The Paper Grail (41 page)

He’d have to get out of the closet. That was first. He peeked through the vent, and seeing no one in the kitchen, he stepped out into the service porch and straight off saw the first-aid chest hanging there on the wall. He opened it, hauling out a pile of gauze bandages and compresses and a bottle of iodine. Then he opened the next pantry, pushing around bottles of rug shampoo
and detergent and boxes of Brillo pads. Shoved in among the clutter was a plastic half gallon of bleach, which he pulled out, listening for a moment. There was the sound of talking from upstairs, but it was nothing but a mutter. They would hear him if he started scraping around.

He decided that the moment had come to act. There was no time for a debate between the devil and the angel that sat on either shoulder. Providence had seen to it that Mrs. Lamey had a well-stocked service porch, and it was clearly bad luck not to make use of providential gifts. That’s what Uncle Roy would say, anyway.

He opened the bleach bottle and carefully drained the iodine into it, putting the top back on and swirling it around. Then he set the bottle into the service-porch sink and counted to sixty while he pulled out his pocket knife and opened it, shoving the blade into the plastic bottle a half inch from the bottom. Bleach dribbled out around the blade as he wiggled it back and forth, widening the hole until the bleach ran out in a rivulet down the drain. After a moment the flowing stopped, and Howard worked the knife lower, draining off most of the rest of the bleach. Then he twisted the knife sideways, cutting the whole top of the bottle off.

Left in the bottom was a chalky precipitate beneath a thin pool of bleach. He made a big wad of the gauze bandage and poured everything through it and down the sink, catching the precipitate and shaking as much of the moisture out of it as he could. What should he do with it? He wanted something sensational. Heat would do it.

Stepping hurriedly into the kitchen, he opened the drawers one after another until he found one that was full of ladles and spatulas and corncob skewers. The stuff inside clanked around when he searched through it, and he had to slow himself down and work carefully and quietly. There it was—a wire-mesh tea strainer. He stuffed the saturated gauze into the strainer and then closed and latched it, stepping across to turn on the gas stove.

In order to dry it out, he dangled the strainer over the heat, careful not to jostle it, and turning his face away so that if it blew up then and there, at least he wouldn’t be blinded by it. He’d only done this once before, just a small one in a high school chemistry class, and the bomb had blown his desk open. He needed more than that now—something to send them running, to put the fear into them.

The stuff was nearly dry, and the whole business hadn’t taken him six minutes. The rest was a matter of luck. Either it would work or it wouldn’t. He shoved it into a sock from the clothes hamper, just to keep it from clanking too much, and laid the sock gently into the clothes dryer before turning it on.

They might hear it bouncing around in there, but that was a necessary risk. A couple of minutes on high heat ought to produce spectacular results. He slipped quickly to the kitchen door, and, seeing no one in the living room, went out through the front and crouched in the shadows of the porch to wait and think things through.

There wasn’t any time for thinking. Almost at once there was a hellish explosion on the service porch. Howard had thought that the dryer would muffle it, but the sound was almost cataclysmic, like a dynamite blast, and there was the clamor of stuff crashing to the floor when something—the dryer door, probably—blew off and slammed against the opposite wall. The echo of it reverberated down the kitchen, and in the heavy silence that followed there sounded the clatter of footsteps on the stairs.

The entire crowd of them appeared in a rush. Crouching on the front porch, Howard watched them surge into the kitchen. Then he stood up and slipped in through the front-porch door, running for the second floor.

Someone shouted “Shit! Look!” and someone else shrieked, probably Mrs. Lamey, and then hollered something about the fire extinguisher. Howard heard it from halfway up the stairs. At the top, he pushed into the first room he came to.

It was big, wallpapered in a bloodred Victorian floral, and there was a circular bed very nearly in the center of the room. His cane lay on it. On the floor were a little propane torch, a saw, and Touchey’s ball-peen hammer. They had been working at the cane—sawing pieces of it off. There was wood dust on the bedspread, and the tip of the cane was cut flat. The room was heavy with a resiny, sappy smell. The bits that had been cut off were gone.

Howard grabbed the cane and went out into the hall again, stopping at the top of the stairs to listen and catch his breath. He could just barely hear people talking down in the kitchen. Then there was the sound of the back door shutting. They would think he exploded the dryer and then went out the back. Maybe they would go out, too, thinking to follow … He tiptoed down the stairs, hugging the wall.

The front door still stood open, a long six yards from the base of the stairs. He stopped, hunkering down to take one quick look toward the kitchen door before running for the street, and in that moment Glenwood Touchey and Jason the artist stepped out of the kitchen, laughing between themselves, as if they thought that the blowing up of the dryer had been a wonderful trick. Then a look of doubt and suspicion crossed Touchey’s face, and he stared at the open front door.

Howard jumped for it. There was nothing at all to be gained from waiting. He leaped off the bottom stair, waving the cane and landing on his bad leg, stumbling, and nearly going down. The two men regarded him momentarily with a look of wonder, as if they weren’t sure what he meant by any of it. Then Touchey shouted, picked up a heavy glass ashtray, and threw it at Howard, missing him by three feet. The ashtray smashed through the front window in a shower of breaking glass, and Howard took a vicious swipe at Jason with the cane when the artist moved to cut him off.

Howard banged right into the screen door, knocking it open. He ran straight up the sidewalk and around into the alley. There was shouting in the house—Touchey and Jason hollering for help, not wanting to go out into the night alone. Howard climbed into the Volkswagen bus and crouched in the darkness between the two rear seats.

He could smell old vinyl and grease and upholstery stuffing as he waited there, thinking that this was either a good idea or a dead-bad one. They wouldn’t expect him to stick around, now that he’d got his cane back. If they checked the bus, though …

He heard them running off, up and down the street. After a moment Stoat’s car started up, its bad starter whirring for a moment before catching. Howard waited until there was silence and then peeked up over the top of the seat. The alley was dark and empty. The night was wearing on. Sylvia might already have finished hobnobbing with the spirit world and gone back to the shop. Climbing out of the bus, Howard headed that way, down the alley toward Main, sticking to the shadows and watching over his shoulder.

The store was dark. Sylvia was still up at Mrs. Moynihan’s. Howard set out in that direction, suddenly wanting to be there, too. Who could say what Mrs. Lamey’s little circle would attempt next? Listening for approaching cars and footfalls, he hurried up Main, all the way to Evergreen before turning up toward Pine. The village was dark and silent and the moon was high, lighting
up the street. Abruptly he started to run, full of premonition, and just then a car turned up from Main, cruising slowly. Its headlights caught him, and the car sped up.

Vaulting a picket fence, Howard ran across the shabby front lawn of an old house. He rounded the corner into the backyard, bowling through a covey of metal trash cans and heading straight into the adjacent yard. He heard a door open and someone shout. A dog began to bark and then another joined it as Howard jogged on, past the backs of dark houses. Looking between two of them, he could see Stoat’s car out on the street, keeping pace with him. There were three men in it—Stoat, Touchey, and Jason.

Howard leaned heavily on his cane as he jogged. There was a fence in front of him, blocking off the next backyard. He stopped, looking out again toward the street. A light came on in the top story of the house behind him, and he realized that there was nothing to be gained by trying to escape over fences. He headed for the sidewalk again and found himself fifty feet from the corner of Pine Street.

Stoat pulled up beside Howard as he panted along toward Pine, looking hard at street addresses. Howard had run himself out. That had to be clear to the three in the car, who shouted encouragement at him through the rolled-down windows, merely following along now, enjoying themselves, but none of them seeming willing to confront him on the sidewalk.

There was Sylvia’s car parked in the drive of a rambling white house. Lights shined through the front window. Howard turned and jogged up the walk, knocking hard on the door. He could hear voices inside. Stoat’s car stopped abruptly and backed crazily into the curb. The three piled out, heading up the walk after him as he whacked on the door again. It opened, and, as if in a cartoon, he nearly knocked on the face of a matronly-looking woman in a sack dress, who stared back at him half suspiciously.

Sylvia stood behind her, though, and at once said, “Howard!” as if she were happy as anything to see him.

The woman smiled a little then, looking past him at the other three on the walk. Howard panted for breath, almost unable to speak. “Won’t you come in?” the woman said pleasantly.

“We’d love to,” Stoat told her, stepping up onto the porch. “We’re friends of Sylvia. We’re visiting in the area, and Sylvia was nice enough to invite us around. We can’t stay but a moment, though. I hope we’re not too late.”

Howard stepped in through the door, past Mrs. Moynihan, and drew his finger across his throat so that Sylvia could see it. Sylvia shrugged. What could she do?

A blond-haired woman sat on a sofa in a big room beyond, along with a man in a flannel shirt, with a beard and a large nose. He wore a half dozen big pieces of gaudy Navajo jewelry and had the flushed and broken-veined face of a heavy drinker. On a low coffee table lay a scattering of crystals, copper and silver jewelry, and a stack of paperback books and tracts.

“We’ve interrupted something!” Stoat said, as if he regretted being impolite. “I was afraid of this, Howard.”

Sylvia had disappeared. Howard looked around wildly, hoping that she would appear to rescue him, but she was gone. “Yes,” Howard said, trying to look apologetic. “Are you a fancier of New Age philosophy, Mrs. Moynihan?” He picked up one of the paperbacks. On the cover were three out-of-focus butterflies and the title “Who You Are.”

She looked at him skeptically as he smoothed out his hair.

“Mrs. Moynihan is not a ‘fancier’ of philosophies,” the man with the beard said.

“Of course.” Howard smiled at him, wondering where the hell Sylvia was. She appeared just then from down the hall, and winked at Howard, who had no idea on earth what the wink meant. “I met Rodia Davis at Esalen last year,” he continued, pulling the name out of a hat, talking wildly.

Mrs. Moynihan widened her eyes. “I’m sorry …” she said.

“The woman who channels the spirit of the Carpathian slave. Wonderful book that she’s written, out in paperback from Amethyst Imprints. Do you have a copy, hon?”

“No,” Sylvia said, looking doubtful. “I might have one at the shop, though …”

“Let’s just go round and find it, shall we?” Stoat asked, putting his hand on Howard’s shoulder. “Seriously, we’re interrupting things here. Coming along, Sylvia? Or should we pick you up in—what? A half hour, say?”

“A Carpathian slave?” Mrs. Moynihan asked. “That’s fascinating.”

“I could have sworn that the Carpathians were a mountain system,” Touchey said cheerfully. “Are you sure you mean Carpathian?”

Mrs. Moynihan gestured at the couch. “Do sit down,” she said. “We were just finishing up, actually. Most of the guests have gone. This is Susan MacIntyre.”

The blond-haired woman on the couch smiled and nodded. There was a hammered-copper comb in her hair and she wore a quartzite ring as big as a goose egg. “I’ve got to be going myself,” she said, standing up, and after a few parting pleasantries she hurried through the door and was gone.

“Glass of wine?” Mrs. Moynihan asked.

The bearded man scowled and checked a wristwatch that was hidden beneath the sleeve of his flannel shirt. “Coming onto eleven,” he said.

Sylvia gestured at him. “This is
Mister
Moynihan.”

“Glad to meet you.” Howard leaned over and shook hands with the man, who looked more doubtful than ever. “You know,” Howard said, “you have an uncanny resemblance to Abraham Maslow,” which was a lie, or probably was. Howard couldn’t recall ever having seen a picture of Maslow.

“Do you think so?” Mrs. Moynihan said, looking sideways at her husband, maybe a little skeptically.

“Right on the money.” Howard sat down on the couch, settling in comfortably. “A glass of wine would be spectacular, actually—as long as we’re not keeping you folks up.”

“Of
course
we’re keeping them up, Howard.” Stoat shook his head at him, as if he were a naughty boy.

“Jason here is an artist,” Howard said, nodding at the scowling Jason, who still hadn’t sat down.

“A painter,” Mrs. Moynihan said. “How lovely. I paint myself.
Please
sit down.” Jason sat, dusting off the chair cushion first.

“Don’t tell me that’s your work on the wall there?” Howard asked, gesturing at two massive, unframed seascapes sitting side by side on the wall opposite. Together they composed a single scene of a rocky cove with waves the color and texture of cheesecake breaking on the rocks. A fishing boat stood out to sea, blocked in heavily with what must have been a rope end—the sort of picture that might easily have hung on the wall of a suburban bank.

Howard heard Touchey mutter something under his breath, and Jason seemed about to explode. “That reminds me of Bigler,” Howard said, “only the work here is much finer—far keener eye for detail.”