Symphony - [Millennium Quartet 01]

by Charles L. Grant

  She shrugged again. “You’d have to ask him. I know nothing about it.”

  He stepped off the curb, and something about the way she backed off at the same time made him stop. Like a mother protecting her cubs, he thought. Then: no, like a guard dog. Protecting something else.

  He took another step toward the house, she another step back.

  “Something wrong, ma’am?” he asked politely.

  Another step, another step back.

  And he saw the car in the driveway, facing out.

  The hood ornament glittered with raindrops, even when the Woman stood beside it and stroked the silver mane. Slowly. Caressing it. Her gaze not leaving his face.

  “Reverend Chisholm.”

  At his name the afternoon’s greylight shimmered and became night, and all he could see was her, and the car; all he could feel was the weakness that made his legs cold and his stomach leaden and his lungs not able to take in enough air; all he could hear was a voice, his voice, pleading for mercy, begging not to be killed, even though his lips didn’t move.

  All he could smell was the stench of his own fear.

  “Reverend Chisholm.”

  Fingers curled into helpless fists, nothing inside strong enough for anger.

  “You know me,” he said, despising the sound of his voice, too thin and too high. “I don’t know you.”

  Night snapped to greylight and he took a step to one side as if he’d been using the dark for support. Confused, uncertain, he lifted a useless hand in a useless, feeble farewell and walked away, not sure where he was going.

  She said, “Oh, you know me, Reverend Chisholm. It’s a little too late, but you do.”

  He didn’t look back.

  Not even when he heard the rhythmic sound of the engine.

  * * * *

  4

  S

  tan paced across the kitchen, wrapped in his trench coat, one hand scratching through his beard, the other through his hair he was sure had turned from blond to white no matter how often he had checked the bathroom mirror since he’d gotten back.

  “Basta, Stan, for God’s sake,” Lupé said from her place by the sink. “You’re driving me crazy.”

  “Loco,” he told her. “That’s Spanish for crazy.”

  She looked at him, grinned, then laughed as she lit a cigarette. “Yeah.” She nodded. “Crazy, loco, what’s the difference, man, knock it off, okay?”

  He couldn’t stop.

  The voice, the man, he couldn’t stop moving, but no matter how much he moved he couldn’t get far enough away.

  Escobar sat at the table, hands flat on his thighs, staring at the refrigerator. As far as Stan could tell, he hadn’t moved since breakfast.

  “She was right, you know.” Pacing to the door, peeking around the shade. “This place is different. It feels weird. I don’t like it. That woman with the book, she was weird, Lupé. And that...” He shuddered and paced into the living room, made a circuit without looking outside and returned to the kitchen, avoiding Lupé’s grab for him by going around the other side of the table.

  “Damnit, Stan!”

  “I can’t help it,” he said, big eyes bigger, hardly blinking at all. “You saw. You saw.”

  He could see it in her eyes, the way the cigarette trembled between her fingers.

  “Oh, man.” He paced back to the living room and looked through the door window. “Oh, shit.”

  “What?”

  “Come here. Quick.”

  She came up behind him, leaned over his shoulder.

  The driveway was empty.

  Stan put a hand on the doorknob. “Do you think... ?”

  She didn’t answer, and he pulled it open, grimacing at the humidity that wrapped him in damp wool, peering through the light rain up and down the block.

  “I don’t hear nothing,” he said.

  She moved to his side, pulled up one jeans leg and took the knife from her boot. Grinned at him over the blade.

  “Yes, you do, amigo. Yes, you do.”

  Through the water dripping from the roof, from the branches, from the leaves, he could hear it. Not clearly, but it was there.

  He heard Escobar stand.

  “Time to go,” Lupé said quietly, pushed the screen door open, and stepped onto the porch. “Tell you what, Stan, I make you a promise. When we’re done, I’ll take you to my place in New Mexico. I think you’ll like it there.”

  “I don’t have a passport.”

  She looked at him, she laughed, and she stepped into the rain with a wave over her shoulder.

  Laughing all the way down the block.

  But not loud enough to drown out the hoofbeats that sounded like rolling thunder.

  * * * *

  5

  C

  asey sat on his stool beside the register and spoke to no one. His third bowl of steaming soup sat in front of him, and although he put spoon to bowl, spoon to mouth, he barely tasted a thing. Barely heard the clatter of silverware, barely heard the chatter and the laughs. An impromptu celebration. Doors were open, lamps were lit, people came out of their homes, stretching and pointing as if they had been in hibernation; they stood in the streets and gawked at the rain, decided it was time to eat out for a change.

  There was no room in the diner.

  People stood patiently by the door for a place to sit down, swapping weather and news reports, grinning as they tsked and ratted over riots and murder.

  No one carried an umbrella or wore a raincoat.

  Rina and Helen worked the booths and counter, every so often Helen ducking into the kitchen where Todd, with a pad of gauze taped to the side of his head, a splendid bruise blossoming on his cheek, cursed at the grill and insisted he needed no help in spite of the cannonade echoing in his skull.

  Casey stared at the bowl. Chicken with rice, and he couldn’t remember what the other two had been.

  The lights were too bright, the noise too loud.

  Spoon to bowl, spoon to mouth.

  His hands had stopped shaking maybe an hour ago, but he still felt cold, as if his insides had been carved from a rough block of ice.

  People spoke to him in passing, and he responded with a smile or a nod or a word or two without conscious meaning; people clapped him on the back, and he stiffened every time.

  This is nuts, he thought; I’ve got to go home, I’m getting sick again.

  But he didn’t move beyond looking outside at the rain. A rain so fine and soft it was merely a faint ripple in the air. Silver sparkles caught in the diner’s glow, in the streetlights, slowly adding neon reflections to the shining tarmac.

  Mist rising from the street in swirling pools, lifting into the trees to soften the dying leaves. Scattering and regathering whenever someone walked through it.

  A tranquil summer’s night, a heat wave broken, a drought finally on the way to being a drought no more.

  Then a natural lull, with nothing but the hiss and spatter of the grill, the squeak of Rina’s sneakers on the floor, Helen dropping change into the register drawer, slapping the drawer shut, nearly silent groans and sighs of contentment.

  People drifting away, conversation low.

  Rina gathering tips as she wiped the tabletops, change jingling heavily in her apron pocket.

  Helen took a break and sat beside him, rocked toward him until their shoulders touched, rocked away and said, “So what did she say?”

  “What?” Too loud, too quick. He couldn’t keep her gaze.

  “We saw you talking to that woman. What did’ she say? Who is she?”

  Spoon to bowl, spoon to mouth.

  The soup was cold.

  “I don’t know.”

  yes you do

  “Casey.”

  “How is Bobby?” he asked instead, a smile so false it felt grotesque and he killed it.

  She shrugged. She had discovered Bobby tightly curled in her bed, sobbing and refusing to move. “I gave up. Tessa’s with her now.”

  His eyes wi
dened a bit. “Tessa?’’

  “A common enemy,” she said, nodding toward the man bent over the stove. “I guess they’ve been friends for too long.” She inhaled quickly, deeply, and plucked the spoon from his hand, set it on the plate, trying to force him to look at her. “Casey, you’ve got to talk to me.”

  He stared at the bowl dumbly. “About what?”

  She slapped his arm; it wasn’t a playful tap. “What do you think, you jerk? Mabel and her gun, Bobby trying to knock Todd’s head off, Enid...you name it.” Her hand covered his before it could escape to his lap. “This place is going nuts, has been for a week, and if you blame it on the heat, I’m going to strangle you, Casey Chisholm. I swear to God, I’ll wrangle you.”

  Pressure in his chest, in his head.

  As he swiveled his seat around, hand slipping from beneath hers, he saw Mabel in the far booth, pale and looking older, laughing silently at something Mrs. Racine had said; Nate at the end of the counter flirting with Rina, but not very well; Mel standing in the doorway slapping rain from his shoulders.

  No one else.

  The rest had gone home.

  Silver flashes outside; an early night in the rain.

  “The bell,” Todd said behind him, making him jump. “Don’t forget the goddamn bell.” In a voice loud enough to silence the others, turn their faces toward him. Waiting.

  It was yesterday on his porch all over again, but this time, this night, there was urgency and demand.

  His hands wouldn’t stop moving while he struggled for an answer—from his face to his lap to patterns around his chest, from a mime for understanding to a mime for ignorance, and confusion, from his lap to patterns to covering his face until he knew he couldn’t run anymore.

  “It’s the goddamn Millennium, isn’t it,” Todd said.

  And Casey answered, “Yes.”

  * * * *

  Cora didn’t know what to do. She had let the girls run around in the rain while she sat cross-legged on the deck with Dimitri, trying everything she could think of to stop him from crying. It had lasted so long he had run out of tears, and she had finally cajoled him to his feet and brought him inside, sitting him at the kitchen table while she tried to find out where his parents had gone. She called everyone she knew, every place she could think of, but Mr. Balanov had either just left or hadn’t been seen, while his wife hadn’t been seen since just before noon.

  She called Reverend Chisholm half a dozen times, both at home and at the church, but the phone kept ringing, an odd hollow sound.

  “I don’t know,” she said to the room. “I don’t know what else.”

  Dimitri didn’t move.

  She hurried to the back door and held it open while she called the girls. She still didn’t know who that Anita kid was, but it made her mad that her father had stuck the kid here without even bothering to tell Cora where she lived.

  “Come on, guys,” she called. “It’s getting dark. Come on in.”

  Sonya stood by the near side of the pool. “Aw, Cora, do we have to?”

  Anita was at the other end.

  “Yes, you have to. You don’t want to get sick just when the heat’s gone, do you? And look at you, silly,” she added. “You’re shivering so hard your skin’s going to fall off.”

  Sonya giggled. “That’s yucky.”

  Cora leaned over the railing. “Not as yucky as you’ll look if the Cora Shark gets you. Now move your butt, kid.” She raised her voice. “You, too, Anita. Come on, hurry up.”

  Sonya scrambled up the steps and into the house, still giggling, saying she was going to put on her clothes before her face fell off.

  Anita didn’t move.

  Cora waved. “Anita, come on.”

  Although the rain wasn’t hard, it was still hard to see her clearly, and Cora had to look twice when she thought she saw a spark jump in the girl’s hand. “Anita, what are you doing? Come in here. Now!”

  A faint buzz beneath her feet made Cora start, then the underwater lights came on in the pool. The surface rippled and cast rippling shadows across the little girl’s figure, and this time Cora did see a spark in the girl’s hand.

  “Anita,” She headed for the stairs. “Anita, do you have matches?”

  A third spark, and Cora froze on the top step.

  A flame added shadow to the child’s face, and there was something in her other hand.

  “For God’s sake, do you have a firecracker?”

  Anita laughed. Not a child’s laugh; a woman’s.

  Flame touched fuse.

  “Anita!” But Cora couldn’t move. “Anita!”

  An orange glow spiraled up from the girl’s hand, end over end, and landed in the pool.

  “Anita, damnit!”

  The explosion threw Cora onto her rump, the monstrous geyser that rose from the center of the pool spread in white fire and foam and landed on the deck, slamming her onto her back and sliding her into the wall. She screamed and tried to get to her feet, spitting water, shaking her head, finally standing and wiping her eyes clear.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  A futile scream; Anita had another one.

  “I’ll give you to three,” the little girl called, and laughed. “One.”

  Cora slipped and skidded across the deck, screaming for Dimitri and Sonya to get out of the house.

  “Two.”

  Punching the door open, skidding across the cold kitchen floor, grabbing a stunned Dimitri’s arm and dragging him into the hall.

  “Two-and-a-half,” she heard, and shrieked Sonya’s name, saw her charging down the staircase, and shoved Dimitri toward the front door.

  “Two-and-three-quarters!” And a laugh.

  Sonya froze, and Cora scooped her up under one arm.

  “Three!”

  * * * *

  Todd came around the counter and sat sideways in the booth directly opposite Casey, fussing with the surgical tape that had come loose around his hair. The others moved closer. Helen remained at his side. This, he could tell, was no philosophical discussion about to get under way. They were afraid, badly afraid, and they were angry because they didn’t know why.

  “It’s funny,” he said, keeping his voice steady, not looking at them, looking everywhere but at them, “but we can believe or not in ghosts and monsters and aliens from outer space, life after death or nothing at all, but when it comes right down to it, none of it matters.

  “If this is truly the end, none of it will matter.”

  “What do you mean, if?” Nate demanded weakly, his voice shaking a little.

  “I mean, son, I don’t know. Not for sure.”

  Rina stood behind Nate, her hands on his shoulders, her face drawn with fear. “Yesterday you said some fiddler was riding. I don’t... are you talking, like, those guys I saw once on TV? The ones on the horses?’’

  No one answered.

  They all knew what they had heard.

  “They’re called the Four Horsemen,” Casey said at last. “In the Book of Revelations they ride into the world to herald the last days.”

  “What?” Todd said, his disbelief clear, disbelief uncertain. “Come on, Case, are you saying those Horsemen are actually real?” He leaned away and shook his head, winced, and touched his bandage. “What the hell—you should pardon the expression—are they doing here, then? In Maple Landing? Why not New York, someplace like that?’’

  “Nonsense,” said Mrs. Racine calmly, still in the last booth, still sipping her coffee. “Nonsense.”

  “Assuming,” Farber said casually, leaning against the door, “you take the Bible literally, of course.”

  Casey looked at him, at the sprinkle of water across his face that made him seem almost transparent. “Like I said, Mel: if they’re here, it doesn’t matter what you believe, does it?”

  “It does to me.”

  Lights too bright, voice too loud, Nate shaking off Rina’s hands and slipping off his stool, saying, “You guys are nuts,” saying something e
lse about getting home, his mother will be worried, crossing the space between the counter and the booths, no one stopping him, until Casey cleared his throat.