Gravelight

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  You look just. . . wonderful, Wycherly told himself. He wondered if there was any place to wash up. A creek?

  He opened the door of the wardrobe.

  There were dresses inside—plain cotton housedresses of the sort that could be ordered from a catalog, their timeless unfashionability nearly unchanged in thirty years. The drawer at the bottom of the wardrobe proved to contain women's underwear; Wycherly retreated hastily.

  When he straightened up he was dizzy, and the room spun giddily around him. He backed up, holding on to the brass bed for support. What was all this stuff still doing here? Even if Evan's "Miss Rahab" had had no heirs, in Wycherly's experience, anyone would steal—and what could be easier than stealing from the dead?

  This is weird, Wycherly thought with the serenity of drink and lingering exhaustion. But he didn't actually care much.

  And that, Wycherly thought to himself, clutching the bed frame for support, was the bottom line, as Kenny Jr. was so fond of saying. Wycherly didn't care what was going on, how many women had died

  here, or if they'd all been murdered by Charles Manson. Kenny'd said he was selfish. His father'd said he was weak. They could both be right for once, and he hoped it would make them happy: The only person Wycherly was interested in was Wycherly Musgrave, and Wycherly Mus-grave needed a place to hide.

  And a drink.

  He pushed open the door to the main room.

  Someone had been busy, though no one was here now. The front door to the rustic cabin was open, and Wycherly moved reflexively to shut it, although the only trespassers he was likely to get would be squirrels. But squirrels—or even raccoons—could not be responsible for the condition of the cabin as it was now. The table was covered with a clean, bright red and white cloth with a wooden bowl of wildflowers and four gleaming hurricane lamps on it. He smelled the scents of white vinegar and pine soap. Little trace remained of the dust and eerie abandonment that still filled the bedroom.

  Coals and kindling heaped beside the iron stove, pots and pans on the wall, canned goods on the shelves. Two wooden settles flanked the wood stove, a table and chairs in the middle of the room, cups and plates filled with grey dust still upon it... A flash of recollection appeared and was gone. Someone had cleaned here while he slept. Was it that mountain girl, Luned?

  The notion disturbed him deeply, though Wycherly had lived his entire life against a backdrop of invisible service. From buying the groceries, to preparing the food and a thousand other tasks, there had always been unseen hands to take care of it. Wycherly had never been called upon to perform any of the common chores of daily living, yet having someone else do it bothered him deeply.

  Hunger made its presence faintly known. A drink would take care of that.

  Wycherly walked over to the battered white refrigerator on the far wall. But when he opened it, all that greeted him was room-temperature air and a faint smell of bleach. Where was the beer? He'd brought at least two six-packs up with him. He looked all through the refrigerator, but found nothing other than dry cleanliness.

  His attention was momentarily distracted by the calendar on the wall beside the sink. It was curled and faded, a promotional calendar from

  some supplier of bottled gas. The date was 1969, the month was August. A bad omen. August, his birthday—the anniversary of Camilla's death— was always a bad time.

  He turned away, and saw a yellowed newspaper on top of the potbellied cast-iron stove in the other corner. Wycherly picked it up. It was yellowed and crumbling, but he could clearly see the masthead: the

  PHARAOH CALL AND RECORD, PUBLISHED WEEKLY FOR LYONESSE COUNTY, INCLUDING THE TOWNSHIPS OF PHARAOH, MORTON'S FORK, LA GOULOUE, BISHOPVILLE, AND MASKELYNE; AUGUST 4, 1969.

  No one had been here, even to steal, for nearly three decades. For a moment, Wycherly was distracted from his search for the missing beer; despite his professed disinterest, he felt the hackles on the back of his neck begin to rise.

  The door banged open.

  "Oh, there you are. Mister Wych!" Luned said.

  She strode through the door, a filled bucket in one hand, a six-pack in the other. Wycherly hurried over and took the beer from her. It was icy cold.

  "Been settin' in the crick," Luned said, setting the bucket down beside the stove with a sigh of relief.

  Wycherly pulled off the top of the can, sitting down in one of the wooden chairs to pour the beer down his throat in one long swallow. The need to have it available was almost stronger than his craving for it; he drank the next one more slowly.

  "I'm sorry about the pump, Mister Wych, I truly am," Luned said. "I 'spect I can get it to run, but I didn't like to wake you or anything. Leastways now you can wash up and all." She looked anxious. "And there's a backhouse up the hill a-ways; you can see it from the window here."

  Thanks, but no.

  "Never mind. I imagine, ah, 'crick-water' will be just fine," Wycherly said. He wasn't sure he'd be willing to drink it, no matter how clear it looked, but then water hadn't been his preferred beverage for a very long time.

  "Icebox works on white gas," Luned went on. "The tank's empty, and there won't be any more along until Monday. You'll need kerosene for your lamps, and I guess Mai Tanner'11 bring that too, along with what else you might think to ask for."

  Mr. Tanner, Wycherly remembered, was the local bootlegger. Evan had told him. He hesitated. Beer was one thing. Moonshine was something else again.

  "What day is this?" he asked instead, shoving the rest of the six-pack aside.

  "Thursday. It's about six. Dinnertime," Luned added, as if Wycherly were ignorant of the most basic facts of life.

  Wycherly said nothing, nursing his second beer. He wasn't entirely sure of what was going on here, and he wanted to know. For all her talk of ghosts back in the general store, Luned seemed to have had no hesitation in scrubbing the cabin from top to bottom. And the sun was starting to set, and she was still here.

  Why?

  As he stared broodingly at her, Luned moved to the cabinets over the sink and began taking down cans. They were new, obviously stock from the general store. Wycherly glanced around the room. Several cardboard boxes—some filled with bulging rusted cans, some with shining modern ones—were tucked into corners.

  "Evan sent up a load of groceries," Luned said, catching his look. "He says there's everything here you'll need. Bread comes in on Wednesday, milk on Monday, big store's in Pharaoh and you could maybe pay Francis Wheeler to run you down there or borrow Bart Asking's pickup."

  The speech had the air of something planned beforehand and carefully rehearsed. Wycherly wondered who else Luned'd had the chance to say it to; from the way Evan Starking had acted, Morton's Fork wasn't exactly on the tourist-trade map.

  "And my car?" Wycherly asked, remembering it with an effort. The crash that must have been only this morning seemed an episode from another lifetime already.

  "Jachin and Boaz pulled it right up the hill and it's down to Asking Garage right now. Mister Asking says he says he doesn't think it's any kind of an American car."

  Boaz and Jachin, Wycherly deduced, must be the oxen owned by Caleb. He felt a faint spasm of relief at knowing that the car was safely out of sight.

  "It isn't. It's Italian."

  "Well! Fancy that—and it uses American gasoline and everything?" Luned asked.

  Wycherly stared at her, not sure whether she was serious or puUing a joke. After a moment, Luned turned away and went back to opening cans.

  Silence.

  "I thought you said no one lived here?" he said, just to break the silence. So why are there still clothes in the closet?

  Luned turned and stared at him.

  "Old Miss Rahab did, thirty year gone, but it ain't good luck to talk about people that clears out, Mister Wych, specially for a fella with red hair like yours," Luned said.

  ''Clears out''? Not "dies"? Wycherly grinned sourly to himself, finally understanding why he'd gotten the reception he had at Morton's Fork. Once upon a
time people had believed that red hair was unlucky, and apparently that superstition still held in this backward place.

  "All right—Luned, is it?—we won't talk about the missing Miss Rahab. Just as long as you're sure she won't be back."

  "Don't you worry yourself They don't never come back. Mister Wych," Luned said seriously.

  / wouldn't, if I lived here.

  "Well, that's fine then," Wycherly said, a shade too heartily. He felt awkward talking to this skinny, painfully-ignorant girl-child; to treat her as his equal when she would never have the resources that had been available to him seemed cruel, but to patronize her seemed worse.

  He'd much rather not talk to her at all, but considering the amount of cleaning she'd done, he certainly owed her a little polite conversation. As polite as he ever got, anyway.

  "Now if you'll just get that fire going. Mister Wych, I can get your dinner ready and give your bedroom a lick and a promise while the vit-tles heats, and besides, you'll be wanting to heat up some good hot water for your shaving and all," Luned said, apparently addressing her remarks to the silent refrigerator.

  A shave. A wash. And little Luned to clean up for me. Wycherly shook his head in bemusement. He had, he realized, entered a simpler world, one where men built fires and women cleaned house. It held no particular appeal for him. In Wycherly's universe, men and women both idled, and paid laborers ordered by his parents took care of the mechanics of living. He wasn't sure he wanted to think of Luned as a servant.

  "Are you sure you want to do that?" Wycherly said, making no move

  toward the stove. "I mean, it was very kind of you to show me up here, and everything. ..." Go away so I can get drunk in peace.

  "And what'd you give Evan three hundred dollars for, cep'n so I could clean this place up for you and lay you in a nice mess of fixin's?" Luned answered inarguably. "I'll get my share out of him, Mister City Man, don't you worry your head none about that. So if you'd be so kind as to see to that fire, if it wasn't no trouble?"

  She placed her hands on her hips and stared at him, and Wycherly really didn't have any choice. Fortunately the expensive summer camps where he'd had been warehoused as a child—as well as a number of the more innovative detox programs he'd attended—had stressed wilderness survival as the pathway to self-improvement; once Wycherly managed to unlatch the front door of the stove and make sure that the inside was reasonably empty, he had no difficulty in laying down a pattern of logs to light.

  The antique newspaper made excellent starter, and he still had a box of matches in his jacket pocket from whatever New York restaurant he'd been thrown out of last. The well-aged wood caught quickly, and Wycherly shut the door, pausing only to wonder if the draw pipe still worked after all these years.

  Apparently it did, because the fire burned cleanly, its fiames visible in orange flashes through the glass of the stove's front door.

  "Take that a while to heat," Luned commented, struggling toward the stove carrying an enormous cast-iron pot filled with what looked like soup or stew. Wycherly rushed to take it from her. Every muscle he'd strained in the crash complained, and he nearly dropped it himself.

  Once it was settled, Luned carried a second, smaller pot to the stove and ladled water from the bucket into it.

  "There." She inspected him critically. "H'ain't you got no other clothes. Mister City Man?"

  "My name's Wycherly, Lm not a 'Mister,' and no I don't." He looked down at the crisp grey work pants. Couture courtesy of the Morton's Fork general store.

  "Well-1-1, I reckon I'll just have to stitch up a shirt for you. Mister City Man," Luned said slyly, turning away and sashaying—there was no other word for it—into the bedroom. "Mind you stir that soup now, or it'll burn."

  Wycherly stared at the pot. He'd be damned if he'd stir soup.

  He needed a wash, and probably to find that backhouse. Country plumbing—an outdoor privy, probably full of spiders and wasp nests if nothing worse. Wycherly shuddered. He looked at the cans on the table, beaded with condensation and creek water. He'd could wash up there, as he'd first planned. Abruptly the thought of going near the water made him shudder.

  Don't be feeble-minded, Musgrave. Camilla Redfordis safely in her grave and has been since 1^84. You saw the gravesite, remember?

  Only the dead never stay dead. Thafs the only real problem with them. In the Musgrave family, there was no such thing as a dead issue.

  He got to his feet and knocked back the rest of the second can. Removing his jacket was a struggle, but he managed, laying it carefully over the back of the chair. He looked back at the beer. One for the road.

  But no. Not right now. The two beers he'd already had were nothing more than a cushion, fuzzing the edges but not really intoxicating him. He meant to stop, he really did. He'd been dried out before, and he knew the drill. This time Wycherly had been drinking heavily for several months—heavily for him, which meant a considerable amount of alcohol every day. When a man reached that point, the trick was to sober up slowly—no d.t.'s as the alcohol slowly worked its way out of his system. After he'd reached technical sobriety, he could start drying out. And then he could see if he could stay sober.

  He already knew the answer to that.

  But he'd pretend he didn't, just for a giggle.

  Wycherly turned away from the cans on the table and went to the door. By now it was late enough that the last rays of the setting sun webbed the clearing in horizontal bars of yellow gold. He walked out into the open air and turned back to look at his new home. The brass fittings of the door had oxidized to a blackish green, and the door of the cabin hung slightly open, despite his best efforts to shut it.

  Old Miss Rahab's cabin was a large split-log building. Flowering vines grew up over the stone chimney and spread over the roof; where volunteers had sprouted, young trees grew close to the cabin, and land that might have been clear-cut in its former owner's day now sported a dense, second-growth forest. It gave the isolated cabin the look of something out of a fairy tale; an enchanted cottage set in the middle of an impenetrable wood. If the exterior had ever known paint it was a thing of

  the past, and time had weathered the wood to a soft, uniform grey that made it blend in seamlessly with the aspens and rowans that grew near it. Though the structure had been built less than a hundred years ago, it bore a strong family resemblance to the cabins that had dotted the rolling woodland of the Western Expansion. There was nothing in sight to tie it to the twentieth century, as if to cross its threshold was to lose one's grip on the present, and tumble helplessly down the corridors of the past. A steady pillar of smoke came from the cabin's chimney. All the windows were open, and several yards away he saw a tall narrow shed.

  From the backhouse Wycherly moved reluctantly toward the creek. It was downhill, about six hundred yards from his cabin, running narrow and deep beneath a canopy of rambling rose.

  Wycherly knelt painfully beside it and leaned over. The sight of a white face looking up at him out of the water made him cry out and lose his balance, until he realized it was nothing more than his reflection staring back up at him from the creek's dark surface.

  He could not escape the feeling that Camilla was somewhere in that black water, waiting for her vengeance. And when he least expected, she'd reach up with those white, white arms and drag him screaming down into Hell.

  Stupid, Musgrave. Have we already gotten as far as hallucinations? Doesn't bode well for the future, Vd say.

  With trembling fingers, Wycherly unbuttoned his shirt. He was not going to let her win this time.

  The T-shirt beneath was also stained with dried blood. Wycherly peeled it away from his skin gingerly, and then crumpled it up in both hands and plunged it into the creek. The water was icy, despite the July heat. When the shirt was as clean as plain water could make it, he used it as a rude washcloth to scrub his face, his neck, and as much of his torso as he could reach.

  It hurt to move. Crusted scrapes reopened, staining the shirt a delic
ate pink. He blotted at his head with the sopping rag until his hair was soaked and hung down his bare back in dark copper tendrils. Last of all he simply held the T-shirt over his eyes, savoring its coldness and trying to compel his headache to go away. A drink—or several—would make it go away. He knew that from experience.

  But he wasn't going to take them. Beer didn't count.

  GRAVELIGHT

  49

  Yeah, Wycherly jeered at himself. That's right. You're going to quit. He could almost always manage the first month fairly easily. And then what?

  Wycherly didn't know. He'd been dragged that far toward sobriety on his father's whim so many times that he'd come to look upon drying out as a short vacation, an intermission to remind him of why he drank and how pleasant it was. Like Columbus, Wycherly Musgrave wasn't really certain there was anything on the other side of the ocean.

  What if there wasn't?

  All at once a crushing sense of panic descended over him. Nauseated, he leaned forward and rested his head on his knees, clutching the wet T-shirt to his face. Why go through all of this just to take control of his own life? What would it be for once he had? He'd spent thirty years learning to be an embarrassing liability—did he think he could turn that around on a whim?

  The pointlessness of everything appalled him. Wouldn't it be much better just to die?

  No. Three decades of not conforming to other people's hopes aided him now with a spasm of reflexive stubbornness. He wouldn't die just because it was probably the most rational course of action.

  But if he lived, what would it be for?

  He didn't know.

  Wycherly faced that head-on, sitting beside the creek and letting the terror roar through him. This was what he'd foolishly vowed to face without the soothing peace of alcohol—a beast that wasn't even black, because blackness at least would be something, a positive attribute, and the beast was nothing at all; the abyss, the void.

  And it was coming for him.

  He did not fight. Wycherly had never fought back. He'd only run, and now he was here, and there was no further place to run to.