Shuteye for the Timebroker (3 page)

“Where have you been, Clay? I checked your bedroom and found it empty at six. It’s nine now. I was so worried.”

Clayton began to explain. The singing, his descent to the cellar, and then to the tunnel, his conversation with Captain Jill. When it came time to detail how he had been rendered unconscious and taken advantage of, Clayton paused, unsure of how to phrase it delicately. At last, he bulled ahead, knowing Granny had led no sheltered life.

Granny nodded knowingly. “I was afraid something like that had happened when I saw the cellar door open.” Granny’s cherubic face assumed a look of worry and sadness. “Oh, I’m afraid it’s all my fault for not warning you, Clay. And once I suspected where you’d gone, I still couldn’t help. My joints, you know.”

Clayton felt awful that Granny was blaming herself. All his self-pity quickly vanished. What did he have to worry about? At least he was young and healthy. The woman lurking under the house could surely be evicted by someone of his ingenuity and abilities. When he smelled the coffee Granny had perked, he felt even more hopeful.

“I had completely forgotten about this Jill person,” Granny continued, her look of concern partially overlaid by one of calculation. “There was an old legend about her, but after so many years, no one gave it much thought. It seems now we’ll have to do something about it. Tell me, Clay, what exactly did that chill of hers feel like?”

Clayton thought a moment, then strove to capture the preternatural sensation in at least a simile.

“Like being squeezed by a polar bear during an Antarctic midnight while simultaneously having a spinal tap.”

Granny shook her head in sympathy. “It sounds, son, like you could have used a nice warm sweater between you and that witch.”

At that instant, having placidly uttered the non sequitur, Granny began to knit.

Clayton put a hand to his forehead and eyed her uneasily—for the woman had neither needles nor yarn in her hands.

For almost seventy years, Granny had been a compulsive knitter. Even her arthritis had not slowed her down. The output of her flickering needles had clothed, covered, and comforted dozens of Littles and their neighbors with sweaters, blankets, slippers, mittens, socks, and gloves of every description and size. Nor was Granny a purist. She would knit with wool, rayon, acrylic, even string. She knew every pattern in the books, and dozens that were unique to her. Clayton had worn garments made by her all his life.

But just recently, Granny had developed a disconcerting habit. Although as capable as ever, she had forsaken the conventional implements and materials of her craft, apparently having exhausted their potential after seven decades of activity. Instead, she seemed content to make busy knitting motions with her empty hands, knitting sheer air, apparently working in a medium invisible to the eye.

Clayton suspected and dreaded that Granny was gradually succumbing to something awful like Alzheimer’s. Yet she seemed so competent in every other area. Her only eccentricity was that ghastly miming of knitting. It gave Clayton the heebie-jeebies.

“Have something to eat, Clay,” Granny said, “before you drive out to the farm.” Then she repeated, as her hands ceaselessly shifted, “Yes, we’ll definitely have to do something about this.”

* * *

When was the state ever going to pave this stretch of highway? They neglected Blackwood Beach shamefully, and sometimes it didn’t help that the town repaid them in kind.

Of course, the ride was not enhanced by the fact that Clayton’s red ’59 Ford pickup had no shocks. Clayton always meant to get around to installing some, but both time and money conspired against him. By now, he was coming to feel that any vehicle that had served as faithfully as the Little Mistletoe Farm delivery truck for so long deserved respect for its innards, and should be allowed to keep all its original, Detroit-given organs right up until death.

Still, it made for a bone-shaking ride.

Driving along Middenheap Mile (so called because the town dump had existed there since the seventeenth century), Clayton alternately steered and chafed his gloved hands together. Another deficiency of the truck exhibited itself in the heater department. But was it worth the effort to fix something that was needed only two or three months out of the year?

Heading out of town, tire chains rattling and crunching over the snowy gravel road, Clayton considered the problem of the excitable and lickerish Captain Jill. Although his concerns were many, his solutions were few. Eventually he gave up.

Middenheap Mile forked onto Holsapple Meadow Road. A ways down the latter, a sign appeared on the left, supported by two tall wooden poles above a driveway:

THE LITTLE MISTLETOE FARM OF BLACKWOOD BEACH, JEROTHMUL LITTLE, PROP.

Jerothmul was Gran’pa Little. Despite Gran’pa’s demise, Clayton saw no reason to impose his own name on the sign. He was not the true proprietor, any more than Gran’pa had been.

That office belonged to Ethel.

Pulling into the plowed driveway, Clayton checked the picnic basket beside him, which Granny had prepared as usual. He hoped Ethel appreciated the fact that he trekked out here every day despite all his own problems. Perhaps he would get a civil response today.

Engine killed, Clayton climbed out, his size thirteen Timberland boots biting into the snow. He turned to enter the grove.

Clayton experienced another slippage of time. He was a child again, visiting the farm for the first time. It had been summer.

“Where’s the mistletoe, Gran’pa?” he had asked. “I don’t see anything but a bunch of oaks.”

“Look closely, boy. Use your eyes.”

Clayton had stared and stared, until at last he spotted the mistletoe. “It’s woven all among the branches, Gran’pa. How come?”

Gran’pa Little had explained then that mistletoe was a parasitical plant, growing on many different kinds of trees, not able to take root on its own. Without pruning, it would eventually kill its host. As it was, the life processes of the mistletoe infected the host, causing bizarre growths—so many, in fact, that the branches of mistletoe-bearing trees came to be called “witches’ brooms.”

So, here was another essential paradox of Blackwood Beach: one of the town’s prime exports was barely visible on its own, a mere straggler hiding among the commercially unimportant, but more impressive, oaks.

However, when he was just thirteen, young (but, at nearly six feet, not little) Clayton had not been particularly aware of paradoxes as such. He had simply been enthralled with the fact that his grandparents ran such an intriguing, Christmassy business.

“Gran’pa,” Clayton had asked, “how did you ever decide to grow mistletoe, of all things?”

Gran’pa Little stopped to load and tamp a charred briar pipe before answering. “Did you ever hear of Druids, Clay?”

Clayton nodded.

“Well, we Littles trace our family tree back to Druidic times. Although we were never Druids ourselves, we were of their religion, serving as acolytes. In Germany, one branch of the family was called Klein. In pre-Christian France, we were Petite. In old England, Lytle. Apparently, part of our duties was attending to the sacred groves of oaks and mistletoe so important for Druidic ceremonies. Eventually, as our religion was superseded and replaced by Christianity, the keeping of the groves was transmuted into a strictly commercial enterprise. In a nutshell, that’s how I inherited this business.”

Clayton had studied his grandfather, standing there stalwart, with the summer sun burnishing his silver hair, and had been suddenly swept by a chilly awe and respect for their lineage.

Returning to the present with a start, Clayton realized the chill was real. It was not summer now, and the mistletoe was plainly visible, the oak’s own leaves having dropped. Among the widely spaced trees, Clayton sought to gauge the progress of the crop. The berries seemed to be flourishing, promising a bountiful crop in the summer. (Paradox two: although a symbol of winter and Christmas, mistletoe was harvested in midsummer. Clayton had learned to accept such ironies with a shrug.)

After a walk of some minutes’ duration, Clayton came at last to the largest oak in the grove. A massive, gnarly-rooted giant, it thrust its branches up toward the deep winter sky and rattled its few dead leaves as if in supplication for the sun’s return.

Between two thick roots that formed a rough circle, at an angle of forty-five degrees, was set a door of planks bound with iron straps.

Clayton knocked politely on the door and called, “Ethelred, sir. It’s me, Clayton.”

After an interval, a rude grumbling came from behind the door, which swung reluctantly open, revealing Ethel, standing on a flight of steps leading down below the tree.

Naked save for immense quantities of hair that hung down to his feet, Ethelred the Druid was a spindle-shanked, wizened being even smaller than Granny Little. His mad eyes and pointy nose were the salient features of an otherwise hirsute face.

“Oh, it’s you, is it?” said Ethel, squinting belligerently at Clayton. “What do you want now? Can’t a fellow even read his runes in peace, without these constant interruptions?”

Clayton stooped from his height to politely regard the mannikin on his own level. “Sorry, sir. I meant to show up earlier. But there was some trouble back at the house. I’ve just brought your food for another day.”

“Here, give me that then, and begone.” Ethel seized the basket by the handles. “Unless you’ve brought those magazines I asked for.”

Damn, thought Clayton. He had forgotten again. The Druid was essential to the success of the farm, and was worth the cosseting he demanded.

“Sorry, Ethelred. I haven’t had a chance. Next time, for sure.
Penthouse, Playboy, Gallery
—and what else?”

Ethel shook his head ruefully, as if nothing human could amaze him. “Can’t you remember anything? A volume of stories by that fellow named Duke or Knave or Queen or whatever, stories to chill the blood. Just the reading for a cold winter’s night. And don’t forget again, Mister High-Pockets. Such neglect makes me mad! In fact, I don’t know why I stay with your family. All these generations since the Romans drove us out of Gaul. Why, if it weren’t for my grove—” Clucking his tongue, Ethel left the implications of his remarks unvoiced. He turned his back abruptly on Clayton, slammed his door, and then could be heard retreating to his burrow.

Straightening his spine with a groan, Clayton turned to go. He heard the door open again behind him, and immediately felt the not negligible impact of an empty picnic basket striking his back.

Clayton wondered if there weren’t easier ways to earn a living.

* * *

The next few weeks were among the most tiring, irritating, exasperating, and downright crazy Clayton had ever experienced.

First, there were the continuing depradations of Captain Jill, now transformed from the Hellcat of the East Coast to the Subterranean Scourge of Blackwood Beach.

The tunnels she inhabited—and which she had apparently learned to navigate in the dark with the utmost ease—penetrated everywhere in the town. Captain Jill made a point of spreading her attentions far and wide along their length and breadth.

One of the first things she did—as Clayton learned later, while enjoying a beer at Emmett’s Roadhouse—was to plunder Rackstraw’s Market, laying in a hoard of food, which of course her reanimated body now required. Whiskey she had aplenty, Clayton knew.

Next, she began snatching bodies—the bodies of healthy young men, to be precise. She nabbed Piers Seuss at dusk one day, while he was digging for quahogs with a bullrake by the mouth of one of the tunnels. His wife, Andy, was furious, and uttered various futile curses upon his chagrined return. Other men and boys soon met with similar fates, some willingly, others with the same distaste Clayton had exhibited. At swordpoint, however, distaste becomes eagerness. And of course, there was Captain Jill’s power of benumbing coldness to contend with, too.

The singing was another sore point. People were losing sleep all over town. Captain Jill’s voice, oiled by liquor, was apparently inexhaustible. And her choice of songs was highly objectionable, consisting of gory ballads and bawdy ditties. Mothers began sending their children to bed with earmuffs on.

Bad as these town-wide mutual sufferings were, Clayton found a personal burden more irksome. It was Granny’s invisible knitting.

Clayton had now been living in Blackwood Beach for over a month. During the first week of his transplanted existence, Granny had mimed knitting only once or twice, for short periods, and Clayton had been able to live with it. But ever since the day Captain Jill had appeared, the phantom knitting had been a nerve-wracking constant in his life.

Granny persisted at it day and night, wordlessly moving her clumsy fingers in the old familiar patterns. Clayton found that when he was in the same room with her—which was often—he could not take his eyes off her, captivated by the senseless motions as a rabbit is hypnotized by a snake. (Desperate to end it, he even tried leaving yarn and needles around in conspicuous places, hoping Granny would pick them up and resume normal knitting. But she never took the bait.) After a while, Clayton felt his mind disappearing into the same elderly abyss Granny seemed to inhabit, for he swore—no, it couldn’t be.