The Spirit Wood (30 page)

In the rearview mirror, she saw the great gray bulk of the house, its windows lighted, its doors gaping open—someone was standing between them, arms outspread. She sped around the first turn; the house was eclipsed behind the trees.

Would they pursue? Were they around her even now? The rain sluiced down the windshield, too fast for the wipers, and drummed like angry fingers on the hood of the car. The violence of the storm, increasing every second, seemed to have aroused the forest itself to equal fury. Branches flailed at the sides of the car, scraping the metal, scratching against the glass.

Where
were
they going? Not far, not in this. Meg glanced over at her passenger. Mrs. Constantine was terribly still, rigid. The hospital, Three Towns General—she'd have to go there. First.

As soon as she'd gotten them out of Arcadia.

The driveway, circuitous and difficult at any time, was almost impossible now, in the darkness, with the tires spinning in the soaked gravel, and everything on all sides distractingly animated. Meg tried to concentrate on the road, but out of the corner of her eye she kept imagining—or seeing—a flash of white, a glint of silver. Or a black shape, blacker even than the impenetrable forest, scuttling along parallel to the drive. She cranked at her open window again, got it up another inch before she lost her grip on the wet handle. Above the wailing of the wind, she thought she heard, hollow as an echo, a high-pitched, long-sustained whistle.

They
were
chasing her. She worked the knife free of her belt, laid it across her lap.

Something darted across the drive, just beyond the headlights. She switched to high beams, to try to catch it. But it was gone.

One more turn, she told herself. One more turn in the drive, and then it would be a straight shot to the gates.

There was too much reflection from the rain; she switched back to the low beams.

She came around the last bend, broken branches littering the gravel and crackling under the tires. She reached up and pressed the electric gate release just as she saw the uprooted tree, half its trunk splintered down the middle, leaning on the iron gates like a drunken giant. Behind the leaves, where the lock would be, she saw a blue spark sputter.

“Oh, Christ.”

Mrs. Constantine's eyes opened.

“It can't be, it can't, it can't,” Meg said, pressing and pressing the release button. The car stopped.

“It's blocked?” Mrs. Constantine said, almost inaudibly. She saw the knife in Meg's lap. She was starting to say something when the trunk of the car suddenly jounced down, and she screamed.

There was a sharp clatter, a crack in the rear window, then a dent—punched right through the roof, shattering the dome light—as something scrambled up and over the car. Pounced on the hood, and turned.

Mrs. Constantine screamed again.

Peter slid down, over the front bumper. His eyes gleamed like gold; his hat was gone. There were two tiny horns poking up at the front of his skull.

Meg pumped at her window. He came around to her side, reaching toward her. She picked up the knife.

“Get away!” she shouted. His fingers, blunt and hairy, crept over the glass. She hacked at them fiercely. “Get away!”

He jumped back, wounded, clutching his hand.
“Meg!” His voice was choked, guttural. “I don't want to—”

Cranking with both hands, she got the window up the rest of the way.

Peter looked at her, mutely, through the wet glass. Then at the blocked gates. Mrs. Constantine's head had fallen to one side, her mouth open, her limbs slack.

Meg watched, in horror, as Peter galloped away from the car, toward the front gates. My God, he had a tail! A short, brown, wagging stump.

Bracing his head against the tree, he shoved it off the top of the gates. Then, heaving and panting, dragged it to the side of the drive.

“Go!” she could see him shouting, waving his bloody hand at the unobstructed gate. “Go!”

She pressed the button; the blue sparks flew. But one gate hung lower than the other now; the lock was soldered to itself. She pressed again. Lightning lit up the night.

Peter leapt up, like an acrobat, onto the iron bars, waved her to try again. And then, as she did so, he lifted the lower gate up, and pressed forward, his shoulder blades working powerfully. There was a sudden explosion, a shower of blue and white sparks, as the gates burst open, Peter clinging with one hand and one hoof to the screeching, electrified iron.

Meg gunned the engine and shot through the gates, skidding out onto Huntington Road. The last thing she saw, before gathering speed for the hospital, were the filigreed gates, crackling white as if hit by lightning, with Peter's body hanging limply from the bars.

V

Rebirth

Forty

A
SURPRISE?” BYRON
said. “Where is it?”

“In the kitchen.”

He dropped his books on the sofa, poked his head into the kitchen. Someone had hit him with a snowball on the back of his parka.

“Where?” he said, still looking.

Meg joined him in the doorway. “There—under your chair.”

The puppy was hiding; it had the sock, with the wind-up alarm clock in it, clenched in its teeth.

“Oh, my gosh,” Byron said, crouching down. “Come here, boy.”

“Girl.”

“Come here, girl.” He crawled forward, the loose sole of his shoe flapping. “What's its name?”

“I thought that should be a joint decision. I only got her this morning.”

Byron stood up, cradling the cocker spaniel puppy in his arms. “What's your name?” he asked it. “Huh?” He bent his head down as if to hear. “Argus? Is that what you said? Ulysses’ faithful hound?”

He looked up at Meg for approval.

She laughed, and shrugged. “It's okay with me . . . if you think it's feminine enough.”

“Sure it is,” he said, talking to the dog again. “With a face like that, who could have any doubt?”

Argus squirmed, and he put her down on the bare floor.

“I got her free, from one of my kids in the ceramics class.” They sat down on the sofa, Byron's books between them. The puppy scampered back into the kitchen. “I figured, new apartment, new lifestyle. Time we had a dog.”

Byron kicked off his shoes. “Good idea,” he said. Then, indicating the brooch pinned to her blouse, asked, “What's that you've got on?”

“It's the cameo Peter's mother left to me.”

Byron, struggling now with the zipper on his parka, looked up. “It's nice,” he said hesitantly, “but why all this today?”

“I don't know,” Meg said, as if there really were no reason. “Today I was just thinking about things a lot. I decided to dig this out of my jewelry box.”

“Must have taken hours,” Byron kidded. Then, after a pause, “It was your anniversary today, wasn't it?”

Meg smiled and flopped her hands helplessly in her lap. “Yes, Mr. Holmes, you've got me there.”

“I thought it might be,” he said, “when I dropped you at work this morning. But I wasn't sure if I should
bring it up.” He pushed his books to the floor, and moved over to put his arm around her. “You okay?” he said.

Meg nodded.

Argus, come to investigate the noise from the falling books, yapped in the kitchen doorway.

“Are
you
okay?” Meg asked, the sleeve of his parka cool against her neck. “Are you happy?”

“Deliriously so,” he said, kissing the top of her head. “Really.” And then he lifted her chin and kissed her again, hard enough to prove it.

The puppy scooted across the floor, dragging the sock, and leapt up with its paws on Byron's knee.

“Down, Dodger,” he said, the words tumbling out before he could catch himself. “Old habits die hard,” he said.

“I think Dodger's a lovely name for a dog.”

Byron, scratching the top of the puppy's head, said, “Now that you mention it, I think so, too.”

T
HE
COLD AIR
felt good, all over; the night, too. The old man had gone in—Nikos had disappeared, too—but he felt better than he'd ever felt, racing through the black woods, over the frosty hard-packed ground, outstripping even the dogs. At the gates—the new ones—he doubled back, around the west wing of the house and out onto the lawn.

For a moment, he paused, looking down toward the boathouse, dark and untenanted. He'd forbidden it to be used. Thoughts, unwelcome ones, began to surface. His breath clouded in the air. He was just about to run again, to blot them out, when Leah appeared on the balcony, beckoning to him.

He'd have preferred to go on running, at least for a while, but he heard the baby cry, from the bedroom. One lullaby—that would do it.

He loped around the fountain and, clenching his flute between his teeth, jumped to the drainspout, his hooves scrabbling at the wall like a mountain goat's. Hand over hand, he hauled himself up, clambering onto the cold stone parapet.

Leah was inside now, rocking the baby in her arms. “Play him to sleep,” she said, as Peter splayed his fingers along the wooden flute. “I think his horns are hurting him tonight.”