Charles l grant, p.7
Charles L. Grant, page 7
“So when are you going to get him?” Davies asked, as though he were asking when Maine lobster would be back on the menu.
Neil didn’t bother answering. So many films, so much television, and him the ultimate hero cliche—a former cop aching to be back on the line. What bullshit. What he wanted to do was live. What he wanted to do was figure out how the hell the man in black was doing what he did. He didn’t have to check the thermometer to know that the temperature had drifted into the low twenties, damn near zero with the wind. And that creep out there wasn’t dressed warmly enough to be able to stay out there long. He shouldn’t have stayed there this long. Unless he was really packed under that coat. Unless … he looked at the side wall. The cabins? Could he have been hiding in the cabins? Was that where he went when the cold got too much? Or the house? The house had an oil furnace; the cabins only fireplaces and space heaters. But they were protection from the wind.
So was the house.
So where were his tracks?
“I take it that means no.”
Neil turned to him slowly, tried to keep his voice even. “You haven’t been paying attention, have you?”
Hugh leaned back. Said nothing.
“Why don’t you try it?”
“I checked the cars.”
“So check out the guy.”
Hugh shook his head. “This is your country, Neil, not mine. I’m a city boy, remember? All I have to worry about is muggers in broad daylight.”
“Bullshit.” Neil stabbed a thumb at the window. “We got trees, you got buildings, it’s all the same, pal. Country boy, city boy don’t wash out here.”
Hugh brushed at the muffler, pulled at both ends as though drying his neck. “Maybe yes, maybe no, but I’d still like to know who that guy is before I try anything stupid.” His smile came and went. “And I think just about anything we try will be awfully stupid, don’t you?”
“Patience.”
“Patience,” the man agreed.
Neil leaned against the wall, gazed out at the creek. The mist had been driven away by the snow falling again, but it seemed foggy all the same. The branches were laden, sagging, dipping, every so often a clump of white tumbling to the ground. A hand to his mouth to touch his lips, then into a loose fist that pressed its knuckles lightly against the pane. He supposed, if he kept the rifle and gave Hugh or Ken the revolver, one could station himself down at the storeroom door, the other outside. If the man came around to the road, the rifleman could take him; if he showed up at the back again, there’d be two chances to get him.
If it happened in the first five or ten minutes, no problem; any longer than that, and they’d be too cold to do anything. Too stiff.
Assuming the man in black didn’t spot them first.
Assuming Nester’s death had been the result of a lucky shot.
Right, he thought; right.
He heard Davies shift, the leather creaking.
Something clanged, muffled, in the kitchen, and it was a chilling long moment before he remembered Willie was in there.
“Time?” Davies asked.
Neil held his wrist up to the light, squinted. “Eleven, give or take.”
“It feels like the dead of the morning.” He grunted. “So to speak.” He took off the muffler, folded it neatly on his thigh, flapped it open and draped it back around his neck. “Maybe we ought to have a plan.”
Neil cocked his head—go ahead, give me one.
“I mean,” said Hugh, lowering his voice and glancing quickly toward the others, “it’ll give them something to think about besides him.”
“You know, I’ve been thinking about a bunch of things along those lines,” Neil said, watching his breath fog and fade on the pane. He shook his head. “1 don’t know if anything would work.”
“Doesn’t have to, as long as they’re busy.”
“I’ve been thinking too that things are awfully calm in here.” He looked at Davies. “You know what I mean? A man’s been shot—in the back, too—and once that was over, we’ve just been … sitting around.”
“Well, whose stupid fucking idea was that?” Ken demanded, moving down the bar, spinning the stools. “Seems to me you’re the one who made it clear we shouldn’t do anything but wait for the cavalry.”
Neil nodded. “Yeah, I guess 1 did.”
“Seems to me Curt was right.”
“Oh?”
Ken looked at Davies, we’re talking man to man here, okay? “What you got, see, is trouble here. Bad trouble, am 1 right? So what a guy does—a real guy, that is—what the guy does is, he does something about it. Somebody wants a fight, you fight, am 1 right? Somebody wants to blow your head off, you make sure he doesn’t. Course, you’re not a real guy, see, you just kind of stick around, pull your head in, wait for someone else to pull your ass out of the fire. Am I right?”
Davies crossed his legs. “So what do you suggest?”
Ken sniffed, looked around and saw Julia standing at the bar’s turn. Trish had taken a stool; Mandy sat beside her. He waggled his fingers at them.
“What we got,” he continued, speaking now to Neil, “is two guns and a whole shitload of big knives, right? Okay. So we get as warm as we can, use the tablecloths if we have to under our coats—hell, the radio man’s lady got a fur coat, for god’s sake, it must be good for something besides tickling her chin. We get ready and start walking to Deerfield. We don’t have to get as far as the cops, even. Hell, there’s that development—Meadow Heights, Meadow View, something—long before we get to the light. Maybe what, half a mile up, tops? We stick to the middle of the road, guns front and back, and we move it.” He grinned proudly. “Even in the snow it isn’t going to take all that long.”
“What about the killer?” Mandy asked.
“No sweat. You got lanterns, flashlights, shit like that, right?” he asked Neil. “We all carry something, keep it on the woods. Somebody sees him, we pop him.”
“What if he sees us first?” she said. “What if he shoots first?”
“Hey,” he said, spreading his arms, “it’s a chance, okay? You gotta take a chance. If he does shoot first, we’ll know where he is and pop him anyway.” He shrugged. “Hey, it’s a chance.”
She looked right at Neil and said, “Okay.”
Ken applauded. “Right! Smart lady!”
“But first you have to tell me about the tracks.”
“How the hell should I know about the damn tracks?” he snapped, almost shouting. “He’s a fucking angel, how the hell should I know, who cares? He’s got a gun, he pulls the trigger, he ain’t no ghost. Jesus Christ!” He stamped a foot. “Jesus … Christ.”
“Ken,” Trish said.
He looked back at her and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, so you’re scared. So what else is new?” When she refused to meet his gaze, he leaned back, elbows up on the bar, almost smug. “Look, no hard feelings, Mr. Maclaren, but maybe this ain’t your kind of thing, you know what I mean?”
When you get old, Neil thought at him, you’re still going to look like a teenager. No lines. Big eyes. Your hundred-year-old aunt is still going to want to pinch your cheeks.
And you’ll still be a jerk.
He looked down at the yard.
The man hadn’t been standing in the snow, he realized then; not in the snow, but at the edge of the creek on the lip of the bank. There are rocks and pebbles there, thick grass. There’s a fair distance between us and him. We couldn’t see his tracks even if we wanted to.
You’re not an angel.
You’re not the Devil.
Son of a bitch, how about that.
None of it, however, made him feel any better. As it; was, he didn’t dare speak. What the young man had said had stung almost as bad as Nester’s drunken accusation, and he would not, dared not let himself be provoked. That way lies not only madness, but sure death. He hadn’t been kidding. He wanted to live. And he wasn’t about to provide the madman out there with a human shooting gallery.
“If you want to try it,” he said to the window, “go ahead. I’m not going to stop you.”
Havvick snorted—as if you could.
“Ken,” Trish said, “that’s cra2y.”
“Perhaps,” said Hugh, “but the young man’s effort may lead us to something better.”
“Like what?” Ken asked, twisting to press his chest against the bar. “You got something in mind?”
Hugh shrugged. “Not at the moment, no. But as 1 said, what you’ve suggested might be used as a starting point to another idea. That’s what I meant.”
“So. None of you want to try it? You’re just going to let this guy shit all over us, right?”
Neil frowned. Why wouldn’t the kid just let it go? What was the point?
Ken made a noise of disgust deep in his throat, pushed away from the bar, and walked back toward the tables. When he reached Mandy, he stopped and said, “And fuck the damn footprints,” before moving on.
Mandy laughed softly, quickly.
Ken turned around just as Neil did.
“Lady, I don’t see you using your brains.”
She stared at him, a mild smile.
He looked pointedly at her chest. “God knows you got enough of them.”
She slapped him.
It wasn’t hard, she didn’t bring her arm back for a roundhouse swing, but it was loud. It stung. It widened his eyes. He looked at the others, finally looked at Neil, who watched him almost lazily, canting his head just a little, just the slightest touch of a dare, and Havvick snorted again in disgust, turned his back and walked away.
Is that what you are? Neil thought to his back; is that what you are?
And what are you, he asked himself.
A survivor.
It tasted bad.
Trish wandered off then, and Hugh followed, muffler in his hand and swinging at his side.
Mandy shifted to the last stool, swiveled a revolution, hooked her feet over the brass band near the bottom. There was no emotion in her expression. She merely looked at the snow, but he saw that she had buttoned his cardigan above the neckline, had one hand buried in a pocket.
“He’s going to do something, you know,” she said at last.
He nodded.
He knew it.
Havvick wouldn’t let his own challenge go unanswered. He would mutter to himself for several minutes, check the outside, check his courage, finally announce to one and all that he wasn’t about to sit on his butt anymore and let some freak scare him like he was a kid, or a coward. There was no telling how far he would get, maybe not even as far as the front door, before Trish begged him to stay.
Maybe he would.
Maybe he wouldn’t.
Neil bet Nester’s ghost the kid would go.
What he didn’t bet was if the kid would live long enough to gloat.
“Jones,” Mandy said.
He looked at her. “Sorry?”
She twirled a strand of hair around her forefinger. “Ceil’s name is Llewelyn. Mine is Jones.”
When she paused, he wondered what he was expected to say. His shrug said okay, so?
The speakers crackled, and they jumped, grinned sheepishly.
Tommy Dorsey.
He thought about the front window then, downstairs. And the rifle. He looked at the trapdoor and said, “Would you mind opening that up for me? I’ll be back in a second.”
To the front.
Ignoring the others watching him.
At the counter he picked up another candy bar, and the rifle, looked outside and saw nothing but moving lines of white.
Trombones over the speakers.
They were quiet when he returned, though he heard someone stirring in the booth, heard a low voice but no words as he propped the rifle in the corner and peeled the oilcoth away, let it crumple to the floor. A hand through his hair. A glance over his shoulder—Mandy was gone, he couldn’t see Julia, he couldn’t see anyone.
He was alone.
They had walked out and left him.
A chill rippled from crotch to throat, and he swallowed heavily until he saw a vagrant flash over in the corner booth. Skin. Gem. Eye. It didn’t matter. His throat was parched, and he fumbled hastily over the bar to grab a clean glass, moved down and leaned over again, turned on a spigot and filled the glass with water. He drank it all without taking a breath. He felt the woods at his back, the glass, the man in black.
He refused to turn around.
His imagination, that’s all. It worked on him the way it worked on the others, tricking them, teasing them, using the storm and the night and the wind and the trees to show them a black ghost who left no traces behind but the body of a man.
A man who came and went at will.
A man impervious to the weather.
A man who had murdered a drunken gambler who cheated on his wife and cheated at cards and cheated on every friendship he had ever had in his life. Not a terrible man, however; an ordinary man. Not a murderer. Never a murderer.
Came and went.
Killed and left.
Neil gripped the padded rim of the bar suddenly, hard, feeling abruptly nauseated when a brief, terrifying wave passed over him, through him.
He blinked.
Jesus.
Jesus God.
It was envy.
It passed, not envy, how can it be envy? jesus, and he set the glass down with exaggerated care and lowered himself onto one of the stools. He folded his hands before him, stared at his reflection in the mirror, hiding behind bottles and the popcorn machine. Several deep breaths and a caution that this kind of thing wasn’t going to do anybody any good. He had to remain calm. All the time. He saw Julia peer around the corner, frowning.
“Someone,” he said, “should sit up front and let me know if that guy shows up there.”
She didn’t move.
“Please.”
“Okay. Sure.”
His reflection looked more impassive than he felt. A false study of confidence. A paradigm of granite. A riddle of a man who knew what was right and did it despite the denunciations of others. The question was the definition of “right.” Protect, in this case, the people under his roof. Do it by staying, do it by leaving, do it by doing nothing.
A woman’s hand passed twice in front of his eyes. He shifted his gaze but not his head, and Ceil, a cigarette in her left hand, tapped a finger on the bar.
“I’m a committee of one,” she said.
He waited.
“They’ve decided. They want to leave.”
He puffed his cheeks. “1 said before, I’m not going to stop anybody. You want to try it, go ahead.”
“That’s what I told them you’d say.”
Pressure from his foot swiveled the stool around to face her. “So?”
“Cow boy wants the rifle.”
He laughed humorlessly, barely a sound. “Cow boy can whistle for the moon.” He had no idea why he’d said that. Logic should have had him agreeing. He would keep the revolver, let those leaving have the bigger weapon. Havvick could probably use it, most young kids around here could, and probably use it well enough not to shoot any of his party by mistake. But he shook his head. “No.” He pulled the gun from his waistband, held it out to her. She stared at it, neither fear nor excitement, and took it. “Cow boy doesn’t like it, he can break up a table and use the legs for clubs.”
She turned her head side to side, blowing smoke, creating a screen. By the time he blinked it from his eyes, she was walking away. Slowly. Hips not quite snapping. The hand that held the gun down at her side.
She hadn’t reached the end of the bar when Hugh called from the front: “Company.”
He was off the stool before anyone said a word, had the rifle in his hand and was on his way down the steps before someone called his name.
Stay there, he thought; stay there, you son of a bitch.
He didn’t look at the tarp.
He darted around the posts, bent over as the roof and stone floor rose toward each other, was on his knees when he reached the window, no more than two feet wide, half that high. Old boxes were shifted out of the way, shards of cement dusted from a ledge extending out from the sill. The outside level with the gravel, part of the pane now covered to the depth of the snow. He breathed downward to prevent the glass from fogging and unlatched it. It was stuck. He leaned close, and squinted.
Saw him.
Shadow against shadow in his usual place just back of the streetlight.
Diamonds of snow winking on his shoulders.
fairy dust
raven’s wings
Running footsteps upstairs and harsh whispered voices, a chair scraping, something heavier, voices again and he wasn’t sure but that he heard his name mentioned once.
He tried pushing the frame, but it wouldn’t budge. It hadn’t been open in years; the wood soft and rotted in places, splintered in others. If he hit harder, if he broke the pane, if the frame protested, the man would be alerted and leave.
If he fired through the glass, there was no telling whether the shot would be true.
It didn’t matter.
The man would know they were armed, maybe take the opportunity to leave, and leave them alone.
And if he was lucky, then what the hell, he was lucky.
He eased back and brought the rifle to his shoulder, chambered a round that sounded like a gunshot itself.
Sighted on the man’s chest.
Uphill.
Shadow.
You never hit those damn turkeys, you know.
The barrel quivered.
Footsteps heading toward the back. Hard. Determined. Someone definitely yelling his name now.
He inhaled very slowly.
A flurry of snow pattered against the window and fell away, making him blink.
Very slowly he exhaled until the barrel stopped moving.
He held his breath.
The man in black didn’t move.
Neil fired.
Twice.
Someone screamed. Distant. Muffled.
Footsteps running. Distant. Muffled.
The night spat at him, snow and wind through the shattered pane. His ears rang. His head ached. He blinked to clear his vision and finally saw the empty space by the streetlamp. Nothing on the ground. Nothing in the street.
