The Seven Whistlers (7 page)

But she wouldn’t be back for it. Not alone, at least.

Arlene dropped the Jeep into gear and sped off across the
rutted dirt road, tires kicking up a cloud of dust. Heart thundering in her
chest, she tried to catch her breath, and resisted the magnetic pull of the
rearview mirror. As she reached a turn in the road and spun the wheel, she
reached up one hand and turned the mirror away. For the first time in her life,
she was afraid of what she might see.

Mike finally had a design he liked for Mabel Rutherford’s
dining room. The problem was that the woman had been a nightmare to deal with
when it came to his sketches. Some people were like that. If they saw the
finished work, the actual piece of furniture, they would remark on its beauty. But
for some reason it seemed to them that the existence of it as a sketch made it
unfinished and felt they were almost required to find fault. That could be a
long process. He’d dealt with Mrs. Rutherford before, and knew she would be
difficult.

So he’d decided not to show her the sketches for her dining
room. Instead, he was going to bite the bullet and make one of the chairs. If
she didn’t buy it, someone would. The legs and spindles would all be done with
nothing but hand tools. The seat would be finished and edged and smoothed the
same way, but to get the basic shape, he needed the table saw.

All day he’d worked on the sketches, and by the time he’d
had something that satisfied him, it was nearly dark. He’d stopped for an hour
to have something to eat and to drink several glasses of ice water. He always
got dehydrated while working in the shop, even if all he was doing was
sketching. It was as though the dry wood drew the moisture out of him.

Now he turned on all of the lights in the shop, and the
place lit up brighter than day. Shadows were misleading when it came to riving
wood, whittling spindles, and working with the adze and spokeshave and other
tools. A shadow might lead him to put too much pressure on the hand plane, and
then there was an indent where he hadn’t meant one to be.

Mike felt a bit of moisture just beneath his nose and he
reached up to touch it, alarmed at first, thinking his nose might be bleeding
again. How odd that had been, last night, the way the blood had just started up
without any reason. He hadn’t bumped his nose or done anything to bring it on. And
it had taken ten minutes of dabbing damp napkins to his nose before it had
completely stopped.

This morning, when he’d set down to work on the sketches, a
clearer picture in his mind of what he wanted, it had started up again, bright
crimson drops spotting the sketches of Mrs. Rutherford’s dining room.

But this time, there was no blood. He sniffled.
Must just
be allergies
, he thought, as a way to jinx the possibility he might be
getting a cold.

Studying the shelves against the back wall of the workshop,
Mike picked out a piece of oak that was perfect for his needs. He folded the
sketches and slid them into the back pocket of his jeans, then picked up the
slab of oak and brought it over to the table saw. He checked the machine over,
locked the wood down onto the table to keep it from shifting when he didn’t
want it to, and started up the saw.

The whine ground against his skull like the scream of a dentist’s
drill. Mike flinched and stood up, backing away from the table. He paused for a
moment, wondering if something was wrong with the saw, but then he realized
that it always sounded like this. Most days, it simply didn’t bother him. He
felt the whine in his head, like he was grinding his teeth. His allergies,
again. Must have been. His sinuses were packed and the noise added pressure. Something
like that.

But he’d only need the saw for a few minutes.

He set to work. When the saw began to cut through the wood,
the whine was worse. He forced the tension of his muscles, guiding the saw,
careful with the curves. The basic shape of the seat was all he needed. The
rest he would do by hand.

With a pop, the power blew, casting the workshop in
darkness. The whine of the saw lingered for a second, diminishing, and then
there was silence as well.

“What the hell?” he asked the dark, but the only reply was
the echo of his own voice.

The night was overcast, blotting out the moon and stars. There
would be very little light from the windows, but after the brilliant brightness
of the workshop, his eyes would need time to adjust.

The pop had sounded almost like a transformer blowing. There
was one on a telephone pole just down from his place. He could see if it he
looked out the window nearest the front, so he made his way over to the window,
careful with each step. He was usually pretty meticulous about cleaning up
after himself — safety first and all that — but just in case he’d
left any wood stacked on the floor, he slid his feet forward, searching the
darkness with the toes of his boots.

At the window, he looked out. The silhouette of the
telephone pole was visible, darker than the night. Even with the heavy cloud
cover, there was a trace of ambient light — enough to make shades of
black and gray instead of pure darkness. The fat transformer box on the pole
was dark and dormant. If it had blown, there were no sparks, and it had not
started a fire. That was a good sign at least.

Mike took a breath and rested his forehead against the
window. His momentum was gone. Without power, he couldn’t get started on Mrs.
Rutherford’s chair. He only hoped his passion for the design hadn’t changed in
the morning.

As he started to turn back toward the dark workshop, he
caught sight of motion outside. Out on the street, two black dogs were trotting
by. They were the most enormous hounds he’d ever seen, bit, sleek things with
pointed ears and eyes that glistened in the dark. They passed the telephone
pole, and the transformer box sent out a shower of sparks.

The dogs swung their heads from side to side as though
searching for something, stopped to raise their snouts and sniff the air. One
of them lowered his head and started snuffling the pavement as though following
a scent. The other studied every building, every window, and the dark spaces
between them.

Hunting dogs,
he thought. But what were they hunting?

The dog who’d been sniffing at the pavement lifted its head
and swung around. Mike backpedaled from the window, suddenly afraid to have the
dog see him. It seemed foolish — he was inside his house, after all
— but instinct forced him away from the glass.

Ten or fifteen seconds ticked by and he took a tentative
step forward. When he looked out at the night again, the dogs were gone.

A trickle came from his left nostril. Cursing his allergies,
Mike reached up to wipe it away, and it smeared on his hand. He caught the
coppery smell, then, and knew it wasn’t his allergies this time. His nose had
started to bleed again.

“Damn it,” he snapped, there in the dark.

There was nothing more to be done in here tonight. All he
could do was get the chair seat off of the table, and shut it down. His eyes
had adjusted enough that he could make out shapes and objects in the workshop,
but still he was careful making his way back to the table saw. He wiped the hem
of his ratty t-shirt across his nose, but the bleeding seemed to have been just
that one trickle. As he released the clamps holding the wooden seat to the
table, he moved his hands slowly, gingerly, wary of the darkness. He did it all
mostly by touch.

Mike slid his hands under the slab of oak.

With another pop, the power came on. He shut his eyes
against the sudden brightness of lights in the workshop and the whine of the
saw filled the room. The blade bit into flesh and bone. He cried out in pain
jumped back from the table.

With the room lit up, the blood on the saw and the wood and
the table looked too bright, too red, almost artificial. The little finger of
his right hand lay on the table, strangely pale. He lifted his hand and stared
at the half inch stump and the blood pulsing out of it. A strange numbness
filled him.
Shock,
he thought.

And then,
Stupid.

Mike used his left hand to switch off the saw, furious at
himself for not having done so before. Safety first, what a joke. But it wasn’t
just stupidity. For the power to have come back on at precisely that moment,
that was just dreadful luck.

He took off his t-shirt and wrapped it tightly around his
hand, even as he walked over to the phone to call 911. Maybe he could drive
himself to the hospital, but he didn’t know how much the finger would bleed,
didn’t know if he’d stay conscious. And if they came quickly, maybe the
paramedics could save the finger. Could be the doctors would be able to
reattach it. They did stuff like that on tv all the time.

Alan teased him all the time about how one day he’d lose a
finger in here. The jokes weren’t going to be funny anymore.

Rose sat with one hand on the mouse, bathed in the glow of
her computer screen. She’d gone back and cleaned up the cabin as best she
could, putting the place in order for her parents’ return, but this afternoon
she’d returned to her apartment. Before dark. After last night, she didn’t feel
like sleeping at the cabin for a while.

The light was on in the hall, and another in the living
room. Voices drifted to her from the television. She’d been in the middle of
watching
Good Will Hunting
for about the twentieth time. It was old
enough now to be considered an old movie — old enough to be available for
free On Demand — but she loved the movie. One of her favorite moments in
any film ever was when Casey Affleck, Ben’s little brother, got up in the face
of the arrogant Harvard jerk in the bar and said “
my boy’s wicked smaht!
”

She loved that. And she loved the melancholy, working-class
wisdom that Affleck was able to bring to his supporting role. He’d made enough
bad decisions after so that people forgot he could really act, but
Good Will
Hunting
proved it. Rose had a soft spot for Affleck. She wondered if it was
because he looked a little bit like Mike Richards. On the other hand, she
wondered if she had a soft spot for Mike because he looked a little bit like
Ben Affleck.

She figured the truth was that she had a soft spot for Mike
because he was Mike. Rose knew he had feelings for her, and she knew she felt
something in return. But it didn’t feel like love to her. She’d known Mike most
of her life and though she knew he was a good, decent, hard-working man, in the
back of her mind there would always be the goofy kid who’d snapped her bra
strap like an elastic in the sixth grade and didn’t think girls should play
hockey.

Mike now was so completely different from Mike then. He was
a man, now. A catch, her mother had told her, many times. Maybe she ought to
work harder at not seeing the goofy kid in his face every time he smiled at
her.

Or maybe she should just not watch
Good Will Hunting
so often.

The movie was still on in the living room. All day she’d
been turning over in her mind the stricken look on her grandmother’s face that
morning when she’d dropped the tea cup, and the thing she’d said. Talking to
Jenny had only guaranteed that Rose would continue to work the thing over in
her mind. In the middle of watching the movie, she’d found herself drifting back
to those thoughts again and again, until finally she just had to satisfy her
curiosity.

A quick net search, that was all. She didn’t even bother to
pause the movie. It wasn’t like she hadn’t seen it before. Anyway, it would
only take her a few minutes. In her bedroom, where her computer desk took up
nearly all the space that wasn’t occupied by bed or dresser, she hadn’t taken
the trouble even to turn on the light.

Now she sat in front of the screen and typed “Seven
Whistlers” into Google search. There were a few references to books of folklore
and legends, but not many. This didn’t surprise her. Some bits of folklore made
it into popular culture, but most never did.

She hit a couple of dead links before coming up with a web
site that had a description of the legend. As she, a chill spread through her.

“The Seven Whistlers are evil spirits most often
mentioned in the folklore of various regions of England, primarily
Worcestershire. They appear as enormous black dogs, often accompanied by loud
shrieking or whistling noise, as of the wind. Legend says they are demons
loosed from Hell, searching for souls upon which the devil has laid claim. They
harbinger disaster and ill luck for any who encounter them. If all seven should
ever gather at once, it is believed that the world will end.”

Rose read the last line again, and shivered. The chill she
felt would not go away.

Rose slept poorly.

Her dreams were filled with visions of huge mongrel dogs,
their saliva-flecked jaws snapping hungrily as they chased her through the dark
woods that surrounded Kingsbury.

The squeal of a truck’s bad brakes outside her window made
her eyes flutter open, and she glared at the wan morning light filtering
through her bedroom window. Her legs ached as if she had run a marathon. The
dread and terror of her nightmares lingered and she intended to get up right
away, not wanting to descend back into dreams. Instead, she rolled over and
promptly fell back to sleep.

When she woke again, her head ached and she had cotton-mouth
in the worst way. Reaching for the glass of water she always kept on her
bedside table, she groaned as she caught sight of the clock. It was after nine
o’clock. She hated sleeping late.

Rose dragged herself from bed, went into the kitchen to pour
herself some orange juice, and then opened her door to pick up the newspaper
from her doormat. Thursday. And her grandfather was still dead, his wake and
funeral yet to come. Fresh grief blossomed in her. For the first few minutes
after waking, in the space between bad dreams and real life, she’d managed not
to think about his death at all. But that couldn’t last.