Halloween: Magic, Mystery, and the Macabre (19 page)

He nodded gravely and sawed with vigor as they passed.

“Love it,” she said. “My brother plays the cello. Damned good.

Make you cry.” Her shoulder bumped his. “Ah, now check it. This

used to be a swell art gallery.” She indicated a deserted shop front.

The placard promised the impending advent of a chain Irish pub.

“Alas, the poor Krams. I knew them, Horatio. Lived here their entire lives, had local artists and poets in all the time. Robert Creeley read here, once.
The
Robert fucking Creeley. Nobody wants art, though.

Nobody wants poetry. What they want is another bloody pub the

same as every other cookie cutter pub. I hear the Irish mob had a

hand in running my friends out.”

“Where’d the owners go?” he said, thanking God she’d taken the

pressure off him by cursing. He put his hands into his pockets, then took them out again. He wished he’d remembered to bring gum. His

bum knee hurt. A panel van rolled by, slow as a shark on the cruise.

Its plates were splattered in black mud.

“Yonder.” She waved in the direction of the Catskills.

“That reminds me. There are caves nearby.”

“Caves everywhere around these parts. Why do you ask?”

“Something about the mafia or Prohibition I overheard. Maybe

the War of Independence. My memory is shot.”

“Hm. There’s also the Iron Mountain facility. They store all kinds of documents in some limestone caves in Rosendale. Hush-hush

stuff.”

“Aha.” He watched the van’s taillights dwindle. “I also heard some murders happened here in town. Gruesome was the word.”

“Sure. Those are still going on, though. Have been since the ‘70s.

Cops never bagged anybody. Never will.”

“Serial killer?”

She stopped. Her face was luminous as if animated by the

prospect of blood. He fell in love, just a little bit, then and there. “Uh, huh. Creepo snatches hikers and joggers and street people. Leaves

them in the woods. Maybe seven, eight years ago, a Boy Scout troop stumbled upon eleven decomposed corpses in a cavern along the

Wallkill. What kinda merit badge do you get for that, I wonder?”

LAIRD BARRON [143]

“Hold up a sec. The seventies? Forty years, give or take. That

seems like a long time for one guy to be about this sort of business.”

“I bet it’s a family thing,” she said. “Pop passes it down to the

eldest son the way tradesmen did during the agrarian era. Some kind of whacked traditionalist.”

“Lurid as lurid can be, yet, it never made the national news . . . ”

“It made the news. Twenty-four hour cycle is the problem. Today

it’s a mass grave, tomorrow it’s back to celebrity meltdowns and the peccadilloes of the rich and the beautiful.”

He stared at the moon and thought about her explanation.

“Are you here to research the case?” she said.

“No. My book is about an ornithologist. He dies in a valley in the mountains. Birds eat him.”

“Ah, you’re researching birds.”

“I’m here for you.”

Her turn to scrutinize the moon and not say anything.

They kept on. Residential houses now—old, Gothic models that

he’d noticed were common here in the Hudson Valley. Iron fences

and lushly neglected yards. Televisions flickered blue in certain

windows, projecting phantom lovemaking, train wrecks, explosions,

murder. Fires glowed inside jack-o’-lanterns. Lawn gnomes crouched with feral aspects in the long, wet grass.

He loved how she walked. Somewhere between a sway and a

shuffle, arms swinging loose, head turning on a swivel in the manner of every professional fighter he’d ever known. She possessed a sort of animal grace that wasn’t conscious of itself, but alert to everything occurring within its environment. Heat emanated from her in

waves.

He shivered. “Do you go armed, considering the situation?”

“Yeah, sometimes. When I’m not sure of where I’m headed or

who I’m meeting. Then I carry a blade.”

“Got it on you now?”

“Nope.” She kind of smiled and patted his arm. “Didn’t figure I

needed it. Besides,
I’m
a weapon. You’re safe as houses with me.”

“I’m sure.”

“Ask me where I got the knife.”

[144] BLACK DOG

“The knife you should be packing, but aren’t?”

“Yep. Haha, I did carry it this afternoon when I met the realtor.”

“Okay. Where did you get the knife?”

“From the Sneaky Fucking Russian.”

“Let me guess—he’s a karate guy.”

She grinned. “Right on. Speaking of the mob, this dude’s got the

swagger. Broken nose and gin blossoms, wears heavy jewelry and a

track suit. Thick accent. Eyes like pennies. A scowl mean enough to make a Spetsnaz drop his AK. Kinda skulks around. He asked me out

about a hundred times when he first arrived at the dojo. He got more and more belligerent about the whole thing. Finally he exploded and demanded to know what was wrong with me that I wouldn’t date

him. Shouting and stomping his foot, the whole routine. I told him this was unacceptable behavior and to piss off before he got kicked out onto the street. Very tedious.”

“Ah, an old school eastern gentleman. I like those guys all

right.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah. They tend to be tough, loyal, no nonsense types. I got a

soft spot for that. He’d probably make a great boyfriend after you slap him around a little.”

“Sure, it isn’t you he’s trying to feel up when you’re sparring.”

“Fair enough. Does he know you call him the Sneaky Fucking

Russian?”

She snorted and laughed. “Uh, no. Are you going to listen to the

rest of the story? I’m not finished.”

“Tell me.”

“So, right. A couple of months go by. The Sneaky Fucking Russian

keeps training, but he avoids me like the plague. Won’t so much as glance in my direction. One night he comes over to me with flowers and a small box wrapped in a bow. I’m thinking, oh shit, here we go again, but he holds up his hand and says, ‘No, no, I was wrong to

speak to you in that manner. You are strong American woman and I

am the dirt under your shoes. I am not fit to kiss your foot.’ Then he gives me the box . . . ”

“Thus the knife.”

LAIRD BARRON [145]

“Yep!”

“What kind is it?”

She shrugged. “What do you mean? It’s a knife.”

“I mean is it a Randall, a Gerber, a Ka-Bar . . . ?”

“Oh. Well, I don’t know. It folds.”

“You should get a fixed blade and keep it on you.”

“Thanks, Dad. I told you, I’m a weapon.” She was quiet for a long

moment. “Death doesn’t frighten me. I’ve died plenty of times.”

“How does that work?” He squeezed her hand and let it go. “You

feel warm enough.”

“
Everybody
has died. When I was six I went sledding and hit a concrete retaining wall under the snow. Felt my neck crack and

everything faded to white. When the world came back into focus I

was right as rain, but . . . ”

“I understand,” he said. The booze made him a bit giddy. He

remembered a long ago storm on Norton Sound, the rasp of diamond-

bright snow scouring the ice, a universe of white; his hands were

blurred shadows groping for purchase, and all around him, inside

him, a constant dull roar. “And for a few hours after you came to, everything was in too sharp focus. Everything was too real.”

“Yes! Too shiny, too present. I felt like a ghost floating through a world that had materialized just to accommodate me. By the next

day I’d forgotten. Sometimes it comes back when I dream, or at odd moments.”

“Like tonight.”

“Maybe a little.” She gave him a sidelong glance. Her eyes were

ringed like a raccoon’s and they shone with wary innocence. “The

portal opens on All Hallows. Tonight is the night to do a séance or summon a spirit, if that’s what floats your boat. All possibilities are viable.”

“How many times has it happened? The return from the dead

bit?”

“Three. You?”

He considered. “Eleven or twelve.”

“Jeez, dude! What the hell were you doing before you started

writing?”

[146] BLACK DOG

“Misspending my youth. Drinking, fighting, whoring around.

Tramping across ice packs and climbing mountains. The usual for

where I grew up.”

“Can’t leave it there. Tell me a story.”

“Oh, how about I do that on our next date? Give you something

to look forward to.”

“What makes you think there’s going to be another date?” She

smiled. “Come along, tell.”

“I drowned once when I was a kid,” he said. “Fell in the creek.

Dad had to press the water out of my lungs and get me going again.

Another time, very late in the winter, I was training a string of huskies on the Susitna River. The ice gave way under my sled and I went into the black water as deep as my chest before the team somehow dragged me free. There wasn’t any bottom to that river. That current is strong and it’ll just plain suck you under. Basically a miracle I survived. Got shanked in a bar fight in Dutch Harbor. A deckhand stuck me with

a big ass filet knife. Except that’s not quite what happened—damned if the point didn’t bounce off my chest. Not even a bruise, but I saw my life go pouring out onto the sawdust floor anyhow. There you go.

Three stories for the price of one.”

She chewed her thumbnail and kept walking, half a stride ahead.

She said, “I’m a bitch after you get to know me.”

“How many dates in is that, would you say?”

“Usually halfway through the first one. I like my space. Everything tends to be about me, me, me.”

“Everything?”

“I’m all I’ve got.”

“You’ve been fucked over. That’s coming through loud and clear.”

“With a vengeance,” she said.

“Okay,” he said.

“Thought it might be useful information. I’d hate to disappoint

you down the road.”

“That doesn’t sound so selfish.”

“I like to make people smile, but I hate them too. Ah, the essential dichotomy of me. It might drive you crazy. You’ll love me, but you’ll be a mad dog.”

LAIRD BARRON [147]

He chuckled. “The damage was done long before we met. Are

you happy?”

“I’m happy and I’m never bored. I’ve always thought I was meant

for great things. But, all that happens is I keep getting older.”

“You’re in a rut. Press your face to the grindstone and that’s all you can see. Same friends, same colleagues, same scenery. The years roll over into one another. Happiness and misery become intertwined.”

“I like my rut,” she said.

“People always think they do. It’s either that or slit your wrists.”

Streetlights stretched farther and farther apart. The night

deepened. They came to a bridge with rusty girders. The water below gleamed in moonlit streaks.

“I’ve lived in this town for twenty years and never walked across

this bridge,” she said.

“Tonight is the night?” he said. “For séances and a bridge crossing?”

“Yeah. Watch out for the ghost of the Hessian.” She pulled her

collar tight and winked.

He counted sixty-six steps, measuring each stride with the precision his father, a Marine, had instilled within him. Being slightly drunk concentrated his mind, oddly enough. Seventy-six steps saw them

atop a gravel embankment that functioned as a turnout for cars. A

heavily trodden path began just off the white line of the road and immediately forked. One path descended to the river; the other

climbed a hillock toward a copse of gaunt trees and a jumble of rocks.

She plucked his sleeve and led the way upward.

The largest, flattest stone shone white. She brushed aside a litter of dead leaves and primly seated herself upon its surface and beckoned him. For a time they sat, shoulder to shoulder; she smoking, he

watching the lights of the town and the headlights sparkling along the road. The wind rose in brief gusts and branches moaned in the

surrounding woods.

“This is romantic,” he said, putting his arm around her. She didn’t move one way or another.

“They say there was a grove here once,” she said. “During colonial times those white settlers who followed the Old Gods cultivated this

[148] BLACK DOG

hillside, planted oak and sage and conducted rituals. Naturally, the Christians eventually squashed them. Hanged the ‘witches’ from the trees, or drowned them in the river. The grove was razed to ash and this stone became known as the White Spot.”

He raised his head to examine the few scraggly trees that poked

from the dense soil, claws raking free of a grave. “Nothing good

grows here, I take it.”

“Stunted, emaciated shadows of the grand oaks of days gone by.

The ground is supposedly cursed, but I come here all the same. I feel drawn like a flake of metal hurtling toward a giant magnet. There’s a current in the earth, a conduit. It speaks to my blood.”

The moon floated across the near pane of sky, visibly traveling

like a golden sail on the night sea. She inclined her head toward him and they gazed into each other’s eyes. A charge arced from her and into him. His vision doubled. He beheld himself kneeling before her naked form, lips pressed to her sweet hip while the great and deathly blizzard that nearly killed him once raged against the walls of a

landlocked cabin. He had the sense of the moon plunging toward

the earth, the dissolution of himself within the following shockwave.

As he dissolved, the lilac taste of her was the last artifact of his being to go into that good night. A dog or a wolf howled.

She touched his neck and her hand was cool. She said, “What’s

wrong?”

“Must be the Great Conjunction, or too heavy on the booze,” he

said, shuddering free of the illusion.

“No conjunctions tonight. Plenty of single malt, though.” She