[Oxrun Station] The Last Call of Mourning

by Charles L. Grant

  He shook his head, pulled a thick envelope out of his jacket pocket. "I met that man, Grange, on the street. He told me you were here." When she said nothing, he slid the envelope in front of her. "I've just come from Angus. He told me . . . well, damnit, Cyd, what are you trying to prove?"

  "He wasn't supposed to say anything," she whispered, though not contritely. "He's got a bigger mouth than Rob."

  "Your brother has nothing to do with this, I hope."

  "Father, please keep your voice down." .

  Yarrow seemed to shrink within the greatcoat that matched his suit, but his expression remained stern as he dismissed the hovering waitress.

  "And no, Rob had nothing to do with this. Or Evan. Or Mother. No one was supposed to know."

  "Fait accompli, is that it?"

  She shrugged. Something was wrong.

  "My dear, I don't know what to say."

  She shrugged again, and cursed herself for not getting another lawyer to handle the sale and transfer of title. But Angus Stone had been her family's protector since, it seemed, the day he'd stolen all Harvard's honors, and it was only natural she should go to him when the itch she'd discovered had to be scratched.

  And when the silence became a near physical pain, she took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I wanted something to do. It's as simple as that."

  "Well, why the . . . why didn't you tell me?"

  She tried not to frown. Why wasn't he bellowing?

  "Because," she said, "I'm not a lawyer like Evan, and I hate banking—which is your and Rob's cross, not mine—and I refuse to wallpaper or paint in any fashion, shape or form, or redecorate a single room in a house that's too bloody big for us anyway."

  "Your mother's good at it."

  "Of course she is, but that's not the point."

  "I know," he said surprisingly, and so quietly that she almost didn't hear him. "But you're . . . you're not the same since you came back, Cynthia, not the same at all."

  "For all that, neither are you," she said without thinking, and leaned quickly back from the expression on his face. It had no name. Just a look. A look that as much as slapped her and left a rising welt.

  "All right," he said as though a decision had been made, "if this is what you want. You know, though, there's been a thousand movies made of this: rich girl, bored, tries quaint shop of her own, rich father opposes but secretly helps her, she's a success in spite of him and marries the poor boy and they live happily ever after. A thousand films. It's all very . . . B-movie, Cyd."

  She could not help it; she gaped. "B-movie? Father, I didn't know you knew what that meant?"

  He very nearly laughed, coughed instead. "You think I've been living in a vacuum all my life, girl? God Almighty. Anyway," and he tapped the envelope, "Angus wanted me to give you these."

  "The creep," she muttered.

  He laughed loudly and rose, put a hard hand on her shoulder. "It's all yours now, girl. I hope you know what you're doing."

  "I don't know, Father," she said candidly. "I really don't."

  He stiffened to say something, and she prayed he wouldn't. She couldn't stand a platitude now, and knew he was going to give her one. A platitude, a homily, some deathless fatherly advice that would cling burr-like to her forever. And when he didn't, when he only patted her shoulder gently and left, she could only twist to watch him, turning back when she saw several faces looking at her curiously.

  He's tired, she thought in puzzled explanation for his generous behavior. A long day in the city buying banks and selling countries. Or perhaps it was a long-term after-effect of his stay at the clinic. Each of her family, while she'd been in Europe, had been forced during bouts of serious illness to take a bed at the Kraylin Clinic out in the valley. No more than two or three days at the most, but each homecoming necessitated a day or two extra in bed. Only her father seemed not to have shaken off the pneumonia's debilitation; and considering her mother's newfound aversion to medicine, it was a wonder he had gone there at all, much less stayed.

  She emptied her glass in a swallow, deciding it was too late and too useless for puzzling. And though she knew she should have felt at least a modicum of elation at her father's acquiescence, there was only a sensation, a premonition, that she hadn't had the last word.

  "You think too much," she muttered to her reflection in the glass, dropped a bill on the table and hurried outside.

  It was full dark now, and most of the stores up Centre were closed. She watched as a policeman walked into the station house behind a young man whose head was bowed, a woman in a light cloth coat trailing and wringing her hands. An ambulance several blocks down darted across the avenue, siren stilled, lights blaring. There was no traffic as she crossed, walked north toward her car, only the faintly hazed neon of a few late-keeping shops, the muffled footfalls of a handful of pedestrians passing like autumnal ghosts beneath street lamps that had not been redesigned since they'd been fired with gas. Her car was the only one still parked on the street. The color seemed grey, and she postponed walking to it by standing in front of . . .

  She grinned.

  Her shop.

  Virtually all her savings transformed into plate glass, into a threshold, into the darkness beyond where there were black-wire bookracks forming three aisles back to front, and ceiling-high wooden ones she'd stained herself. The door was recessed, and she imagined it blocked so incredibly soon with brown cartons and brown boxes steel-banded and wire-taped, from which she would snatch glimpses of other worlds, other people, and sell them as dreams. Sections for lovers, for planet-hoppers, for clue hunters, for children; a nod to the classics, to the drama, to lines of poetic conscience. But mostly, she knew, there would be the dreams.

  Yarrow's Burrow.

  She grimaced and decided the name could wait.

  Turned, stepped off the curb and stopped herself with a shudder, glancing fearfully to her right.

  There was no limousine.

  She raised the collar of her raincoat to her cheeks, held it and hurried across to the car as she fumbled with her free hand for the keys in her purse. Unlocked the door and settled behind the wheel.

  Switched on the ignition. And sat there. Staring. Finally looking over to the place that was now her own and wondering if the Station was as bad as she thought. Or if it was only her—Cindy/Cyd/Cynthia—champing, snarling at the successes her brothers had had while she herself had not yet found the direction she wanted her own life to take. At twenty-seven she should have done, she kept telling herself; if not a career, then a family. But none of the professions she knew or studied interested her enough, and none of the men had been interesting either, to a degree that had made her want to learn if they were caring.

  Poor little rich girl, Ed had said once when they'd argued over something she'd already forgotten. A cliche like most, not entirely without substance.

  Spoiled, too, she decided, was a good enough word. Everything when she needed it, everything when she wanted.

  "You know," she told the windshield that fogged at her words, "if you keep thinking like this, lady, you're going to have to find a decent cliff around here to practice your diving."

  She grinned, almost laughed, and drove down to Chancellor where she turned right with a glance to the police station, and had nearly reached the Chancellor Inn when a movement above her made her look in the rearview mirror.

  The limousine.

  The steering wheel shook under her hands, and she wished for no reason that she'd worn her driving gloves.

  Coincidence, she thought. The man's done his business in one place, probably over dinner with a banker or two, and is now on his way to somewhere else. There are lots of limousines in Oxrun, they're practically a dime a dozen. Coincidence. It would be irrational to believe anything else. And paranoid. Not, she told herself, to mention stupid.

  She obeyed the stop sign at the avenue's end and looked out to Mainland Road and the deserted fields that stretched to the horizon on the opposite side. She
remembered an orchard that had been there once, one she used to raid with friends until the grower had died and the trees had gone with him. A fire. She thought she recalled a fire had destroyed them; but now, with no moon, she could see nothing but black.

  The windshield fogged again and she switched on the blower, lowered her window slightly and was ready to move onto the highway when the car jumped forward, the wheel twisting in her hands. She swore and looked over her shoulder. The limousine was directly behind her, its bumper and half the grille below her line of sight. It pushed at her again, and she shook a fist at it. "All right, all right," she muttered. "Idiot bigshots think they own the road." And before it could bump her a third time she accelerated and spun right, heading for the traffic light that marked Williamston Pike.

  Looked in the mirror and saw the limousine following.

  Rapidly. Closing.

  Passing beneath one of the mercury arc lights, its grey now blending to cover its windows.

  And its headlights were dark.

  Instinctively, she pressed her foot down and the car responded in kind. It shuddered once, almost faltering, before barreling ahead, past the Pike, past the light, and into the hills.

  The limousine followed.

  She gripped the steering wheel at ten and two, tried for a deep breath and failed. Sat as straight as she could to keep tension from her spine and stared at the headlights boring through the black. She was glad she could not see the trees, knowing they would be little more than a blur to measure her speed. Her left foot tapped the worn carpeting impatiently, her left hand's fingers releasing and regripping the beveled wheel one at a time. A dust-devil of leaves swirled in front of the car and was flattened, another stayed on the shoulder to tell her of the wind. The car swayed to the left; she righted it with barely a touch, grinning until she looked up to the mirror and saw the Greybeast following.

  Its lights were on now, their glare catching her gaze and almost blinding her.

  Stupid, she thought. What the—

  The car hissed around a sharp bend and, before she could fully understand what she was doing, she slammed on the brakes and fought the car's skid as she thumped onto the graveled shoulder and punched off the lights. She was facing slightly downhill, beyond the curve, and within moments the limousine flashed behind her, its headlights stabbing at the sky as though searching for bombers, dipped and swung past her in absolute silence.

  She wasted no time waiting for the driver to realize his error. Immediately the taillights were no more than a prick, she made a clumsy U-turn that scraped the right front fender against a telephone pole and raced back toward the village, not realizing her headlights were still out until an oncoming car screamed its horn at her and swerved sharply, as though she had crossed the center line.

  At the Pike she turned left into the village and pulled over to the curb after taking the first corner. Her hands would not leave the wheel. Her foot would not leave its pressure on the brake. The green dashlight wavered, blurred, picking up the quivering of her lips and arms, merged with the dark when the tears finally came. Silently. Quickly. As quickly gone as they had come. She licked her lips, tried to shake her head and discovered the aching that throbbed at her temples, swept along her jaw where she'd kept her teeth clenched. The taste of blood—her lip: The smell of the old and cracked vinyl upholstery, of gasoline, of wet tarmac, of what had to be fear. Slowly, one by one, she willed her fingers free of the wheel and flexed them to banish the cramps in the joints. Rubbed at her temples. Her chest.

  "God!" she said finally, and almost wept again at the sound of her voice.

  3

  There were dreams in soft shifting colors of Cindybright days and Cynthiagrown nights, of Windsor Castle and Stonehenge at winter's dawn, of parties that lasted until the moon grew weary; of late December evenings in the family library when the fire was companion and the books her only friends; of Paul and Iris Lennon and Wallace McLeod, and the rest of the Yarrow staff who faded one by one in spite of the wealth; of Ed and his laughter and the smooth ride of his patience. Of winter nights ... of Ed ... of Paul, Iris, Wallace . . . Ed . . . and his laughter , . . of Ed ... and winter nights . . .

  And there were nightmares in colors that dared have no name; of her mother lying helpless at the foot of a steel ladder, her back twisted and broken while her mouth opened in scolding for the hands reaching to help her; of a pair of bright lights that shattered the walls to bring down the ceiling; of a faceless man stop who drove a monstrous car that expanded to cover the highway in a blackred rush; of driving between two hills stop whose incredible trees uprooted themselves and created a wall that reached out with barked claws to strip away the sky and stop! the breath from her lungs; of running across the park from the playing fields to the pond and seeing behind her a vast stop! shadowed figure that plucked at the stars and punctured the moon and stop stop in her path the sightless bloody corpses of Wallace and Paul and Iris Stop and Stop! Ed Stop! Ed please stop Ed please . . .

  "Stop," she whispered, almost whimpered, twisted herself violently onto her side and opened her eyes.

  The horrifying images of the bodies lingered, finally faded as she willed it, and the room returned in soft stages of light.

  Bookcases fronted in glittering lead glass, a tall polished wardrobe—her grandmother's— with the right-hand door that seldom stayed closed, dresser, vanity table and worn velvet stool, an overstuffed armchair with oversized wings she'd used as a child to carry herself away. Gentle reds and bronzed golds that shimmered in the morning light easing through the window—a casement window whose myriad small panes on every chilled morning seemed less like glass than thin slivers of ice. A book lay on the floor, its marker beside it. A pewter tray with crystal decanter and matching glass on the nightstand beside the bed. Prints on the walls of Remington cowboys and Remington squaws.

  All there, she thought as she rolled onto her back, and winced at the clammy sheets that pressed to her spine. Immediately she sat up, swung her legs over the side and stood, hugging her nightgown to her chest as she moved to the window and looked down at the yard. Warm; until she was reminded of the month; and cold as she rubbed her arms vigorously, stretched and rolled her neck to banish the night's stiffness.

  Brother, she thought, I don't need dreams like that anymore.

  By the time she had managed to find the courage to drive home, dinner had been over for nearly an hour. Barton was locked in the library with his sons, and her mother was drying what remained of the meal's dishes. There'd been voices in the living room from a television set that cast purple shadows from a show she didn't recognize; and she had wandered silently, wishing the house a cottage instead of a mansion, a place where there weren't quite so many caverns where a Greybeast could hide. And when, toward eleven, she'd told the family what had happened— forgetting in the telling all her planned dramatic gestures—they had listened politely, quietly, only her mother nodding thoughtfully to show she'd been listening. The others seemed more interested in the television screen.

  And when she had done, they had waited. Without speaking.

  "Well," she'd finally exploded in exasperation, "isn't anyone going to say anything?"

  Rob adjusted his glasses carefully. Evan, who was lying on the floor with a book cradled between his forearms, only lifted his head long enough to show her a shrug.

  "Good God, people, I could have been killed!"

  "Nonsense," her mother said. "It was nothing more than joyriders, or whatever they call those idiots these days. A woman alone in a car, a dark night . . . someone from the college, most likely, that's all. Good grief, Cynthia, this is Oxrun Station, not someplace like Detroit. You weren't in any real danger at all."

  "Mother," she began, was cut off by her father's look.

  "You were drinking at the Cove," he reminded her. "And I suspect you hadn't eaten yet, either. Your sensations were heightened and some fool kid only aggravated them, like your mother said." He smiled, reached for her hand and
patted it twice. "Relax, my girl. Take it easy."

  She had almost thought to argue further until she noticed the smirk on Rob's face and realized then how foolish she must have seemed.

  More so now as she watched a series of high-columned clouds lumber across the startlingly blue sky. And below, on the lawn, a flock of agitated blackbirds scurrying over the grass in cockheaded search of an early meal. From where she stood, she could easily imagine herself coasting in a small plane, watching a herd of dark cattle grazing in a field. She grinned. Imagination. A useful commodity had she been a writer or a teacher or someone in research. But, as she felt a swelling of gas burn in her stomach, she knew that her father had been right in his explanation. No food, the drink, the nerves about the shop. Her tolerance for liquor was remarkably low, most especially wine. It generally did not take more than a glass or two to dull her, make her drowsy. And in a way, she considered it a blessing. She had never been able to take enough to get drunk; she always fell asleep first, to the dismay of her escorts.

  Nevertheless, the experience had been frightening, and if she ever caught the driver who had played games with her nerves . . .

  She shook her head vigorously and reached up to stretch, feeling the dried perspiration of her nightmares pulling at her skin. She grimaced her disgust and ran a hand lightly over her stomach as if her palm could sponge that away too. Then, after a final look at the trees and the yard—and a fleeting image of her shack—she hurried into the marbled bathroom and took a long steaming shower. Dressed. Took the stairs down two at a time.

  She was whistling when she reached the dining room, stopped when she saw her mother the only one there, lingering over a cup of coffee and a piece of burnt toast. She grinned. Ever since the staff had been dismissed—where had she been then? in Rome? in Venice?—Myrtle had tried to live up to the enviable reputation Iris Lennon had left behind her. She never quite made it, however, according to Cyd's brothers, and it had not been long before meals in the house became a haphazard matter, each of the children virtually scurrying to get their own food before their mother assaulted what remained of the larder.