Crossroads (23 page)

"The money’s right there in front of you," Silky said, nodding toward the trunk. "It’s real enough, right?"

"Well, yeah. Real enough. But it ain’t real greenbacks."

"Why not?"

"Well, for one thing greenbacks come from the by God US Mint."

"Not one of my friends has ever had trouble passing one of these bills."

Clem had to admit that he hadn’t either. Over the years Silky had paid him for picking up supplies in town, had him take care of the property taxes, buy groceries, all of it with hundred dollar bills. Clem had simply assumed that Silky had money stashed, probably his life savings tucked away in cash. He’d never guessed the old man was sitting on a fortune in counterfeit currency. He couldn’t believe his best friend had been endangering his freedom like that.

"You never told me what your friends did that they could only do in the carnival."

"They’re different."

"Different how? You mean freaks?"

Silky nodded. "Some of them worked the freak tents. Some were mind readers, fortune tellers, magicians..."

There was a sadness in his voice that seemed deep and heartfelt, as though even owning their own shows was a huge comedown for his friends.

"So then how come you never just up and went with them? How come you never leave this island?"

"Now we’re getting down to it," muttered Silky.

"Well?"

"I volunteered."

"Volunteered for what? What have you been doing all these years?"

"Just being here."

Clem shook his head. "I don’t get it."

"You wouldn’t. Do you know what it’s like to be alone? I mean
really
alone?"

"I’m a fisherman," said Clem.

Silky waved aside the comment with one hand. "And you sail on back to the island after a day, two at the most on the water, and you come up here and play cribbage and chew the fat. You cruise into town and get drunk in the Salty Dog and gab with your fishing buddies. I mean really, really alone."

"I guess I don’t understand what you’re getting at, Silky."

Silky sighed. "This isn’t the only place, you know."

"What do you mean
the only place?"

"Some people live on the other side of the crossroads."

"What crossroads?" Clem asked, frowning.

"You ever wake up in the middle of the night in the dark, and you can’t tell if you’re dreaming or awake."

"Yeah. It happens."

Silky nodded. "Ever had a visit from the
Hag?"

"I’ve heard of it. Most fishermen have."

"But it isn’t just fishermen. The
Hag
is universal. Sleepers around the world wake up convinced there’s something or someone else in the room with them, that it’s trying to kill them."

"It’s a dream."

"Sure. That’s what most people say. But what if it isn’t?"

"What are you saying, that our nightmares are real?"

"Not our nightmares specifically," said Silky. "I’m saying there’s a place you go to where things live you don’t understand. And when you’re half asleep you can get sucked into it. Some people go there naturally...Some people
live
there."

"You’re saying that’s where Shandan lives?"

Silky nodded. "Where he did. Where we all did."

"You worry me, Silky. Why did you show me the money?"

Silky took a long swallow from his glass, and Clem wondered again at the way a man his age could hold his liquor. There wasn’t the slightest glaze to his eyes, nor the barest slurring of his words.

"I couldn’t think of anything else I could show you to convince you that there’s something happening here you’re not ever going to understand. I want you to take as much of this cash as you can carry and get off the island."

His voice echoed in the room like the crack of doom, and Clem couldn’t stop an involuntary shudder from racing up between his shoulder blades. If Silky was crazy it was a frightening insanity that was threatening to drag him along with it.

"Are you gonna tell me the rest of this crazy story or not?" he said with a lot more bravado than he felt. But he was happy to see that his hands were still steady on his glass.

Silky shrugged, studying his whiskey more than drinking it. When Clem could stand no more of the silence he broke it again.

"What’s buried in the basement?"

"Shandan."

"I thought you said he was alive."

"He is."

"And he’s down there under that rubble? You’re saying he’s been hiding in your basement all this time?"

Silky shook his head. "Not hiding, exactly."

"Then what?"

Silky sighed. "Shandan started all this. But what’s coming isn’t all his fault."

"What is coming?"

"Hell."

With that Silky chugged the last of his whiskey and capped the bottle, and Clem knew the old man was finished talking.

"You can sleep on the sofa," said Silky, rising. "In the morning, if you won’t leave, you can help me dig."

"I got my own bed at home."

Silky glared at him, shaking his head. "Don’t you go out that door. We may be safe in here for the night. We may not. But you damned sure won’t be out in that dark."

Clem remembered the feeling of being watched in the woods surrounding Silky’s cabin, and he shivered yet again.

"I thought I felt something up here the other night. Was it the same thing that was on my boat?"

Silky shrugged. "Maybe. He might have been following you all along to see what you were gonna do. Or he might have been trying to find a way to bring his pets here."

"Who’s
he?"

Silky shook his head, staring out the window into the night. "No more about it tonight. That’s all I’m saying. You understand?"

"All right," said Clem, placing his empty glass on the table where the jar had been.

Silky nodded. "I’ll get you some blankets."

"Silky?"

The old man stopped, staring back over his shoulder.

"I ain’t gonna leave you," said Clem.

Silky nodded slowly.

"Try to get some sleep tonight," said the old man, his voice echoing down the short hall. "We ain’t dead yet."

Chapter 31

Sheila gingerly traced her fingertips along the scratches in the trunk. The torn paint revealed bright slashes into the metal below. Marguerite’s porch light caused Kira to blink as she and Jen climbed from the car.

"That light can’t be on," muttered Sheila, shaking her head. "The power’s been off for more than a year."

Kira stared at the bungalow that was surrounded by tall pines. She didn’t like stopping after so narrowly escaping the Grigs, but Sheila had insisted, and Jen had not objected.

"Those things really were
Grigs?"
  Sheila whispered, still toying with the paint. "Everything you told me was true?"

Kira nodded.

Sheila  was struggling to believe, but even with all she’d seen she still wanted some
other
explanation. Kira simply didn’t have one to give her. The situation had gone beyond the point of white lies. Once a person had seen a living, breathing Grig, doors were going to open that were meant to stay shut. All kinds of possibilities might begin to present themselves that before had not seemed possible at all. Kira knew that Sheila  was very vulnerable at that moment, and she wanted desperately to help her, only the only way she could think of to do so was to be cruel. But her mother had told her that it wasn’t always a mercy shielding people from too much truth, because eventually the truth would jump up to bite them in the butt.

Still, she knew that her mother had shielded her. She wished now for the millionth time that she hadn’t. There was no easing into her and Jen’s world. You either did it the way she herself had-with a terribly sudden jump-or not at all.

"They can’t be real," insisted Sheila, staring at the gleaming scratches again.

"They are real," said Kira, sharply, "and you don’t have much time to start believing that."

Sheila ’s head snapped up at the abrasive tone.

"You think those things will follow us here?" she asked, glancing down the dark, treelined drive.

"You mean those things that aren’t real?" asked Kira.

Sheila sighed. "Yes. Those...Grigs that aren’t real. Are they coming after us?"

Kira nodded. "The trouble isn’t just that they’ll be coming after us."

She could tell by the narrow look in Sheila’s eyes that she had her undivided attention.

"What is the problem, then?" asked Sheila, turning toward the front door as it swung open and then slammed closed again.

Kira crossed her arms and tried to look stern.

"The problem," she said, "is that now they know you. I think Grigs and the
Empty-eyed-man
usually leave people alone that haven’t seen them. Not always. But mostly. But once you’ve  seen them I don’t think they’ll ever
leave you alone again. Never."

She sensed that truth so deep down in her heart that the knowing was like something she’d been born with, although for the life of her she didn’t know
how
she knew.

"Shit," said Sheila, flushing as she waved for her mother to stay on the porch.

Kira couldn’t see Marguerite, but just as before she felt the woman’s presence.

"Where do the Grigs come from?" asked Sheila, finally but very reluctantly admitting defeat.

"The same place the
Empty-eyed-man
comes from."

"Where’s that?"

"The other side of the mirror."

"Baloney," said Sheila, sighing as she led the way to the porch steps. "No one and nothing comes out of a mirror."

"Okay," said Kira, sighing.

"Why did they murder your parents?" asked Sheila, ignoring the mirror problem for the moment.

"I don’t know," said Kira, sadly.

"They’re in a better place," said Jen, quietly. "They’ve gone home now."

Jen’s eyes were closed tightly, and Kira was almost certain that, at that moment, she was looking directly at her parents in whatever better place they were in. But Kira didn’t believe it was
home
no matter what Jen said. Sheila stopped with her hand on the step rail, frowning at Jen. It was clear from the look in her eyes that she still didn’t really understand. Maybe she never would. But some things she had to if any of them were to have a chance to survive.

"You have to believe whatever Jen says," said Kira, ignoring the fact that
she
didn’t believe Jen’s statement about her parents going home.

"If you say so," said Sheila.

"No," said Kira, taking her arm. "You have to really believe. Can you do that?"

"I’ll try," said Sheila, sighing loudly.

"You don’t understand," said Kira. "Jen sees things that you and I can’t even guess at. Sometimes she sees a little of the future, or what might be the future. I think sometimes she sees things worse than Grigs that even I can’t see. And sometimes she... does things-"

"Does things?"

"She was why the Grigs couldn’t see us at first. She can do things like that. The thing is... Sheila... when Jen says something it’s important that you don’t argue with her-"

"I wouldn’t-"

"You would, and if you do, if you stop to think, or you ask a question, whatever... you could get us all killed. Sometimes Jen can’t give you more than a moment’s warning. When she says jump, you just have to jump."

"And if that’s in front of a moving car?"

"Then you jump."

"You’d do that?"

Kira nodded. Jen had always been right so far. Kira could see that Sheila was reading her face, and she kept it hard and real.
If Sheila hung on to any of her disbelief, if she opened her mouth to question Jen at the wrong moment, if she failed to move at the instant she needed to, then Kira knew that
she
would stay there to try to drag Sheila along to safety, and doing so she would probably get herself and Jen killed. Sheila was her responsibility now, even as Jen was, in her own way. But Sheila didn’t have Jen’s powers, and now that they were all here, Kira was afraid that Marguerite was going to get dragged into all of this as well. At least Marguerite was a ghost. Kira wasn’t certain, but she didn’t think the
Empty-eyed-man
could hurt someone who was dead already.

Sheila waved Jen and Kira into the kitchen before dropping into a chair.

Sheila made no remark about the electric light that clicked on overhead. But she stared at the switch, and Kira felt the same presence there she had sensed on the front porch, that she had felt in Sheila’s trailer.

"Hello," Kira said, quietly.

Sheila frowned. "Mom says hi," she said. "Now, how can they find us?"

Kira sighed. "I don’t know. I think maybe they sense me the way Jen senses them, the way I can sense the
Empty-eyed-man.
I can feel him when he’s around... because he doesn’t belong here."

"Jen?" said Sheila, turning to Jen.

Jen’s eyes opened, the good one glimmering.

"Are we safe right now?" asked Sheila .

After a moment Jen nodded, and Kira relaxed. Sheila was hard headed, but she wasn’t stupid.

Kira was accustomed to staying in trailers and tents, sleeping in boxcars, but she had been in regular homes before, visiting retired carnies with her parents or when they were hawking tickets door to door. Marguerite’s house was different from all the others Kira had experienced. For one thing it reeked of the ancient dried flowers that draped every wall, and the soft lamp light was supplemented by homemade candles in rainbow colors and all sorts of odd and interesting shapes that now lit themselves magically. In the tiny living room a large crystal pyramid took up most of the coffee table in front of the empty fireplace, and the glistening glass was surrounded by what Kira recognized instantly as Tarot cards. A desk in the corner bore stacks of papers and one large sheet that was held down on four corners by little golden dragons. Everything was covered in a layer of gray dust.

"Your mother’s a fortune teller," said Kira, smiling broadly.