The Orangefield Cycle Omnibus

by Al Sarrantonio

  There was almost a touch of pity in John’s voice. “I’m afraid that can’t be helped.”

  To his own astonishment, Corrie was on his knees and crying. “What in hell is happening to me!”

  “We could all ask that, couldn’t we?” John answered, enigmatically.

  For a brief moment, the scarecrow laid a finger on Corrie’s shoulder. “Believe me, if there was any other way …”

  He turned, and began to make his way back toward the rows of corn.

  Corrie was still on his knees, weeping. It was as if a damn that had been erected when he was seven years old had suddenly been dynamited.

  “It’s not fair!”

  “When you go home, you can sleep now.”

  Corrie heard a dry rustle, retreating light steps.

  Through a veil of tears, he saw nothing but corn stalks in front of him.

  He pounded one fist on the ground, again, again.

  “Not … fair …”

  Later, from the hilltop, as he made his way home, he turned to regard the corn field, and saw the figure of the scarecrow, tiny and far away, standing mute and unlit, a dead sentinel.

  Chapter Six

  “Being a cop’s wife I can handle. I always have. But not this other shit.”

  “I don’t want to fight with you again, Rose.”

  His wife was out of bed, at least. She had her housecoat on, and her cigarette pack out on the kitchen table, next to her cold coffee. Six o’clock in the evening and she had her housecoat on.

  “Why don’t you get dressed,” Grant offered. “We’ll go out.”

  Butting out a spent cigarette in her big frog ashtray (green, huge, a frog on his back with a laughing face and his belly concave to receive ashes), she shook her head emphatically no. “I told you, I don’t like to go out.”

  “We haven’t been out in months—”

  She turned her fierce, frightened eyes on him. “No!”

  Grant loosened his tie; this battle was already lost. He turned away from her, pulling the tie out of his collar and said unenthusiastically, “What about dinner?”

  “We’ll order in again. From Chow’s.”

  “Chinese again?”

  “I like Chinese!”

  Twenty-seven years, and he felt like he hardly knew her. It was like starting all over again, with a stranger.

  Knowing the outcome, he decided to try again anyway. He let out a long breath, turned around and sat across the kitchen table from her. She was fumbling another Newport out of the pack, and Grant took one. She scowled at him briefly, then said, “Go ahead.”

  “Thanks.”

  He watched her light up, her trembling fingers, darting eyes. Then she concentrated on the cigarette and was fine.

  He started off slow, after drawing on his own cigarette. “Don’t you think we should maybe try another balance on the meds?”

  She became instantly fierce. “Screw the meds!”

  “You stopped taking them again …?” He tried to keep his voice calm.

  “They make me sleepy. And jumpy.” She gave a fractional, wry smile. “And depressed.”

  “They’re supposed to help.”

  “Well they don’t!”

  “Rose.” He tried to keep the weariness out of his voice.

  When he looked up from the table to meet her eyes she was staring at him fiercely. “You want to send me to that place again? Killborne? Let ’em stare at me through that fisheye glass in the door?”

  “I never wanted you to go there the first time. The doctor—”

  “Screw the doctor! And screw you!”

  She grabbed her cigarettes, swept her matches up and got up, knocking her chair backwards. It hit the floor. Grant looked down at the table. A few moments later he heard the door to the bedroom close with a bang.

  Five hours later he woke up in front of the television, still fully dressed. He looked at the clock on the cable box — it was just after ten. He shifted in the recliner, straightened up, stared at the television. A familiar scene: Clint Eastwood in Pale Rider, the hard squinting eyes under the brim of his hat staring at the town going up in flames. Hadn’t he been watching this movie when he fell asleep?

  He checked the on-screen TV guide and discovered that the movie had immediately been repeated. He was watching the same damn thing all over again.

  He aimed the remote at the screen.

  “Bang,” he said, and the picture went off.

  His mouth tasted foul; he eyed the partially empty scotch bottle on the table next to his chair, the glass with a little amber liquid pooled at the bottom. He’d had ice and water, hadn’t he? Next to it was the crumpled remains of a TV dinner aluminum tray.

  He picked up the glass and drank what was in it.

  The hair on the back of his neck stood up a split second before he heard dry tapping on the window.

  This time I catch you.

  He was out of the recliner in a second, his hand already on the still-loaded 9mm, pulling it out of the drawer.

  He was on the stairs and out the back door—

  Huffing breath, he saw a dim figure just disappearing over the backyard fence. There was something strange about it …

  He was after it without thinking.

  He couldn’t quite vault the fence, which was chain link, but he was over it with a one-foot assist. The figure was running, making an odd flapping sound, just disappearing between two houses.

  Plenty of places to hide on the next street …

  Bill saw it heading to the right, and made a calculated move, cutting over one backyard and then sprinting down the driveway.

  He came up short at the curb.

  The street was empty.

  No — there, on the other side, something was walking, vanishing behind a high hedge.

  He ran after it, brought the gun up as a head appeared above the hedge—

  “Don’t move!”

  A startled face: a woman in a bathrobe, a clutch of something which she dropped—

  “I forgot to get my mail …” she explained automatically, raising her hands.

  “I’m sorry,” Grant said; he bent to help her retrieve it, then saw movement up the street, out of the corner of his eye—

  “Sorry again,” he said, and ran after the retreating figure — he could faintly hear that strange, flapping sound.

  The figure was a half block away from him, and stretching the distance, when it made a mistake, taking a sudden left turn into the neighborhood playground. Grant smiled to himself; the area, which was flat and grassy with a jungle gym and a single tennis court, was surrounded by a high fence.

  I’ve got you, you bastard.

  He pulled in to the entrance moments after seeing the figure go in. His 9mm was up now, and he looked to the left, the right.

  He saw nothing

  Dammit.

  Then — yes — right in front of him, standing by the jungle gym slide, trying to blend into the night …

  Grant pointed the gun. “Stay right there,” he said. “Don’t move a muscle. It’s time to talk.”

  The figure stood still. There was something very odd about the head. And parts of whatever it was wearing were being raised and lowered by the wind—

  “Just stand still,” Grant ordered.

  Twenty feet.

  Ten.

  That head—?

  In the wink of an eye, something happened to the figure. Grant came very close to pulling the trigger of his 9mm. There was a dry sound, and a crack — and suddenly the figure wasn’t there.

  Grant stood over the spot, wheeling around, waiting for the sound of feet hitting fence, but there was nothing but silence.

  Nothing.

  He was alone.

  Still holding his gun tightly in his right hand, he bent down at the spot where the figure had been.

  There was a pile of what looked like dry, bleached leaves inside a sack, and something oddly shaped beside it.

  It was an old jacket wrapped around
a frayed flannel shirt, a pair of pants with holes in it, all stuffed with dry corn husks.

  Beside it was a broken pumpkin, the face still intact, carved as if ready for Halloween. There were wet seeds stuck to the inside, as if it had been freshly prepared.

  More weird shit, Grant thought.

  Just what I don’t need—

  The pumpkin face flared into life, as if someone had put a candle behind it. And then, even more strangely, the mouth moved.

  “See Corrie Phaeder,” it said.

  Chapter Seven

  In his own bed.

  The house was quiet now. For a while, the things in the walls had been scrambling, making noise, and he was afraid that the wall itself would do one of its tricks.

  But then, as soon as he climbed into bed, his heart pounding, the house had rested. He could almost hear it give a huge sigh around him, as if happy to have him home.

  He had slept for a long while, and had dreamed, and when he woke up hours later he felt as if he had slept instead of just gone to a black place. It was almost dawn. The curtains were pulled back from the window, and he saw faint pink purplish light through the half denuded branches of the oak tree outside his window. The branches moved, and he held his breath, thinking that the tree might be doing one of its tricks.

  But it was only the wind.

  It was cool in the room. He pulled the quilt up to his chin, and, as if in answer, the heat snapped on in the basement, and the baseboards clicked with expanding heat. He felt a familiar warmth rising next to the bed.

  Oddly, he didn’t feel the terror he thought he would experience coming back to this room. Remembering his last day here, twelve years ago, he thought he would be gripped with fear …

  Instead, it was almost as if all was forgiven.

  The house sighed around him again, like a cat settling down to a nap.

  He looked straight overhead, at the round hatch that let up into the garret. By standing on his bed he would be able to unlock the hatch, pull down the short wooden stairs and climb up …

  All the warmth from the quilt, the baseboards, bled out of him.

  For a brief moment it looked like the hatch was opening by itself, falling down onto him—

  And then everything in the room was back to normal.

  He yawned, and felt warm again, and, after fighting the urge, closed his eyes.

  Then he was asleep, and dreaming again.

  He dreamed of Monica, this time. It was the first time she had really pushed herself back into his thoughts since he left L.A.

  It was early in their time together, and she was always smiling. He’d done a photo shoot near the beach at Malibu, on the sand but under a cabana, which was logical enough since cabanas were what the advertiser was selling. They had the usual covey of girls in bathing suits, bikinis for the most part but there was one girl in a one-piece black suit that he couldn’t take his eyes off of. The camera seemed to love her, too. While she was no different at first glance than the other models, something happened when she smiled — not only her whole face lit up but the entire surrounding area. It was more of a spotlight than a smile, and he was caught in it immediately. That and the one piece suit made her stand out.

  He asked her out after the shoot, something he had done a few times before. It had never worked out; usually on the first date, by the second at most, the differences between Corrie and whatever model it happened to be surfaced immediately. More often than not it happened when they opened their mouths to speak: usually, not much came out. When it was obvious there wasn’t much beyond me-me-me, Corrie never called for another date. Or vice-versa.

  But this time it was different, immediately. Monica was not only attractive but intelligent, and she seemed more interested in the world around her than herself. Corrie never heard her utter the word ‘me.’ It was always, ‘How lucky I was to see Naples,’ or ‘You would love Jamaica, the food is incredible,’ or ‘We have to go to a Mighty Ducks game — you’ll love it!’

  “Why the one piece suit?” Corrie asked her on their first date, and she didn’t even blush.

  “Birthmark, and a doozy, right about here.” She made a circle, and not a small one, left and above her belly button. “It almost kept me from being a model. But, heck, there are plenty of jobs where you don’t have to show too much skin, and I only want to do it another year or so anyway. I want to go back to UCLA, to grad school. The modeling’s my stash.”

  She smiled again, lighting up the room, and Corrie found himself falling in love with her on the spot. The long dark hair, the almost perfect features, the dark brown eyes, the slim body, the great legs — he had seen all of this a hundred times, but never quite like this. She made the rest of them look like cartoon characters — as if they had been drawn, not created.

  Not on the first date, but on the second, he got to examine the doozy of a birth mark.

  And then things had gotten more and more perfect, and Monica had moved in with him while they both continued to work …

  And then the fight, the one he had started, for no real reason than that something in his head was telling him to. Even though he tried to fight it, the nasty words came out, and continued to come out.

  And then she was gone.

  The last thing he saw of her was that smile, when she turned toward the door with her suitcase in her hand. It had been just as dazzling, and made his heart skip a beat just as it had the first time he saw it and every time since. But now it was sad and puzzled.

  “I don’t know why this is happening, Corrie,” she said. “But I believe that things happen for a reason. I hope that what you’re doing is worth the end of this — because I thought it would last. Maybe forever.

  “I hope you’re happy, Corrie — I hope you’re happy forever …”

  And then the wonderful smile was erased by tears, and she turned and went out of his life, and he couldn’t stop her, couldn’t tell her why he was going back home to Orangefield—

  He woke up, and heard a bird singing in the oak tree outside his window. The clock said 9:30. The room was dappled with sunlight blinking through the oak branches.

  It was bright October outside.

  He felt rested.

  So now the old pattern is back: I’ll dream of my real life during the night in photo-minute detail, dream of things that have really happened to me — and, during the day—

  He turned at the sound of something ticking in one corner of the room, which turned into a scrabbling sound up the wall. There was a groan overhead, and the porthole into the garret bulged for a moment, then popped back into its normal shape.

  —during the day—

  Somewhere below him, deep in the house, he heard a long swishing sound, like a broom being moved in one long stroke against a floor. There was a whispery chuckle which faded into a loud bang, like a hammer against a board.

  The birdsong abruptly ended. Corrie wondered if it had ever been real. He looked out the window and the window itself had switched from a vertical rectangle to a horizontal one — in a flash it was back the way it should be.

  — during the day I’ll live in a nightmare.

  Chapter Eight

  Corrie Phaeder!

  There was a name Bill Grant hadn’t thought of in at least ten years.

  And the decade had been better for it.

  Corrie Phaeder!

  The one who got away!

  Grant still got angry when he thought about it.

  The kid had killed his own mother, Grant was sure of it.

  He had learned over the years that, just as there was such a thing as love at first sight, so too was there such a thing as dislike at first sight. He’d hated the Phaeder kid the first time he laid eyes on him. Instantly. The kid had radiated bad news, and Grant had not only picked up on it but fed off it. It had gotten so bad that the Captain at the time, Jim Leersohn, had taken him off the case and put Mitch Farrow, who was now captain, on it instead.

  Which had ultimately resulted in th
e kid walking away, not only from a murder charge but from Orangefield, too. It had started a rift between Grant and Farrow that had never healed.

  And now Corrie Phaeder was back in Orangefield.

  Grant couldn’t believe it.

  He had the kid’s case folder open on his desk in front of him, but he didn’t even need to look at it. He knew every detail of the case by heart.

  The kid had, plain and simple, gotten away with murder.

  And what he had tried to do to Kathy Marks, the librarian, was something else that Grant had never been able to prove, and something, to this day, that the librarian would not talk about. Grant was still sure that Riley Gates, his partner at the time, was wrong about that one …

  The kid had poisoned everything he touched.

  And now he was back.

  Grant lit a cigarette, flipped the file closed, and got up.

  The house looked exactly the same. The stretch of River Road in front of it was paved now, something it hadn’t been back in the early ’90s — and if Grant remembered correctly there was a new house next to Phaeder’s. But except for that and the weeds and tall grass in the front yard and the peeling paint on the porch, the property looked exactly the same. The door ajar on the shed at the end of the driveway had never been fixed. Grant remembered his first interview with Phaeder, which had taken place right next to that door—

  As if on cinematic cue, Corrie Phaeder pushed the broken door aside and emerged from the gloomy interior of the shed, blinking at the sunlight. Shading his eyes, he stared at Grant’s car and then Grant as he got out of it.

  Grant swore the kid’s squint changed to a frown, and Phaeder turned and went back into the shed.

  Grant retrieved his notebook, which, on a case, might as well be attached to his left hand with glue, and a pen from his shirt pocket, and made the long, slow walk up the driveway. He had always liked the crunch of gravel beneath his feet …

  Phaeder was struggling with the other door, trying to push it out, and gave up as Grant reached him. Instead he angled the broken door down as if the missing lower hinge was there and moved it carefully out and open, pushing it against the left edge of the shed front and blocking it there with a nearby brick. It creaked ominously but stayed.