"But you"ve seen behind the veil."
"That"s one way of putting it."
"Tell me...." She hesitated. "Tell me what you"ve seen."
I smiled at her. There we were, standing wet and cold on a bridge in the middle of nowhere, but Janice Ravenwood didn"t mind. Not as long as she had a chance of unlocking an eternal mystery or two. She stared at me, waiting for answers with the eager eyes of an acolyte.
Janice"s flashlight beam burned my retinas.
I reached out and took the flashlight from her hands.
My face was lost in the dark.
I turned the light on Janice.
I saw her clearly, as clearly as I saw the dead.
But that didn"t mean I knew her secrets.
"Please tell me," she persisted. "Good or bad...I really want to know what it"s like on the other side."
Her eyes gleamed expectantly. A woman who"d lived for years off of pretty lies, waiting to hear the truth.
"Later," I lied. "Later, I"ll tell you everything you want to know."
I described the little girl. Her blue eyes, her blonde hair, her little Addams Family dress. I pointed to the spot where she sat, legs dangling over the side as she watched the creek for the splash of a steelhead"s tail fin.
Driven by the storm, the creek rushed faster now. Dark and brown as the rain bled over the earth and the river drank mud from the sh.o.r.e.
The rising wind howled through the forest and gave voice to the tempest that rose from the sea. Though not so loud as the thunder. The ground shook as sharp cracks slashed the steady scream of the storm.
"We"re wasting time," I said, and Janice nodded.
She sat on the wet wood in exactly the same spot as the little girl. Inhaling deeply, she closed her eyes. A minute pa.s.sed. Janice started to shiver. The rain pounded down. Droplets stained her cheeks, glistening in the flashlight"s stark illumination.
"She likes it here," Janice said finally. "She likes watching the fish. Steelheads. They swim against the current. They fight it. They have to fight it, because they have to get upstream, they have to-"
"They have to sp.a.w.n."
"Yes. The little girl knows that, because her father told her about the steelheads in a letter. He promised that her mother would bring her to this very spot, where she could see for herself. And her mother did just that, and told her to wait for her father, and left her here all alone.
"The girl is frightened. She doesn"t want to disappoint her father. She doesn"t know him, except for his letters. She keeps them in a special place, bound with a black ribbon, and she looks at them when she feels lonely. Sometimes she reads them over and over, and sometimes she just stares at the pretty red envelopes, at the return address written in her father"s strong hand.
"She knows that address will be her new home. She hopes she"ll like her father"s house as much as she likes it here on the bridge. She doesn"t mind being alone here. She"s used to being alone. She"s a quiet girl. She doesn"t have any friends at home. Her mother won"t allow it.
"She waits for her father. She hopes he will be her friend. She stares down at the water and watches as a steelhead slices a dark ripple on the surface, almost close enough to touch. If she were only a little closer, if she reached out at just the right time...."
"I don"t care about the fish," I said. "Tell me about the little girl. Tell me who she is."
"It"s not that easy. I follow her thoughts like a chain-one link at a time. First her parents and the creek. Then the fish...."
"Forget the G.o.dd.a.m.n fish."
Janice leaned forward at a dangerous angle, as if she were trying to see her reflection in the brown water. It was impossible to see anything there. With a pair of living eyes, at least. But if you were staring through the eyes of the dead- "She sees her shadow on the water," Janice said. "She seems so small. She doesn"t like being small. Everyone says she"s pretty, but she knows they only say that to be polite. She"s too thin, and her skin is pale as white corn, and she doesn"t like her blonde hair. She wants to be someone else. Someone different. She wants dark hair like a girl in a storybook. And she wants pretty skin, skin like no one else on earth.
"Skin like the scales of a fish, skin that shines and gleams like a brave knight"s armor. She wants that more than anything. She"s not going to look away from her shadow until she sees a steelhead swim through her rippling body. She wants to see that living mercury splash through her face and-"
"Forget the fish, dammit!" I grabbed Janice"s coat, afraid she was about to tumble into the creek. "I want to know about the girl!"
Janice cried out, and the sound was like a crack of thunder, as if something had snapped inside her.
I shook her. "Tell me her name!"
"It can"t be." Janice shook her head. "It"s impossible."
Dropping the flashlight, I pulled Janice to her feet and slapped her hard. I gave her one more chance to answer, and my tone of voice told her that I wouldn"t give her another.
"Everyone calls her CeeCee," Janice said. "Everyone but her father. In his letters, he always calls her Circe."
My fingers dug into Janice"s trim shoulders. "You"re hurting me," she said, but I barely heard her.
A dozen conflicting impressions raced through my mind. The little blonde girl and raven-haired Circe...two faces becoming one, features joining around a pair of deep blue eyes.
But one couldn"t be the other. It was impossible. Their eyes might be the same, but they were so different. Not just the color of their hair-that could be changed on a whim. But the girl was dead, and the woman was alive, and there was no way to justify that they were one and the same.
"You"re going to break my arms!" Janice yelped. "Let me go!
I did, glaring at her now.
I slapped her again. "That lie wasn"t pretty," I said. "Now tell me the truth."
"I am telling the truth!"
I drew back my hand. This time she didn"t cringe from the blow. She intercepted it, grabbing my wrist so that my palm thudded against her shoulder.
Her fingernails dug in and broke skin. "Let me go, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" she shrieked. "I told you the truth!"
The rain beat down on us. I spun her around and grabbed her from behind and she tried to squirm away. The creek rushed below. My arms closed over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and she scratched at my hands, screaming at the top of her lungs.
I told her to shut up if she wanted to live, but she wasn"t listening anymore. I swore in spite of myself as her nails raked my flesh and my blood coursed over her fingers, and a fresh torrent of screams poured down with the rain.
But the screams did not come from me, and they did not come from Janice Ravenwood.
They came from the thing at the far side of the bridge.
A thing too tall to be a little girl"s ghost.
I saw it, of course. Only in silhouette, but I knew that it was a dead thing. A ghost. Just an oily smear against the forest.
The way I was built, I couldn"t help but see it. But Janice saw it too. She gripped my b.l.o.o.d.y hand, and her psychic gift surged through my blood, and she saw through my eyes.
Just as she"d wished.
The thing came forward, a black streak of shadow. Janice held me tight, her thoughts scrabbling inside my skull like a hundred frenzied spiders. She wanted to scream, but she couldn"t. She couldn"t do anything but watch, and listen, and wait. All she had to do to banish the ghost was let go of my hand, but she held on tight. Out of fear, out of fascination...I don"t know what made her do it. All I knew is that she couldn"t let go.
The thing took another step, stumbling in the dark, and then another. Blacker than the night, a shadow"s shadow. A bar of light cast from the dropped flashlight lay in the thing"s path.
It avoided the light, clinging to the bridge railing.
It stopped just a few feet away from us.
The dead thing"s screams faded to whimpers. But it wasn"t the sound that raised my hackles. It was the stink of death.
I took a shallow breath, and Janice retched against a terrible perfume born of murder and blood and the rot of an early grave.
Janice struggled in my arms, trying to break contact. She didn"t want to see the world through my eyes. I could sense that. She didn"t want to draw back the veil of death. Not anymore.
"Don"t look away, Janice," the thing said. "I want you to see where your marble road leads."
Lethe Whistler"s ghost laughed against the storm. Janice struggled harder, wet and slippery in my arms. She kicked the fallen flashlight and it whirled madly on the bridge, white rivulets spilling everywhere, slicing the forest, spearing the night and the thing that lurked there.
The beam found its target crouching low to meet the light. A sharp blade of light speared the dead woman as surely as the one that had killed her, revealing her gristled ribs and skinned s.e.x and a cleaved, lipless smile laughing under blue, blue eyes.
Janice broke free of my grasp and ran.
Almost immediately, she was swallowed by the night.
I s.n.a.t.c.hed up the flashlight and aimed it at the dead thing. A snake of illumination slithered across Lethe"s pitiless eyes. She said, "Kill that b.i.t.c.h, or you"ll never see the little girl again."
I didn"t have time to think. I drew a pistol as I spun away from the ghost. I aimed the flashlight into the forest, but its range was much too short to reveal the woman who had wished to see the world of the dead.
I couldn"t see her, but I knew that she was there all the same.
I closed my eyes against the rain and emptied my pistol into the darkness.
7.
The cold rain sliced my face as I trailed Lethe Whistler"s ghost across a beach shaped like the blade of a reaper"s scythe.
I did not follow too closely. I aimed the flashlight beam just short of Lethe"s b.l.o.o.d.y heels, sparing myself the sight of her. The wind off the water did the rest, banishing the sickening miasma that accompanied her.
The clean scent of salt air washed the darkness, but the bracing smell did nothing to clear my head. A foghorn sounded in the distance, and waves crashed against the sh.o.r.e, but it was the thunder of gunfire that rang in my ears.
My left hand stank of cordite. Back at the bridge, I"d emptied a pistol into the dark forest. I had no idea if I"d hit Janice Ravenwood. If Lethe"s ghost knew the answer, she wasn"t saying. Apart from the threat that had forced me to draw my gun, she hadn"t said a word.
That threat had been enough, because it was accompanied by an unspoken promise to take me to the girl. Still, I didn"t know if I could believe Lethe had the little girl, any more than I could believe that the child was indeed Circe Whistler"s ghost.
It seemed impossible. Circe was alive, and the little girl was dead. But if the little girl and Circe were indeed one in the same, that would explain why Lethe"s spirit had attacked the child. Even if I couldn"t understand the connection between the girl and the woman, Circe had admitted that she orchestrated her sister"s murder. That was certainly reason enough for the hate Lethe had directed toward the little girl"s ghost.
Golden sand sparkled beneath the flashlight beam. A gust of wind pounded against my back and knocked me forward a step, and the harsh light played over Lethe"s skinned calves. Stripped muscles danced against ribbons of tendon and naked bone.
The wind changed and the scent of Lethe"s pain caught me straight in the face like a stunning blow. But Lethe didn"t slow down. She moved forward. Whatever her motivation, it drove her like a slave master"s whip. Needles of rain st.i.tched her shade, and the wind tore through her like an open window. She was nothing more than air, but the storm could not carry her away. She would not allow that to happen.
It was obvious that we were heading toward the bottle house. I didn"t know why, and Lethe wasn"t telling me. She never looked back once. She knew I would follow her, just as she knew that she could safely turn her back to me.
Lethe had nothing to fear from my guns or my knife. She was already dead.
She pulled ahead as we neared the cliff, the same way the little girl had. Through the whispering beach gra.s.s she went, and up the trail, and to the cracked concrete stairway that led to the bottle house.
I followed as best I could. Icy wind blasted the cliff. The storm lashed my wet body as I crossed the patio, but the bottle house was not an inviting sanctuary.
Lethe waited in the open doorway. The wind howled through her, sweeping across the black maw while screams and gasps and moans echoed behind its concrete lips.
The sound was only the wind in the bottles. I played my flashlight over the rain-slicked gla.s.s, and told myself to get a grip. But what I saw wasn"t half as powerful as what I heard. And what I heard were a thousand voices, as if a horrible party waited there in the dark.
"It"s a party for the dead," Lethe said, as if she could read my mind. "But you"re invited."
I stood in the storm, as cold as a corpse.
Lethe was trying to scare me.
For the first time in a long time, I hesitated.
Wondering if I was really as smart as I thought I was.
Wondering if I should be afraid.
Lethe smiled her red smile, and the black mouth swallowed her whole. Her voice joined the others, beckoning me inside.
A deep inhalation.
I stepped forward.
I crossed the threshold, welcomed by the cold.
Lethe pointed at a bottle in the wall. "Turn it," she said.
I did. A hinged slab of stone rose from the floor like a fallen tombstone intent upon righting itself.