My breathing became more regular and my throat seemed to open wider, taking in pins of cold air. I trembled less violently and folded my arms in front of me to keep from an obvious appearance of shaking.
Frazier still sat on the ground, trying to stand.
“You think you beat me,” he sneered, defiant. “You can't hold back the night. Look around you. Half of every life on this miserable world is spent in nighttime. It's God's counterweight. There is much work yet to be done in the world of night. God divided the light from the darkness, He did not put an end to the night. He saw that all nations, all people, must know both. This contrast of opposites is God's way, and I am the envoy of darkness, the angel of the counterbalance. I bring the deep Black to a world sick with pale eyes. I refresh the night with continual gifts.”
“Right,” I said, my normal voice returned, a little weakened. “You'll have to get some new material, you know. You've said all this to me before.”
“I have?” He looked up at me suspiciously.
“Get up,” I urged him, sounding exactly as exhausted as I was.
“Your face does not come to me,” he said slowly.
“I gave you a ride yesterday morning, and then, as it happens, you visited my house.”
“How would I visit your house?” he snapped. “Ain't been inside a human dwelling in ten years.”
“You were just in Preacher Levi's trailer. Couldn't have been much more than three or four hours ago.”
“There!” he shouted, leaping to his feet. “How you to know a thing like that? Proof!”
What he meant was a mystery, but what he had done was diabolically ingenious.
Frazier had managed to keep me off guard long enough for him to inch his way toward the iron bar on the ground, grab it, and jump to his feet wielding it.
“Now,” he bellowed, “I smite you back to hell whence you come!”
The bar caught my upper arm at about the biceps, and I thought I could feel the bone crack. White pain shot outward from the blow in every direction. My heart exploded, pumping so hard I thought it might shoot through my ribs and into the night, a red comet.
Too stunned to move, I watched in wonder as he circled me.
“You cannot die,” Frazier muttered, his words a mush in his mouth, “but that body you took can be beat to a pile.”
He swung the bar wildly, barely missing my head.
I lumbered sideways, still dumbfounded by the surprise of his attack.
He readied another blow.
I concentrated hard, balanced my weight, kicked horizontally with my right leg directly into his lower abdomen. I felt the connection; the give in his gut sickened me.
He flew backward, skidding on his backside, but was up and swinging with preternatural agility before I could get my leg back on the ground. I hopped away from him.
Not fast enough.
He flew at me, caught the side of my head with a glancing crash. It shook my teeth, but didn't connect strongly enough to do the damage it had intended.
I burst, running. I thought to make it over the brick wall next to me, try a desperate dash for the truck.
If I could get in, lock the doors, I might live.
I was vaguely aware of a train whistle knifing white through the black air, but I took it for another sound from Frazier, high whine or a yelp.
I stumbled over the brick edges of the low wall and miraculously managed to retain my footing, kept running. I could hear Frazier behind me, snarling.
The sound brought a sudden image to my mind: a drooling Bruno, Eppie's junkyard dog. I was propelled faster toward the haven of my truck.
Before I had taken two more leaping steps, I felt Frazier's first solid blow to my head. I was almost beside the crumbling entrance of the old mill, my truck tantalizingly in sight.
But I went down.
I tried to roll. Before I could, a second pounding thud creased my back between my shoulder blades.
Again a distant whistle sounded, and I thought my eardrums might be bursting from the blood pumping in my skull.
I managed to turn on my side, eyes wild, watching helplessly as Hiram Frazier raised his iron rod high above his head.
“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” he said, clear as crystal, a voice I had never heard, “the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”
He brought the bar flying down toward my head, an arc made silver by the searing moon, the last light I saw.
Struggling up through the darkness, I thought I could see a white star, a comet streaking above my head. My eyes opened, blurred, and closed again before I panicked.
I heard a violent explosion of breath burst from my lungs, tried desperately to sit up, arms crossed in front of my face. I could still see, in my mind's eye, Hiram Frazier's iron bar crashing down toward me.
But no impact followed, and I wondered if I might be dead.
I tested my eyes, opened them slowly.
The comet I had seen stood a few feet in front of me: Orvid, his white mane flaring sideways in the cold wind.
“Frazier!” I told him, struggling to get to my feet. “He was here. He was trying to kill me. He's getting away!”
Orvid didn't move, and the serenity on his face made me doubt his sanity. Or mine.
“It's all right,” he said soothingly. “I know where Frazier is. Or I'm assuming the man I've got is Hiram Frazier. And he's not going anywhere. Now let me take a look at your head.”
He stood sideways, let the moonlight spill onto my face.
“How's your vision?” he asked. “I mean how blurry is it?”
I blinked.
“It feels fine,” I stammered, my voice quavering. “It barely hurts. Isn't that a sign of severe concussion? Doesn't that mean I'm about to die?”
“For such a large man,” Orvid said, only a slight smile suggested in his eyes, “you certainly are something of a baby about certain things.”
“I'm not a
baby
,” I chided, “I'm a hypochondriac.”
I stood unsteadily.
“You're not slurring your words,” Orvid offered. “You can see.”
“These are the first signs of impending doom,” I insisted. “But the fact is, it's beginning to hurt, now that I'm up. It hurts a lot. What does it look like?”
He stared up at me, squinting.
“It looks like red confetti stuck to your face,” he answered, “about three inches long over your left eye. But it's not deep. He's a drunk old man, and his bones are made of cricket sounds.”
“Am I hearing things, or are you misquoting the Queen Mab speech from
Romeo and Juliet
?”
“I'm trying to be the sort of companion that your friend Andrews would be if he were here.”
I turned to face Orvid directly, hand absently running over the bloody scar on my forehead.
“How would you know about Andrews?” I asked, suspicion edging each syllable like static electricity.
“I told you before, I do my research. I've been studying you for years.”
I froze. I was beginning to have a certain suspicion about Orvid's field of study, and it did not bode well for our hero.
“You've been studying me,” I breathed. “That's right. I remember your saying that. Why?”
“It's an interesting story,” he said quickly, “but wouldn't you rather deal with Hiram Frazier first?”
“My God,” I answered, coming to my senses a little, “where is he? He's not getting away?”
“No.” Orvid started toward the train tracks. “Let's go.”
“Go where?” I said weakly, standing my ground.
“Frazier's down past that thicket of trees,” he said, not turning
back to me, “where the tracks bend. He was going to hop the train.”
“The train,” I said slowly. “I
heard
a whistle, but then I thought it was in my head, or in Frazier's howling.”
“It was a freight,” Orvid said simply. “I heard it coming. By the time I saw Frazier headed into the clearing down there, the train was almost at a standstill. He had a crowbar in his hand, by the way. The one he hit you with, I'd imagine.”
“Why didn't he finish the job?” I asked, finally taking the first few steps to follow Orvid.
“The train was coming,” Orvid told me, as if it were obvious. “He didn't want to miss it. He only had to stop you from following him. He didn't have time to kill you.”
“But he didn't get away?” I said, still trying to clear my mind.
“He's down there in the clearing,” Orvid repeated. “He's not going anywhere.”
“The train's gone?”
“Gone.”
“But Frazier's there?” My voice was a little gravelly.
“Just come on,” Orvid answered impatiently. “And don't forget your flashlight.”
The night had cleared at last. High clouds still chased past the haloed moon, but the rain was gone. Moonlight spread silver wings, and the spirit of the night soared over everything, blessing bare elm branches with pale benevolence. The flashlight was barely visible where I'd dropped it in the grass.
I collected it, not bothering to turn it on, and followed Orvid into the trees, onto the tracks. The rough gravel bed that supported the crossties seemed a white river. High in the trees a night dove called, and a vague promise of morning was suggested even in the dead of night.
The tracks took an abrupt curve to our right and upward. We came to a clearing on our left half the size of a baseball field. It was empty save for a lone, forlorn figure seated on the ground.
“Is that Frazier?” I whispered.
“You tell me,” Orvid said out loud, only a little irritated. “I've never met the man, I'm just assuming.”
He picked up his pace. I stumbled behind.
As I got closer, I could see that Frazier was tied with some sort of bands at his wrists and ankles. He was seated uncomfortably on the wet ground, a grimace contorting his face, a mixture of pain and desolation. Despite everything, it was a pitiable sight to my eyes.
“That's him,” I said, amazed.
“Let me go,” he said weakly, not looking up.
Orvid went to stand behind the figure on the ground, a little to one side of his left shoulder.
I came to a stop a few feet in front of Frazier and stared.
“He charged down the side of the tracks,” Orvid began in answer to the questions in my eyes. “I thought to myself, âWho else could this be? He's got to be Frazier.' The train was already passing, but it was slow. This guy was running faster than it was moving. He had a rusted crowbar in his hand, as I was saying, and he used it to hook onto a flatcar. He was about to heave himself up onto the train when I hit the backs of his knees with my cane. He didn't see me. I'd been standing right there, and he didn't even see me.”
“I saw you,” Frazier insisted, his voice grating the air. “I just didn't think you were really there.”
“He fell, hit his shoulder, might have cracked or dislocated something,” Orvid went on, ignoring Frazier. “He would have been crushed under the train if I hadn't pulled his ankles and dragged him away from the tracks.”
“I was almost on the train,” Frazier sobbed. “I was there.”
“What's tying his hands and feet?” I asked, trying to see in the dim light that filtered through the bare limbs.
“I always carry a few police ties.” Orvid casually produced a thin, white piece of plastic no bigger than a strand of tagliatelle.
“That's holding him?” I took a step back before I checked myself.
“Riot cops carry something like these to handcuff lots of people in big riots. They work.”
“So you hobbled him, dragged him, handcuffed him,” I said, touching my forehead again, brushing away wet blood, “and then came looking for me?”
“I was worried about you.” Orvid smiled. “If Frazier had killed you, it would have been very difficult for me to take care of your body. You're really big and heavy.”
“Yes,” I answered drily. “I'll try not to inconvenience you in that manner.”
“Okay,” Orvid said brightly. “Well, our work here is done.”
“Not by a long shot,” I insisted. “You understand I have about a hundred more questions.”
“Let me go,” Frazier muttered with absolutely no conviction.
“What questions?” Orvid asked me amiably, leaning a little on his cane, a generous smile on his lips.
“You've been
studying
me?” I tried not to sound completely dumbfounded. “Is that what you just reminded me of?”
“Where to begin?” Orvid mused.
The moon had freed itself completely from a prison of clouds, and the sky was polished with the soft light. All around us the birds and night frogs kept quiet, anxious to hear what Orvid had to say.
Even poor Hiram Frazier sat mute, breathing through his slack mouth, eyes closed.
“About three years ago, when you first returned home to Blue Mountain,” Orvid began, “you had been gone from there a long time.”
“Over a decade,” I agreed, nodding.
“People were curious about you, about why you were back.”
“They were?”
“Lots of people were glad to see you, of course,” he hedged, “but you have to know that you're a strange person and people don't quite know what to make of you.”
“Conceded.” The bloody place on my head was throbbing.
“People thought you might be back to stir up trouble,” he went on, “about your family. Even about my familyâthe rumors concerning your mother and my cousin Tristan. They're still circulating.
But that's the thing about gossip, really: everyone likes to talk about it in private, but no one really feels comfortable if it's made public.”
“Someone thought I was going to make those awful stories
public
?”
“Some people in my family thought it was a possibility. That's where my interest began, with the gossip concerning my cousin.”
“That's really more about my mother than about me,” I said, clearing my throat, “but go on.”
“Let's just say it sparked an interest. Professionally.”
“There it is,” I said softly. “The center of your hidden world, your
profession
. I don't know how I would provoke an interest in a person such as yourself.”
“What do you think I do?” Orvid asked, his smile turning cold.
“Oh, I know what you do,” I said, trying to match his toughness. “I just don't want to discuss it.”
“Why not?”
I tried to clear my mind and focus on the exact reason I didn't want to concern myself with Orvid's business.
“Maybe I'm afraid of you,” I said. “Or maybe, as I believe I told you, there's enough bad news in my life at the moment and I don't want to sully my subconscious with any more twenty-first-century desolation. Or maybe, finally, I actually do feel some sort of odd kinship with you, a burgeoning friendship of some sort, and I don't want to be disappointed.”
“I see.” He shifted his weight. “You don't want to be disappointed in me, but you really don't know what I do for a living.”
“I do,” I insisted, my voice rising. “Skidmore knows too. And frankly, it's as much a mundane cliché as it is a disappointing occupation for a man of your intellect.”
“Skidmore doesn't know anything,” he assured me.
“He does. Damn.” I could feel my temper rising, my face warming. “He's seen you fetch your little packages from the train. I've even pieced together the likely lines of connection: you to Andy
Newlander at the movie house in Pine City, then Andy to Nickel Mathews, and finally from Nickel to dozens of young people in our county. Or is it hundreds?”
Orvid exploded with laughter.
Frazier was so startled he almost fell over, and my adrenaline level shot up, heart thumping, face hotter.
“Oh my God,” Orvid finally managed, all but supporting himself on his cane. “You think I'm the county drug lord?”
He dissolved again, ending in a mild coughing fit.
I talked over his wheezing.
“But, see, how would you even know that the subject was drugs simply from my mention of Andy and Nickel,” I reasoned only a little weakly, “if you weren't connected with that business?”
“I am an observant sort,” he said uneasily, pulling out his inhaler, “as I thought I had demonstrated. I see things; I learn. And with the boys we're talking about, it's not exactly deep-cover spy operations, is it? I mean, Nickel Mathews, God bless him, has the IQ of a radish.”
“You're not the drug guy?” I said thinly.
“No.” He was smiling again. “That's Eppie Waldrup.”
“What?” I felt like sitting down.