Stony dropped to his knees. He covered his ears.
“You want to know it? Did that bitch in the woods tell you? Did she? I knew she would one day. I knew she couldn’t be trusted. Did she tell you that you would be dead today if not for me? Did she tell you that I lost my little boy the minute he was born and then I had to decide in one minute if I was going to take you? And all I wanted was my little boy and something in me thought that you could be him. You could be him. And I spent the past fifteen years of my life pretending to love you, to love you and hope that it would somehow just work, but even your brother Van knew early. He told me when he was six that you had something wrong with you. He told me that you looked like other babies but you had something that made him think you were evil. And I knew you were, but I just pretended for so damned long! And I tried to kill myself—but I couldn’t! Even though I hated you, I knew you were a baby—and I knew that God would send me to Hell for eternity for killing myself and abandoning my children! Jesus tells us to bear our burdens gladly but I couldn’t! Not with you!”
Stony dropped his hands to his side. Steam felt as if it were building inside him, and he felt a ripple—a movement within him that he could not identify as if his blood were heating up, as if the sounds of distant waves crashed along his bones and muscles. He opened his mouth and the words that came out did not feel like his. “Tell me who my mother is! I want to know!”
“Listen you little ungrateful bastard, the only reason I took you is because a priest put you in my arms and gave me that money because I needed to know that I could get away from here if I ever had to. I took that money as payment for you and your sorry sniveling little ass and now you throw it up in my face. Now, get the hell out of my house. Get the hell out of my house!” Tears streamed down Angie Crawford’s face, and she looked uglier than he had ever seen her, uglier than he thought any human being could look. Her eyes were wild, her hair tossing up and down as she shook her head, as she slammed her fists against her stomach, screaming.
* * *
4
* * *
In the Castillo household, Lourdes’ mother turned to the police officer from Mystic who had shown up early and said, “She hasn’t come home all night. I told you people something happened. I told you last night. She’s a good girl. She doesn’t stay out all night. Something’s wrong. I bet it’s that boy. That boy from the village. That village has always been bad. He’s been up to no good with her.”
This was the most composed she had been in nearly nine hours, when she’d sent her sons out into the woods and to town to try and find their little sister.
* * *
5
* * *
Others in town detected a slight change, as if the coming winter had just drawn a breath closer, for frost was in the air, frost and something about the light of this day that seemed on the verge of going out completely.
Stonehaven Borough was arranged in a series of neat and tiny paths, all crisscrossing as if part of a labyrinthine design. At its heart, the Common with its old library, and at its autumn-yellow edges, the Post Office and churches. The old Customs House on High Street, the apartments above the few stores in what might generously be called downtown Stonehaven, the old venerable captains’ and their widows’ houses along Water Street...all intersecting, all winding around each other until, smaller and smaller, the village ended at Land’s End. There, the glassy water surrounded the stubby finger of rocky land. The gulls and cormorants rose and fell with the water, and Guff Hanlon was taking his morning constitutional before going back into the village to work his winter hours in the public library. A few boats were out upon the shining waters, and the Isles of Avalon were just gentle slopes of haze out in the Sound. Guff saw, as he rounded the tip of Land’s End, what looked to him to be a strange light coming from over at Juniper Point, back by the few summer mansions. The light was yellow-green, and flashed for only a few seconds. But it was enough to startle him. He checked the position of the sun in the east, and thought it might just be light glinting off one of the windows of the Crown place. Something about the light seemed interesting to him, so he went and sat at the edge of the water, crossing his legs on one of the large rocks that shored up the point. He watched the summer homes from the great distance for a few minutes, and then decided he had just imagined it. For nothing could produce a light quite like the one he’d seen.
He was about to get up and continue his walk, when he saw the light again.
And something else, too.
Later, as he pushed the cart of books down the Oriental rug in the center of the Stonehaven Free Library, he gave a nod to Fiona McAllister. She wore her low-cut peach blouse, and the tan skirt he liked so much on her. She followed him past a few early-morning patrons, into the narrow hall of the book stacks. In the dark, dusty room, he turned to her. She tried to kiss him, but he kept his distance. “Something’s wrong,” he said.
“What is it?”
“It’s not you. It’s me. I saw something this morning. Something that bothered me. No, wait, it didn’t bother me. It terrified me.”
She put her arms around his shoulders. “Tell Mama,” she whispered.
Guff shrugged her off. “Not now, Fi. Not now. I thought the Crown place was on fire this morning. I thought it was burning...” Then, tears poured from his eyes, and he no longer looked like a man in his mid-forties, but like a boy of nine. “I wanted it to burn. I wanted it to...”
“You imagined it,” Fiona said, trying to comfort. “Don’t say these things, Guff.”
“No,” he said. “I saw it in the clear light of day. It’s getting stronger...”
“Oh, baby,” she said sweetly, and this time, he fell into her arms, and she kissed him all over, she kissed his neck, his closed eyelids, his nose, his lips, his chin. His tears mingled with hers. “It was a long time ago,” she whispered. “A long time ago. We were all so young then. All so young and innocent. It’s all right. It’s a good thing.”
“I was there,” he moaned, a little too loud, not caring if others heard him. “I was there. You...all of us...”
* * *
6
* * *
“Where the hell you been?” Del asked. He had just managed to escape the school bus, and was down at the docks by eight-thirty A.M., drinking beer and skipping stones across the water. He had his wool cap pulled down almost over his eyes, and his sweatshirt was covered with seagull shit.
Van stood over him, not exactly looking at him, not exactly looking through him, either.
Something was funny about the way Van looked, but Del couldn’t quite figure out if he was just dirty or what on account of the way the sun was gleaming so damn hard and striking the water too so it made flecks of light dance around Van’s face.
And then, as Del shaded his eyes, he knew
It’s blood.
Goddamned blood.
And Van—his face, his hair, all crinkled and wrinkled and white as a worm—
Van was soaking, his clothes, his skin, and he left a trail of blood as he stepped closer to Del and took a beer from the six-pack. Van hunkered down beside him.
“I’m fucked,” Van said.
* * *
7
* * *
The Village had its own morning bustle, as Officer Dennehy walked shop to shop with a picture of Lourdes Castillo in one hand, and a Styrofoam cup full of coffee in the other. He stopped first at the Package Store, and walked among the rows of wine bottles to the cash register. Martha Wight, her white hair flecked with pepper, sat flipping through a copy of the National Enquirer, cigarette in one hand nearly singeing the pages. She glanced up, a ribbon of smoke curling around her craggy features. “Ben?” she said.
“Good morning, Marti,” he said. He set his coffee down. Tossed the photo on her counter. “She’s been missing since last night. Parents are worried.”
Martha Wight gave him a curious look. “Never seen her before. She from the Village?”
H
e shook his head. “Wequetucket. But she was over here yesterday. You got any rock candy?”
“Never seen her before,” Martha repeated, giving a light shrug of her bony shoulders. “Rock candy’s over in the jar.” She pointed to a series of small jars on the far counter. “You eat enough of that stuff, your teeth’re gonna fall out.”
“Too late. Half of ‘em are already gone,” Dennehy said. He walked over, lifting up the lid. The rock candy was blue, and on strings. He lifted one strand up, popping a bit of it in his mouth. He glanced around at the costumers and the liquor and magazines as if he’d never seen the Package Store before. “You probably know every kid in town, huh? Probably always trying to get some beer or candy or something?”
Martha Wight shook her head. “I don’t sell no beers to minors, you know that, Ben. These kids. They’re all the same. This one probably ran off with some boy. They run wild.” Taking a long drag off her cigarette, she raised her eyebrows. Exhaling a powerful lungful of smoke, she added, “If I see her, I’ll send her home.”
The cop hit three more shops, but reached a dead end on all of them, until he came to the Railsback Butcher Shop.
Butch Railsback, hacking at a side of beef, his apron smudged with blood and entrails, glanced at the picture. “Yeah, dat’s Angie Crawford’s boy’s girl. Lourdes. Like that miracle place. Lourdes. She’s a cutie. Hope she’s okay. She and Stony, dey’re prob’bly off somewheres toget’er.”
Then, Officer Dennehy asked, “You know, that’s what the girl’s mother said. But when I stopped by the Crawfords a half hour ago, Angie told me she had no idea who this girl was.”
Butch shook his head. “It’s her. I seen ‘em both together kissin’ behind my shop. Maybe Angie never seen her before. Could be. Could be Stony-boy don’t take his girl home to meet Mama.”
When Dennehy was out on the street again, he noticed that more than a few shop owners seemed to be watching him.
As if waiting to see where he’d go next. He waved to each of them and thought:
Dear Christ, what a beat I got. Save me from old New England and the way they watch and wait and then never really step in with information until it’s too late.
* * *
8
* * *
The kitchen at the Crowns’ house was long and wide, meant for entertaining company with dinner parties.
In the early part of the twentieth century, it had been used precisely for that. Dozens of the almost-rich and almost-famous would arrive in droves in the summer. Coming from Manhattan or down from Boston, the flappers and their feckless beaus with slicked-back hair, the charmed circle that the Crown family drew to them—never men as powerful as Crown, never women as wealthy as Mrs. Crown—but those who needed something from them, or got something just by being among the Crowns. Nouveau-riche movie stars, oil tycoons, upscale gangsters and their mink-glazed molls, all gathered for frolics and dalliances, and the kitchen was often the center of the hive as illicit liquor was, more often than not, hidden in one of its secret compartments beneath the long sink with its six faucets. You could almost hear the echo of laughter and gaiety as couples ran around the cooks, dipping their fingers to taste the sauce, or uncorked another magnum of Dom.
But the wild times and parties had ended, and within a few years, the summer home became a reclusive place. By the time Diana was born, so little entertaining had been done there that they no longer employed a cook in the summer.
Alan Fairclough stood in the kitchen, and poured himself a glass of aged Scotch. Sipped it, looking about the place. Glanced at his watch. Eight-thirty A.M. He had slept well, and was not surprised by her call two hours earlier. “It’s happening. I can’t believe it, but it’s happening,” she’d said, her voice thrilling, her excitement palpable.
“All Soul’s Day coming,” he had told her. “The rituals are the fine-tuning.”
“Yes,” she whispered. Then, after a pause, “There’s a lot of blood.”
“That’s all right. Don’t let it worry you. This is part of the plan, Diana. There’s nothing to fear. You know that better than anyone.”
“I’m not afraid of it. I’m afraid of—”
“Of losing yourself to its totality. Don’t be,” Fairclough said softly. “Look, I’ll have some breakfast and then I’ll bring the boat over.”
Then, Diana said, “I did the ritual. Just like you taught me. I wasn’t tainted with the sacrifice.”
Alan smiled, glancing out the window of his home, across the Sound, to the thrusting finger of Stonehaven, and the great white house at its edge. “Purity. Did he love her when he did it?”
“I think so. Yes. It almost brought it out in me,” she whispered.
“That’s all right, Diana,” Fairclough said soothingly. “It’s natural for that to happen. It’s nothing to fear.”
Now, two hours later, in the grand kitchen, Alan Fairclough felt as though everything he had ever searched for was at hand. Everything he’d ever believed in was coming true.
In a few moments, Diana Crown appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. “It’s happening,” she said, sweat along her forehead. “Just like you said it would.”
Alan raised his glass. “Sometimes one has to prod these things along. For the sake of religion.”
Her face could not be more perfect, he thought. What she was, what was within her—
The magnificence of it.
All his life he’d been searching, and to find it here, among this family, tucked away...
“I have something for you,” she said.
“Him?”
Diana nodded.
Alan tasted the bitter fire of whiskey at the back of his throat. “Do you think he has much fight in him? Last night must have been...well, exhausting to say the least. You had to push him over the edge, no?”
She shrugged. “Does it matter?”
Alan Fairclough grinned like a little boy on Christmas morning. “Oh, infinitely so. I want to give him a sporting chance.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
VAN
* * *
1
* * *
“What’s all that?” Del asked, but looking at the blood on Van’s shirt, he didn’t need to be told. The smell was enough. It was like sticking his face into an open wound.
“I fuckin’ killed her,” Van said, and then began giggling. “Shit, does that ever sound goofy. I killed her.”
Del cocked his head to the side. Took another swig of beer.
“It was not like killing her though, Del, man you got to believe me,” Van said, his words coming out rapid-fire. “It was more like making cosmic love to her, it was like fucking something that opened like a flower, it was sweet, I know it was wrong to do, I know it was bad, man, but it was like not killing her, it was like she whispered to me to make holes all over her and then she opened them all for me—for me, man—for fuckin’ me—and then she said, well, come on in, Van, baby, I want you inside all my flowers—she was like this garden...”
Both of them were silent for a moment. Del heard the cries of seagulls overhead as they dropped crabs and clamshells along the pavement behind them.
Van popped the tab on a beer can, his eyes squinting as he glanced around at the sun-spotted water. “I’m fucked, man.”
“Is this a joke?” Del asked, and then it struck him—of course it was a joke, man, Van was always playing pranks and shit, he one time pissed on six different doorsteps in one night, and another time he took a dump on Tamara Curry’s back porch just so when she went to feed her cats in the morning, she’d step right in it. Van was a fucking genius at practical jokes and stuff. “I know, you went down to Railsbacks’ and got Butch to let you wipe like a dead pig or something all over you and that’s the blood and shit and stuff—” Del raised his beer can, “Good Halloween costume. Me, I’m goin’ as Dracula, but you—Man you are one sick mother, but my hat’s off to you, dude—”
Van’s expression flickered like there was a translucent mask
of happiness over a face beneath it. A face that was like imploded flesh, like someone had stuck a hand grenade down Van’s kisser and pulled the pin.
“I mean, it’s pretty freaky for you to do this for a damn costume, but man, it’s gonna scare the bejesus out of the bitches from Wequetucket if we haul ass down there tonight—” But even as Del said these words, something about them felt hollow, as if in saying them he was hoping to cover up whatever black hole Van was sitting in.
“I killed that bitch that my baby brother knocked up,” Van said, his lips quivering, as if all the awfulness of the previous night had just hit him. He squinched up his face, looking like an old wizened man for a second. He drank the rest of the beer.
The sunlight felt good. Del looked out across the water to the south. He could see Stonington and Mystic down that way, and some trawlers pushing out to the east. The curve of land, and the yellow-gold of trees as their brilliant colors swept the sky with a chilly breeze, all seemed part of the world of normal life that gave Del some comfort. He didn’t look back at Van. “You’re shittin’ me, man.”
“No, man, I’m not. I really killed her. Look, she was walking home through the woods. Like she always does when she and Stony get together. Remember when you and me spied on them?”
“Yeah,” Del said, wanting to chuckle at this memory but something icy caught in his throat. “Yeah I remember. Last summer.”
“Yeah he was getting some off her, and whore that she was, she put out good. Well, it was like that, only it was me and Diana—”
“Something’s wrong with that bitch,” Del interjected.
“And then something got inside me, man. It was like I had swallowed some yellow jacket or something and it was all jiggly inside me and I heard these voices—”
Halloween Chillers: A Box Set of Three Books of Horror & Suspense Page 22