Symphony - [Millennium Quartet 01]

by Charles L. Grant

  “I’ll walk you,” he said, feeling helpless, feeling rage.

  Cora nodded.

  “You want to come on the river tomorrow?”

  She looked away, and finally, “Sure, why not?”

  Into the dark between the streetlamps.

  “Reed, would you have ... you know, back there?”

  “Are you kidding? With you? Gimme a break.”

  “Fuck you, Turner.”

  He grinned. “You wish.”

  He couldn’t hear the whispered answer.

  * * * *

  9:50 p.m.

  Enid Balanov sat in the center of the three-cushion couch and watched her husband watching a baseball game from his leather club chair. He was quite tall, and quite thin, and, she believed, quite the savior. In the middle of the recession, Petyr had saved their computer business by diversifying into prognostication and business scenario-building, making them more successful than ever; he had saved himself by fleeing the Soviet Union before the roof fell in; and he had saved her from a life of taking care of her ailing parents. In return, she had given him herself, and Dimitri and Sonya: A harsh-looking man who was extraordinarily gentle.

  She waited until the inning was over.

  “Darling?”

  He stirred as if waking, and smiled at her.

  “Something’s the matter with Dimitri.”

  He waited patiently.

  “He...” She wasn’t sure how to put it. She didn’t want him to think their only son was unstable. “I don’t know where he gets it, certainly not from us, but he has a notion that we’re all going to die. Soon, I think. I’m ... concerned.”

  He covered his mouth with one hand thoughtfully, parted the long fingers. “He is learning mortality?”

  “No. This is...oh, dear.” She faltered.

  “The birds?”

  Her mouth opened. “How did you know?”

  “I hear him in the yard sometimes.” He left his chair to sit beside her. “Sonya has her castles, Dimitri has his birds.” He rubbed her back in slow small circles. “Maybe he has read about Dr. Dolittle.” He laughed as he always did, not making a sound.

  She nearly wept with relief and leaned back into his hand. Petyr knew; Petyr would save her son.

  Just like always.

  “That woman still rents pornography,” she whispered, her eyes half closed. “The Lord knows I try, but she only laughs at me.”

  The hand moved to her shoulder, massaging.

  “She distresses you?”

  “I do my best.” She could barely speak. The crack of a bat on the television, the roar of the crowd, the touch of his hand as it snaked down to her breast. “Father Chisholm appreciates me. He says so often. But that woman...one of these days, she’s going to make a mistake, and someone’s poor child will see that filth. Our children, Petyr. Maybe they’ll see.”

  “It is a hot summer,” he said, close to her ear, breath warm, hand moving, constantly moving. “You see on the news the strange things people do in hot weather.” Constantly moving. “Sometimes to themselves.”

  A pleasant chill closed her eyes, made her sigh.

  Petyr would save the children..

  Just like he had saved her.

  * * * *

  10:05 p.m.

  The excitement was long over, jukebox blaring, Arlo back in his chair, Bobby fussing around the others as if the problem had been all her fault. Kay watched her move smoothly from table to table, and took another pull at her beer. On her right, Tessa stared glumly at her glass; across from her, the Palmers described in excruciating detail the birth of a foal at their stable last week. They were thin, leather, and plain, and it was all she could do not to reach out and pinch their cheeks to see if they were actually human. A smile as she ducked her head—maybe this was something she could tell Mabel. Aliens renting horses right here in town. But she hadn’t told anyone about Dimitri and the gun. Or, more accurately, her hallucination about Dimitri and the gun.

  Bobby brought another round.

  When she danced away with a wave, Tessa looked up and muttered, “Bitch.”

  The Palmers ignored her.

  Kay felt like slapping the woman a good one. She couldn’t figure out why Todd Odam, of all the men in this town, had two of the most eligible, prettiest women pining like they were part of some stupid country song.

  The door opened and a man walked in, heading for the bar.

  She was halfway out of her chair before she realized it wasn’t Nate.

  Tessa stared at her oddly. “You okay?”

  She nodded weakly and sank back.

  “So tell me something,” Tessa said, nodding toward her housemate. “What’s she got that I haven’t?”

  Ed Palmer said, “Nice legs.”

  Sissy Palmer said, “Solid flanks.”

  They looked at each other and laughed hysterically.

  “You know,” Tessa said solemnly, “maybe you guys ought to get out more.”

  Kay laughed with the others, but she couldn’t stop thinking about how she’d been mistaken. First Dimitri and the phantom gun, now the stranger who wasn’t Nate.

  It scared her, and made her ashamed.

  Mostly, however, it scared her.

  * * * *

  10:15 p.m.

  Casey sat on his stool and glared at his cup of cold coffee. He had ordered it shortly before all hell had broken loose in Mackey’s. He had helped carry the stranger to the clinic, and when Farber shooed them all out except Tessa, his part-time nurse, he had returned to find the coffee still there, Helen in conversation with two couples in the far booth, Todd practicing his guitar in the kitchen, and Ozzie Gorn sound asleep in the booth by the door. No one asked about the accident. No one asked what he had thought when he had seen the man lying on the floor, and Arlo sitting in his chair, humming to himself.

  You’re being unreasonable, you know.

  But he knew a bar fight when he saw one, and he knew Arlo Mackey wasn’t nearly the flower-child idiot some thought he was.

  “The Millennium,” Todd said from the serving gap.

  Casey held up his cup, tapped it with a finger. “Can I get another? This is cold.”

  “Nobody, but nobody insults my coffee,” Helen declared, swinging sharply around the counter. She snatched it from his hand. “You better pray you’re right.”

  He watched her sip, grinned when she grimaced, and winked at Todd when she swished away, slapping a towel against her leg.

  “Millennium,” Todd repeated.

  Ozzie snored, snorted, snored, and groaned.

  “Jesus, Hel,” Todd complained, “will you move that jackass outta here?”

  “Move him yourself,” she said from the coffee urn. “I’ve got my reputation here to think about.”

  Todd made himself comfortable, and Casey thought, why not? So far today he had had sick people, dying people, a recovering old lady who played poker with the interns, spacemen slated to join him at a wedding, and Ozzie Gorn smelling like gasoline and snoring in public. So why not the Millennium, too? It almost made perfect sense.

  He adjusted his I’m listening expression and waited.

  “Basically,” Todd said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “every time one comes around, people start acting weird.”

  Casey couldn’t argue; he waited.

  Helen slipped a fresh cup in front of him, dared him to complain again, and returned to the far booth.

  When Ozzie sputter-snored, Casey swiveled around, stepped to the booth, and leaned as close to the man’s face as he dared. “Ozzie, customer!” he bellowed, and stepped nimbly aside when Gorn threw himself out of the booth and the diner without saying a word.

  Then he returned to his stool, picked up his cup, looked innocently at Todd and said, “That’s it? People act weird?” He was aware that Helen’s friends were staring at him. Helen stared as well, but not in astonishment. She, he knew, would be thinking of a good way to explain him. “Every thousand years people act wei
rd?”

  Odam nodded.

  “It took you all day to figure that out?” He sipped his coffee, added a spoonful of sugar, and sipped again. “Todd, the Lord surely knew what He was doing when He sent me to you.” He smiled broadly as Helen failed to stifle a laugh, and Todd blustered as he stomped back to his guitar.

  When the couples left, he was alone, listening to Todd’s awful playing, and to Helen’s footsteps as she swept through the booths, gathering dishes and cups, glasses and glass ashtrays.

  “So who rang the bell Sunday night?” she asked, taking a damp cloth to the tables.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past Cora or Nate.”

  He shrugged. “Like I said.”

  She dropped onto the stool beside him, and kissed his cheek. “How you feeling?”

  “Wrung out.”

  She nudged him. “You want a date?”

  His head swung slowly toward her, and he blinked when he realized their noses were nearly touching. “Why is it that you’re the only one around here who doesn’t treat me like I was different?”

  She didn’t smile; she didn’t turn away. “You’re a preacher, you’re not God,” she answered simply. “So what about that damn bell? It woke half the town. Do you have any idea how much a woman my age needs her beauty rest?”

  He hated it when she did that—answered a question with something he felt he ought to address, then changed the subject to something he could answer without having to give a sermon. By the time he sorted everything out, she was, like now, on her way to somewhere else. In this case it was the kitchen, hips deliberately, mockingly, twitching, and he heard her tell Todd to lay off the cranky cook bit because the place was empty.

  She was as bad in her way as Kay was.

  “Well, thanks for nothing!” Casey called.

  She poked her head through the gap and frowned as she looked around. “The only people ever in here are the ones who like my coffee.”

  “My Lord, don’t you ever forget anything?”

  When she smiled, he nearly blushed.

  When she laughed at his discomfort, he threw his hands up in mock surrender, dropped a bill by the register and bid them both good-night. Once on the street, he stretched and started for home, deliberately not looking at Nate and Rina sitting on the hardware bench, forcing himself not to go over to the bar and demand that Arlo tell him what had really happened.

  Spacemen, UFOs, bar fights, and women, he thought, slipping his hands into his pockets; I am truly blessed.

  He kicked at a pebble, and missed.

  Oh, and don’t forget the hopping vampires.

  He considered heading on down to the river, let its whispers and rushes work its magic on his nerves, but the thought of climbing up the hill again changed his mind. He would go home, watch the movie, get some sleep. He had a checkup with Farber in the morning, and he didn’t want to give the doc any excuses for still not feeling well.

  The gate squealed.

  He hummed tunelessly as he unlocked the front door.

  He frowned when he heard something on the road, thinking with an impatient silent sigh that Cora had rounded up her gang again. Bracing the screen door open with his foot, he turned to make sure before he yelled.

  Moonlight; nothing more.

  Still, he heard something, and several seconds passed before he realized it was hoofbeats.

  Unhurried; unshod.

  A careful step to the railing, squinting into the dark, searching the moonlit road.

  Nothing there.

  By the sound, the animal was close, but he was puzzled when he couldn’t spot it.

  You’re hearing things.

  Unhurried; unshod.

  There’s nothing out there.

  Near the gate, but the road was empty.

  The warm night took a chill.

  He stepped back from the railing, left hand slapping his leg slowly, lightly. He should have been annoyed, perhaps even angry, but all he could feel was a winter touch on his arms, on his nape.

  It stopped.

  It was out there.

  He couldn’t see it, but it was out there.

  And just as suddenly, it was gone.

  * * * *

  10:50 p.m.

  William Bowes sat on the front steps of his single-story ranch house. Even in the yellow light from the bulb above the door, he was huge. Fashioned from slabs of flagstone from his face to his hands. Marine-cut brown hair. Fatigue pants and black T-shirt. Bare feet.

  A tarnished wedding band on his right hand.

  Tears on his cheeks.

  Come home, Cora honey, he pleaded to the dark; please, darling, come home, I’m so sorry, I’m sick, I need help, come home, I need you, don’t leave me alone, not again, I’m sorry.

  He sobbed aloud.

  Please. Please.

  A dog barked.

  William snarled.

  * * * *

  11:45 p.m.

  Micah drove slowly back to the landing, parked beside the boathouse, and made sure the place was padlocked.

  He was halfway to his cabin when he heard the buzzing.

  Couldn’t be, he thought, walked on, and stopped.

  Too many beers in too short a time. That was always his problem. He never had learned the knack of nursing.

  He checked over his shoulder.

  A shifting, fragmented black cloud hung above the river.

  No; but he ran anyway, despite the fact that bees don’t fly at night.

  * * * *

  12:01 A.M.

  The church bell rang.

  * * * *

  Part 3

  Conductor

  * * * *

  1

  1

  T

  he night was made for ghosts.

  Mist coiled and curled over the interstate lanes, hung in the trees, sparkled in the headlamps. In some places it seemed to have a pulse and glow of its own; in others it took on the color of night.

  Nothing moved but the moon, hazed and fading.

  Leaves sagged for want of a breeze; debris on the shoulders hardly stirred when trucks passed, barely once an hour; a long stretch of construction narrowed two lanes to one, reflecting signs and red-flagged poles and striped barrels and a dump truck squatting behind a sawhorse fence; a deserted car, a scrap of limp cloth hanging from the driver’s window.

  Nothing moved but the moon.

  Not a sound.

  * * * *

  2

  The Continental swept across the flatland out of West Virginia, and Stan checked to the right, to the glow of tall lights beyond the exit and the trees. He had been here before, maybe three years ago. Hagerstown. A quick ten-minute drive between West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Motels, restaurant, gas stations, fast food. He didn’t know what else was here. He had only seen it at night.

  His pack was on the floor between his feet, although he didn’t remember how it got there. He had slept, though; he was sure of that. Got in the car, said a few words, drifted off to the music that still played on the radio.

  When the car drifted to the right, aiming for the exit, he was surprised. He was glad. He hadn’t eaten since probably forever, and maybe Susan would finally give him the meal she had promised.

  Mist swept over the windshield.

  The car slowed.

  “We gonna eat?” he asked hopefully.

  “In time,” she answered.

  He shook his head wearily. “Man, I’m starving. I don’t mean offense, but you said.”

  “I know.”

  Stirring in the backseat.

  He still hadn’t seen who was there with Lupé, and he still wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

  “I second the starving,” Lupé said, close to his ear, making him jump. She had folded her arms on the back of the seat, rested her chin, and when he looked, his eyes nearly crossed. She grinned. “Steak, home fries, beer.”