Phantom (25 page)

"Well, if it is, don't waste your time
thinking about it. The important thing is to live a good, happy
life, with as much love as possible. That's all. That's
everything."

"But, Mom ... "

"Hmmmn?"

"I don't want to lose you."

"Oh, Ned." He sounded so sad and helpless,
Linda suddenly felt herself about to cry. "You're not going to lose
me, honey. No, you're not. Please don't worry about that." She gave
him another long hug, then brushed his hair back off his forehead
and kissed him several times. "No, no, no," she whispered.

"But, Mommy—" Now that Ned had started, he
couldn't stop. His voice trembled. "I'll be gone and I won't ever
see you again."

"No, no, no." Softly, soothingly, but
firm.

"But I will, I'll be gone and—"

"No, Ned. Where?"

"I don't know .... They'll take me somewhere
way far away."

"Who?"

" ... Somebody ... "

"No, that's not—"

"
Yes
." Surprisingly insistent. "I know,
Mommy, I
know
."

Linda found her son's eyes in the dark and
she could see the fear running loose in them.

"Ned, is it those two old men? Are
they—"

"No, they're my friends."

"Well, have you seen somebody else? Has
someone followed you home or threatened you, or anything like
that?"

After a long pause, a tiny voice: "No ....
"

"Okay. Now you listen to me, sweetheart. You
don't have to be afraid. Nobody's going to take you away from Daddy
and me."

"Yes, they will."

Once more Linda was surprised at how certain
Ned sounded.

What was it? Not paranoia, not in one so
young. Then she remembered something from her own childhood. How
old had she been at the time—five? Anyhow, it was the first time
someone explained the word kidnapping to her. For weeks after that
Linda had lived in sheer terror, convinced that at any moment she
was going to be snatched and murdered and buried in a swamp and
never found again. Finally she had gotten over it, but she still
recalled the fear. Vividly. Ned was nearly ten, but ten was still
very much a child. He could get a notion into his head and it could
grow out of all proportion.

"My poor baby." It had to be something like
that, some irrational childhood fear. Linda rocked him in her arms.
"Do you think Daddy or I would ever let anybody take you away from
us? Of course not."

"But what if you couldn't stop them?"

"That'll never happen, Ned. Never, never,
never."

"Mommy, I love you." .

"I love you."

"And Daddy."

"And Daddy loves you. We both love you so
much."

"I don't want it to happen to me."

"Nothing bad is going to happen to you, Ned.
Only good things. And no one is ever, ever going to take you away
from us.”

"Oh, Mommy ... "

"We love you too much, and nothing can beat
that."

"Will you stay here with me in the dark,
Mommy?"

"Of course, I will."

"Really all night?"

"Sure."

"Because, well, I really want you to stay
and hold me."

Little-boy talk. Regression? He sounded more
like an Oedipal five or six. This thing tonight, Linda thought,
it's set him back. But at least he's brought it out and told me
about it. With lots of love and a bit of luck it'll be over with in
a day or two. Please.

"I'll stay here as long as you want,
Ned."

"Mommy, Mommy ... "

His whole body shook, and then Linda could
feel his hot tears soaking through her blouse. For a few minutes
she couldn't keep from crying along with him. She hugged and rocked
him some more. She sang gently to him and hummed any soft tune that
came into her head. Ned cried himself to sleep in her arms, but
whenever she tried to move, his fingers grabbed her tightly. At
some point Michael looked into the room, but Linda waved him away,
afraid that Ned would wake up.

Later, much later, she managed to slip out
of Ned's room. Her arms and legs were stiff, and her breathing was
a little irritated. She took two puffs of Becotide from the
inhaler. Michael was asleep.

After a while, so was she.

* * *

22. The Farley Place
(2)

"Lady of Spain I adore you. Pull down your
pants I'll explore you .... "

As Ned entered the baithouse, Cloudy was
singing to himself. He was perched on a stool at the small zinc
table that served as a workbench in the back comer of the shed,
where he was fiddling with a dozen or more flashlights. Peeler sat
in his armchair, thumbing through an old catalogue of fishing and
trapping gear. Both men glanced up at the boy.

"I told you he didn't run off to join the
Navy," Cloudy said.

Peeler grunted.

It was a drizzly morning, fit for doing
nothing, and Ned had been sure he'd find either or both of his
friends at the baithouse. He shook the moisture off his baseball
cap and made his way past the tables of tanks and wooden boxes.

"Where did you get all the flashlights?"

Cloudy nodded toward Peeler. "That old fool
had these lyin' around for years, and there ain't a one of 'em
works. Now I brung one good set of batteries so we can see what's
what." He pushed the switch to try the flashlight in his hand.
Nothing happened. "Okay, now, this one here needs a new bulb,
see?"

Ned nodded.

"So far, every dang one I tried needs a new
bulb." Cloudy took the batteries out and put the flashlight with a
group of four others to one side. He resumed humming the same
schoolyard song as he took up the next flashlight.

Ned moved away a few feet, to a tray of baby
crayfish. He teased them with his finger, sending them scurrying
through the water.

"So watcha been doin'?" Peeler asked after a
few moments.

"Oh ... nothing much."

"Another one needs a new bulb," Cloudy
announced. "You sure need a lot of new bulbs."

Peeler harumphed. "You gotta check the
connection," he said. "It don't matter if you got good bulbs and
batteries if they don't make the connection.'"

"I know, I know."

"Some of them things been kicked around so
much they don't connect no more. That's what needs fixin'."

"Yeah, yeah."

"Don't need but one anyhow," Peeler added in
a mutter.

Ned waited until he was sure this exchange
was over before speaking. "Something did happen to me a few days
ago," he said. "I thought I was in real trouble for a while
there."

"How's that?" Peeler looked at the boy over
the top of the catalogue.

"Oh, I was just out walking. Near the old
railroad tracks, you know." Ned kept his eyes on the crayfish as he
spoke. He wouldn't come right out and say he was in the spa again,
but he didn't think he would have to tell a blatant lie either.
"And suddenly these bees came up, a whole mess of them. Boy, did
they chase me. I never ran so hard in my life."

'They'll do that," Peeler said. His eyes
dropped back to the catalogue page.

"Was they yellow jackets?" Cloudy asked.

"I didn't stick around to find out."

"You musta come on a hive of 'em, to stir
'em all up like that," Peeler said. "Did it myself once."

"It was scary."

"They can hurt you, yes, they can," Cloudy
said. "I used to know a fella—Peeler, you remember old Billy
LeBeau?—he'd get sick real bad from bees."

"Yeah," Peeler replied.

"Just one or two bee stings and his face'd
get all swole up like a big pink marshmallow, and he'd have trouble
breathin' and all."

"Really? That bad?"

"Oh, yeah, sure. They had to give him oxygen
once, and he had to carry a little jar of pills around with him all
the time, in case he got stung."

"Billy didn't have to see a bee," Peeler
said. "If he just heard a buzzin' around him, he'd drop his load
and head for the hills. Hey, whatever become of Billy, anyhow?"

Cloudy considered for a moment, then shook
his head. "I don't know. He's gone somewhere. Ain't seen nor heard
of him in years now. Maybe he's out in the desert, or up with the
Eskimos. Any place where there ain't no bees."

"I think we have a nest in our house," Ned
said. "I've heard them buzzing around."

But the subject of bees was apparently
finished, for this brought no response from the two old men. Peeler
scanned the pages of the catalogue as if looking for something he
had lost, and Cloudy was humming again as he worked on another
flashlight.

"When are you going fishing again?" Ned
asked.

Peeler shrugged. "Tomorrow, maybe. If it's
not too wet out. I got red wigglers to spare, so we could go over
to Baxley Mill Pond and get us a bunch of sunfish, if nothin'
else."

"You gotta catch so many of them," Cloudy
protested. "And then they're a pain in the butt to clean."

"They ain't so bad," Peeler said. "We can
all pitch in. Ned'll cut up a few punkinseeds, won't you?"

"Sure."

"See? I think it's a good idea. I been
feelin' so bone-lazy this past week, that's about as much work as I
can stir myself to do."

"And you wouldn't do that if you couldn't
get the boy to do most of the work for you, ain't that right, Mr.
Tadpole?"

Ned laughed. "I don't mind. I like to go
fishing."

"Okay, okay." Cloudy gave up. "I'll watch
the shop, you guys bring home the food." Then, to himself: "Dinky
little sunfish ... "

Peeler threw the catalogue over his
shoulder, stretched and gave a mighty yawn. He slumped back in the
armchair, his eyes a little watery. "Darned if I ain't like a watch
that's all wound down," he said. "Must be the weather."

"Yeah, and we been havin' this dam weather
for thirty years now," Cloudy remarked, with a sly wink at Ned.

"Peeler."

"Hmmmn?"

Ned sat on a wooden crate near the old man.
"Tell me about my house," he requested.

"Your house?"

“
Yes."

"What about it?"

"Well—everybody calls it the Farley place,
don't they?"

"Sure do."

"How come?"

"Folks name of Farley used to live in it, a
long time ago.

They built the place."

"But why do people still call it that, if it
was so long ago?"

"Ah, that don't mean nothin'. Somethin' gets
a name, it sticks, that's all."

"What happened?"

"What d'ya mean?"

"Something happened at the house—to the
Farleys—didn't it?"

Peeler smiled, but Ned noticed that the old
man was chewing his lower lip. Cloudy had turned around on his
stool, a flashlight. lying neglected in his hand.

"You're guessin' now, Nedly."

"But it did, didn't it?"

"Why? What makes you think so?"

"There's something about it—the house. I
don't know what it is, but I get a funny feeling sometimes."

"He still thinks it's haunted," Cloudy said
with a laugh that was just a trifle forced.

"Maybe," Ned allowed quickly. He sensed that
he had the initiative and he enjoyed the feeling. He pressed on.
"So tell me what happened."

Peeler yawned again. He seemed so bored that
Ned suddenly wondered if he might not be wrong after all about the
Farley past. .

"There ain't an old house in the country
that don't have some kind of story or other about it," Peeler said
in a tone of complete dismissal.

"I want to know about the Parley place," Ned
insisted. "I live there now, Peeler. Please tell me."

Ned was glad to hear that the light drizzle
outside had grown into a steady rain. It drummed on the metal roof
of the baithouse, and a few drops leaked through in places. He had
Peeler and Cloudy cornered, at least until the rain let up. Ned
leaned forward on his seat, propping his elbows on his knees.
Undisguised expectation showed on his face.

"There ain't a whole lot to tell," Peeler
began reluctantly. "It was before my time, really. Well, I mighta
been a little kid then, I don't know. Anyhow, the thing is, the
Farleys had some kind of family trouble, that's all. I believe one
of the sons worked on the fishin' boats, and a storm come up real
quick, like they can sometimes, and blowed him over the side and
they never did get him back. He was lost at sea. That sort of thing
used to happen all the time in those days, you know. It was a lot
worse than it is now. And probably nobody'd remember it except that
not long afterwards the mother got killed too. Now, I don't know
the ins and outs of what done her in, whether it was an accident or
natural causes, or what. But comin' so soon after the death of the
son, well ... it made a little more impression on folks."

Ned didn't speak. All he
could think was,
That's it, that has to be
it.

"There was some trouble about that time with
the Sherwoods too, wasn't there?" Cloudy asked. "Didn't they own
the boats?"

Peeler nodded. "Yeah, they owned the boats,
they ran the fishin' fleets hereabouts. Made a lot of money too. I
guess some said it was their fault about the Farley boy, but that's
just stuff. I don't see how it could be their fault if somebody
gets blowed away in a storm."

"Seems like more people died young in them
days," Cloudy said. "You had big families—eight, ten, twelve
kids—so it wasn't unusual for some of 'em not to make it. More
folks died from accidents while they was workin' too. And
sickness—they didn't have all the medicines they got now. So, all
in all, you had a lot more of that kind of thing goin' on ....
"

"Yeah, that's right." Peeler took up where
Cloudy trailed off. "There wasn't nothin' special about it."

"What happened to the rest of the family?"
Ned asked.

"You got me there," Peeler said. "Nothin' I
know of. I guess the other kids just growed up and went their ways.
The old man never married again, that I'm aware of. He musta packed
up too, somewhere along the line. Anyhow, I ain't never heard no
more about any of 'em."