The Prodigy: 2014 Edition - The Ghost Stories of Noel Hynd - Number 4

by Noel Hynd

  To Claire,

  You're a symphony!

  Rolf Geiger

  Claire walked back to work. He watched her go. When she went through the revolving door, she turned and looked his way. Rolf was still watching her.

  She gave him a wave and a motion with the umbrella. It was sort of like a friendly salute. He raised his hand slightly and waved back.

  Then he turned and walked home. The rain eventually stopped and the sun broke through.

  He felt excited about something and couldn’t even tell what. Thoughts of Claire ran through his mind. If nothing else, she had diverted him from the memory of “the encounter.”

  But his suppressed thoughts about Claire shamed him. In spite of himself, he felt a physical attraction. But he would keep his interest in Claire in check, he vowed. She probably had a boyfriend. He shouldn’t confuse her interest in his music with an interest in everything else. She had been fun to have a cup of coffee with, that’s where he needed to leave it.

  He kept telling himself all of this. He kept repeating it because he wasn’t convinced.

  Eighteen

  Three days later, on a Friday morning late in April, Rolf and Diana flew to Nantucket Island for the weekend. They arrived in the early afternoon, rented a jeep at the airport and registered at the Gray Lady Inn on Federal Street.

  Both Rolf and Diana were looking for relaxation and escape. Blessed with longer daylight at this time in the spring, they took the jeep out to a secluded beach on the south shore and shared a long walk.

  Much of the time, Rolf was silent, though he held Diana’s hand as they strolled. The ocean crashed within twenty feet of them and Geiger constantly thought he heard music and a rhythm in the surf. Then he held her firmly, arm around her, for several hundred yards. The beach was nearly deserted. At one point, a black Labrador ran to them, barked playfully, and then ran at full speed to join its owner, a tiny male figure far down the beach.

  The day was blustery and the sun darted in and out. But being away from New York, and being able to force the visions of Rabinowitz to a distance were important.

  When they stopped walking, they found a long log, the wreckage of an unearthed tree that had fallen into the ocean during a storm. It had drifted and dried.

  They sat down on it. Diana found a small flat piece of driftwood that was a few feet away. She picked it up and looked at her lover.

  “Hold still,” she said.

  He did.

  She sat a few feet from him and pulled out the small set of colored pencils that she always kept with her. With a few lines and strokes, she drew a profile and a caricature of Rolf, sitting on the beach, the ocean in the background in blue.

  She labeled it, “Nantucket. April 2009,” and handed it to him.

  “I love it,” he said. “And I love you, too.”

  “Mmm,” she answered. “Let’s not get back to the room too late tonight, okay?”

  They were back to the inn by six. On a previous trip to Nantucket, Geiger had dined at the restaurant at 21 Federal Street. The restaurant’s address was also its name: Twenty-one Federal. The restaurant had been excellent three years earlier and was equally excellent on this evening. Then they took a short walk through the main center of town.

  At this time of the year, most of the stores were closed in the evening, but Nantucket Bookworks had its doors wide-open, inviting them in. They spent a half hour browsing. At one point, Rolf looked up and his heart skipped a beat. There was a back room in the bookstore, filled with books for children. A young woman with short dark hair, moving just at the edge of Geiger’s vision, had just walked into the room.

  Geiger blinked. He had gotten a good look at her. He was sure it was Claire.

  He glanced at Diana, who was at a section of art books near the front door. Then he glanced to the rear chamber again, moving slightly closer. The woman’s back was to him now, but from the three-quarters profile he had glimpsed, she had looked just like Claire. Or at least he thought she had. Rolf went to Diana’s side.

  “I want to leave,” he whispered.

  She looked up in surprise. “We just got here,” she said.

  “It’s not that. I just saw someone I want to avoid.”

  “Who?”

  “A girl named Claire.” He nodded in the direction of the back of the room.

  “A former one night stand, I assume, Tiger.”

  “Nothing of the sort,” he answered. “She works for Brian.”

  “Is she a bitch or something?”

  “No. Quite the opposite. She seems very young and very nice.”

  “Then go say hello. I don’t mind. If you don’t come back,” she kidded cheerfully, “I’ll know she was a very special woman to steal you from me. Don’t be antisocial. Go give the girl her cheap thrill, then come back here and I’ll slip you some sex in the open Jeep.”

  He sighed doubly. Diana was one of the best teases he ever met.

  Rolf walked slowly to the rear of the store. He turned a corner and found himself in the small section of the store where children’s books were kept.

  No Claire. But there was an adjoining area where there was collection of greeting cards. Geiger saw the woman’s shadow through the doorway. He could tell by the silhouette that it was the woman he had taken to be Claire.

  He drew a breath. What was going on? Why was this making him apprehensive? It was just a simple hello to a girl who worked for Brian. That’s all.

  He turned the corner and saw the short dark hair, green parka and jeans. He took two steps forward, reached and tapped the woman on the shoulder.

  “Hi,” he said.

  The woman turned. Geiger felt a wave of shock go through him. He didn’t understand. How could he have been so wrong? The woman who faced him was not Claire. Nor did she look like her. She had a pale, pretty face. She looked familiar, but Rolf couldn’t place her. It was as if he had seen her in a dream, or a famous painting. She was equally surprised to be looking at him.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  He began to answer, but before his eyes, the features of the woman’s face rearranged themselves for a moment and he saw his own mother as an old woman, had she lived. He flinched in deep shock as he stared into her sorrowful hurt eyes.

  “Yes?” the woman asked again. “Yes?”

  “What?” Rolf asked, shaking himself. The woman’s face flew apart again. It reassembled into something less familiar and with less emotional baggage. Now she was amused.

  “You tapped me on the shoulder,” she said. “Remember?”

  “I, uh, I’m sorry,” he fumbled. “I thought I recognized you. But I’m mistaken.” Her lips parted in a smile.

  “Quite all right,” she said politely. “No harm.” He could tell: she recognized him.

  “I love your music,” she said. “Coldplay with Mozart. What a hoot.” He managed a smile.

  “Thank you,” he muttered. “You’re very kind.”

  “I hope you start performing again,” she said.

  “Yes. Yes,” he struggled to get away. “Well, thank you. I’m planning to.”

  “I enjoyed meeting you,” she answered.

  She gave him a smile that suggested that she wished he could stay longer.

  He walked back through the store, confused. He arrived by Diana’s side. She had a large book in her hands.

  “Look at this,” she said. “Isn’t this fantastic?” It was a thick, fifty-dollar book of Nantucket photographs, taken and compiled by an outstanding local photographer. He gave it a look.

  “I like it,” he said, visions of Claire still in one part of his mind, the identity of the mystery woman in another part.

  “It’s gorgeous,” she said. “It has pictures of everything we’ve seen today.”

  “There’s empty space in the bookcase back in New York.”

  “You’re a doll,” she said.

  But his focus was still far away. He was craning his head looking toward the back rooms again. Was he was j
ust plain losing his mind?

  They stayed at Bookworks another few minutes. Rolf bought two hardcover novels and Diana bought the book of photographs of Nantucket. They returned to the inn by ten.

  When the door to their room closed, the bag of books slipped from his hand and dropped to the floor with a heavy thud. Rolf took Diana in his arms. He drew her very tightly to him.

  “Still horny?” she asked.

  “I’m desperate for you?” he said.

  He began to kiss her. Her response to him was as passionate as his advance. They tumbled enthusiastically into bed and made love. Toward midnight, they both fell asleep, Diana tucked closely under his arm.

  The next morning, on Saturday, they rose after sleeping late and had brunch in town. In the afternoon, they explored other parts of the island: ‘Sconset, Madaket, and Smith’s Point. The island remained quiet and sleepy. The wind off the ocean still had a sharp edge to it.

  Late in the afternoon, when they were concluding a walk along the oceanfront in Madaket, another black dog appeared. Like the previous day, it was a Labrador. It ran to them and barked, though not as playfully this time.

  Geiger shooed the dog away. The animal recoiled looked as if it were positioning itself to attack them. It started to lunge toward Diana. Geiger quickly stepped between her and the animal and blocked the dog with a hard knee to its shoulder. The animal turned on Rolf and snapped, barely missing his left hand, the hand he needed to play the bass clef sections on a world tour.

  “Hey! Get away!” Geiger shouted at the dog. He hit the animal with a knee again, much harder this time, sending it sprawling. A second snap by the beast barely missed his right wrist. The dog had no license and no collar. Geiger cursed and fumed.

  “If people own an animal like this, can’t they keep it on a leash?”

  The animal turned in a looping pattern and came back a third time. Diana ducked behind Rolf. Before the animal could jump, however, Geiger formed an open palm and whacked the dog as hard as he could on the side of its head. The Lab yelped, snarled, and spun backwards, landing hard in the sand. The animal barked furiously at Geiger, then, as if in response to a command that only it could hear, it turned and ran away, sprinting down the beach as far as it could go.

  “Incredible!” Diana said breathlessly. “Why would anyone own an animal like that?”

  “Let’s hope the dog’s not going for reinforcements,” Geiger said, watching the dog escape. He stared at the fleeting animal. For a moment, it looked like a wolf racing over a field.

  Then Geiger’s eyes widened anew.

  “My God,” he said. “Look at that!”

  Now they both stared down the beach, seeing the same figure in the distanced as on the previous day. The same old man.

  “Was that the same dog as yesterday?” Diana asked incredulously.

  “It sure looks like it,” Geiger answered. “Didn’t act like it, though.”

  She shook her head. Geiger’s hands found hers. In the distance they saw the old man put his dog on a leash. The distant figure, with its dog, stood and watched them.

  Rolf felt a surge of recognition, then fear.

  “Wait here,” he said to her.

  He walked slowly down the beach. He drew within a hundred yards, feeling his heartbeat accelerate. There was little doubt in his mind. This was the same man he saw on East Seventy-Third Street in New York, the same man who was at the funeral of Rabinowitz. Geiger drew close enough to almost make the identification for certain. This old man wasn’t just watching him, he was stalking him. Geiger moved within twenty-five yards.

  Yes! Positively! It was the same person.

  In indignation, in fear, Geiger shouted at him.

  “Hey!”

  Rolf quickened his pace.

  The old man turned abruptly. He walked briskly toward the inland side of the beach and slipped behind a high dune. Geiger accelerated and followed. He caught a glimpse of the man on a path that led farther away from the shore, before he turned a corner by an old shack. But when Rolf reached that point several seconds later, the man and his animal were nowhere to be seen.

  Geiger stood for almost a full minute, looking in every direction. But the old man and his animal had vanished. Completely.

  He settled himself. He tried to tell himself that he had imagined the identity, just as he had apparently thought he had seen Claire in Nantucket Bookworks the night before, only to be proved wrong.

  He walked back to Diana and took her hand.

  “They’re gone,” he said.

  “Good riddance.”

  “If we’re lucky,” Rolf commented, “they both got torn apart by a pack of rabid seagulls.”

  The remark struck Diana as particularly funny and removed much of the tension from the incident. As they walked back to their jeep, they were already laughing about the distant old geezer and his ill-mannered mutt.

  They returned to their guesthouse and changed for dinner. They ate at Twenty-one Federal again and, once again that evening after dinner, Geiger’s eyes and subconscious seemed to be perpetrating devilish tricks on him.

  On Main Street on Saturday night, they encountered a series of street performers. From a block away and across the street, Geiger thought he recognized something.

  “Incredible,” he muttered. “I don’t believe this!”

  What he thought he had seen was the same clown-violinist he had seen a few weeks earlier on East Seventy-Third Street, the performer with the ghostly white visage and the vanilla violin to match. To Rolf, the musician in Nantucket even appeared to be wearing the same clown suit with the large polka dots.

  Without explanation, Geiger took Diana by the hand and pulled her through some parked cars.

  “What’s going on, Rolf?” she asked. “What is it now?”

  “I have to see this! And so do you!”

  He pulled her along with great urgency, walking down the block to take a closer look at the player. When they arrived, however, the musician looked differently than Geiger had expected. There was no white on his face and the violin was actually an electric fiddle. His shirt bore polka dots, but they were smaller than those of the clown on East Seventy-Third Street, and this violinist wore jeans and a fedora.

  He turned to Geiger when Geiger arrived and winked at him, as if he knew him. He didn’t. He wished them a good evening. When he spoke he had a Southern accent.

  “I love a good mystery, Rolf,” Diana said. “But would you mind telling me what you dragged me down here for?”

  Geiger looked at the fiddler as he started to play. Then he told a lie.

  “I thought I knew the fellow from Julliard,” he said.

  “Like you thought you knew the girl from last night?” she asked.

  “Very similar,” he conceded.

  But the inexplicable events did not stop. When they returned to the Gray Lady Inn, they were surprised to see a police car sitting outside. They were even more surprised after they walked in.

  It was past 10 P.M. but the lobby was loud with animated voices. There were about two dozen people there, half of them in shock, the others morbidly amused. Everyone seemed to know everyone else, even the other guests.

  There was a uniformed policeman named DaSilva and a sandy-haired detective named Timothy Brooks who seemed to be in charge. Geiger read their names off nametags.

  “What happened?” Geiger asked.

  Brooks raised his eyebrows.

  “Have a look for yourself, if you’d like a sight you’ll never forget,” he answered. He motioned into the sitting room where Rolf and Diana had been a few hours earlier.

  Diana and Rolf glanced at each other, then walked through the crowded lobby to the doorway which led to the sitting room.

  “Just go to the door. No farther,” Brooks called after them. “There’s a veterinarian at work in thee. With a patient.”

  “A vet?” Geiger asked.

  Rolf and Diana moved to the doorway. Other people gave way so that they could
see. The big plate-glass window that overlooked the meadow had been shattered. On the floor was the perpetrator.

  A deer.

  A mature buck lay on the carpet, with dark red blood running from cuts to its head, neck and shoulders. The animal was on its left side, obviously sedated, but breathing hard. Several piles of shattered plate glass—big, dangerous, jagged shards of it—lay around the room.

  “What happened?” Diana asked.

  There had been a handful of witnesses. The best among them were a honeymooning couple named Basilio from Weymouth. They had been sitting in the solarium when the buck, had charged out of the nature preserve on the west edge of the meadow behind the inn. The animal had raced across the meadow as if pursued by something that had frightened it terribly. It ran in a circular pattern for several seconds, moving in giant, frantic leaps. Several witnesses thought it might have been injured, but, as it turned out, it hadn’t been.

  But no one could see anything pursuing it and no one could imagine what might have so scared it. Deer hunting was forbidden on the island, no one had heard any shots, and there were no large dogs or other predators. The animal had run around in a final circle, then turned abruptly—again, almost in response to some unseen foe—and charged directly at the inn.

  “I mean, directly,” Luanne Basilio said. “That deer never swerved once it turned toward the inn. Just came straight at the plate glass window.”

  There had been a tremendous crash when the deer hit the plate glass. The collision with the window had stunned the buck, at the very least, and it had collapsed panting and bleeding onto the carpet, where it still lay.

  “How long ago did this happen?” Geiger asked.

  “About twenty minutes,” Brooks answered.

  By chance, the vet lived a few doors away and, summoned by Mrs. Irwin, had rushed over right away. Dr. Lee Goran had already tranquilized the animal and was examining its wounds. A woman from the Nantucket ASPCA stood by also, looking over the vet’s shoulder. A decision was being made as to whether the animal would have to be euthanized or released. Meanwhile, an accumulation of curious onlookers stood by in the next room, standing vigil.