by John Farris
Tepei's fingers dug into Dal's arm. "Look over there. What's that?"
Dal angled his flashlight toward an easel, the portrait of Barry taking shape. Mark had been working on it recently; there was a gleam of fresh paint like drying blood. Barry had changed in the portrait. Her pose was lewd, cynical, a flaunting of her nakedness. Her eyes had a demonic opaqueness; there was a brutish look around the mouth.
"Is that Barry?" Claude asked.
"Why does he make her look like that?" Tepei said.
Dal shook his head, feeling short of breath, oppressed by the distortion of everything he knew his sister to be. He no longer felt even a little sorry for the injured boy they were hunting.
"I don't know. I don't know anything about Mark Draven. I just want him out of here, and for good."
Chapter 30
Alexandra, wearing her saffron yellow robe, opened a small aluminum ladder and stepped up on it to cover the cages of her parakeets for the night. She had turned off the lamps in her cottage; only the incense brazier nearby provided illumination. It was enough. She did not need light to sit on the floor and meditate, and her mind's eye was all-encompassing: it burned with anticipation.
Perhaps an hour after she composed herself and became so still one would have thought she had ceased to breathe, she heard a subtle increase in the loudness of the rain outside as a door opened soundlessly, then closed. There was a footstep. She didn't move, and the sounds of entry were not repeated.
After a time she turned her head slightly, toward the kitchen, as if in response to an unspoken query.
"Yes, I know you're here. I've been expecting you. Show yourself."
Mark Draven appeared, his eyes, his wet face taking on highlights from the gleam of the brazier. The rest of him was murky, shadowed, mud encrusted. His left arm was across his chest, the hand out of sight beneath his sodden blazer. His eyes were inflamed. He stared at the lama.
"Why did you hurt me?"
"There was no other way to prove what you are, where you came from."
"What do you mean? What do you know about me?"
"I know that you live and breathe, you have human appetites. You are a nearly perfect work of art. Barry's work." He shifted his weight, as if to dodge a blow; the floor creaked. Alexandra continued calmly. "She created you in a moment of supreme tension from the chaos that surrounds us all. We all struggle daily to control this chaos with our minds, the force of our wills. But Barry's abilities are of a higher order than most."
He came closer in two strides, kneeled down. He trembled.
"I'm flesh and blood! You hurt me—my hand—"
"Let us see your hand."
It was a simple suggestion, but he bared his teeth. He wanted to look away then, but Alexandra's green eyes held his attention, as if she had him at the point of a spear. He twisted in pain, aching to deny the truth of what she had said. But the truth was taking possession of him. He was in torment; he was in ecstasy. Suddenly he pulled his left hand from beneath the coat and held it high. The hand was intact, undamaged.
Alexandra didn't even look at it. She nodded slightly, and he screamed. It was a haunting scream that was only vaguely human. It became, in the end, a howl of pure pleasure. Alexandra could not subdue a tremor of fear, and she felt her strength, inevitably, lessening.
"You have fulfilled all of Barry's expectations except two: you have no soul and no conscience. Therefore'you must be denied the life you cling to with such passion. Before you destroy that family."
He made a fist of his restored left hand. It trembled with power above her head.
"Can you stop me?" Draven said. "Can you dissolve me, like you did your phantom monk?"
"I'm no longer young. I haven't the stamina. But they are all under my protection now. Barry, her father, Dal."
"Your magic," he said scornfully.
"It will do."
"Go to the house. Bring the casket back."
"I will not," she said, aware of the fist but refusing to look anywhere other than into his eyes.
"Then don't interfere with me. Go away."
"I must try to help them."
"I won't give up my life! And no one can take it away. Who has to know what you say or what you think?"
He reeked of confidence, of animal cunning. Alexandra smiled slightly, but she felt another tremor. She continued to oppose him with all her serenity and her power. But the realization was there, stark as bone: it was not, in this instance, enough. She had overmatched herself.
Draven reached down, he reached out. His right hand brushed her cheek, leaving a trace of mud there. Alexandra steeled herself and tried to force him back with the power of her mind. He hesitated, teeth clenched, breathing harshly. She felt a giving, a moment's uncertainty on his part. But she was fading, hovering at the edge of a misty blackness, unable to assert full control.
One of his large hands went to her shoulder, the other to the back of her head. Her mind seethed and then flared like a dying star. He saw the light flicker from her eyes and yelled in triumph, at the same time giving her head a sharp jerk. There was a snap—her body seemed to leap an inch or two off the floor. Blood trickled from her nose, her head continued to turn loosely almost a full half-circle.
He sat there holding her for a few seconds more, puzzled that it had happened so simply. His enemy routed. He swallowed once and released her. Alexandra's shell fell back in silence, head glancing off a silk pillow, falling aslant. And silence, and silence. The body useless now, unable to renew itself as his had done. Draven picked himself up with a surge that carried him on 'a run from the cottage, back into the falling rain, the dark of night.
Chapter 31
By one in the morning they had explored all possibilities.
Dal had finished calling every hospital in the area. Barry sat in the kitchen of Tuatha de Dannan with glazed eyes, drinking strong tea, at times almost nodding off from the shock of the accident, Mark's inexplicable disappearance. The rain was down to a drizzle. Tepei sat close to her, murmuring, trying to coax her into going up to bed. Barry moved to the family room and announced her intention of staying there, close to the telephone. Dal yawned and pulled Tepei away, and they went upstairs together.
The light of the single lamp in the room hurt Barry's eyes; she turned it off. Rainwater dripped from a clogged gutter above the front windows. Then the clouds thinned and the moon shone forth, adding shadows to the room. The gold hardware on the casket Alexandra had brought to them gleamed in the nocturnal light.
It made Barry uneasy to look at the casket, to dwell on the brace of enchanted daggers within. Omens and superstition. The woman was nothing but a witch, Barry thought. All this grief was her fault. Barry got up and shrouded the casket with a newspaper, then returned to her rocking chair.
The clock in the upstairs hail struck two. Mark, Mark, where are you? She dozed and dreamed he was walking on his hands along the roof peak of the house. Then she started awake, perspiring, her throat wet and cold. She had heard something strange and listened tensely for the sound to be repeated. But her ears were ringing faintly from tension, her orientation was awry.
Scratch, scratch.
For a few moments she thought the sound was close by, in the room. Mice in the walls. But they'd had the exterminators there at the beginning of spring.
Scratch.
Like something nibbling or digging. Teeth, claws ... Barry exhaled nervously and got up. It could only be Meanness, at the kitchen door; she decided that her ' perspective on the sound was distorted by her own fatigue, the silent house. The dog had been out for hours, she'd forgotten all about him. There were places outside where he could have found partial shelter from the downpour, but still, by now he must be one wet, miserable dog.
She started for the kitchen and noted in passing that the newspaper she'd covered the casket with was now on the floor. A strong draft would have done it. Barry had the urge to take up the casket and drop it in the well on the high side of the barn
yard, but she knew her father would have a fit. And if Les Mergendoller were any judge, Alexandra's gift to them was exceptionally valuable.
Barry turned on the kitchen lights and opened the back door there. Meanness was not sitting on the stoop as she had expected. Maybe he'd been trying for some time to get in and had gone away to sulk.
Scratch, scratch, scratch!
Loud enough this time to make her jump and look around. A branch of a tree rubbing against the roof or a side of the house? But there wasn't a tree near enough. No, it was something in the walls, or even within a closed space like a pantry or closet, working tenaciously to get out. Barry made a face, thinking of mice again. She drew a glass of water at the sink and drank it slowly. She couldn't help listening for the sound, her nerves tingling. But she didn't hear it again. On impulse she went to her father's studio but found no sign that Mark had been there. Moonlight came through the high windows. She turned slowly and looked at the corner where Mrs. Prye's machine was covered by a drop cloth. Shuddering, she walked slowly toward it.
"Please, Mrs. Prye. Help me. I have to find Mark. Tell me where he is." She waited, her fists clenched. There was, momentarily, a faint glow beneath the drop cloth. But it vanished, and nothing else happened. Mrs. Prye didn't speak.
"Talk to me! Why is this happening? Where has he gone? You know! You must know. You know everything about me!"
Scratch, scratch.
The sound was distant, but chilling. Barry whirled.
Through the Windows she saw the moon, the distant universe. And, closer, Meanness was clearly visible a hundred yards or so from the house, ambling uphill from the direction of the pond.
Forgetting the capricious Mrs. Prye, she ran back to the kitchen and opened the door there, whistled sharply. Meanness soon appeared and squeezed past her into the kitchen. He cruised by his empty food dish and looked around at Barry in disappointment. She gave him a couple of Gaines Burgers.
"Where have you been?" Meanness was almost completely dry. Just the toes of his big feet and the edges of his ears were muddy from his perambulations around the farm. His brindled coat glittered dustily in places. Barry stooped to pat him and examined the husks that clung to her hand. It was chaff, from the floor of the gristmill near the grinding wheel. But the mill was closed up tight—there was no way he could have gotten inside.
Unless someone had let him in.
"Mark!" she said, and went running from the kitchen into the yard.
Chapter 32
Dal and Tepei got up at eight-thirty Sunday morning.
After Dal showered and shaved, he went down the hail to Barry's room, which was halved in sunlight and empty. Her bed hadn't been disturbed. He left Tepei dressing leisurely, trying on this and that, with a humming and a quietness around her eyes, and took the back stairs to the kitchen.
Tom, in a ratty plaid robe, was making coffee. The back door was open to green things—turf and garden and faintly damp air from all the rain. Tom still looked half starved but also rested and collected. His cough was nearly absent. Dal noted the improvement with satisfaction. Meanness slumbered noisily on his braided rug, as if he'd spent a long night in carousal.
"Where's Barry?" Dal asked his father.
"Haven't seen her."
Dal rubbed his pink shaved cheeks and poured coffee for himself. "She's probably out looking for Mark."
"Damn fool thing for him to do," Tom reflected. "Why run away like that?"
Tepei came down wearing an aquamarine silk blouse and striped Saint Laurent pants, her long satin-finish hair brushed smartly over one side of her face. She sat at the kitchen table with her hands folded, eyes on Dal.
"Shouldn't we call Alexandra?" Tepei suggested. "Barry could have gone to her house. There may be some news."
Tepei had jotted down Alexandra's number the night before. She placed the call, but no one answered.
"Now what?" Dal said, scrambling eggs with diced onion and chunks of cheddar cheese.
"Well—the police," Tepei said.
Dal thought about it and shook his head. "What can they do? They'll come out, ask some questions, file a report, check the hospitals again."
Tom took a long pull of coffee, leaning, like a light-deprived plant, where shuttered sun bent in at the windows.
"What about Edwards?"
"If Mark had gone to him," Dal said, "he would have called us right away. If he showed up anywhere we would have heard. But I can't believe he's lying unconscious in the woods, either. What happened to him was pretty damned awful, but it's not likely to be fatal."
They ate their breakfasts. Tepei had to be in San Francisco by seven o'clock that night, so Dal drove her to Kennedy in his Mercedes to catch her flight. Coming back, traffic was heavy on the parkways; he arrived home a little before two.
No Barry. Tom hadn't seen her. He didn't appear concerned. He was back in his studio. Everything that was Mark's was gone. Tom had set up a panel he'd been working on before he was weakened by illness. He had mixed little cups of color from the big jars on his worktable. Tom's pipe was going, and he gave off waves of contentment and satisfaction as he trimmed some sable brushes with a razor blade.
There were no messages from Barry or messages concerning Mark on the service. Dal piled up the Sunday papers, carried them to his room with a large bottle of Grolsch beer. He turned on the television. The Yankees had a laugher going in the fourth at Toronto. He couldn't interest himself in the game or in a Times magazine article about the Mark Rothko retrospective at MOMA. Barry's absence nagged, then actively worried Dal. It wasn't her style just to go off and not tell anybody where she was.
He tuned out the baseball game and stretched, shoeless, across the bed, closing his eyes. He was still suffering from jet lag and hadn't slept all that well, despite the soothing presence of Tepei next to him, her bittersweet fastidious lovemaking. The knee that had been hurt in the Corfu quake was throbbing—he knew he'd better see an orthopedics man about it. And where the hell was Barry? Scratch, scratch.
It began unobtrusively, but became annoying after a while. Dal could neither identify nor home in on the sound. Fingernails, claws, something digging away in or at the house.
Dal got up and drained the rest of the now-tepid beer. He didn't care for it that way, preferring his beer so well chilled it was ready to turn to ice. Right now it was midafternoon, and what he really craved was a dollop of Jameson's with a frosty-cold suds chaser.
He went down the back steps, and there was Barry in the kitchen, making sandwiches. She looked around in surprise.
"Hi, Dal!"
"Hi. What're you doing?" There was a brown bag on the butcher block counter next to her, and it was already bulging with goodies. One sandwich was done, the crusts neatly trimmed away, and she was spreading mayonnaise on another.
"Just fixing something to eat. I haven't eaten all day I'm really hungry."
Her blue jeans were dusted with chaff, there were husks in her tangled hair. She had dark brown smudge of ordeal, of sleeplessness, beneath her hazy eyes. Dal looked her over carefully in passing, opened the refrigerator door, and pulled out another beer, which he popped into the freezer.
"Where's Tepei?"
"On her way to Frisco. Magazine assignment. Missed you this morning, kid."
"I went out early."
"Worried about Mark?"
"Oh, God! I don't know what to think! What could have happened to him? I've looked everywhere."
"Not like him not to get in touch with you."
Barry sighed and slipped her sandwiches into Baggies, then packed them in the brown bag. There was a quart size thermos bottle on a shelf beside the sink. She took it down and fumbled it badly as she was unscrewing the cap. Sometimes she was so inept he had to grin. But today her nerves, her air of suppressed frenzy, dug like a big barbed hook into the pit of his stomach.
"Get the milk for me, Dal?"
"Looks like you're having a picnic. Can I go?"
"'Well, I'm—I ju
st thought I'd go rowing, you know, by myself. I'm really depressed. I need to be alone. Maybe Meanness will go with me—he's outside somewhere."
"Still pissed at me?"
"Yes. But I don't want to fight."
"Me either." Dal took a long look inside the refrigerator for the Tupperware bowl and the cut-off finger that had been packed in ice the night before. They were missing. He took a deep breath and closed the door. "Here's the milk."
"Thanks." She spilled some of it as she was filling the thermos.
"Did you hear that?" Dal asked her.
Barry turned her head sharply. "No. What do you mean? Oh—that scratching noise. I did hear it, late last night. It gave me the creeps."
"Where's Mark, Barry?"
She jumped about a foot. "I don't know!"
"Trouble is, even when you were a little kid and tried to lie to me, I always knew. You get crinkly lips. And I've never seen you so on edge. And one more thing—you couldn't put away that much food in a week."
Barry picked up the thermos and gripped it under one arm. She grabbed the bag of food with her other hand. Then she backed toward the door, wary of him. There was a look in her eye, reflection of an unhealthy spirit, that gave Dal pause. He could barely breathe.
"I don't get crinkly lips and I'm not lying and I don't know what's the matter with you since you got home. You'd poison a rat if it bit you!"
"What kind of trouble are you in? What the hell is Mark Draven doing to you?"
"Nothing!" Barry shook her head vehemently, which caused her face to redden. "Nothing's wrong. I'm fine!"
"No, you're not—you're depressed. You just said so."
"Okay. So I'm depressed. I have a right to be."
"And you're scared too. What's going on with you, Barry?"
"Can't you just leave me alone? Stop being my big brudder. Stop trying to be anything to me—I haven't asked for it and I don't need it!"
Barry elbowed her way past the screen door and walked quickly away from the house. Dal was about to follow, but he wasn't wearing shoes and his knee was aching—there was no way he could hope to match her pace. Instead, forgetting about the beer he had placed in the freezer, he went up the stairs at a limping run, ignoring the pain.
