He was closing on the kayak, but the current was taking hold. It propelled him in the right direction, but it was urging the kayak along too, and David was growing winded. His back muscles bundles of flame, he put his head down, stroked and kicked with maniacal intensity. He pushed himself as far and as long as he could and then looked up, praying he’d closed the distance.
He had. The kayak was only six feet away. Despite the complaint of his aching limbs, he gave a final burst of effort, and then his fingers brushed hard plastic. The damned thing goosed away from him, and it took another thirty seconds of painful toil to draw even again. This time he stroked abreast of the kayak and slung a forearm over the side. The boat wrangled, he glided along with it for a few seconds before realizing he could touch the bottom. Not comfortably, but if he strained, he could brace his toes on the river bottom and keep the kayak relatively stable. He’d try to climb into the boat in a minute or two. For now, it was enough to have caught it.
The Rappahannock lapped against his armpits, the mingled aromas of dead fish and damp foliage somehow pleasing now that he was safe.
He became aware of movement in his periphery. He screwed up his eyes, but it was impossible to discern the object in the water. Breath coming in labored sips, he tried to climb over the rim of the kayak, but as expected, it was a hell of a lot harder to accomplish in deep water than it had been in the shallows. David compressed his lips, took a chance and dropped down in an underwater crouch, then exploded to the surface and shot both arms over the kayak’s center. He only succeeded in overturning it.
Damn it!
He attempted a different tack. After situating the oar inside the kayak, he drew himself up gradually, attempted to use his upper body to keep the boat from overturning. It wobbled a bit, but eventually he was able to flop inside. Though his muscles were overtaxed, he began paddling toward the object moving away from him, which was dark and circular, almost like…
…the top of someone’s head. But it was almost to a dock that sprouted from the bank about fifty yards from the park. He closed the distance, but it was evident he wasn’t going to intercept whoever it was. David watched, mesmerized, as the figure reached the dock, climbed onto it, and rushed down its length toward the densely wooded shore.
It was a woman, David saw. She wore a white two-piece. She had a beautiful body, but this scarcely registered. He couldn’t help thinking that this was the woman he’d seen last night floating over the water.
There was no woman!
The woman whose sad, melodic nocturne had summoned him from the house. Why had she set his kayak adrift? Why had she fled?
For a time, he simply gazed into the woods after her and willed her to appear again. When his trance fractured, he realized the current had been hauling him away, toward the main Rappahannock.
David rowed himself around, started back toward the peninsula.
He thought of Anna, of how he’d broken her heart, left Virginia, left everything he’d known to begin a new life.
And in doing so, ended hers.
Far off, so softly he couldn’t be certain it existed at all, David heard the melody of the night before. Sorrowful. Yearning. The song cleaved his soul.
The voice sounded like Anna’s.
Part Two
The Long Bedroom
Chapter Eleven
“Dammit, Ralph, I know you’re in there.”
David peered through the screen door, imagined he saw movement in the cramped kitchen. The morning was overcast, but he could make out the small table, a vacant chair that hadn’t been pushed in.
He rapped on the metal frame again, harder this time. “The Red Sox suck balls!” he called. “Carl Yastrzemski is a communist!”
A throaty chuckle from within.
David visored his eyes and stared through the screen. A figure ambled toward him.
Ralph pushed open the screen door, his expression sheepish. “You’re probably miffed at me, huh?”
“At least when a woman stands me up, she’s civil enough to send a text.”
“You get stood up a lot?”
“I need some water. I forgot how sultry Virginia was in June.”
Ralph eyed him. “‘Sultry’? You sure you don’t write romance novels?”
David armed sweat off his brow, but his forearm was sweaty too. He blinked against the stinging in his eyes. “Damn.”
“Get in here,” Ralph said, holding the door for him. “You’re a goddamned mess.”
He followed Ralph into the kitchen, where the older man handed him an ancient dishrag.
“The mosquitoes are out too,” David said through the towel, which smelled faintly of shoe polish. He drew it away from his face. “This thing clean?”
“How can a big strong guy like you be so delicate?”
David chuckled, tossed the towel on the kitchen table. There were four brands of cereal boxes lined up there, most of which David associated with little kids. He identified the half-eaten bowl as Fruity Pebbles.
“Didn’t have an appetite this morning,” Ralph remarked, moving toward the screened-in porch.
“That why you stood me up?”
Ralph grunted in the negative. David trailed the older man onto the porch, but Ralph went out, down a pair of rickety wooden steps, along a flagstone path, the stones having sunk so far that they were scarcely visible in their nests of grass.
“Dock’s wide enough for both of us,” Ralph said.
Although the view off the end of Ralph’s dock wasn’t panoramic due to the heavily wooded yard, to the south you could see a long ways. If you gazed straight ahead, the Rappahannock went on forever.
“Bet you paid a lot for this view,” David said.
When Ralph didn’t answer, David looked at him and noticed how tight his face had become.
“Ralph?”
With the air of a man working himself up to something, Ralph glanced down at the water, said, “Guy loses his wife at fifty and decides he’s gonna go live on the river. Fish, drink beer, smoke all he wants.”
“I didn’t know you smoked.”
“He looks around, but all he finds are rundown shacks priced like French chateaux, places that claim to be on the river but actually have ‘river access.’” Ralph looked at him. “You ever hear that phrase, run screaming the other way. ‘River access,’ ‘lake access,’ those are just real estate parlance for shitty property nowhere near the water. I don’t know how many places the lady showed me before she got it through her head I didn’t want to strap on hiking boots and pack a week’s provisions just to make it to a fishing hole.”
“I dated a real estate agent,” David said. “She told me she always tried to sell her own properties before she’d show any others.”
“Didn’t want to split the commission,” Ralph said. “This house wasn’t even listed. I only found out about it by happenstance.”
“Driving around?”
Ralph shrugged. “In a manner of speaking. I was scouting for properties when I stopped at The Crawdad. You see it before you turned off the highway?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Not surprised. Looks like a derelict garage. But it’s still in business. Good thing, too. Otherwise you’d have to drive fifteen miles just to gas up.
“Anyhow, I’d just finished buying groceries at The Crawdad when I happened to glance at this old bulletin board littered with notes.” Ralph meandered over and tested a fishing rod sheathed in an iron holder. The line moved easily, nothing on the other end. “‘One bedroom, one bath, two acres, Rappahannock,’ was all the ad said. Wasn’t even a price listed. I asked the old fart who used to run the gas station – he’s been dead more than a decade – where the property was. He had wrinkles on his wrinkles, but I could see he was uncomfortable talking about it. I didn’t know why then. Didn’t know why until after I’d bought the p
lace and moved my stuff in.”
“He the one selling it?”
Ralph glanced at him. “If he was selling it, why would he be hesitant to talk about it?”
“Good point.”
Ralph nodded over his shoulder. “You can have some cereal, get the blood flowing to your brain.”
“Piss off,” David said, grinning.
Ralph smiled too. “I finally got out of the man that the house was on Governor’s Road, and he gave me directions. Wouldn’t give me a number for the owner, not yet, but he told me how to get here.
“When I arrived, I felt despondent.”
David looked at him questioningly.
Ralph shook his head. “Oh, I loved the house. That was the problem. No way, I figured, was this gonna be in my price range. It’s not like the place was in great shape, but the view off the dock, the screened-in porch….” He shrugged. “I came back to The Crawdad and told him I was interested. Didn’t even bother wearing a poker face. I wanted this house. After my wife….” He glanced at the river, his expression pensive. David let it go.
Ralph hawked, spat. The loogie smacked the water, where it floated and spread. “Turns out the house had been part of an estate, and a lawyer from Virginia Beach was in charge of it. He sold it to me – not cheap, but not as salty as I’d figured – and I moved in a few weeks later.”
Ralph fell silent. The day had grown gloomy, a breeze kicking up around them. Rather than cooling the day, however, the sensation of being stuck inside a vast cauldron only increased, the febrile wind swirling about them like some devil’s stew. Just when David was about to prompt him, Ralph went on.
“I didn’t notice the Alexander House until after I’d moved in.” He turned to David. “You find that strange?”
David thought about it. “Your property is pretty overgrown – no offense.”
“I prefer to think of it as rustic.”
“You can’t see the Alexander House from inside the house. Too wooded.”
Ralph said nothing, but David could tell by the way the older man had cocked his head that he was hanging on David’s every word.
A bit uneasily, David went on, “You can’t see it from the screened-in porch either. Again, too wooded. The backyard is jammed with trees and brambles. And from here….” David paused, glanced to his right, where the Alexander House, two hundred yards away, stood silent and watchful.
“And from here?” Ralph prompted.
“Well,” David said, gave a little shrug, “you can see it from here, but it would be easy enough to miss if you weren’t looking.”
“Would it,” Ralph said. Not a question.
David tore his gaze off the house. “I admit it’s arresting, but I can understand the oversight.”
“Maybe you can help me understand it.”
He realized Ralph was staring at him now, his eyes imploring.
“Ralph, what do you—”
“That fucking place,” Ralph said, his voice a harsh croak. His eyes were starey, his teeth bared. “It’s like it was…hiding from me. I looked this house over, even walked the property in all directions….” He leaned toward David. “And I never saw the Alexander House. Can you explain that?”
David peered down the shoreline. “There are several possibilities.”
“I’m listening.”
David shifted from foot to foot, aware he had been thrust into his accustomed role of skeptic. “For one, the weather could have been bad. There’s a lot of mist in the mornings—”
“I visited this property eight times before I moved in.” A trace of a smile. “You know how exciting it is to move into a new house. Especially if it’s your dream home.”
David couldn’t argue with that. The place he lived in now he’d scouted two dozen times before making an offer, and after closing on it, he’d hung around like a gnat until the previous occupants moved out.
He chewed his lip, inspected the long run of vacant land between the properties. “There might have been more trees then.”
“There weren’t.”
“Oh.”
“Nor,” Ralph continued, “was there an ancient mountain range that sank due to the shifting of tectonic plates.”
“Smartass.”
“Just taking away that argument.”
“Is it possible you’re just unobservant?”
“You have a scar under your hair,” Ralph said. He tapped behind his right ear. “Back here. You can only see it when you’re facing a certain angle and the light is just right.”
David fingered the scar behind his ear self-consciously, which was shaped like the onyx stone in the ring his father used to wear. He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know, Ralph. Maybe you were just excited about your new home and didn’t pay attention to the neighbors.”
“That place,” Ralph said, his lips writhing into what David was certain was an unconscious snarl. “That place is diseased.”
“I’ll admit it looks foreboding.”
“You don’t feel anything?”
“What the hell do you want me to say?”
“No need to get testy.”
“I’m not testy,” David snapped.
“I won’t judge you.”
“Judge me all you want,” David half shouted. “I deserve it. I….” He stopped, massaged his brow. “Maybe I’m just putting too much pressure on myself.”
Ralph reached into his pocket and came out with a well-worn pouch of Red Man chewing tobacco.
Watching Ralph pinch out some black leaves, David said, “You’re just full of vices, aren’t you?”
“It’s unhealthy,” Ralph agreed. “But it’s better for my lungs than stogies.” He stuffed the wad into his cheek.
“Was someone living in the Alexander House back then?”
The color drained from Ralph’s face.
When the older man didn’t speak, David asked, “What happened there?”
“They were beheaded.”
David could only stare. He realized with alarm that Ralph was on the verge of tears.
Ralph said, “They were a nice, normal family. He was a trifle strange. A writer, like you.”
When David opened his mouth, Ralph waved him off. “You wouldn’t have heard of him. His wife had a good job, so he was free to pursue his dream of writing full time.”
The contempt in Ralph’s tone was evident, but David made no comment.
Ralph spat brown juice into the water. “I had them over once, nice little boys, one no older than five, the other a toddler. Wife read x-rays…oh, I forget the—”
“Radiologist.”
“Radiologist,” Ralph repeated, with a frustrated shake of his head. “Old age.”
Another silence.
David glanced at the Alexander House. “Who…you know….”
“Cut off their heads?”
David cringed. “Man.”
“No idea.”
“You didn’t find them, did you?”
Ralph spat into the water, armed juice off his lips. “As a matter of fact, I didn’t.”
“Who—”
“Should’ve known you wouldn’t let this go,” Ralph muttered. He scratched the back of his neck, sighed. “The woman – Clara Raftery – used to drive to work every morning, except on weekends and holidays, and sometimes even on those.” He shook his head. “Hard worker. Good woman. It got so I’d sit on the front porch and smoke just so I could wave to her.” A fond smile. “If she’d been twenty years older….” The smile faded. “One morning she didn’t go to work. Then the next.
“I was worried she’d taken ill. Their cars were in the driveway, so I knew they hadn’t gone on vacation. Besides, it was early November, not exactly prime traveling time.”
Ralph looked up at the dingy sky. “The fou
rth day I finally went down there. You know, to make sure things were okay. I’m a shitty cook, but I could’ve whipped up some chicken noodle soup or something. She was always bringing me leftovers….” The smile again, but there was pain in it. “I knocked, but nobody answered. I walked around the house and called out, but…nothing. They didn’t respond to phone calls…didn’t….”
Ralph spat straight off the end of the dock, the stream an impressive splurt that must have traveled at least twelve feet. “It was the smell that told me.”
“You called the police?”
Ralph smiled a ghastly smile, tobacco-streaked and half-mad. “I was a good citizen, all right. Did my duty and dialed the authorities.”
David frowned. “I don’t—”
“Don’t you see?” Ralph barked. “It made me a coward, that place. Even now I can barely look at it.”
David found himself thinking back a couple days ago, the evening he’d arrived. Yes, Ralph had greeted him, but he’d been restive. And he’d balked at entering the Alexander House.
It’s making you a coward too, a voice whispered.
“They’d been strapped to the dining room table,” Ralph said, his voice gruff. “Strapped down and vivisected.”
David’s stomach muscles contracted. “All four of them?”
“Their heads were lined up on the mantle. Like those wooden ducks.”
David couldn’t keep himself from imagining the woman and the man and the two little boys staring sightlessly from atop the mantle. “You saw this?”
The Siren and the Specter Page 6