Night Songs (10 page)

    She thought nothing, planned nothing. Her hands untied the ropes, her right foot pushed the boat off, and the oars were slipped expertly into their locks without a sound. She had almost turned the craft around when she realized what she was missing. She maneuvered back to the dock, tied up the bow and ran for the workhouse. The tall double doors were unlocked and slightly ajar. A swift glance at the house, and she ghosted inside. Though she barked her shins several times against obstacles invisible in the dark, it didn't take her fingers long to locate the shelving she knew was there, and to close around a gaff and a waterproof flashlight.

    Once outside, she paused and stared up the drive, marking the place where the gravel became blacktop and started Neptune Avenue. The amber light was out. The Anchor's neon was blind. For all the movement she saw then she could have been the island's only inhabitant. Not even a leaf was stirred by the wind.

    In half an hour, arms protesting and back dully aching, she reached the burial place. The water was cold, her flesh tight as cracked leather.

    Now she was below the surface, and there were creatures of the night sea she had forgotten or had not known. They swarmed about her like black shadow lightning, taunting, teasing, darting nips and nibbles at her legs while she fought to keep air in her already straining lungs. Four times since she'd arrived she had slipped out of the rowboat, four times using the rough anchor chain to guide her as she pulled her way down; and four times she had failed, embattled, the cold too much and the air bubbling up and out in reluctant spreading streams, preceding her to the top where she clung wearily to the bow and spit, coughed, felt the salt stinging her reddening eyes and the cuts on her feet.

    Her teeth chattered uncontrollably, though she no longer felt the water droplets on her face.

    Her hair pulled at her scalp, as if trying to work loose.

    On the fifth drive she nearly failed to locate the chain again, and the flashlight gained unconscionable weight.

    On the sixth dive, as she sobbed silent fear and anger in equal frustration, she was lucky.

    The shrouded corpse lay on the uneven bottom between two low ridges of tide-gouged sand; the feet were half buried by the weight inside, the torso and head canted upward and drifting in the slow-moving current. The pale beam darted over it, passed it, returned and held. Shapeless, yet unmistakable, the light giving it a gray aura that shaded out to black.

    Lilla grinned and wanted to laugh, tasted salt water instead and returned flailing to the boat, breaking the rolling surface with a sound like a bark. She clambered over the side and lay panting on the boat's bottom, staring at the sky. Resting. Grinning. A dark strand of kelp burrowed into her hair, and pearls of water shivering across the bridge of her nose, in circlets around her breasts.

    "I told you, Gran," she whispered. "I told you. I told you."

    She hummed snatches of several tunes, all of them Gran's, and her left hand beat time on the planks while her right used the flashlight like a bloated baton. Her thighs quivered. Her stomach pushed out, caved in.

    Hummed the old songs she had sung in the shack.

    "Told you, Gran. Told you to trust me."

    She giggled suddenly, and covered her mouth.

    The cold rushed through her in spasms, and she made herself rigid to drive them away.

    A cramp uncoiled in her right foot, and she jabbed out her heel until the pain subsided and died.

    Then, over the humming, she heard the thunder coming at her from the mainland. Her head shook in outraged dismay; not now, no, not now, not now. She had found him. She had run the length of Haven's End and had stolen a boat and had rowed right to the spot and she had found him. She knew where Gran was, and now she wanted to rest. The thunder gave her answer. She sighed a weak protest, and saw lightning beyond the trees.

    "All right," she muttered. "All right, damn it, all right."

    She picked up a gaff with thick roping knotted at its looped end and dropped back into the ocean before the storm changed her mind. Unerringly, she swam directly down to the shroud and plunged the rusted hook into the upper end. She tugged at it repeatedly, as hard as she could to be sure it would hold, then retreated once more to the boat and the air. She lay there for a moment, her breath in shallow gulps, before scrambling around to her knees and taking hold of the rope. A shuddering inhalation, a murmured prayer, a mirthless smile… and she began to haul Gran in, feeling her palms sting and burn as she pulled slowly, slowly, hand over hand, bracing her knees on the coils building on the bottom, every few moments glancing over her shoulder to the shore to check for lights.

    Hand over hand until Gran was beside her and she could sag against the rear seat, gasping and weeping, cooling her hurt palms against her stomach, her breasts.

    She paid no heed to the thunder now, felt nothing but the sea swell beneath the keel and tip her gently, side to side.

    "It's going to be all right now, Gran," she said five minutes later, taking up the oars and heading for the beach. "You're going to be all right now. I told you not to worry, didn't I? You got to trust your Lilla, Gran. You don't have to worry now. I've got you. I've got you."

    

    

    In less than two hours the boat was returned, and the gaff, and the flashlight, and the night was still black.

    

    

    Lilla sang.

    (the dimlight flared and she almost screamed, but a darksoft whispering insinuated itself between the scream and the glare, a whispering that became the fog that comforted her again)

    Slowly, she backed out of the shack, her nearly blind gaze on the shimmering glow in the other room. She could see the foot of the bed, she could see Gran's feet, and she could still hear the singing that lingered after she was done.

    She walked away from Gran's house without once looking back, making her way stiffly over the dunes to Surf Court. She paid no attention to the looming houses and their yellow porch lights, to the cars in the driveways, to the trembling streetlamps. She showed neither haste nor purpose, as she walked down the road to Neptune Avenue, turned right and followed the broken white line past Tess Mayfair's dark-windowed boarding house, past the Rising Sun and the Seaview, and into the mile-long stretch of unbroken woodland. She did not feel the damp tarmac under her feet, nor the wind pushing hard at her hair.

    A gray haze in the distance, the streetlights of the town, but she cocked her head to one side and knew she wouldn't have to go quite that far. There was a dark lump on the verge fifty yards ahead, and when a vicious gust passed over it, it squirmed and tried to crawl.

    Lightning reached out to drag thunder after. Lilla smiled, and kept walking.

    The figure shifted again, a shifting shadow against shadows, and finally stirred itself to standing.

    Lilla stopped, but kept smiling.

    "Warren," she said, her voice clear despite the howling wind. "Warren, you weren't at the funeral."

    Harcourt passed a weary hand over his eyes and peered into the darkness, his mouth opening slightly when lightning showed him the speaker. "Lilla!" He tried to straighten his spine, his lapels, reached up for his hat and froze when he discovered it wasn't on his head. He stammered and managed an apologetic smile, became suddenly aware that his feet were still bare. "Lilla-"

    She faced him. "You weren't at the funeral." Not an accusation; a simple fact.

    "I am… was as you see me," he told her, wincing as the storm moved from howls to shrieks. He moved closer, to be heard. "I could not disgrace you."

    "You wouldn't have."

    "But I would," he insisted, wounded dignity in his eyes. "I would." Then he glanced up the road, back the way she had come. "It's over, then."

    "It has been, for hours. Warren, we missed you, Gran and I."

    He waved away her kindness. "He's in the sea, then?" She nodded.

    "He let you do it?" He was astounded and relieved.

    She reached out to touch him, and even through the topcoat he could feel her cold grip. "Gran is dead, Warren. Now he's buried the way they wanted." Closer, almost touching. "I don't think I want to stay in his house tonight."

    Harcourt's expression was befuddled as he attempted to sweep aside the alcoholic fog he carried with him. When her hands moved to the back of his neck, when his skin felt her fingers idly twirling the ends of his hair, he tried not to shudder. She was bereft, he reminded himself; now she wants to go home. But he almost wept when he realized he couldn't remember where she lived.

    "Atlantic Terrace," she whispered, as if reading his mind. "Just down from Peg Fletcher's, you know that. It's late. I'm a little frightened with all this," and she looked skyward, back to his eyes.

    A slow and deep breath to steady himself, and he nodded. "I quite understand, Lilla. If you need someone to accompany you, you only have to say the word. I am always at your service, as you know."

    She dropped her hand to his elbow and smiled at him broadly. "You'll be a gentleman?"

    Offended, he almost drew away. "Always, Lilla. Surely you know that."

    She giggled softly, kissed his cheek, pressed her forehead to his chin. Her voice was muffled. "You and I, Warren, we're alone on this island now. The others, they think they know what we go through, but they don't. Not really. They feel sorry for us, but they don't care." She looked up at him. "Do they care?"

    He wanted to say
yes,
and knew instantly it was a lie.

    "You see?" she said.

    The wind was a hint of winter, and before he knew it he had his arms around her, drawing her into the warmth of his coat. So small, he thought. He hadn't realized how small she was, the girl-woman, the child. So small, and so soft; he startled himself by feeling things he had thought were long dead. One hand slipped down to the slope of her buttocks, the other into her hair.

    They kissed.

    Soft, he thought while her tongue searched for his. Soft. So soft.

    He felt her trembling against him, and wanted to open his coat so he could feel her stomach and breasts and the ridge of her hips. But to open the coat would mean breaking the embrace, and it had been so long, so terribly long… so he hugged her instead and closed his eyes at the low groan that warmed the side of his neck.

    "Are you shocked, Warren?" she asked softly.

    He shook his head once. "It is a trying time for you, Lilla. Solace, comfort, it's what you need, what you deserve."

    "Are you sober?" she asked then, and he almost laughed aloud.

    "I would say, my dear, that I am about as sober now as I have been for years. That isn't saying much, I grant you, but it's the best you'll get tonight."

    They clung beneath the wind and the lightning, against the battering of dead leaves, against the dust devils that leapt from the verge to the road.

    She kissed him again, gently, not insisting, and when she lay her head tenderly on his chest he felt a thrumming through his clothes. He frowned for a long moment until he realized she was singing. Very quietly, virtually unheard as the wind brought the first rain. Then a connection was made, and he remembered El Nichols pushing him down the road, remembered turning around, remembered Lilla's night songs.

    "Warren," she whispered, "are you alive?"

    There was more than the night cold now working down his back. He pushed her away, but she held onto his arms.

    "Alive?" she asked again.

    "Of course," he snapped, trying to pry loose her grasp.

    She smiled, and in a sudden blue-white flare he saw her eyes, the death there, and would not believe it. Nor could he believe the power in her hands.

    He could think of nothing else to say but, "That singing…"

    "You know the words?" she said, turning her head to see him sideways.

    "I have had French, yes, and I've traveled a bit in my time."

    "Warren-"

    "And I am just drunk enough to be glad he's in the ocean."

    "Oh, Warren," she said, shaking her head slowly. "Oh, Warren, dear Warren, he's not there, he's behind you."

    A gnarled black hand from the dark grabbed his shoulder, and as he whirled to look behind, the razor she held measured the length of his exposed neck.

    Then she left him upright in the shadows and walked back to the shack.

    Hearing nothing but the wind, and her singing, and something behind her, drinking.

    

    

    

    

    Another warm day, too warm for October, an August day misplaced in the middle of autumn. The rainstorm was gone, sweeping out to the Atlantic and up toward New York. What was left was the sun that turned the shallows turquoise, brightened the pines' green, shifted red leaves to vermilion and brown leaves to tan. The sea scent was strong, the breeze a welcome cooling, and Thursday a memory buried in a back closet.

    It should have been perfect.

    It should have been a quiet time of remembering, perhaps regretting, and looking forward to winter and the peace that it brings, forgetting for the moment that spring will start it all again.

    But there'd been too many dreams spawned after midnight, too many arguments over a sun-bright breakfast, too many doors slammed and engines raced-and an unnerving feeling that an island four miles long and two miles wide was suddenly an island that had grown much too small.