Christ, she thought; Casey, watch where you’re going.
She was called back inside, and taking care of the remaining customers took all her patience while Doug stood behind the bar and went through the motions of mixing and serving, as if he were a robot. She tried a dozen times to get him to talk, but he answered only with sickly grins and noncommittal grunts, and she gave up in disgust, wondering why the hell a little fight should affect him this way.
That self-deception lasted only a few moments.
She knew damned well what was bothering him, and hadn’t hesitated at all to press on him the necessity of his staying behind with her. Gil was gone, the waitresses nervous, the crowd rowdy, and he was the only other man in town she could trust to keep the place from being torn apart. He’d agreed, but he might as well have gone for all the company he was.
Then worry over Casey soon turned to anger—if he was dumb enough to go to the estate, then nothing she could do would stop him from paying. Unlike her brother, she remembered early; and unlike her brother, she didn’t mind a bit.
When Bud returned and told them that story about the knife wound, she almost screamed.
Then Doug left with only a quick word and a nod, and by two-thirty she was alone, rinsing out the last of the glasses, taking the cash from its drawer and stuffing it into a canvas sack whose mouth she tied closed with a broad leather strap.
The lights winked out, the neon sign lingering even after the switch was thrown.
She walked to the house through a gap in the hedge, and went through to the kitchen without turning on any lights. The sack was dropped into the freezer, the safest place in the house since she never bothered with a safe. Then she walked to the telephone and dialed Doug’s number.
Four times she dialed, and four times she hung up before his end started ringing.
Then she sat alone in the parlor, in the dark, hands clasped in her lap, and she thought about Casey running through the hills, thought about Liz Egan lying bleeding on the ground.
Her left foot began to jump, and she grabbed her knee, forced it still.
She didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.
She thought about dying.
4
Bud sat on the edge of the bed, hands clasped on his knees. He was naked. Ollie was asleep beside him, murmuring now and then, her hand once brushing his hip. Below him the shop was quiet. Outside, he saw the round white cages the streetlamps dropped onto the street. A dove sounded, an owl answered.
I saw it.
He watched himself jump the Lockharts’ hedge, saw Liz on the gravel, saw his hands working, the smooth slice in the roll of fat at her side and the blood slipping out as if from a razor’s cut. He saw the gauze pads, the white tape, the stretcher, the man named Davermain, the ambulance lights muted against glare. He watched the hospital approach, swinging dizzy-ingly away as Gil took the entrance curve, dizzyingly back as he pulled up to the emergency ward door and saw the interns racing out, followed by a nurse.
The back doors swung open.
There was talk, nervous laughter, and Liz was gone, Davermain beside her, Bud climbing out and grabbing hold of the van’s corner to steady himself. He had been nervous, frightened, worried to death he had done the wrong thing and Liz would die because he had missed something in his training. He was scared, and Gil hadn’t helped by standing beside him and cursing Casey’s shitty aim. As if Bud would feel better if it were Bernie on the stretcher.
I saw it, he said a dozen times to the intern who could barely suppress his rage at what he thought had been a joke. Liz had a wicked bump on the back of her head where she had fallen, and that was what had knocked her out. There was no blood; there was a cut, but less than one you would get rubbing against a sharp twig. The intern hadn’t believed his story about Casey; Gil had hustled him into the van and they had left for Deerford, leaving Liz to be checked and released later that night.
When Gil showed him a fist if he didn’t shut up, he’d slumped into the corner and watched the road, and couldn’t understand what he’d done wrong. Even though Doug’s perfectly reasonable explanation had triggered the memory of the bogus fire, he was positive. Less positive because of that fire, but so damned sure!
Now he couldn’t sleep.
Ollie had done her best, even agreeing to help him call around to see if they could locate Hallman and find out if Doug had been right, that it was Bernie’s blood they had seen. But no one knew where Bernie was, and a few were already making jokes about Bud’s needing glasses, preferably the kind with soda bottle lenses.
When he began making noises about going out again, to inspect the parking lot, maybe drive back to the hospital and see Liz, she had rebelled. She told him bluntly that he was forgetting what had happened to them that afternoon, and it was obvious even to a blind man that’s he’d had another flashback. It was a horrible thing, most likely brought about by his concern for Liz, but it was just another hallucination.
She went to bed.
He sat in the living room at the back of the house and tried to make himself believe it.
He undressed and sat on the edge of the bed and tried to make himself believe it.
He walked back down to the Retirement Room, unlocked it, and switched on the light. The furniture waited for him, dark, patient, telling him there was no fire, that he couldn’t still smell the smoke or see the flames or watch the grey and black smoke billowing through the open window. There was nothing wrong here. It hadn’t changed at all. Until he saw the Indian lounge, and the scorch mark on the cushion.
He walked back upstairs and into the bathroom, lifted the lid from the toilet tank, and pulled out a large plastic bag. Water dropped onto his bare feet. He raised the bowl lid and opened the bag, dropped the marijuana into the water shred by shred and flushed it away. Then he returned to the bedroom and slipped under the covers. The night was still warm, but the room was cold and his teeth began to chatter, his legs began to jump, and when Ollie awoke to see that was the matter, all he could do was stare, and whisper, “I saw it.”
5
Liz huddled next to Clark in the Mercedes, a thin hospital blanket around her, the stench of disinfectant filling her nostrils. Every few seconds she reached up and gingerly touched the lump of bandage on the back of her head, and that would trigger the sight of Casey leaping out at her from the bar.
She grunted when she felt the knife passing into her side, and Clark tightened his arm around her shoulders.
“A miracle,” he said. “It’s a miracle you weren’t hurt.”
But I was, she thought; goddamnit, I was.
Clark had prevailed upon a nurse to drive him back to the tavern so he could pick up his car. It wasn’t difficult. He simply smiled through his tan and the woman practically fell into his arms. Then, quite on his own, he had driven over to the house where he found Heather waiting. In his best (she assumed) lawyer/fatherly manner, he’d explained what had happened, apparently giving it a rather romantic twist—it was Liz who had seen the fight, Liz who had recognized the danger and, without thinking, interceded to halt it. By the time he had finished, Heather was eating out of his hand and it was nothing for him to suggest she remain where she was until he’d brought her mother home.
“You ought to have that idiot arrested,” the intern had said to them as he walked them to the car. “God.”
“It wasn’t his fault,” Liz had insisted. “He thought . . . it was because there was all that blood . . .”
“Asshole,” the intern had muttered. “You people ought to get a real doctor over there, then things like this wouldn’t happen.”
Liz shivered.
the blade had cut her
Clark drove unerringly to the house and parked at the curb. All the lights were on in the living room, and before she was out of her seat, Heather exploded from the doorway and raced into her arms. Clark stood to one side, making himself busy locking the doors and fussing with his key case. Then he followed them up the shor
t walk to the brick steps, and to the landing just inside. Stairs led down into a darkened family room, led up to a hall and the living room on the left. The rooms were white, with a few wildlife prints scattered along the walls. Liz dropped onto the three-cushion sofa and held Heather close. Clark found himself a chair that faced them and settled in, crossing his legs at the knee, folding his hands in his lap.
Over in the corner a grandfather clock chimed twelve.
The chattering slowed, and Heather finally pulled out of her mother’s embrace and stared at her as if she were a woman she’d never seen before. “Mom, you’re a hero!”
“No, not really, dear. And where is your—”
“But Mr. Davermain said you tried to stop that fight!”
Liz managed a scolding look that Clark shrugged off, and let the blanket fall from her shoulders. Heather looked immediately at her side and reached out a finger to touch the unbroken fabric.
“Mom, I thought he stabbed you.”
“No, dear. We thought he did. All that happened was that I fell down and cracked my skull a little.”
“There’s no concussion,” Clark reminded her. “Just a bump.”
“A bitch of a one, too,” she said, wincing and slapping at Heather’s hand when she unhesitatingly prodded at the lumpy bandage. “Look, I thought Clark explained all this to you.”
“Oh, he did,” Heather agreed. Then, quite without warning, her eyes reddened and she started to cry. Liz felt her own tears on their way down her cheeks, and over her daughter’s shoulder she asked if Clark wouldn’t mind putting the kettle on in the kitchen. When he was gone, all too eager to be away, she stroked the girl’s back and looked down the hall toward the rooms at the far end.
“Where’s Keith?” she asked gently.
“Oh Mom,” Heather sobbed, “I thought you were dead. When Mr. Davermain came in looking like that, I remembered—”
Remembered the way the guests had come to the house after Ron’s funeral. Solemn at first, condolences, remembrances, then standing around and avoiding looking at Liz and the children until the food and drink were served.
“I know, dear, I know,” she said as she willed her son to get his butt out of bed and come comfort his mother.
“God, I thought—”
“Keith,” she said suddenly, sharply, pushing the girl away. “Heather, where is Keith?” She rose just as Clark came out of the kitchen with two cups of tea. When she asked him about her son, he looked bewildered, stammered, and finally just shrugged.
“Heather,” she said, ignoring the thumping in her head, “are you covering for him again? Damnit, has he come home yet?”
Without waiting for an answer, she strode furiously down the hallway, listening to Heather indignantly protesting her innocence behind her. The first door on the right was Heather’s, the first on the left the bathroom. At hall’s end were two more set into the corners—her own on the left. She opened the right-hand one without pausing, and stepped in.
“Oh my god,” she said, “oh god, no,” and fell heavily against the jamb.
“What is it, Liz?” Clark asked, his voice once again tinged with professional concern.
“Mom? Mom, what’s wrong?” Heather ran up behind her, looked in, and gasped.
The bed was empty.
“Where is he?” Liz demanded, turning on her daughter and grabbing her shoulders. “Where is he?”
Heather paled as her mother’s fingers dug into her skin and dragged her closer. “Mom, I—”
“Damnit, girl, where is your brother?”
“Listen, Liz,” Clark began.
“You keep out of this, Clark,” she snapped without looking at him. “Just . . . oh, go make some tea.”
“Mom, please, you’re hurting me.”
She glared into the girl’s wide, frightened eyes. “I’ll do more than hurt you, Heather Egan, if you don’t tell me right now where Keith is! You were supposed to be watching him! You were supposed to be watching him!”
She could hear herself yelling, could see the medication she’d been given fuzzing her vision until it seemed as if she were peering through gauze. But she couldn’t help herself. She lost one man in the family already, and now her only son, eleven years old, was out there god only knew where, in the dark, in the middle of nowhere, and all this child could do was complain about a little pain. What the hell did she know about pain?
Her bedroom door opened.
Keith stumbled out, rubbing his eyes. “Mom? Mom, what’s all the noise for?”
6
Casey could see the mansion squatting in the middle of his sixty acres, a dark formless lump untouched by the moonlight. The windows reflected nothing; the rolling lawn was bleached white as if buried by frost. A bird flew low and fast across the ground, leaving no shadow. Behind him one of Cleary’s hounds started barking again.
Shit, he thought; if Piper’s home, I’ll never get a chance.
He lay his hands on the wall’s top and climbed over smoothly, dropping on the other side, instantly running.
In the open like this he was vulnerable, a cinch target, and he tried to hunch over, but his weight was concentrated above his waist and he felt himself tipping. It didn’t matter. Upright or not, he was clearly visible from all sides. So he gulped deeply and began to sprint, staring at the house as if by his will he could bring it closer than it was.
Halfway there, he heard a noise.
It was a rumbling, like a subway train deep in its tunnel approaching its station; a grinding, as if the grass had turned to glass; a whistling, as if it were a late autumn wind coming down from the hill.
He glanced over his shoulder, puzzled, thinking maybe it was a hundred men vaulting the wall to give him chase, the sound of their feet striking the ground the sound that he heard.
It wasn’t a posse, and it wasn’t the wind.
It was a boulder. A jagged globe of grey stone that rumbled along the ground as though it were plunging down a steep slope.
And it was heading straight toward him.
He faltered in surprise, tripped, and sprawled to his knees. It wasn’t the boulder so much that kept him scrambling until he was up again and running; it was the sound. It was the fact that as it came closer it began to grow larger. A trick of the moonlight, but as the sound increased, so did the stone.
The ground rose, and he veered right to climb with it, broke over the top, and raced down again, into a deep trough swirling with shadows. His footsteps were muffled, his panting harsh and edged with fear. After twenty feet he struggled up a second rise and stopped, hands limp, jaw sagging while he tried to find air. The boulder, or whatever the hell it was, was hidden by the first knoll he’d come over.
But he could still hear it.
He could still feel the ground trembling beneath his feet.
Then he saw it.
A wedge of it slowly lifting above the grass, a grey-black moon moving up in its orbit. Stalking. Higher. Shadows flitting across its rugged surface. Higher. Slower. Winks of mica like trapped stars. Higher, until it finally reached the top.
And stopped.
“I’ll be damned,” Casey said, shaking the sweat from his eyebrows. “I’ll be damned and gone to hell.”
The boulder rocked on its base, forward and back.
Casey leaned toward it, narrowing his eyes, cocking his head.
The boulder rocked again, toward him and away. His eyes widened. He looked behind him to the house to see which way to run next, and saw a wavering light in an upper story window. A candle. Someone was walking through the rooms, carrying a candle. Hot damn, he thought; I was right! I was right!
With a soft grinding, a crunching, the boulder rolled back down the slope and out of sight.
Casey checked to be sure it was gone, wondering how the hell the guys had done something like that, but he wasn’t going over there to find out and get his ass caught, and started down to the level grass, Winter-rest’s back lawn. He walked at first, then broke into
a slow trot, and didn’t hear the rumbling until he was at the bottom and ten yards along. Jesus, he thought, they don’t give up, do they? He turned as he ran, and froze, and opened his mouth to scream.
The boulder shot over the second knoll as if it had been punched from a cannon, spinning and climbing, and kept on going, into the air.
As big as the moon, bigger, and grey-black. It rose and it spun and the shadows turned to black bands that wound about its circumference and sharpened its edges and whistled its own wind, while Casey gaped and shook his head, and finally realized what was happening and started running again.
whistling
High-pitched and atonal.
whistling
And climbed.
whistling
And fell.
Casey stopped.
He had remembered at last why Judy didn’t want him talking about the house.
He remembered, and he screamed.
whistling
Louder.
He was facing the house when it landed squarely on his back, cutting off the scream, slamming him into the grass, into the earth, only one leg showing, one convulsing hand, droplets of blood showering over the lawn.
The boulder squatted in the moonlight, rocking back and forth, turning side to side, silently grinding Casey into the ground.
PART THREE
THE INVITATIONS
ONE
1
On Saturday morning the sun rose over the eastern hills, the sky was blindingly clear, and the temperature promised considerably more moderation than the previous day.
Such a morning in Deerford was usually marked by preparation. The proprietors of the various shops knew this was the time when the casual driver stopped by to inspect offered goods and perhaps spend a little unintended money. So they had to be especially clean, especially well stocked. The owners of the Shade Tree, Wilbur and Nell Cleary, whipped their small kitchen into shape in anticipation of their most profitable day. Friday nights were fine but mostly local; Saturdays brought the strangers, first-timers, and those who had been pleased the last time around. There was sweeping to be done, salads and dressings to make, vegetables to start steaming, and late breakfasts to be served to the likes of Gil Clay, who, according to Nell, wouldn’t know how to start an electric stove. Bernie Hallman would grumpily get ready to pump several hundred gallons of watered-down, expensive gasoline, Deer-ford being farther off the beaten trail than most drivers anticipate. Judy Lockhart would sleep as late as she could, then check on the Depot to see what damage had been done the night before. If Gil and Casey had done their jobs well, if the waitresses hadn’t botched theirs, she would walk back to the house and fall into bed again until the middle of the afternoon. Elderly ladies in pink dresses and sensible shoes headed for the church to clean, to sing, to gossip while they polish. The children swam until noon, then split into their factions and headed for the fields and ballgames, the streams for some fishing, the woods for some hunting in and out of season.
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