by Brian Hodge
“It happened two years ago,” Kraylin said, his back still toward her. “One morning, after all that self-promising, I was able … I was able to do something! It doesn’t matter what. I did it. And it wasn’t telekinesis or telepathy or any of that other nonsense about ESP. It was magic, Miss Yarrow. A certain kind of magic.”
He spun around, one arm outflung, and she almost yelped and raised her palms toward him.
“It’s all right,” he said softly. “I don’t throw lightning bolts or anything like that. I don’t pull rabbits out of hats or create windstorms or fire. I’m getting there, to be sure, and one of these days all those elements will be mine to control. Earth, wind, fire, water. But not yet, Miss Yarrow. Not yet, and I’m patient.”
She looked toward the foyer, looked back at Kraylin. You’re crazy, she tried to tell him; you’re out of your mind.
Dead crow … flying.
She drew her legs up under her and hugged her knees tightly. Heard footsteps upstairs and frowned until she realized that someone was moving from room to room, following her earlier race, turning out all the lights.
And the wind …
“It takes a great deal of concentration,” he said, bending forward at the waist as though talking to a child who was a great deal shorter, “and it takes nearly everything I have. You have to be strong, Miss Yarrow. Very strong indeed. And I knew almost at once that I would have to give up my practice and my research if I wanted to keep hold of what I had. But to do that I needed money. A great amount of money. And where better to find it than Oxrun Station.”
She swallowed to kill the dryness in her throat. “Where … where did you meet my father?”
“Angus Stone,” he said without hesitation. “The old man was the first one I’d met when came here. He had a reputation for fairness and liking a bit of the greenback for himself now and then. I … well, I gave him a demonstration, so to speak. I showed him what I could do, and what I needed so that I could keep on doing it, so I could get stronger. He introduced me to your father.”
“And you killed him.”
“I can raise the dead, Miss Yarrow.”
“You killed him because alive he would have none of your nonsense. He didn’t believe you, whatever you told him, so you killed him so you and Angus could get hold of the money.”
He took a step toward her.
“Don’t come near me,” she spat, her feet down to the floor, her hands gripping the armrests as if ready to spring.
“Or what?” he said with a twitch of a grin. “You’ll tear out my eyes? Miss Yarrow, I think we had better understand each other a little more clearly.” He took a deep breath, held it, released it, moved away from the divan to pace the open floor, though not once did his eyes leave her, measuring her, checking to be sure that she could not outrun him. “I can, literally, raise the dead. That takes concentration. It takes, as I’ve said, a great deal of power. But once done …” He stopped and pointed at her sharply. “Once done, Miss Yarrow, my creations last for hours. Not many at one time, of course. I’m not a juggler. But while they last they do my will. They don’t have instructions, not to the letter, because they’re not zombies, my dear. They are living creatures of my creation that happen also to be dead.”
Cyd wanted then to place her hands over her ears, her eyes, whatever it would take to drive the man from her. It was madness she was hearing, and madness she believed—Father was dead, and Mother did not bleed. They had been murdered in some way—how agonizing to think that it didn’t matter how—and Kraylin had retrieved them. Used them. Sold property and valuables to keep himself going—in a manner, she thought through a swirling cloud of hate, that he would like to become accustomed to. And it followed in diabolic logic that the sons would be next.
One question remained, “Why aren’t I dead?”
The doctor cocked his head, his eyes narrowing into a concentrated squint that seemed to swallow his face until only his mouth was left.
“I don’t need you,” he said. He shrugged as though the answer were simple. “I don’t need you. The money is mine, and I have proved to myself what I can do. I was prevailed upon not to kill you when you returned and so I did not.”
“Generous.”
“Expedient,” he corrected. “As I said, I don’t need you.”
A shadow swelled on the foyer wall, someone waiting just beyond the door.
“But now you will have to kill me, won’t you,” she said flatly. There was no query; it was a matter of fact.
And she was startled when Kraylin shook his head slowly. “I still have no need,” he said “Besides, my dear Cynthia, who would believe you, eh? No one, that’s who, or you would have headed straight for the police, or that… boyfriend of yours. You know people will think you’re mad, crazy, whatever you choose to call it. No one will believe that you’ve been living with the dead and not known it.”
“The office,” she said quickly, a grasp at a straw. “Someone down there will believe me, I know it. Someone would have noticed by now that Father is … different.” She felt the tears again and fought them. “Someone will know.”
“Not quite,” he said smugly. “Your family hasn’t owned that bank for at least, oh, eight months. It was the first thing I had sold.”
“But Angus—” She stopped, closed her eyes briefly, snapped them open again when she heard herself crying, a faint and distant wailing that was building to escape. She had to get out. One minute more in the company of this nightmare and she would lose all hold of what sanity remained. Lose all control … Control. “Wait a minute,” she said softly. “I thought you said it took a lot of power, or whatever it is, to do this … this thing. Then how could you …” Her eyes widened.
Kraylin nodded. Again the teacher, this time complimenting on the insight that had been reached.
“Who?” she said. Then she waved her hand to forestall his reply. She knew. It was Evan. Evan in the background for all of his life; Evan who did most of the work and took most of the abuse; Evan who was the middle son and received the dwarf portion of affection once she had been born and there was a girl in the house. Evan who worried about everything night and day, who had less sleep than anyone until a solution had been found, a buyer put off, a poor risk unloaded. Evan whose loyalty was to the fortune, not the family.
“How did you convince him to murder his own parents and his brother?”
“I showed him what to do.”
“You mean, he can …?”
“You almost said it just a moment ago, Cynthia. To make this work so no one would know, I had to have someone else working with me. The sorcerer’s apprentice, so to speak. When I couldn’t be here, he kept the charade going.”
The fight was gone. The rage was gone. There was only the numbing advance of despair. In a situation so totally intolerable, the only saving grace had been the thought that all of them were dead, all of them trapped in a hellish limbo of this man’s creation, and none but herself, by virtue of her absence, had escaped. But now … but now…that Evan had actually, of his own free will, of his own damning choice, deliberately become a partner to the demon that stood before her—it was too much. There was too much weight for her shoulders to bear, too much was being asked of her now, too much … too much.
She knew she had slumped, but she did not care. It would be vain, it would be more than self-destruction to keep the pretense of defiance now.
That one of her own had actually chosen to be with him!
Evan spared you, remember. You could have been dead.
Dead.
Peace.
Darkness.
She wanted it.
What was the sense? she wondered. To fight against something that could not be defeated, to struggle against a tide like the Canute of legend? Why bother? What in God’s name was worth standing up to the man who stood triumphantly before her, hands folded at his waist like some fiendlike priest awaiting the acolyte who brings him the chalice?
And the worst
of it was, he would continue to spare her. Whether she moved out of the Station, or stayed in a place of her own in the village, she still would know, and the knowing and the helplessness would soon drive her to a grave she would dig with her own hands. First would be the death of her mind and its attendants, slipping deeper into the peace that silence would bring her, ignoring the world because the world would be changed; then aging, slowly or rapidly as her dementia dictated, to be buried in the Park with the rest of the living. A telephone rang.
Kraylin hurried to the foyer and made a quick signal, and she saw the shadow billow and shrink as whoever had been waiting went into the other room. A voice. Soft. Calm. Immensely aristocratic. A moment later the doctor returned.
“That was Mrs. Lennon,” he said, as though it did not matter. “You’ll be pleased to know that today was your best day. I told her you would bring champagne when you came in.”
“I wish I had the vocabulary to call you what you deserve.”
He held up a forefinger in admonition. “Cynthia, that’s hardly the way to talk. You’d think I was a megalomaniac, determined to raise all the dead of the world and take it over, as if they were some kind of a private army. Ah, you’re surprised! I’m ashamed of you. I’m not greedy, Miss Yarrow. I know what my limitations are, and I know that it will take me many years before I could even begin to be that strong. No, my dear, all I’m after is the knowledge. To know that I can do will be reward enough.
“It’s as your brother said: ‘What a hell of a thing, to have your daydreams come true.’ ”
She expected him then to break into a high-pitched cackle, to rub his hands gleefully at the thought of his success. Instead, he only shrugged; and in that swift movement, in that one small reaction, she saw the strain that worked on his face. The sharp edges, the hardness, the alteration of his features were not, as she had imagined, the result of playacting. He was straining. He was trying to speak normally with her while at the same time retain control of his … things. And things is what they were; they were no longer her family.
Strain.
And weakness.
And Iris and Paul and Ed and Sandy and Yarrow’s on Centre Street where people bought their…dreams.
She almost laughed, and it was a struggle not to; she nearly leapt from her chair, gripped the armrests to prevent it. What despair there was had vanished in the instant.
Myrtle and Barton and Rob … Angus and Wallace and a helpless black crow.
They were dead and wanted burying, and she would be damned first to give Kraylin the last call of mourning.
She stared at him, seeing in his subtly altered expression a sense of her decision. He returned her gaze, only his hands moving to betray the unease he was working with, the sudden realization that Cyd was now his enemy, and an active one at that. She knew he was wondering what had gone wrong with his presentation; and presentation it was, of that she didn’t doubt. Every word that he said, every move that he made had been calculated to drive her into that blinding despair. That it nearly worked served to chill her, made her wary when he turned and called for her brother.
And when he stepped into the living room, his smile almost rueful, she was not surprised that she had been wrong once again.
“Was it really so bad? The business, I mean. Was it all that bad that you had to do this? With him?” She rose and moved to stand behind the chair, her hands on the back and gripping it hard.
“Bad enough,” Rob said. “Not to mention the fact that we were never all that accepted here, and you know that as well as I. The Station is old money, Cyd, and we’re not. Not yet.”
Angus had said he’d given the shop’s papers to Barton and Rob; on the night of the opening Rob had cut his hand and bled; and the note in her pocket had been written to Rob, who had, for once in his life, panicked and had filled out the death certificate in case cover had to be created for a failure of Kraylin’s.
Robert the eldest, who would not die poor and would not die weak. She wondered if the doctor knew him as well as she did.
He seemed to know what she was thinking. With a quick, jerking motion he strode away to the windows and watched the shrubs battle the wind. Cyd took the opportunity to come out from behind the chair, a careful eye on Kraylin’s uncertainty as he tried to keep brother and sister in sight at the same time.
“Now what?” she said.
“I saved your life,” Rob said without turning around. “Just go away, Cyd, before you force me.”
“O really,” she answered, the sarcasm as heavy as she dared make it. “Well, I suppose I should thank you, shouldn’t I? Thank you for taking away my family, and thank you for ruining me for the rest of my life—or did you think I’d be able to continue living, here or anywhere else, knowing what I do about this obscene thing you’ve done?” She took a step closer to the foyer door, a single step closer to Kraylin by the divan. “Oh, and I forgot: thanks for sparing Ed. I imagine it was you who was driving that car all the time. Nice work, brother. I wish you’d killed me.”
Rob looked at her then, malice and anguish a pair in his eyes.
“Cyd-”
“I would tell you to go to hell, Robert Yarrow, but it wouldn’t do any good, would it.”
“All right, Miss Yarrow,” Kraylin said quickly. He moved toward her, his hands outstretched as though to restrain her, his eyes darting from side to side as he realized that somehow he had lost his control.
Cyd didn’t wait for the rest of his admonition. She lunged toward him, but not at him, her right arm lashing out with all her strength at the shoulder; and the flat of her hand slashed across his throat. He spun away from the blow, grappling for air, caught hold of the back of the divan and fell, heavily, onto the floor.
Rob yelled.
And Cyd ran for the door.
Chapter 16
The front door was locked, and Cyd wasted no fruitless time in tugging and kicking. Immediately she saw that exit was barred she pushed herself away and sprinted into the sitting room. Heard movement behind her, unhurried, unworried, and the thought that her recapture was so foregone to them fueled the rekindling of her dormant rage. With one arm she swept a lamp and ash tray from a small end table, grabbed hold of a leg and in one spinning motion punched the table’s surface through the nearest window. Again; again; setting her back to the sill when she heard her name shouted, listening to the faint silvered sounds of the glass landing on the ground, the walk, the blacktop beyond. Feeling the wind kicking into the house, instantly lifting all drapes, curtains, shades with its hands, all table cloths and fringes and chair aprons and clothes. Another lamp tipped over, shattered and went dark, the sparks of its dying caught in the air and whirled into nothing. The scent of rain. The scent of fear.
Kraylin and Rob stood in the doorway while Evan advanced on her one step at a time Behind them she could see her mother and father standing in the foyer, oddly slumped as if marionettes with one string missing.
“Come on, Cyd,” Evan said. He reached out a hand; it trembled. Kraylin had one hand clenched to his throat.
“Get away from me,” she said, and brandished the table.
Evan smiled. “Come on, Cyd, let’s stop this, huh? Father’s going to kill you for that window, you know.”
He was less than three feet away and tensing to lunge when she beat him to it, thrusting with all her strength and releasing the table, at the same time spinning around and throwing herself outside. Trying not to cry out—the last thing she had seen before leaving the floor was Evan, his hands still groping after her while one table leg jammed into his cheek, tearing it, pushing it back toward his ear … and he was still groping as though he hadn’t felt a thing.
The shrubs broke her fall. Branches and needles whipped at her arms, her face, the exposed flesh of her legs. She rolled, came to her feet and, with a last glance at the window, scrambled along the walk until she could run upright, ignoring the blood that ran down her calves, knocking away with a fist the threat of blurred vi
sion. She had thought to make for the trees in back, clamber over the wall and lose herself in the forest. But that would do her no good now, not with Rob knowing the trails as well as she, not without a purpose as she struggled over the hills.
There was Ed, however, and she had to reach him. No matter how he felt, what condition he was in she had to reach him, to be safe for a while.
The front door slammed open; light spilled like white fire to the walk and the drive.
A shout. She did not turn. Ran faster until she had reached the car, saw the tire iron in the shadows and grabbed it with both hands. The metal was cold, and she relished its burning, held it in front of her protectively as she yanked open the door and jumped to one side—and a thing not a bird darted out, and fell: a mass of black feathers that writhed on the ground. Grimacing, she kicked it away, could not help looking up to the house … and freezing.
On the walk stood her parents, and Evan with his face torn apart. And on the stoop Kraylin struggled with Rob. The doctor was shouting something incoherent, his voice so harsh she could feel the pain. Rob was impervious. He looked down at the short man, his face darkened in anger, and with a single almost careless swipe of his arm sent the man reeling into the corner of the wall that protruded from the door. From where she stood she could hear the sickening crack of skull against stone, could see Kraylin’s eyes widen in shock and disbelief before he staggered forward, stumbled, fell into the shrubs, with one hand clawing uselessly at the leaf-covered concrete. Clawing, stiffening, reaching … still.
“Cyd!”
Despite the warnings that stormed through her, she took a step toward him as the wind keened over the roof, sent leaves out to blind her. The cold was raw.
“Cyd, you know I can’t let you do this!”
Her tears were as much from her sorrow as her rage, and there was nothing more that she wanted now than to plant the iron in his heart and tear it out again. Her grip tightened. Her legs trembled. She stepped onto the drive, her head up and slightly tilted against the direction of the wind.