Faerie Tale (21 page)

“No, you owe me a dinner. I found him.”

“Oh?” said Mark, now interested. He’d be relieved to find any concrete evidence to bear out Gabbie’s experiences. “Did you speak to him?”

“A little tough. He’s been dead awhile.”

“Okay, talk.”

“I got to town and asked around if there were any blacksmiths in the area. The local tack shop owner was very helpful. There’s three smiths that work the area, and all live in other towns close by. Then he asked why I didn’t use the phone book, so I had to explain that the smith I wanted might be Amish and wouldn’t have a phone. He said he’d never seen any Amish smiths, and even if there were one, he assured me, it was unlikely they’d find a lot of work in White Horse. The population is decidedly mainstream and, I think, slightly bigoted. In any event, later on I met this old codger, name of Ry Winston, who remembers his father talking about Wayland. He steered me to the graveyard, and there was a
small stone marker with Smith’s name. Seems he died in 1905.”

Mark shook his head and groaned. He took a drink and said, “Just what we need. Ghosts.” He frowned. “Why is that date familiar?”

“I’ll get to that.”

Mark sighed. Gary had a flair for the dramatic and hated to be rushed in telling a story. “So we’ve got a spirit encounter?”

“We can pretty well rule out a bizarre scam. If it is, it’s a world record for off-the-wall ideas. I can’t see any point in impersonating this guy. I did a lot of checking. Smith was a regular ‘local character,’ so there were lots of stories among the old folks, Ry’s father’s generation, and Ry had heard most of them. And the library had some pretty interesting stuff. An obit from the local paper was pretty frank on his reputation. It took me half the day to find the issues I wanted in their morgue.” He drank and said, “Seems old Wayland was sort of a local Wee Geordie, the strongest kid on the block. He won all those weird contests they used to have, you know, like tossing horses, biting anvils in half, lifting buildings, or whatever.”

Mark laughed. Gary had a tendency to colorful images when he got going. Gary continued, “One of the strangest things about this is that the guy lived locally for only half a year or so.”

“He must have been something for old Ry’s father to remember so much about him.”

“Notorious, to say the least, a world-class hell-raiser, almost a legend in his own time. He worked out of the local saloon, the Rooster Tavern, where he tied up his wagon. Rented a loft over the taproom there. He allegedly died in 1905, but they never found the body. He vanished one night after a party. Supposedly, he got too drunk to function and fell into the river near the tavern. The marker was put up as a memorial by his local pub buddies. Seems he was the leader of the equivalent of that day’s biker crowd. ‘Ruffians of all stripe, teamsters, field hands, and unemployed layabouts,’ in the words of the paper. He also, according to old Ry, jumped every pretty
girl in town regularly, including a fair number of the young wives. Seems there was some mystery about it, ’cause it wasn’t hushed up, and that’s something Ry can’t understand. They’re a pretty straitlaced lot now, so they must have been downright puritanical back then. But consider this: I said to Ry it’s strange no husband tried to blow him away. Even if he was the local strong man, a rifle from behind a tree is a hell of an equalizer. Ry’s answer was to shrug and say, ‘That was Wayland. Pa said no man’d raise a hand against him. He had the power.’”

Mark considered. “What power?” He was silent for a while, then said, “What else?”

“With all that sex, I asked Ry if Wayland might have some descendants around, and Ry said, ‘Old Wayland never did leave kids, on one side of the blanket or the other.’ The best Ry could figure was that the old boy was sterile, and that’s why the ladies liked him so much, no problem with getting preggers.”

Mark said, “So he was a Casanova.”

“Yes, but here’s why the date tickles your sensitive curiosity. He showed up the same day as Kessler.”

Mark’s expression showed keen interest. “What?”

“I found mention of Kessler’s arrival, a ‘German gentleman seeking investment opportunities,’ in the same paper that announced Smith’s setting up for business. Both men arrived on May 4, 1905.”

“But Kessler didn’t come to Pittsville until June 2.”

“Right. Kessler rented a room for a few weeks in White Horse, at the Rooster Tavern—part of the time we assumed he was still in New York City—then pulled up and came to Pittsville.”

“Okay, mark that down as coincidence for a moment. What else?”

“Here’s the best story of all. A few years earlier someone imported a bunch of poor Germans—sort of an unofficial indentured servitude, working off passage with several years’ labor. It was probably illegal, and just as probably the town officials were in on it. Anyway, there’s one real juicy story about Wayland, a local matron, and a German maid. Seems one night the matron walked into
the kitchen and found Wayland humping the maid’s brains out on the kitchen floor while she was supposed to be serving hors d’oeuvre to guests. Anyway, there was a row, and it turned out he was boffing the old gal as well, and that made for just the sort of scandal these little towns love so much. But the kicker is the matron was the mayor’s wife and the girl was Helga Dorfmann. The mayor married her off to Kessler just after that to get her out of the house and, it seems, out of town.”

“Kessler’s wife?”

“None other. They married less than a week later.”

“So there was a good chance Kessler and Smith knew each other, or at least knew of each other.” Mark sat silently for a while, then laughed a beleaguered laugh. “Why couldn’t you have found me an Amish smith, Gary!” he said with mock anger. “Okay, so we have a regular folk hero in New York who sounds like a match for the one in Uffington, But what do we have to link him to the Wayland Smith that Gabbie met?”

“How about his wagon being pretty much as Gabbie described it to you?”

“You saw it?”

“In the paper. The picture was old and grainy, but it was there. They shot a picture of him after he ate a tree or something in a Fourth of July contest. And his horse was an old dapple-grey.”

“I don’t suppose you got a copy?”

With a grin and a flourish, Gary produced a photocopy. The reproduction was bad, but there was the smith standing before his wagon. The caption read: “Wayland Smith, recent arrival to White Horse, victor in the Independence Day horseshoeing contest.”

“What do you think?” Mark looked disturbed. “Para-psychological phenomena? Is Gabbie seeing ghosts? Is she picking up on some sort of psychic field in the area? Maybe we got evidence of our first true time fugue, and for a while she passed back to 1905? Or he came forward in time for a few minutes? An other-life experience?” He sighed in resignation. “I don’t know what to think.”

“I don’t know either, but rule out subconscious suggestion,
hysterical self-delusion, and the other hypnotic schtick. Gabbie’s new here and has not heard those stories. I doubt ten people here in Pittsville have.”

Mark drummed on the arm of the chair. “Maybe she’d let us test her for paranormal abilities.”

Gary looked hard at Blackman. “I’ve known you too long, Mark. You’ve already thought of something. You just don’t want to tell me.”

Mark covered his eyes as if tired. After a moment of silence, he said, “You’re right. Let me think for a while.”

“Okay, you think. I’ve got to call Ellen. I’m late and I owe her one.”

Gary hurried upstairs to use the phone in his room. Mark sat alone, nursing his scotch while he pondered an answer forming in his mind. It was so fantastic he wanted to exhaust every answer more probable. And there were still too many blanks. He sat back and suddenly wished he had stayed in experimental psych as an undergrad. Rats and pigeons never gave one this much trouble. Or this much potential for terror.

The rain pounded. It beat on the boys and Bad Luck like a thousand tiny hammers, insistent, unrelenting, stinging eyes and somehow getting up noses, making them sneeze. Patrick and Sean marched purposefully through the woods, drenched to the skin already. The rain was cool but not yet chilling. Their moods matched, caught between irritation at the rain-out and delight in getting sopping wet and muddy with a good excuse. They had never seen a sudden summer thundershower in California to match this one. The peals were deafening and the lightning flashes impressive. The dim, late afternoon light, almost forgotten behind the thunderclouds, made distances odd; the woods looked flat and impossibly dense. Bowers became caverns of menacing gloom, with familiar boles
now sinister shapes of black against dark grey. The boys took delight in the delicious scare the shadowy woods provided, as if they were embarking upon an adventure of gigantic proportions. Bad Luck seemed not to mind the rain, or at least he was more caught up in the boys’ fun than in concern over wet fur.

They cut across Erl King Hill, as usual in coming back from the park, and when they topped the hill, a staggering blast of lightning and thunder caused them to halt. As one they jumped, for this display was considerably more terrifying than those before. Patrick let out a yell, something between a shriek and battle cry, and ran down the hill, Sean a step behind. Halfway down the hillock, Patrick clutched his chest and fell, shouting, “I’m hit!” He rolled, and Sean rolled after him. Both boys reached the bottom covered in wet grass, mud, and stickers. They were now a complete mess. Bad Luck barked in joy and nuzzled first one brother, then the other, licking faces already wet. Patrick leaped up and ran to the trail that led home.

The rain drove them on, an insistent pressure. Where drops fell unobstructed by branches, they struck muddy ground, exploding upward in rebound, splattering the boys with droplets of mud. The cuffs of their jeans turned black. Where the drops struck branches, they gathered, combining, then shot downward larger, somehow wetter, and struck the boys with an audible plop. Never had the twins known quite so magic a rain. Even while menacing, it was the most wonderful, most excellent, best ever rain.

Patrick veered off the trail and down the bank, toward a shortcut they used across the creek. Sean yelled after his brother, who ignored him. Sean didn’t know if Patrick chose not to hear or couldn’t because of the sound of the rain and the wind in the trees, but he was upset at the slight.

At the base of the cut in the woods he grabbed Patrick, swinging him around. “Hey!”

“What!”

“Don’t go down there.”

“Why not?”

“We got to go back and use the bridge. Jack said there could be floods.”

Patrick gifted his brother with a look that said his concern was unfounded and resulted from lack of nerve rather than thoughtful concern over risk. “It’s too soon. The rain just started a half hour ago. Boy, you sure can be chicken sometimes.”

Sean stood speechless. There was something he fought to recall about Jack’s warning, but he couldn’t remember—something about rain in the hills. Patrick turned and walked down the short distance to the edge of the stream, halting there. The stream was now swollen to ankle depth or more, and the swift-moving water presented a different picture from the meandering rills they were used to seeing. Bad Luck waited, halfway between Patrick and Sean, uncertain which brother to follow. Patrick hesitated, seemingly on the verge of turning back, but he caught sight of his brother and his decision was made. He plunged into the water.

“Patrick!” Sean yelled. “Mom’s going to get you!”

Patrick waded out, finding the water already up to his knees. “Why? You going to tell?” He turned to face his more timid brother, a defiant look on his face. “Huh?”

The rain had begun in the hills two days before, at first a gentle sprinkling, but growing in strength each hour. Pools formed in the rocks, gathering until they found escape downward. Trickles became rivulets, which gathered into streams. Near Wurtsburg the level of the water in the flood control basin had risen until the operator decided to bleed it off and opened the valve. That small flood rushed down the usually dry stream bed toward Munson Springs. At Dowling Mills the water swirled down a broken culvert, diverted to a small creek that turned it toward Pittsville. At the north end of the Fairy Woods, the water gathered behind a clog of branches, leaves, mud, and debris. It leaked through, causing the stream which ran below the Troll Bridge to rise as thousands of gallons of water raced over normally dry rocks. Then the surge from Wurtsburg, turned aside at Dowling Mills, struck the clog of wood and brush. The inadver
tent dam held, then suddenly disintegrated and was swept away. A crest of water two and a half feet higher than before rolled down the stream bed.

A deep thunderpeal and the masking noise of rain was counterpointed by a more ominous sound, a rolling, surging rumble. Patrick hesitated, and that moment trapped him, for he turned to look upstream, rather than move toward either bank.

Sean looked where his brother’s eyes fastened, and down the gully the wall of water moved. “Patrick!” he shrieked as the water engulfed his brother. He scrambled down the bank, seeking to reach Patrick.

The water was little more than waist-high, but it knocked Patrick down, then picked up the boy and bore him along. Sean watched his brother’s head vanish below the roiling brown foam. With a cry of terror he jumped forward, grabbing Bad Luck, who had been about to leap into the water after Patrick. Sean’s mind reeled, but he knew that no matter what Patrick’s fate, the lab would also be swept away. He pulled hard on the dog’s collar and scrambled back up the bank, his feet churning the mud as he sought to race to the Troll Bridge.

The rain turned everything to a chiaroscuro, a grey haze devoid of color, and suddenly Sean was lost. Crying in terror, he shouted his brother’s name while he spun, seeking the path he had stood upon a moment before. Bad Luck hesitated and with a bark bounded off between two trees. Sean ran after the dog, hoping he knew where the path lay.

Patrick choked as he fought vainly against the force of the water; then he came up, spitting and coughing. The stream wasn’t that deep, but it moved with staggering force against the little boy’s body. And the rocks seemed uniformly slippery, so that no handhold was possible. He tried to shout for help, but each time he opened his mouth, he sucked in water. Trying to keep his head, he struggled against the stream, but in vain. Something he had been taught while playing at Santa Monica beach, about rip currents in the ocean, intruded on his panic-stricken thoughts, and he attempted to move at a right
angle to the flow. All he succeeded in doing was turning himself in circles and bouncing off rocks. The boy was terrified, and his natural bent for keeping calm was escaping him. Then suddenly he was in darkness.