Crossroads (19 page)

"Who are your friends?" asked Marguerite, as she took a seat on the sofa.

Sheila frowned, glancing at Jen, then her mother.

"Sheila?" said Kira.

The girl was sitting on the sofa, staring at the spot where Marguerite was sitting as though she could see
something.

"What?"

When Kira reached out and ran her fingers along the edge of Marguerite’s face, Sheila sucked in her breath.

"You see her?" she whispered.

Kira shook her head.

"Then how-" said Sheila.

"I... feel her. Who is she?"

Sheila sighed, dropping into her recliner. "My mother... Her name is Marguerite."

"Hello, Marguerite," said Kira, staring right through her. "I’m Kira, and my friend is named Jen."

"She says hello," said Sheila, feeling a monstrous headache coming on.

"I’ve never met a ghost before," said Kira.

"Welcome to my world," said Sheila. "I meet them all the time."

"Where are you and Jen from?" asked Marguerite.

Sheila repeated the question for Kira.

"Florida," said Kira.

Marguerite was quiet for a moment, staring at the pair. "They have come here for a reason, Sheila. I feel it. Don’t you?"

"Why are you here, Mother?" snapped Sheila. "You’ve never left the house before."

Her mother frowned, patting the wrinkles from her chinos with shaking hands.

"I was merely being polite. But I do feel something. You know my feelings-"

"Mother-"

"It’s your Uncle Willy," said Marguerite.

"What about him?" asked Sheila, more than a little aware of the way Kira watched her, talking to empty air. But the kid wasn’t like regular people. She didn’t seem to have any trouble at all accepting that there was a ghost in the room carrying on everyday conversation that she couldn’t hear. Why would she? She was walking around with an invisible companion of her own. Sheila felt as though her normally tentative grasp on existence were fading into ghosthood itself.

"He’s dead," said Marguerite, quietly.

Sheila’s mouth dropped open. "How?" she asked. "When?"

Marguerite shook her head. "They found him in his shop. Murdered."

"Jesus," muttered Sheila. "Who in the world would want to kill Willy?"

"No idea. I just thought you ought to know."

"Wait a minute. How did you find out?"

Her mother frowned. "I know Sheila. Accept it or not. I know."

"You haven’t
seen
him, them-"

"Not yet. He won’t be in circulation for a while."

"Therapy," said Sheila, shaking her head. "I’m sorry, Mother."

Marguerite patted Sheila’s knee and nodded. "He’s in a better place now."

"Willy, Willy," said Jen, shaking her head.

They all turned to stare at her, but as usual, Jen was peering off into space.

"Willy, Willy," she repeated, softly. "Winding wind. Whither will your journey end?"

"What?" gasped Marguerite.

But Jen had gone silent.

"Sometimes she does that," explained Kira. "It doesn’t mean anything."

"Burney used to say that about Willy all the time," said Marguerite, still staring at Jen. "I’m sure he made it up."

"Mother claims my father made up that poem," said Sheila. "How come Jen knows it?"

"Maybe she heard it somewhere," said Kira.

"No," said Marguerite, emphatically. "I’m sure Burney made that up. He read somewhere that Australians call little whirlwinds Willy Willys. And he always loved my brother. How could she have known that ditty?"

When Marguerite looked at Jen again there was something strange in her eyes, as though she were staring right down deep into Jen’s soul.

"I know you don’t believe in things unless you can touch ‘em or taste ‘em or hold onto ‘em tight, Sheila, but I have a hunch that these two know better. Now what brings them up all the way from Florida?"

"Mother," said Sheila , "is that really any of your business?"

"I get the feeling it might be."

"You’re acting like an inquisitor."

Her mother frowned. "Am I? I didn’t mean it to sound that way."

She turned back to Kira. "I apologize, young lady. I didn’t mean to interrogate you."

"She can’t hear you," said Sheila.

Her mother smiled, and unaccountably Kira smiled at the same time.

"I think she understands, anyway," said Marguerite.

"You don’t find this whole thing at all odd?" Sheila asked Kira.

"You mean you talking to a ghost?"

"Yeah, that."

Kira scrunched up her face. She didn’t want to insult either Sheila or Marguerite by saying something childish. "I never knew anybody who talked to one before. That’s all."

"But you saw her as soon as we pulled in."

Kira nodded. "I thought I did."

"And you’ve never seen a ghost before?"

"Not that I know of."

"Sometimes the Creator opens our eyes for a good reason," said Marguerite.

"Or maybe not," said Sheila.

"Tell her what I said," said Marguerite.

Sheila repeated her mother’s words.

Kira gasped. "She knows about the Creator?"

"She said
of course. Doesn’t everybody
?" said Sheila, frowning.

"I don’t think so," said Kira.

"No," agreed Marguerite. "That was silly of me to say. You’re right. Not everyone does."

"There’s something different about your mother," said Kira, squinting and sniffing..

"Different from what?" asked Sheila. "She’s a ghost."

"From other people. From towners. She doesn’t feel the same at all."

Marguerite laughed. "Oh, dear. Is it evident even to a child I don’t know
after
I’m dead? I see what you mean, Sheila. I guess I am too odd for my own good, but I keep feeling like maybe Kira and I know each other."

Sheila told Kira.

To Kira’s surprise Jen nodded.

"Now where might we have met?" Marguerite mused.

"You don’t have to meet someone to know them," said Jen, cryptic as ever.

Marguerite beamed a cagey smile, and nodded. "That is a truth that I know well."

"I’m sorry about Uncle Willy," said Sheila, quietly, "but if that’s all you came for... I have to get up early. I’ll give you a ride."

Marguerite chuckled again. "I have discovered that I don’t need rides. I can get home quite well all by my lonesome, if you please."

The doorbell silenced her, and when Sheila  answered the door Kira could just see a gun on a man’s hip and a uniform sleeve. She glanced nervously at Jen, but Jen shook her head, relaxed.

Marguerite rose, but stopped to lean over into Kira’s face. Kira squinted up in her direction, trying to touch the apparition she could sense but not quite see with gentle fingers. She thought she heard something, like distant whispers, but she couldn’t make them out. Then the feeling was gone, and she knew that Marguerite had left.

"Sheila Bright?" said the cop.

"Can I help you?" asked Sheila, slipping out onto the stoop and closing the door behind her. For some worrisome minutes Kira and Jen were alone, and Kira’s trust meter was all over the scale. But when Sheila finally stepped back through the door she closed it and leaned against it, and it was obvious that the cop had gone.

"What’s wrong?" asked Kira, hurrying to her.

Sheila wrapped her arms across her breasts, staring blankly ahead, shaking like a leaf. Kira and Jen helped her to the sofa and both wrapped her in their arms.

"What’s wrong?" asked Kira again.

"Charlie, the sheriff," gasped Sheila. "He shot himself."

Chapter 26

Silky had just put away the dinner plates when a rolling quake rattled the cabin windows and shook the floor so hard he was knocked on his ass. He sat for a moment with his back against the hallway wall, his tailbone throbbing, one wrist burning from breaking his fall. He climbed shakily to his feet, the residual tremors still vibrating through the soles of his boots as the stone foundation slowly settled.

Shit. Shandon.

Silky jerked at the cellar door, but the shifting of the old house had wedged it in place. Leaning way back he tugged harder, finally dragging it open enough to peer down the steps. Musty smelling dust saturated the air like smoke. He snagged a lantern from the wall, lit it, and eased onto the stoop. One of the support posts was cracked and bent almost double, the beam it carried sagging perilously toward the dirt floor.

He hurried down the stairs, leaning under the beam and staggering to the back wall. A pile of dirt and large foundation stones buried the mirror. He kicked one of the granite blocks so hard he felt a toe crack, and he winced, tears welling in his eyes, but they were tears of frustration as much as pain. What the hell caused the damned tremor? He’d been here forty years without a quake, and twice now in one year the place had shaken like a child’s rattle. Could Shandon be causing the earth to shake? But why in the world would he do something like that?

He limped hurriedly up the stairs again, stopping only long enough in the kitchen to ascertain that the stove had shifted up against a cupboard, and the gas line was still intact. But the whole center of the cabin was now askew, dishes shattered on the floor, his chair in the tiny living room overturned and up against the outside wall. He ignored the mess, rushing out the back door to the small shed that leaned up against the bedroom wall. He found a shovel and a pry bar and limped quickly back down into the cellar, wedging the point of the bar into the pile of stones and beginning to dig.

Chapter 27

To Clem the night seemed unusually noisy. Car horns honked, people laughed in the distance, a fire siren shrieked like an alien bird calling. The cheesy motel room smelled of cigarettes and some kind of sickening floral air freshener. But it was only a block from the Rockport wharves where he had managed to secure a couple of weeks dockage, and it had a mini-refrigerator and microwave and a double bed that was a hell of a lot softer than the tiny bunk on the boat. Almost all the comforts of home, but it
wasn’t
home. He finished his third beer, wondering if he should eat. But another beer sounded better, so he opened one, staring sullenly out the front window down toward the black emptiness of dark water.

"Goddamned if I’m gonna spend the rest of my life in this wretched place," he muttered.

He started to slam the bottle onto the table, then gently rested it there instead. Snatching his overnight bag off the floor, he was halfway to the door when he remembered the new shaving kit he’d bought in town after realizing he’d forgotten his own on the island. He carried the bag into the bathroom, shoved the kit into it, then took a minute to make sure he wasn’t forgetting anything else. He was more than just a little wobbly on his feet, but the alcohol only lent strength to his resolve.

The screen slammed behind him, and he stopped on the walk out front to sniff the breeze. Silky was right. A storm was brewing. Not today, or even tonight, but it was coming. A real pot boiler. He stood there for a moment longer, getting his land legs back under him, then strode quickly down the walk between the other tourist cabins that lined the street. Beneath the streetlamps, women in bright sun dresses walked toddlers and older kids toward their rooms, returning late from local restaurants or the public beach a mile away. A couple of lobstermen he knew passed in an old pickup loaded with new wire pots, and he waved.

At the far end of the dock the
Mary O
rocked gently against her big plastic fenders in the low swell. In the distance he could see the green and red lights of the harbor buoys lighting the way home, calling him. But it wasn’t a friendly call like it had always been in the past. Now it seemed almost as though the buoys were warning beacons, warding him away, and for a moment he wondered if he shouldn’t just hike back up the street and go to bed. Instead he grabbed a piling and leapt up on the gunwale and then onto the boat, tossing his overnight bag onto the deck. Climbing into the wheelhouse he warmed up the engine then went back out on deck to cast off.

Time to have it out with the old man, find out what the fuck is going on.

A shadow skittered between the cabins up the street, and he squinted. Looked like a big dog, but it had moved real fast and stealthily at the same time. More like a cat. No telling what was running around the streets of town these days. The thought reminded him how many years it had been since he’d lived in one. He was casting off the aft line when he caught sight of the shadow again, closer to the wharf. He stretched to get a better look, and before it disappeared he was absolutely certain it wasn’t any dog or cat. In fact he didn’t have any idea what it was, but he damned sure didn’t like the looks of it. It seemed too bulbous to be any real, live animal. But he didn’t think he was hallucinating, and the glimpse he’d caught of gleaming teeth made him certain the creature wasn’t prowling for garbage. Whatever it was, it was looking for fresh meat.

He hurried forward to cast off the bow line, and as he did he spotted another one of the things slipping out from between the trash barrels at the end of the dock. The first creature rushed to join that one, and they both turned to race down the wharf. Clem’s blood ran cold.

Whatever they were, they weren’t of this earth. God had never made anything that looked like that. He unhitched the bow line and dropped it onto the prow, stumbling back toward the pilothouse with head swiveled over his shoulder, his eyes glued to the fat little bastards sprinting toward the boat.

The pair had fucking teeth like great whites in bodies that were nothing but black balls, and he could hear their claws scratching on the old wharf boards like knives etching a wooden tombstone. He rushed to the wheel and cranked up the big diesel, comforted by the familiar rumble beneath his feet, the light roll of the boat in the low swell. The two
things
were only yards away, but the
Mary O
had already drifted a couple of feet from the dock, and Clem could tell by from the way the bulbous red eyes roved warily across the intervening water that whatever the bastards were, they didn’t like the idea of maybe not making the jump. He spun the wheel and backed the boat away, finally turning it toward the open bay, but until the dock was out of sight he could see the pair of impossible
things
staring after him.