Dark Forces

by McCauley, Kirby

  “We ought to straighten up in here,” Linda told him. She was doing a sort of half-dance around the room, scooping up debris and singing a line to the record every now and then.

  “I was wondering if I could get you to pose for me this morning?”

  “Hell, it’s too nice a day to stand around your messy old studio.”

  “Just for a while. While the sun’s right. If I don’t get my figure studies handed in by the end of the month, I’ll lose my incomplete.”

  “Christ, you’ve only had all spring to finish them.”

  “We can run down to Gradie’s afterward. You’ve been wanting to see the place.”

  “And the famous mantel.”

  “Perhaps if the two of us work on him?”

  The studio—so Mercer dignified it—was an upstairs front room, thrust outward from the face of the house and onto the roof of the veranda, as a sort of cold-weather porch. Three-quarter-length casement windows with diamond panes had at one time swung outward on three sides, giving access onto the tiled porch roof. An enterprising landlord had blocked over the windows on either side, converting it into a small bedroom. The front wall remained a latticed expanse through which the morning sun flooded the room. Mercer had adopted it for his studio, and now Linda’s houseplants bunched through his litter of canvases and drawing tables.

  “Jesus, it’s a nice day!”

  Mercer halted his charcoal, scowled at the sheet. “You moved your shoulder again,” he accused her.

  “Lord, can’t you hurry it?”

  “Genius can never be hurried.”

  “Genius, my ass.” Linda resumed her pose. She was lean, high-breasted, and thin-hipped, with a suggestion of freckles under her light tan. A bit taller, and she would have had a career as a fashion model. She had taken enough dance to pose quite well—did accept an occasional modeling assignment at the art school when cash was short.

  “Going to be a good summer.” It was that sort of morning.

  “Of course.” Mercer studied his drawing. Not particularly inspired, but then he never did like to work in charcoal. The sun picked bronze highlights through her helmet of curls, the feathery patches of her mons and axillae. Mercer’s charcoal poked dark blotches at his sketch’s crotch and armpits. He resisted the impulse to crumple it and start over.

  Part of the problem was that she persisted in twitching to the beat of the music that echoed lazily from downstairs. She was playing that Fleetwood Mac album to death—had left the changer arm askew so that the record would repeat until someone changed it. It didn’t help him concentrate—although he’d memorized the record to the point he no longer need listen to the words:

  I been alone

  All the years

  So many ways to count the tears

  I never change

  I never will

  I’m so afraid the way I feel

  Days when the rain and the sun are gone

  Black as night

  Agony’s torn at my heart too long

  So afraid

  Slip and I fall and I die

  When he glanced at her again, something was wrong. Linda’s pose was no longer relaxed. Her body was rigid, her expression tense.

  “What is it?”

  She twisted her face toward the windows, brought one arm across her breasts. “Someone’s watching me.”

  With an angry grunt, Mercer tossed aside the charcoal, shouldered through the open casement to glare down at the street.

  The sidewalks were deserted. Only the usual trickle of Saturday-morning traffic drifted past. Mercer continued to scowl balefully as he studied the parked cars, the vacant weed-lot across the street, the tangle of kudzu in his front yard. Nothing.

  “There’s nothing out there.”

  Linda had shrugged into a paint-specked fatigue jacket. Her eyes were worried as she joined him at the window.

  “There’s something. I felt all crawly all of a sudden.”

  The roof of the veranda cut off the view on the windows from the near sidewalk, and from the far sidewalk it was impossible to see into the studio by day. Across the street, the houses directly opposite had been pulled down. The kudzu-covered lots pitched steeply across more kudzu-covered slope, to the roofs of warehouses along the railyard a block below. If Linda were standing directly at the window, someone on the far sidewalk might look up to see her; otherwise there was no vantage from which a curious eye could peer into the room. It was one of the room’s attractions as a studio.

  “See. No one’s out there.”

  Linda made a squirming motion with her shoulders. “They walked on then,” she insisted.

  Mercer snorted, suspecting an excuse to cut short the session. “They’d have had to run. Don’t see anyone hiding out there in the weeds, do you?”

  She stared out across the tangled heaps of kudzu, waving faintly in the last of the morning’s breeze. “Well, there might be someone hiding under all that tangle.” Mercer’s levity annoyed her. “Why can’t the city clear off those damn jungles!”

  “When enough people raise a stink, they sometimes do—or make the owners clear away the weeds. The trouble is that you can’t kill kudzu once the damn vines take over a lot. Gradie and Morny used to try. The stuff grows back as fast as you cut it—impossible to get all the roots and runners. Morny used to try to burn it out—crawl under and set fire to the dead vines and debris underneath the growing surface. But he could never keep a fire going under all that green stuff, and after a few spectacular failures using gasoline on the weed-lots, they made him stick to grubbing it out by hand.”

  “Awful stuff!” Linda grimaced. “Some of it’s started growing up the back of the house.”

  “I’ll have to get to it before it gets started. There’s islands in the TVA lakes where nothing grows but kudzu. Stuff ran wild after the reservoir was filled, smothered out everything else.”

  “I’m surprised it hasn’t covered the whole world.”

  “Dies down after the frost. Besides, it’s not a native vine. It’s from Japan. Some genius came up with the idea of using it as an ornamental ground cover on highway cuts and such. You’ve seen old highway embankments where the stuff has taken over the woods behind. It’s spread all over the Southeast.”

  “Hmmm, yeah? So who’s the genius who plants the crap all over the city then?”

  “Get dressed, wise-ass.”

  III

  The afternoon was hot and sodden. The sun made the air above the pavement scintillate with heat and the thick odor of tar. In the vacant lots, the kudzu leaves drooped like half-furled umbrellas. The vines stirred somnolently in the musky haze, although the air was stagnant.

  Linda had changed into a halter top and a pair of patched cutoffs. “Bet I’ll get some tan today.”

  “And maybe get soaked,” Mercer remarked. “Air’s got the feel of a thunderstorm.”

  “Where’s the clouds?”

  “Just feels heavy.”

  “That’s just the goddamn pollution.”

  The kudzu vines had overrun the sidewalk, forcing them into the street. Tattered strands of vine crept across the gutter into the street, their tips crushed by the infrequent traffic. Vines along Gradie’s fence completely obscured the yard beyond, waved curling tendrils aimlessly upward. In weather like this, Mercer reflected, you could just about see the stuff grow.

  The gate hung again at first push. Mercer shoved harder, tore through the coils of vine that clung there.

  “Who’s that!” The tone was harsh as a saw blade hitting a nail.

  “Jon Mercer, Mr. Gradie. I’ve brought a friend along.”

  He led the way into the yard. Linda, who had heard him talk about the place, followed with eyes bright for adventure. “This is Linda Wentworth, Mr. Gradie.”

  Mercer’s voice trailed off as Gradie stumbled out onto the porch. He had the rolling slouch of a man who could carry a lot of liquor and was carrying more liquor than he could. His khakis were the same he’d had on when Me
rcer last saw him, and had the stains and wrinkles that clothes get when they’re slept in by someone who hadn’t slept well.

  Red-rimmed eyes focused on the half gallon of burgundy Mercer carried. “Guess I was taking a little nap.” Gradie’s tongue was muddy. “Come on up.”

  “Where’s Sheriff?” Mercer asked. The dog usually warned his master of trespassers.

  “Run off,” Gradie told him gruffly. “Let me get you a glass.” He lurched back into the darkness.

  “Owow!” breathed Linda in one syllable. “He looks like something you see sitting hunched over on a bench talking to a bottle in a bag.”

  “Old Gradie has been hitting the sauce pretty hard last few times I’ve been by,” Mercer allowed.

  “I don’t think I care for any wine just now,” Linda decided, as Gradie reappeared, fingers speared into three damp glasses like a bunch of mismatched bananas. “ Too hot.”

  “Had some beer in the frigidaire, but it’s all gone.”

  “That’s all right.” She was still fascinated with the enclosed yard. “What a lovely garden!” Linda was into organic foods.

  Gradie frowned at the patch of anemic vegetables, beleaguered by encroaching walls of kudzu. “It’s not much, but I get a little from it. Damn kudzu is just about to take it all. It’s took the whole damn neighborhood—everything but me. Guess they figure to starve me out once the vines crawl over my little garden patch.”

  “Can’t you keep it hoed?”

  “Hoe kudzu, miss? No damn way. The vines grow a foot between breakfast and dinner. Can’t get to the roots, and it just keeps spreading till the frost; then come spring it starts all over again where the frost left it. I used to keep it back by spraying it regular with 2,4-D. But then the government took 2,4-D off the market, and I can’t find nothing else to touch it.”

  “Herbicides kill other things than weeds,” Linda told him righteously.

  Gradie’s laugh was bitter. “Well, you folks just look all around as you like.”

  “Do you have any old clothes?” Linda was fond of creating costumes.

  “Got some inside there with the books.” Gradie indicated a shed that shouldered against his house. “I’ll unlock it.”

  Mercer raised a mental eyebrow as Gradie dragged open the door of the shed, then shuffled back onto the porch. The old man was more interested in punishing the half gallon than in watching his customers. He left Linda to poke through the dusty jumble of warped books and faded clothes, stacked and shelved and hung and heaped within the tin-roofed musty darkness.

  Instead he made a desultory tour about the yard—pausing now and again to examine a heap of old hubcaps, a stack of salvaged window frames, or a clutter of plumbing and porcelain fixtures. His deviousness seemed wasted on Gradie today. The old man remained slumped in a broken-down rocker on his porch, staring at nothing. It occurred to Mercer that the loss of Sheriff was bothering Gradie. The old yellow watchdog was about his only companion after Morny’s death. Mercer reminded himself to look for the dog around campus.

  He ambled back to the porch. A glance into the shed caught Linda trying on an oversized slouch hat. Mercer refilled his glass, noted that Gradie had gone through half the jug in his absence. “All right if I look at some of the stuff inside?”

  Gradie nodded, rocked carefully to his feet, followed him in. The doorway opened into the living room of the small frame house. The living room had long since become a warehouse and museum for all of Gradie’s choice items. There were a few chairs left to sit on, but the rest of the room had been totally taken over by the treasures of a lifetime of scavenging. Gradie himself had long ago been reduced to the kitchen and back bedroom for his own living quarters.

  China closets crouched on lion paws against the wall, showing their treasures behind curved-glass bellies. Paintings and prints in ornate frames crowded the spiderwebs for space along the walls. Mounted deer’s heads and stuffed owls gazed fixedly from their moth-eaten poses. Threadbare Oriental carpets lay in a great mound of bright-colored sausages. Mahogany dinner chairs were stacked atop oak and walnut tables. An extravagant brass bed reared from behind a gigantic Victorian buffet. A walnut bookcase displayed choice volumes and bric-a-brac beneath a signed Tiffany lamp. Another bedroom and the dining room were virtually impenetrable with similar storage.

  Not everything was for sale. Mercer studied the magnificent walnut china cabinet that Gradie reserved as a showcase for his personal museum. Surrounded by the curving glass sides, the mementos of the junk dealer’s lost years of glory reposed in dustless grandeur. Faded photographs of men in uniforms, inscribed snapshots of girls with pompadours and padded-shoulder dresses. Odd items of military uniform, medals and insignia, a brittle silk square emblazoned with the Rising Sun. Gradie was proud of his wartime service in the Pacific.

  There were several hara-kiri knives—so Gradie said they were—a Nambu automatic and holster, and a Samurai sword that Gradie swore was five hundred years old. Clippings and souvenirs and odd bits of memorabilia of the Pacific theater, most bearing yellowed labels with painstakingly typed legends. A fist-sized skull—obviously some species of monkey—bore the label: “Jap General’s Skull.”

  “That general would have had a muzzle like a possum.” Mercer laughed. “Did you find it in Japan?”

  “Bought it during the Occupation,” Gradie muttered. “From one little Nip, said it come from a mountain-devil.”

  Despite the heroic-sounding labels throughout the display—“Flag Taken from Captured Jap Officer”—Mercer guessed that most of the mementos had indeed been purchased while Gradie was stationed in Japan during the Occupation.

  Mercer sipped his wine and let his eyes drift about the room. Against one wall leaned the mahogany mantel, and he must have let his interest flicker in his eyes.

  “I see you’re still interested in the mantel,” Gradie slurred, mercantile instincts rising through his alcoholic lethargy.

  “Well, I see you haven’t sold it yet.”

  Gradie wiped a trickle of wine from his stubbled chin. “I’ll get me a hundred-fifty for that, or I’ll keep it until I can get me more. Seen one like it, not half as nice, going for two hundred—place off Chapman Pike.”

  “They catch the tourists from Gatlinburg,” Mercer sneered.

  The mantel was of African mahogany, Mercer judged—darker than the reddish Philippine variety. For a miracle only a film of age-blackened lacquer obscured the natural grain—Mercer had spent untold hours stripping layers of cheap paint from the mahogany panel doors of his house.

  It was solid mahogany, not a veneer. The broad panels that framed the fireplace were matched from the same log, so that their grains formed a mirror image. The mantelpiece itself was wide and sturdy, bordered by a tiny balustrade. Above that stretched a fine beveled mirror, still perfectly silvered, flanked by lozenge-shaped mirrors on either side. Ornately carved mahogany candlesticks jutted from either side of the mantelpiece, so that a candle flame would reflect against the beveled lozenges. More matched-grain panels continued ceilingward above the mirrors, framed by a second balustraded mantelshelf across the top. Mercer could just about touch it at fullest stretch.

  Exquisite, and easily worth Gradie’s price. Mercer might raise a hundred of it—if he gave up eating and quit paying rent for a month or three.

  “Well, I won’t argue it’s a beauty,” he said. “But a mantel isn’t just something you can buy and take home under your arm, brush it off and stick it in your living room. You can always sell a table or a china closet—that’s furniture. Thing like this mantel is only useful if you got a fireplace to match it with.”

  “You think so,” Gradie scoffed. “Had a lady in here last spring, fine big house out in west Knoxville. Said she’d like to antique it with one of those paint kits, fasten it against a wall for a stand to display her plants. Wanted to talk me down to one twenty-five though, and I said ‘no, ma’am.”’

  Linda’s scream ripped like tearing glass.

  M
ercer spun, was out the door and off the porch before he quite knew he was moving. “Linda!”

  She was scrambling backward from the shed, silent now but her face ugly with panic. Stumbling, she tore a wrinkled flannel jacket from her shoulders, with revulsion threw it back into the shed.

  “Rats!” She shuddered, wiping her hands on her shorts. “In there under the clothes! A great big one! Oh, Jesus!”

  But Gradie had already burst out of his house, shoved past Mercer—who had pulled short to laugh. The shotgun was a rust-and-blue blur as he lunged past Linda. The shed door slammed to behind him.

  “Oh, Jesus!”

  The boom of each barrel, megaphoned by the confines of the shed, and in the finger-twitch between each blast, the shrill chitter of pain.

  Then the hysterical cursing from within, and a muffled stomping.

  Linda, who had never gotten used to Mercer’s guns, was clawing free of his reassuring arm. “Let’s go! Let’s go!” She was kicking at the gate, as Gradie slid back out of the shed, closing the door on his heel.

  “Goddamn big rat, miss.” He grinned crookedly. “But I sure done for him.”

  “Jon, I’m going!”

  “Catch you later, Mr. Gradie,” Mercer yelled, grimacing in embarrassment. “Linda’s just a bit freaked.”

  If Gradie called after him, Mercer didn’t hear. Linda was walking as fast as anyone could without breaking into a run, as close to panic as need be. He loped after her.

  “Hey, Linda! Everything’s cool! Wait up!”

  She didn’t seem to hear. Mercer cut across the corner of a weed-lot to intercept her. “Hey! Wait!”

  A vine tangled his feet. With a curse, he sprawled headlong. Flinching at the fear of broken glass, he dropped to his hands and knees in the tangle of kudzu. His flailing hands slid on something bulky and foul, and a great swarm of flies choked him.

  “Jon!” At his yell, Linda turned about. As he dove into the knee-deep kudzu, she forgot her own near panic and started toward him. “I’m OK!” he shouted. “Just stay there. Wait for me.”

  Wiping his hands on the leaves, he heaved himself to his feet, hid