From the north, from the easternmost wilderness of Town, came a constant high-pitched wailing of coyotes. He heard also the ceaseless flow of water in creeks and ravines eroded into the slopes north of the trail. He crossed long stretches of mud lying on the old road, and three times he had to dismount and lead Beauty over wide mud hills, as both the man and the horse sank to their knees. Once Frost heard a portion of earth let go and grumble slowly down the slope to his right. A little further on he stopped and looked back and waited for the moon. When it slipped for half a minute into a slash in the clouds he glimpsed a figure a few hundred yards behind. Perhaps someone following. He sniffed, rubbed his cold nose and continued.
He slipped one hand under his poncho as he rode, to warm against his stomach. In the other he gripped the reins and the sword and the spear. He passed Wing’s Bridge with the rain starting up again and eventually came to Skaggers’ Bridge and recrossed the river in the dark.
52
Frost studied the house from the top of the driveway. The two-storey building from the good times was dark. But to the left, in two of the low sprawling additions, windows were lit. The larger of the two additions was joined to the rear of the smaller one and protruded beyond it. In the single window of the part that protruded there was a strong but wavering light of candles. The much weaker light in the window of the closer and smaller addition seemed to originate from those same candles. There was a smell of wood smoke.
Frost let Beauty pick her way down the weed-grown drive but then had to urge her on until she stood beside the tall set of front door concrete steps. He slipped off her back onto one of the steps and went stiffly down and turned toward the carport and left the horse standing there. At the back end of the carport the white piano was dimly visible. The door from the carport into the basement opened quietly, as if the hinges had been oiled regularly. For a minute Frost stood staring into the dark of the basement. Then he leaned his spear against the wall outside and, holding only his sword, stepped through the door.
The darkness was not complete. A ragged hole in in the far wall was lit by weak light from the first addition. The illumination was not strong enough to show Frost a way across the sixty feet of basement. He stepped carefully, feeling ahead with his feet and with the sword. There was a skittering of rodents’ feet nearby, above the floor, perhaps on a table. There was a lingering smell of dirty bodies and garments. The hole in the wall was covered with a sheet of clear poly that twisted the light as Frost came closer. He reached, touched the poly, waited, listened. He heard the distant rain and the whoosh of his own blood in his ears, nothing else. With the back of his hand he slowly pushed the plastic aside. It was very loud. He stepped over the concrete foundation and let the plastic fall closed behind him.
He now stood on an earth path that led erratically between heaps of objects piled shoulder high. Here, there was enough light for him to move steadily forward. He did not turn his head to observe the skewed silhouettes of wide-screen televisions. He ignored the laptop computers stacked like bricks, and the armchairs tumbled together like wrestlers unable to budge. He stepped past a tangle of coffee tables giving off a smell of rot, past floor lamps and lawnmowers spaced like sentinels, past fishing rods reaching into the poor light, past washers, driers, electric ranges, leaf blowers, vacuum cleaners, table saws.
The path turned sharply to the right. Twenty feet ahead was the entrance to the second addition. There was no doorway, just an open space in the wall, and the stronger light. Frost stopped. The rain was loud above his head, with drops falling regularly and with varying sounds on the expanse of commodities all about. He went to the opening in the wall and stopped again. Ahead the earth path was lined every four feet or so with burning candles, large free-standing ones, Christmas candles. Among the mounds of goods there was now a lot of chrome: toasters, bathtub taps, century-old antique bread boxes, tables and chairs with chromed legs; and the light of the candles danced upon these objects. The air was suddenly very warm.
Frost crept forward. At the third candle the path turned left. Here Frost waited again and listened. There were fewer drops splashing upon the commodities. He heard a crackle of burning wood.
“Is that you, Frost? Come on around here so’s we can talk.”
Langley’s anxious and aggressive whine.
“No point in hidin’ back there. None at all.”
On Frost’s left, split cordwood was stacked head high, with a dozen mobile phones heaped on a protruding chunk of fir. He leaned forward, looked past the wood. He pulled his head back. He gave a small grunt. He leaned back against the piled wood and closed his eyes. A mobile phone dislodged and fell against a piece of cordwood and burst open, and the battery bounced from Frost’s muddy sandal.
Langley said “Come on, Frost, for Christ sake. It’s only us.”
Frost pushed himself away from the cordwood and transferred the sword to his left hand and wiped his right hand against his shirt under his poncho and took the sword in his right hand again. He shook his head. He stepped forward.
Langley said “Well, there you are. Welcome to my place.”
He was seated in a stuffed black leather armchair, in jeans and the T-shirt that said Pink Floyd. Blood stained the entire left shoulder and sleeve of the shirt, and Langley’s arm, resting on an arm of the chair, was streaked with blood that had been partially wiped or washed away but was now dried. His legs were spread wide, and Grace was seated on the floor between them, with her back against his crotch.
Grace’s legs were stretched straight out on the earth. She wore a green silk dress with a low neckline. The light of the candles and light escaping from the butterfly-shaped damper of an airtight heating stove that stood a few feet to Langley’s left made the fabric of the dress seem to move, although Grace was as still as a stone. She wore three strands of pearls. She had no shoes. The bottoms of her feet were dirty. Her hands rested flat beside her.
Langley said “You can see how it is, Frost.”
In his right hand he held a knife, the blade of which was pressed against Grace’s throat. It was a hunting knife with an eight-inch blade that seemed to reflect more light than was possible.
He said “My god damn soldiers that were here took off on me. Ain’t that somethin’? Unless Grace here chased them off.” He closed his legs a little and jostled Grace and said “Did you chase them off, darlin’?” But he did not look away from Frost.
The three were silent for a minute as Frost stared at Grace. Her grey hair had been pulled straight back in an attempt to match the refinement of the green dress. But the face had gone entirely to skull and a slack covering of skin. She let her head droop forward over the blade. Lifted it. Looked again at Frost. Let it fall. Lifted it. There was no expression on her face beyond the weight of drowsiness. The only life in the eyes was from the candle flames. On her throat, along the edge of the knife, there was a thin line of blood.
Frost sighed. His shoulders slumped. He shrugged, shook his head a little. He stood there with rainwater trickling from his poncho, down his wrists and dripping from his fingertips and from the tip of his sword. He looked away from Langley and Grace, looked down at the worn earth floor dotted with a few tiny puddles. He stepped forward.