Haunted Legends (25 page)

“It seems to me now, my dear girl, that unlike fiction, one has to fashion one’s own deus ex machina if forgiveness is to be found.”

He rises from the bed, his hand pushing against Henrietta’s pillow, then replaces the book on the shelf, and begins preparations for his trip.

•  •  •

“I got more than just that on here. I talked to a guy who’s seen her.”

“Let’s hear that, too, then.”

Click. Hiss. The sound of muffled voices and the ping! of glasses being slid into an overhead rack. A louder voice calls, “Two more pitchers for table seven!” A bartender shouts, “Regular or Light?” Hiss. The sound of a man clearing his throat. Then: “Is that thing on?”

“It sure is.”

“Huh. Don’t look like no tape recorder I ever seen.”

“It doesn’t use tape. It’s a digital recorder.”

“You don’t say? Well, I’ll be. Makes you wonder what they’ll come up with next.”

“So . . . you said that you met her one night?”

“Oh, I sure did! Told the story many times. Was even on TV once.”

“Would you mind telling it again now?”

“Not at all. Nice of you to not think I’m some kinda kook.”

“I believe the stories. So, please . . .”

•  •  •

As the winch pulls taut and the tow truck begins moving the demolished car up the incline, the State Police detective looks at the man standing next to him and says: “Mind if I ask you another question?”

The other man shakes his head and wipes something from one of his eyes. “I don’t know what else I can tell you but, okay.”

“Do you have any idea what he was doing all the way out here? I mean, a man his age had to’ve known that driving from Ohio to here in the middle of winter was risky. I just can’t help but think he was really determined to do something or see someone. Do you have
any
ideas?”

The other man shakes his head once again. “I swear to you, I don’t have the slightest clue.”

Something in the man’s voice makes it clear to the detective that he’s lying. The detective begins to speak, thinks better of it, and stands in silence. No reason to push the poor guy.

•  •  •

She’s made it as far as the bend in Archer Avenue when she hears the sound of a car, but the wind makes it impossible to tell from which direction the vehicle is approaching. She decides it doesn’t matter. She can barely feel her feet or hands. Even if the car is going in the opposite direction, no one with a soul and an ounce of compassion would leave her out in the cold, not on this night.

She moves toward the middle of the road and begins looking both in front of and behind her, then begins waving her arms. Soon, she sees the glow of headlights coming around the bend straight toward her. Oh, how wonderful! They
are
going in her direction. She opens her mouth to shout at the driver and steps to the side, away from the oncoming vehicle, but a sudden gust of wind causes her to lose her balance and her white shoes slip on a patch of black ice and she gasps, spins, and stumbles into the path of the car.

•  •  •

“Sis? It’s Joseph. Listen, I’m over at Dad’s house and—What?”

“I said, do you know what time it is?”

“Yes, and I’m sorry, but I’ve been trying to call Dad for the last three days and haven’t gotten an answer.”

“Oh, God. Is he all right?”

“He’s not even
here
! The car’s gone. He left an envelope for us with a bunch of stuff in it—a copy of his will, his bank book, his stock certificates, the deed to the house—he made it out to you—and . . . and there’s a letter.”

“What’s it say?”

“No, not over the phone. Can you come over? I called the police and I have to wait here.”

“I’ll be there in an hour. Are you okay?”

“
Hell,
no. But thanks for asking.”

“Where do you suppose he could’ve gone?”

“When you get here. I’ll tell you everything when you get here.”

•  •  •

The driver of the semi doesn’t see the parked car until he’s right on top of it, and by then there’s no time to hit the brakes or swerve, not on this road and not with all the black ice. The front of his truck slams into the car and pushes it along the road for several yards, sparks flying, shattered glass spitting up against his windshield, before finally smashing into a snowman in the
middle of the road, splattering it all over before the car at last dislodges and rolls down the incline by the side of the road.

The driver beats his steering wheel and screams a torrent of profanities, but does not stop. The snow and wind are coming in almost full force now, and if he’s late with this delivery, it’s his ass.

Stupid asshole should’ve known better than to park there in this weather, anyway,
he thinks. What kind of nutcase leaves their car and goes to build a fucking snowman
in the middle of the road?

A few miles later, the driver notices the blood in a few of the larger, icy clumps of snow that have lodged up against the center of the windshield, in that no-man’s-land the wipers can never quite reach.

Oh, God, please . . . please, no.

He eases off to the side of the road and parks the semi, then grabs a flashlight from under the seat, opens the door, stands on the running board, and shines the light onto the hood.

Blood and hair. There is blood and hair in the clumps of ice and snow.

He shakes his head. No, it was just a snowman, that’s all. Snowmen don’t bleed. It must’ve been a bird. Yeah, that’s it. He must have hit a bird and not noticed.

Birds don’t have hair,
whispers something in the back of his conscience, where the light doesn’t quite reach.

“No,” Rudy says out loud. “No. It was a bird. Snowmen don’t bleed.” And that helps. Not a lot, but some. So he drives on, his hands shaking, knowing that it couldn’t have been a bird but telling himself it was, anyway, over and over, knowing full well that this is going to haunt him for the rest of his life.

•  •  •

“—well, she was a sweet thing, no denying that. Long blond hair and the prettiest face. She kind of reminded me of my youngest daughter. Anyway, she was at the Willowbrook—used to be the O’Henry years ago, until the new owners bought it and decided things needed to be, you know, updated and such.

“She come over and asked me for a dance and I figured, why not, she was awful courteous—not like the girls these days—and we had ourselves a nice little dance. Oh, you should’ve seen how she was dressed! Long white dress, real fancylike, and shoes to match. I know this sounds corny as hell, but she looked like some of them paintings you see of angels.

“Thing was . . . she was awful
cold,
even though it was only autumn. The small of her back, her hands, her cheeks. Real cold. My wife, she’s kind of cold-blooded—not in
that
way, she’s a sweetheart, but brother, sometimes her touch is like ice—she says it’s ’cause of her circulation problems . . . shit, where was I? Oh, yeah.

“This gal was
real
cold, so I offer her my jacket. She thanks me for being such a gentleman, and I drape my jacket over her shoulders. She asks me if I could give her a ride home and I say sure thing. We’re driving along a little ways and she asks me to go down Archer Avenue. I oblige her request and we’re driving along and talking about the weather, the way the Willowbrook has changed over the years, stuff like that, and then we come up on Resurrection Cemetery and she asks me to stop. I think it’s a bit odd but I stop anyway.

“She gives me back my coat and thanks me for being a gentleman, then she gets out and starts walking toward the cemetery gates. Here it is, ten thirty at night, and she’s headin’ into the boneyard. I call to her that the cemetery’s closed and that she really ought to get back in the car so I can take her home. That’s when she turns and looks at me and smiles and says, ‘I am home.’ Then she just . . . faded away into nothing.

“That’s when I knew who she was, and believe you me, I damn near wet myself. I mean, you hear all the stories about her, but you never expect that
you’ll
. . . you know what I mean. Ain’t a day goes by that I don’t think of her. Makes a body wanna cry, it does, thinking about the way she died, out there all alone on that road, middle of winter. Son-of-a-bitch what hit her didn’t even stop. I hope to hell whoever it was, if they’re still alive, I hope to hell they ain’t had a moment’s peace.

“She was a damned sweet girl, and she deserved better than that, you know?”

•  •  •

The old man impresses himself; he’s only had to stop twice along the ten-plus-hour drive to make water. The last time, he went outside, writing his name in the snow like he used to do when he was a child. He even laughed while doing so, the first real laugh he’s had in at least twenty years.

But he’s made it, despite the damn snow and wind. Three times he’s almost been knocked off the road by the wind. The radio said there were “blizzardlike conditions” coming, but that hasn’t stopped him.

And now he’s finally back here, after all the years,
after all the bad dreams, after a lifetime. Archer Avenue. But this time,
this
time he drives slowly. This time he’ll see her before it’s too late. This time he’ll stop. This time he’ll make it right and hope that will be enough.

He turns the radio to a local “beautiful music” station. Truth in advertising, for once. It’s Big Band night tonight. Glenn Miller. Stan Kenton. Spike Jones and His City Slickers. This music suits the old man just fine and dandy, yessir. Just as long as they don’t play any Bing Crosby, especially “Black Moonlight.”

He slowly rounds the bend and hits the straight stretch dense with trees on either side, some of them obscuring the steep incline off to the side of the road. He knows that if he’s not careful, he will drive off and fall a good seven feet where no other passing cars can see him. He has to be careful now. Like he should have been back in ’37.

A flicker in the headlights as several swirls of snow dance up onto the hood and skitter across until they explode against the windshield. But this time he’s got the defrost on high; this time he’s got the expensive wipers that are going a mile a minute; this time, he’s careful. He drives up and down the road for one hour, two hours, and only notices the gas gauge nearing
E
halfway through the third hour.

“Where are you?” he asks the snow and darkness. He wasn’t expecting an answer, but, still, he’s heard the stories about this road, about the other people who have seen her, talked with her, given her a ride home.

“Where are you?” he asks again, this time much louder than before. He pulls over to the side of the road, taking care to stay as far away from the incline as possible. Too much of the car is still jutting out into the passing lane, but he doesn’t care. He presses his forehead against his hands, takes a deep breath, and then turns off the engine.

For a little while he sits there, staring out into the freezing night as the snow whips about the car. He’s so tired, so very tired. He imagines that he sees two medieval men on horseback in the distance, making their way back to the monastery where the creation of a final masterpiece patiently waits for one of them.

He opens the car door, climbs out, and begins walking up the road toward Resurrection Cemetery. His knees ache and his legs are weak, but at least he’s wearing his good winter coat, his good winter gloves, and the heavenly wool cap Henrietta had given him on the last Christmas she was alive.

He’s only a few hundred yards from the cemetery gates when he can’t walk any farther. He stops, kneels down, and makes a snowball. The snow is thick and heavy enough to pack well, and with a laugh he sets about making a snowwoman, forgetting that he’s now in the middle of the road. It takes him nearly forty minutes to fashion her, and by the time he’s finished his hands are nearly frozen, even with the gloves. There is no time for her face, but that’s fine because he remembers that face with startling clarity. He’s never forgotten even a single detail.

He steps back and smiles at her, then holds out his arms.

“May I have this dance?” he asks his creation.

And there he stands, arms extended, eyes blinking against the wind and snow, until at last he hears the roar and the collision and the metallic scrape and the shattering of glass. He moves closer to her, touching her cold skin—didn’t everyone always say that her touch was cold? Poor girl. Poor little thing.

He stands there, smiling, as the lights and roar and sparks screaming down on them form a marvelous winter aura around her. He closes his eyes.
There you are,
he thinks. He does not tremble.
I see you at night.
He holds his breath. He holds his breath. He holds his breath. He holds

Afterword