Jenny smacked Alan hard on the arm, motherly concern and annoyance etched on her face.
“Alan Scott Bryce, put a little brain back in your head! Mike nearly lost his hand, and you’re making jokes!”
Alan grinned sheepishly. “Not my fault he can’t keep his fingers attached —”
Jenny whacked him again, and then they were off and running. All they needed was a catalyst to incite the playful couple bickering that usually made Mike feel like he was an outsider. He turned to Rose, hoping to catch her eye, see if the affection between their friends distanced her in the same way, but her dark eyes were lost in thought.
Mike noted the worried set of her brow, the way she was slowly shredding a paper drink napkin between her fingers, and reached out, touching her softly on the shoulder. She jumped, instinctively tensing at his touch.
“You okay?”
Rose blinked, and then her eyes cleared and she shook her head, an embarrassed frown turning down the corners of her mouth.
“Fine. Just thinking, that’s all.”
Mike sensed there was more to this than Rose was saying, but he didn’t want to push the issue and make her feel like he was trying to want to push her away or intrude on her private thoughts, so he just shrugged, playing the moment off like it was any other.
“No worries. You need another drink?” he said, gesturing to her empty glass.
She shook her head. “I think I’m good, but thanks for asking.”
She turned away, back to her thoughts, a sad, distracted look on her beautiful face. Mike found himself wishing for the days when Rose was just a face in the crowd . . . because it was killing him to be her friend.
Rose declined Jenny’s offer to spend the night.
Her thoughts were too chaotic to deal with entertaining another person. She had to go up to the cabin to feed Lucy and let her out. By the time Lucy had done her business and scampered back into the cabin, Rose felt exhausted. All she wanted was to crawl under her parents’ down comforter and think. She had a moment of trepidation as she thought of the hounds, but it seemed like they were just as likely to show up downtown as in the woods, and there was no reason for her to think they’d come back to this very spot. Rose knew she was as safe here as she would be anywhere else in Kingsbury.
Her own safety was not what troubled her.
Ideas had been whirling in her mind for hours. At first, she’d pushed them away, thinking they were crazy. But now, as she tried to relax and let sleep take her, she began to realize that they were not crazy ideas at all — they were purely logical connections she had only just begun to make.
And they terrified her.
If she was right, it would change everything.
CHAPTER 12
The alarm clock went off at seven, but Rose was already awake. She’d been lying awake since half past four, scrunched up between the thick down comforter and Lucy, turning her thoughts over and over in her head. Once again she had been having horrible nightmares — crazy dreams that even now, hours after she’d woken, still upset her. She hadn’t wanted to go back to sleep after that, so she’d laid there in the darkened cabin, listening to the night sounds and the conflict that raged in her own heart.
Now, though, Rose got out of bed and quickly dressed, not bothering to shower. She had questions that required answers, and she was determined to find them before her Grandfather’s wake later that evening.
While she fed Lucy, she sipped at a cup of tea, but her stomach was in such knots that she didn’t dare try and eat anything. She didn’t have time to spend the morning in the bathroom retching it back up.
As she stood by the kitchen sink watching Lucy wolf down her breakfast, she stared at the teacup in her hand. She couldn’t believe it was only two days ago that she sat in this very kitchen watching her grandmother freak out at the mention of the Seven Whistlers.
What a fool she’d been not to have put the pieces together sooner. Although, if she really was honest with herself, it seemed more likely that she didn’t want to see the truth than that she couldn’t. It had her hit hard last night, like lightning. Something Mike had said had jarred her memory, and the image of her grandmother gripping that tea cup right before she dropped it, her skeletal fingers clutching at the cup as if it was somehow keeping her tethered to reality, had risen up in her mind, and wouldn’t leave.
Her grandfather had died. The Whistlers had come to Kingsbury. Now that Rose had begun to believe that these beasts were not simply the wild dogs the chief of police wanted the town to think they were, now that she knew the legend . . . well, once she’d remembered her grandmother’s reaction that day, how could she not have begun to think the worst.
God, it was the worst.
Rose felt certain that her grandmother knew exactly why the seven Hounds from Hell were in Kingsbury . . . and whose soul they sought.
The gravel drive crunched under her shoes as Rose climbed the last few feet to the front door of the Glen Valley Rest Home. She slipped her hand around the door pull, and slid open the opaque glass door, noting — for what she hoped was the last time — the way the name of the place was haphazardly stenciled in thick black courier across the top half of the smoky glass.
The heat was on inside, turned up high to contend with the thin blood of the ancient human relics living out their final years or months or days there. Closing the door behind her, Rose slipped off her thick jean jacket, and wrapped it around her waist. She walked over to the reception desk, her shoes squeaking on the institutional gray linoleum floor. The nurse behind the desk looked up and smiled, recognizing Rose instantly. Then the woman seemed to remember that Rose wasn’t here for a visit, that there was no one here for the girl to see anymore.
She put down the file she was holding and gave Rose a sympathetic half-smile.
“Oh my goodness, Rose, I’m so sorry about your grandfather.”
Rose smiled back at the woman, letting her know it was okay. “Thanks, Viola. I appreciate that. It’s been rough, but we’re doing alright.”
Viola nodded, her thin, angular face bobbing up and down on her pencil-thin frame. Rose had often envied the Nurse her boyish figure; still did, even now.
“I was wondering if my grandmother had picked up Grandad’s stuff yet. She asked me to come by days ago, but I just couldn’t yet, you know?”
Viola nodded vigorously. “I completely understand. A shock like that can really knock you for a loop. Let me look, but I’m almost positive we boxed up his stuff and put it in the basement.”
The nurse looked down, eyes scanning the desk until they spied the black, leather-bound patient logbook. Flipping through the stiff pages, she found what she was looking for, and gave Rose a nod.
“It’s here,” she said. “I’ll just have Bill go down and get it for you.”
Rose waited in the reception area, her spine straight against the back of a sturdy wooden chair. Her head throbbed and her heart raced, making her feel queasy. From the moment she’d stepped through the door of the rest home, a terrible dread had nestled down inside her. It made her skin crawl.
The place was rank with the stink of death and infirmity. It filled her throat and nose, so that she almost couldn’t breathe. She didn’t know why the place had never affected her this way before. Maybe because she’d been filled with hope when she was visiting her grandfather; hope that he would get better, that he would again be the man she had known.
“Got them for you,” a voice called from behind her. Rose turned in her chair to see Bill, the facility’s aging caretaker, coming down the hall with two boxes under his arm.
Rose almost cried when she saw how little was left to show for her grandfather’s life. Forcing back the tears that threatened to leak down her cheeks, she mustered a thank you for Bill.
He set the boxes down in the chair beside her and took off his cap, letting it dangle at his side. His wizened brown skin glowed like caramel under the fluorescent lights, and Rose found her heart breaking just
a little more under his sympathetic gaze.
“I was real sorry to hear about your Granddad, Rose,” he said. “He was a nice man, and I know you all will miss him greatly.”
Rose didn’t trust herself to speak. She wanted to let the old man know how much his sympathy meant to her, but she also didn’t want to cry.
He held out his hand. “You don’t gotta say anything. I just wish there was more for you to take with you,” Bill said, indicating the two small boxes.
“Thank you,” she managed. “Me, too.”
Bill watched as she retrieved the boxes, slipping them under her arm. She gave him a wave as she turned, and walked toward the front door.
The old man stood in the hall long after the girl had gone, watching the spot where she’d disappeared through the door. Trouble followed that girl. He could taste the darkness that dogged her every step.
He only wished he knew how to help her.
The sound of the knife slicing through the heavy packing tape was very satisfying. Rose slipped the blade under the side flap of the box, and eased it through the rest of the tape, letting the box open of its own accord.
She took out the contents, carefully arranging them on her kitchen table. When she was done, she let her knife dance across the second box. She repeated the process, until her tabletop was covered with the meager remains of her grandfather’s life.
Not nearly enough to show for a man’s life.
Rose went through his clothes first. There was really only some underwear, a few t-shirts, pajamas, and two pair of faded khakis. She folded the clothes and put them back in the box. The whole thing was so depressing she wanted to cry.
She picked up his watch and wallet next. The wallet was empty, except for a picture of her grandmother. It was an old picture — her grandmother was probably only in her early twenties — but it could be no one else. The young woman in the picture had the same sharp, beautiful features and hard-set mouth. Rose touched her own mouth, feeling smooth softness, where her Grandmother’s young face was tense and drawn.
Rose put the wallet and watch back into the box, her hands drawn instinctively to the small cache of papers she’d set aside earlier. There was a small moleskin notebook mixed in with the hospital records, and other paper detritus. She picked up the notebook, and flipped it open. Her grandfather’s spidery handwriting covered the yellowed pages.
The date on the top of the first page was January 20th 1943. Rose bit her nail, somehow certain that this was what she had been looking for.
She began to read.
January 20th 1943
I’ve been shipboard for less than two weeks, but I can already feel my body beginning to settle into the rhythm of the sea. It’s infernally hot below deck. Some of the guys on laundry detail sweat so much they work in their underwear. I’m just glad Momma’s not here to see this, she’d whoop them all for being disrespectful.
The ship’s so big, and gets dirty so fast, that it takes all two thousand of us working non-stop to keep it clean. Scrubbing isn’t woman’s work here, nor is cooking, nor doing wash.
Davey has the bunk below mine. It’s nice to have a friend from home on board with me. We’ve made a few other friends, but Davey and I stick together anyway. One of the other guys asked if we were brothers. Davey just laughed, but here in the middle of nowhere I feel like we’re almost that close.
Got a letter from Doris. The kid thinks she’s in love with me. I told her before I shipped out that we were just friends, but at least she writes. That’s nice. Davey got two letters from Isobel. I could smell her perfume when he opened them.
Wish she was writing to me.
Rose made herself a cup of tea, sipping it as she made her way through the journal entries, utterly enthralled by even the most mundane details about her grandfather’s experience during World War II on the battleship North Carolina. He’d spent his days working and training, his nights on duty, watching for enemy aircraft as the ship trolled the waters of the South Pacific.
Her heart had skipped when she’d first encountered her grandmother Isobel’s name scratched into the little moleskin journal. She’d had no idea her grandfather had married his best friend’s girl. She wondered how that had come to pass.
March 25th 1945
We started shelling Okinawa yesterday. I keep thinking about all the civilians there, wondering if they’re going to be alright. Davey says they deserve what’s coming to ’em, but I don’t know. The Japs are the bad guys, that’s for certain, but I just don’t know.
My mind keeps going back to better times, when we weren’t preparing for this battle. When you could just sit out on your watch looking at the stars in the sky. What you see out on the water is like nothing you could ever see on land.
Makes you almost believe in magic when you’re alone out here on the sea.
April 6th 1945
Dear God, what have I done? Davey is dead and it’s my fault.
April 6th 1945 — Later
We were firing at a bunch of crazy Jap pilots. Kamikazes, they call ‘em. The bastards crash into you, dying as they take you down with ’em. It was near the craziest thing I ever heard about until I saw it for the first time. Chilled my heart.
The air was full of the stink of battle, guns going off all around us, on our ship, and the carriers near us in the water. I just remember hearing a loud crack in the air, and then there was smoke everywhere.
We were hit by friendly fire I heard later, but at first, I thought one of them kamikaze planes had hit us. There was blood all over everywhere, on the deck, just everywhere.
I didn’t see the guy until he was almost on top of me. One of my shipmates, covered in blood. He threw himself at me, his eyes bugging out of his head. He’d been hit by shrapnel or something, so that his face was ruined and I couldn’t even have said if I recognized him or not. Maybe it was the pain or the blood or the smoke, or maybe his fear just snapped something in his head, but he’d lost it.
The sailor attacked me, drove me down on the deck. He hit me a few times, then grabbed my head in his hands and started slamming me against the deck. His blood was everywhere. I didn’t know what to do. I started screaming for help, but none came. I found my hands around the man’s throat, and then I was choking him, trying to force him off me. He thrashed in my hands, and then suddenly, he was still.
I pushed him off me, and rolled him over, checking for a pulse. There was nothing. I didn’t know what to do. The first thing that came into my head was to just roll him off the side. The ocean would take him, I thought. Just one more sailor, lost in the war . . . not killed by my own hands.
I got the man to the side, but as I started to push him over, I heard Davey’s voice through the smoke, shouting my name. He’d come looking to make sure I was okay. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t let him find me kneeling over the corpse of one of our shipmates. Self-defense or not — and it was, sweet Jesus, it was — I’d taken a life.
I backed off quickly, slipping away in the smoke, hiding behind one of the big guns. Davey was just a figure in the smoke. He nearly tripped over the dead sailor. But then, as he knelt beside the still form, laying in that bloody mess on the deck, the smoke cleared.
A pair of sailors came up just behind him, and then one of the deck officers. I heard a voice ask Davey what had happened, and moments later, another voice saying the sailor had marks on his throat, that it looked like he’d been strangled.
God, help me, but they thought Davey had killed him.
I knew I had to step forward right then and set them straight, explain how it had all happened. But it would mean a court martial, and if they didn’t believe it had been unavoidable, that it had been self-defense — if they found that I’d committed murder — the penalty in court martial would be death.
I wanted to speak up, to tell the truth. I just couldn’t get my voice to work.
This was the last entry. Rose reread it twice before she had to put it down. Her hand hands were shaki
ng that much.
CHAPTER 13
Arlene’s studio was a mess. She’d spent the whole of the morning working on the book cover, the one with the warrior monk. Only now, the monk had four Hell Hounds surrounding him, waiting to go do his bidding.
She had no idea why she’d added them to the painting. There were no Hell Hounds in the book she was creating the painting for. She’d have to do a lot of fast-talking with the publisher to get them to okay it. Or not. At the moment, she found that she didn’t really care what the publisher said. She liked the painting as it was, felt the energy the subject matter invoked as she ran her brush across the canvas.
A chill went through her, even though the heat was going full blast. She was getting antsy. Too much time with the paintings, and she always went a little stir crazy. Still, this painting unsettled her, made her feel strange whenever she looked at it. Only a fool would have failed to see why she had included the hounds. Their presence lingered in her mind, both the memory of having seen them at the lake, and the knowledge that others had seen them as well.
Her stomach rumbled, angry that she’d only fed it egg whites and a bagel this morning instead of her usual corned beef hash and scrambled eggs. The culinary arts ran strong in her family. Arlene had been thrilled when her niece, Jenny, had gotten the job as chef over at the Red Oak Inn. Some of her friends had told her that the inn had been upgraded in most travel guides from three to four stars, just based on Jenny’s cooking and the influence she’d had on the menu and the kitchen.
After putting a few more strokes of paint onto the canvas, Arlene decided to let the painting to dry a bit, and go over to the Thistle Café for an early lunch. She cleaned her brushes — the one thing in her life she was meticulous with was her brushes. She loved to see them all lined up in a row waiting for her in the morning.
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