The Spirit Wood

by Robert Masello

  “It is good, after so long, to meet you,” he finally ventured. “Your father, he lived here for many years. And you never came.”

  She made no reply.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I didn't even know he lived here,” she said, laying one hand flat against the pattern in her lap. “And because even if I had known, it wouldn't have made any difference.”

  “But to Peter?”

  “What about Peter?”

  “Perhaps he would have liked to know his grandfather,” Nikos said with a shrug. “His grandfather"—Nikos gave the word a special sinister attention, Mrs. Constantine thought—"many times spoke about him. And how he would one day come here.”

  So this inheritance scheme—or something even worse—had been in her father's mind all along? He'd even gone so far as to speak of it, and of Peter, to his caretaker? What else, Mrs. Constantine wondered, had he confessed to this man? Everything? Is that why Nikos looked at her with such cunning and self-assurance?

  “I don't see how his grandfather"—she tried now to invest the word with its full authority—"could have said anything about Peter, or his coming to this place. They never had any contact with each other, I'm pleased to say.”

  Far from taking offense, or backing off, Nikos seemed pleased at her rising temper. His smile broadened; a bee circled the brim of his cap.

  “Yes, that is so,” he conceded. “But still, Peter likes it here very much, I think. I think he would like to stay at Arcadia.”

  “As it happens, he can't.” She enjoyed saying so. “He has a job to return to at the university.”

  Nikos wagged his head, as if to say he wasn't so sure about that. When he stopped, the bee landed on his brim. “Why must he go back to a job? What he does—the reading, the writing—he can do here. He has his books, his papers, his library.” The last he made sound very grand, and slightly foolish. “Everything else we can do for him. Angelos, Leah,” and moving one hand to his chest, “me.” Another bee joined the one on his brim; a third landed on his knee. Nikos seemed unconcerned. Leaning back against the bench, he began to describe, slowly and in detail, the life that he and his family had led in the old country. A place he referred to as Proseleni. “Very beautiful,” he said, “but very hard. On our island, there was nothing left. Everywhere we went, places that had been ours—” he made a looping gesture to indicate forever; another bee popped onto his shirt—"were not ours anymore.” He spoke in a low, almost hypnotic fashion. About the mountains of Greece. The olive groves. The ruined temples.

  And as he spoke, to Mrs. Constantine's amazement, more and more bees began to collect on his shoulders, and shirt, and baggy trousers. It was as if he were somehow drawing them to him. They zigzagged in, between the posts of the gazebo, then dropped down onto his clothes or even his bare skin; several fat and furry yellow jackets crawled across the backs of his hands. One hung from his earlobe, like a piece of jewelry. Nikos, noting Mrs. Constantine's growing discomfiture, smiled. And went on. “It was good fortune for us, your father coming. He knew how to find us—that was not always such an easy thing—and he knew also what we needed. It was not so hard to make a bargain.” The gazebo now was filled with the metallic buzzing of the bees, and more were arriving every second. Mrs. Constantine was afraid to move. Nikos's body had become a swarming tapestry of yellow and black; they were crawling up his neck now and burrowing into his curly beard. “Bringing us here, your father gave us a new life.” A cluster of bees alighted on his face, one clinging to his lower lip even as he spoke. “He gave us all that we needed to live again. Earth, water, these woods. My little family has been very happy here.” Mrs. Constantine could hardly bear to look anymore, but she was too horrified to close her eyes. Nikos gazed at her, utterly unperturbed. “And Peter, you will see,” he said, “will be very happy here, too.”

  Mrs. Constantine struggled to find her tongue. Nikos had to be defied in this; he had to be told that Peter was no part of his evil tribe. She could not let this revolting stunt deter her. “You're wrong,” she said. The bees buzzed menacingly at the intrusion of her voice. “Peter won't be staying here. A few weeks from now, he and Meg—you seem to have forgotten her—will be packing up and moving back to Mercer.” Nikos had turned his palms up, so that the bees collected in his open hands. “And ten minutes after that, if I have anything to say about it, this place will be subdivided into half-acre lots and sold to anyone who wants a piece of it.”

  Nikos did not answer her and his smile turned icy and forbidding. His eyes seemed to flash yellow, the color of the bees. Tilting his head back like a patient in a dentist's chair, he scooped up a handful of the swarming insects and pressed them like popcorn into his open mouth. She could hear their muted buzzing for a second. One nearly succeeded in creeping out again from between his lips—before he poked it back in and swallowed hugely. With evident satisfaction. Leaning forward again into her stupefied face, he whispered, “No, you do not understand.” Pieces of the insects were caught, and fluttered, between his tiny, sharp teeth. Hundreds of others, still buzzing, clung to his body. “Peter must stay here because there is no other place for him. Your father knew this. I know this. And you,” he said with a sneer that assured her he knew everything after all, that even this, her darkest secret, had been revealed to him, “you must know it too. What is in his blood cannot be taken out again.”

  Twenty-five

  THE WAY I figure it,” Byron said, leaning over the balcony, “he must have grabbed hold of that drain-spout and swung himself down to the fountain.”

  “But that pipe is ten feet away,” Meg said.

  “I know. But short of suggesting that he took a flying leap off the balcony, it's the only explanation.”

  He could see that she didn't put much faith in his drainspout theory. For that matter, neither did he. But nothing else presented itself—if Peter had actually leaped off the balcony, he'd have had a couple of broken legs to show for it. And he didn't. He wasn't even limping.

  The only thing he did seem to be suffering from was amnesia. He claimed to remember nothing of what happened in the shower. Neither Byron nor Meg had laid it all out for him; when they started to, he'd looked at them so blankly, so uncomprehendingly, that it seemed pointless. According to Peter, he'd come home from the Caswells and somehow wound up asleep in Nikos's hammock. If he was guilty of anything, it was of having one too many drinks with Jack and Joan. And that was it.

  How could they convince him of all the rest that had happened, particularly when they could hardly believe much of it themselves?

  “However he got down from there,” Byron said, “the problem remains the same. What are you going to do now? It's not safe to stay with him.”

  “He needs help,” Meg said. “I can't just run away from him. I've got to convince him to see a doctor or psychiatrist or someone. Something's wrong, and he needs to get help.”

  “I agree,” Byron said. “I tried to bring it up myself, yesterday afternoon. But he looked at me like I was from Mars. He thinks that you and I both are hallucinating.”

  “Do you think we should talk to his mother about it and see if she could persuade him to see a doctor?”

  “I suppose,” Byron said dispiritedly, “but I don't know who he should even see. A shrink? A GP? Is it alcoholism we're dealing with, or is it something else?” Was Peter schizophrenic? A psychopath? He didn't know how he could suggest these things to Meg without hurting her more than she'd already been hurt.

  “He seems in control again now,” Meg ventured, as if the worst was over. “Maybe it's just a matter of waiting out the summer, then getting him back to Mercer and normalcy again.”

  “What if it's not?” Byron said. “What if he goes haywire again?” He hated the position he found himself in; anything he said sounded suspect. If he spoke against Peter, it might seem he was just trying to advance his own cause, to get Meg to run away with him; if he pretended to be optimistic, he ran the risk of putting Meg, the woman he
loved, in jeopardy again. And that he couldn't do. He had a choice, it seemed, of abandoning his friend or endangering his love. It was a terrible choice, but if it came to that, he knew what he'd have to do.

  “Remember what we said, down on the dock, about this place, and the weird feeling it gives us sometimes?”

  “Yes,” Byron said, “I remember.”

  “I mentioned it to Peter one night, and he looked at me like I was insane—and ungrateful. He said that I just wasn't used to good old peace and quiet—as if Mercer were a major metropolis—and that as far as he was concerned, he'd never felt more at home anywhere in his life than he did right here.” Byron believed it.

  “Don't you think it's strange that you and I should think the place is creepy, and Peter should take to it like a duck to water? What's he see here that we're missing?”

  “You got me,” said Byron, shrugging his bony shoulders. “But I'm beginning to think that whatever it is, it's a lucky thing we don't see it.”

  Byron thought of the mythical Furies of ancient Greece, monsters so hideous that to look upon them was enough to drive a man mad. What was it, he wondered, that Peter had seen?

  Twenty-six

  THE SKY ABOVE the bay was unusually lovely that night, striped with horizontal bands of pale rose and paler blue. Mrs. Constantine and Meg had drawn up a pair of rickety aluminum chairs on the back lawn; Byron had joined them, armed with a Frisbee and accompanied by Dodger. He was trying to teach the dog to catch it.

  “I saw a spot on the evening news where there were man-and-dog teams competing for a thousand-dollar prize,” he said. “Dodger and I could clean up at this.”

  But Dodger was proving less than a quick study. Each time Byron wafted the orange Day-Glo Frisbee into the air, Dodger would sit back on his haunches, watching it in flight, and then, only when it had landed and Byron had repeatedly urged him to fetch it, run and nudge it along the ground with his nose. After moving it a foot or two, he'd lose interest in it altogether and bound back to Byron.

  “I think you're going to have to make your fortune some other way,” Meg remarked as Byron went to retrieve the neglected Frisbee once more.

  “I'm not going to give up yet,” Byron said. “It's just a matter of time until he catches on.”

  “Where is Peter?” Mrs. Constantine asked Meg. “Is he coming down?”

  “I think so,” said Meg, not really having any idea.

  “He was working in his study when I left.” Or at least he'd been in there with the door closed. All week he'd been avoiding their company as much as possible. “You want to try and roust him out, By?”

  Byron thwapped the Frisbee against his thigh, like a tambourine. “Not me,” he said, “I know enough not to interrupt a fellow scholar in the midst of his work.” He tried to make it sound like a joke, but Meg knew it wasn't. All of them were leery of Peter these days.

  A few minutes later, he came down on his own, so stealthily that he had put his hand on his mother's shoulder before any of them even knew he was there. Mrs. Constantine jumped in her seat.

  “Careful,” he said with a short laugh. “That chair's liable to break.”

  Meg looked up at him. His eyes were bright and terribly alert. He was smiling—broadly, confidently. Had he finished the dissertation?

  “Your work must have gone great today,” she said.

  “Yep,” he declared, “just great. This is going to be one historic dissertation. Dunlop's going to love it. Did I tell you what Caswell said?”

  That was the night he'd come home and attacked her; he referred to it now as if nothing had happened. She had to remind herself that as far as Peter was concerned, nothing had.

  “No,” Meg replied. “I never did hear Caswell's verdict.”

  “Brilliant,” Peter said. “He thought it was brilliant. If it weren't so damned esoteric, he'd have published it himself, he said.”

  As if that would have been such a coup, Meg thought. Still, she was glad Caswell hadn't undermined him. He needed all the encouragement he could get.

  Byron, sitting cross-legged on the lawn, was idly spinning the Frisbee on one finger.

  “Where'd that come from?” Peter asked.

  “I got it in town. I thought if I could train Dodger to catch it, we'd have something to fill those long Omaha weekends.”

  “And do you?” Peter said, snatching it up. “Come on, Dodger—show me what you can do.” He thumped the Frisbee with the palm of his hand and made as if to throw it. Dodger didn't budge. “A little slow on the uptake?” Peter said. He tossed the Frisbee lightly into the air. Diogenes didn't even follow its flight.

  “I wasn't having any luck either,” Byron said.

  Peter trudged down the hill after it. He made several more attempts to enlist Dodger, then abruptly gave up. Withdrawing from his back pocket what looked like a long, fat pencil, he splayed his fingers along its length and blew into one end. For a moment, they all heard a single, sweet, high-pitched tone, then, though he continued to blow, nothing. Dodger's ears pricked up, and Byron took hold of his collar.

  Peter took the flute from his lips and studied it approvingly. “Believe it or not, Angelos made this.” Slipping it back into his pocket, he added, “I thought Dodger just might need an example.” Moving a few yards away, he looked expectantly toward the west wing of the house. Dodger whined, and twisted under Byron's hand. A moment later, it became clear why—loping along beside each other, with the regularity of pistons rising and falling, came Fifi and Fritz.

  Peter crouched down, and the dogs made straight for him. When they were within range, he laughed, shouted something that sounded like Greek, and flipped the Frisbee down toward the water. They adjusted their course instantly and shot off after it. When the saucer dropped closer to the ground, just low enough to be caught, both of them leapt simultaneously into the air, their jaws open, ears erect. One snared the edge between its teeth and whipped its head away to protect the prize. Peter laughed and clapped his hands together.

  "Bring it to me, Fifi—bring it here!”

  The dog wheeled on the grass and cantered back to him proudly, like a racehorse entering the winner's circle. Fritz followed abjectly.

  “Thatta girl,” Peter said, plucking the Frisbee from her jaws. Then, turning toward Byron, said, “Well—do you think Dodger's got it?”

  Byron held tight to Dodger's collar. “I think Diogenes is just going to sit this one out.” But the dog barked and tried to pull away.

  “I don't think he wants to sit it out,” Peter said, baiting him. He muttered something to the two eager mastiffs, then snapped the Frisbee into the air again. This time, Fritz retrieved it. The next time, Fifi. Dodger grew increasingly restive.

  “How do you tell the dogs apart?” Mrs. Constantine asked her son.

  “Once you get to know them, it's not hard,” Peter said. “Fritz stands higher in the shoulder. Fill's got a longer muzzle. Their tempers, however, are about the same.”

  As if the dogs knew they were being discussed, they stood still and straight, facing the group on the lawn. Meg remembered that fearful day in the glade, and she could almost swear, staring into the eyes of the dog Peter said was Fritz, that the dog remembered it, too. And was challenging her with it. She knew it was impossible, that no dog was capable of such a thing, but that was how it felt. She was relieved when Peter launched the Frisbee once more, and the dogs charged off after it. But a second later, she saw Dodger, desperate to play along, shoot up from the grass as if he'd been fired from a bazooka. With his tail wagging frantically, he set off after the heavy black mastiffs.

  “Dodger!” Byron shouted. “Get back here!”

  The Frisbee was still hanging high in the air, gently suspended by the evening breeze, and Fifi and Fritz were maneuvering for position below it. Dodger barreled up behind them, blond fur flying, and jumped while it was still hopelessly out of reach. The others hardly noticed him. Fifi moved farther downhill while Fritz described a tight circle directly
below the hovering disc. Dodger, delighted to be a part of the game, tried to do both, racing back and forth until the saucer suddenly tilted in the air and dropped onto the ground right in front of Fritz. Fifi still made a lunge for it, but Fritz had already scooped it up.

  “Okay, Dodger, you've had enough now,” called Byron. “Come here, boy.”

  “Come on,” Peter cajoled. “He's just gotten started. Let him be. I'll even make it easy for him this time.” And he tossed the Frisbee lightly in Dodger's direction. The dog bounced in place, excited but unsure which way to run. The mastiffs were more certain and went straight after it. Dodger fell behind again, but a sudden gust of wind swept the Frisbee backwards, catching Fifi and Fritz off guard. The disc sailed closer to the ground, almost onto Dodger's head. He tried to grasp it between his jaws, but it caromed off and rolled along the lawn. He tried again, and had just appeared to get a tentative grip on it, when Fin and Fritz both plunged forward, seizing a piece of it themselves. Fritz jerked it fiercely backwards, growling, but Diogenes managed somehow to hang on. Fifi leapt back, jumped to the other side, looking for a better purchase.

  “Dodger!” Byron shouted, jumping to his feet. “Let it go!”

  But he held on tightly; his muzzle and Fritz's were clamped on opposite sides, their noses rubbing against each other. Meg, too, had jumped to her feet, expecting Peter to call off Fritz. But he was watching the struggle as if it were a harmless amusement.

  “Dodger!” Meg cried as Byron ran down the lawn toward them.

  Fifi suddenly pivoted, to protect her mate; she barked furiously and snapped at Byron. Fritz and Diogenes were locked in combat now, both growling, each attempting to tear the Frisbee away from the other. Fritz had straightened his spine, and was pulling backwards with all his strength; Dodger was clinging low to the ground, scrabbling at it with his paws, trying to pin it down.