Shuteye for the Timebroker (2 page)

Somehow, two years had drifted by while he held a succession of odd jobs. A wan romance had developed with an old friend, now divorced. Its ending had almost ruined the pleasure of nightshirts for Clayton, leaving him bitter and confused.

Then had come the letter from Granny Little, written in her familiar crabbed script, which looked as if a drunken spider dipped in ink had wandered across the paper. Requesting help with the family business, the letter was too plaintive to go unheeded.

And so Clayton had taken the well-known road north, finding that he hadn’t forgotten the final, crucial passage into Blackwood Beach, and feeling as if the tawdry years were dropping off his back like a snake’s too-small skin.

* * *

The splintery ladder had left its calling cards in the soles of Clayton’s bare feet and under the base of one thumb. Standing beside the ladder, he tried to aim the flashlight at his injury with the same hand with which he was attempting to remove the sliver in his digit. The whole procedure was both ineffectual and frustrating, so he gave up and concentrated on taking in his novel surroundings.

The ladder vanished above into a deep black square that was the cellar trapdoor casement. The tunnel ceiling around the hole was braced with wooden planks and beams, mossy and green with age. The rickety ladder hung down like a dipstick in an oil tank, not far from the earthen wall of the passage, so that one might almost have missed it without moving slowly through the subterranean shaft and carefully shining a light.

The passage—obviously part of the extensive network underlying Blackwood Beach—was wider across than the span of Clayton’s outstretched arms, a not inconsiderable distance. From behind Clayton came a moist breeze meandering in from the sea. Ahead, the beam-ribbed tunnel stretched cold and damp.

It was from this direction that the singing came. So much was clear. Also apparent was the nature of the voice. It was a woman’s, reminiscent of that of the young Lauren Bacall. (Clayton still got shivers when he recalled the neophyte actress telling Bogart how to whistle.) Had this woman wandered in from the seaward end of the tunnel and gotten lost? She certainly didn’t sound frightened, unless she was singing solely to keep her courage up. Clayton doubted, however, that someone who was terrified could put so much almost palpable joy into lyrics about maiming, looting, and burning.

Down the tunnel, flashlight probing ahead, Clayton cautiously advanced.

He was not ready for what he encountered.

The young woman sat on a big crate. Her hair was a wild mass of red curls, like a bank of roses in spring. Her skin was white as country snow, save for random freckles and ruby lips. Her green eyes seemed to catch the flashlight’s rays; they shone like a cat’s. Her small nose managed to imply an impudent archness.

She was dressed rather unconventionally. A white shirt of masculine cut, big balloon sleeves tight at the wrist, its buttons half-undone, causing it to hang off one shoulder. A short black skirt with a jagged hem, revealing long, exquisitely tapering bare legs, which were encased below the knees in high boots. A wide leather belt, from which depended a sheathless sword.

Swigging from a bottle, she let one leg dangle; the other was bent sharply, the heel of her boot caught against the upper edge of the crate. The whole effect was exceedingly indelicate, and had Clayton’s mother ever caught his sister sitting in such a fashion, the girl would have gotten the walloping of her life.

An icy drip started to fall from the root-tangled ceiling of the ancient, beam-braced tunnel, directly above the befuddled Clayton. It seemed the very essence and distillation of frigidity, a succession of pure arctic droplets, each stinging like the Ice Queen’s kiss.

Clayton didn’t even feel them. He stood barefoot—his robe twitching halfheartedly in the tunnel’s mild breeze, his collar growing wetter by the minute—unable to believe what he was seeing.

Bellowing out the final refrain of her chantey, the woman paused to drink long and heavily from her bottle, afterward wiping her mouth with the back of one hand. Clayton noticed then that one board of the crate had been pried off, revealing numerous bottles packed in straw within. When she lowered her head, her gaze at last fell upon Clayton.

“Company!” she shouted. “‘Sblood, but I do hate drinking alone! Haul your carcass over here, man, and help me hoist a few.”

She patted the empty spot next to her invitingly, with a lascivious twinkle in her eyes that Clayton found disconcerting, to say the least. He gulped, coughed, and found his voice.

“Uh, sorry, ma’am, but I make it a policy not to mix spirits with spirits.”

“Ah, a regular tavern wit, I see! Very glib, indeed. But your caution is overnice, in this case. I’m no ghost, you mooncalf! Look at me! Does this flesh look less than solid?”

Subtly shifting her position, allowing her skirt to hike up in an apparent attempt to meet her downward-trending blouse halfway, the woman offered herself for inspection.

“Ma’am, please!” Clayton begged, averting his reddening face.

“Have some spine, man! Are you a eunuch? Why, the scurvy potboy, lowest of my crew, would have known how to react to such an invitation by Captain Jill Innerarity, Hellcat of the East Coast, known from Cape Cod to Cape Hatteras as a mortal terror and expert wench. All right, you can look again. I’ve composed myself all ladylike for your eyes.”

Clayton swung his head back around. Captain Jill had spoken true, going so far as to demurely cross her legs at the knees. Still, Clayton didn’t trust her.

“If you’re not a ghost,” he demanded, “then what are you? And what are you doing underneath my house, howling those awful songs and keeping me awake?”

“I’m a woman and a pirate, any fool could see those two things. And as for my singing, I’m celebrating my release. After three-hundred-odd years of entombment, you’d bloody well feel like singing too, bucko!”

Clayton’s bafflement must have been obvious. Jill boosted herself off the crate, dusting her skirt neatly. “Follow me, you poltroon, and I’ll show you.”

She headed off down the tunnel, and Clayton cautiously came after her.

By a tumbled pile of bricks partially filling the way, they stopped.

“My home for these past three centuries,” Captain Jill said, indicating with a wave of her hand where Clayton should look.

He swung the flashlight to reveal a brick-lined cubicle set into the earthen side of the tunnel, its fourth wall a knee-high remnant flush with the passage.

“How—” began Clayton.

Captain Jill interrupted. “This Blackwood Beach of yours was a wizardly place even in my day, and I steered clear of it as long as I could. But after raiding up and down the coast for years, I ran out of towns to sack. And I was always looking for new challenges. So at last I convinced my men that we could deal with any dastardly tricks this hamlet could offer. One stormy evening, we hazarded a landing on the beach, thinking no one would be expecting us. But they were. A queer one- eyed sorcerer by the name of Goodnight led them. My men he bewitched into hermit crabs, who promptly buried themselves in the sands. Me he bricked up here, filling the loathsome box with a strange blue gas that left my senses intact, saying he might have a use for me in time.”

Clayton contemplated the coffin-sized space. Three hundred years in a closet? He would have gone mad.

As if guessing his feelings, Captain Jill continued. “That devilish blue phlogiston, or whate’er it was, left my poor body suspended, but my mind all arace, like a chip in a millstream. At first, I thought I’d be a bedlamite ere long. I couldn’t understand why the warlock had gone to such trouble to preserve me, only to drive me mad. Why hadn’t he just extinguished my thoughts for the nonce, as one caps a flame? But then I noticed the gas gave me certain powers. To wit, I could see and hear what was happening outside my petty cell—all over the world, in fact. I suspect that the scheming Goodnight wished me to keep abreast of history as it happened, so to speak, perhaps in preparation for whate’er obscure use he had for me. At first, I was chary of using my supernatural vision and hearing o’ermuch. But I soon came to enjoy amusing myself, watching the folly of mankind.”

Clayton had a sudden frightening thought. “Welcome Goodnight, the magician—did he just free you tonight?” Clayton had no wish to intrude on any of the mysterious Goodnight’s projects.

“Hah! That rascal did no such merciful thing. Yesterday a tremor of the earth opened a crack in my prison. The gas seeped out, and I came to, my old self. With my sword, I gradually chipped away this old mortar and made my escape. If luck be with me, that bastard Goodnight knows nothing of my escape, and I’ll soon have my revenge.”

Talk of taking revenge on the powerful Goodnight, still living as one of Blackwood Beach’s most eminent citizens, sent gooseflesh crawling up Clayton’s wet back, and he sought to change the topic.

“Uh, your visonary powers—do you still have them?”

Captain Jill scowled fiercely. “Blast it, no! They’ve vanished with the gas. A handy talent those would have been, now that I’m free! Luckily, I remembered watching some men hide that crate of whiskey not far from me some sixty years ago—during a time called Prohibition, I wot—and I knew where to head as soon as I was free. All those years built a powerful thirst, my lad.” Captain Jill passed a silky tongue over her lips. “As well as certain other yearnings.”

Nervously, Clayton replied, “Well, yes, I’m sure that’s true. We’ll see about attending to those when we get you back up to the surface and make you presentable.”

“Who says I’m following you back up aboveground?” Captain Jill demanded.

“I naturally assumed—”

“You’ve assumed wrong, my fine fellow. Your modern world makes me nervous, at least for the nonce. I’ve everything I need down here. Whiskey, song—and now you.”

While she talked, Captain Jill had managed to inch closer without Clayton’s noticing. Now she was within a foot of him. Realizing this with a start, he began to back away.

“Uh, that’s very flattering, Miss Innerarity, but I’m afraid I have no intention of staying. I have duties up above, a saintly old grandmother to attend to—”

“Grandmother be damned!” Captain Jill yelled. “I’ve got blue fog in my veins that I’ve got to work off. It’s left me cold after that long sleep, and I need some mortal warmth!”

Captain Jill extended one slim finger to touch the back of Clayton’s hand. A preternatural bolt of ice shot up his arm, and he hastily jerked back.

“I’m sure a doctor can cure that condition better than me,” Clayton argued. “Perhaps a day in the sun would work wonders—”

“I’ll pick the nostrum for what ails me, you snivelling whelp, and it’ll be a cure that’s never failed me yet!”

With this, Captain Jill leaped upon Clayton with alarming speed. Her embrace transmitted a fearsome chill through his nightshirt and throughout his entire body. He felt her breasts as two soft mounds of snow tipped with nubby little stalagmites. (Or was that stalactites? he wondered absurdly. He could never keep the two straight. He supposed it depended on whether she was lying on her back or on her stomach.)

Clayton’s mind began to fail under the onslaught of the cold radiated by Captain Jill, who now wrapped one leg around one of his and toppled him to the ground. Much to his alarm, he detected certain umistakable stirrings below his waist, as her actions combined with the supernatural chill began to rouse him to an icy erectness.

Before blanking out, Clayton had time to wonder if “Roger me silly, you varlet!” meant what he suspected it did.

* * *

Why was he thinking of John Keats? Surely there were more pressing matters to fill his mind as he lay there on the damp, packed earth of the tunnel floor. Such as finding the power to get to his feet.

Ah, that was why thoughts of Keats had occurred to him. Those lines in “La Belle Dame sans Merci”: “And I awoke, and found me here / On the cold hill’s side.” Certain parallels were undeniable. Was there any record of how the knight in that poem had dealt with the morning after?

Summoning energy from previously unplumbed depths, Clayton woozily got to his feet. His flashlight was sending out a yellow beam indicative of drained batteries. Captain Jill was nowhere to be seen.

Somehow Clayton made it back to the ladder leading up to his cellar. His energy was dribbling back in small increments, and he used some to ascend the rungs.

In the basement, he dropped the trapdoor and weakly shoved boxes atop it. He jumped as a noise sounded behind him. Jill? No, only a whiskery rat scrambling across some cardboard.

The cellar stairs were another obstacle, but he conquered them like Hillary taking the last hundred yards of Everest. In the kitchen, he slammed the door shut and locked it, wondering if he had the strength to move the refrigerator in front of it.

“Clayton?”

He nearly shot out of his skin. Turning around slowly, he found Granny Little seated at the breakfast table. His loud sigh of relief obviously puzzled her.

Granny Little was about four feet five inches tall. Her silvery white hair was caught up in a large bun partway back on her head. Thick bifocals in gold frames rested on her hawklike nose. Her knobby, arthritic hands were clasped clumsily atop the table. She wore her unvarying outfit: a gingham dress covered with a homemade cardigan.