Blood Fugue (9 page)

David stared back at him, wide-eyed.

‘Never take that off. Ever. Understand?’

The boy nodded and slipped the binder back over his head.

‘Come on.’

With the staff in one hand and a binder ready in the other Kerrigan led the boy home through the gradually deepening gloom.

Chapter 9

Reminders: August 19th

Don’t forget Buster’s worm medicine. He’s spending way too much time with his tongue up his ass.

Jimenez family have been gone for four days. With that cheap gear and their city-folk legs, they ought to have given up after forty-eight hours. If they’re not back by tomorrow morning: GO AND GET THEM.

Important: Find out what’s up with Burt. Kath says he’s been acting up all week. Keeps telling her he can see an old man outside the window. If he’s mistaking his own reflection for someone else, he must really be losing it.

Not that I’m likely to forget this but it’s over with Amy. Really freaked her when I pissed the bed, I guess. How’s a weirdo like me going to get laid now, huh? Shop at Randall’s until the dust settles.

CRUCIAL: Take a flashlight for the walk home after dinner tonight

Kerrigan timed his walk down to Burt and Kath’s place so he’d arrive while it was still light. Walking home would be different. If there’d been a cab, he’d have taken it, but there wasn’t any kind of taxi service for seventy miles in any direction.

The nebulous purple twilight was already heavy on the air as he walked up the creaking wooden steps and knocked hard on the doorframe. He took a step back to wait for Burt and turned to gaze out at the street. He looked from side to side along the porch too. Every second drew more life from the sky. In some of the houses on the Terrace, people were already turning on their lights.

He slung off his backpack and reached inside, casual at first then frantic. No flashlight.

‘Jesus Christ. You fucking space-case.’

The darkness rose like a flood around him. Burt was taking too long to answer. He banged again, louder, and peered through glass in the door trying to see beyond the fine mesh curtain that obscured the view. There were no lights on inside. If Burt couldn’t get to the door, then why hadn’t Kath come instead? Kerrigan stepped back from the door and looked around again. Gooseflesh rippled under his clothes. Someone was watching him, he was certain; waiting for him to look away before . . .

Unable to endure another moment of the swelling darkness, he tried the handle and was surprised to discover the door pulled easily open. These days, Burt and Kath never left the door unlocked.

He closed the door behind him and stood a moment in the hallway, listening. There was nothing but the ticks and creaks of an old house breathing. The same noises it had made when he was growing up there. Remembering the nights he’d spent terrified in his upstairs bedroom when Kath turned the lights out didn’t help to steady him. This was the place where it had all started.

He reached out for the light switch and flicked it on. Nothing happened.

It had to be a bulb. Surely the power wasn’t out. Maybe a fuse had blown. If anything, the darkness was worse inside the house: more intimate. He knew his folks weren’t there. It was plain enough, but he called out anyway.

‘Hey, Burt. It’s Jimmy. Kath? I’m here.’

There was no answer. He didn’t call again. His voice was hollow and pathetic in all that gloom. It sounded weak, fearful.

He went to the kitchen first, the old boards of the house complaining beneath his soles. When he flicked the kitchen light he found that it was out too. Oddly, there was a smell of cooking, maybe a pot roast or something. He stood for a while smelling the food and feeling no hunger at all. Surely they would come back at any moment. Maybe they were out buying a new fuse. That had to be it.

He walked out to their bedroom. In the old days they’d slept upstairs just as he had, but when Burt’s legs began to let him down, they made a new bedroom in the old living room and converted part of the hallway into a downstairs bathroom. They didn’t alter the room much. The only major change was moving their bed in there. It looked strange and out of place with a sofa stuck at the end of it and an ancient TV beyond that. Everywhere the shelves were stacked with old books and papers and the walls were decorated with paintings by unknown artists from who knew when.

There was no one in there.

The darkness was almost total by then. Kerrigan began to panic, his heart so loud in his ears he was afraid he wouldn’t hear an intruder until it was too late to act. He had to find some light.

He prayed the fuse for the upstairs circuit hadn’t blown too. The staircase was wooden just like everything else inside the house and it creaked worse than the floorboards. Every step he took telegraphed that he was on his way up and he cursed the place for giving him away so easily.

The stairs bent back on themselves at a small square landing and there was a set of switches there. When they worked, flooding the upstairs with an unhealthy yellow light from low wattage bulbs covered by thick light shades, Kerrigan was delighted. He sighed and felt his heart rate settle down a little. He could wait upstairs until they got back. Or he could probably see well enough to call Maggie on the hallway phone downstairs to see if she knew where they were.

It was as he placed his foot on the final step that he heard the rumbling growl. It was up there with him. He froze, his right hand gripping the stair rail. His left hand instinctively went to his chest and held onto the binder. He waited, unable to move.

Eventually, he edged forward. The sound was coming from his old bedroom. It was dark in there and the door was half open. He had no weapon on him and even if he had he wouldn’t have entered the bedroom. He was stuck there listening to that sound; the last sound Burt and Kath would have heard. The idea made him want to weep.

The growling stopped and he heard movement; a scratching, sliding sound. Something dragging itself across the floor. Whining. He saw a black nose poke out from the darkness and into the upstairs hallway.

‘Dingbat?’

The crazy mongrel scampered out of the bedroom when he heard Kerrigan’s voice and started to jump up at him, whining with fear and relief all the same time.

‘Shit, Dingbat, you had me scared half to death, you stupid mutt.’

He ruffled the shaggy fur on Dingbat’s head.

‘Is anyone up here, you hairy son of a bitch?’

They checked the rest of the rooms, Dingbat sticking with him until he was satisfied the place was completely uninhabited.

‘Where’d they go, boy? Where’s Burt, huh? Where’s Kath?’

At the mention of their names Dingbat tilted his head to one side.

‘Come on, let’s make a phone call.’

Down in the hallway not much light penetrated from upstairs but he could make out the buttons on the phone well enough and was able to read Kath’s neat schoolmarm handwriting. Maggie’s phone rang for a long time but she didn’t answer.

As he replaced the phone onto its base, the snarling began again. Dingbat was backed away from the front door, the hair along his spine rising into spikes. His lips drew back from his teeth and he shrunk into a tight crouch, ready to launch himself. Kerrigan could see the outline of the door only faintly but he had a feeling there was someone there.

In the semi darkness he watched the door swing open and saw a vague silhouette framed there.

‘Is that you, Jimmy?’ It was the voice of Maggie Fredericks. ‘They took Burt to the hospital. Kath’s with him. I think he had a heart attack.’

After twenty-five miles of winding mountain roads Kerrigan was close to vomiting. He kept quiet about it though. Maggie’s kindness was the only thing that would reunite him with Burt and Kath, assuming Burt hadn’t already passed on. Maggie asked him questions from time to time but he didn’t feel much like talking; he knew whatever he told her would be common knowledge to all in Hobson’s Valley by the next morning. He kept his replies as short and unspecific as he could without coming over as unfriendly.

The sense of emptiness that always stalked him pressed close as they drove down the far side of the mountains and finally onto a straight road in the next valley. His nausea eased but his dread increased.

By the time they arrived at Maiden County hospital, Kerrigan felt weak and old. He walked to the coronary unit as if his legs had forgotten how and asked for Burt. The nurses shared a few hushed words and asked him to wait for a moment.

It was Kath who returned, red eyed and shrunken with shock and grief. He could still see the love in her eyes, but there was anger there too. She hugged Kerrigan with the fierceness of chains, as if she’d never let go.

Maggie hung back while they embraced.

After a long time, Kath released him.

‘Burt’s not going to make it.’

Kerrigan shook his head.

‘They said that?’

‘No. But I know him. He’s had enough. He’s been giving up for quite a while.’

Kerrigan pushed his hand back through his hair.

‘Jesus, Kath. What happened?’

‘Oh, he was helping me in the kitchen. He never does that, you know. But he was excited. I haven’t known him to act that way for a long time. It made me happy just to see it.’

She smiled at the memory of it.

‘He went out to call you and tell you to come a little earlier. He wanted to have a beer with you on the porch. When you didn’t answer, he figured you were already on your way. He went to get changed and he was laughing. ‘That boy sure is a sissy’ he said. He knew you were trying to make it down to us before it got dark. And then —’

— Burt pushed his walker ahead of him, grinning and shaking his head. His boy had finally bitten the bullet. Tonight Jimmy would walk home alone, in the dark, and conquer his fear once and for all.

Burt reached for the light switch in the bedroom, flicking it on and off a couple of times.

‘Darn it,’ he muttered. ‘Need a goddamned electrician now.’

There was just about enough light from the hallway for him to see his clean shirt laid out on the counterpane. He shuffled into the bedroom and parked his walker beside the bed. The scent of the pot roast wafted in from the kitchen and Burt’s stomach growled. He slipped off his old shirt and reached for the clean one. There was a tap at the bedroom window and Burt froze, mid-stretch.

‘Lord above,’ he whispered.

His eyes swivelled towards the sound. Framed like a living portrait was the face he’d seen twice in the last few days. The face of an impossibly old man. Except the face was worse tonight, swimming forward from a sea of blackness and melting. The ancient eyes widened, livid purple veins rising in the whites. The mouth tore open and the tongue spilled free, splitting into three snakelike fronds, each of which now licked the dirty windowpane—

— he called out to me. He sounded frightened, Jimmy, like you used to when you were a kid and woke up in the night. His voice was tiny. I heard his knees crack against the floorboards and I ran to him. He was holding his chest and staring at the window. I held him before I called for help. He was so cold and so tiny, Jimmy. My man for all these years. Cold and broken.’

She collapsed against Kerrigan. This time there was no iron in her embrace. She was barely able to support herself. He looked over at the nurse.

‘Can we go in and sit with him together?’

‘Of course.’

He held Kath and she guided him back to the room where Burt was. The old man looked frail but he looked peaceful too. There was no tension in his face, no anger. A monitor tracked his heart, betraying its erratic rhythm and hesitant beats. They took a seat on either side of him and each held one of his hands.

It wasn’t a long vigil. Sometime in that next hour Burt’s heart stopped. They’d already resuscitated him once and the doctor on duty and Kath had quietly agreed that he should not be resuscitated again, considering how destructive the first infarction had been. They held his hands as the monitor sounded an alarm signalling no heartbeat. A nurse came in, switched the monitor off and left them alone. Kerrigan whispered goodbye and kissed Burt’s cooling hand but for a long time he couldn’t let go of it.

Chapter 10

Kerrigan spent the night in his old room with Dingbat sleeping at the end of the bed.

He rose early but Kath was already up and dressed, busying herself in the kitchen. When he hugged her she pulled away. He reached for the cereal cupboard but she steered him to a chair at the kitchen table. Despite his protests, she made pancakes and fried eggs with vegetarian sausages for him. He wasn’t hungry, but he ate as much as he could.

That time in the kitchen was hard to bear. He watched Kath begin several little routines that were meant for Burt before stopping and tidying away whatever it was she’d started on. He saw how little of what she did was for herself. After a while she stood at the kitchen sink, lowered her head and wept, shaking silently. This time she let him hug her.

When the tears had passed, a squall that signalled a whole season of storms, Kath sat down at the table and withdrew an envelope from her apron pouch. The envelope was ivory with age and fat, as if it was stuffed with money. She laid it on the table in front of her.