Gravelight (7 page)
Authors: Marion Zimmer Bradley
“Wildwood Sanatorium burned down eighty year ago next month. Ain't nothing there now but ha'ants and brambles,” Luned explained simply.
They don't go because it isn't there.
Feeling as if he'd been played for a fool, Wycherly snarled, “So what do you expect
me
to do for you?” He was hungry, and he wanted a hot bath that it didn't look as if he was going to get, and he felt an uneasy sense of responsibility that he didn't like, as if merely by virtue of coming from a privileged background he had some responsibility to those who had less.
me
to do for you?” He was hungry, and he wanted a hot bath that it didn't look as if he was going to get, and he felt an uneasy sense of responsibility that he didn't like, as if merely by virtue of coming from a privileged background he had some responsibility to those who had less.
Luned stared at the floor, biting her lower lip to keep from crying, something that irritated Wycherly even more.
“I thought ⦠maybe ⦠if you were a conjureman like old Miss Rahab ⦠you could maybe fix me up a tonic so's I didn't feel so poorly all the time,” she finally said.
That's ALL?
Wycherly nearly said. But there was no “all” to it; that
something
was wrong with Luned was clear, from her pallid complexion to the fact that it had been so easy to mistake her for a child half a dozen years younger. He could tell her to eat better food, to rest more, but was there any way for her to follow such orders, living as she did?
Wycherly nearly said. But there was no “all” to it; that
something
was wrong with Luned was clear, from her pallid complexion to the fact that it had been so easy to mistake her for a child half a dozen years younger. He could tell her to eat better food, to rest more, but was there any way for her to follow such orders, living as she did?
“I better go,” Luned said.
“No.” Though Wycherly hated the thought of getting entangled with some ignorant mountain girl, still less did he like the thought of being a man just like his father: someone who used people and then threw them aside when they were no longer useful.
And ignored them until they were.
“Sit down. Eat your soup. I may be able to do something for you. And quit sniveling,” he snapped.
Though Luned had said the soup had burned, there was more than enough for dinner. Even though most of the ingredients had come out of cans, it was surprisingly good, enough to awaken even Wycherly's flagging appetite. As they are, Luned pattered on about her housekeeping skills, demanding that he give her his shirt so she could clean and mend it for him.
“âand I'm a powerful good seamstress, Mister Wychâyou'll see.”
He supposed that he would, like it or not. But at least he had a solution for some of her problems.
“Wait here,” Wycherly said, when dinner was over.
He got up from the table and went back into the other room, not waiting to see if she obeyed. His shoulder bag was right where he'd left it, on the floor beneath the window. She hadn't touched it when she'd cleanedâat least, he hoped she hadn't. He slung it onto the bed and opened it.
In it were all the necessities of a wastrel's life: his shaving kit with its rechargeable electric razor, a bottle of “1903” cologne. An address book, containing the telephone numbers of enough doctors and lawyers to keep the police away from him for at least a little while, if the need came. A cellular phone he wasn't going to use, a roadmap leading nowhere. A shirt and underwear he didn't remember packing. Reading glasses he never used. Tylenol-3. A bottle of sleeping pills, the prescription carefully doled out to him in non-fatal amountsâas if that would slow him down when the time came. A pint of Scotch.
Wycherly held it up to the light: It glowed like amber, like fire, like everything good and precious in his world. Its loving warmth seemed to radiate through the glass into his hands. He knew that if he was serious about drying out, he had to get rid of it.
But he couldn't bear to do that just now. He set it carefully on the pile with the other things, as gently as if it were alive.
And here, down at the bottom, the thing he was looking for.
The prescription bottle was the size of a small jar of instant coffee and made of white plastic to protect its contents from the light. The bottle held 150 pillsâno one cared how many he had of these.
Vitamins. Strong ones. A contribution to his therapy from the psychiatrist he wasâin theoryâcurrently seeing, who felt she should preserve his health while not interfering with his drinking. Alcoholics, she'd said, usually suffered health problems exacerbated by malnutrition; either because they preferred drinking to eating or because chronic drinking stripped the body of essential nutrients. These were supposed to make up for that. He supposed they'd work equally well for someone whose body had been stripped of essential nutrients by something else.
But Luned was expecting magic from a red-headed conjureman who flew through the air in a sorcerous automobile. He unscrewed the cap. God knew why he was humoring the simpleminded wench. She had all the sexual appeal of a backward ten year old, and Wycherly was no Humbert Humbert.
The foil seal was still in place, which meant the bottle was full. About five months' supply. But how to get her to take them?
He looked around the room.
There was a small, hinged silver box on top of the dresser, about the size of two packs of filter cigarettes taped together. He picked it up, wondering why Luned had left it behind when she'd cleaned out everything else. Because it looked valuable, probably. He turned it over, looking for a hallmark, but all he saw were some odd square imprints, the designs too muddled to make out.
Possibly this was an antique snuffbox, but even if it was, Wycherly felt no qualms about using itâold and ornate, it was just the right size to hold the contents of the pill bottle, and Wycherly dumped the contents into it and closed the
lid. Hefting the box in his hand, he walked back out into the other room.
lid. Hefting the box in his hand, he walked back out into the other room.
Luned was still sitting at the table, just as he'd left her. In that moment, the whole situation took on a surreal clarity that Wycherly associated only with being very drunk indeed. What was he doing meddling in the life of a stranger on whom he could have no hope of having a permanent effect? And meddling just for fun; Wycherly could imagine no other reason. What was Luned to him? Nothing. So why should he help her?
He walked over to the table.
“These are pills,” Wycherly said. “I want you to take one of them each day. Don't take more. Don't skip any days. Don't share them with anybody. Don't let anyone know you have them.” He felt suddenly, eerily, mature. Had that covered all the possibilities for misuse? “I'll know if you do,” he finished, hoping that would cover all the rest.
Luned looked at the box, her eyes wide. Before he could stop her she'd opened it and poured the caplets out on the table. “These look just like plain old ordinary store-pills,” she said in a disappointed voice.
“But they aren't,” Wycherly said, possessed of a mad urge to bend her to his will. “They're magic. But magic never looks like what it really isâit wouldn't be magic then, do you see?”
And you're the village idiot, trying this Dr. Strange routine on this feeble-minded, credulous, backwoods Lolita.
Only was it so very credulous, a part of Wycherly's mind wondered, for someone to believe with such matter-of-factness in things they'd actually seen? Perhaps Luned expected him to be the new warlock on the block because such things were common here.
Angrily, Wycherly clamped down on such a dangerous fantasy. Soon enough he'd have the opportunity to see any number of things that weren't there; there was no point in making what was to come worse for himself by making up ghoulies and ghaesties with his conscious mind.
“If you don't want them, fine. You asked me for them, remember?” he pointed out.
“I'll take them,” Luned said quickly. The silver box disappeared into her pocket.
“Fine. Come back to me when they're gone.”
An hour later true dark had fallen, and Wycherly was alone in his new home. It was starting to cool down now, as the fire in the wood stove died. Luned had warned him that the night would be cold, and he'd want heat even in summer, but he could always light it again later.
She'd promised to come back tomorrow and bring all the beer that two twenty-dollar bills could buy. He'd have to be more careful with his money from now on. The general store didn't take AmEx, and he doubted that there was an ATM anywhere within walking distance of Morton's Forkâand to use either was to risk having his family find him.
But he could manage. He'd managed in worse situations.
Wycherly looked around the cabin. Two of the kerosene lamps burned brightly in the main room; one on the table, one on a shelf above the stove. Pale moths fluttered around both of them, making the shadows leap and flicker.
Wycherly studied the absence of alcohol on the table, trying not to think about the bottle of Scotch in the bedroom. Did he really want to do this?
Could
he do this? And if he could, why do it here, in a place that already reminded him of a cross between Green Acres and the Twilight Zone?
Could
he do this? And if he could, why do it here, in a place that already reminded him of a cross between Green Acres and the Twilight Zone?
He wasn't completely sure, even now. But deep within him, a faint smothered voice said that whatever he did he must do here, and now. That there was no other safe place, and that to delay at all would be to delay until it was too late.
So be it. But it was an odd feeling to be responding to the prompting of an inner instinct that urged him to save himself. Wycherly had much more experience with self-destruction.
She was losing her mind, having low-rent visions like a straight-to-video Joan of Arc. Sinah Dellon sat in the darkened great room, huddled in her big terrycloth robe, trying to put her world back into order. Maybe starting the search for her roots ten years earlier would have made a difference. She'd never been adopted; her records had never been sealed. From the moment she'd realized she had a real mother somewhere, she'd dreamed of meeting her with a longing that bordered on pain. If she'd come here the moment she'd turned eighteen, would it have helped?
No. It was too late even then.
She ran a hand through her hair distractedly. It had hurt to give up the long-cherished fantasy of meeting her birth mother. Athanais Dellon was dead, had been dead for all the long years her daughter had dreamed of their reunion while dwelling in the house of strangers. And now she needed her bloodline's help more than ever. Now she was having visions.
She ought to be running through the woods screaming her head off. Or at least driving for the nearest coast as fast as she could.
Sinah got up from the couch and wandered through the renovated schoolhouse. It was too fantasticâthere was no place to begin to think about something so far removed from reality. She glared at her dream house with real anger; the longer she stayed here, the more it seemed like a prison, not a refuge. As if instead of bringing her home, this house was insulating her from it.
Don't be ridiculous, darling. There isn't any “home” here. They don't want you. And now you're going nuts.
Sinah knew her behavior was right up there with that of heroines in gothic novels who, when confronted with all manner of ghastly apparitions, stayed right where they were (in the moldering isolated mansion) and waited to be murdered by the Byronic young master. But Sinah was looking for the truth about her family; without it, she couldn't go forward and she couldn't go back.
She went over to the window that looked out beside her
front door. The Jeep still sat there, a guaranteed magic carpet that would take her away at the turn of an ignition key. A sensible woman would goâand check herself into the nearest psychiatric hospital. Just because she didn't feel crazy didn't mean she wasn'tâafter all, didn't she think she could read minds?
front door. The Jeep still sat there, a guaranteed magic carpet that would take her away at the turn of an ignition key. A sensible woman would goâand check herself into the nearest psychiatric hospital. Just because she didn't feel crazy didn't mean she wasn'tâafter all, didn't she think she could read minds?
And see visions.
Fire. There'd been something burning; that was all Sinah remembered of her vision by now. Fire, pain, and terror. It must mean somethingâbut what? If only the people here would
talk
to her; tell her what it was that Athanais Dellon had done to them that made them shun her daughter nearly three decades later. Had Athanais had powers like Sinah's?
talk
to her; tell her what it was that Athanais Dellon had done to them that made them shun her daughter nearly three decades later. Had Athanais had powers like Sinah's?
Were they what had killed her?
Wycherly didn't feel even slightly drunk, and, in an experimental spirit, decided to see if he could get to sleep without drugs as well. But once he lay there in the darkness, sleep seemed to retreat until it was a thousand miles away.
And in the darkness, he heard voices. Murmuring just at the threshold of audibility, low purling chuckling cozening voices ⦠.
The black beast was coming for him, coming out of season, as if it had heard that Wycherly meant to free himself from it and was punishing him for even the thought of escape. And Wycherly realized that the sounds he heard were not voices, but something worse: water, the sound of running water somewhere near, outside the window, out in the dark ⦠.
Pulling at him. Lapping around his legs, pulling him under, cold and implacable. He was hurt, bleedingâhe could not remember what he was doing here, standing in a river in the middle of the night, but a reflexive automatic sense of guilt made him look around sharply, and that was when he saw it. A carâhis car?âsubmerged beneath the water, the beams of its dying headlights shining dimming, golden beacons beneath the water. The warm blood eddied about his legs; he fell to his knees in the river, and the icy water
reached his chest, making his heart clutch with its coldness. How could the water be so cold? Even the air seemed frigid now, as if all warmth, like love, was gone from his surroundings.
reached his chest, making his heart clutch with its coldness. How could the water be so cold? Even the air seemed frigid now, as if all warmth, like love, was gone from his surroundings.
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