Son of the Endless Night, page 11
He drank more of the wine and was gratified by a lessening of the tension that had crowded him all day. There was a full-length portrait of a man and a seated woman in a gold frame above the marble mantel. The family resemblance was obvious but Inez said, as she glided up to him in stockinged feet and slipped a hand inside his elbow, "My mother and father."
"I thought this house belonged to another family now."
A grimace of distaste crumpled the scar and gave a fleeting impression of lizardly old age, belied by the petal smoothness of the rest of her face.
"They aren't here in winter. I removed a few things from storage when I arrived. So that the house would always be as I've remembered it." She looked at him, tightening her grip subtly; her hip brushed against his and Rich felt a pleasant sexual charge. "Do you like my father's house?"
"Yes."
"I'll show you more of it later. Are you feeling better about me now, Richard?"
"Yes," he said, but couldn't return her smile.
"You weren't injured last night, were you? You shouldn't have tried to drive in your condition."
"You— you just came in, and— "
"Caught you by surprise. I suppose I was too abrupt. One of my failings. But you'd begun to distress me greatly. After all, it's Polly's well-being that concerns us. Now that I've come to know you better, I see that I may have misjudged you, Richard. You could be useful. I want you to stay here tonight."
She'd caught Rich by surprise again, but before he could say anything Inez was on the move, sallying to another group, breaking into their conversation with a gesture and a remark that brought laughter.
Rich hunched his shoulders, looked at the half inch of wine left in his glass, finished it. The fire burned hotly. His mind settled into neutral. He felt a little tired. Seven thirty. Karyn was going to be mad as hell at him.
He looked around guiltily, wondering about a telephone. Good idea to let her know where he was. He didn't see a phone in the den.
The maid was nearby, with a tray of fresh drinks. He approached her.
"Telephone? Yes, I'll show you. Would you care for another glass of wine?"
"Thanks." Rich helped himself.
The maid picked up a candelabrum and led the way. Rich followed her across the marble floor of the entrance foyer and through a dimly lighted formal living room to the family room at the other end of the house and, at last, a telephone. But there was no dial tone, just a sparkly resonance.
Lines down somewhere, he thought. He hung up and then tried again, with the same result. Annoyed, he held the receiver to his ear, sipping wine with the other hand.
"Richard?"
The voice, loud in his ear, startled him. Someone on an extension phone in the house, he thought.
"Yes— who's that?"
No reply. He listened for several seconds, hearing again only the faint resonance of an inoperative phone line.
"Is anybody there?"
"It's Windross."
"Windross! Where are you?"
He heard the familiar wheezing breath, and a kind of dry sob in the man's throat.
"For God's sake— for the sake of your soul— get out! Run! Before they— ''
"Richard," Inez said quietly from the doorway, "what's the matter?"
With the receiver of the phone half lowered, Rich turned a stricken face toward her.
21
Right after dinner, as was his habit, Avery Myatt fell asleep in the La-Z-Boy lounger in front of his TV while watching Family Feud on the cable. His spinster daughter Min finished the dishes in the kitchen and then limped, all three hundred pounds of her, with a crumpled bag of Meow Mix to the cat's bowl by the back door, which was rattling in the wind. Earlier on the six o'clock local news they'd been predicting six inches of snow before morning.
"Here, Figgy. Figgy, Figgy, come and get it!"
The elderly housecat was way ahead of her, slinking past one stumplike and arthritic ankle to get to his dinner. Min rationed the stuff severely, determined to get another three meals out of the nearly empty bag; the price of cat food, like everything else these days, was in the sky.
She was surprised to hear her father up and around in the den, clearing his throat, rattling the newspaper, changing channels on the TV before Family Feud was over. Just as the Delano family from Ukiah, California, was charging into the lead on points, thanks to their sharp little daughter-in-law, who'd be so much prettier if she just got rid of those harlequin-style glasses. The rest of the Delanos, God bless their hearts, they were dumb as fence posts in every category. Min shuffled to the breakfast counter and peered over it at her father. Usually he napped through until about ten o'clock, had a snack, watched the late news, and then went to bed.
"I wasn't through watching that," she admonished him from the kitchen.
"Didn't know you were watching, Min. You must have eyes in the back of your head."
"Well, I was mostly listening, while I did the dishes. Do you want another couple of Di-Gels?" She assumed it was his stomach that had prematurely awakened him. For dinner she'd fixed one of his favorite meals: fried pork chops, mashed potatoes with cream gravy, biscuits, and chocolate cream pie, and he'd eaten more than the doctor said was good for him. But whenever she tried to cut him down on food he turned grumpy and picked on her, making remarks about her own eating habits when everybody knew it was a glandular problem she had.
Myatt came into the kitchen. He had a half-shut eye like an ogre in a kid's picture book, florid stubbly chins, and a noisy catarrh that traveled through walls and sometimes kept his daughter awake nights. He pulled the Mylar-covered back door open and spat thickly outside into the snow. The cat arched its thin back as cold air swept in, lashed out complainingly with its tail.
"What's bothering you, Dad?"
"I don't know that anything is."
"Well, you never get up like this, right after supper."
Myatt used a toothpick and stood blankly in front of the old winter coats hung from pegs opposite the back door.
"I was thinking it might be a good idea if I run over to the Gannaway place."
"Why?"
"It's been three or four days. I ought to make sure everything's tight."
"They don't pay you enough to get you out on a night like this."
"They pay me a hundred dollars a month. That's like finding money in the street."
"Comes to maybe thirty cents an hour, the time you put in over there. You fuss over their house and let this one go."
Myatt reached for his plaid wool jacket, the pockets fat with leather gloves. "What have I let go?"
"If you don't know already, I'm not going to tell you. But you know."
"Roofs tight and dry. I put in the new copper water pipe end of October. Why do you make me play guessing games with you, Min?"
"Just go into my bathroom sometime, and see the condition of the linoleum around the toilet."
"Oh."
"Oh. Yes. This isn't the first time I've had to mention it. But I hope it'll be the last."
"What has you so mean lately?"
"I could use a new hip joint, for one thing. But we'll never have the money."
Myatt pulled on his galoshes and went outside to the garage. He drove his Isuzu shortbed, equipped with oversized snow tires and extra quartz-halogen headlights, the mile and a half south to Cutler Road. Even in his well-equipped truck he didn't feel secure in this pelting snow, and he proceeded slowly. He met no one else along the way, and wondered about the nervous impulse that had got him up and out here this late when it would have been more convenient to drop by in the morning. The old Courdewaye house was so well built it was, in Myatt's opinion, well-nigh indestructible: he'd bet its walls against a bulldozer anytime. It had survived worse blows than this halfhearted blizzard and would continue to do so, as long as the owners allowed him to stay on top of all the little maintenance chores. He maintained the thermostat at sixty-four degrees in winter, high enough to protect the furniture and the plumbing. They could afford the cost, even with gas so expensive.
But sometimes, when least expected, things went wrong. Mentally he went over his checklist: doors, shutters, toilets, wellhouse pump, hot water heaters . . .
Avery Myatt was distressed to see, as he neared the driveway, that the gate was open and bogged down in snowdrift. There was a good latch on the gate, and he'd checked it on his last visit. Kids, maybe. He fretted about vandalism. Too much trouble to dig the gate free and close it tonight. First thing tomorrow; he'd give Lars Tucker's middle boy three dollars to help him, save on the shoveling, save the old ticker too.
Even with snow tires chewing away, the drive was almost impassable; he'd have to plow again. Myatt's Isuzu crawled around the wooded knoll, and the powerful headlights illuminated the dark house: first the roof and tall chimneys, then the third floor, and as the truck dropped lower with the curve of the drive, the lights swept across the ivy-framed front entrance. The windows were intact downstairs, he observed— no shutters torn away. Everything was as it should be, at five minutes past eight in the evening.
Still-
He parked opposite the front door, unsnapped his key ring from his belt, and stepped down from the cab of his truck. He had only to take a few steps to reach the door, but the wind had a weight and velocity that astonished him; driven before it as if caught in a floodtide, he was banged painfully against the fender of his truck. Breathless, he turned his back on the unrelenting wind. He hunched over the fender to keep from being blown away. The shriek of the wind was like nothing he remembered hearing in his lifetime, and he'd been through seventy-two Vermont winters.
A sudden unreasonable panic rose in his breast; he felt his heart swell enormously, like a bullfrog's throat. I'm going to die, he thought. The snow was in his ears, his nose, his mouth, an avalanche of snow— swept off the roof?— smothering him.
Broadside to his truck, clinging for his life, he reached for the side mirror mounting and grasped it. The blizzard that had broken loose upon his arrival continued unabated. He turned his head inch wise toward the house. Above the scream of the wind he'd heard something else.
Music.
For a few moments, through the horizontal flash of snow, he had a glimpse of the windows glowingly alight, the figures of men and women inside the den, a fire on the hearth, the serene, vaguely aristocratic faces of Courdewayes above the mantel, faces he hadn't laid eyes on in more than forty years.
Then it was all blotted out by more driving snow, and the front door swung open, open to blackness and the eyes of some kind of thing hovering a good four feet above the stoop, sharp red eyes a handsbreadth apart in a wedge-shaped head. The eyes had enough of a glow to illuminate an upthrust hairy snout and long outcurved incisors. The beast was too big for a dog and not big enough for a bear, the wrong size anyway: petite in the hindquarters, powerful, like a gorilla, across the shoulders, all of the body covered with a wild matted coat. He could smell it across the surging wind, knew it had smelled him, too, in all of his fear.
Myatt clawed his way to the door of the cab as the storm tried to tear him away from his truck and send him bowling across the dooryard to the maw of the beast on the stoop; and the music played on. His heart, he knew, couldn't take it. Already he imagined the heart of him thin as the membrane of an egg, and under such evil pressure a blowout was inevitable. But a heart attack was preferable to the jaws of the thing that had come out into the snow, more than curious: its attitude was one of menace.
Myatt pulled his legs inside and slammed the door and ground the starter, geared down when the engine roared. The wheels spun, the truck shuddered and sideslipped. Desperately he turned on all the lights but could see nothing except the heavy streaking snow all around his truck.
Blind as he was, Myatt drove, somehow staying to the drive and not blundering into deep drifts. He knew that if he got stuck he would stay there until the gas ran out and he froze to death; he would not open the door, he would not get out of the truck and try to make it to the road on foot. The beast filled his mind, eclipsing reason. Its sheer ugliness, glimpsed in the violent purity of the storm, was paralyzing.
Then— a miracle to Myatt— he was around the knoll, past the open gate and on his way home, the worst of the blizzard behind him: looking back he could see only the red bleed of his taillights along the road.
The faces. The music. The beast. His own face was hot; sweat dripped from beneath his earflap cap. His heart would last out, he thought cautiously. This time. Thing was, he'd made a bad move going out on such a night after a heavy meal that he hadn't even begun to digest. It was causing him considerable pain now, that big gutful, and obviously it had affected his nerves, even his mind. The sudden ferocity of the storm had scared him, made him imagine all sorts of things. A kind of mirage. Extremes of weather could do that to a man.
By daylight he would investigate, but there would be nothing. No need to call the law: the story would get around, he'd never hear the end. The music was still in Avery Myatt's head, but fading now. Fading further with each slowing beat of his overstressed heart.
22
"Dinner is served."
Rich had just helped himself to another glass of wine. His fifth or sixth glass, he'd lost track. Odd that he hadn't cared for the taste of it earlier in the evening. Now he couldn't get enough: the most delicious, aromatic claret he had ever drunk, although Inez claimed it wasn't anything special in price or cachet, certainly not the equal of some of the noble French wines that Karyn's obnoxiously knowledgeable father had served on Rich's infrequent visits to the Vale house in Rye. Ordinarily any quantity of the grape gave Rich a bad head— stuffiness, a vague ache behind the eyes, blood pounding at the temples— and a slowly deepening feeling of melancholia. But this claret was having just the opposite effect. He was sober, alert, charged with energy but not restless, a little impatient to get on with the business that had brought him here. But in control of himself, certain of his ability— with Inez skillfully guiding him— to relieve Polly of her burden, which was more than any child should have to bear.
But Polly was asleep; the time wasn't ripe. It was time now to relax with his new friends, the most congenial group of people he'd met in a long time. Rich was not shy, and in the last hour or so he'd really warmed to the company, overcoming his earlier reservations about them. They loved his anecdotes about growing up in south Boston, life in a strict Catholic household, his amusing imbroglios with the Paulist fathers at St. Malachy's, none of whom had thought he'd make it to Yale.
Even Windross proved to be not such a bad sort, after he'd come downstairs for a glass of wine and apologized for his childish attempt at a joke over the telephone. Rich was assured of Windross's devotion to Polly. He was a good father after all. Within a few minutes he excused himself to return to an upstairs bedroom and his vigil beside the sleeping child.
Rich solemnly shook the innkeeper's hand and vowed that before the night was over he, Rich, would see to it that Polly was at peace. That brought tears to the man's eyes; he overflowed with gratitude.
"I don't know how we would have managed without you."
"Just don't worry," Rich said.
Since retrieving him from the den, Inez hadn't left Rich's side. He had grown accustomed to, dependent on, the sweet-sour fragrance of her perfume, the nearness of her firm body, the heat of her breath when she whispered companionably in his ear. When he looked at Inez he imagined her naked and waiting for him in bed, but of course this treat would have to wait for a while, too, though he was already aroused, a hefty swelling evident in his groin. He defended himself in advance. Nothing wrong with his desiring Inez. It was suitable revenge on Karyn, who was turning out to be— not to his surprise— a whore, eager to fuck with Trux Landall or any other stud who showed an interest. Wouldn't she like to know that every woman in the den coveted him right now: they showed it in their deliberate, lingering glances where he was hard and eternally powerful.
But Rich belonged, heart and soul, to Inez. Her body he judged to be exceptional, but her scar was the biggest turn-on of all; he had contrived a couple of times to brush his fingers across it, which made her eyes flash and shine, prompted the pointed tip of her tongue to caress a full and lusciously red lower lip. He was imbued with her musk, flattered by her close attention and intimate laughter, teased by what Inez no doubt felt was her superior sexuality. She was older, more experienced; nevertheless Rich was confident that before the night had ended he would teach her a few things— have her whimpering, crawling, obeisant beneath the angled altar of his unfailing cock.
"Dinner is served."
And high time, he was starved: he could have cheerfully, gluttonously torn his way through a raw carcass, swilled hot blood in place of the invigorating wine that had so sharpened his senses. Inez gracefully linked an arm with his; her fingertips were on the pulse in his wrist. The sensual flaring of her nostrils assured Rich that she was aware of all of his appetites, and shared them.
Inez seated him at one end of the long table in the dining room, facing her. Three serving girls and the tall butler paraded, loading the table with choice meats and fowl. Chubby-cheeked pork, pheasant with feathers intact and steaming, venison marinated in onions and rich gravy. While they dined and drank two more courses of wine Inez smiled often at Rich through the steady flames of the centerpiece tapers. There was no other source of light; the room was lively with their vast shadows.
The conversation improved, if anything. Inez holding forth. She had a fund of wicked, amusing stories. Rich found himself red in the face and gasping for breath as she described, in exquisite detail, the disciplining of her late children. Arnold, age ten at death, Mary, age eight. Dressing them, head to toe, in musty woolens, forcing them to remain rigid for hours in the hellish Mexican sun until they collapsed from heatstroke in pools of their own sweat. Then, to reverse the effects of dehydration, bloating them with water from a hose until, standing naked and clinging to each other in the bathtub, they were ankle-deep in urine.
