant. It seemed to be waiting.

  She wished she had brought Homer; if nothing else he would make her seem properly foolish.

  Her own office was at the lefthand front corner, frosted glass on the door and her name typed off-center on a three-by-five card taped to the dark frame. She unlocked it, walked in, and before taking off her coat plugged in a coffee pot she kept filled and ready. Then she stripped off her coat and hung it on a wall peg. Thought for a second before slumping into a worn swivel chair behind her glass-topped desk. The wall opposite was shelved to the ceiling, books and papers and sketch pads in profusion; the wall behind was covered with photographs of sculptures she'd taken around the country, a few tiny oils from her own students and Greg's, sketches of projects she intended to begin whenever she had the time, and a blank space in the center where Lauren's picture had been tacked until she'd taken it down last summer.

  She sighed wearily, blinked slowly, with a push of her left hand shoved open the window that overlooked the slope. The cold tightened her arm as it drifted over the radiator, vanquished the must that had invaded the room.

  She stared at the trees, at the snow, at the distant road. A long time she'd been looking at that view; and a corner of her mouth twitched in a half-smile. Thirteen years, if you count the two sabbaticals, and the half-year she saw nothing but the funeral of her child.

  Married at twenty-two, divorced at twenty-seven, bereaved at thirty-one. A hell of a progression.

  "Knock, knock."

  'Who's there?" she said with
out turning to the door, refusing to acknowledge the startled jump of her pulse.

  "It's not a joke, Pat. I'm just too lazy to lift my precious hand."

  Greg was tall without slouching, his hair an unkempt thicket of premature grey that somehow managed to add youth to a face smooth and slightly flushed. Underneath an open, paint-soiled smock he wore a blue-splattered shirt, grey trousers and wide brown belt, and cordovan shoes that should have been discarded the first time a brush had dripped across their laces. He was smiling anxiously, and she waved him in, pointed to the coffee he poured for them both.

  "This is rotten," he said, grimacing his first sip. "You ready?" He took the bandy-legged wooden chair she kept by the door.

  "Nope." She tasted the coffee, spat and put it down.

  "Good. We should do well, don't you think?"

  She swiveled round to face him, delighting in the imp that seldom strayed from his eyes. "I had an accident last night."

  He frowned. "You didn't say anything when—"

  "I didn't know." She told him about the dent, though she still didn't tell him about how she had been followed. No longer convinced of it herself now, she decided she didn't need one of Greg's patient lectures. "I swear to you, two drinks at dinner and no more, ever again."

  "Wow," he said softly, and shook his head slowly. "You're all right, though?"

  "Sure." Her smile was cock-eyed. "As well as can be expected, given the day." She pulled open the center drawer and took out a pencil, tapped it once on her knee and rolled it between her fingers. "I'll tell you, Greg, I don't mind admitting this is driving me nuts. I mean, the whole tiling is making me absolutely paranoid." She caught herself, and waved away the question that came to Greg's expression. "I just don't understand why Constable has to wait. Why can't we have the meeting now and get it over with, huh?"

  "Because he thought you'd shove one of your kids into one of your sculptures, that's why. Like Vincent Price in The House of Wax, and all that."

  Her throat constricted. "You think they turned us down?"

  He shrugged. "I don't know, Pat. I honestly don't know."

  She chewed absently on the eraser. "I think he hates me. Ford, that is. Constable doesn't care one way or the other."

  "No," Greg said, stretching his legs and crossing them at the ankles. His voice was naturally low, a rough-edged complement to her own deep timbre. "Actually, if the truth be known, you scare him."

  "Me?"

  "Now, Patrice," he said, cautioning against lying to someone who knew her better. "Come on, come on."

  "No, I can't buy it, Greg. What he's afraid of is the expense. Setting us up in a separate department will mean hiring at least two more full-time people, giving you and me at least promotions, and—"

  "All right," he conceded, "that's part of it too. But you know damned well that isn't all of it, not by a long shot."

  She looked at him thoughtfully. He'd joined the faculty only four years ago, a multi-degreed artist who'd grown weary of the games he'd had to play with the larger galleries. It wasn't sour grapes because of no talent; he just didn't have the stomach for the competition he had to face. At first, Pat had thought him a quitter and had been scornful for retreating into teaching; then she realized there was something else, something that had unnerved him and made him leery of going on. She still didn't know what it was, but she knew he would tell her sooner or later. It was in the way he would look at her when he thought she wasn't watching; in the way ... in his way of building a friendship between them so he could begin the unburdening.

  She was patient. She could wait.

  Meanwhile, a second look showed her hints of exhaustion tightening the folds around his eyes. When she lifted an eyebrow in silent query, he shrugged and drained his cup. "No sleep."

  "You were drunk," she accused lightly.

  "I was passed out," he admitted with a rueful laugh. "I don't know how the hell I got home, believe me, and I kept waking up every hour or two. The damned tree outside my window kept hitting the pane. I almost went out and cut the thing down."

  "That would be just like you," she said. "Get straight to the root of the problem."

  He glared. "That's terrible. You oughta be shot." Then he blew her a halfhearted kiss and left, wasn't ten feet down the corridor before a pair of young women fell in beside him, laughing instantly at something he said, gesturing as if they had a mobile canvas retreating before them.

  Pat watched until the doorframe cut them off. And wondered how many of those girls Greg had taken into his bed.

  "Oh, nasty," she scolded. Her right hand brushed over an end of the collar tie, tugged at it lightly before she closed her eyes tightly, snapped them open. A groan at feigned aches in the small of her back and she stood, stepping around the desk to fetch her books from their shelf. A finger to her chin, scratching. Thinking about Greg, the younger women who constantly surrounded him . . .

  . . . and someone was watching her.

  She tensed, her shoulders pulling back as if expecting a blow. Slowly, all the while telling herself she was being paranoid again, she turned to face the door. Two young men were standing on the threshold.

  Her smile was as relieved as it was warm. "Yes," she told them before they could ask. "I made the call yesterday."

  Oliver Fallchurch—blond curls, pudgy, a half-grown beard—clapped his hands once; Ben Williams—lean and dark-haired, his left sleeve pinned up at the elbow— only nodded. Suddenly they were shoved aside and Harriet Trotter nearly spilled into the office. Her face was flushed in embarrassment, her freckles so thickly sprayed they made her otherwise pleasant face seem mottled and scarred.

  "Some sonofabitch goosed me," she complained in a high-pitched, too-young voice.

  Oliver shrugged disinterest, and Ben lifted the stump of his arm as evidence of innocence.

  "The three of you ought to be locked up, you know that," Pat said. The boys stepped aside as she left, flanked her in the corridor with Harriet scrambling behind. "I spoke to the gallery yesterday, as I promised, and everything seems to be going well. Spartan is a good place, fair, and the pictures of your work seem to have pleased them."

  "Then the show isn't really set," Oliver said glumly. He wore what Pat had come to think of as his only set of clothes: a blue-and-pearl-button cowboy shirt, jeans too snug for the breadth of his rump, and black boots with pointed toes. "I knew it. I knew it was too good to be true." The accusation was evident: you didn't try hard enough, Doc.

  "For god's sake, Ollie, she didn't say that," Ben said.

  "Yes, I did," she corrected, averting her gaze from the pain in his face. Someone, she thought then, ought to teach him how to shave; the sight of all those nicks and scabs always made her queasy. "It isn't set, not yet. But I have an appointment with Mr. Curtis in two weeks, so I'll bring him a few of the pieces and let him see them firsthand." When Ben groaned his disgust, she slowed and punched at his arm, not entirely in jest. "Look, I've told you a hundred times, when a gallery like the Spartan shows this kind of interest, it's only a matter of time. To be honest, I'm aiming for June. A pretty fair graduation gift for the three of you, don't you think?"

  "Only if someone buys something," Harriet said behind her.

  Pat turned, frowning. Normally, the redhead was overenthusiastic, if anything. Today, however, there were shadows under her eyes and a tremor at her lips, and her arms had folded a large notebook against her shirt-straining chest.

  "Oh, don't mind her," Oliver said. "She claims a hurricane almost took off her roof last night."

  Pat stopped abruptly, and Harriet had to sidestep to avoid a collision. "What?"

  "Well, it's true," the girl insisted, her glare defiant as the others moved on. "I couldn't sleep, you know? I went down for something to drink, down in the kitchen, and I heard something outside. I thought it was a cat at the garbage can, so I turned on the light and ..." She took a deep breath, suddenly wary. "At least I thought it was a tornado. Not a hurricane, a tornado. It was rig
ht there in the middle of the back yard.''

  "A dream," Pat said, turning quickly and walking.

  "I was awake, Doc!"

  "Something like a dust devil, then."

  "Huh?"

  She smiled. "For heaven's sake, Harriet, you've seen them before. It happens all the time. A freak wind current, that's all."

  "Yeah," the girl said, obviously unconvinced. She muttered harshly under her breath and strolled ahead, leaving Pat alone in the corridor, sweeping around the back of the auditorium toward her studio. She tried not to think. In spite of philosophers and psychologists there was still such a thing as coincidence in this world, and the dust devil, snow devil, whatever the hell it was, could easily have spun its way into her own path last night before dissipating in the snowfall; Harriet, after all, only lived one block over. It was her own drunkenness that had exaggerated what she'd seen, just as half-sleep and shadows had done it for the girl.

  But she wondered if Harriet had heard the throaty grumbling.

  4

  PAT slowed the station wagon when her stomach threatened to disgorge the lunch she'd taken quickly in the Union cafeteria. Her tongue touched at her lips nervously and her eyes began a rapid blinking. She swallowed- She gulped for air. She guided the car to the curb and rested her head against the steering wheel's rim. Alongside her, in the park, she could hear the faint shrills of children skating on the L-shaped pond. And she wept.

  A small rowboat in the bay off Bristol.

  A smaller child determined to prove her mother really didn't know what a fine sailor she was.

  Dark water. Dark wind.