The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All (7 page)

    "I had a bad feeling about Landscomb and Welloc."

    "Forget those idiots. They're as much at the mercy of Hell as anyone else in Ransom Hollow."

    "Got anything to drink?" Luke Honey said.

    Scobie hung the lantern from a branch and handed Luke Honey a canteen made of cured animal skin. The canteen was full of sweet, bitter whiskey. The men took a couple of swigs and rested there by the flickering illumination of the sooty old lamp. Luke Honey built a fire. They ate jerky and warmed themselves as the dank night closed in ever more tightly.

    Much later, Scobie said, "It used to be worse. My grandsire claimed some of the more devout folk would drag girls from their homes and cut out their innards on them stone tablets you'll find under a tree here or there." His wizened face crinkled into a horridly mournful smile. "An' my mother, she whispered that when she was a babe, Black Bill was known to creep through the yards of honest folk while they slept. She heard his nails tap-tapping on their cottage door one night."

    Luke Honey closed his eyes. He thought again of Arlen's pitiful, small hands severed at the wrists and discarded in the brush, a pair of soft, dripping flowers. He heard his companion rise stealthily and creep away from camp. He slept and awakened to the old man kneeling at his side. Scobie's face was hidden in shadow. Luke Honey smelled the oily steel of a knife near his own neck. The man reeked of murderous intent. He wondered where Scobie had been, what he had done.

    Scobie spoke softly, "I don't know what to do. I'm a man of God."

    "Yet here we are. Look who you serve."

    "No, Mr. Honey. The hunt goes on an' I don't matter none. You're presence ain't my doing. You bought your ticket. I come because somebody's got to stand up. Somebody's got to put a bullet in the demon."

    "The price you've paid seems steep as hell, codger."

    Scobie nodded. He remained quiet for a while. At last he said, "Come, boy. You must come with me now. He's waiting for us. He whispered to me from the dark, made a pact with me he'd take one of us in return for Arlen. I promised him you, God help me. It's a vile oath and I'm ashamed."

    "Oh, Scobie." Luke Honey's belly twisted and churned. "You know how these things turn out. You poor, damned fool."

    "Please. Don't make me beg you, Mr. Honey. Don't make me. Do what's right for that innocent boy. I know the Lord's in your heart."

    Luke Honey reached for Scobie's arm, and patted it. "You're right about one thing. God help you."

    They went. There was a clearing, its bed layered with muck and spoiled leaves. Unholy symbols were gouged into the trees; brands so old they'd fossilized. It was a killing ground of antiquity and Scobie had prepared it well. He'd improvised several torches to light the shallow basin with a ghastly, reddish glare.

    Scobie took several steps and uttered an inarticulate cry, a glottal exclamation held over from his ancestors. He half turned to beckon and his face was transformed by shock when Luke Honey smashed the butt of his rifle into his hip, and sent him stumbling into the middle of the clearing.

    Luke Honey's eyes blurred with grief, and Michael's shade materialized there, his trusting smile disintegrating into bewilderment, then inertness. The cruelness of the memory drained Luke Honey of his fear. He said with dispassion, "My hell is to testify. Don't you understand? He doesn't want me. He took me years ago."

    Brush snapped. The stag shambled forth from the outer darkness. It loomed above Scobie, its fur rank and steaming. Black blood oozed from gashes along its flanks. Beneath a great jagged crown of antlers its eyes were black, its teeth yellow and broken. Scobie fell to his knees, palms raised in supplication. The stag nuzzled his matted hair and its long tongue lapped at the muddy tears and the streaks of drying blood upon the man's upturned face. Its muzzle unhinged. The teeth closed and there was a sound like a ripe cabbage cracking apart.

    Luke Honey slumped against the bole of the oak, the rifle a dead, useless weight across his knees, and watched.

THE REDFIELD GIRLS

1

    Every autumn for a decade, several of the Redfield Girls, a close knit sorority of veteran teachers from Redfield Memorial Middle School in Olympia, gathered for a minor road trip along the hinterlands of the Pacific Northwest. Traditionally, they rented a house in a rural, picturesque locale, such as the San Juan Islands or Cannon Beach, or Astoria, and settled in for a last long weekend of cribbage, books, and wine before their students came rushing into the halls, flushed and wild from summer vacation. Bernice Barber; Karla Gott; Dixie Thiess; and Li-Hua Ming comprised the core of the Redfield Girls. Li-Hua served as the school psychiatrist, and Karla and Dixie taught English-Karla was a staunch, card bearing member of the Dead White Guys Club, while Dixie preferred Neruda and Borges. Their frequent arguments were excruciating or exquisite depending on how many glasses of merlot they'd downed. Both of them considered Bernice, the lone science teacher and devourer of clearance sale textbooks, a borderline stick in the mud. They meant this with great affection.

    This was Bernice's year to choose their destination and she chose a rustic cabin on the shores of Lake Crescent on the Olympic Peninsula. The cabin belonged to the Bigfish Lodge and was situated a half mile from the main road in a stand of firs. There was no electricity, or indoor plumbing, although the building itself was rather comfortable and spacious and the caretakers kept the woodshed stocked. The man on the phone told her a lot of celebrities had stayed there-Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Elizabeth Taylor, and at least one of the Kennedys. Even some mobsters and their molls.

    Truth be told, Dixie
nagged
her into picking the lake. Left to her own devices, she would've happily settled for another weekend at Ocean Shores or Seaside. Dixie was having none of it: ever fascinated with the Port Angeles and the Sequim Valley, she pushed and pushed, and Bernice finally gave in. Her family homesteaded in the area during the 1920s, although most of them had scattered on the wind long since. She'd lived in Olympia since childhood, but Dad and Mom brought them up to the lake for a visit during the height of every summer. They pitched a tent at a campsite in the nearby park, and fished and swam in the lake. Dad barbequed and told ghost stories, because that's what one did when one spent a long, lonely night near the water. Bernice and her husband Elmer made a half dozen day trips over the years; none, however, since he passed away. Lately though, she thought of the lake often. She woke in a sweat, dreams vanishing like quicksilver.

    The night before the Redfield Girls were to leave on the trip, there was a storm. She was startled by loud knocking on the front door. She hesitated to answer, and briefly lamented not adopting another big dog for protection after her black Lab Norman died. Living alone on a piece of wooded property outside of town, she seldom received random visitors-and certainly not in the wee hours. A familiar voice shouted her name. Her teenage niece Lourdes Blanchard had flown in unannounced from Paris.

    Bernice ushered Lourdes inside, doing her best to conceal her annoyance. She enjoyed kids well enough. However, she jealously coveted those few weeks of freedom between summer and fall, and more importantly, her relationship with Lourdes was cool. The girl was bright and possessed a wry wit. Definitely not a prized combination in anyone under thirty.

    Bernice suspected trouble at home. Her sister Nancy denied it during the livid, yet surreptitious phone call Bernice made after she'd tucked the girl into bed. Everything was fine, absolutely super-why was she asking? Lourdes saved a bit of money and decided to hop the international flight from Paris to Washington State, determined to embark upon a fandango of sorts. What was a mother to do? The child was stubborn as a mule-just like her favorite Auntie.

    "Well, you could've warned me," for starters, Bernice said. "Good God, Nance, I'm leaving with the Redfield Girls tomorrow-"

    Nancy laughed as the connection crackled. "See, that's perfect. She's been clamoring to go with you on one of your little adventures. Sis? Sis? I'm losing the connection. Have fun-"

    She was left clutching a dead phone. The timing was bizarre and seemed too eerie for coincidence. She'd had awful dreams several nights running; now, here was Lourdes on her doorstep, soaked to the bone, thunder and lightning at her back. It was almost as bad as the gothic horror novels Bernice had been reading to put herself to sleep. She couldn't very well send Lourdes packing, nor with any conscience leave her sitting at the house. So, she gritted her teeth into a Miss America smile and said, "Guess what, kid? We're going to the mountains."

2

    The group arrived at the lake in late afternoon. Somehow, they'd managed to jam themselves, and all their luggage, into Dixie's rusted out Subaru. The car was a hundred thousand miles past its expiration date and plastered with stickers like FREE TIBET, KILL YOUR TV, and VISUALIZE WHIRLED PEAS. They stopped at the lodge and picked up the cabin key and a complimentary fruit basket. From there it was a ten minute drive through the woods to the cabin itself. While the others finished unpacking, Bernice slipped outside to sneak a cigarette. To her chagrin, Lourdes was waiting, elbows on the rail. Her niece was rapidly becoming a bad penny. Annoyingly, the other women didn't seem to mind her crashing the party. Perhaps their empty nests made them maudlin for the company of children.

    "Aunt Dolly died here. This is where they found her." Lourdes squinted at the dark water thirty or so yards from the porch of the cabin.

    "That's great aunt to you." Bernice quickly pocketed her lighter and tried to figure how to beat a hasty retreat without appearing to flee the scene. "To be accurate, it probably happened closer to the western side. That's where they lived."

    "But, she was the
Lady of the Lake
?"

    "Aunt Dolly was Aunt Dolly. She died an awful death. Cue the violins."

    "And the ghost stories."

    "Those too. Nothing like enriching cultural heritage by giving the tavern drunks a
cause celebre
to flap their lips about."

    "Doesn't it make you sad? Even a little?"

    "I wasn't alive in 1938. Jeez-I never knew the gal personally. How old do you think I am, anyway?"

    Lourdes brushed back her hair. She was straw blonde and lean, although she had her mother's eyes and mouth. Bernice had always wondered about the girl's fairness. On the maternal side, their great grandparents were a heavy mix of Spanish and Klallam-just about everybody in the immediate family was thick and dark. Bernice had inherited high cheekbones and bronze skin and black hair, now turning to iron. She owned a pair of moccasins she never wore, and a collection of beads handed down from her elders she kept locked in a box of similar trinkets.

    A stretch of beach separated them and the lake. The lake was a scar one mile wide and ten miles long. The water splashed against the rocks, tossing reels of brown kelp. Clouds rolled across the sky. The sun was sinking and the water gleamed black with streaks of red. Night came early to the Peninsula in the fall. The terrain conspired with the dark. For the most part, one couldn't see a thing after sundown. The Douglas Fir and Western Redwoods rose like ancient towers, and beneath the canopy all was cool and dim. Out there, simple homes were scattered through the foothills of Storm King Mountain in a chain of dirt tracks that eventually linked to the highway junction. This was logging country, farm country; field and stream, and overgrown woods full of nothing but birds and deer, and the occasional lost camper.

    An owl warbled and Bernice shivered. "Anyway. How'd this gnat get in your ear?"

    "I read about it a long time ago in a newspaper clipping-I was helping Grandma sort through Grandpa's papers after he died. As we drove up here, I started thinking about the story. This place is so… forbidding. I mean, it's gorgeous, but beneath that, kind of stark. And… Dixie was telling me about it earlier when you were getting the key."

    "That figures."

    The younger woman pulled her shawl tight. "It's just so… awful."

    "You said it, kid." Bernice called her niece "kid" even though Lourdes was seventeen and on her way to college in a couple of weeks. Depending upon the results of forthcoming exams, she'd train to be a magistrate, or at the least, a barrister. They grew up fast in Europe. Even so, the divide was too broad-Bernice was approaching fifty and she felt every mile in her bones. Chaperone to a sardonic, provocative little wiseacre seemed a hollow reward for another tough year at the office.

    "There's another thing…I had a really bizarre dream about Aunt Dolly the other day. I was floating in a lake-not here, but somewhere warm- and she spoke to me. She was this white shape under the water. I knew it was her, though, and I heard her voice clearly."

    "What did she say?"

    "I don't remember. She was nice… except, something about the situation wasn't right, you know? Like she was trying to trick me. I woke in a sweat."

    Bernice's flesh goose pimpled. Uncertain how to respond, she resisted the temptation to confide her own nightmares. "That is pretty weird, all right."

    "I'm almost afraid to ask about the murder," Lourdes said.

    "But not quite, eh?" They must be sharing a wavelength. What wavelength, though?

    "I wish Mom had mentioned it."

    "It's quite the campfire tale with your cousins. Grandpa Howard used to scare them with it every Halloween-"

    "Way insensitive."

    "Well, that's the other side of the family. Kissinger he isn't. Nancy never told you?"

    "Frank discourages loose talk. He's a sensible fellow. Mom follows his lead." It was no secret Lourdes disliked her father. His name was Francois, but she called him Frank when talking to her friends. She'd pierced her navel and tattooed the US flag on the small of her back to spite him. Ironically, his stepsons John and Frank, thought Francois was the greatest thing since sliced baguettes.