“Why wouldn’t we get paid?” said Aerie. “I mean, you guys didn’t know this was gonna happen. Did you?”
“What was that guy thinking?” said Ron. “Stomping all over our jam with his fucking Strat.”
“It was Sari’s idea,” said Mal. “She wanted this smooth segue where she could just strut across the floor and start in with Vida.”
“Well he blew his wad way too early, didn’t he? We weren’t close to done playing.”
“Brilliant idea,” said Aerie. “Bringing the birdie here.”
“You should have piped up when we were hauling the gear,” said Ron.
“I did,” said Aerie.
“Crap, she’s looking at us,” said Mal.
“Who?” said Ron.
“That boss lady from the Arts Council,” said Mal. “The one who saw us bring the birdie up the stairs.”
The woman, one of the pair who had tended the water and cookie table, ducked back inside abruptly when she saw them looking.
Mal crouched down and ran his finger down the greasy line that the creature had etched into the pavement. He picked up a piece of transparent grit and rolled it between his fingers.
“Jesus,” he said. “Is this what I think it is?” He scraped it across the face of a parking meter, carving a diagonal gouge into the glass. “Holy shit. This is a diamond.”
Ron squinted at it. “No way. It’s not even shiny.”
“It’s uncut, you idiot.”
“Let me see that.” Ron snatched the pebble from Mal’s fingers.
The boss woman re-emerged, accompanied by two policemen. She pointed directly at Mal.
“Ah crap, here we go,” said Mal.
“Go on, Aerie, get out of here,” said Ron. “Pretend you don’t know us.”
***
Aerie dragged the kithara across the floor a little bit at a time. It was even heavier than it looked. There was no way she could get it down the stairs and into the van on her own.
The landlord showed up and blustered about. He was an elderly, olive-skinned man of indeterminate ethnicity and a vaguely Caribbean accent. He pushed a broom, sweeping up the grains of glass, stopping now then to snap pictures of the curlicues in the floor with his cell phone. He was nicely dressed, with shiny shoes and pressed wool slacks. Aerie, the sole musician left in the room, gave him a focus for his wrath.
“Hey you! You wit’ the band? You gonna pay for dis. I gotta refinish the whole damn floor. What the hell did you do to it?”
“Sorry,” said Aerie, wincing. “We didn’t mean to.”
“Someone’s gotta pay. Lookit it. The floor’s damaged.”
“What about … don’t you have insurance?” said Aerie.
“Course I got it. But I don’t know if they cover such tings. I gotta check it. If dis was vandalism—”
“I had nothing to do with it,” said Aerie. “I’m just—”
“Who’s your manager?”
“What makes you think we got one?”
“All band’s got a manager, no? The cops talkin’ to your friends right now. How come they didn’t take you in, too?”
“I’m just … the bass player.”
He held up his cell phone and snapped her picture. Aerie bared her teeth in a mock snarl as the flash went off. “You’re dat Walker girl, huh? Da International Recording Artist?” He held up a poster.
“Fuck off,” Aerie muttered, under her breath.
“What was that?”
A fireman came by to consult with him. Aerie left the kithara at the top of the stairs and went back to deal with the other instruments. She packed everything up she could into their cases. She would be able to stick the small stuff into the van but there was no way she would be able to get the larger things down the stairs.
Aerie had half a mind to grab her bass and roll it home so she could curl up in bed and forget about the whole disaster.
She could load the smaller stuff into the van and forget about it. It would be safe enough, locked up.
But what about Aaron? When he got home, he’d think his house was broken into, which happened to be true. The police would get another call and Ron and Mal would be in even more trouble, not to mention her as well—as an accessory. Breaking and entering. Burglary. To go along with the reckless endangerment and property damage.
That’s what the fire department decided had happened, though it didn’t explain the markings on the floor or the eyewitness accounts of the swirly, grey beast. From what Aerie could overhear, they had been worried at first about a bomb, but all signs pointed otherwise: the low velocity scatter of the glass particles, the mildness of the injuries, and the absence of any singeing or smoke.
The decided that the culprit was some concoction of dry ice and/or liquid nitrogen, some kind of homemade rock and roll fog machine that had gone awry and imploded. Hence, Eleni’s frost burns. Twenty minutes of investigations and interviews and they started letting folks back in the room.
By then, Eleni had been taken to the hospital, Ron and Mal in for questioning. Sari had vanished with Vida and her entourage leaving Aerie alone to deal with instruments and explain everything to Aaron.
As Aerie fumbled with the balky snaps of Ron’s raggedy guitar case, some guy in pleated khakis hovered up behind her. Aerie tried to ignore him, but when she turned to fetch her bass, he swooped in. It was Aaron’s neighbor. The one who had helped her when her car broke down. She drew a blank. What was his name again?
“Need a hand? Looks like your band’s … deserted you.”
“Um … sure.” She zipped her rosin into a pouch.
“N-name’s John.”
“Yeah. I knew that.”
He crouched down and started gathering up some of Mal’s horns.
“Actually … it would be great if we could load up the big stuff, first.” She waved towards the kithara. “The van’s parked in the lot behind Mayer’s.”
“No problem.” He followed Aerie to the stairwell. “You know … I overheard those firemen. That was no liquid nitrogen.”
“I know.”
Her eyes flitted to the landlord watching them from the head of the stairs. They each grabbed a side of the kithara and hefted it, maneuvering around him as he looked on with disdain.
“So … what was that thing … in the jar?” John whispered, when they were halfway down the stairs.
“Who knows?” said Aerie.
They backed out the propped open door onto the sidewalk. “These things, or things like them. We have them. In the woods near my house.”
“You mean like … in the wild?” said Aerie. “No way.”
“It’s true. I’ve seen them, and their tracks.”
“Any idea … what they might be?”
“I was hoping you would know.”
“Why are you here?”
“Um. Guess I just wanted to know more … what you all were about. Don’t think it helped. I’m even more confused now.”
They set down the kithara in the lot. Aerie opened up the van. “I take it the deliverance is not going so great?”
“On the contrary. Cindy’s ecstatic. Things have been quiet up at the house. But we both know why, don’t we?”
“Yeah,” said Aerie, sighing. “What was your name, again?”
***
It was pushing nine when they had finally emptied got the corner of the loft of instruments. Aerie slid the side of the van closed.
“Thanks,” she said. “Guess I’ll be … heading out your way now.”
“Yeah. Me too. I mean … duh … I live there.”
“We can convoy,” said Aerie. He looked so awkward standing there shifting his feet, his jaw all tensed, his hands fidgety.
“You know … I’d love to help you unload at the other end, but … I can’t. I hope you understand.”
“No big deal,” said Aerie. “Aaron should be there to help out. Um … good luck with your … deliverance.” She smirked. “You don’t think I’m a devil worshipper,
do you?”
“Oh no. Nuh-uh. Not at all.”
Aerie took his hand and gave it a squeeze. His fingers were cold and damp. “Well, thanks again. See you … around.”
“Drive careful. I-I’ll be right behind you … on the road.”
“I’ll be fine,” said Aerie, climbing into the seat and starting the van. “At least I don’t have that damned bell jar to worry about.”
She pulled out of the lot, crossing the curvy line that the birdie had traced on the road.
Chapter 26: Outburst
John prayed for the insanity gripping him to dissipate. He walked down the sidewalk to his car, forcing himself not to look back towards the lot. He listened for the van to pull out, watched every car that passed.
He noticed the change in the wind: the bite of it in his nostrils, a moth struggling in a patch of light, candy wrappers and oak leaves slapping against the cuffs of his trousers.
He got to his car, started it up, waited until he saw the white van flash past, and swung out behind it. Never had a woman affected him this way. He marveled and quailed at the power of the forces controlling his heart. It was if a creature had crawled behind his rib cage to possess him. How could he succumb so easily, without a fight?
The van breezed through a yellow light. John braked, not thinking, and got himself stuck behind a red, watching the space accumulate and cars intervene between him and the object of his infatuation.
He panicked. When the light turned green, he goosed the accelerator and darted across the intersection like a jackrabbit. He ran the next red, accelerated to cut off a UPS truck trying to make a right turn, and blasted through the fringes of town pushing sixty.
It happened to her van? His pulse throbbed in his temples, but why? She had probably only stopped for gas or something. Maybe he should just go home and not worry about her.
A car signaled and turned, revealing the white van just past Buttermilk Falls State Park. His heart leapt. He caught up, keeping a length or two behind her bumper, letting no other vehicle come between them.
Now that he found her, he should have felt relieved, but the disquiet that engulfed him refused to unclamp its jaws. He breathed like a fever victim, squirmed in his seat, unable to get comfortable. When the light of an oncoming truck silhouetted her, his heart bounded. Somehow, he didn’t want to go home any more. He wanted to go wherever she went. Nothing else mattered.
He rolled down his windows, and let the crosswinds blast through his hair, the chill a tonic to his confusion. The radio blared some scratchy, ghostly McCoy Tyner from some underpowered college radio station.
There was no sane reason for him to feel this way about Aerie. For one thing, John had Cindy, one of the prettiest creatures to be found in the Finger Lakes. He was a lucky man, that John, people would say.
This Aerie, she was homely by comparison, not beautiful by any standard. She had an odd flare to her nostrils. Her features were narrow and mousy. Her chest was flat. Her hair—flat and brown. Her eyes, just brown.
Despite her ungainly proportions—sturdy at the base, wiry at the top—she carried herself with a grace suggestive of some sleek denizen of the savannahs. She gave one a sense of a creature perfectly adapted to their world, melding with nature in ways that could be sensed in every aspect of her being, from the jaunty way she walked to the way her fingers arced and flexed, even how gravity settled the folds of her clothes.
John knew he was everything she was not. No movement came natural to him. Never mind dancing, he walked and stood and sat like a man with his joints misaligned and in the wrong places. No matter what he did to his hair it pressed flat and parted naturally on the side. Mirrors constantly ambushed with the news that he was just a younger version of his dork of a father.
He couldn’t imagine how poor an impression he made on her. His wit came slow, the words he chose as inappropriate as cudgels for brain surgery. No wonder she hadn’t looked at him twice, could not even remember his name. Yet he wanted to be wherever she was, go wherever she went.
He had thought that attending her gig might satisfy his niggling curiosity and quench his desires and he could go on with life. That seeing her would remind him of how homely she looked, or would unveil some irreparable ugliness in her persona.
But being close to her again had only stoked his fires. He knew, that to feel that way about another woman was a betrayal and a sin. Though, he had no inclination to repair it, not just yet. It bothered him that she was associated with that unearthly entity in that jar, and by extension whatever it was that carving tracks in the moss of Connecticut Woods.
But she seemed just as troubled as him by that thing’s emergence from the jar. He couldn’t believe she had been a willing participant in these proceedings. He supposed her a pawn in whatever nefarious scheme his neighbor was undertaking.
They turned up into Connecticut Hill, zooming through tunnels of overhanging branches, fallen leaves scurrying like rodents under the glare of their headlights. John flicked his high beams at her as they approached the turn to the cul-de-sac. If Jerry or the interns were watching, they would wonder about his gesture, but he had to reach out to her in some way, communicate some token of support, even if was a mere flash of photons.
Last Hope’s pickup was absent from the driveway. Mac’s Audi was there, pulled up tight alongside Cindy’s Camry. John parked behind Cindy, got out and stood for moment, gazing through the trees at the hell house. He gave a quick rap on the screen door before entering.
“I’m home.”
Mac popped up from the sofa the instant John walked in. He looked all wired and fidgety.
“Hey, Mac. Where is everybody?”
“They went to Watkins Glen,” said Cindy, appearing at the entry of the kitchen, hands stuffed in the pockets of her bathrobe. “Donnie and Jerry treated the interns to a dinner out. Remember that steakhouse we went to once? What was it …?”
“Ponderosa?”
“No, not Ponderosa.”
“Didn’t want to leave Cindy here all alone, considering all that’s been going on,” said Mac. “Thought I’d stick around and, you know, man the fort.”
“Thanks Mac. That’s mighty gentlemanly of you. It’s been quiet, I presume?”
“Oh yeah. It’s been nice. Not a peep.”
Cindy came into the room. Mac moved away, maintaining a space between them, as if magnetically repelled from her. John found this behavior odd.
“How’s Dale?” said Cindy. She came up to him, eyes fierce, chin firm, and pecked his cheek.
“He’s … good. Busy.”
“Any leads?”
“Not really.” He tossed a glance towards Mac, who stood stiffly behind the coffee table, shifting his weight from side to side. He went over and twiddled with Jerry’s monitoring equipment he noticed John looking his way.
“Mac’s bringing a bunch of folks from church over noonish tomorrow for the consecration. We should have some refreshments ready.”
“I take it Don’s feeling better?”
“Well, he’s out eating steak, isn’t he?” said Cindy.
The three of them stood, facing each other awkwardly.
“I guess I should be going,” said Mac.
“I’ll … uh … walk you out,” said John.
Cindy, her lips pursed, gave Mac a quick, little wave and ran upstairs. The wind seized the screen door and ripped it from John’s grasp.
“Man, it’s like a hurricane out here,” said Mac. He forced a chuckle. He took John’s hand firmly and shook it, eyes down, aimed at John’s chest. “Good night, and God Bless.”
The Audi’s security system warbled. Mac swung in, slammed the door, and rumbled out of the driveway.
John lingered on the stoop, gazing up at the hell house, letting the wind have its way with him. A light flicked on in another room. A shadow moved across the window. He wondered whether Aerie thought of him as much as he did her. He wondered if she thought of him at all.
***
/> Aerie unloaded the van by herself, and used a hand truck she found in a broom closet to get every instrument into the house and back to their places in the music room, their prior locations outlined clearly on the dusty floor. Sweaty and panting, she stopped to admire her handiwork, but was struck by how vacant the room seemed without the bell jar at its heart.
She went into the kitchen to get a drink of water. As she searched the cupboards for a glass, she noted the signs of a bachelor. They held pop tarts and cheap spaghetti and jarred pasta sauce. Salt and pepper were his only spices. He certainly was no foodie.
A pantry with its door ajar caught her eye. She opened it up to reveal a wall full of cubbies and drawers like a Chinese herbalist cabinet. They were crowded with jars and specimen cups filled with fine grey powders labeled guano, greensand, diatomaceous earth, lime and sulfur. Some had cryptic place names that sounded vaguely familiar, names like Bamako and Danakil and Atacama. Several containers were encased in lead as if they held something radioactive.
Green and white mottled composition books were stacked on a shelf below. Aerie flipped through a few, seeing that they read like diaries, describing places he had visited and containing sketches and numbers relating to the powders he kept in the cubbies.
The word ‘sonant’ kept popping up, as well as the number ‘432.’ One book was full of musical diagrams. Another described the properties of dozens of exotic tone woods in great detail.
Aerie selected one from among the batch of what looked like the oldest. It mentioned Concord, MA and the year 1995. She figured that among the books, he’d be least likely to miss the older ones. She tucked it under her jacket.
She left the kitchen and switched off the light. When she turned off the hall light, the darkness settled like a funeral shroud. The wind sounded like a mob of voices in the treetops. A chill ran up her back. She couldn’t wait to get the heck out of here and get back to Ithaca. She wasn’t about to stand around in the dark waiting for him. What was the point?
She would, however, write him a brief note explaining basically what had happened and stick it under the door. He had Ron’s number. If he wanted the whole story, let him call Ron. Taking the bell jar was his idea anyhow.
She fumbled in her purse for some paper. She found a CVS receipt, fished around some more until her fingers wrapped around a pen, extracting it from a tangle of ear phone cords.