The Tea Party - A Novel of Horror Page 5

  Her abrupt laugh was short, bell-clear, mirthful, and she shrugged. In good time, Judy dear, all in good time. Don’t panic. Keep calm. If you lose him too it won’t be the first time.

  The coffee made, she took her cup to the back door and looked out, hoping that maybe Casey would be there. He wasn’t. Her eyes closed and she muttered a short prayer, warning him to be careful, warning him to stay away from Winterrest today.

  Damnit, Sis, I saw that light, he had protested vehemently on Tuesday morning. It was upstairs, in back, one of the bedrooms, I guess. It was there, and I wasn’t drunk.

  But he was drunk when he told her, or well on his way—the first time he had slipped in over a year. She had been so furious at him for his weakness, and for what he might say to the wrong people at the wrong time, that she had hauled off and slapped him, so hard her palm stung and she had to blow on it to keep it from bursting into flame. Casey had staggered back a step, his eyes gone wide, his lower lip trembling, and before she could turn away he had burst into pathetic tears. He stumbled around the house weeping, raising his fists to heaven and demanding justice for himself, and retribution for the sister who wouldn’t believe him if he gave her the time standing in front of Big Ben.

  Then he had left. And stayed away, returning only that night to snore in his bed. He was gone by dawn Wednesday, was sober by the afternoon, and that night in the Depot she was begged by several of the regulars to chain him, or lock him up, but for god’s sake do something because he was driving them all crazy with his talk of folks moving back into the estate.

  She understood their nervousness.

  Winterrest wasn’t a place you visited willingly, even at noon.

  At three o’clock there was still no sign of him, and though she was worried, she was furious as well. She should have known that her brother wasn’t strong enough to face the dying again.

  She wasn’t really sure she was either, but considering the alternative, she didn’t give herself much of a choice.

  Ten minutes passed while she rinsed out her cup, dried it, set it back in the cupboard, emptied the copper kettle, put away the jar of coffee, rinsed off the teaspoon and placed it in its drawer.

  Casey was still gone.

  She wondered what people would say if he tried to tell them what was happening. Crazy, is what; drunk, stoned, and Christ, Judy, don’t you think he ought to be looked at or something?

  Her red lips parted; it might have been a smile.

  The hell with you, pal; you’re on your own now.

  Shortly before four she switched on the neon Miller sign in the Depot’s window, unlocked the door, and checked the bills and change in the register drawer. She hummed. She assayed a buck-and-wing across the floor to turn on the lights. A glance at her watch proved it broken again, and she dumped it in the trash; watches and she did not get along—a sign, perhaps, that Time and Judith Lockhart did not mean much to each other.

  She hummed louder. Once in a while she pulled out a compact and examined her makeup, pursed her lips, fluffed her dark curly hair, smoothed her ruffled red blouse down over her chest. I made you love me, she sang silently to an image of Doug striding through the door; you didn’t wanna do it, you didn’t wanna do it. She opened the blouse’s top button and told herself it was all in a good cause and the hell with what her employees thought.

  Then she looked down at the cleavage and groaned loudly; if she wanted anything to show she’d have to gain about thirty pounds; then, for good measure, shove a box of tissues into her bra.

  Not quite that bad, actually, but loosening a provocative button would only make someone ask her to redo it.

  “Judith,” she told herself as she pulled out the week’s work roster, “you are insufferable. And very, very sick.”

  And Casey still hadn’t shown up, though he knew damned well he had to work behind the bar tonight.

  The sonofabitch had probably forgotten.

  Or was too frightened to show his face.

  It really didn’t matter now; she had her work to do.

  Being Friday, there’d be waitresses in to help her after six, local girls under orders not to wear tight skirts or blouses or sweaters, to wear honest-to-god Wranglers or somewhat baggy slacks and definitely not something out of a designer’s wet dream; she wanted her customers to concentrate on their drinks or each other, not a single hip, breast, or rolling buttock that worked for her. She checked the big-screen TV to be sure it was tuned, checked the jukebox to be sure it wasn’t going to balk again. There was no need to go in back; Gil Clay had been in earlier to count the weekend stock and take the deliveries, and she noted with satisfaction that he was, as usual, right up to snuff. He was a good man, if a bit on the thin side in meat and hair for her taste, and though in the early days of their relationship he had come on to her, she had made it clear that what she wouldn’t tolerate from her girls she wouldn’t tolerate from herself. Amazingly, he had understood, and they’d been friends ever since.

  The stool behind the register was high and padded, made especially for her by Bud Yardley, who lived in the next house down from hers. She could sit and rest her feet, yet still see everything that went on in the tavern. As she settled down and waited for the first drinker, she noted that her feet barely reached the first rung. Short. Very short. But not too short, she comforted herself; she didn’t even mind hiring girls taller than she.

  A sudden grin sent many of her freckles sliding into her dimples.

  Girls. God almighty, here she was only a handful of years over thirty—and lord, if they only knew how over thirty she was—and here she was calling women under twenty-five girls. Jesus, that had to be symptomatic of something or other.

  At fifteen past four she heard the wind—soughing, then screaming, though none of it reached the Depot; at the same time she thought she smelled smoke, and could definitely feel a subtle, subterranean rumbling that set the tiered glasses in front of the bar’s mirror to trembling.

  Singing to each other softly.

  Settling after several minutes into a crystal-bright, brittle silence.

  She touched a hand to the register drawer and slid off the stool, walked unhurriedly to the pay phone by the side door, and dropped a dime into the slot. Dialed. Waited as she looked blindly at the walls, the floor.

  The handset was picked up at the other end.

  She said nothing but her name; then she only listened.

  A moment later she rang off, hummed some more, and turned with a big smile as Piper Cleary walked through the door.

  THREE

  1

  Dumpling was barely two years old, the youngest of the last litter Piper Cleary’s old bitch coon hound had whelped before Piper had decided he’d had enough. She was also the most stubborn, and Piper had had a hell of a time teaching her that staying in the yard on Hollow Lane was a much better deal than a round of heavy-handed slaps on the nose or rump for straying out of sight.

  But Dumpling was pregnant, and hungry, and Piper was inside listening to music, having forgotten to fill the bowls that lined the steps on the sagging back porch. The other three hounds lay in whatever shade they could find, patiently waiting for dinner while they panted through the heat and weakly tailed off the flies.

  Dumpling couldn’t wait. When she failed to gain his attention by scratching and whining at the back door, and when none of the other dogs would help her, she hunted anxiously around the yard for something to gnaw on, something to ease the ache in her belly and the pressure her own pups were causing below. There was nothing. All she could find, and all she knew she would find, was dry grass, brittle weeds, and drooping brown shrubs that separated the back of the yard from the trees. She barked once, and moved in a switchback trail away from the house. When she looked over her brown-and-white shoulder, she saw that the others weren’t looking, and Piper hadn’t come to the door to scream at her hoarsely.

  The hunger grew, and she snapped at her side, chased her tail and yelped when she caught it.
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  A dash into the trees, then, to begin the fervent search for a morsel—an egg dropped from a nest, a wounded bird on the ground, a hare’s burrow, an acorn.

  Then she raised her head, her dark eyes steady, her nose twitching, the skinny white tail lifted. A scent; there was a scent, and it was raccoon, nearby.

  All her training, all the long hours in the woods at the end of Piper’s leash, battled with her to turn around, to run back, to sound the alarm. But she was hungry, and there was something inside her demanding to be fed. She whimpered, lowered her nose and followed the erratic spoor until she came to the stone wall. After circling frantically, she lifted herself awkwardly onto her hind legs, resting her forepaws on the top to look over. She sniffed the air, found the scent, and saw all that fresh and moist green grass just waiting for her.

  Dropping to the ground she circled again, yelping, wagging her tail, once flopping onto her side to lick at her swollen belly. Then she roused herself with a single sharp bark and took the wall at a single leap.

  The grass was cool, the raccoon scent overpowering, and she raced with her tail whipping like an antenna in the wind.

  She had run just thirty feet when she saw the dark brown rock half buried in the ground. A puzzled snort as she approached it cautiously; it looked like no ‘coon she had ever seen, yet there was no question that here is where the scent originated. Another bark, this one high and querulous, and she considered the possibility that her prey was underneath.

  She approached it, jumped back yelping to warn it she was there and knew its hiding game, approached it again, and made a tentative start at digging.

  The rock moved.

  Her ears pricked high, her soft brown eyes went wide; she was so startled that she backpedaled and ended up on her haunches. With her head cocked to one side she studied the rock, her tail slapping softly at the grass.

  A rippling

  A series of barks then to prove she hadn’t been fooled at all, that she knew where the quarry was, and she lunged forward with both forepaws digging furiously.

  rippling

  Salivating now at the prospect of at last feeding herself and her unborn young, Dumpling ignored the way the rock elongated and grew taller, ignored the way her claws seemed to dig through the earth without touching it. She was too busy now, sending hasty gouts of dirt and grass between her legs, snarling, growling happily, determined to finish before Piper found her and she was punished.

  The hole widened; the scent grew stronger.

  She eased back and circled, sniffed the ground as her tail pointed skyward. Then she attacked the rock again, knowing there was food, determined to find it and feed herself and her pups.

  Barking angrily when she discovered that her left leg was caught somewhere down in the hole.

  Barking fearfully when she tried to dig it out and had her right leg snared as well.

  rippled

  Whimpering at the pain that climbed into her chest. Howling her distress when she felt her bowels go. Tugging, snarling, realizing she wasn’t going to escape, finally gnawing and biting frenziedly at her own flesh, tasting her own blood, digging in her back claws as she was dragged slowly forward.

  Her head slipped into the hole and the barking was muffled, was stopped; her chest followed, and her tail slapped feebly at the grass; the swollen veined pouch for her pups split darkly, redly, yet her hind legs kept clawing, kept scrabbling, until there was nothing left on the lawn but a large brown rock, and a spattering of blood that shimmered in the heat.

  2

  Dinner was over by seven, the kitchen cleaned, and Maggie fed and watered and brought to her stall. Doug stood restlessly in the living room, trying to decide how to relax before beginning the new design. It hadn’t been easy returning to work, but over the past three years he had been picking up a house here, an addition there, and it was almost to the point where he could, with luck, stop living off his savings.

  The telephone on the sofa’s near end table rang. He blinked at the intrusion, and told himself immediately it was that wind which had made his nerves so sensitive.

  “Doug,” a woman’s voice said before he had a chance to give a greeting, “I’ve got a problem.”

  Slumping onto the couch, legs stretched toward the hearth, he tried not to sound too effusive. “Ah, the elusive Miss Lockhart! So good to hear from you, my dear. I was given to understand from your week’s silence that you had gone on a trip around the world.”

  “Knock it off, Doug, okay? This is serious. Casey’s at it again.”

  He allowed himself a half smile and burrowed deeper into the corner. “I thought your brother was on the wagon.”

  “There isn’t a wagon built in the universe he can’t fall off of, and you know it. Please? Do you think you could cover for him tonight?”

  A guilty look to his right, into the dark study. “Judy, I’d like to, really, but I’ve got a commission on the board that’s due Tuesday. And then there’s that new house for the guy over in Branchville. If I don’t finish that one pretty soon, his wife is going to have him out on his ear.”

  “So? You’ve got the weekend, right?”

  “Judy, I haven’t even started Tuesday’s project yet. In fact, I’m seriously beginning to wish I’d never taken it on in the first place. It’s probably going to be a waste of time.”

  He could hear sounds behind her voice: tinny laughter, tinny country music from the jukebox overlaid with conversation turned babble by the number of the Depot’s early customers.

  He could sense her disappointment, yet he knew that if he put off working tonight he wouldn’t get to it until Sunday. He wasn’t in danger of starving by any means, but neither was his portfolio so fat or his reputation so secure that he could afford to antagonize new contacts or customers.

  “Douglas?”

  A little girl’s voice, pleading and grinning. A shameless tactic she used whenever she felt him wavering, and a tactic he didn’t mind because two years ago he had decided it was possible for him to fall in love again, and Judy was one of the women he felt strongly about. One of two. After so many years, suddenly there were two. Judy had been polite and aloof, accepting his clumsy advances with good humor, and no solid rejection; then, abruptly, two weeks ago, she began making sly jokes about harnesses and yokes and rings through men’s noses.

  He hadn’t questioned her turnabout, but it had started him thinking twice about what he was doing.

  Because the other woman was Liz Egan, and his emotional confusion only doubled when he found himself thinking about her, a state that was increasingly hard to ignore.

  He cleared his throat. “It’s important, this job, Judy.”

  “Please?”

  Another glance over his shoulder—the empty house, the wind. Maggie slicing the air.

  “Damn your ass, Douglas Muir, if you—”

  “Of course,” he said quickly, “it is only an addition. One of those solar greenhouse things for some judge over in Newton.”

  “Right.”

  He crossed his legs at the ankles, stretched an arm along the couch’s back and tapped a finger on the wood trim. “I mean, I guess I could let it go until tomorrow.”

  A pause. “Right.”

  He held out his arm and stared at the mouthpiece, then pulled it back and frowned. “Judy, is something wrong?”

  “I told you,” she said with a quiet, nervous laugh. “Well, I guess I’m a little on edge, too.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, remembering, and feeling a sympathetic twinge along his left leg. “That wind was enough to jar anyone’s teeth. I thought for a minute there Maggie was going to light out for Canada.”

  “Wind? What wind? Doug, what are you talking about?”

  “What . . . ?” He pointed to the window as if she could see him, dropped his hand and shook his head. “Never mind.”

  “Hey, are you all right?”

  “Yeah, sure. I think the pressure must be getting to me. Presidents can’t hold a candle t
o architects with customers who have angry wives.”

  She laughed, cut herself off and asked him once again if he wouldn’t please, please fill in for Casey tonight before she went crazy and burned the place down.

  “I guess,” he said. “Sure.”

  “I know I’m asking a lot, but he’s acting up, real weird lately, and I’ve only got two hands, y’know? My god, you’d think he’d know better, today of all days.”

  “Judy, I said I’d come, okay?”

  “I tell you, Doug, that man oughta be shot, he makes me so mad. If he wasn’t so big, I’d chop him to pieces.”

  Then he knew: another boyfriend had been lost in making sure Doug was the one she actually wanted. Her trouble was, he thought, she didn’t know what she really wanted, and didn’t know how to stop looking.

  And his own indecision wasn’t helping matters any. “I mean, really, Doug. He knows this is payday, and he knows there are a zillion stupid tourists out looking for their dose of rural reality, and damnit I get so mad sometimes just thinking about what I’ve done for him, putting him through—”

  “Judy, Judy, for god’s sake!”

  “—college, nursing him when he got sick, all that—”

  “Judy!”

  “What!”

  “I’ll be there in half an hour.”

  Silence.

  “Doug?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Casey said he saw a light in Winterrest the other night.”

  The telephone rang and immediately he replaced the handset. He thought it was Judy again, and had a quip ready to fire when he heard, faintly, hoarse breathing on the other end. Bubbling, as if the caller’s lungs were filled with water.

  Then: “Mr. Muir?”

  A smooth voice, cultured to the point of having an accent almost British. Ageless, as was the man it belonged to.

  “Good evening, Mr. Parrish,” he said, leaning his head back until he was staring at the ceiling. “How are you?”

  “I am fine, Mr. Muir. I trust I’m not interrupting anything, but I am calling to see if you have found the time to think over my client’s proposal.”