“Can’t fool you, Little Sis.”
“And you’re winning, right?”
“You could say that,” Charlie said, fingering the quarters.
That brimming bucket was only the tip of the iceberg. It had been a good two days—not a record, but damn near one. He’d been plugged in. That was what had counted. Tapped into a conduit he’d never tried to define, never dared to, a conduit he only knew as a repository of luck, both good and bad. At every table, at every machine, he’d felt it inside him: a familiar involuntary tightening of all his muscles, a sensation similar to butterflies in his stomach. In his head he could see them: the blackjack dealers’ cards, the winning sequences on the one-armed bandits. Since arriving Saturday morning, he’d cleared more than twenty grand—money he’d immediately deposited in the bank. He’d been plugged in, all right.
“You know,” Ginny said, “one of these days that great luck of yours is going to run out and you’re going to get burned. Burned bad.”
“When I’m plugged in,” Charlie said matter-of-factly, “I can’t lose. And when I’m not plugged in, I don’t play.”
“You’ll run up against the wrong character at some poker table and you’ll find yourself—”
“Now, before you deliver one of your lectures—”
“No lectures, Charlie. I’m glad to hear from you.”
She meant it. They were only half siblings, but they had always been tight. Ginny believed the age difference had helped make that possible. Charlie was eighteen years her senior, and they had never lived under the same roof, except for short spells. No chance to develop the rivalries of closely spaced siblings. No chance for turf wars, or bitching over what’s on TV, or who’s doing the dishes, or who’s got the car Friday night, or how long Sis has been in the bathroom, or how late Brother got to stay out, or any of the other nonsense that gets blown out of proportion in the standard family. What they’d had were time and room to feel each other out on their own terms.
But there was more to it than that.
Almost ten years ago Charlie had introduced Ginny to his best friend, and that best friend and Ginny had taken an immediate liking to each other, and that liking had quickly turned to love, and before you knew it, they were married, had built a house in the woods, and had brought a son into the world—a beautiful blond-haired boy, Charlie’s godson. And when Jimmy Ellis, Sr. had killed himself in his Jeep that fall afternoon on Thunder Rise, Charlie had been the first to find him. Charlie had been the first to tell Ginny. Charlie had sat next to her at the funeral, his arm around her, cushioning her sobs. Charlie was a wanderer, but then . . . then, when she’d needed someone most . . . he’d been there. And he’d been there since, whether by phone or his trips back East. Been there for her and for her son.
“I’m sorry I haven’t called earlier,” Charlie said.
“It’s only been three months,” Ginny chided. “You could have been dead and buried for all we knew.”
“You worry too much.”
“No. Not me. But Mother does. She’d never say it, of course, but she’s been pretty concerned. Three months, not even a postcard. Mothers worry about that kind of thing, Charlie. You ought to know that by now.”
“I thought you said no lectures,” Charlie said lightly.
“I did,” Ginny said. “Just a gentle reminder about family responsibilities. Are you still living in California?”
“Yes. Just across the border from Reno.”
“Don’t tell me you have a job.”
“Not exactly,” he said, and now an eavesdropper would have sensed he wasn’t hot to continue this line in the discussion. “Well, I’ve got news on the job front. Guess.”
“Let me see . . . last I knew you were at a printshop. In Pittsfield, right?”
“Correct.”
“And . . . you’re not there anymore.”
“You got it.”
“You’re working in Mother’s place.”
“The bed-and-breakfast? Be serious.”
“I give up.”
“I’m teaching!” she said proudly. “At Morgantown Elementary!” Since graduating with her certificate from the University of Massachusetts six years ago, she’d had her name in for a job at Morgantown. But it was a small school (as Abigail Gale and her father would discover when she enrolled there) with virtually no turnover. The kind of school where teachers automatically become institutions, where the institution on retirement automatically merits a banquet, a gold watch, and a posed picture of both banquet and watch across the front page of the local rag.
“Congratulations, Little Sis. What grade?”
“Third.”
“Too bad.”
“Why bad?”
“You won’t have Jimmy. He starts kindergarten this year, doesn’t he?”
“Indeed, he does.”
“Is he looking forward to it?”
“Why don’t you ask him yourself? He’s right here. Want to speak to him?”
“Does the sun set in the West?”
“Hold the line a second.” In the background, she yelled, “Jimmy! Telephone!”
“Hello?” the young voice said after a bit.
“Is this my favorite nephew, the one and only James Ellis?” Charlie asked.
“Uncle Charlie!” the small voice said excitedly.
“Pardner!”
“Are you coming over?” It was always the first question.
“Not today, pardner. I’m pretty far away.”
“Are you in another country?”
“I guess you could say that,” Charlie said. “I’m in Nevada.”
“What’s Nevada?”
“It’s a state. Like Massachusetts, only much bigger. All the way over on the other side of the country. Your mom can show you on a map. So, how’ve you been, pardner?”
“Good.” Already the excitement in his voice was slipping away. It wasn’t like Jimmy. He could usually get a couple of days’ mileage out of a call from Uncle Charlie, at the very least.
“Only good? I hear you’re starting kindergarten next month. You must be excited.”
“I guess.”
“‘I guess?’ That doesn’t sound like the guy I know. The one who loved nursery school. Remember how much fun nursery school was?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, kindergarten is even better. Believe me.”
There was silence while Jimmy looked to see where his mother was. She’d gone into the bathroom. “Uncle Charlie?” he whispered.
“Yes?”
“Did you ever kill any wild animals?”
“You mean, like deer? You know the answer to that.”
And he did. One of the most fascinating things about Uncle Charlie was his knowledge of the woods. More than once Jimmy had listened spellbound as he’d spun tales of stalking deer across the snow-blanketed wilderness. More than once he’d taken his nephew into the woods behind the cabin he kept in Morgantown to show him firsthand nature’s secrets and wonders.
“Not deer,” Jimmy said tentatively. “Bigger animals. Wicked fur-oshus ones.”
“Like moose?”
“Yeah, but even more worse.”
Charlie was picking up on it now. Not Jimmy’s tone, but something just beneath the surface. Charlie could feel it there, hiding in his nephew’s words. For a second he thought it must be related to the prospect of kindergarten. He dismissed that almost immediately. Something was troubling Jimmy, but it was more serious than butterflies about school.
Before Charlie could speak again, a computer voice interrupted. “Please deposit seventy-five cents for each additional minute. . . .” it droned.
Charlie quieted the voice by feeding it enough quarters to reach Hong Kong for the rest of the week.
“You still there, Jimmy?”
“Yes.”
“Is something wrong with my pardner?”
“No.” Jimmy wasn’t convincing.
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Charlie screwed his eyes shut, blotting out the casino’s incessant flashing and buzzing. There was a sensation in his mind, fleeting, a dark shape . . . there evanescently and then completely gone. It had moved like . . . like what? Like an animal. A large animal. A wicked fur-oshus animal. He could get no more of a fix on it than that. If he had been plugged in, the way he was when he was on a roll at the poker or blackjack tables, it would have come to him. A Kodacolor-perfect image of what was bothering his nephew, just like pictures of the dealer’s cards. But he wasn’t plugged in. Couldn’t make himself be either. His talent wasn’t large enough to plug in on demand.
“You know, you can tell your uncle Charlie,” he said softly. “I won’t tell anyone. I promise.”
“Well . . .”
“Tell me, Jimmy,” Charlie said firmly.
“Well, in the middle of the night there’s something in my room.”
“Nightmares.”
“That’s what Mommy says. She thinks it’s from watching too much TV. But it’s not a nightmare. It’s real. In my room.” Jimmy’s voice threatened to break.
“What’s in the room, pardner?”
“The wolf. The same one I saw in the woods.”
Wolf. A large animal. A wicked fur-oshus animal. The words echoed in Charlie’s mind. It was an uncomfortable echoing.
Jimmy gave a summary of what had happened in the woods. Now that it knew where he lived, he said, the wolf was stalking him. It was a patient and very clever wolf, a ferocious and completely evil one, and it was taking its sweet time. Waiting for the right moment to pounce, a moment Jimmy could only guess. Just like Uncle Charlie tracking a deer across the frozen wilderness.
“I thought maybe you could kill it for me,” Jimmy said, and it was then that his courage dissolved and he started to cry.
They talked another five minutes, Charlie reassuring his nephew that there weren’t any wolves left in Massachusetts—and even if there were, no wolf would come within miles of a human being, just as no wolf could ever climb up the outside of a house to a second-floor bedroom. Jimmy didn’t sound convinced, but he had composed himself by the time his mother was through in the bathroom. For good measure, before Ginny got back on the line, Charlie promised to look into things the minute he was back East in the fall. If he found a wolf . . . of course, he would kill it. Instantly.
In the ensuing minutes Ginny gave her own version of the woods episode. She verified that the nightmares had started soon after and were occurring perhaps every third night. Her theory was that the threat of school was responsible. True, she agreed, Jimmy had gone to nursery school without apprehension; but that had only been two days a week, and she and her friend Susie McDonald had carpooled to bring their children. Kindergarten was a Much Bigger Deal: five days a week, in the same school as the big kids, delivered to and fro every day on a regulation-size school bus. Give him a week, Ginny said, and Jimmy would feel right at home. The nightmares would naturally pass.
The conversation covered several other topics before ending with Charlie saying he planned to be back East by Halloween, and to please be sure to tell Mother.
Charlie was oblivious of the casino’s glitter as he returned the phone to its cradle, took his remaining quarters, and headed for a cashier’s booth. He was not plugged in anymore; it had been ready to pass before the phone call, he’d felt it clearly, and now there wasn’t a trace left. He knew better than to risk even another half hour. He’d done that once—gambled when he wasn’t plugged in—and he’d wound up fifteen thousand dollars in the hole. Never again, he’d vowed.
After changing his quarters for bills, Charlie got in his Cherokee and started the two-hour drive over the mountains to the trailer he’d been renting since coming to northern California last spring from Morgantown.
Wolf.
The word haunted him as he drove across the state line into the rugged beauty of the Sierra Nevadas, which rose from dynamited ledges on both sides of the interstate. Normally, breathing the evergreen air here, seeing these mountains—so unlike the gently weathered hills of his home state—had a profound effect on him. The inevitable aggravations and tensions of a trip to the city would fall off him, like a snakeskin, as he traveled deeper and higher into the rock.
Now he was oblivious.
And not simply because of what his nephew had said, although that was unsettling enough. Hearing the word “wolf,” having it register—thinking it as he was now, dark and disturbing, like thunderclouds overspreading a blue mountain sky—had struck some deep ancestral chord. Had somehow ricocheted back through the centuries, back through his genes to the tribe of his father, a full-blooded Quidneck, a faint trail leading back, back to . . .
. . . he didn’t know what to. Only that it wasn’t anything good, that it didn’t concern only Jimmy.
More than that wouldn’t come. Not for several days.
CHAPTER SIX
Monday, August 25
Evening
Brad sat in an overstuffed chair, the comfortable one in the corner by the front window of their second-story room, and watched the sun go down in a blaze of crimson. The final rays flirted briefly with the rose-print wallpaper behind the bed, and then they were gone, leaving the room amber. The evening breeze had carried away the heaviness of the afternoon, and now it was bringing back the strong, cool smell of pine.
Brad was relaxed—maybe too relaxed, the part of him that had been running on nervous energy the last two weeks kept saying. He took another sip of his beer, second from a six-pack of New Amsterdam he’d purchased in New York and kept chilled in a Styrofoam cooler. A mini-celebration was in order. It wasn’t quite so simple, he realized, but as he sat there with his feet up, slaking his thirst, it really did seem as if his head had cleared since he’d left New York. With some careful engineering on his part (more puppy talk, mostly), Abbie’s mood, too, had swung around long before they’d arrived in Morgantown. And the Boar’s Head Inn, the unlikely medieval name Mrs. Fitzpatrick had given her bed-and-breakfast, had turned out to be one of those rare places that surpassed their travel guide reputation. It was typical of New England inns built a century or so ago, offering large bedrooms crammed with ponderous old furniture, a sprawling living room, and a location that would make a New York developer drool. It was a mile outside town, nestled in woods at the base of the Berkshires. From either of the establishment’s two porches, you were afforded uncompromised views of the hills.
Abbie was on one of those porches now, a floor below Brad.
He could hear her voice, animated and high-pitched, and he could hear an older voice talking back. It belonged to a woman he’d noticed in the dining room earlier. Not just another background person, but a woman with looks: long brown hair, large eyes, perfect white teeth that formed a high school sweetheart’s smile. Any way you sliced it, a cut above your average woman. She’d been sitting alone, and through soup, salad, main course, and dessert, she hadn’t stopped reading an oversize hardcover book. He couldn’t see the title, but if forced to guess, he would have put his money on a bestseller. Maybe a Michener or a Krantz. After dessert she’d closed her book, taken a last sip of coffee, and gone onto the porch. On his way up to their room, Brad had seen her out there, still lost in her reading.
From their bedroom Brad tried to catch her conversation with his daughter. They weren’t loud, and something buzzing out there (cicadas? crickets?) was drowning out most of what they said. Here and there he caught a word or two, but no complete sentences. Still, he caught enough to know that it was an amicable exchange. Whoever she was, she seemed at ease with children.
Time—he could not guess how much time—passed. For a while he wondered idly about the woman—where she was from, what she was doing here. From the woman his mind wandered to the new job. It lingered there a while, going over the same issues yet again, and from the job his thoughts moved along to the inn and the sixtyish woman who owned it. In the course of these thoughts he opened his third beer. As he
finished it, the amber tint to the room gave way to light gray, the light gray soon enough to dark gray, liberating the shadows from their daytime hiding places. The room, so cozy in daylight, now had more than its share of mysterious spots. Someone more in tune with the supernatural might have expected to hear soft footsteps.
Brad was turning on the lights when Abbie bounded in. His face lit up. Here she was, the little girl who always made him catch his breath, the only person on earth he was crazy for, the bouncing, smiling, outgoing girl with her endless stream of questions. The girl with the personality, intelligence, and looks to take her places when she blossomed into womanhood—some mighty big and exciting places, he’d bet. The girl who had her old dad exactly where she wanted him, wrapped tightly around her little finger.
“Well, if it isn’t my favorite Apple Guy!” Brad greeted her.
Abbie hugged him, kissed him on his cheek, then touched his chin as if she wanted it on record that she’d noticed all the stubble but understood why it was there. She scrambled onto his lap. Getting up, she accidentally dug a knee into his crotch. It hurt like hell, but Brad swallowed the pain and the instinct to yell out. It was funny in a way, but any references to their respective “private parts,” as he’d taught her to call them, always made him uncomfortable. Unless there was absolutely no way around it, he didn’t mention them—certainly not in any casual context. Maybe he was just being old-fashioned. Maybe his parochial school upbringing was surfacing after all these years of trying to bury it forever. But he didn’t think that was it. He thought it had everything to do with the near hysteria Americans had developed for anything that smacked of child abuse. As a journalist he was only too aware of cases where ex-spouses had used the charge of sexual abuse in attempts to ruin their former mates. No question, Brad was paranoid, but the last year had taught him paranoia could be an extremely useful survival tool.
“Know what, Dad?” Abbie asked when she was comfortable.
“What, pup?”
“There used to be Indians around here!”
“Indians?”
“Yup. A whole big tribe of ‘em.”
A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult Page 549