The Grave - An Oxrun Station Novel (Oxrun Station Novels)

by Charles L. Grant

  Home, then. It was time to head home when even the wind didn't want him sneaking around.

  The faint sound of a siren wafted from the west. A downed tree, he guessed, or a branch through someone's front window.

  As he started down the slope he glanced to his right, at a thick and rich stand of maple that protruded from the forest, a broad-boled and ancient stand that surrounded (and now concealed) a three-story clapboard farmhouse a quarter mile distant. He felt himself taking a step toward it, changed his mind with a warning whistle, and continued down through the brush, angling away from the homestead toward the car he had parked at the end of the flatland. He sidestepped a patch of sodden, sinking ground and jammed his hands into his jacket pockets, worked his face to a passable scowl.

  Anyone else but Mrs. Thames . . .

  He spat angrily. All he was doing was skirting the solution, and he hated it, especially when he knew, when he positively knew that the answer was right here in front of him, his eyes for the moment simply unable to focus on the clues he needed. Failure was not exactly a stranger to his work, and he could remember without half thinking about it worse times than this.

  But it was just so goddamned frustrating! And so goddamned unfair.

  After the barn lofts and the attic rafters and the stables of the valley's tenants had proved depressingly empty, he had made himself a series of maps of the land, blocked off and marked for quick identification. Then he had launched a series of excursions through the lower woods in hopes of coming across remnants of foundations that signaled a forgotten farmhouse or desolate outbuilding. Each time he returned empty-handed he shaded the map, stared at it, at the others, hoping the roughly drawn lines would suddenly join in an arrow, an X-marks-the-spot that would save him his temper, and Mrs. Thames' patience.

  It had only been two weeks, he kept telling himself, but the shadow of the Vermont trip refused to leave him be. And today was the fifth day of trying, his first in an area of briar and ash at the back of Don Murdoch's place; and his feet, he thought sourly, were rapidly turning to moss.

  He kicked out in reflex, glanced back again at the house he could not see.

  Murdoch—a large man dark from his curly hair to his constantly squinting eyes, from his spiked eyebrows to the ghost of a beard that made one wish he would either grow it or shave closer—had purchased the small parcel of land only the summer before. He had made it clear he had no intention of working it (other than tending a rather large, successful garden), used the fields instead for the walks he claimed he needed to write some of his books. Josh had never heard of him or his work, and Nat Clayton at the library had told him one afternoon that Murdoch was not the most sought-after author she had ever encountered, apparently selling just enough to keep his publishers happy and his readers from desertion.

  "Let me tell you something," Murdoch had told him, standing in front of the fireplace in the house, his hands chopping at the air as though he were sculpting, "I may not be the richest man in the world, but I know damned well what I'm doing with my life. How many others can say that, huh? So I don't win the Nobel Prize, so I don't sell to the movies or TV . . . so what? Who cares?" He had laughed, raucously, richly. "I got what I got, Josh, and that's all that matters."

  The man was, Josh had to admit, personable enough, and had a proverbial beauty for a daughter; so he listened politely to the stories of the agonies that eventually transformed themselves to books, and drank his cheap liquor, and laughed at his jokes, and spent as much time as he could stealing glances at the woman.

  In December, Murdoch brought him out to dinner, none too subtly leaving him alone with his daughter. But there had been an awkwardness he had been unable to surmount, and Murdoch had returned from the kitchen, scowling as if he had been eavesdropping at the door.

  In January, he came to the office.

  "What do you have against my Andy?" the man had demanded.

  Felicity was at lunch; Josh was too surprised to speak.

  "Huh? What's the matter with her, Josh? Don't you like her? She's a good girl, a fine woman, I want you to get to know her better." There had been no leer, no wink. "She's a good girl," he said again. Softly. "A very good girl. It isn't right she should be out there all alone."

  "Don," he'd said, just as softly, "what happened to her mother?"

  Murdoch sighed and slapped his hands to his sides. "Died ten years, out in Arizona. We went there for her health, the clean air and all that. It helped her lungs, but it didn't help her heart."

  "Oh. Hey, I'm sorry."

  Murdoch waved the apology away. "It's all right, I'm over it. But I tell you, Josh, I'm not all that sure Andy is, you know what I mean? She's got to have people around her, and nothing I do will make her live on her own." He slapped his chest, his stomach, yanked at his hair untouched by grey. "I'm healthy as a horse, and she worries about me. Me, one of the greatest unknown writers in the known universe." He laughed again. "Josh, do me a favor and take her out once in a while, all right?"

  Josh had been dumbfounded; a father who was trying to give his little girl away? To a stranger?

  Murdoch suddenly lost his bluster, became nervous, almost jittery. "Do it for me, will you? She's driving me crazy out there with all her fool help."

  No matter how often he replayed the scene, Josh could not remember saying yes or nodding. But he knew he must have given the man some sort of sign, because the next thing he knew his hand was being pumped and Murdoch was himself again.

  "You won't regret it, Josh. I promise you that. She's got college, she's got smarts, she won't embarrass you or any of the rest of the damned snobs in this town. I tell you something, pal—I never would have come out here if I didn't have to. Give me the city anytime, that's what I say. Christ, it's miserable out here!"

  "Hey," he'd said, suddenly defensive, "it isn't that bad, you know."

  "Bad enough. Bad enough. Damn, I hate waiting." He'd stopped, frowned. "Wish I could just snap my fingers and the book'd be done, you know what I mean?"

  Felicity had walked in, then, and Murdoch had left.

  And Josh had taken Andrea to dinner, to movies, on rides through the country he had always thought lovely. Not often, but enough. And now he was wondering what he'd gotten himself into.

  Just like the plow. Spending every available daylight hour covering himself with mud, dead grass, and stinging gouges from thorns that were plastered over with his name. He punched at the air. Only two things kept him going through this miserable weather: his pride, and the idea he would let the old woman down if he gave up so soon. It's only been two weeks, he reminded himself again; only two weeks. Give yourself a break.

  He stopped at the car for a long, pensive moment.

  Here. Damnit, it had to be somewhere near here, if it was here at all. Damnit, it felt right. The land looked right. A farm other than Murdoch's had been here before—the age of the newer trees and the unmistakable signs of a land-clearing forest fire made it almost a certainty. Here, goddamnit, he knew it. Knew it so much he had already spent hours past sunset checking through Oxrun histories, maps from Town Hall, diaries held at the college; tall-tales and folklore and old surveyor's plots. And though none of them had aided him directly, neither had they been able to prove him unarguably wrong.

  Not only was it depressing, it was frustrating as hell.

  He didn't need this. Not now. Especially not now.

  He shook his head sharply and yanked open the car door . . . and threw up his hands when something leapt at his eyes.

  Chapter 3

  Josh yelled, as much in abrupt fear as at the sharp pain that erupted in his shoulder when he threw himself back and caught the edge of the door. He dropped to the ground on his back, slapping at the air in front of his face, at his chest, rolling over several times before sitting up and staring. His mouth open and gulping for a breath. His legs outstretched and trembling. He was cold, and his teeth chattered, his head jerking from side to side while he blinked away unbidden tear
s to clear his vision.

  He was a child. He was stalking Big Game through the night-infested jungles of his back yard, his shadow clear and long from the hot burning sun overhead. Drums sounded. Lions roared. He heard the unmistakable grumbling of an elephant herd wallowing at a waterhole nearby. Sweat poured down his face, darkened his shirt under his arms, slipped into his boots to make him feel as though he'd been trudging through mud. He knew the jewels had been hidden somewhere within reach, came to a grey bark dead tree and dropped into a crouch. Listened. Tested the wind for the scent of the enemy. A rustling in the foliage above. A rustling in the shrubs that cut him off from the plain. He examined the tree carefully, wiping a forearm over his face and laying his rifle on the ground beside him. There was a hole, a large one, just above eye level. He sniffed, swallowed, checked the area behind him and picked up his rifle again. Slowly, trying not to disturb the leopard sleeping in the branches, he poked the butt into the hole to test for obstructions. The jewels were there; he knew they were there; and when he felt something give he grinned, rammed the butt home . . . and screamed as the cloud swept out of the tree and settled over his head. There was a running, then, a shrieking, a thousand bombers buzzing in his ears. The jungle was gone, the lions were gone, the elephants and the leopard and the waterhole and the plain; only the wasps, and the fire, and the sound of his sobbing.

  "Jesus," he whispered, reached into a hip pocket for his handkerchief. He flapped it out square, then rubbed it hard over his face. "Jesus." The cold slipped away, the trembling subsided, but he could still feel the race of his heart in his chest. And he thought he could still feel the fire of the stings that had stitched over him that afternoon, so long ago he wished he could forget it. Gingerly he pressed a finger to various parts of his neck, knowing he wouldn't find anything but doing it just the same. At the same time he scanned the air, the car, the shadows of the weeds he had fallen into. Saw nothing until he had pushed himself to his knees and was slapping at the dirt on his jacket with the bill of his cap.

  It was a bird. A robin. It was lying just under the car, half in sun, half in oiled shadow.

  He rose awkwardly to his feet and put his hands on his hips, squinting though the sun was already westering behind him, staring blindly at the forest until he could convince his mind to start working again without all the remembering. Then he grabbed hold of the edge of the car door and knelt again, poking at the dead bird with a stiff forefinger. Its neck was broken, eyes glassed over. He frowned, scratched his cheek, turned, and dug a shallow trench in the soft earth with his heel. When it was done he shoved the bird in and covered it. With his boot, not his hands.

  He knew it hadn't been his flailing that had done it; he had already started falling backward before he had made first contact. Then it must have been that windstorm. The bird had been slammed into the car, its neck was snapped, and he had been so immersed in thought that he hadn't seen it lying on the roof, partway over the door.

  His imagination had done the rest.

  And once he had figured it out to his satisfaction he immediately looked around him, realizing what an idiot he must have looked like to anyone happening to see him. His grin was sheepish. A faint warmth spread momentarily over his face. The hunter of plows and the finder of Time's secrets undone by a robin. It was a good thing Fel hadn't been with him; she would have laughed all the way back to the office, laughed the next morning, laughed for a week. After that, she would only grin now and then.

  A grunt for a laugh, and he slipped in behind the wheel. Both front and back seats had been encased by the cheapest terry cloth coverings he could find as protection against dirt. At least for the time he searched for the plow. He hated them. They were green. But his car he considered close to a national treasure—a twenty-five-year-old Buick, deep maroon, complete with the air holes on the sides of the hood, the rocket ornament, and the weight that made him feel as if he were driving a tank. It was the only thing he had gone looking for entirely on his own, a whimsy that became an obsession until he had found it a year after he'd started.

  Now it was his trademark, and he protected it with a jealousy usually reserved for lovers.

  But why, he thought wryly, should this car be any different from what he did for a living?

  Sometimes, as now, he could not help stepping back and looking at himself, seeing what he was doing, thinking that the people who had first settled this part of the country would have thought him a lout, if not directly engaged in some of the devil's own work. As he backed carefully toward one of the potholed spokes that poked off of Cross Valley, he tried to imagine another man of thirty-three spending his beautiful spring days on the hunt for a dumb plow. No, he decided; he was probably the only one in the world fool enough to try it.

  He considered, then, stopping in at the Murdochs' for a drink and a free dinner. Decided against it when he remembered with a wince the paperwork waiting back at the office. He had promised Fel that morning he would spend at least part of the day there, before she rebelled and started screaming at all his work she was doing. A promise, he realized, already two hours late in the keeping.

  Cross Valley Road extended from a handful of abandoned iron mines on the slopes of the northern hills to an abrupt dead end on the slope of those to the south. It was straight, well maintained, and from it extended any number of spurs poking into the farm-land, spurs that were known only by the houses and homesteads they passed. No one knew why it didn't carry on over the hills, why it stopped where it did, why it didn't curve to encircle the rest of the land; and no one (save newcomers who didn't know any better, and were taught quick enough once the issue was raised) ever proposed making additions or alterations. Cross Valley was Cross Valley; it was almost as though there were a Commandment to protect it.

  Josh drove slowly, feeling now a delayed reaction to the imagined assault, and not wanting to leave the open space for the closeness of the village. There were also the potholes, which the Buick accepted with a minimum of shuddering, dropping in and out of them with remarkable disdain. He grinned at the power he gave himself behind the wheel, scowled at a streak of dust he saw on the hood, then told himself that if he didn't watch out he would be spending every sunny day for the rest of his life spread-eagled over the roof to protect it from the elements. He knew he loved the old bus, but it was hard not to fall into the role of fanatic.

  Once on Cross Valley, his delays having run out, he turned right and headed for the intersection with Williamston Pike. From there it was a four-mile (and then some) ride to the village center, passing along the way the estates of those whose money was so old, so ingrained, they never even considered the possibility of its going. And that, in a large and small way, was one of the reasons why he had remained in the Station after his parents had left. The village itself was not large at all, virtually self-contained, and its population was generally more wealthy than the facade it gave to the world. Yet upper class or middle, the town as a whole took care of its own. Not like a family, but as protection against the world.

  A horn blared at him suddenly and he shook his head once, saw up ahead a gathering of vehicles at the intersection he wanted. He stiffened and took his foot from the accelerator. On his right was nothing but barbed wire fencing and telephone poles, the fields sweeping beyond them. On the left, a space of woodland between the road and the railroad tracks where a few small homes crouched in the shadows. And at the corner a young willow that had been snapped in half and slammed to the ground. A yellow sedan was angled over the stump, bleeding oil and blue-grey smoke, its front end smashed to chrome and glass glitter. The windshield was gone, the passenger door jammed open and twisted almost off its hinges.

  There were two ambulances idling on the shoulder, and as Josh pulled off to the side and yanked on the parking brake, one of them crawled onto the pike and darted away, silently, its red light spinning. A patrolman stood in the middle of the road, hands in his pockets and waiting for some traffic to direct around the scene. He lif
ted his head slightly when he saw Josh stop, but made no move to join him, eying instead the hesitant work of a second patrolman who was walking around the demolished car with an extinguisher in his hand.

  A wasp settled on the outside mirror. Josh rolled his window up slowly and watched it slip around the curve of the chrome. A trickle of perspiration drifted down his spine. The car grew warm. When he blinked and the wasp was gone, he threw open the door without checking for cars, stopped only long enough to toss his cap onto the front seat before strolling over to the cop,

  Fred Borg had been a policeman in Oxrun Station since before Josh's birth, had finally and beefily resigned himself to never making chief, or wearing anything more than the sergeant's stripes on his arm. The only time Josh could recall the man rousing himself was a year or so ago, when the present chief, Abe Stockton, had the uniforms altered from blue with grey piping to the opposite. Fred had protested the change simply because it was change, had lost, and Josh had never understood why Borg had been so adamant in his opposition. Probably, he thought with a grin kept to himself, the new color showed the dirt too readily; right now, Borg was streaked with dust, with what looked like grease, and a few darker blotches he did not examine too closely.

  "Josh," the man said, a short nod in greeting.

  "Hey, Fred." He glanced over to the wrecking crew attempting with violent mime to attach a tow chain to the sedan's rear bumper. "What's up?"

  The second patrolman (Josh reached for his name, and failed) finally gave up stalking fire around the car and tossed the extinguisher into the back of the traffic patrol's station wagon. Then he leaned against the front fender and fished a cigarette from his pocket. Borg scowled, but said nothing.