As we moved off again, her head kept leaning at slight angles, taking in the sights around her. The town had come fully awake. There was quite a lot of traffic in the center this particular day. Folk were filling up the diners. And the sidewalks were becoming fairly busy, bustling. The truth is, the Landing is a bigger and more heavily populated community than it genuinely ought to be. That’s because, unlike other provincial towns in New England, no one ever gets to leave.
“A lot of people here dress pretty old-fashioned,” she told me, apropos of nothing. “I already noticed that.”
I hadn’t before—I had no reason to. Clothing’s hardly a big issue in a place like this.
“The dress sense round here?” she went on. “It’s almost like stepping back into the fifties. I keep expecting Fonzie to appear.”
Was that how we genuinely looked, I wondered, to someone normal from the outside world? Had we been isolated so long that we’d fallen out of step?
But I wasn’t sure I liked her manners. Were city folk this blunt the entire time? Although I had to admit that, at close quarters, she smelled just as pleasant as she looked. And it had been a good long while since I’d had someone this attractive sitting next to me.
We got clear of the center, still heading north. The traffic became a good deal thinner, just us and a push-bike sometimes. There were wider sidewalks with grass verges. Rows of elm and maple trees. Well-tended front yards. And then finally, we were into an area of single-story houses, all extremely well maintained. Not a crooked shingle, nor a broken picket in a fence. Everything was looked after meticulously. I’d grown up here, and it had always been this way.
“My neighborhood,” I told our visitor.
“Looks okay.” Lauren turned the gum around in her mouth. “This isn’t exactly what you’d call a small town, is it? So how come it doesn’t show up on my map?”
“A printing error?”
Which, even to my ears, sounded pretty lame. She stared at me oddly and I couldn’t blame her.
“No. I don’t think it’s that. You got Area 51 round here or something?”
She cracked a grin. Then got her cell phone from her purse, and dialed a number far longer than any I was used to. One which had a city code. I couldn’t help but watch her, fascinated.
Someone picked up at the other end. Her whole manner went stern and businesslike.
“Jeff? It’s Lauren. I’ve found Hanlon. I’m in a place called…”
Then she tailed off, her expression growing puzzled.
“Jeff?” she asked, rather more loudly. “Hey? Can you hear me?”
The line apparently went dead. She peered at the phone, then tried redialing. And didn’t even get an answer, this time. I had been expecting that. She had no way of knowing it…but when you’re in this town, there is a real serious problem attached to communicating with the world beyond its borders.
“What the hell is going on?” She jabbed at the keypad a few more times. “It was working before.”
“We have trouble with reception,” I explained. “The woods.”
“The…?”
“We’re so deep in them. They mess up the signal sometimes.”
She squinted at me awkwardly, then stared out through her side window again.
“This really is an isolated place, huh? I couldn’t imagine living anywhere like this.”
“Oh,” I assured her, “it can get pretty interesting here from time to time.”
“What, you have a swap meet twice a year?”
Which should have annoyed me. But I was getting used to her attitude, and didn’t let it bother me. In spite of her appearance, she carried a hardness with her, like a shaft of steel inside a velvet coating. She had either been born with it, or it had formed. But there was no doubt that she needed it. I found it hard to even imagine what her job was like. All those gangsters. All those junkies. Jesus Christ, a city cop.
She’d obviously been places and done stuff I could only dream of. I was learning new things, the whole while she talked. And so the best course of action, I finally decided, was to simply go along with the flow of this, and hope she never found out how different a place the Landing really was.
“We’re an inward-looking community,” I told her. “We live our lives our own way, and keep ourselves to ourselves.”
She munched at her gum, then pulled a face.
“That’s Massachusetts for you, I guess.”
On the whole of Kenveigh Street, there’s only one home that shows any slightest sign of neglect. And it’s mine. The lawn out front is a little too tall, and has crabgrass. Some moss has formed on the concrete in front of the garage door. And none of the windows have been cleaned in quite a while. But people around here understand my history, and know that I’m kept busy a lot. So they’re polite enough not to comment on any of it. Which doesn’t mean that they necessarily like it.
When we pulled up, Lauren looked renewedly puzzled.
“You live here alone?”
This was a family-sized house. What could I tell her—that a would-be demigod had spirited them away? I opted for a simpler explanation.
“Divorced, I’m afraid. Two years now.”
“And you got the house?”
I was forced to think quickly.
“My wife left Massachusetts. Headed down to Florida. She took the kids with her.”
Sympathy began to creep into her gaze. “That must be rough. You ever see them?”
My jaw hardened of its own accord. “No.”
Lauren put her gum in the ashtray. “That sucks.”
“You get used to it,” I told her.
“People can get used to anything. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck.”
Fortunately, none of my neighbors were outside to see this. No curtains moved. I carried her case for her. It turned out to be very light. We headed up the front path. But as soon as we were inside, Lauren spotted the phone and asked me, “Do you mind?”
She headed to it without even waiting for an answer.
I already knew what would happen. But it gave me enough time to clear a few things up, ahead of her. I went into bathroom. Alicia’s nail varnish and makeup were still there, and there was a robe of hers on a hook on the door.
I bundled them up and hid them in a cabinet. Then I went into the living room and did the same.
I could hear her dialing a third time, rather angrily, by the time I’d finished.
“I still can’t get through,” she called out.
“Same problem?”
“How can it be? This is a landline.”
Which was a good point. I was going to have to watch my step.
“Maybe the switchboard’s down. It happens sometimes.”
“What?”
I changed the subject hurriedly.
“Let’s get you settled.”
I gave her Pete’s room, which had a larger bed than Tammy’s. He had been into all kinds of fearsome creatures, alive or long dead. There were dinosaurs depicted on the bedspread, snarling at each other. And a variety of large predatory cats on the wallpaper and drapes. An alarm clock in the shape of a T.rex sat on the nightstand. We had let him choose it all himself.
“Where’s your computer?” Lauren asked.
Goddamn. Here in the Landing, there was little point in owning such a device. A computer will do some of the things that it’s normally supposed to, for sure. But we cannot reach the outside world by means of one. We’ve tried sending out emails. And we’ve tried going on message boards. Our communications simply get ignored. And without that facility, the machine is just a box that pushes largely useless information at you. Our libraries have a couple. But I was forced to admit I didn’t have one.
She looked suspicious all over again.
“So how do you run a business?”
“All my work is local.”
“Wow!”
Wow indeed. I fetched her my bathrobe, and then showed her where the shower was.
She
closed the bathroom door behind her. Water started hissing after that. I walked back into the living room. And, I have to admit, something clenched up hard inside me, listening to that retreating sound. How long had it been since anybody else had used the shower in this house?
My heart was thumping gently. And my mind felt slightly muzzy. I went to the mantelpiece, and stared at the photo of my family I keep there. Time seemed to turn to a gray blur and drifted by.
The hissing and spattering noises had stopped again, by the time I came around. I heard the bathroom door swing open.
Lauren padded, barefoot, past my doorway. She was toweling her hair, and didn’t even seem to notice I was looking at her. But I found it hard to breathe, for a while after that.
My robe was far too large for her. She’d rolled the sleeves back, but was tripping over the hems. Her face was turned away from me. And considering the way that I was staring, thank heavens for that.
It could have been Alicia. Same build. Same height. Almost identical coloration.
She was gone a moment later, back in Pete’s room. But she didn’t seem to close the door. I thought I heard the bedsprings creak.
It’s not her, I kept on telling myself. It’s a stranger. Although something in me didn’t want to listen.
No more sounds were coming from the room. I went back into the hallway. Reached out cautiously and rapped at her door. Then waited until I got no answer before peering cautiously inside.
It was apparent what had happened. She had only meant to sit down on the bed a while. Her bare feet were still on the floor. But she was sprawled out on her back now, fast asleep among the dinosaurs. Exhausted from the start of this, she’d gone out like a light.
I gazed at her for rather too long. Then I went back to the front door. Got out my own cell phone and called Saul, keeping my voice low.
“Wait a couple of hours before you come and get her,” I told him, describing the way things were.
“Which is to miss the bigger picture, Ross. What the hell are we supposed to do with her?”
“I’d say we’d better find this Hanlon quickly, since she isn’t going back without him.”
“And if she begins to suspect…?”
“She’s already started to.”
Saul grunted.
“Show her our provincial side, as much as you can,” I suggested to him. “She already thinks this place is weird, but only because—so as far as she’s concerned—we’re a bunch of hicks. Anything that strikes her as off-center? She’ll put it down to that, most likely.”
“Sounds like a plan, although a fairly stupid one,” he grumbled. “What are you going to do now?”
“I need to consult with someone.”
Which made him grunt again.
“I could ask who,” he said, “but I’d honestly prefer not to. Let me know what you find out.”
CHAPTER 12
I left a brief note by the side of Lauren’s bed. Then I drove to the commercial district, which is hidden behind a strip of parkland with a double row of fir trees, at the northeastern edge of town. There were a couple of older structures in view, the lumber mill, the brick-built smokestack. But most of the buildings had gone up between the fifties and the modern day.
I was heading past office blocks before too much longer. Warehouses and light-industrial factories. A truck went by that was from out of town. I could see the driver’s face behind the windshield. He looked rather anxious. That’s the way the curse usually works on folk who were not born here. They don’t like visiting this place. They want to leave as soon as possible. And once gone, we’ve come to the conclusion that they simply forget about us, all knowledge of our town dissolving from their minds.
I watched the trailer in my rearview mirror. It was moving away from me at quite a speed. Then a forklift truck piled with wooden crates came rumbling out from a factory door, yanking my attention back.
It stopped for me, and I continued on. I was driving to the very outer edge, where the township gave way to dense forest. Dr. Lehman Willets lived out there, if you could call it living.
“Sanderson’s Supplies” read the big sign painted near the top of the building. There were three stories of it and a basement, all of grimy, crumbling brick, the mortar interlaced with moss. The windows were dusty, lightless. Some were broken. And you would have thought it was abandoned. But everyone knew who inhabited the place.
If you don’t count Raine, who at least has Hampton, then Lehman Willets is this community’s best-known hermit. And he has another distinction as well. He is the only person living here who was actually born in the outside world.
He’d been here for a good few years. And the fact that he could walk out any time he liked?…Let’s just say he has his reasons, and they’re not exactly happy ones. Most people are afraid of him. So far as I know, no one ever visits him, except for me.
He’d set his home up in the lower sections of this place. And so I headed for the metal door around the side. There was a wasps’ nest in an air vent higher up, the black dots spiraling out from it rather sluggishly by this time of the year, distracted by the cooler air. Dimly conscious in their tiny minds of the approaching winter, their own End of Days. That had put them in a bad mood, which was understandable. One of them hummed angrily in front of my face until I swatted it away.
I was about to turn the handle, when a window swung open above me. I must admit, it made me jump. I’d not been expecting anything like that. When Willets’s head came poking out, it was in silhouette against the sky. My surprise leveled off to puzzlement. He was somebody who almost never altered his routine. So what was he doing up there?
I could just make out his pupils from this distance. They were tiny specks, a searing shade of red. And I supposed that he was scowling at me, since the man never had much of a cheerful demeanor. He’s African-American, and looks much older than he really is, gray-haired before his time.
“Oh, it’s you, Devries!” he called.
As if he’d been expecting someone else?
“What are you doing up there?”
“Been here since midnight,” he told me.
“Why?”
“Felt something creeping around, late last night. Something pretty weird, on the night air. Can’t tell you what it was. But…something we’re not used to. So I spirited myself up here—it just felt safer.”
Then he seemed to remember that I couldn’t move around that way.
“You’d better use the fire escape.”
Everything he’d told me came as a surprise. I knew the kind of magic he could conjure. What was capable of making him that nervous? I thought about it on the way up, and didn’t like the answers that I got. Willets might be an outsider, but he’d taught himself the use of magic in his first months here. He’d turned out to have a natural aptitude for it. And by this time he was, for all his shortcomings and foibles, one of the strongest sorcerers in town. Most adepts can’t cure injuries or wounds, for instance. But Willets could.
Whatever had spooked him, it had to be something really serious. If he’d felt obliged to alter his habits, then everyone had cause to worry.
He had been, back in the normal world, a researcher of the paranormal. That was what had brought him here. The curse had not deterred him. And once he had arrived, he had learned witchcraft so quickly that—for a while—it had sent him on a downward spiral into pure dementia.
He was no longer that way. Dotty, yes. Unpredictable, sure. But insane, like in those early days? It was better not to think about it.
I reached another door at the top. And when I let myself through, trumpet music washed around me. It was very dim in here. Not that he had covered up the windows. He’d simply made them go opaque. The holes in the glass too, which seemed impossible. But not for Willets, apparently. I hung back while my eyes adjusted.
He’d lived underground for so long that he couldn’t abide direct sunlight. He seemed to have left most of his possessions downstairs. The b
ig leather-bound volumes on the subject of arcana. And the old-fashioned iron kettle that he usually kept on the boil. His folding bed was here, though—he’d already sat back down on it. And at the center of the room was the source of the music. A matt black plinth with a turntable on top, the one thing left in the whole world he really seemed to care about. There was no other equipment, not even speakers. The chords lifted straight off the vinyl and then floated up into the air.
You could feel the power rising off him. As he came into clearer view, I could see that he was dressed in his habitual serge pants and tweed jacket. He didn’t even look at me. His chin was resting on his knuckles, and his features were intense and furrowed as he drank the music in.
“When there’s something genuinely bothering me,” he told me, still not looking up, “I always find myself going back to Miles. He soothes me like no one else can. This was recorded at the Blackhawk Club in San Francisco, April 1961. I went there once. A lovely city. Probably still is.”
He came from South Carolina himself, although he’d been a lecturer at Boston U. But it was rare for him to mention the outside world at all. So he was in a peculiar mood this morning.
His eyelids slipped shut, and he waited for the final chords of “Love, I’ve Found You” to slip away. Then he raised his right hand slightly, gave a gentle click of his fingertips. The turntable and plinth both vanished. And a canvas chair—for my benefit—appeared on the same spot.
As I settled down, I noticed something else. He’d only been up here a few hours. But small creatures had already started gathering around him. Spiders were spinning brand-new webs off in the corners. A few mice were watching him over by the skirting board. A pigeon had got in somehow, and was eyeing him from a rafter. That was the way it was, with the good doctor. His power was so massive that it captured everything’s attention.
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