No argument was offered; he only pulled at the beer and nodded for the man to go on.
“Now that house back there. I been around a long time, Mr. Muir, and I notice things. I have to, it’s my business, bein a hunter and all. And I really can’t prove it—that is, I ain’t got somethin I can pull outta my pocket, so you’ll have to take my word for it— Winterrest is a demon place, sure as I sit here.”
He squinted to see if Doug was laughing; he wasn’t—he was listening.
“See, it goes back to the beginning,” he continued, shifting until he was sitting Indian fashion. “You read that report thing from that fella down in Princeton?”
Doug nodded; he had.
“Well, it goes back to then, I think. The way I see it, that professor that found out all those things about Deerford and the house, he wasn’t really listenin to what he was hearin. Talked to a lot of the old folks, the ones that keep the stories, and he picked what he wanted to and ignored the rest. Me, now, I hear it all, I hear the details, so to speak. That man that built that place, after all that terrible stuff happened to his family, he knew the land was cursed. Don’t laugh! Cursed is what I said, and cursed is what I meant. There are places like that. You travel enough, you can see them all over. Places so damned ugly they look like God shat on them he was so pissed. Places, too, that look so beautiful and no one’s there. Now the first ones, it makes sense you don’t do anything there. I mean, who wants to live on a garbage heap, so to speak?
“But the second sort of makes you wonder. Such a lovely spot, peaceful, maybe a stream, some trees, but it could be a desert for all you find there. You can’t even find a robin huntin worms.
“Yep, it really makes you wonder.”
Doug emptied his can and leaned back on his elbows.
Piper pushed off a hound with a good-natured oath and slapped his deerstalker against his leg before yanking it on again.
“Now, when this long-ago guy got here, there wasn’t anyone on the land. Lots of folk around with their farms and things, but no one here. Great property, worth a fortune. Right on the coach road, looks to be good farmin, but not one of the others took it. Now this new one, he doesn’t notice, he just wants a place to live ‘cause he’s been travelin a long way, so he builds.
“It has to do, you see, with the living and the dead.”
Doug sat up: it’s difficult enough for some people to believe in the living.
Piper emptied a third can, opened a fourth, and took half before taking a breath. Doug didn’t want to guess how many the man had had before he’d arrived, and he was puzzled by the sudden indulgence.
“A man that lives out here away from everything, he knows about living. The crops, the trees, the animals, all that stuff. Now the fella that built Winterrest, he’s from the city so to speak in those days, and he don’t notice that no one else had farmed the land, not even the Indians that was still around. Then all those terrible things started to happen, and it just stands to reason, don’t it, that he wasn’t gonna let any of it stop him.”
He paused, eyes glazed, mind drifting. Belching, he shook his head.
“Now in those days, the best way to fight was to have yourself a fort. A wood fort was okay, but a stone fort was a damn sight better. Which he went ahead and did ‘cause he knew how. What he didn’t know, though, was that the demons that had cursed this place were gonna make him and everybody else crazy. He probably figured he could beat that curse with plain old hard work and a lotta sweat.
“But there were bad winters that time, and the way I see it, he just went crazy. Cabin fever. Killed his family, saw what he’d done and killed himself he was so miserable. And the demons that made him do it just never bothered to leave.”
A sharp nod; the point finally made.
“Mr. Muir, on the other side of that wall there be demons, and there have been since who knows when. It’s just cursed, like I said. And because that sap built his house there, it got itself cursed too.”
He hiccoughed, belched, lay on his back, and stared at the sky while his hounds sniffed around his side.
“Demons, Doug ol’ boy, and we’re gonna have tea with ‘em this very afternoon.”
He didn’t comment, but rose with a sheepish grin and asked about the bathroom. Piper waved him grandly toward the house. He pulled open the rusted screen door and stepped into a kitchen of cracked linoleum on the floor and white metal cabinets on the walls. The bathroom was to his immediate right, and he hurried in, shut the door, and leaned heavily on the sink while he ran cold water.
He splashed his face and shook his head at his reflection. Douglas, ol’ boy—
And he couldn’t finish; he couldn’t tell himself it was all a madman’s crock.
Instead, he gaped at a yellowing snapshot tacked to the wall by his shoulder. It was of Piper is his deerstalker cap, looking as wasted as he did now, not a day older or a pound thinner. He was standing at the gate that led to Winterrest, and right beside him was Eban Parrish. Remembering a habit his mother had, he pried up the bottom corner with one finger and looked for a date.
He found it just above center, in ink almost faded to gold.
It was June, and the year was 1935.
2
The suitcase lay open on the bed. The drawers of the maple dresser were pulled out, the closet door was open, and two pairs of boots and a pair of shoes lay on the mattress. Doug strode in from the bathroom and dumped a double handful of toiletries into the suitcase, then turned to the dresser and began to grab for socks and underwear, tossing them behind him, not checking to see if they landed in the case.
His movements were smooth, almost practiced, but the muscles in his wrist and neck were strained to cords, and there was a mask of perspiration forming over his face.
A folded shirt dropped to the floor, and he paused, stared, then kicked it under the bed.
1935
He stuffed as much as he could into the case, belted and snapped it closed, and left the room to stand by the gallery rail. Below, the speakers hissed, nothing on the turntable, nothing on the tapedeck. He looked at the beams, the walls, remembering with choking clarity the mess he and Piper had made getting everything into place without it falling on their heads.
Flat River
The debate was over. Manipulation had somehow been shaded into threat, and the merely unusual had taken on hues of the preternatural. He didn’t know if such a thing existed. But after he had seen the photograph, his mind rejected hoaxes and the normal.
What was left, though he had no name for it, frightened him too much for him to remain.
He took the stairs down as fast as he could, dropped the suitcase by the door, and hurried out to the paddock. Maggie trotted over to the fence and nuzzled his hand while he stroked her neck.
“I’ll be back for you in a while,” he said. “If I don’t, someone will be over to take care of you until I do.”
The buckskin tossed her head, snorted, and raced off with tail high, and Doug couldn’t watch. He spun around and ran back inside, swerved into his study, and began gathering his designs into a large briefcase.
The telephone rang.
He ignored it until he had all he wanted, then snatched it up, listening for the bubbling husky breathing that would tell him it was Eban Parrish.
“Doug?”
He almost collapsed on the floor in relief. “Liz, hi!”
“Doug, I thought you were going to call me.”
Confusion dropped him onto the couch. “Hey, I’m sorry. I don’t remember, though—”
“You didn’t promise,” she said. “I just thought . . . I just thought you’d call, that’s all. You were kind of spooked last night.”
“Pot calling the kettle black, Liz.”
“Yes,” she admitted. “And I’m still not going. Have you made up your mind yet?”
He tugged at an earlobe, felt the weight of the luggage behind him. “In a way, yes. Look, I’d like to come over for a minute if I can. Do yo
u mind?”
“No, of course not. What’s—”
“Be there in five.”
He rang off before she could ask him anything, and was out and into the Jeep before he could ask questions of himself. At the end of the Lane he waited impatiently for a line of cars to pass, noting as he did the thickening overcast that sagged here and there to touch the tops of the hills and create a fog that blurred the foliage. The breeze was not yet a wind, but it was ambitious enough to turn the leaves over and prophesy rain, turn the cattle’s backs, and send the crows into sporadic flight, wheeling like buzzards before settling on fences to watch the traffic darkly.
He took advantage of the first break and spun east, tempted to stop and have a word with Sitter, to see what excuses he would make for Winterrest; but as he approached the lawn chair and the waving left hand, he changed his mind. Piper was drunk and Sitter was probably crazy and the only thing that would come of it would be further confusion.
For the first time in years he forgot to wave as he passed.
And it wasn’t until he had turned into Meadow View that his breathing eased and his hands calmed. The Mohawk Gang was playing touch football in the front yard, and they waved as he hurried up the walk. Keith yelled to him over the shouts of the others, but he didn’t hear it; he pushed the bell and turned to follow the game, such as it was with two kids to a side.
Normal, he thought; god, it’s all so normal.
Liz opened the door and stood alongside him. She was smiling, though the smile did not extend quite as far as her eyes.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“Liz, this morning I had a talk with Piper, and I got to thinking about. . .” He paused and shook his head. “I started packing. I was going to run away and knew I couldn’t, at least not without seeing you first.”
“Really?”
“God, Liz, c’mon.”
She took his hand, then, and led him around the side of the house, stopped near the back, and told him, “I’m scared, Doug.”
He shifted his hands until they were in his hip pockets, one hip cocked, one foot slightly ahead of the other. The game in front was loudly reaching its climax.
“You frightened me last night,” she continued, “and you’re frightening me even more. Here,” and she pressed a fist to her temple, “I know you’re nuts. I know I am for giving credence to anything we’ve said about Parrish and the rest. There are always adequate, if not always perfect, explanations for just about every phenomenon around here, including Eban and his infernal love for a single house. And that’s good. I know that if I sat down and thought about it hard enough, I could come up with an answer that would satisfy all the criteria. I could go in front of a jury and acquit Parrish in an afternoon, for whatever stupid crime we’re determined to accuse him of.”
When he lowered his head, the shadow of the hat brim buried his eyes.
She faced him, and she was angry.
“But I haven’t been able to sit down, Doug. I can’t sit down! Not for more than five minutes at a time.” She jerked her gaze to the sky. “I haven’t been able to think, Doug. I can’t think straight anymore, and I don’t like it! And now you’re going to take off, just like that. Just like,” and she snapped her fingers hard, like a gunshot.
He almost lost his own temper when, quite unexpectedly, she stepped close to him, took his elbows and pulled him into an embrace. Tenderly. Fearfully. Until the Gang appeared at the corner of the house and he released her quickly, moving back until she looked over her shoulder and saw them.
“Go away,” she ordered, too loudly. “Go!”
The Gang exchanged puzzled looks, and vanished in an excited whispering.
“Liz,” he said when they were alone, “you didn’t let me finish.”
“Upstairs.” And they climbed to the redwood deck. He sat at the round plank table while she fetched Dr Pepper from the refrigerator. The sky lowered; the breeze died; the air felt as cool as the can of soda in his hand.
“Finish,” she told him, her eyes glinting with a hint of tears.
The words came, but slowly, as he told her about Piper’s demons and the photograph he had seen in the Cleary house.
“We are,” he said, looking over the lawn, “two perfectly normal people in a perfectly normal town. At least I thought so until the other day. Now, I’m not so sure. I was packed to leave an hour ago. Until you called.” His smile was sardonic. “There are times, you know, when I have to be hit rather smartly with a two-by-four to straighten me out. I couldn’t leave and not see you. In fact, if you stayed, I couldn’t leave at all.”
“Doug—”
He waved her silent and fussed in his jacket pocket for a cigarette. He lit it, and watched the smoke hang in the air, dissipate so slowly he still saw it until he blinked. Then he leaned over the table, his forearms a triangle with the push of his stomach.
“Look,” he said, and wasn’t sure precisely what he would say, “I’ve decided to go to the party this afternoon.” He avoided her startled look, took a drink of soda, a puff of the cigarette. “I have to, I think. I’ve done a lot of traveling, as you know,” he said wryly, “and I guess what I’m saying is, that it’s about time I stopped. Something’s going on around here. What, I don’t know, but it affects us, and only us, and since there’s no guarantee it’ll stop if I, or we, leave, the only way I’m going to find out is by going there and talking to Parrish.”
“Why him?”
“He . . .” He stopped. “He knows, Liz. I don’t know why, but I know he knows.”
“What about Piper’s demons?”
“Piper was drunk.”
“He isn’t always drunk.”
He swirled the soda in its can, blew smoke, blew air, and pointed at her. “I do not believe in demons, Liz. I do not believe in demonic possession or spectral domination or centuries’ old curses on houses.”
“You didn’t believe in earthquakes in New Jersey, either. Or gale-force winds that don’t hit anyone but you. Or women who get five months pregnant in a week, if that’s what really happened.”
“Touché,” he muttered.
“Touché what?” she cried in frightened frustration. “I don’t even know what the hell I’m talking about.”
“In that case,” he said calmly, “the way I see it, there’s only one way to find out if we’ve suddenly gone crazy, which I doubt very seriously—we go to that damned party and see if there’s someone here who’s trying to pull our strings.”
She shook her head and looked away, one hand drumming on the table. “Do you want to?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Yes!” she said. “Of course you have—you just don’t go. You—”
“What, Liz, ignore it? Pretend it’s all the product of my poor, overworked imagination, that none of it is happening? Or should we just move away and try to forget it all?” He stared at the house and cursed the losing of his temper. Then he directed his gaze back to her, and lowered his voice. “Liz, Parrish called you this morning to be sure you weren’t selling.”
She said nothing.
He leaned closer. “That is no coincidence, I know that now. For some reason, he’s made sure that neither you nor I nor Bud and Ollie is ready to give up our homes, even for more money than we’ve ever seen in our lives. He has made absolutely sure that none of us want to leave town despite the enticement. That means something to him so much so that I can’t just walk away without finding out why.”
“But he hasn’t threatened us or anything,” she protested.
“No,” he said. And didn’t have to say not yet.
3
Maggie wandered around the paddock, grazing, testing the air, shaking her head and snorting at the presenti-ment of the storm. She tried running a few paces, and drew herself up; she tried scratching her back on the grass and found it unpleasant. She stood at the gate and stared at the house.
She ran again, and reared to thrash at the air; ran again, and stopped.
<
br /> Her tail twitched, her mane trembled, but nothing she did brought the squirrels out to play.
She returned to her grazing, snorting angrily whenever she heard the rumbling underground.
4
Sitter McMahon sat alone in the dark.
The television was off, the blinds were all drawn, and the door was as locked as he could possibly make it. He told himself it was a poor day for making people happy, that they wouldn’t appreciate his waving at them in all that gloom, and when Douglas Muir didn’t wave back he knew it was true.
But he didn’t scan the channels for signs of the witches’ coming.
Today was the day.
He was safer inside.
5
“Deeeeeeemonnnnnnsssss!” Piper cried from his place on the ground. “C’mon, you goddamned deeeeemonnnnnsssss, this is the Cleary you’re temp-tin, ya goddamned bastards!”
When he felt the ground rumbling, Piper Cleary began to cry.
6
The air was shadowed, but there were no shadows on the ground.
Liz didn’t want him to go. Before you do anything foolish, let’s at least check it out.
The air was chilled, and damp, and the temperature stayed high.
We can’t take anything at face value anymore. Let’s go to town and see, okay!
Agreement came slowly, and he was ashamed of himself for giving in only when she said she would go with him.
Don’t worry. The whole town can’t be in on it.
He parked in front of the Depot, and they walked slowly across the street, hands brushing but not clasping. They had considered recruiting Olivia and Bud, but changed their minds when Liz suggested they were probably too involved with sorting out their problems.
The real estate office was closed, its blinds down, the door locked. Doug knocked so hard the glass threatened to break. They walked around to the back, one on either side, and failed to find an open or unlocked window, or a Venetian blind open enough to see in. No one they asked in the crowded restaurant had seen Parrish all day, though it was suggested that he was probably at the estate, getting ready for the party. Few seemed to care that it was up for sale; those who did promised support when he mentioned that he might confront the agent with the distress of the community.
The Tea Party - A Novel of Horror Page 21
