Part 15 (1/2)
”Nothing. It was like a tomb. Not a sound. Absolutely nothing. ”
But the next day he'd gone back. And now today. ”Why?” Sterne had asked as Monckton plucked the Jeep keys from the peg on the wall. ”You expect to hear something or what?”
”No, I don't expect to hear anything. At least not with my ears.” He opened the door. ”I'll be back soon.”
But this morning, the third day of his vigil, Whitey Monckton did hear something. He'd followed the same procedure as on the first two days, parking the Jeep by the garage, and walking around the house, working from the back patio around to the west wing and on from there. He was, as he'd told Sterne, not listening with his ears alone. He let all his senses open, not knowing how the ent.i.ty he thought of as The Pines might choose to approach him.
In the few days he'd spent with Sterne in the two-room cabin near the mountain's base, he'd come to conclusions that had changed the way he looked at the world. Between what he had seen and what he had heard in The Pines, he had become a firm believer in the existence of life after death. Monckton had seen things, and he was not one to doubt the evidence of his own senses. At first he had tried, like Scrooge, to blame the manifestations on ”an undigested bit of beef, a fragment of an underdone potato.” But Monckton had a cast-iron stomach and a const.i.tution to match. He had seen, he had heard, and therefore whatever it was, was real. And though he had experienced nothing since coming down from the mountaintop, still he was haunted by the house, its mystery crept into his thoughts and dreams until he could think of nothing else.
So now he stood, head poised, at the west wing door, not listening as much as sensing. He stood there for nearly ten minutes, then turned and walked toward the front of the house, his shoes crunching the dry brown and rust leaves that carpeted the lawn and walkway. Even though no trees stood within the triangles the wings of the house formed, they'd blown over in profusion from the tree line until they were piled knee-deep against the western side of the south wing that housed the Great Hall.
Wind from the west, Monckton observed, and s.h.i.+vered as a chilly gust tore through his light jacket and swirled dead bits about his ankles. He stopped at the huge front door. The leaves skittering dryly across the jagged flagstones drowned out all other sounds, but as he stood waiting, the wind receded until the rat-scrabbling of the leaves had stopped and Monckton found himself in a total silence, like the eye of a psychic storm.
And then he heard it, high up in the air. At first he thought it might be the air circulation system in the attic, but remembered that it could barely be heard in the house, let alone outside. But the sound had the suggestion of machinery in it, of some great engine that was cranking into life after a sleep of decades, of millions upon millions of cogs and gears and wheels that had never before worked in unison now all at once coming together in some disharmonious hymn of power. And as he listened, each fragment of sound seemed a voice that whispered in rhythm, an insignificant voice that, when combined with uncounted others, formed a strength, a single note like the hiss of a billion leaves scratching stone. The sound grew louder and louder, becoming from its myriad parts one giant engine that throbbed with a universal heartbeat, roared like all the seas and skies of earth roaring in one storm, one cataclysmic symphony composed to split the planet's crust and litter the cosmos with its leavings.
Under the sunny October sky, Whitey Monckton pressed his palms over his ears only to learn that the song he was hearing was not heard with his ears, but with his skin, heart, brain, soul, with every part of him, and he listened for a long time, until it died away to a low dull pulse and the wind returned once more, lifting the leaves and making them dance to its own comparatively uninspired tune.
Chapter Ten.
George McNeely awoke to a face hanging over his bed.
At first he thought it was Kelly Wickstrom, peering in to make certain he was all right, but immediately realized his error.
The eyes were slanted like an Oriental's, and narrowed dangerously. The teeth were bared, their whiteness almost startling. The long black hair hung in matted clumps made damp by something red. It was an instantaneous picture, since the face vanished in less than a second after McNeely's eyes opened; but it hung there a moment longer, implanted on his pupils.
Dream, he told himself, and no wonder. It was surprising that he hadn't awoke to an entire platoon of gooks staring through the bars of the Vietnamese rat cage. Or worse yet, he might have seen David Neville's face-if you could call it that-floating luminously over his head.
He sat up in the bed and stretched, luxuriating in the feel of his stiff muscles drawing to their greatest length. Then he pulled on a pair of slacks and a jersey and walked into his living room. He was not alone. Gabrielle Neville was sitting in an easy chair, a book in her long-fingered hands. She smiled at him.
He nodded. ”How long have you been here?” he asked as he sat on the sofa.
She shrugged. It was answer enough. ”I wanted to be here when you woke up, to thank you. For trying to save David.”
”It's what I was supposed to do. I'm only sorry I wasn't better at it.''
”You tried.”
”Not hard enough.”
”It wasn't your fault. It was fated to happen.”
”Fated? You believe that?”
She frowned. ”I believe that once David decided to come here, it was inevitable that he would die here.”
”What about the rest of us? Are we fated to have something similar happen to us too?”
”I don't know. Some things just seem to happen.”
”Jesus, that's profound.” He hated himself for saying it, but she irritated him, played on his nerve ends like a five-year-old on a violin. All he'd wanted was to relax for a few hours, to read, have a bite to eat, and then start to figure out how to escape from this tomb. But instead, he had to talk karma with the widow of the man he'd let die. Though he felt he'd slept for hours, he was unaccountably weary.
”I'm sorry if it sounds simplistic,” she said, unoffended. ”But things happen. When they do, they do, and we're fools to be concerned about them afterward, because we could not ever have done anything differently, because it happened.”
”No second chances, huh?”
”No, no second chances at all. Just . . . similarities in the future.
He sighed and lay back on the sofa, throwing his bare feet up on the back. ”And I suppose you've never wanted something to happen again, so you could do something differently?”
”I have, but I know when I do that the feeling is pointless. So I try not to think like that.”
”No recriminations.”
”No recriminations.”
”You're one tough broad, Gabrielle.” He threw his forearm over his face and closed his eyes. ”I've thought most rich women were stupid and happy and pampered.”
”Most rich women aren't married to a man like David.”
”Neither are you anymore.” It was a thought that slipped out, a cruel, involuntary lunge that had taken voice, and he kept his eyes closed so that he couldn't see her face.
”That's true,” she said finally. ”But you must remember that I've been expecting to be a widow for some time now, so the shock isn't as great as it might be.” She paused. ”Besides, it hadn't been much of a marriage lately anyway.”
Now he looked at her, his eyes narrowing. ”Isn't that a bit callous?”
Her face was set. ”No, it's not. It's the truth. He'd changed so much through his illness. Not physically, but his mind. He was always self-centered, but in a charming sort of way. He could laugh at himself and his own pretentions so that, although they were still there, they weren't nearly as offensive as they might be otherwise. But once he got cancer, he changed. He lost that sense of humor, which was what kept him from being a prig.” She paused. ”He changed in other ways, too ... toward me.”
She looked at McNeely as if expecting him to say something to make it easier for her, but he remained silent.
”We hadn't made love for over a year,” she said harshly, as if throwing down a challenge. McNeely looked away from her. ”We couldn't,” she went on. ”He was impotent. But I still loved him.”
”Why are you telling me this?” McNeely asked, watching the ceiling.
She stood and walked over to where he lay on the sofa. ”I just want you to ... I want someone to know and understand how I feel, what I've gone through.” There was no mistaking the pleading in her voice.
”Why not Kelly? He's got a sympathetic ear.”
”I want you to know, George.” She reached down and put her hand on his forehead, pus.h.i.+ng his black and silver curls back to reveal a smooth and unscarred brow.
McNeely didn't recoil from her touch; he merely closed his eyes and smiled thinly. ”I see,” he said. ”I think I see. But to post with such dexterity ...”
” ... to incestuous sheets,” she finished for him. ”I know the quote, and it's not accurate. Not incestuous, not at all. And as for dexterity, I'm not newly widowed. David's been dead for a long time.”
”And you've already grieved, is that it?”