Soulstorm

by Chet Williamson

  "Someday, Simon," said David coldly, "you'll push me too far and I'll forget that you used to tell me bedtime stories. But what are these demands of yours?"

  "They're simple. No weapons inside the house. No firearms, no knives, swords, or spears hung as decorations on the walls. No poisons or materials that could be used as such. That's all."

  "What about no rope—I might garrote them. What about no forks—I might go for their jugulars. What about no socks—I might fill one with stones and cosh them. Oh, Simon, you've left me a veritable array of death." David laughed chillingly. "You still think I intend to kill them then?"

  "I don't know, but I won't take the chance. I've done enough simply by arranging it so that they have to take your offer. I won't be party to any deaths as well."

  "I'm going to tell you something, Simon, and I'll tell you only once. I will not cause these men's deaths. I swear it. I'll do nothing to prevent harm from coming to them, but I won't be the cause of it myself." He was silent for a moment, staring into Renault's eyes. "Do you believe me?"

  Renault thought, then nodded his head. "But no weapons," he repeated.

  "No weapons," David Neville agreed.

  Now, as Renault sat there trying not to think of his next cup of coffee, he almost wished he had not made that demand, that David and Gabrielle had had perhaps a small handgun to protect themselves if things got touchy. He did not feel that either Wickstrom, McNeely, or Cummings were dangerous men, despite their reputations or lines of work. But in such a situation, and with a woman as desirable as Gabrielle … he shrugged and whispered a silent prayer that at least she was all right.

  He'd thought David had been a fool to allow her to join him, even though he'd told Renault that he was powerless to stop her once she had her mind made up. Renault thought the truth was somewhat different. He believed that David intended to die in The Pines, and could not conceive of leaving this life without Gabrielle at his side. For this reason, and in respect of their love, Renault had made only feeble protests to Gabrielle, who had dismissed them with a seemingly unconcerned lightness.

  "He's my husband, Simon, and I intend to be with him. The Pines holds no fear for me, and it means so much to David. It's the only hope he has left."

  David had cautioned Renault not to tell Gabrielle the truth behind the choice of their three "bodyguards," so a story was concocted regarding David's desire to see how different men from different yet ruthlessly similar professions would function under conditions of unseen stress. She had thought the explanation odd, but so much that David had done in the past few months had been strange that she accepted it without question.

  Renault wished again that David had permitted him to wire the house for sound, but he had been adamant. "This is me and the house, Simon—and me against them. There'll be no last-minute rescues. I want to be on my own in there. And what's more, I don't want anything to destroy our chances of finding what I want to find there."

  "You mean ghosts."

  "Yes. I mean ghosts."

  Well, thought Simon, they'd all be damned lucky if they didn't all end up as ghosts before the month was out. He couldn't check up on them personally, so he did the next best thing. He picked up the phone and dialed John Sterne.

  ~*~

  Sterne was watching television when the phone rang, and the shrillness of the sound in the small room made him jump. He grabbed it before the second ring. "Sterne."

  "This is Renault."

  "Simon. What's up?"

  "I just called to . . . to see how things are going." Sterne sighed. "Quietly, Simon. You know I'll call you as soon as"—he corrected himself—"if anything happens.”

  “Yes, I know. I suppose I'm just worried."

  "Well, don't be. Everything's quiet as . . . as can be up here." Quiet as death? That's what I was going to say.

  "How are you getting along, John? And Monckton?"

  "Just fine." Monckton and John Sterne, Renault's right-hand man, were stationed in the caretaker's cabin at the bottom of Pine Mountain, waiting for the month to end, or for something else to happen. "We've gone on a twelve-hour shift. Monckton's a nighthawk, so I'm dawn till dusk, and he takes the dark."

  "May I speak to him? Is he sleeping?"

  "He's . . . he can't come to the phone right now. Shall he call you?"

  There was a slight pause. "No, never mind. I'll try not to bother you again."

  "No bother, Simon. We're concerned too. But like I said, it's been quiet."

  "All right. Try not to get too bored. Goodbye, John."

  " 'Bye, Simon." Sterne hung up and breathed a heavy sigh of relief. Thank God Renault hadn't asked where Monckton was. Orders had been for both of them to remain in the cabin for the entire thirty-one days so that they could respond quickly to any emergency call from the house, and Neville/Renault orders were not to be taken lightly, even though they may have been given that way.

  But Monckton was not at the cabin. He was at the house.

  It had started only a few days after the five were shut in. When Monckton got off his shift at dawn, he would go outside and stand at the bottom of the road, looking up toward where it became lost in the labyrinth of trees that cupped the first turn. He'd watch for a few minutes, as if expecting to see something coming from around that curve, down from the top of the mountain. Then he'd go into the cabin and sleep, or eat a light meal and watch early morning television. He had a drafting table there, but so far he hadn't been able to make himself sit down and work on any of the upcoming projects he had.

  Two days ago he'd driven up the mountain for the first time since he'd come down with Renault. There'd been no preamble to the act, only that restless unease that had possessed him since their vigil had begun.

  "We were told to stay here," Sterne had reminded him, but Monckton had only shook his head.

  "I know that," he answered, "but I've got to go up there, got to check it out."

  "Check it out? What do you expect to find? The place is tightly sealed, Monckton. They could all be screaming and shooting guns off inside and you'd never know it."

  "I guess you're right," Monckton grudgingly acknowledged. "Maybe you're right. But I think I'll know if everything's okay. Besides, what's the difference if I'm there or here when the alarm goes? It's not like I drove down into town. "

  "What if Renault calls?"

  "You can handle him. Tell him I'm sleeping or on the john or something. Don't worry about it. It's no big deal."

  No big deal my ass, Sterne thought. He had considered calling Renault and reporting Monckton's insubordination, then thought better of it. If the alarm did go off, Monckton would be that much closer to doing something about it. The two .38 revolvers and the .12 gauge in the Jeep would insure that he could handle whatever problem came up. Sterne had felt a sudden queasiness in his stomach at the thought of Monckton driving away, leaving him alone with the silence of the forest and that squat black phone connected to The Pines. But Monckton would not leave; he was fairly confident of that. The man seemed enthralled by the house a mile above, and their conversations had usually drifted back to David Neville's grand experiment. Sterne suspected, that Monckton knew more about the house than he let on, but Sterne had never tried to push him into any revelation. Instead, it was Monckton who kept pressing the subject.

  “Is it possible, do you think?" he'd ask Sterne over and over again. "Even if you haven't, has there been anyone in your family who's claimed to see a ghost or anything like it?"

  Sterne could only sigh and say no. He, like his entire family, was a realist with no time for haunts. This month was to him simply an inconvenience that lengthened his term of apprenticeship to Simon Renault, delaying Sterne's ultimate goal of taking over the old man's position when death or old age retired him. At least this time of deadly dull service above and beyond should put a feather in his cap, if Monckton's short drives were not discovered.

  He felt guilty about covering for Monckton on the phone with Simon. He should have r
eported it and covered his own ass instead of setting himself up to be caught in a lie. But it seemed so harmless, and how would Renault ever find out? Besides, Monckton was just curious. Sterne had asked him when he'd come back from his first visit what he'd done, and Monckton had simply shrugged. "Nothing," he'd said. "What could I do? I just walked around the house and listened at the doors."

  "Hear anything?" Sterne had inquired with sarcasm.

  "Nothing. It was like a tomb. Not a sound. Absolutely nothing. "

  But the next day he'd gone back. And now today. "Why?" Sterne had asked as Monckton plucked the Jeep keys from the peg on the wall. "You expect to hear something or what?"

  "No, I don't expect to hear anything. At least not with my ears.” He opened the door. "I'll be back soon."

  ~*~

  But this morning, the third day of his vigil, Whitey Monckton did hear something. He'd followed the same procedure as on the first two days, parking the Jeep by the garage, and walking around the house, working from the back patio around to the west wing and on from there. He was, as he'd told Sterne, not listening with his ears alone. He let all his senses open, not knowing how the entity he thought of as The Pines might choose to approach him.

  In the few days he'd spent with Sterne in the two-room cabin near the mountain's base, he'd come to conclusions that had changed the way he looked at the world. Between what he had seen and what he had heard in The Pines, he had become a firm believer in the existence of life after death. Monckton had seen things, and he was not one to doubt the evidence of his own senses. At first he had tried, like Scrooge, to blame the manifestations on "an undigested bit of beef, a fragment of an underdone potato." But Monckton had a cast-iron stomach and a constitution to match. He had seen, he had heard, and therefore whatever it was, was real. And though he had experienced nothing since coming down from the mountaintop, still he was haunted by the house, its mystery crept into his thoughts and dreams until he could think of nothing else.

  So now he stood, head poised, at the west wing door, not listening as much as sensing. He stood there for nearly ten minutes, then turned and walked toward the front of the house, his shoes crunching the dry brown and rust leaves that carpeted the lawn and walkway. Even though no trees stood within the triangles the wings of the house formed, they'd blown over in profusion from the tree line until they were piled knee-deep against the western side of the south wing that housed the Great Hall.

  Wind from the west, Monckton observed, and shivered as a chilly gust tore through his light jacket and swirled dead bits about his ankles. He stopped at the huge front door. The leaves skittering dryly across the jagged flagstones drowned out all other sounds, but as he stood waiting, the wind receded until the rat-scrabbling of the leaves had stopped and Monckton found himself in a total silence, like the eye of a psychic storm.

  And then he heard it, high up in the air. At first he thought it might be the air circulation system in the attic, but remembered that it could barely be heard in the house, let alone outside. But the sound had the suggestion of machinery in it, of some great engine that was cranking into life after a sleep of decades, of millions upon millions of cogs and gears and wheels that had never before worked in unison now all at once coming together in some disharmonious hymn of power. And as he listened, each fragment of sound seemed a voice that whispered in rhythm, an insignificant voice that, when combined with uncounted others, formed a strength, a single note like the hiss of a billion leaves scratching stone. The sound grew louder and louder, becoming from its myriad parts one giant engine that throbbed with a universal heartbeat, roared like all the seas and skies of earth roaring in one storm, one cataclysmic symphony composed to split the planet's crust and litter the cosmos with its leavings.

  Under the sunny October sky, Whitey Monckton pressed his palms over his ears only to learn that the song he was hearing was not heard with his ears, but with his skin, heart, brain, soul, with every part of him, and he listened for a long time, until it died away to a low dull pulse and the wind returned once more, lifting the leaves and making them dance to its own comparatively uninspired tune.

  Chapter Ten

  George McNeely awoke to a face hanging over his bed.

  At first he thought it was Kelly Wickstrom, peering in to make certain he was all right, but immediately realized his error.

  The eyes were slanted like an Oriental's, and narrowed dangerously. The teeth were bared, their whiteness almost startling. The long black hair hung in matted clumps made damp by something red. It was an instantaneous picture, since the face vanished in less than a second after McNeely's eyes opened; but it hung there a moment longer, implanted on his pupils.

  Dream, he told himself, and no wonder. It was surprising that he hadn't awoke to an entire platoon of gooks staring through the bars of the Vietnamese rat cage. Or worse yet, he might have seen David Neville's face—if you could call it that—floating luminously over his head.

  He sat up in the bed and stretched, luxuriating in the feel of his stiff muscles drawing to their greatest length. Then he pulled on a pair of slacks and a jersey and walked into his living room. He was not alone. Gabrielle Neville was sitting in an easy chair, a book in her long-fingered hands. She smiled at him.

  He nodded. "How long have you been here?" he asked as he sat on the sofa.

  She shrugged. It was answer enough. "I wanted to be here when you woke up, to thank you. For trying to save David."

  "It's what I was supposed to do. I'm only sorry I wasn't better at it.''

  "You tried."

  "Not hard enough."

  "It wasn't your fault. It was fated to happen.”

  “Fated? You believe that?"

  She frowned. "I believe that once David decided to come here, it was inevitable that he would die here."

  "What about the rest of us? Are we fated to have something similar happen to us too?"

  "I don't know. Some things just seem to happen."

  "Jesus, that's profound." He hated himself for saying it, but she irritated him, played on his nerve ends like a five-year-old on a violin. All he'd wanted was to relax for a few hours, to read, have a bite to eat, and then start to figure out how to escape from this tomb. But instead, he had to talk karma with the widow of the man he'd let die. Though he felt he'd slept for hours, he was unaccountably weary.

  "I'm sorry if it sounds simplistic," she said, unoffended. "But things happen. When they do, they do, and we're fools to be concerned about them afterward, because we could not ever have done anything differently, because it happened."

  "No second chances, huh?"

  "No, no second chances at all. Just . . . similarities in the future.

  He sighed and lay back on the sofa, throwing his bare feet up on the back. "And I suppose you've never wanted something to happen again, so you could do something differently?"

  "I have, but I know when I do that the feeling is pointless. So I try not to think like that."

  "No recriminations."

  "No recriminations."

  "You're one tough broad, Gabrielle." He threw his forearm over his face and closed his eyes. "I've thought most rich women were stupid and happy and pampered."

  "Most rich women aren't married to a man like David."

  "Neither are you anymore." It was a thought that slipped out, a cruel, involuntary lunge that had taken voice, and he kept his eyes closed so that he couldn't see her face.

  "That's true," she said finally. "But you must remember that I've been expecting to be a widow for some time now, so the shock isn't as great as it might be." She paused. "Besides, it hadn't been much of a marriage lately anyway."

  Now he looked at her, his eyes narrowing. "Isn't that a bit callous?"

  Her face was set. "No, it's not. It's the truth. He'd changed so much through his illness. Not physically, but his mind. He was always self-centered, but in a charming sort of way. He could laugh at himself and his own pretentions so that, although they were still there, they w
eren't nearly as offensive as they might be otherwise. But once he got cancer, he changed. He lost that sense of humor, which was what kept him from being a prig." She paused. "He changed in other ways, too … toward me."

  She looked at McNeely as if expecting him to say something to make it easier for her, but he remained silent.

  "We hadn't made love for over a year," she said harshly, as if throwing down a challenge. McNeely looked away from her. "We couldn't," she went on. "He was impotent. But I still loved him."

  "Why are you telling me this?" McNeely asked, watching the ceiling.

  She stood and walked over to where he lay on the sofa. "I just want you to … I want someone to know and understand how I feel, what I've gone through." There was no mistaking the pleading in her voice.

  "Why not Kelly? He's got a sympathetic ear."

  "I want you to know, George." She reached down and put her hand on his forehead, pushing his black and silver curls back to reveal a smooth and unscarred brow.

  McNeely didn't recoil from her touch; he merely closed his eyes and smiled thinly. "I see," he said. "I think I see. But to post with such dexterity …"

  “ … to incestuous sheets," she finished for him. "I know the quote, and it's not accurate. Not incestuous, not at all. And as for dexterity, I'm not newly widowed. David's been dead for a long time."

  "And you've already grieved, is that it?"

  She nodded. "A long time ago." She knelt down to kiss him and he let her. Her mouth fit smoothly over his, and their lips parted shyly so that their tongues barely touched. Then she drew back a few inches and looked into his eyes.

  "Will you make love to me, George? Now? Right now?" She asked the question as if fearing both possible answers. In response, he cupped her face in his hands and pulled her gently to him for another kiss, deeper, more intense.

  They walked together to the bedroom, where they undressed each other tenderly and made love on the rumpled bed. There was kindness in their lovemaking, each surrendering completely to the other so that nothing should be taken by force. It was long and warm and beautiful, and they came together in the kind of eternal moment she had always dreamed of and had too infrequently experienced. Then she fell asleep, her arms around McNeely's waist, her head nestled in the hollow between his arm and chest.