Part 12 (1/2)
”It peters out a couple of miles farther on,” Kurt said over his shoulder. He and Hank wore big packs. Kurt seemed to be more comfortable than his huffing and puffing counterpart. ”The brush gets thick and it basically disappears. We aren't going that far. I want to pitch the tent up ahead at this one spot-remember the fis.h.i.+ng hole, Pop? Then we can explore a bit.”
Explore a bit. Don wondered what that meant. Kurt's sudden interest in checking out his old stomping grounds seemed increasingly out of character. He'd long since professed to set aside childish things in favor of career ambitions and the manly hobbies of collecting cars and women. He wants to find that pile of rocks. Lord knows why, but the boy's got his cap set. Don studied his son's powerful, determined stride. Maybe Kurt's dreams were worse than he let on. He was the stubborn type, p.r.o.ne to exorcising demons via head-on confrontation.
The lazy, golden afternoon was further mellowed by a cool breeze and lengthening shadows. The creek gurgled through rocks and rushes and songbirds chirped in branches that yet kept most of their leaves. Clouds hung white and fat; they s.h.i.+fted and wobbled and remade themselves as animals and faces. A flock of geese honked as it skimmed low over a marsh across the way, then climbed rapidly and vanished beyond the ridgelines. Thule barked and raced ahead, peeing on every other bush and hunting for more birds to rubberneck.
After a bit, Hank called for a break; he and Kurt lighted cigarettes while Argyle scoped the valley with a pair of Zeiss field gla.s.ses he claimed to have looted from the corpse of a German Lieutenant during World War Two. That would've made him a stripling pup of seventeen or eighteen, a mere four years Don's elder, but he figured the tale was true. Beneath the genteel exterior, Argyle seemed rather fierce. He habitually concealed a bayonet in its honing scabbard at his belt-another wartime memento. Don begged him to leave it home when they gathered at the tavern, convinced the old goat would stick some loudmouthed lout and get hauled to prison. Argyle grinned and told him not to worry so much-he'd go gray before his time.
Don shaded his eyes and studied the valley behind them. The house was tucked like a matchbox in a fold of the terrain, partially obscured by the barn and the trees; reddish, westerly light illuminated its walls, pooled in its dead gla.s.s windows. Don thought its windows resembled a spider's eyes, its body a spider's body, its legs folded in the waving gra.s.s. He considered b.u.mming a smoke from one of the guys and instead took a drink from his water bottle and watched Argyle who'd squatted near a rotten stump alive with termites. Don had an uncomfortable epiphany-he wondered who was watching him and his friends. A goose ran across his grave and the bucolic panorama attained a sinister grandeur.
Cigarettes finished and water swallowed, the party commenced moving again.
Eventually, they arrived at the proposed campsite, a shady bower beneath a stand of maples ten yards from a pool that teemed with minnows and trout. The area had overgrown in the many years between visits, but the four of them soon trampled the bushes and cleared off the ring of stones that formed a fire pit. Despite himself, Don was taken aback by the rush of memories of bringing Mich.e.l.le and the kids here to fish and tell stories around the fire, and after, look at the vast expanse of stars through the telescope he rescued from the attic and brought along on their excursions. Kurt and Don pitched the tent while Hank gathered deadwood. Argyle supervised, his professed area of expertise. Dinner was pork and beans and a half case of import beer.
Velvet darkness settled upon their tiny hollow of light. It grew chill and a damp breeze rustled in the branches and scattered leaves. Argyle announced he needed his beauty sleep and turned in. Hank followed suit a few minutes later, his face red from fatigue and too many beers.
Kurt said, ”I think Winnie's going to leave me. At first I figured she was having an affair. It's been less than two years. That's not long, really. She's alone...her temp job at the college-she helps the Chinese kids who don't savvy English-it's only part time. I work fifty, sixty hours a week. I'm gone ten days out of the month. India, Asia, you know. Wherever. She's got a lot of time to kill. Bored and lonely can be a bad combination.”
Don stirred coals with a stick and kept his mouth shut. The wind moaned and darkness s.h.i.+fted around them.
Kurt said, ”Winnie started acting strange a few weeks ago. She'd be missing when I dropped in at the house unexpectedly. She'd be late from work. Then I caught her on the phone in the middle of the night. I'd been drinking, well, tying one on, I guess. So I woke up to take a p.i.s.s and she's gone. I'm groggy as h.e.l.l, but I decide to find her and she's in the den whispering on the phone. I can't make out much and she hangs up. I got back into bed and pretended to sleep just before she came sneaking into the room. She never said anything. I was upset, but I didn't confront her. Instead I intercepted the phone bill when it came in-she usually handles all that stuff. Know where she was calling?”
”Hong Kong?”
Kurt turned his head and actually laughed. ”Nice one, Mr. Comedy. You're a regular George Burns. She called here. Three times in the middle of the night, each one maybe five days apart. You didn't talk with her, did you?”
”No. Are you sure you've got the right number?”
”I'm sure. She was calling Mom.”
Don frowned. He couldn't recollect Mich.e.l.le taking any calls at odd hours. On the other hand, he usually slept like the dead and she kept her cell phone set to vibrate-a matter of habit from enduring a million meetings and debriefings with officials who weren't the type to brook interruptions. ”Why would she call your mother? Are they close? She hasn't indicated they've talked outside of your visits.”
”I don't know. There's something funny between them.”
”Perhaps it's a conspiracy,” Don said, trying to lighten the mood.
Kurt didn't laugh at this sally. ”I've considered that. You learn to spot certain behaviors in my line. I work with human resources and screen a lot of employees. Our data is extremely sensitive and it'll sound corny, but we have to guard against corporate espionage. h.e.l.l, we've been compromised by foreign governments. Lemme tell you, I've got a keen eye for suspicious persons. Winnie and Mom...they worry me.”
”For the love of...This is why you agreed to help me clean the house, I take it. To get me alone. Good grief, Son.”
”Yeah. I wanted to sound you out on this. Win's parents were eager to get rid of her.”
”Really?”
”Yeah, Dad. I thought there'd be trouble, her folks being well-connected; that maybe they'd think I was too low for her station. Her father made no secret he despised Americans. At the dinner they threw for our delegation, he joined the toast only after one of his superiors gave him a look. Should've seen his face, wrinkled like he was drinking vinegar.”
”Well, maybe you won them over with the old Miller charm. Or, maybe they wanted your money-Mr. Big Shot corporate fella.” Don winked.
”Her parents are loaded. They pushed her out the door. Winnie clammed up about the whole deal. Put it on the tab, I guess. I tell ya, Dad, I'm getting scared to see the bill.”
”Well, she could be a corporate spy. Marries you to steal secrets. Pretty clever.”
”Oh, G.o.d. Don't even joke about that.”
Don sighed. ”It's also pretty melodramatic. Didn't your company screen her? Good lord, all the questions your mother and I had to answer before they gave you the job...”
”She's not a spy, okay? No, I have a domestic crisis brewing here.”
”Why would your mother conspire with her...take sides? She isn't the sort.”
Kurt nodded, as if convincing himself of a dubious theory. ”Jeez, I dunno. Probably Win's asking for marital advice. Maybe she's scared about the baby. When we were here last...When I whacked my head. I wasn't sleepwalking.” He gulped the remainder of his beer and rolled the empty bottle between his big hands. ”I'm a pretty light sleeper these days. Win had gotten up to use the bathroom or something. I went downstairs for a gla.s.s of water; y'know, feeling my way in the dark. Candlelight was coming from under the door to Mom's study. They were in there talking; who knows about what. Me, I bet. Anyway, I figured to h.e.l.l with Win if she wants to cry on Mom's shoulder. I went to the kitchen and got a drink.”
”Then, what happened to your head?” Don felt uneasy now. He disliked the haunted light in Kurt's eyes.
”There's a mystery for you; I don't remember hitting it when I fell. Maybe I got short-term amnesia from the blow. The room sort of spun and I blacked out. Next thing I know, I'm in the greenhouse with Mom leaning over me, calling my name. It's weird, Dad. Really weird. Only thing is, I have this recurring dream of the incident, of being dragged. Like somebody had a hold on my pajamas and started pulling me away. There's giggling and whispering.”
”I think maybe you did rattle something loose. You fainted, obviously. Then, delirious and disoriented, you crawled outside. Not much of a mystery if you ask me.”
”Think so?”
”I do.”
”You're probably right. I've just been doing the math and things don't add up, is all. Like, why Mom always insisted we spend the summer here. What is it about this house? None of us ever liked the d.a.m.ned thing. Except her.”
Don wasn't feeling well; his skin clammy with thoughts of the lights in the bedroom, the long, strange history of inexplicable occurrences he'd learned to ignore. ”You're drunk. Go get some sleep.”
”I'm not drunk. And I'm serious about what I said.”
”That seems to be the case. Let it lie for now, okay?”
”I'll let it lie, all right. Something else I gotta say, first. The story I told you guys about the seance at the Coolidge department store, how I saw a figure in the office...” Kurt let the moment drag on as he visibly steeled himself for whatever was to come. ”To be honest, I actually got a better look at it than I let on that night we were sitting around with the storm going and such. Didn't feel right to say what really happened in that d.a.m.ned store. Not with Mom watching me like old Boris the cat used to right before he pounced and scratched the s.h.i.+t outta me.”
”Why didn't you want to tell the whole story in front of your mom?”
”Because, that person I saw leering at us from the other side of the gla.s.s...the f.u.c.ked up witch-thing that terrified Reeves. It was her.”
”Who?”
”You know.”
Don rose as quickly as his creaky knees permitted. ”Yep, past my bedtime.” He made a point of not looking at his son on the way to the tent.
Asleep moments after his head hit the bedroll, his dreams were sepia-tone twilightscapes of taiga frozen to iron. His astral self rocketed across the wintry panorama at frightening velocity. A light drew him; the mother of all bonfires, and it was bones, just like the old tribes did it, that crackled and emitted sulfurous black smoke and gouts of red fire.
Mich.e.l.le, naked and lithe in a middle-aged incarnation, was chained to a boulder that had been shaped first by primitive hands, then eons of wind and rain. It was the lumpen altar of a nameless dark G.o.d. She smiled at him across time and s.p.a.ce as figures in cowls danced around the base of the rock. There was a dolmen nearby; a pile of henges large enough to entomb a giant. The dolmen radiated the implacable cold of s.p.a.ce; it hissed the frequency of gamma radiation, of stars.
”I love you,” Mich.e.l.le said, her voice carrying faint as a ghost radio signal. ”We all love you.” Her face began to change and crack apart. He screamed and the vision shattered.
He lay sweating and shaking in the tent in the darkness and did not sleep again. Those long hours he spent yearning for daylight and cursing Kurt for putting such fool notions into his mind. Reinforcing notions in your mind, a submerged and less pleasant aspect of himself muttered from the cellar where Don routinely banished all unpleasant facets of his personality.
At dawn, heavy mist rose from the damp soil and drifted through the forest until it filled the valley. The men huddled near the fire, boiled coffee in a dented kettle and ate cereal for breakfast. Argyle dug a bottle of Irish whiskey from Hank's pack-he'd blithely loaded the poor sap like a donkey-and dumped a good pint into his thermos of coffee.