Christopher Bell was no longer lost. He knew where he was. He was at last within view of a building. He couldn’t tell which building it was, because he had wandered way off not only the deer path, but off the dirt and gravel road to the house, too. It was the truth, he had to remind himself. It was the glorious truth. He had found the road and had lost that, too, sure that he knew a shortcut.
He gave himself a certain ironic praise: you’re doing just fine there, Bell. Way to go. Now you get to explain to Sarah how you got lost behind a manzanita bush or a tree trunk and couldn’t find a gas station. Twice. You got lost twice. Not counting getting lost in San Francisco. It wasn’t fair to count that. Let’s let that stay off the record.
He knew where he was definitely now, though. There was the peak of a roof, the flash of white walls through the dark trees. He was coming up, scrabbling and climbing, on the Outer Office. Congratulations, he told himself. At last you’ve found something. He couldn’t approach it directly, though. A rotting tree lay in one direction, and a picket of poison oak in another. He had to work a detour, swing wide around the cottage, and trudge up what was a slight slope but seemed, at his point, steep enough.
The flies made a long chord of cello music, a low hum that stopped him. This was more than a snag of flies in the shade of a tree. This was a chorus. There is something there, he told himself. Something over there. There is something up in that tree.
She was a work of insect bodies, the flies tracing and retracing her so thickly he could not make out her features. But he knew who it was.
Speke, was his first thought. Speke did this. The thought was unjustified, and he knew it was concocted of shock and prejudice, but there it was. You start to doubt someone, and anything seems possible. He was hyper-rationalizing, he knew, to compensate for the shock. And it was a great shock, even though he had worked alongside homicide detectives, and he had seen bodies so decayed that arms came off when the cops tried to lift them.
This was different. He had to tell someone. He had to make a telephone call. He had responsibilities. He had known this woman.
He sprinted, slipped, and a branch scratched his face. He blinked. Someone’s arms were around him, and he could not escape. It was someone strong, someone who held him at arm’s length.
Speke gazed upon Bell as a man might gaze at his own brother after years of separation. It was good to see this biographer. It was good to have him here.
“You need to help us,” he said, and Bell backed away, then looked a question at Sarah.
“We have to cut down the body,” said Sarah.
“Are you all right?” Bell asked.
“Be quick,” was her sole response.
Bell’s eyes narrowed. “What have you done?” He directed this question to Speke, but Sarah answered.
“Do what he tells you to do,” she said.
Speke stood shivering in the splashes of sunlight as Bell climbed the tree and cut her down. The knife made a fine, breathy song as it cut through the telephone cord. Speke did not want to hear it, but he could not deafen himself to the whine of steel and plastic, the subtle squeak as of a serpent fighting the blade. It set his teeth on edge, and yet he could not look away, and he could do nothing but cringe at the tune the steel made until the body nearly fell, dangled, and then did what it threatened to do, as Bell strained, clinging to one dead arm.
For a while the tree clung to her. He strained to reach upward to catch her.
The body fell. Joints made a butcher shop creak, and air was forced out of the dead lungs with a sound like a moan, a love making sigh. The arms flung, lifted, fell into a new position. Dust was suspended in the air. A sparse tangle of flies settled over her.
“It’s all right,” Speke heard himself say. He meant: she can’t feel it. He also meant: it’s not all right. It’s terrible beyond belief.
That thing there, in the dark moist pool of fluid. That can’t be her.
“Come away,” Sarah said.
She stayed at his side, a presence like the strength of a bodyguard, steadying him. Good Sarah, thought Speke. She should have been spared this sight.
Bell slipped from the tree. He and Sarah were trembling, and Speke felt sorry for them. These two brave, good people had not expected this. Most people live their entire lives and never see such violence. But she sustained him. Sarah’s presence was like cool water, and he was thankful that she was there. He was more than thankful: her voice, the very whisper of her step, was everything to him now.
He directed Bell to Brothers’ tool shed, where Bell found what they needed, something with which to conceal her body and defeat the busy flies. Maria was stretched out on the dry leaves, and Bell covered her with a plastic ground cloth he brought back folded into a tight triangle, like a plastic, post-funeral flag. Maria’s shape was visible through the translucent cover, a woman frozen in a spill of ice.
The sound of the flies was audible, but farther away and scattered, the hum of an electric shaver far off, or the breathy purr of a computer.
“I have to talk,” Speke began.
Sarah put her hand on his arm.
“It’s all right,” he said. “I want to tell you …” He could not continue.
“We’ll take care of everything, Ham,” said Sarah.
Bell, whose face was blanched and pinched, said only, “Anything we can do,” in a harsh voice.
Speke could not feel anything but gratitude for Sarah, and for Bell. But the gratitude faded, and was replaced by the granite escarpment of horror. This was real, he told himself. This was really happening. Sarah’s eyes told him that. This was no dream.
The law would arrive. He knew that the sheriff would be here eventually: he knew the specialness of this place was about to be lost. There would be detectives and reporters, and not the friendly sort of journalists. It didn’t matter. There was only one last thing that did matter, and it was easy to accomplish.
To his surprise, it did not take long at all. He was not aware of the words he chose. He was aware only of uttering the truth, the liberating, and painful truth.
It was amazingly easy, telling the beads of this narrative, this tale that was not only his. It was like telling the secrets of a stranger. Maria had deceived them all, but Asquith had been the great magician, accomplishing far more than Speke could have imagined. Explained in human speech, as he sweated in the sunlight, it was all so simple. Ugly, but simple. Sometimes, especially as he said their names, he had to pause and wait for his speech to return.
Why was Sarah’s touch on his arm so steady? Hamilton Speke did not, in a real sense, exist. His lies, and his self-deception, had led him to this day, in this heat, with three people dead.
The last news blanched them, silenced them, took away their breath. “You don’t know about Clara,” he said, half question, half regretful discovery.
Whatever else you do, do not go into the kitchen. News that should never be spoken. Words that should poison the air.
“You’ll be all right,” said Sarah at last, in a voice almost too soft, too broken to be a voice.
No, Sarah, Speke wanted to say. He could not talk for a moment. The speech that had played out the facts had been the last words he ever wanted to speak. He patted her shoulder. No, he thought. Sometimes faith is pointless, even wrong. I will never be all right. My life, he could not bring himself to say, is over. It’s only right. I have done too much.
He stiffened.
They gazed at him without comprehension.
He scrambled over a ridge of roots. No! he told himself. It can’t be!
Lord—say it isn’t true.
This was what he had feared ever since he first saw Live Oak, and walked the grounds in the healing sunlight. This was the dragon that had always hidden in the woods. He could do nothing but tell himself that it wasn’t true, trying to deceive his own senses.
He sniffed the air again. There was no smoke at all, he told himself. Not even a little bit. Then, just as definitely, the scen
t was back.
It’s not possible, he told himself.
He buried his head in his hands. When I look up again, all will be well.
Everything. My entire life will be wonderful, and Maria will be alive again, and Clara and Asquith. He wanted to weep, and not just a simple shedding of tears. He wanted to fall to the ground and gnash the earth, chew the twigs and branches, let himself dissolve into complete oblivion.
Instead, he lowered his hands: He took a deep breath, and there it was still, a dark spill in the air. This place was never meant to last. You never did belong here. You thought this was your home, just as you dreamed that Maria was yours.
These trees, this air, belonged to no one. Of course, he thought. It was only right. Asquith was in a way still alive. In a way, he could not die. It was wonderful, a miracle wrought by a man with no faith. Asquith had mastered everything that was not life, and that was a great legion indeed. “Can’t you smell it?” Speke demanded.
Bell stood like a man unable to trust his eyes or his ears. He looked shocked beyond thought, haggard and blanched. “What?” he said, but it came out as a whisper.
I will take command, Speke told himself. There is nothing else to do. “I’m going to need your help,” he said, laying a hand on Bell’s shoulder. He did not recognize the sound of his own voice, this tone of authority.
“Anything I can do,” said Bell again, his voice broken to a whisper.
“Don’t stop and think—just do what I tell you.”
“Anything—”
“We are going to fight.”
Bell did not respond, was afraid to respond, gazing with a look that was lost, even frightened.
Speke laughed. He saw how he must look to Bell, a disheveled figure delivering a senseless battlefield rant. Perhaps Bell was not the sort of person who rallied to a challenge. Perhaps he was a man easily confused by events.
How dull-witted the biographer seems, thought Speke. How slow to understand what is happening. Perhaps I misjudged this man completely, thinking him keen, equal to my life’s story. Look at him, even now, looking to Sarah for help. Tell me what to do, Bell was asking her with his eyes. Tell me what is happening.
“Before Asquith died,” said Sarah, “he set fire to the woods.”
41
Bell followed Speke’s command. He had, really, no choice. There was something about Speke that made a man obey.
He ran toward the road, for help. But suspicion bit him, and kept biting. There was no fire. It was entirely in Speke’s imagination. Don’t leave Sarah with Speke. It was a non-fire, a figment, a phantom. He couldn’t smell any smoke. It was too hot to run, but he ran anyway. The drive was littered with acorns, brunette teeth so hard he nearly slipped on them.
Stay on the road, he warned himself. Don’t stray for even a few steps.
Bright Mr. Bell. You were so smart. He had dreamed of a stimulating project, and here he was. He would not, of course, be able to turn any of this into coherent chapters. He had discovered a new life, and it had nearly destroyed his talent. Speke was neither genius nor fake. He was something beyond human, wonderful and terrible at the same time. The next biography, Bell told himself, will be about someone long dead, someone who can do nothing but stare at me from photographs.
It was like a man reaching a tripwire, and barely catching himself. He stopped running.
I am a fool to leave her with him. Speke is dangerous.
Speke, he thought, must think me a total ass. Speke was going to kill Sarah. A ridiculous thought—and yet, there it was. His lips were chapped. Sounds were strangely crisp. The yellow white rye at his feet made a fine, high noise with the wind.
Stay here. Speke had gone mad. Bell put his hands on his hips beside the drive, in one of the deer paths that ran parallel to the road. His breath was heavy, but soon settled to its normal rate. He listened, and sniffed the air. He was sure of it—there was no fire.
So what now, he asked himself. What should I do?
There in the dust of the deer path was the single print of a very large cat. It was a big print, nearly as wide across as his hand. There were no other prints, simply the single kiss on the ground. It was exact, proud. It struck Bell how a thing can be only itself, and not any other creature.
Distinct, and deadly. The red branches of the mesquite looked different to him. The gray leaves, the writhing, copper branches hid another world. A world that deceived, that disclosed treasures and buried crimes. It was a world he would never understand.
What should I do?
As a youth Bell had promised himself that he would never be like his father. He wanted a big life, a life of color, of scope. His father had been a deliberate man, an accountant whose hobby was the sharpening of shears, knives, and mowers. It was a life of numbers and carbon steel. The whetstone was his father’s favorite tool. Now, his father dead just five years, Bell realized that he had inherited his father’s skills, his father’s temperament. He was a man who craved the fine edge, the sharp fact, the plain, tungsten truth.
He did not want greatness, and he did not want to capture life. Not any longer. He wanted to flee this place, and never return. That was what drove him now. He ran, hard. He ran until the cramp returned, that steel stitch in his side. He forced himself onward. He had one, simple need: escape. He was not seeking help. He was running away, defeated.
He clung to the gate; panting, his eyes closed.
This was the barrier that had blocked them earlier in the day, so long ago. Ham had not known about this chain. Bell had conveniently forgotten, but now here he was. There was no way over the gate. The words fell within him with masochistic solemnity: no way. There was a taste like iron on his tongue.
The black iron spears might have been greased. He could not find a grip. He kicked, fought, climbed, and slipped all the way back.
Again, he grunted his way halfway there. And slipped nearly all the way back, all the way to the dust.
He had one thought: leave this place. Run away. The place is too much for you. It has defeated you.
Just climb and escape, that’s all, and forget everything else. This place is magical, and you are not. Speke is a giant, and you are just another little man. He slipped, but battled upward. Until, elbows bruised, shins aching, he found himself at the top of the gate.
Go ahead.
But Sarah had been right. You couldn’t climb over this fence. The spear heads were sharp, and several times he nearly lanced his scrotum. He wanted to flee, but there was no way to escape. He was trapped at the top of a row of spears, and could not fall either way.
His own nature was revealed to him. He could not embrace life, after all. He need a telephone, a phone book. He needed a computer, a row of books. He needed a cross-reference on this. He couldn’t survive intellectually naked. Confusion was not his element. He felt the child in him return, baffled, even scared. His inner voice was a piping, immature reed, a boy imitating an adult. This doesn’t add up. What’s the agenda here? Just a little information. That’s all he needed.
There was no way over the gate, and it was just as well. He let himself fall inside the gate and panted, sweating, determined to run back to the house and save Sarah’s life. At the same time, he felt the injustice of his position. Too much was happening that made no sense. He was confused. Some people lived quiet lives. They made coffee and read the newspaper. Some writers hired researchers, and did all their work from a desk overlooking San Francisco Bay. He was a field man, and didn’t mind work. But he needed to double-check his facts, and that’s exactly what he couldn’t do now.
He would run back and save Sarah. He worked to convince himself. Lying here in the dust was an act of cowardice. It was probably too late—she was probably already dead. And he knew that whatever the battle to be fought, he was lost.
And then he smelled it.
The smell was dark, the scent of earth turned to poison, the smell of life turned to heat and light.
Bell clawed, wrestled, hump
ed his way to the top of the gate. The sky was flawed in the distance, against the horizon. A fabric stretched into the sky, soiling the blue.
Wind stroked his hair, and hissed through the dry grass, and he could smell fire as he balanced on the row of black spears, took a breath, sweating, unable to tear himself away from the heads of the spears. Clothing tore, the crotch of his pants or the seam along one leg. A spear head was cold against the flesh of his thigh. He teetered, wanting to fall, trying to keep from falling.
Can’t make it, a voice nagged him from within. You can’t make it—don’t try.
Until he fell at last. Earth met him with a clap, and he rolled. As a cub he had followed the Oakland Fire Department, and he knew how to drop from a roof onto bare concrete. My breath, he found himself thinking, is knocked out. I’ll be able to breathe again soon.
But he couldn’t sit up, and he couldn’t crawl. He kicked at the dirt, and could go nowhere. Hurt, came the electric thought. I’m hurt.
I can’t move.
Speke ran up the slope and Sarah followed. The shadow in the air was closing around the two of them, as though the air were becoming not gas but a solid, coalescing from gray dust to dark, impervious stone.
The air around them shook, trembled, and then began the perceptible shift, dragged inward toward the woods. He had always awaited this enemy. Now it was here at last. Speke felt the strangest glee. Fighting a fire like this would be a war against death. A war against the army Asquith had scattered in the woods like the teeth of a dragon. He could only partly understand the fierce pleasure he felt. He was awake again. There was something to fight for, he sang in his heart. A reason to battle. And a great, iron joke. Asquith isn’t defeated at all, not even a little bit. He is alive in the fire.
There was no sight of the flames yet. There was only the tumult, as of a riot, an army gibbering and insane, wrenching and wrestling the oaks.
The garage door would not open. The old wood door creaked, the nail heads groaning beneath their bright, ever fresh paint. The hinges complained. The handle pulled loose. Speke felt the strength of his arms, his legs, his back, the power of his life.
Ghostwright Page 28
