The Pines (27 page)

“What the frig’s going on at this table?” Doris looked up to find Sims glaring down at them, his mustache twitching with outrage. “People comin’ in here for lunch, an my customers is complainin’ you’re takin’ their appetites away. Good Christ, what are those?” He snatched the photos off the table before anyone could stop him. “What the hell kinda thing is ’is to bring inna restaurant?”

Larry and Jack took advantage of the diversion to edge away from the table. Hopelessly, Athena watched as they headed for the door.

“If they’re your patrons, they don’t need us to make them sick,” Doris growled, her hand on Athena’s shoulder. “They should thank us. We probably saved them from ptomaine.” She turned back to Athena. “Excuse me, honey. I have to go to the little girls’ room.”

“Wait, Doris, please, just…Even if the dogs killed Lonny, I tell you I saw what was chasing me. After I got away, the thing must’ve found the man on the road and…Doris?”

“Back in a minute, honey. Yo, Sims, why don’t you turn the air-conditioning up?”

“Shit.”

Steve watched as Doris took the proprietor aside. They stood by the door, Doris whispering and gesturing rapidly, and Steve knew Sims wouldn’t bother them again. When he returned his attention to the table, he saw Barry leaning across it with both his hands on Athena’s folded hands. She kept shaking her head. When he caught some of Barry’s words, he faced away in embarrassment.

The woman at the next table had impossibly blonde hair sprayed to brittle stiffness. “So she was riding the…you remember the old Camden trolley, don’t you? And there the Devil was, she said, just sitting right on top the power cable, wings folded up, she told me, just sitting there like a bird or a bat or something.” She waggled bright red fingernails. “Anyways, the driver stops the trolley, and they all hanged out the windows to watch until a policeman come along and shoots at it. Then it flaps away. She says it made a awful noise, like something dying.”

Steve craned his neck to look around the room and overheard wisps of similar conversations. Some people even kept glancing at the windows, and a few actually started gathering up their things.

“But it’s what you said. Remember?” Athena’s voice grew louder. “There’s always been too many deaths and disappearances out here. There must be a reason. Remember, you said…?”

Movement across the room caught Steve’s attention: Sims stood on a chair and, after several wobbling attempts, managed to unhook the painting that hung over the counter. He jumped down heavily, muttering, then stuck the picture of the Devil behind the counter before hobbling back to the stove where things were frying. A dark grease shadow lay where the painting had been; at its center, wormy laths showed through a hole in the crumbling plaster.

“She told me herself she had a big fight with him a couple days before he died. He even hit her, and she had to set that damn big dog of hers on him. Now he’s dead, and she finds the body? If she makes a federal case out of this, who the hell’s she think the prime suspect’s gonna be?”

Pines whipped furiously past the car.

“Slow down. I’ll bet Frank won’t care much for this development. If they get a manhunt started, it’ll really ruin your little business.”

“Shit.” Barry gritted his teeth, jerked the wheel. “We’ll handle it,” he said finally, flicking a butt out the window. “Things’ll die down after while.”

“You hope.” He looked hard at his partner and didn’t like what he saw. “I doubt the ambulance people will just let it drop.”

“Well, then, maybe Frank’s got some ideas about that.” Barry shook with laughter. “Ideas that’ll fix their wagon.” The car swerved.

Uneasy, Steve watched him, puzzled.

By the time she’d left Doris—after an evening spent hanging around the hall—it had already grown quite dark.

She wondered what time it was as she slammed the car door and walked around to the back of the house. She only knew that it had to be late. She felt drained by anger and frustration, sick and furious with herself every time she thought of Barry. At least Steve had seemed more receptive. Or perhaps just more polite.

The darkness around the house seemed more solid than usual as she limped heavily up the porch stairs. Every light in the place blazed. She couldn’t wait to see this month’s electric bill.

A shriek assaulted her ears, and a heavy iron skillet gouged wood from the doorframe. “It’s me! Pamela, stop it!” The thrown skillet rolled, thudding on the floor.

Pam cowered against the stove, one hand on her heart. “Oh God, ’Thena. Oh, I’m so glad, oh God…I got so scared. I’m so glad you’re home.”

“Yeah, me too,” she muttered as she locked the door.

“I kept hearing noises. Oh, ’Thena—all night long, I kept hearing noises. All alone here. An’ things kept moving by themselves and all, I swear to God. By themselves. ’Thena, I heard footsteps outside. I knew it was them dogs coming to get me, or a monster. I know it was Lonny’s ghost. I know it.” She blinked red, swollen eyes. She hadn’t gotten dressed today. When she’d seen it in the catalog, her nightgown had possessed the glamorous shimmer of a frost-covered window pane. Now it hung like an old curtain. “I asked the Ouija board an’ it just kept on saying, ‘danger in house danger.’ Oh, ’Thena. An’ then a rat got in the house, I swear to God, a big black wood rat. I tried to get it with the broom, but it ran behind the stove, an’ then I didn’t see it no more.”

“All right, Pam. I’m home now. It’s all right.” Standing at the stove, she poured herself yet another cup of coffee and wondered if she’d ever sleep again. She marveled to think that just a few weeks ago she’d been worried about sleeping too much. “Could you do me a favor, Pamela? Could we just sit here and be quiet for a few minutes?”

A moth swung about the light globe on the ceiling.

“Oh, I’m so glad you’re back. Oh, and you know what else? Y’know what Matty said while I was feeding him dinner?”

“Where is Matthew?”

“Oh, I put him to bed a while ago now. Anyhow, you know what he said? I said, ‘Eat it all up an you’ll grow up big and strong now,’ an’ he said, ‘I don’t wanna grow up!’ Just like that. ‘I don’t wanna grow up!’ Wasn’t that a funny thing for him to say? I’m gonna push the table against the door now you’re home. You think I should?”

She closed her eyes, shutting Pamela out, shutting herself in with bleak thoughts of Matthew’s future. There were times when she didn’t want him to grow up, either. If possible, she felt even more weary than before.

“An’ look—he hit me today. I mean, he didn’t do it on purpose or nothing, but look at that.” She displayed a large bruise on her upper arm, already mottling from purple to green. “The dog ain’t here. I’d like to know where the hell he goes at night. Matty gets all upset. An’ those bad dreams he’s been havin’. Why should he be havin’ bad dreams about Chabwok all of a sudden? What’s that? Oh, what’s that?”

“It’s just Dooley scratching at the door. Let him in, will you. Oh, never mind. I’ll do it. Be quiet, Pam. I’ll lock it again. Get in here, dog.”

“Why should Matty be havin’ bad—?”

“I don’t know.” She sat at the table. “What have you told him about Lonny?” She put her head in her hands. “No, not now. Please, Pamela, I’m so very tired. Could we talk about this some other…?”

Terrible screams obliterated her words. They came from upstairs. The dog went wild. So did Pam. “Matty! Oh my baby! Oh my Matty! Oh God!”

Athena pushed past her, ignoring a twinge of pain in her leg as she took the stairs two at a time. She could hear Pam lumbering behind her, and the cries poured through her as she sprinted down the hallway.

“Not chains! Chabwok! No!”

Horrified, she paused on the attic stairs.

“Chabwok! Not the chains!”

She stood mesmerized. The voice was Matthew’s yet somehow not. With a jarring thud, she was shoved to one side as Pamela thundered past. Picking herself up, she stumbled to the top of the narrow stairs and stood transfixed.

Pam had thrown herself on the boy’s cot. “He’s having a dream,” she sobbed. “Oh, he’s having a bad dream now. Oh Matty. Oh my baby.” The boy’s eyes stared vacantly as the woman rocked him in her fleshy arms. He almost looked dead. Then she saw the way his mouth trembled, the lips drawing back over the teeth, saliva running down his chin and neck.

Pamela wailed. As though an electric current had passed through his body, he stiffened, limbs flailing. One of his arms struck Pamela across the chest and sent her tumbling in a heap to the floor.

“Grab him! Pamela, help me!” Athena leaped onto the bed. “Get hold of him!” She grappled with the thrashing boy, attempted to pin down his arms. “He’s strong! Get up, Pamela, help me! Quick, give me something to put in his mouth. He’s biting his tongue.”

Blood frothed at the boy’s lips, and Pam shrieked. “Oh God oh God oh my God oh Matty oh God oh!”

Athena yelled as his teeth clamped down on her fingers. She struggled with him, forced his mouth open. “That’s it! Now quick, hold this arm down! Do it! Here, just sit on him!”

Swaying and trembling with each violent seizure, the two women struggled to control him while the springs of the old cot sang in loud protest.

Night insects fluttered and ticked against the window, and he found himself listening for the leathern beat of giant wings. An open can of beer in front of him, he just sat at the dining-room table and fought the sourness in his stomach. Then he put one hand on the telephone. Ring marks covered the table’s dusty surface, and the handmade doily in the center had yellowed. His pipe rested in a cut-glass bowl, the red cinders slowly turning gray.

“Ambulance.” She answered on the first ring. “Yeah, this is Doris. Hey, Steve, how you doing?” Her voice sounded odd, and he could picture her cradling the phone with her shoulder while she lit a cigarette. “No, she headed home a while ago, Steve. I’m here by myself, just drawing up the duty roster for next week. Should’ve done it earlier, but Athena needed to talk. What? Yeah, that’s what I figured too. I’m not gonna let her work for a while. She can answer the phone or something. We’ve got a couple new people starting anyway. Listen, Steve, you didn’t call to ask me about the rig. What can I do for you?”

“Right.” He took a deep gulp of beer, the foam gurgling down his throat. “Doris?” He smashed the can and tossed it toward the overflowing wastebasket. “You saw Lonny. Right? I mean, you examined the body and everything? What did it look like to you? Hello?”

“Dogs,” she said at last. “About the other one, the hard hat, I don’t know. But Lonny was all chewed up.”

They listened to each other breathe.

“So?” she asked. “What do we do now?”

Saturday, August 8

“Goddamn middle of the night. Ain’t even awake yet.”

“You want some of this coffee? Duke’s wife made it.” A uniformed trooper passed around the thermos.

“Not enough sugar.” Loosely grouped around the blue and white cars, nine troopers loitered just off the sand road. Nearby, their superior called questions into a radio.

One of the troopers gulped coffee out of the thermos lid, then spoke in a low voice. “How many guys they got out here?”

“Four other groups, I heard,” his buddy replied. “Ten guys each.” He hefted his special-issue shotgun. “When you think we’re gonna get started?”

“Soon’s it gets a little lighter, I guess.”

He’d passed her mailbox ten minutes down the road. Now he gazed up at the astonishing house. Tunneled by termites, it tilted and sloped. He barely glanced at the green things sprouting through the back steps, barely noticed the patches of raw board warping in the sun. His footsteps, drumming across the porch, were echoed by hammerings from within the house. The screen door was off the hinges and leaning against the porch wall, so he knocked on the frame. The banging continued.

“Hullo?”

Athena stopped pounding and turned around in surprise. “Oh, hello.” She smiled a bit awkwardly. “Steven. Almost didn’t recognize you in civilian clothes.” She set the hammer down on the table and brushed at her clothing. “I didn’t hear you drive up.”

“I went around to the front of the house.” He stood self-consciously in the doorway, finding the kitchen dark after the glare. “I take it you’ve got some of the rooms shut.”

“The floors are rotten. In fact, I’m surprised you didn’t fall through the front porch.” Brushing off plaster dust, she looked at him in confusion, wondering if she should understand his presence here. “Oh, I’m sorry. Can I get you some coffee? Come on in.”

“No. I mean, no coffee, thank you, but I’ll come in for a minute, maybe.” He took a few hesitant steps into the kitchen. “What were you doing?”

She picked up the hammer again. “Some of the boards over the windows looked a little loose.”

“That to keep something out or something in?” Startled by loud giggling, he spun around. A plump blonde with plastic barrettes in her hair loomed in the doorway. She held one hand over her mouth, her face going deep red at the sight of him.

“This is my sister-in-law, Pamela Monroe,” said Athena with evident reluctance. “Pamela, this is Barry’s partner.” She peered out the back door. “Where’s Matthew?”

“Well, hello now.” Pam still giggled like a five-year-old, though the flesh around her eyes was swollen and bruised looking. “So nice to…We sure don’t see too many people out here, ’cept for them pineys.”