The pullover blouse lay beside her. She was naked to the waist, her breasts and belly and shoulders naked, and she was reaching for
"Come on. Right on top of Elizabeth Cotton, virgin."
"It's silly."
"You think uY?"
I watched her lean back and slip the jeans down off her thighs, the thin panties folding away with them, graceful as a snake shedding its skin. She tossed them away and lay back against the cool earth, reached over her head and took one side of the headstone of Elizabeth Cotton in each hand. In the moonlight her tanned flesh looked unnaturally pale. She smiled at me and moved against the stunted grass.
"Come on. I want you in me."
Justa whisper. Like a razor sliding through paper. Itseemedto force the blood through my veins and trigger a heavy pounding in my chest. I wanted her. With all I'd seen of her tonight, I wanted her worse than ever. I felt like a man in a life jacket who finally accepts
the water's numbing cold. This was hers. Pure Casey. Undiluted. In the Middle Ages, they'd have burned her at the stake.
I took off my clothes and stood there a moment, naked, looking down at her, watching myself rise. Amazed a little.
Then I went into her.
I went in hard, tickled by perversity. The smell of damp musty earth suddenly strong around us. I pumped at her until her cool skin grew warm again and then moved her violently on top of me, exchanging places with her-the ground, the old crumbled bones beneath my arched back and thighs.
She reached down. Her fingers clawed the damp soil. She took up a handful and ground it against my chest. I felt a sudden all-enveloping chill. She leaned over me and grasped the headstone in both hands again and I rose up high to meet her.
I looked up into a face that was already trembling on the near side of orgasm, past the blind-seeming eyes, and glimpsed myself as though reflected in some dream image as clouds drifted by the moon. I saw us as though from above, locked together, clashed in need. The headstone behind me. I saw huge dead hands reach up out of the churning earth and pull us down.
As she screamed, I felt those hands on me. Broken stalagmite fingers.
On my shoulders. On my neck. Lightly clutching.
Cold and sweating, I came too. And screamed along with her. While the hands receded. Tendrils of smoky mist, climbing back into the soil.
"My god!"
I heard my own nervous "You too, huh?" "You were moving at me right up out of the ground. I was fucking a dead man!"
I felt her shudder. Her body sparkled with beads of sweat. "God!
Kiss me. Kiss me easy."
It was very soft and warm. For a moment I felt the strangeness clear a tiny space for us, like stepping into a dense fog and watching it swirl away around your feet. I felt her cool breasts brush my chest,
laughter.
smelled the rich natural perfume of her damp hair. She was Casey, just Casey. Slightly nuts but that was all.
I still lay inside her.
Like the dead, it would take only a little imagination to get me to rise again.
I broke the kiss and gently lifted her away.
"No more?"
"I think we've educated old Liz Cotton."
I stood up and pulled on my clothes. She sat still a moment fingering a blade of grass, the picture of healthy life amid all those twisted shapes of tombstones. Suddenly I heard the crickets and the frogs again. They'd been there all along, but I was elsewhere.
She got dressed. The last thing she put on was her pullover blouse.
She tugged it on over her head and then thought of something. While it was still around her neck she kissed the palm of her hand and pressed it to the headstone of Elizabeth Cotton.
We walked back through the cemetery to the church. Neither of us spoke. I glanced at the padlock on the door and shook my head.
"You know why I was so mad before? Back at your house. You know why I hit you?"
"The windows. The broken windows. I don't blame you."
"No. Just partly that."
"What else?"
I pointed to the padlock.
"Look at that. It's ridiculous. A Yale lock wouldn't keep out a determined ten-year-old."
"So?"
"So I know. Remember I told you there was one other brush with the law?"
"Yes?"
The blue eyes glittered at me.
"Breaking and entering. I was fourteen years old. It was no big thing. A lot of scare tactics at the police station, that was all. And bad times with my mom and dad for a while."
"A lock like this?"
"God, no! You wouldn't want a lock lit than ashed. That's what I mean. No, this was a house over on Maple. Properly closed for the winter. I went through a window on the ground floor. Wandered around awhile. Somebody saw my flashlight through the living-room window."
"But why? What were you doing? Stealing?"
"Good thing I wasn't, or I wouldn't have gotten off with just a warning. No matter how many cops my dad knew. No, that was the weird part. I didn't go there to steal.
"When they got there-the cops, I mean-I'd just been sitting in the living room, in this big old easy chair, wondering what the people were like. And smoking a cigarette. I'd almost forgotten that. I guess I did steal something. The cigarette. From a tired old pack on the kitchen table."
We walked to the car and I thought about it. I hadn't thought about it for years And I'm not sure I'd ever asked myself exactly what the point had been.
"I don't know why. It was exciting. I liked it. Hiked invading their privacy. I looked through all the drawers upstairs, but they were mostly empty. There were some clothes in the closet. I looked through them. I didn't know the people at all, but being in the house gave me the feeling that I did. I liked that. That's why I was sitting in that chair. Just thinking about them. I could almost hear their voices.
"I have this fantasy. I'm in the city, Portland maybe. Whatever. And I see this girl on the street. She's very attractive, so I follow her.
I follow her for days, get to know everything she does and everywhere she goes. But she never sees me. I get to know her completely without her ever knowing me. And then when I think I've got her completely down cold, I go away and never come back. Like leaving a lover. She never even knows I was there."
v oy g u r I s m.
"Sure. I get to be with her, know her, even care about her a little, but I never have to do anything . I'm completely .. . aloof. At the same time I'm completely committed to her, obsessive even. It's all I do for days. You see?"
"I think so"
fora while, k get it out of my mind. The whole experience was so clear to me, as though it had only happened days ago. And it was strange, because I could remember want/ngto get caught in there. That was why the flashlight was on. I'd had it trained right on the window, for no good reason at all except that I must have known somebody would see it and wonder. I'd wanted somebody to know. I think I was even aware of it at the time, without understanding why I'd want to risk that, why I felt that way.
I thought I knew now what the fantasy was about. It was a kind of declaration to myself as to where things stood with me. The reserve.
The need for emotional safety. Yet as early as six years ago, I'd broken into a stranger's house and thrown a flashlight beam on the living room window. Even that far back I must have known what my little reserve was worth.
We were quiet going back to Dead River. I didn't take her home. Even at four in the morning it would be quite a scene there. A rock through a neighbor's window would be nearly impossible to forgive. And Casey wouldn't want forgiveness anyway.
We went to my apartment instead.
We climbed the stairs yawning. And Casey turned back to me and murmured, "Sounds like fun."
"What does?"
I knew what she meant. It made me cold inside. But I went through the motions anyway.
"Breaking and entering."
I said nothing. I opened the door for her. She stepped ins
ide and faced me. The smile was sleepy but the eyes were filled with broken light. I didn't even bother to argue the point. I knew where it would lead us. It was where we'd been going, anyway, all along.
"I want to do it."
The tendrils of fog had followed us from the graveyard. They slid around my throat again like soft wet claws, caressing me, turning my spit to acid.
"And I know just the place for it too. The perfect place."
"You do?"
She looked at me. For the first time, her smile mocked me a little.
"Don't you?"
"Look, it has to be the Crouch place."
"Why?"
"Because it does."
The hamburgers at Harmon's were lousy. The refrigerated, prepackaged kind you stick in a microwave. But we ate them. Casey looked terrific in a tiny blue halter and cream-colored shorts. The makeup was subtle and carefully done. To me it was obvious there was seduction going on.
"Because the Crouch place is isolated, dummy. I have no intention of getting caught like our cat burglar over here." She nodded at me and Kim smiled.
"Nobody's going to come by. Nobody's going to see us go in or come out again, and nobody's going to pay any unexpected calls. It's perfect."
"She's right," said Steve. "It's the safest place around. But I dunno, Case. Where's the big thrill?"
"It'll be worth it. You'll see."
"Got something planned?" Kim wiped at a crumb of burger bun at the corner of her mouth.
"I might."
"So tell us."
"And make it good, please," said Steve. "Because I really don't see this so far. I mean, what's the big deal about walking into an empty house at night, looking around and leaving? It's kids' stuff. It
would make more sense to do it someplace in town. If we can't get caught, Where's the risk? What's the point?"
"There's no risk. But I can still make it fun. It's kids' stuff, all right. But use your imaginations. You'll see."
"See what?"
"Will you tell us for chrissake?"
"Come on, Case," I said. "Let's have it. Skip the buildup."
She looked at me and grinned. I wasn't a conspirator, but I felt like one. Whatever her idea was we hadn't discussed it. She knew damn well I wasn't happy with the thing. I'd go along. She didn't have to sell me like she did the other two. But I wasn't happy.
She was, though.
She'd found a way to shoo the boredom again.
"Hide and seek," she said.
Kim's mouth made a big scowly streak across her face. "What?"
Steve looked at her the way an adult will look at an annoying child. I just sat there, thinking about it.
"Hide and seek. Just the way we used to play it when we were kids. But we play it in the Crouch place."
You could feel it dawning on them. It was a dumb idea, all right, but it had possibilities, ambiguities. Personally I'd rather have been in Sheboygan.
"I get it. The place is supposed to be haunted or something, right?"
Steve's index finger darted at her like the tongue of a snake.
"Right. So we play with that a little, see? No flashlights allowed.
A strange house. At night. Alone. A place we don't know and have never been in before."
Kimberley nodded. "The vague possibility of a cop coming along."
"Very vague," I told her. I hoped I was right.
"But still there," said Casey.
"And us with the lights off, trying to find one another in the dark in an old, weird house." Kim's voice was excited now, the concept in full bloom.
Steve snapped his fingers.
"I like it. I really do. You're right-it's kids' stuff, but it's good."
"A whole lot better than The Love Bug."
That was the movie at the Colony tonight. Kim shivered.
"I'm spooked already."
All of them turned to me.
"Clan?" said Casey.
I shrugged. "Why not?"
She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. It was the kind of kiss you get from grandmothers on your tenth birthday.
"It's settled then."
She drained her chocolate egg cream. Steve's straw gurgled in the bottom of his glass.
"When do we go?"
"What's wrong with tonight?"
"Sooner the better."
Kim was hopping around in her seat by now. "Okay, so what do wp hrinrf?"
wA? Wl III.
"Despite what Casey says, I'd suggest flashlights," I told them. She started to object.
"We don't have to use them, Case. But just to be on the safe side.
That house is pretty old, you know. Floors start to go in old houses, things fall down on you. I don't think if one of us got hurt we'd want to depend on matches."
Steve held up the bandaged hand. "He's right."
"I'd also suggest a couple six-packs. Apart from that, Ican'tthink of anything."
"limp?"
"Midnight, of course," said Kimberley.
Casey nodded. "We should meet say at Dan's place at eleven, eleven-thirty."
"Right"
There was a silence then. Everybody smiled at one another. I think we all felt pretty silly. Kim started to giggle.
"You've had some dumb ideas, Casey. But this one ..."
"Thanks."
"I mean really."
"I appreciate it."
"Ghosts, for god's sake!" She threw up her hands. For a moment there was something very Old Testament about it. In Harmon's. A blond girl in shorts. Praying.
There was a lot I had to tell them about the Crouch place, but I waited.
My feeling was that telling them right away would only end in Casey's finding some way around it. A few handy rationalizations here and there and she'd have us going along with no trouble whatsoever.
It seemed my best chance would be to try throwing a scare into them at the last minute and hope somebody balked. I wasn't crazy about The Love Bug either, but it was preferable to something that could get me arrested. None of them had ever been caught at anything. I had. I knew it felt lousy. The old stories about Ben and Mary bothered me a whole lot less than the off chance that some nosy local farmer would drive by and realize there was somebody inside there and call the police. I never really credited Rafferty's speculations about strange disappearances, but I credited bad luck. I credited that, all right.
We met at my apartment.
Casey showed up in the same blue halter top and cream shorts, looking like she was ready for a picnic. I told her that if the night turned cold, she was going to freeze out there. She dipped into the green book bag and pulled out the corner of an army shirt, looking at me as if to say, no small objections, thanks. I made no more of them.
Kim wore overalls over a yellow cotton blouse. Both had seen some use.
It was a good choice, practical for the kind of thing we were doing.
Predictably Steven's shirt was bright with tropical colors -greens, yellows and red-orange-worn over white linen slacks. The swathe of bandage on his hand made him look like an injured tourist in a banana republic. As usual he was last to arrive.
"You're gonna be a mess in that," I told him.
He shrugged. "I'll get clean again."
There were three flashlights between us. Kim had found out hers was broken. I told her she could have mine. It wasn't chivalry.
I still wasn't counting on anything to happen tonight. I still hoped I could talk them out of it.
We got into the blue Le Baron, and Steven got behind the wheel, and we started off through town.
I waited until we were out on the coast road, with all the houselights and streetlights behind us for maximum effect, and then I spun my little story for them.
I told them about the doctor being afraid and made it sound worse than Rafferty had told it. I told them about the caves and about Ben and Mary being imbeciles who were driven off their land through somebody's greed and made them sound as vengeful as I dared.
/> Then I wrapped it up.
"Steve, you said there was a light in the house that night. I said bullshit. But suppose you were right? Suppose it's them, in from the caves? Are you folks absolutely sure you'd want to meet up with them in the dark?"