Vigilantes of Love (6 page)
The air here was colder, the chill running beneath his coat made him shiver. He was hungry too. And needed to use a bathroom. Mark suddenly realized he was more uncomfortable and scared than he’d ever been before.
His arm throbbed, and the sleeve, when he rubbed it, was wet with his own blood. That made his stomach queasy. Leaning against the cold rock wall, he slid to the floor.
The tears came easy, here in the dark, and he found himself thinking about the recent fight with his mother.
She was hurting just like him. But how could she just tell Dad to leave? Why couldn’t they get along?
Stupid,
he chided himself.
You can’t get along with either of them yourself, so who are you to talk?
He could do a better job at keeping his mouth shut, he supposed.
But she was so annoying. Fussing and fretting over him, telling him how to act and what to do. He was old enough to act how he wanted, and her smothering attentions only made him shove back harder. She was such a pill these days. Where was that smirking girl on the black and white stoop now?
And where was the happy-go-lucky kid holding hands with both his parents and dragging them spastically from booth to performance to food stand at the Renaissance Fair just a couple years ago?
Thinking about that summer, he realized that his parents had been pushing each other away even then. Sure, he grabbed hands and held them together, but there were looks and words between the adults sharper than what seemed called for at the time. Maybe his hands had held theirs together longer than he’d ever realized. And now that they had split, he was pushing them both away from himself as well. Why did it have to be this way?
Pulling the flute from his pocket, he ran a finger across its surface. So cool, so small. And yet, magical. Had he been like this flute for his parents once? Small but magnetically magical? His music wasn’t strong enough to hold them together anymore. Would the flute lose the power of its magic for him? Had he found a key to another world that would only grow useless and end up boxed in another attic someday, waiting for an unsuspecting child to uncover it? Would he even believe in its power tomorrow?
Putting the flute to his lips, Mark concentrated on imagining the girl he’d thought of in the eaves. He blew, softly, into the mouthpiece, and saw her violet eyes, her wan, knowing lips, her silken breasts. He pictured her running again with him through the fields, rolling in the fragrances of spring.
As he played, his mind strayed, the girl merged to the tender face of his mother, stroking his head as he lay feverish and sick in bed. She kissed his forehead and the ill feeling lifted slightly; the power of her love was great. And then she drifted away with a change in his music, and there was again the faery girl, stroking his head and kissing him with different ardor, and he tasted a different, equally-fulfilling love. The bitterness washed from his heart at her touch…
Then he heard the bellow of the troll.
Mark opened his eyes to find the faery girl kneeling with him once more. Her wide eyes were sad and her hands gripped his wounded arm.
“He will kill you when he gets here,” she whispered, her voice high and sweet. The troll’s voice sounded near, bellowing, “Hide ‘n’ seek’s yer game, eh? Boy, make me chase you and I’ll eat you finger by finger, toe by toe. You’ll be awake the whole time…”
“Can you take me back to the fields?” he begged her.
She shook her head. “You’ve brought yourself here, and you must take yourself out. Faerie is no place for humans – it magnifies your hates and loves so. You could lose your mind from each. I’m as dangerous to you as the troll.”
“No, you’re not,” he said, bending slightly to kiss her. His lips tingled again at her touch, but she broke the contact quickly.
“Go home, Mark. Don’t call for me or the troll again. Find a human girl, cherish your family. It all goes so fast for humans… Today you’re young and spiteful, tomorrow you’ll be old and bitter.
“Find another way; see the world as you saw it with me in the fields. Smell the life in the air. And go find it – in your world.
“Don’t look for me. You’ll play that flute someday and everything in your life now will be gone, you’ll be old and dying, and I will still be as I am today. The troll will still be hungry. And other, more deadly creatures will be eager to heed the melancholy of your call. This is not a place for you. Use the flute now for the last time, Mark. Make it sing of the love of your family. Only you can create it. Go home to your life and live it.”
The sparkling girl touched a kiss to his forehead and then, without pops or flashes of light to mark her passing, simply was no longer there.
Mark heard the troll’s voice right outside his passage. Was he just supposed to wish his way out of this? If he blew the flute now, the monster would find him. Then again, if he didn’t and the monster discovered his hiding place, he’d never get another chance.
Raising it to his lips once more, Mark pictured his grandparents’ home. The photo of his dark-haired grandparents with a smirking daughter before them on the stoop of their house came to mind, and Mark found himself looking for those youthful smiling people in his dour guardians of today.
“So there you are, boy. Thought you could hide in the cracks did you?”
Mark blew.
The sound was harsh, rushed, fearful. He squinted his eyes shut and thought hard of his mother. Of her hugs, of her caring. It made him squirm to admit to himself that he did love her, that he missed her. He pictured the two of them walking, joking, kicking stones into the pond…
The flute trilled from flat, to sharp, to a major key. As Mark thought of the good times he’d had, and could still have with his mother, his fingers sped faster and faster. They burned with pent-up feeling, and just as he felt a gate open, in his heart and all around him, the troll grabbed him.
“Noooo you don’t boy. Not escaping that way.” A claw ripped his shirt.
Mark opened his eyes as he hit the top note of the flute’s range. The troll slapped the instrument from his hand. The tip splintered in his mouth with a wayward whistle and flew up to strike against the ceiling. But with the sound of that last note, as the claws shredded his shirt, Mark also felt himself grow lighter, as if he were dissolving in the tune…
…and then he was standing, one foot in the muskrat hole.
He blinked, his eyes blinded by the greying dusk. After the green glow of the caverns, the edge of the night was as brilliant as noon. He pulled his foot from the hole, then looked for the flute. Had he lost it in the cavern?
There. A grey tube half hidden beneath a leaf. He grabbed for it, and came up with half the flute. Then he saw the other piece, a yard away. He pressed the two halves together and they fit without flaw. He hadn’t lost any slivers. Crazy glue could join them, but could he ever play a magical song again?
Slipping both pieces in his pocket, he wasn’t sure he ever wanted to. Life was tough enough without trolls trying to turn you into dinner. Though he’d like to see the girl again…
The warm, musty smell he’d always hated about the house seemed welcoming, not stale tonight as he pushed through the door and into the kitchen. Grandma was fixing dinner and her mouth dropped when she looked up from peeling potatoes at the sink.
“Mark, what happened to you? Are you alright?”
His mother’s voice sounded from the front room. “What’s wrong? Mark?”
She rushed into the kitchen, her face the mask of concern he recognized from so many nights when he’d been sick and she’d sat beside his bed. She came halfway across the room, then slowed, and stopped. She knew he hated her fussing, and she was trying to give him space.
“What did you do to your lip – and your arm?”
He touched his mouth and his fingers came away bloody. From when the troll had smashed the flute into his mouth as he played. It hadn’t hurt until now, but it was swelling, he could tell. The pain suddenly hit him with a dull snap.
Kicking off his muddy shoes, he crossed the kitchen and threw his arms around his mother. Then he stepped back a pace.
“I’m fine, I just fell in a hole by the pond and got cut up a little.”
He met her eyes then, and saw the love and pain mixed there. “I’m sorry about before, Ma. Really.”
“So’m I, kiddo,” she reached out and ruffled his hair. “Hey, your hair’s wet, too!”
“I know, I know. The… um… hole had water in it. I’m gonna go up and shower and then I’ll be down for dinner, okay?”
“Why don’t you take off your shirt and let me look at that…”
“Ma…”
“Right. Wash up.”
“There’s alcohol and bandages in the linen closet,” his grandma offered.
“I know. I’ll be down in a bit.”
He walked between the two women and down the hall to the stairs. And it didn’t feel like he was escaping. For once, he thought as he climbed the stairs, he might enjoy Grandma’s bland cooking. For once, this house seemed as wide as he wanted his world to be. Tonight, he might even be in the mood for some small talk.
Pulling the broken flute from his pocket, he stared at it for a moment. Then he walked to the bed, slid it away from the wall, and opened the door to the eaves. There was the box, barely visible on the floor a few feet away. He tossed the instrument, heard the pieces clatter to the bottom, then slammed the door shut.
He stripped off his clothes, wincing as his sleeve pulled at the already-scabbing arm. He hurried to the bathroom to clean up. He wanted to get back downstairs quickly.
For the first time in a long while, he was hungry.
The exit ramp for Willow Springs comes up fast, hidden as it is behind a copse of dense trees and brush, but I didn’t miss it. Not with my eyes straining to see it for miles before I was even close. This was a rendezvous I desperately wanted.
Needed.
I hate to be alone on a holiday. Even a little holiday like Halloween. To sit in the dim yellow light of a living room leafing through the latest
People
magazine or watching “Talk Soup” on cable while in every house around you people are gathered together: lovers, families, friends… It’s just too dismal to deal with. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, the Fourth of July, and yes, even Halloween, I try to fill with company; anyone besides myself. This particular occasion was going to cost me cash to indulge my desire, but hey, if I wasn’t paying for affection in this way, I’d be paying for it in another, right? Engagement diamonds, matching towels, a sofa set that didn’t have sagging springs… So maybe this way was cheaper.
I saw her as soon as I hit the exit: long black hair flowing over an army jacket that stretched baggily to her knees. Her legs were provocatively bare from knees to her ankles which were protected in dark miliary boots. Her face gleamed bone-white in the headlights, which I flipped to parking lights only as I pulled onto the shoulder.
“Alex?” I called out the window, still safely belted into my seat.
She nodded and immediately moved to the passenger door.
“What’ll it be tonight?” she asked, as she slid into the seat beside me. I could smell her as soon as she opened the door, a sweet mix of jasmine and soap.
Good. I always worried about hygiene in these situations.
“I thought we’d drive up 41 a couple miles and pull off the road for a couple hours, if that’s okay with you. There’s a mattress in back.”
She glanced into the back of the van and shrugged, apparently unconcerned.
“Fine. Two hundred dollars up front. And a guaranteed ride back here.” Her voice was light as a summer breeze, but its tone was no-nonsense. I didn’t counter. “Deal.” I held out my hand and she gave me a tired smile; her grip was strong.
I pulled out the cash, and slipped in an extra fifty for incentive. Her eyes lit when she counted the cash and came out ahead.
“Let’s go!” she grinned.
There’s a great little side road off 41 that leads down into the woods and ends just a couple blocks short of the canal. The best part about the road is that the lone house that it leads to was abandoned when its owner died a few years back, and the “condemned” notice on the window, not to mention the rather predictable flooding it undergoes almost every spring, has kept any interested parties from snapping it up. The pavement is more like a gravel road these days than blacktop, as every year the ice and overflowing canal carry it away in chunks.
It was to this private drive that I took Alex for a Halloween date. It wasn’t your standard holiday get-together filled with love and affection and Rockwellian warmth, but it was something. I wasn’t sitting at home alone, answering the door to a bunch of barely-costumed teenagers looking for free candy every ten minutes.
As I turned off the engine at the end of the road, she made a show of unbuttoning her heavy khaki coat. I watched with growing excitement, catching glimpses of her pale skin through the opening of her coat. All at once she yanked it fully open, exposing firm white breasts and a beautiful dark pit of a belly button.
“Trick or treat!” she called out, and I must have blushed as her teats jiggled in the blue light of the dash.
She laughed and slipped the coat off. She was completely naked underneath, and I could feel my interest stirring. Or should I say rising?
