Charles L. Grant, page 16
“It couldn’t have been him,” she said quietly, pointing at Neil. “He wasn’t wearing a black coat.”
“I saw him” was all Willie would say.
“No.” But gently.
“Aw, Christ,” Havvick said.
“You were,” Willie said to Neil. “And you made me hurt her.” He started to rise, lost his balance, sat again. “You were there, and you made me hurt her.”
“No.” Trish smiled. “No.”
“I saw!”
Her expression said, poor little fella, you’re crazy and you don’t even know it, what a sap.
Her voice said, “Willie, don’t be silly.”
Lower lip trembled, nostrils flared, feet scraped on the floor as Ennin lunged to his feet, the carving knife thrust
Mandy crossed her arms under her breasts, leaned back and dared him to convince her.
Neil wondered what universe the kid was living in, if he had heard a single word since Neil had returned. But by his stance, he knew that cow boy was both confident and frightened. A move in the wrong direction would put a bullet in his head.
He felt it then himself—an almost subliminal vibration of fear that settled below his waist, made him tense his groin and swallow.
Not cop-frightened, not the fear that someone might without warning turn into a bad guy.
Another fear.
He didn’t know what it was yet, but it made his mouth go dry, and he had to swallow several times more to keep himself from choking, from retching.
Pay attention.
There are two answers, Havvick told them, shifting as if he wanted to pace and didn’t dare, looking for a moment as if he wanted to apologize, and didn’t dare.
The first one is easy, the one they had started with. There are two guys out there. Like Neil said earlier, the Holgate brothers, dividing the action between them. One works the north side of the road, the other works the creek and woods. Same coats, same hats, bulletproof vests like he’d said before, and with the snow and the dark, even a pair of dissimilar brothers like Curt and Bally could be made to seem alike by people too frightened to take a good look. The idea is money. Sooner or later, someone is going to offer money, or a demand will be made. Not all that hard, since Havvick himself wasn’t exactly living off food stamps, and the radio man was probably richer than they thought. All the Holgates have to do is wait. Sooner or later. Bound to happen. Which is why the old fart was killed—he really had recognized one of the brothers. They didn’t count on the rest. But it’s no skin off their backs, as long as they get what they want. And when they get it, they disappear. No one can prove it was them, now or later.
“And you’re in on it,” he said to Neil.
Who coughed, laughed, couldn’t stop laughing even when Havvick jabbed the barrel toward him, making sure he could see the kid’s finger on the trigger.
What you got, Havvick said to the others, is a guy used to be a cop, now runs a two-bit bar and restaurant, for god’s sake. No money in that. He isn’t old, but his pension sure isn’t going to buy him anything decent in Florida or wherever it is old farts go when they’re waiting around to die.
“You’re out of your mind,” Mandy said sadly.
“So tell me,” Ken countered, “why he isn’t dead? He goes out there three times, and that guy doesn’t shoot at him once. Brandt goes once and gets his head blown off.” ” “Don’t be—”
“He has a gun, right? He uses it, and the rifle, and doesn’t hit the guy once.” His smile was cold, matched the draft snaking through the lounge. “Nobody is that bad a shot. I was with him, remember? On the road?” Easing back to the window. “Think, okay? He sits around, he does something, he sits around, he does something else. Like … like he’s waiting for a signal. Like he already knows what’s going to happen next.”
Neil couldn’t understand why they were listening to this drivel without going for his throat. He couldn’t understand it. He supposed, he hoped, it was because they were tired. So tired their brains weren’t functioning properly. It had to be. He kept his fingers tented over the revolver. “You didn’t hit him, either,” he reminded him.
“Maybe 1 didn’t, maybe I did,” Ken answered. “Just because there wasn’t blood on the ground doesn’t mean I didn’t.”
No, Neil thought; it wasn’t falling apart, it was exploding.
Trish yawned.
“And,” Ken said with deafening soft finality, “Willie saw him.”
“I did,” Ennin agreed, almost apologetically. Almost, but not quite. “I’m not wrong. I saw him. He made me hurt Julia.”
Neil couldn’t believe it, couldn’t credit what he’d heard. Willie Ennin taking sides against him. Mandy Jones suddenly, ominously, silent. “So what are you going to do? Wait for the cops to show up and turn me over to them? Tell them I’m the one who made you shoot Hugh Davies in the back?”
Uncertainty lowered Havvick’s shoulder, lowered the rifle, though not all the way.
“I don’t know,” he said, “because there’s the other thing.”
Jesus.
Dear Jesus, make him stop, give me strength. .
“That he’s not real.”
Pay Attention.
Mandy hopped off the stool, ignoring Ken’s backward movement and the raising of the rifle as she threw up her hands. “You are out of your mind,” she declared.
“Somehow,” Havvick said, distaste all too clear, “I’m not all that shook by what a hooker has to say.”
When she gaped, turned and took an angry pace toward Neil, Ken’s laugh turned her around again. “Julia told me, okay? Don’t get all bent out of shape.”.
Trish stared. “Really?”
“Not real,” Willie said, half to himself. He swiveled his seat around, leaned his elbows on the bar. Shook his head. “Has to be real, Mr. Havvick. He killed people.”
Mandy’s cheeks flushed, but Neil couldn’t look at her, not now. Havvick was spiraling slowly out of control, the same loss he’d felt himself, out there in the woods.
“Tracks,” Ken said simply, and looked right at Neil. “You showed me where he stood, remember? After the sonofabitch torched my van? 1 saw what you saw, you know. You think I’m stupid or something, but I saw it. He didn’t leave any tracks.”
“Kenny, stop it,” Trish interrupted, a mild scolding. “We already went over that.”
“Enough firepower to stop a bull, and he . . . went away.”
“Kenny!”
“Oh Christ, get real,” Mandy said acidly. She looked at Neil. “It’s bad enough, that other thing about some idiotic money scheme of yours, but this is . . . this is insane.”
“It’s his father,” Ken said.
Mandy laughed.
A second, two, and Trish laughed as well.
Willie giggled.
A cloak of ice settled over Neil’s shoulders, a great wrestling with his will to keep him from shouting, from reaching for the gun, from appealing to Mandy not to believe this damn fool. He took his time sliding off the stool, a provocative sideshow of stretching arms and rolling shoulders, using the momentary distraction to pull the revolver close to the padded lip of the bar. When he faced Havvick again, he took a deep breath to rein his temper and made sure the kid knew it. Felt it.
His lips parted.
Closed.
Parted again: “I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“Kenny, please.”
“It’s simple, Neil. Your old man is pissed. You went after the guys who killed him, and you didn’t get them. You chickened out. You fucked up. And then you went and quit. So he comes back, right? He wants you, not us. That’s why you’re not dead. He wants you real slow.”
Willie spun again. “I—”
Ken cautioned him with the rifle. “Brandt says he thinks he knows who the guy looks like, right? You say the guy’s Neil. Or looks like Neil, right?” Then he smiled, so figure it out for yourself, and said, “1 don’t believe in ghosts either, but it looks like I have to, don’t I.” His voice caught. He cleared his throat. “I don’t want to.”
“Kenny, stop it!”
Neil heard it, then—the opening notes of a hysterical song, each one just a little higher than the one before it.
“We’re in here, doing things we don’t even dream about.”
It wouldn’t be long before the notes blended to a scream.
“Julia was right. About the raven, I mean.”
He braced himself, not knowing if the kid would shoot now, shoot later after his tirade, shoot at all.
“And it’s all your fucking fault!”
Trish put a restraining hand on Ken’s hip, and he slapped it away, scowling. Trembling. Checking the yard, shaking his head.
Neil leaned a hip against the bar, the gap just behind him. “Ken, I hope to hell you can hear yourself. Because you’re scaring more than Trish here.” His tongue felt dry, throat lined with pebbles. “What about the Holgates?”
Ken’s head began to tremble, evidence of great effort. “Shut up,” he said. The rifle’s barrel wavered. “It’s all your fault.”
“The Holgates makes more sense than ghosts, you know.”
“Shut. Up.”
Neil did.
He sensed rather than saw the finger tighten around the trigger.
Mandy stepped away slowly, one leg crossing over the other, watching Ken steadily while she brushed by Ennin, watching Neil as she backed around the corner and finally stopped. “So what do you want him to do?” she asked calmly.
Out of the line of fire, Neil thought; a very practical woman.
“Don’t,” Ken snapped at her. “Don’t talk to me like I’m him.” He nodded sharply at Willie. “You can think I’m crazy or not, I don’t give a shit, who the hell cares about a fucking whore anyway, but don’t… don’t talk to me like that.”
She was rigid. Not breathing.
Neil could see it on her lips, straining: cow boy.
Trish started to get up. “Kenneth, that’s enough.”
Without looking, he backhanded her across the mouth, knuckles slamming her down and over the chair to the floor. Not looking when she cried out, not looking when she couldn’t get herself untangled from the spindle legs, not looking the least bit contrite.
He looked terrified.
“You,” he said to Neil, “are going back outside.”
Neil shook his head.
“You’re going outside,” Havvick repeated. “Let him do what he wants, that’s not our problem anymore. Let him do what he wants, get him the hell off our backs.” He started to move between the tables, changed his mind suddenly and moved back to the window. “Just get out, Neil.” He used the rifle as a pointer. “Get out.”
“If,” Mandy said, “that man didn’t kill him before, all that rime, why should he do it now?”
Havvick whirled on her. “You on his fucking side?” he shouted. “You his goddamn birthday present or something, that why you came way the hell out here?”
Trish whimpered, pushing herself frantically on her buttocks until she came up against a booth.
Mandy shook her head in an eloquent display of disgust.
Havvick fired.
Trish screamed.
Neil grabbed the revolver, ducked and whirled around through the bar’s gap, paused as he slapped through the swinging door and saw Mandy standing there, a hand flat against her chest, the only sign she was alive her tongue darting out, in, out again to wet her lips.
She wasn’t even blinking.
Then he was gone as Havvick snapped his head around, all the noise erupting behind him, standing in the dark hallway and telling himself the nightmare couldn’t possibly get any worse before shoving into the kitchen—his office was a dead end, in more ways than one—listening for pursuit, keeping the long butcher-block counter between him and the other door.
Waiting for the next shot.
His left hand in a hard fist while he tried to decide what the hell to do next.
In the snow was out of the question for now, his coat was back in the lounge; in here, on the other hand, he was pretty well trapped and there was no place else to go.
He heard Mandy yelling.
If it came to it, if he was in fact forced out of the building, he could probably make it to one of the cabins. It wasn’t perfect, but it would be safer than trying to go somewhere else. Not the house; that would be the first place cow boy would look.
He heard Trish yelling.
And not the road. The man in black was out there, working his own intention. Whatever that was.
A glass broke.
you know
Something, maybe a chair, turned over.
He didn’t hear Willie, and that made him wonder.
Then a shadow filled the service window, and he dropped below the counter, pressed his back against it, cursing silently when Havvick fired without taking aim, drilling a gouge from the center of the wood, splinters in the air, the sound too loud, putting him inside a large toneless bell. Above his head, the pots and utensils swayed.
And the fluorescent bulb still flickered.
“Son of a bitch!” Havvick yelled.
Another chair toppling; another glass breaking.
“Just keep her the hell away from me, Trish,” Ken ordered. Quieter after that, trying to be reasonable. “C’mon, Neil, don’t be stupid. Get the hell out.”
Trish and Mandy, fighting?
Where was Willie?
Neil crawled to his left to the end of the island counter, the kitchen door directly opposite. Frost around the edges of the panes. He couldn’t see out; the glass was a mirror that showed him the room behind him. Flickering as the light did. He wasn’t there; his reflection wasn’t there.
“Ken,” he said, twisting around to sit again.
Cow boy didn’t fire.
“Ken.”
“Please, Neil. Please get out.”
Flickering.
Neil looked across the room, started when he saw someone staring at him, relaxed when he realized it was only his reflection in the convex face of the oven’s gleaming enamel front panels. Distorted. Not really human at all. For his own peace of mind he raised a hand to it, saw it shimmer, and smiled.
“Neil, for Christ’s sake.”
“Ken,” he said, looking up at the ceiling.
“Neil, damn it, if I come in there, you’re gonna shoot me.”
He grinned. “Nah. I’m gonna bake you a cake.” He sobered instantly. “Kenny, it’s not my father. The rest may be right, but he is not my father.”
There was silence.
Buzzing in the light.
Then: “He wants you.”
Surprising himself, Neil gave him the truth. “I know.”
Silence again.
The whisper of a wind sliding across the window by Willie’s desk, the door.
“Who … who is he?”
Neil almost said I don’t know.
Instead: “No tricks?”
No hesitation: “No tricks.”
Pay attention.
Watch the news, Ken, read the papers, and listen to them, the people, the way they talk when the cops are done inside a house, or an apartment, or a store, it doesn’t make any difference where the hell they are. The blood’s always there. And the bodies. Sometimes just a couple; sometimes too damn many for the bags they brought with them, for the ambulances waiting at the curb. And sometimes, not always, there’s a survivor, you’ve seen what they look like, and he swears on his mother’s grave while they’re hauling him away that he doesn’t remember what happened, or that he lost his temper, or that he was drunk, or he was on drugs, or maybe he just didn’t do it, you gotta believe me, it was someone else, not me, I wouldn’t do something like that. Listen to the neighbors. Such a quiet kid, man, woman, girl. He helped my little girl across the street every day. She always found time to baby-sit when I had to work an extra shift. There must be some mistake, he wouldn’t do anything terrible like that. He went to church. Almost always it’s at night. Almost always, the neighborhood didn’t hear a thing, if there was anyone around to hear. Almost always, the one who’s left, if there’s anyone left, that is, he’s put away for a long time, people picking at his mind, trying to learn, trying to find out what’s going on in his head. Maybe he says something to them. You hear that maybe he says things got weird, time stopped or the world stopped or everything just stopped and things got weird. Maybe he says the Devil made him do it.
Maybe he did.
It doesn’t matter. They don’t listen.
A nice boy.
He goes to church.
A nice family; they laughed all the time.
Nice bunch of people. Not perfect. Who the hell is? They must’ve been on dope or something, go figure.
Listen to them, Ken, because later, hardly ever on the same day, you hear that sometimes, once in a great while, these people the cops or neighbors found, they actually killed each other, and sometimes it was just one, just two.
Ordinary people-Nice folks.
They go to church.
They don’t go to church.
What difference does it make? They’re dead.
Pay attention.
Once in a while it isn’t drugs or liquor or tempers at all. Once in a while it’s him.
It was quiet in the kitchen, in the lounge.
A listening kind of quiet.
Small sounds from the building, hardly any noise at all, an adjusting against the wind, a faucet dripping slowly, the creak of a chair as someone shifted in it.
Small sounds.
Not loud as Neil waited for Ken to laugh, to call him nuts, to try to shoot him through the counter walls. He wasn’t sure himself; it had all come to him as he spoke, and as he glanced out the door window to the black-ice early morning. Thinking as fast as he could.
If that’s true, then who is he, Mr. Maclaren? What does he do? Why does he do it?” Small sounds. People stirring.
“I don’t know who he is, Ken. I swear to God, I don’t know.”
Then what the hell is he?”
Fairy dust raven’s wings
A hunter.”
Suddenly weary, he sagged, head lowered, staring blindly at his legs.
Urgent whispering in the other room.
