Whitley Strieber Page 2

  A shimmering, golden goddess of a frog swam there. The bull's heart was captured and he went deeper and deeper after her, his loins tingling, his muscles singing in the quiet. She lured him farther and farther, deeper than any frog should go. Come, she said with her quickness. Swim, she said with her grace. Swim! Swim!

  The wind was seething behind him, roaring through the lilies, ripping the green and quiet waters, the holy pond.

  Swim, little one, the goddess called, swim with all your soul!

  The black torn began to run. He rounded a comer onto, Meecham Street. The neighborhood changed from houses to a row of neat little shops. Bixter's Ice Cream was open, its video games clattering and buzzing. Beside it the B. Dalton bookstore was just closing up. Joan Kominski locked her register and turned out her lights. The passing torn, unnoticed by her, shot her a vision of her own future: she was in a hospital room dragging breaths that would not fill her lungs. The hallucination was so detailed that she could smell the oxygen, see a picture of a clown on the wall, hazy beyond the plastic oxygen tent, taste her own drowning fluids. And feel Mike's hand in hers and hear him catling “Doctor, Doctor!”

  She paused, stunned. With shaking hands she lit a cigarette. She stood in her darkened bookshop, smoking, calming herself down.

  The torn trotted quickly down Main and crossed the Morris Stage Road. Mike Kominski was roaring home full of Amtrak martinis, late as usual from his job in New York, and it would not do to be caught in front of that particular Lincoln.

  The wind was just behind the frog now and he knew it was dry and he knew it was hot. He swam and swam in the roiling, dirtying, darkening waters. Ahead the maiden frog, the goddess, glimmered, urging him to rush on and on, deep to her, deep to her!

  “We're getting an electrical field!”

  The wind touched his back and it was hot and ugly and hard. It must be deathwind, for it smeiled of the man-place.

  He must not surrender to it! Ahead she flashed her gold beauty. He swam as he had never swum before, the water hissing past his nose and eyes, his whole body surging with the effort of it. Her eyes shone and her skin gleamed.

  The wind touched him again.

  “Heartbeat!”

  No!

  The wind surrounded him.

  “It's coming to rhythm.”

  The wind sucked at him—

  “It's getting steady.”

  His whole heaven collapsed. But she did not abandon him. Alone of all that beauty, the most beautiful part remained. When she saw him being dragged back, she turned and came, too, swimming fearlessly into the dry agony that had captured him. She ceased to animate his determination and concentrated on giving him courage. She went deep, deep into him, into the secret place where glowed the strength of his spirit.

  Then he hurt all over and he was hungry and he was hot and it was white and there were no fly Smells and it was bleak again.

  “It's alive, George!”

  “Damn right it is.” George Walker could hardly restrain himself. He stood up from the bank of instruments, he clapped his hands. And Bonnie leaped, a blond streak of joy, into his arms. He kissed her moist lips.

  He enjoyed the deliciousness of the girl while young dark looked on, glasses steaming. Relax, Clark, let an old man get a little. What does it matter, you get all you need on the Covenstead.

  George did not have that privilege. His relationship to Constance was too deep a secret; he could not go on the Covenstead except by dark of night, and then only in those rare instances when he was called.

  And as for living among the witches—well, if his work here was ever done, maybe. He had never told Constance his dream of retiring to the hidden witch village.

  He was afraid to. If she said to him what he feared, that it was not his fate to find peace in this life, he did not think he could stand it.

  Sometimes the loneliness of his position was very hard to bear.

  “We've got to get it out of the halter,” dark said, his voice full of testy eagerness. “It'll dehydrate. We really don't need a damaged specimen, do we, folks.”

  Bonnie broke away from George's hovering presence. “I'll bag it and return it to the terrarium.”

  “The isolate,” George said. “And band it with the date and time. Under no circumstances do we mix this little piece of gold up with the other beasties.”

  The frog was soon in the awful, waterless pond with the magic walls. It knew what it had to do here. Sit. A hop meant a hurt on the nose. The magic wall could not be seen, but it was as hard as the skin of a floating log.

  So the frog sat. Remembering its heaven was almost enough to make it turn itself inside out with agony. It begged the golden frog to help.

  I cannot!

  Take me back, please.

  I cannot!

  Dried, dead flies scattered down, sticking to its nose. The frog's tongue did not go to get them.

  Please, please.

  I cannot!

  The frog felt a cleaving that in higher things is called love, for the lost green water. All it could do, though, was sit, inert and mute, silent.

  Frogs are not made for anguish. Nor to have their deaths stolen from them. Nor to be dragged back from their humble paradise.

  Frogs are made for joy.

  The Wolff Building crouched dark and ugly ahead. Nobody saw the incredible way the torn entered the building, nor saw it slip down the corridor to just the right door.

  But the instant the cat went through that door the frog knew.

  The frog saw dangerous eyes on the other side of the magic wall. Once it would have hopped away from such terrible eyes, but now it only sat, apathetic. In its brain there repeated the image of the deep water and the golden lover it had lost.

  Even when the huge black head of the torn came oozing right through the magic wall, the frog did not hop. Had it understood the miracle involved in a cat pushing its head through solid glass without breaking it, the frog might have jumped. But it did not understand the magic wall. As far as it knew, the only purpose of glass was to disappoint frogs.

  The cat nudged the frog with its muzzle, then opened its mouth. The sharp frog eyes saw the tongue, the white fangs, the gently pulsating throat. And it saw more.

  Instead of terror, the frog felt eagerness. For down in the cat's throat it saw its lost beauty, her skin touched by sunlight. She lay in a crystal pond, tadpoles swimming about her flanks.

  Heaven was in the belly of the cat. The frog laid his head in the tom's mouth.

  This was one death it did not have to suffer. The torn snapped its jaws down so fast the frog felt nothing.

  But then it had already died once and that was quite enough. It saw a fierce flash of light and heard a sound like tearing leaves, and was gone.

  The cat tasted the cold, sour flesh of the frog, gobbled, drank down the cool blood, felt the eyes sticky against its tongue, the skin slick and bland, the muscles salty. It swallowed the frog.

  When it returned to the night, the moon had risen red in the east, its light diffused by haze from the Pecomc Valley Power Company's plant twenty miles away in Willowbrook, Pennsylvania. The torn proceeded along North Street toward Maywell's one and only housing development, “The Lanes,” built by Willowbrook Resources in 1960. The development's sameness had over the years been camouflaged by trees. Each of the streets had been named after a familiar variety. The birches planted on Birch were tall and blue in the moonlight, the spruce on Spruce dark green. On Elm there were oak saplings and one or two still-struggling Dutch elm victims.

  The cat passed down Maple Lane until it reached the Walker house, a substantial raised ranch with pale yellow aluminum siding and a '79 Volvo in the driveway. Beside it was Amanda's ancient VW Beetle.

  The torn went between the two cars, through the closed garage door, and into the game room beyond. It was indifferent to the fact that the lights were on; it knew that the room was empty. It slipped behind the sofa just as Amanda, nervous and hollow-eyed, entered. It cocke
d its ears toward her, and heard much more than her breathing, her movements. It heard the voice of her mind, the thready whisper of her soul.

  She looked around, shaking her head. Here she was again, back in this awful house. She knew that this was a triumphal return to Maywell, but having to stay in this place cast a brown shadow on her victory. Too bad she couldn't afford the Maywell Motor Inn. But she was lucky to have managed to get enough gas for the Volks, given the present state of her finances.

  This house. . . this town. . . the only thing about any of it that brought even a flicker of a fond memory was the thought of Constance Collier herself, with her wild colony of witches out on the estate, and her flamboyant seasonal rituals, the fires burning on the hillsides and the wild rides through the town.

  It all seemed so peaceful now. As she had gotten older, Constance must have mellowed.

  Sneaking out to the Collier estate to see the witches dancing naked in their April fields had been desperately exciting, one of the few thrills of being a child in this staid community.

  Always, though, there had been this house waiting at me end of a happy day. She had come home to the resentments and the sorrows: this was a place of unspoken anger, where people wept at night.

  She looked around her. Everything was brown and sad. Since George had bought it from his brother, it had—if possible—gotten even worse. There was an open chill on it now, as if hate was glaring into every room, from the walls, the doors, the very air. There was no more hypocrisy here, at least. The body of the house now reflected its soul.

  Standing in the family room, Amanda felt the weight of the place. She remembered one awful night when she had come in from watching—almost participating in—the Halloween ritual on the Collier estate. Her father had slammed her up against that very wall. “Never, never get near that place!” His voice had been desolate with sorrow.

  What would he think now? In a few days she was going to be working with Constance Collier.

  She wouldn't participate in witchcraft. She had no time for such fantasies. Of course, it would be interesting to learn more about what went on at the estate.

  She dropped down onto the old couch, the same one that had been here in her childhood. She was twenty and living on her own when she discovered that it was not necessary to be sad. Life could be rich and fulfilling. There was an aesthetic to living that had to be carefully learned, though, or there was the danger of falling down the same pit that had swallowed her parents, the pit of spiritual bankruptcy and moral indifference.

  Through the dirty glass sliding doors she could see the backyard. The old maple where she had spent so many summer hours was still here, and her throat tightened a little to see it. Ten years ago she might have been in that maple on an afternoon like this, sitting in the palace of leaves.

  Ten years. The silences were growing longer. Her relationships with her parents continued, dragging themselves out in her mind. If she had to stay here, memories that were now no more than haunting would soon become unbearable.

  She hoped that Constance Collier would have some space for her out on the estate. Then this hard journey would become much easier.

  The only thing that would ever have brought her back to Maywell was Constance Collier. Now she was here, chosen to paint the illustrations for the renowned writer's new translation of Grimni's. It was the biggest and best commission she had ever had.

  Mandy had come a long way for a twenty-three-year-old woman. A long, hard way. Of course the Catdecott Award for her Rose and Dragon illustrations had helped. She believed that the work itself, though, was what had attracted the secretive and distant Constance Collier's attention to an anonymous former townie.

  She could create whole, complete worlds in her imagination, and paint them down to the last strand of golden hair.

  Hands dropped onto her shoulders. “Oh!”

  “Sorry. I didn't mean to startle you.”

  “Uncle George.”

  She could only feel kindness toward him, since he had been so willing to let her stay here. As soon as she came in, she had understood the reason for his eagerness: without Kate and the kids, this place was more grim than it had ever been before.

  “You're looking lovely, Amanda.”

  “Why not? I've escaped Manhattan, and tomorrow I meet Constance Collier.”

  As he looked at her, his eyes brimmed with what she suspected might even be desire. Had she been a damn fool to stay with him? Perhaps she should have gone straight to the estate. But Miss Collier hadn't offered her accommodation. All of her old town habits came back. She dared not be forward with Maywell's leading citizen. Her agent had agreed. “Don't jeopardize the project by making demands right at first,” Will T. Turner had advised.

  “Have you got anything to drink?” Amanda asked. George padded off in his big sheepskin slippers, across the chipped linoleum of the game-room floor.

  “Old Mr. Boston brandy good enough for you?”

  She took it and sipped. “Mmm. Just the thing to relax.”

  “I'm glad you're here, Mandy.” He stood close to her. “I'm sorry the house was such a mess when you came. I just completely forgot. We've been very busy over at the lab.”

  “Doing good things?”

  “I'm hopeful.”

  She nodded, sipped again.

  “It's just that I'm so damn tired.” He snorted out a laugh. “We were very successful today. Very successful.”

  “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  “Not really. Except to say that it was rather a triumph.” His eyes regarded her steadily.

  If she stayed in this house, George was certain to make passes at her. She did not need that. She would have to risk giving Constance offense and request a room at the estate when they met in the morning.

  She was ready to ask George some polite question about his triumph, when something unusual happened. One of her most treasured talents was the ability to have detailed visualizations on demand. But they never came like this, unbidden.

  And yet, despite the fact that she was healthy and not in the least tired, she found herself in the grip of just such an uncalled vision.

  She saw a haggard George, crouching in a dark room, perhaps even the awful cold room in this house's basement. Her mother used to store coats there, in what had been billed in the brochure as a wine cellar.

  It was where Mandy and Charlie Picano had gone for prolonged kissing behind the coatrack.

  It was where their cat Punch had died, starved to death while the family was on vacation. Nobody had noticed that he had been shut in there.

  It was where the children had whispered tales of witchcraft in Maywell, and Marcia Cummings had insisted that witches were good.

  In Mandy's vision a woman lay on a table in the room, which had been transformed from a place of mystery into a torture chamber. The woman was dead, but George was not sad.

  At the moment George was smiling. Mandy recoiled at the sight of his cadaverous grin.

  “Mandy?” His smile faded. He began watching her closely.

  She threw back her brandy.

  “You're good at that.”

  “I've become a city girl, remember. And I'm tired from the drive. I want to go to bed.”

  “I'm sorry I forgot to make up the guest room.”

  “Don't worry about it. I can make a bed.”

  When she started for the room, he followed her. As they walked together through the quiet house, she hoped against hope that it would not be—but of course it was her old room.

  He paused before the door and took her shoulders in his hands. He kissed her forehead. “Good night, Mandy.”

  She fought down the shaking. When he kissed her, his lips felt like two leather straps. “Good night, George.” She turned to face her past.

  George and Kate had raised two kids here and not even changed the wallpaper. Mandy remembered selecting it at Chasen's on Main, being torn between the cornflowers and these repeating rose arbors. She had chosen th
e roses and then planted a rose garden beneath her window. Over three years her roses had flourished, and she had secretly called herself the Rose Girl. Only Marcia knew it! told Aunt Constance,“ she had whispered when they were naked beneath the covers of a soft June night.

  “You told her?”

  “She said to give you a message. 'Tell the Rose Girl that I love her and watch over her.' ”

  “Me?”

  Marcia had squeezed her, and they had slept in one another's arms, two ten-year-olds so innocent that their nakedness meant only friendship to them. “She loves us all. Let me take you to meet her.”

  That was strictly forbidden. Dad hated Constance Collier, hated Maywell. He was only here because Peconic made him be here in his capacity as regional manager.

  How Mandy had dreamed, lying in that bed beneath the window. Sometimes she saw witch lights on Stone Mountain; sometimes she watched the red moon rising, or the stars.

  There was dust in this house, dust and loneliness. And something else, too, she reflected as she closed the guest mom door. There was a place in the living room wall that had recently been patched, as if a fist had been slammed into it. Shades of Dad. “George is a violent man,” Kate had told her. And Kate had left him.

  Mandy brushed her teeth and lay down on her bed in the dark. The moon made a pale shadow across the floor. A hollow autumn wind muttered in the dry leaves. Down the street a dog howled.

  The old torn came out of his hiding place and proceeded across the game room, through the big eat-in kitchen, pausing in the living room. Against the perspective of the furniture the cat seemed unnaturally large.

  It had a weathered, surprisingly kind face. And that kinked tail was endearing. The shredded ear, though, was almost comical, making it seem as if the whole cat was lopsided.

  The torn waited on the sun porch where Mandy's easel and canvases were installed, waited amid the smell of linseed oil and paint. It saw the skill in her brushstrokes, and drank in the energy of the young woman. Poor, confused young woman. She had no idea how dangerous this story would be to her, as it unfolded.

  She had painted a haunted landscape with a fairy stealing down a moonlit path. . . painted it with skill and even passion, and more than a little of her own heart's truth. But what a relentlessly sentimental notion of a fairy. It looked like a bug, with those wings. And it was far too small. The picture had the fatal defect of charm.