Symphony - [Millennium Quartet 01]

by Charles L. Grant

  He took off his shirt and shook it out, sneering disgust at the flurry of dirt and grass and leaves that snapped to the tile floor. Pants the same.

  Then he looked in the mirror again, grabbed the sink and rising on his toes to get a longer view.

  It took him a few seconds to take it all in.

  And again he didn’t know whether to laugh or scream.

  * * * *

  2

  From the serving gap Todd watched Casey march up the street. His first impulse was to go after him, find out how he was. His second, once he had seen the reverend’s face, was think that God or somebody was in a hell of a lot of trouble, and this was undoubtedly none of his business. He backed away and returned to the grill, flipping burgers and wishing Helen would come in early for a change. Bowes and his friends were out there, bragging about their tracking skills, and bitching that Todd didn’t serve beer. Mackey’s was closed. How the hell were they supposed to help the cops when quenching their thirst meant drinking goddamn water?

  The police had, for the most part, left town. A state cruiser had stopped by twice, but only long enough for the trooper to let him know that nothing had been found, Escobar was still on the loose, remind people to keep their doors locked.

  Todd didn’t think they would catch him. Roadblocks on the state and county roads had turned up nothing. The man was gone. They’d do better checking his Philadelphia places, or wherever the hell scum, like that went to ground.

  The screen door opened, and Helen walked in, reaching for her apron hung on a wall peg.

  “You seen Case?” he asked as casually as he could, slapping burgers on plates.

  Helen made a face at the noise out front. “No.”

  “You heard?”

  She nodded, made no comment.

  He wiped his hands on his apron. “At least Enid hasn’t come in. I heard she went to every house on the Crest this morning.” He laughed shortly. “Preaching, I heard. Telling everybody about the new Lazarus.”

  Helen picked up the plates without a word and took them to the front.

  Oh boy, he thought; we’re in a mood today.

  The screen door opened again. This time it was Bobby, T-shirt and shorts, hair looking as if she’d brushed it with an eggbeater. “I’m going to the mall,” she announced, keeping the door open with her hip. “You want me to look for something?”

  “Nope.” He smiled. “What about Arlo?”

  She shuddered. “He can clean the place himself. I’m not going in there again, not until he does. Maybe not until he gives me a fat raise.”

  He agreed, started over to give her a kiss, and frowned when she sidestepped onto the stoop, waved, and left.

  A puzzled stare at the house beyond the hedge—damn, you ladies have a knockdown or what?—before he closed the door and started cleaning the grill.

  “Is it true?”

  He saw Helen over his shoulder, leaning against the butcher block counter in the middle of the room. “What’s true?”

  “About... about Casey.”

  “Jeez, Helen, you know better than that.”

  He realized then the diner was silent. Bowes and the others had left. Grease popped and sizzled.

  “Do I?” she said, biting on her lower lip.

  She looked frazzled and hot. He set the metal spatula on its hook on the grill’s front and stepped over to the counter. “Helen ...” He shook his head. “It was a freak thing, okay? I was there, and it was a freak thing. Mel already told him what really happened. Something about muscles and stuff. A freak thing.”

  “Like the bees?”

  He swallowed. “Yeah. Like the bees.” Then he reached over and stopped her hands from fussing with the apron.

  She gave him an embarrassed laugh, fussed with her hair, and laughed again. “I’m still not used to this,” she said, meaning the haircut.

  He didn’t know what to say.

  She headed for the swinging door. “Got to clean up. Bowes and those animals ... slobs, they’re all slobs.”

  He cleaned up, went to the gap, and watched her damp-dust the booths, the counter, check the coffee urn, count the money in the register, grab a broom and sweep the clean floor twice. There was no one on the street. No cars passed in either direction. The police stayed away.

  “You know,” he said when she started her fourth pass on the counter, “you wear that stuff through, I’m taking it out of your tips.”

  Instead of dutifully laughing at something he said at least twice a week, she dropped onto a stool and cupped the rag between her hands. “You remember the other night, you and Casey were talking about the Millennium?’’

  He didn’t, not right away. When it finally came to him, he nodded cautiously. He didn’t like her voice—toneless and flirting with hysteria; he didn’t like the way she wouldn’t look him in the eye.

  “Look, Hel, we were only—”

  Her look silenced him.

  “Think about it,” she said, squeezing the rag in one hand. “You think about the bees and that dead man, and you tell me what it means. You tell me all it means is that people act weird.”

  Not a request; a demand.

  “Helen—”

  “Then you tell me why I heard a horse on my street last night, and when I looked, the street was empty.”

  He forced himself to laugh and returned to his grill.

  He picked up the spatula and attacked the grease again.

  He remembered the night the church bell tolled, and the unshakable, uneasy feeling that a horse was riding down the road.

  He remembered the bees.

  * * * *

  3

  Casey wielded a broom from the janitor’s closet.

  He had already swept the dead moths from the left side of the church into the vestibule; now he worked on the right side. Shivering.

  Terrified he might find one of them alive.

  * * * *

  4

  Nate checked the inventory for the fiftieth time that afternoon, scribbling a note to Kay that Howard from the deli still hadn’t returned the four red-cased videos he’d rented three days ago. When he was finished, he stood behind the counter and checked the change, the bills, rereading the receipt from the UPS man, closing the drawer, and beating out a drum solo on the counter. Waiting.

  Wondering if Kay would ever come in today. He hoped so, because he was nervous being in here without her telling him what to do.

  He hoped not, because he wouldn’t know what to say. Especially after the dream he’d had about her last night. “Aw, man,” he said, and drummed louder. He wanted desperately to tell someone. After all, now he could brag with the rest of the guys at school, only he wouldn’t be lying through his teeth, not like most of the others. He could honestly brag. But he wouldn’t. Just like he wouldn’t tell Reed, because Reed either wouldn’t believe him, or he’d blow his stack, his cool, and everything else.

  He certainly couldn’t tell Reverend Chisholm. The man would pick him up with one hand and throw him halfway to Texas.

  “Aw ... man.”

  Drummed louder.

  Rina; what was he going to do about Rina? Seeing a woman, in Playboy or something was one thing; seeing a woman right there in front of him, under him, on top of him, all over him was something else again. How could he ever look at Rina again ... without wondering.

  Drummed louder.

  Blinked and looked at his hands.

  He wasn’t drumming anymore.

  The sound he had made was the sound of hoofbeats.

  He snatched his hands away and wiped them on his jeans, wiped them across his mouth, and decided to take inventory again. Then he would call Kay’s house and find out if she was all right. Then he would...then he would ...

  The bell over the door rang, and Dimitri walked in.

  “Hey, Dimmy, what’s happening?”

  Dimitri wandered around the store, touching boxes, humming to himself.

  “Dimmy? What’s up?”

&nb
sp; Dimitri stopped in front of the new releases and turned around. His eyes were red, his cheeks pink.

  Nate hurried around the counter and knelt in front of him. “Hey, bud, what happened? Those sh—jerks try to get you again?”

  The little boy shook his head.

  Nate tried a smile. “Then what? Oh, I get it. Sonya beat you up, right?” He poked the boy’s stomach playfully, but there was no response. “Okay, I give up. You going to tell me?”

  “The birds,” Dimitri said, his voice soft and high.

  Nate automatically glanced at the window. “What about them?”

  “They’re gone.”

  * * * *

  5

  Against the wall behind the counter at the grocery was a low table Mabel Jonsen used for a desk. She never took her work home; she figured once she’d turned out the lights and climbed the stairs, she didn’t want anything to do with how many cans of pea soup she had left, or day-old bread, or bags of kitty litter. She didn’t want to know about electric bills or delivery bills or the credit card bills that never seemed to get low enough for her to pay off in a single check.

  When she sat at the desk, only customers were allowed to interrupt her concentration.

  “Man,” Moss said from the front of the store, “only a couple of minutes to five, and it’s still at the one-hundred, red-mercury, sweltering level.”

  She hunched over a sheet of paper, working on a list she’d been developing since she’d opened.

  “You see Reverend Chisholm before, Mabe?”

  Wedding guests. Who would be the same guests for the party she wanted to throw Sunday afternoon after church. Sort of a preview of the nuptials picnic, even if the weather didn’t break. She chuckled. If it rained—please, God—she would hold the umbrellas herself.

  “Man looked like he was ready to strangle someone.”

  She was pretty sure she had everyone, but there could be no mistakes. Leave one person out, and she wouldn’t hear the end of it. Ever.

  Mrs. Racine thumped a carton of milk on the counter, along with a dozen cans of cat food. Mabel grunted as she stood, nodded to the old woman, and rang the items up.

  “How are you feeling, Tiffany?” she managed to ask with a straight face. It was one thing for a high school kid to have a fancy, silly name like that, but a woman who was surely pushing seventy if she was a day? She ought to be called Agatha, or Thelma. “Managing the heat okay?”

  Mrs. Racine allowed as how she’d feel a whole lot better once winter arrived. As it was, she and her children were doing the best they could under the trying circumstances.

  “Fine,” Mabel said. She bagged the milk and cat food in brown paper, hefted it, and said, “Moss, you want to help Mrs. Racine with this? It’s kind of heavy.”

  “Kind of hot, too,” he answered good-naturedly. “Sure, hon, no problem.”

  Mrs. Racine demurred, but only out of politeness, clasping her white-gloved hands over a matching purse at her waist while Moss grabbed the sack under one arm and offered her the other.

  “Flirt,” the old woman said, lips tight in disapproval, eyes smiling.

  “My charm, Mrs. Racine, my charm.”

  He winked lewdly over her head at Mabel, who scooted around the counter and made impatient shooing motions with both hands until they were gone. At the door she watched him pretend to stop traffic as he and the old woman faded into the glare, like ghosts. He was a nice man, she thought with approval; he seemed to have assimilated very well.

  When they were gone, she returned to the desk, unable to hold back the giggles any longer.

  Tiffany?

  She laughed aloud, picked up her pen, and gnawed thoughtfully on the inside of one cheek as she went over the list once more. And suddenly threw the pen down so hard it bounced off the table to the floor.

  “Damn him!” she yelled.

  She loved Moss, God knew she did, but he kept sneaking in, putting names on without consulting her. Yesterday it was that awful Bowes bastard, and this morning, after breakfast, he had slipped in Michael Rennie as a joke. She hadn’t laughed.

  “Mabe,” he had said, aggrieved, “this heat wave has stolen your sense of humor, you know that?’’

  “Mr. Rennie,” she’d answered stiffly, “is a respected movie actor.”

  “Mr. Rennie,” he said, mocking her tone, “was an alien in a science-fiction movie about flying saucers, that’s the only reason you like him.” On the way out he’d added, “Besides, hon, he’s dead.”

  Mabel couldn’t retort because he had closed the door too quickly, then popped it open again and grinned. “Maybe you could send Casey to fetch him.” He laughed, ducked the thrown box of cookies, and left again.

  Not funny, Mabel thought, glaring at the list.

  And neither is this.

  As soon as Moss came back, he would damn well explain to her who this Susan person was.

  * * * *

  6

  Casey slumped against the wall, puffing, glints of sweat at his hairline. The moths were at the door. All he had to do was sweep them out. A couple of times he had been tempted to pick one of the more unusual ones up, but he was afraid the wings would move.

  He blew out a weary breath and returned to the sanctuary, to check to be sure he had gotten them all.

  He was, but not until after he had looked under every pew back to front, under the pulpit, behind the altar, under and behind everything in his office.

  It was then that it first occurred to him to wonder how they had gotten in. With all the windows and doors closed, it would have to have been—

  “Magic,” he muttered, and froze for a second, half expecting a bolt of lightning to strike him where he stood. His stomach grumbled instead, reminding him of meals long overdue, making him laugh silently, sending him to the front to finish the job and be done with it.

  But once he saw them again, tumbled in the pile, broken, near to dust, he realized he would have to wade through them to open the doors.

  He couldn’t move.

  * * * *

  7

  Today is Friday,” Sonya said, not quite a question.

  Cora nodded. “Yep.”

  They sat at the shallow end of the pool, arms around each other’s waist, feet dangling in the water. A beach umbrella was jammed into the ground behind them, providing shade but scant relief.

  “So ... so why is Momma singing?”

  Cora didn’t know. She had been late. Rina had helped her grab her things from the house, once they were sure her father was off playing cowboy in the woods. When she got here, Dimitri was gone, and she could hear Mrs. Balanov’s voice, even through the closed windows. Hymns. Nothing but hymns.

  “Maybe,” she said, “your momma’s happy.”

  Sonya considered it. “Are you?”

  She didn’t know that, either.

  “Dimitri isn’t.”

  “Oh? How come?”

  “The birds.”

  Oh, God, she thought, not again.

  “They’re all gone.”

  Cora started to make a joke, changed her mind, and looked around. Except for the muffled singing, the yard was silent. No breeze to move the water, no hum from the pool’s filtration system, no cars on Black Oak, no noise of kids playing in the schoolyard.

  She hugged Sonya closer, and for no reason she could think of, she didn’t want to make a sound.

  * * * *

  8

  Arlo sat in the darkened bar, slowly spinning round and round on a stool. The cleaning was done, the air stank of disinfectant, and all he had to do was throw a switch, light the lights, and the Landing would know he was back in business.

  Round and round.

  All morning since the last cop boy had dropped by, he had been trying to understand why he hadn’t confessed to them but he had to Casey Chisholm. He tried to understand why he had confessed at all. Big trouble coming down the road, sure as he sat here, but he would be long gone when it arrived. They would have found it ou
t later; why did he say something now? It sure didn’t make him feel any better, no closer to Arizona, no closer to Nirvana.

  All it had done was piss the Padre off.

  Round and round.

  And the Padre had pissed him off, too. Sitting there, a giant in black, judging him, and, if the truth be known, scaring the living daylights out of him. Nothing specific, but something had changed, and the Padre wasn’t just a big goofy preacher anymore, wasn’t a drinking buddy, wasn’t a wink-and-nod, mind-your-manners-son friend anymore.