by David Nickle
After a moment, Ann stood. She was feeling better. At least she had caught her wind.
She started to piece together what had happened. Of course, they had been waiting for her here. These men may have had enough connections to hire a hit man and a Miami lawyer, but they didn’t have the means, clearly, to watch every border crossing twenty-four hours a day. On the other hand, they’d known that one of the few places she’d be going was right here, if she were coming back at all.
So here was where they’d waited. Ann hadn’t considered that but it made sense—it was a logical way to grab her, if that’s what they were going to do—and if they didn’t want to involve U.S. law enforcement to do it for them.
They hadn’t wanted that. Which was why they’d sent Hirsch to the hospital, and offered up a respite home in St. Augustine, against the bogeyman of Ann’s humiliation in front of the Federal Aviation Authority.
She began to shake. Part of that was the cold—it was three in the morning in November, and she wasn’t dressed for it. But that was a small part. More chilling than the cold was that realization: they’d seen her coming.
She pulled her legs close to her and tucked her head into her knees. Like a tongue to a broken tooth, her mind settled back on the colours of the spectrum. But there were no colours; just the words: Red. And orange.
Yellow.
Yellow.
Light.
“There.”
Ann opened her eyes. The speaker turned the mag-light away from her. He was taller than she remembered, had a bit of a paunch that had been hidden by his broad shoulders. His brush-cut hair stood out in spikes, by the light cast by the other flashlights that wove through the tree branches like searchlights, moving
toward her.
“Are you hurt?” asked the man. His voice sounded different now than it had in her cabin in the Rosedale Arms.
“No,” said Ann. She pushed herself back against the tree trunk; the bark bit into the thin denim jacket she’d bought on the road.
“Good. You hit my truck pretty hard; back of your van took most of it. Should have been wearing your seatbelt.”
Ann looked up at him. The other flashlights were shining on both of them now, and she could see his face. His hair was greying, but he didn’t look much older than forty.
He looked kinder than he had tossing her cabin, Taser ready in one hand. . . .
She murmured to the Insect: Kill him. Shame came and went, like a wave over beach pebbles. Kill all of them if you have to.
He smiled a bit and bent down as one of the flashlights came up beside him. It was held by a child, or someone very small; it just came up to his waist. It wore a hood. As it moved into the light, Ann saw that it was a little girl. Dark-haired—ten years old, maybe twelve. And yes. The same girl she’d seen for an instant outside the cabin. Of course.
“She’s trying,” said the girl. “But Mister Sleepy has it all sewn up. Don’t worry.”
“I’m not,” said the man, and patted the girl on the back of her head. “Thank you, Mister Sleepy,” he said, looking not at her but into the night sky. “Thank you, all of you.”
The branches rustled as though there were a breeze, and the man extended his hand down to Ann.
Because she could think of nothing else, she took it. He hauled her to her feet, but it was hard to stand.
“I’ll try and be a gentleman,” he said as he slipped his arm underneath hers.
“See that you do,” said another voice from behind her. It was one that Ann thought she might recognize. Just then, she couldn’t say from where. But he didn’t speak again until much later.
“Now come on, Mrs. Voors,” the first man said.
He led Ann for a few steps, then dragged her, and finally—apologizing again—bent down, drew his other arm behind her thighs, and lifted her.
“You’re shaking like a leaf.”
“She’s afraid,” said the little girl, “of Mister Sleepy.”
Ann shivered, and shut her eyes. She didn’t fight; it was as though all the energy had fled from her. She felt as though she were deflating.
“Who are you?” she asked.
He said something, but she couldn’t make out what, exactly.
ii
The music was not especially loud, but it was too loud to ignore. It was choral. It reminded her of Orff, a bit. One of the middle bits of Carmina Burana. But more primitive. Carmina Burana as arranged for piano movers and orchestra.
Ann opened her eyes. Her mouth was very dry. Her head was propped up on sofa pillows. The rest of her was prone, on a sofa. It felt velvety and lumpy. But it was warm. She looked around; she was in a large room. There may have been windows, but it was hard to tell; thick green curtains hung along two of the walls. The other two walls were painted burgundy. There was a stained pine dining room table, and some chairs near Ann’s couch, and an overstuffed dark leather recliner.
The room was not brightly lit, and what light there was came from the far end.
That was also where the music came from: the speakers next to a big, flat screen TV. Ann propped herself up and looked. There was a game playing on it—a first-person shooter type of game, but with a bow and arrow rather than a big gun, and the fellow wielding it was running around some mountainous terrain on a beautiful autumn afternoon. The view was only partly occluded by a high-backed leather chair, faced away from Ann.
Ann swallowed. It hurt a little to do so. She put her feet on the floor. The game shifted to a menu screen, showing a compass rose of choices.
“Mrs. Voors?”
Ann stood, carefully.
“It’s Ann,” she said. “Yes. Hello Susan.”
The chair turned around. Ian Rickhardt’s wife, Susan Rickhardt, was clad in a dark fleece sweater and pale blue track pants, thick-toed feet proudly bare. The music from the game had devolved into a series of grunts: the piano movers were hefting the Heintzman up the stairs, Ann thought, and suppressed what she was pretty sure would be a crazy laugh.
“You’re awake,” Susan said simply.
“Barely,” said Ann. And it was true; she felt doughy, as though something were holding her down. Something might have been holding her down, she realized. It was somehow easy to forget that she had just been abducted; it was in fact impossible to remember the point at which she had apparently passed out. Which she must have, because here she was, on a couch in this very simply appointed room, looking at Ian Rickhardt’s wife playing a video game. She wasn’t a guest here. She was a prisoner. Was Susan Rickhardt the one they’d left to guard her?
“I take it this room is somewhere in the winery?”
Susan shrugged. “I call it home,” she said.
Ian’s wife Susan—the simple fact of her—had always been a puzzle for Ann. She was heavyset and dull-eyed. The only time she’d seen her out of sweats was at the wedding, when she’d also had her dark, too-thin hair done as nicely as you could ever expect. When they’d first been introduced her hair was as it was just now—flat on her scalp, unwashed. Susan had shaken her hand perfunctorily, almost sullenly. She didn’t seem like the sort of woman a man like Rickhardt would marry. It would have to be love—though Ian didn’t seem to be the type for that.
When she remarked on this to Michael, he’d just winked, and said, “She must have hidden talents.”
Ann had slugged him in the arm and called him nasty, but she hadn’t really been angry. It was one of the few times he’d shown anything approaching lechery, and she thought then she wouldn’t mind if he showed it more often.
If only she’d known.
Ann shook her head. Something was dulling her now; the same weird fatigue that had knocked her out in the orchard.
Focus, she thought, and asked: “Do you know where Philip is?”
Susan Rickhardt picked up the game controller from where it nestled in her lap and tapped a button. The compass rose v
anished and she was back at it.
“There’s a dragon on top of that hill,” she said. “I’ll take it down, soon as I can find the path up.”
Ann stood, wobbling a bit, crossed the room. There was no other chair in front of the TV so she knelt beside Susan.
“Skyrim?” said Ann, and Susan nodded.
“Best Elder Scroll yet,” she said.
“So I’ve heard,” said Ann. “You’ve been at this awhile, I see.”
The bar at the bottom of the screen showed she was running a character at Level 48. Susan didn’t answer; she was absorbed in
the game.
After a moment, Ann got up. She was steadier on her feet—far steadier, certainly, than she’d been in the orchard. She walked over to the curtain, peeked out the tall window behind it. There was nothing to see but dark; so she’d either slept a long time, or not long at all.
There was a door, behind the sofa where Ann had been sleeping, next to a long mahogany credenza. It was a double door, stained dark, with brass handles. Ann went to it, and turned a handle.
It wasn’t locked. Ann pulled it open a crack. There was a hallway beyond, lit by halogen pot lights. She shut the door quietly and leaned her back on it.
Back at the TV, the battle for Skyrim continued. Susan appeared to be sneaking up a cliff, approaching a camp of barbarians with arrow notched.
“Save the game,” said Ann. Susan responded by letting an arrow fly and killing a lean woman wearing a headdress. Her two companions got up and began looking around for the source.
“Save it,” said Ann again, as she crossed the room back to the TV. Susan put two more arrows into the men. One of them fell dead; the other was strong enough to take it. He drew a sword and moved to attack.
Ann stepped up to the TV stand, and pressed the eject button on the game console. The screen went dark. Ann turned around and faced Susan.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s time for talking. Play later.”
“You are a little bitch,” said Susan. She tried to look around Ann, to the screen. “Put it back in.”
“Okay,” said Ann, “I will in a minute. But first. Where is Philip?”
“Put it in.”
“Where?”
“Put it—”
There was a knock at the door.
“Tell me where my brother is, Susan. Please.”
Susan didn’t answer. She pushed back in the chair, like she was pulling away from something. Her eyes became wide. She shook her head quickly, like she was trying to dislodge something.
The knocking resumed—louder this time.
“Should I get that?” asked Ann, and Susan shook her head no.
“Why not? Is it someone you don’t want to talk to?”
“Put it back in, now,” she said.
“Is it Ian?”
“No.”
“If I put this back in,” said Ann, wagging the disk back in front of her, “will that stop?”
Things happened very quickly after that. Susan drew back, like she was experiencing g-forces in an airplane, and then launched. The chair skidded backwards on the floor, and suddenly, she had hold of Ann’s wrist.
Ann stumbled back as Susan kept pushing, and Ann fell against the TV. It toppled backwards and with a wrenching crash, fell to the hardwood floor behind it.
The pounding abruptly stopped.
Susan let go of Ann’s wrist, and Ann righted herself.
Behind her, the two door handles turned down.
“What’ve you done,” said Susan. Her voice was flat. Dead. She couldn’t even make it sound like a question.
The doors swung inward, until there was maybe a foot of space between them.
“It’s your poltergeist, isn’t it?” Ann said
And from the look on Susan’s face, she could see that she’d guessed it.
Susan had been Ann many years ago, when Ian Rickhardt married her: a young woman who’d had a poltergeist in her from her childhood. And she had sat here, cared for, playing console role-playing games, while Rickhardt carried on. She was a vessel.
She was shut down.
“Does the game ordinarily keep it at bay?” asked Ann. But Susan wasn’t answering; she’d turned around and was staring at the door. Her breath puffed visibly, giving her a smoker’s wreath of mist. She was trembling, now.
Terror circled Ann too, looking for an opening, but Ann wouldn’t give it one. She drew a breath of the newly cold air and stepped close behind the older woman.
“What do you call yours?”
“Little,” Susan said, her voice shaking. “I call it Little, though it’s not. You’re a bitch. Always were.”
Around them, the curtains started to billow—as if perhaps a figure moved behind them. Ann shivered, and Susan’s breath condensed in little clouds.
“I used to play Dungeons & Dragons,” said Ann. “I used that to keep mine quiet. A magical D & D kingdom where I made all the rules. It worked for a long time. Never thought about trying a video game.”
Susan looked around the room, her eyes narrowed into a squint.
“It’s not like that,” she said.
“Then what is it like?”
“You don’t control it,” said Susan. “You don’t keep it quiet. That’s not your job. The only thing you have to do, is stay out of its way.”
The curtains fell back, and were still.
“All you have to do,” said Susan, “you stupid little bitch, is stay out of its way.”
Susan moved behind the table, to survey the damage that was done to the TV. Its glass screen was cracked, and dark. She knelt down and ran her finger along the line in the glass.
“I don’t know where your brother is,” she said, not looking up. “I saw him when he showed up a day ago, but Ian said it might not be for long.”
“Did he say where he was going next?”
“Home,” said Susan. “He said he might go home.”
“So he’s left here, definitely,” said Ann.
“He’s left here definitely.”
“And you think he’s gone back to the rest home.”
“Ian said he was going home.”
“So Ian knows where he’s gone?”
“I guess,” said Susan.
“Thank you,” said Ann, and Susan looked up at that.
“Sorry I called you that word,” she said. “That’s not how it was supposed to go when you woke up.”
Ann tried to smile. “I’m sorry about the TV.”
“My fault,” said Susan. She stood up, and frowned and nodded to herself. “I’m the fuckup. I was supposed to offer you some wine. Maybe something stronger. I got caught up. Stupid game.”
Ann felt a chill up her arms again, but this time, the drapes were still. This chill was familiar in its own way. She’d felt it on the road, at the end of a long day driving, as she pulled into a campground, and thought about opening up the cooler in back.
“Is there wine here?”
“Over there,” said Susan, motioning to the credenza. “Some nice stuff. You should have a glass.”
“Not sure I feel like wine right now. Philip—”
At that, Susan finally cracked a grin. “Oh, come on now,” she said. “I already told you. Philip’s gone.”
Ann looked at the credenza, and at Susan. She shook her
head.
“I shouldn’t. Not until—”
“Until what?” Susan motioned to the credenza again. “You’re not going anywhere for at least a few hours. And really—when haven’t you felt like a nice glass of Ian’s wine? Just check it out.”
The credenza was more than it appeared.
When Ann opened the doors, she found inside a small bar refrigerator, installed next to racks of tall stemless wine glasses and a rack of six bottles of red wine. The refrigerator contained another six bottle
s of white. Ann selected a Gewürztraminer. Rickhardt Estates did a good job with the Gewürzt.
There was a giant corkscrew contraption on the shelf below the glasses. To the uninitiated, it was a puzzle box, but Ian had this model in his kitchen and early in their acquaintance he’d showed Ann the trick. Ann unfolded and twisted and pumped, and the pink rubber cork disappeared in the thing’s belly. She pulled out two glasses, holding them between three fingers by the rims as she set them down, and poured.
It was only after she’d joined Susan back at the wreckage of the TV that Ann noticed. The doors leading to the hallway, right beside her, were shut.
“Sure,” said Susan, taking the glass, “just one.”
“I don’t remember this part of the house,” said Ann. They were sitting on the sofa, each tucked against separate armrests. Susan Rickhardt was back in her Buddha pose, legs crossed up under her, her wine glass cradled in her lap. She was looking at her lap.
“You’re not in the house,” she said.
“We’re at the vineyard, though. I don’t remember this from the winery either.”
Susan nodded. “You never came out to this part. It’s the conference centre.”
“Didn’t know there was a conference centre.”
“It was no secret. But I can see how Ian wouldn’t give you the tour.”
“We had our wedding here. You’d think we’d have at least talked about using this—”
“You’d think you two would’ve talked about a couple things.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Sure. They don’t do weddings here,” said Susan. “That’s what the new building’s for. Wasn’t that one nice enough for you?”
Ann emptied her glass and reached down for the bottle. It was mostly empty.
“Damn,” said Susan. “I’ll get you another one.”
“It’s not that,” said Ann. “But . . .” she struggled to put the thought to words. Wine didn’t usually hit her this hard. “. . . but let’s put it on the table. This isn’t a conference centre, is it now?”