Earl nodded. “Sure. But you’ll have to ditch those suits. People up here don’t wear many three-pieces in cottage country.”
“That’s not a problem,” Louie said. Though Earl was. He was getting on Louie’s nerves. Maybe when this Colombian deal that Earl was setting up was done…maybe the padrone would give Earl to Louie as a favor.
“I’m going to enjoy seeing you guys in T-shirts and cut-offs,” Earl said.
“You talk too much,” Fingers told him.
“Is that true?” Earl asked Louie.
Broadway Joe’s son just smiled.
* * *
Late Monday afternoon, a black van splattered with mud pulled over to the side of the read just before the turnoff to Tony Valenti’s property. The driver carefully checked the road both ways to make sure he was alone, then backed the van off the road.
The bed of the van rode high and there was no ditch, so the driver had little trouble squeezing his vehicle in among the trees. Branches scraped its sides and it drove right over saplings. When he got it far enough from the road, the driver killed the engine and disembarked. He moved quickly forward and began to straighten saplings that hadn’t sprung back on their own, moving on to do the same with the grass and weeds. These latter didn’t fare quite as well as the more resilient saplings, but by the time the man had brushed away the van’s tracks from the mud on the side of the road and had thrown a camouflage net over the van itself, the vehicle was barely visible.
The man stood for a few moments in the misting rain, regarding his handiwork. He had short dark hair and a day’s worth of salt-and-pepper stubble on his cheeks and chin. His complexion was dark, made more so by his black water-repellant clothing and the shadows of the trees.
Going back into the van, he returned a moment later with a self-cocking commando crossbow in his hands. It was fitted with a scope that he checked out, sighting it on a nearby blackbird taking shelter in a cedar from the rain. The scope brought the bird in startlingly close.
“Bang,” the man said.
Laying the crossbow down for a moment, he attached a belt around his waist. A small quiver of crossbow bolts hung from it. Then he picked up his weapon once more and slipped off into the woods, moving back toward Tony Valenti’s house. His passage was silent in the wet forest.
9
“You understand what the old man was talking about in there?” Valenti asked Ali.
The two of them were sitting on the top step of the stairs going into the cabin, watching the rain. A small overhanging roof kept them dry. Inside, Bannon was reading while the old man sat at the table, doing what, Valenti didn’t know. He just sat there. Thinking maybe. Valenti and Ali had come out to get a breath of air.
“How’s your leg?” Ali asked.
“It’s okay. It always aches a bit in this kind of weather.” He turned to look at her. “You didn’t answer my question.”
Ali glanced at him, “Jeez, Tony. I’m just a kid. What do I know about this kind of stuff?”
“Don’t give me that.”
“Okay.” She spent a moment picking at a thread on her jeans, then looked out into the rain. “The things he was saying confused me. I mean, all these old gods he was naming—some of them are sun gods, some of them are sort of hunter figures, some are a bit of both. But they come from all different kinds of mythologies and cultures.”
“You figure they can’t all be the same?”
Ali shrugged. “I don’t know enough about it. I really am just a kid, Tony. The kind of stuff Mr. Datchery talks about—that’s for scholars to figure out.”
“Yeah, but you’ve read a lot. You’re smart.”
“And you’re not?”
“I’m just a dumb Italian,” Valenti replied, mimicking her. “What do I know?”
“Okay. I get the point already.”
“So what do you think?”
“Well, I know there are similarities all around the world. And when it comes to Christianity—well, they did borrow a lot from other cultures. Easter comes around the same time as the vernal equinox—that’s the Spring equinox when day and night are the same length—and even the whole business with Easter eggs is based on pagan fertility rites. In fact, even Christ’s being crucified has parallels in other cultures. The Norse god Baldur was nailed to a tree as well.”
“You’re kidding.”
Ali shook her head. “So I understand what Mr. Datchery was getting at, but at the same time I find it confusing. And then…” She looked at Valenti. “Then there’s what I feel inside. About the music and the stag. When I think about just that, not about things that I’ve read or stuff that you learn in church, then it all starts to make perfect sense. Maybe I’m going a little crazy—I don’t know.”
“I don’t think so,” Valenti said. “I get the same feeling. And I’ve been hearing that music a whole lot longer than you have. But then I talk to Tom and he just says it’s all a load of crap and that makes sense, too. I mean, how can any of that stuff Datchery’s talking about be real?”
Ali sighed. “I don’t know. What do you think’ll happen at this stone tonight?”
“I’m still trying to figure that out.”
“You don’t think these people belong to a…well, a cult or something?”
Valenti shrugged. “The thought’s crossed my mind.”
“My mom used to know this guy who claimed he was a witch—not like riding a broomstick and casting spells and stuff like that, but it was some kind of religion. I talked with him about it a couple of times, but I was pretty young and I didn’t understand a lot of what he was saying. Then Mom got mad ’cause he was telling me all this stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Well,” Ali said. “I read up on it after he stopped coming around—Mom didn’t make him too welcome. Anyway, one thing I remember is that they had two gods instead of one: the Moon Goddess and her consort, the Horned Man. And that’s—”
“Just like what we’ve got going on here.”
“Or so Mr. Datchery says.”
“But we’ve seen the stag, Ali. We’ve heard the music. And ordinary deer don’t come to people’s rescue like some kind of cavalry—not like the stag did that night.”
Ali nodded. “Yeah. Only why did he do that?”
“That’s the thing, isn’t it?” Valenti said. “Maybe we’ll find out tonight.”
“I suppose.” Ali thought about it. She wanted to go to the stone tonight—to hear the music right up close, to see what Lewis Datchery was talking about, but at the same time she found the whole idea a little scary. At least Tony was going to be there. And Tom. They’d make sure that nothing happened to her. Only, what if whatever took place happened inside her? The music hadn’t made her look or talk any different, but ever since she’d first heard it, she’d felt different inside. She wondered if Mally would be there tonight, then realized that that was something else they hadn’t talked to Lewis about.
“Rain’s letting up,” Tony said. “Just like the old man said it would.”
“Tony,” Ali said. “We never asked him about Mally.”
“That’s right. We never did.”
* * *
“She says she’s always been here,” Lewis said, “and while she seems to know the mystery better than any of us, it doesn’t affect her the way it does us.”
“She told me she was a secret,” Ali said.
Lewis nodded. “The Moon’s secret—but I don’t rightly know what she means by that.”
They were all sitting around the table. Bannon had a poetry collection of Padraic Colum open in front of him and was obviously more taken by the book’s contents than their conversation. Glancing at him, Ali wondered at the incongruity of someone involved in Tony’s old business being interested in early twentieth century Irish poetry.
“You have to understand,” Lewis went on, “that Mally’s as much a riddle to me as she is to you. I’ve known her a great deal longer, of course, but while she lets enticing s
nippets fall my way during our conversations, she’s never really come out and spoken plainly to me about anything.”
“I know that feeling from just seeing her a couple of times,” Ali said.
Lewis smiled. “And yet I trust her. She’s been very good to me—kept me company through many an evening. She likes to have me read to her and brings me the odd book from time to time that she ‘finds.’“
“She brought you all of these?” Bannon asked, looking up from his book.
“Oh, no,” Lewis said. “But some of them. Others my friend Jango searched out and brought me—knowing my interest in such things. The greater portion of them, however, made up the library of the man who built the house you now live in, Ali.”
She remembered something Mally had told her. “The ‘dark man’?”
Lewis nodded. “That’s what Mally calls him. His real name was Ackerly Perkin. He left this area well over fifty years ago.”
“Mally…she’s been around that long?” Ali asked.
“I’ve known her that long. I have the feeling that she’s been around forever.”
“But she looks my age.” Ali couldn’t believe the wild girl was fifty years old, if not older.
“She hasn’t aged a day since the first time I met her,” Lewis said.
“That’s not possible,” Ali said.
Still not looking up from his book, Bannon nodded in agreement.
“There’s a great deal about Mally that doesn’t seem possible, I’m afraid,” Lewis told them.
“What about this Perkin guy?” Valenti asked. He was getting uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was going. Unlike Bannon, he’d heard the piping and seen the stag, so he knew that there was something odd going on around here. But people didn’t just stop growing older. Not unless they’d died. “What’s the story on him? And why does Mally call him a dark man?”
“She saw him as something dangerous,” Lewis said, “though I’m not sure what the exact danger was. Either he was capable of showing the mystery to be an illusion—which would, you’ll have to agree, take a great deal away from its power to move our spirits—or the mystery was real, but Perkin was capable of creating illusions that could chase the mystery across the world like the legendary Wild Hunt chased the souls of the dead. What’s even more curious, however, is that there was another Perkin in Wealdborough who was, in his own way, as mysterious as Ackerly Perkin, but his exact opposite. We’re back to illusions again—the original Perkin in England had none, while Ackerly Perkin had too many.”
He regarded the confused looks on the faces of his guests and shrugged apologetically. “I’m sorry if I’m not explaining this very well, but the whole problem has been a source of much personal confusion and soul-searching and I still don’t quite have it set in my own mind. My research has led me down too many false trails—so many, in fact, that I’m not quite sure myself as to which are the illusions and which not.”
“You mean the stag’s not real?” Valenti asked.
“He seems very real,” Lewis said.
Valenti thought about it attacking Shaw’s car last night. “I’ll say.”
“But something pursues the stag—and that’s what confuses me the most at the present time. This Hunt—is it a natural phenomenon? By which I mean, if the stag exists as a mythical being, does it always follow that the Hunt will pursue it? Or was the Hunt created out of Ackerly Perkin’s illusions and set upon the stag’s trail? Or is it my own questioning as to what exactly the stag is that has set the hounds upon it—are the hounds my questions?”
“I thought the stag was the huntsman,” Ali said.
“Some cultures have depicted him so,” Lewis replied.
Valenti remembered what he’d seen the first night he saw the stag. There’d been shapes following it, looking first like hounds, then like monks or priests. “Why’s it so important to figure this all out?” he asked. “I mean, either something’s real, or it’s not, right?”
“But it’s not so simple as that,” Lewis said. “We’ve contained the mystery to some degree—kept it from roaming beyond the confines of these forests because if it was to run free in the world…” He paused, looking for a way to phrase what he wanted to say. “There’s too much wrong in the world now,” he said finally. “And if you remember what I said about the mystery reflecting what it finds in the hearts of those who come into contact with it…”
There was a moment’s silence as his guests considered his train of thought.
“Boom,” Valenti said.
Ali shook her head. “I can’t accept that. What if you’re wrong, Mr. Datchery? What if the stag’s presence would be enough to just mellow everyone out?”
“There is no power in the world, not that of any religion’s god or mystery, that can change people from being what they are. The world’s history—what little we have recorded of it—proves that beyond a doubt.”
“But—”
“And if you need further proof,” Lewis continued without letting Ali speak, “then remember this: The mystery once had free run of the world. Were there no more wars? Did people help each other in times of famine or plague?”
“So you have to keep it trapped?” Bannon asked, interested despite himself.
“A better way to put it would be that we’re keeping him alive,” Lewis said. “He wouldn’t survive very long in the greater world by himself. Unfortunately, our numbers have dwindled here in New Wolding. We are no longer enough to keep him here. The mystery speaks through Tommy’s music and reaches out farther and farther each time it sounds. The mystery needs the rebounding echoes that come when the music touches the soul of a man or a woman, and then returns to him. The echoes that come back to him now aren’t always good. They make the mystery wilder, driving him farther away from his aspect of the Green Man and more to that of a dumb beast. And at the same time the Hunt grows stronger, feeding on those echoes. It becomes a downward spiral….”
“Maybe it’s time for him to go,” Ali said. “You know. The circle turns and all that? Maybe he’s got to go, so that he can come back stronger.”
“That’s the Christian in you talking. The miracle of Christ’s rising from the dead and His subsequent ascension into Heaven.”
Ali shook her head. “I think it’s more pagan,” she said with a small smile. “I mean, reincarnation and that sort of thing.”
“I think I’m getting a headache from all of this,” Valenti said. “The more you talk, the more confused I get.”
“My own years of research and study have left me no better off,” Lewis replied. “Sometimes I think that only Mally has the right of it. She says to just let things flow. What comes will come.”
“She seems more active than that to me,” Ali said.
Lewis smiled. “Well, she also says that it’s better to do and experience, than to peck and worry at the workings of a thing.”
“There’s just no straight answer, is there?” Valenti said.
“Wait until tonight,” Lewis said. “Maybe you’ll find an answer.”
“Will Mally be there?” Ali asked.
“Perhaps. She doesn’t always go.”
“Whatever happened to Ackerly Perkin? Bannon asked.
“The world went to war and he went to experience it.” Lewis shook his head. “We never heard from him again.”
“What about the other Perkin?” Ali asked. “The one in England?”
Lewis sighed. “I don’t know. It’s getting late. Perhaps we should have some dinner and save the rest of your questions for another time. Wait until after tonight.”
“Okay,” Ali said. “Do you want some help with dinner?”
“I’d like that very much,” Lewis said.
Valenti glanced at Bannon, but Bannon merely returned to his book as Lewis and Ali began to make a salad. Lewis already had a stew on and there was freshly raised dough ready to go into the oven. As the scent of baking bread filled the cabin Valenti returned to the door and studied the v
iew.
Somewhere up on that hill, in among the wet trees—that was where the stone was. Somewhere in the forest, the mystery was walking…like a stag, or a goatman, or a man with antlers and a mantle of green leaves. Valenti wondered for a moment before he went back to sit at the table: Did the mystery ever appear as a wild-haired girl with burrs and twigs in her curls who called herself Mally? Or maybe as an old man who lived by himself in a cabin in the forest, on the edge of a village that wasn’t marked on any map?
Just what the hell were they going to find out tonight? He glanced at Ali, who was happily chopping up cabbage and carrots for the salad. Maybe coming out here today hadn’t been such a good idea after all. If anything happened to her… Fercrissakes, he told himself. Don’t even think about that.
10
By six o’clock Monday evening, Howie came to the conclusion that Earl had dumped him. He felt a curious mixture of relief and regret. On the one hand, this was going to be the big score. Earl wanted to just work his way deeper and deeper into the big money rackets, but Howie hadn’t quite decided what he was going to do with the cut Earl had promised him. All he knew was that for the first time in his life, he was going to have enough money to do what he wanted for a change. People were going to listen to what he had to say. Women were going to want him in their pants.
The thing that balanced all that slipping away was the fact that he wouldn’t be around Earl anymore. Earl with his crazy eyes. Earl who, if you said the wrong thing maybe, would just as soon blow you away as not. Howie didn’t dislike Earl, but he’d learned to be more than a little afraid of him. His relationship with Earl had become a little like a big cat act in the circus, except the lion was in charge, and if it jumped through a hoop, it was only because it wanted to.
Howie shifted uncomfortably in his deck chair. What the hell was he going to do now? How long were Lisa and Sherry going to take care of him before they, too, picked up on the fact that Earl probably wasn’t coming back to collect him? As though summoned by his thoughts the screen door banged open behind him and the women joined him on the porch. Lisa had a joint burning between her fingers.