The Call of Distant Shores (36 page)

Grinding his teeth against the pain, he turned to the window.
 
Nothing, there was no one there.
 
He turned to the table along the far wall, and the row upon row of blank slides.
 
The thing passed his elbow and gripped his bicep.

With a hoarse, maddened scream he gripped one of the slides, dragged it free of the rack, and drove it into his shoulder.
 
He sliced, drawing a long, bright red burst of blood.
 
The sensation was warm and almost comforting in the face of the agony in his lower arm.
 
He ignored the screen, and the microscope.
 
With desperate, slashing strokes he worked the slide through skin and muscle, tears streaming down his face as he fought to reach the bone.

There was a searing flash of light, and everything in the room went still.
 
The light filled the pod, glaring from the windows.
 
Smoke rose from the screen and the equipment.
 
Where Roberts had stood, there was nothing.
 
On the floor the clean, broken shards of a glass slide gleamed like forgotten crystals.

EXOTECH INTERNAL MEMO 1009-53-1.c

Subject terminated.
 
Test exceeds parameters.
 
The key is functional and programmed.
 
Installation is complete.
 
Launch for Earth is one hour.
 
Remaining subjects terminated.
 
Destruct sequence engaged.
 
Pulse ray primed and programmed for release upon achieving Earth atmosphere.
 
The key functions exponentially, as expected.
 
Projected annihilation of host cells twenty-four hours.
 
Rebirth achieved.
 
Ia
Cthulu
.

The barber shop in Cedar Falls was more than just a gathering spot for tired old men with nothing better to do than to trim the few remaining wisps of gray from their temples and pass on the latest fish stories.
 
Brown's small shop sported two chairs, three barbers, off and on, the memorabilia of dozens of lives.
 
Terry Brown was the sixth generation of Browns to run the small shop.
 
His father had come back from the war, honored and decorated, just in time to take the reins from Jeremiah Brown, who'd cut hair in Cedar Falls for nearly forty years.
 
There were sighs of relief when that torch was passed.
 
More than a few heads of hair had borne the mark of a slight palsy and unattended cataracts, but it hadn't been enough to keep them away.

Jeremy stood on the steps, taking in the changes time and weather had etched across the face of the old building.
 
He hadn't stepped foot in Cedar Falls in nearly ten years, but he remembered the last time he'd mounted the steps to Brown's Barber shop with a clarity that ran like cold rain down his spine.
 
Small details surfaced, details with more clarity than those he could have brought to mind from the breakfast barely cool in his stomach.
 
The aroma of his father's cigarette-scented flannel shirt, the rustle of leaves, rolling and scurrying down the sidewalks as he'd stepped up onto the curb.
 
Cars had been larger in those days, and Jeremy smaller.
 
The scents of gas and oil had carried on the wind, blending with wood-smoke and the acrid scent of burning leaves.

There had been chairs outside the shop in those days, metal chairs that bounced if you hit them just right, and leaned back nearly to the sidewalk behind if you had the proper size and age.
 
They were usually full, pulled close in beside the sand-filled ashtray and flanked by a Thermos cooler.
    

Now anti-smoking laws and open-container fines had ended all that, and what remained of the chairs themselves were deep scrapes in the wooden planks of the Main Street boardwalk.
 
Jeremy hesitated outside the door.
 
The exterior changes had done nothing to still the
presence
of the place.
 
He closed his eyes, and years melted away in an instant.

There were animals of all sorts lining the walls, some heads, fish so large they seemed surreal and improbable to a young boy whose fishing experience extended to Bluegill and catfish. There were the heads of deer, a bear, a wild pig, and in the corner, Jeremy's favorite, a stuffed mongoose poised in eternal battle with a coiled, moth-eaten snake.
 
There were tools of unknown use and origin, black and white photos so yellowed and dusty you had to stand with your nose pressed to the glass of their frames to make out the images.
 
Squat figures in black pants, black shoes and white shirts, standing in front of buildings that only peripherally resembled the city streets Jeremy had walked as a child.

And the wooden figurehead.
 
Jeremy stood, leaning against the frame of the doorway, and shook as the memory of that worm-eaten chunk of wood invaded and took over.
 
Dark wood, so dark it seemed soaked with sea-water, damp and rotting, the thing had glittered with coat after coat of varnish.
 
Jeremy's father had told him it was to fight off the rot, but Jeremy had never believed it.
 
The varnish – so thick it clogged the lines of the original sculpture – had seemed more a prison, holding that rot
in
so it couldn't escape and infect those standing too near.

It was a woman, or had been, at some point in history.
 
Carved from a single log, long angular features, huge, mournful eyes that stretched down and down to high cheekbones and a slender, pointed nose – almost Roman, he'd heard others say.
 
You could tell the woman the piece had been modeled after had been beautiful.
 
Even the ravages of the ocean, the weather, and the years hadn't been able to mask it.
 
There was an eerie sense of something hovering just beneath the surface of the wood, staring back at you if you studied it too closely and watching you move about the room if you pretended not to notice.
 
Always.

In his pocket, sharp page folds pressing through the worn denim of his jeans to scrape his thigh, was the letter that had dragged him home.
 
The type had smeared from sweat, too many folds, and too many readings.
 
The return address was one he'd never seen before, and would likely never see again.
 
Probst
and Palmer, Attorneys at Law.
 
The address wasn't local to Cedar Falls.
 
Jeremy's father had left him with two standard rules. Never do business with friends, and even if you break rule number one, never do business in your own back yard.
 
The less people knew about what lay behind your smile, or your frown, the less likely they were to be able to find a chink in your armor and take you down.

Jeremy had never understood who in Cedar Falls would want to take him down, or his father, for that matter, but he understood the rules.
 
Probst
and Palmer's offices were in Kingston, 100 miles to the north, and Jeremy had stopped through on his way to pick up paperwork, and keys.
 
His father had left things in good order.
 
The house was paid for, the taxes good for the year and the insurance caught up both on the property, and the ancient Chevrolet sedan he'd left behind.

All of it was ordered and neat, empty and far too bizarre to be handled all at once.
 
Jeremy had driven to the house, parked out front and stared at the door and the windows for about fifteen minutes, then driven away.
 
He knew he should have gone in, checked the place over and unpacked.
 
There were more papers to sign, and the utility companies would have to be notified that services should be restored.
 
Jeremy knew, but he just couldn't face it.

So here he was, head against the wooden frame of Brown's Barber Shop, sweat trickling under the flannel collar of his shirt as he fought for balance against suddenly weak knees and a whirling panorama of memory and pain.
 
He didn't need a haircut, but he very suddenly needed to sit down, so Jeremy twisted away from the wall and slipped inside with a deep breath.

There were two bright overhead lamps, one swinging over each chair on a single stainless steel chain and funneled toward the floor by aluminum shades.
 
The edges of each were yellowed and dusty, and Jeremy wondered, just for a moment, if some of that stain wasn't tobacco from his father's cigars.

Some things hadn't changed at all, except in perspective.
 
The once-giant sailfish, while still huge, seemed possible through adult eyes, the mongoose and snake seedy and dusty rather than mysterious and dark.

The room was empty, and though the lights were on, there was a sensation of – emptiness.
 
Deep, dark emptiness that matched the hollow ache in the pit of Jeremy's gut.
 
He stepped in and let the door swing closed behind him with a squeak.

For a moment, he just stood there, taking in the room, the scent of old leather chairs and hair tonic, the slightly acrid scent of oil burned in the gears of Chrome and Bakelite clippers that should have been retired in the sixties.
 
Whispered voices from his past spoke of presidents and congressmen long dead, bake sales and sea stories.
 
Dust motes danced beneath the hanging lamps, and Jeremy turned to the wall at the back, taking a step deeper into the gloom.

She was there, just as he remembered.
 
There were a few more photographs lining the wall to either side, some in color, which didn't fit his memory at all, but Jeremy's gaze was focused.
 
The wood seemed to grow from the wall, curving and taking shape slowly as it built up to the deep-set holes that were her eyes.
 
Long, flowing hair, deeply etched into the wood, each line darker in the center and lightening as it neared the surface of the wood.
 
The longer Jeremy stared the more real she became, the room fading around her until all he could see was a woman, gazing back at him in quiet desperation.
 
He stepped closer, one foot hesitantly sliding through the dust, then the other.
 
Just as he reached out his hand to trace her cheek with one finger a voice cut through the shadows.

"Can I help you?"

Jeremy spun, eyes wide and his mouth dropping open.
 
The man who'd spoken leaned against the second barber chair on one elbow, watching Jeremy with interest.
 
The cheeks had grown heavier, and wrinkles lined the skin beneath his eyes, but Jeremy recognized Terry Brown instantly.
 
It had to be Terry.
 
He was the spitting image of his Father, and in that instant the echo of Jeremy's father's voice, and the scent of smoke and leather nearly overwhelmed him.

"I ..." his words caught in his throat for a second, then he turned, stepped forward and offered his hand shakily.
 
"I'm Jeremy Lyons," he said.
 
"I used to come here with my father."

In that moment, the other man's face shifted through a series of emotions, surprise, a deep, impressive smile – a quick flash of insight, and ended in a sympathetic frown.
 
"Jack Lyons' boy?"

Jeremy nodded.
 
"The last time you cut my hair," he said softly, "was for my high school graduation."

"Flat top," Terry nodded, "high and tight, just like always."

Jeremy turned back to the wooden woman mounted on the wall for just a second, then stepped away and walked toward the barber's chair, extending his hand.

"I'm guessing you aren't here for a trim?"

Jeremy grinned wryly.
 
"I don't know why I'm here, exactly.
 
I went by the house, just wasn't quite ready for it.
 
When I came back into town, it just seemed natural.
 
I don't know how many afternoons and evenings I spent in here, reading – drawing – listening.
 
Guess I thought it would be a little more like home than that empty house."

"Not a lot of action these days," Terry smiled.
 
"I get busy about one or so, but by three or four it thins out.
 
Only a few old-timers remember the way things were, and mostly they come around on the weekends.
 
Not a one of them has needed a real haircut in years, but they come, and they pay, regular as clockwork."

Jeremy smiled.
 
"Just like always."

The two laughed comfortably, and Terry moved away from the chair toward the front door.

"Let me lock up," he said.
 
"I've got a few bottles of beer in back.
 
No one waiting up for either of us."

Jeremy almost bowed out.
 
He had no right imposing his depression on someone else.
 
The more he thought about it, the less sense it made that he'd come to the old barber shop at all.
 
It was a place to get your hair cut, and all the magic, if there'd truly been any, had long departed.
 
He turned to the wall a final time.
 
Almost all.