[Oxrun Station] The Bloodwind

by Charles L. Grant

  Memories . . .

  Her eyelids fluttered and lowered. Her legs straightened so slowly she scarcely notice their moving. And her arms slipped in stages down to her sides.

  She slept. Without dreams.

  Woke when she could no longer hide from the sun. A stretching, then, and a groaning, and absolutely no guilt at all when she saw that the time was less than ten minutes to noon. A roll onto her stomach, a thumping at the pillow, the muffled squeal of a child behind the scrape of a sled's runners. With one eye she peered at the window, saw the hard blue of the sky and the shadows on the sill. The eye closed. She sighed. She smiled into the pillow and suddenly vaulted from the bed.

  By one, she had showered and dressed, had washed and dried the dishes from a breakfast she'd almost gulped down so as not to see the calories from the eggs and toast and bacon. A muttering as she replaced Homer on his shelf by the door. Then she drifted through the apartment to pull back the draperies and flood all the rooms with brilliant yellow light. When she was done, she paused in the center of the livingroom for a moment, remembering she had come to some sort of conclusion just before she'd fallen asleep. It eluded her, however, and it didn't bother her. Whatever it had been had taken root somewhere, and it must have been good or she wouldn't have felt so fine, so loose, with so much ready and patient energy.

  She nodded once, sharply. Today she would finish Greg's gift. Or come as close to it as she could. She didn't know why, but it felt right she should work on it—not the sculpture at the college, but the statuette in her workroom. When he had first seen Homer and had heard the story behind it, he'd laughed and touched it gently, hoping (he told her) that some of its luck would rub off on him. She'd never forgotten it, nor had she forgotten the pleading and the frustration that had briefly darkened his face. It had taken her some while before she'd decided to make a copy, some while longer before she knew it would be a mirror image of the original instead of an exact duplicate.

  She nodded again. Yes, it was right. His increasing dreary moods and periods of self-doubt, his virtual surrender to his students in lieu of working on his own—who knows, she thought, he may even break out of his slump and stop feeling so jealous.

  The telephone rang. She turned casually and took her time walking to the kitchen. It didn't matter if whoever it was hung up before she got there; if it was important they would call back, and if not she didn't want to hear it. Not today, when everything was so fine.

  As she lifted the receiver she almost yawned, and nearly choked on a laugh when she heard Greg's voice.

  "Well, speak of the devil."

  A pause. "Pat, are you all right? I mean, do you have company or something?"

  "Nope," she said, reaching out for the nearest chair and pulling it toward her. "I'm alone and getting ready to do some work."

  "You didn't come in yesterday." No accusation, not exactly a question. "Luckily, I was able to come to your rescue and keep Danvers from raising the roof.''

  A palm clapped to her forehead. "Oh my god, I forgot about him completely. I was going to call—"

  "I know, I know," he said, a rim of laughter in his voice. "It was a good thing Harriet saw me first. When she told me, and when I called you and you weren't home, I sashayed into the schmuck's office and told him you had an interview in Minneapolis, contracted a vicious form of typhoid on the way and wouldn't be in until Monday. I'm not sure he bought all of it, but at least you'll live through the weekend." His laughter broke loose, then, while she grinned at the window. "Seriously, though, are you okay, Pat? I mean, there's nothing wrong, is there? I was . . . well, I hate to admit this, you realize, but I was worried about you. And when I dropped by after classes you weren't there. Did you, uh . . ."

  "Yes," she said, drawing up her legs to set her heels on the cushion's edge. "Yes, I went to New York. I had to, Greg."

  "You could have called me."

  It took her a moment to say, "No. Not this time. I guess it was all that pressure and stuff, too much drinking, too much imagination. I mean, I was beginning to think there were spooks and goblins out there to get me, and every one of them had Ford's fizz painted all over them."

  "Fizz? Did you say fizz?"

  She pushed her free hand back through her hair. "Fizz. An old Cagney term for puss." She waited, but he made no comment and she stuck her tongue out at the receiver. There were times when she wondered if his sense of humor passed only in one direction. "Anyway," she said into the silence, "I had to get away for a while. I thought I'd be gone the whole weekend, but . . . I came back. Late. Greg, so many things have happened lately, and somehow I lost the ability to handle it. So it was either go down to the city or lock myself in a closet.''

  "Yeah," he said, "I know exactly what you mean. So. Are you okay now?"

  "Fine," she said. "Just fine."

  "Good. That's good."

  "It sure is."

  "Great." Her grin became impish. If there was something else he wanted to say she wasn't going to drag it out of him. He'd have to do it on his own. "So what are you going to do today?"

  "Work," she said, glancing over her shoulder to the hallway. "A project I have here that's pretty important now."

  "Oh really?" And she frowned at the abrupt frost on the line. "Got yourself a commission or something?"

  "No," she said sharply, not caring if he bridled. "No, it's not, Greg. A private thing, and something I can't talk about until it's done, all right?"

  "Sure, sure. I know what they are."

  I'll bet, she thought uncharitably.

  "So."

  "Buttons," she said.

  "Huh?"

  "Sew buttons. Something my mother used to say when I was a kid."

  "Oh." A crackling, then, and she was puzzled until she heard it again; he was opening a pack of cigarettes. "Say, Pat, is this work of yours going to last very long? I mean, I don't suppose you'd be done in time to catch a show over in Harley. Maybe a couple of drinks after?"

  She almost accepted, but she sensed a fine edge on his temper and did not want to spend the evening walking on eggs. Especially when she knew her present mood wouldn't fade.

  "Pat?"

  "Greg, I'd like to, really, but I want to get this done as soon as I can."

  "It's really that important."

  "Yes. At least it is to me. And as long as I feel like working again, I don't want to waste it." Her laugh was forced. "You know how it is, Greg. Strike while the iron's hot or it all turns to crap." She waited. He said nothing. "You do understand, don't you?"

  "Sure I do, Pat. You know I do." A rustling, then, as he changed hands. "Well, look, I'll—hell, there's someone at the door. Hey, I'll call you tomorrow, okay? Maybe we can go for a drive, watch the snowbuggies tear up the wildlife, okay?"

  "Sure, yes. As a matter of fact, I'll probably have cabin fever by then, so I'll need to get out. Call me around noon, okay?"

  "You got it, Pat. And Pat . . ."

  "Yes?"

  "I, uh . . . I'm glad you're all right. You really had me worried for a while there."

  "I had me worried, too. Talk to you tomorrow."

  The connection broken, she lowered her feet to the floor again and leaned back until the chair tilted, bumped against the doorframe. Her ankles hooked around the legs. It was incredible, and not a little enervating, what an admixture of feelings she had when she spoke to him over the phone. Motherly and antagonistic, challenging and daring, exasperation and quiet. She was positive he'd been about to tell her at last that he loved her, and had backed away as he had every other time. Now, however, she did not feel angry, nor relieved. Angry because he'd failed to give voice to his feelings; relieved because it had always produced in her a need to run, to fend him off, embattled as she was with memories of Leonard and their idyll that had died so suddenly. He'd never harmed her, never cheated on her; what they had had simply eroded because they'd no foundation except short-lived romance. And when Lauren had been born . . . and had died ... not even joy o
r sorrow could pull them together for more than a moment.

  It had been, simply put and simply meant, a mistake.

  And she didn't want to make that mistake again.

  The chair thumped back to the floor and she rose, grabbed Homer from his perch and wandered into the workroom, shaking off Greg and the call and a fuzzy image of Leonard the moment she stepped over the threshold.

  Into a room small and oddly shaped, hooking around into an el at the back, a narrow windowed space that could easily have been made into a closet if it hadn't been for the door leading to never-used back steps. That part of the room was behind the mirror on the landing, and she knew from a single visit that Mrs. Evans had turned her identical space into a sewing room filled with bolts and scraps and the smell of a hundred spools of thread.

  The floor was covered by the cheapest rug she'd been able to find, one that wouldn't mind being layered with fine dust. The walls were papered in stripes and roses, the left one partially stripped until she'd given up and left it. Pedestals, workbench, an easel, rolls of canvas and stretching boards—this was a haven for comfortable chaos. Neither the window in the el nor the one practically jammed against the wall shared with the bathroom were curtained or shaded, and the sun just starting its winter dive to the west filled the room so brightly she had to squint until she could see.

  Greg. She shook her head once and pulled a smock off a wall peg, shrugged into it and set Homer on a tall barstool, just to the right and behind a matching stool-and-wide-board that held a fifteen-inch cube of grey-white marble. Most of it had been chiseled and chipped to sharp pieces on the floor, leaving behind all of Homer's mirror-twin save its hindlegs. Its body was already as detailed as she'd wanted, its face complete but for the eyes and the teeth. She stood in front of it and stared over at Homer. “Doesn't have your personality," she said, grinning as she rubbed her palms together for starting. "And if he doesn't like it, you know I'm going to use it to bash in his head.''

  She walked around the stool slowly, a finger reaching out now and then to remind herself of a correction, of a speck in the stone she considered polishing out. Then she reached for a rag and dusted lightly its cocked head, looked down at the block where its feet were still embedded. That first, she decided, and the face last. Because once the face was done she would want Greg to see it, and she didn't want him spoiling things by making jokes about her method. It was bad enough he pulled every chestnut from the fire—This looks easy; all you do is chip away everything that's not what you're doing; it would be worse if he didn't appreciate both the work and the hope behind it.

  "And that," she said to Homer, "is why we haven't been in here for a while. You know, a shrink would love me, he really would. Avoidance-approach, isn't that what they call it? God, it's been so long, Homer, I can't even remember."

  She leaned closer, blindly reaching out to pick up the chisel.

  "You know, pal, I'm glad you didn't go with me yesterday. You'd hate the city. Too big, too noisy, they'd want to run you through a Xerox and stick you in a Times Square shop window for the tourists or something. Better you should stick to the kitchen, you know?"

  She started at the uncompleted block, envisioning the paws, matching them with Homer's, searching again for flaws that might crack the entire piece to dust.

  Then she blinked and straightened and stared right at Homer.

  "What. . . ?"

  The chisel dropped to the floor unnoticed as she turned and hurried back to the kitchen. Stood in the doorway and saw herself coming in for breakfast. At the stove. At the cupboards. Pushing Homer aside while she ate and had her tea. Pushing Homer aside while she cleaned up afterward. Setting Homer on his shelf . . . setting Homer on his shelf . . .

  "No."

  She walked around the table, searching the floor, the counters, even looking down the crack between the refrigerator and the stove.

  "No, damnit!"

  But yesterday (yesterday, or a hundred years ago?) she had run upstairs with the glove she'd found in the box, with Homer in her handbag. Homer had gone to his shelf, and the glove had been tossed onto the table.

  Now the glove was gone, and Homer had been moved.

  11

  LESS than twenty minutes on her hands and knees in kitchen and bedroom convinced her she'd not find the glove, and it took far less than a second to dispel any thought that she'd been mistaken. It had been there. On the table. And Homer had been placed on his shelf before she'd left.

  Which meant that someone had been in the apartment while she'd been in New York.

  She dropped heavily onto the sofa in the livingroom, hands clasped between her knees as she stared blindly at the coffee table. A pile of magazines on the right, ashtray in the center, a half-read paperback novel on the left. She saw none of it. There was only a streak of enhanced light from the windows arrowing across the dark wood to the filigreed raised edges. It blinded her, but she did not turn away. It shimmered, seeming to drift away, then winked out and back when a large bird passed between it and the sun. She saw none of it.

  What she saw instead was a shadow, features and edges indistinguishable as it slipped through her home— her home!—and made its way into the kitchen where it picked up the glove and moved the statuette from one place to another. Again and twice more she followed it, shaking her head in bewilderment because it made no sense, no sense at all. There was no question, of course, but that it had to have been Oliver. Without a single bit of his trappings he was more like a child than a twenty-one-year-old student flirting with manhood. She recalled a day last spring when he'd come to class without his Stetson, trembling like an addict without his drug. Someone on the quad had snatched it on the run, and it wasn't until Ben had tracked the prankster down and retrieved it that Oliver had been able to think straight, to work. Pat hadn't quite understood it then, and she did not understand it now. He was much too old to rely on such charms, certainly too old to continue retreating into a romanticized era where his own ungainly size would have been a symbol for strength, not ridicule. He was much too old, and yet obviously not old enough.

  Her hands slapped her thighs and she rose, hesitant until she saw his trapising through what was hers, without her permission, breaking in like a common criminal for a lousy goddam glove.

  She called Harriet, learned the two boys were with her, and instructed the three of them to remain where they were until she arrived. Her coat fought with her, her hands fumbled through the pockets until she remembered the wind had taken her cap that night. Well, she thought as she stomped angrily down the stairs, at least I'm not calling it a monster anymore.

  Across the street and up the block to High, over to Fox Road and she stood in front of a Victorian much like her own on a much smaller scale. Evergreen shrubs lined the porch that ringed the house, and the pines in the front yard were a good thirty feet over the roof. Harriet was standing at the front door, waiting, smiling anxiously and rubbing her hands together against the chill.

  "Hey, Doc," she said as Pat took the steps. "We're—"

  Pat brushed past her and turned right into the parlor, a room turned into a tropical forest by hanging ferns and potted rubber plants, the greens of the carpet and furniture, the tinted shades that as far as she knew had never been lifted. The house was warm, too warm for her taste, and she had her coat unbuttoned before she'd stopped walking.

  Harriet hovered at her side, confused, her left hand pulling at the buttons of her plaid shirt, then dropping to rub against the snug fit of her jeans. Ben was sitting in a large wing-back in front of the farside windows, his legs crossed, a glass of dark liquid in his hand. He smiled, though a glance to Harriet asked the obvious question. Oliver was by the fireplace. Cowboy shirt, jeans, black boots, and his gloves poking from his right hip pocket.

  "Hi, Doc," Ben said, shifting as though to rise. "You weren't in class yesterday. You're not sick, are you?"

  "No," she said. She stared at Fallchurch.

  Oliver tried and failed to me
et her gaze, half-turned to poke a pointed toe at an andiron.

  "Oliver, how could you," she said quietly. "How could you do it?"

  Harriet moved past her to sit on the couch, straggles of hair slipping over her eyes. She licked at her lips, looked to Ben, who shrugged and sat back, sipping at his drink.

  "Oliver."

  "I'm sorry, Doc." The voice was much smaller than the body from which it issued, just barely under control and its sentiment totally false.

  "If you're sorry, why did you do it in the first place? Why couldn't you have waited? Is it that damned important? I mean really, Oliver, is it that so goddamned important?"

  Harriet gasped, and Pat glared at her, wondering if she had been there, too.

  "Yes," Oliver said then, stronger, jamming his hands into his pockets and leaning his shoulder against the mantel. "Yes, it is that important. And if you don't mind me saying so, Doc, it seems to me you should have known it."

  Unbelievable; it was absolutely unbelievable. And in catching the look that passed between Ben and the girl it was evident they were on Oliver's side, condoning the break-in in spite of the trivial reason.

  "I'm sorry," she said coldly, "but I fail to understand how—"

  "Aw, shit, Doc," Ben said in disgust, thumping his glass down on the floor beside his chair. "Jesus Christ, you know damned well how we feel about this. Unless you're so wrapped up in your new department that you don't notice us anymore."

  "We?" she said, ignoring the jibe. "We?" She looked to Harriet, back to Ben and lifted a hand. "What . . . what do you two have to do with—"

  "I told you," Oliver said. "Didn't I tell you she didn't care? Didn't I tell you, huh? She can't even see us anymore. We're just faces now, just like the rest of her students. Hell, I told you."

  Pat put a hand to her forehead, the other gesturing for silence just as Ben started to speak. "Wait a minute," she said. Her eyes closed briefly, opened, looked at each of them in turn. "Wait a minute, just wait one little minute here. Why do I get the sudden feeling none of us know what we're talking about?"