The Pines (32 page)

“How long have you been standing there?”

“And then one time when I was fooling around with the wee-gee board and I asked if anyone was there, remember, ’Thena? You was here. And it spelled out…”

The books lay in a disorderly heap. “So, is it a monster all the time?” Athena made her voice very loud, but her words barely got past the forlorn laugh that caught in her throat. “Or is it sometimes normal?”

“C’mon now, honeychile,” Doris drawled. “Down home we all know the loup-garou looks human except during the full moon.”

“It wasn’t a full moon when I saw it,” Athena told her.

“And then, child, he’s all covered with hair, of course,” she went on. “But there’s one way to tell. Surefire. You only become a werewolf when one bites you. You catch it like rabies, and the bite never heals.” Pam drew closer, and Doris played straight to her. “And the wound is supposed to drip blood in the presence of the next person you’re going to kill.”

“Do they kill everybody?” asked Pam in a small voice.

Steve went to the sink where he began rinsing out cups.

“Everybody except for witches.” Doris crumpled the empty cigarette pack.

“You don’t have to do that, Steve.”

“There’s supposed to be a strong sexual bond between witches and werewolves.” Doris winked. “I’ll just bet that’s a real howl.”

After a moment, Pam recognized this as a joke and giggled uncontrollably.

“That’s enough of this for one night.” Athena started gathering up the books and stacking them. “Pamela! If you could excuse us.” Her voice struck like steel, and Pam sulked out of the room.

“So?” Stretching and yawning, Doris pushed away from the table. “How do we begin? Oh Christ, my leg fell asleep. Do we all get silver bullets or what?”

“I figure we’ll use this house as a base of operations.” He returned to the table. “If that’s okay with Athena.”

She nodded.

“Of course, we can’t expect to find much in the way of evidence lying around in the woods,” he continued. “What with the state cops tramping about with dogs, and all that rain.”

Doris peered at the map he’d brought. “If those campers you told us about were supposed to be all the way over h ere…and the fire tower is way the hell over this way…I don’t know but…could there be two of them?”

“Why stop at two?” Athena made a grim sort of chuckling noise. “Perhaps the woods are full of them.”

“I think it’s safe to say that the person or persons we’re looking for cover a great deal of ground. I’ll want to see the trailer,” he added. “After that, we should start questioning all the people around here. Someone may have heard or seen something. As of today, I’m on indefinite leave of absence, so I…I’ll…uh…have plenty of time.” He stammered at the sight of the gratitude on Athena’s face. “I’ll call you tomorrow.” Rising, he banged his knee on the table. “Both of you,” he added hastily, picking up a stack of books. “I want to get started right away. I’m going to take this stuff home and look through it some more. Unless you want them, Athena?”

“I should get going too, honey, and let you get to bed. Big day tomorrow, apparently. Though I sure as hell ain’t going to sleep too good to night. C’mon, sport,” she called to Steve as she headed for the door. “You sure you’re all right, honey? Call me if you need anything. Have you got all the windows and everything locked? You’re sure?” She pushed the screen door open against thick darkness. “Steve? You following me to the highway?”

“Good idea.” But he remained with Athena a moment and dropped his voice to a whisper. “About Barry…”

“Don’t. Please. I don’t even know what I feel yet. I just can’t believe he’s gone. No, please, don’t say anything.”

He took something out of his pocket and placed it on the table. “Belonged to my wife.” Then he hurried out the door.

“Night, honey.” Doris’s voice drifted back through the dark.

“Steven?” She could hear their footsteps fading on the gravel around the house, and she wanted to run after them but could only stare at the bracelet.

It was an antique, quite lovely really, but not the sort of thing she could ever wear, she thought. Designed of interlocking grape leaves, it lay there on the table like a sprig of some strange, tarnished plant. Puzzled by the gift, she picked it up, wondering what Steve’s wife had been like.

Her blood went ice.

It was silver.

He drove slowly, the taillights of Doris’s station wagon bright in his windshield.

But his mind was on something faraway. And long ago.

It could only be played at night, he remembered, and it had been a very popular game, especially with the bigger kids, especially with the boys. All the kids would gather around a lamppost to chose who’d be “It.” Then, talking in hushed whispers, those not chosen would go up a “safe” alleyway where—giggling nervously—they’d count to a hundred, then trickle out in quiet groups.

And the game would begin.

As deep shadows poured across the block, loose, fearful waves of children would sweep along the tree-walled street. At times, the quiet would be broken by a laugh that was almost a scream. They were hunting the “werewolf.”

In memory, the maple trees always swayed and whispered, dropping enormous blots of shadow over the sidewalk. A child could enter those blots and vanish. Was it hiding behind that car? On that porch? Sometimes they would disperse in screaming flurries. Sometimes they would search alone. And soon would come the time when the werewolf crept up behind some kid, and that kid would become a werewolf too…but no one else would know.

And that had been the beauty of the game.

He took his sweating hands off the wheel, wiped them on his pants. His high beams picked out pines, holding them until they whipped past to merge with other ghostly shapes.

When he was about nine years old, there had come a night when, all unknowing, he’d been the only kid left on the block who wasn’t a werewolf, when suddenly all the other children had turned and grinned….

Doris honked her horn at him, the sand road having run out. She honked again, in farewell, then turned her car onto the asphalt. He stared a long time at her diminishing lights. The paved road surged away in front of him, hard and straight.

Pam was finishing the doughnuts. “Anyways, you should see him, he’s real handsome,” she continued in a possessive whisper. “You know, real dark and tall. So Al rents him Lonny’s old room. You know? Overtop the gin mill?” She sucked the sugar off her fingers with smacking sounds. “Course I ain’t actually seen him myself yet. But I heard all about him and all. They say he’s real strange.”

Not listening, Athena sat across the table from her, examining the bracelet, turning it over and over in her hands.

“They say he was a camper, and he had a run-in with the dogs too. And his arm was all bleeding.” Her eyes shone. “Like it been bit.”

Tuesday, August 11

Wallowing in softness at the turns, the car crept along the shore road, while a radio voice, fuzzy with static, jabbered cheerfully on about the heat. Driving with one hand, Steve checked the map. Barely able to read the directions he’d scrawled in the margins, he decided Doris had been right about his handwriting. The flat sameness of the countryside became hypnotic. Pines drifted in the wind, coasted in the billowing grass.

Finally, after cruising the same stretch of road three times, he stopped the car. This had to be it. The people back at the last general store had been very specific. Getting out, he stepped over a low guardrail and struggled up a sandy hillock. Panting, he stood at the top.

Leeds Point. The name rang in his brain.

Nothing much of the shack remained. Below him, a scruffy line of dunes hemmed the salt marsh. At the far edge of the marsh slumped the remains of a crude structure, just a few charred timbers scattered about the tilting remnant of a corner post.

He stared down at it, the sea air stinging his eyes. Could this really be the original shack? It couldn’t be reached without a rowboat, he now saw: floating vegetation had hidden the dark water. It could be the one. Or it could just be some old hut the locals liked pointing out to tourists. Did it really matter? If the Leeds house did still exist somewhere, it would be in similar condition. He hadn’t expected to find anything here; yet he’d felt compelled to come.

Below him, beyond the shack, beyond the marsh, sandy hillocks humped down to the sea, a grayly wavering band from which sunlight glinted in liquid fragments.

“You okay, honey? You sound sort of groggy.”

“The heat. And I didn’t sleep.”

“After last night, who did?”

“Hang on a second.” Athena set the phone down while she poured another cup of coffee. “No, I haven’t heard from him yet either, and I tried calling him again right after I talked to you the last time. I don’t understand it. A whole morning wasted.”

“Now you listen to me, honey. I’m going to come right over, but you are not to do anything until I get there. You understand me? I don’t care how antsy you are to get started. Under no circumstances are you to go anywhere yourself. Especially if you’re right about this guy. Hmm? No, I don’t think we should call the police until we’ve talked to Steve.”

“All right, Doris. You’re probably right…. No…I’ll wait for you. I promise.”

Pam was playing with the Ouija board. “You’re drinking more coffee, ’Thena? You’ll never sleep.” Pamela looked frowzier than usual today, and the hot kitchen reeked of bacon grease and unwashed breakfast dishes. “My name! Oh look, ’Thena! It spelled my name! See?”

“I still don’t understand, Pamela.” She set her cup down. “Why didn’t you mention this man last night?”

“I tried to tell you! But you wouldn’t listen. Nobody listens to me.”

Claws scraped dully across the linoleum. Stiff legged and wobbly, Dooley paced into the room. Following, Matty stumbled into the kitchen.

He watched the dog drink, listened intently to the lapping. Suddenly, the boy jerked his head around. “I…d-ddooo you…?” In the sunlight from the back door, his eyes glinted. “…know if…?”

Athena cringed away from his stutter, from the unbearably jumbled syllables.

“W-will it g-get like…?” His face twisted with concentration as he forced himself to hold his mother’s gaze. “Like when it gets all yella and thick like…will…?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Amazed, she stared at him. “No, Matthew, I don’t think it will get infected. I’ve been watching him pretty closely.” She refilled the dog’s water dish, the boy close beside her. “Though I think it’s time he had his pill. Would you like to give it to him? Then later we can change the bandages again and put on more salve.” She took a small brown bottle from the shelf—antibiotics left over from an illness of Matthew’s—uncapped it and broke one of the pills in half. “Just do it the way I showed you. Put it on the back of his tongue and hold his mouth closed.”

Taking the pill from her, the boy knelt by the dog. He took the animal’s large head in his small hands, and the dog swallowed. “L-Like this?”

She blinked. “Yes, just like that.” She watched while he stroked Dooley’s head. He didn’t look up at her again.

“It went to the
L
. That means love.” Starry-eyed and completely absorbed, Pam prattled on about the Ouija board, about the handsome stranger in Lonny’s old room.

Athena found herself standing by the door.

“You going out?” Pam asked.

“No.” She pushed open the screen. “Perhaps just right outside. For some air. Keep Matthew in here. I don’t want him out at all today.”

“Matty? C’mere and play, baby. You want to talk to Chabwok?”

Letting the screen door slam behind her, Athena went quickly down the porch steps and stood, blinking at the dazzling afternoon. Behind her, shadows muffled the house, and she heard the murmur of Pam’s voice. Even the insects had receded to a dull pitch, reiterative, everywhere and dying, spent. With some notion of watching for Doris, she went around the side of the house.

The headlights of the rust-eaten Plymouth glimmered almost invisibly in the daylight. “Damn!” She ran to the car, switched them off and tried to start the engine. “Damn damn damn.” The car didn’t even cough. “Oh, great going!” She slammed the door. Now she was really stuck here. She stamped away from the car and stood by the side of the road, fidgeting. “Okay, Doris,” she muttered to herself, “where are you?”

This man in town—he had to be the one. But what if he were gone by the time Doris and Steven got here? It seemed to her he might fade back into the woods as easily as he’d come, and there would be no way to trace him. But what could she do alone? Ask around at least, she thought. Find out if this were more nonsense of Pam’s before sending the others involved. Maybe get a look at him at least? No, she had to wait for the others, but she couldn’t just stand still.

The sky breathed down. Swatting away biting flies, she paced along the white-powdered road.

“Nobody ever listens to me.” Pam sat at the table, her fingers on the old jelly glass that scratched across the board. “
W-I-C
…” She stopped, confused about the spelling of “witch.” No longer moving from letter to letter, the jar hesitated a moment, then moved resolutely to the yes.