Dark Rain Page 5

  Then he added quickly, “I will pay you handsomely of course.”

  There was a sudden rattle like coins clashing in the air, as if to emphasize that point. They were not there. He’d simply created the sound. I thought about all the people who had lost their lives this evening, and I gently swore. Which didn’t seem to faze him even slightly.

  “Tell you what. I’ll put food on your table for an entire year. We’ll call that a deal – let’s not mention it again, eh, sport? A deal’s a deal, you know.”

  For some reason, a row of blotches had appeared down one side of his face.

  How far could I trust this thing that had once been a man? Everything that he had told me might be just a part of his more general lunacy. But it fitted in with what I had already seen. And he was the only person I’d met so far who had any insights whatsoever.

  I shoved my hands into my pockets, then muttered, “Okay. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Don’t toy with me, sport. You and that girly-whirl of yours? You’re both already on it.”

  So I shrugged. “I’ll keep you informed, then.”

  “Oh, no need,” he told me airily. “I’ll know.”

  The golden eyes slid shut as he said that. And I thought the interview was over. But they snapped open again.

  “One more thing,” he said. His voice had lost its distant quality, and taken on an urgent tone. “Whatever’s come to visit us, it’s all het-up and hungry. It doesn’t seem inclined to linger, loiter, ponder, take its time. I’d get a move on, sport, if I were you.”

  Okay. I took note of that.

  On my way out through the ballroom door, I paused, turned. And asked him the same question that I always ask him when I come up here.

  “Do you ever think about it? Trying to use your powers to lift it? Regan’s Curse?”

  I could only see his eyes again, by this time, staring at me from the dark. The candle had gone out.

  “Why should I do that?” came his soft reply.

  “Because then, we could get out of here, and live more normal lives.”

  As usual, his gaze went rather puzzled. The typical reaction of an agoraphobic. It was cozy and familiar in the Landing, so far as he was concerned. There was nothing wrong with the place at all. So why would anybody want to leave?

  But finally, he saw my point.

  “It’s been tried so many times already. I’m afraid I don’t believe it can be done. Regan Farrow’s magic was already very powerful. The pain of death just magnified it.”

  He let out a sigh.

  “I think we’re well and truly stuck here, chum. We can only put our noses to the grindstone and get on with it.”

  And he actually sounded sane, for the first time in years. But it was not the answer that I’d wanted.

  I made my way back quickly through the Manor’s grounds toward the gate. Stopped there impatiently for several minutes. Neither Hampton nor the Silver Shadow came back into view. Goddamn.

  So I started back on foot. It was a long walk home, but all of it downhill. And I had a lot of thinking to do.

  FIVE

  I never get to sleep quickly. The yawning chasm in my double bed is far too wide for that. There’s still, even after two years, an indentation in the mattress where Alicia used to lay. But tonight, it was worse than ever. And it wasn’t only the deaths in Garnerstown playing on my mind. What Raine had told me kept on ringing through it.

  Did we have a visitor? I was lying in the darkness, but the moon had finally come out. A thin wash of silvery illumination made its way in past my drapes. The street outside was completely silent. But every so often a dog barked, several blocks away. And then I could hear a distant chiming as the Town Hall clock, down at Union Square, struck the hour.

  When I was a kid, there was an owl in a tree near my home that used to keep me up for ages sometimes. Those unworldly sounds it made had me half-convinced it was a ghost. I never told my folks, of course. My father wouldn’t have understood. He’d been a cop too, like my grandfather before him, both genuine tough guys in their own quiet way, capable, resourceful. I remembered the way that you felt safe around them all the time, and their casual but constant watchfulness. And all the time until I’d been in my teens – and begun the process of becoming independent – I had wanted to grow up just like them.

  I hadn’t grown that independent, I guess, since I had wound up joining the force anyway.

  But now … what was I listening for tonight? Something moving around out there. Something prowling – hungry – through the darkness.

  Not knowing what it might be troubled me the most. And trying to guess exhausted me. By three o’ clock, I had dropped into a restless doze.

  That was when the dreams began, of course. I don’t claim, the way some people do, to have the same one every night. But they all focus around the exact same subject. The same procession of circumstances and its terrible conclusion, approached from different angles, separate starting points in time.

  It was still there vividly in my mind’s eye. A bright and sunny day, with merely a faint hint of a breeze. People’s front yards all in bloom, and a few traces of white blossom – a hint of pink contained in them – clinging to the apple trees. People were out walking, everywhere you looked. Despite what’s happened to Raine’s Landing down the centuries, it can be a pleasant, comfortable place. An environment you can enjoy, and even take satisfaction from. We’d all have gone crazy a long time back, if that wasn’t the case.

  I’d just gotten back from Calder Street, over in East Meadow, Cass’s neighborhood. It had been an emergency call. Some would-be adept, nineteen years old, had gone berserk. And had – taking her cue from the ‘Circe’ myth in Homer – attempted to turn her cheating boyfriend into an actual pig. That may sound amusing, except for two things. She hadn’t succeeded the whole way – he was the right color, and made the right noises, but Old MacDonald wouldn’t have him on his farm. And you only had to see the flaring terror in his eyes to recognize that this was not a joke.

  In the end, Gaspar Vernon had agreed to come down from the Hill and fix the matter. I left him to it. I guess I might have been badly shaken up, if I had hailed from any other town. But a cop in the Landing deals with incidents like that the entire time.

  My shift wasn’t over for another couple of hours. But in those days, there was always a habit I had when anything unpleasant caused by magic happened. It put my mind at rest to drop by my own house and make sure that my family was safe.

  So there I was, cruising up through my own neighborhood of Northridge. There was nothing exceptional about the place, and that was how I liked it. Kids were playing on the sidewalk. They had balls and bikes and dogs. A postman was making his rounds. Old Ted Brampton already had the sprinklers on in his front yard, despite the fact that it was barely summer yet. Just row upon row of neat little houses, all of them well maintained. This was, and has always been, a respectable blue-collar neighborhood.

  I turned the corner onto Kenveigh Street. Pulled up in front of my own garage, then walked across and rang the bell. And, when I got no answer, used my latchkey. There was no one home, but that was not surprising on a day like this. They’d obviously gone out.

  I was writing them a note, to let them know I’d dropped by, when I heard a car backfire on the street. That drew me to the window. A fourteen year-old, rust covered Toyota had pulled up to the curb next to my squad car.

  I squinted at it hard. And couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing.

  The thing had Nevada plates. Which couldn’t possibly be right. My face went stiff and my pulse bumped over.

  As I watched, a squat young man with shaggy hair got out. He went to the trunk and hefted a massive, battered suitcase into view. I think my mouth must have dropped open at that point. This was obviously someone who was planning to stay a while. Which was something that never happened here.

  No one ever came here, unless they absolutely had to. And when that was the case, they go
t out again just as quickly as they could. Certainly, we had no long-term visitors. It was all a part and parcel of the curse.

  For the past three centuries, Raine’s Landing hadn’t been part of the regular world because of it. And it should have been working on this fellow now. Every instinct in his body ought to have been screaming at him. Turn around! Get out!

  Instead of which … he was smiling. He actually looked pleased that he’d arrived.

  I finally unfroze, with difficulty. And went on outside, my original shock giving way to bemusement.

  Oh, he was staying, all right. He was struggling with the big case, sweating. But there was this fixed, determined expression on his wide, lumpy face. His head swung around when I stepped down from my porch. And then his eyes narrowed when he saw my uniform.

  That made me wonder straightaway if he had been in any trouble. He simply stood there, rather edgy looking, as I walked across.

  “Any problem, officer?”

  His voice was flat and nasal.

  I didn’t like the look of him from the outset. He was pinkly chubby, like an overly-large infant. Had to be in his late twenties. Stood about five six, and had let his dark hair grow out into unkempt cornrows. He had on a Hawaiian shirt and denim shorts, brown sandals.

  There was something about the look on his face, though. Something slightly twisted to it. And an unpleasant gleam in his tiny, deeply set brown eyes, like he had some kind of beef with the entire world.

  “None at all. I live here, that’s all – that’s my house.” And, despite my misgivings, I extended a hand. “Ross Devries. Most people just call me Ross.”

  He reached out warily and shook.

  “Jason Goad.”

  There were large calluses on his palm.

  “And what brings you here, Jason?”

  I was still looking him up and down, and wondering how he’d even got here.

  “That an official question?”

  He didn’t smile, asking me that. He was entirely serious.

  “No. Free country. It’s your business, I guess.”

  But my throat was getting tight by this time. What the Hell exactly was going on? I’d lived here my entire thirty-three years, and had never even heard of any visitor, except for Willets. And Willets was exceptional. Jason here didn’t look as if he answered that description.

  “Okay.” He’d decided to lighten up a little. “I’ve rented a room, right here.”

  And he pointed to our neighbor’s house.

  I tried not to look dumbstruck as I squinted across at it. In all the time we’d been on Kenveigh Street, Mrs. McGaffrey, right next door, had inhabited the place alone. She’d had a husband once, but he had died in an accident at the lumber yard, a year before we’d turned up. And since then, she’d not so much as had a relative drop round for coffee.

  But we could barely communicate with the outside world at all, so how’d he managed to arrange that? Did he have some kind of special gift? If so, it struck me as bizarre.

  I was still doing my level best to hide my astonishment. I wasn’t sure how, exactly. But somehow, this guy had managed to worm his way in here.

  I was trying to think what to say next. There had to be a way of finding out more without making it sound like an interrogation.

  “All the way from Nevada, huh?” I tried.

  “Right. Vegas. Ever been?”

  When I shook my head, his pudgy features creased into a knowing smirk. So … how much did he know about us? What had he found out?

  It suddenly occurred to me. Could this be somebody who practiced magic too?

  “No, didn’t think you had,” he was continuing. His tone had become slightly superior. “I understand a few things about this place.”

  I stared at him again, less friendly this time.

  “That a fact?”

  “Sure. A few little rumors on the Internet, if you know where to look. A bit of research, historical stuff. Late Seventeenth Century stuff, if you really want to know.”

  Which was the period when Farrow had put all of us under her spell.

  His gaze was studying my own, hunting for any kind of reaction. We’re a closed community round here – to put it mildly – so I gave him none. Which didn’t mean there weren’t reactions galloping around inside my head.

  “Population censuses,” he told me. “Who lived where, and when. And where they came from. That and … how can I put this? I seem to have a special instinct.”

  I was waiting for him to go on. But, without any warning, his attention went elsewhere.

  He looked past me, down the sidewalk. And I followed where his eyes had gone.

  There was the faintest of mirages in the middle distance, caused by the day’s growing heat. And from it were emerging Pete and Tammy and Alicia. They were coming back from the direction of the park. Pete was walking up ahead of them, growing confident at five years old. And Alicia had our daughter, two years younger, in her arms.

  My boy spotted me and yelled out “Daddy!” Tammy and my wife both waved. I should have returned the gesture. But a prickling of the hairs on the nape of my neck made me look back around.

  Jason Goad was staring at the three of them like they were ice-cream in the middle of a desert. Must have realized I’d noticed that. But he did not avert his gaze.

  “That your family, Ross?” he asked.

  I didn’t like the tone of his voice. Not one little bit.

  Particularly when he added, “Dude, is that chick yours?”

  My alarm clock started ringing. My hand went across to slap it off. I awoke, but the dream hung with me for a little while. Maybe I was trying to rearrange the circumstances in my head, attempting to make them better.

  I sat up suddenly, remembering what had happened yesterday evening. In point of fact, it all came flooding back.

  My head seemed to ache with the pressure of it and I rubbed my brow, blew breath out through my teeth.

  It was seven in the morning. The house, as usual, seemed entirely cold and echoey without my family around. There was only one reason why I still lived here. I wasn’t convinced they were completely gone. Was still hanging on to the faint possibility they might come back. Or was I just fooling myself? I often wondered that.

  Most things that I did, these days – I did them just to fill the gap where my genuine existence used to be.

  I took a long, hot shower. Didn’t even bother to towel myself. Just pulled on a robe and then went through into the kitchen, where I got some coffee brewing.

  Jack Stroud, I could see from my window, was back out on his front lawn, waging stage two of his war against the family Formicidae.

  I popped a slice of bread into the toaster, then fried myself a couple of eggs.

  It suddenly struck me that it was insane, the way I rattled around this place. Then I remembered the alternative. Rattling around alone elsewhere.

  I closed my eyes a moment. Then I went into the living room, plate in one hand, mug in the other. It was the same way that it usually was. There were several tall shelves full of books. Alicia and I had always been big readers – she had been a teacher before Tammy came along. The half-dozen paintings on the wall were all by local artists. There was a large stack of assorted records by the stereo, although I’d not played any of them for a while. A checkerboard was open on a table in the corner, with the game half-finished, gathering dust.

  It was like the damned Marie Celeste in here, I thought.

  Hung above the mantelpiece was a stuffed smallmouth bass. It was only seven inches long, but was the first fish Pete had ever caught – he’d pulled it out of the lake at Crealley Street Park, so we’d had it mounted anyway.

  And ranged below it were a small cluster of baseball trophies, from my own days as a pitcher back in high school. I’d had them tucked away in a box in the garage, but he’d found them, insisted we take them out, to Alicia’s grins and my embarrassment. I could still hear his voice piping in my head. “It’s an achievement, dad! Yo
u’ve got to show them!”

  At his age, Pete hadn’t had anything like a proper arm yet. But I’d already started showing him how to hold the cheese for heaters, curves, and breaking fastballs, explaining to him what the different throws were for. I have to admit it, I’d had dreams for him in that direction.

  And if this all sounds rather dull to you, then I’m not even going to apologize. I’d been merely a regular guy – husband, father, cop – before all this had started. And I missed that more than words could say. If circumstances ever let me, it was a place I very badly wanted to get back to.

  I found the remote under a paper on the couch, and switched the TV on.

  It was tuned to RLKB. And the local news was being broadcast. The station’s sole reporter, Marlon Fisk, was standing at the end of Cray’s Lane, which looked rather less forbidding in the light. But a strip of yellow tape behind him bore the legend ‘do not cross.’ A warning that had come rather too late.

  “… are calling this the worst single incident of magic gone wrong in the Landing’s entire history,” he was telling us. “Who caused it and why is still a mystery. But for victims and survivors both, the consequences are all too real.”

  So that was how the powers-that-be were playing it. Maybe word had come down from the mayor’s office. I doubted Saul Hobart would announce that as a given quite so quickly. And there’d been my conversation at the Manor, late last night.

  Fisk had mentioned survivors, though. People who lived there, obviously, who’d been lucky enough to be out that evening. That lightened my mood a little. Maybe they’d be useful.

  My thoughts turned to Cassie. Hopefully, she’d turned up a new clue or a witness. I phoned her, but got no answer. Damn. Where to begin, when I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for?

  My appetite deserted me, the way it usually does when I’m under pressure. I put my plate aside, half-eaten, then got dressed and headed for the office.

  Banners were flapping around Union Square as I made my way across it. They had to have been put up crack of dawn this morning, since they hadn’t been here yesterday. The wind was up from last night and it yanked the fabric, making it crackle with a noise like sails. As though the looming gray buildings around me might be towed away at any moment.