Bag of Bones (72 page)

He takes her deeper and she begins to scream. Her screams mingle with the screams of the loons until he stops the sound with a kiss upon her terrified mouth.
“Love you, Daddy loves his sugarplum,”
he says, and then lowers her. It is to be a full-immersion baptism, then, except there is no shore-bank choir singing “Shall We Gather at the River” and no one shouting
Hallelujah!
and he is not letting her come back up. She struggles furiously in the white bloom of her sacrificial dress, and after a moment he cannot bear to watch her; he looks across the lake instead, to the west where the fire hasn't yet touched (and never will), to the west where skies are still blue. Ash sifts around him like black rain and the tears pour out of his eyes and as she struggles furiously beneath his hands, trying to free herself from his drowning grip, he tells himself
It was an accident, just a terrible accident, I took her out in the lake because it was the only place I
could
take her, the only place left, and she panicked, she started to struggle, she was all wet and all slippery and I lost my good hold on her and then I lost
any
hold on her and then—

I forget I'm a ghost. I scream “Kia! Hold on, Ki!” and dive. I reach her, I see her terrified face, her bulging blue eyes, her rosebud of a mouth which is trailing a silver line of bubbles toward the surface where Fred stands in water up to his neck, holding her down while he tells himself over and over that he was trying to save her, it was the only way, he was trying to save her, it was the only way. I reach for her, again and again I reach for her, my child, my daughter, my Kia (they are all Kia, the boys as well as the girls, all my daughter), and each time my arms go through her. Worse—
oh, far worse—is that now she is reaching for
me,
her dappled arms floating out, begging for rescue. Her groping hands melt through mine. We cannot touch, because now I am the ghost. I am the ghost and as her struggles weaken I realize that I can't I can't oh I

couldn't breathe—I was drowning.

I doubled over, opened my mouth, and this time a great spew of lakewater came out, soaking the plastic owl which lay on the pallet by my knees. I hugged the
JO'S NOTIONS
box to my chest, not wanting the contents to get wet, and the movement triggered another retch. This time cold water poured from my nose as well as my mouth. I dragged in a deep breath, then coughed it out.

“This has got to end,” I said, but of course this
was
the end, one way or the other. Because Kyra was last.

I climbed up the steps to the studio and sat on the littered floor to get my breath. Outside, the thunder boomed and the rain fell, but I thought the storm had passed its peak of fury. Or maybe I only hoped.

I rested with my legs hanging down through the trap—there were no more ghosts here to touch my ankles, I don't know how I knew that but I did—and stripped off the rubber bands holding the steno notebooks together. I opened the first one, paged through it, and saw it was almost filled with Jo's handwriting and a number of folded typed sheets (Courier type, of course), single-spaced: the fruit of all those clandestine trips down to the TR during 1993 and 1994. Fragmentary notes, for the most part, and transcriptions of tapes which might still be down below me in the storage space somewhere. Tucked away with the VCR or the eight-track player, perhaps. But I didn't
need them. When the time came—
if
the time came—I was sure I'd find most of the story here. What had happened, who had done it, how it was covered up. Right now I didn't care. Right now I only wanted to make sure that Kyra was safe and stayed safe. There was only one way to do that.

Lye stille.

I attempted to slip the rubber bands around the steno books again, and the one I hadn't looked at slipped out of my wet hand and fell to the floor. A torn slip of green paper fell out. I picked it up and saw this:

For a moment I came out of that strange and heightened awareness I'd been living in; the world fell back into its accustomed dimensions. But the colors were all too strong, somehow, objects too emphatically
present.
I felt like a battlefield soldier suddenly illuminated by a ghastly white flare, one that shows everything.

My father's people had come from The Neck, I had been right about that much; my great-grandfather according to this was James Noonan, and he had
never shit in the same pit as Jared Devore. Max Devore had either been lying when he said that to Mattie . . . or misinformed . . . or simply confused, the way folks often get confused when they reach their eighties. Even a fellow like Devore, who had stayed mostly sharp, wouldn't have been exempt from the occasional nick in his edge. And he hadn't been that far off at that. Because, according to this little scratch of a chart, my great-grandfather had had an older sister, Bridget. And Bridget had married—Benton Auster.

My finger dropped down a line, to Harry Auster. Born of Benton and Bridget Noonan Auster in the year 1885.

“Christ Jesus,” I whispered. “Kenny Auster's grandfather was my granduncle. And he was one of them. Whatever they did, Harry Auster was one of them. That's the connection.”

I thought of Kyra with sudden sharp terror. She had been up at the house by herself for nearly an hour. How could I have been so stupid? Anyone could have come in while I was under the studio. Sara could have used anyone to—

I realized that wasn't true. The murderers and the child victims had all been linked by blood, and now that blood had thinned, that river had almost reached the sea. There was Bill Dean, but he was staying well away from Sara Laughs. There was Kenny Auster, but Kenny had taken himself and his family off to Taxachusetts. And Ki's closest blood relations—mother, father, grandfather—were all dead.

Only I was left. Only I was blood. Only I could do it. Unless—

I bolted back up to the house as fast as I could, slipping and sliding my way along the soaked path, desperate to make sure she was all right. I didn't think Sara could hurt Kyra herself, no matter how much of that old-timer vibe she had to draw on . . . but what if I was wrong?

What if I was wrong?

K
i lay fast asleep just as I had left her, on her side with the filthy little stuffed dog clutched under her jaw. It had put a smudge on her neck but I hadn't the heart to take it away from her. Beyond her and to the left, through the open bathroom door, I could hear the steady
plink-plonk-plink
of water falling from the faucet and into the tub. Cool air blew around me in a silky twist, caressing my cheeks, sending a not unpleasurable shiver up my back. In the living room Bunter's bell gave a dim little shake.

Water's still warm, sugar,
Sara whispered.
Be her friend, be her daddy. Go on, now. Do what I want. Do what we both want.

And I
did
want to, which had to be why Jo at first tried to keep me away from the TR and from Sara Laughs. Why she'd made a secret of her possible pregnancy, as well. It was as if I had discovered a vampire inside me, a creature with no interest in
what it thought of as talk-show conscience and op-ed page morality. A part that wanted only to take Ki into the bathroom and dunk her into that tub of warm water and hold her under, watching the red-edged white ribbons shimmer the way Carla Dean's white dress and red stockings had shimmered while the woods burned all around her and her father. A part of me would be more than glad to pay the last installment on that old bill.

“Dear God,” I muttered, and wiped my face with a shaking hand. “She knows so many tricks. And she's so fucking
strong.
”

The bathroom door tried to swing shut against me before I could go through, but I pushed it open against hardly any resistance. The medicine-cabinet door banged back, and the glass shattered against the wall. The stuff inside flew out at me, but it wasn't a very dangerous attack; this time most of the missiles consisted of toothpaste tubes, toothbrushes, plastic bottles, and a few old Vick's inhalers. Faint, very faint, I could hear her shouting in frustration as I yanked the plug at the bottom of the tub and let the water start gurgling out. There had been enough drowning on the TR for one century, by God. And yet, for a moment I felt an incredibly strong urge to put the plug back in while the water was still deep enough to do the job. Instead I tore it off its chain and threw it down the hall. The medicine-cabinet door clapped shut again and the rest of the glass fell out.

“How many have you had?” I asked her. “How many besides Carla Dean and Kerry Auster and our Kia? Two? Three? Five? How many do you need before you can rest?”

All of them!
the answer shot back. It wasn't just Sara's voice, either; it was my own, as well. She'd gotten into me, had snuck in by way of the basement like a burglar . . . and already I was thinking that even if the tub was empty and the water-pump temporarily dead, there was always the lake.

All of them!
the voice cried again.
All of them, sugar!

Of course—only all of them would do. Until then there would be no rest for Sara Laughs.

“I'll help you to rest,” I said. “That I promise.”

The last of the water swirled away . . . but there was always the lake, always the lake if I changed my mind. I left the bathroom and looked in on Ki again. She hadn't moved, the sensation that Sara was in here with me had gone, Bunter's bell was quiet . . . and yet I felt uneasy, unwilling to leave her alone. I had to, though, if I was to finish my work, and I would do well not to linger. County and State cops would be along eventually, storm or no storm, downed trees or no downed trees.

Yes, but . . .

I stepped into the hall and looked uneasily around. Thunder boomed, but it was losing some of its urgency. So was the wind. What wasn't fading was the sense of something watching me, something that was not-Sara. I stood where I was a moment or two longer, trying to tell myself it was just the sizzle of my overcooked nerves, then walked down the hall to the entry.

I opened the door to the stoop . . . then looked around again sharply, as if expecting to see someone or something lurking behind the far end of the bookcase. A Shape, perhaps. Something that still wanted
its dust-catcher. But I was the only Shape left, at least in this part of the world, and the only movement I saw was ripple-shadows thrown by the rain rolling down the windows.

It was still coming down hard enough to redrench me as I crossed my stoop to the driveway, but I paid no attention. I had just been with a little girl when she drowned, had damned near drowned myself not so long ago, and the rain wasn't going to stop me from doing what I had to do. I picked up the fallen branch which had dented the roof of my car, tossed it aside, and opened the Chevy's rear door.

The things I'd bought at Slips 'n Greens were still sitting on the back seat, still tucked into the cloth carry-handle bag Lila Proulx had given me. The trowel and the pruning knife were visible, but the third item was in a plastic sack.
Want this one in a special bag?
Lila had asked me.
Always safe, never sorry.
And later, as I was leaving, she had spoken of Kenny's dog Blueberry chasing seagulls and had given out with a big, hearty laugh. Her eyes hadn't laughed, though. Maybe that's how you tell the Martians from the Earthlings—the Martians can never laugh with their eyes.

I saw Rommie and George's present lying on the front seat: the Stenomask I'd at first mistaken for Devore's oxygen mask. The boys in the basement spoke up then—murmured, at least—and I leaned over the seat to grab the mask by its elastic strap without the slightest idea of why I was doing so. I dropped it into the carry-bag, slammed the car door, then started down the railroad-tie steps to the lake. On the way I paused to duck under the deck, where
we had always kept a few tools. There was no pick, but I grabbed a spade that looked up to a piece of gravedigging. Then, for what I thought would be the last time, I followed the course of my dream down to The Street. I didn't need Jo to show me the spot; the Green Lady had been pointing to it all along. Even had she not been, and even if Sara Tidwell did not still stink to the heavens, I think I would have known. I think I would have been led there by my own haunted heart.

*   *   *

There was a man standing between me and the place where the gray forehead of rock guarded the path, and as I paused on the last railroad tie, he hailed me in a rasping voice that I knew all too well.

“Say there, whoremaster, where's your whore?”

He stood on The Street in the pouring rain, but his cutters' outfit—green flannel pants, checked wool shirt—and his faded blue Union Army cap were dry, because the rain was falling through him rather than on him. He looked solid but he was no more real than Sara herself. I reminded myself of this as I stepped down onto the path to face him, but my heart continued to speed up, thudding in my chest like a padded hammer.