A flush of shadows, p.23
A Flush of Shadows, page 23
Gretchen looked pale and sick and Charlie's face was a mask.
"They started her on hypnoanalysis. And they got the story about her father, about the boyfriends she wanted to be her father, her mother's reaction each time. And they got a dose of what we've had from her, the projections she's capable of. Easier to call her schizophrenic than try to deal with that. Delusions of grandeur, nymphomania, schizo… she's had it all pinned on her."
"They gave you the key words to induce trance?" Charlie asked after the silence had persisted many minutes.
"Yes. First, she had to know that I was a doctor. That was the kind of cue they left with her, that she would respond to a doctor using those words." She glanced at Gretchen and added, "It's a posthypnotic suggestion to return to trance instantly on cue. Obviously, Amos planted one also, but he's an amateur. He didn't know enough to protect his power over her. Probably never even occurred to him that anyone else could step in so easily."
"He isn't even her father," Gretchen said in disbelief. "He's living with her, that poor little kid, using her."
And they were in the area last summer, Constance thought, when Vernon became obsessed with a mysterious woman and then was killed. She looked at Charlie and he shook his head slightly. She had told enough for now. She nodded just as slightly.
"I'm going to go keep her company," Gretchen said then. "She may be lonesome tonight, and afraid. Poor little kid."
Charlie nodded. "I want to go over the security system."
It wasn't over, he thought. Not with Amos out there in a rage, not with that strange girl in the house with powers she seemed to have little control over. They separated then and Constance went upstairs to get her notebook. As she passed the masks on the stairway wall, she scolded them. "You knew all the time," she muttered. "Damn enigmatic Indians."
When she returned to the living room, Charlie was closing the drapes; beyond the glass, the floodlights were on, lighting the entire yard down to the lake.
"No targets," Charlie said. "Anyone tries to open a door or window, the system goes off. Sort of like locking up a wide-open field, but it's all we can do."
"You think he'll try to get in tonight?"
"Not if he's got half the brains he should have, but I'm spending the night on the couch there, just in case I overestimate his intelligence."
And she would keep him company, she thought, eyeing the chairs, the other couch. The upstairs bedroom seemed very far away, inaccessible, out of earshot even.
"Vernon and Wanda used to play games," she said. "Chess?"
He nodded. She went to the television room and asked Gretchen for the set and presently they were at play. Shortly after twelve, Gretchen and Angel went upstairs, and soon after that Charlie made his first check of the house. From the dark television room, he looked out at the yard. It was raining, and the wind was blowing fitfully. A freeze was predicted for overnight. The roads were going to be bad for going home, he found himself thinking, and he longed to be there in front of the fireplace, the silly cats trying to filch anything edible, Constance in her chair, reading or writing away. Maybe tomorrow they would wrap it up here and go home, ice or no ice, he decided, then finished his tour of the house.
Amos would not be able to give her up, Charlie was thinking later, staring morosely at the game, where he was going to be mated in another move or two. In some ways, he pitied Amos, who had tangled with something he could not control or understand or resist.
"Vernon must have seemed a real threat," Constance said, finishing his thought as she so often did.
"Yeah. But why does Angel keep on looking if she's found someone?"
"The three-year-old in her is still looking, remember. When the father turns out to be a lover, the three-year-old knows something is wrong, and the search is on."
"And it'll never end for her."
"I don't know. I want her, Charlie. I want to help her, to work with her, find out what she's capable of, help her learn to control it."
Charlie thought of the images of Constance that Angel had put in his head—old, ugly, fearsome even. He doubted that Angel would let Constance anywhere near her, if she had a choice. Yet, they couldn't just turn her loose. And they sure couldn't send her back to the institution. She isn't our problem, he wanted to say, but obviously Constance thought she was, or was willing to take her on as a problem.
"I concede," he said then. "Want to break the tie?"
"Sure." She started to set up the pieces again, then stopped when Wanda appeared in the doorway from the kitchen area.
"Why are you both still up?"
"How did you get down here?" Charlie asked.
"The back stairs. It's after two."
"Is anything wrong?" Constance asked sharply. Wanda had on a long robe that looked warm, but she was shivering and very pale.
"Please, both of you, please go to bed. This is terrible, staying up all night, not sleeping. I have to be alone sometime! There's always someone… ." She fled into the darkened hall.
Constance followed her to the kitchen. "What happened?" She asked again, sharper this time.
Wanda put a teakettle on the stove and turned on the burner. "I want a cup of tea."
Constance looked at her helplessly. "Were you dreaming? Is that it?"
"Just leave me alone."
"Listen to me, Wanda. There are things about him and Angel that you have to know. She isn't his daughter, and she's the one with telepathic powers. He never knows anything until they go away and he gets it out of her. She's the one giving him information, not Vernon. And it's information right out of your head, our heads, not from beyond the grave."
Wearily, Wanda turned off the stove, then faced Constance. "I called Amos. There are things moving in the house, unquiet things. I want to see him alone. You and Charlie have to go upstairs, mind your own business. I don't want you here any longer. Isn't that clear enough? I don't want either of you here now. If Vernon tries to tell me something, Charlie just gets in the way." She moved toward the hall, this time resolutely.
In defeat, Constance walked with her. They could not order her not to see Amos, order her to keep her house locked up all night, order her to do anything. They were nearing the end of the hall, the bright living room open before them, when she stopped abruptly, her fingers digging into Wanda's arm, pulling her back, her other hand on Wanda's mouth. Amos was standing in the living room, holding a small gun, looking at Charlie on the couch.
"Just don't forget it's here," Amos was saying, putting the gun in his raincoat pocket, keeping his hand on it. "When she comes out with her nice tea, then we'll talk."
Wanda pulled hard against Constance, and Constance tightened her grasp, held her without difficulty. She pulled her back farther into the shadows.
"You don't think people might talk if you come in and shoot up the company?" Charlie said pleasantly. His voice was so mild, so easy, he might have been asking about ball scores.
"You're a firebug. Angel told me. Wanda and Angel and I are leaving and you can play with fire." He had turned so that he could see the hallway to the kitchen. "Just sit still until your wife joins us with her tea."
"Were you afraid Vernon was going to take her away from you?"
Amos moved out of range; they no longer could see him. Constance let go of Wanda and ran to the living room.
He was standing close to Charlie, speaking in a low, intense voice. "… her fault. She can't help it. He was going to investigate us, investigate her, take her away."
"And you killed him. He just wanted to do something decent for the kid."
"Decent! You know what she does! She told me about you, how she wanted you. I know what that means."
"What does it mean?" Wanda asked, holding on to the door frame. "What exactly is it she does?"
For a moment, Amos looked too stunned to speak. He recovered quickly. "She's sick. I've known it for a long time, but I thought I could cure her. I thought my love would be enough to make her well. It was a mistake. I was misguided. I know that now. She needs medical treatment, a hospital, help—"
Suddenly, Constance felt as if she had been punched in the stomach. She doubled over in pain, unable to breathe, and at the same time a red hatred poured through her, wrenching her, numbing her. Things were flying through the air; the masks were flying. She tried to dodge, but something caught her on the side of the head and she fell, dazed, far removed from the room.
Charlie threw his arm up before his face to ward off the masks, caught one on his elbow and felt his entire arm go numb. Hatred and fury blinded him. He grunted and fell to his knees when something smashed into his midsection. The chessboard flew from the table, scattering pieces, and hit Amos in the back. Amos was screaming hoarsely. "Angel! For God's sake, stop it! Sister Angel, be a good girl. Stop!" It was cut off by a scream, and Charlie could not tell whose scream it was. Wanda crumpled to the floor.
Constance pulled herself up, got to her knees. Angel was on the top step, barefoot, dressed in a man's pyjama shirt that reached down to her mid thighs. She was crying the way a child cries, like a three-year-old, open-mouthed, her eyes tightly closed, screaming.
She had to make the child hear her, had to say the right words, make her hear… . Her words were drowned in screams. An end table flew across the room, hit Amos on the leg. She said the words again and could not even hear them herself. The entire room was alive, moving, crashing. She would kill them all, Constance thought distantly.
"I'm coming!" Charlie whispered. "Hold on, baby. I'm coming!" He tried to move, tripped over the chess table and felt it jerk out from under his body, saw it fly across the room, crash into the wall. He pulled himself on the carpet, clutching it, trying to drag himself to her. I'm coming. Honey, don't scream! Stop screaming! I won't let him send you back, Angel! I swear it!
Amos was dragging one leg, holding on to the back of a chair, unable to stand upright, yelling hoarsely to her, calling her name over and over. The chair tilted and he crashed to the floor again. The gun was shaken from his pocket to the floor. Angel kept screaming.
Amos flung up his hand to ward off something; he rolled and doubled up in pain and his hand closed on the gun. He was moaning. "Stop it, Angel! My God, Angel—" He convulsed with pain again, and this time he lifted the gun and fired.
"Angel!" he screamed. He dragged himself to the steps, and she fell down on top of him. Her eyes had opened; she stared unblinking at the ceiling; her long white hair swung when he lifted her. "Angel!" he cried out again, and pressed her body to him, cradled her like an infant, rocking back and forth with her, crying out her name over and over.
Constance buried her face in her hands and shook with weeping. She felt Charlie's arms around her and leaned against him blindly.
His eyes were closed tight, his face against her neck. He stirred first. Wanda, he thought. Someone had to see how badly Wanda was injured. He lifted his head. "I'll be damned! Constance, look!"
Nothing in the room was disturbed, nothing broken, nothing out of place. Constance raised her head, reached up to feel her temple, expecting a lump, a cut, blood. There was nothing. Amos rocked back and forth, sobbing, holding Angel in his arms. Wanda was starting to move.
The police had come and gone, and now the sky was lightening. Charlie and Constance stood before the wide expanse of glass and looked at the lake, unbroken by a ripple. He had told the police that Amos had come for his daughter, then shot her when she appeared on the top step. Constance and Wanda had repeated the story, adding nothing at all to it.
"That poor kid," one of the policemen had said over and over. Poor kid, Constance echoed in her mind. She never had a chance. She remembered the toy cat, how it had thrown Angel into a panic as she equated herself with it—soulless, will-less, an automaton, taking orders, never free. And with powers that never would be studied, never understood, never used for something other than deception and destruction. Powers that finally killed her, after making her life hellish. "She never had a chance," she whispered.
Charlie tightened his grip on her hand. And Amos, he never had a chance, either, he thought, but did not say it. He would have had to kill father figures for an awfully long time. Constance had not asked what Angel had made him feel, what she had made him see. She never would ask, and he never would bring it up, either.
"I wish we were home," he murmured, yearning for their comfortable living room, the three raunchy cats, the quiet fire, the silent snow accumulating under the windows. She leaned against him and sighed. "Let's not go anywhere again for a long, long time." They went upstairs then, and when they got to their room, they shared one of the twin beds, just to hold each other, just to be close.
TORCH SONG
Copyright © 2012 InfinityBox Press
CHARLIE HAD FINISHED CUTTING up the apple trees he had felled back in February. Delimbing, debranching, disjointing, disarming—he grinned—at least sawing them into manageable lengths; he surveyed with satisfaction the mess he had made. "Get 'em before the sap rises," his neighbor Hal Mitchum had advised, "and you can burn the wood come fall." They were old, tired trees that yielded too little to stay and caught every disease known to the apple kingdom, and worse, they threatened the well-being of the half dozen new ones he and Constance had planted. He had gotten them before the sap rose, and then rain and snow had alternated week after week and Constance had said, "Charlie, you can't just leave them all spring, all summer. They'll be covered with brambles and weeds the day after spring comes. And you can't drag them out after the daffodils are up," she added in a way that warned she meant it. She had planted the daffodils and probably knew where each one was, when it was due.
"Why don't you just hire someone to come in, do the job, clean up, and be done with it?" he said, mimicking her very well. He should have answered, Because you don't hire someone every time there's a little job to do, not when you're supposed to be retired. But she would have nailed him on that one; there had been a couple of pretty lucrative jobs he had done in the past six months.
He started down the slope toward the barn to get the tractor fired up, find a chain, start hauling the butchered trees to less sacred ground. Slipping and sliding on a layer of snow over a layer of ice that rested uneasily on a layer of oozy mud, he made his way without a glance toward the house until he had nearly reached the barn. Then he stopped when he saw a man emerge from the barn and another one watching his progress from the back patio.
He shifted the chain saw and continued to walk. City men, dressed in topcoats, the nearer one in shiny black shoes that definitely were not meant for snow and ice and mud.
"Hey, Charlie," the man at the barn said. "Carl Pulaski, remember me? We met twelve, fifteen years ago."
Charlie had never seen him before. "You just dropped by for a little visit?"
"Sort of. In the neighborhood, remembered you, knew you were around here somewhere. I'm with ATF, you remember?"
Charlie passed him to enter the barn. He glanced around swiftly but couldn't tell if anything had been moved, touched, or added. Pulaski followed him in.
"Gee, Charlie, Mr. Meiklejohn, I'm sorry you don't recall our meeting. That would have made this easier." He held out ID.
"Yep, Carl Pulaski, says so right there," Charlie murmured after a glance at it. He headed for the rear of the barn, where coils of rope and lengths of chain hung on pegs. "Thought you guys were all south for the winter—Waco, someplace like that."
"I'm in the area on official business," Pulaski said stiffly. "My associate and I want to talk to you."
"Well, I'm pretty busy right now. Like to get that wood hauled before it snows, rains, or sleets, or all three. Why don't you tell me what you want, and I'll remind you that I'm not official anything these days, and we'll both be able to get on with our work."
"Why are you on your high horse, Meiklejohn? You know you can make this as hard or as easy as you decide."
"See, Carl, when I was a wee lad, my mother taught me that if you want to pay a visit, you ring the doorbell and wait for someone to answer it. If no one shows up, you go away. You don't go snooping around outbuildings."
"We're investigating the Fircrest fire, Charlie. We need to talk to you."
Now Charlie studied him with interest. Pulaski looked frozen. His face was lean and very red at the moment. About fifty, give or take five, bareheaded and gray, pale blue eyes; he looked very earnest, sincere, like an accountant about to tell you how badly you screwed up your tax forms last year.
"What about the fire?" Charlie asked. "I know what was in the papers. You can probably still get them at the library."
"Let's go inside the house and talk," Pulaski said with an edge in his voice. "My feet hurt from the cold, and my hands are numb."
Charlie shrugged and nodded. He led the way, secure in his heavy boots now that the ground was level. Pulaski had trouble with his footing. At the patio, the second man waited. "My associate, Cy Gorman," Pulaski said, starting for the sliding door. Gorman kept his hands in his pockets.
"This way," Charlie told them, and led them to the back porch entrance, where he began to pull off his boots. He looked pointedly at Pulaski's feet, and the agent took off his shoes. Gorman's shoes were clean; he had had enough sense to stay on the walk, which had been cleared about a hundred times that year. Inside the back hall, Charlie hung his jacket on a peg; they kept their coats on.
