The Little Country

by Charles de Lint

  He was her way out of the cage‌—and that was it. He set it up so that she got her green card without a hassle, got her some dancing gigs, and then the film work. Sure he was connected, but then who in the industry wasn’t? And it wasn’t so bad. You could make out fine. Just stay clean‌—no drugs, no booze‌—and they didn’t have a hold on you. You could walk, anytime you wanted to.

  The time just hadn’t come for her yet.

  She was in her late forties now, but so long as her bod held out, she was going to hang right in there. Because she liked the action. She liked the idea of all those little weenie men sitting in dark theatres or renting video cassettes, getting hot because of what she could put out. If they only knew what went into those films. Like making them was anything but a chore.

  She had to work a little harder than all the fresh young talent the sleazebags like Eddie “discovered,” but then she had the experience. She could do more in five minutes on the screen than most of those kids could in a whole reel.

  Maybe she was an actress after all.

  She watched Mousehole approach through the front window of the cab.

  Not like anybody here would understand‌—or even care.

  She wondered what Bett’s game was. What the hell could the Littles of Mousehole have that was so important? About the most they had going for them was the ability to bore you to tears without half trying. Still it had to be something, something big, because Bett was throwing around an awful lot of money to get it.

  There was a bonus waiting for her and Dennison if they could get it themselves. Whatever “it” was. Kinda hard to imagine them collecting that bonus when they didn’t even know what it was that Bett was looking for in the first place. She got the idea that he didn’t know either, but that just made it more interesting.

  The cab pulled up in front of the newsagent on North Cliff. Connie got out, leaving Dennison to handle the cabbie, and looked out at the harbour.

  Now this hadn’t changed a bit. It gave her the creeps to think of how she might have spent the whole of her life in this dead-end hole.

  Thank you, Eddie, she thought. Maybe I owe you more than I thought I did.

  “Ready?” Dennison asked as the cab pulled away.

  Connie nodded. “The sooner we get this over with and I can get out of this place, the happier I’ll be.”

  “What’s wrong with the town?”

  “Village,” Connie corrected him. “Over here, they’re very set on what’s a village and what’s a town and get insulted when you screw it up.”

  “That still doesn’t tell me what’s wrong with it.”

  “Look at it. The place hasn’t changed for five hundred years, I’ll bet. It’s got nothing going for it.”

  “I think it’s pretty.”

  Connie sneered. “Or quaint?”

  “Yeah, that too.”

  “Christ. You should try living here.” She laughed. “Wouldn’t that be something? Mousehole with its own hotshot private dick. Be a lot of work for you here, I’ll bet.”

  “You don’t much care for the place, I take it.”

  Connie gave him a hard stare. “You wouldn’t understand,” she said.

  “Try me.”

  She shook her head. “Let’s just get the job done, okay? We can socialize later.”

  Her humour returned at the frown that settled on his features. That was supposed to be his line. She licked a finger and made a mark in the air with it.

  “Score one for the gal,” she said.

  2.

  So far, Ted Grimes had no complaints about the way Bett had handled things. It showed he was serious, and Grimes appreciated that in a man.

  Bett had booked him into the kind of room he wanted, away from the tourist areas‌—although at this time of year that wasn’t hard to manage. With the tourist season over, it looked like everything was away from where the sightseers liked to hang out. The package was waiting for him on his dresser, as well. After stowing his bag in the closet, Grimes cut the string and unwrapped the brown paper from the parcel to find a nice snub-nosed Colt .38 Detective Special and a box of shells.

  Grimes didn’t much care how Bett had gotten hold of the goods. All that was important was that they were here. One-handedly, he took the gun apart, cleaned and oiled it in record time, then loaded it up with one shell. He snapped the cylinder back into place and gave it a spin with his prosthetic hand.

  The Colt had a comfortable heft in his left hand as he held it, weighing in at a clean seventeen ounces. Six shots. More than enough for the job.

  If there was a job.

  Everything else Bett had promised had turned out just the way he said it would, but Grimes wasn’t sure about the job itself. It didn’t figure that Madden would head over here without a single member of his security force in tow‌—not when you considered the way he lived at home. His house in Victoria might not look it, but the damn place was a fortress.

  Grimes knew.

  His missing hand ached with the memory.

  Of course the thing about Madden was that maybe he never needed guards. He sure hadn’t needed them that night.

  The ache in his missing hand deepened.

  Wasn’t that a thing? Frigging hand had been gone now for the better part of two years, but he could still feel the sucker sitting there on the end of his stump.

  Grimes gave the cylinder another spin.

  It’s Wheel of Fortune time, he thought. Round and round and round she goes, and where she stops, nobody knows.

  He spun it again, then lifted the gun to press its muzzle up against his temple.

  Okay, Madden, he thought. Here’s your chance. Work your hoodoo. Finish what you did to me‌—just like you should have done before.

  Adrenaline pumped through him as he slowly squeezed the trigger. The world turned sharp‌—every object in the room going suddenly into a deeper focus than it had been moments ago.

  The hammer clicked against an empty chamber.

  No go.

  Grimes brought the gun down again and snapped open the cylinder. Holding the gun between his prosthetic hand and his chest, he loaded the chambers until all six carried a load.

  You had your chance, Madden. Now it’s my turn.

  He laid the gun on the table within easy reach and tucked the box with its remaining shells into his jacket pocket. Then he sat and waited for the phone to ring, heartbeat still quick-stepping from the adrenaline charge he’d given it a moment ago.

  Russian roulette: the game of champions.

  He’d been playing it with Madden ever since that night Madden had stepped inside Grimes’s head with those hoodoo eyes of his and made Grimes cut off his own hand.

  Madden didn’t know about the game, but he was going to find out.

  Real soon now.

  It was that, or Michael Bett was going to be one sorry sucker before this night was through.

  Fortune My Foe

  One of the bugbears of modern life is too much rationalism, too little easy interplay between the world of the unconscious and the unseen.

  ‌—ROBERTSON DAVIES, from an interview in Maclean’s, October 1987

  Janey got up from the sofa when she was finished reading and went to stand by the window. She looked out at Chapel Square where the last light of the day was leaking away. Shadows thickened in doorways and clung to the walls. She shivered, looking at them, remembering the shadows in the story she’d just finished reading, remembering what Peter Goninan had told her and Clare about shadows and John Madden.

  He can see through them, hear through them, speak through them . . .

  Perhaps even move through them.

  Was he out there in those shadows? Watching? Waiting?

  “Did you finish?”

  She turned from the window to see her grandfather standing in the door to the kitchen. The smell of frying fish lay heavy in the air and her stomach rumbled. She hadn’t even thought of eating a moment ago, but now she was starving.

&nb
sp; “I finished it,” she said.

  On the sofa Felix was just closing the book. Clare was sitting beside him, head leaning back, eyes closed. She’d finished that last page before either one of them.

  “Was there something . . . wrong about it?” the Gaffer asked.

  Janey shrugged. She was feeling unaccountably irritable all of a sudden, but she was determined not to take it out on either her grandfather or her friends.

  Good practice for the new and improved Janey Little, she thought. Just saying Madden let them live that long.

  “It just didn’t end like I was expecting it to,” she said.

  Clare opened her eyes. “How did it end?”

  “I’m not sure. I mean, I know how it ended, I’m just not sure what it means. I need a bit of time to suss it all out.”

  “I know what you mean,” Felix said.

  “I feel like doom’s just hanging over our heads,” Janey went on. “It’s like no matter what we do, we’re going to do the wrong thing.”

  “What you have,” Clare said, “is an attitude problem.”

  Janey scowled at her, forcibly reminding herself not to come back with some sharp-tongued retort.

  “And just what is that supposed to mean?” she asked.

  Despite her good intentions, there was still a bit of an edge to her voice.

  Clare smiled to take the sting from her words. “It’s just that if you expect things to go wrong, they usually will.”

  “I didn’t bring this all down on us,” Janey protested. “You can blame Bill Dunthorn for that. I only found the book after he wrote it.” She frowned as she said that. “Or whatever he did to make it.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  Janey took a moment to answer, then sighed.

  “I know,” she said. “But it’s hard feeling positive when everything feels so bleak. I expect this Madden bloke to come bursting through the door with a gang of thugs any minute.”

  “You’ve been watching too many American movies,” Clare said.

  “I suppose. But I swear, if one more thing goes wrong, I’m going to do more than scream. I’m going to bash someone. I really am.”

  So much for the new and improved Janey Little, she thought.

  “Remind me to keep out of her way,” Felix said to Clare in a loud stage whisper.

  “She’s a frightful bully, isn’t she just?” Clare replied in a similar voice.

  Janey shook her head and couldn’t help a smile. It felt good.

  “All right,” she said. “But you have been warned.”

  Felix and Clare started shaking with mock fear until Janey started to laugh. She collapsed into the Gaffer’s reading chair, unable to stand.

  “Feel any better?” Clare asked when Janey’s laughter had finally subsided.

  Janey nodded. “Much.”

  “Dinner’s ready,” the Gaffer said.

  “I could eat a horse,” Felix said as he got up from the couch to follow the Gaffer into the kitchen.

  “You are a horse,” Clare told him.

  “Would that make me a cannibal, then?”

  “Don’t know. Aren’t horses vegetarian?”

  Felix put two fingers on either side of his mouth and assumed a very poor Boris Karloff imitation.

  “Not vher vhe come from, mine dear.”

  Clare made a cross with her own fingers and brandished it fiercely in his face whereupon Felix began to moan.

  They were being silly, Janey thought, and it felt good. It was just like old times. She could almost forget all the mad things that had been going on, not to mention the perplexing end to the book. . . . Unfortunately, none of their problems were going to go away as easily as her irritable mood just had.

  “So do you still want to go to the Men-an-Tol?” Felix asked a little later while they were still eating.

  “More than ever,” Janey said.

  Felix nodded. “It’s worth a try, I suppose. But I wouldn’t hold my breath expecting that we really are going to call up some magical world full of piskies and the like.”

  “I know.”

  If she did that, she’d soon turn blue and asphyxiate. But she knew she had to try.

  “Before we go,” Felix went on, “we should wrap the book in plastic. That way we can still hide it somewhere out in the fields.”

  “Won’t Madden just track it down?” Clare asked.

  “Well, we’ve all finished reading it now, haven’t we? Didn’t your friend say that that would close off its magic?”

  Both Janey and Clare nodded.

  “The last time odd things occurred because of that book,” the Gaffer said, “the effects remained for some time afterward.”

  “Doesn’t change anything,” Felix said, “because here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll hide the book as best we can, then when we get back here, we’ll call Lena Grant and tell her that we’ll give it to her for a price.”

  Janey’s brow furrowed.

  “But‌—” Clare began.

  “No, hear me out. We’ll arrange to meet at a certain place‌—you can figure out where, Janey, but someplace fairly public would be best. . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “And then what, my robin?” the Gaffer asked.

  Felix looked around the table at each of them.

  “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I haven’t worked it all out. We want them to incriminate themselves, but I can’t figure out how we’ll do that.”

  “They won’t do anything in a public place,” Clare said. “They’ve already proved that they’re too smart for that.”

  “But hiding the book’s a good start,” Janey said.

  She laid down her utensils, her meal done. She’d been so hungry that she hadn’t even been aware that she’d polished off everything on her plate until she was done. She looked down at it ruefully.

  “I’m sorry, Gramps,” she said. “I didn’t taste a thing.”

  “Understandable, my treasure.”

  “We should go,” Janey said.

  “I’m too old for that kind of a trek,” the Gaffer said.

  “But will you be safe here by yourself?” Janey asked.

  “They won’t do anything in the middle of the village when everyone’s still awake,” her grandfather replied.

  “And we’ll be back soon,” Felix said.

  “Should we call Dinny?” Janey asked. “He did ask us to.”

  Felix shook his head. “And when he asks why we’re going out to the Men-an-Tol? We’ll call him when we get back.”

  “But I’m coming,” Clare announced. “I promise I won’t slow you down.”

  “That’s all right,” Janey said. “I know the farmer there‌—we can drive most of the way up his track.”

  They stood up from the table.

  “Leave the dishes,” the Gaffer said as Felix started to clear the table. “It’ll give me something to do while I’m waiting for you.”

  “If you’re sure . . . ?”

  The doorbell rang, halting any further conversation. With the day they’d just had, no one wanted to answer it.

  “It’s more bad news,” Janey said. “I can feel it in my bones. Why don’t we just duck out the back and ignore it?”

  “That’s brave,” Clare said, trying to make light of the nervousness that she was feeling as much as Janey was.

  “Well, you go answer it then.”

  “I’ll get it,” Felix said.

  2.

  John Madden’s spirit traced the pattern of the countryside surrounding Penzance like a cloud of birds.

  He was a sharp-eyed kestrel, hovering high in the still air, missing nothing of what went below. A hook-beaked fulmar petrel that stalked the strand line along the coast. A long-legged curlew wading in boggy moorland. A stonechat in the furze, hopping closer to where two old men sat on a stone wall with their cloth caps and gum boots, gossiping as they rested. A jackdaw catching a vagrant breeze above a reservoir.

  His spirit soared high,
sailed low, and the patchwork countryside was laid bare to his view. He traced ley lines, rediscovered old secret places, marked new ones: stone crosses and standing stones; barrow mounds and old battlefields; smugglers’ caves and deserted tin mines; pools where salmon wisdom lay dreaming and graves where old spirits stirred at his passing.

  And central to it all, like the hub of a spider’s web from which its emanations spread out in patterning threads, he was always aware of William Dunthorn’s secret key, thrumming to its own rhythm, a rhythm that twinned and was yet apart from the heartbeat of the land. A hidden wisdom that whispered and promised and had lain central to his thoughts for longer than he cared to remember.

  Soon to be his.

  Soon to‌—

  He started and opened his eyes.

  “What is it?” Grant asked.

  Madden lifted a hand for silence as he concentrated.

  The gate that Dunthorn’s key had opened was closing, withdrawing. It was recalling its secrets‌—all the untutored enchantments to which it was heir‌—and locking the door on them once more.

  It wasn’t possible.

  The Littles should have had no knowledge of what it was that they held. They could open it‌—for the door to such secrets could easily be opened by accident. But they should have no understanding as to how to close it once more.

  Yet it was closing.

  Senses stretched taut, he could already feel its presence fading.

  The process was slow. Residual traces would remain for weeks in the area. But the gate itself that the key unlocked was closing. When it was shut, he would be returned to the same moment of frustration as he had been some thirty-five years ago.

  That he wouldn’t allow. Before he let Dunthorn’s secret slip away from him again, he would risk a tide of blood to acquire it.

  He turned to Grant.

  “I need a car,” he said.

  Grant nodded and glanced at Gazo who had laid aside his magazine and was looking at them.

  “I don’t know what I can find at this time of day on a Sunday,” he said, “but I’ll see what I can do.”