Winter Tides

by James P. Blaylock

  “Surely this can’t be all you’ve brought?” he said, his voice full of disappointment.

  “I’m afraid it is,” she told him.

  “I’ was rather hoping you’d fill the trunk and back seat,” Jane said. “We’ve got room for eight canvases at least, especially considering the size of these.”

  “I couldn’t make up my mind, actually.” Anne shrugged. “And I was a little rushed. By the time I’d eaten dinner, the fog was getting heavier, and I was worried about the drive out here, especially since I had to detour past the Art Supply Warehouse to pick up canvas and … I don’t know—a bunch of stuff. So I needed room in the car, and there was no way that I was going to get out there to buy anything tomorrow or the next day, now that I’m employed.” She grinned at Edmund again, realizing that she’d been talking a little breathlessly, reeling off a string of half-baked excuses.

  “I fully understand,” he said. “Although I’ll tell you right now that in no way must your job get in the way of your art. If anything, it ought to facilitate your art. And if you ever need time off, even at a moment’s notice, you only have to say the word.”

  “Well, I certainly appreciate that,” Anne said.

  “I value artistic inspiration more highly than you can imagine.”

  “it’s good to hear that.”

  “And so I’m not just talking about your having to make a quick trip down to the store for supplies. I’m talking about the urge to paint. If you wake up in the morning and you’re struck with inspiration, then paint.”

  “Well …” She tried to look enthusiastic. When she woke up in the morning, she was generally struck with the urge for coffee. She had mostly gotten over the idea of inspiration years ago.

  “I absolutely mean it. Just dial my number and leave a message. But I warn you, sometime I’d like to watch you paint. I won’t make any noise. I’ll just sit in a chair in the corner and watch you work. I want to share in the power of your inspiration.”

  “Honestly,” Anne said to him, “I can’t imagine working with anyone watching.”

  “I’d be quiet as a mouse.”

  “Even so …” She shook her head. Share in the power of her inspiration … ?

  “Perhaps when we’ve gotten to know each other better. Say, I’ll tell you what. What I would like to do is stop by your studio and have a look at the paintings that you didn’t bring along tonight. It’s crazy for me to be running back and forth to Laguna Beach when you’ve got canvases right down the street from the Earl’s.”

  The request stunned her for a moment, It was impossible, at least right now. It was entirely logical, of course, except that his motives were wrong. Somehow she was absolutely certain of it. And anyway, she hardly knew him. “I’m afraid that Potter’s is my sole agent.” She shrugged, as if there was nothing she could do about it. Jane, thank God, seemed to catch on.

  “Maybe you can run a few more down here later in the week,” she said. “I want to repaint the wall first anyway. We could have them up by Sunday afternoon.”

  Edmund didn’t look at her, but spoke to Anne instead.” I’ll happily pay the gallery’s commission.”

  “It’s not only that,” Anne told him. “All of them are wrapped, and … You know what? I just don’t want to. This probably seems fairly weird to you, but I like to paint in my studio; I don’t like the idea of showing the paintings there. It mixes the money end of things with the creative end, and that just has the wrong flavor to it. Does that make sense?”

  “I totally respect that,” he said.

  “Good. And now, I’m afraid, I’ve got to go.”

  “That’s a wise idea,” Edmund said to her. “The fog’s socked in along the bluffs. Drive slowly. Do you want to caravan?”

  “I’m not going home that way,” Anne lied. “I’m going up through the canyon.”

  “That’s smart. There’s bound to be less fog, and you can grab the 405 back down into Huntington Beach. I ought to go that way too.”

  “Actually, I’m going to visit a friend in Irvine.”

  “Ah.” Edmund nodded his head. “I fully understand,” he said.

  Again she found the statement impossible to respond to, so she set down her champagne glass and abruptly headed for the door, relieved to see that the fog had dispersed for the moment, although it might easily still be bad once she was out of town again. “See you soon,” she said to Jane, and pushed out through the door.

  Edmund was instantly beside her, striding along toward the corner. “I’ll walk you to your car,” he said. “it’s late.”

  “Thanks.”

  They turned the corner and went across the street and down the steps into the parking garage. “Is that you?” Edmund asked, nodding at the Saturn.

  “That’s me.”

  “That’s a very reasonable car.”

  “I like the name, I guess. That’s about as spacey as I get.”

  “I don’t know about that,” he said. “I have the feeling there’s more to Anne Morris than meets the eye.”

  “There’s more to anybody than meets the eye,” she said.

  “That’s the truth. Hey, do you ever travel?”

  “I’ve traveled some,” she said, trying to sound noncommittal.

  “Well, I’ve got a trip planned to Mexico, to a resort below San Felipe. Beautiful ocean down there. Really, it’s fabulous.”

  “I bet it is,” she said. “It sounds wonderful.”

  “It’s a place called Club Mex—all the amenities. You name it, You’ve got it. They know me down there. This will be something like my eighth trip. I slip away as often as I can, out from under things, if you know what I mean.”

  “I certainly do,” she said. “And I’ve got to slip away right now myself.”

  “You’d like Club Mex. I think I could guarantee that.”

  “I’m sure I would.” She unlocked her car door and started to climb in.

  “Oh, oh,” he said, smiling broadly at her.

  “What?”

  “Someone’s apparently broken into your car.”

  Surprised by this, she looked into the back seat. There was no sign of anyone having broken in.

  “All your supplies,” he said. “The canvas and all. From what was that place? The Art Supply Warehouse? I thought you said it pretty much filled up the interior.”

  Instantly she regretted the lie. “I meant it filled up the trunk.”

  “Ah. I guess you did say the trunk. Well, drive safely. Watch the fog.”

  She climbed into the car, waved once at him, started the engine, and backed out of the space. When the Saturn bumped down onto the street, she glanced into the rearview mirror and he was still standing there, still smiling. She beeped the horn once, just to be friendly, and then turned up toward Laguna Canyon Road. As soon as she rounded the curve in the road, she doubled back down Broadway and headed home again along the coast.

  21

  EDMUND’S WİLD DRIVE THROUGH LAGUNA CANYON HAD been nothing but a waste of time and gasoline. By the time he had driven a mile north of El Toro Road he realized that she had betrayed him, unless she had driven her Saturn like a race car driver. He had gotten back into Huntington Beach at nearly eleven o’clock, and found her car parked on the street near her apartment. Her light was off, the street door locked. She was cagey—he had to give her that—but given a little time, she would come around. She wasn’t a complete fool, after all. Her response irritated him, though. He had to admit that. He had hoped for more out of her.

  He lay in bed now beneath light covers. On the bedside table lay the doll that he had found in Anne’s box. There was an urn for the burning of incense, too, along with a half-dozen books on magic—three of which he had paid very good money for only two months ago—the kind of books that weren’t for public consumption, that circulated within certain small and secret circles of knowledgeable people. It had taken him ten years of searching to find his way into one such circle, and another five years to outgrow it, to r
ise above it. His interest in black magic dated from when he was an adolescent, and he had managed to put together a good library over the years, although accumulating his books had been a matter of constantly rejecting the books that he had outgrown, and he knew that at some future date he would need only one or two books, although those would cost him many times the value of the rest of his library.

  The most esoteric and useful of the books on the bedside table was relatively new, and was titled simply Demonology: Exorcism and Incantation. What was wonderful about it was that it was equally useful to the priest or the magician—a cookbook of magical recipes without the usual screwball archaic language that appeared in so many of the books that pretended to be profound. Unlike what many people thought, fancy language wasn’t a door. The door was in your mind, and you found it by patient investigation. He opened to the chapter on incubi and succubi, although he had read them so many times that he knew most of the passages by heart. He found that reading was a good way to begin the focusing process, and he read for ten minutes now without pause, without thought, letting the words form the pictures in his mind that they seemed to want to form. It wasn’t his duty to promote the process with thinking; it was his duty to open his mind.

  He closed the book, put it aside, and set a lamp oil candle in the ceramic urn. He lit the wick and watched the yellow flame spring up, settling down and burning evenly in the still room. He turned the rheostat down to dim the lights, folded his legs in the lotus position, took three deep breaths, glanced at his watch, held the last lungful of air, and centered his hand over the flame. He shut his eyes and pictured a faraway place, his mind fleeing away into a darkness lit only by a distant fire. He felt the sensation of flying through cool dark spaces, and the fire in the distance drew closer and closer until he could see the deep shadow of the woods that encircled the fire. Tonight he pictured it more clearly than he had ever pictured it before—the boles of the stunted trees, the priapic suggestion of their upthrust limbs, the tumorous shapes of the roots pushing up out of the mold-covered soil. He was abruptly and thrillingly aware that he was picturing the place in Anne’s painting, and at this same moment he felt the pain of his burning hand and jerked it away from the flame, sucking in a breath simultaneously. He threw his head back and breathed heavily for another few moments, and then glanced at his watch.

  Nearly two and half minutes—a good ten seconds less than last night. It had been the consciousness of Anne’s painting that had tripped him. But it had also been Anne’s painting that allowed him to see the place as clearly as he had seen it. He looked at his hand and found that there was a blister dead center in the palm. Next time he would try to hold it even closer to the flame. According to what he had read, there was a meditative point at which one’s flesh was impervious to fire and where one lost the desperate desire to breathe. Reaching that point was a step along a path that included, even farther along, the ability to levitate, followed by the ability to fly. And along with flying, the ability to reach that place in the deep woods where the fire burned, that place inhabited only by people of deep pagan knowledge and desire.

  Now, starting with his feet, he tensed every muscle group in his body, one after another, for a slow five-count, vanquishing anger and futility from his mind. He pictured the fire in the woods again, stared at the flames, watched them dance, his muscles relaxing. For a time his mind darted around, but he drew it back to the fire, and then on the center of darkness that lay hidden within the flame, until his thoughts narrowed like sunlight through a lens, and the world around him became a vast darkness.

  Only when he had abolished all thought did he allow her face to come into his mind. He held its image, feeling the rise and fail of his chest, breathing her into himself….

  He heard a dog bark then, and with the harsh sound of the barking her face vanished, his muscles tensed, his anger washed over him like a tide. He cursed, full of a terrible and immediate urge to kill the dog, and right then there was a tremendous knocking at the front door. Immediately the doorbell rang, and then the knocking started back up. Suppressing the desire to scream, he climbed out of bed, stormed across the room to the closet, and found his bath-robe. Unless the building was on fire, whoever was knocking would be a sorry bastard in a moment. He went out into the living room, looking at the shadow beyond the window in the front door. The pounding continued.

  “Hold the hell on!” he yelled, tying his robe shut. He ran his fingers through his hair to smooth it out, unbolted the door, and swung it open. Red Mayhew stood there, his face drooping with alcoholic stupidity. He stank to high heaven. Without pausing another instant Dalton swung the door shut and threw the bolt, and immediately Mayhew stabbed away at the bell again. Halfway across the room, Dalton turned around and retraced his steps. Clearly he had to deal with this, and deal with it now. He opened the door again. Mayhew glared at him, swaying precariously on the threshold.

  “Get the hell out of here,” Dalton told him evenly. He looked past him, down the walkway, which was overhung with fog-shadowed shrubbery. Thank God there was no one in sight.

  “I want what’s mine,” Mayhew said thickly.

  “You’ll get what’s yours, you drunk piece of shit,” Dalton said. “I’ll give you five seconds to disappear. If you’re still here, I’ll drag you inside, put a weapon in your hand, beat you senseless, and call the cops. Do you understand me? I’ll have you jailed if you’re still alive.”

  “You little puke …”

  “Four seconds.”

  “Call a cop? I’ll call a cop! Tell them I simulated your father? Mr. goddamn big stuff. Eh? You pay me a fair wage, or I’ll run you right the hell in, you little scumbag pervert, with your goddamn car and whatever the hell …” Mayhew lost his train of thought, but he made furious slashing motions with his hand now. The force of it threw him off balance, and he stumbled into a forest of sword ferns alongside the porch, going down on one knee.

  Shit! There was the sound of someone coming now, and Dalton bent over and grabbed the old man by the arm.

  “Come on, old-timer,” Edmund said out loud, yanking Mayhew to his feet. The man on the path, a stranger, nodded at him, but didn’t seem to want to stop and help, thank God. “Homeless, I think,” Edmund told him. “Found him sleeping on the porch. I’m going to run him down to the shelter.”

  The man nodded and kept right on going, not wanting to get involved. Mayhew swayed there uneasily, then raised his head and glared at Dalton again. “Little piece of crap like you …”

  “That’s right,” Edmund whispered at him. “I think this has gone far enough, Mr. Mayhew. Am I to understand that you’ve come after money?”

  “Damn straight I did.” Mention of the word “money” seemed to sober him. “What you owe me.”

  “I have no problem with that. I just wish you had asked for more when we transacted our business. But that’s behind us now. Will fifty dollars make us even?”

  Mayhew stared at him, as if he were thinking this through.

  “Fifty dollars it is, then, Mr. Mayhew. Wait here.” He went inside, bolting the door behind him to keep the old man from following him. Hurriedly he found his wallet, took out a fifty, went back out through the living room, and opened the door again. The bell rang when he was almost there, and he yanked it open to find Mayhew staring, his nose nearly pressed against the little wooden posts across the window. “Patience is a virtue, Mr. Mayhew,” Dalton told him, holding the fifty up in front of his face with both hands. “Keep it safe now. Here.” He tucked it into the old man’s coat pocket and patted it. “Are you with me, Mr. Mayhew? Shall I ask for a receipt?”

  Mayhew swatted his hand away and backed off a step, taking the bill out of his pocket and looking hard at it. He nodded. “We’re … square,” he said. “This and the money from that other fellow.”

  “What fellow would that be, Mr. Mayhew?”

  “Down at Sixth Street. The one who sent me down here.”

  “At my place of business?”<
br />
  “Damn right, your place of business. Don’t think I don’t know who you are, either.” He put the money into his pants pocket and looked up and down the walk.

  “I see. I know you too, Mr. Mayhew. Can I tell you something, a little secret between the two of us?”

  Mayhew squinted at him.

  “If you ever come back here, if you confront me in public under any circumstances whatsoever, if you talk again to any of my employees, I’ll have your tongue cut out. Do you understand me?”

  “Underestand …?”

  “Listen!” Dalton grabbed the lapels of his coat, pulling the old man’s face close. “I’ll have your tongue cut out. With a scissors. Do you understand me? You’ll vomit on your own blood, but you’ll live, Mr. Mayhew, you’ll live. I hope I’ve made myself clear.”

  There was a satisfying look of horror on Mayhew’s face now, and the old man tried to pull away from him. He looked around wildly, clearly wanting to get the hell out of there now, and just for good measure Dalton pushed him over backward, into the sword ferns again. Mayhew scrabbled through the shrubbery, crawling back out onto the walk, breathing hoarsely. He held both hands out in front of him, as if to ward Dalton off, and Dalton jerked both of his own hands into the air and thrust his tongue out, scissoring his fingers together and making a gagging sound in his throat. Crouching and looking back, Mayhew stumbled away down the walk. In a moment he was gone in the fog.

  Wearily, Dalton went back inside and bolted the door again. All in all he felt better now, exorcised. The horror on Mayhew’s face was bracing. If Mayhew talked to the police, they wouldn’t believe a word of what he said. On the other hand, Dalton wasn’t anxious for the old man to talk to the police or anyone else. And apparently he had already talked to someone…. It would have been after hours, and that, of course, meant Dave, who probably thought it was funny as hell to send the old man down here, drunk on his ass, to raise Cain. What to do about it, though? Nothing tonight.