Death Cycle, page 6
Kyle stopped. “No,” he said quietly. “More like an avenging angel.”
To their left, far back in the tangle of trees and bushes, Roz swore she could hear the sound of an engine softly grumbling.
Roz glanced that way, but paid it no attention. Just beyond the trees was the street. There was nothing surprising about hearing a car out there. Kyle looked that way too. “Silly, right?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “So what does this have to do with me?” she asked brightly, taking his hand without thinking.
“Forget it,” he said. He laughed quickly. “I really feel like a jerk.”
She tugged at his arm. “No, come on. I mean, what did we do that some kind of avenging angel is after us?”
The faraway engine grumbled, just a little louder.
A sliver of ice slipped into Roz’s stomach, and she glanced at the distant greenery again.
Nothing moved.
Kyle’s voice was soft. “When someone leaves their home, and I don’t mean dying but like when they move away, the family keeps some part of them behind. Like an anchor, sort of, so they’ll have a place to come back to if they have to. Like a piece of clothing, a possession, or something like that. To remember them, you see? Pictures don’t count; they’re not real possessions. My folks and me, we each left something back in Wyoming for my uncle and grandmother to keep. You see what I mean?
“But sometimes the person who’s left behind tries to hold on to the other one’s spirit, even if they don’t realize they’re doing it. They want them to stay so badly that they refuse to let go, even if they know they’re going to see the other person again.
“This isn’t so terrible, the story says, if the departed person is a good person. It isn’t right, and it has to be fixed, but it isn’t a real disaster if it’s taken care of.”
Roz nodded, hoping she understood, thinking how sad and how wonderful the idea was.
But Kyle wasn’t finished. “It’s when the person who left isn’t really good at all that the trouble starts. The part of the spirit that’s held back is the true nature of that person. It’s the thing that really makes that person tick.”
Roz stopped. “What are you saying?”
He shrugged. “I told you it was dumb.”
She pointed a trembling finger at him. “It’s about Bart, isn’t it? You’re trying to say that this … this Black Rider is—” She shook her head vigorously and looked at the sky. “You’re right. It’s dumb.”
The engine raced, but not loudly.
The bushes at the edge of the clearing began to tremble.
“I’m sorry,” Kyle said miserably, and walked away.
“It’s Forbin!” she called after him, angry at both the way he’d tried to tell her just what everyone else had been saying for a month, and also at the faint burning in the corners of her eyes. “It’s Forbin doing all this! You know it!”
He didn’t look back.
She took a running step after him, hesitated, then ran again, glancing across the grass at the agitation in the shrubs. She convinced herself that it was a cat after a bird, or a dog rooting around—nothing more than that. It wasn’t Forbin and his bike. The underbrush was too thick even for a rider like him.
Kyle moved more quickly than she realized, and it wasn’t until they were both under the overhanging branches again that she caught up.
By that time her anger had subsided, and she was feeling a little foolish herself.
They didn’t speak.
They walked side by side, not touching, not distant, until they reached the twin brick pillars that marked the gateless exit. Once they were on the sidewalk, they turned left and walked on, still not speaking until she couldn’t stand it any longer.
“Sorry,” she said.
“Me too.”
“Neat story.”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“Spooky. Melanie would love it.”
Finally he looked at her, and he wasn’t smiling. “Listen, Roz, there’s—”
“Hey!” someone called from behind.
They turned and saw Lynda running toward them. When the girl reached them, she grabbed Roz’s arm and hung on, panting, head down. “Man, you guys sure are hard to find.”
“What’s up?” Kyle said.
“Just saw your good friend, Beetle,” Lynda said.
Roz glared. “He try to hurt you?”
“Nope. But he’s looking for you,” she said to Kyle. “He’s ticked. He’s really ticked.”
“What for now?”
“Forbin.”
Kyle shook his head; he didn’t understand.
“Man, when you guys hide out, you don’t hear anything, do you.” She beamed. “The cops picked him up. They want to know what he knows about what happened to Johnny. Anyway, Beetle thinks you had something to do with the cops hearing about Forbin.”
“Wow,” Roz said softly.
“When?” Kyle asked.
Lynda shrugged. “I don’t know. Sometime last night. Right after supper, I think. They kept it quiet for some reason or other. Beetle says they might not even let him go today. Anyway, it’s not the first time the cops had to deal with that creep. I don’t think you have anything to worry—”
Roz stopped listening.
She looked back at the park wall, at the trees, the bushes, and thought about last night.
If Forbin Gray had been in jail, then …
Nine
Roz sat on the front steps, her elbows propped on her thighs, her chin settled glumly in her palms. Across the street, two kids chased each other noisily with six-guns. Three doors up the street, at the curb, Mr. Macklaine worked on his bright red jalopy that he had told her had been a mean street machine back in the forties. Behind her, through the open screen door, she could hear her mother coughing, swearing at the coughing, then apologizing to someone on the telephone. It was probably a long-time customer from the department store where she worked. Roz could tell by the tone of her voice.
The westering sun glared directly into her eyes.
She considered trying to call Melanie again and shook her head slightly. It was no use. Either the family had suddenly gone away for some reason, or Melanie was sick. Or the likeliest explanation would be that she just didn’t want to talk to anyone today. It wouldn’t be the first time.
She shifted, dropped her hands to her knees, and turned her head to get away from the sun, her left hand absently rubbing her upper right arm.
Black Rider, she thought.
No, she reminded herself. There was no such thing.
A whisper drifted through her denial. He comes out of nowhere, you know. He comes, and he disappears. And you sure know now who he isn’t.
A shudder made her legs jump, and she glared at the sun as if it were its fault she couldn’t seem to get warm.
Her gaze shifted to the left, to the Grove and, beyond it, Midnight Place.
She had never been on the street, though she’d heard stories about it. In fact, she’d never been deeper into the Grove than a step or two, and certainly not all the way to the creek, even though she’d lived in this same house her entire life.
It just wasn’t a place a kid went to.
She watched the pine trees as they swayed in the late-afternoon breeze, and remembered with a fleeting frown that although she and Bart had gone together for several months, never once had he invited her to his house.
Bart Corry had lived on Midnight Place.
The sun winked as it lowered behind the houses and trees across the way.
Mr. Macklaine slammed his jalopy’s door and made a machine-gun racket as he collected his tools in their metal box.
The two cowboys vanished around the side of the house.
Bart Corry.
Forbin Gray.
“You’re kidding, right?” Lynda had said just before they’d all parted. “He had to be the one who went after you guys, Roz. He tried the same thing he did to Johnny, only it didn’t work.”
“He didn’t do it, he’s innocent,” Roz had insisted. “Besides, why would he want to hurt me? Or Melanie?”
“I don’t know, but how can you even think of defending that … that creep?”
It wasn’t a matter of defending a creep; it was a simple matter of deduction neither Kyle nor Lynda seemed to want to accept. The time the motorcycle had gone after Melanie last night was the same time Forbin had been picked up by the police.
It was a simple conclusion. He didn’t do it.
When they reminded her of the first incident, when Forbin had nearly clipped her legs off, she snapped that he was just showing off, that he didn’t mean anything by it, and he sure wasn’t trying to kill her.
That was simple, too.
And just as simply, it couldn’t be anything like Kyle had suggested. Spirits were fine for mythology books and people who didn’t know any better; but spirits, or Black Riders, in Ashford, in New Jersey, were completely out of the question.
But Bart Corry had lived on Midnight Place.
And there were all those stories…
Shadows reached across the street.
A flock of dark birds circled overhead, preparing to nest for the night.
“If you’re going to sit there all the time, would you mind if I put a planter in your lap? “ Roz was suddenly startled by her mother’s voice.
The screen door squealed when it opened, squealed when it shut, and her mother sat beside her, grunting. “It must be boy trouble.” Her mother squinted up and down the street. “You know, dear, when your father talked about boys being stupid sometimes, he forgot to mention something.”
Roz waited.
“Girls are usually smarter at that age, and maybe more mature, but that’s never stopped them from being just as dumb once in a while. That’s what you call boy trouble.”
Roz chuckled. Maybe it was, and her mother was right, and she’d been too thick to know it.
Her mother lit a cigarette and blew the smoke into the air. “That was Melanie’s father I was just talking to, in case you’re interested. I guess you could say he was awfully annoyed.”
Uh-oh, Roz thought.
“When your father gets home, we have to go down to the police station. It seems there are some questions they’d like to have answered.” She grimaced and looked away.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
Roz shrugged helplessly. “I didn’t want to upset you.”
“Well, Mr. Bannon’s pretty upset, dear. Melanie was too frightened to go to school today. She practically begged him not to force her to go. Needless to say, he wants to hang the kid that did it. Forbin, is that his name?”
Roz shook her head emphatically. “He couldn’t have done it, Mom, really. He’d already been picked up when that happened last night.”
Her mother nodded thoughtfully. “Wonderful. Two homicidal nuts in town at the same time. Wonderful.” She stood, crushed the cigarette beneath her shoe, and took hold of Roz’s shoulder. She pressed down and squeezed. “Never,” she said quietly, voice taut with suppressed anger. “Never let me find out about something like this from someone else again, do you understand me, Rosiland? Never.”
Roz didn’t try to defend herself because she knew she was wrong. She only looked mournfully down at the steps and mumbled what she also knew was a completely inadequate apology. When the screen door slammed she released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Her shoulder ached. She didn’t want to know how mad her father would be when he found out.
She was right. He was furious.
He began yelling the second he stepped out of the car. He yelled all the way to the station, yelled at the police for not protecting Ashford’s children from homicidal maniacs and crazies, and yelled at her mother for being too lenient. Once the police realized Forbin couldn’t have been the girls’ assailant, her father even yelled at Mr. Bannon for dragging him out on a perfectly good Friday night on a wild-goose chase.
By the time they were home again, Roz had a splitting headache, and an order from her father not to leave the house after sunset without a damn good reason until this guy was caught.
Again she didn’t argue. The anger wouldn’t last, but his concern about her would. Though sometimes his temper made him unreasonable, she had never once doubted that all her father wanted was to protect her.
Her headache worsened when the telephone rang shortly before eight, and it was Forbin Gray on the other end. Before she even had a chance to say “hello,” he explained that the police had released him to his father’s custody once they had inspected his bike and found no signs of collision, and a handful of friends had sworn he had been with them at the movies.
“Stork, I owe you one, honest to God.”
“It’s okay,” she muttered, wondering what in God’s name he was talking about.
“Hey, don’t talk like that. I owe you, all right? The cops, they practically had me down in Rahway doing hard time, you know what I mean? You and Bannon saved my skin when you went to the police. Don’t argue with me. I owe you—you name it, it’s yours.”
She looked around the kitchen, wishing he’d be quiet. It almost sounded as if he were ready to cry, and the thought of Forbin Gray with tears in his eyes was almost too much to bear. She had to come up with something good, and something now, or he’d never leave her alone.
“Okay,” she said at last. “Don’t call me Stork.”
She could hear him snapping his fingers in agreement. “No sweat, you got it. Never again, I swear. And thanks, Sto—I mean, Rosiland.”
Oh God, she thought. Forbin Gray’s going to call me Rosiland for the rest of my natural life.
Suddenly she smiled, giggled at the prospect, and dropped into a chair before her legs gave way. She would have exploded into hysterical laughter had the telephone not interrupted. This time it was Melanie.
“Hey, Mel, where’ve you been? Meditating or something? Have you heard about—”
“Roz?” Melanie was whispering. “Roz, can you hear me?”
Roz sat straighter and checked the wall clock. It was just past nine. “Yes, sure. Mel, what’s the matter?”
“He was here. Oh God, Roz, my folks went to my aunt’s when they got back from the police. He was out there after they left. I could see him. Roz? Roz, what am I going to do?”
Roz gripped the receiver in both hands and checked to be sure her parents weren’t within earshot. Then she hunched over the table and lowered her voice. “He’s gone?”
Melanie sobbed once.
“Okay, then just stay where you are.”
“You think I’m going out?”
Roz closed her eyes. “No, don’t be silly. I was just—”
“Why, Roz?” Melanie choked, trying to shout and whisper at the same time. “Why is he doing this?”
She didn’t know, but she didn’t stop talking until Melanie finally calmed down enough to begin to get angry. Roz didn’t blame her. It was the feeling of helplessness that gave birth to the anger. She couldn’t call the police, she couldn’t tell anyone who didn’t know, she couldn’t run out there and confront him. She knew that if she exposed herself like that, he wouldn’t be content just to watch her.
He’d try to kill her.
Suddenly she remembered what Kyle had told her about the Black Rider and managed to get most of it through to her friend. “You’re the expert,” she said when she was finished. “I’m not saying this is true or anything, but if it is, maybe you can figure out why.”
There was silence on the other end.
The clock in the oven face buzzed softly.
Her father muttered something to her mother in the front room.
Then Melanie said, “It’s you, Roz. It’s you.”
Ten
Explanations were cut off when Mr. Jordan walked into the kitchen, put his hands on his hips, and stared at his daughter, then pointedly at the phone.
Roz, deliberately leaving the mouthpiece uncovered, said, “It’s Mel, Dad. Her folks had to go see that nutty aunt—the one who lives in Foxriver, I told you about her—and after yesterday and all, Mel’s kind of upset about staying alone. Can I go over and keep her company for a while?”
He opened his mouth and closed it, taken aback by her boldness.
“You can drive me, okay? Mr. Bannon will bring me back, I swear it. Please? It’s kind of scary over there now.”
In her ear Melanie said, “That’s no lie, Roz, no lie.”
“How late?” her father finally asked.
“Dad. It’s Friday.”
He scratched a hand over his chest and shook his head slowly. It wasn’t a refusal, it was amazement.
“Cry,” Melanie suggested.
Finally he reached into his pocket and pulled out his key ring. “All right. But if they get back too late, you stay over, understand?”
“Yes!” Melanie cried.
Roz winced at the shout in her ear, but nodded eagerly. She would have agreed to almost any conditions he could think of, and sagged in relief when he left to tell her mother what was going on.
“Okay,” she said hastily. “I gotta go. Call Kyle, call Lynda, see if they can get out. If they can’t, we’ll call them back when I get there.”
She hung up without waiting for a reply, raced upstairs to change into a shirt and jeans, and was downstairs just as her father opened the front door. Then she snapped her fingers, ran back to her room and changed into her running shoes. She grabbed her windbreaker, ran back down, and grinned at her father’s mounting impatience. She blew a kiss to her mother as she ran out, and was so effusive in her thanks on the ride over that a familiar, and ominous, expression settled on his face. Somehow I’m being scammed, kid, I know it, so don’t push it.
She shut up.
He grunted.
And before the car was completely stopped at the curb on Markin Street, Melanie was at the front door, waving and smiling sweetly. Roz whirled in her seat, kissed her father on the cheek, and was on the sidewalk before he could offer the warning she’d seen forming on his lips. She waved and hurried up the flagstone walk, took the porch steps two at a time, and hustled Melanie back into the house.
