The Sound of Midnight - An Oxrun Station Novel

by Charles L. Grant

  The most difficult thing would be in talking with others, as talk they must. As she scrambled into a ditch and pulled herself out, she could see their faces; as she brushed herself off, she heard the first automobile grumbling past them less than a hundred feet away. Liz or Fred or Abe or even Bella—their lips, eyes, hands twisted in pity-filled sympathy as they wondered what had happened to the girl they had known, tried to guess at what terrible thing it was that had snapped the threads binding her to the real world.

  Liz would most likely call it symptoms of the aftershock from the incident in the orchard.

  Fred would label it the extreme emotional reaction to the deaths of the Campbells, and the incident in the field.

  Bella would snort and call it strain. A young, healthy woman had no business trying to run a thriving store on her own.

  She stopped, grabbed onto a pine bough, and allowed herself to sag into a position of temporary rest. Talk they must? No. No, they could not talk, not to anyone. Not until they either convinced Ed McPherson that he would be much safer in exposing everything before it was too late, or until someone else, a third unknown, survived an encounter with the things, the powers that were hovering over Oxrun Station. Until then, they would have to be silent. And the decision, though inevitable, was anguished enough to make her gasp.

  She stood on the shoulder in plain view while Vic tried to flag a car out of the oncoming traffic. They had brushed each other off as best they could, plucked leaves and other debris from their faces and hair, but in the middle of this isolated stretch of road, Dale felt sure there wouldn't be a driver brave enough to stop and pick up two people. After fifteen fruitless minutes she suggested she step back into the shadows, but Vic vetoed the idea almost immediately—he didn't want to be hanging onto a car-door handle when she stepped out into view and the car took off.

  Another half an hour. They walked. Stopped. Walked still farther along the ankle-wrenching graveled shoulder.

  "Maybe I should show them a little of my fabulous legs," she said. "You know, the Gable-Colbert thing in It Happened One Night?"

  "Hey, what do you want them to do, lady? Speed up?"

  She slapped at his arm and they resumed their walking. Five minutes later a car raced past them in the opposite direction. Suddenly it flared its brake lights and made a screeching U-turn.

  "I don't believe it," Dale shouted. "A bloody good Samaritan." Before Vic could stop her she stepped into the road and began waving her arms. When he yelled a warning, she ignored him; the idea of getting warm again was worth the praying that the fast-approaching vehicle wouldn't try to run her down. She shouted, semaphored, and the car slowed, easing off the highway onto the shoulder. Its lights were bright, and she hesitated, feeling uncomfortably like a moth trapped and pinned to black glass. Then, her relief too great, she raced forward calling before nearly tripping herself in an attempt to slow down and stop. It was a police car, and the patrolman sliding out of the passenger door had his weapon drawn. The spotlight on the roof glared abruptly, and she raised a trembling hand to shade her eyes.

  The only sound was the grumbling of the engine.

  "Dale? Dale Bartlett, is that you? Is Vic with you?"

  She leaned forward, staring at the dark figure. "Fred?"

  "Come over here, Dale. You, too, Vic."

  She checked the run she nearly broke into, glanced back over her shoulder, puzzled when she saw the alarm spreading across Vic's face. Suddenly a truck thundered past, its wind whipping the coat about her legs, kicking dust into her face and making her cough. A hand darted automatically to her hair, pushing at it, finding a shard of a leaf and discarding it hurriedly. She reached the car a step ahead of Vic, and she frowned when Fred backed away as he holstered his gun. His hand, however, remained near the butt.

  "For crying out loud, Fred, what are you trying to do, give me a heart attack? I'm not a criminal, you know. It's me, Dale!"

  Borg said nothing. He opened the rear door and motioned her inside, Vic following silently. There was a mesh screen across the top of the front seat, and when she checked she found no inside handles on either of the doors. By the time she had unraveled her confusion she realized Fred had been speaking on the police radio, letting the dispatcher know who it was he had picked up on the Mainland Road. Vic stared stonily ahead, not changing his expression when Borg twisted around until his back was to his door and he was facing them.

  "It's a cold night, Dale. Where have you been?"

  She started to tell him, then felt a painful silencing grip on her wrist. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you, Fred. Now would you mind telling me what's going on around here? Are we really being arrested? Why are we being arrested? I don't understand."

  "Has anyone else seen you two in the last couple of hours? Anybody at all? Did anyone pick you up?"

  "Nobody picked us up, no. Has anyone seen us? I don't know, but not within . . . what time is it?"

  "It's going on eleven."

  "My God, so late?"

  "Come on, Dale, stop—"

  "No," Vic said flatly, "no one has seen us except for some drivers who wouldn't stop for us. The only alibi we have, if that's what you're looking for, is each other. And I gather that isn't going to be good enough this time."

  "To be honest," Fred said, "I don't know. Look," and he glanced quickly at his driver, "I don't like this any more than you two do. I wish I didn't have to, but it's got to be done. Abe wants you guys in, and I'm lucky enough to happen to be the one who located you. Some of the others might not have been so . . . friendly."

  "Stop it!" Dale snapped, yanking her wrist out of Vic's still tight grip. "Will you two stop talking in riddles and tell me what's going on around here? What's all this garbage about alibis and stuff? Why does Abe want us this time? Somebody burn down the school or something?"

  "Let me guess," Vic said as if she hadn't interrupted. "We are obviously suspected of something, aren't we? Something more than setting a few half-dead apple trees on fire. It wouldn't be something like murder, would it?"

  "Murder?" She turned to Vic, astounded. "Murder? I. . . this is really . . . for God's sake, Vic!"

  "It is, Fred, isn't it?"

  The radio crackled; the car swerved sharply to avoid a raccoon lying dead in the road.

  "It was about nine o'clock, something like that," Borg said, his voice strained. "Jaimie McPherson called the station and told the sergeant on duty that Ed had been killed."

  "Oh my God," Dale whispered. "Oh my God."

  "He was out for a walk, the boy said he was, and when he got back to the house he looked around for his father because he didn't answer his calls. He found Ed's body in the bathtub. It looks as though it was a rotten accident—and that's strictly off the record, damnit—but he claims you two had been there earlier in the evening and that the three of you had one hell of an argument. He says he left before it was over, slipped out the back way. He doesn't know exactly how long he was gone, but when he came back, there was Ed in the bathroom and . . . well, you can see the inference."

  "I don't believe it," Dale said. "I mean, I really don't believe this. It isn't happening, is it, Vic? Vic—"

  "Hush up, love," he said, putting an arm around her shoulder and pulling her to him.

  "But, Vic—"

  "Dale, be quiet. Please, love, there's nothing to worry about. We're going to be just fine. Stop worrying, okay? We're going to be all right."

  The patrol car turned onto Chancellor Avenue and sped toward the station. Dale, watching the homes blur past, couldn't stop her eyes from tearing, blinking, couldn't keep from swallowing the bile that was surging acrid in her throat. Nightmare within nightmares. A close friend bringing them in for questioning about the death of a close friend. It didn't make sense, and she was stunned into frightened silence as the car pulled into the drive beside the station, stopped and waited. Fred, trying to give them a small smile of encouragement, guided them through a side door, across the front room where he nodded to
the sergeant, and directly up the side corridor and into Abe's office. He didn't draw his weapon again, but he and his partner stayed shadow close. And when the door closed, Dale noticed they were making a point of showing her they were still outside.

  Stockton was behind his desk. His face was creased and reddened, as if he'd been roused from a sound sleep only minutes before. He needed a shave, and his white civilian shirt was opened at the collar, the sleeves rolled hastily up to his elbows. He didn't look up from a sheet of yellow paper lying in front of him Dale forced a cough into her palm.

  "I want to know if Dale and I are under arrest," 'Vic said, and she noticed immediately the strain of keeping his voice, and his words, deferential. "If we are, Abe, then I would like to make the proverbial phone call and get in touch with a lawyer. We haven't been read our rights yet, you know."

  "Hopefully you won't be hearing those," the chief said, finally meeting Vic's gaze, "but I don't think I'd discount that lawyer just yet." He shook his head. "Brother, you've done it good this time, you two have. I just hope you can get yourselves out of it."

  "I think we can," Vic said. For the first time since they were picked up he smiled. Dale couldn't see the humor, but the gesture served to help her relax—not completely, but enough so that she was far less petrified than she had been when she'd seen Fred's gun wavering in her direction before being put away. "All right," Abe said. "Now because you two are friends, and because Oxrun isn't the big city or a miserable little hick town looking for the limelight, I'm going to tell you what we know so far." He lifted the sheet closer to his eyes, squinted and set forefinger and thumb to rubbing his chin. "Jaimie McPherson called in here at exactly nine-oh-eight to report the death of his father. He was, according to the desk sergeant, hysterical and naturally incoherent. Patrolman Borg and his partner answered the call and found McPherson lying in the bathtub. The shower was still running, warm, and the room was steamed up—Jaimie had apparently closed the door again after he saw what had happened. McPherson was bare to the waist, and without shoes or socks. It could," he said, looking up, "very well have been a miserable accident. I say miserable because of the way his wife died. He could have leaned over to adjust the water, slipped—there was some water on the floor by the tub—and struck his head on the tile wall. He could have drowned, or the blow could have killed him. That I couldn't tell anyone just now. We only picked you two up—"

  "We know," Dale said, surprised she still had a voice. "Fred told us."

  "Okay, then," Abe said, leaning back in his chair. "Vic, you said you can get yourselves out of this sticky-looking situation. Go ahead."

  "Vic," Dale said before he began, "don't you think we'll need a lawyer?"

  "No, not yet," he answered, still smiling. Then, to Abe: "We're not going to deny that we visited Ed tonight. There would be no sense in that. We did. That's a fact. We got there just about eight—Dale heard the clock chiming inside. We didn't stay for more than a half an hour, forty-five minutes tops. I wanted, see, to buy a chess set from him, one he'd gotten from Dale's store. He wouldn't sell, and we argued about it. But it wasn't a screaming match, as Jaimie seems to imply. When we left we decided to go for a ride, so we headed up Mainland for. . I don't know . . . ten miles or so before we came to a side road that headed up one of the hills. It shouldn't be too difficult to find; it was a couple of miles past that old gas station out there. Anyway, we stopped at the top of the hill to check the view, and I found out I had a flat tire. And wouldn't you know, I didn't have a spare."

  "Dumb," Dale said. "He'd forget his head if it wasn't screwed on."

  "True enough, true enough. Well, we decided to make for the gas station to get some help. Then I discovered I'd left my gloves back in the car, so we turned around and hadn't gone a dozen steps when we heard the engine start. I ran most of the way—"

  "Leaving me to stand in the dark," Dale interrupted.

  "—but when I got there, there was nothing left but the jack I'd taken out of the trunk."

  Abe stared at him. "What you're trying to tell me is that someone stole your car?"

  "Right," Vic smiled. "Probably some kids out for a joy ride or something. Anyway, we turned around again and walked all the way back down the hill to Mainland. Fred should be able to tell you where he picked us up. Abe, there's no way Dale and I could have been at the McPhersons' when Ed was killed. Not and be where we were on the road when Fred saw us?

  "And we want to report a stolen car," Dale added, trying not to grin.

  "I suppose you have proof of being up there," Abe said, almost comical in his effort to remain official and express relief at the same time.

  "Just send somebody up there to look for our tracks and the jack. The jack should still be there. I didn't feel like carrying it with me. It isn't all that sentimental."

  Stockton slapped at the intercom on the corner of his desk, snapped out his instructions and sat back again. "I don't like this," he said, almost to himself. "I don't like this one bit."

  "Ed," Dale said suddenly. "That had to be an accident, Abe. Jaimie was rightly upset, finding his father that way. But all he did was strike out blindly. We were the last ones there and the natural ones for him to pick on. I mean, really, Abe—he's lost both mother and father in something less than a few short years, and they both died in the same way. It would be enough to drive anyone hysterical, especially a young, impressionable boy."

  When Stockton didn't answer, she looked to Vic and sat in the wooden chair she had used the last time she'd been in the office. She hoped the patrol wouldn't be gone long, prayed that the jack Vic had thrown at the fire-thing was still on the hill. A trembling forced her to clasp her hands tightly in her lap, move them to grab at the armrests. She felt her control slipping in the weighted silence that pressed on her shoulders, and she cleared her throat just to hear the sound. Abe ignored her, began a ritual shuffling of papers, making notes, murmuring into the intercom without looking up; his mime of temporary disinterest was maddeningly stilted, and she wanted to strike out at him, to demand that he punch through the monstrous holes in the fabric of their story and compel them to reveal the truth. Relief. She blinked quickly, leaned slightly to her left to stare at a small travel alarm clock perched on top of the intercom cabinet. She watched the luminous green hands crawling from minute to minute, knowing that the more she looked the slower they would move, yet she was unable to take her eyes away. Only once did she allow herself a glance at Vic, and saw him leaning against the far wall, his expression unemotional, his eyes roving the office an inch at a time.

  Suddenly an image imposed itself on the blank wall she had created in her mind: Ed McPherson, glasses askew, forehead bloodied, face distorted under the water flowing from showerhead to drain. A shadow without apparent source darkened . . . stained one wall, a shadow huge and formless, its edges tongues that wavered like a fringe of flame. It had no dimension, yet it lifted from the wall and blotted out the light, blocked the corpse sprawled in the tub for an eon-long moment before receding, shrinking, vanishing into the dark corner behind the door. And the body . . . shriveled, wrinkled as though it had been immersed for hours, tiny threads of blood pink streaking the sides of the tub and drying into clusters of blackened scab.

  There was a stench. Putrefying flesh.

  Dale gagged and opened her mouth to scream, would have done so had not the door opened suddenly and a patrolman poked his head into the office. He looked from Vic to Abe to Dale, and back to the chief again.

  "What is it, Simmons?" Stockton growled.

  Simmons edged into the room, nodded to Dale and placed a large object wrapped in brown paper on the desk. He leaned over and whispered into the chief's ear, answered a single curt question with a one-word answer and left. The door closed without a sound.

  "Well?" Vic said.

  Color returned to Stockton's face. He tore open the package and Dale closed her eyes, slumped in her chair and wiped a palm across her forehead.

  "I told you it wo
uld be there," Vic said, pointing to the jack and its handle.

  "They found it off to the side of the road."

  "What can I say? I got so mad that I threw it. It sure wasn't going to do me any good without the car."

  Abe rose, slowly, and leaned forward, his hands firm on the desk top. "Vic, Dale, there are a lot of people in this little town that I never expect to see in here, or out there," and his head jerked in the direction of the front desk. "I would have bet my life that you two belonged to that select group." Then his hand lifted quickly. "Hold it, Dale! Don't say anything. Not yet. What I'm trying to say is this: we get our share of non-crimes around here—accidents, crank calls, things like that—and it beats me why you of all the people I could think of have gotten yourselves involved with so many of them. It was getting very annoying, and now it's deadly. You're probably right, Dale, and the kid was most probably hysterical over the circumstances of Ed's death. Borg sure made it sound that way when he reported in; and though I haven't spoken with the boy myself, I’ll do that first thing in the morning, if he's calmed down some. I have him staying with some people who came right over when the boy asked me to call."

  "Who?" Dale asked.

  Abe waved the question away. "What I want to know is this: are you two involved in something I should know about? I mean, coincidences are fine in their place, and there are folks who have, for example, traffic accidents a couple times a year just because they have plain rotten luck. But when I see you, Dale, in here more times in the last five months than in your whole life, I begin to wonder. And can you blame me?"

  He waited, looked at them expectantly. Dale moved to Vic's side and took his arm, held on, and waited for him to say something.

  "Can you blame me?" Abe repeated.

  Vic remained calm. "No, Abe, I can't blame you at all. Look, the last time we were here we had words. But that was, I think, more because of the reaction to that unfortunate fire than because we're actually hostile toward you. And I certainly don't want words with you now. This is too serious for that. You're just going to have to take my word for it that there's nothing going on, nothing at all except, as you say, plain rotten luck that's mixed us up in this mess."