Charles Grant - Night Songs

You guys just better watch it, he cautioned with a sneer, and went back to join his mother.

"What are you doing, deputy?" she said.

"Watching the bad guys, like Chief Tabor said I should."

"Okay. You're not getting into trouble?"

"No, Mom," he said, wondering how that was possible with nothing in there to break.

"Well, listen, I think we ought to-"

She stopped with a hand to her chin when the police cruiser came to a squealing, rocking halt at the curb, its front bumper less than an inch from the front of Colin's car. Peg was out of her chair and at the door before Matt could say anything; then he hastily stood to one side as Colin hurried in with Lilla cradled in his arms. Matt thought she was sleeping, maybe even dead, and paid no attention to his mother's low questions or Doc Montgomery's clipped responses. He watched Chief Tabor grab for the phone on his desk, watched as Colin opened the first cell and kicked the mattress flat. Lilla didn't move when laid her down, and Colin backed out in a hurry, slammed the door shut and forced the bolt home with the heel of his hand.

Matt reached out to touch him, pulled back and bit his lip. "Mr. Ross? Mr. Ross, is she all right?"

Colin leaned hard against the wall, knees bent, one hand on the boy's shoulder while the other brushed back through his hair. "I don't know. I hope so, pal."

He was a funny color, and sweat was pouring off him. Matt didn't know whether to put an arm around his waist or ask him a question or… or what. Then he heard his mother in the front office.

"Impossible," she declared firmly. "Absolutely impossible."

Colin closed his eyes.

Matt sidled around him and stood in the doorway. There was a feeling in the room now that he didn't like at all.

Chief Tabor was sitting at his desk, Doc Montgomery standing at the window, and his mother was between them with her hands on her hips, looking from one man to the other with an expression he recognized all too well- Matthew, the next time you tell me a story like that I'm going to tan your behind, you understand me?

"Listen," Garve said, one hand lifted weakly from the blotter where he was trying to stand a pencil on end. "Listen, you can say that all you want, Peg, but there were three of us there, and we saw what we saw."

"And I saw her go over that cliff," she insisted, eyes narrow and chin stubbornly set. "I saw her."

"I don't doubt that, believe me."

"But-"

Montgomery rapped his knuckles on the door frame. "A little order here, please," he said. "We aren't going to solve anything by arguing over what's inarguable."

"You're crazier than he is," she told him. "For God's sake, Hugh, you're a doctor!"

"That's right."

"Then-"

"Then nothing," he snapped, yanking off his glasses. He stared at them, blew on one lens, put them back on. His voice sounded hoarse. "She took a bullet in the throat, one in the shoulder, she was run over by the length of the car, and as God is my witness, Pegeen, she was standing up and moving the last time we saw her."

"Then for God's sake, why isn't anyone out there to help her?"

Neither man answered. Montgomery looked out at the street and pulled at his mustache while Tabor opened a desk drawer and took out another pencil.

"Garve? Garve, for Christ's sake!"

Matt didn't like the feeling at all. It was almost like the time they came and told him his father was dead, and he felt so bad because he couldn't bring himself to cry. He was supposed to, he knew that, but all he could think of was that there'd be no more beatings and no more lies and no more broken promises, and his mother wouldn't go to bed crying at night. It was almost like that-something unreal and not right, yet this time there was something more, something that almost had an odor to it, and it came from the two men who were trying not to look at his mother.

"All right," she said, temper and fearful confusion making her voice thin and high, "Why don't I ask Colin, okay?"

"Ask," Montgomery said. "Ask away."

Matt jumped then when Colin walked past him into the room. He started to follow, but changed his mind immediately when he saw his mother's face shift from hope to disbelief.

"My God, not you too," she said.

"Peg," he said in the middle of a long sigh, "don't say another goddamned word until you hear me out. Just remember what you were thinking when we took off and went for Lilla."

Matt turned away. Colin was angry and trying very hard not to yell. He didn't want to hear that, so he returned to the cell block and leaned against the wall where Colin had stood. Looking at Lilla. Remembering how she'd come to him at Tommy Fox's place. He looked up, out the small window, and saw the dim light and the wires trembling and the leaves flying by as if chased by the night.

"Hello, Little Matt."

She was sitting up, her hands in her lap, her bare feet close together. The dress was worse now than when he'd seen it the day before, and her hair was pressed so close to her scalp she looked almost bald. She looked terrible, but her eyes were all right.

"Hello," he answered softly. But he didn't dare move.

She tilted her head and raised a corner of her mouth in what might have been a smile. "They're doing a lot of yelling out there, aren't they?"

He shrugged. "I guess so." His hands were cold, and he could feel an icicle pricking the back of his neck.

"They're talking about me, you know."

He lifted a foot and pressed the heel to the wall in case he had to push off quick and run. "I guess." It was funny, though. She sounded just like the old Lilla now, not like the spooky Lilla who had come after him at the marina. It was funny. She even looked at him in the same old way-nice, and friendly, like she was going to tell him a secret about the ice cream old Gran hand-cranked in the back. "Something happened, I guess."

"Yes." Then she straightened, and looked right at him. "And you know, don't you, Little Matt?"

"Oh, no," he said quickly. "No, I don't know anything."

"Oh, I bet you do. Maybe not everything, but I bet you know more than they do."

He was ready to deny it, to tell her she was crazy and he was going to get his mother; he was ready, but he said nothing because the way she studied him, the way she nodded and pointed at him once, made him realize that he'd been right. All along, he had been right.

It must have shown on his face because she seemed to relax abruptly. "I knew you were smart, Little Matt. I knew it all the time. Gran knew it too. He knows a lot of things like that."

Suddenly, without quite knowing why, Matt was excited. If she could do that, if she could talk to the fog and things, then she would be the first real witch he had ever known in his life. This wasn't like James Bond or anything like that; this was his home, and this was real. A hundred million questions stumbled over each other in their haste to get out, but he couldn't find the right words. All he could do was watch as she rose slowly from the cot and looked up at the window. Then she looked over her shoulder and gave him her beautiful ice-cream smile.

"Shall I sing you, Little Matt? Shall I teach you a song?"

He remembered lying under the covers and listening to the melody cloak the island and bring the fog.

Gran in the water… bodies in the ground… fishes and worms and holes in your stomach…

"Shall I?" she repeated. "Shall I, Little Matt?"

He nodded.

She began to hum, just loud enough for him to hear, her hands clasped primly at her waist and her gaze so strong he couldn't look away. The old Lilla was gone; this was the new one, one he didn't know. He heard her, and he listened, and he saw a jumble of black-red images spinning madly down a dark corridor toward him, images that were mouths and lips and tongues and teeth, all of them humming and singing and asking him questions he didn't understand.

She hummed, and looked once more over her shoulder.

"Look, Little Matt. You should be proud."

He looked.

The fog was back.

"You should be proud that you know, and the others won't believe me."

Smoke clouds, fire clouds, rolling and tumbling and sailing silently past the station, smothering the town.

He wanted to say something, to ask her how she did it and could she teach him, but he was stopped just in time when Colin hurried into the cell block and grabbed his shoulder. "Come on, pal, I'm taking you and your mother-"

Matt pulled away, and pointed to the window.

Lilla was still singing.

Colin gaped.

Matt tried to hear the words.

The fog slipped through the bars in thick bands and gathered at her feet as if spilling from a cauldron. It pooled and thickened and extended an arm that braided slowly around her calves, her thighs, her waist, disappeared behind her back, and came over her right shoulder. The coil became a serpent that opened its black-red mouth and hissed a steaming wind in Colin's face.

"Jesus," he whispered.

A serpent's tongue of flaming amber licked at Lilla's face; a serpent's tongue of crimson reached out to the bars, and Colin flinched as if scalded.

Lilla's mouth moved, but it wasn't Lilla talking. "Jesus damn, Colin you got no imagination."

Matt's fascination snapped at the sound, and he shuddered. It wasn't interesting anymore, it wasn't fun or exciting-it was too close to the nightmares he'd had just before old Gran was lowered into the sea. He clamped his arms tightly around Colin's waist and pressed his face into his belt, trying to block the old man's voice slithering from the girl's mouth.

"No imagination, boy, you know that, don't you? A terrible shame it is, because it will kill you. No imagination will kill you as sure as I stand here."

A laugh, harshly soft and echoing from a tunnel.

Colin dropped a protective hand to hold Matt hard against him.

The voice deepened and grew harsh. "Oh, I got tricks, Colin. I got tricks plenty. One, two, three, four. I got plenty tricks, and you got no imagination, and that gonna kill you. It gonna kill you for sure."

Colin lifted a hand as if to strike at the voice, but the fog-serpent vanished at the beckoning of the wind, and the fog outside vanished as though it had never been.

Lilla strode to the cell door, took hold of the bars and began to push out. Colin hesitated only a moment before thrusting Matt aside and calling out for Garve as he leapt to the door to hold it. Lilla's face was blank; she was gone, nothing there but the dress and the features and the tangled bloodied hair. She pushed, and Colin's cheeks reddened as he hunched his shoulders and shoved back. Garve raced into the block and saw the struggle; he grabbed Matt by the collar, lifted and nearly threw him over the threshold. Matt heard his mother gasp, but he turned around to see.

"Damn!" Garve yelled, and Colin grunted with exertion.

Then, without warning, the bolt snapped and the iron hinges parted as if they were paper. Colin was thrown back against the wall, and the door was thrust to one side, pinning Garve against the bars. Lilla raced out and into the office, one hand snapping against the side of Matt's head and dropping him to the floor. There were lights, and a rushing like the sea, and as he pushed himself up he saw her dodging around the desks while Montgomery yelled, and his mother stood at the doorway with a chair held in front her as if she were warding off a lion.

Lilla shrieked.

Montgomery charged her.

Peg jabbed with the chair, and Lilla swerved to one side, folded her arms in front of her face and leapt through the window.

The plate glass bulged just as the launched herself from the floor, shattered before she reached it, scattered so when she landed she wouldn't lacerate her naked feet. She landed squarely, the momentum slamming her against Colin's car. A brief, too brief second to catch the air back in her lungs, and she spun to her left and raced around the corner. There were no cars. No lights on porches. No sign of the fog as the wind stopped playing with the island and began to gather itself to storm.