The Cypress House

by Michael Koryta

  Arlen’s breath was coming fast and ragged now. The physical toll was something he didn’t understand, but it was fierce, his body responding as if he were pushing through a long, arduous march. His muscles ached and his head throbbed and that chilled sweat ran from every pore.

  Good, Owen said. She can’t stay here. Neither can you.

  “But Paul…”

  I don’t know. Maybe. There’s still time. But there’s also more death to come. More than mine. If you stay, death stays with you. I’m certain of it. Follow my sister. Go with her now, and go fast.

  Arlen thought about that as the waves broke and the wind pushed off the Gulf in puffs and put a crisp skim over the pool of blood beneath him.

  “Paul is with the McGraths?” he said.

  Yes.

  “And he is alive?”

  Right now. But there’s so much death around him.

  “Can you get me to them?” Arlen said. “Can you guide me?” He was speaking with his lips almost at the boy’s ear now, could smell the coppery scent of blood. Each time Owen spoke, the voice was fainter.

  I can.

  The headache flared with a sudden, unbearable agony, and he had to release his hold and lean away from the body. The pain relented then, but he was awash in perspiration and felt a trembling exhaustion through every muscle, an odd dizzy sensation on top of it all, as if he’d gone too long with too little air.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, leaning forward and grasping the boy’s shoulders one more time. “I’m so sorry.”

  I know. A whisper now, scarcely audible.

  “I’ll set it right,” Arlen said. The wind rose in another sweeping gust and sprinkled a few raindrops across the porch, and suddenly he felt alone and was aware, for the first time in several minutes, that he was staring into a dead man’s eyes. The reality of that had just vanished for a time; he hadn’t been seeing much at all, really, just hearing it. It was like entering a trance, but now something had pushed him away from it, back into reality.

  “You’re slipping from me,” he said.

  I can’t hold here long, Owen Cady’s voice whispered from somewhere outside of time and place. You don’t know how to keep me here.

  “I’m trying.”

  Yes. But you can’t do it yet.

  So soft. Almost gone. Arlen said, “You take care. Wherever it is you’re bound, ride easy.”

  That was all. Arlen could feel it when he left. The sweating stopped, dried quickly on his skin, and the sounds of the real world returned, the calls of the gulls and the rustle of the palm fronds and the creak of the shifting house.

  His father could hold the dead with him longer. Could find them easier. How had he done it?

  You could have asked him, Arlen thought, but you didn’t. You refused to believe a word of his tales, and now what guidance you might have had is gone. You’ve got his parting words—an instruction that you have to believe, and a promise that love lingers. That’s all. You’d best make it enough.

  Paul was still alive. Temporarily at least. They’d taken him, but they’d taken him alive. He might still die today. But if Paul went, Arlen would see that he didn’t go alone.

  He straightened up from the body. He didn’t want to leave Owen here untended but saw no other choice. He went inside the inn, thinking he’d fetch a blanket and cover him with it. The smallest of token gestures, but it was something. He had taken maybe ten steps through the dark room before he glanced at his own reflection in the mirror behind the bar and came to a stop.

  The man looking back at him from the glass was a skeleton. He stared at it, motionless, and then he slowly lifted his hand to test the image. The man in the mirror moved with him, bone fingers fluttering in the glass. Arlen wet lips that had suddenly gone dry, and when he did it, the man in the mirror flicked a black tongue out and ran it over bare, unprotected teeth.

  If you stay, death stays with you, Owen had said. I’m certain of it.

  He turned from the mirror and looked out the window, to the drive from where Rebecca had left not long ago.

  Follow my sister, Owen had told him.

  But he’d also said that Paul was still alive.

  Arlen kept his eyes away from the mirrors as he crossed the room and found the keys for the convertible. Kept his eyes away from the mirrors as he went upstairs and retrieved a blanket. Kept his eyes away from the mirrors when he came back down and went outside. He knelt at Owen’s side and closed his eyelids one final time, then draped the blanket over him and wrapped it so that the wind would not tug it free. When he was finished, he rose and gathered both rifles and looked them over. Springfield M1903 model. Twin guns. Rebecca and Owen’s father had probably purchased a pair of them at the same time he’d bought the two pistols. They were good weapons. They’d ended plenty of lives over the years. Such was the standard of good weapons.

  He tugged open the bolts and made sure each rifle was already loaded with five .30-caliber shells. The guns could bury those bullets a foot deep into the trunk of a pine tree from six hundred yards away. The last time Arlen had held one, it had a bayonet fixed to the barrel.

  He slammed the bolts closed and hefted a rifle in each hand and gave a final look down at the covered corpse near his feet. Then he walked off the porch and around the house and out to the convertible. The clouds were dark and ponderous overhead, but no rain fell. He laid the guns in the backseat and got behind the wheel and started the engine. It was a powerful motor, would be a fast car. He didn’t know where he was going, but Owen had said he could guide him, and he believed that. He saw no reason for a dead man to lie.

  Before he put the car into gear, he moved his eyes to the rearview mirror. The light was strange and shifting under the clouds, but his eyes looked like they had a skim of frost over them. He took a matchbook from his pocket and lit a match and held it up to his face, leaned closer to the mirror.

  His eyes were filled with white smoke. It drifted out of the sockets and mingled with the smoke from the match and swirled up into the sky and the storm clouds above. He took a long look at his own eyes, and then he blew out the match and dropped the car into gear and pressed firmly on the gas.

  Part Four

  DEAD MAN’S ERRANDS

  50

  THE CLOUDS THICKENED and continued to hide the sun, but the rain held off. It was as if the storm were being kept at bay, and angry about it. The skies contained menace that hadn’t been able to break through, just bathed the world below in shadow and trapped the heat and humidity close to the ground. Arlen took the dirt road all the way to the end, came out at the T-intersection with the paved road and thought, What now?

  He turned left. There was no conscious decision, no reason for going left instead of right, he just looked in each direction and felt his foot leave the brake and return to the gas when his eyes locked on the windswept gray moss that dangled from cypress trees ahead to the north.

  He’s guiding me, he thought. Owen’s guiding me.

  He didn’t know how, but he felt confident in it, had a strange assurance that this was the right route, that it would lead him to Paul.

  The wind picked up as he drove under the cypress grove, and a piece of Spanish moss drifted down in a lazy arc and landed in the passenger seat beside him. It was just past one now but so dark it felt like dusk. The arrival of the Cuban boat was still eight hours away. If it showed up at all. He had a feeling it would not, that word would have been passed somehow, and everything Barrett and the others waited for would not transpire.

  Rebecca was on this same road, somewhere well ahead of him. She would have a few hours at least before they began to look for the truck.

  And then I’ll catch up with her, he tried to think, but a single glance in the rearview mirror revealed the smoke in his eyes.

  He would not see her again.

  It was an agonizing thought. He’d never feared death. Had, at times in his life, longed for it. But those were in days past, days before her.

  It
was right for him to bear such a loss, though. It was needed. He thought of how he’d laid his hands on Owen Cady’s shoulders and looked into his dead eyes and heard his voice so clearly, heard the truth from him, and he remembered his boyhood trip down to the Fayette County sheriff and the way his father’s blood had pooled in the dust, and he knew that all things circled back in time. You paid for your sins, and he would pay for his today.

  As he drove down the road, he reached into the backseat and moved one of the rifles up front with him, braced it against his leg with the barrel pointed down and the stock and trigger close at hand.

  The car drove beautifully; Solomon Wade had a fine taste in machines. Arlen was holding it close to seventy. Twice he passed other cars moving at half that speed, saw drivers lift hands in annoyance and surprise, and blew by them and continued on. He’d gone at least five miles headed due north, passing two intersections without much pause, certain somehow that they held no significance, before he reached a four-way and again found himself turning left without thought or reason. The pavement soon disappeared and he banged onto a dirt road. The water from the previous night’s rains had not drained well here, and he splashed through deep puddles and spun the tires through soft mud. Thunder rippled to the south, but there was no lightning and the wind was still. He tried to keep the speed up, but the road was deeply pocked and rutted, and he was afraid he’d rattle the wheels right off the car. He felt one solitary raindrop find his forehead as the road narrowed into what looked like a thin green tunnel. The strange bird-of-paradise plants pressed close, their wide green fronds stretching toward the sky in search of sunlight.

  “Where am I going?” he said aloud, hoping for an answer, hoping that Owen’s voice might reach him even here. There was nothing but silence, though. The road wound on and on, and no sign of humanity existed, just that green jungle.

  He’d believed in each move he’d made in the car, believed that the dead man was guiding him, but what if that was all a foolish trick of the mind and he was driving away from Paul? His doubt grew as the road led him farther into the woods and farther from anyplace he knew, and he dropped the speed off again so the car was moving at a crawl and began to consider turning around. The road was so damn narrow that such a feat would be difficult. There were tire tracks in the mud and hoofprints from horses, but what did that prove? Only that someone had come this way; it didn’t have to be the McGraths.

  A stretch of muddy water showed through the trees then, a creek winding into the woods. Arlen studied it, saw that while it was narrow it was also deep, and remembered the boat from the inlet the day he’d been up repairing the roof just after the hurricane. Tate McGrath. And Owen had said the McGraths emerged from the inlet today.

  “It’s the right place,” he said. “You’re getting me there, aren’t you?”

  Again, no answer. He wished he could hear him, or at least feel him, know that he wasn’t making this ride alone, but there was nothing. He had to take it on faith, had to believe, and the sight of the water made that easier.

  He drove on, and a rickety wooden bridge appeared ahead. It was many years old. Arlen wasn’t sure it could even support the weight of the car, but then his eyes drifted ahead and what he saw made that concern vanish.

  There was a car coming his way. It had just rounded a bend well ahead of him and was approaching the bridge, driving at a slow speed. Arlen pushed the brake all the way down and stayed where he was, watching it come on. When it passed out of the shadows and took on enough clarity, he recognized it—the county sheriff’s car. Tolliver.

  He felt his breathing slow, felt his muscles go liquid and soft, the way they once had in fields far from this country, and he wrapped his hand around the walnut stock of the Springfield and waited.

  The sheriff’s car had slowed when the driver spotted Arlen, but it kept coming on, up to the edge of the wooden bridge, which was maybe a hundred yards ahead, and then stopped. Arlen could see Tolliver clearly now, the big man riding behind the wheel with one hand out of sight. Surely resting on a gun, the same as Arlen’s was. Only Tolliver’s gun was a pistol, and it didn’t have the range to do damage until he crossed that bridge. The Springfield had plenty.

  They’ll hear the shot, Arlen thought. He’s come from a good ways off, but not so far that they won’t hear the shot.

  Tolliver’s car lurched forward again, out of the mud and toward the old bridge, and Arlen knew that the sound of the shot was going to be the least of his concerns if he let him drive on.

  He engaged the parking brake and rose up as the sheriff’s car spun mud and neared the bridge. Put one knee on the seat to support himself and then cleared the Springfield and rested it across the frame of the windshield. The engine of the sheriff’s car howled with a sudden increase in gas as Tolliver saw the weapon and realized what was coming. Arlen dropped his face and pressed his cheek against the smooth stock of the rifle and gazed down the barrel. The car was driving fast but still centered; until it cleared the bridge, Tolliver couldn’t maneuver to the right or to the left. Arlen let the front wheels find the boards of the bridge and then he exhaled a slow, patient breath and focused right-center on the windshield and squeezed the trigger. The gun gave a gentle buck in his arms, an old but unforgotten sensation, and then he ejected the shell and closed the bolt and fired again. There were three shots left in the Springfield, but he didn’t need to use them. The car gave a last lurch forward and then the growl of the engine dropped off, and the car rolled slowly down from the bridge and came to a stop in the mud. The engine was still running, but no foot remained on the gas pedal. Tolliver was out of sight. He’d fallen sideways, down onto the passenger seat.

  Arlen left the convertible running, climbed out and jogged toward the sheriff’s car with the gun held out in front of him and the mud sucking at his boots. When he got close enough, he dropped to a knee and pointed the rifle at the passenger door and waited. Tolliver could be baiting him, could rise up with the pistol in his hand the moment Arlen reached for the door handle.

  He didn’t rise, though. The two .30-caliber bullets from the Springfield had landed true; there were twin holes cracked through the windshield, inches apart, fractured glass surrounding them just above the steering wheel. Arlen gave it a few more seconds, listening to the engine run, and then he saw something drip out of the car near the base of the door frame. Blood.

  At the sight of it, he rose and walked to the passenger door and pulled it open, holding the Springfield against his side with a finger on the trigger. Tolliver’s wide body was jammed between the dashboard and the passenger seat, shoulders wedged tight. Blood pooled on the floor beneath him, and a thin stream of it ran out onto Arlen’s boots when the door was opened. Arlen could see the big man’s back shudder. Trying to breathe. Not gone yet.

  There was a pistol on the driver’s seat, the weapon Tolliver had held when the bullets found him. Arlen reached over and picked it up and slid the barrel through his belt. Then he took a handful of the sheriff’s shirt and hauled him out of the car and down into the mud.

  Not a sound had come from anywhere up the road. The shots from the Springfield had been loud, though, and Arlen suspected the McGraths could move as silently as they chose through these woods. He kept his back against the car, protected, as he rolled Tolliver over. He had to set the rifle down to do it; the sheriff must have gone every bit of two fifty. When Arlen got him over, he saw the holes punched through him, one high on the right side, blown through the collarbone, and another lower and centered. Tolliver gave a long blink, smoke billowing out from under his eyelids, moved his lips like a fish searching for water, and then he died. Arlen knew the moment that he went; he’d watched enough men find that moment in the past.

  Arlen said, “Bad news, buddy: you can’t hide from me that easy.”

  He left the rifle leaning against the car, and then he reached down and cupped each side of Tolliver’s head with his hands, lifted the dead man’s face and looked into his eyes.
r />   “Come on back now,” he said, “and tell me how many they are.”

  You’ll never cross this bridge again.

  This voice was nothing like Owen’s had been. Recognizable as Tolliver’s, yes, but changed, gone dark and twisted. As Arlen held the dead sheriff’s head in his hands, the man’s flesh drained of color, went white as sand under moonlight, as if every ounce of blood had been pulled away. Arlen felt a shiver ride through him and nearly dropped Tolliver and stepped back. He held his position, though, swallowed, and said, “I didn’t ask about crossing the bridge. I asked how many they are.”

  Don’t understand this game, do you? Tolliver’s ghost whispered. We ain’t all here to help you, friend. Just because you can reach us doesn’t mean we’re required to help.

  Arlen didn’t say anything. Tolliver’s blood was running with the slope of his torso, dripping down his throat in warm rivulets and caressing the sides of Arlen’s hands.

  You’re a good shot, Tolliver said. Tate’s better.

  “We’re about to find out,” Arlen said.

  Hell, yes, you will. That man’s as natural a killer as I’ve ever seen. More natural than a rattlesnake, more natural than a shark. You ain’t never seen his like. And there isn’t a life that old boy values but his sons. You? You’re partnered up with them that killed one of his sons. I’d call that a death warrant.

  The world had begun to spin around Arlen. He was holding his focus on Tolliver’s eyes, but outside of that center everything was in motion, a whirl of trees and sky and colors. This wasn’t like talking to Owen at all. It felt like being lost in a terrible fever.

  “Is Wade with them?”

  Not yet. But he’ll be riding close soon enough. He’ll see you before the end of your time, and then you’ll wish you’d not come this way.

  A high, harsh hum was in Arlen’s ears now, coming in waves, like a pulse, and he squeezed his eyes shut and grimaced. When he opened them again, the hum was louder and the world seemed draped with fog. He could see nothing beyond Tolliver’s face, could hear nothing but that hum, and…