Black Oak 5, page 1
BLACK OAK #5: WHEN THE COLD WIND BLOWS
By Charles L. Grant
A Macabre Ink Production
Macabre Ink is an imprint of Crossroad Press
Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press
Digital Edition Copyright 2016 Kathryn Ptacek
Copy-edited by: Duncan Douglas
LICENSE NOTES
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Meet the Author
Photo by Jeff Schalles
Charles L. Grant taught English and history at the high school level before becoming a full-time writer in the ’70s. He served for many years as an officer in the Horror Writers Association and in Science Fiction Writers of America.
He was known for his “quiet horror” and for editing the award-winning Shadows anthologies. He received the British Fantasy Society’s Special Award in 1987 for life achievement; in 2000, he was the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from HWA. Other awards include two Nebula Awards and three World Fantasy Awards for writing and editing.
Charlie died from a lengthy illness on September 15, 2006, just three days after his birthday. He lived in Newton, NJ, and was married to writer/editor Kathryn Ptacek for nearly twenty-five years.
Book List
Horror
Novels
Black Oak: Genesis
Black Oak: The Hush of Dark Wings
Black Oak: Winter Knight
Black Oak: Hunting Ground
Black Oak: When the Cold Wind Blows
Fire Mask
For Fear of the Night
In A Dark Dream
Jackals
Millennium Quartet #1: Symphony
Millennium Quartet #2: In the Mood
Millennium Quartet #3: Chariot
Millennium Quartet #4: Riders in the Sky
Night Songs
Raven
Something Stirs
Stunts
The Bloodwind
The Curse
The Grave
The Hour of the Oxrun Dead
The Last Call of Mourning
The Nestling
The Pet
The Sound Of Midnight
The Tea Party
The Universe of Horror Trilogy
The Soft Whisper of the Dead
The Dark Cry of the Moon
The Long Night of the Grave
Collections
Dialing the Wind
Nightmare Seasons
The Black Carousel
The Orchard
Science Fiction
A Quiet Night of Fear
Ascension
Legion
Ravens of the Moon
The Shadow of Alpha
As “Geoffrey Marsh”
The Fangs of the Hooded Demon
The King of Satan’s Eyes
The Patch of the Odin Soldier
The Tail of the Arabian, Knight
As “Lionel Fenn”
The Quest for the White Duck Trilogy
Blood River Down
Web of Defeat
Agnes Day
668, the Neighbor of the Beast
By The Time I Get To Nashville
Mark of the Moderately Vicious Vampire
Once Upon a Time in the East
The Once and Future Thing
The Really Ugly Thing From Mars
The Reasonably Invisible Man
The Seven Spears of the W’dch’ck
Time, the Semi-Final Frontier
As “Simon Lake”
Daughter of Darkness
Death Cycle
Death Scream
He Told Me To
Shapes Berkley
Something’s Watching
The Clown
The Forever House
As “Felicia Andrews”
Moonwitch
Mountainwitch
Riverrun
Riverwitch
Seacliffe
Silver Huntress
The Velvet Hart
As “Deborah Lewis”
Eve of the Hound
Kirkwood Fires
The Wind at Winter’s End
Voices Out of Time
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This is for Brendan, my Jackie Chan buddy and the only sane one in the family
BLACK OAK #5: WHEN THE COLD WIND BLOWS
Previously, in Black Oak
A litmus test for those who would work with Ethan Proctor at Black Oak Investigations … and for some of those who use its services:
“Do you believe in ghosts?”
In Hart Junction, Kansas, Proctor and Vivian Chambers discover curious shards of what looks to be yellow glass in a ranch house where they both nearly lost their lives. Tests prove the glass to be an unidentifiable form of amber crystal. According to the test report, the shards are what’s left of a globe, its size undetermined.
In a private jet over Virginia, Taylor Blaine hires Proctor and his firm to find his daughter, Celeste.
“Thirteen years, Proctor. She’s been missing thirteen years, and I’ll pay anything to find her again.”
Celeste Blaine was last seen driving away from her Connecticut home with her two best friends, Maude Tackett and Ginger Hong. They were eighteen, on their way to their freshman year at college.
No bodies were ever found.
Neither was the car.
In Pludbury, England, in a mansion called Beale Hall, Taylor Blaine sees a photograph of his daughter.
It is much less than ten years old.
When he brings Proctor in to see it as well, the photograph has vanished.
“But I saw it,” Blaine insists. “I’m old, but I’m not senile. I saw it.”
In Atlantic City, Proctor meets a beautiful woman named Petra Haslic.
He has no idea if she is human or not.
It doesn’t matter; he cannot forget her.
do you believe in ghosts?
ONE
In the Pines …
… a breeze moves among the widely spaced trees like the current of a late-summer stream— lazily, easily, in no hurry to get from one place to another. Eddies of it near the ground for a moment spin dead leaves, or stir mounds of brown pine needles, or cause low weeds to quiver and let loose their seeds. Tufts of grass sway as though underwater; a fallen pinecone trembles; the feathers on a dead sparrow move not at all.
The trees are white pine, their boughs thick and heavy. The lowest ones soon snap at the bole and add their bulk to the woodland floor, while the highest ones form an interlocking canopy that allows the afternoon sun to reach the ground only in patches that shift erratically as the day passes from dawn to dusk. Not much grass, then, and little concentration of underbrush; languid ferns and the occasional thomed thicket; temperatures not as warm as the piedmont that surrounds it, and autumn cold at night, even on the hottest day.
There is quiet, but it is not silent. The breeze sees to that, and the movement of birds and animals and the infrequent hiker who’s taken a wrong turn in his walking tour of Burline County. The voice of the forest.
Peaceful, for the most part. Comfortable.
The breeze also carries with it the scent of the woods itself, and the fresh growth of a new spring, the warmth of the sunlight, loam and new blossoms vivid in the dim air, red earth and black dirt, and behind a solitary spindly thicket the old blood and rot of a fawn torn to pieces. Partially devoured.
In the pines …near their eastern boundary is a man-high boulder sunk into a shallow depression as if it had fallen from a star. Its dark rough surface is cut by lightninglike white cracks; a veil of moss on one side, a tiny blade of grass growing from a thimble-size hollow in the other. At the base, the depression is filled with a tangle of dead weeds, twigs and brown needles, clots of dirt, and a single thin white stick that looks remarkably like bone.
Five minutes later it still looked like bone, and Royal Blondell grunted softly. He sat cross-legged in front of the great rock, coonskin cap pushed back on his head, one eye half-closed as if that, somehow, would improve his vision a
“Damn, Royal,” his best friend, Garber, had once told him, “if we all worked like you do, we’d still be hunting for the first dinosaur bone.”
Royal had only shrugged. Point of fact, he had little use for the academic we’s of this world—except old Garber, of course. Sure, they wanted to learn and discover and figure things out, just like him, but it seemed like they ended up spending half their time working just as hard trying to find someone to pay for their expeditions, their excavations, all those new scientific gizmos to make the work easier. And get their names in the paper.
He, on the other hand, had no big degrees, no string of unpronounceable silly-looking abbreviations after his name. A high school diploma, nothing more, and proud of it. And a small inheritance from his mother to take care of his simple life, without anyone butting in.
A moth landed on the boulder, pale wings quivering.
Behind him some distance, he heard a couple of birds arguing, voices carrying a slight echo in the trees. It made the woods seem that much bigger. That much more empty.
One day, around his twenty-third birthday, he got tired of pumping gas in Alton. It didn’t seem like this was any way to live a life. So he quit, sat on his front porch for a couple of days, contemplating and figuring, then drove over to the high school after the last bell had rung. He made his way to Garber Kranz’s classroom, and said, “Garb, the hell with it, I want to be an archeologist.”
To his credit, Garb hadn’t laughed. He only said, “Why?”
“’Cause I’m tired of stinking of grease and gas.”
Royal grinned at the memory. No grease and gas now, just twelve years of dust and dirt and age and a few things he’d just as soon not remember. Not one second of which he would trade for anything.
The moth left; the birds fell silent. And finally, convinced he would disturb nothing important, do no irreparable harm to the site, he dug into the backpack lying on the ground beside him and pulled out an old but expensive pair of chef’s tongs padded with soft rubber. He reached out to snare the bone and gently tugged at it. It was loose, and he tugged again, pulled it free, and held it up, head cocked, squinting.
“Y’know,” he said with a rueful smile and sigh, “you can be dumber than a post sometimes, boy. Maybe you need your sorry eyes checked.”
What he held was nothing more spectacular than a long twig with its bark recently stripped, not long enough in the air for the wood to darken, except at the bud knobs, which could be taken for small knuckles.
A morning and most of an afternoon wasted.
Still, he couldn’t expect to hit pay dirt every time. If he did, what would be the fun of it? Where would be the adventure? Come up with a treasure every time he waved his trowel or spade, the whole thing would become downright… boring. And the one thing he could say about his life ’til now was, it sure as hell wasn’t boring.
A little lonely sometimes, but that ain’t the same thing.
“Up, boy,” he muttered. “Your bones’ll settle. They’ll be digging you up next.”
Another look at the twig, and he tossed it over his shoulder, packed the tongs away, and rose easily, slinging the pack into place. A stretch of each leg, each arm, his back and neck, and he settled his cap where it belonged. Then he slapped at the dust gathered on his baggy army pants and dark green shirt, checked to be sure nothing had fallen from the pockets, and decided maybe it was time he headed on home.
Maybe, in fact, he ought to hurry a little.
He had a feeling he was pressing his luck. Gone from his house for almost a week, tramping around, doing his work… yeah, maybe he was pressing his luck a little.
More often than not Royal wasn’t a superstitious man, but he couldn’t help it when he was here, in the pines. The spotlights of sunlight, the serenity, the way the air held glittering bits of dust, the way footsteps were cushioned by layers of fallen needles … it should have retained that pleasantly surprised sense of reverent awe he had felt when he’d first discovered it.
It should have.
It didn’t.
As he walked eastward, following a trail only he could see, he glanced over his shoulder. Nothing there, of course. There never was. But it felt like it. Back there where the light didn’t quite touch the ground, where the ferns resembled hands reaching out of the earth, something should have been there. Watching him. Measuring him. It was a foolish idea. A man of his experience ought to know better. Nevertheless, he gripped the backpack’s straps and moved a little faster.
What he would do, he figured, is get himself home and have a good bath. Then something to eat while he watched TV to catch up on the news he’d missed the past six days. Then get on the phone and try to find Garb.
He scowled.
Garber was a man of strong habit, especially since he had retired from teaching. He would make a schedule for each day and stick to it. But every once in a while, as if one of his internal circuits got shorted, he would drop everything and light out of town. One year it was up to Myrtle Beach to play three days’ worth of miniature golf; one time it was over to Savannah to sit by the river and throw rye bread to the gulls; last time it was to use a dugout Royal had made for him, paddling into the Okefenokee to, he claimed, track down Pogo and discover the Meaning of Life.
This was the first time, however, that he’d left town without slipping a message under Royal’s welcome mat, letting him know where he had gone.
Royal huffed, and adjusted his pack. A line of sweat gathered around the rim of his cap, and he could feel his thin black hair matting to his scalp. As he topped a low rise, a stitch in his side made him grunt. He was startled he’d been traveling so rapidly. He stopped and leaned against a bole, bending over, bracing his hands on his knees. He sniffed and spat, spat again and scolded himself for acting like a frightened kid.
Still…
He looked to his right, saw how the pines began to give way to bulky oaks and fat-waisted cedar, a few twisted tall sycamore, long-limbed maple with scars in their bark. More grass, more underbrush. More light. He could see large fragments of darkening sky and the pale, almost transparent rise of an early-evening moon.
Word had it there was a pack of wild dogs making the rounds of the county. Some livestock chewed up, a couple of kids missing. This, he thought, would be a good place for the pack to hunt …
Great; a real good way to keep your nerves, you fool.
He began to hum an old folk song, one his momma used to sing. Used to be he thought it some kind of love song, some poor guy wondering why the lady he loved wasn’t around anymore. Used to be that’s what he thought.
In the pines
He looked left.
In the pines
Not any longer.
Where the sun never shines
Night had already arrived in the white pine forest, and with it the certain knowledge that he wasn’t alone.
Fool, he thought, but that didn’t stop him from shifting quickly from a walk to a trot, heading for the dirt road just a half mile away where he’d parked his old station wagon just after dawn. He couldn’t remember the next line, but it didn’t matter. Dumb song anyway.
Fool, he thought again, but he didn’t look back.
And he didn’t look up, in case he’d see the moon.
Darker now; so much darker.
The backpack thumped heavily against his spine; his left knee began to ache, legacy of a serious twist he had given it a few years back; it felt as if a hair had settled in his throat, and he finally began to cough, causing him to stumble and veer back and forth off the trail as if he were liquored. He spat, and coughed, and spat again hard, cleared his throat so many times it began to bum. Coughed and spat, wiped an arm over his eyes to clear away the sweat, blinding him just long enough to miss the way the ground dipped sharply and rose again, throwing him forward onto his hands and knees, his head so low he scraped his chin against a rock. A curse, as strong as he could make it, as he flailed upright. Looking back.
Darker; so much darker, and the moon so much stronger.
He wasn’t sure, he wouldn’t swear to it, but up there on the rise he’d left only a few minutes ago he thought he saw something weave among the trees … something low to the ground, russet and black. Following him.
