by Brian Hodge
She scowled at the blank panes, at the curtains and shades behind them.
In the back the lawn was as ill-kept as its mirror in front, and the several apple trees that twisted close together were unpruned, and untended, their fruit in small piles rotting untouched on the ground. There were three low steps that led to an aluminum storm door, and she took them in a single angry bound that made her thrust out a hand to keep from colliding with the glass. Again she knocked, half-heartedly this time because she knew there’d be no one who would willingly admit her. She searched the frame quickly and found no bell, pulled the storm door open and tried the inner knob.
It gave.
She hesitated, not caring if anyone in the neighborhood saw her, only wondering if perhaps she were more foolhardy than brave. Someone had been watching her as she’d stood on the sidewalk—she was sure of it, she was positive; and as she tried to tell herself it was not her imagination a dozen alternatives flooded her mind until she fought them all back, and stepped inside.
The kitchen was small, immaculate, giving off a curious air of being unused. Everything was in its place, and everything was polished, and she felt it as sterile as a hospital room. Most likely, she thought as she stood by the small table, he dined out most nights, and when he was home forgot to eat.
She passed into the dining room, which was little more than the broad part of a stunted L-shape, the rest of which stretched across the front of the house to the door. A short hallway gave access to the bathroom and three bedrooms, one of which she imagined would have been his study.
She called out and waited, understanding her trespass and knowing that Angus would not call her on it if he were home. She was only a friend come back for a question, and if he were reading too intently or taking a shower or a nap, it was only quite natural that she should let herself in. After all, she thought, the Yarrows practically subsidize him, so it wasn’t as if she were merely a client. And as she stood in the frame between front room and back, she realized how tense she had allowed herself to become, how her shoulders were beginning to ache across her back, and her nails were starting to dig into her palms.
“Angus! Angus, it’s me, Cynthia!”
The name sounded strange as it left her lips, and she coughed loudly before trying it again, “Angus, it’s Cyd Yarrow. I need to talk to you.”
Well? she questioned silently; how long are you going to wait for an answer? The place isn’t that big, you know. You going to stand here all night?
Slowly she stepped among the piles of journals and briefs, at the last minute deciding to walk down the hall. At the bathroom, then, she stopped and flicked on the light—to see nothing but her image in the large mirror over the sink. It startled her, but the light was comforting and she left it on as she headed for the last room on the right, sure this was his bedroom, and if he were here he would be napping.
The door had been closed to a finger’s width crack, and she lay a palm to it and pushed. It protested. She pushed harder, and waited.
“Angus?” Softly.
A single bed was set flush into the far corner; on the wall opposite, a chest of drawers; on the floor between, a small braided rug of indeterminate color. Nothing else was in the room but shades on the two windows. The light from the bath gave the furniture vague shape, and something else on the bedspread long and black.
“Angus?” Now fearfully.
She groped for a light switch and found none, and saw no table that would have held a lamp. She turned around, saw a white frosted dome on the hall ceiling and located the switch, flicked it up and looked back into the room.
Angus lay fully dressed as she had seen him the previous night. His shoes were on, and his tie carefully knotted; but there was a stillness in the air that disturbed her, and a dread lack of movement when she approached the bed and leaned one hand on the mattress.
“Angus,” she whispered. “Angus, it’s Cyd.”
A passing truck flashed its lights through the window, illuminating the shade and added a soft white glow to the one from the hall. At that she stumbled backward, one hand out groping at the air to keep her balance. There was no sense calling him again; he was dead. The old man had, in the space of twenty-four hours, become ancient: his flesh sagged as if gravity had doubled, his eyes sunken into their sockets as though they had no support; his color was a pasty white just this side of grey, and his hair seemed perceptibly longer, and unimaginably brittle.
A second flash from a second vehicle, and she could see Barton lying on his own bed beyond the park.
There was very little difference .. . except, Angus was dead.
She lurched toward the door, into the hall, kept a hand on the wall as she made her way to the living room where she collapsed with an anguished sigh into the rocker. The movement, gentle and steady, served to calm her until she was able to fight through the grief she was feeling. Angus Stone. Alone, old, confused by those he had thought were his friends. Angus Stone … dead … and she had no idea how old he was.
She licked at her lips several times before realizing her mouth and tongue were dry; scrubbed her hands together until she felt the skin burning. She rocked faster, harder, the chair a steed that would carry her away, through the valley and over the hills into what some called civilization, where sanity reigned and the lies that people mouthed were expected, thus compensated. And the faster she rocked the more she felt the wind of her creation, pulling at her face, disfiguring it, distorting it; faster to flee the implications of her grief.
She began to perspire. She ignored it.
She nearly slipped off the thin cushion, and pushed herself back.
It was that movement which broke the self-woven spell. The damp wood of the arms under her palms, the press of the wood into her spine—she snapped back to the room in which she was sitting, to the dogs and the dolls and the pictures and the hearth. The air was close, all the windows had been closed, and she opened her mouth widely to find a proper breath. Deeply. Slowly. As the chair slowed beneath her. Deeply. Softly. As the runners on the carpet wore into their grooves. She dipped into her coat pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, mopped her brow and her chin, her neck. Then she rose and crossed to the telephone that squatted blackly on an end table nearest the fireplace.
She called the police, the handkerchief wrapped loosely around the receiver. She explained what they would find if they came to Northland now, but she did not give her name when the sergeant on duty started fumbling with his forms. She hung up. Wiped her face again and hurried out the back door, stuffed her hands back into her pockets and walked as unconcernedly as she could to the sidewalk and the street.
She winced when a door slammed just a few houses down, but she did not turn around. She kept herself facing King Street, staring at the lights that blurred without fog until she reached the corner and saw her car. It was alone at the curb, and the entrance to the hospital seemed empty, seemed deserted. No visitors now; those who were coming were already inside, in the lounge or in the rooms, preparing themselves for their duty.
A slow and deep breath that nearly caused a fainting, and she got into her car and drove off toward the park. The steering wheel was cold, the windshield lightly fogged until she snapped on the blower; she felt as if she were in an alien machine, not the familiar steel friend that had brought her so much joy, had driven her into so much trouble—the green glow of the dash outlined her knuckles, made luminescent her coat, and as she turned the corner slowly onto Park Street she half-expected the moon to drift by as she settled into orbit.
Why? she asked herself. She was sure there must be a law she had broken in reporting Angus’ death and not staying until the police arrived; and she was just as sure that by staying she would have defeated whatever purpose had been growing in her mind. To stay in that house—to stand in the living room while Angus lay dead on his bed—an image of his crumbling face floated beyond the windshield and she swerved sharply, bounced off the curb and found herself crossing the Pike,
still heading north with the woods on her right and the Oxrun Memorial Park sweeping off to the left.
Why hadn’t she stayed?
She felt no sense of danger, nothing like that at all. Not even the thought that someone had been watching her from the house before she’d entered bothered her now. It was only one more curiosity to add to the rest, and she had so many of them now that one more made no difference. Another grain of sand thrown onto the beach, another drop in the ocean—what difference did it make when she could make little sense of those things she had?
She reached out and punched the car lighter into its recess, waited, and when it snapped out pulled it free before she realized with a grin that she hadn’t had a cigarette for at least a month. The need was there, but other matters overrode it. The orange glare of the coils faded as she watched them from the corner of her eye—like an ember drifting away from a fire, she thought; like—
Fire.
And Miss Yarrow … next time please throw out all your trash right away, okay? Stick it outside in back, in one of those dumpsters or a metal container.
When she and Ed had left the store after the firemen had left, she locked the back door.
She shouldn’t have had to; she had done it when she had left. And the lamp was almost brand new—she had bought it in Spain.
She pulled over to the side of the road, set the emergency brake without switching off the engine. Warm air billowed from the heater under the dashboard, but she rolled the window down to let in the cold.
I knew it, she thought.
Fire. And the Greybeast—why had it stopped chasing her when it had gotten so close?
Fire. And the Greybeast—if she were the target, then why had it chased Ed? Why had it forced him off the road?
Because whoever was after her had not wanted her dead—that much had been apparent since the very beginning. And whoever was after her wanted her alone. Alone. With Ed gone now, his spirit somehow broken by the stand-off with death, she had no one but herself to fight her battles for her.
And it wasn’t the store. She had had several ideas that there were other merchants involved— jealousy, rivalry, some complicated insurance fraud, something, anything , to keep her from opening. But if that had been true, then the Lennons and Sandy would not have been spared. Their work for her was not a secret, they could have been reached at any time since that first day.
It wasn’t the store.
It was her. Nothing more.
With a slap to the wheel she thought she’d found the purloined letter. Like the nose on her face it was right there in front of her, seen only at angles, never recognized except in mirrors as something that was whole.
She looked up and saw her face in the windshield: “You’re a fool, Cyd Yarrow.”
The reflection nodded.
Snapping off the brake, then, she made a sharp U-turn and returned to the Pike, headed east past her home until she reached the spot where she thought the Greybeast had been waiting.
Neither Iris nor Paul had ever heard of the Clinic.
Sandy, did your grandfather ever work for Dr. Kraylin, out on the Pike?
Who?
One in Hartford, New York, and Bridgton, Maine.
Her headlights were dim. She pulled off to the side and took the handkerchief from her pocket, climbed out and wiped the dirt from the thick glass. Back inside she waited until the night-cold had left her before easing out onto the road again, staring into the darkness on the left until she had reached the Pike’s end.
There had been no sign, no paved drive, not one thing that she could see that proved the Clinic’s existence.
She turned around and headed back, the car moving at just above a fast walk. With her left hand she held onto the wheel while her right supported her on the seat as she leaned close to the passenger door and stared out the window. Shaking her head slowly.
Lies built on lies.
She saw it.
Less than a hundred yards past where the fields ended and the hill-forest began there was a break in the tall brown weeds and thickets that served as a base for the wall of trees. The shoulder of the road was level here, without ditch or burrow to interrupt it, and it was graveled with small multi-colored stones to hide any tire tracks the Greybeast might have made. She pulled off to the side, as close to the shrubbery as she could, wincing as the winter-stripped branches scratched like iron against the paint. The headlights died. The green dash glow faded. And after the blower’s whine had been cut off, the silence was too loud for her to take without shuddering.
Shop fire, bird flight, Greybeast racing.
She retreated back to her cinema world, found comfort there in scenes from films long gone, from titles long forgotten—she was dressed in white, edged in black, and the authorities had given her ten hours to leave town.
Get out of Oxrun, Cyd, before it’s too late.
She sighed several times in melancholy rage— whoever among her family had thought she would run had not counted on her trip to make her restless, had not counted on the shop to give her an anchor. Perhaps he/she/they had thought she would fall madly in love with Ed Grange, and would prevail upon him to take her away from the Station and its madness; or she would drag him herself as she continued introspection.
Mother and her matchmaking, Father and his impatience, Evan trying to be so subtle it was like throwing flaming bricks. Only Rob of the four seemed to hold himself neutral, like an umpire seated above the arena while silent battles were waged, raged, flung dust into blindness. Only Rob knew his sister was something more than just a sibling, something more than just offspring.
Only Rob understood that his sister was alive.
All right, she told herself, so they were mistaken, okay? So they didn’t count on the shop to act the way it did. So what? What good, my girl, is knowing that going to do you?
Reason then tried to convince her she should stay in the car, turn on the ignition again and drive into the Station. Park on Chancellor Avenue in front of the police station and sit on the desk sergeant until Abe Stockton was brought back to his office. While there she could call Ed to see if he were feeling better— he really should be in on this, you know, she told herself; after all, the Greybeast got him where it failed with you.
But why Ed?
Why Ed?
Making sure her coat was buttoned to the throat, she slipped outside and waited, letting the cold work on her until she was sure she would handle it. Then she began to walk back to the hidden drive, stopped at the rear bumper and with a second thought, opened the trunk to see if she could find herself some kind of weapon. The thought of it was abhorrent, but there was nothing else for it; if she was stupid enough to want to foray on her own, she was not all that stupid that she would do it without defense.
The dim light buried in the trunk lid was less than useless as she rummaged through the junk she had piled in here over the years, always planning to clean it all out and never quite able to bring herself to it. Finally, with a dry grunt of disgust, she unscrewed the butterfly nut that fastened down the tire wrench rod, hefted it with a wry grin and slammed the lid down after unearthing a flashlight.
Remembering to keep the light aimed only at a slight angle ahead of her, then, she stepped out more quickly, watching for traps that would turn an ankle, for signs that the narrow path’s entrance was rigged with warning devices. She found nothing, however, once she had reached the spot, and with a last look at the car she vanished into the woods.
Walking.
Trying not to whistle, trying not to hear the empty sound of her footsteps.
With detached curiosity she noted that the path was barely wide enough for a single car, that once off the Pike and beyond the thickets’ wall there were ruts worn into the ground to mark a long time of passage. What grass there was had been stained dark with dripping oil, or had been scorched by the heat of a waiting, patient engine. There was no fence that she could see when she darted the flashlight up and to one side ever
y ten or so paces, nor was there a ubiquitous New England stone wall.
There was no wind.
Nothing moved except her.
And in moving—and resisting the urge to move faster—she wondered why Kraylin had issued his dinner invitation. She almost laughed. No matter what foolish things he and her family had done, Kraylin was no fool in his estimation of her: He knew how he repulsed her, and she was sure that each of their meetings had been orchestrated by him to reinforce that impression. Had he presented his card on a solid gold tray, he knew she would have taken it, and later shredded it with pleasure. The invitation was for show only, so he could report to her mother that the gesture had been made, but please don’t be too disappointed when she does not show up.
At that moment she would have given half of her shop and all of her stock to have an instant picture camera for a record of his expression, the look on his face when she knocked on his door.
The path began to veer to the right; several puddles from the last rain were still in the hollows, but sheathed now in thin ice that threw back her light in segmented fires. She began to look ahead for some hints of habitation, saw none and frowned, and hoped her walk wouldn’t be long. Her shoes were adequate, but no more than that; had she been thinking instead of scheming, using her head instead of her heart, she would have stopped at the house to change into her jeans and the boots. As it was, stiff weeds and dead branches scraped along her coat, every so often slipping under the hem to dig at her legs. Reflex made her kick out each time it happened, until she realized that she was doing it too often, it was making her tired.
She walked.
And the cold settled tautly on chin, cheeks, ears, nape—drawing the skin tight in preparation for chapping. It crept beneath her collar to work on her spine, wrapped about her joints to slow and to prick her. The coat grew heavy. The collar she had raised to protect what it could seemed to have sprouted needles that rubbed her skin raw. Her hair felt like straw, though she did not touch it; her lips felt like cardboard, as though a lick would send them bleeding.
