The Everlasting (2 page)

As he stepped from the final stair, Scott saw the handwriting on the front of the envelope.
Scotty
, it said. The only person who had ever called him Scotty had been Papa.

At that moment the world changed around him. It grew stale. And he knew that this dream of his life was close to edging into nightmare.

The ghost found him days after his grandfather's funeral.

Scott loved to walk in the country—a love that had
been instilled in him by Papa—and following the funeral it was the safest way he knew to mourn. His parents' house was still a sad place, as if echoes of his grandfather lying in the coffin still resided there, sucked into the walls along with decades of cigarette smoke. His mother went to sleep crying and woke up the same way. His father was ineffectual in comforting her, and had taken to spending long hours in their large garden, finding a multitude of tasks that suddenly needed attending. Both of his parents seemed more concerned with the circumstances of Papa's death than the fact that he was gone. Scott had tried to encourage light back into the house, but he had come to realize that such dark times were sometimes necessary. At sixteen he understood that he still had much to learn about life. This week, he believed he was growing up some more.

His favorite walk was straight out across the field behind their house and into the woods, and that was where he went three days after the funeral. It took him past an ancient oak tree that had been blasted by lightning in the distant past. Most of it was dead, blackened, hollowed out and rotten. Yet parts of it still gamely sprouted leaves each spring, and it dropped a handful of acorns come autumn. The tree provided a den for some of the younger kids in the village, and there was always evidence of their habitation. Scott had never made use of the space and fun the tree had to offer, because Papa had always taken him deeper into the woods to show him more wondrous and secret things. He passed it by with a casual
glance. Its hollow trunk was empty but for scattered candy wrappers and a crushed can.

A few steps beyond, with the edge of the woods still in sight, he heard the first footsteps behind him.

He spun around, expecting to see one of his friends creeping up on him. He didn't relish company right now; their sympathies would be awkward. But there was no one there. Only the tree, standing sentinel even so long dead.

The footfalls had stopped as soon as he turned his head, and he guessed it must have been the breeze in his ears, the sun on his neck, the throbbing wound he still nursed inside from Papa's violent death.

When he turned to start again toward the woods, the thing was standing before him. It raised a hand, and he fell back before he had a chance to see it properly: a vision of black, something old and scarred by time. It swept forward, and cool, dry fingers caressed Scott's throat.

“Where is the Chord of Souls?” the thing sighed.

Scott tried to cry out, but something like smoke pressed across his open lips, and he tasted soil, tobacco, and spice.

“Where is the Chord of Souls?” the thing asked again, leaning over him now, blocking out the sun. It kneed him in the stomach and Scott gagged, winded, desperate to draw in a breath past the soft hand blocking his mouth and nose. He thumped his feet on the ground and tried to twist his head. The tightness in his chest brought panic closer, and for those few seconds the thing became quiet and still, staring
down with fluid eyes, as though this act of suffocation were the answer it sought.

The shape's fingers splayed, and Scott drew in a stuttering, deep breath. “What?” he asked. He tried to raise his arms, but they lay heavy and useless.

“Where is it? The old bastard couldn't have taken it with him. He
couldn't
have!”

Scott shook his head, and now he could see the thing above him at last. It was a man, that was all, a small, wizened old man with hair yellowed by decades of smoking, skin grizzled and creased by years in the sun or a lifetime of sorrow. His eyes held madness and sadness both: madness at what he had lost, and sadness that it would likely never be found again. Even then, Scott saw desperation in this old man's eyes.

And panic. He looked like someone for whom time had already run out.

“Don't know what you want,” Scott said.

“You tell me now, boy. You take me to it! Your grandfather wouldn't have left it unresolved.” The man leaned back, giving Scott room to breathe. He looked away across the field. His eyes seemed strange, as though they reflected nothing. “Tell me he didn't leave things undone. . . .”

Scott wanted to shout for help. Perhaps if he screamed at the top of his lungs his mother or father would hear him, or someone in the neighboring houses. Or maybe the shout would simply frighten this old weirdo back into whatever hole he'd crawled from. But when Scott drew in a deep breath and readied
himself—muscles tensed, hands clawing at the dried corn husks scattered across the ground beneath him—the old man changed. His age became power, not a hindrance. His eyes narrowed and filled with something so much more threatening than madness. And Scott felt heat exuding from him, like a breeze of hot air in the height of summer, an old, dry heat that had been stored and fed and nurtured for longer than Scott could hope to understand.

In that moment, Scott recognized him at last. “No!” he said. It could not be.

“Tell me,” the man said. His breath made the air unreal. His presence here belied the safe truth of the field, the woods, the oak tree.

“You're dead,” Scott said.

The old man closed his eyes and slumped forward, drawing into himself as if searching for some deeper meaning. A bird chirped somewhere in the distance. The man glanced that way and the bird fell silent.

“You have one more chance,” he said. “The Chord of Souls.”

What can I do?
He was trapped here, restrained by this dead man. Papa's friend. The man Papa had murdered before taking his own life, and now here he was, returned to ask Scott about something Scott knew nothing about.

“He would have
shown
you,” the old man said, looking away across the fields, his expression turning desperate. “He would have
told
you.”

And then Scott remembered those final words his grandfather had somehow relayed to him, through
Scott's tears and sighs of grief.
I'm not afraid, because I know the truth. And one day I'm going to tell you.

“Ahhh,” the dead old man said, seeing realization dawning in Scott's eyes.

“He told me he wasn't afraid,” Scott whispered, “but he didn't tell me why.”

For a second or two Scott believed he was going to die. This illusion would release the violence simmering beneath its leathery skin, and its fists would rain down, elbows, knees, and gnashing teeth tearing and pummeling until Scott was dead. But as certain as he was of this fate, he could do nothing to prevent it. His arms were still heavy by his sides. And even though the man had stood and was no longer touching him, Scott still felt stuck to the ground. If he attempted to stand he would fall from the world.

The dead man's shoulders sagged and his face relaxed as though relieved of some great effort. “Well, he's afraid now,” he said. “I don't see what else I can do but wait.”

Scott's vision throbbed with each terrified heartbeat. Between one blink and the next, the man vanished.

There was no way this letter could be good.

His first reaction was to burn it. He would hold the envelope and set it alight, perhaps catching an occasional teasing glimpse of the flaming words within, his grandfather's final communication smoking away unread, unknown, unfulfilled. He would always wonder, but the threat of what it might contain—the potential
for hurt, pain, and loss—was surely enough to dictate his course of action.

And it
deserved
to be burned. After all the nightmares it had given him through the years since Papa's death, the probable contents of this letter were like a heart attack sure to happen, death wrapped in a stained, thirty-year-old envelope.
One day I'm going to tell you
, Papa had said. “Not today,” Scott whispered, and it was a plea.

“Scott,” his wife groaned from upstairs, waking slowly from her usual deep, peaceful sleep. She had no nightmares of dead old men springing at her from unseen shadows. “What's in the post?”

“Nothing much,” he said, staring at the envelope.
Nothing much? A letter sent by my grandfather before he died, finding me thirty years later. Finding me even though we've lived in half a dozen houses since then? Not much?
“Well . . .” he said. And that single, hesitant word was the point where decisions were made, and everything changed forever.

“What?” Helen said. She appeared at the top of the stairs.

I should burn it
. Even as Scott's thumb slipped below the sealed flap—the paper was old and brittle, the edges yellowed by time—he knew that it should be destroyed. “Something strange,” he said, lifting the flap. The paper tore like only old paper could, shedding flakes of itself onto the hall carpet.
Bits of Papa in here
, Scott thought.
Molecules of his skin. His dried spittle. I'm touching him right now
.

A dog barked outside and Scott glanced up, expecting
to see the mad old ghost staring in at him through the porch window.

“What is it, babe?” Helen came downstairs, night-dress creased and twisted around her, eyes still glazed from sleep.

Scott looked up at his wife of two decades and felt an intense rush of love. It struck him like this occasionally, a realization of just how lucky he'd been in life and how lucky he was still, but this time it ended with the deadening comprehension that all things ended. One day, both of them would be dead.

“A letter,” he said. He withdrew his thumb and thought of lying, but that was so strange to him. Their relationship was not built on lies. And even though the truth was so unreal, it came out in a rush. “A letter from my grandfather. He must have written it just before he died, posted it, and it's been lost all these years. Stuck to the bottom of some sorting tray, maybe. Weird. You hear of things like this happening all the time.”

Helen stood three steps above him, frowning, running a hand through her long hair. “We've only lived here for ten years,” she said. “How did it get here?”

Scott looked down at the envelope. He did not show her that it had only his name on the front. “I suppose it's followed us move for move,” he said.

“What does it say?” For the first time Helen's voice contained the sense of wonder that this strange delivery warranted.

“I haven't taken it out yet.”

“Well, are you going to?”

Scott stared at his wife. He shook his head. “Not
just now. I . . . I'd like to open it alone. It's weird. You know what I thought of Papa.”

“You loved him a lot.”

He nodded. And even though he was certain that the letter contained much more than grandfatherly chat, somehow he managed to hide that knowledge from her. He did not lie, as such . . . he simply omitted the truth. It felt bad. But he comforted himself by believing he did it for her.

He often dreamed of Lewis, Papa's dead friend, and how he had sought Scott out two weeks after his own murder. Right now that dream seemed so close that it could be walking up his garden path.

“I'll make some tea,” Helen said. “You go and read the letter. But if it's a treasure map, you bloody well take me with you!” She smiled, kissed his cheek, and walked into the kitchen.

Scott took the envelope into his study and placed it carefully, squarely on his desk. He sat and looked at it for some time. He knew that he was not mistaken; it really was from Papa. Somewhere inside he had always known that this letter would arrive, or something like it. He knew this not only because his grandfather had left things unfinished between them, but because of the visit he'd received from the mad ghost of Papa's dead friend.

Scott stood and pulled the window blinds aside, watching for shadows in the garden, shapes on the garage roof. And for a while, hating himself, hating whatever it was his grandfather had left unsaid, he listened for Helen's cry of fear.

He knew he should burn the letter. But he also knew that Papa had guided him better than that.

By the time Helen came in fifteen minutes later with a mug of tea and a plate of toast, Scott had read the letter three times.

“I think it's a set of directions.”

“Directions on a map, you mean?”

“Sort of. Instructions, but directions nonetheless. And there are some strange markings, some signs, shapes. I don't know. Here, you read it.”

“Are you sure?” Helen's eyes were wide, her brows raised, and she could see what an honor Scott was affording her. This was a personal letter, and it had traveled through the years to reach him here, now, where he sat only three decades younger than his grandfather had been at the time of his death.

Scott nodded. For a moment he considered the danger he might be placing Helen in from reading this, but only for an instant. Perhaps it was selfishness or fear, but he convinced himself it was love that made him wish her to be involved.

She took the letter and read it through, standing very still.

Scott stared from the window out into their garden. Was he out there now, that mad old thing? He had not seen him again since that first time just after the funeral, but there had often been a feeling that he was there, flitting across the background, still searching for whatever it was he claimed Scott's grandfather had yet to reveal.
Where is the Chord of Souls?
he had asked.
He had haunted Scott as surely as a ghost in any film he'd seen or book he'd read, stalking his mind if not actually appearing to him. He inhabited his nightmares. He had an influence over Scott's whole life, and had probably changed it more than Scott dared admit.