Wheel of Stars Page 13

  From the woods that line came. She had been wrong—there was no returning trail after all. Rather the night sulker might have vanished into nothingness at the very spot where she had seen it crouching to wait upon Tor's will. Had it retreated to its own place? And what of Tor? The girl stood gazing at the roof of Lyle House. Did he claim that now for his own? If he had what did the future hold for the two of them? That he had been completely defeated she did not believe.

  Gwennan hunched a shoulder as she turned away. Far more than she could understand struggled within her. She must have time—and a chance to relax in the everyday world. For it was in this world, of that she was now sure, that Tor must finally be faced and the last decision made.

  10

  The sun was well up, though its limited warmth had not melted the pattern of the frost. Gwennan pulled her scarf closer about her throat. She wanted nothing but to get back to the warmth of her home—to find there the real world which she had known all her life. Too much had happened—those dreams, encounters, whatever they might be—had left her both wearied and dazed.

  As she went she was careful to angle away from those blackened tracks, and she kept as far as she could from the edge of the wood. There were no birds, no sounds, except the thud of her own boots.

  Now it became a matter of setting one foot before the other, using her dulled determination to reach the wall, cross that into the lane. No car passed her—she walked numbly through an utterly silent world—nor were there any tracks here.

  When she sighted the curl of smoke from the Newton place, she gave a small gasp of relief. That single trail of vapor was an affirmation of reality. She stumbled as quickly as she could towards her own door—only to halt, her mittened hands to her mouth—staring at the walk before her, open lawn on either side.

  Black—dead black—as if someone had taken ebony hued paint and, with great deliberation and skill, set out to make a foul trail. The same burnt signature left by the monster she had seen on the land near the standing stones was here. So plain she half expected to see a curl of steam arise from the tracks. Gwennan thought to pick up the familiar stench. But that had not apparently lingered—thus the sulking menace had not been here recently as these stark marks would suggest.

  Gwennan did not head for the front door, rather she turned to trace the prints. The splotched marks encircled the whole of the house bringing her again to the front where they ended abruptly. That creature who had prowled here, in threat or warning, might have stepped out of nothingness, then returned again. For beyond that circle of prints there was none marking arrival nor departure. Only this was left to prove what had passed on sentry duty around her own hope of safety.

  The girl took a deliberate step forward, crossed that line with fastidious care so that her own booted feet did not touch any print. Only tracks they might be—but still she wanted no close contact with even so little left by that alien being.

  Her key—now she could not remember how she had left the house last night. Had she even locked the door? Gwennan hesitated on the worn doorstep studying the thick boards of the door itself. Those had been put together in the old protective pattern—the double cross as a charm against evil, a ward against what might prowl the night. Fragments of which she could no longer be sure, garnered from her own reading (or had they appeared in her mind during her experiences by the stones?) were a jumble in her thoughts. She looked higher—to the frame of the door. There was set that dark painted curve of iron—a horseshoe with ends carefully up to hold luck within the house—the cold iron which, by tradition, was so potent a weapon against the unseen.

  For the first time Gwennan noted markings flanking that country symbol of good luck. There were certainly faint indentations in the ancient, weather worn wood of the beam to which the horseshoe had been fastened. So greatly eroded were they that it was like the tracings on the standing stones so that only light striking at a certain angle brought them to notice at all.

  She shucked a mitten, lifted her hand to try to-trace the inequalities of the wood, to assure herself that her eyes were not deceiving her.

  They—

  Gwennan dropped her hand and retreated a step, her eyes wide.

  She had not used any torch to illuminate that piece of centuries-old wood. Yet now, as if the very approach of her fingers had the power to summon them, the markings glittered into life. Only so for an instant or two, then they faded once more into the grey. In fact there was a dulling cast across the house, the yard, for a cloud had crossed the sun. And with that came a chilling blast of wind.

  Still she had seen—a face—a strange face from the mouth of which issued two curls of vines to encircle the head. And the second symbol was one she had long known—an ankh—that looped cross which the ancients considered the key to life eternal. Who had carved such potent signs here? That vine-wreathed face—her memory presented her with an illustration made of carvings from a very old church overseas. The Green Man! He who commanded potent forest rites—

  Slowly Gwennan stepped forward. Had she really seen those? Now the wood appeared utterly bare. Perhaps her experience of the night had given her once tightly reined imagination too great freedom.

  She plunged at the door and found it indeed unlocked—passing her easily into the gloomy hall to meet the warmth, the familiar smells of home. Her breath coming in what was close to dry sobs, Gwennan fled on to the kitchen, to stand at last in the midst of its homey comfort, striving to draw to her a feeling of safety, even as a child might huddle into a blanket in the midst of a cold, dark night.

  Nothing had changed here, there had been no intrusion she could sense. Gwennan threw off her coat, scarf, hood, and hurried to feed wood into the waiting stove. There were still embers which had been banked well enough to bring the fire to life. Mechanically she went about getting breakfast, bringing out eggs, bacon, setting on the coffee pot, cutting bread to toast. Busy at such tasks, she lost some of that feeling of otherness, became again the person she had always believed herself to be, shutting out all else.

  A glance at the shelf clock, whose comfortable tick added to the easement of this moment, gave her a start. Ten—and her meeting with the board—! Those papers she had meant to go over so carefully—she had no time for checking them now. Eat, change into the respectable suit Mrs. Abers would expect her to wear—hurry into town.

  She ate swiftly and wondered what would happen if she cited her night's adventures as an excuse for any tardiness. The board would immediately set searching for a new librarian, for poor Gwennan Daggert would as speedily be whisked off to some safe rest home where her delusions might serve as a classic case for some psychiatrist. Why, she might even end up in one of those sensational horror novels so much in demand at the present moment.

  To cling to the duties which had been so long her whole life, that must be her present anchor. She stacked her dishes, a slovenly trick, Miss Nessa would have termed that. The sharp ring of the phone startled a small cry out of her, and her coffee mug fell from her hand, to shatter in the sink, spattering her with the dregs.

  For a moment she could not move at all. Then she reached the other side of the kitchen and managed a hoarse “hello.”

  “Gwennan?” Mr. Stevens sounded surprised, even uncertain.

  She pulled her wits together quickly. “Yes. I think I am coming down with a cold—” That surely would excuse any strangeness another might see in her this morning— “But I will be at the meeting.”

  “Save me some time after, Gwennan. There is a matter I must discuss with you. Thought I had better let you know ahead of time as this is of the utmost importance. You planning on walking in?”

  She thought of those black tracks encircling the house, what they might just threaten. However, she did not want anyone to see those and ask questions—not now!

  “Yes, of course, I always do.”

  “You are pretty much alone so far out there.”

  “Never bothered us. Miss Nessa liked it that way. I'
ll be in on time, Mr. Stevens.”

  “The time—yes, it is getting along. Well, just remember I want to see you after the meeting—important or I wouldn't insist—this being Saturday.”

  She went to change her clothing, leaving what she threw off again in a muddle Miss Nessa would have highly disapproved of after the long years she drilled Gwennan in tidiness. Then she was off, briefcase in hand, hoping that when the proper moment came she could call to mind all the figures she had been so laboriously compiling for the past month. She glanced at the yard, somehow not surprised that the black tracks had disappeared. Perhaps she had reached a point where nothing could really surprise nor astound her again.

  The old set pattern of life pushed more and more of the past hours into the realm of dream, until she began hopefully to doubt her adventure. Gwennan concentrated dazedly on her report, using that skill she had long ago learned as Miss Nessa's assistant and representative, to throw herself entirely into the work at hand, shutting out all else. In the past it had been her own very meager personal life she had so exiled, now it was these wild dreams. She was startled at the end of the meeting when old Mrs. Kitteridge, apparently roused from the semi-doze which of late years enveloped her at their conference, asked:

  “What about the Crowder papers? We've never decided what to do with ‘em, have we now? Emma took a sight of pride in all those books and letters. Thought once they should go to some college.”

  Mel Teague, who clung to his status of representing the farmers, usually rallying a negative vote swiftly to any hint of new expenditure, settled his big bulk more firmly in his chair.

  “Now there's somethin’ else ‘bout those there papers. The Crowders—they always took a sight of real interest in this town. It was old Thad Crowder as made the first bond with the Lyles when us Freeport people came up river to settle here. He was a learned man for his time, they say used to go around huntin’ up strange things—doing ‘em, too—like talkin’ to the Indians ‘bout their devils and such. He was the one who just up and disappeared—or so they tell. Story was that the devil himself came down and snatched him right out of the meetin’ house during a big storm. Now that story was one of my family's tellin’, Matt Teague bein’ there at the time and never the same afterward. The Crowders—they didn't talk much—but they kept the town papers and records fair and square—very good at that. And everyone knows they were a writin’ family—kept their own accounts of what went on here. I heard from my Granddad that in the old days if anyone wanted proof of this or that happenin’ in the past—like where was the landmarks of a piece of property or the like—they'd just trot over to the Crowders and ask.

  “Then one of them would get down some big old book and look in it. Sure enough there it would be, all wrote out fair and square. They kept an account of everything whatever happened here. Maybe they kept too good an account to suit the Lyles—or Thad might have. The Lyles were livin’ like lords, with all them servants waitin’ on ‘em when the Freeport people came. And they were always mighty friendly with the Indians, too. That devil story—”

  “The Lyles,” Mrs. Abers spoke with her usual precise diction and that well-known quelling note in her voice, “have never done this community anything but good. When the Indians were raiding everywhere else, they never entered this valley.”

  “Yeah, those who had a mind to didn't come to no easy end,” Mel commented. “I remember that story, too. It was one of the Teagues as come across the camp where them French and their Indians met up with something they never bargained for. He always said afterwards that it was a sight worse than any massacre as he ever heard of—that it weren't no human work at all—but the devil must a took a hand in the business.”

  “Just as,” Jim Pyron, editor of the Weekly Clarion, looked thoroughly interested, “he seems to be making himself known to us in the here and now—”

  Gwennan stopped stuffing her papers back into her case. She did not quite dare at the moment to look straight at any of those old or middle-aged faces. They were all of village founder blood and there were family tales well known to all of them. She knew what she herself had discovered in her own one short search of the Crowder papers. Who could guess what else might lie in the still unopened cartons?

  “It's been just about a hundred years now,” Mrs. Kitteridge observed, “since the last time. I remember Granny Whatton—” she paused before continuing, “that was no made-up story, neither. I don't think any one can deny that there is somethin’ here in this valley which shows up now and then—somethin’ strange—”

  “Which does a killin’ or two.” Mel's emphatic interruption brought a moment of silence.

  “It might be well for us to do a little lookin’ through those papers,” he added. “Or suggestin’ it to Bob Baines—as sheriff he might get himself a few helpful ideas—”

  “Never knew,” remarked Jim Pyron, “that the law would take to hunting down the devil. That usually just deals with his works—not his person. What is making trouble now must be some kind of animal—maybe a big cat. Those are coming down from the north—more of them than people know about.”

  “Now you've taken to arguina on both sides, Jim,” Mel said.

  The editor laughed. “That's what's known as keeping an open mind, Mel. I did a little looking around myself in our files at the Clarion. Of course the paper doesn't go back before 1830, but, yes, I found a few queer stories scattered through back issues. I'll agree that there are a lot more things in this world than people are willing to admit exist. These Crowder papers—they do sound like something worth shifting—not just for devil stories—but for local interest. Might even do to run one of those columns in the paper like ‘A hundred years ago today’ and quote from them. What about it, Gwen, anything been done with the papers?”

  “No. The boxes are in the store room. I did open one with town records in it—the duplicate ones, I mean. They seem to be in good order.”

  “Mind if I drift over and do some poking around them? I can see a story, maybe more than one, in this.” Jim had totally lost that bored glaze of eye which he usually wore during board meetings. Though the Pyrons were an old family, Jim was relatively a newcomer, having inherited the paper from a cousin, coming back to town after college, then a stretch in ‘Nam. In this company he ranked near the well-traveled Lyles for worldliness.

  Mrs. Abers glanced up from the thick, old-fashioned galoshes she was pulling on.

  “Heard that Lady Lyle's gone again. They say she was ailing. Too bad—I didn't take much to that nephew of hers when she introduced him at the store. Suppose if anything does happen to her he'll be the one to take over Lyle House.”

  “He's young—no tellin’ ‘bout him,” Mel commented. “He's already stayin’ up at the house. Saw him goin’ down the lane last night. Friendly enough seemin’, I guess, but he ain't like the Lady. She was one to keep to herself maybe, still there's never any need she hears of that she doesn't lend a hand in helpin’ out. You can ask the Reverend about that. Too bad he couldn't make the meetin’ today. Heard tell that Sally Edwards was taken ill so he undertook to drive her to Freeport—”

  “What's wrong with Sally?” Mrs. Kitteridge showed even more animation. “Why, I met her in town just two days ago and she looked as good as ever. Said she had nothin’ to complain about either. Was it some sort of accident? Why didn't we know?” Her indignation grew with every word.

  “No accident,” Mel shook his head. “Think the family don't want it talked ‘bout—but it'll be all over town sooner or later anyway. Sally was found at the edge of Brink's Woods near clean out of her mind—real hysterical she was. Then her heart took a bad spell. They figured they had to get her to the hospital as soon as they could. We need us a doctor in this town. Ever since old Doc Anderson died, we've needed one. But these here young fellows nowadays—I guess they figure they can make a lot more money in the cities, and there're too few of us to give them that kind of a livin’. Maybe we're just all too healthy for our own good
.”

  “Brink's Woods—” Jim, who was generally keen on the subject of trying to attract medical aid for the town, was more interested in the other part of Mel's report. “That's on the other side of the Lyle place, isn't it? I was thinking when I drove by there just the other day that it was unusual there hadn't been any logging done there for so long. Lots of dead stuff ought to come out—a dry summer and a lightning strike there—then we might find ourself with a real fire.”

  “True enough. But you ain't goin’ get old Lovey Brink to do anything ‘bout it. She couldn't care less, long as she has her garden patch and her check comin’ in regular at the bank. Her son ain't been home in ten years or more. Brink's Woods—you know that is a place that devil critter, whatever it is, might well take to hide out in. And were a woman like Sally to maybe be chased, or even see something strange, she could well have a heart attack. I think Baines ought to look a little in the direction and I'm goin’ to tell him so. Well, time to be gettin’ ‘long. We got some things settled anyhow. Gwen, you watch out for the pennies now. They mightn't go far these days—but they aren't to be thrown around carelesslike neither!” He heaved his bulk out of the chair.

  For the first time Gwennan realized that Mr. Stevens, though he had been present, had had very little to say. He had even pushed his chair a little away from the table, making only absent-minded comments when he was called upon. There was a briefcase leaning against one of the legs of his seat, but he had never reached for it, though she had expected him to produce something pertinent to library affairs. Instead he had steepled his fingers together and more or less fixed his attention outwardly on them, as if his patience was being strained to wait out the conclusion of the meeting.

  She ushered the rest of the board out, assured Jim Pyron he could have ready access to the Crowder papers whenever he wished, and returned to where the lawyer waited for her.