[Oxrun Station] The Bloodwind

by Charles L. Grant

  Harriet stared at her, obviously fighting a grin. "What?"

  "Ollie is a shithead," she said. "He wouldn't last a week in New York. What about Ben?"

  Harriet shrugged. "Sometimes he agrees with Oliver, sometimes with me. But he's mad, Doc. He's really mad. And I don't understand it because you never promised anything for any of us, except that you'd try this Curtis for us. That's all you ever said, right?"

  She nodded.

  "Well, that's what I told them. And the next thing I knew we were running all over the place yelling and screaming and Oliver was punching out my mother's ferns ..." She stopped and giggled. "You ever try to punch out a fern?"

  Pat sighed her relief and sat again, closer this time, feeling less at bay. "Harriet, you know there are times when you're not nearly as dumb as you let people think."

  The girl started as if touched by a flame, rubbed a hand gently along one cheek.

  "So what do you want me to do, Harriet? Do you want me to talk to them?"

  "No!" Her hand shifted to cover her mouth. "I'm sorry; I didn't mean to snap at you. But when they left they were ready to kill, if you know what I mean, and I just wanted to let you know. Maybe by Monday they'll be okay, I don't know. Maybe. I just thought you should know because—"

  "I should be prepared for the worst?"

  Harriet looked at her, the lamplight bleaching her color, yet sifting shadows into her eyes. "Yes," she said quietly. "Something like that." Then, before Pat could react, she was on her feet and rushing toward the door. One arm caught in a sleeve as she tried to fling on her coat and she cursed at it loudly, glancing fearfully back over her shoulder as if Pat might come after her.

  Pat, however, remained where she was. As suddenly angered as she was over the girl's dramatics, she knew better than to follow. All she would get now would be more of the same, only this time couched in typical Trotter hysterics. And when the door slammed shut, she rose and walked to the French doors, pulled aside the curtain and watched as Harriet darted into the street to the opposite sidewalk, running in spite of the patches of snow still on the pavement, her coat flapping behind her, her arms close to her sides. She was gone in seconds.

  A week ago, even a couple of days, and she would have been scrambling for the closet to hide in, or for the telephone to call Greg and demand protection and sympathy for the collapse of her world or the destruction of her enemies. She might even have had a glimpse of some thing lurking in the early-evening darkness, out there beyond the trees, waiting for her and watching.

  But that was done now.

  All she could do was feel an understandable twinge of self-pity for what she believed was her own failure in properly preparing the trio for what lay beyond Hawksted's walls, and a certain amount of disgusted anger at Oliver's childishness and Ben's fickle loyalty. She would talk to them, but she would wait until Monday when her temper had calmed and her mood stabilized. For now she had work to do. Homer and his twin. And she would be damned if Oliver was going to take Greg's pleasure from her.

  By midnight the grizzly's canines were finished; by one her eyes had grown so tired they felt in danger of crossing. She grinned at her work and swept the dust and the chips onto the floor. Tomorrow would be soon enough to take care of the cleaning. Then she wandered into the kitchen and pulled a bottle of brandy from the cupboard over the refrigerator, filled a juice glass halfway and toasted her reflection in the dark-framed window. As she lifted her glass to drink, however, a tiny piece of marble fell from her hair into the liquid. She blinked at it stupidly, sighed and fished it out with a finger. Not exactly the most sophisticated method of taking care of a problem, but one she was used to, forever finding chunks and fragments of stone in her purse, in her car, even in her pockets. It was an occupational hazard, and one of the tiny-reasons-made-huge that had caused Leonard to leave her.

  Greg, on the other hand, thought it a fascinating characteristic, an identification of her which belonged to no one else. He had, in fact, been with her and the trio on several afternoon excursions to the quarry. And he'd confessed to her once that, like the trio, he'd gone back there on his own, alone, just to stare at the gaping hole in the hillside, just to wonder about things that to someone else would not be important.

  Leonard would have called it a rock pile, she thought without malice; a rock pile, and nothing else.

  The smile that parted her lips grew slightly melancholy; she'd been thinking an awful lot about her ex-husband these days, another sign of the pressure she'd finally dug out of with her trip to New York. There was no affection there, however, except one for a distant, onetime friend one seldom saw anymore. A wondering, as she did every other June about those in her high school graduating class. Which of them had become real estate salesmen, which policemen, which outlaws. Which of them, like her, had finally shucked the conventions taught so diligently by her teachers and had discovered there was a living out there in the world that was defined in a much larger sense than by the size of a paycheck or a white-cottage mortgage or the number of children one had before one was thirty.

  Not many, she guessed as she replaced the brandy and set the glass in the sink. Not many at all.

  There was a knock on the door as she moved slowly toward the bedroom. She stopped, listened, thinking perhaps it was Harriet returned with another episode to be unburdened of. A glance at the digital clock on the nightstand told her it was almost two, and a moment of tension stiffened her spine until she heard a voice whispering her name. She grinned and took her time answering. Laughed aloud when she yanked open the door and Greg took a step backward, as if expecting a blow.

  "You do know what time it is," she said, stepping aside and waving him in.

  "I am not drunk," he insisted, heading directly for the sofa without taking off his coat. He sat primly, hands in his lap, knees and ankles together. "I am not drunk."

  "I believe you," she said, still grinning, the scent of bourbon strong in his wake. "But I repeat: you do know what time it is, don't you?"

  He nodded, and leaned back, his hands slipping to the cushions on either side of his hips. "I was enjoying a small tot, as it were, in the Inn, as it were, when I thought about you cooped up here all day. I decided it was time you were liberated." He struggled out of his coat and dropped it on the floor. His shirt was dark flannel, opened midway to his abdomen, yet he still slipped a finger under the back of his collar and tugged at it as if he were being choked. "I said to myself that it wasn't fair you should be abed on a Saturday night. At least not alone."

  "Greg," she said carefully.

  A grandiose wave was meant to dispel her objection. "I am a dear and close, though not so old, friend, am I right? Who else to lay your troubles to? Who else to spill your guts to in such a time of tribulation?"

  "You've been taking lessons from Danvers on the sly, you bastard." She sat beside him, just out of reach. "Greg, why didn't you go home?"

  He closed his eyes, his head resting on the sofa's arched-wood back. "I missed your voice."

  "You have a telephone."

  "I might have gotten you out of bed."

  She coughed back a laugh.

  "Your car is parked at the curb," he said then, his voice quiet, the words not quite slurred. "Dangerous. You should keep it in the driveway."

  She frowned for a moment, shook her head to rid herself of the curious impression he was at once scolding her and sounding relieved. She leaned closer to him and touched his arm. "Greg, what is it? Is it that girl, Susan?"

  "Who?"

  "Susan. Susan Haslet. The one who was killed in the accident."

  His face creased in an effort to think. Then: "No."

  She couldn't resist it—she slid next to him and kissed his cheek lightly, laid a hand on his chest and slipped her fingers under his shirt. "What?"

  He stirred, but kept his eyes closed. "I was thinking," he said.

  "Good."

  "I was thinking about you. I was thinking ... I couldn't figure out why it w
as that so much of your work sold when I can count on the fingers of two hands how many of my things have left my easel. I was thinking that maybe you had some kind of potion, something you gave buyers to loosen up their wallets. I was thinking ..."

  When he paused she pulled away, not shocked but somewhat pained at the bitterness that had crept into his tone. He sounded so much like Oliver it was uncanny, and she had to resist the urge to slap him as hard as she could. An urge that passed the moment she saw his lips grow taut as he fought to bury a smile.

  "I was thinking all that, you see, and decided it was sour grapes." His eyes snapped open, and his hand slipped to the back of her neck. She did not resist. "You asked me if I'd been drinking."

  "Shut up," she said, and kissed him.

  "I was," he said, making her laugh and back away. He sighed loudly. "Drinking and expostulating and making a damned fool of myself so I decided I needed some salvation." His hand went to the top button of her shirt. "You either have a hell of a case of dandruff or you've been working."

  She grabbed his hand and pressed it hard against her breast. "If you don't shut up, Greg ..."

  His lips brushed her cheek, her ear. "You work too hard." Moved to the side of her neck. "Much too hard." To the hollow of her throat. "You smell like stone." Hands unbuttoning the shirt, lips to the rise of her breasts. "All work and no play." Her bra parted in the front. A chill across her flesh, pleasant, anticipation. "You need someone to protect you against all work and no play." She shrugged the shirt off her shoulders, concentrating on his touch while her hands moved to pull his shirt from his waistband. "I decided it was all sour grapes and I'm going to accept your favor for the next joust." Lips. To her own, to her chin, to her throat.

  She let a small groan slip from her, laced her hands through his dark hair as he slipped past her breasts to her stomach. She pulled up her legs and worked them to either side of him, waiting, waiting, until the warmth of his breath against her stomach made her swim out of the dream she thought she'd fallen into.

  "Greg?"

  He turned his head slowly to rest his cheek on her navel.

  "Oh . . ." She would have said "damn," but he wouldn't have heard her.

  13

  THE snow untrapped by the shadows of the trees was brilliant, daystars caught in a crust of white that spread unbroken over the fields beyond the village. Skeletons of orchards, stands of pine, a few shaggy-coated horses were the only dark elements in an otherwise pristine valley. Even the ridges thrown up by the plows on the verges had not yet been completely contaminated by passing traffic; and out here, along Cross Valley Road, the odds of that happening were considerably small. Most of the homes east of this road were farmhouses, most of the people either members of the stoic and hardy few who refused to give in to the larger combines in other parts of the state, or recent settlers who allowed the fields to go to seed, content only in the block-style buildings and the fieldstone fireplaces and the open spaces where their children and their imaginations would run without danger. There were a number of spurs off Cross Valley, each digging closer to the back wall of hills, only one of which had a name— Pointer's, over which Greg drove his VW with confidence born of the extremely lucky and the marvelously foolhardy.

  Pat adjusted her sunglasses, muttering every time the loose temples allowed them to slide toward the center of her nose. She had kept her coat buttoned snugly, her muffler snugly wrapped, since the car's heater had given up working just after they'd thumped over the railroad tracks. The windows, then, had been cracked to prevent the windshield from fogging, and though the day was gorgeous and the breeze bracing, she didn't really care to add pneumonia to the outing.

  The outing itself was startling enough.

  Sometime during the dark morning hours she had managed to get Greg undressed and into her bed. Her mind fuzzy with sleep, her lips working at a laugh that never quite came to surface, she'd fallen in beside him and snaked an arm under his neck. Drifted off, and had awakened with his left palm cupping her breast. She'd kissed him and he'd moaned in his sleep, kissed him again and let her hand slip tickling between his legs. Kissed him a third time, tasting the inside of his lips with her tongue and opening her eyes to find him staring at her. She'd almost laughed, held it in check until he had realized he was awake and made love to her. Gently. So slowly she wasn't sure he would be able to finish. But he had done. And had done it again. Then rested her head on the center of her pillow and had padded off to make breakfast.

  Two hours later he suggested they forget whatever plans they had decided on for the day and drive out to the quarry. She had refused him admittance into the workroom, and his none-too-subtle curiosity was sufficient reason to get him out of the house. When she agreed, shoving him back toward the kitchen, he nodded as if he'd known it all along and proceeded to organize a gathering of sustenance, the prime ingredient of which was a Thermos filled with brandy.

  "Unless," he said loudly over her halfhearted protests, "you believe that Connecticut has a contingent of St. Bernards. My dear, suppose we get lost, huh? Suppose the wilderness engulfs us and we are trapped in the vicious and uncaring arms of an unrepentant Nature."

  "Oh my god," she said, "you've been reading Jack London again."

  "You can bet on it, love," he said, and had hustled her out the door almost before she'd had time to snatch up her keys.

  The quarry had been her idea, for no reason other than she enjoyed the quiet. Greg had protested mildly, had yielded when she threatened to be "in a mood." Now they had climbed into the forest, the road losing its blacktop and becoming a concrete-hard dirt trail barely wide enough to allow the car through. Branches scraped over the roof, shrubs scratched the sides, and she winced whenever they passed over a low thicket of browned weeds topped with speartips of ice. The rattle made her nervous; they were already a considerable distance from the nearest house, and she didn't relish the thought of the VW breaking down and forcing them to walk all the way back. With civilization so near, she had forgotten how desolate this area of the hills could be.

  And how quiet now that Greg had stopped his chatter and was concentrating on keeping the vehicle from dropping into a ditch or colliding with a boulder cloaked with heavy snow.

  The road banked sharply to the right. Widened, and the young trees to either side marked a place once cleared and used. A series of five old sheds on the right had been weather-stripped of their paint, a sixth and seventh had collapsed in the past from the weight of the seasons. On the left were two chimneys, nothing more. A half-mile further on and the road dipped, all that remained of a railroad spur that had taken quarry blocks down to the depot for shipping. She had once spent an entire Saturday trying to locate the tracks, had concluded someone had ordered the rails and ties taken up once the mining had ceased.

  And then, abruptly, the road climbed for a hundred yards, leveled, and Greg braked slowly to keep the car from skidding.

  "God," she said breathlessly as she pushed open the door, "I should have come out here sooner."

  The abandoned quarry was two hundred yards across, less then one hundred wide, and a sheer drop from where she stood of sixty or more feet to the surface of the water. The sides were sheer-faced stone still showing the marks of explosions and cutting, inter-spaced with saplings and brush that somehow made it all seem much more forbidding. The woodland came directly to the edge, save for this one area where Greg had joined her, an open cage, she had first thought, to keep in whatever lived down in the pool.

  During the summer she had expected to find any number of students and local kids using it for swimming, but not once during any of her visits had she discovered signs that even picnics had been held here. It had been abandoned, then, not only by the miners, but also by the village; a short-lived enterprise that had yielded low-grade granite and a few tons of marble unobtainable elsewhere and quickly snapped up for the village's municipal buildings.

  The snow crunched beneath Greg's workman boots. He stood behind her,
one hand on her shoulder.

  "You really do like it here, don't you."

  She nestled her head back against his chest. "Yep," she said. "It's a getaway place, if you know what I mean. A good place to scream when throwing dishes doesn't work."

  He chuckled and squeezed her shoulder tightly. "For you, maybe. For me it's kind of spooky, don't you think? I mean, all the times you've brought me out here, I've never seen a single animal or one lousy bird."

  "No kidding," she said. "I've never noticed."

  The road angled downward slightly, leveled again at the base of a six-foot grey boulder the wind and the rain had scoured into the vague shape of a throne. At its front there was a wide seat and armrests, and Pat quickly dug and brushed off the snow so she could take her place and stare out over the quarry. Greg, who distrusted the slippery ground that only ran another eight feet before it plunged over the edge, stood to one side, his hands deep in his pockets, his chin tucked into his muffler.

  "Crazy," he muttered.

  A faint echo. Fainter still, the chorus of intermittent voices the wind wrung from the gaps that pocked the walls.

  "There," She said, pointing to her right. "Over there is where I found the stone for Homer. I nearly killed myself climbing down when I saw it." She smiled at the memory, fear gone and replaced by amazement. "It was wedged in a crack, but I knew what it was as soon as I saw it. I had to have it, you know what I mean, Greg? Nothing was going to keep me from getting it."

  Greg leaned forward at the waist, squinting. "You're right. You could've been killed."

  A silence, then, as he pulled out the Thermos and poured a dollop into its red cap. He passed it to her and she drank, hugging herself delightedly at the fire in her gullet. She sighed her content, not wanting to frown when she saw how uneasy he seemed, as if the drop to the white-covered frozen surface were pulling at him with invisible, tempting fingers. They hadn't been here together since last fall, last October, but she was positive he hadn't reacted this way then. Not that it mattered. He could have been covering up in order to impress her. This made it a good sign, that he was relaxed enough not to have to play foolish courtship games.