SOMETHING WAITS (6 page)

Les feared most that it would stall here on the mist-slick mountain road, forcing him to start it again at some impossibly steep angle, foot fighting clutch, heart banging ribs as the tires slipped inexorably backward. And eventually off the cliff. Not a thought he relished. Not with fog so thick it masked both the small traffic lane to his left and the sheer, jagged abyss at his right. He couldn’t see the towering six foot breakers dashing themselves to fine spray on the boulders below, but he could
hear
them.

He wanted out of this. He wanted to be home in Ventura, feet up, bourbon in hand, Jay Leno making him smile.

“I’ve had
enough
!” he reported to the import’s interior, as if articulating misery could invoke unseen powers.

Perhaps it did.

Out of the swirling mist now came a paler rectangle of weathered wood, a sign, rattling and groaning against rusted chain links, spanking the wind and announcing crudely:
CUSHION’S GARAGE
in faded, paint-flaking cursive. An attendant hand-painted arrow pointed the way.

Les drew bolstering breath, took a renewed grip on the leather-wrapped wheel and followed blindly.

A high, clapboard façade materialized before his hobbling fog beams. Stately Victorian dormers came into focus. Les let out grateful breath: there actually
was
human life out here. He nosed his sports car down a narrow drive before a low, sun-baked porch, tires crunching gravel loosely. He set the brake. Grinned wearily, back and shoulder muscles unknotting, clenched molars relaxing. He was still alive. Thank-you unseen powers. It was just after he cut the engine he heard the screaming.

It was coming—it
seemed
to be coming—from the weathered old house, a second story window, along with the thrashing sound of splashing water, an occasional muffled curse. There were hollow banging noises as well, like someone thumping a metal drum. Les sat quietly for a long moment listening, fingers hooked unconsciously atop the wheel. The screaming turned to a low wail. Then another frantic thrashing of water; someone was being hurt. On impulse he pushed quickly out of the import, banging the wheel hub with his elbow. A jarring
honk
knifed the damp air. The screaming ceased immediately.

Les hesitated beside the car. Listened. Craned up at the mist-shrouded window. Blank panes stared back. Empty. No, wait—movement. A tall, vague shadow passed behind thick-leaded panes, antique rippled glass. Then: nothing. Silence.

Les stepped tentatively from the car and crept around a weed-festered yard to the front of the place, following a broken, flagstone path. He found himself facing an aged porch: off-center wooden steps warped in a crooked grin, beckoning to the off-center front door above. Les climbed carefully, eyes locked on the door. Its weathered wood was spider-webbed with paint cracks, bowed and warped as well from ever constant salt air. Les walked wobbly porch planks to a low, dubious overhang, rapped lightly on the door. He waited in chill breeze, shoulders hunched inside his jacket, a vague discomfiture settling over him borne of shifting fog. Maybe this wasn’t such a hot idea. All alone out here and someone wailing inside this weird old house. But where the devil else was he supposed to go—the stupid import was through.

He shifted on his hips nervously, suppressed a shiver, cleared his throat, rapped again, harder. “Hello! Is anyone home?” His voice bounced back ineffectually, snatched by the wind.

He waited. Gazed about the sagging porch. What a dump. An iron lawn table, canted and faded sickly white like an old man; or maybe merely scoured that color by onshore wind, lack of maintenance. The place was a mess all right. He twitched at a nearby groan. A chained porch swung mournfully from rust-frozen links. Les pulled his coat jacket tighter. “Hello! Can you hear me?”

He was thinking about trying the slim outside latch when a movement within stayed his hand. A tall silhouette detached itself from interior shadows, moved toward him unhurriedly.

A powerful basso voice boomed—seemed to rattle the thin door. A vaguely southern accent, deep and menacing. “What you want!”

Les tried to squint past the warbled glass. “Help, actually! My car’s broken down. I…saw the sign down the hill…”

The interior shadow enlarged, morphed gelatinous into human shape: tall, stocky, foreboding. “We’re closed.”

Period. The figure began to ripple away…

Les gulped sudden panic. “Wait a second! The fog! I can’t walk these roads at night!”

It must have sounded just pathetic enough. The shadow turned back. In a moment there was a dull click and the door swung inward a foot. A muscled face loomed there, hooded, steel gray eyes, tousled red hair, week’s growth of stubble above torn T-shirt and bib overalls. Middle-aged probably, but hard to tell under the leathery, sun-creased skin. A waft of mildew and alcohol pinched Les’ nostrils. “Whad ya expect me to do?” Accusatory, suspicious.

Les felt all confidence deserting him. “Well,” thick and dry, “…maybe a place I can rest…until the fog lifts.”

The man in the doorway looked Les up and down. Twice. “Won’t lift till tomorrow noon.”

Les lingered. A directionless mound, fog plucking goose pimples at his neck. “I see.”
Think of something!
“The sign, the garage? Is it yours?”

Difficult seconds passed. “You ain’t a salesman?”

“Me? No.” He was, actually, but auto insurance. Which was ironic.

Up and down again, eyes piercing. Finally: “Ever slept in a garage?”

Les started to shake his head, smiled bravely instead. “When I was a kid.”

The man nodded warily, hairy nostrils widening as if sniffing Les out. Slowly, as if he had all day and night, as if the chill fog weren’t creeping up Les’ pant legs and shrinking his privates. “A kid.”

“Yes. When I was thirteen, I think.”

The man finally nodded, seemed to settle an inch. He shrugged. “It’s yer funeral. There’s an old mattress already out there.”

“A mattress. I see. Fine.”

Was that a grin. Mocking? “Hope you got a strong back.”

There was movement in the dark hall behind them, a tentative, pale shadow. The man turned to observe a small, delicately-boned girl wrapped in threadbare towel creeping up mouse-like and twitching behind him. Long, stringy hair spilled over naked shoulders, plastered flat with dripping water. A tawny, not unpleasant face with enormous eyes, trying to see around the big man’s bulk.

The big man turned back to Les. Grunted. “My wife.”

Les nodded a hello. The young girl stared curiously, bare shoulders fine as polished ivory, delicate mouth pursed quizzically. Watching. Dripping.

“Retarded,” the man said, grinning cigarette-stained teeth. “Never learned how to talk.” He winked at Les, steel eyes dancing. “’Course she don’t have to talk to make a good wife, if ya know what I mean!” His voice made it more liquid and obscene than it already was. Les resisted an urge to step back. His eyes went to the girl. She caught his polite smile, stared back briefly like a deer in headlights and melted into shadows quickly.

“Is everything all right?” Les asked. “Before…I thought I heard…noises…”

The man laughed, souring the air with alcohol. “Everythin’s fine, Mister. Abbie she jes don’t like takin’ her bath is all. Jes like a little kid! She’d go about stinkin’ if I let her!”

Smiling now at his own astuteness, he pulled the door wider. “You got any luggage?”

“One suitcase.”

The man nodded toward the little import in the mist and stepped out. “C’mon, I’ll give ya a hand.”

* * *

Mr. Cushion turned out—to Les’ surprise—to be not an awful person, even passingly friendly, maybe a little starved for conversation out here in the rocks and conifers. They engaged in a lot of it over dinner in his untidy little kitchen. Abbie crept silently about the room, bringing coffee and warm bread and saying nothing.

“Not many folks come by these days,” Cushion was saying. “Big service station down to Point Royal now, took away most of my business. Shell. Government bastards.”

Les wiped up sweet gravy with a piece of delicious bread. “It was closed when I drove up.”

“Sunday. The world near stops spinning in these parts on Sunday. You won’t be goin’ nowhere tomorrow, neither.” And he bit into a chicken leg with strong, wide teeth.

Les looked up cautiously. “Oh? Why’s that?”

Cushion jerked a thumb toward the milky panes in the dour, shadowed parlor. “Fog. Lasts for days around here sometimes. Weeks. We never know. Find yourself at the bottom of a canyon with your imported engine up your skinny ass!”

He roared laughter, belching, slapped the table, making Les jump with the silverware. Les smiled back companionably. Cushion snorted dismissively. “Don’t fret none. Abbie and me will take care of you, won’t we, Abbie girl?”

Les started again as the girl appeared at his elbow from nowhere, pouring coffee. It might have been the poor lamplight, but it seemed to him her hand trembled just the slightest. “Little jumpy, ain’t you?” Cushion chuckled. “Don’t fret, she won’t bite!”

The bedroom above the garage ( a converted carriage house, really) was austere; a little one-room tar paper affair with minimum accoutrements except for a once-expensive but long abused mahogany bed. The mattress was rife with lumps and mildew under a thin hand-made quilt. The floor was unpolished planked wood, and freezing. A single window overlooked the rocky coast without. Cushion explained to Les the room had been the home of a former assistant, a young man he’d had to let go on account of poor business. That fancy-ass station in Point Royal. “Ain’t been nobody round since but me and the girl.” Cushion nodded at the sad little room as if to confirm it. “No one to talk to…” and he trailed off sullenly. Les felt a wedge of sorrow for the man. And the young woman. They were more lost than he was.

The room was livable, he supposed, but a year of disuse had made it close and stuffy. Les opened the single window wide, took in a deep brace of salt air. The breakwater thundered below the cliff. He listened awhile, sat about on the bed for a while after that, drumming his fingers on the lumpy quilt, and grew rapidly bored. Finally he ventured downstairs again, thought of walking back to the house to see what his host was up to but finally decided it impolite. He checked out the oily little garage—empty of vehicles--looked about the yard, decided to stretch his legs along the coast. Miraculously the fog had lifted some and he could see, at the edge of the bluff out beyond the rock-bound shore, the distant ocean horizon swathed in moonlight. It looked very old. Eternal. Unassailable.

As he stood listening to the tumbling spray below he suddenly tensed, leaned toward the lip of the bluff and cocked his head, listening. A gull? The wind? Far out over the black rolling waves, he saw movement, then the distinct form of a swimmer, clearly in distress. In between the booming surf he detected a plaintive, terrified cry. A woman’s cry.

He found a narrow path through the boulders, picked his way down carefully in deepening darkness. Kicking off his shoes as he went, he swept across a short, hard-sand beach and plunged into the foam without hesitation.

A scholarship swimmer in college, Les drove through the water with measured confidence and practiced strokes, summoning UCLA training and life-saving summers on Martha’s Vineyard. He knifed the small waves neatly, diving under the high ones, maintaining speed and control, one eye on the distant shape floundering against the horizon. Eye contact was the key. The sea was cold, but it was not yet November, he’d stayed in decent shape through the years and the steady, contained exertion warmed him; he could do this. He swam strong and without fear, but every time he topped the next swell he seemed no closer than the last; yet the thrashing arms and tangle of long flowing hair ahead did not appear to be moving under the current, which in any case was against Les with the incoming tide. He glanced behind him once to be certain he was making progress, wasn’t caught in a rip, but the shoreline was indeed receding, the upstairs glow in Cushion’s Victorian growing dimmer. Still, for every dozen yards he gained, the flailing figure seemed to magically draw away a dozen more. A growing dread began to drag at Les’ heart, though his muscles refused to tire. The real horror came from somewhere deep inside his mind, not in thinking he wouldn’t reach the woman in time, but that he
might
! And the further he was drawn out to sea, the more the terror welled, the dread of what would happen when he finally reached the waving victim. It was of vague, uncertain origins, this feeling--yet very real. Yet unable to abandon some poor soul to the deep, his body continued plowing on, even as his mind urged turning back:
swim away, swim away—before it’s too late!
Too late and he was met with something too awful to comprehend, some unknown terror just beyond the edge of reason. And all the while the desperate wailing of the drowning woman echoed to him over the hills of foam.

Then, all at once, Les knew instinctively he was close, would be upon her over the next rise. He stopped swimming abruptly, limbs frozen with fear. He dog-paddled cautiously in one place. The sea carried him lazily to the crest. He looked down the trough, saw the top of a tangled, matted scalp in the lea of the next swell. He was gripped by a near irrepressible urge to backwater, flee. Instead, he rode the wave down solemnly, reached out for the stringy head, pulled the submerged face from the water—