The Sound of Midnight - An Oxrun Station Novel

by Charles L. Grant

  A half-dozen ravens not yet gone for the winter had settled on the perimeter of the scene of the burning, but none of them seemed to want to venture inside. Dale watched them as they scurried in tight circles, agitated because something prevented them from satisfying their curiosity. So talk already, she told them silently, and tell good old Dale what's bothering you. But the large birds only grew more excited and suddenly, without warning, flew off as if startled by a shot.

  All right, then, she thought, and began to walk, keeping to the outside of the charred area as the birds had done, peering into the orchard's remains, examining every inch of ground she passed over. The ravens returned, flew low over her head, and wheeled off, screaming. She pulled out the flashlight and followed the tight beam, kneeling every few feet to brush her hand across the ground and sweep debris away, to brush aside a twig or a small blackened stone. Once, she came upon the body of a field mouse evidently suffocated by the smoke. She felt tears and took up a sharp rock, dug a hole in the resisting earth and buried it, touching the small black mound with her palm while she wept silently. More quickly, then, until she had made the turn three times about the circumference and stepped back, sighing.

  A tree. She wished for a tall tree to climb because she knew without the seeing that the flames had burned out a near-perfect circle before stopping, though with the breeze that had been blowing they should have spread farther, more raggedly into the field. She sniffed the air, found no lingering remains of gasoline or oil; she rubbed her hand over blackened grass and smelled her fingers—nothing but the stench of fire gone cold.

  And then, at the point where she had buried the mouse, she moved into the destruction. Stiff blades crumpled beneath her boots, ash lifted lazily into the air and fell behind her as if gravity had been nullified. She tried not to touch any of the trees or sagging branches, but streaks of charcoal streaked her overcoat nonetheless.

  Here, she thought, is where I stood when Vic did his first looking; and here's the tree he climbed, and the mound I saw with the lighter. Oblivious to the stains, the grit, the burning of patches of ice, she crawled on hands and knees in hopes of locating a bloodstained rock—but there was nothing, nothing at all. Neither did she uncover the scorched remains of any of the arrows that had ignited the conflagration. And finally, when it was too dark to see beyond the glow of the flashlight, she gave it up and kicked furiously at a fallen trunk.

  "It happened!" she said loudly, not caring if anyone was near enough to hear her. "I know it! It happened right here!"

  She jabbed the light at the trees around her. Flashes, then, of fingered branches, gutted boles, thick-stemmed icicles like petrified moss. She stamped to the mound and swept it clear of debris, picking up uncovered stones and flinging them wildly into the dark. And raised a fist to the moon.

  She calmed.

  Wept.

  Stood with a weight at her shoulders, staring until she realized she was looking at what was left of the coat Vic had wrapped around her legs before carrying her out. She knelt, poked at the few pieces of material and picked up four cold-metal buttons.

  I'll get him a new one and sew these on, she thought, kicked at the rubble and dislodged a stone.

  She stood, glanced down and in the flashlight glow, saw that what she had uncovered wasn't a stone.

  "Oh, Willy," she said "Oh, my poor Willy."

  CHAPTER VII

  A thin cloud poked a gray finger at the face of the moon. In the distance, the quarreling of the ravens.

  Dale sat on the mound in the orchard and toyed with the flashlight. After her initial outburst at her find, she forced herself to recall as much of that day when Willy had drowned as her memory would allow. She saw Fred Borg take something from the dead boy's hand. But she couldn't make herself see it clearly. Connection via imagination, she wondered, and without conscious effort remembered a similar thing at the scene of Dave's horrid accident.

  "No," she said. "It's not even coincidence because nothing's the same."

  She rose, dusted futilely at her coat, and left the orchard, stumbling several times before reminding herself to turn on the flashlight before she broke a leg. At the hedge, however, she waited until Mainland was cleared of traffic before she burst through and stood on the highway shoulder, staring down the deserted length of Chancellor Avenue. No cars to distract her, no pedestrians that she could see. She wanted to run, to race the night home, but enforced tension steadied her, made her cross the road slowly and reach the sidewalk without quickening a step. A bracing breath, then, and she proceeded as if nothing at all was churning up nausea in her stomach, nothing was squirting acid into her mouth that she had to spit into the gutter or gag on. As she passed the Provence home she was glad to see all its lights were out; otherwise, and she cursed it, the temptation to stop and show the woman what she had found would have been too great. Not that Liz would have understood, or believed, but her famed cynicism might be what was needed to still the terror squirming to be released. Not Liz, then. Vic. The logical one to contact now. But again a doubt. The image of his slightly glazed eyes, the stifled pain that slid a barely controlled mask over his expression—he said he needed time to think, to sort out the confusion, and she knew it was because of the blow he took. His thoughts were scrambled, would tend to be illogical and definitely not what she . . . they needed right now.

  Leave him, she thought. Let him rest.

  Besides, she had to have a few minutes more to do some thinking on her own, to thrash through her wondering into speculation, and from speculation to fact. The first thing, then, was to change her clothes so she wouldn't look to the world like a chimney sweep just home from a day's grimy work. A shower to wash body and mind so she would at least have the illusion of feeling better, even if the facts didn't point that way.

  She gazed over at the police station, at the single small globe over the double doors. A patrol car, empty, was parked at the curb. Stockton wouldn't be there now, and though she hesitated before continuing, she decided not to take a chance asking if Fred was on duty. There would be more questions, and a note left for the chief to read in the morning. A note that would lead to his calling, still more questions, and her lying.

  Those infernal tangled webs, she thought with a silent groan; and then she groaned aloud as she approached her house and saw the dark figure hurrying down her front steps. At first she thought it was Abe out of uniform before she stared through the inadequate street lighting, recognized the woman and tried to decide which way to turn to escape a meeting. But it was too late.

  The woman hurried toward her. Her face was harshly lined, obscuring a youthful attractiveness which had become frozen in years-long bitterness. The hair pulled back and burned was too gray to be brown, too brown to be aged. There was no make-up that could have softened the overhanging nose, the jutting cleft chin, the bloodless lips between.

  "I was coming to see you," Milly Campbell said, her voice remarkably similar to her aunt's. "You weren't home." Almost an accusation.

  "I was out for a walk," Dale explained, and regretted it immediately. Milly glanced over the soot and ash that clung to her coat, face, and hands.

  "I heard about the fire, you see, and I wanted to bring you something in case you were hurt. In the fire, you see."

  In her hands was a small, foil-covered bowl she thrust at Dale, who took it before it dropped to the sidewalk. She felt its warmth and shifted it to hold against her side. "Well, I'm really grateful, Milly, thank you. And really, I'm all right. I just got a slight knock on the noggin and a couple of small burns that only hurt when I laugh."

  Milly didn't move from the middle of the walk. Her hands were jammed into her black coat pockets, her eyes, steady on Dale's. "You shouldn't have been there, maybe," she said. "Them's dangerous fields there at night they tell me."

  Dale smiled. "To my eternal regret I found that out the hard way. Never again, believe me."

  They stared at each other until Milly finally swallowed, wavered and t
ook a step back. "Well, as long as you're not badly hurt, that you're doing well in spite of the fire . . ."

  "Oh, please!" Dale said suddenly. "Won't you come in and sit for a minute or two? It's a long walk home, and getting to be winter cold. Maybe you'd like a cup of coffee or tea to warm yourself up a bit?"

  Milly shook her head, her expression unchanging. "No, but thank you anyway. My aunt is alone and I should be back." She stretched out a hand, drew it back quickly and walked away.

  "Are you sure, Milly?" Dale called after her. "It won’t be any trouble at all, honestly."

  There was no answer. Dale became rigid as she fought the impulse to chase after the Campbell woman, grab her thin shoulders and shake her until something that made sense broke through those tightly cold lips. She couldn't understand, and hated not understanding what the Campbell family found so urgent that they had to be continually solicitous of her welfare. First the aunt and now the mother, and the tears she had seen in Dave's eyes the day he was killed in the crash. If none of her own, though admittedly not close, friends had bothered to pay her a call, why these near strangers? What, she wondered as she unlocked the front door, was there about her that elicited the Good Samaritan in those gloomy Scots?

  It was a speculation that might have taken up the rest of her evening, but she reminded herself that she already had planned a visitation of her own. After a quick gulp of tepid coffee, she showered and changed and was out of the house before its warmth could trap her into napping on the sofa or taking an hour to talk with her plants.

  She walked briskly, her arms swinging, her head straight. March, you fool, she grinned at herself, skipped a few paces to break the martial rhythm she'd fallen into, and laughed. A few minutes later she was up and across the Pike and heading west until she reached Northland Avenue. The streets that extended over the Pike on this side of the park from the center of town did so for only a single block before being stopped by a tall hurricane fence that separated the village from the sprawling expanse of the Oxrun Memorial Park. She never understood how some people could live so close to a cemetery, but shrugged off the morbidly gathering ideas of answers and counted two houses in before coming to a halt.

  It was a small and game attempt at a modern ranch that failed miserably because of the Victorian monsters that flanked it, backed it, faced it across the street. A yellow light glowed over the plain front door, and in the picture window to its right red drapes dimmed a lamp set behind them. A skeletal dogwood too close to the walk made her swerve onto the lawn, and the early frost crackling beneath her shoes snapped at her nerves and she almost jumped onto the concrete just to bring back the silence.

  She waited. Heard nothing inside. Licked at her lips and, keeping her hand in her pocket, knocked loudly on the door. When it opened, she didn't wait for an invitation but hurried over the threshold and into the light.

  The room was as she had expected, though she didn't know exactly why. A single worn couch, a matching armchair with an ashtray stand beside it; no television or sign of a radio, the walls shelved and packed with what could easily have been hundreds of books and back issues of professional magazines and journals.

  On the long wall at the side of the house was a fireplace topped with a wood mantel, stark and completely utilitarian.

  The wall-to-wall carpeting was a dull, lifeless green, and in its center, Jaimie McPherson was sitting with a chessboard between his legs. He looked up, waved when he saw who had entered, and returned to his game. Dale was forgotten.

  But she was pleased to see that Ed was startled by her unannounced appearance. He fumbled with her coat, rushed to hang it in a hall closet. Like a kid trapped in the pantry, she thought grimly.

  "Dale," he finally managed to get out, guiding her quickly to the chair, "I thought you were . . . well, when I heard about what happened, I would have thought you'd be hospitalized or something."

  "Word travels fast," she said flatly. "It only happened last night."

  Ed took his place on the couch, Jaimie directly at his feet. "Well, I must admit I tried to call you a little while back. To see about those dreams of yours." He took off his glasses and pointed with them. "I do worry about you now and then, you know."

  "Well, thank you," she said.

  The door was behind her, the couch serving as a break between living room and dining area. Directly in front of her was the fireplace, and on the mantel the chess set that Dave Campbell had made. She glanced around the room, at the shelves she could see, then back to the mantel.

  "My expensive stare." He laughed quickly.

  "I thought you wanted it as an addition to your collection. I don't see any others."

  "I like to keep it out. I don't use it, of course. Jaimie and I use that plastic one he has when he beats me."

  "I don't beat you, Father," the boy said without looking up. "No, of course not," Ed said shortly. "But you have come close on occasion, you have to admit."

  "Sure, Father," Jaimie said. He kept his eyes on the board.

  Out of sight in the dining area a grandfather clock chimed in Westminster the hour, and after the eighth peal had faded, Ed crossed his legs and replaced his glasses. In leather-patched tweed jacket and turtleneck shirt, he seemed more a man posing for a magazine profile than someone spending a quiet night home with his son. Dale was reminded of Elinor McPherson's death, and she tried without success to place Ed in the role of dual parent; from the way the boy spoke to his father, he evidently had most things his way, and Ed seemed not to offer him much, if any, resistance at all.

  She smiled. With one hand smoothed the collar of her blouse over the light sweater she'd worn—a dark green to highlight what blond her hair showed that evening.

  "Is it cold out?" Ed asked finally, nodding to her sweater, then to the closet.

  "It's not summer any more, that's for sure," she said, her smile more broad. "I wouldn't be surprised if we had a good fall of snow before Thanksgiving."

  Ed grunted, watched his son move a Norman queen. He leaned forward, looked up to Dale, and shrugged as if to indicate that his son didn't need his help, especially when it hadn't been requested. He straightened, coughed into a fist, and laid a hand across the back of the couch. "And what, then, brings you to my side of the town, Dale? A friendly visit, I hope?"

  "Now why would it be otherwise, Ed," she said, and lifted her fist from her lap. "But I found something tonight. At the field where the fire was. Where I was almost killed."

  "Jaimie," he said abruptly, "would you mind excusing us?" When the boy didn't move, he added sternly, "Now, if you please."

  Jaimie took his time standing, nodded once toward Dale, and moved slowly, almost disdainfully, down the short hall. Dale looked over her shoulder, saw a light flare, cut off by a door closed carefully.

  "He gets moody sometimes," Ed explained with a hint of apology. "I don't like to disturb him with such . . . unpleasant talk."

  "Commendable," she said.

  "But you mentioned that you had found something tonight. What is it? And why did you bring it to me?"

  "Well," she said, opening her fingers, "because I think this belongs to you."

  He seemed at first unconcerned until Dale realized he couldn't see clearly. She stretched out her hand. McPherson squinted, rose, and gingerly took the object from her palm. She couldn't tell whether or not he was only being careful, or afraid of it.

  "I don't remember all the names," she said, "but isn't that one of the pawns supposedly representing the Hound of Something or other?"

  "Culann," Ed said. He held the chessman to his eyes, turned it slowly and shook his head. Dale rose, then, and took the piece from him. His fingers groped, and relaxed. When he didn't speak, she took the board down from the mantelpiece and placed it on the carpet. Kneeling, she set the pawn on its space and looked up.

  "At the scene of the fire, Ed. How did it get there?"

  The analyst seemed stunned. Again he removed his glasses, this time setting them on a cushion of
the sofa. He sat heavily, and rubbed the sides of his nose with two fingers, tugged at his shock of hair, rubbed his nose again.

  "Come on, Ed," she prompted, "it's yours. I'd like to know how it got into the field."

  His eyes wandered, snapped back into focus and his expression hardened. "Are you suggesting, Dale, that I had something to do with what happened? That I set fire to that place while you were out there, you and Blake? Is that what you're suggesting?"

  She sat back on her heels, her hands covering her knees. "It just seems odd to me, Ed, that such a fragile and valuable piece of workmanship should somehow find its way into a field; and not only to a field, but one where there just happened to be an awfully big fire last night." She raised a palm to quiet his sputtering protest. "I don't like what I'm saying either, Ed, but you're going to have to do a lot of explaining to prove to me it wasn't more than a simple coincidence."

  Once more she saw the dazed look, as though he had suddenly found himself in a room he'd never seen before, speaking with someone whose language didn't at all resemble the one he spoke.

  But as before, his face cleared. He pushed himself off the couch and strode to the hall entrance, calling his son, his anger barely controlled. And when the light from the boy's room spilled into the corridor, Dale snatched up the board and replaced it on the mantel, turned just as he followed his father into the center of the room.

  "Jaimie," Ed said, taking the boy's shoulders and turning him to face her, "Miss Bartlett here found something of mine today, something in a place where it shouldn't have been. Something, in fact, that never should have left this house in the first place. Jaimie, do you have any idea what I'm talking about?"

  Jaimie's freckles seemed to deepen as he paled. He lowered his gaze to stare at a foot that was toeing a groove in the carpet.