Everville

  That the forces of heinous and unrepentant evil make their barbaric mark in a city as sweetly favored as Everville should come as no surprise to those of us who have seen something of the larger world. I, your author, ventured from the fertile climes of our glorious state in the forty-third year of this century to perform my duties as an American in the South Pacific, and will carry to my grave the scenes of cruelty and human degradation I witnessed there, in surroundings as paradisaical as any this globe can offer.

  It surprised me then not at all to discover, in the course of preparing this volume, rumors of diabolical deeds performed within the precincts of Everville’s comely community.

  The sad story of the death of Rebecca Jenkins is well known. She was a daughter of that fair city, much prized and adored, who was murdered in her eighth year, her body deposited in the reservoir. Her murderer was a man out of Sublimity who later died in prison while serving a life sentence. But the mystery surrounding the tragedy of poor Rebecca does not end there.

  While gathering stories about the stranger incidents associated with Everville, the quizzical demise of one Richard Dolan was whispered to me. He had owned a candy store, I was told, and little Rebecca Jenkins had been a regular customer of his, so he had taken the death of the child particularly hard. The capture and subsequent incarceration of her unrepentant murderer had done nothing to subjugate his great uneasiness. He had become more and more melancholy, and on the night of September 19, 1975, he had told his wife he was hearing voices from Harmon’s Heights. Somebody was calling to him, he said. When she asked him who, he refused to say, but took himself off into the night. He did not return, and the next day a party ascended the Heights to look for him.

  After two days of searching they found the delirious Richie Dolan, wedged in a crevice of rock on the northeast slope of the mountain. He was very horribly harmed by his fall, but he was not dead. Such was the state of his face and torso that his wife fell into a swoon at the sight of him and was never of sound mind again.

  He died in Silverton Hospital three days later, but he did not die silent. In that seventy-two hours he raved like a bedlamite, unsubdued by the tranquilizers his doctors gave him.

  What did he speak of in his final, agonizing hours? I could find no firsthand testament on this, but there is sufficient consensus among the rumors to suppose them broadly true. He raved, I was told, about dead men calling to him from Harmon’s Heights. Over and over, even at the very end, when the doctors stood astonished at how he was clinging to life, he was begging forgiveness—

  The account maundered on for a couple more paragraphs, but Erwin merely skimmed them. He had what he needed here: Evidence, albeit rudimentary, that there was some truth in what McPherson had written. And if one part was truthful, then why not the rest?

  Content that his pursuit of verification was not a folly, he left off the search for the night, and called Phoebe Cobb. Would she come over and lock up? he asked. She would, of course. If he would just be kind enough to close the windows, she’d pop over in a while to secure the front door.

  Her voice sounded a little slurred, he thought, but maybe it was his imagination. The day had been long, and he was weary. Time to get home, and try and put the McPherson confession out of his head until he resumed his inquiries tomorrow.

  He knew where he’d begin those inquiries: down by the creek. Though it was three decades since the events McPherson had described, if the house he claimed the trio had burned down had in truth existed, then there would be some sign of it remaining. And if there was, then that would be another part of the confession verified, and he would be tempted to bring the whole story into the open air, where the whole state could smell how much it stank.

  * * *

  IV

  Phoebe had opened the brandy bottle around a quarter to eight, telling herself she wanted to toast her coming liberation, but in truth to dull the unease she was feeling. On the few occasions Morton went out to get some dinner for himself, he was usually back within the hour, ready to deposit himself in front of the television. Where had he gone to tonight? And more: Why did she care?

  She drowned her confusion in a brandy; then in another. That did the trick just fine, especially on an almost empty stomach. By the time the attorney called, she was feeling very mellow; too mellow to drive. No matter. She’d walk to the Old Schoolhouse she decided.

  The night was balmy, the air fragrant with pine, and the walk proved more pleasant than she’d expected. At any other time of the year, even at the height of summer, the streets would have been pretty quiet in the middle of the evening, but tonight the lights were still burning in many of the stores along Main Street, their owners working on Festival window displays or stocking the shelves for the profitable days ahead. There were even a few visitors around, come early to enjoy the quiet of the valley.

  At the corner of Main and Watson she halted for a moment or two. A right turn took her up towards the schoolhouse, a left led down past the market and the park to Donovan Street, and a little way along Donovan Street was the apartment house where Joe lived. It would be just a slip of the foot to turn left rather than right. But she fought the urge. Better to let all that they’d felt and said this afternoon settle for a few hours, rather than get hot and flustered again. Besides, brandy always made her a little tearful, and her face got puffy when she cried. She’d see him tomorrow, and dream about him in the meantime.

  Turning right, she headed on up the gentle gradient of Watson, past the new supermarket, which was still open and doing brisk business, to the schoolhouse. It took her five minutes to check all the windows, pull down the blinds, and lock up. Then she began the return journey.

  About fifty yards from Main Street, somebody on the opposite sidewalk stepped out into the road, looking up at the night sky. She knew him vaguely. He was the youngest of the Lundy clan, Sam or Steve or—

  “Seth.”

  Though she’d only murmured the syllable he heard her. Without moving from the middle of the street he looked round at her, his eyes glittering, and she remembered how she’d first encountered him. His mother had brought him in to see Dr. Powell, five or six years ago, and the child had stood in the waiting room with a look of such remoteness on his pinched little face, Phoebe had assumed he was mentally retarded. There was no remoteness now. He was fiercely focused.

  “Do you hear it?” he said to her.

  He didn’t approach, but something about him intimidated her. Rather than get any closer, she halted, glancing back up the street towards the lights of the supermarket. There’d been plenty of cars in the lot when she’d passed, one of them would be bound to emerge soon, and she would use its passing as cover to continue on her way.

  “You don’t, do you?” he said, his voice singsong.

  “Don’t what?”

  “You don’t hear the hammering.”

  “Hammering?” She listened a moment. “No I don’t.”

  “Hmm.” He returned his gaze to the starry heavens. “You used to work at the doctor’s,” he said.

  “I still do.”

  “Not for long,” he replied.

  She felt a shiver pass down her body from scalp to sole.

  “How do you know?”

  He smiled at the sky. “It’s so loud,” he said. “Are you sure you can’t hear it?”

  “I told you—” she began.

  “It’s okay,” he said softly. “Only sometimes at night, other people hear it too. It never happens in the day. In the day it’s only me—”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Don’t be sorry,” he said; and then his smile went to her instead of the stars. “I’m used to it.”

  She suddenly felt absurd for fearing him. He was a lonely, bewildered kid. A little crazy in the head maybe, but harmless enough.

  “What did you mean about me not working at the doctor’s for long?” she asked him.

  He shrugged. “Don’t know,” he said. “These things come out sometimes, without
me really knowing what they mean.” He paused for a moment. “Probably nothing,” he said, and returned his gaze to the sky.

  She didn’t wait for a car to emerge from the lot, but continued on her way to Main Street. “Enjoy yourself,” she said as she passed him by.

  “Yeah,” he murmured, “I do.”

  The incident lingered with her as she wandered home, and she made a mental note to look up the Lundy file when she got into work tomorrow, to see what had brought mother and child to the doctor’s that day, and why they’d never returned. When she got back to the house, Morton was in his chair in front of the television, sound asleep, a beer can in his lap, and four more between his feet. She didn’t bother to wake him. Instead she went into the kitchen and made herself a ham and cheese sandwich, which she ate leaning on the sink gazing out into the darkened yard. Clouds were coming in to cover the stars, but she didn’t suppose it much mattered to the Lundy boy. If he could hear hammerings in Heaven, a few clouds wouldn’t dull it much.

  Sandwich eaten, she retired to bed, hoping that she’d be between the sheets and asleep before Morton roused himself. She needn’t have worried. When finally a breath of cool air on her back stirred her from slumber and she felt him slide into bed beside her, the luminous face of the clock read ten past three. Grunting to himself, he pulled the sheets in his direction, rolled over and instantly began to snore.

  It took her a little time to get back to sleep, and when she did it was fitful. In the morning, sitting alone at the kitchen table (Morton had already gone to work when she woke), she tried to sort through the dream fragments circling in her head and remembered that in one Joe had been introducing her to the people in the photograph he’d shown her. All five of them had been in a car for some reason, and Joe’s brother kept saying: Where are we? Hell and damn, where are we? It wasn’t the most reassuring of dreams. What was she thinking? That they were all lost together now? She took three aspirin with a cup of black coffee and headed out to work, putting the dream out of her mind. Which was a pity. Had she dwelt on it a little longer, she might have puzzled over the whereabouts of the photograph that had inspired it, and acted to spare herself, Joe, and Morton more grief than any of them expected or deserved.

  FOUR

  The woman on the motorcycle looked like a seasoned traveler: her leathers dusty and beaten-up, her hair, when she eased off her helmet, cropped short and bleached by desert sun; her face, which had probably never been pretty, worn and raw. She had a bruise on her jaw, and lines deeply etched around her eyes and mouth; none of them laugh lines.

  Her name was Tesla Bombeck, and today she was coming home. Not back to her literal birthplace (that was Philadelphia) nor even to the city where she’d been raised (which was Detroit) but to the town where the reconfiguring that had made her the raw, bruised, etched wanderer she was had begun.

  Or rather, to the remains of that town. At the height of its mediocrity, this place—Palomo Grove—had been a nominee for the perfect California haven. Unlike Everville, which had grown organically over a century and a half, the Grove had sprung into being in three years, created by planners and real-estate magnates with sheaves of demographics for inspiration. And it had quietly prospered for a time, hidden in the folds of the Simi Valley a couple of miles from the highway that speeded its wage earners to Los Angeles every morning and speeded them home again every night.

  The traffic on that highway was busier than ever now, but the off-ramp that served the Grove was seldom used. Occasionally a tourist who wanted to add the Town That Died Overnight to his list of Californian curiosities would come to look at the desolation, but such visits were increasingly rare. Nor was any attempt being made to rebuild the Grove, despite vast losses sustained by both landowners and individuals. Tesla wasn’t surprised. These were recessionary times; people no longer believed in real estate as a solid investment, much less real estate that had proven unstable in the past.

  For Palomo Grove hadn’t simply died, it had buried itself, its streets gaping like graves for its fine houses. Many of those streets were still barricaded off to keep the sightseers from coming to harm, but Tesla had been hearing yes when she was told no from childhood, and it was up over the barricades she first went, to wander where the damage was worst.

  She had thought about coming back here many times in her five-year journey through what she liked to call the Americas, by which she meant the mainland states. They were not, she had many times insisted to Grillo, one country; not remotely. Just because they served the same Coke in Louisiana as they served in Idaho, and the same sitcoms were playing in New Mexico as were playing in Massachusetts, didn’t mean there was such a thing as America. When presidents and pundits spoke of the voice and will of the American people, she rolled her eyes. That was a fiction; she’d been told so plainly by a yellow dog that had followed her around Arizona for a week and a half during her hallucination period, turning up in diners and motel rooms to chat with her in such a friendly fashion she’d missed him when he disappeared.

  If she remembered rightly (and she’d never know) it was the dog that had first mentioned going back to the Grove.

  “You gotta bury your nose in your own shit sooner or later,” he’d advised, leaning back in a threadbare armchair. “It’s the only way to get in touch.”

  “With what?” she’d wanted to know.

  “With what? With what?” he’d said, coming to perch at the bottom of the bed. “I’m not your analyst! Find out for yourself.”

  “Suppose there’s nothing to find out?” she’d countered.

  “Don’t talk crap,” he’d said. “You’re not afraid of finding there’s nothing to find. You’re afraid of finding so much it’ll drive you crazy.” He wandered down the bed and straddled her, so they were nose to nose. “Well guess what, Miss Bombeck? You’re already crazy. So what’s to lose?”

  She couldn’t remember if she’d worked up some pithy reply to this or simply passed out. Probably the latter. She’d passed out in a lot of motel rooms during that phase. Anyway, the yellow dog had sown the seed. And the months had passed, and she’d gradually regained a semblance of sanity, and on and off, when she was consulting a map or looking at a sign-post, she’d think: maybe I should do it today. Maybe I should go back to the Grove.

  But whenever she’d come close to doing so, another voice had spoken up; the voice of the personality who had shared her skull with her for the past half-decade.

  His name was Raul, and he’d been born an ape. He’d not stayed that way for long, however. At the age of four he’d been evolved from his simian state to manhood, the agent of that miracle fluid which its discoverer had dubbed the Nuncio, the messenger. The fluid was not the fruit of pure science, but of a mingling of disciplines—part biogenetics, part alchemy—and it had gone on to touch and transform others, including (briefly) Tesla, coaxing forth the natural propensities of those it influenced, and creating in the process the two warring forces who had made Palomo Grove their battleground.

  One was the Nuncio’s maker, a mescaline-addicted visionary by the name of Fletcher, who had become a force for transcendence under the messenger’s tutelage. The other was his patron, Randolph Jaffe, who had funded the discovery in the hope of attaining access to a condition of flesh and spirit that was tantamount to divinity. The Nuncio had done nothing to dull that ambition, but it had shaped from the Jaff a creature so consumed by his dreams of power that his spirit had atrophied. By the time he’d won the war with Fletcher (destroying the Grove in the process), and was ready to claim his prize, his psyche was too frail to bear the triumph. He had forfeited his reason in pursuit of godhood. Soon after, he’d forfeited his life.

  It was little wonder then, that Raul had protested so vigorously her desire to return to the Grove.

  I hate California, he’d told her any number of times. If we never go back there it’ll be too soon.

  She hadn’t fought with him over it. Though she had full control of her body, and could have driv
en West without his being able to do a thing to stop her, his presence had been comforting during the many terrible times that followed the demise of Palomo Grove, and given that she fully expected such times to come again, more terrible than ever, she wanted to keep relations sweet.

  The paradox of this, that her dubious sanity was preserved by one of the things that drove people crazy (voices in the head) was not lost on her. Nor did she forget that her tenant, who was usually scrupulous in respecting the boundaries between his thoughts and hers, suffered from crises of his own, at which times she became the comforter. She would wake sometimes to hear him sobbing in her head, bemoaning the fact that he had given up his body in the war, and would never again have an anatomy to call his own. She would soothe him then as best she could; tell him they would find some way to free him one of these days, and until then wasn’t it better this way, because at least they had each other?

  And it was. When she doubted all that she’d seen, he was there to say: It’s true. When she feared the burden of all she’d come to comprehend he was there to say: We’ll carry it together, till we can be done with it.

  Ah! To be done with it. That was the trick. To find some way to off-load the revelation onto strong and trustworthy shoulders, and go her way back to the life she’d been living before she’d ever heard of Palomo Grove.

  She’d been a screenwriter by trade, with the scar tissue to prove it, and though it was a long time since she’d sat down to write, her cinematic instinct remained acute. Even in the bad times, a week would not go by without her thinking: There’s a scene here. The way that sky looks, the way those dogs are fighting, the way I’m sobbing—it could be the beginning of something wonderful and strange.

  But of late it had come to seem that all she had was beginnings—always setting off on an unknown highway or opening a conversation with a stranger—and never getting to the second act. If the painful farce of her life to date was to have any resolution, then she was going to have to move the story on. And that could not happen, she knew, until she went back to the Grove and confronted its ghosts.