Ghost Point

by James A. Hetley

  Something about him wanted her gone. The other cop had stayed with her for hours. She’d felt safe with him. This one made her want to run away and hide.

  XV

  Susan’s Dart crested the hill and rolled down into Stonefort. Again. The road aimed her straight at sunrise out over the Gulf of Maine. The cold air lay so still that smoke and steam floated straight up from dozens of chimneys and turned pale rose with the morning light. A dusting of fresh snow covered everything, reinforcing the Christmas-card view. Glowing pink sea-smoke hung just above the water and veiled the boats riding in the icy harbor.

  Idyllic. Idyllic if you weren’t just coming from gunfire and fresh blood gleaming black in the moonlight and attempted murder. Her teeth still chattered, in spite of the best efforts of the Dart’s heater running at full blast. She’d had to stop twice by the side of the road until her eyes cleared and her stomach stopped flipping and her hands stopped shaking. Someone tried to kill me. Someone tried to kill me, and I don’t know why. I don’t have a clue. It can’t just be the eagles. That kept running through her head. KKK night-riders and Cossack pogroms and the Gestapo breaking down the door . . . .

  And then she’d thought a pickup was following her, headlights in the false light of dawn. But it had turned off, nothing to do with her, and it had been a car anyway. She could see that, once the glare left her rearview mirror. And then she’d stopped for the shakes again, sat and listened to the sirens, more sirens in the night, in the distance behind her. Crime lab and other cops, probably.

  She wondered if Aunt Jean would be up. She wondered if Aunt Jean would even be home, rather than headed south to Florida with half the rest of the state, the half that could afford to run away from winter. Someone with that much money could afford to keep two homes.

  But the vision of that house empty didn’t seem right. It didn’t fit the balance of the cosmos. That house felt too much like a home. It smelled like a home. Refuge. Fortress. Constant in a changing world. Someone would always be there, a light in the window on the darkest night, the stove in the kitchen warm and smelling wonderful. Coffee and cinnamon rolls, she thought, and maybe bacon frying. Or sausage.

  “You are American girl,” her mother’s voice echoed out of memory. “You eat American breakfast.” Mom refused to cook “Oriental” food. Said she had to smell enough of that all day at work, wasn’t going to stink up her kitchen with it once she got home. Even Granny Tranh ate fried chicken or a cheeseburger when she came to visit. Susan never got anywhere telling her mother what American girls had for breakfast, if anything. None of their mothers baked home-made cinnamon rolls, fried up pork sausage, hand-squeezed orange juice. Her mother worked with an image from a different century. Susan had been in college before she ever ate an egg roll.

  And then she shook herself out of the dream. That’s Aunt Jean’s home, not mine. I can knock on the door, but she doesn’t have to let me in. Robert Frost definition.

  She was still an outsider here. No matter what she ate for breakfast, how she tried to twist the world around her, this town and that house were not her home. Never could be. She’d had her nose rubbed in it often enough. Gook bitch go home.

  Susan let the Dart drift to a stop at the bottom of the snow-covered village green. Why should she trust Aunt Jean? Trust Alice? I can’t trust the cops. I can’t trust anybody. I’m not part of their cozy little Sunrise County family. I can’t rely on someone else to protect me. I only have myself.

  And even if she trusted Aunt Jean, that would be running home to Mommy with a skinned knee. Mommy would point to the bathroom cabinet and tell her to clean and bandage it herself. “American girl must be strong. American girl wouldn’t cry.” Mom’s voice.

  Susan hadn’t had a Mommy since her first year at Brandeis. Her guts twisted again. Face it—she couldn’t trust anyone else.

  She turned right at the stop sign instead of left, heading away from the cruise past the bar, away from the Mom-and-Pop grocery store with free evangelical insights tucked into every bag, away from the pizza parlor. Heading away from the Haskell House.

  She didn’t know where she was going, but she couldn’t go there. Whatever that house was, it didn’t exist to guard outsiders. She felt it behind her, rock solid, oak log walls protecting its own universe. That universe didn’t include Gook girls.

  Its universe did include weird shit. She remembered the deputy, an hour, two hours ago, muttering about “that damned witch.” The guy in the bar. The woman at the grocery store, Mrs. Reverend Whatever.

  And how in hell had Aunt Jean known to drive that snow-covered fire road, to show up within minutes of Susan’s return to her car, within minutes of that snowmobile swooping by to slash her tires? How had Aunt Jean known that Susan didn’t have a clue about handling her pistol? How had Alice known what goddamn brand of pistol? Spies? She couldn’t trust them.

  Pistol. The deputy had kept it, apologized, said he had to, gave her a receipt to fire at the perps the next time they showed up.

  Aunt Jean had guns at the House. Not just that automatic that Alice had handled like Clint Eastwood in a Spaghetti Western. She’d offered Susan the loan of a shotgun, with a box of shells—she’d said birdshot would be best inside a trailer. Gangland weapon, ruthless. She’d said that at house-trailer range, even a hit on an arm or leg would probably be lethal.

  Shotguns. The deputy had thought highly of shotguns, too. She wouldn’t have needed four shots for a chance of one hit if she’d been using a shotgun.

  One shot, clear against the moonlight, one dead would-be rapist or murderer. She liked that equation.

  The House reached out to her with the tantalizing aroma of cinnamon rolls and coffee. A touch of wood-smoke. Warmth. Safety. Thick red-oak walls and doors that could stop cannonballs. No shadowy night-rider could kick that door in and break the frame.

  Wishful thinking.

  Or was it?

  Aunt Jean had invited her. No matter how Susan twisted things in her head, she couldn’t turn that apple-dumpling wrinkled round brown face into a mask for evil. Violence, yes, she could see Aunt Jean taking up the flaming sword of some avenging angel—get her mad and she’d be dangerous. But Susan hadn’t done anything to get her mad. Aunt Jean had said that the House, capital aitch, existed to protect women. Not Naskeag women. Women.

  Susan fit that label. And she damned sure could use some protection.

  She stopped the car, set the brakes and got out, sucking in cold air to settle her nerves and stomach, calm her hands. She wasn’t even sure where she was, where this road led, except that it led away from Stonefort and the Haskell House. The bay sat on her left, low swells almost glassy under the orange glow of sunrise, under a big old rich-folk house and driveway and hedges, some kind of dark stone tower sitting on the edge of a cliff. Probably an abandoned lighthouse, cupola and light removed and sold for scrap.

  She leaned her butt against the front fender and stared out to sea. Her teeth chattered again, nothing to do with the icy air.

  Someone tried to kill me.

  The water seemed so calm. The air so still. Gulls soared over the water, not even screaming, leaving the world in peace for another few minutes. Peaceful. Deceptive.

  Someone tried to kill me.

  Two birds soared, closer, larger, must be black-backs, dark against the yellow sky. They turned toward her. Not gulls. They held their wings flat. Not ospreys.

  Eagles. A thrill ran down her spine.

  They flew straight at her, coasting on the wind, steady, the air holding them up without a feather stirring, without shifting their wings, uncanny like photos of birds cut out and pasted on the sky. The sunrise glowed on their white heads, auras or halos out of a Byzantine icon. Passing her, close again like that other time, close enough that she heard the air in their feathers, saw the fire in their eyes, larger bird and smaller, female and male, they rose and wheeled over the trees and swooped past her again to turn again and return, once, twice, three times.

 
“Follow.”

  The same word, once, twice, three times.

  Again an eagle scream with words on it, impossible. And then they hung in the air, tipping first to one side and then the other. She’d seen that over ridges, over the shore-edge cliffs, even above the ocean swells, hawks and eagles and gulls playing with the elements, balancing their glide against rising turbulent air and wind but she couldn’t feel any breeze on her cheeks. The birds aimed their beaks toward Stonefort.

  The calm touched her.

  She climbed back into the car and turned it around. She followed the eagles. They led back into the village, past the bar and the grocery and the pizza parlor, past the village green with its picture-postcard big white church and the town landing, up the hill and to the right just as she’d known they would. She pulled into the driveway, crunching gravel under the snow. The old brown Jeep Wagoneer stood there, no snow on it, driven recently. Smoke rose straight up from two of the forest of chimneys through the roof, from the kitchen and parlor stoves she knew now, a house built long before central heating and never “modernized.”

  The eagles perched in the top of an old tall white pine by the woodshed, grooming their feathers, as if they’d been waiting instead of flying. She hadn’t seen them land. She hadn’t noticed Alice, either, but the girl was pushing a snow-shovel around, clearing the walk and steps.

  Alice. Why is she out front, just like she’s waiting for me? Watch yourself, woman. Don’t trust coincidences any farther than you can throw them. Or hallucinations, talking eagles.

  Those thoughts covered setting the brake, switching off the car, and climbing out. This place might seem safe, but Susan remembered other people who seemed to know too much, people who had guards watching their doors at all hours of the day or night. Mafia. Alice would make a damn good sentinel or bodyguard for a Mafia Capo in South Boston, you’d never notice her until she shot you dead. Twice.

  Susan was going to have to keep an eye on Alice. That girl was too dangerous in too many ways.

  That girl leaned on her shovel, unaware of the trouble she was causing. “We hoped you’d come.”

  So she was waiting, not just clearing snow.

  “Shouldn’t you be getting ready for school?” Quick reminder to both of us about age and status.

  Alice cocked her head to one side, chewing on her wad of gum for a moment and then shoving it into her cheek. “Well, first of all, it’s Saturday. That’s probably why those shitheads were out drinking and tomcatting around last night. Friday-night fools.”

  And then there was that part, the kind of people who knew too damn much. News of Susan’s night visitors had traveled faster than a ’69 Dodge Dart.

  Alice shoved some more snow, clearing the last step. “And next week’s Christmas Vacation, and beyond that, I’m in a special program.”

  Saturday. Shit. I’m not even sure what the date is. Have to check that police report.

  A sideways toss of the head, Alice gesturing at the door. “Go on in. The House already knows you, and the coffee’s hot.”

  There it was again, the House. Capitalized. Like a person’s name.

  Susan kicked snow off her boots, opened the door into a flood of warmth and breakfast-smells—yes, cinnamon and coffee and frying bacon, and stepped inside the sense of guarding. Safe. She felt her shoulders and her butt relaxing with those walls around her. They seemed to know something that her brain didn’t quite accept.

  And there was a boot-tray waiting, close enough to the stove for warmth but far enough not to damage leather, and two pairs of soft-soled moccasins that looked like they were sized for either Susan’s feet or Alice’s. One pair had been used, a lot. The other pair looked new, hand stitched, shearling with the wool turned in for warmth on cold floors. The House thought ahead.

  Inside the House, such images seemed natural. She unlaced her boots and slipped her feet into the newer pair of moccasins. Yes, they fit.

  Aunt Jean nodded at her, silent from the kitchen counter where she was slicing bread. Not surly, it seemed like a friendly silence, welcoming, as if this was Susan’s home and they didn’t need ‘good mornings’ because they’d already done that. She pointed her chin at a clean mug on the table and then at the coffeepot waiting on the back corner of the stove.

  Cinnamon-raisin bread, fresh from the oven, instead of cinnamon rolls. Bacon, thick bacon not any kind of commercial slicing, smelled like a maple sugar cure and apple-wood smoke, instead of sausage. So the images got a little muddied. And the coffee smelled like ambrosia, nothing her mother could ever have afforded, the same grind and beans as they’d carried in that Thermos but fresh-brewed. Susan felt ravenous, her unquiet stomach suddenly convinced that food was a good idea.

  “I just shot a man.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “I don’t know. Probably not.”

  “That is a shame, oui. Alice can give you another lesson after breakfast.”

  Oh, Christ. I maybe shoot someone, she hears about it through reading tea leaves or whatever Naskeag witches do, and her first thought is that I need another lesson on the range. “Gun control” means being able to hit your target. This place is weird. No, beyond weird.

  “We heard, my daughter. Not gossip, not magic, Alice made me buy a police scanner. The House thinks it is important enough to let it work.”

  “My daughter.” I think that’s something serious in her culture, not a social noise. I wonder how I earned it.

  Susan poured coffee to cover her confusion. And Alice stomped snow off outside and came in and switched boots for the older pair of moccasins.

  The girl turned to Aunt Jean. “Eagle brought her. A pair, they waited in the grandmother pine until she went inside and closed the door. They asked us to guard her and make her welcome.”

  “As if we would not. But Eagle hunts far from the wigwams of our People. They may not know the ways of the House. Très bien, seeing the old spirits, the strong spirits. We will thank them the next time we offer smoke.”

  So we’re all crazy. Misery loves company. Susan breathed the steam from her coffee, rich and smooth and golden, almost as strong as drinking a lesser brew. “How much does this stuff cost?” She realized she’d spoken, instead of just thinking such a rude question to herself.

  But Alice answered anyway. “Like that guy said with the yacht, if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.”

  “It is a gift from a friend.” Aunt Jean set the fresh bread on the table, added a pound-sized chunk of butter that looked like it had never seen a store, straight from the farm. She dished out crisp brown bacon. “These are also gifts. Eat. No one can think without food in the belly.”

  Susan ate. With food like this, she could get used to visiting Aunt Jean. She inhaled a slice of the cinnamon-raisin bread, another, another, slices of bacon that she didn’t bother to count, a second cup of that outrageous coffee.

  Finally, she poured a third cup of coffee and surveyed the carnage. The three of them had wiped out that loaf of bread. No survivors. She sighed.

  Aunt Jean smiled the smile of a cook with satisfied customers. Then her face turned sober and she set her mug on the table. “Bien. Now tell us why someone would want to kill you.”

  Susan closed her eyes and sighed again, different reason this time. “I don’t understand it. It can’t just be about the eagles.”

  “Non, my daughter. You are right. This must be more than the eagles.”

  Susan opened her eyes again. Aunt Jean was staring off into the distance, her lips pinched and moving in and out. The old woman looked tired, as if she’d been up all night and this was supper rather than breakfast. She also looked fierce, dangerous, eyes squinted like she looked over the sights of a gun at something, someone, that needed killing. And then she nodded to herself.

  “I think perhaps . . . You work with young Rick Bouchard, oui? Your eagle study? And you spend much time along the water, searching, watching, binoculars and camera and telescope? Land where people rarely
go, either boats or farms or houses, because Eagle seeks such places? You take pictures, you draw maps?”

  “Yes.”

  Aunt Jean nodded again. “I do not know who is doing this thing. But I think that now I know where to ask some questions. Mais oui, I have an idea.”

  Alice cocked her head to one side, studying her aunt. “Morgans? Pratts?”

  “They are not so foolish. Neither family. Mais non, they have lived long in Stonefort, they understand what would happen. But I think I ask them the questions.”

  Insider shorthand of some kind. Susan didn’t have a clue as to who Morgans and Pratts might be, and how they tied into Rick Bouchard and binoculars along the seashore. And night-riders.

  Aunt Jean pushed back from the table. “I am tired. My eyes play tricks on me, and the sun is too bright. I am too old to drive on snow.” She paused and nodded to herself.

  “Oui, you need time to recover. A day, two days you will stay here. Then I ask you to take Alice where she needs to be. You also can help. Alice will behave herself.” The old woman followed that last sentence with a glare across at her niece, several messages in one look.

  “We will come, we will go, we have another thing we must be doing. Another one we must help. You will stay here and stay safe. The guarding of the House will hold you and ease your fears and hide you from your enemies.”

  XVI

  “Aunt Jean drives better than I do.” Susan glanced across the front seat of the Dart, checking to make sure Alice hadn’t vanished into whatever music played on her transistor radio. Or tape player, Susan wasn’t sure which. Field identification of tech wasn’t one of her strong points. She snapped her eyes back to the road after a slight . . . queasiness . . . under the rear tires reminded her to pay attention to business. “So what was that business about old eyes and she shouldn’t drive on snow?”

  Alice blew a huge pink bubble from her constant wad of gum, popped it, and gathered the shreds with her tongue. “Yeah, she’s tired. We’ve been as busy as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. What is it, two days since you shot that bastard in your trailer? She’s good for three at least. She just wants you out of the House. Me too, probably. Wants to meet some people, talk to some people, and doesn’t want any witnesses. If we don’t see, we can’t testify. You know how the Bible says not to let your left hand know what your right hand is doing? Sometimes Aunt Jean keeps her left eye closed so’s it won’t find out whatever her right eye’s seeing. You’ll get used to it. Turn left here.”