Lucy lifted her head and gazed lazily at her.
“Goofball,” Rose said, crawling onto the bed with Lucy. The big dog rolled over, letting her huge body press against Rose.
“Stop it!” Rose giggled, pushing the big dog back over onto the other side of the bed. “You’re hogging the bed, dummy.”
Lucy raised an eyebrow, her long pink tongue stretching out from the side of her mouth, trying to lick Rose’s arm.
“No! Not the dreaded dog slobber,” Rose groaned, but it was too late. Lucy was already slopping buckets of dog drool onto Rose’s arm. Instead of pushing Lucy away this time, Rose began to pet the big dog, rubbing and scratching at the sweet spots behind Lucy’s ears.
Cold night air slid through the open window, encircling Rose as she slept. Lucy whimpered in her sleep, her legs kicking back and forth as she ran after some imaginary creature in her dreams.
It came without warning, a shrill high-pitched cry that woke the dog and set her to barking.
Rose stirred. “What is it, Lucy?”
Her eyes were still caked in sleep and her body was not fully under her control as she sat up and put a reassuring arm on the dog’s flank. Another cry tore through the night air, the same reedy whistling sound Rose had heard in the woods just after nightfall.
“Oh God,” she whispered, turning to stare at the open window.
For an instant she froze, but then she slid out of bed and shut the window, slamming it hard in its casing. Lucy jumped down from the mattress and came to stand by Rose, a low growl simmering in her throat. Rose instinctively reached down, clutching the fur at the back of Lucy’s neck for comfort.
“It’s okay, girl.”
But the dog was not soothed. She erupted into a barking frenzy as another whistling shriek tore through the night. Lucy slipped out of Rose’s grasp and darted out of the bedroom, barking wildly.
“Lucy, get back here!”
Rose followed the dog down the hall and into the living room, where Lucy stood barking at the French doors that led to the deck and the back yard, and the woods beyond. As Rose reached for her, the dog bounded away again, bulleting from living room to kitchen.
The dog flap in the kitchen door had been installed years ago, when her parents had a terrier. It only swung outward, so forest animals couldn’t use it to get inside. Lucy had never even tried to use it before, given her size, but as Rose chased her into the kitchen, she saw the Lab forcing herself through the too-small rectangle, rear legs scrabbling for purchase on the tile floor.
“Lucy, Jesus, what the hell are you doing?” she screamed, afraid that the dog would hurt herself.
But then the Lab popped out through the doggie door and the flap closed behind her, leaving Rose gaping stupidly at the place she’d been a moment before.
“Damn it!” Rose snapped. She didn’t want to go outside. But Lucy wasn’t giving her a choice. With trembling hands, she unlocked the kitchen door and stepped outside.
The wind whipped at her slender form, the tank top and boxer shorts she’d worn to bed little protection against the cold. She shivered as her bare feet found purchase on the dew-soaked redwood decking, the chill of the air pervading not just her skin, but her bones, as well.
“Lucy!” she shouted, her voice carried back at her by the wind. She scanned the woods behind her parent’s house, but could see no sign of the dog.
Then she heard angry barking coming from the night time shadows on her left. She turned to find Lucy standing at the edge of the backyard, her teeth bared, low growls and yips erupting from her lowered muzzle.
“Lucy!”
Rose ran across the deck and down the stairs, but Lucy ignored her, still barking at something further out in the woods. In a dozen strides she was at the dog’s side, and she knelt down and took hold of the scruff of Lucy’s neck.
“Come on, you stupid, crazy dog!” Rose said, trying to drag her back into the house. But Lucy wouldn’t budge. She continued to bark and strain against Rose’s hold.
There was a thrashing sound amongst the trees, and Rose took a step backward, staring into the darkness. Maybe Lucy wasn’t stupid after all. Maybe the stupid one was whoever would follow her out into the yard at night when that shrieking whistle filled the air.
Alan thought it was ghosts. What if he was right? Hell, what if it was something worse?
Fear raced through her and Rose scanned the trees. Something moved, and she couldn’t breathe. But then her gaze locked on it, the thing that Lucy had been barking at, and she could only stare in wonder. A beautiful silver stag stood less than a hundred yards from her, antlers gleaming in the moonlight. It flipped back it ears listening to something, and then it turned and looked straight into Rose’s eyes.
‘Oh . . .” she said, more an exhalation than a word. She had never seen anything so beautiful in all her life. She wanted to let go of Lucy and walk over to the stag, perhaps even touch it, but she knew it would bolt long before she could close the gap between them.
Entranced as she was, Rose almost didn’t hear the shrill whistling cries that began to fill the air. A twin voice seemed to have joined the first, two shrieks echoing in the dark, playing call and answer somewhere deep in the woods.
“Let’s go, Lucy,” Rose said, pulling the whining dog by the scruff of her neck. She wished she had the leash to slip into the ring on the dog’s collar so she could have more control.
“Lucy! Come on!”
The dog stood frozen, her whole body stiff, not allowing Rose any give at all.
The whistling cries came again, much closer than before. Close enough that Rose whipped her head up and searched the trees again. Lucy began to bark madly, slobber spraying the grass. The stag hunched a moment, as though it sensed the approach of whatever owned those cries, and then it took off, long forelegs bounding through the brush.
It had gone only a few yards before something huge and dark leaped out of the shadows and dragged the stag down with its claws. Huge jaws closed on the stag’s flank. The beast was silent as it started to pull the stag into the underbrush. A second one shot out of the trees and joined the kill, stilling the beautiful stag’s twitching hind legs.
Rose covered her mouth with her hand to stop the scream that was building behind her lips. She yanked Lucy back with all her might, half-dragging, half-carrying the black lab back toward the house. The sounds of slaughter that came from the darkness of the woods made her stomach lurch with disgust. But the fear was far worse. The stag had been beautiful, but if it had not been there, those things might have come for Lucy . . .or for Rose herself.
Her insides felt hollow and cold. When they reached the deck, Lucy at last began to cooperate, and Rose rushed the dog through the kitchen door, slamming it behind them. She locked it, threw the bolt, and put the chain across as well, then she staggered back against the stainless steel island that stood in the center of the kitchen and slid down into a crouch on the floor. She couldn’t stop shaking, even when Lucy nuzzled against her, the dog’s warmth like an electric blanket.
CHAPTER 5
The sun was barely above the horizon when Jimmy Lizotte made his first cast of the day. Nothing in the world gave him as much peace as fishing on the lake. He’d get up at five o’clock, walk down to the dock with a cup of coffee and a bag of the little cinnamon donuts Hannah always bought him at the Buffalo Nickel General Store, start up the outboard and have the little boat out on the water before he’d even taken a piss. That early in the morning, he could whip it out and piss right over the side and nobody was there to see it.
Now he sat there on the cushion he’d bought over the summer. The air was cool and the water dark this early. There weren’t any bugs out yet. His line disappeared into the smooth surface of the lake.
Fuckin’ bliss.
Jimmy took a sip from his coffee, congratulating himself on how smart he’d been to buy Hannah the machine last Christmas. He could prepare it the night before, set the timer, and wake up to the smell, like
his life was a tv commercial. No calls for this electrician on weekends. Weekdays, he tried not to schedule anything before eleven o’clock, so he could get a few hours on the lake in. Half the time he didn’t catch anything the law would have let him keep, and even when he did, it was barely enough for dinner, but that wasn’t the point.
It was called fishing, not catching.
It’s about the Zen, he told Hannah on a regular basis. She never got it, but that was all right. Most days she loved him enough to understand he just needed it, the way some guys needed beer. And fishing didn’t do to a marriage what too much booze or too many nights in the titty bars would do. Hannah didn’t mind. Most days. And on the days when she did, Jimmy didn’t much care . . . once he was out on the lake, what was she going to do? Skip stones at him?
He took a deep breath and let it out. The pine trees at the lake shore were silhouetted by the rising sun. The chicory coffee was warm and sweet. Jimmy set the cup down and slid his hand into the plastic bag to retrieve a cinnamon donut. God’s perfect food, as far as Jimmy was concerned.
A breeze rippled the surface of the lake and made him shudder a little. It felt good, though. He took another sip of coffee to offset the chill. The breeze came again, but this time, it carried a strange sound.
Jimmy frowned. “What the hell is that?” he whispered to himself.
The whistling noise struck him oddly enough that he disturbed his comfortable position, sitting up and looking around, trying to determine where it was coming from. It wasn’t any ordinary whistle, not some bird call or policeman’s warning. When he was a little boy he’d often heard the whistle that sounded the beginning and end of the work day at the lumber mill across the lake, but the mill had been closed twenty-three years, and this wasn’t the same sound anyway. It reminded him more of the sound falling bombs always made in Bugs Bunny cartoons, but even then, there was more to it. The noise seemed a combination of sounds to him; a distant, reedy whistle, and a scream.
Then, as abruptly as it had begun, it ceased.
Jimmy kept looking around, fishing rod in one hand, brows knitted in unsettled curiosity. He told himself it was some kind of bird, though he’d been fishing on Goodman’s Lake all his life and never heard anything like it. Some migratory breed, he figured. Global climate change had driven it north. Or east. Or something.
But as he settled down again, movement in the shadows of the pines drew his gaze. On the end of the dock where he kept his boat sat an enormous black dog. At this distance, it was hard to say for sure, but the dog seemed to be looking at him. Staring. The massive hound must have been wild, because he didn’t see an owner anywhere. He wondered if it might be a wolf. This beast was way too big to be a coyote.
It just sat there, unmoving. It didn’t scratch itself or wag its tail. The dog sat remarkably still, watching.
The tug on his line startled him enough that he nearly dropped his fishing rod, and he twisted around so quickly that his coffee sloshed onto his shirt. He cursed loudly and set the cup down, grateful that it wasn’t hot anymore. At the same time, he jerked the rod back, setting the hook, and started to reel. He wound in a few feet of line and then let the fish rest a second. It darted back and forth, struggling to free itself from his hook.
“Come on, baby. Come to Jimmy,” he said under his breath as he started to reel again. It felt big enough to be a keeper. Maybe big enough to feed both him and Hannah at dinner tonight.
There were a lot of things Jimmy Lizotte loved about his wife, but near the top of the list was that she never got tired of eating fish. Girl new a thousand ways to cook the catch of the day.
The rod arced down toward the water like a dowsing rod. Jimmy grinned widely and kept reeling. Something silver flashed beneath the dark surface of the lake, and as he wound in a few more inches of line he saw the fish fighting him. It had to be a two-footer.
“Come on, beauty.”
The fish was heavy and strong. It gave a massive tug, one last ditch effort to escape him, and Jimmy rocked on his cushion, the boat tipping a little. He laughed and looked down into the water, and then a frown creased his forehead.
There were other silver flashes down there, some small and some as big as his catch. Fish knifed through the water around the boat. At first he saw only a few, but quickly they multiplied into dozens. A long dark shape darted toward the fish on his hook, and the line swayed to one side.
“You’ve gotta be shitting me,” Jimmy said, chuckling in disbelief.
The swarm of fish — he couldn’t really call them a school since they were all different sizes and types — gathered around the one on the hook, swimming right into it, bumping the catch and the line both. Jimmy tried to reel, but felt another powerful tug in downward. The rod bent further toward the water.
This was the craziest thing he’d ever seen. It was as though the fish were trying to save the one on his hook.
He stared down into the water. The sun rose above the trees and its light shone across the lake. In that same moment, he saw the blood clouding the water below him, and little bits of floating flesh.
The fish weren’t trying to save his catch. They were eating it, like sharks in a feeding frenzy.
“No fuckin’ way,” he whispered.
But at least one of them was still on his hook, still tugging down. Jimmy tried to fight it, but the fish were strong, and the whole thing freaked him out. He took his knife from the sheath in his tackle box and cut the line. It had been pulled so taut that when it let go, he fell backward, and accidentally sliced the knife across the ball of his right hand.
He swore loudly, furiously, and let go of the rod. It banged on the side of the boat as it fell overboard and instantly sank into the darkness. Jimmy screamed in frustration and pain, wadding up a fistful of his sweatshirt and pressing it against the cut. The sting of that slice ran up his arm, but it hurt even less than the loss of the rod and reel he’d never see again. The cut could be stitched. His rig was money he could never get back.
Something bumped the boat. Not hard enough to rock it, really. It was more of a slap. But then it came again, and again, and then it was as though all of those fish were pelting themselves against the boat from beneath.
When he knelt to start the outboard, he crushed his cinnamon donuts beneath his knees. He hung his head and laughed at the absurdity of it all. He had to use his left hand to start the motor, and for a moment he was sure it wasn’t going to start. This day had was one piece of bad luck after another, and it only made sense he’d have to swim back to the dock. But then the motor roared to life. A bunch of fish swam at the propeller and there was a grinding noise as the motor worked overtime, hacking them to chum.
He pointed the prow toward the dock, and headed in, wondering how the day had gone so completely wrong. His Italian grandmother had always talked about the Malocchio, the evil eye, and it sure as hell felt like someone had hit him with that whammy. But it wasn’t the bad luck that made him feel like he had spiders crawling under his skin, and it wasn’t the stinging pain from the slice on his palm. It was the behavior of those fish. That had been damned unnatural. Just plain wrong, and weird.
It scared him a little.
Hannah Lizotte woke to the smell of smoke. She called out for Jimmy even as she leaped from bed and threw her robe on. As she ran down the stairs, she lost her footing and tripped. Catching herself on the handrail, she twisted her wrist, hissing in pain as tendons tore. Hannah cradled her wrist against her chest as she ran into the kitchen and saw the coffee machine engulfed in flames, the black plastic melting and running down over the kitchen counter. The fire had started to spread on the counter.
Terror raced through her. There were too many things in this house that she could not bear to lose. Fire had always been her biggest fear. A flash of fury went through her as she mentally blamed her husband, thinking Jimmy had somehow left the machine on, though she knew it could have been an electrical fire.
Wincing with the pain in her wris
t, she ran to the sink, choking on black, stinking smoke, and turned on the faucet. They had a spray attachment on the sink that was more powerful than the shower head in their bathroom. She switched it on, and began to hose down the burning coffee machine.
A fleck of burning black plastic splashed up at her and stuck to her cheek, burning, searing into her flesh. Hannah screamed, wiping at her face, trying to get it off, but it was stuck. She managed to keep the water spraying on the coffee maker until the flames were doused.
Only then did she let herself sink to the floor, tears and a trickle of blood running down her face.
Half a mile from the Lizottes’ house, a sudden gust of wind blew down a dead, towering pine tree. It crashed down on Ray Winston’s house, totaling the brand new Saturn he’d given himself as a fortieth birthday present.
On Charles Street, the brakes gave way on the mail truck and Audrey Tosches panicked. Before she could get control of the vehicle, she was up on the sidewalk and careening through the plate glass window that fronted Kelley’s bar. She wept as she considered the irony of a twelve-stepper crashing her postal truck into a bar. Then the jagged remaining portion of the plate glass window fell like a guillotine and shattered her windshield. The steering wheel stopped the plate glass before it would have reached her legs, but she’d had her hands at ten and two like they’d taught her at driver’s ed when she was sixteen, and three fingers on her left hand were severed.
The blood scared her more than the pain.
Seventy seven year old Aaron Chomsky caught his slipper on the metal lip that separated the linoleum of his kitchen floor from the bare wood of his basement stairs. For an old man, he was pretty spry, and he reached out to grab the door knob.
It came off in his hand, and he fell.
At the Red Oak Inn, the refrigerator had died during overnight, spoiling all of the food that Jenny would have made for guests at dinner that evening.
The Seven Whistlers Page 3