The Voice of the Night (9 page)

“My brother,” Roy said.

“My brother.”

“Forever,” Roy said.

“Forever.”

Colin concentrated hard on the pinprick in his hand, trying to sense that moment when Roy’s blood first began to creep into his own veins.

After the impromptu ceremony, Roy wiped his sticky hand on his jeans and picked up his unfinished Pepsi. “What do you want to do next?”

“It’s after eleven,” Colin said.

“An hour from now, do you turn into a pumpkin?”

“I’d better go home.”

“It’s early.

“If my mother gets back and I’m not there, she’ll worry.”

“From what you’ve told me, she doesn’t sound like the kind of mother who’d worry about a kid too much.”

“I don’t want to get in trouble.”

“I thought she went to dinner with this Thornberg guy.”

“That was around nine o‘clock,” Colin said. “She might be getting home soon.”

“Boy, are you naive.”

Colin looked at him warily. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“She won’t be home for hours.”

“How do you know?”

“About now,” Roy said, “they’ve had dinner and brandy, and old Thomberg’s just getting her into bed at his place.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Colin said uneasily. But he remembered how his mother had looked when she’d gone out: fresh, crisp, and beautiful in a clinging, low-cut dress.

Roy leered at him, winked. “You think your mother’s a virgin?”

“Of course not.”

“So did she suddenly become a nun or something?”

“Jeez.”

“Face it, good buddy, your mother screws around like everyone else.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I’d sure as hell like to screw her.”

“Stop it!”

“Touchy, touchy.”

“Are we blood brothers or not?” Colin asked.

Roy swallowed the last of his soft drink. “What’s that got to do with it?”

“If you’re my blood brother, you’ve got to show some respect for my mother, just as if she were your mother.”

Roy put his empty bottle in the rack beside the soda machine. He cleared his throat and spat on the pavement. “Hell, I don’t even respect my own mother. The bitch. She’s a real bitch. And why should I treat your old lady like some sort of goddess when you don’t have any respect for her?”

“Who says I don’t?”

“I say you don’t.”

“You think you can read minds or something?”

“Didn’t you tell me that your old lady always spent more time with her girlfriends than she did with you? Was she ever around when you needed her?”

“Everyone has friends,” Colin said weakly.

“Did you have friends before you met me?”

Colin shrugged. “I’ve always had my hobbies.”

“And didn’t you tell me that when she was married to your old man, she left him once a month—”

“Not that often.”

“—just walked out for a few days at a time, even for a week or more?”

“That was because he beat her,” Colin said.

“Did she take you with her when she left?”

Colin finished his grape soda.

“Did she take you with her?” Roy asked again.

“Not usually.”

“She left you there with
him.”

“He’s my father, after all.”

“He sounds dangerous to me,” Roy said.

“He never touched me. Just her.”

“But he might have hurt you.”

“But he didn’t.”

“She couldn’t know for sure what he’d do when she left you with him.”

“It worked out okay. That’s all that matters.”

“And now all her time’s taken up with this art gallery,” Roy said. “She works every day and most evenings.”

“She’s building a future for herself and for me.”

Roy made a sour face. “Is that her excuse? Is that what she tells you?”

“It’s true, I guess.”

“How touching. Building a future. Poor, hard-working Weezy Jacobs. It breaks my heart, Colin. It really does. Shit. More nights than not, she’s out with someone like Thomberg—”

“That’s business.”

“—and she still doesn’t have time for you.”

“So what?”

“So you should stop worrying about getting home,” Roy said. “Nobody gives a damn if you’re home or not. Nobody cares. So let’s have some fun.”

Colin put his empty bottle in the rack. “What’ll we do?”

“Let’s see ... I know. The Kingman place. You’ll like the Kingman place. You been there yet?”

“What’s the Kingman place?” Colin asked.

“It’s one of the oldest houses in town.”

“I’m not much interested in landmarks.”

“It’s that big house at the end of Hawk Drive.”

“The spooky old place on top of the hill?”

“Yeah. Nobody’s lived there for twenty years.”

“What’s so interesting about an abandoned house?”

Roy leaned close and cackled like a fiend, twisted his face grotesquely, rolled his eyes, and whispered dramatically:
“It’s haunted!”

“What’s the joke?”

“No joke. They say it’s haunted.”

“Who says?”

“Everyone.” Roy rolled his eyes again and tried to imitate Boris Karloff. “People have seen exceedingly strange things at the Kingman place.”

“Such as?”

“Not now,” Roy said, dropping the Karloff voice. “I’ll tell you all about it when we get there.”

As Roy lifted his bicycle away from the wall, Colin said, “Wait a minute. I think you’re serious. You mean this house is really haunted?”

“I guess it depends on whether or not you believe in that sort of thing.”

“People have seen ghosts there?”

“People say they’ve seen and heard all kinds of crazy things at that house ever since the Kingman family died up there.”

“Died?”

“They were killed.”

“The whole family?”

“All seven of them.”

“When was this?”

“Twenty years ago.”

“Who did it?”

“The father.”

“Mr. Kingman?”

“He went crazy one night and chopped up everyone while they were sleeping.”

Colin swallowed hard. “Chopped them up?”

“With an ax.”

Axes again! Colin thought.

For a moment his stomach seemed to be not a part of him but a separate entity alive within him, for it slipped and slid and twisted wetly back and forth, as if trying to crawl out of him.

“I’ll tell you all about it when we get there,” Roy said. “Come on.”

“Wait a minute,” Colin said nervously, stalling for time. “My glasses are dirty.”

He took off his glasses, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, and carefully polished the thick lenses. He could still see Roy fairly well, but everything farther than five feet was blurry.

“Hurry up, Colin.”

“Maybe we should wait for tomorrow.”

“Is it going to take you that long to clean your goddamned glasses?”

“I mean, in daylight we’ll be able to see more of the Kingman place.”

“Seems to me it’s more fun to look at a haunted house at night.”

“But you can’t see much at night.”

Roy regarded him silently for a few seconds. Then: “Are you scared?”

“Of what?”

“Ghosts.”

“Of course not.”

“Sounds like it.”

“Well ... it does seem kind of foolish to go poking around a place like that in the dark, in the dead of night, you know.”

“No. I don’t know.”

“I’m not talking about ghosts. I mean, one of us is bound to get hurt if we mess around in an old broken-down house in the middle of the night.”

“You are scared.”

“Like hell.”

“Prove you’re not.”

“Why should I prove anything?”

“Want your blood brother to think you’re a coward
^?
”

Colin was silent. He fidgeted.

“Come on!” Roy said.

Roy mounted his bike and pedaled out of the deserted service station, heading north on Broadway. He did not glance back.

Colin stood at the soda machine. Alone. He didn’t like being alone. Especially at night.

Roy was a block away and still moving.

“Damn!” Colin said. He shouted, “Wait for me,” and clambered onto his bicycle.

They walked the bikes up the last steep block toward the dilapidated house that crouched above them. With each step, Colin’s trepidation grew.

It sure looks haunted, he thought.

The Kingman place was well within the Santa Leona city limits, yet it was separated from the rest of the town, as if everyone were afraid to build nearby. It stood on top of a hill and held dominion over five or six acres. At least half of that land had once been well-tended, formal gardens, but long ago it had gone badly to seed. The north leg of Hawk Drive dead-ended in a wide turnaround in front of the Kingman property; and the lampposts did not go all the way to the end of the street, so that the old mansion and its weed-choked grounds were shrouded in blackest shadows, highlighted only by the moon. On the lower two thirds of the hill, on both sides of the road, modern California-style ranch houses clung precariously to the slopes, waiting with amazing patience for a mudslide or the next shock wave from the San Andreas Fault. Only the Kingman place occupied the upper third of the hill, and it appeared to be waiting for something far more terrifying, something a great deal more malevolent than an earthquake.

The house faced the center of town, which lay below it, and the sea, which was not visible at night, except in the negative as a vast expanse of lightlessness. The house was a huge, rambling wreck, ersatz Victorian, with too many fancy chimneys and too many gables, and with twice as much ginger-bread around the eaves and windows and railing as true Victorian demanded. Storms had ripped shingles from the roof. Some of the ornate trim was broken, and in a few spots it had fallen down altogether. Where shutters still survived, they often hung at a slant, by a single mounting. The white paint had been weathered away. The boards were silver-gray, bleached by the sun and the constant sea wind, waterstained. The front-porch steps sagged, and there were gaps in the railing. Half of the windows were haphazardly boarded shut, but the others were without protection, thus shattered; moonlight revealed jagged shards of glass like transparent teeth biting at the empty blackness where stones had been pitched through. In spite of its shabby condition, however, the Kingman place did not have the air of a ruin; it did not give rise to sadness in the hearts of those who looked upon it, as did many once-noble but now decrepit buildings; somehow it seemed vital, alive... even frighteningly alive. If a house could be said to have a human attitude, an emotional aspect, then this house was angry, very angry. Furious.

They parked their bicycles by the front gate. It was a big rusted iron grill with a sunburst design in the center.

“Some place, huh?” Roy said.

“Yeah.”

“Let’s go.”

“Inside?”

“Sure.”

“We don’t have a flashlight.”

“Well, at least let’s go up on the porch.”

“Why?” Colin asked shakily. ,

“We can look in the windows.”

Roy walked through the open gate and started up the broken flagstone walk, through the tangled weeds, toward the house.

Colin followed him for a few steps, then stopped and said, “Wait. Roy, wait a sec.”

Roy turned back. “What is it?”

“You been here before?”

“Of course.”

“You been inside?”

“Once.”

“Did you see any ghosts?”

“Nah. I don’t believe in ‘em.”

“But you said people see things here.”

“Other people. Not me.”

“You said it was haunted.”

“I told you other people said it was haunted. I think they’re full of shit. But I knew you’d enjoy the place, what with you being such a big horror-movie fan and everything.”