“You broke into my house,” I said, my voice a trickle from my lips, “to scare me into helping you find and kill this man?”
“Sorry,” he said again, and sounded sincere. “I was hoping Skidmore would investigate the break-in, and that would slow him down enough to give us a head start catching up with Frazier. Which it seems to have done.”
“Why did you answer the phone?” I stammered.
“I thought it might be Judy.” Orvid bit his lip. “She knew where I was. In fact for a second I thought it was her voice on the phone.”
“You scared Lucinda to death,” I complained. “And me.”
“It worked,” he said simply. “You're here.”
“Jesus,” I moaned. “You're as much of a lunatic as Frazier is.”
“I'm going to want that Bible back, by the way,” he said emotionlessly. “It's Judy's.”
“I'm absolutely certain that I can't let you kill this man while I sit here and watch,” I told him, trying hard to make ice of the words. “Not now.”
“You can't
let
me?” His chin jutted my direction. “I call that bold talk for the man without the knife.”
“That's not a knife.” I inclined my head in the direction of his blade. “That's compensation.”
“Please!” he exploded, laughing. “You're not seriously trying to undermine my efforts with Psychology 101?”
I felt the heft of the switched-off flashlight in my right hand. I was trying to determine how hard I'd have to throw it to knock the blade out of Orvid's hand. Maybe I could jump up, grab Frazier, drag him behind me, outrun Orvid. I couldn't think of anything else.
Orvid read my mind.
“I've been doing this,” he said, a quick glance at his blade, “for almost as long as you've been a folklorist. You don't really think you could outmaneuver me, any more than I could outthink you in the realms of mythological academia. So really don't try. I don't want you to get hurt.”
I realized I hadn't exhaled in a while.
“You don't want me to get hurt?” I said, barely breathing. “What do you think I'm going to do if you kill this man? If you don't kill me, I'm going straight to Skidmore.”
“I told you that Judy and I are leaving after this,” he said calmly. “No one will find us.”
“Because you and Judy blend in so well,” I taunted, “wherever you go.”
“I can kill you if you want me to, but I'd rather not do it.”
In that instant, panic forced a fact from the recesses of my memory: albino eyes are light sensitive.
I wouldn't have to throw the flashlight, I'd just have to turn it on. But I'd have to be careful. Orvid was obviously hyperaware, his reflexes were at their peak.
“Yes,” I said, struggling to my feet. “I'd rather you didn't kill me, now that you mention it. I thought you were going to.”
“Oh, for God's sake, why would you think that?”
“Are you serious?” I stood facing Orvid and stared him down.
“Okay,” he admitted. “From your point of view at the moment, I get it. But, damn.”
“At the very least, I'm not going to stand here while you kill this man,” I sighed, hoping to sound as tired as I was. “If you agree, I'll go back and wait in the truck.”
“I don't know,” Orvid said slowly. “If you drive off, it'll be hard for me to get home.”
“I'll give you my keys,” I offered, reaching into my pocket. “A fitting, if ironic, turn of events under the circumstances.”
I fished out my keys and held them high in my left hand, showing them to Orvid. As casually as I could manage, I flicked on the flashlight with my right hand, raised it as if I were preparing to light my way back to the factory ruins.
The beam shot a stab of light directly into Orvid's face.
“Christ!” Orvid howled instantly.
I lumbered forward, hand out reaching for Frazier.
I looked up just in time to see Orvid's knife coming directly at me.
The hilt of the knife, with perfect accuracy, hit the flashlight so hard that the flashlight broke apart, shattering into three or four pieces, flying out of my hand in as many directions.
“Ow,” Orvid said like a kid who'd pinched his finger. “That really hurts.”
“My hand.” I tried to sound innocent. “Why did you do that?”
I shook the hand that had been holding the flashlight. It was numb.
“Sorry. I broke your flashlight. Reflex. That light in my eyes really stings.”
“Oh,” I stammered, “the light in your eyes. Really?”
Orvid was already headed my way, rubbing his eyes.
I glanced down.
Orvid's blade was a few feet to my right.
I stepped toward it; scooped it up.
“Look, Orvid,” I said, planting my feet as solidly as I could, holding the blade high. “I can't give this back to you.”
He stopped, sighed, looked up at me.
“Oh.” He rubbed his eyes once more. “You shot me in the eyes deliberately. Good move.”
There was actually a hint of admiration in his voice.
“Don't come any closer,” I said, but the waver in my voice betrayed me.
“Enough kidding around,” he went on, not remotely angry, “give me the thing, okay?”
“No,” I pleaded, “I justâI can't.”
Orvid took a step toward me.
“I don't want to hurt you,” he said, his voice completely calm.
It may have presented Frazier, who gaped at both of us, a fairly amusing image. An oversize man with a big sword in his hand was being menaced by an unarmed person the size of a child.
“I'm pretty fast,” Orvid went on. “I could dislocate both your kneecaps before you knew what I was doing, and then you'd have a really hard time moving. Or I could crack your nuts, I'm just about that high. One good punch would mean permanent family planning for the Devilin line. Or.”
Orvid reached behind his back and produced a small automatic pistol.
“I could just shoot you a couple of places,” he concluded. “Nothing vital, but if you had a bullet in each arm and, say, one in the foot, you'd really be incapacitated. For, like, the rest of this month at least.”
He pointed the pistol directly at my right boot.
“All I'd have to do is fall right,” I countered, “and I'd smash you.”
“I'm faster than that.” His gun hand had not moved.
“Or this blade could do you some damage on the way down,” I said, hefting his knife.
“Yeah, don't fool around with that. It's really sharp. I cut myself on it all the time.”
“I don't know what I'm going to do,” I told Orvid honestly.
We might have waited there, locked in our strange standoff, for quite a while, but Hiram Frazier spoke up unexpectedly.
“Which one of you is going to kill me?' he asked, his voice lucid, his words clear as moonlight.
My eyes shot to Frazier's forlorn outline twitching on the ground.
Orvid spoke to Frazier without turning his head toward him.
“Do you remember a couple of nights ago,” Orvid asked Frazier, “when you were in Pine City?”
“Where?” Frazier said.
“There was a train wreck,” Orvid said steadily. “You were beside the train tracks when a car was hit by a train.”
“I don't remember,” Frazier said, looked off into the darker part of the woods.
But I could see that he was lying this time. My encounter with him only a few moments before had brought the scene back to him.
“There were two little girls in a car, and you took the keys,” Orvid went on carefully. “You were beside a railroad track.”
“Sounds like me,” Frazier admitted, seeming to picture it. “That's what I'll do sometimes. I usually get ten dollars.”
“You caused those girls to be afraid,” said Orvid, taking a step closer to me. “And then you caused them to die.”
“I did?” his voice was wracked with despair. “I just don't remember. I don't want to.”
Orvid's eyes were locked on mine.
“You're all wrong about me, you know, Dr. Devilin,” Orvid said quietly. “I hate that I've given you the wrong impression. I don't have vengeance in my heart. Not anymore, at least. I have pity. It isn't exactly the kind of mercy you were asking for, but look at him. Look at Frazier. He's already dead in nearly every way a person can be except for one: his body's still staggering around. What's better for the guy, ultimately? To go on like this, or to end it all here and now? Seriously.”
I looked over at poor Hiram Frazier.
Transparent as the silver that sifted from the moon, an old man sat on the cold, cold ground. He was shivering, bone white, dressed in black tatters. He was nothing more than a November ghost.
Orvid and I were both startled to hear Frazier's voice once again.
“The little boy's right, you know,” Frazier said, looking at Orvid's back. “You'd do me a kindness if you'd let me die. I'd be grateful if this body could rest.”
Orvid lowered his gun. I could see something had changed in his expression. He was trying to come to grips with the exact nature of the thing called Hiram Frazier.
“Usually a ghost is a traveling creature whose body has died away,” I said, looking directly at Frazier. “But you're the other kind.”
“But I'm the other kind,” Frazier said, staring back, completely understanding me. “You see us more often, but you pay us no mind.”
“What are you both talking about?” Orvid said, turning.
“He's not the kind of a ghost that's a spirit without a body,” I explained, voice hollow. “He's the kind that's a body without a spirit left in it.”
“Oh,” Orvid sighed.
“A vacant body,” Frazier agreed.
That sound, and Frazier's shivering quake, stood the hair on my arms straight up. I felt a flush burning the back of my neck. Everything was edged, like a cutout silhouette.
Preacher Hiram Frazier was, indeed, a true-life, living ghost.
The whole clearing where we stood seemed paralyzed, a place where matter and time were exempt. I had no sensation in my body whatsoever.
Frazier looked up at the black sky, away from the moon.
“You have no idea,” he whispered to no one, “what a kindness it would be if you'd only let this body rest. Please let me come home now. Haven't I done enough?”
Orvid's gaze at me was steady.
“Hasn't he done enough?” Orvid repeated.
“I don't know how I can do this anymore,” Frazier said, his voice even weaker. “I don't want to suck more life out of this world.”
“It may be time,” Orvid said to me, “to turn your little mercy speech back on yourself. What do you think would be better for this guy? Really, no kidding.”
The air all around me was a strange ocean rising and falling, and the threat of drowning in it seemed tangible to me. I had to come up with something to keep Orvid from murdering the old man, no matter what the old man was.
“Tell me again what you heard Tess and Rory say about Hiram Frazier at that Thanksgiving play,” I heard myself saying to Orvid.
“I wondered how long it would take you to get ahold of that. They were supposed to say, âThank you, Mistress Farmer,' and then
sing âCome, Ye Thankful People, Come.' But instead Rory said, âThank you, Mister Frazier, for your gift.'”
“âYour gift,'” I repeated.
“How about that.” Orvid's face was supremely serene.
It didn't take me long to scour the library at the back of my skull and emerge with the facts I wanted.
“Do you know about the alligator god in the ancient Egyptian pantheon?” I said, watching Hiram Frazier's deeply wrinkled, leathery face. “He stands at the gate of death and weighs your heart. He uses one of those old scales, you know, like the scales of justice in that statue? The kind where the counterweight is on one side and the object you want to weigh is on the other? When the god-monster puts your heart on the scales, what does he use as its counterweight?”
“Tell me,” Orvid indulged me.
Good,
I thought.
The longer I keep this up, the longer I have to figure out how to keep Frazier alive.
“An ostrich feather.” I smiled. “If your heart is lighter than the feather, you get to have your heart back, and you go on to a perfect afterlife. If your heart is heavy, the alligator eats it and you wander forever without a heart in the cold realms between this world and the next.”
“Maybe you're referring to the toxicology report for the girls,” Orvid realized. “You mean that when the girls died, they were laughing. They didn't realize the peril of their situation. Their hearts were light.”
“Yes.” I nodded once.
“That
is
a gift.” Orvid smiled.
“Just a thought,” I mumbled. “Only one of several.”
“There are others?” Orvid said, slightly mocking.
“Look at Mr. Frazier's skin,” I ventured.
Scales, warts, hard ridges, stood out on Frazier's face and hands, and Orvid nodded. Alligator skin.
“I think it's probably best not to make too much of your mythological observations,” Orvid said after a second, “but on the other
hand, they do give some import to our business here tonight, don't they?”
“I always think they do,” I answered haplessly.
“Well, I get your point in this regard, anyway. Are you going to hand me back my knife now?”
He made a show of hiding his gun away again.
“I don't want to hurt you,” I ventured, the words shaky, “but I'm not giving you this blade so you can kill a man.”
“Damn,” he growled. “Give it to me.”
He took another step my way and held out his right hand, motioning impatiently for his blade.
“No, Orvid,” I told him firmly.
Without warning Orvid sprang forward almost horizontal to the ground. His head plowed into my stomach like a cannonball. I flew backward, breath knocked out of me, and hit the ground hard, right next to a motionless Frazier.
Orvid was standing over me instantly, soundless as a beam of moonlight. He kicked and I felt a searing pain in my hand. Orvid pulled the blade away from me quickly and held it a moment to one side of his body, low.
Suddenly he lashed out; swung the blade like a golf club. Before I could move, the motion was complete.
Frazier moaned and fell to one side.
“What have you done?” I cried, trying to sit up.
“Not what you think,” Orvid managed calmly.
To my amazement, a second later Frazier put his hands out onto the wet grass and drew in a deep breath. It took me a moment to realize that Orvid had deftly cut the tie that had bound Frazier's hands behind his back.
Moving quickly, Orvid similarly dispatched the white bond around Frazier's ankles.
“Help me get him up, would you?” Orvid said to me.
I found I could barely move, but I somehow got up and trundled in the direction of the body on the ground.
We did our best to get Frazier to a standing position.
“What now?” Frazier asked us blankly.
“Where were you going when I stopped you?” Orvid asked Frazier quietly.
“Home,” Frazier's voice ground out. “Catch a train going home.”
Orvid stood aside.
“There are the tracks,” he told Frazier. “You're going home.”
I looked between the ancient preacher and the shorter albino. Neither seemed remotely real in the dim light of the clearing.
Frazier nodded. “Time to go home, ain't it?” He staggered toward the railroad tracks.
“Wait,” I interrupted feebly.
“Yes, it is,” Orvid answered Frazier, following the man.
“We have to take Frazier back to Skid,” I began. “We can't let him go. That's not what I meant.”
Perplexed beyond motion, I watched the two of them walk a step or two before I followed to intervene further.
Frazier was humming to himself. I couldn't tell the tune.
“It's coming.” Orvid stood directly behind him.