She scanned his face quickly, looking for signals, saw nothing but concern and nodded, reluctantly.
“Wonderful,” Toal said, clapping his hands once and slipping his glove back on. “I promise, too, Natalie — may I call you that? — I promise that I won’t be as rude as the first time we met. Too much excitement, and too much of that dreadful punch. I’ll be sober. You can count on it.”
“Great,” Marc said. “We’ll be there.”
The sun glared in their faces as they walked. Neither spoke, either of the meeting or the news of Sam’s success. It was evident in his slow and careful paces that Marc shared her doubts, that it was too good to be true. A ploy, she decided, to tip her off her guard. It would be an easy thing to check — call Sam and ask. But she knew, too, that the gist of it would be true, that Sam had killed a drifter in the cemetery, that his report would show that this stranger, for reasons deranged and unknown, had been the one who had murdered Miriam and Vorhees.
Case, as Toal had said, closed.
“Darling,” Marc said when they reached her corner, ‘‘I’m going down to the office for a while.” He laughed at her dismay and kissed her quickly. “Relax, only for a while. I want to write out the story I just got: Toal expounding on economics like a small town Baruch. Dederson has wanted something like this for years, and it fell right into my starving little lap. This is one story he doesn’t dare cut up.”
She nodded mutely.
“I’d check on that other thing, too,” he said, plainly echoing her own misgivings. “But I gather I’m still invited to stand guard?”
Again a mute nod.
“Okay, then. And look, don’t be disappointed if I’m a little late. If Dederson really likes this story, I may just stick around to be sure he gets it set for the next edition.” Then his face lined and he took her hands, pressed them against his chest. “And remember, when the sun sets, lock the doors and windows. I still have the key, but I’ll give you three short knocks and a long before I come in.” He smiled, sadly. “I haven’t forgotten, you know.”
“I know,” she said. She kissed his knuckles and turned him around. “So go already. And hurry! We’ve got plans to make.”
“Like what costumes to wear?”
“No. Like what we’re going to do when we get there.”
She didn’t have to explain and was grateful when he only nodded and broke into a trot.
She watched, took two steps toward the house and stopped. She was suddenly too restless to return home herself. There was a tempo, now, in what she was doing and what was being done to her, and she felt it quicken, like a series of waves preparing to crest.
She turned and walked back toward the library. The flag was at half mast, and there was a policeman standing at the base preparing to lower it. At the sight of the uniform, she wondered if Sam were involved in her nightmare as much as she suspected, or if, in fact, he was as guiltless as she, and the drifter, then, was Toal’s doing and no one else’s.
“In, out, in, out,” she muttered. “I wish I could make up my mind who’s in the cast of characters.”
She waited until the flag had been folded and placed in the hands of the night clerk, Arlene Bains, who’d obviously showed up only for that ceremony. Natalie thought of waving, reconsidered, and continued her walk, kicking at a small pebble and unexpectedly breaking into laughter as she raced to keep it from bounding into the gutter.
“Mrs. Windsor!”
She looked up, then across the street. Mrs. Bradford was hurrying across, waving her hand.
“Mrs. Windsor, wait a moment, will you?”
Now what? she wondered. Another piece of jewelry to mortgage my soul?
The woman stopped and braced herself against a lamppost. Her face was pale in spite of her exertions, and she seemed to have trouble focusing. A hand fluttered weakly across her chest.
“Mrs. Bradford, are you all right?”
The jeweler’s wife smiled weakly. “Not used to running. I keep forgetting how old I am. Fifty-four this December, you know. It’s beginning to tell.”
“Nonsense, Mrs. Bradford. You’ll live to be a hundred.”
The woman smiled at the courtesy, and beckoned Natalie closer. “My dear, I’m glad I caught you. I was thinking I wouldn’t be able to tell you until next payday.”
I thought so, Natalie groaned inwardly.
“You were asking me about a ring, remember?”
Natalie’s eyes narrowed, snapped open quickly when she saw the woman frown. She nodded, not daring to speak.
“Well, I happened to ask my husband about it. We were at dinner the other night with the Halls at the Chancellor Inn. Have you ever been there, my dear? Wonderful place, but so noisy! It’s a wonder Chief Windsor doesn’t warn them. I really don’t know how the neighbors stand it. And the way those young people dress! My heavens, you’d think this was Sodom instead of Oxrun Station.”
“The ring,” Natalie said impatiently.
“Oh, yes. Well, I asked. And what reminded me, of course, was that I saw Arty — that’s Artemus Hall — wearing one just like you described. I wanted a closer look, but you must know Arty. He owns the only restaurant in town, not to mention the only bar, so he thinks he’s God Almighty sometimes. And the way his wife acted, you’d think I’d asked him to run away with me to one of those hippie communes or something. Can you imagine me a hippie?” She laughed and patted her hips. ‘‘I’ve enough to remind me of my weight already.”
Natalie forced her hands to smooth her collar, pull a strand of dark hair from her face. “Did you ask where he got it?”
“Oh, my, yes. You see, I thought if I could find out, maybe you’d think more about that bracelet we’ve been talking about. We can scratch each other’s back, so to speak.”
Natalie’s lips twisted into a grin, conspiratorial and false.
“Well, no sooner did I ask him than Danny, that’s my husband, Daniel, decides his ulcer is acting up and practically drags me out of the Inn on my heels. He’s in the doghouse, for sure, but when he gets back, I promise you I’ll find out. When I told him that you wanted one of your own — ”
“You told him?” Her voice was loud, but Mrs. Bradford didn’t seem to notice.
“Well, of course, dear. Anyway, when he gets back tonight from fitting Mrs. Toal for her new — ”
“Oh, my God,” she said. “Look, Mrs. Bradford,” and she took the woman’s arm and gently aimed her back toward the store, ‘‘I’m really grateful for all you’ve done. Honestly. Thanks a lot. And believe me, I’ll be in first thing Monday morning for that bracelet.”
“But Mrs. Windsor — ”
“Now, I have an errand to run.” She winked broadly. “A heavy date tonight, as the kids say.”
Confusion vanished, and she nodded. “Of course, and if you don’t mind me saying so, it’s about time, Mrs. Windsor. You’re much too pretty and too young to be hanging around loose all the time. As the kids say.” She laughed up the scale and without looking back ran across the street to again collapse against a post. Natalie stared after her, only vaguely aware that the patrol car had not yet left the curb in front of the library.
As she walked, she listened instead of thought. To her heels on the sidewalk, crisp and hammer sharp as the evening prepared to replace the sun and the air chilled toward freezing; to the traffic humming, snarling, reminding her of a zoo’s cats prowling for a way to escape; to the thumping bass of a song that lingered as she passed a group of teen age boys huddled around a small radio; to the crass and deliberately loud comments one of them made about the motion of her hips and the flight of her hair behind her.
She listened, turned a corner, and there was little but silence as she entered the east gates of the cemetery and headed immediately for the several rows of dark brown and grey weathered tombstones that marked the sector commemorating Revolutionary War dead and the families of the first settlers of the Connecticut hills. The markers served as a tranquilizer, a detour for her fears
as she created biographies out of epitaphs and morals out of biblical quotations. At a child’s grave, she knelt and brushed away the dead leaves and withered grass, passed a hand slowly over the remnants of a girl’s life vanishing after two and a half centuries.
But when she found herself, a moment later, squinting to read a perfectly clear inscription, she wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands and looked up through the drab, empty branches of a blighted willow. It was dusk, and she was alone.
“Oh, confound it, woman!” she snapped. “I swear to God I need a full-time keeper.”
Quickly she returned to the nearest path and followed it, the rapidly fading light altering the landscape until her sense of direction became scrambled and she found herself in an area of the vast memorial park she didn’t recognize.
Dumb, she thought, really dumb. Marc is going to kill me.
She looked for the familiar to take her bearings. Only there was nothing in sight. Ordered rows of copper plates sunk into the ground, headstones both plain and sculptured poking through kempt grass like flotsam on a darkening sea. A ground mist drifted in behind the fleeing sun, tendrils that dampened her ankles and rose up the boles of ancient trees.
She ran several paces, but the slap of her shoes stopped her.
She thought of calling out, but the anticipation of panic in her voice silenced her.
Ridiculous! She had been in this place a hundred times before and never got lost plenty of times after dark and never failed to locate either west or east gates. Surely the path she was on would lead eventually to a main road; all she had to do was walk. But in following her own advice, she kept drifting off the tarmac onto the grass, tripping once over a toppled plastic vase. Slower, and she wondered if the stars would do her any good. Not that she remembered all their names and significations, but it was better than nothing, much better than wandering around in a circle. She held a hand up in front of her, had to stare to find its outline. Then she looked up to locate the North Star, and fairly sobbed with relief; over the trees she saw the faint glow of Oxrun’s night lights.
“Follow them,” she told herself, using her voice as a lantern. “You’ll come to the lawn, cross the lawn and you’ll come to the fence, look for the spot where those hoods bent the barbed wire posts down and you can make like a monkey and climb over. God! Will Marc skin you alive if you don’t get home before he does.”
Her neck grew stiff, her stumbling more pronounced as she tried to stay on the path while keeping the lights in front of her. The turns were a bother, but she managed each time to cross to another lane heading in the right direction. It became, then, an adventure more exciting than fearful, more in keeping with the relief she felt. She kept one arm stretched out before her, fending off trailing branches, knee-numbing slabs of marble, and benches that squatted just below her line of sight. Her steps grew shorter, as though she didn’t want to break a leg so close to the goal.
Finally, there were no more trees, and the open expanse of lawn was silvered faintly by the rising moon. Cautiously, she moved to her right until she could see Fox Road, marked as an uninviting black corridor with its single feeble light.
‘‘I’m proud of you, Natalie girl,” she said, unable to keep a broad smile in check. “You’d make a heck of an Indian.”
She took another step, and suddenly the world tilted up, rushed toward her, slammed against her forehead and stunned her into a display of stinging reds, golds and screaming whites. Her chest struck a ledge of earth that gusted the air from her lungs, and she fell backward, her mouth open, her throat working but unable to provide her with air. Tears blinded her more than the return of darkness. And when she was able to trickle a breath in, ease it out, she sat up to rub her aching breasts.
A hand went out to her side. Touched dirt. She looked up and saw stars hemmed by a rectangle. Her forehead wrinkled only a moment before her palms covered her mouth to smother a scream.
She was in a grave, freshly dug.
She was going to be buried alive.
No.
She was going to suffocate, claw, scratch her way upward but never reach the precious damp air that masked her skin, weighted her coat, softly plastered her hair to face and skull.
No!
She’d been trapped without suspecting a trap had been laid. There was nothing she could do, and no way out. It wasn’t the other guy this time — now it was she who was going to die.
NO!
She heard her own protests. Biting down hard on her lower lip, she relished the taste of warm blood and the accompanying pain that made her jaw drop to free her skin. The pain, not the dying, was real. There was no one waiting to shovel cold dirt.
One more touch to the earthen wall and she scrambled to her feet, laughed aloud when her head poked above ground. An unfinished grave, not yet deep enough to keep her in. Another explosive laugh, defiant and short, and she pressed her hands on the edge and pushed, lifting herself until she could swing a leg up and over, twist and lie on the grass, staring at the stars that spread to the horizons in their millions.
Oh, my God, she thought, and filled her lungs slowly, pushed the breath out and luxuriated in the gentle sag of her chest ... rise and fall ... rising and falling ... until she felt her eyelids grow heavy.
“Whoa!” she laughed. “What you don’t need now, lady, is falling asleep in a graveyard.”
She sat up, pulled her legs beneath her, and rose, reaching out for support and finding it in a headstone.
Oh dear, she thought. Someone’s already reserved this space.
Curious, then, she leaned closer, moving so her moon shadow lifted from the engraving.
The name was Helene Bradford’s. The date was today’s.
It was, of course, impossible.
She had just spoken to the elderly woman not two hours ago. She couldn’t have died, had the arrangements made and the grave dug in such a short time.
Another family was the answer. Even in a village like Oxrun there had to be more than one Bradford; it was a common, even famous, New England name.
Nevertheless, her nerves refused to calm. The night, she decided, was sneaking up on her, and if she didn’t start moving soon, she’d be seeing Halloween goblins and ghosts that didn’t have little children lurking inside them.
With her eyes steadily on the faint lights ahead, she stepped onto the grass, her feet scuffling to warn her of hidden rocks and invisible, sudden dips in the ground.
A rasping sigh, a muffled snarl.
She stopped and turned, her eyes squinting to adjust to the lack of light. But there was only the faint glow of the tombstones reflecting the moon. Listening before turning to move again. Faster, now, almost to her normal stride.
A scratching, like a nail drawn across soft wood.
She looked back over her shoulder, refusing to stop, yet something warning her not to run. Not yet.
The sounds drifted to her right, back to her left. No closer. Maintaining a distance.
The unmistakable crunch of a heavy weight padding across the grass stiff with impending frost.
She opened her mouth to breathe in the night, her pants loud, her footsteps thundering. She began to hurry, and the stalking moved nearer; she slowed, and it fell back.
Left to right to left to right. Evenly. Toying.
Cat and wounded bird. Panther and stricken fawn.
The fence split into its diamond spacing, the barbed wire slanted in toward her. If she ran now, she’d be driven to ground; if she waited, she’d never reach the fence and escape — the wire would hold her. And it was too late to try for the gates.
A hundred yards. Too far. Whatever it was, it was swift. Light-footed, powerful, muscles rippling under a black hide relaxed and unconcerned — it knew it would get what it wanted. There was no need to rush.
Fifty yards, and the distance between them narrowed.
Once again she glanced back over her shoulder. The lawn was a shimmering grey, and empty all the way back to the grav
es. She blinked rapidly.
Saw ... something.
A faint luminescence, spiraling, like a dying pinwheel.
Perspiration iced her back, under her arms, trickled obscenely between her breasts. Her lips dried, felt chapped and ready to split.
She looked back to her house. Dark. Its white a mottle of black and grey. Then she remembered the damaged portion of fence, the supports for the barbed wire bent nearly perpendicular to the ground.
She told herself she couldn’t do it, couldn’t bear the ripping pain that would drag her back to the earth.
She told herself she had to do it.
With a slowness that threatened cramps in her arms, she slid off her coat.
Ten yards, and the sounds died.
Her shoes slipped off her feet. The grass bit coldly into her soles, and her thighs tightened.
Don’t think, she ordered. Don’t think. Do it!
Almost languorously, she looked toward the open lawn again, trying to gauge the distance between herself and her stalker. It was her imagination, she was positive, that produced from the spiraling red, twisting gold sparks, a puff of white breath and the lick of a pink rough tongue.
Snarling. It was impatient. Perhaps, she thought hopefully, confused because she refused to break into a run.
The grass crackled.
With a sob, Natalie whirled and tossed her coat over the strands of barbed wire, followed the motion instantly by leaping, catching at the opening with fingers and toes and hauling herself up. She grabbed at the coat, heaved, screamed when a cuff of her blouse caught and held.
The snarl rose to an echo of hatred.
She heaved again, frantically, toppling over the wire head first.
Something crashed into the fence, rattling it like chains in a deserted dungeon. Her wrist throbbed and her shoulder ached where they’d taken the weight of her fall, but she ignored the pain as she leaped to her feet and dashed up onto the porch.
And the door was locked.
Marc!
She screamed once, was answered by the thing backing away to hurdle the fence. Again she screamed and ran down the stairs, darting around the side of the house. Tripping over the concrete lead at the base of the gutter. Driveway gravel gouged into her hands, ripped at her knees as she crawled desperately to the garage and yanked at the heavy doors. They resisted and she kicked at them with her stocking feet. A scrape, and one gave maddeningly slowly. The fence shook as the thing passed over and, heedless of the splinters slicing into her back, she slid inside the windowless building and hauled the door closed.
The Hour of the Oxrun Dead (Necon Classic Horror) Page 14
