Sally came over to Peter and looked into the container. “Gimme one,” she said, extending a grimy hand. Weldon and Mills moved up behind her, like two old soldiers flanking their mad queen.
Reluctantly, Peter picked up one of the combs. Its coldness flowed into his arm, his head, and for a moment he was in the midst of a storm-tossed sea, terrified, waves crashing over the bows of a fishing boat and the wind singing around him. He dropped the comb. His hands were trembling, and his heart was doing a jig against his chest wall.
“Oh, shit,” he said to no one in particular. “I don’t know if I want to do this.”
Sara gave Sally her seat beside Peter, and as they handled the combs, setting them down every minute or so to report what they had learned, she chewed her nails and fretted. She could relate to Hugh Weldon’s frustration; it was awful just to sit and watch. Each time Peter and Sally handled the combs their respiration grew shallow and their eyes rolled back, and when they laid them aside they appeared drained and frightened.
“Gabriela Pascual was from Miami,” said Peter. “I can’t tell exactly when all this happened, but it was years ago…because in my image of her, her clothes look a little old-fashioned. Maybe ten or fifteen years back. Something like that. Anyway, there was trouble for her onshore, some emotional entanglement, and her brother didn’t want to leave her alone, so he took her along on a fishing voyage. He was a commercial fisherman.”
“She had the gift,” Sally chimed in. “That’s why there’s so much of her in the combs. That, and because she killed herself and died holdin’ ’em.”
“Why’d she kill herself?” asked Weldon.
“Fear,” said Peter. “Loneliness. Crazy as it sounds, the wind was holding her prisoner. I think she cracked up from being alone on a drifting boat with only this thing—the elemental—for company.”
“Alone?” said Weldon. “What happened to her brother?”
“He died.” Sally’s voice was shaky. “The wind came down and killed ’em all ’cept this Gabriela. It wanted her.”
As the story unfolded, gusts of wind began to shudder the cottage and Sara tried to remain unconcerned as to whether or not they were natural phenomena. She turned her eyes from the window, away from the heaving trees and bushes, and concentrated on what was being said; but that in itself was so eerie that she couldn’t keep from jumping whenever the panes rattled. Gabriela Pascual, said Peter, had been frequently seasick during the cruise; she had been frightened of the crew, most of whom considered her bad luck, and possessed by a feeling of imminent disaster. And, Sally added, that premonition had been borne out. One cloudless calm day the elemental had swept down and killed everyone. Everyone except Gabriela. It had whirled the crew and her brother into the air, smashed them against bulkheads, dropped them onto the decks. She had expected to die as well, but it had seemed interested in her. It had caressed her and played with her, knocking her down and rolling her about; and at night it had poured through the passageways and broken windows, making a chilling music that—as the days passed and the ship drifted north—she came to half-understand.
“She didn’t think of it as a spirit,” said Peter. “There wasn’t anything mystical about it to her mind. It struck her as being kind of a…”
“An animal,” interrupted Sally. “A big, stupid animal. Vicious, it was. But not evil. ’Least it didn’t feel evil to her.”
Gabriela, Peter went on, had never been sure what it wanted of her—perhaps her presence had been all. Most of the time it had left her alone. Then, suddenly, it would spring up out of a calm to juggle splinters of glass or chase her about. Once the ship had drifted near to shore, and when she had attempted to jump over the side, the elemental had battered her and driven her below-decks. Though at first it had controlled the drift of the ship, gradually it lost interest in her and on several occasions the ship almost foundered. Finally, no longer caring to prolong the inevitable, she had cut her wrists and died clutching the container holding her most valued possessions, her grandmother’s silver combs, with the wind howling in her ears.
Peter leaned back against the wall, his eyes shut, and Sally sighed and patted her breast. For a long moment no one spoke.
“Wonder why it’s hangin’ ’round that garbage out there,” said Mills.
“Maybe no reason,” said Peter dully. “Or maybe it’s attracted to slack points in the tides, to some condition of the air.”
“I don’t get it,” said Weldon. “What the hell is it? It can’t be no animal.”
“Why not?” Peter stood, swayed, then righted himself. “What’s wind, anyway? Charged ions, vacating air masses. Who’s to say that some stable form of ions couldn’t approximate a life? Could be there’s one of these at the heart of every storm, and they’ve always been mistaken for spirits, given an anthropomorphic character. Like Ariel.” He laughed disconsolately. “It’s no sprite, that’s for sure.”
Sally’s eyes looked unnaturally bright, like watery jewels lodged in her weathered face. “The sea breeds ’em,” she said firmly, as if that were explanation enough of anything strange.
“Peter’s book was right,” said Sara. “It’s an elemental. That’s what you’re describing, anyway. A violent, inhuman creature, part spirit and part animal.” She laughed, and the laugh edged a bit high, bordering on the hysteric. “It’s hard to believe.”
“Right!” said Weldon. “Damned hard! I got an ol’ crazy woman and a man I don’t know from Adam tellin’ me…”
“Listen!” said Mills; he walked to the door and swung it open.
It took Sara a second to fix on the sound, but then she realized that the wind had died, had gone from heavy gusts to trifling breezes in an instant, and farther away, coming from the sea, or nearer, maybe as close as Tennessee Avenue, she heard a roaring.
V
A few moments earlier Jerry Highsmith had been both earning his living and looking forward to a night of exotic pleasures in the arms of Ginger McCurdy. He was standing in front of one of the houses on Tennessee Avenue, its quarterboard reading AHAB-ITAT, and a collection of old harpoons and whalebones mounted on either side of the door; his bicycle leaned against a rail fence behind him, and ranged around him, straddling their bikes, dolled up in pastel-hued jogging suits and sweat clothes, were twenty-six members of the Peach State Ramblers Bicycle Club. Ten men, sixteen women. The women were all in good shape, but most were in their thirties, a bit long in the tooth for Jerry’s taste. Ginger, on the other hand, was prime. Twenty-three or twenty-four, with red hair down to her ass and a body that wouldn’t quit. She had peeled off her sweats and was blooming out a halter and shorts cut so high that each time she dismounted you could see right up to the Pearly Gates. And she knew what she was doing: every jiggle of those twin jaloobies was aimed at his crotch. She had pressed to the front of the group and was attending to his spiel about the bullshit whaling days. Oh, yeah! Ginger was ready. A couple of lobsters, a little wine, a stroll along the waterfront, and then by God he’d pump her so full of the Nantucket Experience that she’d breach like a snow-white hill.
Thar she fuckin’ blows!
“Now, y’all…” he began.
They tittered; they liked him mocking their accent.
He grinned abashedly as if he hadn’t known what he was doing. “Must be catchin’,” he said. “Now you people probably haven’t had a chance to visit the Whaling Museum, have you?”
A chorus of Nos.
“Well then, I’ll give you a course in harpoonin’.” He pointed at the wall of the AHAB-ITAT. “That top one with the single barb stickin’ off the side, that’s the kind most commonly used during the whalin’ era. The shaft’s of ash. That was the preferred wood. It stands up to the weather”—he stared pointedly at Ginger—“and it won’t bend under pressure.” Ginger tried to constrain a smile. “Now that one,” he continued, keeping an eye on her, “the one with the arrow point and no barbs, that was favored by some whalers. They said it allowed for deeper penetration.�
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“What about the one with two barbs?” asked someone.
Jerry peered over heads and saw that the questioner was his second choice. Ms. Selena Persons. A nice thirtyish brunette, flat-chested, but with killer legs. Despite the fact that he was obviously after Ginger, she hadn’t lost interest. Who knows? A double-header might be a possibility.
“That was used toward the end of the whalin’ era,” he said. “But generally two-barbed harpoons weren’t considered as effective as single-barbed ones. I don’t know why, exactly. Might have just been stubbornness on the whalers’ part. Resistance to change. They knew the ol’ single-barb could give satisfaction.”
Ms. Persons met his gaze with the glimmer of a smile.
“’Course,” Jerry continued, addressing all the Ramblers, “now the shaft’s tipped with a charge that explodes inside the whale.” He winked at Ginger and added sotto voce, “Must be a rush.”
She covered her mouth with her hand.
“Okay, folks!” Jerry swung his bike away from the fence. “Mount up, and we’ll be off to the next thrillin’ attraction.”
Laughing and chattering, the Ramblers started to mount, but just then a powerful gust of wind swept down Tennessee Avenue, causing squeals and blowing away hats. Several of the riders overbalanced and fell, and several more nearly did. Ginger stumbled forward and clung to Jerry, giving him chest-to-chest massage. “Nice catch,” she said, doing a little writhe as she stepped away.
“Nice toss,” he replied.
She smiled, but the smile faded and was replaced by a bewildered look. “What’s that?”
Jerry turned. About twenty yards away a column of whirling leaves had formed above the blacktop; it was slender, only a few feet high, and though he had never seen anything similar, it alarmed him no more than had the freakish gust of wind. Within seconds, however, the column had grown to a height of fifteen feet; twigs and gravel and branches were being sucked into it, and it sounded like a miniature tornado. Someone screamed. Ginger clung to him in genuine fright. There was a rank smell in the air, and a pressure was building in Jerry’s ears. He couldn’t be sure, because the column was spinning so rapidly, but it seemed to be assuming a roughly human shape, a dark green figure made of plant litter and stones. His mouth had gone dry, and he restrained an urge to throw Ginger aside and run.
“Come on!” he shouted.
A couple of the Ramblers managed to mount their bicycles, but the wind had grown stronger, roaring, and it sent them wobbling and crashing into the weeds. The rest huddled together, their hair whipping about, and stared at the great Druid thing that was taking shape and swaying above them, as tall as the treetops. Shingles were popping off the sides of the houses, sailing up and being absorbed by the figure; and as Jerry tried to outvoice the wind, yelling at the Ramblers to lie flat, he saw the whalebones and harpoons ripped from the wall of the AHAB-ITAT. The windows of the house exploded outward. One man clutched the bloody flap of his cheek, which had been sliced open by a shard of glass; a woman grabbed the back of her knee and crumpled. Jerry shouted a final warning and pulled Ginger down with him into the roadside ditch. She squirmed and struggled, in a panic, but he forced her head down and held tight. The figure had risen much higher than the trees, and though it was still swaying, its form had stabilized somewhat. It had a face now: a graveyard smile of gray shingles and two circular patches of stones for eyes: a terrible blank gaze that seemed responsible for the increasing air pressure. Jerry’s heart boomed in his inner ear, and his blood felt like sludge. The figure kept swelling, up and up; the roar was resolving into an oscillating hum that shivered the ground. Stones and leaves were beginning to spray out of it. Jerry knew, knew, what was going to happen, and he couldn’t keep from watching. Amid a flurry of leaves he saw one of the harpoons flit through the air, impaling a woman who had been trying to stand. The force of the blow drove her out of Jerry’s field of vision. Then the great figure exploded. Jerry squeezed his eyes shut. Twigs and balls of dirt and gravel stung him. Ginger leaped sideways and collapsed atop him, clawing at his hip. He waited for something worse to happen, but nothing did. “You okay?” he asked, pushing Ginger away by the shoulders.
She wasn’t okay.
A splintered inch of whalebone stuck out from the center of her forehead. Shrieking with revulsion, Jerry wriggled from beneath her and came to his hands and knees. A moan. One of the men was crawling toward him, his face a mask of blood, a ragged hole where his right eye had been; his good eye looked glazed like a doll’s. Horrified, not knowing what to do, Jerry scrambled to his feet and backed away. All the harpoons, he saw, had found targets. Most of the Ramblers lay unmoving, their blood smeared over the blacktop; the rest were sitting up, dazed and bleeding. Jerry’s heel struck something, and he spun about. The quarterboard of the AHAB-ITAT had nailed Ms. Selena Persons vampire-style to the roadside dirt; the board had been driven so deep into the ground that only the letter A was showing above the mired ruin of her jogging suit, as if she were an exhibit. Jerry began to tremble, and tears started from his eyes.
A breeze ruffled his hair.
Somebody wailed, shocking him from his daze. He should call the hospital, the police. But where was a phone? Most of the houses were empty, waiting for summer tenants, and the phones wouldn’t be working. Somebody must have seen what had happened, though. He should just do what he could until help arrived. Gathering himself, he walked toward the man whose eye was missing; but before he had gone more than a few paces a fierce gust of wind struck him in the back and knocked him flat.
This time the roaring was all around him, the pressure so intense that it seemed a white-hot needle had pierced him from ear to ear. He shut his eyes and clamped both hands to his ears, trying to smother the pain. Then he felt himself lifted. He couldn’t believe it at first. Even when he opened his eyes and saw that he was being borne aloft, revolving in a slow circle, it made no sense. He couldn’t hear, and the quiet added to his sense of unreality; further adding to it, a riderless bicycle pedaled past. The air was full of sticks and leaves and pebbles, a threadbare curtain between him and the world, and he imagined himself rising in the gorge of that hideous dark figure. Ginger McCurdy was flying about twenty feet overhead, her red hair streaming, arms floating languidly as if in a dance. She was revolving faster than he, and he realized that his rate of spin was increasing as he rose. He saw what was going to happen: you went higher and higher, faster and faster, until you were spewed out, shot out over the village. His mind rebelled at the prospect of death, and he tried to swim back down the wind, flailing, kicking, bursting with fear. But as he whirled higher, twisting and turning, it became hard to breathe, to think, and he was too dizzy to be afraid any longer.
Another woman sailed by a few feet away. Her mouth was open, her face contorted; blood dripped from her scalp. She clawed at him, and he reached out to her, not knowing why he bothered. Their hands just missed touching. Thoughts were coming one at a time. Maybe he’d land in the water. Miraculous Survivor of Freak Tornado. Maybe he’d fly across the island and settle gently in a Nantucket treetop. A broken leg, a bruise or two. They’d set up drinks for him in the Atlantic Cafe. Maybe Connie Keating would finally come across, would finally recognize the miraculous potential of Jerry Highsmith. Maybe. He was tumbling now, limbs jerking about, and he gave up thinking. Flash glimpses of the gapped houses below, of the other dancers on the wind, moving with spasmodic abandon. Suddenly, as he was bent backward by a violent updraft, there was a wrenching pain inside him, a grating, then a vital dislocation that delivered him from pain. Oh, Christ Jesus! Oh, God! Dazzles exploded behind his eyes. Something bright blue flipped past him, and he died.
VI
After the column of leaves and branches looming up from Tennessee Avenue had vanished, after the roaring had died, Hugh Weldon sprinted for his squad car with Peter and Sara at his heels. He frowned as they piled in but made no objection, and this, Peter thought, was probably a sign that he had stopped trying
to rationalize events, that he accepted the wind as a force to which normal procedures did not apply. He switched on the siren, and they sped off. But less than fifty yards from the cottage he slammed on the brakes. A woman was hanging in a hawthorn tree beside the road, an old-fashioned harpoon plunged through her chest. There was no point in checking to see if she was alive. All her major bones were quite obviously broken, and she was painted with blood head to foot, making her look like a horrid African doll set out as a warning to trespassers.
Weldon got on the radio. “Body out in Madaket,” he said. “Send a wagon.”
“You might need more than one,” said Sara; she pointed to three dabs of color farther up the road. She was very pale, and she squeezed Peter’s hand so hard that she left white imprints on his skin.
Over the next twenty-five minutes they found eighteen bodies: broken, mutilated, several pierced by harpoons or fragments of bone. Peter would not have believed that the human form could be reduced to such grotesque statements, and though he was horrified, nauseated, he became increasingly numbed by what he saw. Odd thoughts flocked to his brain, most persistent among them being that the violence had been done partly for his benefit. It was a sick, nasty idea, and he tried to dismiss it; but after a while he began to consider it in light of other thoughts that had lately been striking him out of the blue. The manuscript of How the Wind Spoke at Madaket, for instance. As improbable as it sounded, it was hard to escape the conclusion that the wind had been seeding all this in his brain. He didn’t want to believe it, yet there it was, as believable as anything else that had happened. And given that, was his latest thought any less believable? He was beginning to understand the progression of events, to understand it with the same sudden clarity that had helped him solve the problems of his book, and he wished very much that he could have obeyed his premonition and not touched the combs. Until then the elemental had not been sure of him; it had been nosing around him like—as Sally had described it—a big, stupid animal, sensing something familiar about him but unable to remember what. And when he had found the combs, when he had opened the container, there must have been some kind of circuit closed, a flash point sparked between his power and Gabriela Pascual’s, and the elemental had made the connection. He recalled how excited it had seemed, darting back and forth beyond the borders of the aggregate.
The Jaguar Hunter Page 14