The Seven Whistlers (14 page)

Mike followed Rose downstairs.

She stood at the door with the box in one hand and the other
on the knob. From outside, she could hear the high, keening sound that had so
terrified her in the cemetery the other night.

The Whistlers had arrived.

Rose counted four of them at first.

The hell hounds stood arrayed across the front lawn of her
grandparents’ house, silently awaiting her. Mike could have stayed just inside
the front door, but he remained at her side as she went out onto the steps. The
eerie wail of the Whistlers had ceased, now, and though she could see the rise
and fall of their massive chests — their black pelts gleaming in the
moonlight — the hounds had fallen quiet.

One of the hounds had taken up a position on the roof of
Rose’s car. Its eyes shone in the dark, like those of its brothers. They were
pinpoints of unnatural light, there in the shadows of the night.

Rose could not breathe. She wondered if they had been about
to attack when she opened the door and interrupted them, or if they had somehow
been waiting for her to emerge. And how had they found this place? Had their
search finally borne terrible fruit, or had her discovery of the medal — of
her grandfather’s hidden soul — somehow drawn their attention?

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, now, except the carved
wooden box in her hand and what lay within it.

She went down the stairs and onto the front lawn. Mike
followed, a step or two behind. She felt him freeze, and then he spoke her name
in a whisper. Rose glanced at him, but he wasn’t looking her way. She followed
his gaze and saw two more of the sleek, enormous hounds slowly prowling toward
them from around the side of the house.

“Six,” she whispered. “There are six.”

Her fingers clutched the wooden box so tightly that they
hurt. Ice slid through her veins as she stared at the two approaching hounds,
wondering what she would do if they charged. When they stopped twenty yards
from her, Rose flinched. Mike brushed the back of his hand on her arm, and
though it might have been accidental, she believed he had intended to make that
small contact, just to reassure her that she wasn’t alone.

“Put it down on the ground,” he said, voice low and even. “Just
set it down and we’ll back away.”

The words were eminently logical. Of course, that was what
she had to do. Set down the box with her grandfather’s war medal inside it,
leave it there and just retreat into the house. Give the Whistlers what they
came for, and all would be well.

She felt as though she were crumbling in upon herself. Grief
welled up inside her and she lowered her head, clutching that carved box to her
chest. Hot tears ran down her face, surprising her with their sudden arrival.

“Rose,” Mike said.

The hell hound on top of her car leaped down from the roof,
and the six of them took two steps nearer, tightening the half-circle they’d
formed around the front door of the house. Rose and Mike were trapped there. The
open door was their only retreat.

From inside came the sound of her grandmother, calling her
name again, wracked with mournful sobs.

Rose tried to turn to Mike — tried to speak to him, to
explain the crippling emotion sweeping through her — but she could not
form words. Part of her hated her grandfather in that moment; hated him for
having caused all of this with his cowardice and secrecy. Rose hated him because
she had loved him so much.

Damn you,
she thought, shaking her head, blinking
away the tears.

The irony froze her.

Mike said her name again, gently urgent, and reached down to
try to take the box from her hands. She pulled away from him. Her chest ached as
though the hounds had already been at her, like they’d torn her open and ripped
her heart out, and somehow she’d survived.

All the fear left her, replaced by a revulsion and despair
unlike anything she could ever have imagined. The world of spirits and the
justice of souls seemed so far beyond her. She was just a girl from Kingsbury
who liked horses. Whatever her grandfather had done — sin or crime or
shame — he could not possibly deserve whatever afterlife would be his
once the Whistlers had collected him. Rose could not do it. She couldn’t just
give him over to damnation and torment.

Back in the house, her grandmother cried out to her again,
as if she herself were haunting Rose from the spirit world.

Then, from somewhere to the east, over the tops of other
houses and through acres of trees, came that high, keening whistle. Rose let
out a shuddering breath, staring in the direction from which that eerie sound
had come.

“There are six,” Mike said, his voice terribly small.

But the hell hounds that encircled the front of her
grandparents’ house were silent and still, regarding them with gleaming eyes. Which
meant that this sound, off in the distance but coming nearer, was the seventh.

“Rose,” Mike prodded.

Her tears had gone cold upon her face, and she told herself
it was the autumn breeze, not the chill inside her, that was responsible. A
thousand moments played through her mind; holding her grandfather’s hand while
walking to the bakery, modeling her back-to-school clothes while he clapped in
delight, the old songs he used to sing, a crackly-voiced Sinatra. Rose had
loved the man for his wisdom and the way he had always been able to soothe her
with gentle words and smiling eyes.

No matter what he had done, she would never be able to stop
loving him for the role he had played in her life. She thought she could even
forgive him for his cowardice — for letting another man die simply
because he was too frightened to tell the truth — but she would never
forget.

The distant, whistling cry drew nearer.

Mike must have said something further, urged her on. Her
grandmother must have continued to call out to her. Rose could not hear either
of them. The only sound that reached her was that eerie wail, like the
screaming of the damned.

Her hands seemed to move of their accord. Mechanically, she
flipped open the carved wooden box. The medal glinted within. A smell rose from
the box, Old Spice and cinnamon, and for a second it felt to her as though her
grandfather was right there with her, standing beside her in the darkness.

Rose felt the weight of the moment, more powerful even than
her grief. She took the medal from the box and tossed it onto the lawn. The
hounds did not move. In her mind’s eyes, she’d pictured them leaping at it,
tearing at it, even fighting over it, but they remained completely still. Rose
felt the damp streaks drying on her face. There would be no more tears for her.
Her chest rose and fell with her breathing, as though she mirrored the
Whistlers themselves.

The last of the Whistlers howled again, oh so very close,
now.

“Jesus, Rose,” Mike rasped.

She dropped the wooden box. He slipped his fingers into hers
and they clasped hands. Rose squeezed his hand tightly.

“Take it, you evil fuckers!” she screamed at the hounds. “Just
take it and go!”

As if they’d been awaiting her permission, one of the hounds
trotted forward, bent its snout to the ground, and snatched up the medal. They
seemed, in that moment, as docile as lap dogs. But they were too silent to be
ordinary animals, too monstrous to be dogs, to sleek and ominous to be anything
of this world.

One by one, they turned and slipped away. Rose and Mike
stood hand in hand and watched them vanish into the night, black wraiths lost
in shadow, and she knew that they carried a part of her away with them forever,
a piece of that little girl who had once thought her grandfather the greatest
man ever to walk the earth.

The carved, wooden box that had sat for decades atop the
bureau in her grandparents’ room lay on the grass at her feet, empty.

The morning of Walter Hartung’s funeral, the sun shone
brightly down upon those who had gathered in their grief to pay their last
respects. Whenever a breeze kicked up, sending brown and orange leaves
skittering across the cemetery and piling them up against tombstones, a chilly
hint of winter could be felt. But otherwise, the blue sky and warm sunshine
conspired in a masquerade, a pretense that autumn had not yet arrived.

Even the day was a lie.

Early that morning, Rose had argued with her mother — loudly,
and perhaps irreparably. Though she would not speak to her parents about the
events of the past few days, aware that it would be impossible to convince them
of the truth, she was determined not to stand with her grandmother during the
church service, or at the burial. Both her mother and father had attempted to
get to the bottom of her refusal, and then resorted to attempts to make her
feel guilty about it. With regret, if only because she did not want to hurt her
mother, who had after all lost her father, she had stood her ground.

In the front row of mourners, on that beautiful day, with
the sun warming them, her parents flanked her grandmother. Rose noticed that
neither of them touched her; not so much as a gentle, reassuring hand. Isobel
Hartung had never been the sort of woman who invited human contact. That had
not changed.

Rose stood two rows back with Alan and Jenny on her left and
Mike on her right. He still held her hand. The previous night, when the hounds
had all gone, she had driven him back to the funeral home to retrieve his car. There
had been a moment, dropping him off, when she thought he might try to kiss her
and had been torn by her desire to feel that intimacy and the knowledge that if
he had done it under those circumstances, anything that might develop between
them would be forever tied to that night.

Mike had not kissed her.

But this morning, holding his hand, Rose liked his firm grip
and the silent strength he lent her with his touch. Last night, she’d had very
little sleep. She had never felt so lonely, so isolated, and the memory of his
hand in hers had lingered, helping her make it through until dawn. When she’d
woken, she’d almost expected him to be there in bed with her.

She had no idea what the future might hold for them, but for
now, she was grateful for the comfort of his touch. Jenny and Alan lent their
support as well. Jenny glanced at Rose every few minutes, and eventually linked
arms with her, as though at any moment they might dance off along the yellow
brick road. The gesture lightened Rose’s heart, just for a moment, but that was
enough.

As for tears, however, this morning Rose had none. All her
crying had been done the night before. Her last goodbye had taken place on the
front lawn of her grandparents’ house, staring into the night. The funeral
service felt almost like an afterthought.

Her grandmother and her parents obviously did not agree. Whatever
injury she’d done them by not standing with them at the graveside, she added
insult to it through her inability to summon tears. Rose felt strangely numb to
this knowledge. Many in the crowd had been at the wake the night before and
witnessed her departure — followed swiftly by her grandmother’s — and
those who had not been in attendance had surely heard rumor of it by now. Rose’s
refusal to stand with her grandmother only reinforced the awkwardness that
already existed.

The priest had his say, dust to dust, and all of that. Rose
tuned him out. She knew the true fate of the man they were lowering into the
ground, and she could not stand to listen. The sun made her sleepy. A chilly
wind danced around her legs, swirling leaves past her and fluttering the hem of
her long, black coat.

“You’ll get through this,” Mike whispered to her.

She nodded. That much was true. A man had died, but men died
every day. Rose and the other people she loved were still breathing. Her
friends had gathered protectively around her. One death, one funeral, wasn’t
the end of the world.

Not this time.

When the graveside service had come to an end, the priest
beckoned for her grandmother to take a flower and throw it on top of the
coffin, a gesture of farewell. Rose stared at the porcelain-masked old woman,
waiting for Isobel to look up at her. But her grandmother never did look up. She
behaved as though entirely unaware of Rose’s presence, or even her existence.

Rose found she could not bring herself to care. But when her
mother dropped a flower on Grandad’s casket, weeping, and shot her a look of
confusion and sorrow, she felt her heart go cold. Rose had done nothing wrong,
but her grandfather’s sins had cost her a great deal.

Still, when it came her turn to drop a flower on his casket,
she prayed for the old man’s soul, though she already knew the answer.

When the mourners began to disperse — black and gray
figures under a gloriously blue sky, walking back to their cars across rustling
beds of crisp autumn leaves — Rose paused a moment to watch her
grandmother and her parents climb into the limousine that had brought them
there. Those who had troubled themselves to come out this morning would be
invited back to that strangely empty house to reminisce about the one who had
died, who they thought had gone on before them to whatever awaited them all.

Rose and her friends drove to the Pennywhistle instead, and
raised a single toast to Walt Hartung, not for his sins but in spite of them.

In February, on a day as bitter and cold as Isobel Hartung’s
heart, Rose returned to the cemetery to listen to the same priest utter the
same hollow assurances and remembrances. Most of the mourners were the same,
but the crowd was smaller. Whether this could be attributed to the harsh winter
weather or to the simple fact that fewer people had liked her grandmother
enough to be bothered showing up, Rose couldn’t have said, and wouldn’t hazard a
guess.

Isobel had followed her spouse to the grave the way that so
many men and women do, after a certain age.