The Wolves of Midwinter Page 24

  He couldn’t find his old high school love at all in Charlotte. But a song was nudging at him, what was it? Yes, that strange unearthly song “Take Me As I Am,” by the October Project. Mingled suddenly with memories of Charlotte were memories of that song seeping out of Marchent’s room from a spectral radio.

  Again, he made his way to the eastern window, this time in the library, and though the window seat was occupied from end to end, he managed to look out again on the sparkling forest. Surely people were watching him, wondering about the Man Wolf, wanting to ask questions. He heard a faint whisper of those words behind him, and “right through that window.”

  The music had become noise, as the sounds from the dining room met with the great swell from the pavilion, and he felt that old familiar drowsiness come over him that so often did when he was at busy and crowded events.

  But the forest did look fantastical.

  The crowds were thicker than ever, even though a light rain was falling. And gradually Reuben realized there were people high in the trees everywhere. There were shaggy-haired men and women and pale lean little children in the trees, many of them smiling down on the people below and some of them talking to the people below, and these mysterious beings all, of course, wore the familiar soft chamois leather. And the guests, the innocent guests, thought them to be part of the tableau. For as far as he could see, the Forest Gentry were there, dusty, bedraggled with leaves, and even here and there clothed in ivy, sitting or standing on the heavy gray branches. The more he looked, the more detailed and bizarre and vivid they became. The myriad lights twinkled in the falling rain and he could almost hear the mingled laughter and voices as he looked out on them.

  He shook himself all over and stared again. Why was he dizzy? Why was there a roaring in his ears? Nothing had changed in the scene. He did not see Elthram. He did not see Marchent. But he could see a constant shifting and reshuffling amongst the Forest Gentry because innumerable members of the tribe were disappearing and others appearing right before his dazzled eyes. He became fascinated with it, trying to catch this or that lean and feline figure as it vanished or burst into visible color, but he was making himself even more dizzy. He had to break the spell. This had to stop.

  He turned and began to drift through the party as he’d drifted through the village fair. The music surged. Real voices played on his ears. Laughter, smiles. The sense of the bizarre, the horror of the bizarre, left him. Everywhere, he saw people in animated conversation, infused with the excitement of the party, and unusual meetings of locals with friends he knew. More than once he studied Celeste from afar and noted how much fun she was having, how often she laughed.

  And again and again he marveled at the Distinguished Gentlemen and how they helped the party along. Sergei was introducing people to one another, and directing the orchestra musicians to the dining table, and answering questions and even accompanying people to the stairs.

  Thibault and Frank were always in conversation and motion, with or without their women companions, and even Lisa, who was busy with the management of the feast on every level, took time to talk to the boy choristers and point out things to them about the house.

  A young man approached her, whispering in her ear, to which she answered, “I do not know. No one told me where the woman died!” and she turned her back to the man.

  How many were asking that very question, Reuben thought. Surely they were wondering. Where had Marchent fallen when she’d been stabbed? Where had Reuben been discovered after the attack?

  A constant parade moved up the oak stairs to the upper floors. Standing at the foot Reuben could hear the young docents describing the William Morris wallpaper and the nineteenth-century Grand Rapids furnishings, and even such things as the kind of oak used in the floorboards and how it had been dried before construction, things Reuben knew nothing about himself. He caught a female voice saying, “Marchent Nideck, yes. This room.”

  People smiled at Reuben as they made their way up.

  “Yes, please, do go up,” he said earnestly.

  And behind it all was the mastermind, the ever-charming Felix, who moved so rapidly that he seemed to be in two places at one time. Ever smiling, ever responding, he was on fire with goodwill.

  At some point, Reuben realized, slowly realized, that the Forest Gentry were in the house as well. It was the children he noticed first of all, pale, thin little creatures in the same dusty leaf-strewn rustic dress as their elders, darting through the crowds this way and that as if they were playing some kind of personal game. Such hungry faces, dirt-streaked faces, urchin faces! It sent a stab into his heart. And then he saw the occasional man and woman, eyes aflame yet secretive, drifting about as he had been drifting about, studying the human guests as if they were the curious ones, indifferent to those who eyed them.

  It unnerved him that these small emaciated children might be the earthbound dead. It positively made his heart quiver. It made him faintly sick. He couldn’t stand the thought of it suddenly that these towheaded boys laughing and smiling and dodging amongst the guests here and there were ghosts. Ghosts. He could not imagine what it signified, being this size and this shape forever. He couldn’t grasp how this could be desirable or inevitable. And all that he didn’t know about the new world around him frightened him. But it also tantalized him. He caught a glimpse of one of those unusual women, those strangely alluring women, bejeweled and sequined and passing through the crowd slowly with long lingering glances to her right and left. She seemed a goddess in some brutal yet indefinable way.

  His anxieties suddenly collected around him, crowding him, dimming the radiance of the party, and making him aware of how sharp and unusual the emotions and experiences of his new life actually were. What had he ever known of worry before? What had the Sunshine Boy ever known of dread?

  But all he had to do, he thought, was not look at the Forest Gentry. Not look at that strange woman. Not speculate. Look instead at the very real and substantial people of this world who were everywhere having such a remarkably good time. He was desperate suddenly to do that, to not see the unearthly guests.

  But he was doing something else. He was searching. He was searching now from left to right and straight ahead for the one figure he most dreaded in all the world, the figure of Marchent.

  Did someone behind him just say, “Yes, in the kitchen, that’s where they found her”?

  He moved past the giant Christmas tree towards the open doors of the conservatory, which was as crowded as every other room. Under countless Christmas bulbs and golden floods the huge masses of tropical foliage here looked almost grotesque; guests were everywhere among the trellises and pots, but where was she?

  There was a slender woman near the round marble-top table before the fountain where Reuben and Laura had so often taken their meals. His skin was pringling and singing as he moved towards this slim blond-haired figure, this delicate figure, but quite suddenly as he stood beneath the arching branches of the orchid trees, the woman turned and smiled at him, flesh and blood like countless others, another nameless happy guest.

  “Such a beautiful house,” she said. “You’d never think anything terrible happened here.”

  “Yes, you’re right,” he said.

  So many words seemed on the tip of her tongue, but she said only it was a great joy to be here, and she moved on.

  Lifting his eyes, he looked up into the purple blossoms of the trees. The noise pressed in around him, but he felt remote and alone. He was hearing Marchent’s voice when they’d talked of orchid trees, beautiful orchid trees, and it was Marchent who’d ordered these trees for this house and for him. These trees had been brought over hundreds and hundreds of miles on account of the living Marchent, and they were alive now and bent low with shivering blossoms and Marchent was dead.

  Someone had approached, and he ought to turn around, he knew it, and acknowledge the greeting or the good-bye. A couple was here, with plates and glasses in hand, obviously hoping to commandeer th
e table, of course, and why not?

  And just as he did turn, he saw far across the giant room the person for whom he’d been searching, the unmistakable Marchent, almost invisible in the shadows against the dark and shining glass panes of the wall.

  Her face was marvelously realized, however, and her pale eyes were fastened on him just as they’d been in the village when she’d stood there in semi-profile listening to the smiling Elthram who’d stood at her side. An unnatural light seemed to pick her out of the artificial twilight, subtle but sourceless, and in that light he saw the sheen of her smooth forehead, the gleam of her eyes, the luster of the pearls around her neck.

  He opened his mouth to call her name and no sound came out. As his heart shook, the figure appeared to grow brighter, to shimmer, and then to fade completely away. A volley of raindrops hit the glass roof overhead. Silver rain slid down the many panes all around him, and the very walls shimmered everywhere that he looked. Marchent. The grief and the longing felt like a pain through his temples.

  His heart stopped.

  There had been no misery, no tears, no desperate reaching in her face. But what had the expression in those serious eyes, those thoughtful eyes, actually meant? What do the dead know? What do the dead feel?

  He put his hands up to his head. He shivered. His skin was hot under his clothes, terribly hot, and his heart would not stop skipping. Someone asked him if he was okay.

  Oh, yes, thank you, he answered and he turned and left the room.

  The air in the main room was cooler, and sweet with the scent of pine needles. Soft swelling music came from the orchestra beyond the open windows. His pulse was returning to normal. His skin was cooling. A glistening gaggle of teenage girls passed him, giggling and laughing and then rushing into the dining room, obviously on a mission to explore.

  Frank appeared, the ever-genial Frank with his high Cary Grant polish, and without a word put a glass of white wine in Reuben’s hand. “Want something stronger?” Frank asked, eyebrows raised. Reuben shook his head. Gratefully Reuben drank the wine, good Riesling, cold, delicious, and found himself alone by the fire.

  Why had he gone to look for her? Why had he done that? Why had he sought her out in the very midst of all this gaiety? Why? Did he want for her to be here? And if he retreated now to some sealed-off room, presuming he could find one, would she come at his bidding? Would they sit together and talk?

  At some point, he saw his father through the crowd. It was Phil, all right, that old gentleman in the tweed jacket and gray pants. How much older than Grace he looked. He was not heavy, no, and he wasn’t frail. But his face, never surgically tightened, was soft, natural, and heavily lined like that of Thibault, and his thick thatch of hair, once strawberry blond, was now almost white.

  Phil was standing in the library, quite alone among the people drifting in and out, and he was looking fixedly at the big picture of the Distinguished Gentlemen over the mantelpiece.

  Reuben could almost see the wheels turning in Phil’s mind as he studied the picture, and the sudden awful thought came to him: He will figure it out.

  After all, wasn’t it obvious that the Felix of today was the spitting image, as everyone said, of the man in the photograph, and that the men around him, the men who should now be some twenty years or more older than they’d been when the picture was taken, were exactly the same now as they’d been then? Felix had come back as his own illegitimate son. But how to explain Sergei or Frank or Margon not having aged in the slightest during the last two decades? And what about Thibault? One might grant men in their prime another twenty years of remarkable vigor, and the young ones did appear to be men in their prime. But Thibault had looked like a man of sixty-five or perhaps seventy in the photograph and he looked exactly like that now. How was such a thing possible, that someone so advanced in years when the photo was taken should have the very same appearance now?

  But maybe Phil wasn’t noticing all these things. Maybe Phil didn’t even know the date of the picture. Why would he? They’d never discussed it before, had they? Maybe Phil was studying the foliage in the photograph and thinking of mundane things, like where it might have been taken, or observing details about the men’s clothing and guns.

  People interrupted Reuben—wanting to say thanks, of course, before they left.

  When he finally reached the library, Phil was nowhere in sight. And who should be sitting in the window seat, on the red velvet cushion looking out over the forest, but the inimitable Elthram, his dark caramel skin and savage green eyes veritably glowing in the firelight, as if he were a demon fueled by fires no one in this room could possibly see. He didn’t even look up as Reuben drew close to him. Then finally he did turn and give Reuben a radiant confidential smile before vanishing as he had in the village, without a thought for those who might have been watching, as if such things didn’t really matter. And as Reuben glanced around at the people talking and laughing and nibbling from their plates he realized that nobody had noticed, nobody at all.

  Suddenly and without a sound Elthram appeared beside him. He turned and looked into Elthram’s green eyes, as he felt the pressure of the man’s arm around his shoulder.

  “There’s someone here who must speak to you,” Elthram said.

  “Gladly, only tell me who,” said Reuben.

  “Look there,” he said, gesturing towards the great front room. “By the fire. The little girl with the woman beside her.”

  Reuben turned, fully expecting to see the woman and the young girl who’d been crying. But these were different people, indeed.

  At once Reuben realized he was looking at little Susie Blakely, at her grave little face with her eyes fixed on him. And the woman beside her was Pastor Corrie George, with whom Reuben had left her at the church. Susie wore a lovely old-fashioned smock dress with short puffed sleeves and her hair was beautifully combed. There was a gold chain around her neck with a cross on it. Pastor George wore a black pantsuit with a lot of pretty white lace at the neck, and she too was staring fixedly at Reuben.

  “You must be wise,” Elthram whispered. “But she needs to talk to you.”

  Reuben’s face was burning. There was a throbbing in his palms. But he went directly towards them.

  He bent down as he smoothed the top of Susie’s blond head.

  “You’re Susie Blakely,” he said. “I’ve seen your picture in the paper. I’m Reuben Golding, I’m a reporter. You’re much much prettier than your picture, Susie.” It was true. She looked fresh, radiant, undamaged. “And your pink dress is beautiful. You look like a little girl in a storybook.”

  She smiled.

  His heart was racing, and he marveled at the calm sound of his voice.

  “Are you having a good time?” He smiled at Pastor George. “What about you? Can I get anything for you?”

  “Can I talk to you, Mr. Golding?” asked Susie. Same clear crisp little voice. “Just for a minute, if I could. It’s really really important.”

  “Of course you can,” said Reuben.

  “She does need to talk to you, Mr. Golding,” said Pastor George. “You must forgive us for asking you like this, but we’ve come a long way tonight, just to see you, and I promise this won’t take but a few minutes.”

  Where could he visit with them in quiet? The party was as crowded as ever.

  Quickly, he drew them out of the great room and down the hallway and up the oak stairs.

  His room was open to all the guests, but fortunately only a couple were having some eggnog at the round table and they quickly yielded when he brought the little girl and the woman in with him.

  He shut the door and locked it, and made sure the bathroom was empty.

  “Sit down, please,” he said. “What can I do for you?” He gestured for them to sit at the round table.

  Susie’s scalp looked as pink as her dress, and she blushed suddenly as she sat down on the straight-backed chair. Pastor George took her right hand and held it in both of hers as she sat near the child
.

  “Mr. Golding, I have to tell you a secret,” said Susie. “A secret I can’t tell anybody else.”

  “You can tell me,” said Reuben, nodding. “I promise you, I can keep a secret. Some reporters can’t but I can.”

  “I know you saw the Man Wolf,” said Susie. “You saw him in this house. And the time before that, he bit you. I heard all about it.” Her face puckered as if she was about to cry.

  “Yes, Susie,” said Reuben. “I did see him. All that was true.” He wondered if he was blushing as she was blushing. His face was hot. He was hot all over. His heart went out to her. He would have done anything at this moment to make her comfortable, to help her, protect her.

  “I saw the Man Wolf, too,” said Susie. “I really did. My mom and dad don’t believe me.” There was a flash of anger in her small face, and she glanced uneasily at Pastor George who nodded to her.

  “Ah, that’s how you were rescued,” said Reuben. “That’s how you got away from the man.”

  “Yes, that’s what happened, Mr. Golding,” said Pastor George. She dropped her voice, glancing anxiously at the door. “It was the Man Wolf who rescued her. I saw him too. I spoke to him. Both of us did.”

  “I see,” said Reuben. “But there wasn’t anything about it in the papers. I didn’t see anything on television.”

  “That’s because we didn’t want anybody to know,” said Susie. “We didn’t want anybody to capture him and put him in a cage and hurt him.”

  “Yes, right, I see. I understand,” said Reuben.

  “We wanted to give him time to get away,” said Pastor George. “To clear out of this part of California. We wanted to figure some way not to ever tell anybody. But Susie needs to tell people, Mr. Golding. She needs to talk about what happened to her. And when we tried to tell her parents, well, they didn’t believe us! Either of us!”

  “Of course she needs to talk about it,” said Reuben. “You both do. I understand. If anyone should understand, I should.”