The Croning (27 page)

Kurt said, “Winnie started acting strange a few weeks ago. She’d be missing when I dropped in at the house unexpectedly. She’d be late from work. Then I caught her on the phone in the middle of the night. I’d been drinking, well, tying one on, I guess. So I woke up to take a piss and she’s gone. I’m groggy as hell, but I decide to find her and she’s in the den whispering on the phone. I can’t make out much and she hangs up. I got back into bed and pretended to sleep just before she came sneaking into the room. She never said anything. I was upset, but I didn’t confront her. Instead I intercepted the phone bill when it came in—she usually handles all that stuff. Know where she was calling?”

“Hong Kong?”

Kurt turned his head and actually laughed. “Nice one, Mr. Comedy. You’re a regular George Burns. She called
here
. Three times in the middle of the night, each one maybe five days apart. You didn’t talk with her, did you?”

“No. Are you sure you’ve got the right number?”

“I’m sure. She was calling Mom.”

Don frowned. He couldn’t recollect Michelle taking any calls at odd hours. On the other hand, he usually slept like the dead and she kept her cell phone set to vibrate—a matter of habit from enduring a million meetings and debriefings with officials who weren’t the type to brook interruptions. “Why would she call your mother? Are they close? She hasn’t indicated they’ve talked outside of your visits.”

“I don’t know. There’s something funny between them.”

“Perhaps it’s a conspiracy,” Don said, trying to lighten the mood.

Kurt didn’t laugh at this sally. “I’ve considered that. You learn to spot certain behaviors in my line. I work with human resources and screen a lot of employees. Our data is extremely sensitive and it’ll sound corny, but we have to guard against corporate espionage. Hell, we’ve been compromised by foreign governments. Lemme tell you, I’ve got a keen eye for suspicious persons. Winnie and Mom…they worry me.”

“For the love of…This is why you agreed to help me clean the house, I take it. To get me alone. Good grief, Son.”

“Yeah. I wanted to sound you out on this. Win’s parents were eager to get rid of her.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, Dad. I thought there’d be trouble, her folks being well-connected; that maybe they’d think I was too low for her station. Her father made no secret he despised Americans. At the dinner they threw for our delegation, he joined the toast only after one of his superiors gave him a look. Should’ve seen his face, wrinkled like he was drinking vinegar.”

“Well, maybe you won them over with the old Miller charm. Or, maybe they wanted your money—Mr. Big Shot corporate fella.” Don winked.

“Her parents are loaded. They pushed her out the door. Winnie clammed up about the whole deal. Put it on the tab, I guess. I tell ya, Dad, I’m getting scared to see the bill.”

“Well, she could be a corporate spy. Marries you to steal secrets. Pretty clever.”

“Oh, God. Don’t even joke about that.”

Don sighed. “It’s also pretty melodramatic. Didn’t your company screen her? Good lord, all the questions your mother and I had to answer before they gave you the job…”

“She’s not a spy, okay? No, I have a domestic crisis brewing here.”

“Why would your mother conspire with her…take sides? She isn’t the sort.”

Kurt nodded, as if convincing himself of a dubious theory. “Jeez, I dunno. Probably Win’s asking for marital advice. Maybe she’s scared about the baby. When we were here last…When I whacked my head. I wasn’t sleepwalking.” He gulped the remainder of his beer and rolled the empty bottle between his big hands. “I’m a pretty light sleeper these days. Win had gotten up to use the bathroom or something. I went downstairs for a glass of water; y’know, feeling my way in the dark. Candlelight was coming from under the door to Mom’s study. They were in there talking; who knows about what. Me, I bet. Anyway, I figured to hell with Win if she wants to cry on Mom’s shoulder. I went to the kitchen and got a drink.”

“Then, what happened to your head?” Don felt uneasy now. He disliked the haunted light in Kurt’s eyes.

“There’s a mystery for you; I don’t remember hitting it when I fell. Maybe I got short-term amnesia from the blow. The room sort of spun and I blacked out. Next thing I know, I’m in the greenhouse with Mom leaning over me, calling my name. It’s weird, Dad. Really weird. Only thing is, I have this recurring dream of the incident, of being dragged. Like somebody had a hold on my pajamas and started pulling me away. There’s giggling and whispering.”

“I think maybe you
did
rattle something loose. You fainted, obviously. Then, delirious and disoriented, you crawled outside. Not much of a mystery if you ask me.”

“Think so?”

“I do.”

“You’re probably right. I’ve just been doing the math and things don’t add up, is all. Like, why Mom always insisted we spend the summer here. What is it about this house? None of us ever liked the damned thing. Except her.”

Don wasn’t feeling well; his skin clammy with thoughts of the lights in the bedroom, the long, strange history of inexplicable occurrences he’d learned to ignore. “You’re drunk. Go get some sleep.”

“I’m not drunk. And I’m serious about what I said.”

“That seems to be the case. Let it lie for now, okay?”

“I’ll let it lie, all right. Something else I gotta say, first. The story I told you guys about the séance at the Coolidge department store, how I saw a figure in the office…” Kurt let the moment drag on as he visibly steeled himself for whatever was to come. “To be honest, I actually got a better look at it than I let on that night we were sitting around with the storm going and such. Didn’t feel right to say what really happened in that damned store. Not with Mom watching me like old Boris the cat used to right before he pounced and scratched the shit outta me.”

“Why didn’t you want to tell the whole story in front of your mom?”

“Because, that person I saw leering at us from the other side of the glass…the fucked up witch-thing that terrified Reeves. It was her.”

“Who?”

“You know.”

Don rose as quickly as his creaky knees permitted. “Yep, past my bedtime.” He made a point of not looking at his son on the way to the tent.

Asleep moments after his head hit the bedroll, his dreams were sepia-tone twilightscapes of taiga frozen to iron. His astral self rocketed across the wintry panorama at frightening velocity. A light drew him; the mother of all bonfires, and it was bones, just like the old tribes did it, that crackled and emitted sulfurous black smoke and gouts of red fire.

Michelle, naked and lithe in a middle-aged incarnation, was chained to a boulder that had been shaped first by primitive hands, then eons of wind and rain. It was the lumpen altar of a nameless dark god. She smiled at him across time and space as figures in cowls danced around the base of the rock. There was a dolmen nearby; a pile of henges large enough to entomb a giant. The dolmen radiated the implacable cold of space; it hissed the frequency of gamma radiation, of stars.

“I love you,” Michelle said, her voice carrying faint as a ghost radio signal. “We all love you.” Her face began to change and crack apart. He screamed and the vision shattered.

He lay sweating and shaking in the tent in the darkness and did not sleep again. Those long hours he spent yearning for daylight and cursing Kurt for putting such fool notions into his mind.
Reinforcing notions in your mind
, a submerged and less pleasant aspect of himself muttered from the cellar where Don routinely banished all unpleasant facets of his personality.

3.

At dawn, heavy mist rose from the damp soil and drifted through the forest until it filled the valley. The men huddled near the fire, boiled coffee in a dented kettle and ate cereal for breakfast. Argyle dug a bottle of Irish whiskey from Hank’s pack—he’d blithely loaded the poor sap like a donkey—and dumped a good pint into his thermos of coffee.

“Jesus, man! Did you haul a bar up here?” Kurt said. He lighted his cigarette.

Hank moaned and rubbed his thighs. “Ahh, my legs are sore as all hell.”

Don supposed racquetball and badminton at the health club weren’t quite the same as a real hike. He stifled his own complaints and picked at his breakfast in morose silence.

“Well, this is pointless,” the younger man said. “I can’t see ten yards in this fog. Why don’t we head back to the ranch, huh?”

“It’ll burn off,” Kurt said. Don very much disagreed. Possibly the fog would lift in a few hours, although he doubted Kurt would be patient enough to cool his heels that long. Still he kept his peace and waited to see if Argyle would weigh in to second the kid’s sensible idea to trek home.

Argyle peered into the trees and rubbed his chin. “It might lift if you’re willing to wait it out.”

“Let’s see what happens.” Kurt took the pans and the tin plates to the creek and scrubbed them briefly. The other men exchanged glances.

“It won’t do any harm to hold off a bit,” Argyle said. “The lad’s determined to track down this alleged site of his. I must admit I’m intrigued. This part of the country has had its share of unorthodox religious customs.”

“Er, what kind of religious customs?” Don said.

“Oh, the usual—Wicca, the druidic orders. Satan worship is another popular one.”

Hank looked stricken. “No way.”

“You must be kidding. I knew this was a dumb idea,” Don said.

“Don’t fret.
Most
of these people are amateurs. Kids acting out. You’ve seen the gothic silliness that’s been the rage for years now. I credit rock bands for the whole mess. There’s no real menace unless you happen to be a goat or a rabbit.”

“Or a virgin.”

“Haven’t seen one in years.”

Around noon things weren’t much different except the mist was set afire and it hung in luminescent sheets. Kurt declared a brief foray into the forest. There were two compasses, thus the search would be most efficient if they split into parties. Don ended up with Hank. Thule abandoned him to trail after Kurt and Argyle.
See where you’re sleeping tonight, traitor!

After Argyle and Kurt and Thule disappeared into the mist, Hank said, “Y’know, we could just sneak back and call it a day…”

“Gosh, and miss all this wilderness adventuring? In for a penny, sadly enough.”

“I hope you brought a flashlight. We’re gonna get lost and spend the night out here. Yep, I can feel it.”

Don sighed. He checked his canteen and took a compass reading. They set out toward the northwest as agreed upon earlier. The plan was to move generally north in a vee pattern for no more than three-eighths of a mile and then sweep back toward the camp. Even stubborn Kurt conceded that would be sufficient for this particular trip. Either they’d stumble across the site, or late afternoon would find them trudging home.

4.

Hank stepped behind a tree to “get rid of some coffee” and Don ambled on another twenty or so paces to give the fellow privacy. He stood quite still, and listened to faint woodland rustles, the drip of the branches. Trees and underbrush were black silhouettes floating in the shining white. The foliage blocked the sky, but for notches where sunrays slanted into the steaming earth. Birds called far off. He flicked his compass open to take a reading and found the glass was milky with internal condensation; no amount of rubbing with his sleeve helped. The silence began to creep into his ears and he abruptly called out for Hank. His cry echoed impotently, quickly snuffed by the smothering fog. He knew with the certainty of a lucid nightmare Hank wasn’t going to answer.

“Over here,” Hank said. A whisper that might’ve originated inside Don’s head. Only the voice, though. Hank remained hidden by brush and mist.

My lord, I’m turned around
. Hank had replied from a completely different direction than he’d expected.
Thank goodness Michelle isn’t here to see this debacle. She’d fall down laughing at me…

“Hey, Mr. Miller!” This time the younger man shouted, and from a good forty or fifty feet behind Don.

Don homed in on Hank, caught sight of him stepping from the shadowy bulk of a fir. They joined forces again, Hank patting him on the shoulder in passing, a gesture of sympathy. “Take it easy, old-timer. You look a little green around the gills. Bring your glycerin? Think I got hemorrhoids. Of all the luck.”

“Don’t concern yourself with me, young master Hank. I’m…fit as a fiddle.” Don faked a smile. As they continued onward, he sneaked a few glances over his shoulder without the faintest notion of who or what he expected to see lurking back there. Shadows, mist, a wall of sodden shrubbery; he was a young explorer again, brush knife in one hand, map in the other, with a cave to discover, groundwater to divine, a seismic survey to initiate, and anywhere from days to weeks before he’d stumble forth from temperate rainforest or highland desert to civilized, pacified lands once more.

Sure, sure, rejuvenated, reincarnated and on the doorstep of adventure… Yet had he been so skittish in the halcyon days of yore? Was it a consequence of age—the night terrors, paranoia toward Michelle, his fear of the dark, and now hallucinations of voices in the gloom? He had to ask himself just how much more of this getting-old stuff he could take.

A sharp slope greeted them. It was littered with rotted logs, a loose bed of slimy leaves. Underbrush thinned near the brow of the hill and the forest peeled away to reveal a clearing.

Don gasped. “What the dickens?” He
knew
, though. He’d seen it in the photograph. It had awaited him since forever.

“Funky ol’ rock, ain’t it?” Hank said, bored and weary.

The clearing was nearly level; a semi-crescent of dark, gritty soil patched with weeds. Wisps of mist rose like smoke. At the heart of the opening lay a massive boulder rooted deep in the black earth. The boulder rose to eight or so feet and was easily double that in circumference. Twined with creepers and evil green moss, it radiated an aura of malignance like a slumbering beast from a fairytale, one of the awful kinds in Michelle’s books. This illusion was reinforced by the joyous dirge of nearby crows. More rocks lay scattered across the field, some as small as a man’s skull, others on the order of a compact car. The trees that hemmed the clearing were quite large, old-growth forest to rival the twin monsters in Don’s yard.