Charles Grant - Night Songs

• Название: Night Songs
• Автор: Charles Grant
• Жанр: Ужасы и Мистика

SOMEWHERE IN THE NIGHT THEY ARE SINGING SONGS OF DEATH…

Colin Ross, twice thwarted in love, once abandoned, quit the mainland for Haven's End, a wounded soul on an idyllic island, seeking to heal his life.

But instead of peace, he is hurled into chaos. Some dark and ancient hatred, some evil force is unleashed, wreaking vengeance on the islanders, mangling the living and mutilating the dead.

And, as the piercing songs rise to meet the roaring wind, Colin Ross, against his will, is sucked into the raging storm.

---

She wore a long black dress splattered with dried mud and sand, with long ragged tears at the hem and across one shoulder. Her feet were bare. Her hair was tangled-like bristles, he thought-and laced with torn blades of grass, grayed by sand as if she'd rolled in it all night. Her eyes were hidden, but he felt her staring at him, saw her lips parted and her tongue running slowly over her teeth. One hand clutched at a stiff fold of the dress, the other lay flat against her stomach as she walked.

Amy instantly bolted for the house, her brother only a few yards behind her. Lilla ignored them.

Matt could barely move. He rose slowly, seeing she could easily cut him off before he reached the safety of the lawn. She made no move to intercept his friends, only glided across the lawn until she reached the end of the dock. He swallowed, and his right hand brushed nervously against his pants. One by one, the gravel stones fell from his grip, bounced off the wood and dropped soundlessly into the water.

The gulls whirled and shrieked.

One of them swooped down at her, banked, and its wing brushed hard through her hair. She ignored it.

Matt looked up at the agitated birds, pulling his lips between his teeth and trying not to breathe too loudly. He wished Amy and Tommy would find their father and bring him out here; he wished his mother had told him to come right home after school.

A second gull dove and managed to jab at her shoulder, parting the black fabric to expose a line of pale flesh and a thinner line of running red.

She ignored it.

And they kept screaming.

Matt swallowed again and managed a weak, "Hello, Lilla."

He could almost see the shudder that rippled up from her feet to the vague bulge of her chest, the shudder that made her sweep back the hair to show him her eyes. They were dark, and they were pleading, and he found himself moving toward her. He didn't want to go. But if he could wait until he was only a foot or two from her, he could leap from the dock into the shallows and scramble up to the grass. By that time, Mr. Fox would be outside and yelling and Lilla would go away.

He couldn't make the jump.

He stopped close enough for her to reach out and touch his head lightly. Her hand was cold, as if she'd just come from winter.

The gulls swirled.

The haze deepened to clouds that promised another storm.

"Little Matt," she said then, and he frowned because in spite of her looks she sounded perfectly normal. He didn't understand. He knew what people who looked like this should sound like-deep voices that had echoes, with thunder all around them and lightning outside the window. But she sounded just like the old Lilla who gave him ice cream and laughed, who put extra cheese in his sandwiches and extra catsup on his hamburgers.

"Colin," she said, urgently now.

He could feel the passing wind of a diving gull at his back.

* * *

She gripped his shoulders tightly and shook him. "Colin!"

He cried out softly and struggled, breaking one hand free and looking up to demand she leave him alone. What he saw made him shove at her chest in a sudden startled panic. She released him, and he backed away hastily.

Her eyes. They were white.

No color. Just white.

The back door slammed, and he heard Mr. Fox bellowing Lilla's name. She leaned down to him and said, "Colin!" turned and ran back into the trees.

Her feet were bare.

When he stepped off the dock, he could see the grass lightly stained with blood.

* * *

"Now what," said Garve Tabor, "would you like me to do, huh?"

The best answer Peg had was a helpless, weak, smiling shrug. Despite her anger, it hadn't been her idea to come here at all; Colin had insisted. As soon as she had finished her description of the meeting and he'd told her of his phone call, his eyes had gone dark. Wolf dark. His hands had become fists that pressed against the counter, and she could hear his heel tapping angrily on the floor. She wouldn't have minded so much if he had shouted or sworn, but he had done neither. He had only glared at his hands and taken several deep breaths as if preparing to scream. His control was unnerving. And when Muriel came in, he'd snatched up his coat and dragged Peg out the door.

"Well?" Garve said.

Peg only shrugged again.

The office was small. Two wooden desks side by side a few feet back from the entrance, a pair of ladder-back chairs she and Colin were using, gray metal file cabinets along the left-hand wall, a bulletin board on the right under which was a low table holding the dispatcher's radio unit. There was a single door in the rear wall leading to the three cells in back. A gun cabinet beside it, its glass front locked, the rifles and shotguns inside gleaming with new polish. Light came from four white-encased fluorescent tubes that ran half the width of the ceiling.

Tabor was behind his desk, leaning back, his hands clasped on his paunch. His tan shirt was open at the throat, his gun belt lying on the empty desk blotter.

Colin, who had shoved his chair against the wall by the bulletin board and stared blindly out the large front window, shook his head. Peg, directly in front of the chief, sighed.

"I don't know, Garve. It's-"

"Jesus," Colin said, "can't you run them out of town or something? My God, they actually threatened her!"

Tabor brushed at his forelock futilely and shook his head as if he were dealing with children. "I heard what you told me, Col, but if Peg is right, the threat-if there was one-"

"If..?"

"— was implied, and I'd be up to my butt in false arrest suits if I did anything now. It's a subjective thing, Col, Peg, and there's really nothing I can do."

"Talk to Cameron, then," she suggested.

"About what? His friends?" He waved her silent as he straightened and pushed a closed folder to one side on his blotter. Then he opened a side drawer and pulled out a handful of fountain pens, their caps long since missing. His chair swiveled around and he tossed one at the bulletin board. It stuck in the cork like an ungainly dart.

"I'll tell you something."

"Please," Colin said sourly, moving his chair aside when a second pen nearly^pinned his ear to the wall.

"You were talking to Mike Lombard and Theo Vincent, right? Sweet fellas, both of them. Lombard has oil for a smile, and Vincent looks like he eats nothing but sugar."

Peg shifted impatiently, but was too fascinated by his errant marksmanship to say anything in protest.

When the last fountain pen skewered a wanted poster yellowed with age, Garve snorted and faced her.

"Peg, they're nasty, the both of them. I know it. I talked with them back when Jim was killed. But I can't ride them out of town because in the first place, I'm not Gary Cooper, as I told Colin last night; and in the second, there's no law against visiting someone in her home and passing on information. You chose to make what they said a threat, but Lombard is an expensive lawyer who would have me beachcombing in a week if he wanted to. And I'll tell you the truth, I wouldn't want anything but a smoking gun for evidence before I faced Theo Vincent."

"Jesus," Colin muttered in disgust.

Peg, however, saw the man's point and knew he was correct. And perhaps she'd been right all along; perhaps it was the mood the day had gotten itself into. She sighed noncommittally and rose from the chair. Colin muttered under his breath and raised his eyebrows in a shrug.

"You feel it, too," she said suddenly, without knowing why. He nodded. "Yeah."

Garve looked astonished. "You talking about the weird that's come over this town?"

"Weird?" Peg said.

"That's what Annalee calls it."

"Annalee, huh?" Colin said, wide-eyed and innocent.

"Yes," Garve said. He reached for a pile of message slips and waved them briefly at the phone. "She says Doc's been working her tail off all afternoon. A million people coming in with complaints that don't exist, I got a million calls here from folks who've decided to go away for the weekend and would I keep an eye on the house. El's at the ferry now, as a matter of fact. The second fender-bender this afternoon. Lord, if they had water wings, they'd stick 'em on their bumpers and try to drive across, the jerks. Sterling's probably making a fortune." He glanced up at the round clock fixed over the door. "Four now. If this keeps up, we'll be the only ones left by sunset."

"The storm," Colin suggested. "You said there might be one of those Carolina somethings-"

"Screamers."

"Yeah. That could be it. And Gran, and… well, I guess a night on the town is just what they need."

"Sure," Garve grumbled as the telephone rang. He listened for a moment, looked heavenward for mercy, and muttered a few words Peg didn't hear. Then he dropped the receiver and spread his palms in the air. "I was waiting for it."

"What?" she asked.

"Reverend Otter. That goddamned Doberman's been keeping him from his beauty nap. Jesus, if I've told Hattie once, I've told her a hundred times to keep that fool animal inside. God!"

Peg laughed, more from abrupt relief than from thinking the situation comic; as long as these two had felt what Garve had called the 'weird,' then it really was possible she'd overreacted to Cameron's visit. She nodded then when Colin reminded her of the promise of a ride, glad for the chance to be alone with him for a time. When they reached the door the phone rang, and Tabor swore. When they reached the sidewalk, a mud-spattered jeep braked loudly at the curb. Alex Fox was driving and Matt was huddled in the seat beside him.

As soon as Peg saw the dazed look on her son's face, her throat went dry and her skin turned cold. She rushed to his side and gathered him silently into her arms, looking to Fox as he climbed from his seat.

"Lilla," the red-haired man said. "She come out of the woods and scared the kids half to death."

She stroked the boy's cold cheeks, his rigid shoulders, brushed his dark hair away from his eyes. "Darling, are you all right?"

"She didn't touch him, I don't think," Fox said, standing at the curb as Garve came from the office. "I chased her off," he said to the chief, "but Jesus, Garve, God knows what she might've done. Damn, she's crazy!"

Colin stood beside her. "Matt, you okay?"

The boy nodded quickly several times.

"Did she say anything?"

He nodded again.

Peg cupped his chin with a palm and turned his head toward her. "What, darlin'? What did she say?"

"Colin," the boy whispered. "I'm here, pal."

"No. She said 'Colin.' "

"Anything else?" Garve asked from over her shoulder. "No."

Peg eased him from the jeep, a protective arm hard around his shoulders. "I'm going to take him home," she said tightly. "Then I want to talk to Lilla."

"I'll go with you," Colin said.

"Don't bother," she told him, and led Matt around the corner as she whispered to him gently, telling him it was all right and nobody was hurt and Lilla still feels bad about Gran and something like that sometimes makes people do strange things.

Matt pulled away from her. Slowly, not abruptly. He shoved his hands into his pockets and stared at the sidewalk, the curb, the sidewalk again. A pebble got in his way, and he kicked it aside. She looked back only once, faltering when she saw Colin storming around the corner of the hedge, heading for the Run. But damn it, what did he expect her to think? Does Lilla ask for help from someone who's known her all her life? Does she ask for Peg, who had held her when her parents died, and fought with Gran to let her go to college, and was more than a friend, practically a surrogate mother? No, of course not. She frightens Peg's only son to death-God knows why she picked on him of all people-and then she asks for Colin. Colin Ross the artist. Colin Ross the man she's only known for five years. Not Peg. Colin.

A year ago she had seen them on the beach, sitting there, watching the waves, Lilla talking, Colin listening, Lilla suddenly turning to kiss him on the cheek for whatever response he'd given. He'd laughed. She'd kissed him again, was on her feet and running. Peg, as with the first time she'd seen them, hadn't the nerve to confront him for an explanation. It was, of course, all very innocent. Lilla was only a child (seventeen, Peg, and hardly a child), and everyone knew she had a crush on the artist.

But Colin never said a word, and Lilla never said a word, and of course there was nothing to it, and she'd felt cheap for her inadvertent spying, and now here it was again and… she blinked once, slowly, and almost exclaimed aloud: My God, Peg Fletcher, you're actually jealous. You're so frightened for Matt you've made yourself jealous.

Good God, a hell of a thing.

"Mom, what's for supper?"

"Crow, my darlin'," she said wryly. Good Lord, jealous; I haven't felt that in years.

He grimaced and stuck out his tongue. "That's rotten."

"Yes," she said, impulsively hugging him. "Tell me all about it."

She followed his gaze as he looked at the sky. The storm clouds-white slashed with black and reaching for the blue-had drained off all the haze. And over the mainland the slowly-sinking sun glided broad golden beams to the tops of the trees. It was so perfect it was unnatural, and she wasn't surprised when Matt told her, "I don't like this day, Mom. It doesn't feel right, y'know?"

"Yes," she said quietly, "I know exactly what you mean."

At their front door he looked fearfully over his shoulder.

"It's all right," she assured him. "Lilla's not there." He frowned, then nodded in silent contradiction. Peg closed the door behind them, and made sure it was locked.

* * *

Frankie crouched behind a wall of red-thorned shrubs and scratched at a pimple breaking on his cheek. He frowned. He stared at the back of the boarding house and wondered if Mayfair was working in the kitchen, or sitting in the front room, or sitting on the porch talking to herself. The house was brown and three stories high, bay windows and additions everywhere you looked. There were dim lights here and there, and dazzling reflections from the sun lowering to the treetops. There were no cars in the driveway, but that didn't mean a thing; Mayfair didn't drive. And he figured there wasn't a car big enough to hold her.

If she were in the kitchen, he was dead, simple as that.

The birdbath was halfway between him and the back porch, and nothing but dead grass and weeds to hide him if she saw him.

Maybe, he thought, it would be a good idea to wait for dark. But if he waited for dark, Cart and Denise would be holed up in one of the empty motels, going at it on one of the beds, taking a little dope, laughing at nothing and calling him a shithead.

No. He had to do it now. He had to take the chance that the concrete bowl would lift off the pedestal easily and wouldn't be all that heavy to carry. Hell, if he did it right, he could roll it like a hoop.

He stared until his eyes watered, thinking about Denise and Carter and his mother and his old man, and he turned around twice when he heard the squirrels bounding through the leaves in the shadows behind him. After the second time, he realized he was losing his nerve.