When I got back to Scarborough, the right side of my face had swollen badly and there were small burn marks where the prod had touched my skin. There were also two or three gashes on my head, one of them deep. I reckoned that Harelip had kicked me a couple of times for good measure. I put ice on my head and spray on the burns, then swallowed some painkillers, pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt to guard against the cold, and tried to sleep.
I don't recall why I awoke, but when I opened my eyes the room seemed to hang between darkness and brightness, as if the universe had paused to draw a breath when the morning sun first sent shafts of light through the dark winter clouds.
And from somewhere in the house came a sound like the scuffling of feet, as if small delicate steps were padding over the floorboards. I drew my gun and rose. The floor was cold and the windows rattled gently. I opened the door slowly and stepped into the hallway.
To my right, a figure moved. I caught the motion out of the corner of my eye, so that I was not sure that I even saw a figure as such or merely a shifting of shadows in the kitchen. I turned and walked slowly to the back of the house, the floor creaking slightly beneath my feet.
Then I heard it: a soft burst of childlike laughter, a giggle of amusement, and the padding of feet again, moving to my left. I reached the entrance to the kitchen, the gun half raised, and turned in time to see another flash of movement by the door frame that connected the kitchen to the living room, to hear another cry of childish delight at the game we were playing. And I felt certain that what I had seen was a child's foot, its sole protected by the enclosures of purple rompers. And I knew too that I had seen that tiny foot before and the remembrance of it made my throat go dry.
I entered the dining room. Something small waited for me beyond the far door. I could see its form in the shadows and the light in its eyes, but no more than that. As I moved in its direction, the form shifted and I heard the front door creak open on its hinges and impact against the wall, the wind now rushing through the house, pulling at the drapes, setting frames rattling, raising spirals of dust in the hallway.
I walked faster now. As I reached the door, I caught another glimpse of the little figure, a shape dressed in purple that flitted between the trees, moving farther and farther into the darkness beyond. I stepped from the porch and into the yard, felt the grass beneath my feet, the small stones digging into the soles, and tensed as something light and multilegged scuttled across my toes. I stood at the verge of the woods, and I was afraid.
She was waiting for me there. She stood unmoving, masked by bushes and trees that hid her body from me, her face now obscured by the shadows of branches, now clear again. Her eyes were full of blood and the thick black thread wove back and forth across her face like the crudely constructed mouth of an old cloth doll. She stood there unspeaking, watching me from the woods, and behind her the smaller figure danced and skipped in the undergrowth.
I closed my eyes and concentrated, trying to wake myself, but the cold in my feet was real, and the throbbing pain in my head, and the sound of the child's laughter carrying on the wind.
I felt movement behind me and something touched me on the shoulder. I almost turned, but the pressure on my shoulder increased and I knew that I must not turn, that I was not meant to see what stood at my back. I looked to my left, to the point of pressure, and I could not restrain the shudder that ran through my body. I closed my eyes instantly but what I had seen was imprinted on my mind like an image seen against bright sunlight.
The hand was soft and white and delicate, with long, tapering fingers. A wedding band gleamed in the strange, predawn light.
bird
How many times had I heard that voice whisper to me in the darkness, a prelude to the soft caress of a warm hand, the feel of her breath against my cheek, my lips, her small breasts hard against my body, her legs like ivy curling around me? I had heard it in times of love and passion when we were happy together, in moments of anger and rage and sadness as our marriage fell apart. And I had heard it since in the rustling of leaves on the grass and the sound of branches rubbing against one another in the autumn breezes, a voice that carried from far away and called to me from the shadows.
Susan, my Susan.
bird
The voice was close now, almost beside my ear. It had the sound of earth in it, as if dirt had caught in her throat.
help her
In the woods beyond, the woman watched me, her red eyes wide and unblinking.
How?
find him
Find who? Billy?
The fingers tightened their grip.
yes
He's not my responsibility.
they are all your responsibility
And in the patches of moonlight beneath the trees, shapes twisted and turned, suspended above the earth, their feet not touching the ground, and their ruined stomachs shone dark and wet. All of them, my responsibility.
Then the pressure on my shoulder eased and I sensed her moving away. Ahead of me came a sound from the undergrowth and the woman who had been Rita Ferris receded into the trees. I caught a final glimpse of purple moving swiftly beyond the line of trees, laughter like music carrying back to me.
And I saw something else.
I saw a small girl with long blond hair who looked back at me with something like love before she followed her playmate into the darkness.
CHAPTER NINE
I woke to a bright room, winter sunlight spearing through a gap in the drapes. My head ached and my jaw felt stiff and sore where I had gritted my teeth as the shocks hit my body. It was only when I sat up and the pain in my head increased that I remembered my dream from the night before, if a dream was what it was.
There were leaves in my bed, and I had mud on my feet.
I had some homeopathic remedies that Louis had recommended to me, so I took them with a glass of water while I waited for the shower to heat up. I downed a combination of phosphorus, to combat nausea, and hypericum, which was supposed to act as a natural painkiller. Frankly, I felt like a flake taking the stuff but there was no one around to see me do it, so that made it okay.
I started a pot of coffee, poured a cup and watched it grow cold on the kitchen table. I felt pretty low and was considering taking up a different profession-gardening, maybe, or lobster fishing. After the coffee had developed a nice film, I called Ellis Howard. I figured that, in the absence of his lieutenant and given the federal angle, Ellis was taking a hands-on approach to the case. It took a while for him to come to the phone. He was probably still sore over the Biggs affair.
"You're awake early," were his first words when he got to the phone. I could hear him sigh as he eased his bulk into a chair. I could even hear the chair squeaking in protest. If Ellis had sat on me, I'd have squeaked too.
"I could say the same about you," I said. "You sound like you slept as well as I did."
"Yeah, like the bed was made of broken glass. You aware that Tony Celli turned up in town yesterday?"
"Yeah. Bad news travels fast." Particularly when it's being passed into your jaw in the form of an electric current.
"He blew out again this morning. Looks like he's gone to ground."
"It's a shame. I thought he was going to move here and open a florist's."
At the other end of the phone there was the sound of the receiver being covered, a muffled exchange and then the rustling of papers. Then: "So what do you want, Bird?"