by John Everson
“This is stupid,” he chided himself.
“A kid jumped off a cliff. At the same spot where lots of other people who never thought they’d escape a dead-end Rockwell nightmare also jumped. So what? It doesn’t have anything to do with the way the town looks!”
But the problem was, it did. Terrel looked different to Joe today.
Diseased.
Hollow.
In the course of twenty-four hours it had gone from Rockwell cozy to Bosch decay in his eyes. Maybe that was because he had found his first real story to uncover since moving here. There are hidden things here, that story cried, just as there were in Chicago. Cozy warm can also mean killing fire.
Nothing was going to hide those answers from him— certainly not a coat of paint or a home-sewn doll.
He’d gone straight for the phone book after his talk with George. Angelica Napalona had an address right here on Main.
2193 Main, to be exact.
Joe followed the numbers as they ascended from the 1001 of the village hall. As he moved farther from the center of town, the red and gray brick buildings diminished, giving way to white frame ranches and worn two-story homes. He began to wonder if he was going to run out of town before he found Angelica Napalona.
And then he was there: 2193 Main. A typical nondescript white frame ranch. At least it had once been white. Dirt and rot had leached any purity from the paint. The front yard had once been landscaped, but now was overrun by evergreens. Their wildly reaching boughs obscured much of the house. Three blue spruces dwarfed the house on one side, making it seem even smaller than it probably was. A stone path led from the gravel driveway to the front door, where a sign hung: READINGS BY ANGELICA.
“This is a joke!” He laughed out loud in the car.
George had sent him to a fortune-teller to find out the town’s history? Wasn’t that kind of like going to a circus to learn about physics?
He turned the key in the ignition to let the motor die, but still he sat in the car.
Maybe, he considered, she was the best source. After all, if you’re going to tell fortunes, it makes sense to know as much as possible about the people you’re forecasting for, right?
“A source is a source.” He shrugged and stepped out of the car.
As he raised his hand to knock on the wooden storm door, it opened at the hand of an attractive, dark-complexioned woman.
Good show for a psychic. He silently applauded. She must have a motion sensor somewhere on the property.
“Come in, my friend, come in,” she urged, opening the door to him. “You are welcome here.”
He stepped into a narrow hallway and took a better look at his hostess.
Angelica Napalona took care of herself. She was short and trim, with sexy, strangling ringlets of raven hair bordering her face and eyes, which were too dark to make out their color. She overdid the makeup though, he thought. Her cheeks were violated by scarlet rouge and her eyes were rimmed in a raccoon’s shadow of mascara. She draped her shoulders in a long flamboyant cape crazily colored tangerine, gold and purple. But beneath the gaudy trappings of her trade, he could see that Angelica wore very down-to-earth blue jeans and a white cotton T-shirt that hugged what he could see of her figure. At least her Italian name was legitimate, he thought, eyes dallying briefly on her nose.
“Follow me,” she beckoned in a musical voice, and led him past a dark dining room into what had been designed to be a back bedroom, but was no longer used for that.
Strands of translucent gold and silver beads hung from the top of the doorframe to the floor. The door itself had been removed, though the hinges remained in place. Angelica pushed aside the beads and took a seat at a small table. Joe followed, noting that the table and its two chairs were the sole furnishings in the room, which had murals of stars and astrological signs covering the walls. The shades were drawn, and Angelica had successfully lit a huge red candle on the table before Joe even entered the room.
“Sit,” she said, gesturing at the empty wooden chair. Italian or not, Joe guessed her heavy accent was fake.
“Look, Ms. Napalona,” he began, “I haven’t—”
“Call me Angelica, I insisst,” she purred.
“Angelica, then. I haven’t come for a reading.”
“You vant to play cards then? Here, I’ll deal you your life.” With that, she produced a deck and began laying out a series of cards facedown on the table. The backs were covered with mystical runes and figures. She turned one over and beamed. “Ah, ze Jack of Good Fortune.” She set the card to one side. “A good friend to have on your side. Now you pick. Which card will you choose?”
“I’m serious, ma’am. I’d just like to talk with you for a few minutes.”
“Time iss money, my friend.” She settled into her chair until the twin steeples on either side of the backrest were far above her head. She looked like a little girl playing in her mother’s clothes.
Joe had the feeling that this was a losing proposition all the way around, but, having gotten this far, he felt obliged to continue. He retrieved his wallet and pulled out a five-dollar bill.
“Will this be enough?”
“Enough for hiring the services of a professional hamburger flipper, perhaps,” she taunted. “Enough for renting a copy of Gone with ze Wind, if you like. Even enough to buy a paperback novel. But enough to compensate a seer, who vill look into your life’s deepest tangles and help you to unweave them…?”
Joe rose to leave, chalking up this whole fiasco as a waste of time. But Angelica’s hand darted out to hold his own.
“As it happens, I have no pressing business right now, and I am curious about your reasons for seeking me.”
The five dollars somehow left his hand with hers.
“I will speak with you for five minutes. After that time, you may decide whether you wish to know more. And at what price.”
Angelica relaxed again in her chair, folding thin, braceleted arms across her chest. Joe smiled at her posture in spite of himself. Had she any idea how foolish she looked and sounded?
“I want to talk to you about Terrel’s Peak,” he began, watching her reaction closely.
Her face remained blank, but did her arms tighten?
“Go on,” she intoned.
“I’d like to know about who has committed suicide there, and when.”
The five-dollar bill suddenly appeared back on the table before him.
“I will not take your money for speaking of zat,” she hissed, and abruptly stood.
“Who sent you to taunt me like this? Was it Karen? Melody?”
As her voice rose, her accent slipped away. For a second, Joe saw through the getup and glimpsed a middle-aged small-town housewife wearing a loud robe over her daytime clothes. And then Angelica the Reader returned, eyes still flaring slightly, but otherwise in control.
“You can leaf now, sir,” she said, still standing.
“Please,” he began, suddenly sure that George had sent him to the right place. “I wrote a story for the newspaper today about the Canady kid’s death—he jumped last night— and I just wanted to find out more about the cliff. Nobody will tell me anything about it, but someone said you might know. So I looked you up.”
“Who zent you?” Angelica asked in a calmer, richly colored Gypsy voice.
“I don’t think I should tell you,” Joe replied, staring her down. “But it wasn’t one of those women you mentioned. Actually, it was an older gentlemen who said you knew town history.”
“Of that, he vas surely correct,” she said. The seer put a finger to her lips and stared hard at Joe. Pacing the room, she trailed that same finger across a tawdry collection of crystals, baubles and beads. She lingered a moment at a dull bronze key, hung from a nail on the wall near a collage of old photos.
“Listen closely, and I vill tell you what I know.”
Angelica straightened her cape with a hand, recrossed the room and eased back into her chair.
Her eyes were
brown. A deep, forest brown that hid behind lashes too-black. They stared at him intently over the top of steepled fingers. Fingers each ornamented by a ring.
“There is an evil spirit in the cliff, my young reporter friend,” she began. She leaned across the table, so close he could feel her breath upon his face.
“It feeds not on the bodies, but on the souls of men.”
“The name’s Joe,” he offered.
Her gaze did not falter at his interruption and she continued to speak, soft and low. He was starting to see why people could be sucked in by her. When she spoke, her eyes flickered with an inner spark and her lips parted in some secret glee. He was sure she could be convincing.
“I have not felt where this spirit came from, or how long it has been here,” she murmured. “Perhaps it iss the haunt of Indians long dead. An earthen spirit that still yearns for sacrifice and in this age of unbelief finds only murder left to fill its belly. Or perhaps it is a demon chained for all eternity in ze bowels of that dark rock. Its history isn’t of importance, but its hunger is. Every year, that spirit drags at least one person off of ze cliff to crush them on ze cruel rocks below. Its hunger is great. And growing. Most of those who die are strangers to Terrel. Drifters. Businessmen from out of town.”
She leaned forward to whisper. “Walk carefully, Joe,” she warned, and turned away. When she looked back, her eyes were glossy with moisture.
“Every year, at least one of those unlucky enough to visit the rocks at the bottom of that cursed hill are stolen from this town. And we who live here mourn them quietly, and in fear. For we never know when it will be ourselves that the cliff calls.”
This seemed to be going nowhere fast, Joe thought. He should have known better than to expect anything but fairy tales from an astrologist.
“What can you tell me about the last few people who jumped?” he prodded.
“That they have met their destiny.”
Angelica stared him down at that, her hands no longer crossed, but palm-down on the table. She looked ready to either jump up or throw the table at him; he wasn’t sure which.
“So I suspected,” he countered. “But who were they? When did they jump?”
“Why do you vant to know these things?” she whispered. Her face was now as white as her hands, which were pressed hard against the table.
“Because I do, is all,” he snapped, and slapped himself inwardly for his irritated tone. “I saw them take the Canady boy out of the water. The police chief didn’t want to talk about it. Hell, my own boss didn’t want me to write much about it. I want to know why these people are jumping. And don’t tell me it’s because of some hocus-pocus monster locked up in a cave!”
“Your five minutes is up, Joe. And I’m afraid I have better paying clients scheduled for the rest of ze afternoon. We’ll have to do this another time.”
She nearly ran from the room, the beads exploding behind her as they clinked and tangled together.
“I guess I’m letting myself out?” he asked the room with a slight grin. He started to leave, but then paused in the doorway to look back at the table.
The five-dollar bill had apparently flown from the room as well.
CHAPTER SIX
“Sometimes you just don’t know when to give up,” Joe said to himself as he scanned the crowd. “Why are you here?”
The cemetery was crowded with people trying to keep out of the midmorning sun and under the green and white canopy. A minister stood at the front of the crowd next to a brilliantly glossed oak casket. Joe caught a “dust to dust” passage before his eyes lit on a familiar face. He sidled through the people slowly, making his way toward the front of those gathered to the left of the casket. An older woman glared at him as he stepped in front of her, but he excused himself and kept moving. Until he stood beside her.
“Angelica?”
Her eyes widened as she recognized him.
“What are you doing here?” she spat.
“I don’t really know,” he whispered back with a half grin. “It just seemed right, me having been at the scene of the crime and all.”
She stared at him a moment more, as if searching his face for another reason. Then she faced front again and ignored him.
Joe shrugged and crossed his arms. He’d talk to her some more after the ceremony.
A portly woman cried openly in the first row. He assumed this was the mother, Rhonda Canady. She wore a gray skirt and jacket, suitable for mourning, he supposed. When the minister walked over and leaned in to have a private word, Joe knew for sure it was her. Another woman, this one tall and thin, held Rhonda’s arm through it all, patting her on the shoulder when the minister returned to the casket. He gave a signal, and two men began to lower the wooden box into the earth.
“Who’s that with Mrs. Canady?” Joe whispered to Angelica. She stared darkly at him through slitted eyes and hissed, “That’s Karen Sander. We went to school with Rhonda.”
We, she’d said. Without much of an accent. Which would make sense if she went to school here. How could you grow up with a thick Gypsy accent in Terrel?
Joe glanced at her surreptitiously. She hadn’t mentioned anything the other day about knowing the Canadys. But maybe that’s why George had sent him to Angelica. If she was friends with the dead kid’s mom, maybe she knew more than she had let on. Maybe the old janitor hadn’t steered him sour after all.
“Did you know James well?” he whispered.
“No,” she answered quickly. “Rhonda and I have not been friends for some time. Excuse me now.”
She pushed her way past him and strode quickly away from the gathering as, in the front of the crowd, Rhonda Canady tossed a handful of dirt into the hole where her son’s casket lay.
Joe waited until the crowd began to disperse and Mrs. Canady was busy speaking with the minister. Then he strolled toward the grave.
“Mrs. Sander?” he said, reaching out to gently tap the woman’s arm.
She turned to him slowly, as if moving through tar. Her eyes were red with tears, and the stress of the situation was highlighting the crow’s-feet just beginning to wear at their corners. But the freckles on her nose and cheeks, and the wave of her dark hair still held some flash of youth. Joe figured her in her late thirties, early forties. A little old, but not bad, he found himself thinking, then shook the thought from his head.
“Mrs. Sander, I work for the Terrel Daily Times, and I wrote James’ obituary for yesterday’s paper. I didn’t want to bother Mrs. Canady, but I was hoping you might be able to tell me more about James.”
“What do you want to know?” she asked. Her voice was heavy, and her eyes refused to leave the six-foot hole in the earth a short distance away.
“Well, I’ve heard that Terrel’s Peak has claimed a lot of lives. I was just wondering if James ever talked about being suicidal before this happened. Or, do you know if he happened to be friends with any of the kids who have jumped from the peak in the past?”
“Was he a copycat? That’s what you want to know?”
She turned at last to give him her full attention. Her eyes flared from empty pits to fiery black holes.
“No, ma’am, not exactly. I just want to know what kind of—”
“What kind of kid jumps off a cliff, Mr….?”
“Kieran, ma’am.”
“The kind of kid that jumps off a cliff, Mr. Kieran, was my son, William. The kind of kid that jumps off a cliff is”—she pointed at a slim blonde woman talking with Rhonda— “Monica Kelly’s daughter, Margaret. There is no kind of kid that jumps off a cliff. There are only dead kids who’ve done it. I’m sorry, Mr. Kieran, but I just really don’t want to talk about this right now.”
Amazing, Joe thought as Karen Sander abruptly walked away to join Rhonda and Monica at the edge of the grave. Within five minutes he had managed to drive two women away from him—at a funeral, where people were supposed to be open armed and comforting. Was it him, or were people in this town really touchy ab
out this cliff?
And it was damned strange that all three of those women had had kids go cliff-diving without a hang glider. What were the odds? And they all knew Angelica. Maybe he’d have to pay the palm reader another visit. But this time, he needed to have a little more information before he tried to pump her. He needed a handle to prime the pump. The Times’ morgue would take days to weed through to find what he was looking for. But with some names to scan for, he could use the library’s microfilm collection of the Terrel Daily Times. He ought to be able to sift through papers fast enough to get the dates and circumstances of the deaths of Margaret Kelly and William Sander. He doubted their obituaries would say much, but it never hurt to check.
So absorbed was he in following his train of thought, that he didn’t even realize that for the first time in weeks, he was truly, utterly happy. As Joe Kieran walked away from the funeral and unlocked his car door, he was whistling.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Cindy Marshfield waited to cry until she was home from the funeral. And then it all came out like a June rainstorm. She left her mom downstairs and hid in her room with the door closed. It seemed like someone else’s room now, she thought, lying back on the bed to stare at the ceiling. She’d been away for months, and coming back to her old high school room was like visiting a friend’s home—familiar, comfortable, but not hers. Her eyes filled with tears as she traced the spider-web patterns in the paint on the ceiling and relived the past couple days.
The call had come while she was at class. Her roommate, Brenda, had actually picked up the phone and talked to Cindy’s mom. It was two hours later before she could relay the news to Cindy.
“I’ve got some pretty bad news,” Brenda had begun just after Cindy walked into their cramped dorm room. She’d looked curiously over at Brenda, waiting for the punch line that was sure to follow such a pronouncement from her usually giddy friend. But Brenda’s face hadn’t lifted.
