The Croning Part 6

Markers radiated unevenly to the cardinal points-rain-slick headstones of marble and granite, and a few of dull metal. Most were simple affairs, comprised of names and dates etched in rock. Gray plates lay half-sunken in the turf; hungry green moss filled the grooves and hollows of the most venerable carvings. Under these markers, in the wet, dark soil, nested the bones of pioneers and politicians, fishermen and fishwives, cowboys and bankers, immigrants and vagrants, ancient dowagers and newborn daughters, boys lost at war, girls lost in the cannery, atheists and parishioners alike.

Beyond the brief fields of colonial interment, he approached the cemetery's opposite flank, the newest portion. His grandfather's plaque was simple-a plate bolted to a flat wedge of stone. It said: LUTHER ANGSTROM MILLER.

CAPTAIN UNITED STATES ARMY.

BORN AUGUST 3RD 1882.

DIED JANUARY 14TH 1977.

They'd buried his wife in Bellingham in the family plot, so it was only Grandfather here.

"Brought you some flowers, Grandpa." Don arranged the flowers in what he hoped was a decent presentation. The ground was too wet to sit.

1945 was the year the world raveled for Don, the year he'd gone to live with Luther in the old homestead cabin among the hills outside of town. Mom wrecked her car and Dad went off the deep end, volunteered for some kind of suicide mission on a remote and long since forgotten piece of island real estate in the Philippines-the true circ.u.mstances of his death buried in a government vault for forever plus a day. Don's older brothers, Colin and Robert, were out of the picture by then: Colin moved to Wallachia and became curator of the venerable museum of natural history ensconced in Castle Mishko; Robert ran away and did a tour with the Marines, then joined a commune in San Francisco in the latter '60s and disappeared completely except for a half-dozen bizarre letters he sent to 'Whom it may concern' across the next three decades. Younger brothers Stephen and Ralph spent the summer across the pond with Aunt Muriel, a London socialite. Don's long-lost sister Louise had also disappeared into the world, touring Eastern Europe in the company of rich, urbane men, although she too wrote occasionally; last anyone heard she'd emigrated to Central America in the 1980s and performed relief work on behalf of the archdiocese.

Luther had taught Don to smoke in the summer of '45 when the boy was fourteen. Luther was suffering through his third year of retirement from the military and picking at a book of poetry he'd been writing since WWI. The bra.s.s had sent him to pasture after a long run-the time was nigh for a fresh vision, younger, more ruthless men were needed; b.a.s.t.a.r.ds even sneakier and more b.l.o.o.d.y-minded who could face the intricacies of a rapidly changing intelligence-gathering model. His wife, Vera, died the winter previous and the big house on the hill seemed cavernous with just the old man and grandson for inhabitants.

Grandfather's bitterness was tempered by a keen black humor, a refined, yet earthy, knack for self-deprecation that, in the final a.n.a.lysis, bolstered more than condemned. We're ants. Not even ants. We're gnats, kiddo. Don't neglect your prayers. He'd chuckle his horrible, phlegmy chuckle and clap Don's shoulder as if they were junior officers sharing a wry joke.

They didn't discuss family. Instead, they debated where Don should go to college, what he'd do for a profession. At the time, Don had his eye on Rogers and Williams with a mind toward oceanography. The reality became four years at Western Washington State and two more in Stanford and getting hitched to sweet Mich.e.l.le in between. Luther footed what his three scholarships didn't cover. Those summers with Granddad when school was out were from another life, but he recalled them with a clarity that frightened him.

The weather was apocalyptic. Sluggish days framed by metallic skies and brown gra.s.s. Dog days of heat and flies. Flies crawled everywhere, buzzed inside light fixtures, made mountains of their corpses in the porcelain coverlets, clung as blue-green tapestries upon the ancient screens; humming a death drone.

Luther sat on the porch during the worst, empty and half-empty gla.s.ses gleaming around his feet, the flowerbox above his head, scattered like tiers of candles in a medieval church. He slumped in the sweltering blue shade, chain-smoking and draining bottles of scotch without seeming effect, always dressed in a conservative suit, of which there were perhaps a dozen in his closet. He flipped his tie over his shoulder, eyes muddy behind thick-rimmed gla.s.ses. The Philco crackled from the living room, carrying fragments of baseball heroics through the screen door. He glowed in the dead light, a shade of himself, the dimming bell of a supernova. The steady fossilization had crept into his face, marbled the veins of his once delicate hands. Those hands had hardened into the knotty, blunt-fingered hands of the elderly, the spent.

Don knew things about Grandfather, there were many things to know. Luther Miller was, in some murky era of prehistory, a minor legend. The ma.s.sive house his own grandfather, Augustus, had built in the spring of 1878 was a repository and a testament of the rich mythology steeping the Miller lineage. Don had many occasions to examine the artifacts cluttering the study. Diplomas from Columbia and Princeton; yellowed certificates and dusty ribbons awarded by the U.S. Army. Besides the requisite family snapshots and wedding pictures, there were galleries of black and white photos of Luther as a whip-thin young man in an officer's uniform set against exotic backdrops-ruined cathedrals and monasteries, crumbling plazas and pyramids, Old World markets, desert encampments and jungle fortifications, destroyers and camel trains. In these pictures everyone was burned by the sun, everyone smoked cigarettes, everyone was armed and smiling like movie stars between takes in a historical production. And a hundred more, until the photos merged into a camouflage pattern that gave him a headache and a profound sense of inferiority. Grandfather had done things, and in the doing the man himself was shaped and scarred, his blood thinned, his emotions rarefied.

Luther didn't say much about that part of his life either. He didn't talk about his year in China as a liaison to the Shanghai Munic.i.p.al Police, his affiliation with the likes of Fairbairn and Applegate who became close friends. Nor his missions in France during the First Great War, never spoke of the papers he had auth.o.r.ed, the congressional reports he had partic.i.p.ated in. If asked, he shrugged and told the curiosity seeker that his life was archived in the Army record-look it up. And that particular statement was a fitting summation, in Don's mind. Luther Miller was a ponderous, open book with some of the pages carefully removed, others encoded.

That filthy, humid summer of '45 was the summer of the b.l.o.o.d.y war in the Pacific that would end in the bloom of two new suns, the annihilation of innocence, even in savagery. Luther taught him to smoke by example. And once, when the old man was so drunk his speech became deadly precise, his movements the functions of an automaton, he instructed Don to dress sharp and they drove the Studebaker into Olympia. Luther gave him a tour of the State Capitol, introduced him to a smattering of men in Brooks Brothers suits and Rolexes and smelling of expensive after-shave. Important men who smiled and shook hands with Luther, addressed him almost reverently, turned beaming eyes and shark teeth bared in shark grins upon Don.

Through it all, Luther smiled a windup smile Don found alien as the ice in dark canyons of the Antarctic, and called everyone by his or her first name. This ordeal lasted minutes, it lasted hours. When it was over and they were driving back into the hills, Luther, both hands locked on the wheel, asked what Don thought of the esteemed representatives of the people. After his grandson muttered whatever answer, Luther nodded without removing his eyes from the road and said, There is not enough rope on this wobbling ball of s.h.i.t to hang those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. The conversation ended there.

Don trudged back to the entrance. Night fastened upon the cemetery; lamps fizzed alight, mapping the perimeter. Again the breeze freshened, damp in his mouth. Branches groaned as if to promise, Go to your warm house and leave us here in the dark. Do not worry, friend, you will be back for a much longer visit one day.

CHAPTER FOUR.

The Seance (Now) It grew late.

Holly nipped out to chauffeur "Uncle" Argyle as his license had been revoked going on ten years. He lived at the Arden House located in an historic neighborhood on Olympia's eastside. The morning deluge resumed, driven by more powerful gusts of wind and the lane melted into a quagmire and her Rover was the most reliable all-weather vehicle. Argyle's arrival set the household on its ear again. He lumbered through the front door cursing the G.o.ds and the weather in a baritone that was the trademark of Arden men.

Argyle was large, bluff, and commanding in his cla.s.sic gray suit, a Brooks Brothers inherited from his great-grandfather, which rendered the ensemble unspeakably ancient, practically an historical artifact that might've interested a museum or two. He'd pursued an extravagant and fruitful life-soldier, dilettante, author, historian, scientist, and professional ne'er do well just a hair this side of royalty. He'd certainly inherited a fortune sufficient to make a run at the Prince of Monte Carlo, much of it, as the whispers went, from his grandfather's criminal empire during the Roaring Twenties.

His presence among the proletariat Millers was often remarked upon as slumming; this whispered by his presumed equals. The Arden clan extant comprised the inner circle of local old money families, the creme de la creme, the very royalty of three counties, and included such luminaries as the Redfields, Rourkes, Wilsons and Smiths and in roughly descending order. The middle sibling of eight Arden brothers, and the lone scientist from a brood of lawyers and playboys, he was the last standing and the least likely to consider peerage when making a.s.sociations. His brothers had fallen by the wayside due to wars, duels, disappearances, and in one notable instance, natural causes. Not that he'd escaped unscathed; a confirmed bachelor who'd stepped out of character once and married a lovely girl from Nice, a nurse who died young and made an embittered widower of him. Sometime during his seriously squandered youth, he'd gotten his nose lopped in an accident-no one knew precisely the circ.u.mstances of the mishap-and wore a gold-plated prosthetic to conceal the damage.

Mich.e.l.le's inexhaustible fascination with the arcane was responsible for their friend's inimitable fashion statement. A popular form of punishment in the Byzantine court involved severing an offending n.o.ble's nose, followed by the wretch's permanent exile; a fate periodically visited upon even the high and mighty emperors and their luckless consorts. One such emperor fled to a neighboring kingdom and had a golden nosepiece made to salvage some meager shred of his dignity. The emperor returned to court at the fore of an army of disaffected citizenry and slaughtered the would-be usurpers-after hacking off their noses, naturally. The notion appealed to Argyle and he commissioned Llewellyn Malloy himself to craft a number of the ostentatious prosthetics in gold, silver and platinum. When the kids were in elementary school, he gave each of them a fake nose; ivory for Holly, and bronze for Kurt. They wore them with embarra.s.sing regularity and tried to emulate Argyle's distinctive accent.

Dinner was roast pork, Don's specialty. He put the end leaves on the dining table and the seven of them enjoyed a lengthy banquet characterized by great quant.i.ties of champagne and rowdy banter that spared none. There were revelations: Winnie was nine weeks pregnant; she and Kurt delayed their announcement to ascertain the tests were correct, complications could've arisen since she had entered her forties, but the prenatal signs were rea.s.suring. The latter breaking news concerned Holly's last-minute decision to accompany Mich.e.l.le and a.s.sociates to Turkey. Holly was free to partake of such an excursion because she had secured a one-year leave of absence to pursue a masters in education, the prerequisite for a transition to an administrative career. It developed that Mich.e.l.le campaigned long and hard to convince her daughter that a vacation prior to the fall semester was just the ticket.

Between a dessert of orange sorbet and sponge cake, the lights brightened, then died. For several moments all conversation suspended as they sat in the darkness, surrounded by the roaring gale, the rattle of rain against the shutters. Don had prepared for this eventuality. Via penlight, he fumbled out a box of wooden matches and lighted kerosene lamps placed strategically around the house. Originally the property of Aunt Yvonne, the Millers had cause to use them frequently over the years-blackouts were part and parcel of living in the country.

Everyone eventually relocated as a herd to the parlor, amid much stumbling and nervous repartee, and sat near the crackling orange blaze of the fireplace, which Kurt had stocked with seasoned birch. Wind shrilled in the flue, and sparks showered the screen. Don brought out a battered camp stove and boiled water for hot toddies.

Waiting in the darkened kitchen for the kettle to heat, he felt isolated. Hushed conversation echoed down the hall and seemed to issue from a far more remote locale than the parlor. Thule slunk from under the table, a large, black shadow, and growled his fear-growl. He crouched, nose pointed at the cellar door. Not only was the door narrow, but also seemingly designed for midgets. Mich.e.l.le at five-foot-three ducked whenever she pa.s.sed through. The creaky wooden stairs descended some fifteen steps and made a ninety-degree left-hand turn. Fractured, sunken flagstone gave way to hardpack dirt about two-thirds of the way in and the enclosure smelled of wet earth and rotting wood. Don minimized his excursions down there, had pared it to once or twice during each summer visit.

Thule whined. Don shooed him into the hallway. He fixed the drinks, standing in an awkward way at the counter so he didn't put his back to the cellar. Which was worse than silly; it bordered paranoia. He ferried the refreshments from the kitchen and pa.s.sed them among the a.s.sembly. He experienced a short-lived fright upon realizing Mich.e.l.le had disappeared. He nearly panicked, nearly went tearing through the house searching for her. Such an overreaction could've proved disastrous as he was blind as a bat in low light, gla.s.ses or not. Fortunately, his wife materialized from the gloom, a trifle confused why her excursion to the bathroom to powder her nose was suddenly a federal issue. Don mumbled an apology about being jumpy and gave her a conciliatory peck on the cheek.

That matter settled, they waited there in the parlor, sipping their toddies and reminiscing, voices subdued as if the loss of electricity had sunk them into the Dark Ages when peasants scurried into their cottages before dusk and barred their doors and made signs to ward evil.

It was Argyle who suggested a round of ghost stories. How could they in good conscience waste such a perfect alignment of inclement weather, candlelight and agreeable company? No one leaped to second the prospect, but it hardly mattered. Once Argyle seized upon an idea, he proceeded inexorably and heedlessly along his charted course. He launched into a travelogue account of his infamous journey to the interior of China to doc.u.ment migratory patterns of a particular tribe that hunted near the Gobi Desert; incidentally his work netted some obscure, albeit immensely satisfying award. His oratory was punctuated by knowing asides to Mich.e.l.le who smiled indulgently and certified the veracity of his observations through her very silence.

Don conceded that Argyle spun an excellent yarn. It possessed the proper elements-star-crossed lovers, cruel fate, revenge from beyond the grave, a rare flower that bloomed precisely where the lovers were stoned to death, the haunting legend that echoed down through the generations as a cautionary fable. Everyone clapped at the denouement, whereupon Argyle, who had likely recited this exact tale in a hundred seedy cantinas across the globe and twice as many lecture halls full of drooling grad students, half rose to execute a gallant bow.

"Well done, Argyle, well done," Don toasted his old friend. "Too bad you're full of bull chips. Who's next?"

After an uproar of laughter that served to cut the tension, Kurt said, "Well, how about it, Holly? Spin us a haunted house yarn, will you? The thing with poor, hapless Boris-"

"n.o.body wants to hear about Boris. They've heard all my stories." Holly had long resented Kurt's opportunistic mockery, the insult doubly painful by her mother's collusion. She'd first confided this to Don when they were moderately toasted at Kurt's wedding reception and the conversation turned to the subject of the afterlife and whether Grandma and Grandpa might be floating about as ethereal presences.

"Ah, right, it's true." Kurt grinned. "But you tell them so well. As for Boris, I think you came up with that humdinger because you're allergic to cats. You had it in for puss from day one-admit it." He ducked the mug she chucked in the general direction of his head. "Or maybe you just wanted to help Mom prove her Hollow Earth theory..."

Don cast a sharp glance at his wife to gauge her reaction, but she continued to smile and he suspected she'd had more than enough to drink at that juncture. Or, miracle of miracles. maybe the wounds had actually healed.

Then, quick as a serpent her eyes changed and she stared at Kurt with great intensity. "My hollow whatsis?" she said with the sugary inflection that emerged only when her mood was wrathful, the tone she'd adopted before flexing her claws to shred a hundred hapless colleagues in a hundred debates.

"Uh, the, well, you know what I mean." Kurt coughed and looked around for rescue.

"Oh, sweetie, everybody knows there's no such thing as little people," Mich.e.l.le said. Her grin was feral. She showed too many teeth, still perfect after all these years. "But there are better stories. I ever tell you about the time Dr. Plimpton took me to a wh.o.r.ehouse in Spain to meet his sister? She was highly placed. Ran the all the other wh.o.r.es ragged. Just a happy coincidence as Louis was pursuing rumors of a community dwelling in an uncharted cave system. Don, too bad you were done with caving by then. The stalact.i.tes! The stalagmites!" She tossed her drink back with that same awful grin plastered on.

"Linda?" Don said quickly to Holly's girlfriend. "Do you have an anecdote you'd care to share with our humble gathering?"

Linda declined, citing the fact she couldn't watch a horror movie unless she covered her eyes during the scary parts. Don waved off an opportunity to join the fun. The conversation lost momentum and he thought perhaps everyone would call it quits, which suited him. It had been a h.e.l.l of a long day.

Winnie looked at Kurt. "Tell them about the witch."

"Uh, that's not interesting, Win. Trust me, Holly's are whoppers." He wasn't laughing now. His mouth tightened. Don noted him clenching and unclenching his fist.

"Your story is very frightening. I shivered when you told it to me." She smiled innocently, her tiny hand pale against his arm, her face tilted upward so their eyes met. Don stifled a chuckle because he knew feminine revenge when he saw it in action-d.a.m.ned if she wasn't inflicting reprisals for her husband's overbearing behavior. He made a note to avoid crossing the demure woman from Hong Kong.

Kurt's flush was apparent even in the shadowy light. "Bah. Mine's hardly a ghost story. Mom, surely you've got one." He sounded vaguely desperate.

Mich.e.l.le said, "I don't know any ghost stories; just true ones." From her smug tone Don knew she was high as a kite on the champagne. He'd surrept.i.tiously stolen her gla.s.s three times during supper, to no avail.

"Tell us one of those, then." Kurt came as close to pleading as he ever got. "Surely the primitives and their ancestor worship are good for a tale. Something with s.e.x magic and human sacrifice."

"We don't call them primitives these days-they're indigenous peoples. Anyway, I can't think of anything that isn't excruciatingly boring. Yours sound more interesting. I can't recall you ever mentioning it before."

"Good grief, lad. Are you whining? Stop that nonsense," Argyle said, grinning.

"Yeah, bro. Let's hear it." Holly raised her brow in a way that rendered her expression slightly diabolic. At least she didn't combine the arched brow with rolling up the whites of her eyes like she'd often done in school to impress her cla.s.smates, or terrify them, as the case might've been.

The others rumbled approval and imprecations and finally, Kurt shrugged in defeat. "Jesus. You people are relentless. Fine, if I'm going to do this, I need another toddy."

Kurt stared at his drink. He shuddered when a blast of wind broadsided the house, muscles jumping in his clamped jaw. At last, without raising his gaze toward the expectant audience, he began to speak. His voice was thick and he enunciated with the care of a man deep into his cups.

"Okay, Uncle Argyle and Linda, bear with me on the details. Senior year in high school, I saw a witch. That's what we called her, anyhow. 'Witch' isn't the right word, not by a long shot, but you'll see what I mean. That summer, I stayed in San Francisco while Mom and Dad came out here as usual.

"I remember what a big deal it seemed to be-left in charge of the house, paying off the meter guy and making sure the lawn got mowed and whatnot. Not that it should've been, considering how often the neighbors watched us all the time. Mom, you and Dad weren't around much in those days, always traveling to one jungle or cave complex, or another. Still, seventeen was the tipping point-this marked the first occasion I was left alone, the man of the house. Everything was copacetic. For awhile.

"I'd made varsity linebacker for the Rams my junior year. Led the team in sacks. Third most tackles by a Pac Nine player ever. Everybody knew I had a shot at All State. That got me in like Flynn with Nelly Coolidge, one of the best-looking cheerleaders at school. Everybody sucked up to her-the jocks on account of her being a 'hot chick' as they used to say, and all the girls fawned over her because she had plenty of folding green and didn't mind spreading it around to her clique. The girls were afraid of her, too. She was popular and powerful, a dangerous combo. Her dad gave me a summer job at the department store, stocking shelves and closing shop. The gig put enough spare change in my pocket to take Nelly dancing and drinking-cover your ears, Winnie dear-in hopes of scoring more than a touchdown. Never happened, alas. Quite a b.u.mmer, considering the c.r.a.p I was soon to endure on her behalf.

"This was 1979. Thanks to my stellar performance knocking poor soph.o.m.ores around the gridiron, I managed to land that scholarship to UW and that settled matters. Tell you the truth, Dad, if the scholarship hadn't gone through, I'd made up my mind to enlist on my birthday and go into the military with Frankie Rogers and Billy Summerset. Frankie died in the Beirut barracks explosion, and Billy was one of the unlucky b.a.s.t.a.r.ds shot during the Grenada invasion. They were Marines, though. Marines see the worst of it. I still exchange Christmas cards with Billy's younger brother, Eli. Eli joined up for the Gulf War and managed to make it home with all his parts.

"Anyway, senior year. Graduation nine months away and coming fast, coach counting on me to lead the defense to a state championship. I knew d.a.m.n well he held the keys to my scholarship, and Coach wasn't exactly peaches and cream, not with the booster club and the princ.i.p.al on his a.s.s to bring home the hardware every year...I had a lot going on; my mind was racing a thousand miles an hour. Seemed as if half the time I was a little woozy, almost in a dream state, and that could've contributed to what came later. Certain people are susceptible to hallucinations. Perhaps that's me-Mr. Cotton Head. Dunno. I'd love to believe it.

"Me and the boys-Frankie, Billy, Toby Nethercutt, and Mike Shavenko, and a couple other guys from Oakland-raised a bit of h.e.l.l at night. We'd gather at the old Celadon Park-definitely not wise with the druggies cutting each other to ribbons with broken bottles-or that deserted carnival by the boardwalk. Sometimes, when there was a party, a bunch of us loaded into Mike Shavenko's Caddy and cruised down the coast and stood around a bonfire with kids from half a dozen other schools, and drank beer and played football on the beach. The whole Sometimes a Great Notion deal sans anybody as gray or cantankerous as Henry Fonda. There were a few brawls and the usual fooling around, but things were remarkably innocent. Nothing like the kids get up to today. I think the worst thing I did was get drunk a few times and fall into the habit of smoking. Frankie and Billy got me hooked. Especially Frankie, who was a pack of Lucky Strikes a day fellow. h.e.l.l everybody smoked; it was the height of cool. I remember sneaking into the bathroom to get a couple drags in between cla.s.ses. What did we know?

"Frankie's parents were divorced, had been since he was eleven. I knew him since second grade. Happy kid. Cla.s.s cutup, though the teachers loved him because he was so d.a.m.ned quick with a wise-a.s.s remark. You know the kind. He'd make you want to punch him except you were laughing so hard you were in danger of p.i.s.sing your pants.

"His mom lighting out for parts unknown changed everything. She met an advertising exec and left with the guy-packed a single case and was gone forever. His dad went over the edge. Jack Somerset worked on the docks as a longsh.o.r.eman. Shoulda seen his arms and shoulders-a bison stuffed into a plaid shirt. Scary. He took to drinking-would stop at Clausen's Liquor and pound a sixer on the way home from work-occasionally, when I came over to visit Frankie, I saw his old man slouched in that Chevy of his, knocking back a half case of Lone Star. He sluiced those cans into his mouth; one after another, like a machine. Then he'd carry another half rack in and polish it off while he watched basketball. Never said squat, either. Just sat there like a boulder, face white as a sheet from the T.V. glow. You could practically hear him ticking.

"Worse part was, he started slapping Frankie around; and for nothing. Well, maybe not for 'nothing'-Frankie was an inveterate smart mouth, after all. This was different, though. No warning-Jack would just walk over and pop him one. He couldn't fight his dad, of course. Tried it once and the old man chucked him through the screen door like a sack of meat. He smashed into the sidewalk and skinned his hands. The doc had to tape them like a boxer's. So, yeah, here was my boon comrade living in h.e.l.l for seven years. He couldn't get into the Marines fast enough. Not fast enough to keep from going bad. When Frankie's personality turned dark, I wasn't exactly surprised. Yet, even knowing his damage, the transformation chilled me, drove an icy spike right through my guts. I watched him rot from the inside...an apple being eaten from the core by a worm. Broke my heart.

"It got worse that spring of '79 and went to complete s.h.i.t by summer. Jack went from the once a week whippings to kicking his kid's a.s.s every day. Sickest part? The guy got real careful not to leave marks. He'd rabbit-punch him, squeeze his neck until his eyes bulged, that sort of thing. I wasn't there to see it, thank G.o.d. Frankie told me what happened, made a black comedy of the account. He'd laugh and shrug and say something along the lines of, 'It's just T.V., Kurt.' His laugh had changed, too. It sounded like the bark of a crow.

"He got mean at the end of our junior year, became savage as a junkyard dog. He stole money from his dad and paid the goons who loitered outside the brick and bar liquor stores on 10th and Browning to buy booze for him. Not beer, either. Nah, he graduated directly to Jim Beam; stashed the bottles under the seat of Mike Shavenko's car-Shavenko was kind of Frankie's squire. He drove Frankie to all the backyard beer parties, especially the cross-town mixers where trouble could be found if one was sufficiently determined. They'd get good and scotched, then Frankie would pick a fight-one, two, three guys, didn't matter to him. He'd take all comers and beat them down. The kid was scrawny, which goes to show viciousness is more important than natural athletic ability during a brawl. He became something of a legend, honestly. Frankie took plenty of licks, but I guess it wasn't anything compared to what his old man laid on him.

"Now, it can be told-I gave Frankie a key and let him crash on the couch whenever the scene got too heavy at home. He was there, dead to the world on a few mornings, both eyes blacked like a racc.o.o.n's, and snoring loud enough I thought he'd choke in his sleep. And once, Jesus, Joseph, Mary I found him sprawled on the couch literally covered in blood, so much blood I scarcely recognized him. He looked like he'd been in a car wreck; his face was pancaked with gore, his tee shirt was black and hard as a plaster sh.e.l.l. For a few seconds I figured he was dead-then he started snoring that honking, G.o.dawful snore of his. I drove him to the clinic. Turned out he'd been in a h.e.l.l of fistfight against two college juniors at a bonfire party. Frankie had one of them on the ground and was tattooing his face with a sealed can of Black Label when the second dude tried to kick a field goal with his head-the a.s.shole was wearing hiking boots with studs, too. Frankie finished off the first one, then jumped up and chased the other guy along the beach for half a mile and beat him to a pulp. He was frothing at the mouth; tried to drown the guy until cooler heads prevailed and a bunch of kids dragged them apart. Frankie lost three teeth and needed forty-odd st.i.tches in his scalp. Nasty deal.

"The whole arrangement was a kind of betrayal of your trust, letting somebody the entire school considered a bad element flop at the house while you were out of town. Believe me, I wasn't happy about the situation, skewered on the horns of a dilemma. I had to choose between helping my friend and keeping the faith with my parents. It was a tough call. I asked myself what you would do in my shoes, Dad.

"As it developed, Frankie was a perfect gentleman. He didn't touch a blessed thing. He even helped me with the yard work a couple of weekends. Looking back, it's lucky for us his dad didn't put two and two together and come hunting for Frankie to use as a punching bag. Maybe Jack didn't give a d.a.m.n. He was so screwed in the brain by then he'd managed to get fired by the union-which gives you an idea what a colossal mess he'd become to provoke that drastic a move. Last I heard of him was during college-he finally lost his house, and relocated to an Airstream trailer in New Mexico and was living with a prost.i.tute who made her bones, so to speak, under a freeway overpa.s.s.

"While all this drama with Frankie was coming to a boil, I reported to Coolidge's store every other evening at eight o'clock sharp and worked until midnight. Unless we had deliveries; then Coolidge's a.s.sistant manager, Herb Nolton kept me around until one or two A.M. It wasn't exactly backbreaking labor. Herb usually stayed in the office and watched the tube, or fell asleep in the comfy leather swivel chair Coolidge referred to as 'the Captain's Seat.'

"I worked with another guy named Ben Wolf. He'd graduated two or three years before and got married to his high school sweetheart. They had a baby, so Ben worked three jobs trying to keep the roof nailed down over their heads. We took long breaks smoking in the alley and talking football. Ben had played running back for the team. Didn't get bupkus for playing time, although he sure looked fast enough. Nice fellow-he even brought his wife and baby to watch me at the home games later that fall.

"Then there was the other member of our nightshift fraternity-Doug Reeves. Reeves was way older than us; did piece work for a few local businesses. A jack of all trades type; not an electrician or a plumber, yet he could rewire faulty outlets in a pinch and knew how to sling a monkey wrench. He usually kept to himself and that's probably because he toted a hip flask. He wore heavy aftershave to disguise the whiskey reek. At least once a night I spotted him ducking behind boxes in the storeroom to take a swig. Poor Reeves couldn't go fifteen minutes without lighting up, either. Mr. Coolidge forbade us from smoking in the building. Smoke got into the clothes and sleeping bags. He woulda been p.i.s.sed if he knew Reeves walked around with a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. I imagine he woulda fired Herb for letting it go on. Fortunately, Coolidge didn't drop in for any surprise inspections. Nelly told me once that her parents fought like cats and dogs. Eventually they just came home, had a few scotches and stumbled off to separate bedrooms. That's how divorce was done back then, right? Still, their misery was our salvation.

"Things took a turn for the weird. Reeves started hanging with me and Ben during our smoke breaks in the alley. It seemed odd-he didn't say anything, didn't want to join the conversation. He smiled at our jokes in the half-a.s.s way people do when they're trying to get along and not draw too much attention to themselves. At first it happened once every couple of shifts. By the last three weeks I worked there, Reeves was connected to my or Ben's hip wherever we went in the store. He slunk around back there, puffing his cigs and slugging booze. Got to the point me and Ben couldn't even sneak off and leave him. Soon as the coast was clear and we'd tiptoe for the door, I'd hear a paint can or a crescent wrench clatter on the floor and here'd come Reeves like a bat outta h.e.l.l. In hindsight, that might've been the case.

"Ben's the one who finally decided to pull him aside and have a man-to-man chat. He planned to set Reeves straight, break it to him as gently as possible that he might want to crawl out of the bottle and get his act together a bit. The stalking routine was getting on our nerves and it better stop, p.r.o.nto. I remember Ben's expression about ten minutes later when he came back with Reeves in tow to where I was stocking tennis rackets and baseball bats. Ben asks Reeves to repeat what he said and Reeves shrugs and stares at his feet. Eventually we got him to spill that he's scared s.h.i.tless of somebody lurking in the storeroom. 'The Witch,' he called this person. Claimed she was tall, spindly, and white as chalk. She wore a dirty dress that dragged the floor. That's how he noticed her-he saw the hem of her dress disappearing into the shadows from the corner of his eye. He thought it was a hallucination, his wacked version of a pink elephant. Until he saw her in the flesh a few minutes later when he walked by the office and she's in there leaning over Herb, who's sleeping, as usual. Reeves shook while relating this yarn. Guy's teeth were clicking like he was freezing. Allegedly this had gone on for two weeks before we got tired of him grasping after our ap.r.o.n strings, as it were. That's why he didn't want to be left alone in the store-once, he turned around and there she was on the other side of a rack, grinning at him with pure evil. He wanted to quit, except he was too in hock at the bar and a month behind in rent. If he left, he'd starve. Or have a heart attack from DTs.

"We didn't know what to make of it. Ben took the lead again. He patted the guy on the back and made me cough up twenty bucks so the old-timer could go get hammered Friday night-said it was the least we could do. There went my dinner and movie plans with Nelly. Irritating thing about dear, sweet Nelly-free as she was with treating her friends, she fully expected me to pay the freight during our liaisons. That girl was a c.o.c.k tease and all around power-tripper. I'm shocked she didn't go into politics, what with her gift for manipulation.

"As it happened, Herb called me Friday morning to say an unexpected shipment of exercise equipment was sitting on the loading dock. Neither Ben nor Reeves were scheduled to work, so he begged me to come in and do the heavy lifting because he'd slipped a disk in his back. Since I was flat broke and dateless, I jumped at the offer, although lugging barbells and cast iron plates wasn't my first choice for an evening's recreation. I ran into Nelly at the soda shop. One thing leads to another and pretty soon we're necking in the back of my-uh, your car, Dad-and I'm not really getting into it because my mind is on the freaky revelations of Doug Reeves. Nelly asked me what's wrong, so against my better judgment I gave her the whole story. She took it seriously.

"The store was built in 1916 and the Coolidges took it over in 1950. Nelly leaned close and whispered conspiratorially that she'd heard from a friend of a friend that an employee died in the store during the Roaring Twenties; hanged themselves from one of the railings. Only a ghost could come and go like this figure did. I asked if she'd ever seen anything. Not exactly; nonetheless, she remained convinced something spooky was afoot. She'd been sweet on one of the stock boys a couple of summers back and he'd mentioned the ghost too. Same description of a tall, spindly woman with a wicked grin. That sealed it for her.

"Right there, in the middle of our preempted make-out session, Nelly's eyes brightened and she pinched me and said what we needed to do was provoke the spirit into appearing, then perform a ritual to banish it from the property. My jaw dropped. I didn't quite believe what I'd heard. She worked herself into a lather and nattered on about these two friends of hers, outcast girls who dressed in black and moped around and how they were into all kinds of occult bulls.h.i.t. One of them had promised to show her how to use a Ouija board and take her to a seance they planned for Halloween. Precursors to Goth chicks, those two. Samantha and Ca.s.sie. n.o.body liked them, not even the chess nerds, or the stoners, or even the fat kids in band. Nelly was slumming, sampling their 'quaint' lifestyle; no doubt so she could mock them to her circle when she grew bored. Once she'd decided to bring her pals to the store, I couldn't get a word in edgewise.

"Still bemused by this turn of events, I showed up at Coolidge's that evening. Herb handed me the keys on his way to his twice a month wild Friday night at the Elks Club; he wore his orange blazer and a bowtie-I can't adequately express the dizzying effect of that ensemble. From what I understand, Monday mornings he'd skip into the store chipper as a squirrel; the one day he wasn't sober as an accountant. To this day I'm a little curious what he got up to at those soirees. Maybe he hit the jackpot with one those old flames he'd reminisced about on occasion.

"After Herb made his getaway, I got busy with the mountain of heavy boxes waiting for me in the receiving area, which was sort of a warehouse attached to the rear of the building. Metal racks went to the roof, jammed with stuff and crowded in tight. It's by the grace of G.o.d n.o.body ever got clobbered by a loose unit of tile, or an unsecured fridge toppling from the top shelf. We stacked that junk to the rafters, literally.

"Coolidge inherited an antique forklift when he bought the store, the type with a clutch. Ben usually drove the pallets in and dropped them close to the main display room. No way I was getting on that thing in those tight aisles, so that meant hand-trucking the deliveries inside one or two pieces at a time. No fun, particularly because the place was dark and lifeless the way buildings are when they empty for the day and everything falls quiet-and Coolidge's Department Store was huge. Remember? You guys used to get camping supplies there. Two floors and half of a third with a c.r.a.ppy escalator and narrow stairs with awful carpeting-lime green!-steering the mobs from women's clothing to sporting goods and housewares. G.o.d, that place was so packed with merchandise only three or four people could stand on queue without doing the b.u.mp and grind.

"I realized this was the first time I'd been alone in the place. It was gloomy in there, but I was leery of lighting the building like a Christmas tree. I contented myself with switching on everything in the storage room, which sorta helped, although the effect left much to be desired-everything turned sickly green and there were plenty of shadows in the deeper stacks. It didn't do a thing for the main floor which was illuminated by light strips inside the display cases and two or three puny brown bulbs upstairs. Honestly, I glanced over my shoulder every five seconds, sort of expecting to see a Halloween mask of a face leering at me. Every shadow was a menace waiting to pounce.

"About nine o'clock Nelly banged on the gla.s.s of the front door for me to let her and the Gloomy Gus twins inside. The sisters were so pale and sickly they could've doubled for ghosts themselves, or walking corpses. They sure as h.e.l.l stumbled around like mini Boris Karloff clones and communicated in monosyllables. Real charming.

"Those girls were all business, though. While Nelly stood over them, twitching and frittering, Samantha and Ca.s.sie broke out the tools of the occult trade-black and red candles, white chalk and a thick black book bound in faux leather-and meticulously scribed a pentagram, or pentacle, or whatever, and a slew of arcane symbols on the concrete floor near the tool department. Coolidge was a first cla.s.s cheapskate. When the contractors hired to renovate the store for its grand reopening had gone over budget, leaving unsightly loose ends such as bare sheetrock in the loft and carpet that ended ten feet short of the end of some aisles, he booted them from the premises and called it 'close enough for government work. Who looks at the floor, anyway?'

"The circle-as Nelly informed me, t.i.ttering in her sudden anxiety at committing black magic rituals in the sanct.i.ty of the family business-served as a conduit and symbol of protection. Basically, it was supposed to suck in and trap any evil spirits floating around. I thought they were all effing loons and abandoned them to their fun. Oh, not so fast! I was in the middle of unpacking another pallet of boxes when Nelly rushed over and informed me everybody's waiting. Waiting for what? I received an answer soon enough after she herded me back to where Sam and Ca.s.s had lighted the black candles and were hissing incantations. The tool aisle smelled of bubbling fat and burning hair. One of them had chopped off a hank of their hair, tossed it into a tin bowl and doused it with lighter fluid. Whoosh! Too bad the sprinklers didn't trigger. That woulda been cla.s.sic.

"Meanwhile, the black candles were melting in gloopy puddles. Nelly clung to my arm as the red glow of the makeshift brazier lit the scene. It must've looked like something from the cover of a pulp comic. Normally, I'd have enjoyed Nelly Coolidge pressing her heaving bosom against me, but I was transfixed by the sisters rocking on their heels, babbling in tongues, fragments of which definitely referred to Beelzebub and The Prince of Darkness.

"Ca.s.sie looked at me and Nelly; Goth girl's pupils were dilated to the max. She ordered us to sit Indian style. Of course I said, not no, but h.e.l.l no. Nelly gave me a look like you wouldn't believe. Her queen of the realm glare that spoke volumes-it was a I'd never work in this town again warning via telepathy. She brushed her lips against my ear and whispered, Cluck, cluck, cluck! I sat and we all joined clammy hands while Sam called for the 'restless spirit' to show itself. Deep down, despite being cold to the scene, in my heart of hearts I wanted to see what happened next. Nelly's fascination was contagious.

"This went on until my b.u.t.t started to ache from the concrete; then Ca.s.sie pulled a dagger out of her purse and p.r.i.c.ked her finger. It wasn't actually a dagger, just a cheap replica she'd picked up at a Chinese gift shop. She dribbled blood into the bowl. Sam went next and then Nelly. I said nope, no way, and pa.s.sed it back to Ca.s.sie. She smirked and poked me in the forearm. Dull as a letter opener, but she'd jabbed me hard and I was on my feet, cursing like a sailor. She flicked blood droplets from the point of the blade and into the brazier. I'd thought the thing was cold because the hair and powder and G.o.d knows what else had burned to ashes. d.a.m.ned if flames didn't shoot forth again, two, three feet high. The flames died and I stood there swearing. n.o.body else uttered a peep; they stared into the bowl, swaying as if they'd been smoking the reefer.

"The power died. For a few seconds it was pitch black. The girls screamed. I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. That freaked me a tad. To top that, the air felt electrified, thick as if a humid fog bank had settled over me. Maybe ten feet up the aisle, someone laughed-just once; high pitched and drawn out, it cut through the caterwauling. Mocking us.

"The light in the office suddenly kicked in. It flicked on and off, repeatedly, faster and faster in a strobe effect. Between flashes I saw...someone standing in there, watching. Coolidge kept some mannequins in the front window to model the flannel jackets and ladies' underwear, that whole bit. I convinced myself later that Herb left one of the dummies in there, propped in front of the desk. Another cycle of flashes and it was gone. Now I'm considering joining the scream fest. The phones started ringing. We had seven or eight-one at each till, the office, at a kiosk on each upper level, another in storage-and they all went simultaneously. I covered my ears and decided it was high time to bail. Great minds think alike: the girls almost knocked me over as they scrambled for the exit.