999 (27 page)

It’s not that I blame my mother. She could no more help herself than a robin could help but fly. That’s what robins do: fly. And to be perfectly truthful Lily was an unholy terror. Not that she could help herself, either. But the truth is the truth, no matter how painful. There was simply no point in going near her, let alone trying to make contact. For a time, I tried to pity her, but though I could pity my mother I couldn’t pity Lily. There simply wasn’t enough of her. Then, I tried to pretend she didn’t exist, but that didn’t work, either. Nothing worked when it came to Lily—no diagnosis, no therapy, no form of rationalizing, nothing. Eventually, even her
Exorcist
-like twitching and drooling became banal, part of the scenery that’s seen but no longer registers. She was a sad fact of life, like my dad’s pathetic easy chair that was so smelly and decrepit we all wanted to throw it out.

A swelling burst of sound pulled me out of my odd reverie. Up ahead, I saw a crowd spilling out of a large arched, iron-clad doorway. I felt certain this must be the entrance to the gallery where the exhibition hung.

I wanted to go on, but instead I stopped dead in my tracks. My gaze had been drawn, possibly by an unexpected movement, to a shape crouched atop the ornate cornice at the corner of the building nearest us. It projected out over the sidewalk, a dark and sinister countenance that made my blood run cold. It was merely a gargoyle, I realized after this initial jolt, but it was unlike any I’d ever seen before. I squinted into the drizzly gloom. It appeared as if the thing was half man, half reptile. It had an eerie oblate head with a face that was wider than it was high. Oversized eyes flanked an inhumanly large mouth and a horrific ophidian snout.

“What has caught your attention?” Vav asked.

“The gargoyle above us.”

“Ah.” She nodded. “You know, don’t you, that gargoyles were originally added to buildings to remind man of the dark side of his nature.”

“Jesus, if this one represents someone’s dark side I certainly never want to meet him. The thing is downright hideous.” And yet I couldn’t stop myself from staring up at it. Possibly this was because I had a personal horror of reptiles that dated back to when I was a child of seven. I’d been lost in the Mexican coastal swamps and had had a truly terrifying encounter with a crocodile intent on having me for lunch. I got the willies just recalling it.

“The crowd is big, isn’t it?” Vav said without even turning her head to look.

“And getting bigger every moment, I’m happy to say.” In truth, I was delighted to get my mind off the horror squatting above us. “You’re obviously quite popular.”

“Ah no, now you are confusing the messenger with the message,” she said. “It’s nothing to do with
me
. They have all come to see the
paintings.”

“But the paintings
are
you.”

“Once you are there, you will see.” She led me into the mouth of a dank alley along the near side of the stone building. Instantly, the city was obliterated by darkness.

“Shouldn’t we be going into the gallery?” I asked.

“We must hurry,” Vav said. “From what you have told me there is very little time.”

“But I’ve told you nothing—”

I broke off. There was something about this alley, something oddly, eerily familiar, but I shook off the sensation as nonsense. Besides, I was too busy being the paranoid New Yorker, figuring the odds of us getting mugged. I felt a thoroughly unpleasant creeping along my spine the farther we went. It built to such a pitch that I was literally forced to glance back over my shoulder. I let out an ugly expletive as my worst fears were realized: a misshapen form was slouching behind us.

“What is it?” Vav had halted at my cry and now she turned.

“There’s someone coming after us,” I said. “Can’t you see him?”

“I’m afraid I can’t see anything,” she said. “I thought you’d guessed. I’m quite blind.”

“Oh, hell.”

“No, no, it’s all part of my gift,” she said, misunderstanding me. Out of the wok and into the inferno, I thought as I grabbed her by the arm and dragged her backward down the alley.

“Hurry,” she said. “Hurry now, William.”

The figure was gaining on us at an alarming rate. All of a sudden I knew what it felt like to have my blood run cold, because I found myself staring face-to-face—if you could call it that—with the hideous gargoyle. It was so hideous I could barely glance at it. Now I knew what had drawn my eye up to it in the first place: I had seen it stir. The problem was I hadn’t been able to believe it. Now I had no choice. It was alive and it was after us.

“It’s the gargoyle,” I managed to get out. “Vav, if you have any idea what the hell is going on, now would be the time to tell me.” Right about then it occurred to me that the Tazzman had shot me and this was really … Hell?

“Vav, tell me I’m not dead.”

“It’s worse than I had been led to believe,” she said more to herself than to me. What mystery were her blind bronze eyes seeing? “Trust me, William, you’re not dead.”

No sooner had Vav said this than a gargoyle leapt at us with such frightening speed that it was all I could do to duck out of its way. A misshapen taloned hand swung across my vision and struck Vav with such force that she flew out of my grip and bounced like a ball against the stones of the alley. Then, to my surprise, the beast drew back as if sensing something I could neither see nor hear. Foolishly, I turned my back on the horror while I knelt beside her.

“William, are you there?”

“You know I am.” There was blood all over, hot and sticky. “I’ve got to call an ambulance.”

“Too late. You must get to the exhibition,” she whispered. “It’s absolutely vital.”

“Vav, please tell me why.” But she was gone, and I could feel the beast almost upon me, so I let her go and ran. But I had left it too late. One of its paws tripped me and I went sprawling face first onto the cobblestones. I tried to get up, but I seemed paralyzed. I had only strength enough to turn over. I saw it looming over me, its awful snout contorted in what seemed to be a ghastly grin.

I threw a hand across my face and at once I was seized by a violent bout of vertigo. The very cobblestones beneath me seemed to melt as I plunged into a dark and formless pit. I think I screamed. Then I must have lost consciousness, because the next thing I saw when I opened my eyes was a cool, leafy glade. Birds chirped and sang in the oak branches in counterpoint to the soft lazy drone of insects. I could smell clover and the tangy scents of loosestrife and mock orange. Looking up at the sky, I could see it was that time of the day when, having riven out the sunlight, the lovely cobalt of evening has spread like inscrutable words upon a page.

I heard a horse whinny and, turning my head, discovered close by a magnificent chestnut hunter-jumper cropping the grass. He was fitted out in English riding habit.

The quick beat of a horse’s hooves caused me to look up into the face of a woman. She was quite striking, with emerald eyes and lustrous dark-blond hair that fell thick as the forest around us to the edge of her jawline.
Radiant
, that was the word one might use in defining her; radiant in the way few people ever are or could hope to be. Seated confidently astride a black mare with a white blaze in the center of its forehead, she was dressed in expensive but practical hunting togs of a deep blue, save for her silk shirt, which was milky-white.

“Are you quite all right?” she inquired in a delightful, clipped English accent.

“Should I be?” I asked. I wiped my eyes, which to my complete horror were leaking tears. I wanted to stop weeping but I could not. Already I missed Vav; I wanted her back. I realized that in her company for the first time in many years I had felt safe.

“From a distance it seemed as if you took a nasty fall, but now I’m here I do believe the forest bed of oak leaves bore the brunt of it.”

I hadn’t the faintest idea what she was talking about. But as I got up I discovered that I was brushing leaves and detritus from a pair of jodhpurs and high black hunting boots. And not a trace of Vav’s blood which was seconds ago splattered all over me. I wept again, so copiously that I was obliged to turn away from her out of embarrassment.

“I guess I’m okay,” I replied when I’d managed to pull myself together. I put a hand to my head. “Except for a bit of a headache.”

“Hardly surprising, actually.” She handed me an etched silver hip flask. “Here. You look like you could use this.”

I unscrewed the cap, smelled the familiar aroma of mescal. I felt the familiar lure, but somehow something had changed inside me and I was put in mind of a fish rising to the baited hook. I hesitated a moment more before handing back the flask. “Some other time, perhaps.”

She nodded. “Why don’t I wait and ride the rest of the way with you.”

I looked around. “Are we on some kind of steeplechase?”

“Yes, of course.” She laughed, a sound like a thousand tinkling silver bells. “We’re on a hunt, William.”

Taking up the chestnut’s reins, I slid my foot into the left stirrup. “And we would be … where?” I swung up into the saddle.

“Leicestershire. The East Midlands of England. The Charnwood Forest, to be precise.”

“The heart of hunt country,” I said. “The Cottesmore is run here, if memory serves.”

“The great yearly foxhunt. Yes, indeed. But now without growing controversy.” Her eyes crinkled in the most appealing manner. “Come on now.” She dug the heels of her boots into the mare’s flanks and the horse leapt forward. “I don’t fancy missing all the fun, d’you?”

I urged the chestnut after her and at once he broke into a full gallop. To give you a fair idea of how this woman affected me, I confess that even while I was desperately trying to remember everything I’d been taught about riding, I was studying her features with ruthless concentration. Her rosy, cream-colored skin made her seem as if she was born for the hunt—or at the very least for the misty English countryside. She had a canny intelligence about her, an insouciant air that drew me in a way I could not fathom. If at that very moment someone had warned me about her—had accused her of being a murderess, to take the extreme—I would have laughed in his face and, putting heels to my steed’s sweaty flanks, left him in the dust. Happy to be in her heady company. I had only just met her and already I felt as if I’d known her all my life. Some connection, intimate as an umbilical, bound us. She was like an unexpected present under the Christmas tree.
Are you really for me?
I wanted to ask while rubbing my eyes in disbelief.

“Hey, you know my name but I don’t know yours,” I called.

“Surely you know me, William.” She lifted a hand and I saw with a start the webbing between her fingers. “I am Gimel, the weaver of realities, the font of ideas, the headwater of inspiration. I am like my namesake, the camel, filled to the brim with resources, a self-sufficient ship even in the most hostile climates.”

At this moment, we emerged into a wide grassy field dotted with dandelion and foxglove. The specters of solid oaks marched ahead of us on either side, and in the gathering gloom I could just make out an oft-tramped path. As we began to follow it, I soberly reminded myself that all this frothing off at the mind was nothing more than an odd kind of fantasy left over, perhaps, from the tens of thousands of hormonal fever dreams I’d had during my appropriately bad adolescence. By bad I mean spoiled, like that blackish, moldy thing you find in your refrigerator after having been away for several months.

“I take it, then, we’re on a foxhunt of our own,” I said as I pulled abreast of her. I was so close I could breathe in her lovely scent.

“Oh, no. I would never be after anything so beautiful as a fox.” When she shook her head her hair moved in the most provocative way. “We’re after the beast.”

“What beast?”

“You know perfectly well, William, so don’t play me.” She gave me a sharp look. I saw a flinty edge inside the gorgeous emeralds of her eyes and my heart turned over. Doctor, the oxygen! Stat! “The beast of beasts,” she went on, oblivious to the arrow protruding from my heart. “There is only one so hideous, so needing of being hunted.”

“Look, I admit to being more than slightly confused. I mean, just moments ago I was lying in a back alley of Paris with my friend’s blood—”

“So you think of Vav as a friend? Curious. You only knew her a very short while.”

“I’m a good judge of character,” I replied somewhat angrily. “If you aren’t also a friend of hers, you’d better declare it now.”

She laughed. “My goodness, how quickly you jump to her defense.” Close to me now, she leaned over and kissed me on the cheek and I heard those birds chirping in my head, the ones you see in the cartoons flying around Sylvester’s head when Tweety has hit him a good one with a hammer. “Vav and I were like sisters. Closer, even, if you can imagine. Like two pieces of the same pie.”

“I miss her.”

“I’m hardly surprised,” she said. “You were on your way to an exhibition of paintings. It’s important you get there.” She nodded as if to herself. “Absolutely vital, one might say.”

“You mean you know how to get me back to Paris?”

“That wouldn’t be wise, now would it? Besides, there’s no need.” She was posting a bit so I could keep pace. Her back was straight, her shoulders squared. She had about her that almost flagrant tomboy look I find irresistible. I imagined her striding through the forest like Diana, the mythical huntress, thighs flexing, muscles cording as she notched an arrow onto her bowstring, pulling it taut as her prey came into range. “The exhibition just went up in the Manor House. We’ll get there as soon as we can. But first, we must see the hunt to its inevitable conclusion.”

“If it’s inevitable, why bother with it?” I said. “Why not just head straight for the Manor?”

Her brow furrowed. “One might as well ask why not exhale without inhaling first. It simply cannot be done. Laws of the universe, you know.”

“These are the same laws that allow me to move from New York to Paris to the Charnwood Forest in the blink of an eye? Or to allow an exhibition of paintings in Paris to be here now?”