People of the Dark (14 page)

"Oh? Who's them?"

Again she gestured behind her. "The ones who visited Granada twenty years ago."

"And did what?"

"And did what you see there." She sounded annoyed.

"Are you telling me you know who they were?"

"Yes."

"By name?"

"No. That's not relevant."

"Oh?"

"The earth doesn't give her children names, Jack. We do that. The earth does what it does. It produces."

"And what does the earth produce? Precisely."

"It produces people. Like you and me and my brother Norm and Robin Graham."

"But those are real people, and they have real names." I realized that I was humoring her and I didn't like it.

She grinned quickly, impatiently. "Yes, of course they do," she said. "Everyone has names." I got the idea, then, that she had begun humoring
me
. "People are given names. Or they take them. And they live with them, are known by them, and die with them."

"You're being awfully cryptic."

"No, I'm not. Listen to me. The things I'm telling you are true."

We got to the end of the deer path, and hesitated. I said to her, before we turned and started back, "But you haven't told me anything, Sarah."

"I've told you that the earth produces, and I've told you what it produces, and what happened here, Jack. Listen to me."

But I didn't listen to her. I didn't listen to several people. Like Harry Simms, for instance, when he swept out of the woods and screamed that he couldn't breathe. I thought he was nuts. I thought he was playing a game. How was I to know what was happening to him?

And I didn't listen to Erika, either. Not closely enough, anyway, not in the way I should have listened to her. It wouldn't have made any difference, after all. Once the pail of water is thrown, you can't recall it. But I could have helped her through it, I could have eased her agony somehow.

And I didn't listen to my mother, either, although the knowledge she had was amorphous, little bits and pieces of suspicion that I doubt she'd ever have added up to anything meaningful.

It all adds up, now.

The master bedroom here at the house is big and rectangular, with high ceilings and two tall multi-paned windows, kitty-corner to each other (one has a southern exposure; the other faces west), a huge walk-in closet, and light green walls. It once had a fireplace on the north wall, but it was plastered over, so only its outlines show. Residue from the oil heat has collected in front of the wall studs, where concentrations of moisture attracted it—so, on certain days, the green walls look as if very faint gray bars have been painted on them.

Erika never liked this room. She says that she feels uncomfortable in it, trapped in it—I never understood why—so, after a while, I grew accustomed to waking very early and finding that she was not in the bed, that she'd gone into the guest room to sleep or into the music room, which has a cot in it and is warmer than the guest room, anyway.

The night after I talked to Sarah I woke at a little past 2:00 and found that Erika was not in the bed with me. I wanted her in the bed with me; I needed her with me. So I got up and went looking for her. I looked in the guest bedroom first. It's down the hall from the master bedroom. I opened the door, peeked in, and even in the dim light filtering through the heavy curtains from a spotlight over the side porch—which we kept burning for safety's sake—I knew that the room was empty. I said, anyway, "Erika?" and flicked the overhead light on. The room was empty, the bed untouched. I went downstairs to the music room, found that it was empty, too. I cursed. "Erika?" I called. "Erika, where are you?" I got no answer. I decided that I had better make a search of the house.

I found her in the dining room, seated at the head of the table, in the captain's chair, with her back to the large window that looks out on the side yard and the woods beyond. She'd drawn the curtains open on this window. And when I flicked the light on, she said, "No, keep it off, Jack," so I turned it off. She gestured with her head toward the window. "Look out there."

I looked. The spotlight over the side porch was lighting the whole area nicely. I could see our three crab apple trees—the closest had a distinct whitish cast to it, from the spotlight—and our bird feeders (two of which are miniature houses on long steel "squirrel proof" poles), the small gray picnic table that we'd brought from Syracuse, the aged wooden bridge over the narrow creek. I could see the tufted, hulking suggestion of the woods beyond, as well, and above them the belt of the constellation Orion, just barely visible in the glare of the
spotlamp
.

I'said
to Erika, "I'm looking. What am I supposed to see?"

She turned in her chair, stared out the window for several seconds, turned back. "Oh," she said, her voice low and apologetic, "they're gone."

"They are?"

"Yes."

She stood. She was dressed in a sheer black floor-length nightgown that I'd gotten her for Christmas, and as she drew the curtains shut and the light from the
spotlamp
hit her, it came to me in a rush just why I'd gotten out of bed to find her. "You look awfully sexy, Erika," I said.

"Do I?" she said. "Thanks. You can turn on the light now."

"Uh-huh. But then, you always look sexy, of course." I flicked the light on.

"Of course."

I went over to her, put my hands on her waist. "What was out there?" I ran my hands slowly up and down her torso; my palms touched and lingered on her breasts.

"Deer," she answered, and paused for several seconds. "People, maybe."

I moved back from her a step, my hands on her waist. "People?" I said. "You mean the snowmobilers?"

She shook her head slightly; a little smile appeared on her mouth, as if she were vaguely amused. "No, Jack. Not the snowmobilers. Only a few deer. We've seen them out there before, haven't we?" It was true. When we first moved to the house, a small herd of deer liked to meander up the south side of the creek from across the road to the west; one looked like a fawn of six months or so—a spindly, cute, and skittish little creature. "And sometimes," Erika finished, "they can look pretty spooky, huh?"

"Sure," I said. It was true, too—if the deer were at the fringes of the glare of the
spotlamp
, as they often were, their coats reflected the light unevenly, and made them look tall, white, and quick-moving.

"Want a granola bar?" Erika nodded at the dining room table. I looked; she had half a granola bar on a blue saucer there, and an empty glass—it had obviously had milk in it.

"Is that why you got up, Erika? Because you were hungry?"

She nodded. "Uh-huh. Want some?"

"No. Thanks," I said.

"Oh?" She paused briefly; a sensuous grin started on her lips. "What do
you
want?"

"What do you think I want?"

"I think I want you," she said. "I think we want each other." It was a phrase we used to use quite a lot. "And I think that being spooked makes me horny, Jack."

She rarely used the word
horny
, and I liked it when she did. I whispered, "I didn't know that. That's nice to know."

She pushed against me—pelvis to pelvis. She said nothing.

"How horny does it make you, Erika?" I pushed back.

"Stop talking," she said.

"Sure," I said, and we both stopped talking for quite a while.

W
e got back to bed at around 3:00. I remember that she was shivering as we walked up the stairs and I asked her if she was cold. She turned and said, simply, "They
were
people, Jack." But by then it was too late, and I was too tired to care very much.

A
t the end of the first week in April a stocky, moon-faced middle-aged man, wearing a yellow hunting jacket and carrying an over-and-under shotgun, came to the house and asked if he could use the phone. It was mid-morning, a little past eleven. He looked awfully agitated. He was even sweating a bit, although the temperatures that day hovered at just below fifty, so I asked him why he needed to use the phone.

He shook his head slightly. "No reason," he said. He smelled of gunpowder and cigars; his hunting boots were encased in mud.

"No reason?" I said.

He shook his head again, made a poor attempt at a
Nothing's wrong, really!
kind of smile. "There's been a little accident," he said, and inclined his head to the left. "Someone got shot."

"Oh, Jesus!" I murmured.

"So I need to use the phone"—another poor attempt at a smile—"I need to use the phone," he repeated, his voice quaking noticeably, "to call someone—"

I let him into the house, nodded at the phone on Erika's small desk in the library. "It's over there," I said.

"Thanks," he said, and went to it, picked it up, looked at it a moment, looked confusedly at me. "You think I should call the operator, and then she can call the sheriff, or you think I should call the hospital direct—"

"My God," I cut in, and went quickly over to him, took the phone. "Is the man dead?" I asked.

Another look of confusion. "What man?" he said.

"The man you
shot
, of course."

"I didn't shoot a man. I shot a woman."

"A woman? What woman?"

He shook his head. "I don't know. Some woman. I think she's dead."

"Where is she?"

He pointed toward the road in front of the house. "Across the road. In a gully." He grinned stupidly. "I thought she was a woodchuck. I shot her because I thought she was a woodchuck. What's your name?"

I put the phone down, put my hand on the barrel of the man's shotgun. "Leave that here, okay?" I said soothingly. "Leave that here, and show me where the woman is."

I
t had rained heavily the night before, reducing the last snow to sullen grayish patches at the bases of trees and around the garage and house. Much of the rest of the landscape was dark green, wet, and mashed flat from the weight of the snow.

At the crest of the mountain across the road the trees were white with ice. Now and again, the sun peeked out from behind a mantle of low, gray clouds, and its light danced crazily through the ice.

The hunter nodded. "That's real pretty, don't you think?"

We were halfway to the road then, halfway down the long, muddy slope of the driveway. I could see his footprints coming up it. "Where is the woman you shot?" I asked.

He pointed obliquely to the right, where the path leading up to Martin's house started. "She's over there, Mr. Harris."

"How'd you know my name?" I said.

He nodded at my mailbox. "Easy enough," he said.

I got my foot stuck in mud at the edge of the driveway. I tugged hard to free it, but without luck. I leaned over, pulled with both hands—which only made the suction stronger. The hunter didn't appear to notice this, and was at the road before he seemed to realize I was no longer walking with him. He looked around at me, grinned, lumbered back, shook his head slowly.

I said, "This is stupid."

"
Suckin
' you right up, ain't it, Mr. Harris?"

"This is incredibly stupid." I found it very difficult to believe that I couldn't get my foot out of the mud.

"You got to
ease
it out," he said.

"For God's sake, I've tried
easing
it out."

"No, you ain't. Just relax."

I tried to relax.

He said, "
Relax
, Mr. Harris!"

I relaxed.

"Let the mud do what it wants to do, Mr. Harris. It'll relax, too—you wait and see."

I said nothing. I didn't like the idea that I was receiving Good Country Wisdom from a near-idiot who'd shot a woman because he'd mistaken her for a woodchuck.