Gravelight

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  The newcomer's remark had been addressed to the weathered truck driver. Francis. His mother probably named him after the talking mule he so resembles, Wycherly thought pettishly.

  "Smacked up his fancy furriner car on the overlook to Frenchy's Hollow," Francis said. "I expect he'll be needing the loan of Caleb's team to get her out." As if satisfied that Wycherly was now someone else's problem, Francis drove off, leaving Wycherly and the stranger standing alone in the street.

  Wycherly glared at the other man balefuUy, somehow at a loss for words. The man stared back at him with equal suspicion, and Wycherly realized with a sudden shrewdness how he must look: bruised and bloody from the crash, pale and disheveled and possibly not quite sane.

  He couldn't afford to seem out of control. The stakes were too high. If his family should somehow find him . . .

  "I have to say I'd be grateful for Mr., ah, Caleb's help. If, um, Francis hadn't come along, I'd still be sitting on the edge of the road. I'd hate

  just to leave my car there." Especially if there's something in it that ties it to me. "So I really need to get my car ..." Towed to some place it can be worked on? Or just hidden before the highway patrol finds it? Wycherly forced what he hoped was a friendly smile. "And I'd really be awfully grateful for any assistance you could give me." His words faltered to a stop, and still the other man said nothing.

  Wycherly hated to make these false conciliating speeches; he always had. They were an admission of powerlessness, and more than many things, Wycherly craved the power he knew he was too weak to grasp. Wycherly ran a hand through his hair distractedly, wincing when his fingers encountered a tender spot. More than anything just now he wanted oblivion, and he wasn't particular about how he got it.

  "I need it towed here, I guess," he repeated. "If someone can do that."

  At last, as if having wound his way through some complex process of decision, the man smiled and held out his hand.

  "Looks like you need more than that. I'm Evan Starking." He pronounced the name as if it were two separate words: Star King. "My pa owns the general store."

  Wycherly nodded. There didn't seem much to say about that.

  "Why don't you come inside and set, and I'll send my sister Luned over to Caleb." Evan hesitated. "It's going to take most of the day to get your car up the hill with Caleb's ox team, mister, so if you're in a hurry ..."

  "No," Wycherly said, taking Evan's hand. The palm was harsh and callused against his own. "I haven't got anywhere else to go." He followed Evan, past the waiting loiterers, inside the general store.

  For all its external shabbiness, the inside of the general store was neatly stocked; dark and cool, its shelves were crammed with merchandise whose modern labels looked garish and out of place in their antiquated surroundings.

  Evan sent Luned off in search of Caleb—Wycherly got a jumbled impression of a young street urchin, blonde and none too clean—and once she was gone, Evan reached beneath the counter and pulled out a blue spatterware cup and a familiarly shaped bottle. The battered condition of its label suggested it did not contain its original contents, and it was half-filled with a liquid about the color of gasoline.

  "There's a washroom in the back if you want to get cleaned up, mister,

  but you look like you could use a little stiffener first." Evan uncorked the bottle. The raw scent of alcohol was potent on the morning air. Moonshine.

  He half filled the cup. Wycherly took the bottle away from him and filled it to the brim, then picked up the cup. The main ingredient of shine was usually cane sugar—sometimes with the addition of arsenic or lead—and Wycherly could smell a candy-like sweetness hovering on the surface of the liquor smell.

  He felt every cell in his body contract with the craving, and his hand shook slightly as he raised the cup to his lips, drinking down the caustic, overproof spirit as though it were water.

  The panicky clutch of deprivation receded as the seductive, toxic warmth of the drink spread through him. The shine seared his mouth and throat, as if it were in fact the gasoline it so resembled, and its arrival in his stomach masked any hunger pangs Wycherly might have felt with a sullen hurting burn. When he was sure it would stay down, Wycherly drew a deep breath. Evan was regarding him with some respect.

  "Last time a flatlander tried that, he fell over backwards and we had to sweep him out with the sawdust," Evan said.

  Wycherly smiled faintly.

  "I'm Wycherly Musgrave," he said, as if that were some sort of explanation. One cup of whiskey was far from enough to get him drunk—to make him drunker, he scrupulously amended—but it had taken the edge off the demons. "And I'd like to buy a bottle of whatever that is, if you've got any to sell."

  Evan looked thoughtful. "I guess you'd have to talk to Mai Tanner about that. All we sell here in the store is beer."

  "I'll take a couple of six-packs then." Wycherly laid a ten on the counter. "Thanks for the drink. And now I guess I'd better wash up."

  An hour or so later Wycherly was sitting on the front porch of the general store gazing out at downtown Morton's Fork.

  The morning's loiterers had vanished, and no one had come to replace them. No policeman came, either, and Wycherly began to believe that none would come. He'd escaped his well-deserved punishment—from the laws of Man as well as the laws of physics—one more time.

  Wycherly felt like an actor playing a part. He was wearing a painfully-new pair of work pants bought in the store to replace his shredded and

  bloody pair and was working his way slowly through the six-pack of beer. He was nicely insulated now, in momentary charity with the world. His aches and pains were a distant thing, as long as he didn't move too much.

  There was no blinding revelation, no sudden stroke of insight, but it slowly occurred to Wycherly that as he looked at Morton's Fork he was looking at his last chance.

  He glanced down at the beer in his hand, then at his wristwatch. It was a little after ten o'clock in the morning. He'd totaled his car and then drunk six ounces of moonshine and five cans of Rolling Rock, and now he was probably going to drink five more. And he knew just as he knew that the sun would eventually set and rise again that he'd go on drinking— and driving, too, if he could get his hands on another car.

  And it would kill him. If not next time, then the time after that.

  Wycherly resented that. He resented it as much as if it were something someone else was making him do. Automatically, he drained the can in his hand, and then looked at it as if he'd never seen it before. Beer, the breakfast of champions.

  Could he stop? He'd never thought seriously about it before. Wycherly had been dried out by experts at expensive clinics in three countries. He'd been stopped a dozen times—but could he stop himself? He could phone home and—

  The image of his parents' reactions was sudden and immediate, and Wycherly shuddered—at his father's easy contempt and his mother's crippling pity. No. If he did this thing, he would do it here, alone, telling no one. There would be no audience for his attempt—and failure.

  Here—or nowhere. This time—or never.

  It was odd the way the battle lines were suddenly so clear, as if this were actually something important that he and he alone could do. As if the condition of his liver actually mattered.

  Which it didn't—not even to him.

  But he'd do this thing anyway.

  How? He turned his mind to practical matters, away from the disturbing world of ideals. Money was the first thing he'd need. Although Wycherly doubted either his AmEx or Visa would be of any use to him here, the thousand in cash he was carrying would probably go a long way toward buying him a place to hide.

  To hide. He'd named the truth to himself without realizing it. That

  was what he'd been looking for on the road; that was what he wanted here. A place to hide.

  Suddenly the sleepless hours he'd spent dragged at him, and the need for sleep pulled at his body with its promise of oblivion. The wet July heat was like a ha
nd pushing him down, and he ached persistently in his legs, his neck, his back. . . . Wycherly got carefully to his feet. Feeling more than a little light-headed, he walked with extra care back into the general store.

  Luned Starking was back, leaning against the old-fashioned soda cooler with a Coke in one hand and a glossy magazine in the other. This time Wycherly got a better look at her. Evan's sister was a washed-out blonde girl who looked ten and was probably fourteen and had the big-eyed elfin look of long privation. Her attention was riveted on the page, her lips moving slightly as she read.

  Evan glanced up, surprised, when Wycherly entered. "You ready for some more beer, mister?"

  "I need someplace to stay," Wycherly said. "Is there someplace around here that I could rent—someplace quiet?" As if his screams wouldn't be noise enough, once he started drying out. //he started drying out. The certainty of purpose he'd felt only moments before was fading.

  The request seemed to take both Evan and Luned by surprise. They stared at Wycherly, mouths slightly open.

  "I—I'm sure old Bart'U have your car running again just as soon as Caleb hauls it back here," Evan said.

  Wycherly's emotional radar, fine-tuned by years of Musgrave disasters, picked up the sense of worry, almost of desperation, in Evan's voice. As if he were afraid of Wycherly? Why?

  "I don't think anybody can get that car working again, and actually, I don't care. I just need a place to stay. Surely somebody has a place here they can rent?" Wycherly said again.

  "You want to stay here?" Evan ran his hand through his sandy, light brown hair, now looking baffled as much as wary. "Mister, nobody stays in Morton's Fork if they've got any way of getting out, except—" He broke off suddenly. "Nobody."

  At the moment Wycherly was too tired to pursue the other exception to the rule. "But there is someplace?" he demanded.

  "There's this old cabin up on the mountain. It doesn't exactly belong

  to anybody. . . . There isn't any electricity, and you'd have to pump all your own water. And could be some folks say there's ha'ants around the place, on account of a woman died there. ..."

  If Evan was trying to make the place sound unattractive, he wasn't doing a very good job. Wycherly didn't believe in ghosts, and that kind of isolation sounded as if it were made to order for what he had in mind.

  "I just want someplace with a roof and a bed and I'll pay for it," Wycherly snarled. "Which part of the preceding sentence don't you understand?"

  "Well, there isn't really anyone to collect the rent. ..."

  Wycherly took out his wallet and laid six fifty-dollar bills on the counter.

  "I expect this will take care of everything. All I want is a bed."

  Evan shrugged, not meeting Wycherly's eyes as he slid the money off the counter.

  Wycherly felt a black self-loathing well up inside him like bitter water from an underground spring. This was the way to get things done, his father said: Ignore all opposition. Crush it. But even on the occasions— such as now—that it worked for him, Wycherly drew no pleasure from it. It always seemed to him somehow like cheating, as if he'd stolen something that would have been freely given if only he had asked.

  "And perhaps you could have someone show me where it is?" Wycherly added. It wasn't an apology, but he wasn't very good at those. They'd have to take what they got.

  "Luned!" Evan's voice was sharp. "You show Mister Wycherly up to Old Lady Rahab's old place and get it cleaned up."

  "But it's ha'anted —" Despite her washed-out appearance, Luned Starking had spirit—enough spirit to sass her brother, anyway.

  "You just shut your biscuit-trap, little miss," Evan said. "Nobody's asking you to sleep there, are they? And Mister Wycherly don't give a fig for ha'ants. Now you take a broom and scoot on up there."

  Rahah, Wycherly thought. The name sounded Biblical—or gothic— and depressing. His head had started to hurt again, and he desperately wanted unconsciousness, one way or the other. He wondered what the cabin would be like.

  It was easily a two-mile hike, and by the end of it Wycherly cared about nothing other than stopping. He hadn't counted on having to walk there,

  and although Luned took him by what she called "the easiest way," and carried the three six-packs besides—he couldn't go cold turkey, of course, and tomorrow would be soon enough to really assess the situation. When Luned pushed open the door he shoved past her, looking for the bedroom. He had a vague impression of a brass bed and a bare mattress before he collapsed full-length upon it, ignoring his bruises. And he was asleep.

  The spacious kitchen was like something out of an Architectural Digest spread: terra-cotta tile floor, exposed brick walls and silvery paneling from a salvaged barn. Sinah had designed it herself; it was her perfect place, the one she'd fashioned through a decade of lonely daydreams in a succession of shabby New York apartments, waiting for that big break. There was a copper double sink and an institutional refrigerator and stove, their starkness warmed by the brick and wood. The center food prep island had a single burner surrounded by more red tile, and a working surface that was half marble, half butcher's block oak. Well-used copper cookware—brought from Sinah's L.A. apartment—hung on the walls.

  With the deft, economical movements of one used to working in confined spaces, she set out her tools and measured out flour, soda, yeast, and salt into an enormous stoneware bowl, added milk and eggs from her refrigerator, and began to blend the dough. Making bread was good for the soul, and she didn't need some fancy automated machine to do it.

  She frowned, seeing how little flour was left in the sack. The contractor who'd rebuilt the schoolhouse had run in good heavy power lines for a big chest freezer, but with the best pantry in the world, people did still run out of things. Unless she wanted to risk getting thrown out of the Morton's Fork general store again, she'd have to get out her keys and drive twenty miles to the IGA in Pharaoh.

  Why? What could her family have done to these people—even with the power to read minds?

  Somewhere in these hills there must be others like her, others who had learned to tame their unwanted gift. It was why she stayed here, among people who hated her, who denied her to her face and thought her mother was a child of hell.

  Please, let there be others like me. Please . . .

  * * *

  w

  40 MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY

  In a timeless place, awareness hovered just out of reach like a waiting shark. Camilla was here somewhere—but Camilla was dead. Wycherly Musgrave knew that for sure; he'd visited her grave once and seen the headstone: January 16, 1966-August 14, 1984.

  His nineteenth birthday . . .

  Night. The air was hot and wet, and adrenaline had combined with the alcohol in his blood to create a surreal state of false consciousness in which logic played no part. It took him several minutes to realize that he was wet, and longer to understand that he was standing in the river shallows, staring back toward the middle of the river in idiot fascination at the submerged headlights of his car.

  This is a dream. The understanding did nothing to assuage the guilt or the fear. He tried to stop, to wake, but it was no good. He always came back to this night—the night that had revealed him to himself for what he was.

  He turned back to the car, and when he touched the door it opened. Camilla's lifeless, moon-pale body floated serenely from the car, slithering boneless like a white eel through the black glass of the river water, reaching out her white arms to coil about him, dragging him down to share the death he'd forced on her. . . .

  Wycherly sat up with a strangled shout.

  For a moment he wasn't sure where he was, then he remembered. The crash—the town—the cabin. Someplace called Morton's Fork.

  He looked around. He'd slept most of the day away; the light coming in through the window was the pale deceptive illumination of July's long twilights.

  The room was dominated by a wide brass bed with an ornate marble-topped table beside it; the bed was stripped do
wn to its mattress and box spring, the exposed brand labels bringing a weirdly modern note to a room that in so many other ways resembled a museum piece. There was a window, a cedar wardrobe chest, and a braided rug on the floor. The pressed-glass lamp on the table beside the bed, though covered with dust, was still half-full of lamp oil.

  What the hell? Those kids said this place was deserted.

  No. They'd said it was haunted, and that it didn't belong to anybody. Wycherly got gingerly to his feet. The pain was a little less, but still no picnic. Never mind: There was codeine in his bag, and considering what part of the country he was in, he could probably get a drink. Besides,

  GRAVELIGHT

  Luned had brought beer, hadn't she? There wasn't any running water, and he had to drink something.

  Hadn't he been going to stop? din inner voice gibed. Well, yes, Wycherly temporized, but not all at once. Nobody could expect that.

  He hauled himself off the bed, ignoring the mocking silence inside his head. Every muscle protested. He looked around for something to distract him, and settled on the wardrobe.

  Monumental in the style of an earlier day, it towered over the other contents of the room. Wycherly regarded himself in the greenish, mottled mirror.

  Reflexively, he pushed his hair out of his eyes—wincing as he encountered the bruise—and inspected himself critically.

  He was still wearing his leather jacket; it was spattered with blood, and the shirt beneath it was grimy, torn, and bloody. His eyes were red; bloodshot and pouched, their pale-brown color looked positively inhuman by contrast. His pale skin—the redhead's curse—showed every scrape and bruise and crust of blood. His hair brushed his shoulders, dirty and uncombed; he was several days late for a shave, and rubbed his chin reflexively, wondering what he was going to do about it. If anything.