‘Pick it up,’ Jonquil urged him.
Paul hesitated for a moment. For some reason, the pattering of drums sounded louder than usual, more insistent, and the insects scraped even more aggressively. He picked up the black gourd and weighed it in his hand. It was quite light, and obviously hollow, because he could hear something rattling around inside it. Beads, maybe; or seeds.
‘See in your head the thing that you want,’ said Jonquil. ‘The witch-compass makes its song. Quiet when you want is far off distance. Louder - louder when close.’
‘Kind of a Geiger counter, then,’ smiled Paul. ‘Except it looks for luck instead of radiation.’
‘Money, woman, house. Work all time.’
Paul rolled the witch-compass over and over in his hand. There was something very smooth and attractive about it, like a giant worry-bead. ‘I don’t know...’ he said. ‘It depends how much it is.’
‘Ily a deux prix,’ said Jonquil.
‘Two prices? What do you mean?’
‘En termes d’argent, le prix est quatorze francs. Mais il y a également un prix moral à payer, chaque fois la boussole pointe sur ce que vous désirez.’
‘I have to make a moral choice? Is that what you said?’
Jonquil nodded again. ‘No thing that you truly desire come free.’
Paul gently shook the witch-compass and heard its soft, seductive shaking sound.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Fourteen francs. If it works, I’ll come back and thank you in person. If it doesn’t, I won’t be able to afford to come back.’
‘You will be back,’ Jonquil assured him, as he counted out the money. ‘Your feet will bring you back.’
* * * *
It was dry and breezy when he arrived back in New Milford. The sky was startlingly blue and red-and-yellow leaves were whirling and dancing on the green. He drove his rental car slowly through the town, feeling just as much of a ghost as he had on his last night in Gabon. He saw people he knew. Old Mr Dawson, with a new Labrador puppy. Gremlin, his previous dog, must have died. Jim Salzberger, leaning against a red pick-up truck, talking to Annie Nilsen.
The same white-painted buildings, dazzling in the sunlight. The same town clock, with its bright blue dial. Paul drove slowly through but he didn’t stop. He didn’t want anybody to know that he was back, not just yet. He had been crackling with ambition when he left this town, and his parents had been so proud of him when he made his first hundred thousand dollars in Libreville. But here he was, back and bankrupt, more or less, without even the will to start over.
He drove out along the deserted highway to Allen’s Corners, past Don Humphrey’s general store. The sunlight flickered through the car windows, so that he felt that he was watching an old home movie of his previous life.
At last he took the steep turn up through the woods that led to his parents’ house. It wasn’t much of a place: a single-storey building on the side of the hill, with an awkwardly angled driveway and a small triangular yard. His father was out back, sawing logs with his old circular saw, and there was a tangy smell of woodsmoke in the air.
He parked behind his father’s Oldsmobile and climbed out. His father immediately called out, ‘Jeannie! Jeannie! Look who’s here!’ and came hurrying down the steps. He was a tall man, although he wasn’t as tall as Paul, with cropped grey hair and the slight stoop of somebody who has worked hard in an office all his life, and never quite managed to fulfil himself. Paul’s mother came out of the kitchen still carrying a saucepan. She was tall, too, for a woman, and although her hair was grey she looked ten years younger than she really was. She was wearing a pink chequered blouse with the sleeves rolled up, and jeans.
‘Why didn’t you say you were coming to see us?’ asked his mother, with tears in her eyes. ‘I don’t have a thing in!’
His father slapped him on the back and ushered him up the steps into the house. ‘I guess he wanted to surprise us, didn’t you, son?’
‘That’s right,’ said Paul. ‘I didn’t know that I was coming back until the day before yesterday.’
‘It’s great to see you,’ smiled his father. ‘You’ve lost some weight, haven’t you? Hope you’ve been eating properly. All work and no lunch makes Jack a skinny-looking runt.’
‘I should have gone to the market,’ said his mother. ‘I could have made your favourite pot roast.’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ his father said. ‘We can eat out tonight. Remember Randolph’s Restaurant? That was taken over, about a year ago, and you should see it now! They do a lobster chowder to die for!’
‘Oh Dan, that’s far too expensive,’ said his mother.
‘What do you mean, our son here’s used to the best, aren’t you, son? How’s that Mercedes-Benz of yours running? Or have you traded it in for something new?’
‘Oh...I’m maybe thinking about a Porsche.’
‘A Porsche! Isn’t that something! A Dennison driving a Porsche! Listen, how about a beer and you can tell us how things are going.’
‘Well, to tell you the truth, I’m kind of pooped.’
‘Sure you are, I’m sorry. Why don’t you go to your room and wash up? You can fill us in when you’re good and ready.’
His mother said, ‘How long are you staying for?’
He gave her a quick, tight smile. ‘I don’t know ... it depends on a couple of business deals.’
She held his eye for a moment and there was something in the way she looked at him that made him think: she suspects that I’m not entirely telling the truth. His mother had always known when he was lying. Either that, or he always felt guilty when he lied to her, and it showed.
He hefted his bag out of the car and carried it through to the small room at the back. It was depressingly familiar, although it had a new green carpet and new curtains with green-and-white convolvulus flowers on them. His high school football trophies were still arranged on top of the bureau, and there was a large photograph of him at the age of eleven, clutching a shaggy red dog. He sat down on the bed and covered his face with his hands. Eleven years of work. Eleven years of talking and travelling and staying up till two or three in the morning. All of it gone, all of it - and nothing to show for it but a single suitcase and twenty-three CFA francs - not convertible into dollars, and not worth anything even if they were.
His father came in with a can of Coors. ‘Here - I’ll bet you can’t get this in Libreville.’
‘No, we get French beer mainly. Or there’s the local brew. Okay for cleaning drains.’
He opened up his suitcase. Two pairs of pants, one crumpled linen coat, a pair of brown leather sandals, socks and shorts. His father said, ‘You’re travelling extra-light. The last time you came, you had so many cases I thought that Madonna was visiting.’
‘Well ... I wasn’t given too much notice.’
He took the witch-compass out of the side pocket in his suitcase and put it next to his football cups.
‘What the two-toned tonkert is that?’ asked his father.
‘It’s kind of a good-luck charm.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ His father picked it up and shook it. ‘Looks like a giant sheep dropping to me.’
Paul hung his clothes up in the closet.
‘You’re quiet,’ said his father. ‘Everything’s okay, isn’t it?’
‘Sure, sure. Everything’s okay.’
His father laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘I’ll tell you who else is around. You remember that Katie Sayward you used to like so much? Her marriage broke up, so she’s back here with her aunt, to get over it.’
Paul said, ‘What? I didn’t even know she was married.’
‘Yeah. She married some actor she met in New York. Real good-looking guy. Too good looking, if you know what I mean. I met him once when she came up to Sherman to see her aunt. So far as I know, he had an affair with some girl in the chorus-line and Katie was totally devastated. If you do see her, I wouldn’t mention it if I were you. Not unless she brings it up first.’
Paul went to the window and pressed his forehead against the cold glass. Outside, the yard sloped steeply uphill towards a thicket of dry brown bracken. Katie Sayward. He had always adored Katie Sayward, even when he was in grade school. Katie Sayward, with her skinny ankles and her skinny wrists and her shining brown hair that swung whenever she turned her head. Even when she was younger, her lips always looked as if she had just finished kissing someone. She had grown into a beautiful young woman, with a head-turning figure. Paul had only plucked up the courage once to ask her for a date. He could remember it even today - walking into the home room in front of all the other girls, and saying, ‘Katie, how about you and me going out for a burger tonight?’ Katie had clamped her hand over mouth, and widened her eyes, and then she had burst out laughing. The memory of it still made him feel hot and uncomfortable.
So Katie Sayward had married. Well, of course she had married, a lovely girl like that. It was just that he hadn’t wanted to hear about it. And worse than that, her husband had cheated on her. How could he have cheated on Katie Sayward, when she was the perfect, perfect girl?
His mother came into the room. ‘You’re sure you don’t want anything to eat? I could make you a bologna sandwich. I don’t suppose you get much bologna, in Gabon.’
‘I’m fine, Mom. Honestly. Let me grab a few zees, that’s all.’
‘Okay,’ said his father, giving him another affectionate clap on the shoulder. ‘I’ll wake you up in time for dinner.’
* * * *
Randolph’s Restaurant was decorated in the style of an old Colonial inn, with wheelback chairs and softly shaded lamps on the tables and antique warming-pans hanging on the walls. They sat right in the middle of the restaurant, and Paul’s father kept turning around in his chair and calling out to people he knew.
‘Dick! Janice! Paul’s back from darkest Africa! Sure, doing real good, aren’t you, Paul? Business is booming! Counting on buying himself a new Porsche, top-of-the-range!’
Paul glanced at his mother. She was still smiling, but he definitely had the feeling that she knew that something wasn’t quite right.
His father ordered two large martinis to start, and a mimosa for his mother. Then he opened up the oversized leatherbound menu and said, ‘Okay! Let’s push the boat out!’
He ordered oysters and caviar with sour cream and blinis. He ordered steak and lobster and fresh chargrilled tuna. They drank Roederer champagne with the hors d’oeuvres and Pauillac with the entrees, $97.50 a bottle.
Paul’s father did most of the talking. Paul sat with his head lowered, chewing his way unenthusiastically through his meal. He couldn’t even taste the difference between the steak and the lobster, and he left his beans and his broccoli untouched.
‘You must be feeling jetlagged,’ said his mother, laying her hand on top of his.
‘Yes...kind of. I’ll be okay tomorrow.’
The pianist on the opposite side of the room was playing a slow bluesy version of ‘Buddy, Can You Spare A Dime?’ and he almost felt like standing up and walking out.
‘You know something?’ said his father, with his mouth full, and a shred of lobster dangling from his lip, ‘I’m so proud of you, Paul, I could stand right up in this restaurant and shout it out loud. My only son, started from humble beginnings, but had the guts to go to Africa all on his own and make himself a hundred million.’
‘Well, I’m not so sure about the hundred million,’ said Paul.
‘You mark my words ... if you haven’t made a hundred million yet, you sure will soon! That’s what you’re made of! That’s why I’m so proud of you!’
They finished the meal with Irish coffees in the cocktail lounge. Paul’s father grew more and more talkative and when he started to tell stories about his high school days, losing his shorts in the swimming-pool and falling into the rhododendron bushes, Paul asked for the check.
‘That’s real generous of you, Paul,’ his father beamed. Then he turned to his mother and said, ‘How many people have a wealthy young son who can take his folks out for a night like this?’
Paul opened the leather folder with the check inside. It was $378.69, gratuity at your discretion. Suddenly he couldn’t hear the piano music any more.
‘How is it?’ asked his father. ‘National debt of Gabon, I’ll bet.’
‘Something like that,’ said Paul, numbly, and reached into his coat with fingers that felt as if they were frostbitten. He took out his wallet and opened it, while his mother watched him silently and his father chatted with the cocktail waitress.
‘In Gabon, you understand, they respect Americans. They trust them. Wouldn’t surprise me at all if Paul ends up running a big mining corporation over there.’
Paul said, ‘Shit.’
‘What? What is it?’
‘All the money I changed ... I left it back in my suitcase.’
‘You can use your card, can’t you?’
‘No, no, I can’t. It’s only for use in Africa.’
‘But that’s an American Express card. That’s good anywhere.’
‘Not this one, no. I have a special deal. They bill me in CFA francs, so that I save myself twelve-and-a-half per cent handling charges.’
Paul’s father pulled a face. ‘Don’t you have Visa, or MasterCard?’
‘Left them back in my suitcase, too. Stupid of me. Mom’s right. I must be jetlagged.’
‘Looks like we’re going to have to wash the dishes,’ said his father.
‘I’ll tell you what I can do,’ Paul volunteered. ‘I can come back early tomorrow, soon as you open, and pay you then. How’s that? I can leave my watch if you like.’
‘Oh, that’s okay,’ smiled the waitress. ‘I think we can trust you, don’t you? And what is it they say in those gangster movies? We know where you live.’
They all laughed and Paul tucked his wallet back in his coat and said, ‘Thanks.’ Shit. Where was he going to raise more than four hundred dollars by lunchtime tomorrow? He could pawn his watch, he supposed. It was a nine hundred dollar Baume & Mercier that had been given to him by the sales director of a French copper company. His ten thousand dollar Rolex had long gone, in legal fees. He just hoped that Robard’s jewellers was still in business.
His mother took his arm as they left the restaurant and walked across the parking lot. It was a cold, dry night.
‘Winter’s coming early this year,’ said his mother. His father was weaving ahead of them, singing erratic lines from ‘Buddy Can You Spare A Dime?’ ‘Once I was a bigshot...now I’m broke.’
‘Well, we don’t get much of a winter in Libreville.’
‘Is everything all right, Paul?’
‘Sure. What do you mean? Everything’s great.’
‘I don’t know. You look - I’m not quite sure what the word is. Haunted, I guess.’
‘Haunted?’ he laughed. ‘You make me sound like Hill House.’
‘But everything’s okay? The business? You’re not sick, are you?’
‘I got over the dengue months ago.’
‘You will tell me, though, if anything’s wrong?’
He gave her a kiss and nodded, and then he hurried her along a little faster, so that they would catch up with his father. ‘Dad! Dad! Come on, Dad, there’s no way that I’m going to let you drive!’
* * * *
That night he lay in bed listening to the leaves whispering in the yard outside. He felt infinitely tired, but he couldn’t even close his eyes. The moonlight fell across the wall as white as a bone.
He ought to tell his parents that he was bankrupt. He ought to tell them that he was never going back to Gabon, couldn’t go back. He knew his father would be crushed, but how much longer could he keep up this pretence? Yet he felt that if he told his parents, he would reduce himself to the level of a hopeless alcoholic, finally admitting that he couldn’t summon up the willpower to quit on his own.
His parents’ admiration was all he had left.
The digital clock beside th
e bed told him it was 3:57. It clicked on to 3:58 - and it was then that he heard a soft shaking noise, like dry rice in a colander.
He raised his head from the pillow. It must have been the leaves, skittering in the wind. But as he lowered his head he heard it again, much sharper this time. Shikk - shikk - shikk! And again, even louder. Shikk - shikk - shikk!
He swung his legs out of bed and walked across to the bureau. There, amongst his football trophies, lay the black smooth shape of the witch-compass. It was shivering, very slightly, and as it shivered the beads or seeds inside it set up that shikk - shikk - shikk! sound.
Cautiously he picked it up. It felt as pleasant to hold as it always did; yet tonight it seemed to have life in it. It vibrated, and shook again. He pointed it towards the window. It stopped vibrating, and the shikk sound stopped, too. He pointed it toward the closet. It vibrated again, but only softly. Next he pointed it towards the door. It gave a brisk shiver and almost jumped out of his hand.
Dark Terrors 5 - The Gollancz Book of Horror - [Anthology] Page 14
