Covenant (8 page)

“‘Maybe someone should have gone with him,’ the flashlight girl suggested, feeling guilty.

“‘We didn’t say he couldn’t use the flashlight
before
he got to the top so he could see his way,’ another nervous kid reasoned.

“Then, at the top of Terrel’s Peak, an orange glow flickered on.

“‘There he is,’ someone cried, and pointed at the glow.

“But the light snapped off just as fast as it had come on. And then they heard a screech, an awful, horrible ear-piercing scream.

“‘What was that?’ one of the girls said, just as a light winked on again, only this time, it seemed to come from the open sky just below the cliff’s edge.

“‘Look!’ They pointed, and the light went off. ‘What was that?’

“The light came back on again for the third time, just for a split second, down on the beach below Terrel’s Peak. One of the girls saw it and screamed. The kids all got into their cars then and sped back to town, promising not to tell anybody, because then they’d have to say what they’d been doing up there at night. But one of the girls broke down to her parents, and they called the police.

“The next day, a search party found the flashlight, shattered and broken on the rocks below the peak.”

Cindy’s eyes grew wide and she leaned toward Joe, pausing dramatically before whispering, “But John Ryan’s body was never found.”

Cindy pulled back and laughed, rocking back and forth on the towel. “Spooky, huh?”

“Yeah,” Joe agreed, “but who’s to say the kid didn’t just fall off the edge because he was drunk and his body got sucked out with the tide?”

“That’s exactly what I used to say,” she agreed, and then leapt to her feet.

“Wanna get wet?”

Cindy ran toward the surf and Joe followed, after shucking his shirt and kicking off his shoes. By the time he tiptoed through the pebbles and shells and sunk his toes into the cool, sandy mud of the bank, Cindy was already twenty yards out. With a twist and an arch, her pink and yellow butt came up out of the water, and then her whole body disappeared beneath the waves. Joe launched himself into the breakers and began paddling hard to catch up to her.

“C’mon, already,” she yelled, head popping up even farther ahead. “Don’t they teach you Chicago kids how to swim?”

“Sure,” he called back. “But if we go too fast we run out of water!”

The waves felt a lot stronger than they looked, Joe thought, as he redoubled his efforts to catch her. It felt good though, to swim without worrying about bumping into one of a thousand other people crowding and fouling the water. A handful of people had taken up spots here and there down the stretch of sand since they’d first arrived, but the beach still looked empty. Actually, the fact that this beach wasn’t mobbed with people on such a perfect day was nice, but also kind of creepy. It was also proof, he supposed, of the superstition that gripped the town.

The ocean was cool, but not icy-cold like Lake Michigan, which didn’t even warm up much in the middle of summer. Fish zipped past him in mini schools, sometimes brushing with tickling fins at his thighs and calves. Dunking his head underwater, he opened his eyes to see a murky green bottom, with fronds of God-knows-what growing between rocks covered with fuzzy muck and plant life. Small mountains thrust up here and there from the ocean floor, rising to spires and plateaus just above the waves. A few feet away, he watched a green and gold fish dart away from his path. Coming back up for air he saw that he’d never catch Cindy—she had a good head start and was used to plowing through these kinds of waves, while he kept getting mouthfuls of salt water.

Just as he was beginning to question whether he’d have enough stamina to swim back, she pulled herself up on one of the outermost boulders that dotted the inner reaches of the bay and waited. He was out of breath when he reached her, his legs aching with the effort of kicking his body forward. She lay on her belly on the rock and offered him a hand.

“C’mon up, landlubber!”

He was grateful for the boost, and collapsed in a heap next to her on the rock. It was just big enough for both of them to lie side by side, feet hanging off the end.

“I love swimming out here,” she said, her voice just barely audible above the rush of the ocean. “It’s so calming.”

She pointed a finger out to the open sea.

“Out there it’s so vast, so huge. It’s like outer space, in a way. You could never explore it all. And back there”—she pointed toward the spires of the Methodist church, one of the only visible markers of the town of Terrel from this distance— “it’s, like, claustrophobic sometimes. So this is the perfect middle ground. We’re right between zero and infinity.”

She laughed then, a nervous but light sound that Joe found intoxicating. “That sounds really dopey, doesn’t it?”

“No,” he answered, still gasping a little for breath. His chest felt as though it were on fire. “I think it’s probably pretty sharp. The thing is, you can’t really live very long right here, in the middle. You have to pick a side. What do you want to be? Explorer or small-town housewife? Do you want to live in the comfort of zero, or the chaos of infinity?”

Cindy turned away from the beach and looked out at the waves. The sky seemed to meld in an arc of blue right into the farthest point of the ocean the eye could see. A perfect kiss of air and sea.

“I used to know,” she said finally. “But now I’m not so sure.”

She flipped back, resting her head on her hand, her elbow on the rock. He couldn’t help but notice the way the suit clung tight to her body, every yellow and hot pink–painted curve pressing toward him. Her nipples were erect with the cool kiss of the ocean still dripping off her. The water pooled in her bellybutton, dripping down her gleaming skin to disappear in the pores of the rock beneath them. He had to keep telling himself that he was not here to seduce, but to get information. But as her eyes met his and he saw the way they glinted in the early-afternoon sun, he found his original purpose more and more obscure.

“What about you?” she asked. “What do you want to be?”

“I thought we went over this the other night.”

“We started to, but you kinda copped out. I want to know
why you’re here in Terrel. You seem like the explorer type to me. I think you’re a real reporter. And Terrel doesn’t really need a
real
reporter!”

“You’re telling me.”

“So, why here? Are you here to stay, or just passing through? Or”—her smile deepened, revealing just a few too many teeth— “are you on a big, secret undercover story?”

“The story of my life.”

“Yeah?”

“It all started when I was a boy…”

“Stop it! C’mon. Give!”

“Maybe later. After a couple of beers. You can drink, can’t you?”

“Depends who’s buying.”

“Me, if you can beat me back to shore.”

“Don’t consider taking up gambling, huh?”

With that she slid off the rock into the water, and in an instant was slicing through the waves back to the beach.

Joe followed, but this time, he didn’t bother to try to catch her.

“Have you heard Him call?”

“Yes,” Karen answered, clutching her glass tightly enough to whiten her knuckles. “And we’re going to have to answer soon.”

“I hear Him over and over again in my dreams. I can’t get any sleep anymore. And when I do fall asleep, my dreams are…”

Bloody arms holding and stroking and caressing
…

Karen ran a trembling hand through her hair. “I know, I know. I told you it wouldn’t end with James. I’ve even felt that…that tingling He gives. Like I need to be with someone again. It’s been years since I had that feeling, that compulsion, other than on
the day
. I’ve even felt like painting again. But I refuse to pick up the brush. I just won’t give in to that.”

The other woman nodded. “I’ve been playing the piano for hours at a time this week. It’s like someone else is using my hands; I can’t stop. But I still say Rachel is the key. If we find out what she’s done with the child, the Covenant will be fulfilled. And then we’ll be left alone.”

“Not if that reporter keeps bugging us.” Karen sighed. “What if he finds out the full story? You know He will never let us leave, but if the story comes out, the people in town will kill us if we stay.”

“Have you talked to the others about it?”

“No. But I’m thinking it may be time for a meeting.” Karen nodded, as if in saying it she had made up her mind to call one. “But not at the water.”

“We have to go there soon. I’ll go crazy if I don’t.”

“When we go—
if
we go—we’ll go as a group,” Karen cautioned. “Remember that.”

“Then call it soon. Please.”

The Lower Space was a lot cleaner than Joe expected, but exactly as dark. The walls were painted black, and the floor was tiled in dark squares. A scuffed but impressive hardwood bar that might have once graced an ornate theater jutted from one wall. At the back of the club, an entire wall was devoted to nothing but posters and free handouts. There were magazines on the floor for the taking, and the walls were plastered with black marker–scrawled signs advertising civic club meetings and screaming “Looking for Roommate.” In between were posters for bands coming to town soon and other similar debris. A shelf held a variety of colored paper handouts. He’d been right to mark this as the place to come to find out about the underside of Terrel’s culture.

Cindy had raved about the place when he’d brought it up earlier at the beach.

The Space?
She brightened.
Yeah. Lots of cool bands play there.
I go there sometimes—they don’t card much
.

He told her that he was looking for a place that might clue him in to finding cults or weird groups that were active in Terrel.

She rolled her eyes at him. “You’re not going to find your cliff —sacrificing Druids in Terrel,” she warned. “If there were any, you’d probably find them at the Space, but I’m telling you, there aren’t any. That’s not what’s behind this.”

She had promised to meet him at the club tonight anyway.
While he waited, he leafed through the assorted photocopies in the back of the club.

His eye was quickly drawn to a stack of purple paper that proclaimed,
Readings by Angelica. See me, and see your future
.

He shook his head and pulled another ad, this one for the Renaissance Revival Group, which met in the circle to “dissemble and play” on Wednesday nights at seven
P.M.

There were other ads for locally produced comic books, bands looking for guitarists, and even a tantalizing massage off er.
I come to you when your muscles are hard,
it said,
and leave
you limp with relaxation
.

And then he found one that looked like pay dirt. It was printed on yellow paper, bordered by a frame of twined snakes.

Joe pocketed the announcement with a smile. Now, here he might find some interesting wackos to interview.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder.

“Excuse me sir, but didn’t I see you earlier today, indecently exposed in a pair of swim trunks?”

He smiled and turned to see Cindy grinning up at him. She was dressed casually mod in a loose gray top and tight black pants. Her hair was pulled back tight; the effect of that and her makeup made her easily look twenty-five. Tiny silver skull earrings dangled from her lobes.

“Yes, well, didn’t I see you flaunting yourself pretty indecently in a teeny bikini earlier?”

“Maybe. Got a problem with that?”

“Not at all.”

“C’mon and grab a seat. Another half hour and it’ll be standing room only.”

They worked their way through a maze of round tables and huddles of laughing, talking people until Cindy pointed at an apparently vacant table near the stage.

“Here, this one’s open. We might get pushed back by moshers later, but…”

Joe shrugged and pulled out a chair. Which Cindy passed by to take one of her own.

“I can get my own seat,” she pronounced. “But you can get me a beer. Miller—Genuine…please.”

He sat down himself and grinned. Cindy had a way of making him do that, he was finding. She was like some kind of human butterfly, flitting from place to place without ever quite settling still long enough to be caught. But he was enjoying the chase, and the humor she drew from him as easily as juice from a ripe orange.

The waitress was hovering over them before Joe had even glanced around. He ordered two MGDs, and with a nod she was gone to the next table, piling empty bottles onto her tray as she took new orders. She wrote nothing down, and how she could possibly remember who got what, he couldn’t imagine.

“So, have you seen these guys play before?” he asked.

“Toxic Gas? No.” She shook her head. “But I know a guy in the opening band ’cuz they’re from here. Anglicide. You’ll get a kick out of them. Last Halloween they did their whole show with an upside-down cross hanging behind the drum kit. Then at the end of the set, they dropped the cross into a flaming bucket. They’re really theatrical.”

“I didn’t wear enough black, did I?” Joe asked, looking around and noting the dominant color. Black lipstick, black pants, black nylons…

“Doesn’t matter,” she said, scooting closer to put her arm around his shoulders. “They get all kinds of people in here;
tonight’s just more of a punk night. If I was really into it, I would have put on some ripped nylons and maybe a black low-cut top with some chain around my waist. And I’d probably tease my hair out some. And maybe get a double or triple pierce…”

“Okay, okay.” He laughed. “You’re scaring me. So, is your friend’s band any good?”

“They’re kinda like the Cult, but gloomier.”

The waitress returned with the bottles, and Joe handed her a ten.

“How long till they start?” he asked as the waitress left— without ever carding, as Cindy had promised.

“Oh, probably twenty or thirty minutes. They always advertise the start time like an hour earlier than it really is.”

She took a swig of the Miller and nodded at his.

“Drink fast.”

“Why?”

“You owe me a life story, but you said it had to be after a couple beers. So drink fast.”

He lifted the bottle obligingly. “What do you want to know?”

“How about…how old are you?”

“Worried I’m too ancient to be seen with?”

“No. Just curious. If I guess right, you can buy me another beer?”

“Sure.”

She leaned forward and stared hard at his face.

“Hmmm. No obvious wrinkles or liver spots, yet…”

He batted her hand away from his hairline. “Call it,” he demanded.

“Twenty-four.”

“Not bad. The girl gets points for under-guessing. Twenty-five.”

Her lips fell into a mock pout. “No beer?”

“Oh, never fear. Flattery gets you drunk,” he said. “Do your parents know you’re out with an older man?”

“Don’t they say a guy should be like four or five years older than a girl anyway?” she asked, flipping her hair over her shoulder. “Men don’t mature like us girls!”

“Please. Answer the question.”

“Actually, they do know. I told them I met a nice young reporter who was taking me to see a fine, artistic, musically challenging group.”

“Is that musically challenging, or musically challenged?”

“You decide. I think they’re about to start.”

She nodded at the stage, where a group of twentysomething guys were filing onto the stage. The singer slunk his way to the mike, lips glossy red against an obviously accentuated pale complexion. A faded picture of Robert Smith pouted on his chest.

“Wannabe,” Joe said.

Cindy’s gloomy Cult description turned out to be fairly accurate, Joe soon decided. As the bass pounded through the club, he was reminded of college nights spent hanging out in the dark caverns of Chicago’s Cabaret Metro, catching shows by Stabbing Westward and Black Tape for a Blue Girl and other punky, gothic-oriented bands. Anglicide, however, was definitely more of an homage act than an original gestalt. Joe could hear ripped-off riffs and see affected “attitude” before they were through with three songs. But they had energy. And hair. And a certain knack for theater, as Cindy had pointed out. The singer raised his hands with every lyric, praying and spinning at the mike, as the mournful guitars twined.

Three rounds and a Joy Division cover later, and Anglicide turned the stage over to Toxic Gas. They brought a completely different air to the club, with their shaved heads and cutoff shorts and overdriven guitars. Joe quickly decided that this band believed in truth in advertising. They did nothing if not live up to their name. Cindy nodded with a pained frown when he asked if she wanted to go before the band had gotten halfway through its set.

“Oh, God,” she complained when they stepped out of the smoky club and into the fresh air of the street. “I felt like they were going to reach into my ears and pull out my brain!”

“Pretty noisy,” Joe agreed, trying to shake the buzzing out of his head.

Walking back to the car, she put her hand in his.

He grasped it like a lifeline.

“So do you want to go home, or try someplace else,” he asked, once they were in the car. “It’s still early.”

“I don’t feel like going home yet,” she said. “Would you mind?”

“Name the place.”

She thought a moment, and then brightened.

“How about Memorial Park?”

“Done.”

Ten minutes later they were walking across a clearing in the densely forested hillside on the west side of town. In the middle was a statue of a proud military figure astride a horse. A Civil War hero, Joe guessed. But he didn’t get close enough to see. Cindy led them to a giant white gazebo on the far side of the park.

“C’mon,” she urged, almost running.

She pulled him by the hand up the stairs, and then they were standing together on the main floor of the structure. It was obviously meant for small concerts and such, Joe thought, noting the benches that were built into the walls, leaving at least a fifteen-foot stretch of central flooring clear for bands, speakers, podiums—whatever.

They knelt side by side on one of the cool wooden benches and leaned over the rail to stare out at the lights of the town below. The park nestled high on a hill that looked down on the town. If you looked closely, you could see the tip of Terrel’s Peak through the cover of trees that rose above the valley on the other side of town. The whisper of the ocean drifted on the air, even here.

Joe cupped his palm over hers, and she looked up into his
eyes. He thought she looked sad, the fire dimmed in those blue orbs that normally didn’t seem to slow from their pinball—bouncing course through life.

“Thanks for bringing me here,” she murmured.

He shrugged. “Not a problem.”

She gripped his hand tighter.

“I used to come up here a lot with James at night,” she said, staring back out at the twinkling lights of the town.

“We would sit right here and look at the stars, and the lights from the houses. It was like we were the only two people in the world sometimes. I haven’t been up here…since…”

Joe wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

“It’s okay.”

She bowed her head a moment, leaning back into his chest. And then he felt her take a deep breath. And sit forward.

“Do you know any constellations?” she asked. Her tenor was bright, an abrupt shift, but he thought there was still the faintest tremor in her voice.

“No. I think the sky looks a lot diff erent here than back home. I used to be able to find the Big Dipper sometimes, but out here, there’s so many stars, I don’t know how you can find anything!”

She laughed a little. “They are pretty. Have you ever seen a falling star?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Watch, then.”

She pointed toward the ocean.

“If you’re patient, you can almost always find one. And then you get to make a wish.”

“Wishing on a falling star, eh? That’s a little Disney, isn’t it?”

She didn’t answer.

Joe stared out into the sprinkle of stars against the velvet black night and waited. The wind whispered in the trees. The chirp of crickets sang through the night and locusts hummed in the trees around them. But otherwise, the town
was silent. It was as if they’d left all of humanity behind. It made his eyes grow fuzzy to just wander across the heavens. Like there was nothing to do in the world but stare into space. He wasn’t used to this kind of kicking back. And he wasn’t one to be patient.

He remembered the constant barrage of voices and noises and smells of the big city and marveled. In gaining the cosmopolitan, one loses so much of where he comes from. And in leaving Chicago, he had lost so much of what he’d once been. Sometimes he missed it; sometimes he missed
her
. But not now. He looked at the silent girl next to him, face limned by the summer moon.

“I can’t think of what I would wish for,” he said quietly. “I think I have everything I want right now.”

The corner of her mouth drew up and she squeezed his hand.

“This is nice,” she said, but didn’t meet his gaze. Her eyes seemed far away.

“What would you wish for?” he asked.

She shook her head. “If you want it to come true, it has to be possible. And I don’t think it’s possible for James to come back.”

Joe fell silent, and watched the heavens for a chance to cast his wish. He didn’t want anything for himself now.

“There’s one,” she said, pointing low on the horizon, just above the dark pines.

He saw the faintest trail, like a scratch on film, and made his wish.

“I wish for you to be happy,” he whispered.

She kissed his cheek and met his eyes at last. Her cheeks glistened with quiet tears.

“They say wishes don’t come true if you say them out loud, silly.”

“Well then, we’ll just have to wait here until another star falls,” he said. “And this time I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

She drew closer to him, pressing the warmth of her chest
against his. She hugged him tightly and kissed him again, this time on the lips. Her arms were dotted with goose bumps from the night air, but to Joe, she felt as hot as flame.

“You don’t need to wish for me,” she said. “You’ve already made me happy.”

Joe leaned in to kiss her again, but as her tongue met his in a delicate flutter, he looked past the halo of her hair to the sky, watching for another flaming stone to drop from the realm of angels.