Night Relics (31 page)

Bobby stood in the light, shading his eyes from the sudden glare. Abruptly he started crying, and Beth limped down into the
cellar and scooped him up, hugging him tightly for a moment before leading him back out into the daylight. The three of them
went back into the cabin and out of the wind, leaving the back door open.

“Who locked you in there?” Beth asked, kneeling in front of Bobby. Peter could see that she was furious, and was trying to
keep the fear and anger out of her voice, but without much success.

“It was just a kid,” Bobby said with sudden indifference, “messing around, you know. It’s no big deal.”

“
I’ll
show him about messing around,” Beth said. “Who was he? Have you seen him before?”

Bobby shrugged. “I didn’t ask his name. He was dressed funny, like he came from someplace. I think he was the kid who threw
the deer head at school yesterday. I heard he was dressed funny then, too.”

“What do you mean?” Peter asked. “Why do you say he was dressed funny?” But even then he knew what the answer would be—who
the kid was—although he didn’t know at all what it signified.

“He had on this shirt,” Bobby said. “You know, it looked like he was in some kind of old movie. And suspenders, too, and these
really ortho-looking black shoes.”

“Let me guess,” Peter said calmly. “He started crying really loud, and his mother came for him?”

“Yeah, how did you know? She was really mad, or scared or something.”

“So you know this kid?” Beth asked Peter.

Peter nodded. “So do you, in a way. You remember the woman we saw when we were standing on the porch? When the wind really
got going?”

“You said she was ‘the one,’ ” Beth said, nodding. “
That
one?”

“This was her son, I think.”

“And you think they’re the two you told me about? Up in Falls Canyon?”

He nodded. “I
know
they are.”

“Who
are
they?” Bobby asked. “They’re really geeks or something.”

“You got it,” Peter said. “They’re a couple of weirdos. Stay away from them. I don’t think they’d hurt you, but stay away
from them anyway, like you’d stay away from a snake if you didn’t know what kind it was.”

“
He
would,” Bobby said. “He’d hurt someone. He killed a cat. It’s down there, in a box.” He pointed out the door.

“Oh, no!” Beth said, putting her hand on Peter’s arm.

Peter stepped outside again, striding around the side of the house and down into the semi-darkness of the cellar. He saw the
cardboard carton immediately, and bent over to pull the flaps back, dragging the box into the sunlight through the door. There
inside, just as Bobby had said, lay a dead cat. It was a moment before he recognized it—Mr. Ackroyd’s cat, Sheba. If her eyes
were shut she would have looked asleep, but her eyes were wide open, staring at the low wooden ceiling.

Next to the cat, piled up on the floor of the box, was stuff that had been stolen out of his car and yard—a couple of insulators,
the spud gun, David’s flute…. What the hell did it mean? Things were weird enough without this. This kind of thing made it
vile, too. And he’d bet that the two of them, the woman and the boy, were even then up on the ridge, making their way down
toward Falls Canyon, repeating the horrible scene that they’d played out at least twice before over the last couple of days.
What they’d left here were more pieces to the puzzle, but the picture they seemed to want to form had the incongruous and
unpredictably changing shape of a nightmare.

He carried the box up the stairs and back into the kitchen, setting it down on the old linoleum. Beth looked in and then quickly
looked away.

“The kid killed it,” Bobby said. “I know he did. Just like the deer head.”

“I don’t think the kid did this, champ. Someone’s shot her. Probably the kid found her and put her in the box.”

“Actually,” Beth said to Bobby, “I’m pretty sure it was a lion that killed the deer. You could tell that from the bones. Something
killed it to eat it. The kid just found what was left, that’s all. He probably found Sheba, too. Maybe he even wanted to help
her. How do we know?”

“How could he help her?” Bobby said. “She’s dead.” He pointed at the box. “That flute there …”

“Yeah,” Peter said. “He stole it out of my truck along with the spud gun. I
guess
it was him that stole it.”

“Well, it was playing music.”

“What do you mean?” Beth asked, her voice tight. “The kid was playing it?”

He shook his head slowly. “No. It was
ghost
music, playing all by itself. And there was this green thing, like a floating glass thing. I think it was a pitcher of green
Kool-Aid, only not real. The kid called it ‘bug juice.’ ”

Beth hugged him around the shoulders. “You probably heard the wind,” she said. “The wind whistles like a flute when it blows
hard.”

“Wait a minute,” Peter said, crouching in front of Bobby and looking him in the eyes. “You thought it was what?”

“A real song. The flute was playing a real song.”

“Not the song, the other thing. What did you say it was?”

Bobby shrugged, stepping away from him as if he thought Peter had turned into a lunatic. “I don’t know.” He crossed his arms
and chewed on his top lip, then looked down and shoved the box with the toe of his shoe.

“He said it was lime Kool-Aid,” Beth said. “What’s the
deal? You look … You know how you look—like your usual self lately.” She shook her head a little, as if she wanted him to ease
off.

“I guess nothing,” he said, standing up. “Tell you later.” Maybe he was wrong anyway. Maybe it was coincidence, synchronicity,
whatever. He breathed deeply and tried to smile. Bobby was in bad enough shape already. There was no use going haywire on
him. “So what was the song, champ? ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’?” He forced himself to laugh.

“Probably not,” Beth said. “It couldn’t have been anything half that silly. Probably it was that nitwit seventies song, ‘Dust
in the Wind.’ “

“No, it wasn’t,” Bobby said. “And it wasn’t funny, either. It was that song from
The Wizard of Oz
, when they get to the Emerald City and everyone’s dancing….”

And suddenly Peter walked out through the open door and sat down on the wooden stoop. The wind blew through his hair. Leaves
skipped and danced their way across the dead grass, which was bent nearly flat. For a moment he seemed to hear the buzzing
of flies again, and for some reason he was desperately thirsty.

Whatever notions he might have had that morning about talking again with Detective Slater evaporated utterly. He heard Beth’s
voice, speaking softly to Bobby inside, still cheering him up. “ ‘Merry Old Land of Oz,’ ” she said, and right then he realized
that what he wanted to do more than anything else in the world was to gather them both up, climb into the Suburban, and drive
away—to anywhere, it didn’t matter. Somewhere out of the wind, out of the canyon, maybe to the ocean or the desert, where
there were vast, open sunlit places. He made himself stand up and go back inside.

“Could you close its eyes?” Beth asked, gesturing at the box. “We ought to take it back to Mr. Ackroyd, and I think it would
be easier if it weren’t staring like that.”

“Sure,” Peter said. He bent over the box and touched
the cat’s eyes, one eye with either hand, and right then, unmistakably, the cat blinked. Startled, Peter stood up.

“What?” Beth asked.

“It
blinked
. I swear it blinked.” He knelt by the box, sliding his hand under Sheba’s chest. She was warm. Where the hell did you find
a cat’s pulse? There it was, her heart beating faintly. He could just feel it.

“She’s alive,” he said, picking up the box and heading for the door. “In some kind of shock.”

Bobby bolted past him, around the side of the house toward the road. “Hurry!” he shouted, and Peter ran after him, cradling
the box and holding it as steadily as he could. He should have taken the rest of the stuff out of it, but he didn’t want to
stop to do it now.

Bobby crossed the creek ahead of him, leaping from rock to rock, but Peter slogged straight through the water and up the steep
driveway to the road, jogging downhill toward Ackroyd’s place. Beth was out of sight behind him, and he stopped suddenly and
turned, mentally telling her to hurry. He still wouldn’t leave her in the woods alone. But just then she appeared out of the
trees along the creek, and seeing him there, she waved him on. He turned and jogged down the road in wet shoes, past his own
place and rounding the last bend that would lead past Ackroyd’s house. He could see it now through the trees. The old man
stood on the porch, listening to Bobby, then looked down the road at Peter before turning around and going inside. In a moment
he was out again waving the keys to his car and heading around the side of the house.

“I’m going with him,” Bobby said, running back to be with Peter. “We’re taking Sheba to the vet and save her life. Come with
us.”

“I guess not,” Peter said. “You can do the job.” He set the box down and hauled out the rest of the debris, piling it by the
roadside.

When Mr. Ackroyd opened the car door, Peter slid the
box onto the backseat and Bobby climbed in beside it. “She’s been shot,” he said to the old man. “With what, I don’t know.
Maybe a pellet gun. We thought she was dead at first, or we’d have brought her quicker. No telling how long she’s been in
the box—at
least
an hour, probably longer.”

“The dirty bastard,” Ackroyd said quietly, shaking his head. “If I knew who did this …”

“Do you know a vet?”

“Dr. Stone out in El Toro. Open for emergencies on weekends. He saved her once before when she got mixed up with a coyote;
maybe he can again.”

“Hurry. Let’s go,” Bobby said from the backseat of the car. “Let’s pick up my mom.”

Mr. Ackroyd got in and started the car, backing out onto the road, gunning the engine and sliding to a stop next to where
Beth was just then coming over the hill. After saying something through the window, she climbed into the front seat, and the
car jumped forward, braking again in front of Peter.

“I’ll take your car home!” he shouted through the window.

“Keys are in it!” she said, and Mr. Ackroyd gunned the engine and drove off, the car disappearing around the bend.

K
LEIN WAS SHAKING SO BADLY WHEN HE WENT INTO THE
garage that he had to sit down on a pile of lumber to compose himself. He looked at his watch: two minutes to go. He stood
up and pulled the framing hammer off the wall. Push had come to shove. If Pomeroy was utterly out of control then he’d still
be there, screwing around in the house, not about to let Klein scare him off and get one up on him. Klein hefted the hammer,
feeling the weight and the balance of it. One halfhearted blow would crack a man’s skull like an eggshell. He set the hammer
onto the bench top, checking his watch again, surprised that only thirty seconds had ticked past. If Pomeroy had
any
kind of brains he’d be gone.

There was a noise, and he glanced up. Lorna stood outside the open garage door, looking in at him.

“Where’d you take off to?” she asked.

“I didn’t ‘take off,’ ” Klein said. “I went down to the hardware store in El Toro. I’m replacing the latches on Beth’s windows
for her.” He picked up the hammer and walked out onto the driveway.

“That man that tried to break in last night—the one you chased off. That was him, wasn’t it?”

“Who?” Klein asked. “What are you talking about?”

“The same one that called me today. I think this is worse than you’re saying it is.”

Klein looked at his watch. In a couple more seconds he’d be late for killing Pomeroy. He shook his head. “Nobody
knows who the prowler was. Probably just some vagrant or something.”

She stared at him, clearly unconvinced.

“I’ve got one more thing to do next door,” he said, nodding in the direction of Beth’s house. “I’ll just be a second.” If
he didn’t keep his word to Pomeroy now, he might as well kiss it off. It was time for the showdown.

“I thought maybe we should really talk about this,” Lorna said. “Without all the anger and saying stuff we don’t mean.”

“I won’t be more than a minute,” Klein said, hoping he was right. “You go on inside, and I’ll be right there. Beth’s house
is wide open. I’m just going to close things up.”

She looked at him and then looked at the hammer. It didn’t take any kind of genius to know what she was thinking—that he was
up to God knows what kind of thing, and that whatever it was, it was more important to him than she was.

“Look,” he said, “this is all really simple. It won’t take three minutes to clear it up. I was way off base with what I said
inside, and—”

“It was what you were thinking,” she said, interrupting him. “So you couldn’t have been that far off base, could you? And
I got defensive about it, didn’t I? Both of us have been doing that, like we’re on different sides in some kind of war or
something. But really we’re on the
same
side. And we’ve got to slow down and realize that before something happens to us.”

She was nearly pleading with him. And she was dead right. But he had to take care of Pomeroy first. Pomeroy was like a fire
about to go out of control. You put the fire out first, then you could sit down and talk about it. He turned away, giving
her the high sign with his fingers and thumb. “We’ll talk,” he said, winking at her. “But give me just a minute first.” She
stood silently, watching him jog off toward the gate into Beth’s backyard. He felt like the creep of the world.

He searched through the house, walking from room to room, looking into closets and corners, constantly aware of the hammer
levered loosely between his thumb and the palm of his hand. The house was utterly silent except for the creaking of floorboards
and the sound of the wind swishing through the eucalyptus trees along the driveway. Outside each closet door he gripped the
hammer handle and raised the hammer head high, half expecting Pomeroy to be standing inside in the darkness, waiting for him.