"Andrea!"
He peered at it closely, his nose almost touching, but could find no grooves, no indications that anything had been carved into it, much less a name, a date, one of the pious epitaphs that were part of the markings. He pushed back to his heels. Thought. Glanced around him and saw now there were others. He had bent to clean another when he looked up and spotted a double row of them at the back of the clearing.
"Andrea, damnit!"
Unbelievable, he thought as he ran to them, forgetting his disappointment. Stopped and caught his breath, less from the exertion than from the rush of excitement. Nine. He counted nine. Low grey stones he guessed were neither marble nor granite, but culled from the hillside itself as the need arose. Brambles and tangled grasses swept over the gravesites, wildflowers holding close to the four in front. He reached out cautiously, almost fearfully, and touched one, looked back to the others toppled from their notches, and frowned. Puzzled. Suddenly stepped back when he realized he was standing directly on a grave.
"Josh?"
"Andrea," he said without turning around, "damnit, come look at this! My god, it's fantastic! There isn't a church in town that knows about these, and there's not even anything in the Hall, either. I can't believe it. It's incredible."
"It's only a little graveyard."
He smiled tolerantly. "Darlin', there's no such animal as 'only a graveyard' in New England. Every damned one of them is some sort of historical monument, and most of them—in places like this that have been around for centuries—can tell you more about a place than the existing records, sometimes."
"Josh?" Whisper-soft, pleading.
He spun around and saw her at the clearing's far edge, hugging herself and wide-eyed. "Hey. . . hey . . . it's all right, Andy."
He crossed over to her and embraced her, felt a hard trembling nearly break her away. "Hey, it's all right," he said, his lips pressed to her hair.
A moment, a minute, five, and finally she shook herself vigorously and leaned away without breaking his hold. Her smile was embarrassed.
"You afraid of ghosts?"
"No. It just . . . I mean, all this time it was right out here and I never knew it."
"And you wanted to go the other way," he scoffed gently. "You must learn to listen to the Great White Hunter," and he brushed a hand slowly through his hair. Hesitated. Kissed her. Felt her teeth, her tongue, her lips working against his. Feverishly, then, and sagging until he had no choice but to drop with her to the ground. Wanting to protest and wanting to take her, staring up at her as she straddled his waist and tugged at his belt, pulled apart his shirt and began working on her own.
"Andy—"
"Shut up," she said, virtually hissing. She rose and stripped off her jeans, shadows of the foliage rippling over her gleaming breasts, her shoulders, masking her eyes narrowed and glaring. "Shut up," she repeated, softly this time. "Shut up, Miller, and do what you're told."
Chapter 15
A centipede scurried from beneath the headstone and into a tangle of white-blond. It paused, drew in on itself, extended, moved on. Josh's scalp twitched, and the insect broke onto his forehead. Paused again. Moved slowly down toward one eye until a hand swept up and over and Josh jerked to a sitting position, shuddering, hugging himself against a sudden cool wind that set the trees to soughing, the weeds husking to themselves in soft straw laughter. He looked down and saw the centipede vanish into the canopy of grass. It took him a moment to realize what it was, another before he felt as though his skin were covered with miniscule creatures searching for ways to burrow to his blood. Immediately, his hands began brushing across his arms, his chest, tugging hard through his hair while he prayed he would not feel something move beneath his palm. Slowly, then, he drew on his clothes. There was no sense in looking for Andrea; he knew she was gone. The clearing felt empty, and he seemed to remember a pair of lips against his ear, a whispering, a telling: Dad will miss me. I have to go. Of course, it could have been a dream, just as the way she had forced him back onto the headstone had to have been a dream. He groaned, and rubbed at stiff muscles beside his neck. A dream was the only way to explain what the woman had done.
With legs spread to keep his balance he buttoned his shirt. The jacket, lying at his feet, seemed a long way down and he waited until he was sure he wouldn't lose his balance before reaching for it. Groaned again, and winced at the tracks of scratches that pulled on his back. Hell, he thought, not knowing if they were the result of the rough stones or her nails. Hell.
They had coupled swiftly and without speaking that first time, a second lovemaking that began immediately after the first was done. Neither time did she give him endearments, and so taken was he by the ferocity of her strength and the intensity of her concentration that he gave her none, could not remember even thinking any. There had been moments when he'd thought himself engaged in wrestling bouts, others when he cried out almost savagely because it seemed the only way to force release of the pressures that welled within him like the approach of the tide.
Cried out. Struggled. Sank when it was done into a stupor that eventually sidled into sleep.
An owl questioned. Josh shook his head, vigorously and once, and glanced about him, closing his eyes tightly and snapping them open to clear his vision.
No. No dream.
The graves were still back there, and still curiously blank.
He took a hesitant step toward them before he realized he was squinting. An upward glance, and the foliage above had locked into a grey haze punctuated by black. He frowned, and stared at his watch. Slapped at his wrist when he saw the timepiece had stopped just after four. By the sky, then: it was near dark, and he must have been asleep (or unconscious) for nearly . . . "God . . . damn."
The graves would have to wait.
He swung around and made his way into the trees, one hand out to fend off twilight's traps. The other remained at his stomach, massaging it absently as he considered the episode he had somehow managed to survive.
Survive; he frowned again, this time at his mind's choice of words. It wasn't as if his life were in danger. And he had certainly not been exposed to any predators while he'd slept. Yet the word persisted: survive. Survive. But it wasn't, he insisted to himself (and whatever audience might be listening to his thoughts), he who had been the aggressor, not by a long shot. And it hadn't been his fears . . . he smiled. A fragment of a reading, or of a half-heard conversation: that fear can often be among the most powerful of aphrodisiacs. The smile to a laugh contained in his throat. If it had been theory before, he knew it now to be fact—Andrea, when she entered the clearing and saw what he had found, had been frightened. It wasn't unusual; there were lots of people who wanted nothing to do with death, not even in those places where death was memorialized. She had clung to him, had felt his comfort, and that had triggered her escape into a haven-He was grinning now. And the discomfort he had been experiencing over performing the sex act in a cemetery was replaced by a sense of delicious absurdity. It was, he thought, something straight out of those murky Italian films of the nineteen-fifties— symbolism rampant, and a taste for the ludicrous that, by its very severity, was to him equally funny.
He stumbled into a bush, pushed himself out, and reminded his legs that he was no giant, reminded himself that in the half-dark of the forest he was increasingly vulnerable to a broken neck unless he got himself out and back down to the house.
The owl a second time, and the wind's soughing had grown to a keening goad.
In less than an hour, with only one mistaken turn, he broke from the tree line. Twilight had deepened to dusk, the sky black directly above and deep purple around the tops of the hills. A few lights broke the hazy curtain across the valley, but none in the farmhouse at the other end of the field. He forced himself to move slowly, mindful of ruts, of burrows, of tangled fallen branches; he jammed his hands into his jacket pockets, a feeble attempt to stave off the chill that had come with the dark.
Halfway to the
fence, he stopped. Andrea's face shimmered before him, faded, but not before he saw the ferocity in her eyes as she lowered herself onto him. It made him nervous. Perhaps it would be better if he avoided her tonight. Though she'd used the excuse of her father to leave him alone in the clearing, it made more sense that she was suddenly embarrassed at what she . . . what they had done. To remind her so abruptly could be an error not as easily retrieved as others he had committed. Besides, he wasn't so sure he would be able to face her, either. Not without blurting out his love in front of her father. And that, he knew, was hardly what Don had intended to promote that day in his office.
He increased his pace, then, kicking as much as walking through the softly damp grass, angling away from the homestead until he had reached the road. Climbed over the bordering fence and walked the rough verge to the drive. And stopped.
The Buick had been taken from its place behind the MG and parked on the shoulder. A quick check through the open window, and he found the keys resting on the slightly lowered visor above the steering wheel. A melancholy grin. Andrea had indeed been thinking as he had, and putting the car by the road would allow him to drive off with disturbance at a minimum.
Mother, he thought as he slid in and fired the ignition, if you thought my life was sinful before . . .
He rolled up the window and released the shuddering that had been building since he'd wakened. Slapped on the heater and let his teeth chatter. June it was, but it felt more like October, and he wondered when the warm weather would begin.
Slowly he pulled out onto the pitted blacktop. He did not dare speed now; despite the punch of the headlights before him, too many of the potholes gaped unexpectedly, jarring the springs (and his spine) to the point where he was moving no faster than he could walk during daylight. Muttering, then, to himself and the car, he eased along the spur, the window rolled up, the heater's fan ominously grinding.
He would call Andrea in the morning, he decided. He would return to the farm and see Don, see her, try to assure her he wasn't at all put off by what had happened. He would make her laugh, see the humor in it as he did, and she would, if he were lucky, love him even more than she had.
And he had just about relaxed when the left front tire dipped hard into a wide depression, and came out flat.
"Shit!" He slapped open the door and stood in the road, glaring at the hiss of air that joined the wind. His hair whipped into his eyes and he brushed it away angrily. Kicked at the hubcap and walked back to the trunk. Ten minutes later he was swearing again: the spare was flat, too.
"You," he said to the car, "are getting to be one pain in the ass."
He looked toward the village and shook his head. There was nothing for it but he would have to walk back to the house and beg either a lift into town or a telephone call. This was not the way things were supposed to happen; he had already constructed the scenario for tomorrow, and flat tires were not a part of it. With hands back in his pockets, then, the door locked and slammed shut, he trudged to the shoulder and began walking. Tripped several times over fallen rails, over sudden gouges in the earth, over rocks that had no business suddenly jumping in front of him. The wind was giving him an earache. His stomach was telling him it was tired of going so long without food. The tiny cuts on his back were stinging. He zippered his jacket closed, and caught a fold of neck skin that made him yelp, made him stop for several seconds and take a deep breath to calm his bucking temper.
The night turned black.
Behind him a handful of streetlamps coldly marked the length of Cross Valley; ahead, however, there were only the winking sparks of window lights which were little more than useless mirrors of the early evening stars.
He slowed even more. His right hand he kept slightly extended to brush against the fencing, to grip a railing when the sudden rush of a bat startled him into ducking. A nightbird whistled, another sighed. The wind through the grass, like a serpent in slow pursuit, took its confident time before it rose up and struck, and the flesh between his shoulders tightened in anticipation.
By the time he reached the Murdochs' drive he was as out of breath as if he had been running. The skittering crunch of his heels on the gravel was a welcome, grating noise—too often he had lowered a foot into the grass . . . and heard nothing, felt nothing, was sure he would fall.
As intent as he was on reaching the porch he didn't notice the MG until it was almost too late. A muffled curse and a sidestep, and he backed toward the steps with one fist brandished. Turned, still walking, with the unpleasant notion that perhaps his jittery nerves were trying to tell him something.
The screen door was unlocked. He pushed it inward, wincing at the quick shriek, closed it with both hands so it wouldn't protest again. Though the air here was no less chilled than it was outside, he felt a warm relief, and smiled. Rolling his shoulders to disperse the tension, rubbing his hands briskly to bring the blood back. Then he strode to the front door and raised his hand to knock, hesitated and cocked his head birdlike when he heard voices inside—high-pitched, arguing, a monotone of invective unintelligible through the thick wood.
This he didn't need. Bad enough he had probably given Andrea a frightful dose of shame; now he was walking in on what sounded like a major family battle.
Check, he cautioned; maybe it's only the television.
As quietly as he could, then, he walked to his right. The living room windows were shaded, no lights behind them. Around the side of the house to the kitchen, a rectangle of diffused yellow on the floorboards reminding him all too clearly of the graves he had found. He edged along the wall, feeling immensely foolish, and listened for a moment before easing into a crouch.
The kitchen was huge, haphazardly modernized as though the money invested there had finally run out. He was looking at a narrow slice that ran directly across the linoleum floor to a doorway opposite he knew led to the central hallway. On the immediate left was the bulk of a copper-and-gold refrigerator, on the right a corner hutch that held battered ironstone dishes and Don's supply of liquor. Against the far wall, by the doorway, was another cabinet, this one glass-fronted and holding delicately designed china and a few pieces of never-used crystal.
The woodframe screen had not yet been set in place here, and he leaned as close to the pane as he could, inching to his right to bring the battlers into view. But all he could see was the back end of the butcher-block table, and an overturned chair. He scowled and made to rise, froze when Don suddenly backed into the china closet, rebounded, and grabbed hold of the doorway jamb.
Josh ducked quickly, took a long steadying breath before returning to his place—and there was no thought at all of rapping on the glass.
Murdoch seemed to have lost a great deal of weight. Jowls had worked their way out of the folds of his neck, and his cheeks were hollowed as though he'd been ill. His hair was unkempt, and though it might have been the light, it seemed to Josh that grey had taken root through the mass of tumbled curls. He had not shaved for several days, and his white shirt was stained front and side with perspiration and spilled food. His trousers were baggy, beltless, the fastening button undone, and he kept one hand flat against his abdomen to keep them from falling. The other was held out, palm up, fingers crooked in pleading.
Josh watched his eyes, followed their tracking of someone else in the room.
Whoever it was seemed to advance, then retreat, was obviously pacing furiously across the floor-Murdoch shook his head. Josh immediately rose and flattened against the wall, leaning forward to press his ear against the glass above the half-lowered shade.
"Don't say that!" Murdoch begged, his voice near to cracking. "You can't and you know it!"
A muffled response—the shrilling he had heard from beyond the front door.
"No," Murdoch said wearily. "No."
He heard one word: ". . . told . . ."
Murdoch seemed to be recovering. "That I did not. I won't deny the other, but that I did not. I'm not so big a fool as that."
&n
bsp; Josh stiffened. A shadow blocked part of the light, grew, and someone stood directly in front of the window. The outline on the shade was vague, unformed, but below he could see a white gown, and sleeves that ended at the elbow. An arm. An arm so old, so veined, so pocked with brown it could be either a man's or a woman's. The hand that now pressed against the lower pane was thin, fingers like talons, knuckles large as though swollen with arthritis. He had no time to ask himself the question; the hand spasmed and swept from his sight.
"You're headstrong is what your problem is." It was a woman's voice. Not cracked with age, but solemn and breathless with years. A strong voice nonetheless, and one not accustomed to brooking disobedience. The shrill was gone. Josh sensed a kind of weary peace descending. "You could have ruined it. If you had gone out there, you would have ruined it."
"I'm a writer." Not bragging. A tentative statement of fact. "I could have thought of something."
"No, you couldn't."
"I was concerned."
A single explosive laugh. "I'll bet you were. Now you understand this, Donald, and you had better learn it well because I have no more patience with you. Not any longer."
Sullenly: "I'm listening."
"And you will be respectful! If nothing else around here, you will be respectful."
Josh slipped a foot along the floorboard, away from the window. He kept his eyes straight ahead, staring at the dimly grey patch of screen that held back the night. A moth had landed there and was fluttering weakly, several other insects winged and crawling swarming about it without coming near. He swallowed, while his hands gripped his jeans at his thighs. The effort to keep his mind from being overwhelmed with questions raising cords at his neck, breaking perspiration across his forehead.
Three, he finally thought; there were three in the farmhouse, not Andrea and Don only. And if there were three, were there more?
He shook his head violently, cracked it against the wall, and froze, eyes closed, waiting for the rage of discovery. When it did not come he released the breath he hadn't realized he was holding, and swallowed again.
The Grave - An Oxrun Station Novel (Oxrun Station Novels) Page 13