The Silver Bough (37 page)

D
AVE
’
S LETTER LAY
on the kitchen floor where she’d dropped it when she saw the light from the library. As

Kathleen bent to pick it up she remembered the last she’d seen of him, running off with some strangers only minutes after agreeing to come back with her for dinner. But before she could get too indignant over the way she’d been abandoned, she recalled the compulsion she’d felt to stay in that room on top of the library, the room that did not exist. If not for Nell, she’d be there still. Strange things were happening, undoubtedly. She couldn’t presume to judge his behavior without more information.

So, instead of throwing it away as she’d meant to do earlier, she slit open the square blue envelope with a table knife, took out the folded sheet of paper it contained, and held it up to read by the murky light that filtered through the kitchen window.

Dearest Kathleen,

Although I haven’t seen or spoken to you since Saturday night, you’ve hardly left my mind. I tried to call several times, but “No network coverage” said my cell phone, and my landline has become even more mysteriously unreliable than usual. My noble (and formerly trusted) steed took me only as far as the sign which always makes me think of Virginia Woolf before collapsing.

I’ll spare you the mechanical details. Suffice to say it has been repaired, I have wheels again, and I really should have managed, as intended, to turn up at the library before it closed today.

The reason I didn’t is because of you, actually, and I hope you’ll forgive me when you know why.

I’ve written a song.

(I feel those words should leap off the page in neon lights, at the very least!)

It’s the first song I’ve written in over three years, and it’s for you.

I must see you. I won’t leave Appleton until I do. I’ll be back shortly.

Your

Dave

She gulped. Her heart was fluttering; she felt like someone in an old-fashioned romantic novel—no, like the teenaged fan she’d once been. He’d written a song for her!

Again she recalled her last sight of him, the greying reddish ponytail bouncing against the back of his smart leather jacket as he walked quickly, almost running…

He’d been running
after
that crowd; he wasn’t with them; he’d been struggling to catch up, while they’d strolled on, completely unaware…Who were they that had drawn him away, that he’d been so desperate to reach?

She thought of the ghost and the secret room inside the library dome. She’d had Nell to draw her back to reality, but Dave was on his own. She grabbed her purse and her car key and went out to find him.

Even in a small town it was hard to know where to begin. Since her car was still parked in front of the library, she had only to drive half a block and turn left on the Esplanade to find herself back in front of the Victoria Hotel, at almost the same spot where she’d had her last sight of Dave. The hopeful attempt at a sidewalk café had been dismantled, the outside lights were off, and the hotel looked dark and deserted in the cool grey light.

She took the second turning at the pierhead circle, but was then stymied in her attempt to retrace his steps. Half a dozen smaller streets branched off it, and he might have taken any one of them. Yet it hardly mattered, for they all joined up with Main Street, and from there…Flipping a mental coin, she turned right, taking the road out of town as far as it allowed. Dave’s car was still parked where he’d left it, the glossy red paint softly beaded with moisture: dew or sea spray. She noticed a soft grey fog hanging over the sea, gradually creeping closer to the land. At last she made sense of the strange light and odd, muffled atmosphere hanging over the town: fog.

Wrapped in the dim, foggy silence, the town slept. She met no one on the road, and the shops were all shut up tight. The clock in her car had chosen this inconvenient moment to die, and when she went past the town hall she saw the hands on its clock face both pointed straight up at twelve.

She shivered uneasily. It could not be mere coincidence. What sort of power would stop every clock in town? Or had time itself been suspended?

She felt a sudden, childish urge to hurry home, lock the doors, crawl into bed, and put her head under the covers. She wouldn’t be surprised to learn that was what practically everyone else in the town was doing at that moment, waiting and praying for the return of normality. Unless, of course, they were all innocently asleep as they would be in the middle of the night, and it
was
still the middle of the night, despite this strange, sourceless grey light.

On her first drive along the Esplanade, past the harbor, she’d noticed people hanging around on the pier. So, having found everywhere else so deserted, she was drawn back there. Slowing her car to a crawl along the Esplanade, she peered out at the dockside activity, and her unease grew.
Who are all these people? And what are they doing, so alert and busy, while the town sleeps?
Then, at last, among all the strangers she glimpsed a single familiar figure: an old codger in a filthy old sweater and knitted cap, with a pipe sticking out of the side of his mouth as if growing there. He was often to be seen on a bench gazing out to sea, or loitering on the pier, offering advice to visiting sailors, and on very wet days he’d sometimes pass a whole afternoon in the library, poring over the latest issues of
The Fishing News
. As she parked her car nearby and walked back to the pier, she searched her memory for the old man’s name.

“Mr. McNaughton!” she called out brightly, the name popping into her mind just in time. “Good morning!”

“Is it?” He levered himself slowly off a bench, peering at her suspiciously from beneath bushy white eyebrows.

“I’m Kathleen Mullaroy, from the library,” she said, thinking he hadn’t recognized her.

“Aye, I know fine who you are.”

“I’m looking for someone. I wondered if you might have seen him go past. Dave Varney is his name, and he’s—”

“Mr. Varney as stays out at White Gates?”

“You know him?”

He gave a grunt and shifted his cold pipe in his mouth. “Not to speak to. I knows him by sight.”

“Did you see him? It might have been a few hours ago…possibly with a group of people.”

The old man removed his pipe and went and knocked it sharply against the back of the bench. “I saw them, all right. Took it he was going home. Time I was off myself.” Replacing the pipe in its accustomed place, he steadied himself and began to walk away with slow, careful steps. After four or five steps he stopped and turned back. “You want to get yourself home, too. Don’t hang about here—it’s not safe.”

“Why?” She couldn’t stop herself glancing around at the other people. There were now only a few left on the pier; the others had returned to the boats lying at anchor, or otherwise melted away out of sight.

He shook his head slowly. “You’ve seen the fog, haven’t you?”

“It’s not so bad.”

“It’ll get worse. And if you get yourself lost in it—well. You don’t want to be out alone when the fog comes in. You don’t want to get yourself lost. Go home.”

“I’ll be careful. Did you speak to Dave, Mr. McNaughton? Did he say anything?”

“Go home,” he said again, and turned away.

But going home was not an option—not until she knew Dave was safe. She went back to her car and headed for the hills. She had only a rough idea where White Gates Farm might be, but as there were so few roads on the Apple, even a rough idea should be good enough. If Dave had struck out for home on foot, there was a chance she’d meet him on the way.

She allowed herself this hopeful fantasy: finding him a mile or two outside of town, standing sheepishly with his thumb out, tired and confused but suffering from no more than inconvenience and embarrassment. And then she’d take him home.

“Next time,
tell
me before you go off,” she said, like a bossy mother, addressing the imaginary hitchhiker. Next time, next time…Unexpected tears sprang to her eyes. “Oh, Dave,” she cried out as if he could hear her. “Dave, Dave, where
are
you?”

As the empty miles clicked past, her hope withered. There were no other cars on the road at all, and this new day—if it
was
day—was weirdly birdless. The only living creatures she saw as she drove past fields and farmland were a lot of bedraggled sheep, two pale horses, and a herd of black-and-white cows.

Thick clouds hung overhead, making the sky seem unnaturally low, as if a huge, opaque bell jar had descended upon the land, isolating it from all the known world.

The road gradually rose, and farmland gave way to rough, rocky moors. She drove past a pond—what they called a “lochan” here. The water looked very still and deep and gleamed like a black mirror beneath the paler sky, and for no obvious reason she felt oppressed by the lonely sight. Then, on the other side of the road, she saw the sign:
TO THE LIGHTHOUSE
and the line from Dave’s letter came back to her; she could practically hear him saying it, “the sign which always makes me think of Virginia Woolf…”

Her heart leaped, and, in a surge of giddy excitement, she pressed down too hard on the accelerator.

It should have been all right. There was absolutely no traffic; she hadn’t encountered a single car or person since she’d left Appleton, and the road stretched reasonably straight and empty ahead. But suddenly, out of nowhere, a huge white horse stepped out onto the road in front of her.

She slammed on the brake; the car wobbled, fishtailed, and slewed around. Wrestling for control, she managed to bring it to a halt, but not before it had gone off the road, canting to one side, one wheel hanging in open air above the steep ditch.

“Oh, shit!”

She switched off the engine, yanked on the emergency brake, and then, terrified, scrambled out the passenger-side door, expecting all the time to feel the car shudder and roll over. It seemed a sort of miracle that she managed to escape unharmed, and that the car remained precariously balanced.

The horse was standing in the middle of the road, looking at her.

“Well, thank you
very
much,” she said, in a voice at least an octave higher than normal. She looked back at her car. Amazingly, it appeared undamaged, but clearly she would not be able to get it back onto the road by herself.

Looking back at the horse—undeniably a handsome animal—she realized it was saddled and bridled, all ready for riding, and a small note of alarm sounded in her mind. She scanned the other side of the road for a fallen rider, but there was no sign of anyone, either lying injured or stumbling after a runaway mount.

“Where’s your owner?”

The horse whickered and moved toward her. Wary, she backed away. It appeared friendly, but then so had the Shetland pony who’d nipped her painfully on the arm when she was ten, establishing her lifelong attitude of extreme caution around all members of the equine race.

Perhaps sensing her unease, the animal stopped. It dropped its head, then angled around to present its side to her as if inviting her to mount.

“Oh, yeah, and what’d you do with your last rider? No thanks.” She turned away to peer anxiously along the road again, longing for the sight of someone, anyone, who could help her. An ancient noisy tractor, a taciturn shepherd with dog riding pillion on his quad-bike, even a limping teenager screaming abuse at her runaway steed.

“Hello!”

A man’s voice boomed right behind her, and she whirled around, shocked, to find a very fit young man beaming at her. Looking back, she could see no other vehicle but her own drunkenly leaning car; even the horse had disappeared.

“Where did you come from?”

He pointed in the direction of the lochan.

“You live over there? Very near?”

He nodded, still smiling in his open, friendly way, and she sighed with relief.

“Thank goodness! That’s my car,” she explained. “I need help. Is your phone working? No? Ah, well, do you have a car? Truck? Tractor? Anything, really…” As he went on cheerfully shaking his head, she bit her lip. “Well, you must know somebody who does! All I need is something to pull the car back up onto the road—if we had some rope—”