Everville (27 page)

Panic erupted in him, and a shrill sound escaped him. He tried to thrust Lundy off him, but the boy was strong. He clung to Bosley as if he wanted kisses; pressed his body hard against Bosley's body, his breath hot on Bosley's face.

"No-no-no!" Bosley shrieked, thrashing to free himself of the embrace. He succeeded in detaching himself, and retreated, gasping, almost sobbing, towards the door.

Only then did he realize that the sodomite had gone.

"Oh Christ... " he murmured, meaning to begin a prayer. But further words failed him. All he could do was stumble back towards the broken window, murmuring the same words over and over. "Oh Christ. Oh Christ. Oh... "

Lundy ignored him now. "Owen!" he yelled and was at the window in three strides, slicing his body on the jagged glass as he leaned out. Bosley was beside him a moment later, his litany ceased, and there on the sidewalk below lay the sodomite, his trousers still halfway down his thighs. Traffic had come to a halt at the crossroads, and horns were already blaring in all directions.

. Dizzy with vertigo and panic, Bosley retreated from the window.

"Fuckhead!" the Lundy kid yelled, and apparently thinking Bosley meant to escape, came after him afresh, blood running from his wounded flank.

Bosley tried to avoid the youth's fists, but his heel caught in a tangle of discarded clothes and he fell backwards, the breath knocked from him when he hit the ground. Lundy was on him in a second, setting his skinny butt on Bosley's chest and pinning Bosley's upper arms with his knees. That was how they were found, when the first witnesses came racing up the stairs: Bosley on his back, sobbing Oh Christ, Oh rist, Oh Christ while the naked, wounded Seth Lundy kept im nailed to the boards.

Whatever speculations Erwin had entertained where death was concerned, he'd not expected the experience to be hard on the feet. But he'd walked further in the last six hours than in the previous two months. Out from the house, then back to the house, then down to Kitty's Diner, then back to the house again, and now, drawn by the sight of an ambulance careening down Cascade Street, back to the diner again. Or rather, to the opposite corner, in time to see a man who'd been pushed from an upper window being loaded into the back of an ambulance and taken off to Silverton. He hung around the crowd, picking up clues as to what had happened, and quickly pieced the story together. Apparently Bosley Cowhick had done the deed, having discovered the pushee in the middle of some liaison with a local boy. Erwin knew Bosley by reputation only: as a philanthropist at Christmas, when he and several good Christian souls made it their business to take a hot dinner to the elderly and the housebound, and as a rabid letter writer (barely a month would go by without a missive in the Register noting some fresh evidence of Godlessness in the community). He had never met the man, nor could even bring his face to mind. But if it was notoriety he was after, he'd plainly got it this afternoon.

"Damn strange," he heard somebody say, and scanning the dispersing crowd saw a man in his late fifties, early sixties, gray hair, gray eyes, badly fitting suit, looking straight at him.

"Are you talking to me?" Erwin said. :'Yeah," said the other, "I was saying, it's damn strange-2' 'You can't be." "Can't be what?" "Can't be talking to me. I'm dead."

"That makes two of us," the other man replied, "I was saying, I've seen some damn strange things around here over the years."

"You're dead too?" Erwin said, amazed and relieved. Finally, somebody to talk to.

"Of course," the man said. "There's a few of us around town. Where did you come in from?"

"I didn't."

"You mean you're a local man?"

"Yeah. I only just, you know-"

"Died. You can say it."

"Died."

"Only some people come in for the Festival. they make a weekend of it."

"Dead people."

"Sure. Hey, why not? A parade's a parade, right? A few of us even tag along, you know, between the floats. Anything for a laugh. You gotta laugh, right, or you'd break your heart. Is that what happened? Heart attack?"

"No... " Erwin said, still too surprised by this turn of events to have his thoughts in order. "No, I... I was-"

"Recent, was it? It's cold in the beginning. But you get used to that. Hell, you can get used to anything, right? Long as you don't start looking back, regretting things, 'cause there's not a hell of a lot you can do about it."

"Is that right?"

"We're just hanging on awhile, that's all. What's your name, by the way?" "Erwin Toothaker." "I'm Richard Dolan." "Dolan? The candy store owner?" The man smiled. "That's me," he said. He jabbed his thumb over his shoulder at the empty building. "This was my store, back in the good old days. Actually, they weren't so good. It's just, you know, when you look back-"

"The past's always prettier." "That's right. The past's always-" He halted, frowning. "Say, were you around when I owned the store?" "No."

"So how the hell do you know about it?" "I heard a confession by a friend of yours." Dolan's easy smile faded. "Oh?" he said. "Who's that?" "Lyle McPherson?" "He wrote a confession?" "Yep. And it got lost, till I found it."

"Sonofabitch."

"Is he, I mean McPherson, is he still... in the vicinity?"

"You mean is he like us? No. Some people hang around, some people don't," Dolan shrugged. "Maybe they move on, somewhere or other, maybe they just"-he clicked his fingers-"disappear. I guess I wanted to stay and he didn't." "These aren't our real bodies, you know that?" Erwin said. "I mean, I've seen mine."

"Yeah, I got to see mine too. Not a pretty sight." He raised his hands in front of him, scrutinizing his palms. "But whatever we're made of," he said, "it's better than nothing. And you know it's no better or worse than living. You get good days, you get bad days... " He trailed away, his gaze going to the middle of the street. "'Cept I think maybe all that's coming' to an end."

"What makes you say that?"

Dolan drew a deep breath. "After a while you get to feel the rhythm of things, in a way you can't when you're living. Like smoke."

:'What's like smoke?" he said.

'We are. Floatin' around, not quite solid, not quite not. And when there's something weird in the wind, smoke knows."

"Really?"

"You'll get the hang of it."

"Maybe I already did."

"What'd you mean?" "Well if you want to see something weird, you don't have to look any further than my house. There's a guy there called Fletcher. He looks human, but I don't think he is."

Dolan was fascinated. "Why'd you invite him in?" "I didn't. He... just came."

"Wait a minute... " Dolan said, beginning to comprehend. "This guy Fletcher, is he the reason you're here?"

"Yes... " Erwin said, his voice thickening. "He murdered me. Sucked out my life, right there in my own living room."

"You mean he's some kind of vampire?"

Erwin looked scornful. "Don't be absurd. This isn't a late-night movie, it's my life. was my life. was! was!" He was suddenly awash in tears. "He didn't have any right-any right at all-to do this to me. I had thirty years in me, thirty good years, and he just-just takes them away. I mean, why me? What have I ever done to anybody?" He looked at Dolan. "You did something you shouldn't have done, and you paid the price. But I was a useful member of society."

"Hey, wait up," Dolan said testily. "I was as useful as you ever were."

"Come on now, Dolan. I was an attorney. I was dealing with matters of life and death. You sold cavities to kids." Dolan jabbed his finger in Erwin's direction. "Now you take that back," he said.

"Why would I do that?" Erwin said. "It's the truth."

"I put some pleasure in people's lives. What did you ever do, besides get yourself murdered?"

"Now you take care."

"You think your customers will mourn you, Toothaker? No. They'll say: Thank God, there's one less lawyer in the world."

"I told you, take care!"

"I'm quaking, Toothaker." Dolan raised his hand. "Look at that, shaking like a leal"

"If you're so damn strong why'd you put a bullet through your brain, huh? Gun slip, did it?"

"Shut up."

"Or were you just so full of guilt-"

"I said-"

"So full of guilt the only thing left to do was kill yourseIP"

"I don't have to listen to this," Dolan said, turning his back and stalking away.

"If it's any comfort," Erwin called after him, "I'm sure you made a lot of people very happy."

"Asshole!" Dolan yelled back at him, and before Erwin had a chance to muster a reply, was gone, like smoke in a high wind.

"We have our crew, Joe."

Joe opened his eyes. Noah was standing a little way up the beach with six individuals standing a couple of yards behind him, two of them less than half Noah's height, one a foot taller, the other three broad as stevedores. He could make out little else. The brightness had almost gone out of the sky entirely. Now it simmered like a pot of dark pigments-purples and grays and blues-that shed a constantly shifting murk on the beach and sea.

"We should get moving," Noah went on. "There are currents to catch."

He turned to the six crew members, and spoke to them in a voice Joe had not heard from him before, low and monotonous. they moved to their tasks without so much as a murmur, one of the smaller pair clambering up into the wheelhouse while the other five went to the bow of The Fanacapan and began to push the vessel down the beach. It was a plainly backbreaking labor, even if they made no sound of complaint, and Joe went to lend a hand. But Noah intercepted him. "they can do it," he said, drawing Joe out of the way.

"How did you hire them?"

"They're volunteers."

"You must have promised them something."

'@y're doing it for love," Noah said.

"I don't get it."

"Don't concern yourself," Noah said. "Let's just be away while we can." He turned to watch the volunteers pushing the boat out. The waves were breaking against the stem now, sending up fans of spray. "the news is worse than I'd imagined," Noah went on, now turning his gaze towards the invisible horizon. Lightning was moving through the clouds that coiled there, the bolts, if that was what they were, vast and serpentine. Some rose from sea to sky, describing vivid scrawls that burned in the eye after they'd gone. Some came at each other like locomotives, and, colliding, gave birth to showers of smaller bolts. Some simply fell in blazing sheets and seemed to sink into the sea, their brilliance barely dimmed by the fathoms, until they drowned.

"News about what?" Joe asked.

"About what's out there."

"And what is out there?"

"I suppose you should be told," Noah replied. "The lad Uroboros is moving this way. The greatest evil in this world or yours."

"What is it?"

"Not it. Them. It's a nation. A people. Not remotely like us, but a people nevertheless, who've always harbore a hunger to be in your world."

"Why?"

"Does appetite need reasons?" Noah said. "They've tried before, and been stopped. But this time-"

"What's being done about it?"

"The volunteers don't know. I'm not sure they even care." He drew a little closer to Joe. "One thing," he said. "Don't engage them in conversation, however tempted you are. Their silence is part of my deal with them." Joe looked puzzled. "Don't ask," Noah said, "for fear you won't like the answer. Just believe me, this is for the best." The vessel was in the water now, rising and failing as the waves broke against it. "We'd better get aboard," Noah said, and with more strength in his limbs than Joe he strode out into the surf and was hauled up onto the deck by one of the volunteers, all of whom were now aboard. Joe followed, his mind a mass of confusions.

"We're out of our minds," he told Noah once he was aboard. The volunteers were at the oars and laboring to row the vessel out beyond the breakers. Joe had to yell above the noise of sea and creaking timbers. "You know that? We're out of our fucking minds!"

"Why's that?" Noah yelled back.

"Look what we're heading into!" Joe hollered, pointing out towards the maelstrom.

"You're right," Noah said, catching hold of a rope ladder to keep from being thrown off his feet. "This may be the end of us both." He laughed, and for a moment Joe considered throwing himself overboard and striking out for the shore while he was still within swimming distance.

"But my friend," Noah went on, laying his hand on Joe's shoulder.

"You've come so far. So very far. And why? Because you know in your heart this is your journey as much as it's mine. You have to take it, or you'll regret it for the rest of your life."

"Which would at least be long," Joe yelled.

"Not without power," Noah replied. "Without power it's over in a couple of breaths, and before you know it you're on your deathbed thinking: Why didn't I trust my instinct? Why didn't I dare?"

"You talk like you know me," Joe replied, irtitated by Noah's presumption. "You don't."

"Isn't it a universal truth that men regret their lives?" Noah said.

"And die wishing they could live again?" Joe had no reply to this. "If you want to make for shore," Noah went on, "best do it quickly."

Joe glanced back at the beach, and was astonished to see that in this short time the vessel had cleared the breakers and was in the grip of a current that was carrying it away from land at no little speed, He looked along the darkened shore towards the city, its harbor lights twinkling, then back to the crack, and the small encampment around it. Then, determined he would regret nothing, he turned his back on the sight, and his face towards the raging seas ahead, Tesla and Phoebe had little in common, beyond their womanhood. Tesla had traveled; Phoebe had not. Phoebe had been married; Tesia had not. Tesla had never been in love, not obsessively; Phoebe had, and still was.

It made her curiously open, Tesla soon discovered; as though anything was plausible in a world where passion held sway. And sway it held; no doubt of that. Though they knew each other scarcely at all, Phoebe seemed to sense an uncensorious soul in Tesla, and soon began to freely talk about the scandal in which she'd played so large a role. More particularly, she spoke of Joe Flicker@f his eyes, his kisses, his ways in bed-all of this with a sweet boastfulness, as if he were a prize she had been awarded for suffering a life with Morton. The world was strange, she said several times, apropos of how they'd met, or how quickly they'd discovered the depth of their feelings. "I know," Tesla said, wondering as she listened how much this woman would accept if and when she asked for Tesla's story in return. That was put to the test when Tesla got off the phone from Grillo, and Phoebe, who'd been in the room throughout the call said, "What was that all about?"