Текст книги "Dead Man's rain"

Автор книги: Frank Tuttle

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 5 страниц)

Chapter Five

The goblin-clock clicked and spun and gonged out the first hour of the night.

I sat and watched the lightening.

The storm raged and flailed and beat. There was scarce silence now, between the peals of thunder. The Merlat lawn was lit by lightening, showing blood-oaks bending and whipping and tossing. Paper-trash and bits of debris rode the wind, scampering across the grass in herds, tangling in the fireflower beds and thrashing, trapped and melting, in the face of the furious rain.

But Ebed Merlat did not walk. Sometimes I saw shadows fly, but they were just that-shadows, and rain and storm. I wondered why Mama’s pet hex wasn’t turning the lawn into a spook show.

Probably, I reflected, because it was too busy turning House Merlat into one. Seated in my chair in the Gold Room, I heard snatches of faraway music, heard laughter and footfalls and once even a baby’s cry from beyond the gold-gilt door. I smelled lilacs and a heady perfume and once the stench of meat rotting. Sounds and scents all faded when I turned my attention to them. Phantoms?

Some of the voices were familiar. Some of the music I knew.

Phantoms, perhaps-but whose?

This was Ebed Merlat’s storm, according to Mama. I listened to voices I knew weren’t there, and I began to wonder just what else had blown in with Lord Merlat’s angry tempest.

Voices joined the thunder. Mama’s hex stirred, and I almost made out the words.

“This is crazy,” I said, and I bounded out of my chair and stretched. Lightening struck right in the yard, rattling glass and ringing my ears, but Jefrey didn’t budge. In fact, he began to snore.

“Wake up,” I said, clapping my hands. “Wake up or I’m liable to start looking for jewelry to steal.”

Nothing.

I walked over to him, put my hands on his right shoulder, shook him. Shook him again, harder this time.

His head lolled, fell chin-down on his chest.

On the floor, on the far side of his chair, his coffee-cup lay where he’d dropped it. Something black and thick like tar had oozed out of it and pooled in a shiny black drop on the floor.

Even the widow’s coffee shouldn’t have done that.

I slapped Jefrey, hard. His head just flopped, but his eyelids never moved.

Thunder broke again, shook the House so hard lamp-flames flickered. I checked Jefrey’s pulse, found it and peeled back an eyelid to check his pupils.

While I did so, all the hair on the back of my neck stood on end, and though my back was to the window I knew in my bones that if I turned, if I looked, that Ebed Merlat was just beyond the three-bolt glass, waiting to meet my gaze.

“Two years in the grave,” came a whisper. “Dead mouth wide open.”

I bent and picked Jefrey up and heaved him over my shoulder. “Go,” said a voice, close by my ear. “Just go.”

The voice was that of the Sarge. The window at my back radiated cold, like a chunk of a Northland glacier shoved up tight against the House, white ice resting on the window-glass.

“Saving up a scream,” came a whisper.

A child’s hand slipped into mine. I looked to my feet, saw nothing, heard a soft giggle.

The hand in mine tugged me toward the door.

I went. I flung the gold door open, banged Jefrey’s head on the jamb lunging through and banged it again when I pulled the door shut.

The Hall went left and right. It was lit by two lines of new white candles, each standing in a brass dragon’s-claw set, eye-level along the walls.

One by one, starting at the left end of the Hall, the candles began to go out.

I turned and charged to my right.

“I cannot,” came a shout. I heard it, though it was faint and shrill and it sounded in the midst of an awful blast of thunder. It came from above. From the sick-room, locked and shut, the key buried with Ebed Merlat.

“I cannot,” it came again. “I love you.”

And this time, in the thunder, I heard the words “You must.”

Jefrey’s head struck a candle-holder. “Sorry,” I muttered. Then the Hall opened into the tile-floored foyer, and I stepped well away from the door and hid myself as best I could in the shadows at the edge of the candlelight.

Jefrey was as limp as a sack, but his breathing was steady and his pulse was strong. I thanked fate I’d only sipped the widow’s bitter coffee and hoped it had been laced with a sedative and not a poison.

Jefrey was getting heavy. I shifted him around, and I was deciding what to do next when I heard the sound of someone chopping wood.

I shook my head and pinched my nose. The sound of music from the ballroom faded, but the chopping sound continued.

Meaning it was real. Meaning that someone upstairs had an axe, and unless they were carving garden-gnomes, I figured they were chopping at a door.

The widow’s door.

All the servants gone. Jefrey and Markhat left insensate by drugged coffee. The widow alone in her room, too frightened to flee outside the House, too weak to fend off villains within.

Say you were a jilted heir. Say you decided the widow couldn’t file a new will if she, for instance, accidentally fell down three or four flights of hard granite stairs while fleeing from a revenant that everyone knows doesn’t exist. What if you told the Watch that Jefrey quit and left the country? What if you told them a finder named Markhat had departed the day before, after arguing with the widow and storming away, his pockets full of her money?

They’d shake their heads, make “there, there” sounds and quietly collect their inheritance tax and that, as they say, would be that.

“I cannot,” came the shout again. It was a woman’s voice. “You must,” spoke the voice in the thunder. “If you love me you must.”

And crash, came down the axe.

I lowered Jefrey to the floor, slipped off my shoes, picked him up again and padded across the dark ballroom. There was a cloak-closet just on the other side. I found it, got it open, and buried Jefrey beneath a pile of rugs I found in the back.

Music rose up when I turned, and in a flash-lit instant the room was full of dancers. They turned and they stepped and they twirled, and each face they lifted toward me was that of a grinning skull.

I blinked, and the floor was empty.

I reached down, took my knife from its ankle-sheath and closed the door on Jefrey’s muffled snores.

Footsteps sounded from down the darkened hall I’d just quit. They stopped at the Gold Room, and weak light filled the hall when someone opened the door to the lamp-lit room and stepped inside.

“Too late, kids,” I whispered. “Maybe another time.”

I darted across the ballroom floor. The air was chill in places, and once something cold stroked my neck, but I reached the foot of the stairs and charged up it sock-foot.

Halfway to the second floor, I heard toenails clack and scrape on the stones at my feet. Dog toenails. I pinched my nose, but the scritch and scrape continued, and were joined by panting.

“Thufe?”

Something warm and wet butted my right forearm and drew away. The dog-stink intensified, became at once familiar.

“Petey?”

Petey had been my dog, in the Army. In the tunnels. In the dark.

I pinched my nose. Petey was dead.

I smelled wet dog. You can’t mistake the scent of a big dog just come in from the rain.

Petey butted my forearm again. Time to get to work, boss,that meant. He’d always done that, when he thought my attention was wavering.

“Damn you, Mama,” I said.

Petey butted me, yipped. No time to get wistful. Not here in the dark.

I sprang up the steps, two at a time, quiet as a ghost in my sock feet. It’s only Mama’s hex, I thought. It’s only Mama’s hex, and a storm, and three long sips of the widow’s drugged coffee. I’ll be seeing Regents and dragons next.

I could hear the axe bite oak clearly now, and I knew that it, at least, was real.

Petey, he of the brave heart and the warm tongue and the white ring around his good left eye, Petey who lay buried in a weed-choked ditch five hundred miles and a dozen long years away, raced ahead and showed me the way.

Drugs or hex or haunts or all, by the time I reached the fourth floor-the widow’s floor-the dark was alive about me.

Petey was a dark bundle of shadows trotting steady at my feet. Voices spoke out beside me, others sang, others whispered or cursed or wailed or cried. Faces formed in the flames of the few lit candles that lined the walls, their mouths open, imploring, silent and small and gone with a blink or a flicker.

I’d pinched my nose so many times it had begun to bleed. I’d not noticed until I saw blood on my hand, and it was only then that I realized my fingers were going numb.

I shook my head.

“I cannot,” said a voice that silenced all the others. “ I cannot, do not ask that of me, oh God I cannot.”

Petey butted my arm, halted and made a low, soft growl.

We left the stairs. The axe-blows stopped. I followed Petey’s stiff-legged stalk to an intersection of halls, laid myself flat and careful against the wall. After making sure I wouldn’t dislodge any decorations-this was no time to knock down a portrait of old Aunt Hattie-I sidled up to the corner and pinched my nose hard one last time and listened.

“You idiot,” hissed Elizabet. “Why didn’t you just get the key?”

“She never let it out of her sight,” replied Othur. “How was I supposed to get it? Why didn’t you?”

“I’ll be through it in a minute,” spoke another voice, one I didn’t know. “Damned door must be two feet thick.”

Judging that they were sufficiently far away, and that the hall between us was dark, I peeped around the corner.

Othur and Elizabet stood together, an axe-swing’s distance from a bald behemoth of a man, who stood panting, leaning upon his axe.

I pulled my head back before anyone saw.

“Get back to work,” snapped Elizabet. “We don’t want them waking up before we’re done.”

The big man grunted, and an instant later the axe fell.

“Talo and Abda ought to be back by now,” said Othur. “Think they had any trouble?”

“With who? Jefrey, or that idiot from the Narrows?’ Elizabet snorted. “They’re both as dead as Daddy by now,” she said with that same laugh I’d heard that first day on the stairs. “Think they’ll come back to get you, too?”

Othur giggled.

Petey licked my hand. You might not believe now, I thought. But I bet you will before sunrise.

Petey whirled and growled, and I heard footsteps-booted, hurried footsteps from at least two men-sound down on the stairs.

We scooted out of there. Petey led the way, and I followed. Just like old times.

We wound and we wound and we wound, until the halls got narrow and the doors got smaller and the storm felt like it was just inches above our heads. The axe continued to fall, and I heard snatches of a brief argument, and then all the voices but those of the hex fell silent.

Petey led me to a door, stopped. And though he was nothing but hex and poison and memory, he wagged his tail, and I saw.

The door-latch turned, the door opened and there stood the widow, wide-eyed.

I raised a finger to my lips, and she bit back her words. I stepped inside, pushed the door shut. Lightning flared, and the widow’s eyes went wide, and I knew she was seeing the blood on my face.

“It’s nothing,” I whispered. “Good to see you. Why aren’t you in your room?”

“Mrs. Hog warned me to seek a secret place tonight,” she whispered. She bit her lip to stop its trembling. “Have you seen him? He’s out there. Can you hear him?”

I shook my head. Maybe she didn’t know. “I’m more concerned about your sons,” I said. “You know they’re at your door. With an axe, and at least two men.”

“I cannot,” came the cry again. “I cannot!”

The widow did not hear; instead, she nodded. “I know,” she said in reply to me. “I heard the sounds, went out. I saw.” She set her jaw, and did not cry. “What are we to do?”

“You must,” came a voice in the thunder. I pinched my nose and the widow winced.

“We’ve got to get downstairs,” I said. “They’ll be through the door shortly. When they find you gone, they’ll go room to room. We’d better not be here for that.”

“But-outside-Ebed is there, outside.”

“No, he isn’t,” I said. “He’s dead. He’s gone. The man with axe is very much alive.”

She shook her head. I heard the cry again ignored it.

“We’re going to go downstairs,” I said. “We’re going to get Jefrey. Then we’re going to a neighbor.”

She started to argue. I cut her off.

“What did Mama tell you?” I said. The axe blows fell faster now. Even House Merlat’s pre-War, solid oak doors weren’t going to hold them back much longer. “What did she say?”

The widow said nothing, but she looked me in the eye, nodded once.

“Let’s go,” I said. I stepped into the hall and let Petey lead the way into the dark.

We made it down the stairs. We hid once, at the top of the second floor landing, while Abad and a hireling-a man even bigger than the axe-man upstairs-trotted past, cussing and panting.

Abad’s friend had a crossbow. Not a big fat Army-issue Mauser, but a sleek black rig narrow enough to slip easily through doors and poke around corners. Probably had a killing range of only thirty feet, but that’s just fine for the odd bit of murder in our better stately homes.

We all held our breath. Mama’s hex showed me faces in the walls but was quiet while Abad and his crossbow-fancying friend passed.

We waited until the sound of their passage and the last faint glow from the lamp they carried was gone, and then I took the widow’s hand and we darted down the stairs. She moved well, and the soft-soled shoes she’d chosen were as quiet as my socks. And at least her customary black garb let her blend in well with the shadows.

At the foot of the stairs, I listened, heard only cries and moans. I led the widow to the shadowed alcove by the stairs and motioned for her to be still.

“Jefrey,” I whispered, and pointed toward the door to his closet. “Wait.”

I went, Petey at my side, ghostly dancers twirling about me. Blink they were there-blink again, gone. I put my ear to the door.

“I cannot, no, I cannot.”

Petey growled.

“Quiet,” I hissed. Then I heard Jefrey snore, and I opened the door.

While I gathered him up, I pondered my next move. It seemed simple enough-just sneak out the front and wake the Watch. The storm would hide us. Once away, we’d be impossible to find. With luck, they’d not know we were gone until the Watch came and told them.

I slung Jefrey over my shoulder and stepped back out into the ballroom and blinked away the phantom dancers about the time a crossbow clicked and sent a bolt all the way through my left arm, just above the elbow.

The widow shrieked and thunder boomed, loud enough to rattle windows. I dropped Jefrey and went down on one knee, trying to find the man in the shadows so I’d know which way to run.

Lightning flared and I found him, crouched in the dark on the other side of the staircase, five steps from the widow.

He lowered the crossbow, grinned, pulled out a long knife. He shouted something to his friends, but it was lost in the thunder.

Petey snarled. I’d heard that same snarl only half a dozen times, down in the tunnels. It was pure wolf, pure rage, sudden promise of a torn throat, of a leap and a bite and a wet red gush of blood.

The man heard it too. He heard it and he whirled, seeking its source, and a sudden rush of shadows broke from my side and threw itself full upon him.

He fell. He flailed and kicked for a moment, long knife whipping and slashing and striking sparks off the tiles.

I rose. Blood ran down my arm, kept running, and I could feel it rush out new with each heartbeat. But I rose and stumbled toward the man, halfway there before I realized my own knife was gone, dropped, probably under Jefrey and too damned far away.

The widow stepped out of the shadows, a red-on-yellow Hang fish-urn in her hands. Without ceremony, she lifted it high above her head and hurled it down upon the man still wrestling emptiness on the floor at her feet.

He rolled. She missed. The urn shattered, and the man cursed and rolled and caught her right knee with his hand. The widow screamed and kicked him hard in the face.

I leaped. He hadn’t seen me coming. Lightning cracked and burned, just past the stained-glass windows set high up in the walls, turning the floor red and green and a dark royal blue. I had just enough light to land a punch hard in his throat and shove my right knee hard into his groin as I fell. He gasped and I hit him again and then the widow pressed a long thin knife in my right hand and I buried the narrow blade deep in his throat.

He gurgled and went still. The widow pulled me up. The sharp end of the bolt stuck out of my arm, flopping loose, but at least it hadn’t lodged in the bone. Then I saw the blood begin to pool at my feet, felt the giddiness that comes as harbinger to shock.

“Got to get this wrapped up,” I said. “Got to get out.”

The widow bit her lip. Then she reached out and snatched the bolt free from my flesh.

I nearly passed out. She propped me up and took off her scarf and tied it tight around the wound.

“Get up, boy,” said a voice. The widow heard it too.

“Get up. You ain’t done yet.”

Behind us, Jefrey groaned and stirred. I blinked back tears, began to hear music again-though this time, it was a funeral dirge.

“Got to get out,” I said. I rose, managed to step over the dead man and take up his blade. “Got to go.”

The widow rushed to Jefrey’s side. She had him sitting up when I got there, and he even tried to open his eyes. But he wasn’t walking, and I wasn’t carrying him.

Shouts sounded, up the stairs, and I saw the flash of a lamp.

We took Jefrey between us and stumbled away. I steered us toward House Merlat’s tall, wide doors, but then I heard a warning growl beneath the thunder and saw dark shapes mass in the shadows ahead.

The widow halted. “See!” she hissed.

I squinted, looked. There-was that light? Down the hall, past the doors?

“This way,” cried Elizabet. “Check the closets!”

I cursed. The door was that way. The door and the lawn and the Watch-but we’d never beat Elizabet there, and whoever might be with her.

The widow yanked us around. “This way,” she said, panting under the burden of Jefrey’s weight and my own growing weakness. “There’s a safe-room.”

“I cannot,” wailed the voice, through Mama’s hex. “I cannot, please, please, no.”

Footsteps sounded, behind the light.

We went. I tried to remember hallways, tried to place windows and turnings and ways. Was there a sitting room to the right, with windows that might be opened? Where was the hall that led to the pantry?

But Mama’s hex filled the darkness with faces, and as my arm began to throb in earnest, my head seemed to swell and grow light. I could smell Petey’s wet musk, feel his breath hot and moist at my knees. I heard mourners cry amid the music now, and as we passed down yet another hall, it seemed that we merely joined a line of weeping shades already bound for the faint, faint light at the end of a long, cold tunnel. They shuffled and they moaned as they walked, and just as I realized I was moaning softly with them, Petey reached up and bit my hand.

I jumped and pulled the sagging Jefrey up so that his knees no longer dragged on the floor.

“In here,” said the widow. She let Jefrey go, fumbled with the latch and key. And then the door opened with a groan, and Jefrey and I fell inside.

“What is this place?” I asked. “Is there another door?”

“There they are!” shouted Elizabet, from down the hall. Someone answered, though who it was and what they said was lost to the thunder. “Wait, Mother!” she shouted. “There’s someone here I want you to meet!”

The widow heaved the door shut. More clicks and throws sounded in the dark, and after a moment I heard a crossbar being dropped.

Blows sounded on the door. “Oh, do come out, Mother,” shouted Elizabet from the other side. “Don’t be an old bore! Isn’t Daddy waiting for you, just outside? Haven’t you seen him, calling for you?”

The widow didn’t reply. I heard her fumble in the dark, open a drawer and lit a match.

I looked about. The room was maybe ten-by-twenty, no windows, one door. The walls and floor were plain, smooth stone, bare and unadorned. The ceiling was of banded iron. The only door, the one the widow had just barred, was also fashioned of old banded iron.

Chairs lined one wall. A dusty cask sat in a corner. I was betting it was dry and empty.

“Safe,” chuckled the voices. I groaned and let myself sink to the floor.

The pounding on the door ceased. “I’ll be back soon with the others, Mother,” said Elizabet. “I’ll bet Roger has a chisel in his bag. You’ll like Roger, Mother. He’s such a dear. I doubt he’ll even hurt you much, before he breaks your neck.”

Then she laughed, and the room fell silent.

I gasped. My arm throbbed and I imagined it was swelling and wondered if it would soon burst. The widow helped me up, tried to move me toward a chair.

“Rest,” she said. “They’ll not be soon through that door.”

“They don’t have to be,” I said. I turned, put my hands upon the cold, rusty iron. “They can take their time, chisel away the hinges. Might take two days.” I licked my lips. My mouth was so dry I could barely speak. “How long can we stay here?” I said. “How long will we last?”

The widow opened her mouth and quickly shut it. I watched the realization sink in-the realization that we had neither escaped nor found safety.

My head reeled, but I stood. “We’ve got to go,” I said. “Before she gets back. Let them think we’re in here.” I reached for the latch.

The widow knocked my hand away. “No!” she cried, her voice loud in the small bare room. “No! We cannot. We cannot open the doors.”

“I cannot,” came an answering cry, and now I knew the voice. “Do not ask that of me.”

The widow whirled, and sobbed, and I knew she heard it too.

The room flickered in the widow’s shaky candlelight, and Mama’s hex and my blood loss and shock rose up and conspired to show me another room, and another time. I saw Lord Merlat on his deathbed, saw the Lady Merlat-not yet the widow-kneeling at his side. “I cannot,” she cried over and over. “Do not ask that of me.”

She clenched a dark bottle in her hand. Medicine. A certain amount brings ease. More than that-and perhaps the doctors even stressed this, as the wet fever raged-more than that brings peace.

“I love you,” she sobbed, and this time her mouth moved silently with the phantom words from the hall. “I love you, but I cannot take your life away.”

“My God,” I said. The room spun, and I was back with the widow and the doors of rusty iron. “You think that’s why he’s back? You think he came for you because you couldn’t kill him at the end?”

She couldn’t meet my eyes. She looked away, the matches fell from her hand and she sank to her knees.

“I cannot,” cried the phantom.

She let out a wracking, wordless sob that sounded louder than all the thunder, all the hex-cries still ringing in my ears. She sobbed and caught her breath, and her thin body shook.

“He begged me,” she said, after a moment. “So much pain. I wanted to. I tried to. But. God forgive me. I couldn’t kill my Ebed.”

I backed away, toward the door. The throbbing in my arm rose into my shoulder, crept toward my neck. Dark spots began to dance before my eyes. Poison, I thought, and heard laughter in the distant storm.

Something wet stroked my good hand. Petey tugged at me, scratched at the door.

Do what needs doing, boy.

You’ll know what that is, when the time comes.

I lifted the crossbar. The widow didn’t see what I was doing until she heard the latch click.

“No!” she cried, but I opened the door.

The hall was empty. Thunder grumbled. I stepped outside, turned.

“Lock it again,” I said. “Lock it. And cover your ears.”

“You can’t go out there!” she screamed. “You can’t!”

“I’m not,” I said. I hesitated. Words were getting hard to form.

“It isn’t vengeance,” I said. “It never was.” I licked my lips, panted a bit, forced it out. “The kids know about the will. Know you’ve got to have an accident before you make it legal.”

Jefrey moaned, pawed at the air.

“He only came back on the nights the kids had plans for you,” I said. “He came back to save you. Came back to rouse the house. It isn’t vengeance he’s after, Lady. And it isn’t you.”

She wept. If she heard, I couldn’t tell.

I reached, and pulled, and shut the door.

I turned. Petey took his place at my feet. The hall tilted and pitched and I had to put my hand on the wall just to stay upright. If Elizabet and her brothers and their friends showed up while I was in that hall, I’d be joining the phantoms. The line of mourners still walked, but I pushed past them and stumbled back the other way.

Toward the doors. Toward the big dark double doors. I reached the ballroom, slipped on my own blood where it smeared the tiles, crawled until I reached the stairs. Then Petey nipped at my butt, and I stumbled to my feet and followed the lightning-flashes to the door.

I hid once, when the Merlat children came racing down the stairs, spilled onto the tile floor and went scampering off down the hall. I counted five-three Merlats and two angry henchmen, probably brothers to the man I’d just killed.

I held my breath and prayed none of them had the sense to look down and realize what those smears on the floors meant. But they raced away, toward the pantry, not the widow’s safe-room. Fetching more tools, I decided. Chisels and hammers this time.

I crawled toward the doors. Voices rose up around me. Petey clawed at the latch and whined and urged me on with yips and barks.

I reached the door, rose up, took the latch, got blood all over it. The dark spots before my eyes swelled and spun.

“I loved you,” cried the widow, and somehow I heard.

“She did, you know,” I said. And then I pulled myself up, turned the latch and opened the right-hand door.

The storm spilled inside, rain pouring, wind whipping, cold blast rushing. It blew the door back wide, caught the left-hand door, flung it open too, knocked me back and down on my knees.

I let the cold rain spray my face. The voices and the shadows grew dim, Petey whined and I opened my eyes.

At first, I saw only darkness. But then lightning flashed, Petey growled and there, on the lawn, was Ebed Merlat.

Ten long strides away, grave clothes wet and whipping, face pale, eyes rotted away, mouth wide open in a frozen lipless scream.

He walked for the open doors. Each time his grave-boot fell, thunder wracked the tortured sky. He lifted his stiff yellow hands and the wind howled and roared anew-and in the thunder, I was sure I heard the beginnings of a long, loud scream.

“All them years in the ground, boy,” said the voices. “Savin’ up a scream.”

He turned his eyeless face upon me, and I am not ashamed to say I rose and ran stumbling away.

Petey herded me with nips and yelps toward the safe-room hall. Rain and wind blew in behind me. That, and that awful thunder that meant Eded Merlat was one step closer to coming home at last.

I bounced off the walls and left blood on every surface, but somehow I made it back to the door. I collapsed in front of it, heard the widow weeping and sobbing behind the iron.

“It’s nearly over,” I said. “Not much longer.”

I don’t know if she heard me. But she heard, as did I, the sound of heavy footsteps treading slowly down the hall.

I tried to rise but couldn’t, and failed to crawl as well. The footsteps sounded louder, sounded nearer, no more accompanied by thunder, but with the loud crunch of grave-dirt upon the polished tiles.

The voices about me rose up, then fell to whispers. Petey stood stiff beside me, wolf growling warning, dead man or no.

A shadow fell over me, and the air-the air grew as cold as the heart of winter, or the bottom of a grave. I closed my eyes and jammed my hands, even my numb left hand, over my ears. I felt the iron door buckle where the dead man laid his hand upon it, but I heard no scream.

Mama’s hex let me hear something else, though. Ebed Merlat stood above me, an iron door and a grave between him and his widow, but I was able to hear some of what passed between them.

“I could not,” she said. “Forgive me, I could not.”

“I know,” spoke the voice I’d heard earlier in the thunder. “It is I who must be forgiven, for asking such a thing.”

“I loved you,” said the widow, and she sobbed and beat the door. “I always loved you.”

“And I loved you,” said the voice. “Forgive me.”

The widow cried. And then the door latch squeaked as it began to turn, as she opened the door to let him in.

“No,” he said. He must have laid hold of the latch, because it groaned and broke. “Goodbye,” he said. And though the widow pushed against the door, it held fast and shut. “I will always love you.”

As he spoke, I felt him turn away. Caught the edge of a sorrow so deep and so vast, it had bridged the gap between life and death. Then he stepped away, and the sorrow turned to rage. And as he walked down the hall his footfalls turned again to peals of thunder.

Voices sounded, upon the stairs. The heirs had found the open doors. Did they hear the footfalls, too?

“Daddy’s home,” I croaked. Petey licked my face. I heard screams down the hall, and felt the thunder swell, and then, though my hands were jammed tight against my ears, I heard Ebed Merlat scream.

All that time in the ground, Mama had said. All that time watching his wife torture herself because she couldn’t kill the man she loved. Watching his sons and his daughter creep and plot and sharpen their blades against this night.

He opened that dead mouth wide, and he screamed, and soon I did too, just to keep the awful wracking sound of it out of my dreams forever. I screamed and I screamed until my voice was gone and the last candle-flame guttered out and then, without warning, so did I.