Night Relics

by James P. Blaylock

  “Do you know where Lance is?” the man asked. His voice was almost sad, as if he were performing a tragic duty. For a moment she wondered if he really wanted to know. Perhaps it was business; it wasn’t all that late. She stayed silent anyway, growing more tense as the moments passed. Slowly she became fearful for her husband. She’d known that afternoon that there was something dangerous going on. Lance had been tense….

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “I want you to know that he’s entertaining female guests in the poolhouse.”

  There was a dial tone then. No laughter, no threats, just this matter-of-fact statement expressed in a voice full of earnest concern.

  She got out of bed and parted the blinds, looking out the window. The poolhouse was dark. Of course the man was a filthy liar. She pulled on her robe and slippers and went out through the door, suddenly regretting that she’d rebuffed Lance so hard that evening. It was only lately that they’d started taking their arguments to bed with them, and she’d told herself this afternoon that it was going to stop, along with the rest, the drinking.

  The couch in the living room was empty and the french doors stood open to the wind. There were newspapers scattered on the floor from where they’d blown off a chair, and the curtains were blowing away from the wall, billowing up like bedsheet ghosts. The backyard was empty in the moonlight, and the pool was full of leaves.

  The gate was open. So that was it. He’d gone out into the hills again. Or had he? Had the man on the phone been right? There was a movement just then, a stirring of the curtains in the poolhouse window. She sat down on the couch, where she had a clear view of both the gate and the door to the poolhouse, noticing for the first time the glass of scotch on the coffee table. The three or four ice cubes in it were only half-melted. He must have poured it ten or fifteen minutes ago.

  How could the man on the telephone have known? She stood up, carried the glass to the sink, and dumped it down the drain. Then she rinsed it out and put it away in the cupboard. Going out to the poolhouse would be idiotic. What if he was there, waiting? The same man who’d been prowling around Beth’s house last night. She peered past the edge of the drape, looking at the poolhouse again. There was a movement, out toward the hills. Her breath caught, and she stepped back out of the window. A man had appeared out of nowhere, out of the old orchard, carrying what looked like a shovel.

  30

  THE INTERIOR OF THE POOLHOUSE WAS DIM, VAGUELY ILLUMINATED by moonlight through the partly open curtains. The wind hummed in the eaves and things whirled past beyond the windows, their shadows flickering briefly across the walls and floor. The scent of candle tallow and jasmine and dusty pine came to him, and Klein let himself imagine that the soft light playing across the floor was cast by the pair of candles burning in his dreams. He glanced at the woman, nearly invisible in the soft darkness. He could see her moving, hear the rustle of her dress, her shoulders showing pale white in the light of the moon.

  It was the dream again. He toyed with that idea—that he was dreaming, asleep in the house. It wouldn’t be the first time that he was conscious of dreaming but still lost in the dream itself, and he forced himself deeper into it, picturing the candles, the bed against the plank wall, the scent of her perfume. He didn’t want to lose it, this dream that was a sheltered place, dark and secretive, the rest of the world nothing but an abandoned illusion, reduced to the sound of the wind.

  The candle flames flickered. He knelt on the floor at the edge of the bed, tracing the curve of her elbow through the woolen blanket. “Esther,” he said out loud, noticing for the first time that she had a red ribbon in her hair. She turned to him, her hand on the back of his neck, pulling him to her, and he knew that he had come finally to a place he was destined to be, that they had found one another again at last.

  But just as this thought came to him, the walls shook with a gust of wind, and he looked up uneasily, listening to the door rattle, hearing something in his head like the drone of flies. “The wind,” he whispered. She sat up languorously, wrapping an arm around his shoulders, sealing his lips with her fingers, her black hair a shadow, a scrap of nighttime darkness, her pale skin a clever reflection of moonlight. He had the feeling that he was falling, not quickly, but drifting like a leaf, free at last from something he could neither see nor define.

  The door rattled again, as if there was a hand on the latch. He sat forward, listening. The room shook with wind. The night outside was alive with a crashing and rustling. Something chunked solidly into the door, scraping down the length of it, and suddenly all his night fears sprang in upon him—the horror that inevitably shattered his dreams, hidden from him until the end. The woman sat up, clawing at his shoulder now, trying to hide herself with the covers as if she, too, knew what it was that had found them there. The door panel bowed inward with the force of the wind, quivering and thrumming.

  With a shriek it tore itself open, slamming inward. The air was suddenly full of leaves and dust, the wind blowing full into his face with such force that he turned his head away, cowering backward against the wall. He opened his mouth to scream, and dry particles of windblown debris choked him, filling his throat. There was the heavy banging sound of a table turning over, and in the moonlight he could see the curtains flailing against the windows.

  A shadow moved through the swirling, wind-driven debris, a dark wraith that was partly human, partly animate rage. Klein turned his head away, not wanting to see it, knowing that in his dream he turned his head away, and that he saw it anyway, and he knew each time that the shadow would take the form of a man, of Esther’s husband. As if the room had tilted sideways, he felt himself sliding, and he grabbed frantically at the bedstead with his right hand, realizing at the same moment that there was no bedstead, and clutching a sofa cushion instead. He threw his left hand and forearm across his face as the shadow moved past the edge of the door, the moonlight glinting on the steel blade of the shovel. Klein slid onto the floor, curling into a ball and covering himself, looking wildly around for a means of escape but driven against the wall by the tearing wind.

  The man raised the shovel over his head—dark hair and eyes, his clothing torn and dirty, his mouth open in a scream that was either silent or was lost in the wind. Klein saw the blade slash downward, heard the woman’s screams. The room reeled around him. As if from the vantage point of a dream, he saw the dying man on the bed—not himself, but a man young and frail seeming with wide, terrified eyes, his hands flailing in front of him, the woman scrabbling away across the sheets, and the blood-flecked pine boards behind them white with moonlight. Klein knew this man, as if they shared some common history, but like water fading into sand, the knowledge dissipated and was gone.

  Something brushed past him in the dim light, a moving shadow that trailed across his flesh like cobweb. He heard a shuffling noise and saw, standing against the white panel of the poolhouse door, a man holding a shovel—not the murderer from his dream, but someone he vaguely recognized, blurred behind the veil of swirling leaves. Klein pushed himself backward, clutching the sofa cushion in front of him as the man staggered out into the night. A moment later he heard the clatter of the shovel hitting the pool deck, and then, almost at once, an explosion that sounded like gunfire.

  Slowly the door swung shut, the wind fell off, and the leaves and dust settled in the room. He sat in the darkness waiting, pressed into the corner and listening to the slow scraping of feet on the concrete outside.

  31

  THE DOOR STRAINED INWARD WHEN HE PUSHED ON IT, THE wind howling around him, pounding against the wood siding of the bunkhouse, straining the old iron door latch. He stepped back, raising the shovel over his head, his mind a chaos of broken images like the moon’s reflection shivered by a stone. Throwing himself forward, he drove the shovel into the door. The wood deflected the blade and it slashed down across the door panel, the sound grating in his ears like a shriek. In his mind rose the picture of a man’s visage, eyes broad with terro
r, blood welling out of an open gash. He struck the door again, along the edge now, and felt the latch snap, the door slam inward, the wind sweeping him into the room in a wild rage.

  The candles guttered and went out. Moonlight glittered on a rustling vortex of leaves that tore through the room, the silver light shining on Lewis’s face, betraying the craven terror in his eyes. Esther was a dark shadow above a dim white blanket. His mind veered away from her, flickering with staccato images like the stuttering frames in an antique movie: the quick, narrow vision of a face rushing toward him down a tunnel; the moving hands of two card players at a moonlit table; a dead cat in the bottom of a box; a wooden flute lying on the cracked tiles of a fireplace hearth; a narrow, rock-walled, night-dark canyon alive with the rush of water and wind; two broken shadows in a pool of moonlit water….

  He reeled forward, gripped by the sudden throat-seizing fear of falling, overwhelmed with the anguished knowledge of who lay dead or dying in that black pool. He reached out to grip the corners of the table before him, saw playing cards spinning past far below in a dark void. “Peter …” He heard her whisper, knew her voice….

  And a shadow moved away from him like a torn-off shred of darkness. He staggered back, released suddenly by the wind, and through the litter of leaves and dust he saw the dark figure of a man—separate from him now—raise the shovel into the air. He heard the woman scream and the groan of effort from the man’s throat as the shovel hatcheted downward….

  He turned and plunged out through the open door, into the night, nearly stumbling into the leaf-choked swimming pool. He looked around with the wild, empty fear of a suddenly awakened sleepwalker, hearing the sound of a woman’s scream tear through the wild night air. An empty chaise longue, propelled by the wind, skidded toward him across the concrete deck, spinning around and dropping into the pool, and he could hear the clicking and husking of dry sycamore leaves as they blew against the wrought-iron palings, gripping the black metal like paper hands.

  Abruptly he knew where he was—the dark, rocky hills rising behind him, cut with the black ribbon of the ridge trail. He saw movement in the lighted window next door—Beth, her kitchen window. He was suddenly conscious of the weight of the shovel in his hands. The poolhouse door slammed shut behind him and then blew open again, and he saw the long scar in the white paint. He threw the shovel down and sprinted toward the fence, leaping up and grabbing the redwood boards and propelling himself upward, feeling the fence shudder as he boosted himself over with his elbows, a splinter of wood scraping his cheek.

  Something exploded behind him like the crack of a firecracker, and he threw his hands over his head even as his feet jarred with the impact of hitting the ground. Gunfire! They were shooting at him! He crouched down and sprinted across the leaf-strewn lawn toward the back porch, praying that the door would be unlocked.

  32

  WHEN SHE SAW THE MAN WITH THE SHOVEL, LORNA ducked back out of sight behind the drape, throwing her hand to her mouth. He was half-obscured by windblown leaves and dust, but he clearly wasn’t the man who’d been over to see Lance that morning. A jealous husband? In a sudden panic she turned toward the bedroom. The wind howled outside with a power that nearly took her breath away, and a hailstorm of leaves and twigs pelted the doors and screens. There was a fearful pounding just then, like someone breaking down a wall, and she looked out just as the poolhouse door slammed inward, the man with the shovel silhouetted against the darkened interior. She saw him raise the shovel with both hands and heard simultaneously a woman’s scream and the hoarse shouting of a man’s voice.

  She ran back into the bedroom, snatching the phone off the hook and punching the 911 button on the keyboard. She found the gun in Klein’s nightstand when the operator answered. “This is Lorna Klein at 242 Parker in Trabuco Oaks,” she said. “Top of the road. It’s an emergency.” Lance made a point of keeping the gun loaded. “My husband is being assaulted by an armed prowler. Send the sheriff as quick as you can. I’m leaving the phone off the hook.”

  Without waiting for an answer, she tossed the receiver onto the bed and ran out into the hallway and through the living room, pushing open the screen door with her shoulder. The wind blew her hair around into her face, and she brushed it away as she charged straight across toward the poolhouse door. It had been broken in, and it turned now on the wind, swinging slowly outward, hanging from its bottom hinge. The night was full of noise and movement, tree limbs lashing and spray blowing out of the storm-tossed pool. Lawn chairs scraped across the concrete, animated by the wind, and one overturned in front of her, sliding in a rush into the water.

  Then she saw him in the moonlight—climbing over the redwood fence, into Beth’s yard. She saw the castaway shovel, knew she was too late. She threw the gun up wildly and pulled the trigger, turning her head aside and closing her eyes, but even so she could see the muzzle blast through her eyelids, and she flinched at the explosion of the gun going off in front of her face. She looked up just in time to see the man disappear from the top of the fence, dropping out of sight beyond it like a stone. She screamed then, hearing the wail of police sirens above the wind. The sheriff’s substation wasn’t a mile away. They’d be here any moment.

  She looked at the pistol in disbelief, only now really thinking about having pulled the trigger. It was heavy and cold, blue-black in the moonlight like a thing of evil. She nearly threw it into the pool. But that was stupid. Hide it? What the hell good would that do if a dead man lay on the other side of the fence? Who would they think shot him if not her?

  She thought about Lance and made herself move, pushing a fallen chair out of the way and walking toward the poolhouse, not letting herself picture what she’d find there. For a moment she stopped breathing, swallowing down the stuff that rose in her throat, staring out at the moving hillside through the fence. Someone was running up toward the ridge—a woman in a long black dress like a shadow. She thought she heard a scream trail down toward her as she ran toward the broken-in door of the poolhouse.

  33

  IT HAD BEEN A HELL OF A LONG DAY. BOBBY HAD FALLEN asleep in Mr. Ackroyd’s car on the way home from the vet’s and had dropped into bed at about eight, totally zonked, as he put it. The keys to the new dead bolts sat on the dining room table, and next to them a shoe box with the words, “Beth, Personal and Confidential” written on it in the careful kind of lettering that draftsmen learn. She’d left the box lying there while she put Bobby to bed, and it was just as well. Inside lay a gun—a little .22 rimfire pistol, big enough to cause a rat considerable grief if you shot it between the eyes. It looked like a toy—tinny and without a trigger guard, like Bobby’s sparkler pistol or Peter’s potato gun. She’d put the top back on the box and left it on the kitchen counter. Tomorrow morning she’d give it back to Klein.

  She washed the morning’s few dishes at the kitchen sink, watching the wind blow the night to pieces outside the window. The Kleins’ yard, backing up to the hills, was a dervish of leaves, and she watched as a tumbleweed blew across the hillside in the moonlight and slammed into the wrought-iron fence, scattering debris across the pool deck and into the water.

  She looked at the shoe box and then looked away. She and Peter had hardly had a chance to talk today. This wind … Maybe when the wind stopped they’d get clear of all this. The thought had come into her mind a dozen times today—if only the wind would die down—as if the wind itself was some sort of dark spirit coming down off the deserted ridges to manifest itself in their lives.

  She put the last dish away and dried off the counter, then wiped the chrome faucets clean of water spots before sliding the towel through the refrigerator door handle. She looked at a picture that Bobby had drawn at day care a couple of weeks ago and hung on the refrigerator door with magnets—a surfer wiping out on a wave that looked something like an iceberg. His head was cut off at the neck and was flying through the air, the eyes wide open in surprised wonder. The caption underneath read, “Eating It Big.” Walter, he
r ex-husband, used to surf, back in his salad days, and before their breakup he had always talked about it with Bobby, but hadn’t ever found time to take him to the beach. She wondered if the headless surfer was Walter and what a shrink would say about it. Immediately she decided it was Walter, just for the fun of it, and that she didn’t care what the shrink would say. She straightened the picture, trying to neaten the impossible mess of taped and magnet-stuck papers.

  Bobby’s Halloween drawings were still hanging on the side next to the stove, along with a crayon rendering of a Fourth of July rocket, a comical dog, and a construction-paper envelope containing the valentines Bobby had gotten last spring in school. There were outdated dental-appointment reminders and telephone numbers and awards for good grades and Little League achievements and who knew what-all else. The entire refrigerator was buried beneath layers of paper like some kind of weird collage. There was a sort of Velveteen Rabbit effect to it, though, the refrigerator coming to life because of all this attention it got from Bobby and her. She couldn’t any longer envision it clean and white, like her sister’s refrigerator, which always seemed dead to her and metallic, like an alien monolith out of a science-fiction movie.

  How long would it be before Bobby grew up a little and the refrigerator went back to being nothing more than a machine? Suddenly she was struck with the desire to have another child, if only for the sake of keeping the refrigerator happy and alive. She nearly laughed, except that she realized that it wasn’t funny; it was true. She thought about Peter again and about how everyone needed a second chance—a chance to do things right.

  When she reached for the light she noticed the shoe box sitting there like a reminder of all the world’s horrors, another machine with an agenda of its own. What had Klein said last night? Not to worry, prowlers don’t usually come back anyway …And here he was switching out all the door and window hardware and leaving a gun, for God’s sake, on the dining room table.