Nursery Tale Page 15

  "It's Sunday," she said, smiling pleasantly. "And Mass starts"—she checked her watch—"in an hour. It'll take me at least that long to—"

  "You've gone fucking bananas!" Norm cut in; he found that the words made him grin, despite himself.

  She stared blankly at him, as if unable to understand what he was saying. "Are they in your coat pocket?" she said at last.

  "What?—my keys? Christ, Marge, it's a damned blizzard out there! And besides, you haven't been to Mass in years. The last time was the day after our honeymoon."

  She stared blankly at him again. Finally, she removed her coat and hung it back up neatly. She started for the stairs. "I'm going to lie down a while, Norm. Call me when you want your lunch."

  He watched her move very slowly and stiffly up the stairs. When she was on the landing, he whispered, "Marge, are you okay?" But she didn't hear him. She turned right, toward their bedroom. Norm thought fleetingly that she looked very old.

  They huddled in a circle for warmth, their bodies touching, heads down, eyes closed.

  The storm at the tops of the evergreens tossed pine needles and small twigs at them, and stiff, whirling undercurrents of the wind played madly with their long dark hair, and drove dead leaves around them, and into the circle.

  Occasionally, one of the creatures imitated a bird's song, or a speech it had heard very recently. And another recreated, in miniature, the various noises of the storm. Still another laughed (the laughter of adults—deep, and tentative, and shrill, and postured—the quick, spontaneous laughter of children, the cooing and bubbly laughter of infants).

  But mostly, there was silence. And a trembling, uncertain fear. Not the fear of death, but the fear of pain, which is a greater fear.

  There were twenty of them. As one, they stood. And their heads turned in unison to the east, as if their gaze were on the small cluster of houses invisible through the woods and the storm.

  Warmth was there.

  In those houses.

  Fifteen Years Earlier

  Paul Griffin swung his feet to the floor, stood, grabbed the doorknob tightly, yanked his hand back. He cursed.

  Rachel scrambled out of bed.

  "The doorknob's hot!" Paul's voice was trembling. "It's the house, Rachel! It's on fire!"

  "No," Rachel said steadily. "No. It can't be." And they both saw the band of flickering yellow light beneath the door.

  Paul ran to the window, opened its lock, pushed up. The window refused to move.

  He glanced around. "Rachel," he ordered, "the washbasin! On the dresser! Quick, give it to me!"

  Rachel grabbed the washbasin. "I don't understand, Paul. I don't understand," she said as she crossed the room. "We put the fire out. Why do you want this?" She gave him the washbasin. "I don't understand. Please, Paul . . ." She turned. "I don't understand." She crossed to the door. She put her hand on the doorknob. "Why don't we just—"

  "Rachel, no!" Paul shouted.

  She let go of the doorknob. She stepped back. Her body shook.

  "Don't open that door, Rachel!"

  "Yes," she murmured, "yes. I'm sorry."

  Paul brought his arm back, washbasin in hand. Rachel turned, faced him. "They did this, Paul. They want us to stay."

  Paul brought his arm forward. "No," he whispered. He stopped the movement of his arm halfway to the window. "No!" he screamed. "No, you won't, you can't. I won't let you, she's not yours!"

  He crossed the room.

  He threw the door open.

  Chapter 30

  Larry Meade's small talk—managed here (in the open area between Granada and the stand of woods) at a level approximating a shout—was beginning to annoy Dick Wentis. He knew that the small talk was only Larry's way of denying what, exactly, they were doing—of dismissing it as just a passing unpleasantness that would soon be ended. Because Timmy and Sam had, after all, been missing for only half an hour at most, and by lunchtime everyone would probably be safe and snug at home.

  "So," Larry shouted, "that's the scuttlebutt." He'd been talking about a minor sex scandal at his office. "She's going to be canned. I'm sure of it," he concluded, and felt suddenly foolish and insensitive—he wasn't sure why.

  Visibility was at zero. The storm had intensified since sweeping into Granada, and Larry and Dick had found that in order to protect their eyes it was necessary to walk diagonally against the north wind, with their heads lowered at an uncomfortable angle.

  ("We should be able to relax a little once we get into the woods," Dick had explained shortly after leaving the house. "It's a natural sanctuary from the storm.")

  Dick nodded to indicate an area just ahead of them. "Let's be careful," he shouted. "There's a ditch here, somewhere."

  "A ditch?" Larry shouted. He turned his head slightly to look at Dick. "What kind of ditch?"

  "For sewer pipe," Dick shouted back.

  "Oh." Larry lifted his head and massaged his neck.

  Then, for only a moment, the storm backed off slightly.

  He opened his eyes wide. Abruptly, he stopped walking.

  "Larry?" Dick said. He saw the man's lips move, saw the overwhelming fear and confusion that abruptly had settled over him; he heard nothing above the frenzy of the storm.

  He put his arm over Larry's shoulders and forced him to a kneeling position—head lowered, his back and head protecting Larry from the storm and providing a relatively quiet air space to talk in. "Larry, what's wrong?" He found that he still had to raise his voice.

  Larry's unfocused gaze was on the ground in front of his feet. The fear had left him; the confusion remained. He turned his head very slowly to look at Dick. He said, "Who are they, Dick?"

  "I can't hear you, Larry. Talk louder!"

  "I said, 'Who are they?' Those children." He nodded toward the woods. "There. Those children."

  Dick looked where Larry had nodded. He saw nothing. "What children, Larry? Timmy and Sam? Did you see Timmy and Sam?"

  Larry looked up; he was smiling oddly. "Timmy and Sam aren't in the woods, Dick."

  Dick said immediately, suddenly angered, "You can't know that! How can you know that?!"

  "And even if they are . . . even if they are, Dick—we'll never find them!"

  Dick felt the sudden anger building. He fought it back. Christ, this man was a fool! He grabbed Larry's arm and pulled him to a standing position. He pointed stiffly toward the woods; he shouted, "That's where I'm going, Larry! And you're coming with me if I have to kick your ass all the way there!"

  The words WEATHER BULLETIN appeared at the bottom of the TV screen. Trudy Wentis turned the volume up.

  "We were taken by surprise," the weatherman said. "The computer told us"—he grinned as if embarrassed—"that this low front"—he waved his wooden pointer at an area on a map of New York State which stretched diagonally west to east from the Pennsylvania border to Buffalo; a big "L" had been placed in the middle of the area—"was going to track much farther east and north of us, following this retreating band of high pressure"—he moved the pointer to indicate Lake Ontario and lower Canada. "However, this high pressure cell did not behave as our computer anticipated it would. It stalled here, around the Toronto area, and so the low pressure cell was deflected"—he moved the pointer—"into our region. Complicating it, and producing the very heavy snowfall and strong winds we are experiencing now, is another center of high pressure"—the map changed suddenly to a map of the entire eastern seaboard—"which is pulling moist air in from the Carolinas. This high pressure cell appears to be tracking to the east, however . . ."

  Trudy turned the set off and mentally cursed weather forecasters, and computers, and high and low pressure cells. She crossed to the front window, parted the curtains with her hand; she saw nothing but a wall of wind-driven snow. She let go of the curtain.

  She was getting nervous, she realized. It had been a full hour since Dick and Larry had left the house, and she thought the idea of bundling up tight and going out to look for them was becoming mo
re and more appealing.

  And there was the other thing, too—her intuition. As if it were a place inside her, a physical thing, she thought that something had settled into it, something small and prickly and alive—something that was whispering to her that all was not right in Granada. That something indeed was very, very wrong.

  Janice McIntyre thought idly that it seemed almost like something Dr. Spock would have advised against—moving a baby's things to another house before the baby was born (bad for the emotional development of the fetus, maybe—interrupts the bonding procedure). She smiled wistfully, her gaze flitting from the print of Picasso's Child with Dove, to the fine Simmons crib, and the four-drawer chest, to the Welch bassinette (only the best for little Melissa, or little Francis, or whoever it turned out to be), the tall, yellow changing table awaiting stacks of neatly folded diapers. It would all have to be repacked and set up in some other house, and that was a genuine shame because babies' rooms should always remain babies' rooms.

  She flicked the light off. She put her hand on the doorknob and began to close the door. She felt something brush past her, as if a hand had touched her knees and thighs and her swollen abdomen very lightly.

  She flicked the light on. She scanned the room. She saw nothing unusual. Only the light and shadow of the room. She decided there was a draft creeping into the house. From the storm. And she closed the door and went back downstairs.

  Timmy Meade thought that building a quick, makeshift shelter out of the park tables and benches was just about the smartest thing anybody could have done. Because he was protected from the snow and the shit damn wind, and it wasn't so cold in here that he had to worry too much (although he wouldn't holler if it warmed up just a little). It was almost cozy, maybe a couple squirrels and chipmunks and such, caught out in the storm, would see what he'd done and decide to join him. That'd be all right. Hell, there was enough room for Sam Wentis, too. 'Course, he was probably at home by now, sitting down to a lunch of tomato soup and tuna fish sandwiches and a handful of Fritos corn chips.

  And then, afterwards, a nap. Because he'd be tired, naturally, from tromping through the snow and the wind. And the cold always made people tired, too. But just a short nap, fifteen minutes or a half hour, 'cuz there was that shit damn homework to do for Mr. Armstrong (nobody else gave homework assignments, why should he?), and then a good movie on TV . . .

  He noticed, for the first time, that he was shivering. Not quietly—the kind of shivering that raised goose bumps—but violently, even noisily, because he could see that his knees were knocking, and that his jaw was quivering so much that his teeth hit each other occasionally.

  He found, also that he could watch his knees knocking and feel his jaw quivering as if he were someone else, another boy watching from close by.

  And that other boy laughed, because this dumb kid huddled up inside a little house made of park tables and park benches and shivering and shaking like he was having some kind of a fit was just about the funniest shit damn thing he ever saw.

  Chapter 31

  Norm Gellis called, "You asleep up there?" and waited just long enough to take a breath. "I said, 'Are you asleep up there?' Marge." He got no answer. "Damned spook. Mass, for Chrissakes, Mass!"

  He went into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator door. "Shit!" What the world needed, he thought, what it really needed, was a refrigerator that automatically got rid of leftover macaroni, and the little molded jellos with dollops of whipped cream on top. A refrigerator that would disintegrate them, that would turn them into gray mush. That's what the world needed.

  He slammed the refrigerator door. He listened. He wished the house wasn't quite so airtight and quite so soundproof. Because he knew the goddamned biggest storm of the decade was wailing away outside. But here, inside his new house, he could hear nothing.

  Only dead silence.

  And he hated silence.

  Dear Norm,

  I feel like a girl again on my way to meet some date my sister has fixed me up with. I never knew the boys she fixed me up with till we met, and it was always a surprise. That's the way I feel, now, and it almost makes up for what I'm doing.

  I wish I could say why, exactly, I am doing this but I can't. Exactly.

  Marge slowly reread what she'd written, then wadded the paper into a tight ball and stuck it into the pocket of her housedress. She'd have to try again, because Norm wouldn't understand, and it was imperative that he understand.

  Trudy Wentis decided it was time. That she was done fooling herself, done rationalizing. (Well, Dick and Larry and Sam and Timmy have found a safe, secure, warm spot somewhere and they're waiting there till the storm ends.)

  She looked up the telephone number (taking more time with it, she noted, than was necessary; a way of putting off the inevitable, she realized), dialed the number, began growing impatient by the fifth ring, and by the twelfth ring her patience had grown very thin indeed. Finally;

  "Sheriff's Department—Complaints; Officer Tibbe speaking."

  Trudy exhaled. "Officer Tibbe, my name is Trudy Wentis, I'm calling from Granada. Do you know where that is?"

  "Yes, I do, Miss, Mrs . . ."

  "Mrs. Wentis."

  "Mrs. Wentis. I know where it is."

  "I'm calling in regard to . . ." She paused, took a deep breath; this was a lot harder than she had thought it would be. "In regard to my son and my husband."

  "Yes?"

  She began nervously twirling the telephone cord around the forefinger of her right hand. "They're missing, Officer Tibbe. My husband and a friend of his went looking for my son—his name is Sam—about two hours ago, two and a half hours really, and they haven't come back yet. I'm just a little concerned, you understand . . ." She faltered.

  "How long has your son been missing, Mrs. Wentis?"

  "Sam? Since early this morning, since about 8:30 or 9:00, I guess. He was playing with a friend of his . . ."

  "And I assume your husband went looking for him when the storm began?"

  "Yes, that's right. He went with a neighbor of ours, Larry Meade—"

  "I'm afraid I'm going to have to put you on hold, Mrs. Wentis, our complaints clerk, Mrs. Willis, will be with you momentarily—"

  "Officer Tibbe, my husband and my son are missing, for God's sake—"

  "I appreciate that, Mrs. Wentis, and as soon as something concrete can be done to assist you, rest assured that it will be done. You must realize, however, that since the storm began we've received at least a half dozen calls like yours, as well as numerous reports of traffic accidents—"

  She hung up.

  She glanced at the hall closet. Another half hour, then she'd go look for them.

  She turned toward the kitchen.

  And that is when she heard the small, dull thumping noises from above, from somewhere, she guessed, on the second floor.

  Chapter 32

  Timmy Meade remembered what his father had told him about death (two years ago, after his favorite aunt had "passed away"): "It's just a long, dreamless sleep, Timmy. No pain. Just sleep. That's what death is." It had sounded okay at the time. It had even helped a little in getting rid of the grief.

  It fell flat now.

  The phrase "calculated risk" came to him from somewhere in his recent past and he thought it was what he had done—he had taken a calculated risk. Because he had seen death grinning at him inside those piled-up park benches, and it had given him no choice but to head for home. Any other day, what was it?—a twenty-minute walk through woods and underbrush and, for sure, his exposed hands and sneakered feet would probably get a little frostbitten, but that was the calculated risk, wasn't it?

  Too bad it hadn't worked.

  Too bad that in the shit damn blizzard there was no right or left, north or south, east or west. Only the snow. And the wind. And the cold.

  Too bad.

  He thought he was on a road. Maybe Reynolds Road. Or Sullivan's Road. (No, he decided, he couldn't have gone that far out of his w
ay.) And that if he was on Reynolds Road it was comforting to think that it led, more or less, right back to his front door, that it was a kind of link between him and warmth. The idea made him grin a little.

  And then, as if his strength had come abruptly to an end, his knees buckled, and he fell very slowly, face forward into the deep cold snow.

  "Since the storm began, four hours ago"—it was the same weatherman, and he was smiling the tight, mechanical smile common to all people who are enamored of statistics—"we have registered a full twelve inches of snow. Wind gusts, as well, have been clocked at over seventy miles an hour." As if on cue, he stopped smiling. "The sheriff's department says there have been numerous traffic accidents, and a number of people have been reported missing. In some places, drifts are over ten feet high, and there are also unconfirmed reports of roofs collapsing under the strain of the wind and snow. One of the hardest-hit areas seems to be the little community of Granada, ten miles north of Penn Yann. The only road leading into Granada has been completely cut off by the storm, and residents there—and in the rest of Ontario County—are, of course, urged to stay in their homes. Although the temperature itself is staying fairly constant, at fifteen degrees Fahrenheit, the near-gale-force winds are producing wind chills in excess of forty and fifty degrees below zero, a temperature that will bring frostbite to exposed extremities within . . ."

  When she had thrown the vase, and the television screen had imploded dully—showering sparks everywhere—Trudy Wentis settled herself into the nearest chair, let her head fall back, and closed her eyes lightly.

  This was insanity.

  This whole damned thing was sheer insanity! This fine, new house in the middle of nowhere was insanity!

  And the fact that her husband and her son were out in that damned blizzard—their noses and fingers and toes probably turning black from frostbite—was insanity!