Something Stirs, page 17
He dozed.
He answered the telephone despite his mother’s objections: talking briefly to reporters who wanted to know how he felt, telling them all it was a pretty stupid question, how did they think he felt, and grinning at the street for his boldness; talking to Detective Jorgen, who wanted to know why he’d been in the area, listening to his answer with an occasional grunt, and not responding when Scott found the nerve to ask if the man thought Slap was part of all this; talking to Mr. Relbeth, who begged him to come in; talking to Fern again, to Barnaby, who wanted to know, angrily, who the hell Fern Bellard thought she was, trying to get everybody scared shitless like that.
Talking until his ear ached, and his mother took over, less tolerant, snapping, finally unplugging the phone and shaking a fist at it before she went to the store to get something for supper.
They ate in front of the television.
They saw the story of Joey’s murder.
Scott couldn’t bring himself to cry again.
He was, at the last, trapped in the toy department, the mannequins gathering in front of the elevators, whispering among themselves, pointing awkwardly in the directions each of them would take in order to search him out, drag him out, make sure he understood that their legs came off too. Both of them. One of them had brought a lawnmower up from the gardening department, it didn’t matter that it was winter, and he saw himself suddenly in the yard, little, very little, napping lightly in the sun, listening to the mower buzz, listening to his father yelling at his mother about something or other, it was probably money, listening to the grass, not feeling anything but a hard thump against his side, the screaming pain delayed because he didn’t know what had happened. Watching the mannequins prepare to take his other leg off. Faces in shadow. Gesticulating. Separating. The mower buzzing across the polished floor. Calling his name softly. While he hid in the tent pegged on artificial grass and prayed that he wouldn’t be caught, that it wouldn’t happen again. Huddling. Eyes closed. A hand tapping his shoulder and a wooden voice saying, very softly, “Boo.”
Saturday he went to work. He had to. Staying in the house was driving him up the wall, his mother’s hovering wasn’t helping, and he knew that if he didn’t talk to someone face-to-face soon, he would probably tear off his clothes and run naked down the street. For a change, his mother didn’t argue. But the only people who came to the grocery store were the usual customers, not his friends. They gossiped with Relbeth, clucked over the way the town was going to hell, turning into another New York City, and giving him such looks of pity that by the time the sun began to set, he wished he had stayed home.
Besides, his boss was in a mood.
“They” were out to get him. The big supermarket chains again. His refusal to sell, he had become convinced, had turned their tactics to sabotage more insidious than they’d ever used before.
“Oh come on, that’s crazy,” Scott said, counting the register money for the fifth time in an hour.
“I shit you not, boy, they’re going to fire my house or something, you watch.” The stench of the Turkish cigarette close to his face. “Bricks through the window, garbage turned over, you watch, they’ll do it. Force me.” The cleaver dropped onto the counter. “Sons of bitches are greedy, you know. Too damn greedy. Don’t care about the little guy. Don’t give a flying, if you know what I mean.
Scott’s smiled was strained. “So what have they done?”
Relbeth laughed. “Done? Nothing. Not yet.” A finger shook over the register. “But you watch, boy, you watch. I know them. I see them at work. Any day now they’re going to trash this place, just to let me know I ain’t getting away.”
Scott looked to the ceiling for help.
“You going to the funeral?”
He blinked. “What?”
“The Costello kid. Tomorrow afternoon. You going?”
He nodded.
“Said it was an animal.”
Scott knew. Though descriptions were sparse, the official word was that some animal had caught Joey on the riverbank. The autopsy showed that the boy had been drunk, and had been found facedown in the water, battered, cut, death from loss of blood. The police had spotted something that night, had fired at it, but it had escaped. Prints, long gone now since most of the snow had melted, proved that at least it hadn’t been human.
No guess.
Just an animal.
“Dog,” Relbeth said, picking the cleaver up, turning toward the meat locker. “You get ’em in winter.
Hungry as shit, they’ll go for anything they figure is helpless. This damn cold weather isn’t helping, of course.” Relbeth stopped at the door. “And turn on the lights, will you, for Christ’s sake? People’ll think we’re closed.”
Scott did, and squinted at the unnatural brightness, shuddered at the way the neon buzzed in the window.
Then he looked toward the locker, looked toward the street, grabbed his broom and swept the floor.
Straightened the shelves. Counted the money a sixth time and scribbled the amount and time on a sheet of paper he slipped under the tray.
He hadn’t thought about the funeral much, or the way Joey had died; he tried not to think about it now.
Tomorrow would be soon enough. Tonight all he wanted to do was sit in the tub and let the hot water put him to sleep. With luck there’d be no more dreams. With luck he’d be able to convince himself he was wrong, dead wrong, that the police were right, that Relbeth was right, that it really had been some kind of hunger-crazed animal who had caught Joey at the wrong place at the wrong time, had chased him until he’d slipped on the frozen bank and stunned himself on the rocks; had savaged him while he’d been helpless. If he could do that, sleep would be a cinch.
If he could do that, he thought, putting on his jacket, he’d be able to teach elephants to fly.
He pounded on the locker door and yelled a goodnight to his boss, heard a cursing response, and left with a half-smile that remained even when the night wind cracked against his cheeks, dropped his hair into his eyes, slithered down the back on his neck to stiffen his spine.
“Jesus,” he muttered.
Traffic was heavy. People leaving town for the malls and mall theaters, for shows in New York, for parties in other towns. The street was dry, the tires hard and high-pitched, and it took him a while to find a break large enough to allow him to cross in the middle of the block. Once on the other side, he debated walking up to the diner, gave it up, and started home.
And once off the Boulevard he saw the man across the street.
Dark coat, dark hat, keeping pace with him without a sound.
“Screw you, Barnaby!” he yelled.
He jammed his hands into his pockets and hurried on, the wind nudging him from behind now, bringing with it the sounds of the cars behind him.
The man kept walking. Stiffly. As if he had not one, but two false legs.
Barnaby, dammit, he thought, I’m going to kick your ass, you keep this up.
The man kept walking.
At his corner, temper surging, heat tightening his jaw and his stomach, Scott stopped.
The dark man stopped, under a streetlamp.
The dark man raised his head and took off his hat.
The dark man had no face.
Scott backed away, knowing it was trick, a stocking pulled down to Barnaby’s chin, a mask, something like that.
But the dark man had no face.
Eyes, yes; nose, yes; brow, cheeks, mouth, chin—yes.
Yet the face was still blank.
And the dark man had no shadow.
The wind rose, fell, rose again and danced with the bare branches of trees and shrubs.
A car horn blared.
Scott turned and hobble-ran when the dark man put his hat on and stepped down off the curb. There was no ice to be cautious of, only cracks in the pavement, sections that had been lifted and still had weeds poking out from underneath, a rock that could have tripped him if he hadn’t seen it in time, his own shadow plunging ahead and falling back, pointing the way and, like him, refusing to look back.
The dark man made no sound.
Scott felt the wind chapping his lips, stinging his cheeks, pulling at his hair and turning it to fine whips.
The dark man made no sound.
Scott couldn’t believe this was happening again. The same figure, the same flight, the same stumbling up the stairs and into the house, his mother coming out of the kitchen still wiping her hands on a towel, asking if he was all right.
He didn’t answer.
He hurried into the living room and stood at the window.
This time the dark man was still there. Across the street now, by a telephone pole.
“My god, who is it?” his mother asked over his shoulder.
He shook his head. He didn’t know.
“Well, I’m calling the police.”
He felt her turn. “Don’t.”
“Don’t be foolish, Scott. That could be—”
“He’s gone.”
He was.
There. And gone. Blended into shadow, leaving only the pole behind.
Chapter Twenty
In all his dreams, his legs were as they were, and he could not run, and so Blade Murtaugh scooped him up and raced together down a year-long alley, the Queen of Foxriver running at their side, giving her blessing to the rats and the worms and the beetles and the slime, the hat that looked like a turban wobbling side to side until it finally fell off and he saw that she was bald; and when she saw that he saw, she told him not to worry, that none of her knights had any hair either; and when his hand touched his head, he knew that it was so, and it was so with Blade as well, and with the rats that fell from the walls onto his stomach, with the dogs that began to chew on his leg despite the speed Blade managed to hold, and with the cats that ran past them, bits of Slap in their mouths; and when the Queen of Foxriver finally began to fall behind, he looked over Blade’s shoulder and saw something huge looming there, the dark man ten times as tall and oddly shaped and oddly running; and when the Queen saw it, she began to laugh; and when Blade saw it, he began to laugh too.
And Scott sat up in the middle of the night, eyes wide, the screams that he heard clinging to the dark.
His mother.
In his haste to get to her, he fell from the bed, used the mattress to get back up, and hopped to the door, threw it open, and hurried down the hall, past the bathroom on his left, the stairs on his right, to his mother’s door where he knocked as hard he could without pounding.
“Mom!”
He leaned against the wall.
“Mom!”
A light under the door, a grumbling, and she opened it, peering at him as he squinted back.
“Are you okay?”
“Scott, for god’s sake.”
“I heard you screaming.”
She pushed her hair back with the flat of her hand and gave him a look that told him, flaky, she didn’t appreciate the interruption of her sleep. “Scott, you were dreaming.”
He looked past her into the bedroom. There was nothing wrong that he could see, and he felt suddenly awfully stupid.
“You were dreaming,” she repeated.
“Yeah,” he answered, not arguing when she took his shoulder and turned him around. “Yeah, I guess I was.”
It wasn’t until he reached his own bed again that he realized he’d been wrong.
The Queen had been laughing.
What he’d heard was a scream.
Chapter Twenty-One
Large patches of grass pockmarked the hillside cemetery, making what was left of the snow look whiter than it was, making the bare trees look almost attractively grim. The headstones seemed more clean, sharp-edged. Angels prayed and wept, copper and brass gleamed, cherubs directed their pious gazes toward heaven.
Ice daggers hanging from branches hidden from the light dripped rapidly from their points.
Sparrows pecked at the bare ground, crows strutted, a cardinal balanced on a twig, vivid and noisy.
The sky was clear.
The sun was bright.
It was not, Scott thought, wishing he’d brought a pair of dark glasses, the right day for a funeral. There should be rain, or sleet, or at least a few clouds. And it should be cold, bitter, the way it had been the week before, not just about warm enough for him to take off his suit jacket.
It was wrong; all wrong.
Joey, he believed, deserved more of a proper mood. He deserved that at least, since Eddie had gotten nothing.
But he was pleased at the number of people who had shown up, both here, and earlier, at the church.
The Costellos stood and were seated under a stiff canopy beside the gravesite; it seemed as if there were hundreds of them, black suits, black hats, black dresses, black coats with dark buttons. Laine sat with Mrs. Costello. Al was white-gloved in his policeman’s dress uniform, as were a number of his off-shift friends.
Detective Jorgen was there as well, off to one side, standing alone, his hat on but his hands held reverently in front of him.
Snow glittering in the sunlight, white and silver gems trapped beneath the surface, winking at the dead.
Scott stood with the Pack on the fringe of the assembly. They had arrived one by one. Solemn. Saying nothing. Dark suits and coats. Katie kept herself between Fern and Tang; Pancho stood next to Scott, fidgeting, Barnaby just behind and muttering under his breath. They listened to the overweight priest, to the responses, to the sniffling, the muted sobbing, to Mr. Costello swear at God once and angrily until Al put a hand on his shoulder without looking down. They watched the flowers placed on the coffin— roses, carnations, a spray of baby’s breath; watched Mrs. Costello so odd without her apron stand at the edge of the grave for so long, so rigidly, they feared she might throw herself in; watched two figures standing beneath a distant tree, small people, one with an arm around the other, the other wearing a turban; watched the line of automobiles and limousines whose windows fired back the reach of the sun.
Black.
Everything was black except the sky.
The snow.
And when it was over, prayers and silent weeping, when the priest and his acolytes stood aside, when friends and strangers began to drift away after paying their respects to the family, when the relatives huddled around Joey’s parents, Scott made his way to the coffin and looked at the flowers, the brass fixtures, the polished dark wood.
Damnit, Joey, dammit.
A touch of a breeze; the petals fluttered.
Damnit, it’s not fair.
He wondered if he should try to say something to Mrs. Costello, and decided against it. She had already noticed him at the church, had given him a brave smile, a grateful nod. It was enough. As long as she knew Joey’s friends hadn’t forgotten him, it was enough.
He returned to the Pack and they moved as a pack up the rolling slope, avoiding the paths now clogged with escaping traffic, making their way toward the main road that would bring them out onto the street behind Town Hall. They didn’t walk over the graves; they found the spaces in between. Fern groped for and found his hand. Tang shifted to Pancho and Barnaby. Katie walked on his other side.
None of them said a word.
Until Barnaby muttered, “Shit, what the hell are those stupid farts doing here?”
Scott looked to his right over Katie’s head wrapped in a dark kerchief, and saw Blade and the fur-coat-wrapped Queen still huddled beneath the tree where he’d seen them before. On impulse he headed over, Fern not protesting, the others reluctantly falling in behind. It startled him for a moment, their silence, their following, but he was more intrigued by Blade’s not moving away, not trying to leave when he realized he’d been spotted.
Scott nodded a greeting as he approached.
Blade nodded back, collar up, head bare, wool cap crumpled in one hand. “Sorry to hear,” he said, wiped his nose on a sleeve.
“Thanks for coming.”
“My knights,” the Queen said with a tremulous smile.
“Jesus Christ,” Barnaby said in disgust.
Scott turned on him, glared at him, chest abruptly tight with rage. “Shut up, Garing, okay? Just shut the hell up.”
“Hell?” Pancho said.
Scott grinned.
Blade cleared his throat as he smoothed on his cap, tucked the tips of his ears under. “You gotta know something, Leg, you gotta know.” The Queen tugged at the black man’s arm, but Blade brushed at her hand impatiently. “He gotta know.”
“Know what?” he said.
A car backfired, and the Queen jumped.
“I ran away.”
“Yeah, so I noticed.”
Blade wiped his face hard with a palm, glanced up at the branches overhead. “I ran because …” He cleared his throat, looked sheepish. “It wasn’t you. It was …”
“You heard,” Scott said quietly.
Startled, Blade nodded.
The Queen took a step back.
“You’re shitting me,” Pancho whispered.
Scott shook his head. “He’s right. I was there. I saw.”
Feet in the snow then, shifting nervously, the Pack breaking up in several directions at once, but not running away, not leaving. Barnaby was the only one who didn’t move; he glared at the others as if forbidden access to a secret.
Tang, her hair loosely bunned, making her face look too thin, said, “Last night, I—”
“Last night,” Katie echoed. “God, yes. Me, too.”
Scott remembered his nightmare.
Blade nodded jerkily. “Somebody, I don’t know who.”
“Oh, man,” Barnaby moaned, flapping his hands. “This is nuts. You guys are frigging nuts.”
Scott checked at his watch, waited a few seconds for his vision to steady. “The diner, okay? Tonight. Eight or so.”
“Hey, look,” Garing complained, “who the hell made you king, huh? You can’t even wait for them to put Joey in the ground, you son of a bitch?”
Tang gasped.
Fern said, “Screw off, huh?”
“Oh, dry up.”
“Knights and ladies shouldn’t use coarse language,” the Queen scolded without raising her voice.
