Читать книгу Gemini Rising - Brian McNaughton - Страница 6

CHAPTER THREE

As Marcia walked across the darkened parking lot behind the Banner, she was annoyed to discover that Ron Green’s story had done unpleasant things to her nerves. She found herself listening for footsteps and straining her eyes to penetrate the more suspicious-looking shadows.

She told herself firmly that she was too old to be scared by silly ghost stories. Besides, she’d once had a real ghost in her own house, and she’d lived through that ordeal without becoming demoralized. Compared to that, Ron’s story was insignificant, a mere medical anomaly. It was more disgusting than scary, when she analyzed it.

But her fingers trembled shamelessly when she tried to unlock the door of her car. Once it was open, she slid in hastily and locked it behind her without wasting a motion. She sternly resisted the urge to look behind the front seat.

The next time she drew a night assignment, it might be a good idea to bring Lucifer with her. He wouldn’t be a bit of help in an emergency, of course. If danger threatened, he would probably run for his life. But even though Lucifer was an untypical Doberman, the reputation of his breed ought to be enough to discourage muggers.

She was being illogical. A tale of the walking dead had frightened her, not an account of a mugging; and she didn’t believe that the dead could walk. What, then, was she scared of? She had to admit that she didn’t really know.

She started the engine, but first she yielded to the temptation to check the back seat thoroughly. It was empty.

She couldn’t bring Lucy—as he had been so aptly nicknamed—to her night assignments. Ken would make an issue of it, an interminable issue: If you’re afraid to go out alone at night, you’re showing some good sense at last, and you ought to give up this foolish idea of working when you don’t have to, when you have children to take care of, etc., etc., etc.

She had lied to Ron Green. She did take a drink now and then. She felt an urge to have one now; a nice, icy martini, savored somewhere in peace before she went home to face Ken. She considered going back to accept Ron’s offer, but she decided against it. She felt like having the drink in solitude. That sounded suspiciously like the first step toward alcoholism, so she put the idea aside entirely. Once under way, she opened the window to let the warm, damp air of the April night blow in around her. The wind brought something indefinable with it, a memory of youthful restlessness and unfulfilled longings. For a moment the emotion was so strong that her eyes misted.

This was ridiculous. She was heading for a breakdown: first terrified by nothing, then crying at the touch of an April night. She was a happily married woman of thirty-one, the mother of three wonderful children, holder of an interesting job to absorb any excess energies. She recited these facts to herself like the comforting, unexamined litany of a childhood religion. But with a sinking heart she sensed that it was a faith she had outgrown.

Her foot faltered on the accelerator as she saw the ruddy neon of a wayside bar, but she pressed it down firmly. That would be asking for trouble. Asking for company, anyway. She wanted neither. But she might not be able to get that drink when she got home. If she suggested a martini and Ken was sober, he would take it as an invitation to have three; if he was drunk, to have five.

Darkness swallowed the island of neon behind her. The feeble probe of the headlights showed woods on either side of the two-lane highway. The township was booming, as Ken’s income testified, and yet there still existed vast chunks that the developers hadn’t yet chewed up.

She didn’t like the woods. Even this scraggy, suburban forest in the long-tamed East held an echo of the menace she remembered in the Black Hills. There the stars didn’t just twinkle, as they did in New Jersey: they flared. She had been aware of them as self-consuming fires, flaming red and blue and green. Nothing she had heard before had prepared her for the sound that a coyote made. No recording could suggest that maniacal, shrieking cackle, echoing in immensity. A second coyote would answer, and they would scream a duet like two damned souls at opposite ends of hell.

She didn’t want to think about the Black Hills. Most of the memories from that period of her life were hidden, as if by a curtain. She feared what lay behind it, but sometimes she horrified herself by picking and probing absent-mindedly at its edges. The woods had reminded her of that time. She hoped that they would soon be leveled and replaced by the neat little boxes that Ken designed for the omnivorous developers.

She braked suddenly; and now she could see the hitchhiker running up in the glow of her taillights. It wasn’t too late to retract her impulsive act and step on the gas. He would think that she had played a dirty trick on him, but what did that matter? He was at the door before she could make up her mind. She reached out and unlocked it.

“Thanks,” he said. He pushed a shapeless bundle into the back seat, then slid in beside her.

He was emaciated. He might have been forty, but he was more probably nineteen. His long hair and beard looked soft against the craggy lines of his face. None of the usual touches of whimsy relieved the almost Puritanical simplicity of his faded denim outfit.

“Where are you headed?” she asked.

“Blackwood’s Corners.” His voice was resonant. His accent suggested the Far West.

“I can take you most of the way.”

“I’m obliged.”

Why had she picked him up? Because nobody else would have, certainly; and because she couldn’t have stood another minute alone with her thoughts. Neither reason seemed good. But he stared ahead, relaxed, his hands easily at rest on his knees.

“What’s going on out there?”

“Ma’am?”

“I’ve seen a lot of young people in the area lately, strangers in town.” She had been choosing her words with care, but she could only end lamely. “I wondered…a rock concert or something?”

“I wouldn’t know, ma’am. I have friends there.”

His answer was a masterly piece of evasion. It didn’t reveal whether his friends were long-time residents or if they were among the strangers she had observed, but it discouraged further questioning. Marcia wasn’t easily discouraged.

“My name’s Marcia Creighton, by the way.”

Her passenger didn’t answer. She found that he was staring at her. Flustered, she returned her full attention to the road. Maybe he had mistaken her friendly overture for an invitation. No, it wasn’t that. She had read something quite different in his expression: curiosity and surprise, as if she’d just revealed herself as a celebrity.

She decided that she was imagining things. He was shy, that was all, and unskilled in polite conversation. She prompted. “And yours is…?”

“Saul,” he said, and he looked away without acknowledging the smile she intended to be encouraging. She wondered if he had been christened thus, or if the Biblical name was part of his act. The newcomers to the area might be religious nuts.

“Maybe I know some of your friends,” she suggested.

He didn’t respond immediately. From the corner of her eye, she saw that he was again staring at her. At last, with obvious reluctance, he said, “Sarah Goodwin? Abel Hopkins?”

She hesitated before shaking her head. For a moment the names had seemed familiar. Dim faces to match them had wavered elusively at the edges of her consciousness. She came to the dissatisfying conclusion that she didn’t know the people, that she was familiar merely with the type of name, fusing Hebrew and Anglo-Saxon elements, from history books. The names suggested lean figures in black, trudging through the Massachusetts snow to sit painfully erect through a six-hour sermon on the torments of hell by Jonathan Edwards.

She wanted to know more about Saul and his friends. She told herself that her interest was professional, although he probably would have viewed it as frivolous. She was reluctant to identify herself as a representative of the press. She wanted Saul to accept her as an equal, as someone who had also looked for the truth in strange places: she had done plenty of hitchhiking in her time; she had lived in communes; she had listened intently to people who claimed to know the one, true path to…salvation. No, salvation was for individual souls. The person she was trying to remember now had wanted to change the world, to prepare it for a momentous event: a birth; was that it, someone’s birth? But no. She couldn’t remember. She’d come close, that time. Frighteningly close.

Covertly, she cast an uneasy glance at Saul. Something about him had almost resurrected her long-buried memories. Maybe it was merely his long hair or the way he dressed, but she suspected that one of the names he had mentioned had done it. Whatever the reason, the memories were inaccessible now.

The fact remained that she had more in common with Saul than he probably suspected. She felt vaguely ashamed of her expensive car, more ashamed of her ulterior motive: to get a story.

She slowed, but she didn’t stop, at the turn that would have taken her home.

“You—”

He had started to say something, but then he had cut himself short. How odd: did he know where she lived?

“What were you going to say?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“I’ll take you to Blackwood’s Corners,” she announced. “It’s a good fifteen miles, and you won’t get another lift at this hour.”

“I’m obliged.” He couldn’t be accused of obsequiousness.

It was Nora Curtis, the neighborhood gossip and self-styled astrologer, who had first called attention to all the “hippies” lately to be seen in the township. Marcia had winced at that word, a slur against many members of a misunderstood generation: her own. Whatever validity the word might once have had was gone—a victim of Charles Manson and Altamont. As a teen-ager, Marcia had run away from home, confident that love could solve all problems. She had been wrong.

Catchwords aside, Nora’s observation was true. A lot of eccentric-looking people, many of them young, many of them bedraggled refugees from the Sixties, had drifted into the area. What had drawn them here? She had been toying with the idea of finding out for a story. She had hesitated to mention the idea to Higgins, however, afraid that her motivation was not entirely professional. Maybe she was seeking the answer to the riddle of her own blacked-out past.

Saul was the first one she had questioned, and she was dismayed by her lack of progress. She was further dismayed to notice that her State Police vehicle permit, boldly lettered press, was attached in plain view to the sun visor of her car. His curiosity and his refusal to engage in conversation became understandable. He was just a kid, after all, a kid in a strange part of the country, and she was a member of the local establishment.

Maybe she could relax him by making small talk, but she couldn’t think of any. As the miles rolled by, the only thing that came to her mind was Ron Green’s unpleasant story. Well, it might prove to be a good icebreaker. Most people liked to talk about the occult. It might be just the right subject to open up a religiously oriented young man.

“We had something odd happen in town last night,” she said. “I work there, in Riveredge, as a reporter. They were preparing a body in one of the local funeral homes when it got up and tried to walk out the door. Did you ever hear of—”

She stopped short, shocked by his reaction. His face twisted momentarily into a grimace that might have been anguish. He muttered something aloud.

“Are you all right?” she asked nervously.

Saul had recovered completely. He looked calm.

“I was in Vietnam, and I saw some funny things there,” he said. “But you don’t want to hear about all that.”

She was jolted. Without committing a breach of good manners, he had put her down deftly and firmly.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” she said. “I was just trying to start a conversation. I’m curious about all the hitchhikers and strangers I’ve seen around lately. I thought you might be able to tell me something.”

He considered her words for a while. Then he said, “I can’t speak for anybody else. I came to town to see some old friends, to have a get-together, that’s all. You can let me off here.”

Marcia awoke to her surroundings. They had arrived at Blackwood’s Corners, a confluence of three country roads marked by a general store, a church, and a few darkened houses. She pulled to a stop near the gas pumps in front of the store.

“As long as I’ve taken you this far—”

“This is fine,” he interrupted, already wrestling his bag from the back seat. Thanks very much.”

She sat and watched as he walked through the glare of the headlights. Long-legged and purposeful, without a backward look, he crossed the main road and strode away down one of the country lanes. He was soon gone from sight.

She thought back to the moment when he had interrupted her obviously ill-chosen story about the reanimated corpse. What had he muttered? Too soon. That’s what it had sounded like. What was that supposed to mean? Nothing, of course. Vietnam had left a lot of scars. Saul was just another casualty of the war.

If she tried to share her story with Ken, he would tell her she was crazy for picking up a hitchhiker. Maybe she was. She would have arrived home late anyway, and now it would be nearly midnight before she got there.

Perhaps they would all have gone to bed, and she could have that quiet drink in solitude after all.