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

by Charles L. Grant

  The cold stiffened his neck in spite of the muffler. It was only seven; it felt like after midnight.

  He turned left and hastened toward the corner, checking each house as he passed it to be sure people still lived there. And wasn’t sure they were at all when he saw nothing moving, heard no music or voices, passed an automobile in a driveway and heard no ticking of a cooling engine.

  He hummed; it sounded false.

  He couldn’t whistle; his lips were too stiff and threatened to chap.

  Then he stopped a few yards shy of the corner when he heard something moving away from him down Park Street, to his left. He stopped because the sound puzzled him. It wasn’t a car. It wasn’t a bike. It certainly wasn’t someone walking down the white line dragging something behind him. His head tilted and one eye squinted, and he tried to imagine what it could be that reminded him of something riding on an irregular wheel, grind and thump, not made of metal.

  A kid’s tired old wagon perhaps, but there was no squeak and scrape, and no kid in his right mind would be out playing tonight; it was too cold. Unless he was coming back from the market, carrying a bag of groceries, pretending to be a wagon train on its way to California.

  He continued on to the corner, looked south toward the woods, looked north toward the center of town, and saw nothing.

  And heard nothing.

  And shook his head with a wry smile, stepping out now and striding, swinging right on Centre Street, marching four blocks up to Chancellor Avenue, where he saw Livy just as she reached the entrance to the Mariner Cove.

  He grinned, but didn’t call her; moments like this were too rare, and too coveted to surrender — spying on an angel, a goddess, a wonderment, without being noticed in turn. He watched as she looked around, stripping off dark gloves, pulling a dark scarf from her hair and shaking her head just once so her shoulders were buried in puffs and clouds of gold. Her high cheeks were nipped red, her red lips gleaming, her eyes when she saw him standing there round the corner wide and blue and smiling and touched with stars.

  He grabbed her waist and kissed her, tasted her. She put her hands on his arms and kissed him back, and said as he opened the door, “You were sleeping, you jerk. Your eyes look like beach balls.”

  He laughed and ushered her in, where the slap of sudden warmth took his breath away; his skin stung, his eyes watered, and the voices of the other patrons bubbled at him from underwater. Livy, in dark sweater and dark slacks, was a dark ghost that blurred away from him without looking back, and he shrugged hurriedly out of his coat as the hostess brought them to a table near the back corner.

  There was no one near them, no one in the high booths, only a few couples scattered throughout the room, their voices low, barely heard above a murmur, silverware muffled as it scraped across plates and scratched around bowls. He smiled and nodded to Wes Martin and his wife, pulled out his captain’s chair and sat. The low ceiling, paneled walls, nets and lobster traps and the room’s sudden shudder from a powerful gust of wind gave him the feeling that he was, suddenly, in the hold of a great ship that didn’t have long to float.

  The house is burning.

  He passed a hand over his face.

  Wood wheel creaking.

  “Nelson,” Livy said.

  He grunted away his unease and looked — her elbows were on the table, her fingers under her chin. “I love you,” he said, the words stealing his breath. She smiled and nodded, two curls like horns spiraling from either side of her brow bobbing. “I love you, too, but you were still sleeping, weren’t you.”

  He stared at her, taking her, for several seconds before nodding. He felt like a kid caught stealing a snack just before Thanksgiving dinner.

  “You didn’t get it.”

  “No,” he admitted.

  “Do you know why?”

  He started a shrug, stopped it, looked at the silverware and picked up a salad fork whose tines he examined as if he were examining gold. “Livy, there are more brokers, investment counselors, financial whachamacallits and gizmos per capita in Oxrun Station, it seems, than in the entire stupid world. Nobody needs another hand. They all have computers.” He balanced the fork across his index finger. “And before you start again — I don’t have enough contacts to start my own firm.”

  “I wasn’t going to start,” she said softly.

  He nodded. He knew that. She never started again. She would mention something once, knowing he wouldn’t forget, and the only times it came up was when he said it. Not her. That wasn’t her style.

  Suddenly he hunched his shoulders, protection against a wave of severe depression he felt climbing the chair behind him.

  “Livy.”

  She looked at him over the top of her menu.

  “I love you.”

  She winked.

  “I don’t want to lose you.”

  She winked again.

  This is wrong, he thought then, with a suddenness that sat up upright, that set a chill in his breast he covered quickly with one hand; this is wrong. Love isn’t like this. Not true love. It’s not worship, and it sure can’t be fear.

  So why am I so god damned afraid?

  The menu lowered, exposing her face slowly, slowly showing him her smile, the smile pursing to a kiss he wanted to reach out and touch.

  “You’ll get something,” she assured him.

  “I suppose.”

  Her voice was stern: “You don’t ‘suppose’ anything, Nelson Glawford, goddamn it. You do.”

  “Is that an order?”

  “Damn right.”

  And he knew then why the house is burning he felt as if he were standing on the brink of unavoidable disaster — all that he had, and wanted to have, was threatened with extinction because he couldn’t find a way to set his own foundation in anything else but sand. He had thought he’d known. He had believed in his skills. But the world’s markets, the world’s economies, the world’s every damn thing had decided the ride was over. Their ride. His ride. And he wasn’t experienced enough to know how to keep from being dumped from the saddle.

  He was hanging on.

  But he was falling.

  “I love you,” she said, and he wanted to weep.

  “It won’t be easy,” he told her, and he didn’t have to.

  She knew. All the time, she had known and was just waiting for him to come down from the clouds of early successes and early praise. She knew, and she didn’t push him because she trusted him.

  Oh Jesus.

  “I love you, too.”

  They ordered. They looked around. They looked at each other and held hands across the table, one hand on either side of the centerpiece candle in its amber chimney.

  This is wrong, he thought again, forcing a frown into hiding; it’s too right to be right.

  “I need to know something,” she said, leaning closer, her sweater pulling across her breasts. “If I jumped you right now, would you be embarrassed?”

  He felt the laugh and choked it off. “I think it would cause a small problem.”

  “What problem?”

  “The waitress would faint, for one thing.”

  She nodded solemnly. “Yes, I guess she would. You, naked, are a sight to behold.”

  “Hey!”

  She leaned closer and whispered, “Before we leave, I’m going into the ladies’ room and take off my bra. Then you can feel me up in the movie.”

  He moved the candle aside; the flame stretched in her eyes.

  “I love you,” he said. “You will never know, ever, how much I really love you.”

  She gripped his hands tightly, her gaze rimmed with melancholy here and abruptly gone. “Sometimes you scare me when you say that.”

  “Why? I don’t mean to.”

  “I know, I know. But you make it seem as if I have an awful lot to live up to.”

  Half out of his seat, he leaned over and kissed her brow. “You just live, okay? Let me worry about how nuts I am.”

  Dinner arrived, and the
wine; they separated, and he told her about the interview and how clever and witty he had been, and how no one there was all that impressed because the position to be filled didn’t exist anymore and hadn’t for some time; and she told him how her father had flown in from England that morning, had taken her to lunch at the Chancellor Inn, had flown out that afternoon, so quickly she hadn’t even had the time to tell him she was in love; and he told her about feeling so damned ineffectual anymore that today, when he returned to the house, he’d just climbed into bed, hoping that all his problems would be solved in a miraculous dream.

  “Did you have the dream?”

  “Yeah. I dreamed my feet froze off.”

  She laughed, her lips barely parting, a throbbing in her throat, right hand brushing at her hair until it curled behind her ear.

  Dessert, and liqueur.

  “I love you.”

  She giggled, and blushed, and wiped her mouth with a napkin that barely touched her lips. Then she sat back and eyed him so steadily he grew nervous, couldn’t meet her gaze, fussed with a spoon, quickly folded his napkin on the table and put it back on his lap.

  “I wonder,” she said thoughtfully, “if you’ve ever been in love before.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Now that’s a conversation starter.”

  “No, I mean it. You — and I’m not complaining, Nel — but you act like my kids sometimes, you know what I mean?”

  He reached into his jacket and swore when he realized he’d forgotten his cigarettes. “Thanks.” He nodded her a bow. “I’ve always wanted to be compared to rampaging high-school seniors. They’re my secret idols. Bop till you drop, if you know what I mean.”

  “They’re cute when they’re in love.”

  His eyes widened; he put a hand to his throat. “What? Dear god, you mean I’m cute?”

  She nodded, one comer of her mouth pulling slightly.

  He glanced around the room, seeing nothing. “In my whole life, Livy, I have never even remotely thought of myself as cute. Cute is for baby bears, you know?”

  “It’s the way you act, that’s all.” She blew him a kiss. “I think it’s cute.”

  A buzz filled the room and faded. He glared at the ceiling and hoped no one was about to crank up god-awful recorded music. All he needed now was a zillion violins, or some patched-in easy-listening radio station, or a throaty chanteuse hunting for love among the wrong notes.

  He cleared his throat. “Livy.”

  From her expression he knew she recognized the tone; and he was absurdly heartened when she didn’t say anything, only watched him expectantly, hands slipping below the edge of the table.

  He took a deep breath, sent it out in a rush: “Livy, I want you to grow old with me.” And he braced himself for the wisecrack, the joke, the artful deflection he’d become accustomed to lately, and was startled when it didn’t come. Startled, and more nervous.

  In for a penny, he decided.

  “Livy, I want you to marry me.”

  Shit, he thought then; oh shit oh shit.

  And waited.

  You have no job, she’ll say.

  I know there’s money in the bank, but it won’t last forever, and a teacher’s salary isn’t exactly top of the line, even here in Oxrun, she’ll say.

  I love you, too. Nelson, but we’ve only been seeing each other for a few months, and I do remember that time you wanted to have an engagement party and invited all those people, but you didn’t ask me, remember? and I don’t know if I’ve forgiven you putting on that pressure, she’ll say.

  No, she’ll say.

  “Yes,” she said.

  And he stood up and looked down, and said, “Huh?”

  She laughed, covered her mouth, laughed again.

  Then she gestured until he sat again. She picked up her purse and said, “yes,” and stood.

  The panic he felt was unreasonable, but he couldn’t help it. He almost shouted, “Where are you going?”

  She stood by his chair, leaned over, and whispered, “The bra, remember? The bra.” Her hand passed over his hair and she left, following a course around the empty tables and vanishing behind a translucent silver screen that marked the alcove to the kitchen and rest rooms.

  “Oh my god,” he said softly. “Oh my god.”

  He grabbed up a spoon, put it down, rubbed his neck, grabbed the spoon again and blew on it, clouded it, put it down and tried to arrange it in such a way that no one would ever know what its function was.

  She said yes.

  She said yes; I’m cracking up.

  “Jesus Christ,” he whispered to the table, “she said yes.”

  A brief spurt of anger then when his eyes filled with tears, a feigned coughing spate as he grabbed the napkin and wiped them hastily away, cleared his throat, wiped again, and sat back expansively, grinning like a jerk and not giving a damn.

  I have been accepted, ladies and gentlemen, he announced silently to the room. I have been accepted by the most beautiful woman in the entire world, and I feel great!, what do you think about that?

  If he felt any better, he was positive he’d explode; and if he exploded, well, he could think of worse ways to die than dying because of love.

  Idiot, he thought.

  What the hell, he answered.

  His hands folded loosely over his stomach, his legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, and a benevolence softened his brittle-bright gaze as he scanned the room without caring what he saw because all he could see was Livy saying yes.

  Sitting in his chair then, waiting for his future wife. Nodding to Wes Martin as he led his wife to the door.

  Finally aware of and listening to the barely audible music that replaced the faint buzz with a timing he believed could not have been better if he’d slipped the manager fifty bucks for just such an occasion.

  He heard a painfully sweet dulcimer of sweet mountain air that matched his mood and temper, covering him, floating him safely above the darker tones of a doleful guitar and the sawing cautions of a somber fiddle and the prank of a mandolin that played a humorous dirge behind it all; filling the Cove so quietly he barely knew the song was there, not knowing the words but hearing them just the same until they slipped away, returned, slipped away like spring replaced by sudden winter — a spiritual, then a jig, then a two-step, then a hornpipe, then a melody the dulcimer settled over him like a veil, chilling him pleasantly, calling him by name.

  He identified the musicians instantly; he’d heard them often enough on his walks through the village, and heard the talk, and heard the assessments and the wonder and wondered in turn when Frieda Harks and her friends had ever made a record and how could he get one, immediately, because this song would be his song, their song, from now on. And whenever be played it, he and Livy would get all misty-eyed and sentimental and probably stand up wherever they were and slow-dance until they kissed, and kissed until they made love, and made love until they fell asleep, home in each other’s arms.

  He felt no shame at the sentiment.

  The music played on.

  And played faster, and played slower, and played softer at last and he soon began to frown because he knew it was still there, he could feel it, he could hear it, but it worked now like shadows that flitted just beyond the corner of his vision, dancing for him, mocking him, popping out of sight when he snapped his head around.

  Buddy boy, he thought, on one of the worst days of your life, the best thing has happened. Get hold, you idiot, and take the woman to the damned movies before you start seeing pink elephants and they haul you away.

  Waiting for his future wife.

  After several minutes he stopped counting how many times he had folded and refolded his dark wine linen napkin into shapes and sizes he didn’t know he knew.

  After several minutes more he tried to locate the elusive waitress, to catch her eye, to get the check and pay it, but she was gone, and the hostess as well, and when he sat his hands on the arms of his chair and half-lifted himself
up, he realized he was sitting in the restaurant alone.

  A check of his watch, and he scowled briefly; the film would start in five minutes.

  He fidgeted, squirmed, exhaled loudly and craned his neck in hopes of seeing around the screen to the ladies-room door.

  “I am officially engaged,” he said. “She has me, the little devil, and now she’s making me pay.”

  He grinned, stood, pushed his chair in and wandered across the floor to the screen.

  “Livy?”

  He glanced toward the small front table where the hostess usually sat with her leather reservation book and tidy nest of menus; her chair was still empty. And when he looked to his left, toward the double swinging doors that led to the kitchen, he saw by their circular blank panes that the lights had been switched off, as if the place had been closed, the chef gone, busboys released.

  “Hey, Livy.”

  A self-conscious finger-brush of his hair, a palm down his tie, and he stepped lightly to the door centered by a black silhouette of a woman. He knocked with one knuckle. He knocked again.

  “Livy, c’mon, we’re going to be late.”

  She’s sick.

  Not a guess, a certainty. Something had happened to her, either the meal or the wine. He put a hand to the brass plate and pulled the hand away guiltily. He couldn’t go in there, for god’s sake. Suppose someone else came out? Suppose she screamed? Suppose he spent the first night of his engaged life in a jail cell, Jesus Christ. He touched the brass again, whirled, and strode through the room, hunting for the hostess, or a waitress, any woman he could find to send in there and see if Livy was all right.

  The Cove was empty.

  By the time he reached the entrance, his right hand darting in and out of his pocket, he knew absolutely there was no one else in the restaurant. Even the cloakroom was dark.

  “Hey,” he said, perplexed.

  His foot began tapping. Eyes blinked. A quick check outside, but the pavement was deserted, the cold deeper, the wind stronger but not strong.

  She’s sick.

  He almost ran back to the screen. “Livy!” He pushed the door open and stepped in. “Livy, I’m coming in! I’m in!” He hesitated in a small powder room simple in creams and whites, tripled by mirrors lining two of the walls. “Livy, it’s me, don’t worry!” He pushed through another door, to a room more practical in tiles, and called her name, called it twice, began shoving at stall doors before he knew what he was doing, slamming them back increasingly harshly to echoes of gunshots, and when he reached the end of the endless row he went through it again, and a third time, and a fourth because she had to be in here, he had seen her come in, and she couldn’t have gotten out because there weren’t any windows.