The Sisters: A Mystery of Good and Evil, Horror and Suspense (Book One of the Dark Forces Series) (9 page)

Moira Claymore turns back to Androcci, who is swaying back and forth. “You ended our lives when you ended his life. We had to work―all of us. All we really had was this damned house. The money we thought my father had―there wasn’t any. Turned out, he had pissed it away in a lot of money-making schemes that had never really worked, except for this house. This damned old house,” she repeats tonelessly and wearily.

Androcci pitches forward suddenly and vomits again―this time on Moira’s robe. She steps back in horror.

“Filthy pig! You filthy, ignorant Wop! You have lived far too long. It took a long time to find you, but we have finally done it and now you will pay.” Stella kneels and sponges Androcci’s face and cleans away the blood. The sting of the cold water brings him back to full consciousness and he begins to struggle against his bonds. He lurches forward and knocks Moira back against the cellar wall. Now he is in a standing position, but his legs are still tied and his hands are pinioned in front of him. He is a very strong man, and the sedative that had rendered him inactive enough to be trussed up when they had kidnapped him far away in New York is wearing off. His face takes on a grim countenance and he pitches first one way and then the next, like a bull hemmed in by bullfighters. The other women shrink back against the walls as he hops and stumbles around the room, trying to reach the ladder. He somehow knows that if he can make it up the ladder, he can get out the door to freedom. For he knows now what place he is in, and the fear that had gripped him earlier, though very strong, is now ebbing away.

“Get him! Knock him down! Don’t let him reach the ladder!” Moira shrieks. One of the women picks up a nearby brick and hits Androcci in the head, over and over. He yells, a deafening, enraged sound in the small room, and he head-butts her away. But the other women are on him now, and are dragging him back to the center of the room. His head aches and the blood continues to stream into his eyes. He knows he will soon pass out and then he will have no chance at all.

“You are giving far too much trouble, you Italian vermin. People like you should not be allowed to breathe the same air as the rest of us. And I am going to sacrifice you to our Dark God in the belief that you will be the first to go to that special hell even worse than the one we grew up in.” Moira pulls a long knife across his throat and he stops struggling.

“I didn’t mean to kill him, I swear.”

“It doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t mean to do. You did what you did, and we have suffered a long time. You will only suffer a short time, but it will be good to watch.”

And with that said, she makes a long, deep incision into his windpipe. He is too weak now to struggle much, and he can only utter small, inarticulate sounds, as the blood flows from the incision in his throat as well as the cuts on his head. He falls to his knees and rolls onto his side.  A bright red pool is growing around his head and the women begin a terrible chant, offering up this great sacrifice to their heathen God, the Father of all that is evil on earth.

“You will pay for what you did,” Moira says, smiling. “You will pay now and my father will finally be avenged.” Saying this, she speaks a short, chanting prayer of malevolence and dark oaths, and draws the knife back and forth against the man’s throat, holding his head by his black hair, and quickens her motions until it seems as though she is sawing a tree, or playing a hideous cello. Back and forth and back and forth, while the man gargles and sputters, and his eyes grow to be as wide as silver dollars. Finally, Androcci’s head comes completely off, and she lets it roll a short distance away from his body. Moira yells triumphantly and all the women—except Stella, who withdraws a little way in horror—gather in close to make the chant louder and more terrible. A salty, pungent smell fills the room along with the smell of burning tallow.

And, faintly, over in the far corner, a dim blue sheet of smoke goes up to the ceiling from a single cigarette, cupped in the palm of a man leaning quietly against a post. He smiles and rubs something deep in his pocket, then turns and begins climbing the ladder.

Nathan curled up in a blanket on the sofa, watching the flames in the fireplace. He had built it up strong and hot before moving to the sofa, and now he could not sleep. The house was very quiet. After he had tucked Sarah into bed upstairs he had gone outside and found a quarter moon rising in the east over the ocean. The beauty of the late night scene was touching, and it eased some of the trouble that filled his heart.  He lingered on the porch for a long moment―it was still very cold out―and then he had taken the blankets and pillow Sarah had provided to make his bed. There was nothing to do but sleep. He had turned off most of the lights, reasoning that running up the electric bill would be of no use whatsoever, and Sarah―who had taken a mild sleeping pill that her doctor in the city had prescribed shortly after the break-up with Rob―was already asleep. He had checked on her twice in the last hour, climbing the dark stairs quietly and slipping over to look at her sleeping form. How childlike she had looked, curled up in the middle of the big four-poster bed. It would scarcely have surprised him to see her with a thumb in her mouth. She was bringing out a fierce protectiveness in him, one that he had only known a few times in his life, and that only with people he really cared for.

“Does that mean she’s the one that is meant to be with me forever?” he asked himself quietly now, as he sought sleep on the sofa in front of the fire. “Is this what happens? After years of being on the lookout for the right person, they suddenly and for no apparent reason just fall into your life?” No answer came to him―just an empty ache that made him melancholy. He brooded for a long while until his eyes drooped. Then, he went to sleep.

Nathan’s dream began by sliding him into a deep, deep slumber as quickly as if he had ridden a long slide to the bottom in a playground. But it was no playground he found himself in. He was in a tuxedo, complete with white tie and tails, and he was in a house very much like this one, but not this one, and not his own. Somehow he knew this, and he blinked rapidly as he ran his fingers over the keyboard of a sleek, black grand piano. He played well and proficiently, moving from one classical piece into another. He looked up once and saw that a roomful of people was listening appreciatively to his concert, and he wondered how he knew how to play the way he was playing. He had only learned to play piano with a few lessons from his Aunt Millie. Yet here he was, as proficient as a young Van Cliburn, playing as though he were in a competition. His hands fairly flew over the 88 keys, as though he had known them all his life, and made the playing of these pieces his special passion.

The room began spinning, first slowly, as though he were sitting in the middle of a carousel, then faster and faster. The crowd of people and their faces began to whirl by at an alarming speed. Thus, he deduced that the room itself was not spinning―only himself, and his grand piano. This felt very odd, and gave him vertigo, so he decided to concentrate on the keys, and on his playing. He had reached a portion of the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in G minor, Op. 33 by Dvorak, and it was difficult to recall. As he watched his fingers fly, they became like quicksilver, flowing from one key to the next and then blurring into flesh-colored masses that writhed on the ends of his arms, like tentacles. Still he played on and he stole a quick glance up.

The room had changed to a prison cell, and as it spun by, he was aware of a sparely covered bunk and mattress, a toilet without a cover or lid, and a barred window through which he could see the quarter moon rising. He wondered what heinous crime had put him there and he quickly returned his gaze back to his hands, which still flew up and down the keyboard at an amazing speed, making the instrument sing like a large, ungainly songbird. He glanced down at his chest and found it bare. He no longer wore the stiff white frontispiece of the tuxedo, with its pearl studs, but the coat remained. He shifted a little to the side on the bench as he played, still faster and faster, and discovered that his pants were also gone, along with his underwear. He was, he discovered, stark naked, except for a tuxedo jacket, and playing Dvorak in a prison cell. He was smiling, because he knew it was a dream, and he wondered how he was going to tell Sarah about it. Then, the dream took a turn for the worse, and his attention was riveted back as though a hand had grabbed him by his hair and forced him to look to his left.

The cell was gone, and the room in which he had started was no longer spinning. The people were gone, but the room remained, lifeless and in shades of gray and brown. Here and there was a splotch of color, as though someone had hand-colored a sepia print and placed him inside it. He stopped playing and slowly rose from the bench. He heard music, an old record of Dvorak, the same symphony piece he had been playing, coming from another room, and he went toward it to investigate. The house he was in had the wide hall of both his and Sarah’s house, but with enough cosmetic differences to let Nathan know he had somehow been transported into another house on Beach Avenue. He wasn’t sure of the year, but the music playing did not sound as though it came from a CD or even from a phonograph record. He moved carefully into the great room and saw that the music was coming from a tall upright piece of furniture, as large as a small refrigerator. The lid was up and he saw a round copper sheet turning slowly on the top. He noted tiny square holes that passed over a roller, and he guessed that this in turn drove a series of metal rods beneath it like tuning forks, representing the strings of a piano, and the round plate tweaked each one in rapid succession. This gave the rich sound of an orchestra playing the famous piece, and the boxy instrument poured out the music through large, open doors on its front.

“It’s a music box,” Nathan said. “I’ll be damned. The biggest one I’ve ever seen.”

And he was mesmerized by the sound. It flowed right around and over him, as though he had stepped into a swift river, and he could feel each succession of notes as they briefly kissed his naked body and then flew on into the rest of the house. He began to dance slowly around in a circle, stepping off in side to side quarter turns, and holding his arms as though they held a beautiful partner.

He moved to his right, past an elaborately upholstered armchair, and past a potted fern out into a garden. French doors opened wide out from the great room, and through these Nathan danced, pirhouetting like a ballet dancer, into the balmy cool night air of Cape May. The season was mid-summer, and he could hear faintly now, over the sounds of the music box, the crashing of the waves.

Around and around the terraced patio he danced, naked as a baby, except for the cutaway white jacket with tails, and he did not care. His mind filled with wonder at this beautiful, dancing sensation and his sudden ease with music and the experience of it, and he looked up into the heavens above him and at the quarter moon, which had now risen high in the velvet night sky.

Around and around the patio he danced, like Fred Astaire, better than Fred Astaire, he thought, stepping as lightly as though he were on air and his movements as fluid as fine oil. He looked down and saw that he was no longer on the patio, but far above it, looking down on the house and the ocean. He stopped dancing and just looked around him. The night sky was cooler up here and he could see clouds coming from out beyond the horizon, storm clouds.

Lightning skittered and flaked inside the clouds and he began to be afraid. He was not rising any more. He floated motionless above the house, which he now saw was three down from his, and on the corner of Howard Street and Beach Avenue. The old place had been abandoned years ago and he saw the weedy yard in dark shadow far below him.

He looked to his right, and saw his own house and, because he could think of nothing better to do to escape the swiftly oncoming storm clouds, he began swimming. He kicked out with his muscular bare legs and pointed his torso, still clad only in the cutaway tuxedo jacket, toward his house. He arched his back into a jackknife position, as a diver might to reach the bottom of a grotto, and the move worked. He began descending rapidly, while the winds picked up behind him.

Now he felt as though he was being propelled from behind, swimming for his dear life through the thin summer air, hoping against hope to make a safe landing on his own front porch, which now loomed just before him. The wind and rain coming in off the ocean crashed into him with the force of a wave and rolled him head over heels into the front wall of his house.

Stunned briefly, he struggled to wake up. But the rain and the wind just kept pummeling him, until he realized that the water was in fact rising from the beach and surging toward his home. He pulled himself into a sitting position and saw an enormous wave coming for the house. He began screaming and pleading to wake up, to be saved from this terrible dream that had started out so beautifully. The wave now looked like a solid 30-foot wall of water, bearing down on him with the force and the sound of a freight train. And then it hit the house.

  Nathan was instantly immersed in bitter, salty seawater and slammed against the front wall of his house. Behind the wave was still more water and Nathan found himself treading surf that was over his head. Now he saw that if the water kept rising, he would be drowned by being trapped under his own porch roof.

He arched his back again and dove for the floorboards of the portico, reached out and touched the boards, and swam straight out through the roiling waters about 30 yards before he judged that it was safe enough for him to kick for the surface. He had been holding his breath for what seemed like hours.

Now, as his head broke through the surface, he was astonished to see the sun shining high in the sky, with gulls wheeling and keening and crying above him. He pushed aside a long string of kelp and began looking around for his house while he bobbed and floated―but it was nowhere to be seen.

How could this be, he thought, and a sudden feeling of overwhelming exhaustion overcame him.

The storm was gone, as though it had never been, and he was floating somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, naked except for the elegant dinner jacket still clinging to his body. He turned over onto his back, stretched out both arms and floated, riding up one wave and down another. He wondered briefly whether there were sharks circling him in his dream, and wondered if he ought to be more afraid than he felt at that moment.

But a voice came to him saying it would be all right. He smiled at the sound of the voice, which he could not place: it was actually a mix of voices, such as you might hear at a party. But one seemed to stand out above the others. It was a woman’s voice, elderly but kind. “Who are you?’ he asked. And the woman said, “A friend. Go back to sleep now and don’t dream. I will protect you.” And Nathan did as he was told, sleeping soundly and dreamlessly until the smell of strong coffee awakened him.

He rose from the sofa and found sunlight the color of butterscotch streaming through the sheer curtains into the parlor. He glanced at his watch and found it was 7:15 a.m. on Wednesday morning. The smell of vanilla-laced coffee came to his nostrils and he realized with a start how hungry he was. He stood for a moment and looked down at himself. No tuxedo jacket or white pants; just the Old Navy boxers and blue work shirt he had been wearing when he fell asleep the night before. His jeans were folded neatly on the floor by the sofa, alongside his Weejun moccasins. As he yawned and scratched himself, he became keenly aware of eyes watching him.

“It’s been a while since I’ve seen a man in boxer underwear,” Sarah said, smiling. “But do you all scratch yourselves like an old bear when you wake up in the morning? Inquiring minds want to know.”

Nathan reached for his jeans. “I’m not sure if we all scratch, but I know I do. Must be the primeval man in me.”

He smiled as he drew on his jeans and slipped his bare feet into his Weejuns. She’s even prettier in the morning than in the evening, he thought. “Where have you been hiding out? Wait. My first guess would be in the kitchen, making coffee.”

“Well, I did that first, you’re right, but then I went upstairs to take a shower, so I’m not qualified to play the part of a dirty, hairy cave girl.”

He crossed the room and threw an arm around her, drawing her close and smelling deeply of her fragrant short hair and clean skin. “What was that old commercial? My―you look lovely even without makeup.”

She gave him a quick wet kiss and looked deep into his eyes. “Thanks. Want some fresh coffee?”

“I’d love some, but first, I believe I’ll take a hot shower. You have extra towels for your cave-dwelling friends?”

“Of course. What kind of establishment do you think I run here? Come with me to the kitchen and I’ll get you fixed up with some java.” They walked with arms about each others’ waists, as though they had been good friends for years, and Nathan once again wondered at the sudden onset of this relationship, which felt so different from any other he had ever had.

“Do you like your coffee black or with something in it?” Sarah asked. “It’s vanilla hazelnut from Starbucks. Hope it’s okay.”

“Perfect. Thanks.”

She handed him a steaming mug and he sipped it, then took a deeper swallow. “How did you sleep? Good, I hope.”

“I slept wonderfully and only had one brief dream. You know, I don’t ever remember having such strange dreams as I’ve had since I’ve been here.”

“I know what you mean. Although last night, for some reason, I didn’t have a single dream, good or bad. Must have been the security alarm I installed last night.” She beamed at Nathan and he blushed.

“Well, luckily there was nothing to rouse the alarm,” he said, sipping at his coffee again. He looked over at the counter and found it topped with breakfast preparations. “I think I’ll run upstairs and grab that shower now, if you really are intent on making breakfast. It would be the perfect start to the perfect day.”