Her plan was to open the door and fire over the rascal’s head. That would discourage him, she thought. That would keep him from coming back and pretending to be little Johnny Williams.
She could hardly wait.
But wait she did, with the radio turned on in the background, playing music that ranged from doleful and slow to manic and feverish. Mrs. Woodley paid it very little mind. She simply sat, chin on hand, in an armchair drawn up close behind the sheer curtains, looking out into the calm street. The house across the way, the Williams house, was all dark, of course. Its FOR SALE sign was still on the lawn, bright and new. The pool of light under the streetlight was curiously empty. The boy’s dog used to sit there sometimes at night, and it was dead and gone, of course, but more than that, the insects were gone as well: no moths swirled around the incandescent bulb.
Another summer gone. Another fall here already.
A car pulled by, slowly, the way cars did on this street. Faintly, between the pulses of song from the radio, Mrs. Woodley could hear the hum of the mill. Somebody said things were rough at the mill, between bad accidents happening and the flu hitting people now. Well, she didn’t have to worry about that, every month she drew her husband’s pension and his Social Security. Still, it was a shame that when the mill had hard times, everybody in New Haven had hard times. She remembered the Depression, when the men were paid in scrip when they were paid at all. Bad times, then, but she and her husband had lived through them, right here in this house.
She heard the scratching start.
Must have fallen asleep, she thought. Sitting here staring out the window, must have dozed off. Didn’t even see the little A-rab come up on the porch.
She turned on the porch light. Its yellow glare illuminated the window in the dark room. “Get on home,” she said through the door.
The scratching continued, like nails raked down the screen in long, vertical swipes.
“You’d better get on home, young man!” Mrs. Woodley put all the authority she could muster in her voice.
The scratching didn’t even hesitate.
“Very well.” Mrs. Woodley grasped the doorknob with her left hand, the shotgun with her right, and pulled the door open.
He stood there, his head lolling grotesquely, his tongue hanging out, his hands clawing the screen.
And it was the Williams boy.
And he was dead.
Gagging from the stench of decay, Mrs. Woodley raised the gun. She had no thought now of a warning shot. She fired both barrels and found herself sitting on the floor ten feet away from the door. A gaping hole showed in the screen. She couldn’t see it, but across the street the shot had bitten the bark off a twenty-foot-tall oak tree in the Williamses’ yard.
And the boy was gone. Mrs. Williams tried to get up, but something grated in her hip, biting with such pain that she thought she would faint. “Hunhh,” she groaned.
The wind from the open door was cold. A dog barked out in the village somewhere, far off. The stench on the air, the dead smell, faded, replaced by the scorched-sulfur reek of gunpowder.
“Help,” she said, knowing as she spoke that her voice was too weak to carry, too soft to hear outside the house.
She managed to roll to her stomach. Using her left hand, she crawled to the door, dragging the shotgun behind her by the barrel, and pushed the door to. A box of cartridges was on the table beside the chair. She tugged at the table leg until she shook the box off. It fell to the floor, and two cartridges rolled out. She grabbed these two, then the box. It held another six. She worried the gun until she broke it open and ejected the spent cartridges, smelling burnt and oily. She jammed two more in.
Only then did Mrs. Marietta Woodley think of getting to the telephone. And before she reached it, the scratching started again.
3
Karen Yates found the unpaved road easily enough. To tell the truth, back before Buford Dam had been built, when the road still ran out through the pine woods to an abandoned gristmill, she had been there a time or two with high school dates, parking. Feverish hands under sweaters, a smell like a locker room, whispered frantic words of fumbling endearment: her initiation to love.
Her car rumbled onto the overgrown road, lurching heavily and pitching from side to side. Shoot, she thought, if I get stuck off down here, nobody will ever find me. With all this brush around, you can’t see anything twenty feet off the road.
The headlights revealed gleams of water as the road twisted and descended. Sullivan’s Cove was a meadow standing knee-deep in the new lake, spears of grass projecting above the surface. Here the lake was about eighty feet across already. The recent rains had raised it dramatically; if the engineers didn’t finish the new bridge, a half mile north of the existing bridge, soon, she thought, the old one would be all sunk under the water. But the moon was high enough now to reflect in the lake, and looking at its smoked-cheese surface, at the path of gold across the water beneath it, she found herself believing Tom Davies’s story more than she had at first.
She came to the flat place where a little country store and filling station had stood, pulled off onto it, reversed, did a three-point turn, and stopped, the hood of the car facing the lake, the moon in her eyes. A hundred yards farther on, the dirt road ran right into the water. She guessed the boat would have to come up to shore that way. Karen killed the headlights, shook her hair, enjoying the springy feel of curls, and sighed. A big old boat. The moon. The water rocking lazy beneath. She turned on the dome light and checked her Timex. It was five minutes before eight. She turned the light off again and rolled the window down.
The night air was a little cool, but pleasant. Shoot, she remembered back in July, back when the newspaper building was a regular sweatbox. She’d said then that she’d never complain about cool weather again as long as she lived. Besides, it would be warmer on the boat.
She hummed to herself. Then she saw him, swinging up the road from the lake, a silhouette in the moonlight. Grinning, she opened the door and got out. She slammed the door — an echo came back, a couple of seconds later, from across the lake — and walked toward him, swinging her purse. “Shoot, Tom Davies, I was about to think you — ”
“Hey,” he said. She saw his teeth in the moonlight.
“It was you,” she said. “I thought Tom’s voice sounded funny. It was you.”
Andy McCory said, “That’s right, sweet thing.”
“Probably there’s not even a boat.” Her voice quavered, despite her attempt to make it cool.
“We don’t need one.”
She saw the knife.
“You stay away from me, you old redheaded thing,” Karen said, taking a step back.
“You and me, we’re gonna get friendly,” he said.
“I’ll scream, so help me God.”
“Go ahead. Think anybody’s gonna hear you away off down here, on a Tuesday night?”
He had backed her all the way into ankle-high grass, wet with dew. She realized, too late, that he was now between her and the car. “You better not,” she said.
“Look at me.”
His voice had changed so radically, so abruptly, that Karen did stare at him. She blinked. For a moment, just for a moment, he had been Tom Davies, grinning at her in the moonlight. “What you doin’?” she whispered.
“Oh, you’re gonna like it,” he said, coming another step closer. She smelled that old scent again, that locker-room mustiness.
“Please don’t hurt me.”
He said, “You don’t even remember me. You treated me like a piece of dog shit, and it didn’t make no difference to you. You didn’t even care.”
“Please.”
His voice changed again, incredibly silky: “You’re made for love, sweet thing. Just made for it. Now take off those clothes for me.”
“Yes,” she whispered, her twitching fingers already working on the buttons. “If you won’t hurt me.” She pulled off the blouse, dropped it, then unhooked the blue skirt. The garments f
ell in two little forlorn mounds of fabric on the grass. She rolled the stockings down, kicked off both shoes. She stood in her naughties, the moon pale on her skin.
“Nice,” said the silken voice. “Now the rest of them.”
Her lip was trembling, but she felt unbelievably calm. She reached behind her, did in an instant what it took boys ten minutes to do, and dropped the bra. She pushed the black panties down and stepped out of them. She spread her moon-silvered palms to him. “Please, just don’t hurt me.”
Andy McCory shook his red head like a punch-drunk boxer. “Damn you,” he said, and for a second Karen thought he was cursing her, “get out of me! She’s mine! You promised!”
The change in his voice gave her will again, and she bolted, running naked for the dirt road. His arm hooked her waist before she had gone ten steps and whipped her around, down. She landed on her thigh and side, bruising herself. She rolled onto her back in the wet grass —
And he was on her.
4
Jake Harris manned the sheriff’s switchboard that evening. He grumbled to himself this night, for it was unusually busy: somebody out in New Haven calling about hearing a gunshot, people from out on Cart Road calling about noises in the cemetery across the way, just now some preacher calling to ask about Henry Cox, if he knew where he was. Harris didn’t, but it took him only a minute to check the number in the phone book, to give the caller the address along with a curt suggestion to check it out himself next time. Another line was already ringing. Jake cut off the preacher and snapped, “Sheriff’s Office.”
“Jake? What’s the matter?”
Shit, Jake thought. “Sorry, Sheriff. Thought you were a crank caller. Had a lot of ’em tonight.”
“Full moon. No, I was just checkin’ in. I’m gonna try to grab a few hours’ sleep, and I’ll be back in later tonight. We’ve gotta figure out something to do with the coffins in Municipal Cemetery — ”
“Funny. Lady just called a few minutes ago about that.”
“About what?”
“Says she hears somethin’ crashin’ around in the cemetery. I told her to turn her TV up real loud.”
There was silence on the line for maybe a quarter of a minute. “I guess,” Quarles said, “I’d better run check it out. Could be the same people back again. Who’s in the building?”
“I’m it. Everybody else is out checking complaints. We got the damnedest number of — ”
“Okay.” Another hesitation, then Quarles said, “I think you better lock the building, Jake. And stay at your post. I don’t want you away from the lines.”
“I wouldn’t do that. ’Cept if I had to take a leak or — ”
“Cross your legs,” Quarles said, and hung up.
Jake pulled the plug. The switchboard was silent and dark. Shaking his head, he pushed up from the chair, swung the gate open, and came out from behind the counter. It was two steps down to the front door. He fished in his pocket for the keys. Jake locked the right half of the door by throwing the latches, but he had to fit the key in the left half and turn it before the door was secure. He rattled it, looking out into the dark street beyond the wire-reinforced glass. It was blue with moonlight, looking somehow unreal. He shrugged and went back to the desk.
That was at eight-thirty. By nine it occurred to him that the lines had been quiet an awfully long damn time. He plugged in an outside line and heard nothing, no dial tone. He tried the other three. All of them were dead. Dead as a hammer, his father used to say. It killed him dead as a hammer. Something had killed the telephone lines.
The racket started a minute later, from up on the second floor: men screaming in their cells. It made Jake start. “Shut up!” he shouted, but above that din no one could hear him.
From above jabbered a babel of voices, high-pitched or deep, sounding like a crap game played by maniacs or like a revival meeting attended by idiots: some chanting, some praying, some cursing, some plain old screams. “Damn!” Jake said to himself. Stay at your post, Quarles had told him; but Quarles had no way of anticipating this. Jake thought a minute, got up, and went to the sheriff’s office. He flipped on the light and went to the gun case behind the desk.
He was the duty officer, and he had a key to the rack. He took a rifle, loaded it with a full clip, and clicked off the safety. Thus armed, he went to the front stair and climbed up to the cells.
He stepped into the anteroom, locked off from the cells by a door of iron bars. “Shut up!” he bawled again, shouting against a tide of moans and screams.
“Get us out of here!” a black man in the near cell shouted, rattling the door of his cage. “God’s sake, he come down here after us, let us out!”
“Who come down?” Jake yelled.
Somebody way down at the other end of the row, someone with a penetrating tenor, shouted back in a curiously dispassionate seven syllables, “Will-iam Hen-ry Re-sa-ca.” At the sound, the shrieks became even louder.
But over them there was a shriller sound: the phone.
Cursing again, the rifle held crossways over his chest, Jake turned and pounded down the stairs. He got to the switchboard just in time to plug in and hear the party on the other end hang up. If it was a citizen with a complaint —
He propped the rifle up, slid back into the chair, and put on the headset. If it had been a citizen, he would call back. If it had been Quarles, Jake’s ass was so high in a sling he’d be toting it on his shoulders for the next few days. He could only wait. But when he tried all the lines again, he heard only silence. Dead as a hammer.
Jake sighed, reached in his pocket for his cigarettes, and shook out a Camel. He opened a drawer under the switchboard, got out a red-and-white-tipped kitchen match, and snapped it to life with his thumbnail. He lit the cigarette, shook out the match, and tossed it into the ash stand beside the chair. He took a couple of drags on the Camel, waiting for the phone to ring again.
Something cool ran down his cheek. He was sweating. He wiped his face with his palm, puffed on his cigarette again. Reaching to put a plug in — he was thinking of testing the outside lines again — Jake noticed the red stain on his hand. He opened his palm and stared at a smear of blood. Frowning, he touched his cheek, and his fingers came away red. Damn, he was bleeding, though he felt no wound. He pushed his rolling chair back from the switchboard, and it came up short.
Tilting his head back, Jake looked straight up into the slack, wide-eyed face of Billy Resaca. Resaca had his arms straight out like a sleepwalker, and they dripped on him.
Jake dropped the cigarette and grabbed for the rifle. The safety was still off. The rifle fired almost as soon as Jake had seized the barrel and banged the stock accidentally against the wall. The slug hit him just at the angle of his jaw, shattered jawbone and teeth, nicked his tongue about halfway back on the right side, penetrated the roof of his mouth just at the edge of the hard palate, passed up through his brain, beginning to tumble now, and made its exit through a hole the size of a silver dollar that it blasted in his skull, just to the left of the median line at the crown. Brain tissue and blood erupted, fell back. Jake, already dead, leaped from his seat by pure reflex action and fell against the switchboard. He slid from there to the floor.
Before he twitched once and was still, the lights began to flash and the lines to ring. And within seconds, from upstairs, the screaming started again.
5
Henry Cox lived in a house out on River Road. Forty years ago it had probably been a farmhouse: a one-story white frame house set back on a broad lawn. But any land that had gone with it had since been parceled and subdivided, and now, a hundred feet to the right of the house, a range of small single-family dwellings began, marching back into the night away from the highway. Ann saw the Cox mailbox and the drive beyond it, turned in, and stopped the Rambler behind a black Chevy pickup.
“What do you think?” she asked Tate.
“We’d better see about him.”
Ann turned off the headlights. Dim yellow light
shone from behind the drawn shades in the front of the house. They got out of the car, into night that smelled of late roses. The moon, cold and blue, its face smudged, rode high now. Ann waited for Tate, followed him up to the front door of the house, stood at his elbow as he knocked.
They waited for so long that Ann was about to suggest they try the knob when the door opened, inwardly and abruptly. A white man with tousled white hair and a pendulous gut stood there. His lower lip was absurdly big for his face and trembled as he turned his head from one to the other. “Yeah?”
“Mr. Cox?”
The man nodded, his lip bobbing.
“Could we come in?”
Cox ran a hand through his hair, rumpling it more. He wore tan work pants and a long-sleeved red plaid flannel shirt, open to reveal his paunch, barely contained in a nylon undershirt. “What is it?”
“We want to talk to you. That’s all,” Ann said.
Cox scowled, but stepped aside. As she passed him, Ann realized the man had been drinking — the reek of alcohol was strong on his breath. “Everything’s messed up,” he muttered. They followed him into a room dominated by a grandfather clock in the corner. Its heavy tick, the sway of its brass pendulum behind the glass of its case, seemed to set the pace for everything in that room: slow and unhurried.
Certainly Cox’s housekeeping had been slow. A sofa, two armchairs, and a coffee table were stacked with old newspapers and dirty dishes. Cox collected the latter, swept the papers into the floor. He went through a door, burdened with dishes, and came out again in a moment empty-handed. “Set down,” he said, rumpling his hair again. His face, in the light from a floor lamp, was red and puffy, the nose bulbous. He reached in his shirt pocket, produced a pack of cigarettes. “Smoke?”
Tate shook his head, and Ann said, “No, thank you.”
With a shrug, Cox dug into his pants pocket and found a nickel-plated lighter. He snapped it open and lit his cigarette. Then he held the lighter up. “Zippo,” he said. “Had it ever since 1943.” He clicked the lid shut and slipped the lighter into his pants pocket. “Now,” he said, in a cloud of smoke, “what can I do for you?”
ShadowShow Page 31