The music seemed to hold a personal message for him. Go ahead, he thought it was saying. Feel sorry for yourself, regret the things you’ve done and the things you’ll never get to do. But just remember that you aren’t what you were, but what you are now.
Sure, he thought. Tell that to whoever the new padrone’s sending after me. But the music wouldn’t let him hold on to that. It drew his gaze to the dancers, his heart to the music. The fires inside him muttered and burned, but danced in time to the piping notes.
* * *
Of the three of them, it was Ali who first spotted the stag soft-stepping from the forest behind Tommy’s shoulder. It towered over the boy like a twin to the old stone, eyes gleaming, antlers smooth, head lifted high as it gazed into the glade.
Ali faltered in her steps. She dropped Lily’s hand and stood still, staring at the enormous beast. She thought of everything that Lewis had told them, but realized as she looked into the stag’s liquid eyes that none of it mattered. It didn’t matter who or what the stag was, or where it had come from. All that mattered was that it existed. But still, she could understand the legends and myths that had grown up around this majestic being.
It was no longer a stag, the longer she watched it, but a man. He stood as tall, his antlers branching high into the sky, but on two cloven hooves now, not four. A cloak was draped over his shoulder, matted with leaves and burrs and twigs, some green and growing, some dried to an autumn brown. His face was angular like a roughly-chiselled statue—a wise face and a sad one, but there was joy in it, too, and a sense of wildness, a sense of humor and fun. Only the eyes stayed entirely the same, dark and liquid.
Ali took a step toward him and then he changed again. Now the antlers were a ram’s horns, lifting from his brow in two ridged sweeps. The cloak fell to the grass to become a carpet of mulch that he trod on with goat legs. His chest was hairy and muscular, his face a triangular shape accentuated by the tuft of a goat’s beard that dangled from his chin.
Pan, Ali thought. She wanted to speak his name, but her muscles were too numb, her throat too tight to shape its sound. The music dipped and soared around her as she took a second and a third step, drawing ever closer to the magical apparition. And then she heard the other sound—distant at first, but growing louder. It was like the baying of dogs on the hunt, the howling of wolves. She remembered what Lewis had said about the Hunt and shook her head. They couldn’t have him. Not this being.
The sound of the Hunt grew louder now, cutting across the music. The other dancers faltered. The goatman grew indistinct around the edges. He was the stag-man again, taller, broad-chested, and then the stag. He pawed the ground with a hard hoof, spraying grass and clods of dirt. The dogs became louder still.
“N-no,” Ali said.
She started to turn around. She’d stop them. She’d give the mystery time to escape. But then a familiar figure was at her side, floppy hat covering the tangled and matted hair, teeth showing white as she grinned.
“Come on!” Mally cried as she took Ali’s hand.
“No!” Ali protested. “The Hunt—”
“Stuff the Hunt!” Mally told her. “Tonight we’re going to drink down the moon!”
They were directly in front of the stag now. Mally grasped Ali around the waist with both hands and with a cry of “Ali-oop!” flung her up onto the stag’s back. Ali clung to its neck, stunned as much at where she found herself as at the wild girl’s startling strength. A moment later Mally was up on the stag’s back behind her, straddling the wide girth, her arms around Ali’s waist.
“Run!” Mally cried to the stag. “Let’s show them the night as they’ve never seen it before. We’ll run them into their graves and then run some more. Hoo-hey!”
She kicked her heels against the stag’s sides and it leapt high into the air, over the dancers, circling on prancing hooves in front of Valenti, Bannon and Lewis, then back toward the stone. There was a sound of snarling in the air as the Hunt drew close. The stag jumped toward the stone. Valenti took a few running steps after them before his leg gave out and he stumbled to the ground. He watched the stag leap, its riders clinging to its neck and each other, and then it was gone.
He blinked. For a moment he’d thought it had disappeared right into the stone, but he knew that couldn’t be right. It had entered the forest behind the stone. But why couldn’t he hear it in the underbrush? And Ali… It was taking Ali away!
Bannon was at his side helping him to his feet. Valenti shook off his hand and stared wildly at where the stag had disappeared. It was gone. With Ali. Oh, Jesus. What was he going to tell her momma?
“C’mon,” Bannon started to say, but suddenly the glade was filled with dark shapes. The Hunt was all around them.
The dancers had fled to the shelter of the trees with the other villagers. Tommy stood up, back against the stone’s rough surface, his dog Gaffa crouched snarling at his feet. The reed pipes hung from Tommy’s hands. His face was vacuous again, stripped of its inspiration. He stared at the two men and the shapes that surrounded them.
The shapes were dogs, then men, cowled and robed, then animals again. They milled around the circle, snarling. When one of them snapped at Valenti, he dug out his automatic, thumbed the safety off, and fired point-blank into the creature’s face.
The explosion of the gun was loud. A deep silence followed the sound of its sharp report. The beast Valenti had shot didn’t appear to have been affected at all by the bullet, but it backed away from him, as did the rest of the pack. Valenti took aim at the biggest one of them, but Bannon touched his arm.
“No,” he said. “They’re going.”
Still silent, the pack flowed around the pair and ran for the stone. They split up, half passing it on one side, half on the other. Not until they were in the forest did they begin to howl once more.
“Oh, Jesus,” Valenti said. The automatic hung at his side now and he leaned against Bannon. “It took her,” he said. “Ali’s gone. What the Christ are we going to do?”
Bannon turned to look at where they’d left Lewis standing. The old man came out from the shelter of the trees and walked slowly toward them.
“You!” Valenti said, lifting the gun.
“That won’t help,” Bannon said.
Valenti looked at the weapon, then slowly nodded. He flicked the safety back on and thrust it into his pocket. “Where did they go?” he asked Lewis. “Where’s that thing taking her?”
“I don’t know,” Lewis replied. “This has never happened before.”
“Great.” Valenti studied the circle of villagers who were slowly emerging from the trees. They all appeared frightened. He turned to look at Tommy. The boy was still standing by the stone, the reed pipes silent in his hand. “What about the pipes?” Valenti asked. “Can’t you use them to call the stag back?”
“We don’t command him,” Lewis said. “All we do is celebrate him.”
“Yeah. But the pipes call him, right?”
“Sometimes he comes—more often not. And never twice on the same night.”
“Fercrissakes!” Valenti shouted. “Then what’re we going to do?”
Bannon stopped to pick up Valenti’s cane and handed it to him. “We’ll find her,” he said.
“How? Christ, what am I going to tell her momma?”
“C’mon, Tony. We’ll—”
“It’s that wild girl,” Valenti said. “She grabbed Ali. She’s going to be the one that pays if anything happens to her.” He swung around to look at the villagers again. “And that goes for all of you—you hear what I’m telling you? Anything happens to Ali, and you’re all paying.”
“Please,” Lewis said. “We meant her no harm. This has never—”
“Happened before,” Valenti finished. “Yeah. I know. I heard you the first time. Well, it’s never going to happen again, capito? This babau of yours—this bogeyman’s not going to steal another kid, not if I’ve got anything to say about it.”
As Valenti started
for the stone Bannon caught him by the arm. “What are you planning to do?” he asked. “Chase after that thing?”
“You got a better idea?”
“The way I see it is, we’ve got two choices. Either we wait for it to come back here, or we head on back to your place. If Ali gets off that thing, I’m betting she’ll head for your place. All we’re going to do if we start running crazy through the bush is get lost ourselves.”
“Yeah. But what if she falls off it somewhere back there? What if she’s lying there hurt?”
“The girl’s with her,” Bannon said.
Valenti shook his head. “I don’t trust that girl.”
“I can’t believe anything bad’s going to happen to Ali,” Bannon said. “Not while she’s with the stag. Didn’t you feel anything when it showed up?”
“I’ll stay here—all night if necessary,” Lewis offered, “and if she returns here, I’ll bring her to your house.”
“You’re just a part of all this shit,” Valenti said. “If it wasn’t for you, we’d—”
“C’mon, Tony. You’re talking crazy. No one here wants to hurt Ali. If you’d think for a moment, you’d see that.”
Before Valenti could reply, the sound of the pipes started up again—softly, not a rallying call, or a celebration, just a sad series of notes that didn’t quite make a melody. But it was enough so that Valenti remembered what he’d been feeling when the music had been going full tilt. It was enough to take the sharp edge off his fear for Ali. He turned to look at Tommy as the sound of the pipes faded away, but there was nothing in the boy’s eyes at that moment. Nobody home, Valenti thought. He took a deep breath.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go home.”
Bannon nodded. He turned to Lewis, but before he could say anything, Valenti spoke.
“Listen,” he said to the old man. “Maybe I got a little carried away, but I’m worried about the kid, okay? She means a lot to me.”
“I understand,” Lewis said. “If I’d had any way of knowing this would happen, I would never have asked you to come to the stone.”
Valenti nodded.
“If she comes back here, I will bring her to you,” Lewis said.
“Thanks. And we’ll send you word if something breaks on our end.” Valenti glanced at his companion. “Let’s hit the road, Tom.”
Behind them, the piper by the stone began to play once more. The music that came from his reed pipes was not the same as it had been earlier. It sang of regret now, and of things lost, rather than in celebration of the mystery. The sad strains followed the men as they took the path back to Valenti’s house.
12
Frankie was exhausted by the time she turned off the highway to finish the last leg of her drive home. Exhausted and depressed. Funeral homes, hospitals, graveyards—they all left her emotionally drained.
She felt sorry for Bob’s parents, and especially for Joy, but she couldn’t have lasted another minute in the company of any one of the three without screaming. It wasn’t their fault. It was just that the hours in the funeral home, on top of the scare she’d had last night, had not left her in the best of shape. Her nerves were so worn they were ready to snap. All she wanted now was to collapse on her bed and sleep it all away—her fears about Earl, the jangling of her nerves, the depression… Hopefully, everything would look better in the morning.
She drove by the road that went up to Valenti’s house and was about to turn into her own lane when she remembered Ali. God, she was in worse shape than she’d thought. Already slowing down, she suddenly slammed on the brakes when she saw the old pickup truck sitting in her lane. The seatbelt caught her shoulder, then whipped her back against the seat. The car’s engine stalled, but she just turned off the ignition and lights, and stared at the truck.
Twilight had become night while she was driving home from Ottawa. The house was dark. Everything was dark—and quiet, too, now that the car engine was still. Her breathing was loud in her ears. She lost the outline of the pickup until her eyes adjusted to the lack of light.
It’s Earl, she thought as she made out the truck’s bulk in her lane once more. God damn him! She thought of what Tony had told her this morning, thought of what she knew of Earl from her own experiences with him, but she was so angry at the moment that she forgot to be scared. He was not going to move into her life again. Nor into Ali’s. And he was definitely not getting a cent of the Wintario money.
She unclipped her seatbelt, opened the car door, and stepped out on to the road. Its uneven surface made it difficult to walk in her pumps, even though the heels weren’t all that high. It wasn’t until she neared the truck and its dark shape bulked beside her that she had to wonder just what in God’s name she thought she was doing.
She was going to stop Earl? She put a hand against the side of the truck’s bed for balance as a tremor of fear went through her. This was not smart, she told herself. Not smart at all. She ran a hand nervously through her hair, tugging at a knot in the curls. The smart thing to do would be to go up to Tony’s and come back with him and his friend Tom.
She started to turn, then heard something move near the front of the truck. A shadow pulled away from the wheel, rose to its feet to become a man. Everything went tight inside Frankie’s chest and she found it hard to breathe. She backed away, but the shadow followed her. There was a ringing in her ears, and something else as well. It took her a long moment to realize what it was: the music from Ali’s tape, but the real thing this time, not information stored on magnetic tape.
“I want my dog, lady.”
The man’s voice startled her. She knew a momentary relief that it wasn’t Earl’s voice, then the fear came clawing back. Who was this?
“Y-your…dog…?” she asked.
“I’m looking for him, lady. His name’s Dooker. You better give him back….”
Frankie continued to back up. “Look,” she said. “I don’t know anything about your dog. Does it look like I’ve got a—” She bumped into the hood of her own car and there was nowhere left to go. The man continued to advance until he stood over her.
“I want him, lady.”
His breath was stale in her face. A small cry escaped her lips as he grabbed her by the shoulders.
“Please…” she began.
He shook her roughly. “I want…I want…”
Frankie tried to break his grip on her, to no avail. She could still hear the eerie music spilling out of the woods, low and distant, but immediate at the same time. It made her feel weak and strong, all at once, but while one part of her was falling under its spell, her fear of the man and what he was doing was stronger.
She lifted her knee, but the skirt she was wearing was too narrow to give the blow much power. Where it should have connected with his groin and doubled him over, all it did was make him grunt. His grip tightened on her shoulders. Suddenly he half-lifted her and threw her down on the hood of her car. Holding her down with one hand, he started to tear at her skirt with the other.
“Want you,” he growled.
* * *
Lance was in that special place by the river where he and old Dook used to go when it came to him that Dook wasn’t dead—he was going to shoot his own dog?—and he hadn’t run off. Not Dooker. He’d been stolen. Old man Treasure’s daughter—she had his dog, no ifs, ands or buts about it. That’s where he’d first heard the music. She’d used the music to trap old Dook, just like she was trying to trap him. Filling his head with crazy shit.
He got up from the riverbank and into the truck. Turning the pickup around, he headed back along the dirt roads to the Treasure place, only when he got there the place was empty.
He parked in the lane and walked around the house peering into the windows and muttering to himself. Every once in a while he’d start calling for Dooker, but then he’d stop right away, the loudness of his voice startling him. When it started to rain, he hunched in the cab of his pickup, staring at the house through the rain-splattered windshield, w
iping the glass every time the condensation built up too much. When the rain stopped, he went back to prowling the grounds, keeping a wary eye on the woods behind the house.
He checked the barn, calling softly for the dog. The need to see Dooker, to know the old feller was okay, kept building up in him. His head ached as the pressure increased until he finally had to sit down again. He leaned back against the front wheel of his pickup and closed his eyes.
He had to have open ground around him. Even the familiar interior of the pickup’s cab made him claustrophobic. At some point he realized that he must have dozed off—dreaming of shotguns and Dooker dying, but—Christ on a cross—there was no way that was true. The next thing he knew it was dark.
He heard a car engine sputter and die. Turning, he saw its head beams on the road just before they winked off. A door opened and then he listened to someone walk across the road and onto the driveway. He waited until whoever it was had come too close to run away before he could talk to them, and then he stood up.
He was feeling a little better now. His head didn’t hurt so much, and while he still wanted to find Dooker, the need to do so was no longer burning as painfully inside him. His eyes were well adjusted to the dark by the time he saw the blond woman standing by his truck.
He couldn’t tell a whole lot about her face in the poor light, but the shape of her looked real good in the narrow skirt and top she had on. He started out asking her about Dooker, but then he heard it coming—first on the edges of his consciousness, then building up, louder and louder. That music. He should’ve run, he thought. He should’ve just taken off when he had the chance, but now it was too late. And in another moment, it didn’t matter anymore.
He felt the heat in his groin and when he followed the woman as she backed out of the lane, he wasn’t seeing her the same anymore. She was a field that needed ploughing now. A bitch in heat. He could smell the blood on her. And Lord, oh, Lord, he needed to ride her.
Her skirt tore like paper and as she lifted her hands to claw at him he just grinned and bulled his face in against her breasts, away from her nails. With his left hand, he loosened his grip on her shoulder and grabbed her neck. His other hand tore at her undergarments. The music continued to burn in him as he bared her womanhood to the night air.