The Listener

by Robert R. McCammon

  :Who?:

  :Mizz Ripp was goin’ out to catch turtles. I’m in her boat. We’re ’bout five minutes away,: he repeated, if she hadn’t understood that the first time.

  :The woman’s in here,: Nilla said. :We’re hiding in a bathroom. I don’t know where Mister Parr is. They’ve got guns, Curtis.:

  :All right. Stay where you are, don’t move.:

  :Did you hear me? They’ve got guns.:

  :I heard,: he answered.

  Her focus on speaking to Curtis was interrupted when a wash of light sneaked under the door. Then it was gone; then it back came again, searching.

  Nilla heard her brother catch and hold his breath, as if that would do any good.

  The light went away.

  “Where might a couple’a little mice be hidin’?” they heard the woman say. “I think, maybe…here.”

  The bathroom’s door gave a quiet creak. Nilla felt the slight tremor in her feet and figured the woman had placed a hand against the wood. The light returned, aimed at the crooked crack between the bottom of the door and the floor.

  “Sign on this door here says ‘Rest Room’,” she told them. “You restin’ in there?” By the light’s glow Nilla saw the doorknob slowly turn from left to right and back again. The door creaked again, a little louder; Nilla could feel the woman pushing on it. “Oh, now,” she said softly, “you locked yourselves in? That’s not gonna do you a whole hell of a lot of good. Kiddies, you’re gonna make me mad, havin’ to go through all this. And when Ginger gets mad,” she said, her voice still easy, “Ginger stops actin’ like a lady. You hearin’ me, Nilla honey?”

  Beside Nilla, Little Jack shifted and tried to rub the back of his neck on the underside of the sink. He bumped his head on a pipe and from beneath the sink came a hollow-sounding thrummmm.

  “Must be ghosts in there,” Ginger said.

  Nilla and Little Jack heard the skreek of her fingernails being drawn slowly down the wood, and maybe she was getting splinters under them or in her fingers but they didn’t think she cared about that…or really, cared about much of anything except pulling them out of that bathroom.

  There followed a silence in which Nilla’s heartbeat was deafening.

  Then Ginger threw herself against the door with a scream of rage.

  It was so raw, so primal and so animalistic that it made Little Jack cry out with a bleat of terror and jam himself further under the sink. Nilla let loose her own shrill scream with the effort of keeping her feet up against the door as it bowed inward and the wood gave off the pops of pistol shots.

  Ginger hit the door again, the violence of the blow shuddering up through Nilla’s knees and legs. Nilla gritted her teeth…the next blow was sure to break the latch and then the woman would be on them.

  But it did not come.

  “Shit,” they heard the woman mutter.

  Then they heard what she must have: the distant noise of an outboard motor, coming closer.

  ****

  Fay Ripp slowed the boat and cut the motor. The craft drifted toward shore. “Can’t get much further in,” she told Curtis, who sat at the front. “Pilin’s where the wharf used to be could tear the hull open. You’ll have to get out here, if you’re goin’.”

  He nodded in the beam of the flashlight that rested on the plank seat beside his captain.

  With an effort he was able to croak, “’lice.”

  “I’ll fetch ’em. Take me some time, though. You sure you want out?”

  Once more a nod affirmed his decision.

  “Damn,” she said. “Must be awful important.” She looked toward the ruin of the Boar’s Head marina. Was there the glimmer of a light somewhere up there in the wreckage? She picked up the flashlight and offered it to him. “Whatever it is you’ve got to do, this might help.”

  Curtis took the light. They’ve got guns, Nilla had said. Never in his life had he used a weapon or held anything in his hand that might cause injury to someone, but now…he needed something, though it wouldn’t be much use against guns. He leaned forward and put his hand on the sharpened lance that Fay Ripp used to prod alligators away from her turtle catch. Then he looked at her, waiting for her to answer.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Go on and take it.”

  With the flashlight in one hand and the lance in the other, Curtis eased himself over the side into chest-deep water.

  “Careful where you step, boy,” she told him. She waited for him to move away a safe distance, then she throttled up the motor again and turned the boat in the direction they’d come.

  Curtis waded in over mud, rocks and past several broken wharf pilings that stood just above the surface. When he reached the shore he stood looking at the place he had been called to reach. :Nilla,: he said, :I’m here,: but she didn’t answer.

  He followed the flashlight’s beam a few more feet to a staircase that led up to the remnants of a porch. He saw that the stairs were too broken to be used…and then he saw the body on the ground below them, lying in a mess of debris. The man’s eyes were open, fixed in death, and the face—once handsome, maybe even cherubic—had been distorted by the impact of a bullet to the forehead.

  So, he thought, it was just the woman now. What had Nilla said her name was? He couldn’t remember.

  Whoever she was, she was deadly.

  It came to him that he might fail in this. The odds were so much against him. Coming into this situation—to save his friend and her brother—with a lance might have worked for the knights of old, but against a gun…no. But he wouldn’t be able to shoot anybody, even if he could get a gun; it wasn’t in him to wish harm on anyone, he just wanted to get the kids back.

  He realized he likely wasn’t up to facing the kind of evil that might be inside that wrecked marina…but who else was there to do it?

  Ironheaded. Just like your daddy.

  Yes, he thought. I am.

  He shone his light up the stairs again, and that was when he saw the woman standing on the porch aim her gun at his face.

  ****

  “Now!” Nilla cried out, and she and Little Jack hit the woman from behind an instant before the gun went off. The bullet hissed past Curtis’s head. They had come out of the bathroom even though the lantern had been left on the floor to keep them cowed, but Nilla had heard Curtis say I’m here and had figured the woman—and Mister Parr too?—must’ve gone out to see who was there.

  They all fell from the porch in a tangle, as Nilla had hit Ginger LaFrance high and Little Jack had thrown himself against the backs of her knees. They came down into the mud and the lake’s wavelets only a few feet away from Curtis, who backed away with a strangled noise of alarm. His light showed the three figures thrashing, trying to disentangle, and then the woman struggled up, caught Nilla by the hair and put the pistol’s barrel to her head.

  Her name, Curtis thought frantically. What was—

  “Vesta,” he said, the pain tearing through his throat. “No.”

  It had sounded like the moan of wind through a graveyard.

  The woman’s head swivelled toward him.

  By the light that fell upon her mud-streaked face, she looked stunned. Her mouth worked but made no noise. She shivered, as if a stranger speaking her true name had been the ultimate violation, as if truth itself were her mortal enemy, as if it had reached into her soul with a clawed hand and torn open something that had long been buried, and ought to have been.

  In the next instant her face became a rictus beyond rage. It contorted into a horror that could freeze the blood and cause any man to retreat before its draconic ugliness.

  But the son of Orchid and Ironhead Joe stood his ground.

  She lifted the pistol and fired once, shooting him in the chest. As Curtis staggered back under the bullet’s impact, she walked forward and shot him again, the second bullet striking him in the left
side. He lost the light and the lance and he fell. She advanced on him, the hammer clicking back for a third shot to his skull.

  With an anguished cry, Nilla swung a thin piece of board she’d clenched in a deathgrip off the ground and had jammed down as far as she could between her fingertips. The three rusted nails that protruded from its end smacked into the side of Ginger LaFrance’s neck. Nilla wrenched her fingers off the board and it just hung there. The woman gave a gagging sound, and when she turned toward Nilla her eyes held the fires of Hell and blood was streaming from her mouth down over her chin.

  The revolver rose up like a snake’s head.

  A speartip tore through the woman’s chest from behind.

  Curtis’s thrust had had the power of desperation behind it, even though he felt himself fast ebbing. Nilla and Little Jack saw the speartip dripping heart’s blood. The woman looked down at it as if a strange flower had bloomed from her breast. The gun went off, its slug plowing into the mud between the children, and then it fell from her shivering hand.

  The woman of many names sank down to her knees but slowly, as if defying gravity and her mortal wound. She leaned forward on both hands. Blood spooled from her mouth. Curtis had fallen again and was crawling toward Nilla and Little Jack. The woman gave a shudder. Her head moved from side to side as if seeking out the one who’d stabbed her.

  Curtis saw her eyes find and fix upon him.

  “Who are you?” she whispered.

  And again, with a rasp of indignant anger: “Who are you? Who…are you? Who—”

  Her elbows gave way and her face fell forward, her eyes and mouth still open and filling up with Lake Pontchartrain water and mud, her secrets likewise buried in the muck. The lance’s shaft stuck up from her back like the pole of a victory flag.

  Curtis lay on his side.

  Nilla reached him first. Little Jack tried to walk but his bad ankle gave way and he just sat down, his face blanked with shock.

  “Curtis!” Nilla said, and seeing his mangled face and all the blood she began to weep. “Curtis!” she said. “Curtis…oh…Curtis!” She put her head down against his, as the lake washed against them both.

  :That’s my name,: he answered, but even face-to-face like this it was a weak sending. :Don’t wear it out.:

  “Talk to me!” she begged. “Please!”

  :Am talkin’. Not so good at the other way no more.:

  “We’ve got to get out of here…get help…somebody…”

  Curtis tried his best to speak. It was with an effort that he thought might be his last. “Comin’.” And then, back to what he could do. :Police. Mizz Ripp…gone for ’em.:

  “Nilla,” Little Jack said tonelessly, “I think…somebody’s lyin’ over there under the steps.”

  :Shot dead,: said Curtis.

  It would be Mister Parr, Nilla knew. The other gunshot they’d heard. The woman had killed him before she’d come in after them.

  With a shudder and a gasping of breath through the mud in her mouth, Vesta suddenly sat up.

  As Curtis, Nilla and Little Jack looked on in horror, the woman struggled to her feet. She fell again, and again fought her way up. Her back was toward them, and she did not try to turn around or disturb the lance that pierced her body or the nail-pocked piece of board in the side of her neck. She began walking into the lake, step after step, and watching her through the descent of red haze in his vision Curtis thought she might be a traveller at the Union Station, crossing the marbled tiles to catch a train for an unknown destination.

  She kept going as the water rose past her knees, up her thighs, and to her waist. Very suddenly she halted her progress and stood in place against the night and the stars. She remained there for several seconds, standing perfectly still in the grip of the lake, until at last she fell backward with an almost graceful motion, one hand flying up as if to give the world a final gesture of contempt. The folds of her dress floated around her, and her body swayed upon the water like any old piece of debris torn from what had once been a life.

  It was over, Curtis thought. Whatever evil engine had powered that woman…it was gone.

  “Is she dead?” Little Jack called to them, a cry both frantic and dazed. “Is she dead?”

  :Won’t hurt you anymore,: Curtis told her, and she said to her brother, “The police are coming. We’re going to be all right.”

  “Yeah…yeah…but is she dead?”

  Neither Curtis nor Nilla could make out the body any longer. Nilla didn’t want to leave Curtis, get the flashlight and look for the woman; she was terrified that she would see her shambling back to shore to drag them all to a watery grave. She said, “She’s dead, Jack. Just shut up now, hear?”

  “Hell with it, then,” he answered, which sounded just like their father.

  “Our daddy,” she said to Curtis. “Is he…I mean—”

  :Alive when I left him. I just…I don’t know.:

  Nilla figured that was the best answer she could get, at the moment. Someone had beaten Curtis badly, he’d been through torment, and she feared that he was dying right in front of her. She couldn’t stand it, that she could do nothing to help him, that he’d come so far and done so much for both of them, and now…all she could do was offer him a listener.

  “They’ll be here soon,” she told him. “I know they will be.”

  :Soon,: he agreed. :Mizz Ripp…she won’t let us down.:

  “Get you to a hospital,” Nilla said. “Oh, Curtis…without you…what would’ve happened?”

  :Nothin’ good to speak of,: he answered. :Goin’ home soon. Yes, you are.:

  She was silent, and he stared up at the stars.

  The pain wasn’t so bad, but he was getting cold. Funny, on such a warm and humid night as this, to be feeling a chill. But it was morning, wasn’t it? What time might it be? Well, the sun would rise in a few hours, and Nilla and Little Jack were free. That was the important thing.

  Curtis was not afraid. He knew the police wouldn’t be there in time for him, and any hospital was too far away. No. He knew it, like he knew the schedules of the trains. He felt himself weakening; he felt himself going away, as if he were dissolving into the very earth itself.

  But he had done the right thing, he thought. It seemed to him that any right thing called for a price to be paid. He was glad to pay this one, and he had no regrets about it. His life for theirs…a small price, he thought.

  “Hang on,” Nilla said. Her voice was choked, because she also knew. “Please hang on.”

  :I’ll try,: he replied, :but…my fingers…they’re gettin’ some tired.:

  “What?” she asked. “I could hardly hear.”

  Even that was going away.

  He wondered if they would’ve done the same thing. Them. The knights. Sir Tristram…Sir Gawain…Sir Lancelot…Sir Dynadan…Sir Galahad…all the rest of them. Would they have done the same thing? He hoped that if they lived in some other form, in some other place, they might welcome his approach…and one of them—or their shadows or shades in that mystical place—might stand before him and say the most wonderful thing.

  Enter in.

  “Thank you, Curtis,” said the damsel. “Thank you so much for what you’ve done.”

  His eyes were closed but he was still breathing, though shallowly, when she and Little Jack heard the siren coming. It was back a ways, on a road that connected to the parking lot behind the marina. Nilla put her fingertips against Curtis’s cheek. She said, close to his ear, “The police are here! I’m going to go meet them. Hang on, Curtis. Please…they’re here. Do you understand?”

  She heard his reply, and she was amazed that in it he sounded as strong as what he had always been.

  :I do understand,: he said.

  She stood up. She and her brother climbed the small rise to the parking lot. Little Jack was limping badly on the injured ankle that
his fall off the porch had not helped. But they were both rewarded by the sight of the oncoming red pulse of the police car’s spinning light…no…there were two police cars, one following right after the other, both with sirens and lights going.

  Nilla looked back toward the lake in time to see it.

  Afterward, she never knew if it was the brightness of the police cars’ spinners or her own exhaustion and imagination, and she never told anyone about it either, but it seemed to her that she caught a flash of almost incandescent light—a streak of it—not going directly upward but rather upward and out, like a meteor flying across the lake…but it was a strange thing, because it was so small…just a little thing…as small as a bird.

  And it was gone, in a heartbeat.

  FIVE.

  Listening

  Twenty-Six.

  It was true that the Devil could be a man or a woman. That the Devil could be the hard spring in the seat of a car, a gnat in the eye or the whack of a wooden baton on the iron bars of a jail cell. True also that the Devil could get behind the wheel of that car with the hard spring in the seat, and drive crazy and wild with no regard for any human being, and cause one hundred and ten million kinds of suffering for anybody and everybody until the Devil, he drives that car right over the cliff and it smashes to pieces on the sharp rocks underneath.

  “Then,” said the widowed Methodist preacher who married Orchid Mayhew in the autumn of 1938, “the Devil runs for cover because the Devil, he don’t clean up after he wrecks the car. Nossir! It’s the Good Father who comes in and cleans up. Puts that broken engine together. New lamps in those busted headlights. New glass in the windshield. Fresh new tires, so the car that was wrecked by the Devil’s hand—the Devil’s bad, bad drivin’—is ready to go afresh for many, many more miles.

  “Now why don’t the Good Father stop that Devil from gettin’ behind the wheel of that car to begin with?” he asked the congregation of the Beloved Savior Methodist Church of Ville Platte, Louisiana. “We all want to know that, don’t we? Why is the question we ask. Well, I am human and am afflicted in the human way of not bein’ able to know the true will of God, but I do know this: whatever wreckage you’re facin’, however bad it seems, however much it looks like your engine is broken and will never ever run again…the Good Father is a mighty, mighty fine mechanic. If you let Him be. If you give up that old car the Devil’s drove off the cliff. Let the Good Father work on it, ’cause the Devil…he done run for the low country.”