The Complete Short Fiction of Charles L. Grant Volume 3: Dialing the Wind (Neccon Classic Horror)

by Charles L. Grant

“Dad?”

  “What can I do for you, Button?”

  “Suppose I got married instead of going to college?” He looked at her, faceless in the dark. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  She couldn’t; she was a baby.

  “Just asking.”

  “Well, don’t.”

  She drew away. “Jeez, Dad, I’m just asking, I said.

  Boy, you’re a grump. I mean, don’t you want to know when you’re going to be a grandfather?”

  He came home late from work on Monday, and found Betsy modeling her new clothes for Cora. He stood in her bedroom doorway, arms folded, bemused and skeptical at the styles, though not denying she enhanced them, until she started to unbutton a silky cream blouse.

  She stopped when she saw him. “Dad!” She sounded close to outrage.

  He looked from her to his wife. “What? What’d I do?”

  She pointed to the rest of the clothes on her bed. “Do you mind? I want to change.”

  “But I’m your father, for god’s sake!”

  “Dad, c’rnon, this is serious.”

  “Yeah,” he said quietly. “Yeah, I guess it is.” And he left, whistling falsely, and sat in his basement office, staring at the blank screen, wondering if Nancy Arrow had ever married, had ever had children, had kept herself as lovely as he remembered her being.

  A few trees in the park already carried yellowed leaves when he took Tuesday afternoon off; it was warm, and he didn’t want to go home. He left the blacktop path at the entrance and crossed the open grass, watching a dog chase a ball, a young woman chase the dog. When she glanced in his direction, he snapped his head around and moved on, past the ball field and the bandstand, hearing just for a moment the Fourth of July concert.

  The ground began to slope upward, a knoll just high and distant enough to see over the trees to the village beyond. He leaned forward, trudging as if through snow, grunting to himself with each step and watching the grass pass beneath his feet.

  He was alone.

  The young woman and the dog were joined by a boy wearing a baseball cap and soccer shorts. They didn’t notice him; he didn’t mind.

  Once the land leveled again, he faced a tangle of trees and shrubs that jumbled down the other side. Shadows despite the sun. A breeze that didn’t quite take the edge off the day’s heat. He turned around and sat, pulling his knees to his chest, hugging them, resting his chin on them, and did his best to believe that the malaise he felt, the fog he carried with him, was nothing more than a simple and overdue recognition that he wasn’t going to live forever, brought about by his efforts to keep his firm intact. Nothing more complicated. Nothing more bizarre. The intellectual acceptance of what whatever mortality was had come long ago, the day he had seen his mother in her coffin; now the rest of him had caught up, and had caught him from behind.

  All right, he thought, all right.

  Is this all you’ve done?

  His right hand wiped his face, forehead to nose to chin, gripped his neck lightly, slipped fingers into his shirt where they waited for the heartbeat.

  And jerked out when he heard a footfall soft behind him.

  “Bruce?”

  A woman’s voice.

  He looked over his right shoulder, squinting into the shade. “Hi,” he said, smile puzzled.

  She moved around to put the sun behind her, lower than he, her face level with his; he stared until she laughed and knelt beside him.

  “I thought you’d recognize me the other night.” A pale yellow dress that buttoned up the front, sleeves shy of her elbows and edged with scalloped lace. “I waited, but you didn’t come back.” Hair, red hair parted in the center, that curled to her shoulders and shimmered when she moved her shoulders back and forth. “I was going to call . . .” She looked down shyly. “I didn’t know what to say.” Hands clasped in her lap. Eyes raised and glinting. “You haven’t changed a bit.”

  He couldn’t say her name.

  “It took a long time to find you, you know,” she said, settling back on her heels. Breasts larger than he remembered, but not large, simply . . . right. “I don’t know why I even tried. It just came to me that I should.” Waist tucked. Bare arms made softer by a faint covering of down. “Dumb, isn’t it.”

  He couldn’t say her name.

  She picked up a pebble and rolled it between two fingers. “I guess I wanted to know how my old sweetheart was doing.” And she laughed, and covered her mouth, and raised her head, and frowned. “You do know me, don’t you?”

  He couldn’t. He couldn’t say it.

  She nodded. “You do. I know you do.” One finger reached out to touch his knee, hopped from there to his cheek. “You said you were going to grow a beard. I’m glad you didn’t. You’d look too old.”

  “Forty-four,” he said, and immediately cleared his throat.

  She shook a mocking finger at him. “Never tell your true age, Bruce. Especially to someone who was born the same year.” A half grin. “Especially if it’s a woman.”

  “Jesus Christ,” he exclaimed, whirling to kneel, too, and almost falling on his face. “Jesus Christ, it is you!”

  She nodded with her eyes.

  He swallowed and looked around and saw the bandstand and the trees and heard the dog barking and heard a car over on Park Street and felt the August sun and saw a butterfly and a crow and threw his arms around her and closed his eyes and smelled her and felt her and decided not to cry.

  “So,” she said sternly when he finally pulled away and she let her own arms fall, “tell me about you, Kanfield. What the hell have you been doing since . . .” Her hand waved at the years. “Since.”

  The story came to him before he could stop it: he was single, fairly well off, rambling around a too-large house like a typical movie bachelor. And then he swallowed it, and sighed, and gladly told her the truth, including his continuing problems with Athland’s apparent vendetta that stopped just short of slander.

  “Can’t you sue him or something?”

  “I wish 1 could. My lawyer says no. The man is smart. He won’t do anything so obvious. But I know. I know in those clubs of his, at those white-tie parties he gives, he’s doing his damnedest to rip up my back.”

  She touched his leg.

  He watched the hand slide away and float over the grass, and he heard himself speak again, this time of the dream of dying and the unshakable feeling that at the last he’d wasted time.

  “And that letter,” he said then, and opened his palms toward the sky. “If I had to do it over again, I’d cut my hand off, I think.”

  She half-closed one eye. “Lord, are you still brooding about that? Still?”

  “Well, not every day, no.” He scratched an eyebrow.

  “But I still feel like shit.”

  “You were deep shit to me then,” she said, then playfully punched his arm and laughed. “I didn’t hate you though. I don’t know why. I just thought . . .”

  you loved me

  He finally met her gaze: I did, god I did, and I wish to hell I’d really known it.

  A bird called, and broke from the trees to glide over the grass.

  “So,” she said at last, “are you really as rich as this town seems to be?”

  He shook his head and talked again, and when the sun finally reached the tops of the trees that masked the park’s high iron fence, he realized he was babbling and making a fool of himself, so he leaned over and kissed her cheek and felt the warmth and velvet of her skin.

  She touched the place with her thumb.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quickly, not sorry at all but pulling away. “I just had to do it. You don’t ... god. I’m happy to see you!” He grinned and shook his head. “God, you’ll never know how good it is to see you again.”

  She laughed at his enthusiasm, and he laughed back and rocked, and saw the first shadows slipping toward him across the field.

  “Oh good lord,” he said, scrambling to his feet and dusting at his slacks. “Jesus, look at the ti
me! I’m going to get killed.” He took her hand and pulled her up, and gave her a sudden grin. “Hey, look, Nancy, will you come home with me? I want you —”

  She lifted his hand and cupped it in hers and brought it to her lips and shook her head and said, “No.”

  “But why? Don’t —”

  “No,” she said again, and brought the hand to her cheek where she nuzzled it for a moment before letting it go. “I just wanted to see you. That’s all.” She looked away, looked back. “That’s all.”

  “Tomorrow,” he said.

  “I can’t.”

  “Tomorrow night,” he insisted, a step toward the path. “I’ll see you tomorrow night, okay?”

  “Bruce . . .”

  He clapped his hands on his hips. “After more than twenty years, you’re going to leave it at just a few hours listening to me bragging and feeling sorry for myself?” He turned his head, looked at her sideways. “You’d really do that, you rat?”

  Her hands disappeared into pockets he hadn’t noticed in her skirt. “No, I guess not. You rat.”

  He smiled his relief.

  She reached out to shake his hand.

  He took it and felt a finger draw slowly across his palm, and he inhaled deeply while she closed the distance between them and kissed him quickly, and softly, and kissed him again when he begged her without speaking.

  Quickly, and softly, before yanking on his ear, laughing at his yelp, and racing back into the trees without daring him to follow.

  He couldn’t have anyway; his legs were lead and his chest was filled with helium and his head told him he was drunk and his stomach told him he was hungry, and when he took the first step he nearly fell to his knees.

  Son of a bitch, he thought, rushing out of the park; son of a bitch, ask and ye shall receive and Jesus Christ am I in trouble.

  He wanted to run, but he was too self-conscious; he almost skipped, but he’d forgotten how; he charged up the steps and banged into the foyer and Cora was in the living room, reading a magazine and talking with Betsy.

  They looked up; neither smiled.

  He said, “Sorry, ladies. I forgot to call.” He scratched his temple quickly. “Cora, you aren’t going to believe this, but you’ll never guess —”

  “The college called right after supper,” Betsy told him stiffly. “They wanted to ask you some questions.”

  He lifted a placating hand. “I’ll call them tomorrow. Don’t worry about it. Look, you’ll —”

  “It might be important.”

  He checked at his watch and groaned aloud.

  “Damn. Well, they’re closed now, kitten. It’ll have to wait.”

  “Jesus, Dad!”

  He frowned, and let it die. “Tomorrow,” he said, and looked down the hall. “God, I’m hungry. I’ll grab myself something in the kitchen.”

  “There’s nothing there,” Cora told him.

  “There’s always something there,” he answered with a smile, and found the makings of a sandwich that he ate while standing at the back door, watching the hedge shake as Mrs. Yorr’s terriers tried to bull their way through. Go ahead, you little bastards, he thought; make it and I’ll skin you alive.

  Just as he finished, Cora came up behind him. “We were worried,” she said flatly. “Your office said you’d left in the middle of the afternoon.”

  He turned and wiped the crumbs on his thighs, then put his arms loosely around her waist. “I said I was sorry. I had things on my mind.”

  “I guess you did,” she answered. Her hands slipped up between them and flattened against his chest. “You should have called, Bruce.”

  “Did anyone die?” he snapped.

  “Don’t be flip.”

  “The house didn’t fall down.”

  “That’s not the point and you know it,” she said, turning to break the embrace, to walk to the sink and turn again. “Something could have happened to you.”

  He conceded the point. “But since when do 1 have to check in every time 1 decide to go for a stupid walk?”

  She stared pointedly at the kitchen clock. “The college called.”

  He opened his mouth, and closed it; an argument that begins with an apology is an argument he couldn’t win. So he decided to take a shower, and ignored the look she gave him when he walked out of the room, and ignored the snub his daughter tried as he hurried up the stairs and slammed the bathroom door before he knew what he was doing.

  These are tense days, he cautioned as he stripped; tense days, Kanfield. One kid leaving home, one fretful mother, one high school senior testing sexual waters, and one middle-aged husband who . . .

  He looked in the mirror. Nancy stood behind him.

  Oh shit, he thought; oh shit, I should have told them.

  But the time had passed, he judged, to make it sound more casual than he felt; to say anything now, with the mood they were in, would probably start a new fight, one he realized as he washed and let the water pound his head, he almost wanted. The dialogue was already slipping into place — their snide comments, his civilized, telling responses — and the result foregone, his victory sweet and permanent.

  He dried himself so roughly his skin flushed, then burned.

  She’s forgotten. Cora’s forgotten the way it was when we started. Everything is taken for granted, the struggling and the cold nights now back in some fairy tale to tell her grandchildren by the fire.

  She thinks we’ve made it.

  He was afraid they hadn’t.

  Then Cora knocked on the door, opened it, and waved her hand at the steam still floating about the room. “There’s someone downstairs to see you.”

  “Aw, Christ, Cora, couldn’t you —”

  She swung the door wider. “It’s a man named Rowan. He’s a policeman.”

  He frowned, pushed past into their bedroom and grabbed a pair of jeans from his closet. “What, parking tickets, charity? What does he want?”

  Cora watched him dress.

  “C’mon, Cora, what does the man want?”

  “He wants to talk to you. And me.” The tone was accusatory, but he saw the anxiety in her eyes. “He says Harvey Athland was murdered tonight.”

  She left him then, leaving the door open, and he buttoned his shirt hurriedly, jammed his bare feet into sneakers, and stopped at her vanity for a second to run his fingers through his hair. When he saw his reflection, he froze — he was smiling. When he tried to tell himself this was a man’s life they were talking about here, the smile wavered, faded, so reluctantly he turned away and had to stop himself from running to the top of the stairs.

  Rowan, a pleasant man evidently uncomfortable with his role, explained that the body had been found by Athland’s wife. He was in the garage where he’d been tinkering with his car. His back had been slashed, throat open, a kitchen knife with an eight-inch blade plunged into his chest.

  Cora sat on the couch, smoking, legs crossed at the knee. Her hand was shaking. She wouldn’t look at Bruce when he tried to ask her in silence what all this had to do with them.

  Then he exhaled, almost sighed. “I see,” he said. The detective smoothed a dark tie, smoothed the lapels of a cream suit. “We have to ask, you know. Everyone who had trouble with him. Or might have. His wife mentioned your name.”

  “He didn’t do it,” Cora said loudly.

  Rowan looked at her. “I didn’t say he did, Mrs. Kanfield.”

  “He was here.”

  “Cora,” Bruce said. “Take it easy.”

  “But he already checked our knives!” she cried, and lit another cigarette. She looked at it, and grimaced, and stubbed it out. “I’ve quit, you know. Six months.”

  “Mr. Rowan,” Bruce said then, “why don’t we talk outside?”

  On the porch he learned he was the second person visited, learned he wasn’t a suspect, learned that Detective Rowan wasn’t very good at lying. And he supposed he ought to have Corbin here, though he told the man everything he’d done since leaving the office. And yes,
there was a good chance he’d been seen either in the park or on his way home. A neighbor. A driver. Someone. But no, he had no idea where Nancy Arrow was staying — she showed up, they had talked, they were going to meet again tomorrow to talk over old times before their lives split again.

  Rowan shook his hand.

  Bruce watched him climb into a brand-new convertible and drive off without looking back.

  Cora opened the door and stepped out beside him. “He knows you hated that man,” she said. “God, Bruce, he knows.”

  His arm slipped around her shoulder and he took back inside. “I’m not the only one, love. There must be dozens of others.”

  “Well, at least he didn’t arrest you.”

  He started up the stairs. “1 have to make a statement in the morning. I imagine they’ll want my fingerprints or something, at least they do on TV.” He looked down at her. “I don’t mind. I didn’t do it.”

  And was shocked when he realized that his wife didn’t quite believe him.

  That night, after midnight, he woke and was sweating.

  1 don’t want to die, he cried silently; oh Jesus, I’m afraid.

  His office overlooked the small parking lot behind the building, the houses and offices on the far side facing Park Street and the park. His chair was leather, beaten into shape, and he leaned back with his feet up on the sill, staring at the trees.

  “Bruce?”

  He grunted. He’d made the statement, no one treated him badly, yet he couldn’t help feeling that they wanted to, that they wanted him to be the one.

  Lois Outman, his most enthusiastic worker, walked in, a file folder in her hand. “We’ve got to do something about this letter from the IRS, the one about Mrs. Vanders’s deductions for the shop.”

  He nodded absently. Another wall the world had thrown up against him. He wondered what the hell he had to do to get away. To escape. And wondered in the next second what the hell he was talking about.

  Lois waited until, finally, “Well?”

  He waved a hand over his shoulder. “You know what to do, Lo. Why the hell are you bugging me?”

  He felt the stiffening, didn’t turn.

  “You said,” she answered, “you wanted to do it yourself.”