Bloodstone (5 page)

After a moment, she said, “To answer your question, I don’t know if I would have come here on my own or not. After the dreams started a few weeks ago, I thought I was going crazy. I felt them pulling at me and I thought I had to
do something about it. So maybe I would have come. Or maybe I’d be dead by now. The heroin helped with the dreams, you know. It made me…forget things, everything. Who I was.”

“And your brother,” Smith said, as gently as he could. “What happened to him?”

“Michael got sick when I was twelve,” she said. “Leukemia. He was in his senior year of high school, I think, when they diagnosed it. He played baseball and he was very good. Everyone said he would play professionally. The college recruiters were coming to look at him, calling the house and taking him out to see their campuses. Even a few pro scouts, I remember. My father was very proud of him.” She picked up her fork again and began tracing more designs in the bit of egg that remained. “Then he started complaining that he was tired all the time. We didn’t think much about it, since he was training so hard every day, but it got worse, and he got very pale and started losing weight. They took him to see Dr. Lewis, and she ran a lot of tests. I remember that Michael was in and out of the hospital for a week or two, and everybody was really scared. They kept taking blood. And there were long needles, I remember that.

“He quit the baseball team just before graduation. They were going to go to the state finals, and the whole town was devastated by it. I mean, little towns like ours didn’t go to the state finals too often. Without Michael they didn’t have a chance. And he was well liked too, always friendly. But he just sat around his room for most of the days after that, and he wouldn’t talk to me. He wouldn’t talk to anyone. The whole team came to see him one day but he wouldn’t even let them through the front door, and after standing out on the doorstep for a while, they left.

“The doctors started giving him chemotherapy at the hospital and his hair started falling out. It all happened so
fast
. He got really thin, I mean he was like a skeleton, and he bled so easily. He cut himself shaving once and I thought he was
going to die right there, the blood just kept pouring out of him. And then he went back into the hospital again, later that summer, and they told us the cancer had spread to his brain and that he had a few weeks to live. And then he was gone.”

“And you were how old, then?”

“Thirteen. He died less than a year after he was diagnosed. I didn’t get to talk to him before he died. My father went to the hospital that night, and I asked him if I could go, but he said, ‘Not now. It’s late. You’ll go tomorrow.’ His words, I remember them exactly. I guess he just assumed Michael would be around in the morning.” Angel sighed, saw what she was doing with the fork and her remnants of egg, and put it down carefully on her plate. “So that’s it,” she said. “My father didn’t beat me, my mother didn’t turn into an alcoholic or a religious fanatic or anything like that. They just stopped paying attention, and after a while I guess I did, too.”

“So that was why you left for Miami, eventually.”

“I suppose so. I told myself I wanted to be rich and famous and that I had the talent to be a singer, but I don’t know if I ever really believed it. I just needed to get out.” She cocked her head, looking at him the way a little dog might look at something worrisome. “It wasn’t all bad, you know,” she said. “I make it seem like some kind of soap opera. We had some good times together before Michael got sick. But something died with him. He was a big part of the family, so that changed things. Looking back, I guess he was the glue that held us together. My parents never really recovered. My father, especially.”

“And you?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” She sighed again, and tucked a lock of hair behind one ear, a gesture he had come to realize meant she was feeling uncomfortable.

“Just one more thing. Did you dream about it again last night?”

“No, I don’t remember anything, anyway. Did you?” He
shook his head. “Maybe it’s over,” she said. Her voice was hopeful as she tried to make herself believe what she was saying. “Maybe we’re both crazy, after all.”

“Maybe.”

“Listen, can we take a walk, or something? I’d like to get out of here.”

He stood up and pulled a few wrinkled bills out of his pocket and laid them on the table. He was thinking about something she had said earlier, about the heroin:
It made me
forget things, everything. Who I was
. And he thought,
We
both have our tragedies we’d like to forget
.

But that was another thing he had been thinking about lately. They shouldn’t try so hard to forget. Maybe the past was important.

They were walking past the gazebo when the old woman approached them across the square.

Her body was rail-thin and her gray dress hung off her shoulders like a burlap sack. She was moving quickly, the sunlight and shadows playing about her figure making her seem ephemeral, almost ghostlike. Smith could hear her muttering to herself as she approached. Something inside him went off like an alarm as the woman got close. He took a half step back and gripped Angel’s hand. “I don’t think—” he began, meaning to say,
I don’t think she’s quite right
. But the woman interrupted.

“He’s coming!” she hissed at them. She had stopped barely three feet away, and stood with her fists clenched and the cords standing out in her neck. Her eyes were wild and rolling, her white hair a snarl about her head, and she spoke with a furious energy. “The time is close!” Spittle flew in big white flecks as she spat out the next words, as if something had curdled in her sunken mouth. Her voice had raised itself to a new level, taking on the cadence of a preacher in front of his flock. “‘
And they found the stone rolled away from
the tomb
—’”

“Leave them alone, Annie,” a voice said from behind them. “They don’t want any of your sermons today.”

They turned. The voice belonged to a man of medium height with slim shoulders, blond hair swept back from his face and parted on the side. He wore a white shirt and conservative blue-striped tie, tan Dockers, and brown penny loafers. He had an intelligent, sober face, and bright blue eyes. “Go on, Annie,” he said. “You’ve got better things to do than this.”

“I’ve been waiting,” the old woman said. In the extremes of her dementia her age seemed to melt away, and she peered at them with the bright, focused gaze of a young girl, eyes darting from face to face as if searching for something. She nodded, her head bobbing on a long thin neck. “Yes,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for you too, you know.”

The man who had spoken took the old woman by the arm. He whispered to her quietly, gently, turning her in the other direction, and after a moment the manic gleam in her eyes slowly died. Smith thought she would start to move away, but suddenly she broke the man’s grip, turned back and shuffled right up to him. He stood unable to react as she reached out to touch his cheek with a dry, wrinkled hand.

“You’ve come back,” she whispered softly. Her touch was gentle, her voice suddenly calm. For a moment he was staring straight into her eyes, and he saw something there that shook him; it was the spark of recognition.

“
Annie
,” the man said sharply.

She turned again, her mouth moving softly, and stumbled away from them across the open stretch of fresh grass, just an old, bent woman talking to herself. Smith willed himself to relax, and let go of Angel’s hand.

“Annie’s harmless,” the man said, after a moment. “Been like that for years, though she’s usually not so vocal. I don’t know what’s gotten into her. She’s become sort of a fixture in town, and we let her go about more or less as she pleases. She must be near eighty years old now.”

“God,” Angel said. She had her arms wrapped around herself now, and she shivered. “What
happened
to her?”

“She lost her son in an accident a long time ago. The boy fell into the falls and drowned. Ever since then she hasn’t been quite right. She walks around talking about the boy coming home again, returning to her.”

“Her eyes—”

“Odd, aren’t they?” the man agreed. “She’s got a way of looking at you, that’s for sure. But she doesn’t mean anything by it.” He extended a hand in greeting to each of them in turn. “Harry Stowe. I’m the local quack in town. Working up at the clinic this morning, thought I’d take a walk in the sunshine. Glad I did, or Annie might have run you two right out of town.”

“You’re very good with her,” Smith said. He still felt the woman’s touch on his cheek, and resisted the urge to scrub at it.
Don’t fall to pieces, for Christ’s sake
, he scolded himself. She was just an old, confused woman who had thought he was someone she knew. That was all.

“I’ve treated her at the clinic for quite a while. Surprisingly healthy. She never catches a cold, even though she walks around in her bare feet half the day.” Stowe chuckled. “We used to have a problem with her wandering around town in her underwear. Thought we’d have to lock her up, but she stopped doing it after a while. Sue Hall, that’s the reverend’s sister, she takes care of Annie most of the time.”

“Must be quite a job.”

“We all keep an eye on her.”

Smith nodded as if he understood. He introduced himself, and Angel as his wife, and related the vague story they had taken on as their own; a couple just passing through, looking for a change of scenery for a while. He added that they were treating it as a kind of second honeymoon, because that seemed appropriate, and tried not to meet Angel’s eyes. If he looked at her he was afraid he would either give up the whole ridiculous story on the spot or burst out laughing. Either way,
that would be the end of their decision to “lay low” in White Falls, for all intents and purposes.

But then again, Harry Stowe did not look like the kind of man who spread rumors around on a daily basis. His eyes were quick and sharp, and he stood with both feet planted firmly on the ground, an air of quiet authority surrounding him. He had a way of putting you immediately at ease, and Smith thought he was probably a very good doctor.
I’ll bet the single ladies flock to him, and half of the
married ones, too
.

“So this is your first day here in our little town,” Stowe said, grinning. “Bet you’ve got the locals giving you the evil eye, am I right? Don’t pay them any attention. Why don’t you let me show you around a little bit? I can tell you some of White Falls’ more colorful history.”

“Oh, you don’t have to—” Angel started to protest, but he held up a hand.

“The least I can do, after that incident with Annie. To show you that most of us around here are sane. More or less.” He grinned again, and Smith felt a smile work its way out onto his own face. Here was a man who
knew
how to put others at ease, that much was readily apparent. He watched Angel’s face as Stowe spoke, and felt a slight twinge of something—
jealousy?
he wondered. He pushed it aside.

“I’ve got about an hour before I should be back at the clinic,” Stowe was saying, looking at his watch. “Would you like to walk around the square? I can point out a few of the old houses. There are some good stories behind them.”

They began to walk slowly together past the gazebo and under the line of trees toward the western end of the square and the hills, Stowe talking animatedly as they went. He pointed out the Thomas mansion and told them the story of the eccentric recluse who built it and kept building, walling himself in, year by year. “There were some pretty crazy stories about Frederick Thomas,” Stowe said. “I’ve read a little about him in the town records. The people didn’t like him
much; they thought he was some kind of sorcerer. The way he lived probably didn’t help much. I think he fed off of their paranoia and became more paranoid himself, until he was just as crazy as a shi—well, just plain nuts. Frankly, I’m surprised he kept himself alive as long as he did. Back then people didn’t think twice about burning so-called witches at the stake. Or worse.”

Smith studied the house and felt himself oddly drawn to the strange angles and walls that seemed to lead nowhere in particular, the brooding octagonal windows on the attic level, the right wing that hung out over the fence line on the third floor. The house seemed to watch over the square and the surrounding houses like a guard keeping an eye on a prisoner.

Stowe turned them toward the north and showed them the McDonald house, a much more manageable, pleasant-looking colonial, and the Deane house, a square, two-story box set back a bit farther from the square and surrounded by a line of hedges at least six feet high. “McDonald and Deane were the first of the white settlers to set foot on this ground,” he said. “They came up from the south along the river and were attacked by some sort of Indian tribe and forced to turn back. But they remembered the place, and came back a year later with three others. Frederick Thomas was one of those later three, just a kid then, maybe eighteen or twenty. They managed to get along with the Indians, more or less, and after a while they had a neat little settlement going here. This was I guess about a hundred years before Maine became a state. By the 1800s, they were doing a pretty good trade with the other settlements downriver. They took ice from the river below the falls and sold it, and there was fishing, too. The river was well-known in those days, though I don’t know if there’s many fish in her now.”

“Do people still live in these houses?” Angel asked.

“There’s nobody in the Thomas place anymore. Henry Thomas was the last of the line, and he died about ten years
ago. The other two have people in them, though those aren’t the original houses. The original places burned down sometime in the 1800s, and were rebuilt on the same sites. The same families still own them, if you can believe that. Descendants, of course.” He chuckled. “People born around here don’t go very far, or if they do, they always seem to find their way back.”

Stowe pointed a few other things out to them as they walked back down in an easterly direction. The storefronts across from them, including the Johnson Café, were built just after the turn of the century, and the gazebo went up about twenty years later. There were bands that played on the green occasionally, mostly local types, none very good. “The kids like them, though. It used to be a time for families to come out and sit down with a picnic supper, but now I’m afraid it’s mostly just kids getting drunk and causing trouble. There’s usually one or two fights by the end of the night, and once in a while somebody ends up in jail. Putting an end to these bands always comes up at town meetings, but they haven’t gotten around to doing anything yet.”