Night Songs

by Charles L. Grant

  A gray haze in the distance, the streetlights of the town, but she cocked her head to one side and knew she wouldn't have to go quite that far. There was a dark lump on the verge fifty yards ahead, and when a vicious gust passed over it, it squirmed and tried to crawl.

  Lightning reached out to drag thunder after. Lilla smiled, and kept walking.

  The figure shifted again, a shifting shadow against shadows, and finally stirred itself to standing.

  Lilla stopped, but kept smiling.

  "Warren," she said, her voice clear despite the howling wind. "Warren, you weren't at the funeral."

  Harcourt passed a weary hand over his eyes and peered into the darkness, his mouth opening slightly when lightning showed him the speaker. "Lilla!" He tried to straighten his spine, his lapels, reached up for his hat and froze when he discovered it wasn't on his head. He stammered and managed an apologetic smile, became suddenly aware that his feet were still bare. "Lilla-"

  She faced him. "You weren't at the funeral." Not an accusation; a simple fact.

  "I am… was as you see me," he told her, wincing as the storm moved from howls to shrieks. He moved closer, to be heard. "I could not disgrace you."

  "You wouldn't have."

  "But I would," he insisted, wounded dignity in his eyes. "I would." Then he glanced up the road, back the way she had come. "It's over, then."

  "It has been, for hours. Warren, we missed you, Gran and I."

  He waved away her kindness. "He's in the sea, then?" She nodded.

  "He let you do it?" He was astounded and relieved.

  She reached out to touch him, and even through the topcoat he could feel her cold grip. "Gran is dead, Warren. Now he's buried the way they wanted." Closer, almost touching. "I don't think I want to stay in his house tonight."

  Harcourt's expression was befuddled as he attempted to sweep aside the alcoholic fog he carried with him. When her hands moved to the back of his neck, when his skin felt her fingers idly twirling the ends of his hair, he tried not to shudder. She was bereft, he reminded himself; now she wants to go home. But he almost wept when he realized he couldn't remember where she lived.

  "Atlantic Terrace," she whispered, as if reading his mind. "Just down from Peg Fletcher's, you know that. It's late. I'm a little frightened with all this," and she looked skyward, back to his eyes.

  A slow and deep breath to steady himself, and he nodded. "I quite understand, Lilla. If you need someone to accompany you, you only have to say the word. I am always at your service, as you know."

  She dropped her hand to his elbow and smiled at him broadly. "You'll be a gentleman?"

  Offended, he almost drew away. "Always, Lilla. Surely you know that."

  She giggled softly, kissed his cheek, pressed her forehead to his chin. Her voice was muffled. "You and I, Warren, we're alone on this island now. The others, they think they know what we go through, but they don't. Not really. They feel sorry for us, but they don't care." She looked up at him. "Do they care?"

  He wanted to say yes, and knew instantly it was a lie.

  "You see?" she said.

  The wind was a hint of winter, and before he knew it he had his arms around her, drawing her into the warmth of his coat. So small, he thought. He hadn't realized how small she was, the girl-woman, the child. So small, and so soft; he startled himself by feeling things he had thought were long dead. One hand slipped down to the slope of her buttocks, the other into her hair.

  They kissed.

  Soft, he thought while her tongue searched for his. Soft. So soft.

  He felt her trembling against him, and wanted to open his coat so he could feel her stomach and breasts and the ridge of her hips. But to open the coat would mean breaking the embrace, and it had been so long, so terribly long… so he hugged her instead and closed his eyes at the low groan that warmed the side of his neck.

  "Are you shocked, Warren?" she asked softly.

  He shook his head once. "It is a trying time for you, Lilla. Solace, comfort, it's what you need, what you deserve."

  "Are you sober?" she asked then, and he almost laughed aloud.

  "I would say, my dear, that I am about as sober now as I have been for years. That isn't saying much, I grant you, but it's the best you'll get tonight."

  They clung beneath the wind and the lightning, against the battering of dead leaves, against the dust devils that leapt from the verge to the road.

  She kissed him again, gently, not insisting, and when she lay her head tenderly on his chest he felt a thrumming through his clothes. He frowned for a long moment until he realized she was singing. Very quietly, virtually unheard as the wind brought the first rain. Then a connection was made, and he remembered El Nichols pushing him down the road, remembered turning around, remembered Lilla's night songs.

  "Warren," she whispered, "are you alive?"

  There was more than the night cold now working down his back. He pushed her away, but she held onto his arms.

  "Alive?" she asked again.

  "Of course," he snapped, trying to pry loose her grasp.

  She smiled, and in a sudden blue-white flare he saw her eyes, the death there, and would not believe it. Nor could he believe the power in her hands.

  He could think of nothing else to say but, "That singing…"

  "You know the words?" she said, turning her head to see him sideways.

  "I have had French, yes, and I've traveled a bit in my time."

  "Warren-"

  "And I am just drunk enough to be glad he's in the ocean."

  "Oh, Warren," she said, shaking her head slowly. "Oh, Warren, dear Warren, he's not there, he's behind you."

  A gnarled black hand from the dark grabbed his shoulder, and as he whirled to look behind, the razor she held measured the length of his exposed neck.

  Then she left him upright in the shadows and walked back to the shack.

  Hearing nothing but the wind, and her singing, and something behind her, drinking.

  PART TWO

  OCTOBER: FRIDAY

  ONE

  Another warm day, too warm for October, an August day misplaced in the middle of autumn. The rainstorm was gone, sweeping out to the Atlantic and up toward New York. What was left was the sun that turned the shallows turquoise, brightened the pines' green, shifted red leaves to vermilion and brown leaves to tan. The sea scent was strong, the breeze a welcome cooling, and Thursday a memory buried in a back closet.

  It should have been perfect.

  It should have been a quiet time of remembering, perhaps regretting, and looking forward to winter and the peace that it brings, forgetting for the moment that spring will start it all again.

  But there'd been too many dreams spawned after midnight, too many arguments over a sun-bright breakfast, too many doors slammed and engines raced-and an unnerving feeling that an island four miles long and two miles wide was suddenly an island that had grown much too small.

  ***

  The school on Haven's End was less than twenty years old and took care of the island's children until they were ready for high school across the bay in Flocks. The building was unimposing by any mainland standards: a single-story brick and gray-glass building raised on a high concrete foundation to keep the rooms from flooding when the occasional hurricane shrieked up the coast. Double doors at the entrance, high taxus and laurels to camouflage the concrete, and massive full pines at each of the front corners. The only sign it might be an official structure was the flagpole by the steps-tall, white, with a gleaming brass ball at the top gripped in the brass claws of a spread-wing eagle. Ocean Street ended almost at its front steps, as if the school were a monument facing a pitted tarmac mall, and behind were the woods that thickened toward the cliffs.

  The morning blue, the noon sun, were slowly fading behind a haze.

  At precisely two-thirty Colin was positioned in the entrance foyer, smiling and nodding as the children swarmed past him toward two days of freedom. Their shouts were infectious, their
laughter a potion, and he rolled his shoulders with impatience to get on with the weekend while his left hand drummed a march on the flat of his thigh. Like his students, he felt that today was too beautiful to be spent inside. Heresy, he knew; a teacher's dedication supposedly knew no weather. But after the previous night's funeral he thought it a miracle the storm hadn't lingered to drench the town in stereotypical gloom. As it was, he'd had a difficult time of it from the moment he'd arrived. The kids and his colleagues seemed touched with electricity, a curious sort of tension that made them jump when spoken to, kept their eyes on the windows, had their attention wandering throughout their lessons-the kind of intangible crackling that preceded thunder.

  He suspected the mood was caused by the Screamer. In the lounge, a colleague, Rose Adams, had detailed the effects of such a blow in '74. It had swept in before dawn, tides five and six feet above normal, streets flooded, windows shattered, more than a dozen automobiles pushed down Bridge Road straight into the bay. Luckily there'd been a warning, and most of the islanders had taken off for the mainland. Of those who'd remained, one had drowned on his lawn, another had been dashed to death against a wall by the wind and a fallen tree.

  "Of course I'm not leaving," she said when he asked. "Do you think I'd miss one just because of a little wind?"

  A throat cleared behind him, and he turned as he moved aside, the smile almost fading when he saw three students waiting, a girl and two boys.

  "Excuse me, Mr. Ross," Denise Adams said politely as she brushed past him through the door.

  "Have a good weekend," he said to the curly-haired brunette. "See you Monday."

  She paused on the middle of five marble steps and looked back over her shoulder. "Aren't you going to the party tomorrow?"

  He shrugged.

  "Carter can vote, you know. You ought to talk to him. You always say every vote counts in any election." Then she smiled broadly. "I was eighteen last week. I can vote too."

  Several comments came instantly to mind, all of them salacious and unbefitting his position; he grinned anyway, for the hell of it, to show her what he was thinking. Her large eyes widened, and her lower lip pulled between her teeth as she waved somewhat doubtfully and took the remaining steps at a deliberately slow march, her blue plaid shirt tight across her slender back, her jeans-encased hips swinging sharply side to side. The two boys with her ignored him completely. But he smiled at them as well, thinking the effort wouldn't kill him, though he decided not to ask why they weren't bringing home their books.

  The smaller of the two, Denise's brother, Frankie, slapped her arm when they reached the sidewalk. She slapped him back, hard, before he could twist away, and muttered something Colin didn't hear as the door hissed closed. He sneered and ducked another blow, ran to the street and tight roped the center line. The second boy shot an arm around her waist and drew her close, leaned toward her ear and whispered with a leer. She slapped him too, but not nearly as hard as she had hit her brother. Then he looked back over his shoulder and gave a cold smile to Colin.

  Colin nodded as if the smile were genuine.

  "Sweet, isn't he," a deep voice said behind him. He didn't turn. He watched Carter Naughton walk with Denise up the street, his fisted right hand now buried in her hip pocket.

  "He'll do."

  "No, he won't," said Bill Efron. "None of them will. They come here three times a week for your tutoring, and I'll bet you your salary they still won't graduate high school in June. I tell you, Colin, there are times when I suspect they're not even human."

  Colin laughed quietly. The principal had been fighting with Naughton and his friends for as long as they'd been alive, or so it seemed. Cart was nineteen, tall and muscular, his thick black hair greased to a gleaming and combed in a ducktail reminiscent of the fifties. Frankie, three years younger, tried desperately for imitation, but his curled brown hair wouldn't straighten, he was too skinny for a fitted T-shirt, and Colin didn't believe he really had the heart. Peg had agreed, which is why she kept him on as her stockboy and clerk-a chance for salvation, she'd said when he asked her.

  Denise, on the other hand, was what he could only describe as saucy, and sassy, and much too old for her age. She also didn't need the extra work; her high school grades were quite adequate for passing. Though she denied it, he knew the only reason she came was because Carter commanded.

  Efron sighed loudly, a frequent martyr to his profession, and pushed aside his tan cashmire jacket to tuck his thumbs around his alligator belt. He was white-haired and balding, his face a pink balloon slowly leaking air. His pale eyes were narrowed in a perpetual squint, a refusal to wear glasses when he was outside his office.

  "Wouldn't give you two cents for the lot of them," the principal said bitterly. "Damned state insists we have to train 'em, though. Don't know why Flocks doesn't do it; they've got the teachers and facilities. It's that fool at the high school, of course. Carter has him scared out of his wits. But as long as the kid insists on staying in, there's nothing the guy can do." He shook his head in empathetic resignation. "If the draft were still in, that jerk would be in khaki."

  Colin listened without comment. In the first place, he really didn't mind the tutoring he'd volunteered for; he thought it a challenge, rather liked the extra money, and once in a while even Cart gave him hope there might be progress. But Efron was leading up to something else besides grousing. After all this time he knew the signs-the man was corralling his courage for something unpleasant he hadn't the finesse to open squarely. The last time it was a mild scolding for showing Gauguin nudes in the classroom; the time before that it was smoking in the schoolyard; and the time before that it was to announce to the faculty there'd be no raise in the fall.

  "I, uh, don't see you out shaking hands," Efron said at last, with a jocular tone so false it nearly creaked. His pink face turned pinker. "I suppose you're saving it for the big party at the Run tomorrow night."

  Colin trapped an ill-timed comment by wiping his mouth. "I'm not all that political, Bill, though I have to admit it'd be awfully tempting to make a speech. Maybe I will, just to see what Bob says." He laughed with a shake of his head. "Probably toss me out on my ear." He paused. "Are you going to be there?"

  "Probably. If the wife is feeling better."

  Colin barely managed to withhold a chuckle, arranging his expression artfully into a display of concern. Efron's wife was notorious for her illnesses, primarily contracted from the soap operas she watched; what the heroines suffered she felt bound to share, as long as it didn't seem that the suffering was fatal. Efron indulged her, and ignored the snide comments, and the rest of the island generally played the game-when there was nothing left to talk about, Mrs. Efron's latest provided an easy topic.

  "Well, I hope she's well enough. It should be quite a bash."

  Efron nodded thoughtfully, slipped a hand into his jacket pocket. "You won't be giving any speeches, then."

  "I made the one last month at the town meeting, which proved to me I should stick to my canvases. Anyway, I figure people can ask me if they want to know more."

  "And do they?"

  He nodded. "Once in a while. You know how it is." A pause. "Here in school?"

  He turned slowly and leaned as casually as he could against the door frame, trying to decide if the man was kidding or not. The look on the principal's face said he wasn't, and Colin almost lost his temper. "Bill, I'm surprised. You know me better than that. Here, I teach. I don't campaign. Anybody asks me, I tell them to wait until later."

  Efron smiled in weak apology. "I know that, Colin. I just want to be sure you understand."

  "It's been over a month. Why haven't you said anything before?"

  The principal shrugged his wide, sagging shoulders. "Didn't see the need for it."

  "And now?"

  The question echoed off the empty foyer's beige-tiled walls, and Efron backed to a wall display case behind whose glass face were ranged a few polished trophies and dark-framed citations. He stared
at them as if they were whispering in his ear.

  "This isn't a big school, Colin, not like they have in Flocks or the city. But it does have a reputation. And a damned good one, I might add. There are more than a dozen kids here from the mainland whose parents are willing to pay extra to have them learn from us. Our students on the average do better in high school and in college than anyone else in the county." He traced a finger across the glass, as if he were trying to write a message. "I don't want people saying there's any undue influence here."

  "You don't have to worry about that, Bill," he said, hoping his annoyance didn't show in his tone. "At least I don't hand out pamphlets to my students to take home to their parents." And the moment he said it he wished he'd kept his mouth shut.

  Efron half-turned, frowning. "What's that supposed to mean?'

  It was too late to retreat, but he didn't want to argue. A gesture, then, to deflect the tension. "Come on, Bill, don't play games, okay? It's a beautiful day and I don't want it spoiled for something silly like this."

  "Are you saying Cameron uses his business to garner votes?"

  Colin sighed mild disgust and walked toward the intersection of the foyer and the building's single hallway.

  "Colin."

  He stopped.

  The hallway was deserted.

  The voice behind him was solemn.

  "Bob Cameron has a restaurant, and what he does there is his affair. It's private, and his customers don't have to read his material if they don't want to. On the other hand, this is a public school. We have a trust here, aside from a legal obligation. A word to the wise-don't abuse it."

  He nodded without looking back, continued around the corner and headed for the faculty lounge. Once inside, with the door carefully closed behind him, he lashed out with a foot at the nearest chair, wincing when he connected with the aluminum tubing and a shock paralyzed his leg. Idiot, he thought as he hobbled to the back window and looked out at the schoolyard. Idiot-though he wasn't sure yet who deserved the label.