Authors: Bill Pronzini
E L E V E N
N
IGHT.
A martini for Shelby and half a glass of wine for him while good jazz played soft in the background—Macklin’s CD choice this time, Miles Davis’s
Kind of Blue
. Crab salad, leftover sourdough, half a bottle of chardonnay. One of the DVDs from Ben’s collection, his choice again—a farcical boy-meets-girl comedy that was watchable if not particularly funny. Quiet time again, more wood on the fire, the last of the wine from dinner in Shelby’s glass.
The combination of heat and music and food had relaxed him for the first time in days. Again he watched the firelight play over the smooth contours of Shelby’s face, the familiar curves of her body. Tenderness welled in him. And, inevitably, desire.
He said, “Remember that trip to Big Sur right after we were married? The cabin in the woods?”
“What made you think of that?”
“Sitting in front of the fire like this.”
She was silent.
“That’s not all we did in front of the fire,” he said.
Still silent.
“There’s plenty of room in front of this one, too. I could go get a blanket from the bedroom …”
“No,” she said.
“Just like that? No?”
“Not tonight, Jay. I’m not in the mood.”
One of the burning logs dropped off the grate, sending up a shower of sparks that glowed bright red before winking out; his desire died just as quickly. “Seems like you’re not in the mood a lot lately. It didn’t used to be like that—you used to be horny all the time.”
“A lot of things used to be different.” She stirred out of her chair. “I think I’ll take a hot bath.”
“You don’t have to lock the door,” he called after her. “I won’t come in and try to wash your back.”
Bed. Shelby turned away from him, the cold, rhythmic sound of the rain on the roof adding to his feeling of loneliness. Sleep was a long time coming.
And when it did—
Dark place, warm, safe. Sleeping.
Not sleeping anymore. Listening.
What’re those noises? Loud, weird.
Thump. Grunt, slurp, screech, squeal. Thump thump thump.
Something’s out there.
Something … terrible.
I have to find out what it is. But I don’t want to. I’m afraid.
Squeal, howl, slurp. Thump thump thump thump thump.
Oh God, what if it tries to hurt me?
Stay here, don’t move.
No, I can’t, I have to find out what it is—
Dark place, cold. Walking.
Long tunnel, shadows crawling on the walls, faint glow from somewhere that lets me see where I’m going. The floor feels like it’s made of ice, I start to shiver from the chill. Walking straight, turning right, walking straight, turning left—
Light ahead, so bright it hurts my eyes. The noises come from behind it—grunt, slurp, thump thump squeal thump. I want to stop walking toward the light, I’m afraid of what I’ll see, but I have to find out what’s making those sounds.
Closer. And into the light, through the light.
No! No!
Monster.
Horrible, hairy thing and what it’s doing, what it’s doing—
Slurp, thump, slurp slurp.
It’s
feeding!
I make a sound, I can’t help myself, and the thing rises up from the carcass of whatever it’s eating, its open mouth and yellow-spike teeth dripping crimson. It looks around at me, then lets loose an ear-splitting roar and leaps up with long sharp claws slicing the air and comes lurching toward me spitting fire.
Run! Hide!
And I run out of the light into the shadows, run through the tunnel, I’ve never run faster … but I can’t run fast enough, the thing is close behind me, I feel its fire breath and hear the pounding click of its claws—
Dark place again, and I’m down on all fours crawling into another dark place. Trying to make myself smaller, squirming like a worm into a hole, hide, hide!
Too late.
The thing is there, looming over me, I see the awful twisted shape of it as it bends down and … oh Jesus it wraps a claw around my arm and yanks me upward. Pain erupts, then wild panic as it drags me close to its red drooling mouth.
It’s going to eat
me!
But first it shakes me, hard, my teeth rattle like bones, I smell the hot stink of its breath in my face. Spiraling terror makes me pee on myself. The thing roars again and shakes me harder, and then it—
—rips my arm off and hurls it on the floor—
—and rips my head off and hurls it on the floor—
—and my head rolls into the wall, wobbles and stops, and my eyes stare up, stare up—
—and I’m looking at my wriggling mutilated body wet all over with piss and blood—
—and the creature’s mouth opens wider, yawning like a cavern, and from the floor I hear it booming out words in a voice loud as thunder but I can’t understand them, the words somehow fall like whispers against my ears—
—and in horror I watch my headless body being stuffed inside its gaping mouth—
—and then the yellow spikes gnash down and the chewing starts, and I scream and scream and scream—
Macklin was awake now, shaky and bathed in sweat, his breath coming in short grinding gasps. Another nightmare ride, the same every time in every detail, ending when the imaginary monster begins to eat his headless body and he screams himself out of it. Shelby was alert beside him in the dark bedroom, trying with hands and words to calm him. He heard himself say, “I’m all right, I’m all right,” but he wasn’t. His heart felt as if it would burst. One of these times it just might.
She said, “Lie still, shallow breaths,” and got out of bed and hurried into the bathroom.
He lay still, willing his pulse rate to slow. He’d been having the nightmare for so long he couldn’t remember when it first started. Until his life had degenerated into the string of failures, he’d gone as long as two years without a replay; since Conray terminated him it came more frequently. He didn’t understand it, didn’t have a clue what it meant or what triggered it. Some deep-rooted fear … the fear of death? He just didn’t know.
Shelby came out with a wet towel, sponged the sweat off his face. Better now, with the towel draped across his forehead. The tightness still felt like a closed hand inside his chest, but the blood-pound in his ears had lessened and he was breathing more easily. He’d be okay.
Until the next time.
She said, “It might help if you’d tell me about it.”
He couldn’t. He’d never told anyone. A kid’s fantasy monster nightmare … stupid, too embarrassing to talk about. But real—so bloody
real
.
“No, it wouldn’t,” he said. “Don’t keep asking me, okay?”
It was an hour or more before he slept again.
T W E L V E
A
NOTHER GRAY, GLOOMY, WINDY
day. The rear deck, the grassy slope, and the side patio were all wet with dew. Shelby stepped outside for a few seconds to see how cold it was.
Damn
cold—the wind slapped at her face like a frostbitten hand, the sharp smell of ozone pinched her nostrils. There’d be more rain pretty soon, probably another storm.
The cold and damp were in the cottage, too. Jay had turned on the baseboard heater when he got up and it had been going for half an hour now, but the moist chill was still in the air. How could that happen overnight in a place as well built as this one? One of the joys of oceanfront living in the dead of winter, she thought. Goose bumps and sniffles to go with the whitewater views and invigorating sea breezes.
The place was already beginning to give her cabin fever.
Jay made buttermilk pancakes for breakfast, his special recipe that included bananas and nutmeg and some other kind of spice. They were good but she only picked at the ones on her plate; she didn’t have much appetite. For the food or for the conversation he tried to make. Small talk as usual. Not a word about the nightmare, or about anything else that mattered to either of them.
Finally she said, “I don’t think I can just sit around here another day. Let’s go for a drive.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Fort Bragg’s not far, is it?”
“Twenty miles or so.”
“You sound hesitant.”
“No, it’s just that …”
“Just that what?”
“There’s another storm coming,” he said.
“Surprise.”
“No, I mean a big storm, worse than the one on the way up. High winds, heavy rain.”
“How do you know? The car radio?”
“The woman in the Seacrest grocery store.”
“And you didn’t tell me until now?”
“I guess I just forgot.”
You guess you just forgot. Bullshit, Jay.
She said, “When is this big storm supposed to get here?”
“Sometime this afternoon.”
“Then there’s still time for a drive to Fort Bragg.”
“If you really want to go.”
“I really want to go.”
“Okay, then.” He reached across to touch her hand; she resisted an impulse to pull it away. “We’ll leave right after I clean up.”
“Cleaning up can wait until we get back. I’ll do it. You don’t always have to be maid as well as cook.”
“Just trying to make things a little easier for you.”
Five minutes later they were in the car. She felt better being out of the cottage, moving again. The highway to the north was full of loops and twists, but she had to admit the scenery was impressive. Ocean views, wooded areas, a long sweep around the mouth of a river, hamlets and rustic inns and B&Bs. Wind gusts buffeted the car and the sky was a sullen chiaroscuro, but the windshield stayed dry.
Jay kept trying to make conversation, but it was all small talk and she was sick of small talk. They were passing by the picturesque bluff-top town of Mendocino when he said something about it looking so much like villages in Maine, the producers of the TV show
Murder, She Wrote
had passed it off as Cabot Cove for the duration of the series. More small talk, trivial and meaningless.
Enough, she thought.
“Jay,” she said, “talk to me.”
“I am talking to you. I said—”
“You didn’t
say
anything. You haven’t said anything I really wanted to hear in so long I can’t remember the last time.”
She saw the muscles along his jaw clench. “That’s not fair, Shel.”
“Fair? My God,
fair
?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“What you’re thinking, what you’re feeling.”
“You know how I feel about you. I love you.”
“That’s not what I mean and you know it. Half the time you talk to me as if I’m a casual acquaintance instead of your wife. Never about anything that really matters to you. Stop hiding from me.”
“I’m not hiding from you,” he said, “I’m … I can’t always express what I’m thinking or feeling …”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“It’s hard, that’s all. I’m just not wired the way you are, I’m … I have this … oh Jesus, do we
have
to get into this now?”
“If not now, then when?”
“When we’re back home. There’re some things … I’ll tell you then.”
“Why can’t you tell me now?”
“I just … I don’t want to spoil our last couple of days up here.”
“Spoil them by clearing the air?”
“When we get home—that’s a promise.”
“Another promise you won’t keep. You’ll go right on hiding in that private cocoon of yours.”
“No, I won’t. Not this time.”
Useless. Like beating her head against a stone wall.
The fantasy came over her again. He seemed to waver in her vision, turn shimmery, lose definition; for a second or two it was as if she could look right through him. The illusion was almost frightening this time.
She closed her eyes to shut it out, shifted over close against the door and laid her head against the seat back. The silence that rebuilt between them was like a weight. A frustrated anger simmered in her, but it didn’t last. In its place was a small, cold emptiness.
And she thought again: Enough.
T H I R T E E N
M
ACKLIN’S MOOD MATCHED THE
sullen, cloud-heavy morning as they approached Fort Bragg. Little confrontational scenes like the one he’d just had with Shelby always left him feeling depressed. Powerless, too. Not against her, but against himself and the intractable compulsion to hold back. She didn’t ask much of him, and the one important thing she did ask he seemed incapable of giving her. It made him dislike himself all the more.
Scared him all the more.
The thought of what lay ahead fretted him again, brought that closed-fist feeling back into his chest. The coming year would likely make the last few seem happy by comparison. He was pretty sure he knew how Shelby would take the news and just what she’d say, the same thing she’d said at the other crisis points in their life together: “We’ll get through it.” But would they this time? He didn’t see how it was possible, not in the long run. This was so much harder to take than the other setbacks, ongoing and irreversible.
The prospect of life without her scared the hell out of him. Barren. Lonely. Yet even if she was willing to put up with him over the long haul, he wasn’t willing to become any more of a burden to her than he already was. If the situation grew unbearable, as it was liable to pretty quickly, he’d be the one to do the walking. He’d promised himself that and he wouldn’t renege. His gift to her, the best gift he could ever give her—her freedom.
He didn’t know where he’d go or what he’d do if it came to that. Except to get the hell out of Cupertino, put as much distance between them as he could. Head for Tucson, maybe. Tom would take him in, at least for a while; they weren’t close anymore, but his younger brother was a strong believer in family values, family support. But Tom and Jenna had three kids and a mortgage and bills to pay—they couldn’t afford to shelter him for long, even if he could find some kind of work to pay for temporary room and board. He’d be a burden on them, and he couldn’t allow that to happen either. Better to spare Tom and his family and not go to Tucson at all.
What, then? Crawl into a warm little private hole somewhere? He’d be able to manage alone if circumstances allowed him to earn a living wage, but the one thing he’d never do was to go on welfare. If things got that bad, if there was no longer any hope and he was of no use to himself or anyone else, he’d take himself out. There were ways, painless ways, and he’d done enough soul-searching to know that he was capable of it.
Quality of life. A phrase people used a lot nowadays, one that was absolutely true. No quality, no point to living. Simple as that.
They were in Fort Bragg now, crossing a long bridge that spanned the entrance to the harbor. Small seaside town, population seven or eight thousand, that had once been the home base for Georgia Pacific, the largest lumber mill on the north coast; now it was the fishing industry and tourism that supported it. There wasn’t much of either this time of year. Under that dark, threatening sky it, too, had a bleak aspect that an array of lighted holiday decorations failed to alleviate.
Beneath the bridge and along the harborfront to the east there was a collection of restaurants, fish shops, and docks for commercial fishing boats and whale-watching and sportfishing charters. Shelby had no interest in the town or in stopping for lunch—she spoke to him in short, clipped sentences, when she spoke at all—but he drove down to the harbor anyway. Her favorite fish was wild salmon; he thought maybe a couple of fresh sockeye filets for dinner would put her in a better mood. Pathetic peace offering, but he didn’t have any other kind to make.
She waited in the car while he went into one of the fish shops. Just as well, because there was a newspaper rack in front and the Santa Rosa paper’s front-page headline jumped out at him as he went by.
SEARCH FOR COASTLINE KILLER INTENSIFIES
Long, silent ride back down Highway 1. Macklin didn’t even try to make conversation. The rain continued to hold off, but by the time they passed the mouth of the Navarro River the wind gusts were fierce and there was more black than gray in the cloud churn overhead. It wouldn’t be long before the skies opened up and the rain spilled out.
Coming from the north, he missed the Ocean Point Lane intersection and had to turn around and retrace a quarter of a mile. Mr. Inept. The first drops of rain from the bloated cloud bellies had begun to speckle the windshield as he drove through the jog in the road past the big estate. At almost the same instant he saw the vehicles parked in front of the Lomax house.
“Now what the hell’s going on?”
Shelby stirred beside him. “What?”
“Up there. Look.”
Macklin put on the wipers to clear away the rain mist. Shelby still had to lean forward, squinting, because of the sticking blade on her side. There were two cars, a dark-colored sedan angled into the entrance driveway and a sheriff’s department cruiser on the blacktop.
“You don’t suppose Lomax really hurt her this time?” he said. “Bad enough to put her in the hospital?”
Shelby’s jaw tightened; she shook her head.
“Or maybe she did something to him. If it’s bad, I hope that’s the way it was.”
“It may not be anything at all.”
Instead of turning into the cottage’s drive, he rolled on past fifty yards or so—close enough to make out a seal on the driver’s door of the parked sedan. Highway patrol.
“Two official cars parked out there like that,” he said. “It’s sure not a social visit.”
“Not an emergency, either. No flashing lights and I don’t see an ambulance.”
“Could be parked inside the fence. Or it hasn’t gotten here yet.”
She said, to herself as much as to him, “I wish I knew what happened.”
“Well, we can’t go up and ask. We’ll probably never know.”