The Seven Whistlers (13 page)

Rose was headed to her grandparents’ house, and Isobel knew
it. The old woman meant to stop her.

Rose pulled to a stop in front of her grandmother’s house,
and she killed the ignition. For a moment she and Mike just sat there listening
to the engine cool. The house was dark, but seemed to beckon to her in a way it
hadn’t in a very long time. Ever since her grandfather had been put into the
nursing home, this hadn’t been his house anymore. Now, though, it seemed to
resonate with his memory, even from the outside. All of the changes Isobel had
made, the sachet smell and the feminine decoration, would never be able to
erase the old man’s presence again. Not for Rose.

The terrible truth she had learned while reading his journal
had broken something in Rose’s heart. But as she popped open her car door and
stared up at the house, a bittersweet contentment touched her. Walt Hartung
haunted this place. Maybe he always would. She’d feared that his secret would
have forever tainted even the good memories she had of her grandfather, but
found that was not the case.

“Rose,” Mike said, as he climbed out of the car.

She glanced at him. His hand was still thickly bandaged, but
somehow it didn’t make him seem less capable. Mike had a rugged quality she’d
not really noticed before. It stirred in his eyes, now.

“What the hell are we looking for, exactly?”

On the drive, she’d told him the whole story. To his credit,
rather than start picking apart her theory, Mike had listened to all of the
details and then begun to supply some of his own. By now, so many people had
seen the hounds that their presence — and growing number — could
not be denied. But he was aware of numerous incidents of bad luck and ominous
coincidence that Rose had not heard about. Many people, it seemed, had also
heard the eerie whistling sound that signified the presence of the hounds, and
been unsettled by it.

It had filled her with relief to discover that she had an
ally. Mike had given her hand a reassuring squeeze — the hand that wasn’t
on the steering wheel. In that moment, had she not been driving, she would have
taken him in her arms. But such thoughts were for another day.

“Rose . . .” he prodded.

“I honestly don’t know. I guess we’ll know when we find it,”
she said as they sprinted for the front steps, well aware that her grandmother
could not be far behind them.

She used her key to open the door. The hardwood in the foyer
creaked underfoot as she stepped inside and turned on the lights. Mike followed
her in and Rose slammed the door and locked it behind her.

“Some kind of container? Like a jar or something?” he asked.

She shrugged, glancing around, surveying the immaculate
living room and the hallway ahead. What could she say?

“I don’t think we can assume that. It isn’t water, or his
ashes, or something. This is all mystic bullshit to me, but my guess? It’ll be
something important to him, or to her.”

Rose gnawed her lip for a few seconds. If her grandmother
really loved him — and no matter what a bitch she’d been, it seemed she
had — then Isobel wouldn’t have imbued the old man’s spiritual essence in
something that only had significance for her.

“Scratch that. Something
he
cared about. I mean, I
don’t know for sure. Could be the toilet plunger or the cookie jar. But we
don’t have any way to tell. What we need is to find something she’s got hidden.
So we look everywhere an old woman would hide things. Kitchen cabinets,
bathroom vanities, bedroom drawers, closets, under the bed.”

She rattled all of that off even as she started into the
kitchen. Mike followed her, but kept going toward the stairs and then vaulted
up them two and three at a time.

Rose glanced around the kitchen, with its muted floral
pattern walls and sensible clock on the wall. Nothing odd or interesting for
her grandmother. She crouched down in front of the cabinet where the pots and pans
were kept, yanked the doors open, and started pulling everything out with a
clatter, upending the bigger pots to make sure nothing would fall out.

Not here,
she thought as she stood and glanced
around. It wouldn’t be here. She didn’t know why she’d even considered it. It
would be something personal, and her grandmother would have kept it close by. Rose
had watched too much television. This wasn’t some drug dealer’s house, where
she might find a plastic packet taped to the inside of the toilet tank or wrapped
up in the freezer.

“Stupid,” she muttered to herself.

The clock ticked.

Rose raced out of the kitchen. As she reached the corridor
she heard a car door slam outside. Isobel had arrived.

“Damn it.”

She hit the stairs at a run and called out to Mike as she
went up. Her shoulder grazed a framed picture on the wall and she twisted
around just in time to see it fall — a photo of Rose herself with her
grandparents, in a time before Walt Hartung’s mind had begun to deteriorate. The
glass shattered when the frame struck the stairs.

When Rose looked up, Mike had appeared at the landing above
her.

“Anything?” she asked as she reached him.

More framed photographs hung on the walls in the little hall
on the landing. A spider plant dangled over the edges of a vaguely Asian
looking stand in a corner. There were four doors up here — master
bedroom, guest bedroom, bathroom, and what had once been Grandad’s study and
was now Isobel’s sewing room.

“Looked under the bathroom sink, under the bed and in the
closet in the guest room. Just started with the sewing stuff —”

From downstairs came the muffled sound of the front door
being unlocked. Mike shot Rose a look and she nodded. Then she pointed toward
the sewing room, gesturing for him to get back to it, and she bolted into her
grandparents’ bedroom.

The smell struck her first. Perfume and baby powder. The
room had always been immaculate, even before her grandfather had gone into the
nursing home. But now it had a Spartan quality that seemed new to her. Elegant
bedspread, cozy rocking chair, lamps, and a bureau with a tall mirror behind it
and various items spread over its surface with precision. Hand-blown glass
perfume bottle, antique hand mirror and brush, a small frame containing the
young Walt and Isobel in their wedding photo, and a hand-carved box of dark
wood that had sat there for as long as Rose could remember.

From downstairs, her grandmother called her name, the weight
of sorrow in the old woman’s voice. A creak on the stairs announced that she
had started up toward the second floor.

Rose dropped to her knees and looked under the bed. She
yanked open the nightstand drawer and fished through foot creams and Vicks
bottles, a rosary, and costume jewelry her grandmother wouldn’t dream of mixing
with the real stuff in her jewelry box. Isobel called out to her again. Rose
could hear Mike clattering around in the sewing room, tossing things aside. On
instinct, she wanted to shout at him to stop, hating the sound of such
haphazard ruin. But the stakes were too high for sentiment.

“Shit,” she whispered.

“Rose!” her grandmother shouted, from the top of the stairs.
“Please, stop.”

She spun, scanning the room, and her gaze fell upon the
bureau again, and the carved box that sat there. It had always been there, and
so she’d barely recognized its presence. In the back of her mind, she felt sure
she must once have known what lay within it, but could not remember.

The swish of her grandmother’s mourning dress approached
from the corridor. Rose rushed to the bureau and picked up the box. The moment
she opened it, the breath rushed from her lungs. Inside lay a blue-striped
ribbon with a medal on the end — her grandfather’s Navy Distinguished
Service Medal. Why hadn’t this been in the nursing home with him? Rose held the
open box in one hand and brushed her fingers across the medal. A shudder went
through her, and the room seemed to grow colder.

“Don’t you touch that. Don’t you dare.”

Rose turned, breath coming in tiny, shallow gasps. Her
grandmother stood in the doorway, lips pressed tightly together, tears upon her
cheeks. Behind the old woman, Mike stood in the corridor, coiled with tension. He
didn’t know what to do, whether he should interfere. Rose understood.

“Put it back, Rose.”

Swallowing, she shook her head.

“Goddamn you, girl,” her grandmother said, eyes narrowed
with grief and desperation. “Put it back.”

Rose held the open box in her hand. It felt strangely heavy.

“You can’t save him,” she told her grandmother. “What’s done
. . . it was done a long time ago. All you’re going to do is kill the rest of
us, and then they’ll come and take him, but we’ll all be dead. Do you really
think that’s what he’d want?”

Isobel pursed her lips. “Did you ever love him?”

Rose shook her head in disgust. “More than you can imagine. And
if
you
loved him as much as you claim, you won’t do this in his memory.”

Mike shifted in the corridor. The old woman took a step into
the room and he followed, on edge, ready to act if it became necessary. Rose
saw self-loathing in his eyes, a kind man hating himself for what he might be
forced to do.

“You don’t understand. You couldn’t. For years, he told me
about the hounds. He saw them every few months, one or two of them pacing his
car or watching him through a window, following him in the woods. All along he
told me they’d come for him in the end. And I didn’t believe him. Do you
understand that? I didn’t believe him!

“Not until the first time I saw them. Those eyes, shining in
the dark, and the quiet size of the things — I knew right off they
weren’t just dogs. Then I knew that he’d been telling the truth all along.”

Rose felt anger rising in her. Her face flushed. “You knew
what he’d done. You were supposed to be with Davey and you knew that Grandad
had let him die, and you just forgave him!”

The old woman’s eyes darkened. “You don’t think before you
speak, Rose. You never did. Your grandfather didn’t kill David, but I wish he
had. He’d talk of love with his fists, that one. When he shipped out, I prayed,
but not like the other girls whose beaus were going to sea. I prayed Davey
would never come back. Your grandfather made a terrible mistake, and it weighed
on him. But I looked at him, and I saw my savior.”

Rose stared at her. “Even so, what he did . . . it wasn’t
right. He didn’t know he was protecting you. He was protecting himself.”

All trace of emotion — even grief — vanished
from Isobel’s face and she stepped forward, thrusting out her hand.

“Give it to me.”

“No.” Rose shook her head and took a step back. “I don’t
know how you did this, how you could know how to do it, but I’m putting an end
to it.”

Trembling with fury, her grandmother started toward her. Mike
stepped up behind her and put his good hand on her shoulder, startling her. Isobel
spun on him.

“Get your hands off of me. Who do you think you are?”

“Just a guy who doesn’t want the world to end because of the
selfishness of one old man,” Mike replied.

Isobel ignored him. “I went through hell for him, Rose. I
lived with his terror. And I loved him in spite of it. He’d saved me, and I
wanted to save him in return. For years, I searched for some kind of magic to
keep his spirit safe. I’d never believed in such things, but seeing the
hellhounds again and again, how could I not believe?

“I studied legends and I talked to people who had faith in
them, and in witchcraft. In Montreal, I met a woman who showed me what to do,
how to catch his spirit in that box, trap it with his medal.”

Her emotionless mask shattered. Isobel twisted in anguish as
every wretched shred of her grief revealed itself upon her face.

“Don’t you understand how much it hurt me, to do that? Can
you even begin to imagine how dreadful a thing it was to have to do? But it was
better than the alternative, Rose. If you do this, if you give him to the
hounds, he’ll suffer forever. The devil takes his own, Rose! The devil takes
his own.”

Rose felt heat on her cheeks, tasted salt on her lips, and
realized that she had also begun to cry.

“Grandad could have come forward at any time,” she said,
voice quavering, hands shaking. “No matter what Davey’d done to you, he didn’t
know that, did he? All he wanted was to save his own skin, and he let his best
friend be executed in his place. Even after, when Davey was dead, he could have
taken the consequences for what he’d done. But he never did.”

A sob escaped her lips. Mike stared at her and she could see
he wanted to come to her, but Rose shook her head and took a deep breath,
taking control of herself.

“It’s killing a part of me,” she told her grandmother. “But
I won’t let the world pay for what he did.”

Rose snapped the medal box shut, and started for the door.

“No,” her grandmother whispered, shaking her head. “No,
Rose!”

The old woman reached for her. Mike tried gently to hold
onto her arm, but Isobel shoved him away. Rose tried to pass her, but her
grandmother grabbed hold of her, clawing at her, reaching for the box.

“Don’t you do it! Please, stop!”

Rose held the box out of her reach and shook her grandmother
off. Isobel had always been cold and distant with her. All her life, she had
thought her grandmother was a selfish, callous woman with little love in her
heart. Now she saw that she’d been wrong. Isobel Hartung could feel love, but
it was all reserved for the man she’d always wanted, the man she’d forgiven for
a heinous sin, because it served her own purposes.

Even so, Rose did not stop. The old woman’s cries were
torture, but there had never been any choice. She pulled away. Her grandmother
tried to stop her. Mike slipped between them, grabbing Isobel’s arms and
holding her back as Rose went down the stairs. She cursed at him with shocking
venom, vile profanity that Rose had never heard her grandmother utter before,
and then crumbled to the ground and leaned herself against the wall, shuddering
and weeping loudly.