[Oxrun Station] The Bloodwind (20 page)

She nodded, looked at him down the table's long
alley. He was so small, she thought, like from the other
end of a telescope.

"Why . . . why are you telling me all this?"

"It's your car, Pat. She was your friend, sort of."

"But Abbey
—"

"Is still missing."
His expression told her they
held out little hope of finding either of the women still
alive.

"I want to go home," she whispered.

Martin parted his hands and spread the plastic bags in
front of him again. He did not look up. "Pat, who smashed up Professor Danvers' car? Who broke your
car window and dragged Kelly out? How did it get back
in the garage without you knowing about it?"

"Please be quiet," she said, putting her hands to her
head. She had to think, she had to make sense so he would leave her alone.

"Pat, did you cut yourself when the window broke?
Are there any cuts on
—"

"Damn
you!" she whispered harshly. She rose and rounded the table, stopped at his side and pulled up the sleeves of her coat, the sleeves of her sweater. "Look!"
Her arms were pale, lightly veined, completely un
touched. "Happy?
Bastard."
She headed for the door.

"Pat."

"If you're going to ask me any more questions, Wes,
I want a lawyer. If you're going to accuse me of
something, read me my rights or whatever the hell it is
you do and be done with it. Otherwise, I'm going home.
Now."

She opened the door, did not hesitate to close it and stride blindly across the floor to the railing. The desk
sergeant watched her; she could feel his gaze on the
back of her neck, could hear as she pushed through the
railing Wes enter the room and stand there silently. It
took most of her strength to keep walking, to prevent
herself from spinning around and shrieking at him. And once outside she turned right and walked as fast as she
dared without breaking into a run.
Reached home with
out remembering seeing anyone at all.
Climbed the
porch steps and stood in the foyer, one hand patting her
chest, the other gripping a fold of her coat and twisting
it. She saw nothing but the stairs, and she took them
one at a time, watching the landing appear before her,
watching her hair, forehead, eyes, nose, mouth, chin
appear in the gilded mirror over the table. It was a
death's head she saw
—skin taut over prominent bones,
eyes pouched and sunken, lips without color, chin outthrust, comically pugnacious.

Her door was unlocked.

With an acid, silent thanks to the police she went in
and took off her coat, moved to the sofa and stared
down at the cushions. Someone had been sitting there,
one of the policemen who had searched the apartment.
Another had not replaced the cartons and tins in the
kitchen cupboard properly. Or had it been all one man?
A cop who started working conscientiously and, when
it became evident he wasn't going to find anything, ended carelessly.

Homer's shelf was still empty.

She tried the telephone and Greg wasn't home. Nei
ther was Harriet. And no one at the dorms had seen either Oliver or Ben.

She sat at the kitchen table. She stood. She wandered into the workshop and lifted her tools, replaced them,
wandered into the bedroom and dropped onto the bed.
Crossed her legs.
Set her hands behind her head.
Stared
at the canopy sagging slightly in its frame.
Lowered her
gaze to the side window overlooking the driveway,
shifted it to the back window where she watched bare branches tremble, the flitting shadow of a bird, the red
blotch of a sun practically set. She considered all the questions Wes had asked her, all the inferences she had drawn from them, and would not, could not believe she
was actually suspect in Kelly's disappearance, Abbey's
vanishing. But neither could she dismiss the way he
would not look at her, the way he pressed her, the way
he assumed it was she who had cut herself on the
broken window. Of course, he might only have been
doing his job, she told herself as she
flopped
over to her
side; no matter how long they had known each other, he
was obligated by his job to make certain she was not
directly involved. But she was. Of course she was. As
soon as he had described the way Kelly might have
been taken from the car, the way Susan Haslet had died, she knew what had happened: the
bloodwind's
beast has
swiped at Susan's car and slammed it into the pole; it
had smashed through the window and pulled Kelly out.
It had to be. And the only question was
—why?

She sat up suddenly, her gasp loud in the dark room.

Oliver; it always came back to Oliver
Fallchurch
.

Something he had studied, something he had known,
something someone had told him led him to believe
what he had told Greg months ago
—that everything has
a life force. Take it another step—if everything has a
life force, then it was possible that force might some
how be controlled.
Tapped.
Released.
Directed.
And
maybe Oliver had learned how. Maybe Oliver, in his
disappointment, had tried to frighten her as punishment.
And maybe, when she battled that fear in thinking it
was something else, something within her, he had grown
angry—another disappointment. And this time he had
decided to take it all to the extreme.

Susan Haslet's car was the same as hers. Kelly had been driving her car. She had been followed to the
Mainland Road corner, and Oliver's glove had been
found on the hedge the next morning. She had been
followed to the quarry, and . . .

"Slow down, slow down."

Slow down, slow down,
as she walked back to the
kitchen and stood at the rear window, hands on the sill,
face close to the pane.

The marble.
Fragments of the marble every time she turned around.
Until Martin had called her attention to
them in Haslet's car she hadn't thought anything about
it. She
pursed
her lips in a soundless whistle and headed
for the workroom, switched on the light and stood on
the threshold, scanning the benches, the pedestals, the
floor for a sign or a signal.

A life force.

Homer.

And suddenly she knew what the
redbeast
was.

SHE sat on the high,
barewood
stool, the heels of
her boots hooked over the middle rung, her hands flat
on her thighs. The dark sweater she'd worn for two
days now was overly warm, but she felt no discomfort. For nearly half an hour she had examined every particle
of stone in the room, run through her mind every
sculpture she had created and all those she could re
member created by others. She flipped through art books,
through magazines, through mental files of classrooms and lectures, museums and parks; and for another half
hour she sat perfectly still.
Mulling.
Discarding.
Lifting
a finger once as though making a point to her students,
lowering it again when she remembered she was alone.

Life force.

It was not the precise term she would have used had
she thought of it first, but now that it was lodged there
she could not rid herself of it. It wasn't right, and it
wasn't wrong; but it was close enough to explain too
many things.

Life force.

An artist has craft, and so do many others who hope
for recognition. An artist has skills subtle and some
times daring, and so do many others who study and sweat and sacrifice and slave. But separate the sheep from the wolves, men from boys, wheat from chaff, and it is called talent. Skill, craft, dedication can be
taught and can be instilled, but talent cannot. You have
it, you don't. If you don't you're competent, and if you
do you're an artist.

But suppose talent wasn't something as mysterious as
people used to think; suppose talent was for the most
part an unconscious acceptance of the existence of a life
force, and with that acceptance a learning how to con
trol it, to use it in the creation of what the artist was
after. Genius would be the ultimate manipulation, the
twisting and the coaxing of that force into a shape
visible to the human eye. The force that added depth to
a
portrait,
shades of interpretation to a sculpture, that
expanded infinitely the gulf between hackwork and
masterpiece.

And suppose further that this unconscious acceptance
became fully conscious. Suppose, in its discovery, the
discoverer understood that manipulation could extend to
something more than mere artwork.
Lifework.
Liter
ally.
Inanimate objects given mobility and purpose.

The
redbeast
was Homer.

She could see it now, veiled by the snow
—the mas
sive paw, the eyes, the snout, the teeth that gleamed.
And red.
The color immemorial of man's unbridled hatred.

Could everything be animated then?

Obviously not, or it would have been. Therefore,
there were forces closer to the surface, more
maleable
,
more accessible. The stone she had fetched from the
quarry had broken in half
—the one she used for Homer,
the other for its mirror image. Homer was nothing more
than a quaint statuette; the image, however . . .

Bits and pieces of it, then, luring its insubstantial form to her, yet not so insubstantial that it could not
stave in the side of a car and murder a young woman, could not smash through glass and drag another woman
to her death, could not stalk her, could not chase her.
She had found in her terror the shards in her pocket and
she had tossed them away, which answered Greg's
question
—it did not follow because it could not follow.
And to a question of
her own—
it had corporeal existence once the image had been completed.

And the
image, and the original, were
gone.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, she lowered her feet to
the floor. She stood, one hand back to balance herself,
and went into the kitchen. Opened the refrigerator and
checked the contents: milk, lettuce, various thin-necked
bottles of salad dressing, fruit juice, sandwich meats,
fresh
vegetables.
All of it ordinary.
All of it perfectly
ordinary.
Cheese.
Mustard.
Olives.
An open box of
baking soda too long standing on the bottom shelf.
Ordinary.
Catsup.
Jam. Meat in the freezer.
Ice-cube
trays.
Tangible evidence of a living inhabitant, an ordi
nary human being, a woman who had fought for herself
long before fighting became fashionable, became chic,
became
a rallying cry for women who needed a cause
before they would bestir themselves into false safety
among numbers.

Ordinary.
And thinking of a creature not quite of the supernatural that had grown from a warning to an ad
versary bent on killing.

There was no doubt about it now; had she not strewn
the marble pieces over the snow the
redbeast
would
have left the
bloodwind
and crushed her screaming into
the ground.

The door closed when she released it, shutting off the
cold, shutting off the light. There was only the dark
copper finish and the gleam of framing chrome.

And the empty shelf behind her.

A
blink,
and she was in the
livingroom
, standing at
the French doors, the curtains parted and the streetlamp
across the way outlining the porch railing as the moon
had done the trees out at the quarry. Her breath fogged
the pane closest to her lips. An automobile slipped past
behind the drag of its headlamps. A couple walked the
opposite pavement, close, arm in arm, heads together
and capped.
Another car.
Old man
Stillworth
hobbling out of nowhere and up to his porch, fumbling with the lock, stepping in and lighting the inside momentarily
before the door closed behind him.

Thirteen years, she thought. Thirteen years of climbing.

The
alternative was simple and seductive
—pack
a bag and head for New York. She had done it once
already, could do it again. New York was cosmopoli
tan. It had muggers and mounted policemen and robbers
and bag ladies and friendly shopkeepers and surly cab
bies and murderers and neighborhood improvement or
ganizations and museums and theaters and crime and
filth and excitement and her parents and the real world
caught under shadows of buildings too tall. Nothing like
the
bloodwind
could ever exist there. Only here, in
Oxrun
Station; only here, where she lived.

My god, she thought then, aren't you tired of running?

The muffler had been set over her hair and ears like a
kerchief, tied under her chin, the ends flung back over
her shoulders. The topcoat was buttoned to her throat,
gloves yanked on and tugged until the folds in the
leather were smooth and her wrists were covered.
An
extra pair of socks, a sweater over her blouse.
Her
pockets were empty; she had searched the apartment for a weapon and had found nothing to offer her even a
modicum of comfort.

There was only her anger, and a demand for answers.

She had made three telephone calls: neither Harriet
nor Greg answered, and the taxi was at her door in less
than ten minutes.

Now she stood in the center of the Long Walk, alone,
the dark-faced buildings rising in front of her broken
only here and there by the lamps in students' rooms.
There was no sound. All windows were closed, and
nothing escaped. Clouds blocked the moon, and a faint
haze had settled around the white-globed lights set ev
ery twenty yards along the Walk.

For five minutes, while the cold swirled and the light
sharpened.

For five minutes, while she hoped for someone to come along and see her there, watch her enter the building, watch her return.

But no one joined her, and she prodded herself down
to the left, up a series of stone steps to a pair of heavy oak doors topped with a flickering light. It expired just
as she entered, but the inside was well-lit. On her left,
steps heading down to the belowground offices and
tunnel extensions; steps to her right she climbed quickly,
one hand skating over the banister to the first landing.
A door on either side, faint music from one and laugh
ter from the other; directly ahead a wall paneled to the
overhanging ceiling. The next landing faced the quad
with two narrow windows. The next, two doors again,
and a third in the paneled wall that led to a common
bathroom.

She stopped on the third floor, slightly out of breath
and wondering how the students managed to charge the
stairwell every day without suffering ill effects. She
clung to the banister for a moment,
then
faced the
lefthand
door, a rectangular metal insert in its center hold
ing a card with four names typed on
if
. Montgomery
Lions, Hayward
Morhouse
, Benjamin Williams, Oliver
Fallchurch
.

Her gloved hand hesitated before it knocked.

And when the door swung open she stepped over the
threshold before her courage failed.

The room was large, cluttered with overstuffed used
furniture, posters on the walls, beer bottles arranged in
tiers on the hearth of the plugged fireplace. In the front
righthand
corner to one side of the windows was a desk
piled with books, illuminated by a lamp with a dark
green glass shade. Someone sat just beyond the light's
reach, and she moved deeper into the room, aware of
the worn carpeting, of a faint locker-room scent that
wrinkled her nose.

She gestured vaguely back toward the door. "It was
open." Not quite an apology. "Unlatched, I think."

The figure shifted its chair closer to the desk, the legs
scraping on the floor.

"Ben?"

"Yes, Doc."
He leaned into the light, and even with the shadows cast wavering over his face she could see
the sheen of perspiration on his cheeks, the pallid
flesh, the pouched eyes. His left sleeve was unpinned, and a sudden movement draped it over a textbook.

It was quiet. No sound from the two bedrooms,
nothing from the rooms below and across the landing. When she took another step she could hear her boots creaking, her jeans rustling, the lining of her coat whis
pering over her sweater.

"Are you alone?"

Ben nodded,
then
sagged back in his chair, his face
gone from the light. "I don't know where he went."

It took her a long moment to assimilate the implica
tion. "You knew I was coming?"

"Sooner or later."
She sensed a slow shake of his head. "He's nuts, Doc. This whole thing's got him nuts."

She glanced around her, found a low-backed arm
chair and took it, hoping she appeared
more calm
than
she felt. Her stomach felt queasy. The room was overly
warm, yet she did not remove the muffler nor loosen
any buttons; instead, she gathered her hands in her lap
and watched them clasp, open, clasp again.

"He plays the role, you know," Ben said quietly, with no apparent attempt to hide the fear that seemed
trying to throttle each word.
"Cowboy, artist, stuff like
that.
He does it all the time. I've been with him since we were freshmen and he's always playing the role."

She kept her voice hard. "What's he playing now,
Ben?"

It seemed a sigh drawn from torture: "He hates you,
Doc. I never saw anybody hate anyone so much."

There should have been relief, she told herself then;
she should be feeling an immense satisfaction at having
finally been right. But she felt only a shudder that made
one leg jump.

"Where is he?"

The figure behind the light shrugged.