"What can I do for you?"
She hesitated, feeling abruptly and deeply foolish for giving in to a whim.
"Oh," he said, nodding as though he had read her thoughts. "Oh, you probably want to know if they found the car smasher.''
"Yes," she said softly, and had to repeat it when it was evident he hadn't heard. "Dr. Danvers was awfully upset, and so was I, for that matter. Fred seemed to think it was one of the students."
"Well, if it was," Wes said, "they didn't find them. Or him. Poor old Borg must've been there until dawn, and all he got for it was a couple of snowballs down his collar." He grinned again and brushed his fingers through short-cropped sandy hair. "If you want to know what I think . . ."
Her hands slipped into her overcoat pocket. "Sure, Wes."
"I don't think we're gonna find them. There were no fingerprints on that hammer-thing, only a zillion footprints in all the snow ... I don't think so, nope. But I tell you, I sure would like to meet the people that could do a job like that. I got a potential mother-in-law I'd like to see made into a dwarf."
Her laugh was dutiful, whatever comment she might have wanted to make forestalled when one of four telephones on the desk rang and Wes excused himself quickly. She didn't know why, but she waited, watching him nodding, grunting once, reaching for a pencil to scribble something down on a pad. There was a long, narrow scar behind his left ear, one that darted under his collar and, she knew, didn't stop until it reached his decidedly unflabby waist. She had gone out with him several times two summers ago, never once learned the scar's story, and couldn't understand why a man with an advanced degree from John Jay would bury himself in a place like Oxrun.
Bury; and she chided herself for being unfair. It was the wrong word, of course, unless it was applied to her. And before she knew it she felt the depression, and the unease, slipping around her again.
"Sorry," Wes said then, swinging around the desk to take his seat. "That was King's. They need authorization to release a wreck to the insurance company."
"Susan Haslet," she said without thinking.
Wes lifted an eyebrow, one much darker than his hair. "Yeah, how did you know?"
"A guess," she said. "She was a student."
He nodded. "A crime, ain't it. You see some people a hundred years old that should've been buried before they were twenty they're so miserable, then you get someone like this who hasn't even had a—" He stopped suddenly, and looked away to the far wall. "Hey, Pat, I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking."
It took her a moment to realize he was referring to Lauren, another startled moment to realize she didn't feel guilty. "It's all right," she told him, softening his embarrassment with a forgiving smile. "It was a long time ago."
"Well, yeah, I suppose." He looked down at his pad. "Y'know, I'll never understand how King manages to stay in business. He's incredible. Can't keep records worth his soul, changes mechanics quicker man the weather, yet he has the gall to complain we didn't investigate the accident right." He shook his head in disbelief. "I mean, the car—you heard it was just like yours, I guess—it was right smack against a telephone pole, whole right side smashed to hell and gone. So was the left, the door sheared off its hinges. King claims it couldn't have happened, forgetting, I think, a car does tend to spin around when it's hit. Dope. I mean, he's a real dope." He leaned forward on his elbows. "Last year," he said, winking conspiratorially, "he gets a call to pick up some MG that took the woods on over near Harley. On the way back in the tow truck he ends up in the ditch himself, claims to this very day he was attacked by giant gnats." His laugh filled the room, so ceiling-high and wide it almost echoed. "King do enjoy his Coors now and then, he really do."
Pat nodded, trying to join the banter and ignore the weight easing onto her shoulders. But she could not. After a few minutes more she waved and left quickly, afraid he would notice something and try to ferret it without her permission. He was good at that, one reason why she'd stopped seeing him so regularly; she'd found herself telling him things she hadn't wanted anyone to know, not even if the time were right and proper.
He called out a goodbye as the doors closed behind her, and she almost turned to answer, saw the oak swinging heavily into place and shrugged. Stood on the broad stoop and watched the traffic swing out of Centre Street and onto the avenue. Most of the automobiles had snow tires on, but there were still a stubborn few that refused to yield to the blandishments of advertising and had chains on their tires, the rhythmic clanking blurring into a single sound doing more to stir childhood memories than any faded photograph.
A man and woman walked by slowly, arm in arm, heads together, laughing red-faced and slipping on the snow. She recognized them as the editor of the Station Herald and his wife, the Station's head librarian, was about to call out a greeting when she heard, faintly and briefly, the blare of an airhorn—a train pulling into the depot three miles into the valley from where she stood. It reminded her of the first day she'd come to Oxrun, stepping down from the coach and slipping on a wet piece of paper. She'd fallen directly into the arms of the stationmaster, first name Herb, last name never known, and had decided it had been a sign. Herb was gone now, to where no one knew, and it struck her that Oxrun seemed somehow to work that way—people lived here and died and were buried in the Memorial Park, they moved here and moved away with great vans filling the street, or they were here one day and gone the next. No fanfares. No notice. As if the Station had decided it no longer had need for them and swallowed them whole, at midnight, without a moon.
She looked up and saw that the sidewalks were empty, the street momentarily deserted.
A dead town. Posing for Currier and Ives, refusing to turn around to reveal the blood in the yards, the corpses in the attics, the ghosts and the demons and the preternatural creatures that stalked the valley no matter what time, no matter the season. She was alone in Oxrun Station; everyone was gone. She took the four wide steps apprehensively, willing a bus to chug around the corner, demanding someone walk out of the Cove across the street to her left, the Town Hall to her right. Her lips tightened. Alone. The last one in the world in a village marked by the past and remaining there forever. Alone.
And someone was watching her.
She knew it wasn't her imagination.
She knew her reverie had not included others.
There was someone watching her. From behind a partially closed door, from behind a curtain, from one of the cars parked along the street. From an alley. From a tree. From the frosted glass behind her.
She spun around and ran back up the steps, shoved open the right-hand door and saw no one inside. Wes was gone from his post, and the police station was silent. Her hand pulled away; the door swung shut on well-oiled hinges. She backed away, felt a heel catch on the edge of the top step and turned, fairly jumped to the sidewalk and hurried east toward home.
She slowed only once, when she passed the Chancellor Inn. Larger now in daylight, gloomly under the overcast, it scarcely seemed to be the place where her troubles had begun. If she hadn't remained at Janice's party for so long, if she hadn't succumbed to Greg's encouragement and the spirit of the others and taken all those drinks, if ... if ... she slapped at her leg angrily. If wishes were beggars then horses could ride, she told herself, faltered in her stride when she realized how she'd mangled the epigram and laughed aloud. It was a curious feeling; she still could not shake the irrational fears closing in on her, but she knew too that she was on her way to slipping away from them. All it would take would be an overnight bag, a check to cash at the bank, and within an hour she would be at the station, waiting for the afternoon train to New York.
Through the front door, then, and the steps two at a time, fumbling with her key furiously when she heard the telephone's muffled ring. When the bolt turned over she kicked the door inward, not bothering to close it as she raced into the kitchen and grabbed for the receiver.
"Hello?" Breathless, a hand to her chest.
The dial tone, slyly
mocking until she slammed the instrument into its cradle and glared at Homer.
"Well, speak up! Who was it?"
A shake of her head and she was in the bedroom, grabbing the small suitcase from the closet, standing for a moment in judgement of the array of clothes before slipping out of her coat and skirt, exchanging the latter for a pair of grey slacks that, she frowned, fit her a little too snugly around the buttocks. She kneaded her thighs thoughtfully, made her choices and pulled her cosmetics from the bathroom. As she crossed the livingroom she glanced through the doorway to the kitchen, as if expecting the phone to ring again. When it didn't, she shrugged and headed for the landing, stopping again with an exasperated groan when she remembered Kelly, Abbey, and the car. The suitcase hit the floor with an unpleasant thump, tipped over slowly and landed on its side as she returned to the kitchen and ordered a cab. A second daring for the caller to try again, and she went outside to wait.
Fifteen minutes later she was on the platform.
An hour later she was taking a seat in the forward coach, the windows gleaming and clear, the smell of lemon cleanser filling the compartment as the train lurched once, twice, and pulled slowly out of the station.
Her eyes closed as the rails clicked in increasing cadence, opened a short time later when she felt almost physically the weight lifting from her shoulders. She frowned and leaned close to the window, twisting until her cheek was pressed against the pane. There was nothing but embankment and woodland as the train took the hill's slope, and a grey glare that masked all sight of the valley. She knew she should have felt relieved, and gratified that her decision had been the correct one. Paradoxically, however, the dread returned for a second fleeting as a spinning shadow. While she certainly did not appreciate what was happening to her in Oxrun, neither was she comfortable with the sudden release. It was almost as if whatever had been stalking her was bound by the village, by the hills; and if that were so, then it would be waiting for her when she returned.
And if it was, she realized with a start that made her gasp into her palm, then none of it was in her mind at all. It was real. And if it was real, then her father had been right all along.
"You'll suffocate there, Patrice," he'd said after hearing her decision. "I've been there once or twice, and it's no place for a city girl. No place at all. And think of Lauren, for heaven's sake."
"Lauren's with her father," she'd said flatly. "Don't forget, I'm the one who has summers and holidays now."
He lifted his eyes to the ceiling for guidance. So much like her he could have been her reflection. "Patrice, you're not thinking. Oxrun Station is a closed community. You'll not fit in. You are definitely not the small-town type.”
She'd gone anyway, and she had fit in for the most part, but he would not listen to her when he heard her reasons for fleeing as abruptly as she had. And she couldn't lie to him. Any story she might devise would be as transparent to him as all her stories had been, all her life.
He would say, "I told you so," and they would argue and she would return.
And when she returned . . .
She sat back, stripping off the gloves and caressing the smooth leather seat beside her.
My god, she thought. And didn't bother to stop the tear that wriggled out to her cheek.
10
IT was after two in the morning when the train pulled away from the station, slipping dark engine and darker cars into the black as it crept across the valley toward the tunnel on the far side that would break it away from Oxrun and into the flatland beyond. The platform was deserted. The stationmaster had long since returned home, and the only light came from a single bulb burning behind the locked doors to the waiting room. Slowly, Pat walked toward the stairs, her heels loud on the wood flooring, her breath unseen but felt as it drifted back into her face ahead of a light breeze. The overcast was gone; reluctantly, the clouds had broken into tatters and tails and had left behind stars as cold as the snow.
The parking lot behind the station was empty, and she moved around the corner to escape the wind, holding her case close to her waist. She had called from New York to have a cab waiting, but she wasn't surprised it hadn't arrived. Oxrun Cab and Limousine was a small operation leisurely in its response, perfectly suited to the beat of the village.
And she did not mind. She didn't mind at all.
From the moment she stepped off the train and entered the cavern that was Grand Central Station she felt as if a field of mild electricity had cloaked her gently. Her vision had sharpened, her fingertips tingled, and even her parents' home had seemed less like a sterile museum. She'd wandered around the penthouse without touching a thing, had a drink and stood on the windswept terrace to look down at Central Park. There'd been children playing, a policeman on horseback, the traffic streaming down Fifth Avenue toward the Plaza Hotel. Vibrancy, she'd thought, knowing the thought was a cliche, and she'd hurried back inside to make a quick meal in the white-and-gold kitchen.
She didn't much mind that her parents weren't there; she hadn't come to see them, was relieved there would be no inquisition to ruin her day.
And for the rest of the day she walked. Window-shopped. Ducked out of the cold and into a gallery now and then to warm her cheeks and check the competition. She stayed away from the Spartan. Curtis wouldn't like seeing her, feeling as if she were putting pressure on him to accept her students' pieces for the show in June. As it was, she was already beginning to doubt it would happen. The man, though a friend who'd helped her when she'd started, had a reputation as well, and she knew she could push him only so far.
A comedy double-feature at the Little Carnegie: the Marx Brothers, and Cary Grant, from the ridiculous to the sublime.
A snack at the Russian Tea Room, and when she returned to the street she found herself checking her watch. Twice. Three times as she slipped into a taxi that brought her back to the place where it all began, and all ended.
And she realized then, as she'd never done before, that New York was now no longer her home. As she rode back to the station she smiled to herself, wondering how her mother would respond if she ever told her she actually missed an Oxrun weekend: the quiet, the walks through the Station's own park, the games in the middle of the street, the shops . . . and the absence of a feeling of being hemmed in. In spite of her mind's reactions to her struggle and the aftermath, she realized that what Oxrun had given her was freedom from entrapment.
She giggled, again when the cabbie stared in the rearview mirror and accelerated slightly.
She grinned most of the way home, and now broke into a quiet laugh when the old Buick touring car swung into the parking lot and flashed its lights at her.
Yesterday it would have been menacing; this morning, under the stars and in the quiet, it was warm and it was welcome, and she nearly fell asleep on the short ride home.
On the second-story landing, the wall facing the stairwell had been painted an earthen brown and was centered by a large oval mirror framed in elaborately scrolled and gilded oak. Beneath it, a long, narrow table, cherry wood and polished to such a degree that even now it picked up the dim bulb downstairs as if the wood itself were glowing. She paused on the top step and glanced to her right at the Evanses' door. There was no light at the threshold; they were still in Florida. Two paces forward and a turn on the worn fringed carpet, and toe kicked heel, tripping her into the table. The pain was sharp, brief, a scolding for her clumsiness, and when she righted herself, rubbing at her leg gingerly, she saw the envelope floating on the tabletop, her name printed in red ink across its face. She poked at it with a forefinger, thinking nothing at all but a faint puzzlement, and felt a hard bulge. She lifted it by one comer and the bulge shifted noisily, the sound of her station wagon keys clattering together. She nodded. Looked at the floor as if she could see through it to Kelly's apartment below. A grin. Perfect, she thought as she stuffed it into her pocket. Absolutely perfect.
* * *
A touch to the thermostat, and within moments the
pipes in the baseboard heating system began to pop and slam. From the workroom a sound almost like hissing. A floorboard near the center of the livingroom creaked when trod upon. The draperies had all been drawn, and an imperfect meeting of the French doors set the fabric whispering against a draught. The refrigerator hummed sporadically. Wind in the attic. She pulled off her boots and left them by the front door, the soles of her feet rustling through the nap of the carpeting she walked over.
The sound of her breathing.
Not exactly a symphony, but so familiar as to be inaudible until she stood at the side of the bed and listened, and smiled.
The canopy in swirls of green and yellow billowed darkly above her. Here the draperies had been tied back, and the streetlight was gentle in the bedroom air; soft, like smoke. She lay with her hands cupped behind her head, knees drawn up somewhat to bulge the floral quilt. There was a light but not unpleasant scraping at the corners of her eyes, a lulling rhythm to her breathing; yet she would not allow sleep to overcome her now. This was a day not to be released without some moments of savoring, without some leisurely reflection. She understood that something in her life had been altered, though exactly what and for what reasons were still elusive. The fear she had felt leaving the Station had been replaced by something she could only call a sense of well-being, a sense that bordered almost on belonging. But not quite ... not quite. Almost, but not quite.
Her smile was languid. She could feel it at her lips, a reaction without strain.
Her buttocks shifted against the cool sheet, her toes wriggling as though trying to dig in.
Well-being; belonging. She did not frown and she did not struggle. It was only a feeling, and one she knew she would never really be able to put words to in proper fashion. It was an abstraction. An impulse. And an undercurrent of determination that slipped very close to anger—for whatever it was would have to be protected or she would be vulnerable again to the memories that didn't deserve the power they'd had. They were memories, nothing more.
[Oxrun Station] The Bloodwind Page 9
