by Brian Hodge
The camel’s hair coat. Ed. The night she had found the death certificate in her pocket she had also taken out …
She stumbled across the floor to the staircase, sat heavily and gripped the bannister with her right hand.
There was dirt on the handkerchief, but there was no blood.
A single-winged bird had tried to kill her.
Her father had been dead, and was living again.
The death certificate had not been some macabre, unpleasant joke; it had been a preparation in case something had failed.
Angus had told her of a mild heart condition that Kraylin had treated, and had treated well. Now Angus was dead … or was he dead again?
Cyd laughed. She leaned back on her elbows and let the stairwell fill with her voice, let her voice fill the house, let the house echo it back by the tens, by the thousands, denying and crying and demanding the dream end.
“Oh my God,” she whispered.
People die; Yarrows don’t.
She threw the handkerchief from her, watched it flutter to the floor and assume a vague tent shape. She ran, then, to every room on the first floor, turning on every lamp until the house was afire and the shadows were gone and a wind of false warmth followed in her wake. Dying as soon as she reached the library, dying when she looked in spite of herself at the floor behind the door where the dead crow had landed.
There was no blood.
Her coat felt unclean, as though it were leprous and she shed it as she began running again, up the stairs this time and into her room. There was no question now that she had to get to Ed, had to fall into his arms so he could raise his battle shield. It made no difference now that he was afraid; he had been right from the beginning—she should have gotten out. She had no time to pack, however, only time enough to grab a coat from the wardrobe in her bedroom, notice that it was the green one, the one the bird had torn.
She dropped it where she stood.
Frowned.
Knelt, and reached into the pocket, finding there the note she had taken from Rob’s desk. Her fingers would not listen to what she commanded, and the paper dropped twice before she could unfold it. In green ink, in a hand precise as it was bold, there was a single message across the center: You’d better be ready. He does not respond. There was no date, but she knew it had to have been the twenty-third of June; there was no signature, but she knew it was Kraylin’s writing; and there was no salutation. To whom had it been written, then? Not necessarily to Rob; there’d been dust in the desk when she’d finally pried it open, and anyone could have hidden it there if they knew he scarcely used it.
Rob. Evan. Mother.
“I’m crazy,” she muttered as she got back to her feet. “I’m crazy and I don’t know it. That’s the way it always is.”
She wandered out into the hallway and stood at the head of the stairs. The lights notwithstanding, she felt herself poised in the center of a vast well of darkness through which lightning, subdued, flashed on occasion, illuminating nothing but her reflection on the black. There was a core of intelligence in this well that had given her the answers, the thread by which nearly everything could be bound; but she refused to accept it, refused to draw it, could not believe that there were powers within the Station that defied what she had known were consistently immutable. What she had known.
She had known that birds with one wing could not fly; she had known that once cut with a jagged shard of glass her mother would bleed; she had known that her father had lain dead in his bedroom; and she had known that she had placed a dead crow in a towel, in a bag, and had been forced to beat it with a tire iron in the car. What she had known.
One step at a time she descended the staircase, her left hand gliding along the bannister without gripping, her right clutching in spasms at the buttons on her blouse. She felt her shoes sink into the carpet, heard the soft press of her heels and the give of the leather. The wind outside was a distant moaning thing, lost among the lights that guided her down, without the power to harm her, to touch her, to blow away sanity and leave her with …
As she grabbed onto the newel-post with both hands and squeezed as though she could crush the polished wood, she decided to rid herself of fantasy before it was too late. To deny everything in the face of what she had seen, what she had found, would only tend to make tornados of her confusions and drive her into cellars of madness and warmth. To flow was the answer, to speculate and refute.
Assume, then, she told herself, that the bird was indeed dead, that her father was indeed dead, that her mother did not bleed—assume it for the moment without a single scream. Assume that this insanity was engendered by Doctor Kraylin—through hypnosis (don’t ask yourself how the dead can be affected) or drugs or a combination of both. Assume further, and rightly, that the family had been in minor financial trouble before she herself had left on her tour of Europe; that was an open secret, there could be no argument there. Then Kraylin had convinced one, two, however many of the Yarrows that whatever he did was worth the price that he asked, the price that included a handful of lives.
Angus. Wallace. Father. Perhaps … Mother.
Her brothers were left, then.
Unless they were dead, too.
She grinned without mirth: the stumbling block to belief was not the supernatural. More things, Horatio, and the rest of the misquote— she would believe in anything if it could be proven beyond doubt. The stumbling block lay in the fact of her own life, that for the last three months she had been living with the dead. That she would not tolerate, that she would not accept.
Consider, however, a part of her whispered— wouldn’t that account for the changes you saw? Your father without his blustering; Mother’s sudden fear of doctors; the indifference you’ve wept over since the day you got off the plane; Angus’ abrupt turnabout and the hiding of truth; the dismissal of the Lennons and Wallace McLeod?
And that something you sensed each time you came home?
Could not it have been the absence of life?
She shook her head vigorously and rushed into the sitting room, to the far side beyond the second fireplace where she flung open the doors of a walnut cabinet. From it she grabbed a bottle of Bourbon, splashed as much as she dared into a tall crystal glass and drank it before she could imagine the burning. And when it came and she gagged, she drank again, and again. Set the glass down and sagged into a chair.
Insane, of course.
The whole idea was gothic: drive the poor little rich girl right out of her mind, settle her portion of the dwindling estate and divide it. Divide it. But division meant partners. Two at least; at the most … my God!
“All right, Cyd,” she said out loud, “you know damned well there’s only one way you’re going to convince yourself one way or another.”
But she could not get up to go out to the car.
And in facing that fear and the possibilities it bore she knew that in spite of the storm in her mind, in spite of the denials that all science had taught her … in spite of it all, she had accepted it all.
There was no need to face the dead crow that lived.
“No,” she said, ten minutes later.
“I don’t know.”
She stood suddenly. This wavering between the real and the unreal would last all night, for the rest of her life if she let it. She needed to verbalize it, to talk aloud to someone who would play the devil’s advocate with a modicum of humor without laughing her right out of the room. That, without question, would have to be Ed. No matter the pain, or the drugs that they’d fed him, he would have to hear her; hear her, and now.
She returned upstairs long enough to yank her cardigan from the wardrobe and kick the green coat under the bed. The note she left lying in the middle of the floor, unafraid but unwilling to touch it again. The handkerchief also remained where it had fallen, and she gave it wide berth as she came down the stairs and headed for the door.
Stopped.
Listened, with one hand on the knob while the ot
her fussed meaninglessly with her hair.
She listened for the sound of the dead crow flying, for the first time realizing that unless she could somehow exorcise the car she would have to walk all the way into town.
And in listening heard the sound of a motor in the drive.
You did it, Ed, she thought with a grin; by God, you did it!
She opened the door and stepped onto the porch. Several seconds passed while she waited for her eyes to adjust to the night; and when they had it was too late to duck back inside.
In the oval, at the curve by the garage, headlights flared out and an engine died.
And all she could do was stare at the Greybeast.
Chapter 15
When the driver’s door opened she could see five faces inside: Evan, Rob, and her mother in back; Barton and Cal Kraylin seated in front. They were motionless for several long moments, but it was more than sufficient for Cyd to understand that here was the proof of the nightmare she had been feeding. Not that it would stand up to scrutiny in a court, and not that even Ed would believe it unless he saw. Nevertheless it was here. Nevertheless she had it. It was an intuition that leapt into something not quite faith and more than terror; it was the acceptance she had felt inside about the bird, and the knowledge that Horatio should have been here after all. Real and unreal was a problem that had a solution—both real and unreal existed as one. A particle here, an atom there, a shade for this portion … all of it of a piece and none of it separate; and none of it meant a damn unless one believed.
And she did.
As Kraylin and the others stepped out on the drive, and Evan and Rob moved immediately to the car and peered inside, Evan shrugging, Rob nodding, as Kraylin and her parents waited by the Greybeast’s hood.
Oh Ed, Cyd wept silently, for the last three months I’ve been living in a tomb.
They stood in the glow of all the house’s light and waited until they were once again five. Then Kraylin looked steadily in her direction, as if waiting for her to join them, out of fear or resignation. And when she did not move he nodded, stuffed his hands into his blazer pockets and began to walk toward her, the rest trailing a step behind.
Normal; they look normal, some part of her cried. But the illusion, now that she had pierced it, was not quite complete. Like the tiny brass horse in the library, now that she understood that what she was watching was false, there were minute items missing, items that glared in their absence: the barely military swing of Barton’s left arm, the stilted stride of her mother, Evan’s bird-cock tilt as he seemed to listen to the ground more than air. All of it missing, vital parts so small they were taken for granted and thus overlooked.
Kraylin lifted a hand in a mocking gentle greeting, and she bolted.
She slammed the door and raced down the hall toward the back, skidding on the bare sections of flooring but keeping her balance without losing her speed. At the back door she paused, a panicked look to either side, then flung it open and was ready to sprint across the veranda to the lawn when Evan stumbled around the corner of the house. She stared at him for a moment before doubling back toward the stairs, had her hand on the bannister when she looked up and saw Myrtle on the first switchback landing.
Rob stood in front of the sitting room entrance, and across the foyer waited Barton, his hands clasped at his waist.
Kraylin was at the door, hands still in his pockets, rocking on his heels like a skipper at the helm.
“Are you finished?” he said. The hardness she had seen at the Clinic was still there, a tone-rough edge that gave timbre to his voice to help it carry though he whispered. “Are you finished?”
No, she thought, you murderer.
She nodded.
Kraylin raised his thick brows, seemed to sigh his relief, then indicated with a nod that she should follow her father into the living room. She almost hesitated, changed her mind about running when she heard Evan striding up behind her. She did not turn around; instead, without looking at the others she walked carefully into the room, afraid she would stumble over her own shadow or another’s, not willing to give the doctor the satisfaction.
Without waiting, she headed directly for the wing chair that flanked on the left the television hearth. She looked at the blank screen, saw her faint grey reflection, turned and sat and crossed her legs. She would listen, she thought, because it would give her time; time for the improbable to alter definition, time for something positive to come to mind. And when it did she would be ready. Given the chance to run, she knew where she would go.
Kraylin waited on the threshold, his gaze examining the room as if it held a trap before moving deliberately to the divan that was set on her right. He took the far corner, draped an arm over the back, unbuttoned the blazer and rubbed idly at his stomach.
Immediately, Cyd pointed to the four Yarrows arranged behind him. “Get them out of here,” she said tightly, amazed that she had not exploded in tears. “I … I know what they are. They don’t have to be here.”
“Well,” Kraylin said, his admiration showing. “If you think that will help you, of course.” And he lifted one hand in a listless dismissal.
“Can you do that every time?” she asked, wishing she could sound far more calm. When Kraylin nodded she almost spat in his face. “So? Now what?”
Kraylin brushed a hand through his windblown hair, as if in a moment he would be sitting for a portrait. He fussed at it, patted it, smoothed it down to his nape, taking so long that she thought she would scream. Then he shifted his attention to the front of his shirt, again patting, again smoothing, until he was satisfied.
“If you wait a minute,” she said, “I’ll get my purse and give you a nail file.”
He did not smile.
“Listen, doctor,” she said, the use of his title as close to an obscenity as she could get, “you can keep on doing what you’re doing, or you can threaten to kill me, it really doesn’t make a bit of difference to me. You’re not frightening me. I’m scared to death already.”
He nodded, slouched deeper into the corner and cleared his throat theatrically. “When I was younger,” he said, his gaze fixed at some point on the ceiling, “I used to daydream a lot. About being able to control things no one else could. Or make things, like Victor Frankenstein. It’s not all that unusual, you know. All kids dream about being magical, fighting monsters, wondering what it would be like to be a vampire or a werewolf—without, of course, any of the pain that goes with them. So I did it, just like everyone else, the difference being that I didn’t let go. I read books, I saw movies, sometimes I even promised to sell my soul to the devil in return for some bit or piece of magic for my own.
“Naturally, it didn’t work.
“And neither did the nonsense that Mary Shelley wrote about in her novel. Oh, I don’t deny that I thought about it once in a while during the time I spent in medical school, and afterward, while I did research in France and England. I thought about it, dismissed it, but I didn’t stop dreaming. The best time, as you probably already know, is when you first lie down in bed and your mind isn’t quite ready to let go for a bit. It’s also about the only time you can control your dreams. You force the action, as it were … and so I forced my magic.”
Cyd listened carefully, searching for signs of the madman in the voice, finding none and realizing that this made it all the more terrifying. The man was serious. She wished the wind would stop blowing.
“And then, when a little bit of inheritance money drifted my way, I began visiting clairvoyants, mediums, other charlatans of that ilk, thinking that perhaps they had stumbled upon what I had been only dreaming about. I did this, you must understand, only half-heartedly, It was … rather like a hobby, I would say. Something to pass the time when there was nothing better to do. I suppose a psychiatrist would call it a fetal obsession, one that feeds on you slowly until it gives birth to a psychosis.” Bingo, she thought; and knew it was too simple.
Kraylin crossed his legs and grabbed hold of his kne
e. His gaze had shifted, from the ceiling to her breasts, though she could tell that his vision was somewhere else, somewhere inside and he didn’t see a thing. Nevertheless, it made her nervous and she turned slightly away.
“I began to feel afraid for myself. But the irony of it is, the more afraid I was that I would drive myself crazy, the more I began to think that maybe, just maybe this magic business had a foundation I could unearth, as it were, and build on if I had the right tools. And the right attitude, my dear Cynthia, was the key to it all.
“Attitude.
“You see, daydreams are one thing and reality is quite something else. You can daydream all you want, but unless you believe, not a blessed thing is going to happen. And the reason most people don’t believe is because they’ve been trained not to. One believes in illusion, but not in magic.
“So I worked at it. For several hours every day, for years at a time. I would stand in front of a mirror and tell myself it was true. I would whisper it to myself during an operation—you look surprised, Cynthia. Did you think I was a quack?”
She was startled and angry that she’d allowed something to disturb the carefully built neutrality of her expression. So startled in fact that she nodded without thinking, and shrank back into her chair when Kraylin stiffened and scowled.
“I am a good doctor, Miss Yarrow,” he said slowly. “A very good doctor. If there’s one thing I’m not, it’s a phony practitioner.”
“I’m sure,” she muttered, flinching again when he struggled to his feet and stood before her.
“I will not be patronized, Miss Yarrow!”
She shook her head quickly. “Not me,” she said. “I was just agreeing with what you said. You said you were a good doctor, I said okay.”
His chest rose and fell rapidly, and he turned away sharply to face the front windows with his hands behind his back. The drapes there and the shades were drifting slightly as the wind found cracks in the panes and the frames, created draughts that became snakes to creep along the floor. Her ankles grew cold, her calves and her thighs.