Night Songs - Charles Grant

Not today, however.

The wind was screaming something fierce outside the window, and Mitch hadn't returned from his search for baby Frankie, and Denise had somehow managed to sneak out of the house without her seeing. My God, when would they ever wake up and really appreciate all the things she did for them, all the sacrifices she'd made just so they could have clothes on their backs and food on the table. God knew, if she left it to Mitch they'd be on welfare by tomorrow.

Now here it was Saturday, and tonight-she looked at her watch and realized with a silent gasp it was less than four hours away-tonight at seven there was the big party at the Clipper Run. If they didn't get home soon, they wouldn't have time to make themselves presentable.

She sighed loudly, slapped her hands wearily against her thighs and pushed herself out of the chair. She was still in her bathrobe, but there'd been little incentive so far to get into a dress. With no one around to care how she looked, even on a weekend, why should she bother?

She looked to the sideboard, then, and the cabinet beneath. A drink, maybe. A fortification against the battles she knew would come when they returned. No, she thought with a decisive shake of her head and a deliberate glance away. It was too soon for that, and she hadn't clung to the wagon this far with Hugh's help to fall off now. Though God knew she needed a good toot now and then when Frankie started acting up and Denise refused to listen to her advice. My God, she'd say, I'm a teacher, don't you know that? A teacher! I know things. I know life, for God's sake!

But Frankie would only shrug and look sullen, and Denise would just smile and wiggle her ass out of the house.

Rose looked at her watch. Not time for the first drink yet, but what she should do is take a shower, be ready when Frankie or Mitch or Denise finally came home. That would show them. That would teach them a lesson, that planning in the home is just as important as planning in the classroom. She'd be all ready and sitting properly in the living room while they were all running around swearing and screaming and working up a sweat that would stain their good clothes.

Oh, God, she thought as she headed up the stairs, isn't it bad enough I got this sickness without having this family, too?

A hour later she wrapped a pink terrycloth towel around her and scuttled out of the bathroom, laughing to herself as she stumbled into the bedroom and switched on the vanity light. God, she loved that massage thing Mitch had installed at the beginning of the summer; it did things to her she thought were almost sinful.

A look at the gold watch placed carefully on the dresser, and she went to the closet to choose the dress she would wear. At the window, however, she stopped and looked out. She expected to see the fog that was giving her a case of nerves she didn't need.

What she saw was Mitch, Denise, and Frankie standing in the middle of the backyard.

She rapped a knuckle on the pane.

They looked up, one by one.

Thank God, she thought in relief and annoyance, and turned to hurry from the room when something about them made her look out again. It was Denise; she was naked, and there was a stick or something clinging her to shoulder. Oh, God, she prayed in furious resignation, what are they doing to me now? What if the neighbors… she clenched her fists until the spasm of rage subsided, then rushed to the stairs so she could give them all hell when they came in to explain.

The wind toppled a patio chair and tore a shingle from the roof.

She changed her mind and headed straight for the kitchen, where she could face them squarely, the queen of this damned house and they'd better not forget it.

Denise was the first to come through the door.

PART FOUR

October: Saturday

ONE

TWILIGHT

Colin stood in the front of the boarded window, a lighted cigarette in his right hand, his left jammed into his hip pocket. Crushed butts littered the floor at his feet, and his hair was a slick tangle over his brow from constant tugging and violent shakes each time the enormity of what he was saying thrust itself home.

"We saw the signs of what was happening a hundred times." He stopped, changed his mind, "f saw them, but didn't know what I was looking for, so didn't know what I was seeing. But they were all there-Lilla's reluctance to have Gran buried in the usual way, her insistence that he was furious at us for imaginary evils… I kept assuming her grief had mixed up her time sense. What else was I going to think?

"But at my place yesterday, just before Peg came over, Lilla was telling me straight out he'd not died at all, or he'd come back somehow, and he was out to get what he believed was his due. He was using some… some power of his to get what he thought we had cheated him out of.

"He was dead, and now he's back.

"Needless to say, I didn't believe a word. Power like that belongs in dreams and movies."

"It doesn't exist," Montgomery said simply. Seated at El's desk, he looked at Garve first, then at Peg and

Matt who were in a chair at the back of the room, Matt still asleep and sprawled in her lap.

"It does exist," Colin insisted without heat. "I don't know what's behind it, how it does what it does, but it damn well exists and Tess Mayfair's walking is the proof. What Garve and I saw there in the cell block was just icing on the cake.

"And now that I think about it, I'm sure that what I saw at the shack was Gran's shroud. After the funeral, after she was sure we were all in bed, Lilla went into the water and brought him out. She had to have done it, she must have-there was no one else to help her."

An hour had passed since he'd begun, speaking quickly, not giving himself a chance to think, and therefore backtracking several times. But the more he argued, the more he believed-and the horror of it was, he could see them believing as well.

And then he had offered what, for him, was the best argument outside any physical evidence: If he had been able to convince himself that the entire world had misunderstood him, had stacked deck and arrayed enemy against him to the extent that the only way he could win would be by ending it, why couldn't someone like Gran hate just as much? And it had been hate. Hatred for those fools who should have known, and didn't; hatred for those so-called friends who should have cared, and didn't. Colin had hated without understanding that his self-pity was blinding and the people he railed against were the very people trying to help him. His hatred had created a world beyond the real, and the only person who inhabited it was him.

Gran had hated the same way.

The difference had been in the final step.

Colin had slashed his wrists, and the pain had shocked him into the recognition of folly, into the realization that his so-called beliefs were false and falsely based. Gran, however, found himself dying and took a claw-hold on all those ancient beliefs and rituals he had brought from a home that had exiled him summarily. He took hold and refused to release them, and in that refusal made them as tangible as the shack in which he was ending his life-his rage had shredded the fragile curtain between the supernatural and the present.

"The point is," Colin said-he paused and looked at Hugh-"the point is, we're not in our world anymore. We're in Gran's now. And for the moment he's calling all the shots." His expression was grim. "All bets are off now. The rules we used to know aren't the rules anymore."

"What about Lilla?" Garve asked, though he needed no convincing.

"I don't know. I wish I did, but I just don't know."

"She isn't Lilla anymore," Peg said quietly, and they turned as one to stare. "She's not. Not the Lilla we used to know, that is. Maybe not Lilla at all. She was when she tried to warn us, she was when she tried to talk with Matt at the marina. But not anymore. Something happened, and if that business in the cell is any indication, she's… not. Right now, I don't know any other way to put it.

"Matt was right all along, too," Peg continued. "It was the songs. The ones we heard every night. She must have been using something-spells, maybe, or whatever you call them-that Gran taught her, to… I don't know, to bring him back, do something more? But I do know I'm right. She's either been driven crazy by Gran's influence and is doing these things without knowing what she's doing, or she's totally possessed.

"But whatever it is, Lilla is lost to us. We can't go to her for explanations. She just can't help us anymore."

"She's right," Colin said, crushing one cigarette beneath his sole while lighting another. "And we don't know enough. If we're going to get out of this, we have to know more. Jesus, we've got to know these new rules."

"And we have to tell the others," Garve reminded him, and looked angrily at the dead telephone. Hugh only shook his head sadly.

Colin strode to the desk and leaned over it, glaring. "What is wrong with you now, for God's sake?"

Hugh met his gaze with a glare of his own. "You're talking about Lilla being crazy, but have you been listening to yourself lately? Jesus Christ, Colin, I mean… really! Have you heard what you've been saying?"

He forced himself not to reach over and grab the doctor by the throat. "Look, Hugh, not one hour ago you were telling Peg about what happened with us and Tess. By God, you sure as hell believed then. What the hell happened?"

"Your so-called explanation," Montgomery said simply. "It's fantastic."

"Literally," Colin said. "You got a better one?"

"Give me time."

"Well, how much time do you think we have?"

The plywood shuddered, the venetian blinds on the outside clattering like musket fire.

Colin pointed toward the door. "The storm is starting to push in the tide. If we don't do something soon, we're going to be wading hip-deep in the damn ocean."

Hugh rubbed his eyes, pushed a hand across his lips. "You accept it all so easily."

"No," Colin assured him, "it isn't easy at all. But I don't have to meet more than one Tess Mayfair, or hear Lilla with Gran's voice, or see another demonstration like we did in the cell before I decide that evil isn't just another word in the dictionary. I'm a grown man, Hugh, but I'm scared shitless because there's a damn nightmare out there, and it ain't going away just because I say it isn't real."

The ceiling lights dimmed, grew bright again, and Garve stood and reached for his hat.

"Where are you going?" Hugh asked fearfully.

"If the phones don't work, I have to find out who's left in this place on my own, right? In the car."

"Crazy," the doctor whispered. He took hold of the ends of his handlebar mustache and begin to twist them, muttering to himself, sighing, jumping when something slammed into the plywood.

Garve left without a word, and Peg watched as he slid into the patrol car. He fussed with the sun visor, reached into the glove compartment, and stopped moving. She held her breath and waited, staring, until he left the car and returned to the office. He said nothing. He only threw a crumpled, soiled file card onto the desk. Colin frowned and smoothed it open.

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});