Willie found her keys and helped her upstairs to her apartment. Inside, he made her take a couple of sleeping pills from the all-purpose pharmaceutical in his glove box, then turned down the bed and undressed her. He figured if anything would snap her back to herself, it would be his fingers on the buttons of her blouse, but she just smiled at him, vacant and dreamy, and told him that it was Roy Helander and he was wearing Joanie’s skin. The big silver knife jammed through her belt loops gave him pause. He finally unzipped her fly, undid her buckle, and yanked off the jeans, knife and all. She didn’t wear panties. He’d always suspected as much.
When Randi was finally in bed asleep, Willie went back to her bathroom and threw up.
Afterward he made himself a gin-and-tonic to wash the taste of vomit out of his mouth, and went and sat alone in her living room in one of her red velvet chairs. He’d had even less sleep than Randi these past few nights, and he felt as though he might drift off at any moment, but he knew somehow that it was important not to. It was Roy Helander and he was wearing Joanie’s skin. So it was over, he was safe.
He remembered the way his door shook last night, a solid wood door, and it split like so much cheap paneling. Behind it was something dark and powerful, something that left scars on brass doorknobs and showed up in places it had no right to be. Willie didn’t know what had been on the other side of his door, but somehow he didn’t think that the gaunt, wasted, half-eaten travesty of a man he’d seen on 13th Street quite fit the bill. He’d believe that his nocturnal visitor had been Roy Helander, with or without Joanie’s skin, about the same time he’d believe that the man had been eaten by dogs. Dogs! How long did Jonathan expect to get away with that shit? Still, he couldn’t blame him, not with Zoe and Joanie dead, and Helander trying to sneak into Blackstone dressed in a human skin.
…there are things that hunt the hunters.
Willie picked up the phone and dialed Blackstone.
“Hello.” The voice was flat, affectless, the voice of someone who cared about nothing and no one, not even himself.
“Hello, Steven,” Willie said quietly. He was about to ask for Jonathan when a strange sort of madness took hold of him, and he heard himself say, “Did you watch? Did you see what Jonathan did to him, Steven? Did it get you off?”
The silence on the other end of the line went on for ages. Sometimes Steven Harmon simply forgot how to talk. But not this time. “Jonathan didn’t do him. I did. It was easy. I could smell him coming through the woods. He never even saw me. I came around behind him and pinned him down and bit off his ear. He wasn’t very strong at all. After a while he changed into a man, and then he was all slippery, but it didn’t matter, I—”
Someone took the phone away. “Hello, who is this?” Jonathan’s voice said from the receiver.
Willie hung up. He could always call back later. Let Jonathan sweat awhile, wondering who it had been on the other end of the line. “After a while he changed into a man,” Willie repeated aloud. Steven did it himself. Steven couldn’t do it himself. Could he? “Oh Jesus,” Willie said.
SOMEWHERE FAR AWAY, A PHONE WAS RINGING.
Randi rolled over in her bed. “Joanie’s skin,” she muttered groggily in low, half-intelligible syllables. She was naked, with the blankets tangled around her. The room was pitch dark. The phone rang again. She sat up, a sheet curled around her neck. The room was cold, and her head pounded. She ripped loose the sheet, threw it aside. Why was she naked? What the hell was going on? The phone rang again and her machine cut in. “This is AAA-Wade Investigations, Randi Wade speaking. I can’t talk right now, but you can leave a message at the tone, and I’ll get back to you.”
Randi reached out and speared the phone just in time for the beep to sound in her ear. She winced. “It’s me,” she said. “I’m here. What time is it? Who’s this?”
“Randi, are you all right? It’s Uncle Joe.” Joe Urquhart’s gruff voice was a welcome relief. “Rogoff told me what happened, and I was very concerned about you. I’ve been trying to reach you for hours.”
“Hours?” She looked at the clock. It was past midnight. “I’ve been asleep. I think.” The last she remembered, it had been daylight and she and Willie had been driving down 13th on their way to Blackstone to…
It was Roy Helander and he was wearing Joanie’s skin.
“Randi, what’s wrong? You sure you’re okay? You sound wretched. Damn it, say something.”
“I’m here,” she said. She pushed hair back out of her eyes. Someone had opened her window, and the air was frigid on her bare skin. “I’m fine,” she said. “I just…I was asleep. It shook me up, that’s all. I’ll be fine.”
“If you say so.” Urquhart sounded dubious.
Willie must have brought her home and put her to bed, she thought. So where was he? She couldn’t imagine that he’d just dump her and then take off, that wasn’t like Willie.
“Pay attention,” Urquhart said gruffly. “Have you heard a word I’ve said?”
She hadn’t. “I’m sorry. I’m just…disoriented, that’s all. It’s been a strange day.”
“I need to see you,” Urquhart said. His voice had taken on a sudden urgency. “Right away. I’ve been going over the reports on Roy Helander and his victims. There’s something out of place, something disturbing. And the more I look at these case files and Cooney’s autopsy report, the more I keep thinking about Frank, about what happened that night.” He hesitated. “I don’t know how to say this. All these years…I only wanted the best for you, but I wasn’t…wasn’t completely honest with you.”
“Tell me,” she said. Suddenly she was a lot more awake.
“Not over the phone. I need to see you face-to-face, to show it to you. I’ll swing by and get you. Can you be ready in fifteen minutes?”
“Ten,” Randi said.
She hung up, hopped out of bed and opened the bedroom door. “Willie?” she called out. There was no answer. “Willie!” she repeated more loudly. Nothing. She turned on the lights, padded barefoot down the hall, expecting to find him snoring away on her sofa. But the living room was empty.
Her hands were sandpaper dry, and when she looked down she saw that they were covered with old blood. Her stomach heaved. She found the clothes she’d been wearing in a heap on the bedroom floor. They were brown and crusty with dried blood as well. Randi started the shower and stood under the water for a good five minutes, running it so hot that it burned the way that silver fork must have burned in Willie’s hand. The blood washed off, the water turning faintly pink as it whirled away and down. She toweled off thoroughly, and found a warm flannel shirt and a fresh pair of jeans. She didn’t bother with her hair; the rain would wet it down again soon enough. But she made a point of finding her father’s gun and sliding the long silver carving knife through the belt loop of her jeans.
As she bent to pick up the knife, Randi saw the square of white paper on the floor by her end table. She must have knocked it off when she’d reached for the phone.
She picked it up, opened it. It was covered with Willie’s familiar scrawl, a page of hurried, dense scribbling. I got to go, you’re in no condition, it began. Don’t go anywhere or talk to anyone. Roy Helander wasn’t sneaking in to kill Harmon, I finally figured it out. The damned Harmon family secret that’s no secret at all, I should have twigged, Steven—
That was as far as she’d gotten when the doorbell rang.
WILLIE HUGGED THE GROUND TWO-THIRDS OF THE WAY UP THE bluff, the rain coming down around him and his heart pounding in his chest as he clung to the tracks. Somehow the grade didn’t seem nearly as steep when you were riding the cable car as it did now. He glanced behind him, and saw 13th Street far below. It made him dizzy. He wouldn’t even have gotten this far if it hadn’t been for the tracks. Where the slope grew almost vertical, he’d been able to scrabble up from tie to tie, using them like rungs on a ladder. His hands were full of splinters, but it beat trying to crawl up the wet rock, clinging to ferns for dear life.
/> Of course, he could have changed, and bounded up the tracks in no time at all. But somehow he didn’t think that would have been such a good idea. I could smell him coming, Steven had said. The human scent was fainter, in a city full of people. He had to hope that Steven and Jonathan were inside the New House, locked up for the night. But if they were out prowling around, at least this way Willie thought he had a ghost of a chance.
He’d rested long enough. He craned his head back, looking up at the high black iron fence that ran along the top of the bluff, trying to measure how much further he had to go. Then he took a good long shot off his inhaler, gritted his teeth, and scrambled for the next tie up.
THE WINDSHIELD WIPERS SWEPT BACK AND FORTH ALMOST SILENTLY as the long dark car nosed through the night. The windows were tinted a gray so dark it was almost black. Urquhart was in civvies, a red-and-black lumberjack shirt, dark woolen slacks, and bulky down jacket. His police cap was his only concession to uniform. He stared straight out into the darkness as he drove. “You look terrible,” she told him.
“I feel worse.” They swept under an overpass and around a long ramp onto the river road. “I feel old, Randi. Like this city. This whole damn city is old and rotten.”
“Where are we going?” she asked him. At this hour of night, there was no other traffic on the road. The river was a black emptiness off to their left. Streetlamps swam in haloes of rain to the right as they sailed past block after cold, empty block stretching away toward the bluffs.
“To the pack,” Urquhart said. “To where it happened.”
The car’s heater was pouring out a steady blast of warm air, but suddenly Randi felt deathly cold. Her hand went inside her coat, and closed around the hilt of the knife. The silver felt comfortable and comforting. “All right,” she said. She slid the knife out of her belt and put it on the seat between them.
Urquhart glanced over. She watched him carefully. “What’s that?” he said.
“Silver,” Randi said. “Pick it up.”
He looked at her. “What?”
“You heard me,” she said. “Pick it up.”
He looked at the road, at her face, back out at the road. He made no move to touch the knife.
“I’m not kidding,” Randi said. She slid away from him, to the far side of the seat, and braced her back against the door. When Urquhart looked over again, she had the gun out, aimed right between his eyes. “Pick it up,” she said very clearly.
The color left his face. He started to say something, but Randi shook her head curtly. Urquhart licked his lips, took his hand off the wheel, and picked up the knife. “There,” he said, holding it up awkwardly while he drove with one hand. “I picked it up. Now what am I supposed to do with it?”
Randi slumped back against the seat. “Put it down,” she said with relief.
Joe looked at her.
HE RESTED FOR A LONG TIME IN THE SHRUBS ON TOP OF THE BLUFF, listening to the rain fall around him and dreading what other sounds he might hear. He kept imagining soft footfalls stealing up behind him, and once he thought he heard a low growl somewhere off to his right. He could feel his hackles rise, and until that moment he hadn’t even known he had hackles, but it was nothing, just his nerves working on him; Willie had always had bad nerves. The night was cold and black and empty.
When he finally had his breath back, Willie began to edge past the New House, keeping to the bushes as much as he could, well away from the windows. There were a few lights on, but no other sign of life. Maybe they’d all gone to bed. He hoped so.
He moved slowly and carefully, trying to be as quiet as possible. He watched where his feet came down, and every few steps he’d stop, look around, listen. He could change in an instant if he heard anyone…or anything…coming toward him. He didn’t know how much good that would do, but maybe, just maybe, it would give him a chance.
His raincoat dragged at him, a waterlogged second skin as heavy as lead. His shoes had soaked through, and the leather squished when he moved. Willie pushed away from the house, further back into the trees, until a bend in the road hid the lights from view. Only then, after a careful glance in both directions to make sure nothing was coming, did he dare risk a dash across the road.
Once across he plunged deeper into the woods, moving faster now, a little more heedless. He wondered where Roy Helander had been when Steven had caught him. Somewhere around here, Willie thought, somewhere in this dark primal forest, surrounded by old growth, with centuries of leaves and moss and dead things rotting in the earth beneath his feet.
As he moved away from the bluff and the city, the forest grew denser, until finally the trees pressed so close together that he lost sight of the sky, and the raindrops stopped pounding against his head. It was almost dry here. Overhead, the rain drummed relentlessly against a canopy of leaves. Willie’s skin felt clammy, and for a moment he was lost, as if he’d wandered into some terrible cavern far beneath the earth, a dismal cold place where no light ever shone.
Then he stumbled between two huge, twisted old oaks, and felt air and rain against his face again, and raised his head, and there it was ahead of him, broken windows gaping down like so many blind eyes from walls carved from rock that shone like midnight and drank all light and hope. The tower loomed up to his right, some monstrous erection against the storm clouds, leaning crazily.
Willie stopped breathing, groped for his inhaler, found it, dropped it, picked it up. The mouthpiece was slimy with humus. He cleaned it on his sleeve, shoved it in his mouth, took a hit, two, three, and finally his throat opened up again.
He glanced around, heard only the rain, saw nothing. He stepped forward toward the tower. Toward Roy Helander’s secret refuge.
THE BIG DOUBLE GATE IN THE HIGH CHAIN-LINK FENCE HAD BEEN padlocked for two years, but it was open tonight, and Urquhart drove straight through. Randi wondered if the gate had been opened for her father as well. She thought maybe it had.
Joe pulled up near one of the loading docks, in the shadow of the old brick slaughterhouse. The building gave them some shelter from the rain, but Randi still trembled in the cold as she climbed out. “Here?” she asked. “This is where you found him?”
Urquhart was staring off into the stockyard. It was a huge area, subdivided into a dozen pens along the railroad siding. There was a maze of chest-high fencing they called the “runs” between the slaughterhouse and the pens, to force the cows into a single line and herd them along inside, where a man in a blood-splattered apron waited with a hammer in his hand. “Here,” Joe said, without looking back at her.
There was a long silence. Somewhere far off, Randi thought she heard a faint, wild howl, but maybe that was just the wind and the rain. “Do you believe in ghosts?” she asked Joe.
“Ghosts?” The chief sounded distracted.
She shivered. “It’s like…I can feel him, Joe. Like he’s still here, after all this time, still watching over me.”
Joe Urquhart turned toward her. His face was wet with rain or maybe tears. “I watched over you,” he said. “He asked me to watch over you, and I did, I did my best.”
Randi heard a sound somewhere off in the night. She turned her head, frowning, listening. Tires crunched across gravel and she saw headlights outside the fence. Another car coming.
“You and your father, you’re a lot alike,” Joe said wearily. “Stubborn. Won’t listen to nobody. I took good care of you, didn’t I take good care of you? I got my own kids, you know, but you never wanted nothing, did you? So why the hell didn’t you listen to me?”
By then Randi knew. She wasn’t surprised. Somehow she felt as though she’d known for a long time. “There was only one phone call that night,” she said. “You were the one who phoned for backup, not Dad.”
Urquhart nodded. He was caught for a moment in the headlights of the oncoming car, and Randi saw the way his jaw trembled as he worked to get out the words. “Look in the glove box,” he said.
Randi opened the car door, sat on the edge
of the seat, and did as he said. The glove compartment was unlocked. Inside was a bottle of aspirin, a tire pressure gauge, some maps, and a box of cartridges. Randi opened the box and poured some bullets out into her palm. They glimmered pale and cold in the car’s faint dome light. She left the box on the seat, climbed out, kicked the door shut. “My silver bullets,” she said. “I hadn’t expected them quite so soon.”
“Those are the ones Frank ordered made up, eighteen years ago,” Joe said. “After he was buried, I went by the gunsmith and picked them up. Like I said, you and him were a lot alike.”
The second car pulled to a stop, pinning her in its high beams. Randi threw a hand across her eyes against the glare. She heard a car door opening and closing.
Urquhart’s voice was anguished. “I told you to stay away from this thing, damn it. I told you! Don’t you understand? They own this city!”
“He’s right. You should have listened,” Rogoff said, as he stepped into the light.
WILLIE GROPED HIS WAY DOWN THE LONG DARK HALL WITH ONE hand on the wall, placing each foot carefully in front of the last. The stone was so thick that even the sound of the rain did not reach him. There was only the echo of his careful footsteps, and the rush of blood inside his ears. The silence within the Old House was profound and unnerving, and there was something about the walls that bothered him as well. It was cold, but the stones under his fingers were moist and curiously warm to the touch, and Willie was glad for the darkness.
Finally he reached the base of the tower, where shafts of dim light fell across crabbed, narrow stone steps that spiraled up and up and up. Willie began to climb. He counted the steps at first, but somewhere around two hundred he lost the count, and the rest was a grim ordeal that he endured in silence. More than once he thought of changing. He resisted the impulse.
Dreamsongs. Volume II Page 47