Ruth laid her hand gently on top of his, but said nothing, waiting for him to finish.
‘Lois never appeared to me again. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t scattered her remains, because at least I’d be able to see her now and again. But if Mike McConnell was right, I gave her what she was looking for, which was freedom.’
Ruth said, ‘You really believe that something similar is happening here? You think the Creepy Kid may be dead, and cremated, and he keeps turning up because somebody is holding on to his remains?’
‘Sounds insane when you say it like that, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes, it does.’
Jack thought about it for a while. ‘You’re right,’ he told her. ‘I need a couple of hours off. We’ll figure this out, won’t we? Maybe it won’t be the sun shining through a glass flower-vase, but then again it won’t be mirages, will it? Or ghosts, or dead kids looking for their ashes.’
FOURTEEN
Nadine was giving Bronze Star a final polish with a large rubber curry comb when she heard the stable door bang shut. The weather had been squally all morning so it didn’t surprise her, but Bronze Star snorted and whinnied and pawed at the floor of his stall as if something had unsettled him.
‘It’s OK, boy,’ Nadine reassured him, and patted his flanks. ‘Nothing to be scared of.’
Bronze Star had always been a nervy horse, which made him unsuitable for children and inexperienced adults to ride, and last spring Nadine’s father had talked about selling him and buying a more docile animal. After all, at Weatherfield Stables they made their living out of renting out horses and giving horseback riding lessons. A jittery creature like Bronze Star was a liability rather than an asset. If only a few people could handle him, he still needed feeding and veterinary care, as well as insurance. It was only because he was Nadine’s favorite that her father had relented and allowed her to keep him. Nadine believed that Bronze Star could understand everything she said to him, and that he would have answered her, if he could, like a neurotic version of Mister Ed.
The stable door banged again, and then again. Nadine put away her curry comb and her dandy brush and buckled up her kitbag. She gave Bronze Star one last kiss on the nose, and then she let herself out of his stall and bolted the door.
It was then that she looked along the length of the stable and saw three men standing there, posed like gunfighters at the OK Corral. They were all dressed in black ankle-length coats and they were all wearing white masks – one of them fixed in hysterical laughter, one of them scowling, and the third one totally expressionless. Behind them, the stable door was swinging open in the wind, and outside it was dark and raining hard, with intermittent flickers of lightning. Raindrops were sparkling on the men’s shoulders.
‘Can I help you?’ Nadine called out. The men’s appearance didn’t unduly disturb her. Some of the people who came to Weatherfield Stables to rent out horses were wearing the most bizarre costumes, especially when they were out on a stag night or celebrating a special birthday. Nadine had catered for Vulcans, and X-Men, and Flintstones. Last month a party of Knights Templar had turned up dressed as geisha girls.
‘Help us?’ the man in the laughing mask called back to her, looking around. He coughed, and then he said, ‘That depends.’
‘I’m sorry?’ said Nadine.
The laughing man slowly walked right up to her, a little too close for comfort. She tried to see his eyes, but the slits in his mask were totally black and empty.
‘I said, that depends,’ he repeated. His voice was coarse and catarrhal, as if he were suffering from a heavy cold or asthma. ‘What I need to know is, are you going to do what we want you to do, without argufying, or are you going to give us trouble?’
‘Why should I give you trouble?’
‘I don’t know. Think about it. You might scream, for instance. You might complain. You might shout out for help.’
Nadine dug into the pocket of her padded vest and took out her cell. ‘Let me call my dad. Whatever you want, he can take care of you better than me. I only do the cleaning up around here.’
But the laughing man gripped her wrist and forcefully pried the cell from between her fingers. ‘Now, come on. We won’t be needing your old man for this. This is something that only you can help us with, honeybun.’
‘So what do you want?’ Nadine asked him. She was feeling panicky now. ‘Look – my dad will be here at any minute. He can help you. He knows all of the rental charges and stuff like that. He can work out discounts, too. You know, three rentals for the price of two.’
‘Ah,’ said the laughing man. ‘The thing of it is, we didn’t come here to rent no horses.’
‘Then, I’m sorry, but what did you come for?’ Nadine retorted. ‘If I can help you with something, arranging some riding lessons, I’ll help you. But if not, I really think you’d better leave.’
The laughing man leaned toward her, although his feet remained where they were, so that he was tilted at what seemed like an impossible angle. ‘Well, well,’ he said, thickly. ‘You are the feisty one.’ He coughed, but when he had finished coughing, he said, ‘Look at you. Curly blonde hair, cute little turned-up nose, eyes as big as breakfast plates. I do declare you look good enough to eat, from the toes upward.’
‘Please, go,’ said Nadine. Her throat felt tight and her heart was beating so hard that her ribs hurt. She knew that her father had driven into the city to meet his tax accountant, and that he wouldn’t return home for hours. Her mother was in Cleveland for three days, visiting her sister, and the only people left in the house were Cora, the maid, and Duncan, the odd-job man, who could fix anything that needed fixing, but who was no brighter than a mirror with its face to the wall.
‘No, no, doll face, we’re not going,’ said the laughing man. ‘Not until we get what we came here for. And the way it looks, what we came here for is you.’
‘I don’t even know who you are,’ said Nadine. ‘How could you possibly want me?’
‘You’re the stable girl, aren’t you? Or rather, the unstable girl. Or a pretty good likeness, anyhow, except you’re much better looking. And you smell a whole lot nicer than she did, too. You smell of talcum powder, and freshness, that’s what you smell of. Much more desirable than sweat and horse-shit and unwashed hair.’
Nadine said, ‘Really – I don’t know what you’re talking about or who you’re talking about, but you really need to leave, right now.’
‘Oh, we’re not leaving, not yet awhile,’ said the laughing man. He had an unusual accent which she couldn’t exactly place. ‘We have an ex-or-cism to perform, and we can’t leave here until that’s carried out, no sir, yip-a-dee-doodle. We have to put some souls at rest, and right some wrongs. Some terrible wrongs, the like of which you can scarcely imagine. So, no ma’am, we’re not leaving.’
‘Who are you?’ Nadine demanded. She was feeling bolder now, because she was growing angry and frustrated, and her adrenaline level was rising. Bronze Star whinnied and kicked against the door of his stall, and he could obviously sense that something was wrong.
The laughing man said, ‘It doesn’t matter who we are, sweetheart. Not to you, anyhow. But the first thing I need you to do is to take off all of your clothes.’
‘What?’ said Nadine. ‘Are you crazy? I’m not taking off my clothes! Just get out of here before my dad comes back!’
The laughing man shook his head. ‘We know where your dad is, honeybun, and we know that there is absolutely zero chance of him arriving home for another five hours at the very outside. So why don’t you behave like a good little girl, the sort of girl who’s used to pleasing her visitors, and get yourself naked?’
‘No way!’ Nadine shouted at him. ‘No damn way! Now, get the hell out of here!’
‘OK,’ said the laughing man, in his muffled, cardboardy voice. He lifted both hands as if in surrender. ‘If you won’t cooperate freely, out of your own goodwill, then I guess we’ll have to try something else.’
He clicke
d his fingers, and when he did so, the expressionless man reached into his coat and drew out a thin-bladed kitchen knife, at least eight inches long.
Nadine screamed, ‘No! What are you going to do? No!’
She ducked left, and then right, and tried to dodge around him, but the laughing man effortlessly caught her sleeve and twisted her around. He pulled her up close to him and she could smell a strong medicated liniment.
‘I’m really, truly sorry,’ he told her, and then he coughed, and coughed again. ‘Sometimes, we have no way of escaping what has to be done, and this is one of those times.’
The expressionless man walked across to one of the stalls on the opposite side of the stables, where a six-year-old chestnut mare called Maggie May was watching them. He took hold of Maggie May’s plaited mane and pulled her head toward him. Maggie May snickered and resisted at first, and tried to back off, but the expressionless man pulled her harder. ‘Come here, you fucking four-legged pain in the ass.’ Then he held the kitchen knife close up to her windpipe.
‘No!’ Nadine screamed at him.
But the laughing man pushed his white mask right into her face, so that he was only two or three inches away from her, and whispered, ‘Your choice. I asked you to cooperate, did I not? I asked you to act real nice and I didn’t ask for nothing more. Now let me ask you one more time. Please, cooperate. We won’t harm you if you decide not to do what you’re told, but this horse will die, in a way that you never saw a horse die before.’
Nadine was shaking all over. ‘Are you cold?’ the laughing man demanded. ‘Don’t tell me you’re cold! We want you to take off all of your clothes, and we can’t have you feeling the cold!’
‘Please let me go,’ Nadine pleaded with him.
‘You want to give me one good reason why I should, when there’s everything in it for me?’
‘Please,’ said Nadine, and now the tears were running down her cheeks and she couldn’t stop herself from breathing in deep, panicky sobs. ‘What have I ever done to you? Tell me, and I’ll do it!’
‘Oh, you’ll do it all right,’ the laughing man reassured her. ‘Not only that, but a few other things you probably never heard of. Now, which is your favorite horse here?’
She couldn’t stop herself from glancing across at the expressionless man. As soon as he saw that she was looking at him, he drew his kitchen knife slowly across Maggie May’s throat, not deep enough to sever an artery, but enough to start blood sliding down to her shoulders, as if a shiny red scarf had been tied around her neck.
‘Don’t hurt her!’ Nadine cried out. ‘Please – whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it! But don’t hurt her any more!’
‘I’m only asking you which is your favorite horse.’
‘I can’t tell you. These are working horses, not pets. I don’t have any favorites.’
‘Oh, come on, you must have a favorite. How about this one here?’ He peered at the nameplate over the top of the stall. ‘Bronze Star. That’s a fine-looking animal, isn’t it? Shiny as a salesman’s shoes. And that’s a fine-looking pecker he’s got there, doesn’t he just! Almost as big as mine, when I’m feeling in the mood for it!’
‘I told you, I don’t have any favorites,’ Nadine repeated. She was terrified that if she revealed her feelings for Bronze Star, they would hurt him badly, or kill him.
‘Still and all, he’s a good-looking animal, ain’t he?’ said the laughing man. ‘We could start with him, and work our way around the stables, until we find the horse you like the best.’
He beckoned to the expressionless man, who let go of Maggie May’s mane and came across the stable to Bronze Star’s stall. Bronze Star snorted and kicked as he approached, but the expressionless man stood in front of his stall, pointed his finger at him and said, ‘Listen, horse! You’re going to stop fretting now, you got me? You’re going to quiet down and stay that way.’
Bronze Star whinnied again and rolled his eyes, but the expressionless man continued to point at him, as if he were a disobedient child, and after a while he stopped kicking and scuffing at the floor of his stall and stood completely still, with his head lowered. The expressionless man opened the door of his stall and stepped inside.
Nadine looked at the laughing man in alarm and bewilderment. She had never seen anybody who could pacify Bronze Star like that. Even experienced horse-wranglers usually had to whisper to him and cajole him and pat him and get him used to their smell.
‘My friend, he has a real way with horses,’ said the laughing man. ‘Dogs, too, even Dobermanns and pit-bulls. You know what I think? When it comes down to it, he scares them. Shit, I know he scares me.’
The expressionless man lifted his kitchen knife again and held it up until the point was only an inch away from Bronze Star’s left eye. But Bronze Star stayed where he was, his head still drooping, and didn’t flinch.
‘What I’m going to do is, I’m going to blind him first,’ said the expressionless man. ‘That will put him into a panic, and when he’s in a panic his heart will beat that much faster, so that when I cut his carotid artery open, his blood’s going to come pumping out like a goddamn fire hose.’
Nadine hesitated for a few seconds. Then she took off her padded vest and dropped it on to the floor. Next she started to unbutton her green-and-brown check shirt.
The laughing man watched her as she unfastened her cuffs, and then took her shirt off, too.
‘Don’t stop now,’ he told her, with a cough. She reached behind her back and slid open the hooks of her white cotton bra. Bare-breasted, she stood and faced him defiantly. ‘Don’t hurt any of my horses, that’s all.’
‘Oh, girly, you don’t know the half of what we’re going to do,’ said the laughing man.
‘Little tiny tits you got there,’ said the scowling man. ‘Nothing like hers. Hers was humongous.’
The laughing man lifted his hand as if to tell the scowling man to hold his tongue. He waited for a moment, and then he said, ‘Go on, sweet thing. Get yourself stripped off.’
Nadine tugged off her green rubber boots and her riding-breeches and then her thong. She was seventeen and she had gone all the way with only one boy before, Peter Vandermeer, a twenty-one-year-old law student at Ivy Tech, with an incipient black moustache. Their relationship had lasted only two months, and she had never stood naked in front of any other man. She felt angry, and embarrassed, and utterly defenseless, and she had never felt so frightened in the whole of her life. The stable doors banged again and a chilly draft stirred the sawdust on the floor.
‘What we’re going to do now is a little cull,’ the laughing man told her. ‘You know what that is, a “cull”? Comes from the French “cuillir”, to collect. In practice, it means weeding out your surplus livestock and putting them down.’
‘Please don’t hurt my horses,’ Nadine begged him. ‘You promised you wouldn’t.’
‘Moi? I’m not going to hurt your horses. You are. This is a re-enactment, sweet cheeks, an exorcism, and if it’s going to work any good then it has to be done right, just the way it originally was. Here. Knife, please.’
He held out his black-gloved hand, palm upward. The expressionless man came away from Bronze Star and gave him his knife. The laughing man approached Nadine and held the blade up in front of her face, so that its point was only inches away from her nose. Nadine stared at him, gulping and trembling, convinced that he was going to cut her open, there and then. But instead he turned the knife around and offered her the handle.
‘Take it,’ the laughing man coaxed her. ‘Go on, take it.’
Nadine took hold of the knife. She was shaking so much that she almost dropped it.
‘How many horses do you have here?’ the laughing man asked her.
‘Eighteen.’
‘Hmm. That sounds to me like about seven too many. So what I want you to do is, go around and pick out seven that you could do without, and slit their throats.’
‘What? I can’t! You can’t ask me to do that?
I can’t!’
‘If you don’t, my darling, then you are surely going to die, in the slowest and unpleasantest way that me and my friends can conceive of. So that’s your choice. The horses or you. Come on, they’ll forgive you, these horses, once they get to horsey heaven. They’ll understand that you didn’t have a choice. Then again, maybe they won’t. I never thought that your average horse was that intelligent, did you? Would you let any old lardass saddle you up and jump on your back? Or maybe you would. Depends what kind of a girl you are.’
He took Nadine’s elbow and led her over to Bronze Star. ‘There we are,’ he said. ‘All it takes is one deep cut. Quick and deep. No hesitation. He won’t feel a thing.’
Bronze Star was still standing motionless, with his head lowered, as if the expressionless man had completely broken his spirit.
‘I can’t,’ said Nadine, and started to sob.
‘Go on. He won’t hold it against you.’
‘I can’t!’
‘So I was right. He is your favorite. In that case, I totally understand. Let’s try another horse, shall we?’
The laughing man kept hold of her elbow and steered her along the stable to the next stall, with the scowling man and the expressionless man following close behind.
‘Here, how about this old hack?’
The horse in the next stall was Nightlight, a black eight-year-old with a single white blaze on his nose. Most of the horses at Weatherfield Stables were five and over, because horses of that age were used to being ridden, and tended to be more obedient and less likely to throw their riders over the nearest split-rail fence.
Nadine shook her head. ‘No.’
She deliberately dropped the knife on to the floor, but the laughing man immediately picked it up and held it out to her. ‘You have to, don’t you get it? The exorcism won’t work, otherwise, and if the exorcism doesn’t work then it’s going to be your fault, and me and my friends, we won’t like that, and neither will the gods of ill fortune. The gods of ill fortune, they have to be propitiated, or who knows what gruesome events are going to befall us.’
Fire Spirit Page 16