"Is that so? Why?"
She was about to burst into tears. "Would you at least tell me how to get to Muir Road and Nautica Point?"
"Are you from around here?" the man inquired.
"Tommy doesn't know how to be nice to strangers!" the elderly woman spoke up. "Dear, Muir Road's off Overhill. The second street that way is Overhill." She jabbed a finger toward it. "Turn left and keep going about three miles. Muir Road goes off to the right, you can't miss it." The alarm suddenly ceased, dogs barking in its wake. "Nautica Point is back the other way, off McGill. Turn right at the caution light and you go eight or nine miles." She grasped Laura's hand and angled it so she could look at the piece of paper. "Oh, Nick's a town councilman! He lives on Overhill. It's a house with a birdbath in front."
"Thank you," Laura said. "Thank you so much!" She turned away and ran to the Cutlass, and she heard the elderly man say, "Why didn't you just tell her where we live so she can go rob us, too?"
Laura backed up to Parkway and drove toward Overbid. Nick Dudley's house seemed to be the nearest. She picked up speed, looking for a dark blue Jeep wagon, the automatic pistol on the floorboard under her seat
Keith Cavanaugh's mouth worked. Nothing came out
Mary Terror could find no words either. The baby gurgled happily.
Shock settled between them like a purple haze.
The man who stood before Mary did not wear white robes. He was dressed in a plaid shirt with a button-down collar, a charcoal gray sweater with a little red polo player on the breast, and khaki pants. On his feet were scuffed loafers instead of Birkenstocks. His hair was more gray than golden, and it didn't flow down to his shoulders. There wasn't enough of it to cover his scalp. His face — ah, there was the treachery of time — was still Lord Jack's, but grown softer, shaved beardless, loose at the jowls. A padding of fat encircled his waist, a little mound of it bulging his sweater at the belly.
But his eyes… those blue-crystal, cunning, beautiful eyes…
Lord Jack was still behind them, deep in that man who called himself Keith Cavanaugh and made coats of arms in lustrous frames.
"Jesus," he whispered, his face bleached of blood.
"Jack?"' Mary took a step forward. He retreated two. There were tears in her eyes, her flesh and soul fevered. "I brought you…" She lifted Drummer toward him, like a holy offering. "I brought you our son."
His back met the wall, his mouth opening in a stunned gasp.
"Take him," Mary said. "Take him. He belongs to us now."
The telephone rang. From downstairs, the woman who did not know her husband's true name called, "Jenny, would you get that?"
"Okay!" the voice of a little girl replied. The phone stopped ringing. The noise of TV cartoons went on.
"Take him," Mary urged. Tears streaked down her cheeks, ruining her makeup.
"Daddy, it's Mrs. Hunter!" the little girl said. "She can't come until this afternoon!"
Three heartbeats passed. Then, from downstairs: "Keith?"
"Take him," Mary whispered. "Take him. Take me, Jack. Please…" A sob welled up like a groan, because she could see that her one true love, her savior, her reason for living and the man who had caressed her in her dreams and beckoned her across three thousand miles, had wet his pants. "We're together now," she said. "Like we used to be, only more groovy because we've got Drummer. He's ours, Jack. I took him for us."
He slid away from her, stumbled in his retreat, and almost went down. Mary limped after him, through the foyer and toward a hallway. "I did it all for us, Jack. See? I did it so we can be together like we used to —"
"You're crazy," he said, his voice strangled. "Oh my God… you… stole that baby… for me?"
"For you." Her heart was growing wings again. "Because I love you sooooo much."
"No. No." He shook his head. Jack had seen the story on the newscasts and in the papers, had followed its progress until more important matters had pushed it from the lead position. He had seen all the old pictures of the Storm Front, all the faces young in their years and ancient in their passions. He had relived those days a thousand times, and now the past had come through his door carrying a kidnapped infant. "Oh God, no! You were always dumb, Mary… but I didn't know you were out of your mind!"
Always dumb, he'd said. Out of your mind.
"I… did it all for us…"
"GET AWAY FROM ME!" he shouted. Red flared in his pudgy cheeks. "GET AWAY FROM ME, GODDAMN YOU!"
Sandy Cavanaugh came through a doorway and stopped when she saw the big woman holding her baby out to Keith. He looked at her and yelled, "Get out! Get Jenny and get out! She's crazy!" A pretty girl maybe ten or eleven years old, her hair blond and her eyes bright blue, peered into the corridor next to her mother. "Get out!" Jack Gardiner shouted again, and the woman grabbed up their child and ran toward the back of the house.
"Jack?" Mary Terror's voice had a broken sound, the tears streaming from her eyes and all but blinding her. You were always dumb, he'd said. "I love you."
"YOU CRAZY BITCH!" Spittle spewed from his mouth and hit both her and Drummer in their faces. "YOU'RE RUINING EVERYTHING!"
"Police!" Mary heard the woman cry out on the telephone. "Operator, get me the police!"
"Take him," Mary urged. "Please… take our baby."
"That's all over!" he shouted. "It was a game! A play! I was so high on acid all the time I didn't even know what I was doing! We all were!" Realization hit him, and rocked his head back. "My God… you mean… you still believe?"
"My… life… was yours," Mary whispered. "It is yours!"
"Police? This is… this is… Sandy Cavanaugh! We've got… somebody's in our house!"
"I don't want you!" he said. "I don't want that baby! That was a long time ago, and it's all over and gone!"
Mary stood very still. Drummer was crying, too. Jack pressed his back against the wall in front of her, his hands up as if to ward off something filthy.
She saw him, in that awful moment.
There had never been a Lord Jack. There had been only a puppet master, pulling heartstrings and triggers. Lord Jack had been a fiction; before her stood the real Jack Gardiner, a trembling, terrified bag of guts and blood. His power had always been a lie, a deft juggling of counterculture slogans, acid dreams, and war games. He had lost the faith because he had had no faith to lose. He had sewn the Storm Front together with deceitful hands, built towers of clay and painted them as stone, merged horses with lions, called them freedom fighters, and thrown them to the flames. He had created a coat of many arms whose purpose was to clothe himself in the threads of glory. And now he stood there in the uniform of the Mindfuck State, while Gary and Akitta and Janette and CinCin and all the rest of the faithful were ghosts. He was allowing a woman who knew nothing of fire and torment to call the pigs. And Mary knew why. It crushed her soul, but she knew. He loved the woman and the child.
Lord Jack was dead.
Jack Gardiner was about to die.
She would save him from the pigs as her last act of love.
She held Drummer in the crook of one arm, and she drew the revolver from her shoulder bag and aimed it at point-blank range.
Jack jammed himself into a corner. Next to him on the wall there was a framed coat of arms: a castle on a cloud, bordered by stags and swords. Beneath it was the name Cavanaugh.
Mary gritted her teeth, her eyes dark with death. Jack made a whimpering sound, like a whipped dog.
She pulled the trigger.
The noise was terrible in the hallway. Sandy Cavanaugh screamed. Mary fired a second time. Then a third shot rang out, all the rich red love gushing from the punctured body as Jack lay crumpled and twitching. Mary pressed the barrel against his balding scalp and delivered a fourth bullet that burst his head open and flung brains all over the wall and her sweater. Blood and tissue flecked her cheeks and clung to the Smiley Face.
Two bullets left. The woman and the child.
She started after them, but pa
used in the doorway.
Two bullets. For a woman and child. But not the ones who cowered and cried in that room. And not in this house where the pigs would leer and pick at the corpses like hunters with big-game trophies.
As Mary limped to the front door, she passed God skulking in a corner. "You know where," he said under his floppy-brimmed hat, and she answered, "Yes."
She left the house with Drummer, the two of them against the world. She got into the Cherokee and reached for her roadmap as she backed along the driveway in a storm of gravel.
Her finger marked the route and the place. It wasn't far, maybe twenty miles along the coast road. She knew the way. She wondered if Jack had ever gone there, to sit and dream of yesterday.
No, she decided. He never had.
A police car, its lights flashing, passed her as she turned onto Overhill. It took the curve to Muir Road and kept going. She drove on, heading home.
The door opened, and a white-haired man in a green robe with sailboats on it said, "Yes?" as if he resented the intrusion.
"Nick Hudley?" Laura asked, her nerves jangling.
"I am. Who are you?"
"My name is Laura Clayborne." She searched his face. He was too old to be Jack Gardiner. No, this wasn't him. "Have you seen a woman — a big woman, stands about six feet tall — with a baby? She might've been driving a —"
"Dark blue Cherokee," Hudley said. "Yes, she came to the door but I didn't see a baby." His gaze took stock of her dirty clothes and her bandaged hand. "She knew my name, too. What the hell's this all about?"
"How long ago was that? The woman. When was she here?"
"It wasn't over fifteen minutes ago. She said she was trying to find Muir Road. Listen, I think you'd better explain —" He suddenly looked toward the street, and Laura turned in time to see a police car speed by, going west with its lights flashing but no siren.
Muir Road was to the west, Laura realized.
She turned away from Nick Hudley and ran to the Cutlass. She started the engine and left rubber on the pavement as she sped west along Overhill, looking for Muir Road. Somehow, Mary Terror was only fifteen minutes ahead of her instead of three or four hours. There was still hope of getting David back… still hope… still…
A dark blue vehicle roared around a curve in front of Laura, hugging the center line, and Laura saw the face of the woman behind the wheel. At that same instant Mary Terror recognized Laura, and the Cherokee and the Cutlass slid past each other by no more than three inches.
Laura fought the wheel with her hand and elbow, taking the car up onto somebody's lawn, skidding it around and back onto Overhill but now going east. She put her foot to the floorboard, the Cutlass coughing black smoke but gaining speed. The Cherokee was flying in front of her, and in another few seconds they passed Nick Hudley's house, the scream of engines scaring birds out of the birdbath.
On the next curve the Cherokee went up over the curb and knocked a mailbox into the air. Laura got forty feet behind Mary and stayed there, determined not to lose her again. She didn't know if David was in the vehicle or not, or why the police car was on its way toward Muir Road, or if Jack Gardiner was in Freestone, or how Mary's lead had dwindled to forty feet, but she knew Mary Terror would not get away from her. Never. No matter how long it took, no matter where she went Never.
The Cherokee and the Cutlass swerved onto Parkway, roared under the caution light and past the WELCOME TO FREE. STONE sign. Mary's eyes ticked back and forth from the winding road to the car in her rearview mirror. The shock of seeing Laura had been only a further kink in the warp of Mary's mind. Everything was karma, after all. Yes, Mary had decided, it was karma, and karma could not be denied. Let the bitch come. Before Mary took the baby's life and her own, she would execute the bitch who had killed Edward and Bedelia.
Mary's tears had stopped. Her face was a ruin of smeared makeup, her eyes bloodshot and deep-sunken. Her heart had reached its final evolution. It was empty now; there was nothing to dream on anymore. She was the last survivor of the Storm Front, and she would end it where it had begun.
Six miles out of Freestone, she turned onto a country road that led west to the Pacific. Laura kept with her. The miles flashed past, the road deserted. Mary took a turn to the left, following the route on her map, and Laura stayed close. Mary smiled to herself and nodded. The baby was quiet, his hands grasping the air.
The road wound through dense woods. A sign said POINT REYES RANGER STATION, 2 MI. But before a mile had passed, Mary whipped the Cherokee to the right onto another narrow dirt road. She put on speed, dust billowing back into the windshield of the Cutlass as Laura took the turn, too. "Come on!" Mary said, her voice a husky rattle. "Follow me! Come on!"
Laura sped after the Cherokee, her tires bouncing and jubbling over potholes. After a mile or so there was no more dust, but the woods on either side of the road were cob-webbed with mist. Laura could smell the salt air of the Pacific leaching into the car. She followed Mary Terror around a curve, mist swirling between them, and suddenly she saw the taillights flare.
Mary had just stomped on the brake. Laura wrenched the wheel to the right, her shoulder muscles shrieking. The Cutlass missed a collision, but went off the road into the pine woods. The tires plowed through a mossy bog, blue mist hanging between the trees. Laura's foot was on the brake, and the Cutlass grazed a treetrunk and stopped in swampy, rim-deep water.
Laura picked up her pistol. Through the mist she could see the Cherokee sitting there, its taillights no longer flared. The driver's seat was empty. Laura opened the door and stepped out into a bog that claimed her to her ankles. The Cherokee's engine wasn't running. In the silence, Laura heard the thudding of her heart and the cries of sea gulls.
Where was Mary? Was David still with her, or not?
Laura crouched down, moving through the muddy water, and got a treetrunk between herself and the Cherokee. She was expecting a shot at any second. None came.
"I want my baby!" she shouted. Her finger was poised on the trigger, her broken hand throbbing with renewed pain. "Do you hear me?"
But Mary Terror didn't answer. She was too smart to give herself away so easily.
Laura would have to move from where she was. She scurried behind another tree, closer to the Jeep wagon, and waited for a few seconds. Mary didn't show herself. Laura worked her way closer to the Cherokee, mist drifting around her and the sunlight gray through its canopy in the treetops. She gritted her teeth and ran to the vehicle's rear, where she hunkered down and listened.
She could hear distant thunder.
Waves, she realized in another moment. The Pacific, beating against rocks.
The air was cool and wet, moisture dripping from the trees. Laura peered around the Cherokee's side. The driver's door was open. Mary was gone.
Laura stood up, ready to crouch again if she saw movement. She looked into the wagon, saw the clutter of Mary's journey, the smell of sweat and urine and soiled diapers.
Laura walked past the Cherokee, following the dirt road. She went at a slow, careful pace, her senses sharp for any hint of an ambush. The flesh rippled on the back of her neck, the smell of salt in her nostrils. The sound of thunder was getting louder.
And then the woods fell away from both sides of the road, and a house stood before her overlooking the Pacific and its wave-gnawed rocks.
9
The Thunder House
IT WAS A TWO-STORY WOODEN HOUSE WITH A CABLED ROOF, A widow's walk with broken railings, and a wide porch that went around the lower floor. A path of fieldstones, overgrown with weeds, led from the road to the porch steps. The house might have been beautiful once, a long time ago. It was past saving now. The salt breeze and Pacific spray had long ago scoured off what paint there had been. The house was dark gray, its walls covered with green moss and lichens the color of ashes. What looked like cancers had taken hold on the wood, grown tendrils and linked with other tumors. Part of the porch's supports had collapsed, the floor sagging. Vandals ha
d shown their hand: every window in the house was shattered, and spray-painted graffiti was snarled like gaudy thorns between the lichens.
Laura started up the steps. The second one was already broken, as was the fourth. Laura touched the banister, and her hand sank into the rotten wood. There was no front door. Just beyond the threshold there was a hole in the floor that might have been the size of Mary's boot. Laura walked inside, the smell of saltwater thick and the inner walls dark with growths. Moss hung from the ceiling like garlands. The decorations for a homecoming, Laura thought. She walked toward the staircase, and her left foot slid through the floor as if into gray mud. She pulled free, little black beetles scurrying out of the hole. The first riser of the stairs had given way. So had most of the others. The house was decayed to its core, and the walls were about to fall.
"I know you're there," Laura said. The saturated walls muffled her voice. "I want my baby. I'm not going to let you have him, and you know that by now."
Silence but for the thunder and the noise of dripping.
"Come on, Mary. I'll find you sooner or later."
No answer. What if she's killed him? Laura thought. Oh Jesus, what if she killed him back in Freestone and that's why the police were —
She stopped herself before she cracked. Laura walked carefully into another room. Its bay windows, long broken out, gave a majestic view of the ocean. She could see waves crashing against the rocks, spume leaping high. Mist, a silent destroyer, was drifting into the house. On the cratered floor lay beer cans, cigarette butts, and an empty rum bottle.
Laura heard what she thought at first was the crying of a sea gull on the wind.
No, no. Her heart kicked. It was the crying of a baby. From upstairs, somewhere. Tears burned her eyes, and she almost sobbed with relief. David was still alive.
But she would have to climb the stairs to get him.
Laura started up, over the broken risers. David was still crying, the sound ebbing and then strengthening again. He's tired, she thought. Worn out and hungry. Her arms ached to hold him. Careful, careful! The staircase trembled under her weight, as it must have shaken under the weight of Mary Terror. She climbed into the gloom, moss glistening on the walls, and she reached the second floor.