[Oxrun Station] The Bloodwind

by Charles L. Grant

  Homer's shelf was still empty.

  She tried the telephone and Greg wasn't home. Neither was Harriet. And no one at the dorms had seen either Oliver or Ben.

  She sat at the kitchen table. She stood. She wandered into the workshop and lifted her tools, replaced them, wandered into the bedroom and dropped onto the bed. Crossed her legs. Set her hands behind her head. Stared at the canopy sagging slightly in its frame. Lowered her gaze to the side window overlooking the driveway, shifted it to the back window where she watched bare branches tremble, the flitting shadow of a bird, the red blotch of a sun practically set. She considered all the questions Wes had asked her, all the inferences she had drawn from them, and would not, could not believe she was actually suspect in Kelly's disappearance, Abbey's vanishing. But neither could she dismiss the way he would not look at her, the way he pressed her, the way he assumed it was she who had cut herself on the broken window. Of course, he might only have been doing his job, she told herself as she flopped over to her side; no matter how long they had known each other, he was obligated by his job to make certain she was not directly involved. But she was. Of course she was. As soon as he had described the way Kelly might have been taken from the car, the way Susan Haslet had died, she knew what had happened: the bloodwind's beast has swiped at Susan's car and slammed it into the pole; it had smashed through the window and pulled Kelly out. It had to be. And the only question was—why?

  She sat up suddenly, her gasp loud in the dark room.

  Oliver; it always came back to Oliver Fallchurch.

  Something he had studied, something he had known, something someone had told him led him to believe what he had told Greg months ago—that everything has a life force. Take it another step—if everything has a life force, then it was possible that force might somehow be controlled. Tapped. Released. Directed. And maybe Oliver had learned how. Maybe Oliver, in his disappointment, had tried to frighten her as punishment. And maybe, when she battled that fear in thinking it was something else, something within her, he had grown angry—another disappointment. And this time he had decided to take it all to the extreme.

  Susan Haslet's car was the same as hers. Kelly had been driving her car. She had been followed to the Mainland Road corner, and Oliver's glove had been found on the hedge the next morning. She had been followed to the quarry, and . . .

  "Slow down, slow down."

  Slow down, slow down, as she walked back to the kitchen and stood at the rear window, hands on the sill, face close to the pane.

  The marble. Fragments of the marble every time she turned around. Until Martin had called her attention to them in Haslet's car she hadn't thought anything about it. She pursed her lips in a soundless whistle and headed for the workroom, switched on the light and stood on the threshold, scanning the benches, the pedestals, the floor for a sign or a signal.

  A life force.

  Homer.

  And suddenly she knew what the redbeast was.

  20

  SHE sat on the high, barewood stool, the heels of her boots hooked over the middle rung, her hands flat on her thighs. The dark sweater she'd worn for two days now was overly warm, but she felt no discomfort. For nearly half an hour she had examined every particle of stone in the room, run through her mind every sculpture she had created and all those she could remember created by others. She flipped through art books, through magazines, through mental files of classrooms and lectures, museums and parks; and for another half hour she sat perfectly still. Mulling. Discarding. Lifting a finger once as though making a point to her students, lowering it again when she remembered she was alone.

  Life force.

  It was not the precise term she would have used had she thought of it first, but now that it was lodged there she could not rid herself of it. It wasn't right, and it wasn't wrong; but it was close enough to explain too many things.

  Life force.

  An artist has craft, and so do many others who hope for recognition. An artist has skills subtle and sometimes daring, and so do many others who study and sweat and sacrifice and slave. But separate the sheep from the wolves, men from boys, wheat from chaff, and it is called talent. Skill, craft, dedication can be taught and can be instilled, but talent cannot. You have it, you don't. If you don't you're competent, and if you do you're an artist.

  But suppose talent wasn't something as mysterious as people used to think; suppose talent was for the most part an unconscious acceptance of the existence of a life force, and with that acceptance a learning how to control it, to use it in the creation of what the artist was after. Genius would be the ultimate manipulation, the twisting and the coaxing of that force into a shape visible to the human eye. The force that added depth to a portrait, shades of interpretation to a sculpture, that expanded infinitely the gulf between hackwork and masterpiece.

  And suppose further that this unconscious acceptance became fully conscious. Suppose, in its discovery, the discoverer understood that manipulation could extend to something more than mere artwork. Lifework. Literally. Inanimate objects given mobility and purpose.

  The redbeast was Homer.

  She could see it now, veiled by the snow—the massive paw, the eyes, the snout, the teeth that gleamed. And red. The color immemorial of man's unbridled hatred.

  Could everything be animated then?

  Obviously not, or it would have been. Therefore, there were forces closer to the surface, more maleable, more accessible. The stone she had fetched from the quarry had broken in half—the one she used for Homer, the other for its mirror image. Homer was nothing more than a quaint statuette; the image, however . . .

  Bits and pieces of it, then, luring its insubstantial form to her, yet not so insubstantial that it could not stave in the side of a car and murder a young woman, could not smash through glass and drag another woman to her death, could not stalk her, could not chase her. She had found in her terror the shards in her pocket and she had tossed them away, which answered Greg's question—it did not follow because it could not follow. And to a question of her own—it had corporeal existence once the image had been completed.

  And the image, and the original, were gone.

  Slowly, almost imperceptibly, she lowered her feet to the floor. She stood, one hand back to balance herself, and went into the kitchen. Opened the refrigerator and checked the contents: milk, lettuce, various thin-necked bottles of salad dressing, fruit juice, sandwich meats, fresh vegetables. All of it ordinary. All of it perfectly ordinary. Cheese. Mustard. Olives. An open box of baking soda too long standing on the bottom shelf. Ordinary. Catsup. Jam. Meat in the freezer. Ice-cube trays. Tangible evidence of a living inhabitant, an ordinary human being, a woman who had fought for herself long before fighting became fashionable, became chic, became a rallying cry for women who needed a cause before they would bestir themselves into false safety among numbers.

  Ordinary. And thinking of a creature not quite of the supernatural that had grown from a warning to an adversary bent on killing.

  There was no doubt about it now; had she not strewn the marble pieces over the snow the redbeast would have left the bloodwind and crushed her screaming into the ground.

  The door closed when she released it, shutting off the cold, shutting off the light. There was only the dark copper finish and the gleam of framing chrome.

  And the empty shelf behind her.

  A blink, and she was in the livingroom, standing at the French doors, the curtains parted and the streetlamp across the way outlining the porch railing as the moon had done the trees out at the quarry. Her breath fogged the pane closest to her lips. An automobile slipped past behind the drag of its headlamps. A couple walked the opposite pavement, close, arm in arm, heads together and capped. Another car. Old man Stillworth hobbling out of nowhere and up to his porch, fumbling with the lock, stepping in and lighting the inside momentarily before the door closed behind him.

  Thirteen years, she thought. Thirteen years of climbing.

 
The alternative was simple and seductive—pack a bag and head for New York. She had done it once already, could do it again. New York was cosmopolitan. It had muggers and mounted policemen and robbers and bag ladies and friendly shopkeepers and surly cabbies and murderers and neighborhood improvement organizations and museums and theaters and crime and filth and excitement and her parents and the real world caught under shadows of buildings too tall. Nothing like the bloodwind could ever exist there. Only here, in Oxrun Station; only here, where she lived.

  My god, she thought then, aren't you tired of running?

  The muffler had been set over her hair and ears like a kerchief, tied under her chin, the ends flung back over her shoulders. The topcoat was buttoned to her throat, gloves yanked on and tugged until the folds in the leather were smooth and her wrists were covered. An extra pair of socks, a sweater over her blouse. Her pockets were empty; she had searched the apartment for a weapon and had found nothing to offer her even a modicum of comfort.

  There was only her anger, and a demand for answers.

  She had made three telephone calls: neither Harriet nor Greg answered, and the taxi was at her door in less than ten minutes.

  Now she stood in the center of the Long Walk, alone, the dark-faced buildings rising in front of her broken only here and there by the lamps in students' rooms. There was no sound. All windows were closed, and nothing escaped. Clouds blocked the moon, and a faint haze had settled around the white-globed lights set every twenty yards along the Walk.

  For five minutes, while the cold swirled and the light sharpened.

  For five minutes, while she hoped for someone to come along and see her there, watch her enter the building, watch her return.

  But no one joined her, and she prodded herself down to the left, up a series of stone steps to a pair of heavy oak doors topped with a flickering light. It expired just as she entered, but the inside was well-lit. On her left, steps heading down to the belowground offices and tunnel extensions; steps to her right she climbed quickly, one hand skating over the banister to the first landing. A door on either side, faint music from one and laughter from the other; directly ahead a wall paneled to the overhanging ceiling. The next landing faced the quad with two narrow windows. The next, two doors again, and a third in the paneled wall that led to a common bathroom.

  She stopped on the third floor, slightly out of breath and wondering how the students managed to charge the stairwell every day without suffering ill effects. She clung to the banister for a moment, then faced the lefthand door, a rectangular metal insert in its center holding a card with four names typed on if. Montgomery Lions, Hayward Morhouse, Benjamin Williams, Oliver Fallchurch.

  Her gloved hand hesitated before it knocked.

  And when the door swung open she stepped over the threshold before her courage failed.

  The room was large, cluttered with overstuffed used furniture, posters on the walls, beer bottles arranged in tiers on the hearth of the plugged fireplace. In the front righthand corner to one side of the windows was a desk piled with books, illuminated by a lamp with a dark green glass shade. Someone sat just beyond the light's reach, and she moved deeper into the room, aware of the worn carpeting, of a faint locker-room scent that wrinkled her nose.

  She gestured vaguely back toward the door. "It was open." Not quite an apology. "Unlatched, I think."

  The figure shifted its chair closer to the desk, the legs scraping on the floor.

  "Ben?"

  "Yes, Doc." He leaned into the light, and even with the shadows cast wavering over his face she could see the sheen of perspiration on his cheeks, the pallid flesh, the pouched eyes. His left sleeve was unpinned, and a sudden movement draped it over a textbook.

  It was quiet. No sound from the two bedrooms, nothing from the rooms below and across the landing. When she took another step she could hear her boots creaking, her jeans rustling, the lining of her coat whispering over her sweater.

  "Are you alone?"

  Ben nodded, then sagged back in his chair, his face gone from the light. "I don't know where he went."

  It took her a long moment to assimilate the implication. "You knew I was coming?"

  "Sooner or later." She sensed a slow shake of his head. "He's nuts, Doc. This whole thing's got him nuts."

  She glanced around her, found a low-backed armchair and took it, hoping she appeared more calm than she felt. Her stomach felt queasy. The room was overly warm, yet she did not remove the muffler nor loosen any buttons; instead, she gathered her hands in her lap and watched them clasp, open, clasp again.

  "He plays the role, you know," Ben said quietly, with no apparent attempt to hide the fear that seemed trying to throttle each word. "Cowboy, artist, stuff like that. He does it all the time. I've been with him since we were freshmen and he's always playing the role."

  She kept her voice hard. "What's he playing now, Ben?"

  It seemed a sigh drawn from torture: "He hates you, Doc. I never saw anybody hate anyone so much."

  There should have been relief, she told herself then; she should be feeling an immense satisfaction at having finally been right. But she felt only a shudder that made one leg jump.

  "Where is he?"

  The figure behind the light shrugged.

  "Ben, damnit!"

  A whimpering that jerked up her head, made her squint and fail to see the expression on his face.

  "Ben?"

  "He comes in around dinner on Saturday. He says he's had it, he's not going to be shoved around anymore. He says you even got the police looking for him and he knew all along you couldn't be trusted. He said he was through fooling around."

  "Fooling . . . ?" She almost choked.

  The chair creaked, and Ben stood. He walked to the window and looked out at the quad, at the forest beyond. Then he scuttled back into his corner, his hand raking through his hair, rubbing hard down over his face.

  "I wanted to stop him, see, but he wouldn't listen to me when I said it wasn't any good. He's so much in love he can't see straight, and he won't listen to anyone else. He just does everything, and the hell with how it turns out. I mean, you should see him, Doc! He's crazy. I really think he's crazy. He's got Monty and Hay out of here most of the day he scares them so much the way he bulls around, and I'm too tired to hold him anymore. God. Oh Jesus!" He rocked on his buttocks, the empty sleeve swaying at his side. "I'm going away, Doc. I got all the forms Friday and I'm transferring the hell out."

  "Ben!"

  "No!" He stood again and came round the desk to stand in front of her. "No, please, there's nothing you can say, believe me. I've been thinking about this for a long time, and I want the hell out. I can't handle it. I mean, I have enough trouble taking care of myself and this"—he jerked the stump of his arm toward her— "and I just can't handle what Ollie's doing."

  She stood slowly, forcing him back a step. Reached out a hand, dropped it when he shied away. "You knew," she said, more in sorrow than disbelief. "You knew all about it and you never said a thing." She ignored the panic fed by his fear that stumbled him back toward the windowsill; she ignored the strangling sound that escaped his throat; she ignored everything but the need to hear the answer she already knew. "You knew, Ben, and you never said a word."

  "All right!" he shouted. "Damnit, I knew what he was trying to do right from the start. But I didn't believe him. I didn't! I mean, would you, Doc? Would you believe it if someone came up to you and said he could do what's been going on around here lately? Would you?" He slashed the air. "Shit no. You'd have him locked up. You'd call the funny farm and have him taken away. But he was crazy, man. I mean, the guy had lost every card in the deck. You couldn't talk to him, you couldn't make him see anything but what he was going to do." His hand in a fist, a feint at the window. "Hell. Shit!" His shoulders slumped. Then he turned, suddenly, and Pat thought for a moment he was going to attack her. He pointed at her. "You—" And he stopped, grunted, and brushed past her into the lefthand bedroom.

/>   She followed, not knowing what to say and needing to say something in order to learn more. She had to know more, it was the first principle in defending yourself against an enemy set to kill you.

  Two dressers against the wall, two beds whose footboards were each below a casement window. No rug. Two wardrobes. Ben was at one, yanking out clothes and stuffing them into a suitcase scarred with frequent use. A shirt fell to the floor and he kicked it angrily under the bed; a shoe dropped and he groaned; and when a handful of folded socks tumbled from his hand, he dropped to the other bed and covered his eyes.

  "Doc? Doc, I'm scared."

  She sat quickly beside him, an arm around his shoulders, thinking this wasn't the way it should be- at all. Her fury was still contained, but she should be out on the hunt, not sitting in a dark room comforting a boy trying hard to be a man.

  "I am, too," she whispered. "And that's why you have to help me, Ben."

  "I can't!" he said, almost wailing. "They said before they'd kill me if I said anything. And I wasn't going to say anything because I didn't believe it. My god, how the hell can you believe something like this, huh? How can you?" He looked up at the wall, eyes blinking furiously.

  He'll leave, she thought then; he'll leave and find a new place to live and in a few weeks, a few months, he'll convince himself it never happened. It was a dream. A nightmare. He'll shunt it aside and live again, and every once in a while he'll wake up screaming and not know what it was.

  "All right," she said calmly, tightening her grip briefly. "All right, Ben. But you at least have to tell me where they went. I have to find them, tonight. You do see that don't you? It's my life we're talking about here, and I'll be damned if I'm going to give it up just because Ollie wants me dead."

  Ben laughed.