Night Relics (15 page)

It would have been good to swim, but he didn’t have the energy to do anything but sit there and sip the drink. And besides,
the pool was full of leaves, the surface nearly covered with them like some kind of autumn centerpiece.

The dream recurred on windy nights. Always it was the same: the wind, the moonlit hills, the woman in black descending from
the shadows, him going out through the dry grass to meet her. In the dream there was no pool, no wrought-iron fence. The house
and property were as they had been years ago, long before Klein had torn down the remains of the old house and rebuilt. There
were horses on the meadow and a long wooden bunkhouse where the stucco poolhouse now stood.

Only the hills and the sound of the wind were the same, the sound of leaves scraping against wooden siding and curtained windows.
As he lay with her in the bunkhouse he could smell tallow and wool, raw pine boards and the jasmine scent of her perfume.
The wind pressed on the door, tendrils of it skittering underneath and moving the window curtains, finding its way through
knots and chinks in the siding.

It had been a long time—months since they’d been together. She had tried to come to him, but she was a virtual prisoner. Now
and then they met in the woods, briefly, her husband’s shadow looming in both their minds.

On the bed in the bunkhouse they tore at each other’s
clothing, and she pulled the blanket up to cover them, her hands stroking his back, holding him as he kissed her bare shoulders,
her neck, her breasts, the two of them moving together beneath the blanket. She curled her fingers in his hair, pressing him
to her, wrapping her legs around his, clinging to him.

Then, always then, the door slammed open and something cast a black shadow on the moonlit floor. The wind rushed in, moaning,
swirling, tearing away the loose woolen blanket. He scrambled forward, trying to cover her, the wind shrieking in his face,
the shadow by the bedside coalescing into the form of a man holding a garden shovel.

The sod-caked blade lanced toward him, skiving down through the air. There was the sound of his scalp tearing, the shovel
grinding against bone, slamming him backward against the mattress, and beyond that, as if she were already separated from
him by a great distance, the sound of her scream. Then nothing but plunging darkness and the faint, momentary knowledge that
she still gripped his arm.…

Klein stood up, shakily refilling his glass.

Lorna had given him a long article about hypnogogic hallucinations, waking dreams. They were apparently common. Nearly everyone
had them at one time or another— nighttime visions of strange people and shapes and animals. They occurred when a person was
perched right on the edge of sleep, eyes open but already drifting into unconsciousness. They were the source of ghost stories
and stories of alien encounters, evidence of witchery, satanic visitations.

Klein had read the article carefully, almost desperately. When he had put it down he was very damned sure that it had nothing
to do with him. His dream, if it was a dream, was too lush, too ordered, too much a product of all his senses. He’d had his
share of sensual dreams over the years, nightmares too, but never anything like this. He couldn’t begin to tell Lorna the
details of it. It was the kind of thing a man kept to himself.

He listened for a moment to the silent house. Then, making up his mind, he drained his glass and set it on the coffee table.
Tying his bathrobe shut, he unbolted the door and stepped out into the night, shutting the door quietly. He walked around
the edge of the pool to the gate, where he stood watching the hills. Behind the poolhouse and outside the wrought iron fence
stood a dozen small fruit trees, their leaves mostly fallen by now. Years ago there’d been an orchard there, and Klein had
pulled out the last few stunted trees when he’d cleared the land. He’d found a scattering of old tools in the debris of the
old bunkhouse—a rusted spade and some cultivating tools—which he’d kept even though they were mostly junk.

The wind blew softly now, stirring the meadow grasses, the moon drifting low in the sky. Beneath the leafless fruit trees
the shadows of moving limbs intertwined like the avenues of a maze. The old spade stood against the crotch of a peach tree,
its weather-silvered handle shining in the moonlight.

He thought of his dream again—the door swinging open, the shovel slicing toward his face …

He flinched and turned his head, and for one brief moment the stucco-and-aluminum poolhouse was gone, and what he saw was
a long wooden bungalow, candlelight glowing through the windows, the door standing half-open. It swam in his vision like a
desert mirage, and he staggered back into the fence, his fingers closing on the cold wrought iron. The wind rose in a howl,
blasting the surface of the pool, blowing wet leaves into the air. There was a wild cracking noise from somewhere beyond the
fence, and the sound of a limb tearing through shrubbery. The eucalyptus trees along his neighbor’s driveway whipped like
saplings.

Then the poolhouse was as it had been—no candlelit bunkhouse, no door standing open. He turned frantically to look out into
the hills, sensing that for a moment she had nearly come to him. She had been out there, moving through the trees, drawn inexorably
to him just as he had
been drawn out of the house and into the windy night.

He waited for another minute, staring into the wind, knowing that the time had passed, that something had shifted and then
had shifted back again. He pulled his robe tighter, retied it, and walked around the pool deck toward the back door, suddenly
bone weary.

P
OMEROY ADJUSTED THE BANDAGE AROUND HIS FACE
, wishing he had tied it more securely. The knot was too tight to loosen. Wind stirred the trees overhead, and the moon, low
in the sky, illuminated the backyard beyond the corner of the house.

There was another window, this one facing the bed. One slat was cocked open in the blinds, and a long blade of light shone
through it. He peered between, his heart pounding.

She lay on top of the covers, her head propped up on her hand, reading a book. She was dressed in an oversize T-shirt that
was pulled up over her thigh. Moistening his lips, he studied the shape of her body beneath the fabric and wondered what was
hidden by the shirt’s hem. If only she’d move …

He glanced around, charged with fear and expectation. He was visible from Klein’s backyard, but to hell with that. The house
was dark. Klein was asleep. He was safe. He could wait as long as he had to.

She shifted position suddenly, and he bent anxiously toward the window, nearly putting his face to the glass. Her
nightshirt moved on her thigh. Filled with a wild frustration, he nearly knocked on the window. Then she was settled again,
reading her book.

The eucalyptus trees overhead suddenly thrashed in a hard gust of wind, showering him with leaves and hard, pyramid-shaped
seeds. Instantly the wind was howling, slamming furiously down from the hills. The tall trunks of the trees creaked ominously
as they swayed under the onslaught.

Beth lay there oblivious to it in the quiet room, not moving, and Pomeroy was edgy with impatience. There had to be something
he could do—tap on the window, break something—that would make her shift position, get up, anything. Then he would go. That
would be it. There would be other nights, other visits. Right now he just wanted to
know
something about her, something that would make their relationship more intimate. He had never had that, ever. Linda hadn’t
let him in, hadn’t given him a chance to relate to her on a deeper plane….

A gust of wind pounded into him just then, nearly throwing him into the window. There was a sharp crack from overhead, and
a limb tore its way downward through the foliage of the eucalyptus trees, crashing onto the garage roof and sliding to the
driveway.

Pomeroy ducked away, scuttling out of the moonlight, deeper into the backyard along the wall of the garage. The noise of the
falling limb had been tremendous, enough to wake the neighbors. Fear slammed through him, and he wondered suddenly whether
there was a gate on the other side of the house, so that he could get out to the street without using the driveway. He looked
around for a place to hide. If he had to he could go over the back fence, into the hills….

The light inside the room went out just then. The blinds shifted. He pressed himself against the garage wall, out of the moonlight.
Beth looked out from inside the room, straight at where he had stood just moments before.
She could no doubt see the broken branch, which blocked half the driveway. He held his breath watching her. After a moment
she dropped the blind, and he moved forward along the garage, hurrying toward the window again in case she turned the light
back on. Maybe she would come outside! He prepared for it, trying to think of the right thing to say— that he was worried
about her, the wind and all …

But the bedroom stayed dark. If she was going anywhere she would turn the light back on. His anticipation drained away as
he realized that she was probably just going to bed. It would be impossible for him to see her clearly inside the darkened
room. He knew that from experience.

The wind gusted again, howling through the trees. Beth heard the sudden crack of a limb breaking, then the sound of it hitting
the garage roof and sliding in a leafy rush to the driveway. She reached across and flipped out the light, got out of bed,
and stood by the backyard window. Carefully, she lifted the edge of the blinds and looked out at where the broken limb lay
against the garage door. Moonlight shone on the leaves and across the lawn.

She dropped the blinds, then walked out of the bedroom and into the dark kitchen. Through the window she could see the hills
and the fields beyond Klein’s property. The dry grass rippled in the moonlight. The wind shifted through the trees.

Something moved near the Kleins’ gate, nearly in the shadow of the poolhouse. Beth froze, her hands on the sink. It was a
person—someone standing, waiting.

Slowly she turned around and reached for the wall phone, the Kleins’ number coming to her in a rush.

There was no dial tone. She remembered then that the phone was off the hook in the bedroom, and simultaneously the person
moved, stepping out of the shadows. It was Klein himself, wearing his bathrobe. He turned and walked around the edge of the
pool as if heading back into his house.

She thought of the footfalls on the gravel outside the window.

Pomeroy felt betrayed. Everything had come to an untimely ending because of the wind. He wasn’t ready to leave yet. Not yet.
Crouching, he hurried across the lawn toward the back door, treading as lightly as he could on the wooden stairs.

The wind that blew down off the ridges seemed to have gotten into his head, scattering his thoughts like leaves, and he couldn’t
see any farther than the next moment. His vision narrowed so that the door, the doorknob, the cheap locking mechanism filled
his mind, drawing his hand forward magnetically, inexorably. Through the dark window he could see a washer and dryer, an old
sink. His fingers tingled as he fondled the cold brass knob.

He pictured her rising happily off the bed, tossing her book aside. He was home! He’d been away—business. But he was home
now. They’d brew a cup of coffee, talk, listen to the wind.

Gently, he leaned into the door, closing his eyes, watching it swing open in his mind, picturing the darkness that lay beyond,
the woman lying on the rumpled bed in a moonlit room, the thin nightshirt….

Surprised at first, she’s relieved to see it’s him. She’s frightened of the wind, frightened of being alone. He touches her.
He’s home now. They’ll be together, inseparable.

The knob turned in his hand.

Hanging up the phone, she walked past the table and into the service porch. She would check the dead bolt and then go to bed.
It couldn’t have been Klein in her driveway. Not wearing his bathrobe. Maybe he had heard something himself, and had come
out to investigate.

The service porch was dark, but she didn’t bother turning
on the light. She reached for the dead bolt as she stepped in front of the door, and saw at that moment, just inches beyond
the glass, a man’s bandage-wrapped face, his hand rattling the knob.

T
HE
S
UBURBAN SAT ON THE TURNOUT WHERE HE HAD LEFT
it, the keys in the ignition. He climbed in and sat for a moment resting, his head against the steering wheel, his eyes closed.
The dark, shattered shapes at the base of the falls drifted into his mind again—the image identical to what he had imagined
that afternoon, driving home from the suburbs.

He opened his eyes. It had been dark, and he had been spooked by the scream, by the windy night. It would have been easy to
imagine shapes in the confusion of shadows cast by the rocks….

Except that the hiker last week had seen the same thing.

Small comfort. He wasn’t crazy; he was seeing ghosts.

He fired up the engine and drove toward home, keeping his eyes on the road ahead, not looking into the side mirror at all.
Some distance up he passed the house of his nearest neighbor, Mr. Ackroyd, an old man who had lived in the canyon for nearly
fifty years. The house was dark. The Suburban’s headlights illuminated a climbing rose on a trellis that sheltered one end
of the broad front porch. A profusion of white blooms overhung a couple of weathered rockers.

The comfortable look of the place made the solitude and
darkness of the canyon settle on him like an increase in gravity, and he thought about the house on Monterey Street again—music
on the stereo while he cooked dinner, David assembling Lego castles on the living room floor, Amanda working in her study.

A quarter mile farther on he turned down the drive through the trees, his house visible ahead. It was a canyon hybrid of a
Queen Anne cottage, with high-peaked gables and decaying gingerbread, built on rock piers in order to survive the occasional
seasons of heavy rain, when the creek flooded the narrow canyon floor.