Night Mares in the Hamptons

by Celia Jerome

  Well, no. A bodyguard, maybe, to beat the rodeo groupies away.

  “It’s time to breed Paloma Blanca. I don’t want to send her back to Austria, and I didn’t care for the one Lipizzan breeder in the States I met.”

  “Does she have to be bred to a Lipizzan? I mean, would she care?”

  “The Spanish Riding School cares, and I signed a contract when I got her. In case you’re wondering how I could afford a treasure like Pal, I did a favor for them in Austria, saved some horses they couldn’t. I didn’t charge them—hell, it was worth my time and trouble just to be near the horses—but she was my reward. The fools didn’t think she was up to their standards.”

  “She seems perfect to me.”

  He rumbled a pleased thank you. The way to a man’s heart—this man’s heart, if anyone was looking for the path—was obviously through his horses. “But maybe she responds better to you than to the idiots who parted with her.”

  “Maybe. Anyway, there are enough stallions around and I could research who’s at stud, for which arm and leg, but I haven’t done it yet.”

  “I should think a picture of her on Facebook would have the stallions come running.”

  I could hear the smile in his voice. “She’s a beauty, isn’t she? I figure she deserves more than a vial of sperm.”

  I wanted to ask if horses cared and how he knew. I mean, mares didn’t usually get to pick and choose their mates, did they? Breeders did it for them as far as I knew. Kind of like the Royce Institute playing matchmaker with its young talent, breeding for whatever genetic traits they could invent or improve on, breeding to better the herd.

  In the wild, in the past, the biggest, strongest stallion claimed his harem. He kept them together and guarded them against any other would-be stud. The females didn’t get a vote. Like the Institute throwing big, strong prospects at recalcitrant mares, er, bachelor women. I was resisting.

  Still, my ever fertile brain came up with an image of Ty fending off cowboys, cops, and bureaucrats to protect his leather-clad ladies. I bet that was how he got his broken nose. With the intimacy and the anonymity of the darkness, I asked.

  “A jealous boyfriend or a horse that wouldn’t listen?”

  “Honey, they always listen. The horses don’t always agree with me, is all. I’ve got a bunch of broken ribs and a cracked skull to prove it. But if a troublemaking guy doesn’t listen, I talk a little louder, is all.” He raised his right fist. “Real loud.”

  “The law of the jungle.”

  “Nah, just Texas. Don’t tread on me.”

  “Someone did if it wasn’t a horse.”

  He touched his nose. “The first one was from playing football.”

  “I would have thought you’d be too light for that.”

  “If you’re in Texas and you want a girl, you play football. I quarterbacked. Mightn’t have thrown bullets, but I could outrun those half-ton tacklers. Most of the time. The second break was a horse, or on account of a horse. Some bastard was using a chain whip on an old pinto. I took exception.”

  “What happened?”

  “I got blood all over a cop car, the bastard went to jail for animal cruelty when he got out of the hospital, and the pinto lived an easy life on my farm until he died of old age.”

  “Nice. Like my mother’s senior rescues. Not many people will take in an old, tired dog that’s going to get expensive, then break your heart. They still deserve love and affection and the best care you can provide.”

  “Sure. I’d like your mother, too. Maybe I’ll get to meet her someday.”

  “Not unless you’re on a picket line protesting carriage horses in Central Park.”

  “I’ve been there. The horses don’t seem to mind, now that they don’t have to be out in freezing cold or boiling heat. They kind of enjoy getting dressed up and having their pictures taken. It’s better’n kids’ birthday parties, anyway.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was serious or not, but we were way off track, if our track was going to reach the colt. “Maybe I should go inside and try to dream about the missing horse.”

  “Can you order your dreams around like toy soldiers?”

  Not if the redhead in chaps was any indication. “I can try. I was thinking about my new story the first time, about a paralyzed girl who needs a magic horse to help her fight evil. She’s been kidnapped. But then she’s the lost colt, in my dreams, of course. And I can feel his emotions.”

  “But you had nothing to do with the mares coming here?” I heard the suspicion in his voice.

  “No! I would not steal anyone’s baby just to make a better story. And I would never let the little guy be so scared. I need to get back to him, to let him know we’re looking.”

  “I think that might require the both of us.”

  “Dreaming together? That would mean we were sleeping together!”

  “All for the greater good, I reckon.”

  I reckoned, insofar as a New Yorker could reckon, that he was teasing for sure this time. Maybe. “I’ll try it my way first.”

  He shrugged. “Stubborn as a mule. But I wouldn’t be here elsewise. They could have sent an exorcist.”

  “To get rid of the magic horses? Is such a thing possible?”

  He shrugged again. “The pied piper never talked to the rats, did he?”

  I stood up and started to gather my stuff. “I can’t tell if you’re serious or not, Mr. Farraday, and this is too important to be making jokes about.”

  “It’s no joke that I think we were meant to be partners. One way or another. Hell, it was all I could do to remember to chant, when I remembered you in that pretty dress you wore tonight. And the high-heeled sandals that made your legs look—”

  I picked up Little Red.

  “No, don’t go yet. The mares might still come, and I need you to help me stay awake. Besides, you won’t get to sleep while you’re in a snit.”

  “I am not in a snit.” But I set the dog back down. I doubted I’d get any helpful dreaming done while the cowboy was in my front yard. Dreaming together, my ass! I didn’t even want to talk to him anymore, not if he was going to keep treating me like a cowgirl centerfold. But I did want to see the mares, and the stars were still out.

  “Why don’t you take a nap? I’ll keep watch and wake you if I hear or see anything.”

  He yawned. “Can you chant?”

  “No, but I can visualize the horses all reunited and home where they belong. I can try to do what Doc does, give them hope and confidence. Maybe they’ll come to me for that.”

  “Chanting is good, too.”

  He started the low incantation, but I could tell by the hesitations that he was too tired to keep it up for long. I found the noise enchanting, but too distracting for me to concentrate on the mares. “Rest for awhile. I’ll wake you if they come.”

  He pulled his chair over, so I could lean against his legs. “Your back’ll ache otherwise.”

  Before I knew it, I was leaning back. Little Red had jumped up to curl asleep in his lap, which was about as much magic as I expected for one night.

  I breathed in the smell of earth and salt water and honeysuckle and something else: horse. I peered into the darkness, ready to shake Ty awake.

  Then I realized that was his scent, mixed with some spices and soap.

  My new partner smelled like a horse.

  And he snored.

  I liked him better for it.

  CHAPTER 15

  I WOKE UP SCREAMING. NO, NOT MY SCREAM. Not my nightmare.

  “What?” Ty jumped up, dumping Red to the ground. Luckily, the chair was a low one. “Willow?”

  “Not me. I must have fallen asleep, but I didn’t dream. I didn’t yell.”

  The scream came again.

  “It’s Grandma!”

  Ty took off, hopping to shake an angry Red loose from his ankle. I wasn’t as fast, having to find my dropped clog, my dropped dog.

  Ty was chanting as he ran, as fast as a high school quarterback rac
ing for a goal line with truck-sized tacklers on his heels. His hat fell off halfway to Grandma’s, so I picked that up, too.

  Grandma was cursing. “Get out of my garden, you four-footed albino rat bitches! I mightn’t be able to keep you from my dreams, but I damned well will keep you from my plants.”

  “No,” Ty was yelling as he dashed across the road out of my sight. “Don’t frighten them!”

  “Don’t frighten them? They’ve terrorized me and all my friends. Now they are destroying my seedlings, my experiments. Tomorrow night I’ll sit out here with a shotgun, see if I don’t!”

  “No!” Ty shouted again. “Threatening them is the worst thing you can do!”

  By now I was out of breath and almost to the front field. Lights were on at Grandma’s house, the farm stand, and at Susan’s parents’ house down the road. I didn’t see the mares, but I could feel a flood of panic wash over me. Ty cursed, Grandma wailed, sinking to her knees. Susan’s mother was out on her own front porch, holding her arms across her chest, shrieking. Her husband, my uncle Roger, who managed the farm for Grandma, was next to her, shaking his fist in the air toward my grandmother.

  “I told you the experimentals should be in the greenhouse, you old crone! I told you the seedlings were still too fragile to put out! I told you the imports were too valuable to chance out in the field. Did you listen to me? Do you ever? You ought to be locked up before you run the farm into the ground with your crazy ideas.”

  “Crazy?” Grandma shouted back across the dirt road. “I built this farm from a backward potato field. Now it’s one of the most profitable stands on the east end. And it supports you and your family, you lazy good-for-nothing!”

  Aunt Jasmine, who was known to never raise her voice, even on seventh-grade school bus trips, screamed at her mother. “Lazy? My husband works seven days a week and ten hours a day. Do you know where you’d be without his knack for growing things? You’d be picking potatoes, that’s what! Roger almost died from some tick disease he caught on your fucking farm!”

  “Don’t you use that language at me, you ungrateful bitch. You wouldn’t have a roof over your fucking head if it wasn’t for me.”

  “You think I couldn’t support my wife?” Uncle Roger yelled. “You think I couldn’t get a better job? Anywhere, that’s where! You fucking old bitch, I have a good mind to—”

  Aunt Jasmine started hitting him on the head with a flyswatter from the deck. “Don’t you talk to my mother that way, you—”

  Uncle Roger grabbed at a cushion on the wicker rocker. “I’m not one of your damned students and I’ll talk anyway I want!”

  “Stop it!” I yelled, but no one listened except Little Red, who was so scared he peed on me.

  Then Ty tried. “Can’t you see it’s the night mares causing you to say such foolish things? It’s their fear and despair talking, not you. It’s not worth arguing over a handful of plants.”

  Now both Grandma and Uncle Roger turned on him, saying that the plants weren’t just high-priced organics for the tourist trade. Some of their experiments might eventually feed hungry people. Some of their seedlings were so exotic, they were on world endangered plants lists. Grandma had special permits for captive breeding, or whatever you call it for plants.

  “And you’d kill the rarest creatures ever seen for some crappy seeds? Destroy your own village and all its precious resources in the process? Every sensitive and para in fifty miles would have a breakdown. What do you think would happen to Paumanok Harbor itself if you shot one of the horses? Do you have any idea of the powers behind the mares and the vengeance they could wreak?”

  Doc limped out of Grandma’s front door without his cane or his glasses. His silver hair stood up in peaks as if he’d dragged his hands through it. “Evie, stop yelling. Ty is right, this is the night mares’ doing. Ty, shut up. And you, too, Jasmine, Roger. None of you mean what you’re saying, none of you are helping.”

  He knelt beside my grandmother—he called her Evie?—and gathered her into his arms. His touch must have worked its usual magic because Grandma started weeping quietly onto his shoulder.

  Aunt Jasmine and Uncle Roger were still going at it. I wanted to lead them over to Doc, but I was afraid to get close enough while flyswatters and flowered cushions were flailing. I knew they’d both turn on me or Little Red, who was shaking so hard I worried he’d break a bone.

  Then, over the crying and yelling, and Ty stomping around, we all heard, “Hey, everyone, what’d I miss?”

  Susan walked up the dirt road. Actually, Susan staggered up the road, carrying her shoes in one hand. Her hair was a mess, and her blouse was buttoned wrong and gaping open to show where her bra should have been but wasn’t. Her parents took one look at their beloved daughter and started calling her a whore, a tramp, a humiliating embarrassment to them.

  Susan took one look at me, Ty, Doc, and Grandma all listening to her parents’ tirade. She started crying and stumbling back toward my house.

  “Susan, it’s the night mares. They don’t mean it!” I called after her. “You should hear what they called Grandma!”

  By now Doc had limped over to Aunt Jasmine and Uncle Roger, and his soft voice and gentle touch had them calmed down and remorseful.

  “Maybe she won’t remember in the morning,” I told them, trying to offer consolation. “Or maybe she’ll grow out of this phase and change her ways. You can look on the bright side: she wasn’t driving.”

  Ty rejoined the group. Disgusted that he’d missed seeing the mares, he announced he was going back to Rosehill. There was nothing he could do here, and it was nearly dawn anyway.

  Grandma had other ideas. “No, you are not leaving, young man. I said I would make breakfast, and that’s what I am going to do. It’s the least I can manage after causing such a scene. We could all use some good hot coffee or my special herbal tea.”

  “Coffee’d be good, but you didn’t cause the ruckus, ma’am. You just reacted to it, like anyone would. But you can’t go around threatening to hurt the mares. You’ve got to see that’s not the way to solve this problem.”

  “But I cannot let them destroy my plantings, my income, my life’s work. And Roger’s,” she added, sending her son-in-law a look of apology.

  Roger nodded, accepting and holding out his own olive branch. “I could really go for a cup of your tea and maybe a muffin.”

  Ty turned in a slow circle, trying to get a better feel for the layout of the three houses and the fields by the first glimmer of dawn. “Lights. That’s what you need. They don’t like the brightness. Maybe they are some kind of albinos and that’s why they only come out at night. Sunshine might hurt their eyes. No one knows.”

  “But keeping the fields lit is worth a try,” I seconded.

  Ty looked at Grandma. “You could put floodlights on the fields, leave your porch lights on, and every lamp in the house. You can string Christmas lights as far as they’ll reach, and get your hands on every solar lantern you can find. Maybe even those sacks you can fill with sand and put votive candles in.”

  “Luminarias, they’re called.” Aunt Jasmine was holding Uncle Roger’s hand. “We have a box full of the ones left over from the Fourth of July, don’t we, Roger? And two boxes of Christmas lights at least.”

  “Jas never lets me throw anything out,” Uncle Roger told us. “I guess she’s right.”

  Aunt Jasmine patted his hand. “I always am, dear. Maybe we can borrow the portable lights from the school’s playing field. I’ll get the coach and his football team to help move them.”

  “And those emergency floodlights the fire department carries. I’ll call around in the morning. And we can hook up the generator for the far fields, to keep it lit.”

  “That’s the ticket,” Ty said. “The mares won’t come into the light. Even if it doesn’t bother their eyes, I think it ruins their ability to disappear.”

  “I bet my mother has Christmas lights in the basement,” I said. “And those icicle drapes for the fro
nt yard.”

  Ty looked back, as if judging the distance we’d run. “That’ll help, but not on your place, Willow. No, we keep your house dark. You and I will have to handle the emotions. It’ll be easier because we won’t be afraid.”

  We won’t?

  “And we won’t frighten them. We’ll try to befriend them, not chase them away. I’ll bring over some grain and hay when they deliver it to Rosehill for my horses. We don’t know what the white ladies eat, but we can try apples and carrots, too, to show our good intentions. Calmer, they won’t hurt anyone. It’s our only hope. You’ve seen what they can do.”

  “There, Evie, we have a plan. We’ll be fine and save your fields.” Doc shook Ty’s hand, then he asked Aunt Jasmine and Uncle Roger to help him back to Grandma’s house. A muffin sounded fine. And maybe an omelet.

  They’d be fine. I wasn’t sure about Susan. And I had to change my wet sweatshirt anyway. I told them I’d be back in a few minutes.

  Ty didn’t notice my leaving. He was already on his cell phone, making who-knew-what arrangements for saving the planet and Grandma’s plantings. At five-thirty in the freaking morning. The first rays of sun lightened his long hair almost to gold, which reminded me I still had his hat in my hand, with Little Red half in it. I went back and handed him the Stetson, without the Pomeranian.

  He held the phone away. “Your dog bites.”

  “Only when he’s nervous. He pees when he’s really scared. I’d check the hat.”

  Right after I peeled off my wet sweatshirt, I poured a dose of my mother’s special rescue remedy into a fresh bowl of water for Little Red. Then I poured a couple of drops into a Diet Coke for Susan, who was still crying on the sofa. So I gave her the last of my chocolate chip cookies, too.

  She wiped her eyes, smearing mascara down her cheeks, took a drink, and ate half a cookie. “These are shit.” She ate the other half anyway.

  “Not everyone is a genius in the kitchen.” I gave the big dogs biscuits for being woken up so early. They thought I was a Julia Child.