The Dead Path

by Stephen M Irwin

  He switched off the outside light.

  Chapter 16

  S uzette sat in a silent simmer the entire drive back from the church. Nicholas pulled up in front of Katharine’s house at 68 Lambeth Street. Rain pattered on the roof.

  “You are your own worst enemy, you do know that,” she said.

  He nodded. “Cate used to say that.”

  Suzette blinked. He hadn’t said it for sympathy; it was true. Cate had often chastized him for acting before he thought things through. But the mention of Cate turned down Suzette’s thermostat just a little.

  “She was right. What did she ever see in a twit like you?”

  He shrugged. It was a mystery he’d never be able to solve.

  Suzette opened her door. “Coming in to see Mum?” she asked.

  He begged off. His mother’s forced pleasantness so soon after the defensive hostility of Pritam Anand would give him the bends. He agreed to meet Suzette the next morning for a decent breakfast at the cafe near the railway station and make a plan for visiting Plow amp; Vine Health Foods. He waved and watched her hurry across the front yard and through the form of Gavin Boye. The sight made his stomach tighten. He looked quickly away and drove off.

  By the time he’d parked outside his flat on Bymar Street, the rain had dropped to a steady drizzle. He was halfway up the concrete stairs when he decided he didn’t want to go inside. His feet were anxious to move. He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and walked back down the stairs and onto the street.

  The rain finally petered out and a wind had invited itself to shift the air, turning it cold and nudging the black tops of trees. Nicholas was angry with himself. It could have gone so much better with Pritam. Suzette was right. And now he’d alienated a person who felt like a man who could be trusted. Nicholas couldn’t blame the reverend. Spoken aloud, his theory on the murders was a fabulist’s: the stuff of nineteenth-century fairy tales where endings weren’t happy and evil was as powerful as good.

  How had everything gone so wrong so fast? Four months ago, he and Cate had had a life to be envied. Was that the problem? That they’d had the gall to be truly happy? Had they offended the gods by flaunting their pleasure with their simple plans and simple love? One motorcycle trip. One ladder. One phone call. Halloween child. Samhain child.

  Church. Green Man. Walpole Park. A face wreathed in leaves.

  One fall down cement stairs and a day world becomes a night world. The dead walk unmollified, doomed to mark time while some cosmic starter gun fires, reloads, and fires again and again.

  They saw him, the dead. And they knew he could see them; they watched him. As some respite from their own morbid television rerun performances, perhaps they looked to Nicholas for help. But he couldn’t help them. Nor could they teach him.

  Why hadn’t he died in the bike crash?

  Why had Cate died instead?

  Why hadn’t Gavin shot him?

  Nicholas stopped. He was at the corner of Lambeth Street. If he turned up it, in two minutes he’d be with his mother and Suzette. But he could feel no answers waiting there.

  He walked on.

  Another block and he reached the corner of Airlie Crescent. Without thinking, he let his feet change direction-just as he used to let his hands turn the wheel of his van when he trundled through narrowlaned English villages hunting for knickknacks. He strode up a shadowy footpath he hadn’t walked in two decades, in and out of tiny pools of streetlight, to stop outside number seven.

  The Boyes’ house.

  It lay watching from within a nest of tall laurel trees, which hissed disapproval at his arrival. Though the house was, to his adult eyes, smaller than he remembered, it was still huge-a looming colonial with deep verandas draped with filigreed ironwork that had grayed with neglect and hung between posts like cobwebs. The hedges had rambled and shrubs were creeping out to reclaim the yard. Dim lights shone within; a brooding Halloween pumpkin.

  Nicholas entered the yard and mounted the wide wooden steps to stand outside the lattice doors. He rang the doorbell.

  Here was the landing that he and Tristram had dared each other to jump off, commandoes from a C-47. And Nicholas, to his credit, had jumped, albeit pale and terrified. Tristram had jumped whooping. Tristram had been the brave one.

  Across the shadowed veranda, the dark, glossy front door opened a crack and Mrs Boye squinted at him through the gap. Her white hair spilled like a judge’s wig around her dressing-gowned shoulders-she could have stepped from a scene of Shakespearean mania. Her eyes narrowed.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Nicholas, Mrs. Boye. Nicholas Close.”

  Mrs. Boye set her lips. “Oh, Nicholas. I’ll tell Tristram you’re here. But I don’t want you two yelling about the yard! Mr. Boye has had a very full week.”

  Nicholas thought better of arguing with her.

  “Thanks, Mrs. Boye.”

  “Tristram!” she called. “Tristram Hamilton Boye? Gavin, where is that brother of yours?”

  The old woman walked back into the house, shutting the door behind her. Again, Nicholas was alone on the steps. Why am I here? Avoiding my own mother. Avoiding my sister. Avoiding sleep. A minute passed, and no one returned to the door. Nicholas gave up, and was halfway down the stairs when he heard the front door open again.

  “Hello?” A younger woman’s voice. He turned.

  Laine Boye’s hair was dripping wet and she held a bathrobe closed with one hand.

  “It’s Nicholas Close, Mrs. Boye.”

  “I can see that,” said Laine. Her face was in shadow. “Can I help you?”

  He walked slowly back up the stairs. “Yes. Well, I just was walking, and happened to be…”

  He watched her watching him. She was barefoot, drenched, even thinner than when he saw her last. She held her chin up and out, her head cocked.

  “I’m sorry to come unannounced, Mrs. Boye, but…”

  He felt his hand close around something in his pocket. He pulled it out. Something silver and small rested on his palm.

  “I found Gavin’s cigarette lighter. At home. I thought…”

  He held out the Zippo.

  Laine took a half-step back, as if the sight of the lighter offended her. Again, Nicholas noticed the color of her eyes. A seashell gray; an equivocal color that could be contented or angry, serene or melancholy.

  “I thought maybe we could talk a little,” he said. “About Gavin.”

  She watched him a moment, frowning at some argument in her head. Then she nodded and unlatched the lattice door.

  “Come inside.”

  Nicholas followed her in.

  The sensation of being drawn back through time made him wish he’d walked up Lambeth Street instead. Some rooms had been refurbished, and a few of the furnishings had changed. But the tall paneled walls, the polished cherrywood dining suite, the fireplace over which were mounted painted portraits of Tristram and Gavin as boys, were all exactly as when he’d seen them last, twenty-five years ago.

  Laine stopped in the dining room. She seemed shorter in bare feet. Square-shouldered. In the softer light, her features were finer, less angular. Her skin had an olive hue.

  “Give me a minute. I have to dry my hair.”

  She frowned at Nicholas, then stepped into the room that had been Gavin’s and shut the door. On the floor outside it, Nicholas saw a small collection of packing boxes. Some were taped shut, and over the tape the boxes’ contents had been neatly printed in permanent marker: Shoes, Shirts amp; Trousers, T-shirts. Their ordinariness-as if Gavin were simply moving house, not dead and being filed away for good-was prosaic and mournful. One box remained open, only half-filled. He stepped closer to peer inside.

  Some VHS tapes with documentary titles handwritten on the spines. A pair of worn hiking boots. A curled bunch of shooting magazines… and something else. Nicholas bent closer to see-

  “Who are you?”

  He whirled at the shout, startled.

  Mrs. Boye stoo
d behind him, brandishing a fireplace poker.

  “Nicholas. Nicholas Close,” he replied, hiding the tremor in his voice. A woman who could spit on Christ from twenty paces would be a wildcat with a poker. “How are you, Mrs. Boye?”

  “Ah, Nicholas,” said Mrs. Boye, lowering the weapon. “You want to see Trissy. Tristram!” She wagged a bony finger at Nicholas. “I don’t want you two making a racket.” She gestured for him to follow.

  She led him through the house to Tristram’s bedroom door. The sight of it made Nicholas feel suddenly cold. She rapped sharply.

  “Tristram? Your friend is here.”

  She looked at Nicholas with an expression that said: boys, how intolerable. “Go in, but I need you going home by five. We’re dining early.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Boye.”

  She walked away, stiffly whistling a tune that should have been tripping and joyful, but from her sounded broken and lost.

  The large house became eerily quiet.

  Nicholas twisted the low-set knob and opened the door.

  He flicked on the light.

  The room had not been touched since Tristram’s death. A Battle Beyond the Stars poster was stuck to one wall with yellowing tape, one corner detached and weeping down. The alarm clock had burned out, its paneled numbers frozen at 11:13. The air was husky and dry and smelled like sick soil. A thick film of dust coated the wooden floorboards. In the middle of the floor sat a board game; at its center was a hard plastic bubble in which was a die on spring steel that would have click-clacked loudly when it was last pressed by small hands. Now, the steel was rusted and dust had painted the dome a cadaverous brown. Cobwebs hunched in the ceiling corners and around the depending light shade. A large spider had spun a web above the bed; the creature seemed to creep a sly step toward him. Watching. The small single bed was still unmade, a gritty patina of insect husks on the Empire Strikes Back sheets. The room was unutterably sad.

  “Nicholas?”

  He turned.

  Laine stood behind him, dressed in jeans and a wool sweater. Her anxious fingers twined among themselves.

  He stepped out of Tristram’s bedroom and closed the door.

  Laine looked at the floor a moment, then up at him again. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Getting changed, I thought about it. I don’t think I really want to talk with you much about anything.”

  Nicholas felt a guilty stab of relief. He nodded. “I don’t think I have anything to ask.”

  She gestured toward the hall. He could see her fingers vibrating. She was holding herself together with sheer willpower. Husband suicided. Yoked instantly with the care of a senile mother-in-law. No one to help. She led him to the hall.

  “I do have one question,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “Did you shoot him?” She lifted her chin and watched him with those inscrutable gray eyes.

  “No,” he answered.

  She pursed her lips and stepped away.

  They walked past Gavin’s bedroom. As they passed the boxes, Nicholas peeked down again into the half-filled one. And he saw what had caught his eye earlier: the rifle magazines were roughly rolled together and shoved in a plastic bag. On the side of the bag was printed Plow amp; Vine Health Foods. Rowena’s store. Mrs. Quill’s old shop.

  “Do you shop there?” he asked, nodding at the bag.

  Laine stopped to see what Nicholas was looking at.

  “No. Gavin took a liking to dried pumpkin seeds. For the zinc, he said.”

  She opened the front door for him.

  “Good night, Mr. Close.”

  Before he could reply, she shut the door, closing him out in the cold.

  N icholas placed the White Pages on the coffee table. Its cover was torn and heavily graffitied by the previous tenants: a Rosetta stone of cartoon tits and spurting phalluses.

  As he walked home from the Boyes’ house, the sight of the plastic bag from Rowena’s health food store kept popping into his mind. Gavin took a liking to pumpkin seeds. For the zinc, Laine had said.

  He’d shopped in Quill’s old store. The mark on her door, on the rifle, on the bird.

  Tristram touched the bird. But it should have been you.

  It wasn’t coincidence. He knew it wasn’t. The links were growing too strong.

  He flicked quickly through the directory’s residential listings for G. He had an inkling.

  I’m right, he thought. I know I’m right.

  His finger ran down the surnames. Gull. Gunston. Gurber. Guyatt. There were a dozen Guyatts.

  Guyatt, A.; Guyatt, A. Guyatt, C.; Guyatt, E., Linning St., Toor-bul. Guyatt E., Paschendale Ct., Mt. Pleasant.

  Then he found it, just as he knew he would. Guyatt, E., 93 Myrtle St., Tallong.

  Nicholas sat back.

  Elliot Guyatt, the unprepossessing cleaner who had confessed to the murder of Dylan Thomas and died of a stroke just days later, had lived on the same street as Plow amp; Vine Health Foods.

  Rowena’s shop. Quill’s shop.

  Gavin Boye-deliverer of a cryptic message with a self-destruct ending-had shopped at Plow amp; Vine Health Foods. Nicholas was certain that Winston Teale, the huge man with the small voice who had chased Tristram and him into the woods, would have had the frayed linings of his work suits repaired there when it was Jay Jay’s haberdashery.

  He reached into his satchel and pulled out Gavin’s rapidly emptying packet of John Player Specials and realized he no longer had a lighter. He turned on the coil of the electric stove and waited for it to glow. Ridiculous. Rowena was young; Quill and Bretherton were old. Rowena was unthreatening and guileless; Quill had stared from her shop and Bretherton from her photograph through the same cunning eyes. Rowena was pretty and without any air of perfidiousness; Quill/Bretherton/Sedgely was malevolent.

  And yet. And yet…

  Someone lumbered into the front door with a crash and Nicholas jumped.

  “Nicholas!” came the voice on the other side.

  “Suzette?”

  “Open it!” she yelled.

  Nicholas felt his stomach swirl-something bad had happened. He ran for the door, undid the latch, and threw the door open. Suzette sagged inside. Her face was pale and her eyes were wet. She was on the edge of hysteria.

  “Jesus, Suze…?”

  “I finished dinner with Mum and heard something scratching at the front door,” she whispered. “I opened it-idiot-and a white dog bit me.”

  S uzette staggered to the toilet, smacked up the lid, and vomited. The air thickened with tangy brine.

  Nicholas felt the world suddenly grind into slow motion. “We have to take you to a doctor,” he said quietly.

  She held on to the porcelain pedestal with both hands. Her right had twin puncture marks just above her thumb, as if two sharp pencils had been driven into the flesh.

  Oh, God, he thought. My fault. My fault…

  “I didn’t even think,” Suzette mumbled, wiping her mouth. “I opened the door and didn’t even think about insect spray.” She rolled onto the floor, ripped off toilet paper, and blew her nose. “Jumped out of nowhere.” Her hand slipped out from under her and she slid to the tiles. Her eyes struggled to focus.

  “Suze! I’m taking you.”

  She shook her head. “Bed.”

  He lifted her and carried her to the spare room.

  “I don’ thing I really believe joo…” Her words were slurred.

  “That’s okay.”

  “Do now. ’S not a dog…”

  “It’s okay.” He placed her down.

  She nodded at the bite marks on her hand. “Necklace,” she whispered.

  Nicholas shook his head-I don’t understand.

  “Necklace. I gave you…”

  She was sliding from consciousness.

  Nicholas ran to his room and pulled the elderwood necklace from his bedside table. The polished stone felt warm. He returned and put it around Suzette’s neck.

  “You should ha’ be wear… this�
��” she said.

  As Nicholas rested her head on the pillow, he saw a spot of blood appear on the white pillowslip.

  “Suze?”

  No answer. She had passed out. Her breaths came slow and deep. He gently parted the hair of her scalp and found a patch of blood. A clump of her hair had been torn out by the roots.

  He sat back, jaw tight. Suzette was breathing evenly. He fetched antiseptic and cotton balls, cleaned her scalp and then the punctures in her hand. He’d been bitten twice by Garnock, so wasn’t worried that the bites were fatal. But why Suzette?

  She has kids, came the voice in his head. You knew that, fool. And you let her stay.

  He felt anger heating inside him: anger at Suzette for not being careful; anger at himself for letting her come up here; angriest of all with the little white shitlicker that had bitten them both.

  And Quill?

  The thought of her didn’t make him angry. He ran his mind over the feeling like hands over a hidden gift. This was something colder and more solid; a heavy stone to bind with rope and drop into the water, to drag her down and down into the still, brown deeps. He knew she had some plan for him. But fuck her. He wasn’t going to let her hurt anyone else. And he wasn’t going to let her twist him like she did those other men-Teale, Guyatt, Gavin, and who knew how many more. No. It ended here.

  He would kill the witch.

  Chapter 17

  P ritam moved his knight to threaten the Right Reverend’s bishop.

  “You dirty black bastard,” muttered Reverend Hird, wiping his spectacles on a handkerchief. The old man was swaddled in a padded robe, his striped pajama pants just poking from beneath it. Pritam could see that his flesh between the pant cuffs and brown slippers was swollen as tight as a sausage and marbled with veins. Hird moved his bishop.

  “Is that why you never let me play white?” asked Pritam. “So you can slag off at me?” He saw that the white bishop was now stalking his one rook; Hird was the superior player. “You degenerate old chiseler.”

  Hird shrugged. “Now you’re blackening my good name.”

  Pritam advanced a pawn. He looked at the mantel clock; it was nearly midnight. They often played till one or later, discussing the foibles of the congregation, the vagaries of the synod: serious matters couched in trivialities as the old man groomed the younger to take his job.