Night Relics (16 page)

Shaded by oaks and sycamores, the house looked as if it had never seen the sun. Despite the dry weather, the old roof shingles
were green with a patchy carpet of moss that grew down into wooden rain gutters. The attic window yawned black and empty in
the dirty white siding, ragged lace curtains stirring fitfully in the wind that blew in through the cracked panes. Sunlight
and moonlight, Peter thought suddenly, were two distinctly different kinds of illumination. Maybe in the morning the place
wouldn’t look so much like it needed to be fumigated by a priest.

He locked the car and went in. Despite his having lived in and worked on the place for months, it had an abandoned, lonesome
quality to it. Like a bat chased off by sunlight, the sensation fled only when Beth or Bobby were around. He pulled off his
jacket and turned on the water in the sink, drinking a couple of mouthfuls right out of the tap. The cuts on his hands were
nothing more than scrapes, the skin sandpapered off in a couple of dirty patches. He splashed water on his face and then shoved
his head under the faucet, washing off trail dust and then rubbing his hair dry with the dish towel. Then he pulled a beer
out of the old propane-powered refrigerator before going through the house and lighting every wall lantern he came to until
there wasn’t a darkened room left. The propane tank outside held 250 gallons. He could burn the lamps all night long for a
month and not empty it.

He wandered aimlessly, too full of restless energy to go to bed, too fatigued to work. Finally he settled in the parlor, looking
over the torn-up walls and the seedy old furniture. He could picture again the ghostly willow tree he had seen that morning.
Then it had seemed like a psychotic episode to him; now it seemed like something else entirely.

Although the parlor had been built at the same time as the rest of the house, it had slipped further into decay over the years—the
plaster falling off the ceiling, the floor settling out of level, the wall studs and moldings full of termite burrows. There
was a stone-and-clinker brick fireplace with a broad hearth, but the joints had loosened, and now the fireplace floor was
littered with chunks of broken mortar and decomposing brick.

The room was half full of old furniture: stuffed chairs, tables, bookcases, all of it crammed into the back corners and sitting
on top of a Turkish carpet that Peter had rolled back in a vain effort to save it from plaster dust and wood chips. Open wooden
crates held tarnished candelabras and books, odd pieces of crystal and broken art pottery, bug-eaten lace doilies, and cracked
ceramic figurines. There was a dismantled Victrola, or at least parts of one, crammed into a crate along with random pieces
of broken records and a half dozen framed prints of hunting scenes and of tree-shadowed cottages in somber forest glades.

The roof of the room had leaked for years while the house had sat empty, and much of the wooden furniture was loose-jointed
and stained with dirty rainwater. Most of the pieces would take so much work to repair that it would save time and money just
to junk them, except that in some vague way Peter had become attached to it, as if it were a collection of mementos from some
dim, half-remembered life.

He could easily picture the room in its prime: the bookcases full of dark volumes, the chairs arranged in front of the fire,
the Turkish carpet deep and plush, the plaster walls
troweled smooth and hung with the dark-framed pictures. On the ceiling, the crumbling plaster filigree repeated elements of
the carpet pattern, as if the ceiling were a dim reflection of the floor. The whole house had a pattern to it, a tediously
careful design, like an ornately carved and assembled Chinese puzzle box. The man who had built it had clearly been obsessed,
as if he’d had some higher or deeper purpose than mere shelter.

Looking around the room now, Peter was flooded with the sudden notion that all of it could be restored. In his mind he moved
the old furniture back into its customary place, tightening screws, wiping the tabletops with lemon oil, draping the doilies
over the arms of the chairs. Perhaps with patience and the right tools he could cheat time and chance and human frailty, repair
the damage caused by a leaky roof and the passing years. There was a certain promise pending in the old room, as if everything
he needed and wanted was right there, obscured by dust and age, and if only he could find the necessary order, the perfect
arrangement …

As if the weather had suddenly changed, the room grew strangely cool, almost tomblike. Light headed, he leaned against the
doorway and stared at the rubble in the fireplace. He listened vaguely to the wind blowing outside. The glow from the wall
lamps diminished abruptly, and the room fell into shadow. There was the faint smell of jasmine on the air and the murmur of
hushed voices as if from some far-off place. Slowly and languidly, a silver light began to leak out of the fireplace like
drifting, moonlit fog—the same witchy light that had illuminated the room early that morning….

P
OMEROY HEARD
B
ETH SCREAM AT THE SAME MOMENT
that he saw her face through the window. He threw himself down the wooden stairs in a single, twisting leap, already running
toward the driveway when he hit the lawn, hunched over, aware that he was illuminated by moonlight and wanting to distort
whatever view she would get of him.

In the shadow of the house he straightened up and ran flat out toward the street, glancing at the still-closed front door.
There was a light on in the living room. She was calling the police. Of course she was calling the police.

He leaped over a big eucalyptus log that edged the front lawn, ran across the street and into the darkness of the trees, unwinding
the gauze around his face as he ran. Thank God he had wrapped his face up. She’d have got a clear look at him otherwise. It
would have been over then, all of it.

The wind tore the night to pieces, blowing through the high, dead grass in the field. He ran straight into it, lit by moonlight
again, still hunching down. No way he was heading straight back to the car. Ahead of him the field was scattered with bushes,
all of them shaking and bending in the wind. He could lose himself pretty easily out there, hide as long as he had to.

He scrambled in behind a heavy stand of brush, pushing his way deeper into it. His hand was bleeding again from the cat bite.
He tried to wrap it with the wrinkled strip of gauze, but he shivered so badly that he couldn’t get it started. Suddenly enraged,
he slammed the bleeding hand
into the brush, driving it again and again into a limb until the pain receded behind a numb ache.

He was sobbing and sick, the wind clammy on his face, and he fought to be quiet, to control himself, holding on to limbs with
both hands as if the wind would blow him away. He was washed with remorse. Just like with Linda! He had nearly wrecked it
all. Suddenly he was gripped by an impulse to betray himself, to walk across to Beth’s door and admit everything. The very
act of admission would make her understand what he wanted. He would beg her forgiveness, ask her to give him another chance….

Someone was in the street.

Pomeroy held himself dead still. It was Lance Klein. Probably Beth’ s scream had awakened him, and he headed down the center
of the street now, his bathrobe billowing around him. He was looking hard into the shrubbery of the few dark houses. The white
Cherokee wouldn’t mean anything to him.

As if unsure of himself, Klein stopped. Then he walked slowly across to the stand of trees along the road opposite to Beth’s
house. He stopped again, craning his neck, probably not wanting to get too close and be jumped by a prowler hiding in the
darkness. Pomeroy nearly laughed out loud. No way Klein would head out into the field. Not on a night like this.

The police, though, were a different matter.

Klein turned around and hurried toward Beth’s house, and Pomeroy pushed out through the brush, edging along behind it. He
could hear Klein pounding on the door. “Open it,” Pomeroy whispered. “Let him in.”

He dropped to his hands and knees and crawled out into the wind, clutching the gauze in his damaged hand. The grass was high
enough to hide him all the way to the street. Klein had quit knocking and was standing on the porch, shouting something. The
door opened and he went in. The bastard, Pomeroy thought, still crawling toward the street. The dirty bastard. If he touches
her … It was himself, Bernard
Pomeroy, who ought to be inside that house comforting Beth. Everything had gone wrong. The damned wind. The moonlight. He
should have read the signs. The wind didn’t cover anything; it just woke people up, made them look out the window every ten
seconds, hearing noises.

He was near enough to the street now. He stood up and ran, the air tearing in and out of his lungs in gasps. Tumbleweeds
grabbed at his shoes. He expected a shout, the sound of doors slamming. His feet pounded on asphalt now, and when he reached
the corner there was still no one in sight. Sliding into the car, he bent down across the passenger seat, just barely looking
out at the road. Like last time, he let off the brake and the Cherokee moved off downhill, gaining silent momentum. He straightened
up and checked the rearview mirror. Klein hadn’t come back out.

He twisted the ignition key and switched the headlights on, rolling through the stop sign at the bottom of Parker and accelerating
up the highway toward Coto de Caza. When he entered the first maze of suburban houses at the top of the hill, it dawned on
him that he was safe. A vast wave of relief surged through him, and he screamed out loud. Fueled by the emotion, he screamed
again and again until, winded and light headed, he forced himself to slow down and catch his breath.

It was two in the morning when he pulled into the garage, and he was utterly worn out, his shoes full of dirt and foxtails,
the cat bite filthy. He stood in the shower scrubbing himself down with a loofah pad until his skin was raw and the hot water
ran out. Then he loaded his shoes and clothes into three grocery bags and covered them up with kitchen trash, fastening the
tops with twist ties. He took them out and locked them into the garage cupboard. There was no way he could throw them into
the condo Dumpsters. That’s where they’d look first. He would toss them out in two or three different spots tomorrow morning.

He washed his hands again and poured hydrogen peroxide over the cat bite before putting a wide Band-Aid over it.
It struck him then, while he was looking at the palm of his hand, that he had touched the knob on Beth’s back door. He had
actually been standing there turning the knob! How in the hell had he let himself go like that? What had he hoped to accomplish?
He had lost all regard for
consequences.

That’s what had happened to him last time. He had been lucky to pull a suspended sentence. Worse than that, though, had been
the humiliation of being identified. It wasn’t fair. She hadn’t understood.

He had been fingerprinted, too.

Your whole life was nothing but consequences, lined up one after another, waiting to take a punch at you. When you looked
away, even for a moment, one of them knocked you down.

T
HE SOUND OF
B
ETH’S SCREAM DISORIENTED
K
LEIN AND
for a moment he related it to the dream, to the final horrified scream of the woman beside him on the bed.

Then he yanked shut the half-open french door and ran to the fence, climbing up onto a deck chair and looking over. A man
was just then rounding the corner of Beth’s house, running hard, a strip of white cloth wrapped around his head, the loose
ends trailing out behind him. The man threw his right hand out to catch the wall, braking his momentum and swinging up the
driveway toward the street.

At that instant, when his hand was flattened against the wall of the house, moonlight reflected from the stone in his
ring, and the brief glint of light resonated in Klein’s mind. For a moment he was stupefied with disbelief, and he couldn’t
move.

Then he threw himself up onto the fence, trying to scramble over onto the lawn, levering himself around in order to drop down
on his feet. The hem of his robe slid between two fence boards, wedging tight, yanking him back when he jumped so that he
flipped around and sprawled on his hands and knees. The bathrobe cord wrenched loose and the sleeve nearly jerked his arm
out of the socket.

“Shit!” he yelled, staggering to his feet and pulling savagely at the robe. It tore loose from the fence, and he hauled it
back on as he ran past the back of the house, the wind cutting through his thin pajamas.

The street was empty by the time he got out there. He suddenly wished he had some kind of weapon, although at the same time
he was certain he wouldn’t need it. The man wouldn’t show himself. The last thing the bastard wanted was a confrontation.
He walked slowly toward the corner, looking into the shadows of trees and shrubberies, seeing again in his mind the reflected
moonlight from the stone in the ring.

It was too weird to be true.

There was a Jeep Cherokee parked at the corner. It didn’t belong to the Smiths, who lived in the corner house. Klein was certain
of that. He stopped right there, twenty feet from the car, wondering how much he wanted or needed to know.

Deciding, he turned back, walking toward the empty field across the street and the dark bunch of trees at the field’s edge,
peering into the shadows they threw across the high grass. Someone had run through right there; Klein could see where the
grass, brittle and dry, was mashed down. Following him would be nothing….

He turned around and headed up toward Beth’s door. He hadn’t even checked to see if she was all right. And the kid … By God,
if the prowler had hurt either one of them,
Klein would track him through the field and rip his lungs out.

He pounded on the door and shouted to let her know who it was. After a moment Beth looked out through the window, saw it was
him, and let him in.