The Croning

by Laird Barron

  Holly nipped out to chauffeur “Uncle” Argyle as his license had been revoked going on ten years. He lived at the Arden House located in an historic neighborhood on Olympia’s eastside. The morning deluge resumed, driven by more powerful gusts of wind and the lane melted into a quagmire and her Rover was the most reliable all-weather vehicle. Argyle’s arrival set the household on its ear again. He lumbered through the front door cursing the gods and the weather in a baritone that was the trademark of Arden men.

  Argyle was large, bluff, and commanding in his classic gray suit, a Brooks Brothers inherited from his great-grandfather, which rendered the ensemble unspeakably ancient, practically an historical artifact that might’ve interested a museum or two. He’d pursued an extravagant and fruitful life—soldier, dilettante, author, historian, scientist, and professional ne’er do well just a hair this side of royalty. He’d certainly inherited a fortune sufficient to make a run at the Prince of Monte Carlo, much of it, as the whispers went, from his grandfather’s criminal empire during the Roaring Twenties.

  His presence among the proletariat Millers was often remarked upon as slumming; this whispered by his presumed equals. The Arden clan extant comprised the inner circle of local old money families, the crème de la crème, the very royalty of three counties, and included such luminaries as the Redfields, Rourkes, Wilsons and Smiths and in roughly descending order. The middle sibling of eight Arden brothers, and the lone scientist from a brood of lawyers and playboys, he was the last standing and the least likely to consider peerage when making associations. His brothers had fallen by the wayside due to wars, duels, disappearances, and in one notable instance, natural causes. Not that he’d escaped unscathed; a confirmed bachelor who’d stepped out of character once and married a lovely girl from Nice, a nurse who died young and made an embittered widower of him. Sometime during his seriously squandered youth, he’d gotten his nose lopped in an accident—no one knew precisely the circumstances of the mishap—and wore a gold-plated prosthetic to conceal the damage.

  Michelle’s inexhaustible fascination with the arcane was responsible for their friend’s inimitable fashion statement. A popular form of punishment in the Byzantine court involved severing an offending noble’s nose, followed by the wretch’s permanent exile; a fate periodically visited upon even the high and mighty emperors and their luckless consorts. One such emperor fled to a neighboring kingdom and had a golden nosepiece made to salvage some meager shred of his dignity. The emperor returned to court at the fore of an army of disaffected citizenry and slaughtered the would-be usurpers—after hacking off their noses, naturally. The notion appealed to Argyle and he commissioned Llewellyn Malloy himself to craft a number of the ostentatious prosthetics in gold, silver and platinum. When the kids were in elementary school, he gave each of them a fake nose; ivory for Holly, and bronze for Kurt. They wore them with embarrassing regularity and tried to emulate Argyle’s distinctive accent.

  Dinner was roast pork, Don’s specialty. He put the end leaves on the dining table and the seven of them enjoyed a lengthy banquet characterized by great quantities of champagne and rowdy banter that spared none. There were revelations: Winnie was nine weeks pregnant; she and Kurt delayed their announcement to ascertain the tests were correct, complications could’ve arisen since she had entered her forties, but the prenatal signs were reassuring. The latter breaking news concerned Holly’s last-minute decision to accompany Michelle and associates to Turkey. Holly was free to partake of such an excursion because she had secured a one-year leave of absence to pursue a masters in education, the prerequisite for a transition to an administrative career. It developed that Michelle campaigned long and hard to convince her daughter that a vacation prior to the fall semester was just the ticket.

  Between a dessert of orange sorbet and sponge cake, the lights brightened, then died. For several moments all conversation suspended as they sat in the darkness, surrounded by the roaring gale, the rattle of rain against the shutters. Don had prepared for this eventuality. Via penlight, he fumbled out a box of wooden matches and lighted kerosene lamps placed strategically around the house. Originally the property of Aunt Yvonne, the Millers had cause to use them frequently over the years—blackouts were part and parcel of living in the country.

  Everyone eventually relocated as a herd to the parlor, amid much stumbling and nervous repartee, and sat near the crackling orange blaze of the fireplace, which Kurt had stocked with seasoned birch. Wind shrilled in the flue, and sparks showered the screen. Don brought out a battered camp stove and boiled water for hot toddies.

  Waiting in the darkened kitchen for the kettle to heat, he felt isolated. Hushed conversation echoed down the hall and seemed to issue from a far more remote locale than the parlor. Thule slunk from under the table, a large, black shadow, and growled his fear-growl. He crouched, nose pointed at the cellar door. Not only was the door narrow, but also seemingly designed for midgets. Michelle at five-foot-three ducked whenever she passed through. The creaky wooden stairs descended some fifteen steps and made a ninety-degree left-hand turn. Fractured, sunken flagstone gave way to hardpack dirt about two-thirds of the way in and the enclosure smelled of wet earth and rotting wood. Don minimized his excursions down there, had pared it to once or twice during each summer visit.

  Thule whined. Don shooed him into the hallway. He fixed the drinks, standing in an awkward way at the counter so he didn’t put his back to the cellar. Which was worse than silly; it bordered paranoia. He ferried the refreshments from the kitchen and passed them among the assembly. He experienced a short-lived fright upon realizing Michelle had disappeared. He nearly panicked, nearly went tearing through the house searching for her. Such an overreaction could’ve proved disastrous as he was blind as a bat in low light, glasses or not. Fortunately, his wife materialized from the gloom, a trifle confused why her excursion to the bathroom to powder her nose was suddenly a federal issue. Don mumbled an apology about being jumpy and gave her a conciliatory peck on the cheek.

  That matter settled, they waited there in the parlor, sipping their toddies and reminiscing, voices subdued as if the loss of electricity had sunk them into the Dark Ages when peasants scurried into their cottages before dusk and barred their doors and made signs to ward evil.

  It was Argyle who suggested a round of ghost stories. How could they in good conscience waste such a perfect alignment of inclement weather, candlelight and agreeable company? No one leaped to second the prospect, but it hardly mattered. Once Argyle seized upon an idea, he proceeded inexorably and heedlessly along his charted course. He launched into a travelogue account of his infamous journey to the interior of China to document migratory patterns of a particular tribe that hunted near the Gobi Desert; incidentally his work netted some obscure, albeit immensely satisfying award. His oratory was punctuated by knowing asides to Michelle who smiled indulgently and certified the veracity of his observations through her very silence.

  Don conceded that Argyle spun an excellent yarn. It possessed the proper elements—star-crossed lovers, cruel fate, revenge from beyond the grave, a rare flower that bloomed precisely where the lovers were stoned to death, the haunting legend that echoed down through the generations as a cautionary fable. Everyone clapped at the dénouement, whereupon Argyle, who had likely recited this exact tale in a hundred seedy cantinas across the globe and twice as many lecture halls full of drooling grad students, half rose to execute a gallant bow.

  “Well done, Argyle, well done,” Don toasted his old friend. “Too bad you’re full of bull chips. Who’s next?”

  After an uproar of laughter that served to cut the tension, Kurt said, “Well, how about it, Holly? Spin us a haunted house yarn, will you? The thing with poor, hapless Boris—”

  “Nobody wants to hear about Boris. They’ve heard all my stories.” Holly had long resented Kurt’s opportunistic mockery, the insult doubly painful by her mother’s collusion. She’d first confided this to Don when they were moderately toasted at Kurt’s
wedding reception and the conversation turned to the subject of the afterlife and whether Grandma and Grandpa might be floating about as ethereal presences.

  “Ah, right, it’s true.” Kurt grinned. “But you tell them so well. As for Boris, I think you came up with that humdinger because you’re allergic to cats. You had it in for puss from day one—admit it.” He ducked the mug she chucked in the general direction of his head. “Or maybe you just wanted to help Mom prove her Hollow Earth theory…”

  Don cast a sharp glance at his wife to gauge her reaction, but she continued to smile and he suspected she’d had more than enough to drink at that juncture. Or, miracle of miracles. maybe the wounds had actually healed.

  Then, quick as a serpent her eyes changed and she stared at Kurt with great intensity. “My hollow whatsis?” she said with the sugary inflection that emerged only when her mood was wrathful, the tone she’d adopted before flexing her claws to shred a hundred hapless colleagues in a hundred debates.

  “Uh, the, well, you know what I mean.” Kurt coughed and looked around for rescue.

  “Oh, sweetie, everybody knows there’s no such thing as little people,” Michelle said. Her grin was feral. She showed too many teeth, still perfect after all these years. “But there are better stories. I ever tell you about the time Dr. Plimpton took me to a whorehouse in Spain to meet his sister? She was highly placed. Ran the all the other whores ragged. Just a happy coincidence as Louis was pursuing rumors of a community dwelling in an uncharted cave system. Don, too bad you were done with caving by then. The stalactites! The stalagmites!” She tossed her drink back with that same awful grin plastered on.

  “Linda?” Don said quickly to Holly’s girlfriend. “Do you have an anecdote you’d care to share with our humble gathering?”

  Linda declined, citing the fact she couldn’t watch a horror movie unless she covered her eyes during the scary parts. Don waved off an opportunity to join the fun. The conversation lost momentum and he thought perhaps everyone would call it quits, which suited him. It had been a hell of a long day.

  Winnie looked at Kurt. “Tell them about the witch.”

  “Uh, that’s not interesting, Win. Trust me, Holly’s are whoppers.” He wasn’t laughing now. His mouth tightened. Don noted him clenching and unclenching his fist.

  “Your story is very frightening. I shivered when you told it to me.” She smiled innocently, her tiny hand pale against his arm, her face tilted upward so their eyes met. Don stifled a chuckle because he knew feminine revenge when he saw it in action—damned if she wasn’t inflicting reprisals for her husband’s overbearing behavior. He made a note to avoid crossing the demure woman from Hong Kong.

  Kurt’s flush was apparent even in the shadowy light. “Bah. Mine’s hardly a ghost story. Mom, surely you’ve got one.” He sounded vaguely desperate.

  Michelle said, “I don’t know any ghost stories; just true ones.” From her smug tone Don knew she was high as a kite on the champagne. He’d surreptitiously stolen her glass three times during supper, to no avail.

  “Tell us one of those, then.” Kurt came as close to pleading as he ever got. “Surely the primitives and their ancestor worship are good for a tale. Something with sex magic and human sacrifice.”

  “We don’t call them primitives these days—they’re indigenous peoples. Anyway, I can’t think of anything that isn’t excruciatingly boring. Yours sound more interesting. I can’t recall you ever mentioning it before.”

  “Good grief, lad. Are you whining? Stop that nonsense,” Argyle said, grinning.

  “Yeah, bro. Let’s hear it.” Holly raised her brow in a way that rendered her expression slightly diabolic. At least she didn’t combine the arched brow with rolling up the whites of her eyes like she’d often done in school to impress her classmates, or terrify them, as the case might’ve been.

  The others rumbled approval and imprecations and finally, Kurt shrugged in defeat. “Jesus. You people are relentless. Fine, if I’m going to do this, I need another toddy.”

  2.

  Kurt stared at his drink. He shuddered when a blast of wind broadsided the house, muscles jumping in his clamped jaw. At last, without raising his gaze toward the expectant audience, he began to speak. His voice was thick and he enunciated with the care of a man deep into his cups.

  “Okay, Uncle Argyle and Linda, bear with me on the details. Senior year in high school, I saw a witch. That’s what we called her, anyhow. ‘Witch’ isn’t the right word, not by a long shot, but you’ll see what I mean. That summer, I stayed in San Francisco while Mom and Dad came out here as usual.

  “I remember what a big deal it seemed to be—left in charge of the house, paying off the meter guy and making sure the lawn got mowed and whatnot. Not that it should’ve been, considering how often the neighbors watched us all the time. Mom, you and Dad weren’t around much in those days, always traveling to one jungle or cave complex, or another. Still, seventeen was the tipping point—this marked the first occasion I was left alone, the man of the house. Everything was copacetic. For awhile.

  “I’d made varsity linebacker for the Rams my junior year. Led the team in sacks. Third most tackles by a Pac Nine player ever. Everybody knew I had a shot at All State. That got me in like Flynn with Nelly Coolidge, one of the best-looking cheerleaders at school. Everybody sucked up to her—the jocks on account of her being a ‘hot chick’ as they used to say, and all the girls fawned over her because she had plenty of folding green and didn’t mind spreading it around to her clique. The girls were afraid of her, too. She was popular and powerful, a dangerous combo. Her dad gave me a summer job at the department store, stocking shelves and closing shop. The gig put enough spare change in my pocket to take Nelly dancing and drinking—cover your ears, Winnie dear—in hopes of scoring more than a touchdown. Never happened, alas. Quite a bummer, considering the crap I was soon to endure on her behalf.

  “This was 1979. Thanks to my stellar performance knocking poor sophomores around the gridiron, I managed to land that scholarship to UW and that settled matters. Tell you the truth, Dad, if the scholarship hadn’t gone through, I’d made up my mind to enlist on my birthday and go into the military with Frankie Rogers and Billy Summerset. Frankie died in the Beirut barracks explosion, and Billy was one of the unlucky bastards shot during the Grenada invasion. They were Marines, though. Marines see the worst of it. I still exchange Christmas cards with Billy’s younger brother, Eli. Eli joined up for the Gulf War and managed to make it home with all his parts.

  “Anyway, senior year. Graduation nine months away and coming fast, coach counting on me to lead the defense to a state championship. I knew damn well he held the keys to my scholarship, and Coach wasn’t exactly peaches and cream, not with the booster club and the principal on his ass to bring home the hardware every year…I had a lot going on; my mind was racing a thousand miles an hour. Seemed as if half the time I was a little woozy, almost in a dream state, and that could’ve contributed to what came later. Certain people are susceptible to hallucinations. Perhaps that’s me—Mr. Cotton Head. Dunno. I’d love to believe it.

  “Me and the boys—Frankie, Billy, Toby Nethercutt, and Mike Shavenko, and a couple other guys from Oakland—raised a bit of hell at night. We’d gather at the old Celadon Park—definitely not wise with the druggies cutting each other to ribbons with broken bottles—or that deserted carnival by the boardwalk. Sometimes, when there was a party, a bunch of us loaded into Mike Shavenko’s Caddy and cruised down the coast and stood around a bonfire with kids from half a dozen other schools, and drank beer and played football on the beach. The whole Sometimes a Great Notion deal sans anybody as gray or cantankerous as Henry Fonda. There were a few brawls and the usual fooling around, but things were remarkably innocent. Nothing like the kids get up to today. I think the worst thing I did was get drunk a few times and fall into the habit of smoking. Frankie and Billy got me hooked. Especially Frankie, who was a pack of Lucky Strikes a day fellow. Hell everybody smoked; it
was the height of cool. I remember sneaking into the bathroom to get a couple drags in between classes. What did we know?

  “Frankie’s parents were divorced, had been since he was eleven. I knew him since second grade. Happy kid. Class cutup, though the teachers loved him because he was so damned quick with a wise-ass remark. You know the kind. He’d make you want to punch him except you were laughing so hard you were in danger of pissing your pants.

  “His mom lighting out for parts unknown changed everything. She met an advertising exec and left with the guy—packed a single case and was gone forever. His dad went over the edge. Jack Somerset worked on the docks as a longshoreman. Shoulda seen his arms and shoulders—a bison stuffed into a plaid shirt. Scary. He took to drinking—would stop at Clausen’s Liquor and pound a sixer on the way home from work—occasionally, when I came over to visit Frankie, I saw his old man slouched in that Chevy of his, knocking back a half case of Lone Star. He sluiced those cans into his mouth; one after another, like a machine. Then he’d carry another half rack in and polish it off while he watched basketball. Never said squat, either. Just sat there like a boulder, face white as a sheet from the T.V. glow. You could practically hear him ticking.

  “Worse part was, he started slapping Frankie around; and for nothing. Well, maybe not for ‘nothing’—Frankie was an inveterate smart mouth, after all. This was different, though. No warning—Jack would just walk over and pop him one. He couldn’t fight his dad, of course. Tried it once and the old man chucked him through the screen door like a sack of meat. He smashed into the sidewalk and skinned his hands. The doc had to tape them like a boxer’s. So, yeah, here was my boon comrade living in hell for seven years. He couldn’t get into the Marines fast enough. Not fast enough to keep from going bad. When Frankie’s personality turned dark, I wasn’t exactly surprised. Yet, even knowing his damage, the transformation chilled me, drove an icy spike right through my guts. I watched him rot from the inside…an apple being eaten from the core by a worm. Broke my heart.