She faced him fully, suddenly, and her hands drew to lists that brushed at her legs in time to the words that pelted him like hail. "He's mad, Colin. He's very, very mad. You think he likes you, likes me, likes everyone here, and maybe he did. Maybe he thought this was a fine place to live a very long time ago. Maybe he thought it a good place because the old place didn't like him and made him leave. They said he was crazy, that he did things wrong. He didn't, Colin. He did things, but they weren't wrong. And when he came here he thought it all would be better. Maybe he thought it was. But he doesn't anymore. Not anymore. He says he could be the big man on the hill, Colin, but no one gave him the chance. Not there, not here. Now he doesn't like this place anymore. He don't like anyone anymore. He's mad, Colin. He's mad."
It didn't take him long to recognize the hysteria in her eyes, to see her lips begin to quiver. He was on his feet quickly and had his hands on her upper arms before she could move. The dress felt like dried paper.
Bits of sand and kelp and dead leaves soiled her hair, and there was an odor he could not define, one that wrinkled his nostrils and almost made him turn.
Gently. "Lilla… love… he's dead."
She nodded.
"You and I and all your friends, we were together last night. We saw Gran, and we saw you, and it's over, it's all over."
She nodded. "And Warren," she whispered.
"You knew?"
"I hear. I know."
"But how? How-"
She caught a sob in her throat, and he held her closely, absently stroking her back until he realized he was waiting for her to cry, until he realized the long black hair felt like rope when he touched it.
"Lilla?"
She wouldn't look up. "He's mad."
"Lilla, please."
Her forehead pressed against his chest, but her hands stayed at her sides. "He wanted to buy me things, you know. He wanted to be the man on the hill, and buy me pretty things. But he's mad now. He said to me, 'Child, they took it all when I had it and now I give it to them in the way they gave it to me.' "
A deep breath filled his lungs until he had closed his eyes once, hard. When he opened them his hand was brushing through her hair, and through the grains of sand like insects burrowing in her scalp. For a moment he couldn't think of anything to say. The funeral had obviously twisted her sense of time, and she was telling him now what Gran had said most likely on his deathbed. A rush of anger then, at the stupid old man who couldn't die in peace, couldn't leave his own family with a smile or a prayer.
"Lilla," he whispered, "you knew Gran better than anyone. You knew him, and he was bitter." A nod toward The Screaming Woman. "He made those things, and people, very important people came down to see them. You know that. You know that's true."
She nodded, once.
Outside the cottage, the stir of a wind.
"And you know he was offered a great deal of money for them. Even if he'd taken it all he wouldn't have been rich, but it would have been more than he'd ever seen in his life. I swear they weren't patronizing him, Lilla, and they weren't doing it for me. They saw something in his work that… I don't know. I don't know exactly what it was, but they saw it, and they wanted it, and Gran was too contrary to give them a chance.
"I swear to God, Lil, I don't know why he wouldn't cooperate. I guess because he'd grown used to being angry, and anything else was… kind of a threat to the way he was used to living. It's crazy, but it isn't unusual."
"He's mad." The words almost lost in the thickness of his jacket.
"He was mad," he corrected gently. "But he's gone now, Lil. He's gone, and you're not." She shuddered.
The wind rattled leaves softly against the pane.
"You're not listening," she said finally.
His lips parted slightly, almost a smile. "I heard you, Lil. You said he was mad because he thought we didn't like him and we kept him from getting rich, from being the man on the hill."
"No."
He frowned and held her away, but she wouldn't look up.
"Then what?"
She shuddered again, and he stared at his hands to be sure they were still gripping her arms. For a moment he thought he'd taken hold of ice.
"Lilla, maybe we ought to see Doc Montgomery."
"No!" And she shoved him away, so unexpectedly hard his legs clipped the back of the cobbler's bench and spilled him onto the couch. She was backed into the corner now, out of reach of the lamp. "No! No! Why won't you listen?"
"Lilla!"
"No! Gran won't like it!"
And just as he made to rise, Peg came through the door.
"No!" Lilla shouted. "Colin, what's-"
He looked to her, pleading, one hand gesturing toward the girl. "She was here when I got back, Peg. She keeps saying-"
The explosion made him duck, made Peg scream. A pine bough slammed suddenly through the window, knocking over the table and spilling the lamp and the driftwood woman onto the floor. Lilla yelled hysterically, and Colin shoved the bench aside as he went to hold her.
And stopped when Peg grabbed hold of his wrist.
The wind growled through the broken pane, the fallen lamp sputtered and went out. The room was black.
The Screaming Woman rocked on its base, slowly, staring up.
"Lilla," Peg said as if comforting a child.
"No!" she shrieked, and lifted her head as she raced for the door.
No one moved to stop her.
It's the light, Colin thought. It's the light. It's the light.
The wind caught a magazine and flipped over its pages.
When Lilla screamed and ran, her eyes turned dead white.
FIVE
Damn, Eliot thought, what am I going to tell Garve now? One simple, lousy job, and those jerks in Flocks screw him up. It's a murder case, for crying out loud, and there they go and try to tell him the fingerprint lifted from Harcourt's wallet belonged to Gran D'Grou. Gran's fingerprint, my ass.
He had told them the old man was dead, and all they did was stare at him like he was crazy. Then they as much as called him a liar and told him to stop farting around, this wasn't a joke. Of course it ain't a joke, he'd said, but they insisted all the way out the goddamned door that either they were right, or he was more stupid than they thought.
Gran. A dead man leaving fingerprints on a wallet. Shit and damnation.
The only good thing about this will be when Garve gets on the horn and chews those bastards out, or calls the chief at home and raises holy hell. That'd really be something else to hear, really something else. They wouldn't be so damned snotty if they'd seen Warren there under that tree.
He almost braked then when the headlights began picking out islands and swirls of stones and twigs scattered over the state forest road, and when he switched on the floodlight on the dash and directed it at the twisted trees along the verge, he wondered how the hell he'd managed to miss the hurricane. That goddamn Screamer wasn't due until tomorrow.
Suddenly he felt uncomfortably warm.
The night was too black, the dashboard light too green, the whine and thump of the tires too loud by half. Without thinking he turned on the overhead red-and-blues, switched the beams to high and snapped on the radio. It didn't matter that all he heard was static; what mattered was the sound, and the light, and the feel of the wheel sweating beneath his hands.
A large branch clawed at the side of the car. A rock bleached gray jerked him to the right. The dark ahead refused to give ground, and by the time he reached the landing his shirt was soaking wet, his hair dripping sweat down the run of his back. He braked and stared at the low-wave water grayed by the headlights. He stared at the canted shack, willing Sterling to appear. He honked the horn. He stared at the ferry. He honked the horn again.
Sterling came out, one hand buried large in his peacoat pocket, the other gesturing at him to be silent for crying out loud, he weren't deaf and he weren't a goddamned servant that he had to jump like a freak just because a cop blowed his horn.
El didn't care what the old man thought. He drummed on the dash until the chain was pulled away. Then he drove the cruiser over the steel lip and onto the boat, stopping it dead center. Sterling hobbled into the cabin and coughed the engines into grinding. The ferry shuddered and rocked and slipped away from the shore.
At length, he could see the island. At length-and none too soon for his oddly jangled nerves-the engines reversed, and the bow dipped toward the bay. An adjustment to swing the lip and landing into line, and the ungainly boat coasted into place. Smooth, easy, so expertly done El didn't realize what had happened until Sterling crossed through the beams with the guard chain in his hand. El nodded and fired the ignition, hesitated a moment when he remembered what he had to do, then tore off the boat with a screech and stench of rubber.
Sterling watched him bump up to the road, spat disgustedly over the side and dragged the chain back. Ground fog drifted into the glaring light. He waited for a moment, thinking it would be just his luck tonight that another car would come screaming down to the landing just as he'd shoved off. Then he'd have to coax the ferry in again, unhook the chain, and pray the driver didn't dive off the far end.
He had had enough trouble as it was this weekend. Goddamned folks spooked at the storm, and he was going to have to spend practically all day tomorrow making sure the ferry was secure enough not to be dumped halfway across the goddamned state. Good God, when it all went friggin' wrong…
He spat again and wiped a rough sleeve over his chin, had half turned to head for the cabin when he thought he saw something moving, out there just beyond the reach of the floods. A dark thing, undefined, perhaps a tree shadow or a break in the fog. He frowned, and waited, his hand curling around the target pistol in his pocket. The margin of the floodlights' reach formed a white wall on the landing, and now that he took a good look he knew damned well someone was standing there. He would have called out, but that had been Stu's job. Little brother Stu was the friendly one, always hanging back and screwing up the schedule to be sure they weren't leaving anyone behind.