She loved that. And she loved the melancholy, working-class wisdom that Affleck was able to bring to his supporting role. He’d made enough bad decisions after so that people forgot he could really act, but Good Will Hunting proved it. Rose had a soft spot for Affleck. She wondered if it was because he looked a little bit like Mike Richards. On the other hand, she wondered if she had a soft spot for Mike because he looked a little bit like Ben Affleck.
She figured the truth was that she had a soft spot for Mike because he was Mike. Rose knew he had feelings for her, and she knew she felt something in return. But it didn’t feel like love to her. She’d known Mike most of her life and though she knew he was a good, decent, hard-working man, in the back of her mind there would always be the goofy kid who’d snapped her bra strap like an elastic in the sixth grade and didn’t think girls should play hockey.
Mike now was so completely different from Mike then. He was a man, now. A catch, her mother had told her, many times. Maybe she ought to work harder at not seeing the goofy kid in his face every time he smiled at her.
Or maybe she should just not watch Good Will Hunting so often.
The movie was still on in the living room. All day she’d been turning over in her mind the stricken look on her grandmother’s face that morning when she’d dropped the tea cup, and the thing she’d said. Talking to Jenny had only guaranteed that Rose would continue to work the thing over in her mind. In the middle of watching the movie, she’d found herself drifting back to those thoughts again and again, until finally she just had to satisfy her curiosity.
A quick net search, that was all. She didn’t even bother to pause the movie. It wasn’t like she hadn’t seen it before. Anyway, it would only take her a few minutes. In her bedroom, where her computer desk took up nearly all the space that wasn’t occupied by bed or dresser, she hadn’t taken the trouble even to turn on the light.
Now she sat in front of the screen and typed “Seven Whistlers” into Google search. There were a few references to books of folklore and legends, but not many. This didn’t surprise her. Some bits of folklore made it into popular culture, but most never did.
She hit a couple of dead links before coming up with a web site that had a description of the legend. As she, a chill spread through her.
“The Seven Whistlers are evil spirits most often mentioned in the folklore of various regions of England, primarily Worcestershire. They appear as enormous black dogs, often accompanied by loud shrieking or whistling noise, as of the wind. Legend says they are demons loosed from Hell, searching for souls upon which the devil has laid claim. They harbinger disaster and ill luck for any who encounter them. If all seven should ever gather at once, it is believed that the world will end.”
Rose read the last line again, and shivered. The chill she felt would not go away.
CHAPTER 9
Rose slept poorly.
Her dreams were filled with visions of huge mongrel dogs, their saliva-flecked jaws snapping hungrily as they chased her through the dark woods that surrounded Kingsbury.
The squeal of a truck’s bad brakes outside her window made her eyes flutter open, and she glared at the wan morning light filtering through her bedroom window. Her legs ached as if she had run a marathon. The dread and terror of her nightmares lingered and she intended to get up right away, not wanting to descend back into dreams. Instead, she rolled over and promptly fell back to sleep.
When she woke again, her head ached and she had cotton-mouth in the worst way. Reaching for the glass of water she always kept on her bedside table, she groaned as she caught sight of the clock. It was after nine o’clock. She hated sleeping late.
Rose dragged herself from bed, went into the kitchen to pour herself some orange juice, and then opened her door to pick up the newspaper from her doormat. Thursday. And her grandfather was still dead, his wake and funeral yet to come. Fresh grief blossomed in her. For the first few minutes after waking, in the space between bad dreams and real life, she’d managed not to think about his death at all. But that couldn’t last.
A deep sigh shuddered through her and she turned and carried the newspaper back to the kitchen. When she threw it on the table, face-down, she got a look at the headlines under the fold. One of them caught her eye.
THE WILD COMES TO TOWN
She reached for the paper again and picked it up, a chill passing through her. Rose read the story and the dread of her nightmares returned, settling into her bones. The story concerned a recent rash of reports coming into the newspaper and the police department from locals and tourists alike who’d reported seeing large, black-furred animals in the woods, around the lake, and even in town. Some had claimed to see wild dogs.
The police chief chalked it up to a long, hot summer making some food scarce, forcing bears, wolves, and even moose to forage closer to town than they would normally venture. “We’ve had animals in town before, and we’ll have them again. That’s part of the beauty of living in Kingsbury,” the chief had said. “We just have to do our best to live in harmony with the wild, without anyone getting hurt.”
Rose snickered. “Yeah. ‘Cause it’s that simple.”
Then the humor drained from her. Large, black-furred animals. It was such a general description and its implications troubled her deeply. Locals would sure as hell know how to spot a wolf or a moose or a bear, but it had been the police chief to make that leap. The only animals mentioned specifically by people who’d reported sightings to the paper were wild dogs.
The memory of her Internet surfing from the night before came back full force. The legend of the Seven Whistlers had given her the creeps, but she’d told herself it was only a legend, no matter what she’d seen. Wild dogs were wild dogs. Nothing supernatural about any of it. The very idea seemed ridiculous.
But it didn’t feel ridiculous.
She didn’t have to work today, and it occurred to Rose that there might be a better way to spend the time than wallowing in her grief over her grandfather’s death. Jenny had said there might be a local version of the legend, and that if there was, her Aunt Arlene would know it. Rose had brushed off the idea of going to talk to the woman yesterday.
The newspaper trembled in her hand and she dropped it, staring a moment at the way the newsprint had blackened her fingertips. She told herself that she wasn’t just trying to sublimate her grief, burying it by finding something to occupy her mind. She needed to talk to Arlene Murphy, if only to remind herself that the Seven Whistlers were only a story, nothing more.
But, now that Rose had slept so late, she’d probably missed Arlene at her studio, which meant if she wanted to see the woman, she’d have to chase her down in the woods where Jenny said she did much of her painting. The idea of traipsing out in the woods troubled her. After all of the strange things she’d witnessed in the forest lately, she was leery about leaving the town center at all.
Like that’s gonna work, she thought. Spend the rest of your life hiding out in town, never going into the woods again.
She wondered why the little voice in the back of her head always had to be so sarcastic.
Rose went to the bathroom and turned the shower on, waiting for steam to start clouding the glass before she stepped inside. She arched her back, working out the kinks of the night, grateful for the hot sting of the spray as the water poured over her aching body.
Most days she could be in and out of the bathroom in less than twenty minutes. Today, she could not pull herself away from the hot water and the way it released so much tension from her muscles. It was almost ten thirty by the time she finished drying her hair and put on a touch of eyeliner, mascara, and lip gloss.
Better turn in early tonight, maybe even get Jenny to give me another one of those little pills that make you sleep the sleep of the dead.
Rose shivered as the thought eddied around her brain, calling up thoughts of her grandfather’s death yet again, with a sharpness that took her breath away. Though he had been lost to her for such a lon
g time, her heart still remembered the old days, and the vibrant companion he’d been before the Alzheimer’s locked him away inside his own head.
That lovely, crotchety old man was truly gone now — both body and soul — and the realization was like a lead weight, dragging her down into the gray numbness of depression.
She didn’t feel like eating a real breakfast — the small kitchenette in her apartment didn’t inspire much more than microwave meals and the odd grilled cheese sandwich anyway — but Rose made herself take a few bites of a strawberry Pop Tart so her stomach would stop growling. Putting the left over Pop Tart in a plastic bag, she ran the dirty dish and her juice glass under the faucet, then grabbed a bottle of water and an apple, shoving them into her backpack with the unfinished Pop Tart. If she got really hungry later, she’d have something to munch on.
Ever since she started watching her parents’ cabin, she’d let her apartment go to hell. She vowed that after she’d tracked gone up to the cabin to feed and walk Lucy, and then tracked down Arlene, she’d come home and give the place a thorough going over. Cleaning had always been a good way to clear her mind, and maybe it would wear her out enough so that she wouldn’t have to medicate herself to get one good, dreamless night of sleep.
Lucy had been ecstatic to see her. The big dog had jumped all over her, spattering her navy wool sweater with a healthy coating of slobber, right up until Rose spilled food into her bowl, and then the dog had another target for her attentions.
Now, as she drove back toward town, she missed the big mutt. Rose turned up the heat in her car as she made a left onto Braeburn Street, and started the search for a parking spot. The tourists who flocked to New England for the fall foliage had made it almost impossible for the locals to find parking anywhere downtown, but Rose lucked out, finding a tiny space between a Suburban and a Mercedes Benz roadster. She squeezed her battered red Honda between them and got out.
The cool crispness of the Vermont air filled her lungs, invigorating her. It left her with a sense of wellbeing that was almost enough to make her forget her troubles for a moment. Almost.
She slung her backpack over her shoulder and crossed the street, looking for Arlene’s address. Braeburn Street had only recently experienced a mini-renaissance. Once home to a mechanic’s shop and the old Geary Foundry, the tiny street now boasted two art galleries and the Geary Lofts — a series of artists’ studios erected on the remains of the old foundry. The previous year, the mayor had even given the street a nickname — Artists’ Alley.
Rose knew this stop would likely be a waste of time, but before she went hiking around the woods up by the lake in search of Arlene Murphy, she figured she ought to at least stop at the woman’s downtown studio. The way things had been going, she didn’t expect it to be that simple, but better to try and come up empty than to truck around the mountain and only then discover the artist had been down here in town all along.
A shiver went through her as she found the buzzer for Arlene’s loft. Rose wished she’d had the foresight to stow her woolen cap in her backpack before she’d left the apartment that morning. The temperature had been dropping steadily since morning and it was getting to be downright cold for autumn.
“Yes?” came a tinny voice from the callbox.
Rose blinked in surprise and stared for a moment at the box. A smile touched her lips as she realized she wasn’t going to have to go into the woods after all. She cleared her throat, and spoke into the speaker grate.
“Hi, Miss Murphy? Arlene. I’m Rose Kerrigan, Jenny’s friend? She said you might be able to help me.”
“Help you how?” The woman’s voice sounded tentative, even anxious.
“I’d rather not say out here on the street like this, if you don’t mind. May I come up?”
There was a pause, as if Arlene was thinking about it. Then the buzzer on the steel-reinforced door sounded. Rose reached out and pulled open the door.
Draped in a dusky purple caftan that hung on her like a shroud, with more than a dozen strands of amethyst beads looped around her neck, Arlene Murphy reminded Rose of the aging Stevie Nicks. But when took in her curly scarlet hair and pale skin, she decided that the artist reminded her more of some future version of Tori Amos . . . well, a Tori Amos who had raided Stevie Nicks’ closet. She had a sage, earth-mother thing going on, combined with a no-nonsense attitude that belied her appearance.
“Would you like some tea, Rose? I was just boiling water.”
“I’d love some, thanks.”
Arlene went into the kitchenette. “I don’t drink caffeine, so there’s only herbal. I hope that suits.”
“That’d be perfect, thanks.”
“How do you like it?”
“However you take it is fine.”
“Two Licorice Roots it is, then,” Arlene replied, pouring the boiling water into a large ceramic teapot decorated with tiny penguins. “Have a seat. The tea will just be a minute.”
Rose looked around the large, open room with it twin skylights and junk-strewn vanilla pine floor, and could see almost no space that had not been piled up with books, laden with scarves, or stacked with CDs. Art books lay open on tables and on the floor. Old vinyl album covers leaned against the stereo speakers but there seemed no turntable to play them. There were three medium-sized easels set up underneath the skylights, and a long white coffee table covered in painting supplies, but there didn’t seem to be a place to sit comfortably without disturbing Arlene’s disorder.
She decided that Arlene must have meant for her to sit on one of the thick, pink-and-yellow cushions that lay haphazardly on the floor. Plopping down, Rose set her backpack beside her, and tried to make herself comfortable.
Arlene didn’t seem at all disturbed to find her guest sitting on the floor. She set the tea tray down on a box of Quash paints that took up the floor space in front of Rose and tucked her skirt underneath her so she could join her guest on the ground.
After Arlene had fixed their tea in two thick handmade clay pots, Rose hesitated, not sure how to begin.
“You said you needed my help?” Arlene prompted her with a reassuring smile.
Rose nodded. “I wanted to ask you about this story Jenny related to me. Some pretty odd things have happened to me recently and it reminded her of this legend about the Seven Whistlers —”
Arlene’s features tightened, and the woman blanched.
“Are you all right?” Rose asked.
“Of course,” Arlene said under her breath, obviously speaking to herself and not to Rose. She set her pot down on the tea tray, then absently picked it right back up again.
“I’m sorry —” Rose began, but Arlene waved a hand at her to stop.
“Please, just a moment. You’ve reminded me of something. Let me think.”
Rose nodded, waiting. Finally, Arlene shook her head as if to clear her thoughts, and then smiled at Rose.
“So, Jenny told you part of the legend, but didn’t know it all, and figured I could fill you in on its origins. She’s a sensible girl. If anyone in Kingsbury would know, it would be me. I collect legends and stories. Always have. A lot of them go into my art, but that’s not the only reason they fascinate me. Guess I’m just one of those people who’s always wanted to believe in the fantastic.”
“So, you do know the myth?” Rose asked.
Arlene nodded.
“It’s an old tale, but still very powerful,” she said. Her gaze became distant as she recalled the details of the legend. When she spoke again, her voice had an ominous quality, as though to Arlene Murphy, this was more than merely a story.
“Seven hounds were dispatched from Hell to seek the Devil’s due, to collect the souls of men who where damned for dreadful cowardice in the face of death. No, cowardice is not the word. That alone won’t damn us, Rose. But if a man willfully sacrificed another in order to save his own life, to delay the day when the reaper might come for him, why, of course he would be damned. His soul would be forfeit because he lived
on in the other’s stead.”
“Who would do that? That’s terrible,” Rose said, clutching her mug of tea tightly between her hands. The basics of the legend, she had learned from Jenny and from her online research, but this . . . this was new, and it got under her skin.
“You might be surprised what people will do when their lives are in peril. When the axe is about to fall, many a man — or woman — would gladly put another in his place in order to save his own life. It’s a hideous thing to steal another’s time on this Earth. Unforgivable. But, listen. There’s more to the tale. The seven whistlers hunt the souls of the damned, and some are cowards in death as well as in life. The hounds spread out across the Earth, but the legend says that they may come together to hunt elusive prey. It’s said that should all seven hounds ever gather in one location, it will spell the end of the world as we know it . . . The End of Days.”
Rose nodded. There were differences, but she already knew this part of the legend. Still, an icy chill raced through her. She thought of the two hounds destroying the stag in the woods outside her parents’ cabin. That had been almost two days ago. She wondered how many of the hounds were in Kingsbury now.
“I’ve answered your question, Rose. I hope you’ll answer mine. Why do you want to know about the Whistlers?”
Rose swallowed. She wanted to tell Arlene about her strange experiences in the woods, about the hounds she had seen in the darkness ripping the stag apart, and the article in the Kingsbury Gazette about the strange animals, but she was afraid the older woman would think she was crazy. All this talk of legends . . . the artist collected them, painted them. No matter how much passion she had for the stories, that didn’t mean that she truly believed in them.
Still, if anyone would believe her, it would be this woman.
The Seven Whistlers Page 6