Crossroads (5 page)

This wasn’t going to be a social visit.

Chapter 4

Clem Sollart climbed wearily from the deck of the
Mary O
and up the rickety ladder to the dock. He hurried to the aft line he’d tossed over and looped it around a weathered and splintery stanchion, wedging the old tires on the boat’s gunwale against the wharf. Then he straightened and massaged the small of his back. Running a thirty foot lobsterman alone was a fullsized job for a man of thirty, not one almost sixty, but he’d be damned if he’d hire help, and there weren’t no retirement benefits in the bottom of a lobster pot.

As he trudged up the gravelly slope to his shack he rolled the receipts from the day’s sale in his pocket. Not a bad catch for a little, one-boat operation. He might be able to afford the repairs the
Mary
O
needed by late Fall. That and a winter’s supply of heating oil and groceries was all he really required. Maybe a few books to see him through till Spring, and of course a stock of rotgut Scotch to keep Silky happy and losing at pinochle.

The thought of Silky reminded him that he hadn’t seen the old man in a few days, and a tingling thread of worry tickled his mind. Silky was tough as boot leather, with a mind like a steel trap, but he was getting up in years. Normally Clem tried to check on him at least every couple of days, but earlier in the week a damned cold had struck him, and between the grogginess of the cold remedies and forcing himself to get up every day to check his pots, he just hadn’t found the time or energy to make the hike up to the other end of the island. Now his conscience was bothering him.

Not like it’s that far.

The whole goddamned rock wasn’t more than a quarter mile long or two hundred yards across at its widest point. Clem had his shack and dock on the southwestern low end, Silky an only slightly more sumptious cabin up at the point, where the island sloped up to shove its cliff face out and divide Machias Bay from the turbulent North Atlantic like a referee jutting his chin between two fighters.

Clem let the screen door slap shut behind him, squinting through the gloom toward the sun-brightened window over the sink. He grabbed a beer out of the propane-powered refrigerator and stared out at the
Mary O
barely rocking at the dock. It had been a good life on the island for thirty-eight years. The life he’d wanted ever since his dad died and left him the boat. He knew that if either parent were alive they’d probably be disappointed that he’d never married or carried on the Sollart name, but he’d just never felt the need for a woman in his life or children. He was a fisherman, born and bred. He was never going to leave this island. Not until he died, anyway, and maybe not then.

A sharp pain in his chest reminded him that the leaving might happen sooner than he planned. He clutched the edge of the counter, his vision fogging as another knife sliced across his heart, and an iron belt tightened around his lungs. He snatched a plastic bottle out of his shirt pocket and shoved a nitro tablet under his dirt-dry tongue, but it was several minutes before he could see clearly again or take a deep breath. Finally he stumbled back to the table and dropped into a chair, heaving a great sigh.

Fucking ticker.

The doctors said he needed a triple bi-pass, but a lone lobsterman couldn’t afford insurance, and he damned sure couldn’t pay cash for the operation. Silky had offered to give him the money outright-although Clem doubted the old man had nearly as much as he needed-and even if he did, the thought of lying on a table like a bait fish, letting someone slip a mask over his face and gas him and then fiddle around with his innards made Clem’s skin crawl.

Once the nitro had completely dissolved, and the bands around his chest finally loosened, he chugged the rest of the beer, slammed the bottle onto the table and-reminding himself that hard-headedness was a lobsterman’s only virtue-climbed to his feet and grabbed another from the fridge.

He’d thought before about getting a will written up, but who would he leave everything to, Silky? What would
he
do with a boat? He hadn’t been on the water in forty years. Well, he could sell her, but to Clem just the thought of someone other than himself being at the helm of the
Mary O
was enough to give him another twinge of pain around his heart. Damn, but he loved that boat. Better to drag himself aboard when the big one hit and pull the plug. Both of them could rest on the bottom of the bay together for eternity, but of course that would leave Silky here all alone, no way to get a message to the mainland, slowly running out of supplies. Clem guzzled the second beer, slamming the empty down beside the first just as a knock came at the door.

Silky stared at him through the screen.

"Come on in, you old codger," said Clem. "You saved me a trip up to check on you. The whiskey is where it always is."

Silky poured himself two fingers of scotch from the bottle under the sink and grabbed Clem another beer from the fridge. The old man looked like he’d lost some weight, and his face was bonier, his eyes not only sunken but rheumy. Still, for a man as aged as he was Silky didn’t look that bad. Clem wished he’d live so long.

"You look tired," he said, as Silky took the chair across the table.

Silky shrugged.

"Sleeping all right?" asked Clem.

Silky hesitated. "Good as can be expected."

"What’s the matter?"

"I think there’s a storm blowing in."

Clem shook his head, glancing at the barometer on the wall over the table. "Holding steady."

"Won’t be here for a while, maybe, but it’s coming. Trust me."

"You come all the way down here to tell me that?"

"I came down to tell you that I want you to leave."

Clem’s face froze. "Huh? What do you mean, leave?"

"I want you to go. Pack up your stuff, and get off the island."

"Why? What the hell did I do?"

"You didn’t do anything. It’s not about you."

"What is it about, then? You’re not making any sense."

Silky glanced through the open door into Clem’s tiny bedroom, then back at the ripped and faded sofa, the shelf lined with paperbacks yellowed and wrinkled by the sea air.

"You can find a better place on the mainland."

"You mean leave, like in permanent? I don’t want a place on the mainland. This is my home. I built it with my own hands."

"But you don’t own it."

Clem felt as though Silky had just punched him in the gut. He’d lived in this house for thirty-five years, built the place-part time over three long summers, sleeping on the boat or in a tent. Silky had promised him tenancy for life, no charge. All Silky asked in return was free shipping of groceries and necessities and mail delivery, but of course there was nothing on paper, and Silky did own the island.

"Don’t do this, Silky. We’ve been friends too long. Just tell me what I did, and I’ll fix it."

"You can’t fix it," said the old man, sadly. "It’s nothing you did. It just is."

"Is what? Tell me why, at least. You owe me that."

"Owe you?" said Silky, his eyes glazing with anger. "I don’t owe anybody. If anything I’m owed! I want you as far from here as you can get by this time tomorrow. Sooner if you can manage. Here."

"What’s this?" asked Clem, taking the envelope the old man offered.

"There’s more than enough money in there to cover what you have in this house. I ain’t screwin’ you out of that, no matter what you might think."

"I don’t know what to think, and I told you before I don’t want your money. This doesn’t make any sense."

Silky shook his head. "It wouldn’t make sense, even if I knew how to explain it. Now you get off this spit of rock, and you get off now. You hear?"

"Are you in some kind of trouble, Silky? Is that it?"

The old man rubbed the bridge of his nose between white-knuckled fingers. "Sometimes our past comes back to haunt us. When most folks say that, it’s just talk, but in my case it ain’t."

He reached out with a boney hand and rested it on Clem’s fist. "You been a good friend all these years. So I don’t want you to ever believe that this had anything to do with you, but you can’t stay. I’m tellin’ you that to your face. If I have to, I’ll come down here with my shotgun and put pellets in your leg, but you’re gonna go. Do you understand me?"

Clem nodded slowly, searching for the dark gleam of craziness in the old man’s eyes, but all he saw there was a deep seated fear.

"I’ll run to the mainland for the troopers," insisted Clem. "I’ll bring ‘em back here. Just tell me what this is about. Hell, I’ll get the Coast Guard if you need ‘em."

Silky shook his head again. "Nothing either of them can do. You just be gone by tomorrow."

He downed the whiskey in one shot, grimacing as he rose to his feet, but he stopped with the screen half open and turned back.

"If people start dying or disappearing on the mainland, you head as far up in the hills as you can go."     

"Dying from what?" said Clem. "You really ain’t making any sense."

The screen slammed, and the old man hobbled down the stoop back into pale light of the late afternoon sun. He called back without turning this time, and his strange words and the eeriness of the entire encounter chilled Clem’s bones.

"Stay away from mirrors... and shadows. Stay out of the shadows."

But long shadows were already drifting across the island as the day slipped toward night.

Chapter 5

Cowering behind shipping crates each time the train stopped to offload or hitch up new cars, Kira and Jen rode through the blazing heat of that sad Sunday into the cooler lands of night beyond. Finally, hours after dark-when Jen sensed that it was time-they slipped out of the rattling boxcar as the train coasted slowly into yet another siding. Hiking down the tracks, away from the lights of town, into the waiting darkness, Kira’s stomach rumbled noisily. She was parched by thirst and starving, but she had the terrible feeling that they were not nearly far enough away yet from the horror from which they were running.

The crunch of their feet in the soot-stained gravel between the ties sounded like the ticking of some giant clock, and farms and fields passed on either side of them in silent, black and silver relief. As they rounded a long, sweeping curve the scimitar moon sliced through the ribbony overcast, spilling silvery shards of light earthward. Another small village appeared up ahead, slipping languorously between the moon’s rays like an expert swordsman avoiding the killing cut. The sharp spire of a small white church riposted gamely, and to Kira it seemed to be slashing a message across the scudding clouds.

Do not illuminate this place.

There was no hope to be found in this small town, and yet she knew they couldn’t straggle any farther this night. As they neared the village even Jen’s ears pricked up, and her bright blue eye-the one with which she could see
this
world-shone with a strange inner glow in the moonlight.

"I know," whispered Kira, as Jen placed one large hand on her shoulder and brushed Kira’s short blond hair with the other. “I feel it, too.”

A couple of ancient, wrought-iron street lamps struggled unsuccessfully to ward off the inky darkness between the rays of the moon, and a mist that was not fog but something more sinister shrouded the ground, as though the village sat not on the earth but in some terrible land in the clouds.

Jen nodded knowingly as they stopped in the center of a downtown crossing.

"We could keep on walking," whispered Kira, not sure that she could.

Jen shrugged, and Kira understood, staring shivering into the shadowy emptiness beyond the far end of the village. Open rolling farmland with nowhere to run.

"It will be all right," said Jen. "We just need to hide."

To Jen everything was always all right. Kira gripped her hand tightly, leading her across a well kept lawn and creeping behind a large shrub beside the corner of a small, two-story house. Not a single light shone in any of the neat little cottages. Not one dog barked. The town seemed to cringe.

The sound of bootheels on asphalt
nick-nicked
its way to them, and they both stretched to look back in the direction they had just come. As the sound drew closer Kira could barely see a man’s silhouette against the shadowy backdrop of sky. She could make out a peculiar lilting tune that he hummed under his breath, and his black leather cape drifted behind him like a flag fluttering on some silent, unfelt wind. His high black boots glistened. As he drew closer she could see that every inch of him was clad in the same dark leather, down to the gauntlets on his hands. Only his cruel, skull of a face was uncovered, and the sneer that creased it was as harsh and sharp as a killer’s straight razor. He stopped in the middle of the street, and Kira stared through the shrub’s leaves directly into the dark sockets where eyes should have been.

“The Empty-eyed-man,” whispered Jen.

"So, Kira!" he shouted
.

His voice reminded her of the sound of sand
scritching
against the side of their trailer in a storm. "I know you’re here. I can smell you."

Neither Kira nor Jen moved.

"Come out, come out," called the
Empty-eyed-man,
laughing.

Kira held her breath.

He let out a sigh that was so cold ice crystals dangled in the air.

"Pity. I did so want to play."

"He won’t find what he’s looking for here," Jen whispered, stiffening Kira’s spine.

The
Empty-eyed-man
stopped in midstride.

"Yes, I will," he said, searching for them with those terrible dark sockets again, "and you know it. I always find what I’m looking for."

He smiled again, and Kira was certain the teeth she saw  flashing were steel and sharper than any
man’s
ought to be.