Son of the Endless Night, page 4
Polly curtsied, her head bowing almost to the floor. Then she arose and there was no expression in her face as, almost imperceptibly, she advanced the candle toward Karyn's body. A small blackrimmed hole opened in the material. Terrified, Karyn threw herself back toward the open window. She felt the curtains rip and tear free of the rod. But she wasn't in time; the icy draft from the window sucked at the candle flame and turned it into an explosion: she was hurled like an incendiary moth through the window space into blackness.
7
In the burned wing of the inn Rich found his way blocked by temporary walls of unpainted, three-quarter-inch plywood at the top of the third-floor stairs. Workmen had installed a door in each wall and equipped them with stout hasps and padlocks.
If anyone was behind either of the doors, he or she was securely locked in and probably even colder than he was.
He thumped the walls a few times, hearing dismal echoes, and called to her.
"Polly! It's Rich!"
Until a coughing fit overcame him he listened intently, unsure of how well his voice would carry. He could see almost nothing. The emergency light in the foyer cast only a faint outer-planet glow at this level. No lights, no heat. If Polly was up here she couldn't make it through the night. I want Polly! Windross had pleaded, but in retrospect it wasn't possible to interpret his plea. Did it mean they had left her behind? Surely her own father wouldn't permit Polly to spend even five minutes alone in a place like this: dark, reeking, dangerous.
But there was the fact of the locket, and the cat. He'd had only a couple of glimpses, but Rich was certain the cat was Katrinka, Polly's pet. The big head, the stubby body were familiar. If Katrinka was here, then— but undoubtedly the cat had the run of the inn; she might have followed Windross here to this rendezvous with his strange consortium.
No matter what the story, Rich felt he wasn't going to learn any more tonight. His head and neck hurt. Time to go back to bed, lie there sleepless until he decided what to do next.
He trudged back to the main wing of the inn. The night clerk was away from the desk, the lobby deserted. Rich went upstairs and let himself into his and Karyn's room.
The bed was empty, the covers in a wild tangle on the floor. He thought he smelled smoke, but it might have been just an olfactory illusion; he had breathed deeply of cold clean air on his way back but still felt polluted by the atmosphere of the burned-out wing..
"Karyn?"
No reply. Rich pulled off his gloves and parka, tossed them in a chair— she would fuss about that in the morning, he knew— picked up and straightened the comforter and top sheet on the bed. The radiator hissed. The bathroom door was closed. Karyn was taking a long time in there. He went to the door and rapped softly.
He heard her inside, breathing in a rasping, last-ditch sort of way. Thoroughly alarmed, he shouldered the door open.
Karyn was huddled naked on the floor beside the tub. She had Moses the Squirrel clenched tightly in one hand. There was a stink of vomit. Some of her regurgitated
dinner had caked on her bare legs and feet. She looked up at him with a sagging jaw, eyes like stones in aspic.
"What's the matter?" he said stupidly. "Are you sick?"
"Help," Karyn pleaded, trying listlessly to rise. She fell back down with a moan, an elbow ringing against the tub. Rich sponged her off hastily, picked her up, and carried her to the bed. She was cold and flaccid. Her lower lip looked bitten; it was flecked with blood. She moaned again. He tucked her in and chafed her hands and wrists.
"Rich. Where were you? Why did you leave me?"
"I went for a walk. Christ's sake, what happened? Did somebody get in the room? Did he— "
Karyn shook her head emphatically. A strange light came into her eyes; she laughed in a way that shocked him, broke it off gagging. But there was nothing left in her stomach; only a little yellow froth came to her lips. She looked at him again, eyes rolling pathetically.
"There was nobody. Nobody like you mean. I want to go home. Now. I can't stay here anymore." Karyn lunged up suddenly, locking arms around him. She began to cry. Her breath was bad from vomiting. She shook and sobbed, pulling Rich down on top of her, using him as a shield.
"Awful— awful."
"Karyn, what is it?"
"I burned. I burned."
"What are you talking about?"
"I woke up. The window was open. I got out of bed to close it. The curtains began to wrap around me. Around and around until— I couldn't move. Then— they caught fire. I burned, it was horrible."
Rich glanced at the windows. Both were closed, the curtains smoothly in place. He cradled Karyn, stroking her calmingly.
"Nothing but a bad dream, one of those— "
"No! It was real, happening to me! I know the difference, I know when I'm having a nightmare!"
"You're not burned. There's nothing wrong with you except you got scared and puked."
"Yes, I'm scared. I'm terrified! I want you to get me out of here. Promise, Rich, promise!"
"There's nothing to be afraid of. It was just your mother again."
She'd had these dreams before, since childhood. When Karyn was seven her mother had been burned in a kitchen accident, literally going up in flames before the eyes of the petrified child. Quick action by the Vale family houseman had minimized the damage, and subsequent scarring, but the trauma still lay deep in Karyn's psyche.
"No! It was nothing like those dreams." She fought him then; irrationally, bitterly. "Go away! You're no help. You don't understand."
"Just explain— "
"I can't explain. But it was real. All of it."
"You were wrapped in those curtains? Listen, Kare, the comforter was on the floor when I came in, you must have got tangled up while you were sleeping and fell off the bed."
Karyn didn't answer him. Her tears dried up. "I feel like I want to barf again. But nothing comes up. Could I have a drink of water? And bring me Moses."
Rich brought her a glass of water, icy from the tap, and the toy squirrel, which he held disdainfully by the stub of its tail. He returned to the bathroom. She'd left a mess in the tub. It nauseated him, cleaning up after someone who had been sick, but there was no one else to do it. He held his breath, rinsed, and swabbed.
When he looked in on Karyn again, she'd pulled on a nightshirt and was so still he hoped she'd fallen asleep. He undressed and crept into bed beside her.
"Rich?"
"Uh-huh."
"I hate this fucking place. I hate you for bringing me back."
He'd had enough for one night, so he snapped, "You're being childish."
She turned her back to him. "If you won't take me home, I'll take the bus."
"It's three A.M."
"Something bad's going to happen, Rich. I feel it. I didn't tell you everything."
She sounded so forlorn he snuggled close to her, rearranging the flannel nightshirt, uncovering her below the waist. His penis stiffened a little between soft yielding cheeks. He placed a finger down there beside it, feeling the long narrow stroke of hair that grew from the tip of her backbone to the opening of the vulva, like a chastely tucked-in tail interrupted only by the tense eyelet of her anus. He rubbed her gently there with the hardened glans, not really capable of making love again, knowing she didn't want to either; but Karyn didn't resist him. He kissed a brown mole on her shoulder blade.
"Tell me now."
"No. I can't. I don't think I can tell anybody ever."
He put an arm around her waist. "Okay like this?"
She sniffed. "Yes."
He moved his hand up between her breasts, and found Moses the Squirrel.
"I love you, Karyn. Whatever happened, I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry I said I hate you. But I went through hell, Rich. That's the only way to describe it."
"Okay, okay, it's over. I'm here. Try to go to sleep now."
It was twenty minutes or more before the tension began to leave her body. When she slept at last she slept badly, jerking, calling for her father, elbows prodding Rich. He got up once and went to the windows, where a thin draft of cold air came through the shutters. There was a damp spot at the edge of the carpet. He touched it with a finger, sniffed. It was urine. He looked carefully at the curtains. Except for a small round hole someone must have burned there with a carelessly held cigarette, he discovered nothing. But Karyn's panic had left him wide awake. He could still smell the vomit he'd cleaned up. He wanted a cigarette badly.
At four thirty he dressed again, went downstairs, found a machine, bought a pack of Kents, and sat smoking with a sense of greed and guilt in a solitary corner of the lobby, listening to a cabinet clock tick and chime, thinking, his mind exploring dead ends and implausibilities until it became light enough to see the spires along the Chadbury green emerge and glow pinkly in the winter's dawn.
8
Karyn was up and dressed for the slopes when he returned to their room.
"I don't want to have breakfast here," she said, recoiling slightly from his kiss. Her lower lip looked swollen; there was a spot of dried blood she hadn't been able to wash off.
"I'm back on the straight weed," he admitted.
She grimaced in disapproval but didn't say anything. They drove to Hermitage Mountain as the sun rose above the black glistening treeline along the road, ate sparingly on a glass-enclosed terrace of the Davos Chalet Lodge at the base of the mountain, only a hundred yards from the major ski lifts.
Rich's cigarette hack had returned and he could barely turn his head. A big dose of aspirin diminished the pain, allowing for improved mobility. Still, he had a problem. Karyn had been skiing almost since she could walk and had tackled expert trails all over the country. Rich had worked at the sport for most of his college years and felt competent, but he only managed to keep up with Karyn when she took pity on him. With his neck in poor shape he was afraid of winding up in traction before the day was over. He explained his problem and they compromised on a couple of reasonably difficult intermediate slopes on the lower mountain.
Some of his soreness disappeared with strenuous exercise and the sweat he worked up, and by late morning Rich was feeling better. The day was cloudless, the temperature rose to twenty degrees. Karyn still was in no mood for conversation as she tried to get the most out of trails that were basically child's play for her.
By the time they took a break at the snack bar outside the ski shop the area was saturated; the wait for each of the chair lifts was nearly half an hour. While Rich stood in line for hot chocolate Karyn chatted with a couple of former classmates from Brearly, and came back to him looking as if she'd shaken off the effects of her recent nightmare.
"Tam and Brooksie said we might be able to get a room here! Some of the crowd they were coming up with canceled at the last minute."
"You want to stay here?"
"Yes. Anywhere but the inn. Please, Rich, see what you can do."
Rich learned that the management of the Davos Chalet had covered an overbooking problem with the rooms allotted to the no-shows. The reservations clerk hinted that something might be found for them tomorrow if he'd check back later in the day. Rich was a little thin in the wallet and didn't feel like parting with another twenty bucks to ensure the clerk's cooperation. They had a perfectly good room already; he couldn't see the sense in catering to Karyn's newly developed aversion to the Post Road Inn.
When he returned to the ski area Karyn was, as usual, with a group. One of them stood as tall as Frankenstein in his blocky ski boots, but the blueprints had been better for this kid: he had a broad flawless good-humored face with the frosty radiance of a new penny, flaring to red along the taut bonelines. Women were staring at him. Karyn had an arm fondly linked with his, and seemed amused by everything he had to say. Rich was pleased to see the dragonfly quickness and beauty of her eyes and was jealous that someone else had effected this restoration of her soaring spirits.
"Everybody, this is Rich. Rich, that's Popper and that's Jerrill and that's Kristy. And this big guy here is Trux Landall."
"Hiya."
"Hiya."
Rich sipped his cooling chocolate and followed the gossipy conversation without contributing to it until Karyn's friends went off looking for new mountains to conquer.
"You didn't have much to say," Karyn chided him.
"I'm not from Preppie Land. I don't know the code words. Trucks?"
"T,R,U,X, Trux. I dated him when I was a freshman at Smith."
"And he was on leave of absence from the right hand of Zeus."
"Amherst '82."
"Was it serious?" Rich asked idly.
"I thought I was in love."
"I don't blame you. He's a hunk. What does he do now?"
"Harvard Law."
"Brainy too."
"Don't be snide. And don't be defensive. He's not competition."
"That's what you think. His kind has always been competition for me." He was dressed like they were. He had a good haircut. But he gave off the wrong emanations. They all knew each other, blindly, like ants from the same nest.
"Oh, here we go. Amazing that you didn't say anything about street riots with the blacks or your police record for breaking into parking meters."
"I was only thirteen, they gave me probation. And my brother beat the flaming Jesus out of me. You know what I'm talking about."
"I know you get that withdrawn resentful look whenever you're around someone like Trux."
"And Bates and Kyle and Justin. They'll never have to play their way into the big leagues." A term his old Irish grandmother had used, scathingly, came to his lips. "Hoi-poloi." He relished it silently. Hoi-poloi. Maybe he could corner the T-shirt concession.
"You don't loaf through Harvard Law. When Trux was seventeen he sailed six thousand miles on a fifty-six-foot ketch with his uncle. They placed fifth in some kind of ocean-to-ocean race. Trux was washed overboard twice, once by a fifty-foot wave. Of course he was wearing a safety harness. Have you ever seen a fifty-foot wave?"
"I don't swim and I don't sail. I get queasy when the shower doesn't drain fast enough."
"Trux has broken a few bones free-soloing. He has this scar running up the back of one thigh— "
"How far up?"
"Never mind. He's someone you might like to know, if you'd give him half a chance. You're afflicted with reverse snobbery."
" 'Afflicted'?" The word made him feel curiously diseased, a dread pariah. "I need a smoke," Rich muttered, looking around for a place to buy a pack of Kents. But the queue at the snack stand was long.
"Did we get a room?" Karyn asked him.
"Uh, no. Maybe tomorrow; that is if I want to bribe— "
"Rich, I am not staying at the inn again tonight!" She almost stamped her foot, but she was wearing ski boots. He had another, rare glimpse of the prima donna she must have been around the age of twelve. He was perversely infatuated; he wanted to kick her butt.
"What is it about the place that— look, just because you had a bad— "
"Dream. No it wasn't! I told you that! Why do you have to fight with me? Why can't you just say, 'Yes, Karyn, I know you're upset, yes I'll try to help you, we'll stay somewhere else tonight.' " She subsided dispiritedly, touched her swollen lip, looking aggrieved and angry.
Rich put a hand on her shoulder and she twisted from under it, retaliated with an ungentle open-handed shove that put some distance between them. Her head went down; her eyes were lost in deep shadow as if she were wearing a domino mask. Rich fretted and stopped thinking momentarily.
"Karyn, I want to show you something."
He screwed his Styrofoam cup of chocolate into the snow, unzipped a jacket pocket, and took out the locket and gold chain. He held it in the palm of his hand. Karyn glanced at it, then looked rigidly away, staring at the undulating shadows of the chair lift moving up the mountain.
"Do you know what it is?"
He thought she wasn't going to answer him. His fingers, ungloved, had turned lumpish and were smoldering from the cold. He was awkward trying to prize the locket open so that he could show Karyn the numbers scratched across his face. Light from the gleaming surface was reflected streakily to Karyn's cheek, the orbit of an eye. Unmasked, her pupils dark and delectably hot in the surfeit of light and space around them, she flinched and said in a low voice, "I know. Put it away."
"It's the locket I gave Polly in August. I found it in our room last night." Something jumped in Karyn's cheek, a dimple appeared like a shuddering question mark, which only encouraged his enthusiasm for the mystery. "I don't know how it got there, but I think she's trying to tell me— Kare, I'm convinced they're keeping her prisoner in— "
He was unprepared for the swift change in Karyn's mood. With a long belligerent backhand she swatted the locket from his outstretched palm. It lay in the snow as if decapitated, the head of a small blind snake.
"Get that thing away from me!"
"Karyn, what're you— "
"I told you before, I don't want to hear any more about that loony girl! I don't know what's got into you, I don't know why you're so obsessed, but I'm telling you, Rich, there's something wrong in that place and I'll never go back! And if you can't forget about Polly then you better just forget about me!"
"Stop shouting, for Christ's sake,!' he said furiously.
Karyn, with a pained sullen mouth and eyes brimming like watery stars through a torrent of her condensed breath, made a fist, a shocking declaration; he paused, reconsidering a move toward her. Their voices might have carried for a mile in the crisp almost windless air, which now seemed negatively charged, as if in the aftermath of a sinister loudspeaker announcement. Nearly everyone around the snack stand and lift shed was looking at them.
"Karyn— " His eyes slid from her uncompromising face to the vast frame of the sky around her head, of a blue so intense it easily took on some of the toning of the royal purple ear warmer she wore. He shrugged defensively.
