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    Night Relics
    Night Relics
    Night Relics
    Ebook473 pages7 hours

    Night Relics

    By James P. Blaylock

    3.5/5

    ()

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    About this ebook

    From the dark imagination of James P. Blaylock comes a new, chilling tale of the supernatural.

    When Peter Travers moves into an old house in a remote canyon to try to separate himself from his old existence, his wish becomes reality... all too literally. For his wife and son vanish and the people of the idyllic rural town begin to relive the horrors of a nightmarish crime committed one windy autumn, sixty years earlier. Against a backdrop of murder and midnight terror, Peter must contend with the abandoned relics of his own past before he can overcome the dark forces that haunt the canyon and the people he loves.

    REVIEWS:
    “Night Relics is a first rate tale of the supernatural with well drawn characters and plenty of shivery moments” -- Dean Koontz

    “Superb characters and setting, in a plot that meshes seamlessly...” -- Kirkus Reviews

    “[NIGHT RELICS] ... is marked by good prose, believable dialogue and fine description...” -- Publishers Weekly

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
    Release dateJul 24, 2012
    ISBN9781936535682
    Night Relics
    Author

    James P. Blaylock

    James P. Blaylock, twice winner of the World Fantasy Award, is a southern California writer whose short stories, novels, and collections have been published around the world. He was one of the literary pioneers of the Steampunk movement along with Tim Powers and K.W. Jeter. His short story “Unidentified Objects” was nominated for an O. Henry Award in 1990. Despite his close association with Steampunk, most of his work is contemporary, realistic fantasy set in southern California. His novel The Rainy Season was chosen by Orange Coast Magazine as one of the ten quintessential Orange County novels.

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    3.5/5

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    • 4/5
      A very good modern ghost story, with a nice pace, a melancholy but not depressing tone, and good pace and tension, and compelling characters. It falls into quiet horror, but I wouldn't say that is psychological, because when the ghosts are seen and heard they are audible and visible to all everyone there, who assumes they are real people, so they are clearly not in just in someone's mind.

    Book preview

    Night Relics - James P. Blaylock

    earthquakes

    SATURDAY

    ... we no longer see the devil in the bedcurtains nor lie awake to listen to the wind.

    —Robert Louis Stevenson Child’s Play

    1

    ANOTHER WINDY NIGHT, warm for late November and smelling of sagebrush and dust. Restless autumn dreams. The night haunted by a slow and deliberate creaking in the bones of the old house, by the rattle of doors shaken in their frames, by the sighing of the wind beneath the eaves, murmuring past the stones of the chimney. Tree branches tossed and rustled out in the night, and dry leaves skittered across the screens and scraped along the brick path.

    The full moon hung above the ridge like a lantern on a dark wall, and leafy moon shadows swayed across the kitchen floor. Peter Travers put a match to the mantle of a propane wall lamp, and the lamp hissed alive, turning the shadows into pale, flitting spirits. He measured coffee grounds and water into the shell of a stove-top percolator and lit the burner beneath it.

    Leaning against the counter, he looked out through the window, waiting for the coffee to boil. Beyond the oaks and sycamores, the hillside glowed under the ivory moon. Dust devils rose off the dry earth, whirling up out of the sage and sumac like uneasy spirits. The first smells of percolating coffee leaked out into the air of the kitchen, masking the desert smell of the wind. Ghosts. Even coffee had begun to smell like the ghost of mornings past.

    A gust of wind shook the house, moaning past doorjambs and windows and through the crawl-space cellar under the floor. How Beth could sleep through such a racket was a mystery, especially in a nearly strange bed. He felt a quick pang of guilt for not being there himself. It was almost like leaving a good-bye note on the bureau, except he wasn’t going anywhere and this was his house.

    The wind simply made him restless. For the past couple of days it had whispered across the back of his mind even when he slept, and he had awakened a dozen times in the night to the sound of the casements rattling and the walls creaking, sleepily certain that the wind would pull the old house apart piece by piece and shingle the canyon with it.

    Another gust shook the house now, and an unlatched shutter banged open against the clapboards, hard and flat like someone beating on the wall with a wooden mallet. He walked into the living room and pulled open one of the casements in the bank of windows on the back wall. The loose shutter swung out on its hinges, leafy moonlight reflecting off the chipped white paint. He pushed it all the way open and locked it in place with its iron hook. The night air smelled of oak and sycamore and just the faintest scent of jasmine. He leaned out the unscreened, open window and watched the dark woods and the high shadow of the ridge beyond. After a moment the wind fell, leaving behind it an uncanny silence, as if the night had abruptly quit breathing.

    And then very faintly, from somewhere in the trees behind the house, there arose on the still night air the desolate sound of someone weeping….

    THE HOUSE WAS a quarter of a mile from the nearest neighbor. There was no phone or electricity anywhere in the canyon. The refrigerator, the lights, the stove and water heater, all of it ran off propane. Although it was only five miles to the highway and civilization, it took half an hour to drive there on the badly maintained dirt road that followed Trabuco Creek on its winding course out of the mountains.

    The canyon widened out at the Trabuco Arroyo, where the dirt road dead-ended at highway pavement. On the ridges east of the Arroyo, hundreds of nearly identical stucco houses crowded the edge of the wilderness, the far-flung fringe of neighborhoods that sprawled for eighty miles across what used to be cattle ranches and farmland and orchards. When the Santa Ana winds cleared the air, much of Orange County was visible from the Holy Jim Trail that climbed toward Santiago Peak, a couple of rough miles north of Peter’s house, although often the coastal plain was obscured by a yellow-brown layer of smog.

    Six months ago, when he and Amanda separated, he had said good-bye to all that, to the smog and the suburbs, and bought a piece of solitude in the wild back country of upper Trabuco Canyon.

    PETER?

    He shut the window and latched it. In here, he said. He was relieved that Beth was awake, even though he’d done his best to let her sleep.

    He walked back into the bedroom, where she was sitting up in bed, clutching a pillow. She looked rumpled and sleepy. Her blonde hair was a mess, falling across one eye. Prowling around the house in the dark again? she asked.

    Yeah. I heard the weirdest damned noise just now. He sat down on the bed. I didn’t mean to run out on you. I was making coffee.

    A woman like me can’t compete with a good cup of coffee, she said. What time is it?

    At least four.

    Four, she said flatly. Maybe I’ll go ahead and sleep late, at least until five or five-thirty. After this morning I’m a parent again. She collapsed back onto the bed and pulled the covers up to her neck. Bobby, her son, had been visiting his father in the east somewhere; Peter couldn’t remember the place and didn’t want to. The less he heard about Beth’s ex these days, the better.

    Listen, Peter whispered, sitting at the edge of the bed.

    After a moment she said, I don’t hear anything but the wind.

    "Ssh. Wait." Peter held his hand up.

    For a moment there was nothing, just trees rustling outside the window. Then, very clearly, the sound of crying again.

    Did you hear it? Peter asked.

    Yes, Beth said, turning over and plumping up the pillow. I heard it. You can come back to bed now if that’s what’s got you up. That’s not a psycho killer. Wrong kind of noise for that. Psycho killers laugh; they don’t cry. Horrible rasping laughter.

    What is it then? Sounds almost like a lost child, doesn’t it?

    Sounds like a fox, Beth said. They cry like that, especially if they’ve lost a mate. Foxes mate for life.

    People should study their habits, he said.

    Come back to bed and we can study them now. She turned to face him, smiling sleepily and propping herself up on her elbow.

    I guess I’m a little edgy, Peter said.

    The coffee will help that.

    Peter sat there silently.

    Sorry. Didn’t mean to be snotty. She squeezed his forearm and then lay back down on the bed.

    That’s all right, Peter said. It’s this wind. Get some more sleep.

    Beth shut her eyes and shifted around, as if trying to make herself comfortable. She pulled one of her hands out from under the cover and patted his knee, then put it back again, turning over onto her other side. This mattress feels like a sack full of rope, she said, and then was silent.

    After a time Peter heard the crying sound again—the fox that had lost its mate, if that’s what it was. The sound came from a long way off now, and shortly dwindled away to nothing.

    • • •

    THE WEEK BEFORE, he had spent four days in Santa Barbara, staying with his brother near the harbor. They had sailed his brother’s catamaran every morning. Next month, maybe, if they got a few days of good weather, he would do it again. He would bring his son David along this time. Right now David was in Hawaii with his mother. If Amanda could take David vacationing in Hawaii, then Peter could take him sailing in Santa Barbara. It had gotten to be something like a contest between them since their separation six months back.

    BETH LAY SLEEPING, or pretending to. He kissed her lightly on the cheek before getting up, thinking that the last few months had changed everything and nothing. His marriage had dissolved, but his past still held on to him, more tenacious ghosts....

    Closing the bedroom door, he walked out into the living room again. The moonlit curtains moved in the draft, and behind them the silhouettes of leaves tumbled past on the wind. Peter walked slowly toward the windows again, listening to the wind’s whisper, imagining that he heard laughter on it now, buried under the moaning and whispering and rattling like a counterpoint to the crying he had heard just minutes ago. The floorboards creaked beneath him. A branch scraped against a window screen.

    Then, from somewhere far beneath these other sounds, like the echo of something whispered into a deep and narrow canyon, he heard his own name murmured, breathed like a sigh in the air of the old house.

    A shadow flicked across the parlor doorway just then. And slowly, as if someone were turning up the flame in the propane lanterns, a pale light illuminated the open parlor door, casting a silver glow out onto the living room carpet.

    2

    "PETER..." HE HEARD his name again, just the faintest murmur. It wasn’t Beth. It wasn’t coming from the bedroom.

    Shadows moved across the carpet at his feet—the dark shapes of slender tree branches waving in a soft wind, like a willow tree hung with green leaves.

    "Peter..."

    He stepped into the faint light, the shadows seeming to entwine him.

    There was suddenly the heavy smell of orange blossoms on the air. Then, as distinct and clear as a memory, there arose the smell of new-mown grass and of hamburgers sizzling on a barbecue, and, drifting lazily over all of it, the warm, hazy smell of a summer evening.

    His breath came in gasps, and he felt suddenly numb and dislocated. Like a sleepwalker, he stepped slowly across to look into the parlor, full of nostalgic longing as if he were stepping through a doorway into a fragment of some past time carefully manufactured from his memory.

    His tools lay scattered on the floor, the rug turned back, shadowy furniture piled in the corner beyond the stone fireplace. The light that suffused the room seemed to be drifting like smoke from out of the littered hearth. A ghostly willow tree stood rooted in the middle of the floor, its tangle of branches drooping at shoulder height and obscuring the ceiling overhead. Peter anchored himself against the doorjamb, holding on with both hands, watching the room shimmer like a desert mirage. A summery breeze ruffled the leaves of the willow, and pale sunlight shone through the branches, turning the leaves nearly gold. The dilapidated furniture beyond the tree was merely a lumber of dark shapes.

    As if from far away he could hear the hissing of lawn sprinklers and what sounded like laughter. There was the clanking of pots and pans in a kitchen. From somewhere beneath these sounds came the whisper of his name again, Peter... like the sound of a letter slid under a door.

    He stepped in among the lacy, glowing branches of the tree. Yes, he said, and instantly, as if in answer, the wind rose outside with a howling that shook the house. The ghostly light in the hearth vanished as abruptly as a blown-out candle flame. The old furniture rematerialized in the darkness, and the willow tree, the summer smells, all of it was gone like an interrupted dream.

    PETER HELD HIS hands in front of him, closing his fists to try to stop their shaking. He was aware suddenly that the air was full of the acrid smell of overcooked coffee. Mechanically, he went into the kitchen, moved the coffeepot to a cold burner, and turned off the stove, then slumped back heavily against the counter. He pressed his eyes shut, trying to recall the details of the dream. That’s what it must have been, some kind of waking dream, a hallucination.

    He picked the mug up off the counter and tried to pour himself a cup of coffee. His hand still shook, and he slopped the coffee across the stove top. Suddenly lightheaded, he clanked the pot back down onto the burner and forced himself to breathe evenly, holding on to the edge of the stove. The wind, the moonlight, the weird crying outside—all of it must have been rocking like a pry bar in some mental crack....

    He managed to pour the oily coffee into the cup now, along with plenty of grounds. Out the window the moon was just going down beyond the ridge, and the sky was gray in the east. A flurry of dry leaves blew past. Shivering suddenly, he went into the living room, opened a drawer in the hutch, and pulled out an envelope of photographs, then sat down at the kitchen table and sorted through them—pictures of David on a skateboard, and playing baseball, another of Amanda and David and himself in front of the Christmas tree.

    He searched through them for his most recent photo of Amanda, taken last Christmas, not a particularly happy time of the year for her. They had been dressed to go out, and she had looked like a model in her black evening dress. He had looked at the photo just last week and had thought without any hesitation, "Of course you married her."

    Surprisingly, that Christmas had been a good one, maybe because neither one of them had expected it to be. There was no hurry, no fighting, no forced holiday cheer. He and Amanda had even taken turns reading out loud in the evenings from Jack London’s South Sea Tales. Even then they were planning the trip to Hawaii—the trip that eventually hadn’t included him.

    He shuffled through the photos again.

    Are we drinking coffee or turpentine?

    At the sound of Beth’s voice, Peter jerked in surprise, his hand knocking his coffee cup, the coffee spilling out across the photographs and off the edge of the table.

    Beth grabbed the towel off the hook, snatched the photographs up, and dried them off one by one. She was dressed, as if ready to leave.

    Sorry, she said, wiping the table clean. She looked at the photos then, laying them out on the table to dry more thoroughly. I didn’t mean to set you off.

    It’s nothing, Peter said. I’m a little gun shy. I’ve been... He took the towel from her and sopped up the coffee on the floor.

    Thinking about your family, Beth said, finishing his sentence. She picked up a picture of Amanda and him, looked at it for a moment, then laid the photograph back down. I’ve always thought she was pretty.

    Peter waited.

    Walter and I ended up hating each other. You and Amanda didn’t?

    Not really. Not like you two.

    You don’t hate her?

    No, Peter said. I guess I don’t. He sipped gritty coffee from the half-full cup and then set it aside on the table.

    You know, Beth said after a moment, Bobby’s coming home this afternoon. It’s a week early. His father’s too … busy to keep him the full month.

    Walter’s a jerk, Peter said. I knew he was a jerk when you married him. He felt suddenly bitter, as if in some vague way he shared Walter’s weaknesses. Maybe all men did.

    Yeah, Beth said. I’ve always known how you felt about him. You were right. If I had known more about the way things worked, about how men are, I might have protected Bobby from some of it. I didn’t know enough.

    I don’t buy that part about ‘how men are.’ Some of us just aren’t like that. For a minute they listened to the sound of the wind.

    Yeah, she said finally, that wasn’t fair. She thought for a moment, as if choosing her words. Let’s just say I know more now. I won’t let it happen to Bobby a second time. She looked away, studying the photograph of Amanda again. Can I ask you something?

    Go ahead, Peter said.

    When you found out about Amanda, about what had been going on between her and the other guy, was it already over by then?

    What do you mean ‘over’? For who? Between us, you mean?

    No, I mean her affair. Was it still going on?

    Peter shook his head. Dead and buried.

    But you chose not to live with it? Not to let bygones be bygones?

    "Chose? Peter said. I guess it was a choice. Some things, though... I worked at it, but—what? It spoiled things. Maybe if I hadn’t known him..."

    And you weren’t ever guilty of the same thing?

    Not once, Peter said. I’m a confirmed monogamist.

    Like foxes, Beth said. I guess if you’re a confirmed monogamist you won’t stand for anything less in a mate.

    Peter shrugged. Since we’re telling the truth, he said, tell me what you meant about Bobby, about how you wouldn’t let that happen to him a second time.

    I don’t know, Beth said. What did I mean? I guess it’s just that in the last three months he’s become pretty attached to you.

    I guess he has, Peter said.

    "His life is all full of Peter this and Peter that. I bet his father is sick of hearing your name. I hope he is."

    Remember that we’re not all alike, Peter said.

    I know you’re not. Why do you think I’m here? If you were like that you wouldn’t be sitting in an empty room at dawn staring at photographs of the woman you broke up with after fifteen years of marriage. I guess what I wish is that you’d... figure out what you want right now, and settle down to it. Find a way to let the rest of it go.

    She stepped across and picked up the coffeepot, wrinkling up her face, trying to act cheerful. "And you complain about my coffee." She set the pot down.

    You going? Peter asked. Stay for breakfast.

    Can’t. I’ve got lots to do today before Bobby’s plane lands. He’s flying into John Wayne at noon.

    She put her arms around him and kissed him, long enough to take some of the fear out of him. Cheer the hell up, she said. This isn’t the end of life as we know it. It’s just time that we got to know it a little better, that’s all. It’s time we got serious.

    After she left, Peter sat in the kitchen chair staring into his empty cup. He could still feel the pressure of her lips against his. His hands remembered the shape of her body from last night, and he recalled the lilac smell of the scented powder she put in her bathwater and how, with her skin still damp from the bath, she had slipped into bed.... Each part of him seemed to have its own singular memory of their lovemaking.

    THE WOODS OUTSIDE were gray-green now in the dawn light. He got up and made a fresh pot of coffee, thinking now about the ghosts of summer afternoons. He went out into the living room and rummaged through the hutch again, pulling out more envelopes of photographs, sorting through them as he stood there, barely conscious of the wind sighing in the trees.

    There was something in the photographs, in their captured memories, that reminded him again of what he had seen before dawn that morning. He set them back into the drawer, then walked to the parlor door and looked in. Early-morning sunlight slanted through the shutters, dimly illuminating the room.

    On the carpet directly in front of the cold hearth lay a small flute, delicately carved out of wood, lying in plain sight like another hallucination. It was tipped across the edge of the tiles as if it had just that morning rolled out of the open fireplace.

    3

    OLD, OUT OF date—that was the only way Pomeroy could describe Mr. Ackroyd’s place. It was the nicest in the canyon, because it had always been maintained, but the interior was like some kind of time-warp place, all wood and wool and books and old pottery. There were doilies sitting around on things, too, which was weird in a bachelor’s house, but the whole place was clean, and that was something to admire. Most men couldn’t keep a clean house. There was even a little closet near the front door with a broom and dustpan in it.

    When Pomeroy had arrived that morning, Ackroyd was sweeping up the leaves and rose petals on the front porch, and had picked up the debris with the dustpan and put it into the bin instead of just sweeping it under the railing. Pomeroy had committed the scene to memory, playing it through in his mind to get the phrasing just right so he could tell the story to customers. That kind of attention to cleanliness and detail was why the place was in the shape it was in. That would be a selling point.

    I’d miss a television if I lived out here, he said, watching Ackroyd prepare sandwiches in the kitchen. The old man moved slowly and methodically. Surprisingly, he had offered Pomeroy something to eat, for no reason at all—a sandwich, even though it was only eight-thirty, more like time for breakfast. Still, that was real hospitality, and Pomeroy made a mental note to that effect. Recalling it later in conversation could be impressive. He was a man who appreciated a good deed, regardless of the time of day….

    Don’t you miss television sometimes? On a rainy afternoon with nothing to do, say?

    Never had a television, Ackroyd said. I don’t have anything against them, I just never got the habit, living out here.

    "It’s the old movies I’d miss—Judy Garland, Maureen O’Sullivan, Laurel and Hardy. I saw a great one just last night—Going My Way, with Bing Crosby. Have you seen it?"

    At the old Gem Theatre in Garden Grove. That must have been upwards of forty years ago now.

    How about when the old lady comes in at the end? If that didn’t bring tears to your eyes …

    Shameless, Ackroyd said, but effective.

    Der Bingle, Pomeroy said, sighing.

    Yes indeed.

    That’s what they called Bing, people who knew him.

    Ah, Ackroyd said.

    Der Bingle. It’s German, I guess.

    Sounds distinctly German, doesn’t it? Lettuce?

    You don’t mind washing it pretty well, do you? I’m not tolerant of insecticides.

    Pomeroy looked around the living room, calculating the square footage. Ever think of moving the hot-water heater out of the kitchen? he asked. That would be a selling point, moving it outside.

    Is that right? Ackroyd said, running the lettuce under the tap. You wouldn’t think something that simple …

    No, I’m serious. Just a couple of changes would make all the difference in the world. I’m talking a few hundred bucks. Wall-to-wall carpeting, maybe, and white paint on the woodwork. This place wouldn’t last on the market a week with upgrades like that.

    A coughing noise came from the faucet, as if there were air in the lines. Pomeroy grimaced. Where do you get your water? he asked.

    Spring up the hill, mostly. Late in the season or in drought years I draft it from the creek.

    "From the creek? Pomeroy could see through the window that the property behind the house rose steeply up the hillside. It was green with undergrowth, most of it shaded by live oak and sycamore and maple. A water tank, maybe a thousand gallons, sat at the end of a dirt path a hundred feet up the hill. Must be tough out here—pretty primitive for year-round living."

    It’s all I know.

    I’d like a place like this for a weekend getaway. Bottled water all the way. What do you think you’d need out of it?

    I’ve always gotten what I need out of it.

    I mean seriously. What kind of offer would I have to make?

    I wouldn’t sell it. Ackroyd laid the sandwiches on plates along with two variety-pack bags of potato chips. He poured iced tea out of a big jar into glasses and carried all of it out to the dining room table.

    Well, like I said out on the porch before we got to talking, Pomeroy said, I’d like to make you an offer.

    I’m afraid it’s a waste of time. Napkin?

    Thanks. Pomeroy took a paper napkin from a holder and unfolded it on his lap. "I mean a serious offer. What I’d give you on this place would make a healthy down payment on one of those new condos out in Tustin Ranch. All the amenities right there—stores, jacuzzi, pool. You wouldn’t have to drink water that’s had fish swimming in it. Or worse. He opened the sandwich and looked at the lettuce inside. A condo’s a sound investment."

    I’ve never been able to think of my home as an investment, Ackroyd said. That’s probably a personal failing of mine.

    Hey, Pomeroy said, shrugging. Some people have no head for business. But then the right kind of money comes along and they learn fast. Crash course. That’s the best kind of education a man can get. You won’t find it in any of these books. He gestured at the rows of books, dismissing them all. Then he waited a moment, giving the old man a chance to chew the idea over along with his sandwich. What do you say?

    Pardon me? He was staring at the photos that hung on the wall above the bookshelves. I’m afraid my mind wandered.

    Name your price.

    "My price? Somehow what you’re suggesting sounds so exotic that I think we’re speaking different languages."

    He sounded almost testy. Pomeroy nearly laughed out loud. The old man was shrewd as hell; you had to give him that. Pomeroy winked at him, one salesman to another. Clearly he’d underestimated the old man, sold him short. Money’s the universal language, he said. "But I don’t have to tell you that. You’re good. He shook his head in admiration. Scotchman in the woodpile somewhere, eh?"

    "In the woodpile?"

    Look, I’m serious. Quote me a figure. See if you can make me laugh out loud. What? Fifty K? Sixty?

    Ackroyd stood up without saying another word and walked into the kitchen. He was probably thinking about the money now, putting together a counter offer. Pomeroy would pretend to be shocked at the figure when the old man finally spit it out. The thing was that old boys like Ackroyd had been out of things for so long that they didn’t know what a dollar was worth when it came to real estate. You flatter them with the idea that they’re driving a hell of a hard bargain, and when you knuckle under and pay them off, they think they took you to the cleaners. Car sales was like that: well, there goes my commission…. Pomeroy pulled that old chestnut out of the fire every night of the year.

    Ackroyd returned, carrying a paper lunch sack.

    All right, Pomeroy said, what would it take?

    Ackroyd picked up Pomeroy’s uneaten sandwich and put it into the sack along with the bag of chips. I’m awfully tired all of a sudden, he said, gesturing at the front door.

    What?

    I’m afraid I need fairly regular naps. I’ve got to leave in a half hour, and I’d like to lie down for a moment first. If you’d like to take the iced tea with you, I can put it into a jar.

    No, thanks. Pomeroy was momentarily confused. The old man ushered him toward the door, showing him out. Go ahead and sleep on it, then….

    Please, Mr. Adams, Ackroyd said, calling Pomeroy by his current business alias, I’m not interested in selling my house. I’ve lived here for upwards of fifty years, and I mean to die here. There are things connecting me to this canyon that would bore you utterly if I tried to explain them to you, but I’ll guarantee that they’re sufficient to keep me here despite the lack of amenities, as you put it.

    He smiled briefly as the door swung shut. Pomeroy found himself standing alone on the porch. The old man was serious! He was apparently a nut. Pomeroy hadn’t pegged him for a nut. He got into his rented Thunderbird and turned out onto the road, pitching the lunch bag out the window when he was out of sight of the house. Nut or no nut, it was cat-skinning time. If he couldn’t take out an old fool like Ackroyd, then it was past time to retire.

    4

    THE WIND WAS still blowing as Peter drove along Chapman Avenue, over Orange Hill and down into the suburbs. He turned on the radio, punched through the buttons without listening to anything, and then turned the radio off again. There was something familiar and comforting this morning about the billboards and telephone poles and housing tracts, something safe and predictable.

    From the top of the dashboard, he picked up the flute he had found on the parlor floor. It belonged to his son David. Peter had bought it for him in Louisiana a year or so ago. Last Sunday David had brought the flute out to the canyon and had spent half the afternoon messing around with it, getting down the first few phrases of The Merry Old Land of Oz.

    So, what had happened? David had dropped it and then gone off without it? But then it would have been lying on the floor throughout the week, in plain sight.

    There must be some easy answer. Perhaps David had laid it down on the fireplace mantel and forgotten about it. Maybe the wind, or a rat, had knocked it off onto the floor. That was probably it—rats. Rats were to blame for everything—the appearance of the flute, the hallucination, the crying in the woods, the coffee burning. No doubt rats had also stolen the pocket watch that Peter had left lying on the front porch railing the night before last. The mayor of the rats was wearing it now, tucked into a vest pocket.

    A car horn honked behind him, and he realized that he was driving far too slowly, paying no attention. He sped up, thinking suddenly about Beth and about their talk that morning. The words confirmed monogamist rang in his ears again, as jarringly off-key as the flute on the parlor floor. In a way he had meant the phrase to be funny, but instead he had sounded a little too much like someone striking a holier-than-thou pose, choosing, as Beth had put it, to be offended by something. He hadn’t looked at it that way before. It was almost always easier just to blame your wife.

    He and Amanda had agreed to share custody of David, who was ten now. Peter’s move to the canyon was the one thing in the business that bothered Amanda. She could understand Peter’s wanting to live like a hermit, but David, she said, needed more. David wasn’t always easy. He could be moody, and in the last year or so, what with the breakup and Peter’s moving out, he had gone through a sullen phase. Peter’s attempts to fix things with him too often brought silence and shrugs.

    On impulse he pulled into the parking lot of a Sprouse Reitz dime store. There were eucalyptus trees and fall flowers growing in newly built concrete planters, and the stores had a recently tacked-on pastel facade. Peter was surprised to find that he couldn’t remember when the place had got a face-lift.

    Inside the dime store, things were the same as ever. The air smelled of yardage and popcorn. Near the door there were bins of Halloween candy and racks of plastic masks and wigs and skeleton suits. He looked the stuff over, tempted to buy one of the skinny rubber chickens that hung by its feet from a clothespin. A woman about seventy years old, very neatly dressed and with purple-gray hair, stood at the only open register a few feet away. She smiled at him when he inspected the chickens, as if she thought they were funny, too.

    It seemed to him that a dime store wouldn’t be a half bad place to work, wandering around with a feather duster among knickknacks and bolts of brightly colored cloth, sticking price tags onto glass tumblers and pincushions and putting in a few hours at the register, shooting the breeze with the occasional customer. It was a sort of haven built of trinkets, a never-never land where you watched the world slip past beyond plate glass windows. You could live back in the stockroom among the cardboard cartons, resting your feet on an old desk covered with invoices and with pens advertising wholesale dry goods.

    He caught sight of himself in the mirrored backdrop of a jewelry display, and with his fingers he smoothed out his wind-mussed hair. Yesterday evening Beth had told him that shaving his mustache had made him resemble Gene Kelly and then had tried to get him to dance with her to a tape of old Motown songs on the portable cassette player. It turned out that shaving his mustache didn’t make any difference at all. He still could dance only a sort of two-step that Beth finally began to refer to as the Clod. Gene Kelly, though … He was built about right, although he was a little tall. He tried smiling at himself in the mirror. Well, maybe with a hat and umbrella, kicking through a puddle …

    He gave up and walked toward the rear of the store where there were two long counters full of toys, most of them tossed together, some of the packages ripped open. Peter picked through them, flipping a Nerf football in his hand. The football wasn’t enough; there probably wasn’t a kid alive who didn’t already have one. He found a rubber stack of pancakes wearing a hat and carrying a submachine gun, plenty weird enough to impress the modern child, but he decided he didn’t want that, either.

    Then, sorting through a row of plastic revolvers, by accident he found just the thing—something called a Spud Gun, a pistol that shot pieces of raw potato. There were two of them, dusty and lonely, misplaced behind the six-shooters as if they had been forgotten there in some more innocent age. Raised plastic letters spelled out the word Spuderrific on the barrel, and there were instructions on the back for loading the things with potato plugs. Feeling lucky now, he took them up to the counter and handed them to the checker, who pretended to be surprised.

    Robbing the bank? she asked.

    Brink’s truck, Peter said.

    I got one of these for my grandson, she said. When he was six or seven.

    Did he like it?

    He loved it, she said. His mother wasn’t crazy about it, though.

    Peter hadn’t thought about that—hundreds of little potato globs stuck to the kitchen wall. It was too late now, though. The deal was done. She counted out his change and put the guns in a bag, stapling the top shut through the receipt.

    How old is your son? she asked, as if she wanted to chat, to hold him there a moment longer.

    One’s ten and the other’s six, Peter said, which was only a small lie, since Bobby wasn’t his son at all yet. Suddenly full of unanswered questions, he thanked the woman and walked out into the wind.

    5

    SOMEBODY HAD GOTTEN over the fence during the night and glued a bumper sticker to the front door. Save a lion, it said, shoot a developer. It wasn’t meant to be a death threat. Klein knew that. It was put there by a local backwoods no-growth hippie who couldn’t think of anything better to do with his time than screw up another man’s property with petty acts of malice. Since when had it been a crime to be a building contractor?

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