Night Songs

by Charles L. Grant

  Colin wanted to say yes. Instead he waved away the question. Another thought floated briefly, and he looked at Montgomery. "I guess," he said, conceding the point. "But if they didn't do it, Hugh, then who the hell did?"

  "Ask Garve. He's the chief around here."

  "Yeah. Thanks."

  A silence laced with apprehension. "Are you finished?" Montgomery asked. Colin nodded.

  "Then may I suggest the two of you get the hell out of my office so I can chase Annalee around the table?

  Go home, get a drink, I don't care, just go away. Okay?"

  "I… okay," and Colin followed Peg to her feet, yelled a good-bye to Annalee and was outside, in the dark.

  "Colin?"

  "Yes?"

  "You'll… stay?" He nodded.

  She leaned against him and he slipped an arm around her waist, thinking this was going to be a hell of a thing to tell their grandchildren. On the night I proposed to your grandmother she had just said yes when suddenly we found a bloody corpse. We spent the rest of the night waiting for the island doctor to tell us he was razored, going home and turning on every light in the house because we thought there was a madman on the loose out there. A nut. A psycho. A hell of a story.

  He closed his eyes, then, and saw Warren bleeding. Not the dried blood on his coat, or the dried blood on the ground, but fresh blood, running blood, seeping from the black gash beneath his chin-like the blood that had seeped fresh from the gashes on his wrists. He shuddered, and Peg squeezed his arm.

  "Changing your mind, sailor?" she said too brightly.

  He remembered. "Listen, Peg," he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out the keys to drop into her hand, "there's something I want to get from the house. You pick up Matt and I'll meet you there, okay?"

  "Colin?"

  He kissed her cheek softly. "Hey, it's all right, don't worry."

  "But whoever killed-"

  "It's all right," he insisted, already walking away. "You get Matt. I'll see you. Twenty minutes."

  He averted his gaze to avoid her eyes, stuffed his hands in his pockets as he headed toward Bridge Road. At the corner Peg drove by and waved at him.

  He waved back and turned right, hurrying now, Warren's death temporarily shunted aside while he considered what we'd done.

  It was curious. He thought he'd feel elation, or release, or some Busby Berkeley extravaganza exploding into glorious showgirls and vibrant celebration around him. But there was nothing but an odd sense of fear. He'd made up his mind to stop stalling and propose, and he'd done it; Peg had accepted. Now it was too late to turn back (do you want to?) If he reneged, he couldn't stay on the island (do you want to?) If he told her he'd made a mistake, would he be able to look Matt in the eye again (do you?)

  Christ, he thought, I'm really fucked up.

  The first time, so long ago he might have read about it in a book, he had proposed because it was the thing to do, the high school sweetheart and the ivy-covered cottage thing to do in order to complete a life not yet begun and destined never to end. The second time it almost worked (and would have if she'd lived, he demanded to believe). This time was calculated. This time it was deliberate. No passion, no yearning, no 'doing the right thing.' And though he'd felt fine when he'd said it, now he wondered if he had said the right thing.

  Goddamn!

  He swerved off the sidewalk and almost ran through the trees, took the stairs to the porch and had his hand out for the latch before something odd finally registered. He stopped with a palm slapped against the frame, staring down as if someone had thrown up a glass wall.

  The door was open.

  He knew he had closed it this morning, but now it was open.

  ***

  The living room was dark, the only light a pale shade of night slipping in from the side window. He entered cautiously, avoiding the plank that creaked like an alarm just over the threshold. Water dripped in the bathroom shower; the refrigerator in the kitchen coughed on and sputtered; the furniture waited just beyond the focus of his eyes, blending into the walls and bringing them closer. He could feel the bruise on his stomach, Warren's blood on his hands, the roof of the cottage adding weight to the dark.

  He could smell it, then, and he could touch it, and he could hear it in the way his mouth opened to breathe the stale air-there was someone in here. Someone was waiting for him, hiding in the black.

  Vincent, he thought in a swift and brief panic, and an instant denial as his shoulder hunched in anticipation of another attack. Not Vincent, it was too soon. Not Garve, not Peg, maybe Cart Naughton bound to keep the promise he'd made that afternoon.

  No. No one like that.

  But someone was in here, back in the shadows, waiting for him.

  And suddenly a lamp was switched on and the black was gone.

  He blinked wildly and ducked, one arm up and across his chest to protect himself from a blow that never came.

  By the window, by the table, was Lilla. She was looking at the sculpture of The Screaming Woman; she didn't turn around.

  "God," he said, one hand bracing himself against the top of the television while relief weakened his knees. "God, you scared me half to death."

  "Me," she said quietly, tonelessly. A linger reached out to touch the woman's open mouth, probe the darkened mouth. "This is me." She looked over her shoulder, and he saw the wide eyes, the sand-dusted cheeks, and no smile at her lips. "Gran did this of me."

  Only then did he notice she was still in her funeral dress, ragged and damp, one shoulder nearly gone. It had only been a day, but she seemed markedly thinner, almost emaciated, and her fingers snapped at the air as if galvanized in a lab. He shook his head with relief and walked over to the sofa.

  "Lilla, you will never know how glad I am to see you." He dropped with a loud, laughing sigh, filled his cheeks and blew loudly before patting the cushion beside him once to bring her over. When she didn't move at a second or third invitation, he felt no annoyance. No matter how she was acting, it was enough she had finally left that miserable hovel. "Peg and I, we were on our way to see you when… well, no sense in going into details, Lil, but I have to tell you Warren Harcourt's dead and some kind of killer is walking around out there. We were afraid for you. We were going to take you home."

  Her gaze returned to The Screaming Woman. "Home."

  "It isn't right for you to be staying out there, you know that. It isn't healthy. I know there's no such thing as running water or anything, and I'll bet a year's salary you haven't eaten since yesterday."

  "I'm not hungry. Gran is."

  "Listen, Lil, we were also thinking about Cameron's shindig tomorrow and we kind of thought it might be really nice if you… what?" He cocked his head slightly as if he hadn't heard what she'd said, and again she fixed him over her shoulder. "What did you say?"

  "Gran."

  He nodded, not quite frowning. "Yes."

  Her lower lip drew in between her teeth, and he felt as though he were being examined, tested, her eyes unblinking while she searched him for something.

  "Lilla," he said quietly, still smiling, easing forward to rest his forearms on his knees, "Lilla, what's wrong?"

  She shifted, and he saw dark red stains splattered across the front of the dress. "Gran," she said, her right hand out to caress the head of the sculpture.

  Oh God, he thought.

  Warren. And the blood. All that goddamned blood.

  "Lilla." He swallowed, and hated himself for staring, for checking to see if she were carrying a weapon. "Lilla, Gran's dead."

  "Yes."

  "You can't do anything for him now."

  "I know."

  He took a shallow breath and prayed for Peg to walk in the door. "He loved you, you know. He loved you very much."

  She sniffed. "He was my Gran."

  It can't be, he thought. God, Lil, don't read my mind.

  He opened a palm to her. "He was indeed, Lil, and I know he wouldn't want you"-and he pointed at her disarray-"like
this. Not like this, not his Lilla. He'd want you back in the house on the Terrace where it's warm and you have food and where your friends can come and see you, help you." He almost rose, but her eyes didn't move. "Lilla-"

  She faced him fully, suddenly, and her hands drew to lists that brushed at her legs in time to the words that pelted him like hail. "He's mad, Colin. He's very, very mad. You think he likes you, likes me, likes everyone here, and maybe he did. Maybe he thought this was a fine place to live a very long time ago. Maybe he thought it a good place because the old place didn't like him and made him leave. They said he was crazy, that he did things wrong. He didn't, Colin. He did things, but they weren't wrong. And when he came here he thought it all would be better. Maybe he thought it was. But he doesn't anymore. Not anymore. He says he could be the big man on the hill, Colin, but no one gave him the chance. Not there, not here. Now he doesn't like this place anymore. He don't like anyone anymore. He's mad, Colin. He's mad."

  It didn't take him long to recognize the hysteria in her eyes, to see her lips begin to quiver. He was on his feet quickly and had his hands on her upper arms before she could move. The dress felt like dried paper.

  Bits of sand and kelp and dead leaves soiled her hair, and there was an odor he could not define, one that wrinkled his nostrils and almost made him turn.

  Gently. "Lilla… love… he's dead."

  She nodded.

  "You and I and all your friends, we were together last night. We saw Gran, and we saw you, and it's over, it's all over."

  She nodded. "And Warren," she whispered.

  "You knew?"

  "I hear. I know."

  "But how? How-"

  She caught a sob in her throat, and he held her closely, absently stroking her back until he realized he was waiting for her to cry, until he realized the long black hair felt like rope when he touched it.

  "Lilla?"

  She wouldn't look up. "He's mad."

  "Lilla, please."

  Her forehead pressed against his chest, but her hands stayed at her sides. "He wanted to buy me things, you know. He wanted to be the man on the hill, and buy me pretty things. But he's mad now. He said to me, 'Child, they took it all when I had it and now I give it to them in the way they gave it to me.' "

  A deep breath filled his lungs until he had closed his eyes once, hard. When he opened them his hand was brushing through her hair, and through the grains of sand like insects burrowing in her scalp. For a moment he couldn't think of anything to say. The funeral had obviously twisted her sense of time, and she was telling him now what Gran had said most likely on his deathbed. A rush of anger then, at the stupid old man who couldn't die in peace, couldn't leave his own family with a smile or a prayer.

  "Lilla," he whispered, "you knew Gran better than anyone. You knew him, and he was bitter." A nod toward The Screaming Woman. "He made those things, and people, very important people came down to see them. You know that. You know that's true."

  She nodded, once.

  Outside the cottage, the stir of a wind.

  "And you know he was offered a great deal of money for them. Even if he'd taken it all he wouldn't have been rich, but it would have been more than he'd ever seen in his life. I swear they weren't patronizing him, Lilla, and they weren't doing it for me. They saw something in his work that… I don't know. I don't know exactly what it was, but they saw it, and they wanted it, and Gran was too contrary to give them a chance.

  "I swear to God, Lil, I don't know why he wouldn't cooperate. I guess because he'd grown used to being angry, and anything else was… kind of a threat to the way he was used to living. It's crazy, but it isn't unusual."

  "He's mad." The words almost lost in the thickness of his jacket.

  "He was mad," he corrected gently. "But he's gone now, Lil. He's gone, and you're not." She shuddered.

  The wind rattled leaves softly against the pane.

  "You're not listening," she said finally.

  His lips parted slightly, almost a smile. "I heard you, Lil. You said he was mad because he thought we didn't like him and we kept him from getting rich, from being the man on the hill."

  "No."

  He frowned and held her away, but she wouldn't look up.

  "Then what?"

  She shuddered again, and he stared at his hands to be sure they were still gripping her arms. For a moment he thought he'd taken hold of ice.

  "Lilla, maybe we ought to see Doc Montgomery."

  "No!" And she shoved him away, so unexpectedly hard his legs clipped the back of the cobbler's bench and spilled him onto the couch. She was backed into the corner now, out of reach of the lamp. "No! No! Why won't you listen?"

  "Lilla!"

  "No! Gran won't like it!"

  And just as he made to rise, Peg came through the door.

  "No!" Lilla shouted. "Colin, what's-"

  He looked to her, pleading, one hand gesturing toward the girl. "She was here when I got back, Peg. She keeps saying-"

  The explosion made him duck, made Peg scream. A pine bough slammed suddenly through the window, knocking over the table and spilling the lamp and the driftwood woman onto the floor. Lilla yelled hysterically, and Colin shoved the bench aside as he went to hold her.

  And stopped when Peg grabbed hold of his wrist.

  The wind growled through the broken pane, the fallen lamp sputtered and went out. The room was black.

  The Screaming Woman rocked on its base, slowly, staring up.

  "Lilla," Peg said as if comforting a child.

  "No!" she shrieked, and lifted her head as she raced for the door.

  No one moved to stop her.

  It's the light, Colin thought. It's the light. It's the light.

  The wind caught a magazine and flipped over its pages.

  When Lilla screamed and ran, her eyes turned dead white.

  FIVE

  Damn, Eliot thought, what am I going to tell Garve now? One simple, lousy job, and those jerks in Flocks screw him up. It's a murder case, for crying out loud, and there they go and try to tell him the fingerprint lifted from Harcourt's wallet belonged to Gran D'Grou. Gran's fingerprint, my ass.

  He had told them the old man was dead, and all they did was stare at him like he was crazy. Then they as much as called him a liar and told him to stop farting around, this wasn't a joke. Of course it ain't a joke, he'd said, but they insisted all the way out the goddamned door that either they were right, or he was more stupid than they thought.

  Gran. A dead man leaving fingerprints on a wallet. Shit and damnation.

  The only good thing about this will be when Garve gets on the horn and chews those bastards out, or calls the chief at home and raises holy hell. That'd really be something else to hear, really something else. They wouldn't be so damned snotty if they'd seen Warren there under that tree.

  He almost braked then when the headlights began picking out islands and swirls of stones and twigs scattered over the state forest road, and when he switched on the floodlight on the dash and directed it at the twisted trees along the verge, he wondered how the hell he'd managed to miss the hurricane. That goddamn Screamer wasn't due until tomorrow.

  Suddenly he felt uncomfortably warm.

  The night was too black, the dashboard light too green, the whine and thump of the tires too loud by half. Without thinking he turned on the overhead red-and-blues, switched the beams to high and snapped on the radio. It didn't matter that all he heard was static; what mattered was the sound, and the light, and the feel of the wheel sweating beneath his hands.

  A large branch clawed at the side of the car. A rock bleached gray jerked him to the right. The dark ahead refused to give ground, and by the time he reached the landing his shirt was soaking wet, his hair dripping sweat down the run of his back. He braked and stared at the low-wave water grayed by the headlights. He stared at the canted shack, willing Sterling to appear. He honked the horn. He stared at the ferry. He honked the horn again.

  Sterling came
out, one hand buried large in his peacoat pocket, the other gesturing at him to be silent for crying out loud, he weren't deaf and he weren't a goddamned servant that he had to jump like a freak just because a cop blowed his horn.

  El didn't care what the old man thought. He drummed on the dash until the chain was pulled away. Then he drove the cruiser over the steel lip and onto the boat, stopping it dead center. Sterling hobbled into the cabin and coughed the engines into grinding. The ferry shuddered and rocked and slipped away from the shore.

  At length, he could see the island. At length-and none too soon for his oddly jangled nerves-the engines reversed, and the bow dipped toward the bay. An adjustment to swing the lip and landing into line, and the ungainly boat coasted into place. Smooth, easy, so expertly done El didn't realize what had happened until Sterling crossed through the beams with the guard chain in his hand. El nodded and fired the ignition, hesitated a moment when he remembered what he had to do, then tore off the boat with a screech and stench of rubber.

  Sterling watched him bump up to the road, spat disgustedly over the side and dragged the chain back. Ground fog drifted into the glaring light. He waited for a moment, thinking it would be just his luck tonight that another car would come screaming down to the landing just as he'd shoved off. Then he'd have to coax the ferry in again, unhook the chain, and pray the driver didn't dive off the far end.

  He had had enough trouble as it was this weekend. Goddamned folks spooked at the storm, and he was going to have to spend practically all day tomorrow making sure the ferry was secure enough not to be dumped halfway across the goddamned state. Good God, when it all went friggin' wrong…

  He spat again and wiped a rough sleeve over his chin, had half turned to head for the cabin when he thought he saw something moving, out there just beyond the reach of the floods. A dark thing, undefined, perhaps a tree shadow or a break in the fog. He frowned, and waited, his hand curling around the target pistol in his pocket. The margin of the floodlights' reach formed a white wall on the landing, and now that he took a good look he knew damned well someone was standing there. He would have called out, but that had been Stu's job. Little brother Stu was the friendly one, always hanging back and screwing up the schedule to be sure they weren't leaving anyone behind.