Instruments of Night

by Thomas H. Cook

  “Yes.” Graves sensed Slovak at his side, urging him onward invisibly, probing the thing that didn’t fit—slight as a comma—demanding that he let his imagination take the reins. He drew the letter from Eleanor’s hand, read it again, this time studying it as Slovak would study a murder room, not the bloody tapestry, but some small element within it, the odd crease on the murder bed. “The mystery of my daughter’s death.” Another piece slid into place. “Someone from Riverwood,” he said. “Portman knew it was someone from Riverwood who killed Faye.”

  Eleanor shook her head. “But we’ve gone over all that. No one from Riverwood could have done it.”

  Portman’s words emerged from the maelstrom.

  “She went into the woods,” Graves said as the dying Portman had. “Alone.”

  Eleanor peered at him quizzically. “Well, she did go into the woods, Paul. Faye, I mean. And she went alone.”

  Graves considered Portman’s words again. And suddenly an answer came to him. A shift in perspective. It was like something bestowed upon him. Unexpected. Undeserved.

  “In all the names Portman gathered, all the people whose alibis he checked and rechecked, only one person from Riverwood was missing. But we never noticed it. It was hidden by not being hidden.” He saw a figure move up Mohonk Trail, following its narrow path around Indian Rock, then downward, toward the river, plunging through the dense summer growth, breathing in sharp, painful gasps. “She went into the woods,” he said again. He felt the ache in her legs, the emptiness in her stomach. But more than anything, he felt dread like a snarling dog at her heels, driving her forward with a terrible relentlessness until she’d finally broken through the jungle thickness, glimpsed a hint of light blue shifting silently behind a curtain of verdant green. “Mrs. Harrison,” he said. “That’s who Portman meant. That Mrs. Harrison went into the woods. Alone. Not Faye. But her mother.”

  He recalled the gray room in which he’d found Mrs. Harrison days before, its walls blank except for the images of Mary and her murdered son, her voice echoing through the shadowy space that had divided them, Some souls will never be at peace. He saw her hair like a silver aurora around her face, the blue eyes glistening as she stared at him. Because they’ve done something terrible. Her lips trembled as she mouthed the final word: Murder.

  Graves pulled his mind back to the present, the white trellis of the gazebo, the almost sickening aroma of the roses. For a moment he peered at the basement door, half expecting to see Faye emerge from it, to make her way toward the woods. But the door remained closed. And so, he felt his eyes rise toward the second floor, moving from one window to the next, finding nothing but darkness.

  Then Faye’s voice sounded in his mind again. Remember me. He saw her lift her head toward the second floor, her eyes shifting from one window to the next, then to the spaces in between them, the crest of Riverwood, oval of vines carved into the wood, crests that now seemed to hang from the side of the house, looped and coiled.

  “The missing rope,” Graves said.

  He felt not his own eyes staring at the design, but Faye’s, fixed upon it, her mind sunk in its own dark and airless chamber, tormented and betrayed, all she had once trusted gone to rot. How painfully Andre Grossman’s words must have pierced her, If you live you will live to tell it. If you die, your body will tell it for you.

  To live would mean that it would all be revealed, Graves realized suddenly. To live would mean the ruin of Riverwood, of the Davieses, whom she admired, of Allison, whom she loved.

  “The rope came from the basement,” Graves said. “When Edward and Mona came back to the boathouse that afternoon, the rope that was used to moor the boat was missing. It was there when they left, but it was gone when they returned. Someone took it.” He saw Faye at the entrance to the corridor, waiting silently as the boat drifted out of the boathouse, Edward standing at the helm, Mona beneath the white umbrella. “Faye went into the boathouse after Edward and Mona left. She took the rope that had been used to moor their boat. She put it in the pocket of her dress and took it with her into the woods. The same rope Mrs. Harrison later found coiled around her daughter’s neck, and which she either hid somewhere or threw in the river.”

  “Why would Mrs. Harrison hide the rope?” Eleanor asked.

  Other words spun out of the whirlwind, Everybody loved Faye. “Because she loved her daughter,” Graves replied. “And because of that love, she wanted to conceal what had really happened to her.” He saw the walls of Mrs. Harrison’s spartan room, Mary in her anguish, cradling her dead child. “She was a devout Catholic. She wanted Faye to be buried in sacred ground. And so she had to hide the truth about the way she really died.”

  Eleanor was watching him intently. “Paul, do you know how Faye really died?”

  “Yes,” Graves said. “She—” He stopped. The dread rose in him like a stinking water, bringing it all back. Everything he knew about Faye’s death. The precise nature of it. Each detail. Along with how he knew it. He saw Gwen standing in the middle of the room, Kessler slowly circling her, stroking his chin, before he stopped suddenly and barked his command, Get a rope!

  He saw the rope move through the air as if it were alive, a serpent slithering weightlessly through space, toward Kessler’s outstretched hands. He could see Gwen standing limply beside him, desolate beyond imagining, watching vacantly as Kessler shaped the rope into a noose and slung it over the wooden beam, snapping his commands even as he worked: Bring me that chair! Get her on it!

  “Faye wasn’t strangled,” Graves told Eleanor. “Not manually. Not lying on the ground. With someone on top of her. Tightening the rope.”

  “But the autopsy …”

  Graves lifted his hand to silence her. The whole story had suddenly formed in his mind, the design growing out of the detail, as it always did for Slovak. “The photograph. The one Portman was looking at when he died. The one that showed her hands.”

  He saw Kessler dangle the noose before Gwen’s battered face, his eyes flashing as he taunted her, Ever seen a hanging, bitch?

  “Faye’s hands were red and raw,” Graves said. “Her nails were broken. Because she’d struggled to pull the rope from around her neck.”

  Gwen was dangling now, a battered doll bung from a thick cord, her hands pulling desperately at its tightening coil.

  In a voice that seemed far away, Graves heard himself say, “Faye was hanged.”

  Eleanor drew in a quick breath, but Graves did not look at her. Instead, he stared toward the woods, imagining the trail that led through them, passed Indian Rock and down Mohonk Trail to where the cave gaped open. He saw a tree a few feet beyond it, a stump beneath a low-slung limb, feet poised briefly on the stump, then thrust forward, jolting the limb violently, the feet now struggling to regain the stump, sawing wildly as the rope tightened, kicking chips of rotten wood onto the surrounding ground.

  He felt his mind hurl backward to the steaming farmhouse on Powder Road, the moment when Kessler’s foot had stopped suddenly as he was about to kick the chair, another idea coming to him, a better way to hang a girl, one much more torturous and agonizing.

  “Hanged slowly,” Graves said.

  He saw Kessler lift Gwen from the chair, place her once again on the floor, the noose still around her neck, the other end tossed over the beam.

  “Faye had time to look around,” Graves went on. “Time to see the river and the cave.”

  Gwen’s eyes were bruised and swollen, but still open enough to see Kessler as he seized the unattached end of the rope and began to move away from her.

  “Time to think about what was happening. Time to know that she was going to die.”

  He saw Kessler grab Sykes’ arm, press the rope into his trembling hand. Heard his order split the air, Haul her up!

  “Faye’s neck wasn’t broken. She didn’t lose consciousness.” Graves saw the rope grow taut, saw Gwen’s feet begin to rise slowly off the floor. “She fought to get a footing.” First to the balls of her feet
, held there for a time at Kessler’s command, then lifted farther, to the tips of her toes. “Fought to get her breath.” Held again, then hauled up a final time, though just off the ground, to dangle there while she gasped for life. “Fought to live.”

  He saw Gwen’s fingers claw at the rope, jerking, pulling, yanking until her hands were torn, her fingernails bloody, broken.

  “That’s the way Faye died,” Graves said.

  Eleanor’s eyes bore into him like two searing lights. “Paul, how can you be so sure of that?”

  He had no choice but to answer. “Because that’s the way my sister died.” He saw Gwen’s bare feet pointed violently downward, her toes stretched out, searching desperately for the floor as he knew Faye’s had sought the crumbling stump, tried frantically to regain it, but feeling it shatter each time she touched it, too rotted and insubstantial to bear her weight. “She kept tearing at the rope, pulling herself up, gasping, then dropping again. By the time it was over, her hands and fingers looked just like Faye’s did in that picture Portman held when he died.”

  Eleanor stared at him fiercely. “How do you know all that, Paul?”

  Graves felt his throat close.

  “Did you see it? You were there when it happened? When your sister was murdered? You saw what Kessler did to her?”

  “Everything he did,” Graves murmured. “And made Sykes do.”

  With each new outrage, Kessler had made his offer plain, You can stop her pain. All you have to do is take her place. In his mind Graves heard Kessler demand his name, something to call him during the long ordeal, What’s your name, boy? He had never given it, but only because Kessler had not pressed the issue, had not pinched or slapped him, or used on him any of the devices he’d later forced Sykes to use on Gwen. Forks and matches. Pliers, tweezers, wrenches.

  “Made Sykes do,” Eleanor repeated intently.

  Graves felt the old terror sweep over him. How expertly Kessler had wielded it. Using terror to inflict terror. Slap that bitch! Creating a separate being. Dance! Faster! Sling her round! In his likeness. Get that rope! Subject to his will. Haul her up! Made savage and remorseless by fear rather than by hatred. Let her hang! And so become the keenest and most cutting of all his many instruments of night. Gut her!

  “Because he was so afraid, you see.” Graves’ voice came in an aching whisper. “So terribly afraid.” He saw Kessler’s eyes fall upon him, heard him bestow a horrid knighthood. I’ll give you a name, boy.

  “Sykes,” Eleanor said softly. “Sykes is”—her gaze was deep and terrible. Graves felt his soul fall from him like a body through a scaffold floor—“you.”

  CHAPTER 32

  When dawn broke, Graves found himself on the porch of his cottage. He’d walked there in the darkness. He couldn’t remember doing so. All he could recall was how Eleanor had stared at him a long, agonizing moment, then turned away. After that the numbness had swept in.

  He was still on the porch when Saunders arrived to drive him to the bus. He saw the old man’s lips move, and felt his own lips move in response. Later, when Saunders shook his hand in farewell, he felt only a further tightening, the sense of the air thickening around him, as if he were being buried alive in invisible sand.

  When the bus arrived, he took the first free seat. It no longer mattered to him whether he sat in the front or the back, by the window or on the aide. There were other people on the bus, but he no longer imagined their fates. Past and present fused. The future did not exist at all.

  The bus arrived in the city. He got off. A square of light beckoned him out of the sprawling station. On the street, habit turned him left or right, a blind horse heading home.

  In the apartment, he sat, then rose, then sat again. He felt nothing but a single steady urge. It grew more weighty with each passing second, pressing out all other urges: to be rid of it.

  But the will to live beat on insistently. He felt it like the rhythmic striking of a tiny match. It flared briefly, then guttered out. Each time the light grew weaker, the heat less warm.

  Finally, nothing sparked.

  And he knew the time had come.

  He took the rope first, drawing it from the top drawer of his bedroom dresser. He shaped one end into a noose, then walked into the narrow corridor and flung it over the metal bar.

  The chair tottered shakily as he stood upon it, but not enough to prevent him from tying the rope to the bar. The noose caressed his throat like a scarf.

  He was ready now.

  Kessler gave his final command, Jump!

  He tensed to obey. Then a thought split the fog. Which way to face? The wall? The door? The terrace? In the radical narrowness of his world, the choices appeared nearly infinite. A laugh broke from him. Fierce and aching. Filled with self-loathing. In the last instant, as he kicked the chair from beneath his feet, he heard his laughter twist into a scream.

  The end came.

  All of it.

  Every word.

  “At last,” Kessler said. He was grinning maliciously, his teeth broken and crazily slanted, a mouthful of tiny, desecrated tombstones. “At last I am bored enough to kill you.”

  Slovak wondered if he might yet deny Kessler that final victory. Glancing over the edge of the building, he calculated the speed of his descent, the force of the impact, imagined the sound of his bones as they ground into the street below, sensed the sweetness of oblivion.

  Kessler took the pistol in both hands and steadied his aim. “Yours was a heart I truly loved to break,” he said as he drew back the hammer.

  Slovak closed his eyes. He waited to hear the crack of Kessler’s pistol when he pulled the trigger. Instead, he heard the tiny cry of a metal hinge.

  He opened his eyes. Kessler stood motionless, his ears cocked to the same sound.

  For an instant Slovak felt the glimmer of hope that something miraculous might yet save him. Sergeant Reardon in his old frock coat, perhaps, or some nameless watchman on bored patrol. But when the figure emerged from behind the door, small and cowering, all hope departed, and Slovak turned back toward the narrow ledge, the street below, his final resting place.

  “Get back downstairs,” Kessler snarled. “I’ll do this myself.”

  Slovak opened his eyes. Sykes was standing on the roof, his ravaged face now lost in a ghostly vacancy.

  “Get back downstairs, I said,” Kessler barked. “Now!”

  Sykes did not move, and instantly, without the interval of a single second, Kessler fired and Sykes spun to the left, a geyser of blood spurting from his chest. Another shot sent him staggering backward, while a second, third, fourth, and fifth jerked him violently left and right. He had collapsed against the rooftop door by the time Kessler reached him, placed the pistol in his gaping mouth, and fired a final time. Sykes’ eyes fluttered with the impact; blood spewed from his head in a fine pink spray.

  “Worthless,” Kessler said. He whipped the barrel from Sykes’ shattered mouth and turned it once again toward Slovak. “No bullet left for you, old friend. Another time, perhaps?” He jerked open the door and fled down the stairs.

  To his own amazement, Slovak took after him. With his pursuit, his heaviness vanished, as if, with each step, a layer of weariness peeled away, leaving him light and swift and keen.

  At the bottom of the stairs he plunged through the door and out into the evening mist. He could hear the clatter of horses’ hooves, the rattle of a departing carriage. He turned and saw it, a black stain on the graying air, Kessler at the reins, the long whip snapping in the fetid air, drawing bursts of blood and sweat from the backs of his horses as he raced down the deserted street and away.

  “Gone,” Slovak whispered. “Gone …”

  “Go on in.”

  A voice.

  “He’s damn lucky, you know. If that girl with his mail hadn’t heard …”

  “Is he conscious?”

  Her voice.

  “He goes in and out.”

  Footsteps. A touch. Her hand.


  “It’s not too late, Paul. It’s not too late to find him.” Kessler.

  “We’ll work together.”

  A curtain fell.

  The ending changed:

  “Gone,” Slovak whispered. “Gone … go …” The heaviness returned to him; the gravity of his old despair fell mercilessly upon his shoulders. He staggered forward, bone-weary, breathless, a huge, formless mass rolling like a great stone over the jagged cobblestones. It rolled and rolled, through the darkening streets, down the spectral alleyways, past the mountainous residue of crime, waiflike children and the ghostly whores, grimy brothels, garish halls. Night gripped him like a black-glowed hand, but still Slovak moved on relentlessly, unable to stop himself, with the momentum of all cracked and ragged things, weariness providing its own shattered wings.

  And so the night passed and dawn broke, and in the first flickering light Slovak found himself in the foggy park, his throat burning with the night’s long thirst, his eyes stung by the fumes and dust of the awakening city.

  Perhaps, for a brief moment, he slept. He could not tell. He knew only that at some indeterminate point he became aware that a figure now sat near him, tall, with broad shoulders, gray strands woven into her dark hair.

  “Slovak,” she said.

  He turned to face her.

  She lifted her head to reveal a jagged scar that circled her throat in a necklace of wounded flesh. “He did this to me,” she said.