Spirit (35 page)

He walked back to the car, and cleared the freshly-fallen snow off the windscreen with the side of his glove. He opened the driver's door, and stood waiting for the little girl to follow him, but she remained where she was, staring at him, frozen to the bone.

‘Will you please just come?' Miles pleaded. ‘I can't leave you standing here, now can I?'

‘She breathed!' the girl called out.

‘She breathed? What do you mean? Who breathed?'

‘She breathed on the young ones as she passed,' the girl told him.

Jesus, thought Miles, this kid's touched in the head. He was inclined to leave her and find the nearest telephone so that he could call the police. The trouble was, the temperature had dropped so steeply that he was afraid she would die of exposure if he left her out here very much longer, dressed as she was. Supposing he called the police but the police couldn't find her? How could he live with himself if she died?

There was nothing for it. He would have to pick her up bodily and carry her into the car.

He walked back towards her but she lifted her arm again and this time she pointed directly at him.

‘She breathed and they died from her breath!'

‘All right, sugar,' he said, trying to reassure her. ‘I know you're cold. I know you're exhausted. I'm just going to help you into the car, okay? Then we can get you all nice and toasty-warm again.'

The snow was pelting against Miles's back. The temperature was so low that the power-lines cracked and dropped from the utility poles beside the road, thin and rigid and curved. Miles found it almost impossible to breathe: the air was so cold that his lungs literally cringed, because they didn't want to take it in. His nose and his chin were encrusted with ice, and lumpy little beads of ice formed in the corner of his eyes.

‘For Christ's sake, kid!' he shouted at the little girl. ‘You
have
to get into the car!'

Her face was white and wild. She was staring at him in such a terrifying way that he felt as if sharpened fingernails were dragging down his back. She kept on pointing, kept on pointing, and he realized then that she wasn't pointing at him at all, but something behind him.

‘What?' he demanded. He was too frightened even to look.

He heard footsteps. They sounded soft and heavy and intentional. Whommp, whommp, whommp, whommp, soft and heavy and very intentional.

‘What?' he whispered. ‘
What?
'

He turned, and almost lost his balance. Towering above him, only a dozen feet away, was a huge black shape, hooded, cowled, and crackling with unimaginable cold. He couldn't understand what it was, but it was approaching him with such determination that he knew that it meant him serious harm. He shouted out, ‘
No
!' and started to run away from it, but it kept on billowing towards him, its cape blowing out behind it like the wings of a giant manta ray.

Oh, shit
, he thought, and bounded through the snow in giant, cumbersome leaps, swinging his arms from side to side to keep his balance. He knew that he didn't stand a chance of escaping; he could hear it bearing down on him. But there was nothing else that he could do, except to run.

Oh, shit
, he thought.
I didn't want to die like this
.

The black shape came rumbling after him. He could
smell
how cold it was, it froze the roof of his mouth, and clogged up his nostrils. He reached the Housatonic Bridge, leaping and jumping through the calf-deep snow, a hurdler, a ballet-dancer. He didn't know where he was trying to go. He didn't know how he could possibly escape. But the thing that was following him was cold and terrible and felt like evil, and he was quite sure that it wanted to tear him apart. Its cape
literally thundered through the snowstorm, yards and yards of heavy black material, like velvet funeral curtains being shaken out. Snow flew off its outline: snow flew out of its hidden face.

‘Oh God preserve me. God preserve me,' Miles panted. He reached the bridge and gripped one of the crossbars to support himself. His breath was blasting out of his mouth in agonized clouds of ice. He heard the shape so close behind now that his whole being seemed to be shaken by the vibration of its approach.

Somehow, he found the strength to take another step; but when he did so he was abruptly pulled back. The palm of his hand had frozen to the steel crossbar, and he couldn't pull it free. He tugged, and tugged again. He twisted his head around, and the black shape was looming right over him now. For an instant, he glimpsed a huge white horselike face that looked as if it had snakes growing out of it. Then the hood fell back and there was blackness once again.

He gripped his left elbow in his right hand, and wedged his right shoulder against one of the bridge's uprights, and heaved. There was an instant when he knew that he could never pull his hand free. Then the skin tore away from palm of his hand, with a sticky crackling sound, revealing red flesh and tendons, and even glimpses of white bone. He screamed: a small, muffled scream. But he tugged his arm again, and the skin tore away at the wrist, and he was free.

He ran. At least, he thought he was running. In fact he was stumble-trudging across the bridge until he was less than halfway.
Imagination
, thought.
This ü all imagination. Not mine, but somebody else's
.

But knowing that it was simply imagination was not enough to save him. He stumbled sideways and his right ankle cracked. It didn't just crack, it shattered, because the bone was frozen. He tried to walk on it, but his sock was filled with nothing but skin and crunchy slush, and the pain was so terrible that he let
out a high, piercing shriek, and toppled over, and hit the roadway, shuddering and kicking, even though it hurt him even more.

The black shape rushed up to him; and hung over him; blotting out the whirling of the snow. Miles stared up at it, his vision gradually dimming because of the cold. His optic fluid was chilling; his blood was sluggish in his veins. He tried to speak but he found it impossible. He felt tired beyond all reason, and death would be welcome. At least he could rest, when he was dead. At least he could sleep.

He was still lying in the roadway when the little girl came hobbling up to him, and stood beside him, watching him with an expression that was almost remorseful.

He looked back at her, but he couldn't speak.

‘I have to protect my sister,' she said.

He understood; but he couldn't nod.

‘I couldn't let anybody hurt her,' the little girl explained. ‘I couldn't let anybody lead her astray.'

Miles tried to close his eyes but the lids were frozen open and the snowflakes fell onto his open pupils and burned them with cold. He knew that he was almost dead. All he could feel was a dull, thick pain, from skull to toes.

‘Do you want me to say a prayer for you?' asked the little girl. ‘Our roses bloom and fade away, Our Infant Lord abides alway; May we be blessed his face to see, And ever little children be!'

She bent over him and stared into his flinching eyes. ‘Did you like that?'

There was a moment in which he hoped that she would simply leave him there, and let him die. But then she stepped smartly back, and beckoned to the black shape that was hanging over both of them.

Miles heard a roar like an approaching express train. He screamed out loud, and fragments of half-frozen lung came
spraying out of his mouth. He was seized by claws that were worse than claws. They were titanically strong, crushing his pelvis into slush, bursting his stomach, exploding his pancreas, turning his intestines into ribbons of ripped-apart tripe.

He was lifted right into the air, and torn apart. Frozen arms were ripped from frozen sockets; legs were twisted off. In only a matter of minutes, there was nothing left of Miles Moreton but stains on the snow, and offal, and hanks of hair.

The little girl stood reflectively beside the bridge. Then she turned around on her bare frostbitten feet and walked off into the snow. The black shape walked close behind, the snow glancing off its shoulders. It wasn't following her. It wasn't subservient. It was walking in the same direction because they were both returning to the same place: the place to which the little girl had pointed, when Miles first stopped for her.

By first light, it had already started to thaw. A pale sun gleamed in a sky the colour of steam. Deputy Jim Hallett was driving towards New Milford when he saw flocks of huge black carrion crows strutting across the highway, close to the Housatonic Bridge. As he approached, they briefly lurched up into the air, but they soon returned to the slushy road surface. They were tearing at something with their beaks, something from which they were determined not to be distracted.

Deputy Hallett stopped the car and climbed out. The first thing he saw was Miles Moreton's face, staring at him eyeless out of the bloodstained snow.

 

 

Laura was sitting in the courtyard, leafing through the latest copy of
Variety
, when Chester appeared wearing a bright lemon-yellow sports coat and carrying an extravagant spray of purple orchids.

‘Hey there, I was hoping you'd be home!' he enthused. He came over and kissed her on top of the head and dropped the orchids onto the table. ‘I was really cut up to hear about your old man. I hate funerals, don't you? Mind you, my old man died a couple of years ago, cancer, and those morticians really did a number on him. He looked more dead when he was alive than he did when he was dead. My sister saw him in his casket and said, “Look at him, doesn't he look well?” '

He sat down uninvited and took out a cigar. Although it was November the temperature was up in the high 70s, and his tanned forehead glistened with perspiration.

‘Beverley must have told you the camera tests were terrific. Sam Persky really loves them. He loves them.'

‘Does that mean I get the part?' asked Laura.

Chester clipped the end off his cigar and took out his lighter. ‘It means you're shortlisted for the shortlist.'

‘What else do I have to do? More tests?'

‘Yes, kind of more tests. You and me have to pow-wow.'

Laura put down her magazine and sat up, smiling. Her curly-hair was brushed back into an Alice-band and she was wearing a tight blue sleeveless V-necked blouse with wide lapels, and a pair of dark blue calico shorts and sapphire sandals.

‘Do you want to talk about it now?' asked Laura.

Chester was busy lighting his cigar. ‘Well . . . not now, I'm
kind of pushed. I just came by to see that you were still just as delicious as you were in the tests. In case my eyes had deceived me, if you know what I mean.'

‘And have they?' asked Laura.

Chester frowned at her as if he didn't understand what she meant. He didn't have a very long span of attention, even for his own conversation. ‘Those flowers are for Beverley. Kind of
muchas gracias:

‘Oh, really?'

‘Your Aunt Beverley is the best man-friend that anyone could ever wish for, believe you me. How about dinner tonight? Are you free? Well, who cares.
Be
free. I'll call by at seven o'clock.'

‘
Then
we can pow-wow?'

Chester stood up, rising through his own clouds of smoke like a rocket taking off from Cape Canaveral. ‘Sure. Then we can pow-wow.'

He left as abruptly as he had come. Laura sat up straight on her sunbed, feeling vaguely uneasy. The courtyard seemed to have grown chillier, and the birds had stopped singing. All she could hear was the traffic. It wasn't so much Chester's unexpected visit that had unsettled her. She didn't know what it was. Ever since her return to Sherman for her father's funeral, she had felt as if she were being watched and followed. She supposed it was probably natural, after a death. Her friend Tilly Makepiece had lost her mother last year, and yet she still heard her singing in the kitchen. Laura hadn't seen any sign of the Peggy-girl since her return, but after she had talked to Elizabeth and Miles Moreton about it, she was sure that her visions had been real, or at least as real as visions could be.

She hadn't yet heard about Miles's death. Until the county coroner returned a verdict on how he had died, Elizabeth had thought it wiser not to tell her, and even then she doubted if she would. Laura had her future to think about. She didn't want to
be unnerved by another horrific death, especially when there was nothing that either of them could do about it.

Laura picked up the orchids and took them into the house to put them in water. Aunt Beverley wasn't here this afternoon. She had gone to the Chateau Marmont to talk to Harrison Carroll the movie columnist about something-or-other. Laura opened the kitchen cupboard and took out the largest receptacle she could find, a turn-of-the-century tall brown glass vase which Aunt Beverley had filched from the set of
Winchester ‘73
.

‘I'm Going To Wash That Man Right Out Of My Hair' was playing on the radio in the living-room. She sang along as she lifted the orchids out of their crackly cellophane and arranged them in the vase. This was it, she thought to herself. Dinner with a famous director, a pow-wow about her part, and then fame at last. She couldn't wait for Aunt Beverley to come back, so that she could tell her.

‘I'm going to
wash
that do-dee-dum-diddle-dee! I'm going to
wash
that wacka-smacka rooty-too tee!'

She had almost finished arranging the orchids when the radio abruptly went dead. She stopped singing, and listened. Silence. Not even the sound of the yuccas rustling, or the yelp of a distant dog. She waited for a moment, and then she left the flowers and walked through to the sitting-room. It was empty, striped with sunlight, with the white lace curtains silently stirring in the faintest of draughts.

She went across to the radio and switched the knob on and off. The speaker crackled as she did so, but that was all. She banged the side of the cabinet with the flat of her hand, the way that she had seen Aunt Beverley ‘fix' it whenever it went wrong; but all she managed to elicit from it was a thin, soft, blowing noise, like the wind behind a tightly-sealed window.