“I’m wet,” I mumbled.
“Hang on,” I heard Andrews say into the phone, “I think he’s awake.”
“I’m awake.”
Andrews listened to the person on the other end of his telephone conversation and then handed the phone to me.
“Hello, Lucinda,” I guessed, finally managing to sit up.
“If I had a gun I’d shoot you myself,” she fumed. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
I knew I was in trouble then. I couldn’t remember ever hearing her curse.
“We just went to Fit’s Mill,” I began, hoping to convince her that the issue was distance. “It’s only ten minutes from my house.”
“It’s a half an hour,” she snapped.
“Not if you take the shortcut,” I said, but instantly regretted it.
“You cut through those woods? When drunk boys are out there shooting at wild hogs? You listen to me. I am going to get a pair of handcuffs from the sheriff of this town and I am going to lock you to your bed.”
“Not that I wouldn’t enjoy certain aspects of that,” I answered, rubbing my forehead, trying to clear my mind.
“Shut up.”
“Okay.”
“Put Andrews back on.”
I held out the phone. Andrews shook his head.
“Tell her I’m not here,” he whispered.
“I heard that!” the tinny voice on the phone shouted.
“You called her,” I told Andrews.
He sighed and took the phone. He listened. Then he listened some more. He closed his eyes. He wiped rainwater off his face.
At last he said, “Right.” Then he closed the phone and put it in his shirt pocket.
“Did you know,” I said to Andrews, trying to stand up, “that the first mass murderer of the twentieth century was a German named Fritz Haarmann?”
“Mm-hmm,” he answered. “That movie M? With Peter Lorre? Supposed to be about that guy.”
I shook my head. “How do you know these things?”
“I am astonishingly knowledgeable about a ridiculously high number of things,” he assured me, “and incredibly erudite about same. Plus, I love old movies and you happened to hit one I’ve seen seventeen times.”
“You’ve seen a Peter Lorre movie seventeen times?”
“I’ve seen that Peter Lorre movie seventeen times. I’ve seen The Maltese Falcon, like, maybe fifty. And that’s got Peter Lorre in it too.”
“Okay but did you know that this Haarmann was in prison the same time as Hitler?”
“Wow. Did not know that. And you bring this up now because—?”
“I didn’t bring it up.” I stepped off the grave. “My mother told me about it.”
Andrews stood. “Ah. Another piece of the puzzle. Glad to know Hitler figures into your current situation. He’s behind the plot to kill you, is he?”
“That’s not what I said at all,” I fired back.
“Still. Nazis do make the best bad guys, really.”
“Laugh all you want to,” I said, doing my best to head back toward my truck. “These are the only clues I’ve got.”
“Clues from your dead mother?”
“Some of them are from other sources.”
“I’m taking you home,” he said, some of the humor gone from his voice. “You might be used to Lucinda being mad at you, you certainly deserve it. But I don’t care to hear that sound in her voice ever again. I’m taking you home. I’m not letting you leave your house ever again. For any reason. We’ll grow old together and die there. You’ll go first, of course, because I’m in much better shape.”
“And that’s what makes you think you can keep me from going wherever I want to?”
“That’s part of it.” He’d caught up with me and had the truck keys already in his hand. “But to really keep you from going anywhere all I have to do is run you around a little bit, feed you solid food, and then wait for you to pass out.”
“Yes.” That’s as far as my thinking went before I bent over and threw up what little lunch I’d consumed, and every bit of illegal liquor I’d drunk.
* * *
The rain was letting up by the time we turned off the dirt road and into the woods. The ramshackle farmhouse that was the path marker seemed deserted. The lawn chair was gone. No animals, no people, no sign of life existed anywhere on the grounds. I began to wonder if I’d really seen anyone there at all when we’d gone by the place earlier.
The mud in the woods was difficult, but not impossible. The darkened sky gave a certain luster of despair to the forest that it had not known when we were traveling in the opposite direction. The only good thing I could think of was that pig hunters would most likely be under a tree or in a car or on the way home owing to the rain. Still, I kept a sharp eye out for any movement in the trees.
As we neared Highway 76, Andrews slowed down.
“Left up here,” I said, still scanning the woods for men with guns.
“Sh,” Andrews whispered. “Look.”
I turned to see the black 1964 Lincoln Continental parked on the shoulder of Highway 76. It was impossible to tell if anyone was inside. I had the sensation that it was a mythically huge crow, waiting by the roadside for something dead to eat.
“What should we do?” Andrews asked, still whispering.
“Act as if it’s not there,” I told him. “Maybe it’s not.”
He stopped the truck, shifted to neutral, and turned his entire body so that he could stare me down.
“Maybe it’s not there?” He poked my arm. “Did you hit your head when you fell down?”
“Yes.” My gaze was locked on the black car, waiting for any movement, any indication that someone was inside it.
“You are very much not ever going out of the house again ever,” he mumbled, barely coherently.
He turned back and shifted into first gear, eased the truck forward. Suddenly every sound was alive to me: mud shushing, wet twigs creaking, wind in the upper branches, individual drops of rain on the truck’s roof and hood. Just as the front tires of the truck hit the pavement of Highway 76, the lights of the Lincoln came on.
“Keep going?” Andrews asked.
“Yes,” I urged him impatiently. “Only faster.”
Andrews hit the gas, and the rear wheels of the truck spun wildly. We fishtailed and were unable to gain purchase of the road. The Lincoln moved calmly forward, an almost stately wafting, and came to a stillness once again right in front of the truck, its driver’s side door only a few feet from our front bumper.
The truck sputtered and coughed. Andrews realized, too late, that he’d taken his foot off the clutch. Our engine went to silence, and the sounds of nature prevailed.
The driver’s window of the Lincoln lowered slowly.
Andrews watched the window go down and asked very casually, “Did you know that Lincoln Continental was one of the first cars to have electric windows?”
“What?” I asked distractedly, straining my eyes to pierce the darkness inside the car that was nearly blocking our way.
“It was cool, I’m just saying.” Andrews sniffed.
Then, a voice from inside the car: “You boys all right?”
“You were in my room!” I called out sharply. “My hospital room. At the hospital.”
“Yes,” was all he said. “I see you got the clothes I left for you.”
“You were pretending to be an orderly.”
“Naw, I didn’t pretend to be a thing in this world. But I did bring you some tea. Made you feel more better.”
“You were dressed like an orderly,” I said accusingly.
“Damn,” he said, laughing. “Did the tea make you feel better or not, boy?”
I exhaled. “Well, yes. It did. But that isn’t really the point.”
“Can’t agree. It was the very exact point of that tea. So.”
“Ask him what he wants,” Andrews whispered.
“Fever Devilin.” The man in the car leaned forward
a bit so that I could see his face. It was a radiant face, the face of an angel or a mystic—or a lunatic. “I came to help. Came as soon as I heard you in the hospital. If you can get that damn truck out the mud, let’s go back to your place and talk about it.”
“You know my name,” I said, “but I don’t know yours.”
He smiled. “That’s right. Can you get onto the highway or not?”
I turned to Andrews. “Can you?”
He started the truck, slipped it into first gear once more, and eased forward. “I guess so.”
The Lincoln shot forward so suddenly that I thought my eyes were tricking me. In seconds it was gone down the highway, vanished past a bend nearly a quarter of a mile away.
“Whoa,” Andrews said, staring in the direction that the car had gone. “That was fast.”
“Did he see something?” I frantically checked the woods around us, but there was nothing I could see.
“He’s going to beat us back to your house.” Andrews nudged the truck up onto the highway, turned left, and we were on solid blacktop. “Wait. How does he know where you live?”
“Right.” I started sweating, even though I didn’t feel hot. It was difficult for me to tell, but I was afraid I might have a high temperature. I felt my forehead. It was clammy.
“So,” Andrews said, urging the truck forward, “go home?”
“I think I really did hit my head,” I complained. “Or maybe there was something wrong with that food we just had.”
“You threw up because you haven’t really eaten a meal in three months. There was nothing wrong with that food. The liquor, on the other hand, is apparently affecting my motor skills. My arms feel disconnected from my body.”
“And you stalled my truck out back there. That doesn’t usually happen.”
“Even when I’m drunk,” he agreed.
I grabbed the dash and gripped it. “God!”
“What?”
“We’ve been poisoned!” I leaned forward suddenly. “Those men in the restaurant gave us poison.”
The truck slowed, barely perceptibly. “Poison? Poison barbecue? They keep that on hand, do they? Just in case?”
“No, but,” I sputtered.
“There is really something wrong with you.” But he was smiling.
“Are you losing feeling in your arms or not?” I couldn’t stop the rising panic.
“No. Jesus. I’m just not used to that brew, and I drank the whole jar. Also: I didn’t throw up, I didn’t pass out; I didn’t hallucinate my dead mother. That’s you. It’s not poison barbecue or bad liquor. This is you being you. You’re very odd. Seems to me that you’d know this about yourself by now. The unexamined life is not worth living.”
“Listen,” I objected, struggling to catch my breath, “if the unexamined life is not worth living, my life is worth a trillion dollars. I spend most of my waking hours every day wondering what the hell is wrong with me.”
“Well, I can tell you that one of the things not wrong with you is poison.” Andrews shoved the truck into gear and we sped along up the highway. “Stacey told me that you had a panic attack in the hospital. Was it sort of like what you’re feeling now?”
I exhaled. As I did I tried to imagine that poison was panic and both were a black smoke pouring out of my mouth and into the sky, mingling with the charcoal clouds there. I had to admit to myself that I was feeling exactly the way I’d felt in the hospital. And I’d been certain that I’d been poisoned then too. The only thing that kept me from completely relaxing about the idea was the fact that the strange man with the New Orleans accent appeared to be the proximate cause of my panic both times.
“Fever?” Andrews pressed.
“Yes. I’m okay. I’m feeling better. Let’s get back to the house.”
“I have to admit that I’m very curious about this guy,” Andrews said affably. “Cool accent.”
I spent the rest of the trip back to the house trying to calm my breathing, quiet my mind, and prepare for a conversation with the stranger.
* * *
The Lincoln was parked very neatly in front of my house. There was no sign of its driver. Andrews parked my truck close to it and we sat for a moment without talking.
“So.” Andrews was staring at the empty front porch. “Where is he?”
As if cued by those words, my front door opened and the man appeared in the doorway, waving.
“Come on in,” he called. “I put on some water for tea.”
Then he disappeared back inside.
Andrews turned to me. “Well. If there’s tea. You didn’t lock the door?”
“I did,” I said slowly, “although I hardly ever do.”
“I think you should start doing it all the time.”
“For all the good it does,” I pointed out.
We both extracted ourselves from the muddy truck without further comment and made for the house. I realized after a quick examination that we were both a mess: soaked to the bone, caked with mud, and Andrews was still a bit drunk.
We clomped onto the porch. I could hear my guest humming softly in the kitchen. The melody was beautiful, but I didn’t know the tune.
As I opened my door the aroma of lemon and ginger nearly overcame me. The tea was apparently very potent.
“Come on in,” the man beckoned, as if it were his own house.
He stood comfortably in the kitchen. He was dressed, as I had partially seen, in a sharp black suit from another era: thin lapels, three buttons. His bone-white shirt was starched. His dark maroon tie was also thin, nineteen-fifties style, with some sort of tiny crest at one place on it close to his heart. I realized I had seen the same outfit on Miles Davis in a black and white photo somewhere.
“I’ve got to get out of these clothes,” Andrews insisted.
The man gave us a quick once-over and agreed. “Good. The tea be ready when you come down.”
“What’s in the tea?” I asked, well aware that suspicion edged every syllable.
“Angelica root and van-van,” he said proudly.
“I don’t know what that is,” Andrews said slowly, “either of those things.”
“Gris-gris,” the man assured us. “Angelica archangelica is the botanical name of the root, and van-van is made from lemongrass, citronella, palmarosa, gingergrass, and vertivet.”
“All right,” Andrews complained, “but you realize that I didn’t recognize a single noun you said.”
“Naw.” He laughed. “I expect not. You got no gris-gris in London. None at all.”
Andrews turned to me. “What is he saying?”
“Gris-gris,” I answered quickly, eyes still on my guest, “is Creole voodoo.” The man laughed so heartily that it was a little frightening. Combined with the low, fast-moving clouds and the distant rumbling thunder, it was quite effective as a portent to voodoo.
“You’re Creole,” I said steadily. “Not Cajun. I thought your accent was Cajun, but it’s not really. It’s a little outside my area of expertise, so I think I can be forgiven the confusion.”
“Oh I don’t think much about either one of those two words,” the man said. He moved to the stove and stirred the pot he had put there. “Heritage, lineage, family history—it’s all a whole lot more complicated than a single word can handle. Needs a whole lot more than that to tell the story. My mother came from France. Her mother came from Belgium. Somewhere in there we even got German and Dutch, but my skin is pretty dark so I have to assume they bumped into an African or two. You never can tell. It’s all very confusing.”
Andrews headed up the stairs. “Well, I’m changing. These clothes are disgusting.”
I continued to watch the man in my kitchen.
“Take your mother for another example.” The stranger went on stirring his tea, not looking my way. “You may not be perfectly acquainted with all the facts about her genealogy.”
It only took a second for a few of the pieces to fall into place.
“You know something about m
y mother,” I said quietly. “About my heritage. Something important.”
He nodded once. “That’s why I’m here.”
“Who are you?” I whispered.
“Well.” He grinned, staring deeply into the tea. “I think you might find the answer to that a little funny.”
17.
The tea was, despite my suspicions, delicious. A bit of sourwood honey took the edge off, and it was very enlivening. Andrews and I sat on my sofa sipping it while our guest stood by the empty fireplace humming quietly. I was watching his every move, ready to jump, ready to dodge. Andrews was slumped down with his eyes closed, smiling.
Without warning, the man stopped humming. The sudden silence was so startling that Andrews opened his eyes and I jumped enough to spill tea onto my shirt.
“You all used to keep a clock on this mantel,” the man said softly.
Instantly it was clear that this was the man who had tried to kill me. He had snuck in the house in December, he knew about my mother; he’d moved my clock. He was back at that moment, lulling us into calm, readying to finish the task he had begun before Christmas. I set down my teacup and stood in the same motion. I planted my feet, balled my fists, and prepared for anything he might do.
“Andrews,” I said, deadly calm. “Would you please hurry into the kitchen and call Skidmore? Tell him my assailant is here and ask him to get here as quickly as he can to arrest him.”
The man smiled. “Hang on a second, Dr. Andrews. The man who tried to kill Fever is not in the house at this moment.”
Andrews blinked several times in rapid succession. “What?”
“If you would just simmer down a bit,” the man said softly to me, “I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
“I want to know about you,” I insisted.
Andrews sat forward, still groggy. “Do I call Skidmore or not?”
“No,” the man said in a very deep voice. “Finish your tea.”
Instantly Andrews sat back, took a sip of his tea, and closed his eyes again.
“Look,” I began.
“You want to know who I am,” the man said, his voice a rumble of thunder. “Take a deep breath in and then blow it out, you hear the words I’m about to say. You got to have ears that can hear. You got to have eyes that can see. So go on and breathe.”
A Corpse's Nightmare Page 13
