Charles Grant - Night Songs

The air grew damp, and the light sparkled with errant spray.

Matt was gone, but Peg hung back, waiting until she could walk beside him as best she could within the trail's confines. He shifted the basket and held her hand.

Their shoes snapped twigs and broke the spines of piles of dead leaves; their breathing matched the pulse of the surf.

The trees began shrinking and bending away from the ocean, the shrubs falling back, the ground turning to rock until they were out in the clear and the water swept ahead of them to a leftward curving horizon. The boulders were huge, were small, were brown lined with color, and what grass managed to break through the cracks in the ground was rough and sharp-edged and tipped with darkred thorns.

Matt stood in a gap between two child-sized rocks, his hands on his hips, and shaking his head. "It's in," he said, nodding toward the tide.

Colin lowered the basket and joined him, looked down, and told himself sternly he wasn't going to fall.

One hundred feet to the water, surging as if it were trying to climb, splattering, scattering, turning dark to white while spumes of its thunder were caught by the wind and thrown up just short of lashing them.

They were standing at the top of a precarious pathway, one that switchbacked unevenly more than halfway down. Ledges littered with broken shells, weakly fluttering feathers, every so often the bones of a gull. At the bottom the rocks were smooth, but elsewhere they jutted and forced gashes in the waves, gashes in the air. The wind caught his hair and forced it back, exposing his forehead, made him clutch the throat of his jacket and close it around his neck.

Matt pleaded with a look.

"No way, pal, forget it. Even I know the tide's higher than usual. That storm's on its way, and you definitely are not going to be its first casualty."

"What's casualty?"

"It means your butt turns red when you don't do what you're told."

"Oh."

They stepped back reluctantly, Colin first and watching as Peg, protected from the wind by a broken wall of massive boulders, unpacked the basket. He started toward her to help, stopped when Matt tugged at his waist.

"Pal, I said no."

Matt pointed.

On the horizon, merged with the overcast that lowered darkly and began to churn, was the fog.

"She's singing," the boy said.

"What?" He knelt, facing away from the cliff's edge.

"Lilla," Matt told him. "She's singing."

"Now how do you know that, pal?"

"It happens every time, Mr. Ross. Didn't you know that? It does. Every time she sings the fog comes back."

"Enough of that," Peg scolded mildly, looking up from the food.

"Indeed." He took Matt's shoulders gently. "You know what coincidence is?" The boy nodded. "Well, that's what this is."

"Nope," Matt said. "It isn't… what you said." The wind screamed like an angry flock of gulls. The fog.

Colin took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Look, Matt, I know you believe this, and I guess that's all right for now. But I'm starving to death, in case you hadn't noticed, and I would appreciate tabling all ghost stories until after I've had some of your mother's lousy cake."

"Well, I like that," she said with a scowl.

Colin shrugged and nudged her son forward, then groped for his shoulder when Tess Mayfair walked silently out of the trees.

Her dress was ragged, her chest and stomach partially exposed and covered with dried blood. A rib poked behind ragged flesh. Her hair was matted and her eyes were wide.

Peg saw her the moment Colin did and grabbed for Matt, shoved him behind her as she rose slowly from the blanket and backed toward the rocks.

"Jesus, Tess," Colin said with concern. "God almighty, what happened? Do you need help?"

Tess walked toward him, stumbling on the rough ground but not losing her balance,

"Tess?"

She stumbled again and lurched toward him, forcing him back, into the gap that opened on the path. He couldn't look back, couldn't look down, didn't hear Peg shouting as she raced for the basket. The wind snared him and he grabbed for a rock. Tess didn't stop, not even when Peg threw a large bottle of soda at her head.

"Tess!"

She filled the gap. And she lunged.

Colin threw himself to one side desperately, his right foot slipping on the spray-dampened ground, bringing him to his knees as Tess toppled over the edge. Silently. Arms reaching. Turning head down just as she reached the first ledge.

Peg screamed and Colin shouted.

And the fog began to whisper up the face of the cliff.

TWO

Noon was barely past when the fog brought the night, and the Carolina storm brought the wind to give it motion.

Garve sat heavily on the edge of the bed and crushed out his cigarette in the pink seashell ash tray resting on the floor. He was naked, warm, and despite the flesh that had been softened by his years, there was still the definition of muscles less for show than for power. His sandy hair was tangled, he needed a shave, and his hands hung over his knees at the wrist.

"I gotta get to work, I guess."

"Why? There's a crime wave or something?"

He grinned in spite of himself, and relaxed when Annalee's hands gripped his shoulders and began a gentle kneading.

"God, that feels good."

"Sure it does. There's a considerable amount of tension stored in here."

"An expert speaking?"

"Damn straight."

He allowed himself a sigh, kept his eyes closed, and didn't want to know the time. He guessed it was close to ten, but he couldn't be sure. And he didn't much care, not now, at least. Eliot could handle things alone, anyway. Nichols was a good man, though Garve wished he wouldn't make it so obvious that he hungered for the boss's job.

"A penny," she said, leaning into his back and snaking her arms over his shoulders, her fingers lightly scratching the roll of his waist.

"I think I love you."

"Worth a dime at least."

He half turned, and tested the air for sarcasm, drew up his legs and turned the rest of the way, sitting cross-legged and staring. Not at her slightly sagging breasts or the enviable flat of her stomach or the tanned sheen of her thighs; he stared at her eyes, at the chocolate brown that watched him from behind a wisping screen of blonde hair, at the dark lashes, at the gentle laughter he saw there as she reached over to stroke his cheek.

It almost banished the throbbing that had settled behind his ears. "I feel like a jackass, you know," he said.

"Why? Because that son of a bitch made you lose your temper?"

"Yeah. I shouldn't have done it, Lee. It was stupid. If there was a case there, I've blown it."

Concern eased her smile. "Was there one?"

He shook his head. "I don't know. I honestly don't know."

Her sympathy almost made him angry, but she forestalled it by leaning over and kissing him, drawing back and examining him again.

"Do you know how old I am?" he asked when the silence grew too long.

She shook her head.

"I'll be fifty-one come January." He laughed once and looked at his hands covering his lap. "Fifty-one. That's more than half a damned century."

"You wear your age well."

Maybe he did, but this morning he felt twice that. It was the humiliation and the fact that he had lost control for the first time in years. Punks like Cart

Naughton were simple to intimidate, and so was Bob Cameron. But when he came up against the Man, against those who claimed real power-the kind Bob dreamed of-he proved himself a flop. Cow flop. Horseshit. A fifty-year-old cop who couldn't find a killer in a state prison.

"You're feeling sorry for yourself."

He nodded before he could stop himself.

"That's all right," she said, tossing her hair back over her shoulders. "If you say you made a mistake, then I believe you. If you say you made an ass of yourself, well… you made an ass of yourself."

"Thanks a heap, nurse."

"Hey, cop, it isn't the end of the world. Since when have you turned saint?" When he looked up, eyes narrow, she returned the look without flinching. "You're not perfect, Garve," she said softly. "And don't tell me you really, honestly, expected him to crumble the minute you looked at him cross-eyed."

His gaze dropped to her knees, to his knees. "I can always hope, right?"

She shoved him, nearly spilling him off the bed. "You're kidding, right?"

He almost flared, but a short laugh became a long one and he reached out for her, hugged her, moved their legs out of the way and lowered her to the mattress.

"What time is it?" he whispered into the hollow of her sweet-smelling shoulder.

"After one, probably."

He rose up sharply. "What?"

A handful of hair brought him down again. "It's after one and if you leave this house without making love to me at least once, Garve Tabor, I'll never speak to you again."

"Lee-"

"Garve!"

He pulled back to look at her, higher to see the headboard, higher still to see the window.

"Jesus Christ, look at all that fog!"

"I know," she said. Suddenly he was cold, and reached for the blanket to cover them both. It didn't help.

Especially when he thought he heard Lilla singing.

There was just enough light to let them see the fog, to let them see the branches whip out of the gray to lash at their faces and snare around their legs, boil out of the hollows and cover their feet. Peg thought her lungs would overfill and finally explode, and she exhaled in a rush that made her dizzy.

Matt was ahead of her, Colin urging her on from behind, but she couldn't understand a single word he was saying. The sound was there, and the thud of his footsteps, and the crack of his swearing when he stumbled and nearly fell. But she couldn't understand a word.

And she could barely see a thing.

Matt was there, she knew he was there because she could see his hair swinging, and his arms pumping, and his thin legs blurring as he ran. She could also see Tess Mayfair, larger than she'd ever seemed to be in life, lurching out of the trees as if she were drunk, reaching for Colin, nearly pushing him into the sea, tripping over something and disappearing, just like that.

She was ashamed of herself. Instead of trying to help the poor woman she had screamed like an idiot, screamed louder when Colin went down and almost went over himself. It was Matt, whose excitement made him slap her hard on the back, who made her realize what was happening, made her lunge to her feet and dive for Colin's hand. She grabbed his wrist the instant she landed, the air crushed out of her, her eyes flooded with tears of pain. But she held on, her lips pulled back and every muscle in her body pulled taut as a wire. Colin grabbed her forearm with one hand, grabbed her elbow with another, grabbed her shoulder, and she didn't know he was standing until he helped her up.

"Wow, Mom!" Matt said. "Wow, you did it!"

Colin could say nothing. He only swallowed and told her everything with his eyes.

But the running was the worst part.

Worse than understanding that Colin had almost died, worse than accepting her own dare and looking over the edge-to see Tess sprawled on the ledge more than fifty feet below, to see the waves claw at her dress, toy with her legs, wash away the red that ran in streams from beneath her head.