Moonbog, page 26
Before he and Allison had had the big blow-up, he had been pretty much decided on letting Sidney Latham and his contractor buddy have the property. He suspected that he could get a better price, but with the economy the way it was and feeling anxious to be rid of the old albatross, he figured he could get a quick closing, get the money, and then maybe drive on up into Canada as he and Allison had originally planned.
“Voulez vous à couchez avec moi?” he said aloud to himself, repeating the only sentence of French he knew. An old college buddy had told him that was all he had to know to have a good time in Quebec. He smiled, thinking of the prospects; a hell of a lot better than hanging around in Holland for another week or more, trying to milk a little extra money out of the property sale.
He turned right onto the Little River Road. As he drove toward Marshall’s, he found himself forgetting about Allison and thinking about his boyhood. At the wooden bridge, he unconsciously raised his feet from the floor of the car so Old Man Troll wouldn’t grab at him.
The abrupt change in the landscape as he approached the old homestead always surprised him. It seemed as though one minute you were in a thickly settled area, almost suburbia, and then you were lost somewhere in the boondocks. Just like the old joke: blink your eyes and you’ve missed the town. But the old joke didn’t make David smile as he looked out at the desolate Bog, swallowed by the thick blackness of the night.
“Old Man Troll is out there,” he whispered to himself, shivering at the sight of the jagged line of trees standing out against the night sky like a violent slash.
What black shadows moved in the Bog, he wondered.
When he came up to the old homestead on the left, David stepped on the gas pedal just a bit harder, not even bothering to lock up at the darkened old place. He felt its looming presence behind the screen of trees, but he tried to ignore it, telling himself that at least that part of his life was signed, sealed, and just about delivered. He continued up the road until he came to the turn for Marshall’s driveway.
As he started to take the turn, his eye caught a quick flash off to the right. His headlights had reflected off something and he gave it little thought, figuring it was probably just a beer can or something tossed out of a car by a passing motorist.
He hesitated for a moment at the foot of the driveway, asking himself why he was bothering to do this. His last interaction with Marshall had been cold to the point of blatant rudeness. Why not just leave the old man in peace? If he didn’t want his last living relative to bother him, why push it?
“The old man lives alone,” David said softly as he looked up in the direction of the house. “That’s the way he likes it, and that’s the way it will always be.”
David grinned tightly, shook his head, and decided on one last try. Like the sale of the property, he felt his relationship with Marshall was signed, sealed, and just about delivered. After this weekend, he could scratch the old homestead, Uncle Marshall, and Holland, Maine, out of his life forever!
As he drove up the steep incline, David still felt doubt as to what he was doing. But as he crested the hill and his headlights swept across the front of the house, he saw the light on the porch come on. Marshall now knew he had a visitor.
“Hell,” he said aloud, “might’s well go through with it.”
He started to slow his car, and as the lights swung around, David saw something that made a surprised gasp catch in his throat. He saw an indistinct form, a dark shape against the darker woods behind, shift silently like a shadow and dissolve into the night.
“What the—” He hit the brakes hard, making the tires skid in the loose gravel. The hissing sound masked the sound of the gunshot, and David thought his muffler had backfired.
It had just been an instant—barely perceived before it shifted and blended into the dark enfolding forest, but in that instant, David felt a sudden sinking in his stomach.
—A massive, black shadow loomed over him, blotting out the night sky.
David stopped his car and then jockeyed it around until the lights washed over the spot where the shape had disappeared. For a brief moment he thought that perhaps he had seen nothing, but some deeper level of his mind sounded an alarm.
David sat still, staring off into the darkness as the memory of what he and Allison had seen last Friday night as they were driving into town, rose unbidden.
“Could that have been—?” he said, mouthing the words to himself.
He stared into the darkness, trying to peel it away to see who had been outside his uncle’s house.
“Could that have been the same person who . . . who . . . who had killed Billy Wilson?”
David knew it was impossible to know for certain, and he immediately determined that he might not have seen anybody just now; it might have been a shadow from the trees, or a dog, or something—anything! Almost anything would be enough, he thought, to remind him of the person he had seen in the Bog before he found Billy Wilson. Hell, maybe he had smoked too many cigarettes and had had a momentary hallucination.
He shut off the motor of the car and sat for a moment longer with his head out the window. He listened intently but could only hear the chorus of spring peepers that filled the night.
Marshall had come to the door and walked down to the driveway. He stood there, halfway between the house and David’s car. David got out and started up the walkway toward his uncle, wondering if Marshall had come out because he had heard the car coming up the road or if he, too, had realized that there had been someone snooping around outside his house.
“Evening,” David said, as he came up to Marshall. He forced the edge from his voice, jammed his hands into his pockets, and affected a casual manner. If Marshall had seen anything unusual, David figured, it was up to him to tip his hand first.
Marshall was still standing motionless, then with a sudden rasping in his throat, he said, “G’evenin’ to yah. What you doin’ out here tonight?”
Surrounded by the night and the loud chirring of the spring peepers, the two men faced each other, neither one speaking for what David considered an uncomfortably long time. All the while, David wondered if right over there, beyond his uncle’s shoulder, in the woods, in the dark, the person waited and watched.
Old Man Troll.
David noted that his uncle’s face looked frail and worn. Deep lines creased his cheeks, highlighted by the light shining from the porch. The night sounds seemed to swell louder.
“I . . . uh . . . I was out for a drive,” David said, irritated by the tension he heard in his voice, “and uh . . . I just thought I’d drop by. I thought you might like to know what I’ve decided to do with the house.”
“I told you before,” Marshall said sharply, “that I ain’t one goddamn bit interested.”
It was exactly the reply David had expected, but there seemed to be tension in Marshall’s voice, too. David wondered if it was really there or if he was just hearing it because of what he had seen.
He’s out there!
Deciding to force the issue, David straightened up and said, “Well, I’m going to fill you in, like it or not. I’ll be heading back to New York in a day or so, once the estate sale is settled. I probably won’t be back this way for a long time.” He paused, then added, “If at all.”
Something inside Marshall seemed to soften, and he took a step backward and started for the door. “Well, no use jawin’ away out here in the dark, for Christ’s sake. Come on in for a spell.”
Surprised, David followed his uncle up onto the porch and then stepped inside the house as Marshall stood back and held the door open for him. He noticed that before Marshall came inside, he looked around outside, scanning the yard. The fact that Marshall bolted the door once he was inside did not escape David’s notice either. Marshall snapped off the porch light and then indicated the kitchen to David with a wave of his hand.
The memories that flooded back to David as he walked into Marshall’s kitchen almost overwhelmed him with an unnerving combination of attraction and repulsion. He felt both at home and as unwelcome as a stray mongrel dog.
The room was almost exactly as David remembered it, and he was surprised at the fact that it didn’t seem smaller than his memory of it. The first, almost overpowering sensation was that it smelled exactly as it had when he was a boy—the smell was like . . . like wet Manila rope, David thought, grasping for a comparison that never quite described the aroma.
David walked to the small table that stood in the center of the room. He let his fingers brush over the checkered oilcloth tablecloth. It had a slick, sticky feeling to it. He looked around at the appliances, noting that they were the same ones that had been there twenty years ago. The small gas stove, once white, was now yellowed with age. The battered refrigerator hummed in the corner, trailing a frayed cord to the outlet in the wall. The old slate sink that still had a hole where the pump had been was stained to a dull lead color from the perpetually dripping faucet.
David looked for a long time, soaking in the mixture of sight, smells, and memories. The only thing that looked different was the—relatively—new wallpaper with a pattern of roosters interspersed with assorted pots and pans. The small, dingy kitchen filled David with deep feelings of nostalgia and sympathy—sympathy for his uncle Marshall because the kitchen seemed to suit him so well.
Uninvited, David drew a chair away from the table and sat down. “Do you mind if I smoke?” he asked, reaching for the pack of cigarettes in his pocket. He shook one out, placed it in his mouth, lit it, and exhaled slowly; all the while, Marshall didn’t speak or move.
“Do you have an ashtray?” David asked, holding up the burned out match.
Grunting softly, Marshall walked over to the counter and picked up an old mayonnaise jar top. He put it on the table next to David’s elbow, grunted again, and walked over to lean against the counter.
“Thanks,” David muttered, dropping the match into the jar top and then rolling the end of his cigarette to smooth the ash to a burning tip. It was then he noticed that there wasn’t another chair at the table; he was sitting in the only one. Of course, it made sense; Marshall lived alone and probably never had visitors. Flushing with embarrassment, David moved as though to stand up, but then thought better of it and decided that if Marshall wanted to join him at the table, it would be up to him to get his own chair.
Marshall watched David silently. He squinted and cocked his head forward and slightly to the side, reminding David of a rooster about to peck at a pile of corn.
David shifted his eyes away nervously and noticed the newspaper that was on the kitchen table. His eye quickly scanned the headline. It sent a chill racing along the length of his spine.
BOG CLAIMS ANOTHER VICTIM
Marshall started and took a quick step forward when David picked up the paper and started reading the article. He seemed about to challenge David but then leaned back on the counter, apparently deciding that it was already too late to stop him.
David looked at the date at the top of the page: Friday, June 4, 1976. The cigarette ash grew long as David read through the article. When he was finished, he flicked the cigarette ash into the jar top and looked up at his uncle.
“This is last year’s newspaper,” he said softly. “Why d’you have this out?”
Marshall shifted his feet and then walked over to the loudly rattling refrigerator. “Wanna beer?” he asked as he swung the door open.
David shook his head slowly from side to side as he continued to study the old man. He felt a strange, emotional distance between them and was surprised at how easily he could convince himself that there was no blood relationship between them.
“I think I’ll have one,” Marshall said. He took out a twelve ounce can of Pabst and snapped the top. As he raised the can to his mouth, David saw that his hands trembled; something made him think it was more than old-age palsy.
“Why do you have this old newspaper out?” David asked again. This time there was a deep intensity in his voice.
Marshall took a long pull of beer, swallowing noisily. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, and again David thought of the resemblance his uncle had with a rooster. He again noticed the rooster-design wallpaper and, had there not been so much tension in the kitchen, would have found it quite funny.
“I was . . . just readin’ up on those young ‘uns that disappeared last spring. . . . That’s all. . . . Got kinda’ curious about it, now that they found that there Hollis boy.”
He took another noisy swallow of beer and followed it with a deep belch.
“Ummm,” David murmured as he took a final puff on his cigarette and ground it out in the makeshift ashtray. “Shaw was telling me about it.”
“Created quite a stir about these parts,” Marshall said. His voice sounded hollow and not at all connected with what his thoughts were.
David stroked his chin, still eyeing his uncle. “Shaw said that it did. And just lately, I’ve been hearing people say that whoever killed these kids this year might also have done it to the two who disappeared last year.”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” Marshall said weakly. He sounded calm enough, but David thought there was something . . . something in his manner that said he was keyed up about something. He wondered if Marshall had seen the person outside his house. If he had, David thought, then he also might have some idea of who it was. David debated asking Marshall point blank, but he knew his uncle well enough to know that he would instantly deny it—no matter what he really knew.
A deeper, more disturbing thought arose in David’s mind as he stared blankly at his uncle: What if he’s the one who’s been doing it? . . . Killing these kids? Christ, is it possible?
Marshall took another swallow of beer. David noticed that he was glancing out the kitchen window into the darkness of the night.
It is possible! You can never tell about people. Anyone! Anyone can reach a point where they break!
David shifted in his chair as discomforting thoughts arose. What about the mother—loving, devoted, kind of person who suddenly decides it’s time to cash in on those insurance policies her husband was so insistent that they get? Or the teenage son who suddenly flips out—no matter if it’s drugs or just bad brain chemistry and kills his mother, father, and sister— and then decides it’s time to deep throat a shot-gun barrel? How about the Viet Nam veteran who has seen so much insanity in the jungle that he no longer distinguishes between brushing his teeth and sitting on the ledge of a building with a high-powered rifle, laughing at how all those little, ant-like people below scurry for cover when he starts firing?
Marshall’s kitchen filled with tense silence, and then another image rose in David’s mind, making a thin sheen of perspiration stand out on his forehead. He remembered the dark, vague silhouette he had seen carrying something over its shoulder and flinging that something off into the brush before melting like a wisp of fog into the Bog.
“What do you know about this?” David said suddenly, surprising even himself by the intensity in his voice.
The shadowy image in the Bog remained indistinct in David’s mind, no matter how hard he tried to resolve it. Whoever it had been, he was sure it hadn’t been his uncle Marshall. No matter how well the old man might know the area, someone his age couldn’t have run off that fast.
When Marshall didn’t answer, David picked up the old newspaper and slapped it viciously on the edge of the table. “I said, how much do you know about this!”
He faced his uncle firmly, but still he remembered the form running from Marshall’s house and disappearing into the woods. Was it the same person? If it was, then Marshall might know who it was. And if he knew! Christ! He should tell the police!
Marshall’s eyes darted around the kitchen. “I don’t know nothin’,” he said finally.
“Really?” David almost shouted.
“Yeah, really.”
“I don’t think so,” David said. He rose and walked over toward Marshall. “I think you do—”
He cut off suddenly and turned around quickly when the telephone rang. Marshall twitched and almost dropped his can of beer as he placed it on the counter and walked into the living room to answer the phone.
David went back to the kitchen table and took his seat. He folded his arms across his chest and leaned back in the chair, listening to everything Marshall said to his caller.
“Hello?”
After a short pause, he said, “Who is this?”
Another short pause, then, in a harsh whisper, “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about! If you think you can—”
He cut off quickly. David listened tensely. He heard the faint click as Marshall put the receiver in its cradle.
When he came back into the kitchen, Marshall’s face was deeply lined, and his skin was a pale, waxy color. David watched as he walked, limping, over to the counter where he had left his beer.
After a moment, David asked, “Who was that?”
“Just a . . . a wrong number,” Marshall said faintly. His lips looked as pale as death.
“Really?”
“It’s none of your goddamn business!” Marshall suddenly shouted. He slammed his hand on the counter top.
David stiffened and leaned forward. “Maybe it was same person who was outside your house tonight when I drove up.”
“There wasn’t anyone outside my house tonight,” Marshall said. His eyes twitched, unable to look directly at David.
“Bullshitl” David shouted. “That’s a goddamned lie and you know it! Now I want the truth from you. What the hell is going on? What was someone doing outside your house tonight? And that phone call just then; who was it? What did he say? You’re acting as nervous as a goddamn animal with a gun pointed at it. He suddenly lowered his voice. “You can talk to , Uncle Marshall. For Christ’s sake, we’re family; if we can’t help each other, who can?”
