Bethany's Sin Read online

  “It’s important!” he said, and realized he’d said it too strongly because he saw Laurie’s eyes widen, as if she were expecting them to argue. He said more quietly, “Any recurring dream means something. Believe me, I know…”

  “It’s not a recurring dream!” she said. “I mean, I seem to be the same person in those dreams, and I seem to be familiar with the surroundings, but…what happens is never the same.”

  “Okay. But I’m still concerned.”

  “Anxiety,” Kay said. “You told me yourself you thought that’s what it was.” She narrowed her eyes as that terrible, wretched truth hit her. “So now you think this village has something to do with my dreams?”

  “I think a vacation would be good for everyone.”

  “Let’s go to Beach Haven!” Laurie said. “Please, let’s go!”

  “No. I can’t.” Kay was inwardly trembling because now she knew. She’d seen that awful, too-familiar look in Evan’s face: that lost and helpless and fearful look, the look of a drowning man who can find nothing to cling to. “Evan,” she said calmly, “this is the nicest place we’ve ever lived in. We have a chance here, a real chance to make something of ourselves. Don’t you understand that?”

  He sat still, then pushed his plate away like a chastised child. You’ve been a very bad boy, Mrs. Demargeon had said.

  “This may be the last chance we have,” Kay said.

  He nodded, rose from the table.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Out,” he said, his voice not angry but tense and hollow.

  “Out? Out where?”

  “I want to go for a drive. Where are the car keys?”

  “I want to go for a drive, too!” Laurie said.

  “They’re…in my purse on the bed.” She watched as he moved through the den. “Do you want us to go with you?”

  “No,” he said, and then he was climbing the stairs toward the bedroom.

  “Eat your food,” Kay told the little girl. “Those carrots are good for you.” She listened, heard him coming back downstairs, heard the front door open and close. And after another minute she heard the station wagon start and pull out of the driveway. Heard it moving along McClain Terrace.

  “What’s wrong with Daddy?” Laurie asked. “He acted funny.”

  And only then did Kay feel the burning of tears in her eyes. “Your daddy…isn’t well, Laurie. He isn’t well at all.” Tears broke, dripped hotly. Laurie stared.

  The Cock’s Crow, Evan thought as he turned the station wagon northward, driving along darkened, silent streets. A good place to drink tonight. And maybe a good place to ask some questions. He passed the black hump of the cemetery, his headlights grazing tombstones. And then he was surrounded by blackness, driving toward the King’s Bridge Road, his brain filled with uncertainties that streaked like white-hot meteors behind his eyes. They’ll come for you in the night, that man had said, just like they came for me. Take your wife and your little girl and get out. Now. And Kay’s calm, controlled voice: August isn’t that far away. This may be the last chance we have. This may be the last chance we have. He realized he was driving faster and faster, his foot steadily settling to the floorboard. Headlights gleamed off a roadside sign: SPEED LIMIT 40. His speedometer read fifty-five already. Running? he asked himself. Are you running from Bethany’s Sin? The tires squealed around a curve. He passed the Westbury Mall, where comforting lights glowed, where cars were parked; it seemed part of a distant world, ages away from Bethany’s Sin. In another instant, darkness took the road again.

  He veered off 219 onto the King’s Bridge Road, and in another few minutes he could see the glowing of a red neon sign in the sky. It was a smaller place than he’d envisioned, just an old cinder-block joint with a red slate roof and windows stickered with Falstaff and Budweiser beer decals. Above the door the neon rooster craned its head upward in a silent cry, retreated, craned again. There were only a few cars and a pickup truck in the gravel lot; Evan turned in, parked the station wagon alongside the building, and cut the engine.

  Faces glanced up quickly as he came through the door into the dimly lit room, then looked away. A few dungareed farmer sat at tables or sitting at the bar, nursing beers. Behind the bar a hefty man with a reddish beard, wiping glasses with a white cloth. A woman with platinum blond hair drawing beer from a keg, handing it across to a gaunt-looking farmer with bushy gray sideburns. She caught Evan’s gaze, nodded and smiled. “Good evenin’,” she said.

  He sat on a bar stool and asked for a Schlitz. “Right up,” the woman said, and turned away. While she drew his beer into a frosted mug, he glanced around at the place. There were more tables in the back, and shapes sitting at them. Laughter. A white-haired man in a coat and tie with a woman who could have been his daughter. She patted his hand, and he nuzzled her ear. Other men sitting together, talking quietly. Cigarette smoke drifted to the ceiling in layers. Evan caught fragments of conversation: worries about the heat, that damn politician Meyerman and his county road program, the market price of soybeans, engine in that Ford ain’t worth a damn I tell you.

  The woman slid his beer across. “There you go.”

  “Thanks.” He sipped at it, enjoying the sharp, tangy cold. When his eyes were more accustomed to the dimness he turned on the stool and looked toward the rear of the roadhouse again. The shapes were now people, mostly weathered-looking men who were probably local farmers. Evan wondered what this heat was doing to their land. Burning, cracking, drying it up so they’d have another hard year to face. His father had owned and worked land, and so he recognized these vacant, wearied faces. What the heat was doing to the earth it was also doing to these men. Cracking and withering their flesh, drawing it as tight as leather over sun-scorched bones. They drank as if trying to replace some of the fluids the sun had taken from them.

  And back there Evan saw a pyramid of beer bottles stacked on a table. Light filtered goldenly through them, and he could see a form sitting behind the bottles. He thought something about the man was familiar, and he took his mug and walked back toward him. As he neared the table a voice said, “Careful. There’s a loose floor board over there. Step on it and my creation goes to hell.” The voice, too, was familiar, though slightly drunk.

  Evan walked around the table. The man glanced up, beer bottles reflected in his eyeglasses. “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” Evan asked.

  The man paused, squinting. “You’re…the man who lives on McClain Terrace, aren’t you? Mr. Rice?”

  “No. Evan Reid. And you’re…”

  “Neely Ames.” The man held out a hand and they shook. “Good to see you again. Grab a chair and sit down. Buy you a beer?”

  “I’ve got one, thanks.” Evan pulled a chair over from another table and sat down. “Looks like you’ve been doing some drinking.”

  “Some,” Neely said. “More to do yet before this place closes. Hey, I don’t smell like garbage, do I? Or smoke?”

  “Not that I can notice.”

  “Good,” he said. “Good. I thought I had that god damned landfill in the pores of my skin. Guess I’m the only one who can still smell it.” He lifted a half-full beer bottle and swigged from it. “Hell of a day,” he said.

  “For both of us,” Evan said, and drank from his mug.

  “You ever find out about your friend? The one that lives across the street?”

  Demargeon’s strained-to-cracking face, saying they killed Paul Keating in the night. Evan said, “No. I never did.”

  “Too bad. I guess he moved away. Can’t say as I blame him.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  He shook his head. “Don’t mind me. Sometimes this tries to do my talking for me.” He motioned toward the bottles, which seemed to tremble very slightly under Evan’s gaze. “Tell me,” Neely said after another moment. “What is it about that village that keeps you there?”

  “Circumstances,” Evan said, and the other man glanced over at him. “It’s a nice little place; my wife and
I got a very good deal on our house…”

  “Yeah, I like your house,” Neely agreed. He smiled. “I haven’t lived in a house for a long time…Boarding houses, of course, but nothing I could call my own. That must be a good feeling, to have a family like that.”

  “It is.”

  “You know, it wasn’t that I needed money so badly that I took the job in Bethany’s Sin. I was driving through, and the village seemed so clean and quiet and beautiful. It seemed that if I’d kept on driving I’d never see another place like it again. I’m a drifter, and that’s all there is to me, but I thought that if ever I was going to try to find a home, then Bethany’s Sin might be the place.” He lifted the bottle again. “Do you understand that?”

  “Yes. I think I do.”

  “I thought I could fit in around here,” Neely said. “At first I thought it might really work out. But the way those people look at me on the street, like I’m something they could grind under if they really wanted to. And that damned sheriff is the worst of them all. That bastard would like to break me in two.”

  “I think he’s just got a chip on his shoulder,” Evan said.

  “Maybe.” He looked into Evan’s face as if recognizing something there. “You must’ve run into him yourself.”

  “I did.”

  Neely nodded. “Then you probably know what I mean.” He finished his beer and then was silent for a moment, staring into the amber depths of the bottle. “Now I’ve decided to get out of that place,” he said very quietly.

  “Why? I thought you said you liked it.”

  “I do. Are you a poker player, Mr. Reid?”

  “Just occasionally.”

  He set the bottle down before him, as if deciding whether or not to risk the crashing avalanche of the pyramid. “There’s a feeling you get sometimes in a game where the stakes are high, Mr. Reid. As if something is closing in on you from behind. Maybe you’ve played out your streak of luck, or you’re getting a bad deal, or someone’s a better player than you and he’s letting you think you’re winning until he snaps the trap shut on your throat. That’s the feeling I’ve got now. Somebody’s pushed the stakes up high, maybe higher than I can afford, and the final card’s about to be turned. I don’t know if I want to wait around to see what that card’s going to be.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re getting at,” Evan said.

  “That’s okay.” Neely smiled slightly. “Nobody else would, either.” When he looked at Evan again, his eyes were dark and distant, seeing shadowy forms on horse back chasing down his truck. “Something happened to me,” he said quietly, not wanting anyone around them to hear, “out on the road near Bethany’s Sin. I’ve been thinking about that for a long time, and every time I remember it I feel a little more afraid; I don’t know what was going on, and I don’t want to know; but I’m sure now that they would’ve killed me.”

  Evan leaned slightly forward over the table. Bottles clinked. “‘They’? Who are you talking about?”

  “I don’t know who they were. Or what they were. But by God they didn’t look human, I’ll tell you that. Listen to me!” He shook his head in disgust. “You must think you’re sitting here with a real basket case!”

  “No,” Evan said. “Please, tell me the rest of it. What did they look like?”

  “Women,” Neely told him, “but not like any women I’ve ever seen except in my nightmares. There were maybe ten or twelve of them, and they were on horseback in the middle of the road, as if they were crossing into the forest on the other side. I left here after closing—I’d had a few beers but not enough to make me hallucinate. Anyway, I’d driven right through them before I could stop, and when I slowed down to see who they were, they…attacked me.”

  Evan was silent, his heartbeat thundering in his head.

  “With axes,” Neely continued, his voice still low. “One of them broke the window out of my truck. Christ Almighty, I’d never seen anything like that before! I…looked into the face of one of them. I’ll never forget what that thing looked like. It wanted to rip me to pieces, and if they’d forced me off the road well, I wouldn’t be sitting here now.” He paused for a moment, wiped a hand across his mouth. “Most of all, I remember that woman’s eyes. They burned right through me; it was as if I was looking into blue flame, and by God I’ll never be able to forget that.”

  Evan watched him, said nothing.

  “I wasn’t drunk,” Neely said. “Those things were real.”

  Evan let his breath hiss through his teeth. He sat back in his chair, thoughts whirling through his brain, so many things so close to locking together and revealing a dark, terrifying picture.

  “I told Wysinger,” Neely said. “He almost laughed in my face. You’re the only other person I’ve told.”

  Evan ran a hand over his forehead. He felt fevered and shaken, unable to piece any of it together. Get out, Demargeon had said. Get out now. Now. Now.

  “I can see you think I’m crazy, too,” Neely said. “Okay. Here’s something else that’s got me spooked.” He reached into his back pocket and brought out a wadded handkerchief. He placed it on the table before him—the pyramid clink-clink-clinked—and began to straighten it out. There were tiny objects caught in the cloth. Neely lifted them out one by one, and Evan peered down at them. Neely held one up to the light; it glittered silverish and yellow.

  “What is it?” Evan asked him.

  “A tooth,” Neely said, “with a filling. And these others are teeth, too, all broken to pieces.”

  Evan started to touch the tooth fragment Neely held, ` then withdrew his hand. “Where did you find those?”

  “That’s what’s so strange: the landfill.” He turned his gaze toward Evan. “Now what in God’s name are human teeth doing lying around in the landfill?”

  “No,” Evan said, his voice hollow. “You’re wrong.”

  “About what?”

  “I don’t think…God has anything to do with it.”

  Neely’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

  “Nothing. I’m just thinking aloud.”

  Neely began to wrap the tooth shards back in the handkerchief.

  “I was going to show these to Wysinger. Maybe have him check out the landfill or something, because I’ve got a hell of a bad feeling about it. Now I’m not so sure if I should even bother.” He looked hard and long at Evan. “Hey, are you all right? Wait a minute, I’ll buy you a beer.” And then he was up on his feet, shoving the handkerchief back into his pocket, moving toward the bar. As he moved away from the table a floorboard squealed. The pyramid swayed right, swayed left, cutting swaths of amber light. Swayed right, swayed left.

  And broke apart like the falling of an ancient, dark starred city.

  21

  * * *

  Secrets

  ON FRIDAY Kay stayed home from her classes, calling Dr. Wexler to tell him she was suffering from a migraine headache. I’ll be fine by Monday, she told the man, and he said he hoped she felt better soon and wished her a good weekend.

  Kay put the receiver down and lay in the bed, the curtains closed, the room darkened. She’d switched on the light a few minutes before and then hurriedly turned it off again, finding it stung her eyes. Evan and Laurie were down in the kitchen making breakfast for her; hearing them clattering around, she knew she’d have to clean up. after them later. But it was nice of them, and no matter what was burned she was going to pretend to enjoy it.

  She hadn’t really lied to Dr. Wexler; her head was pounding. But she knew it wasn’t migraine. She felt as if her nerves were trembling, felt as if an icy hand caressed her shoulders. She’d tried for weeks now to pretend that nothing was wrong, that what she was feeling inside was anxiety, that soon the anxiety would pass and she’d be the same sensible, practical Kay Reid she’d always been.

  But now she couldn’t do that anymore.

  Something was happening to her that she couldn’t explain away as anxiety or anything remotely familiar. It had begun with those strang
e dreams. At first she’d been an interested, if fearful, observer in them, but now, as they intensified and drew her slowly into them, she’d become a participant unable to escape. And it always seemed that she was locked within another body, one with a ragged scar on the thigh, and she viewed scenes of carnage and merciless battle through hard, slitted eyes that were not her own. She’d wanted to talk about those dreams to Evan, to tell him that fear and confusion were writhing within her, but she’d been ashamed to admit she was becoming more and more afraid of something shadowy and intangible. After all, wouldn’t that be admitting that there might be something to fear in Evan’s dreams as well? No. She couldn’t do that. Evan seemed too preoccupied with something else to listen to her, anyway. In the past few days he’d eaten hardly any dinner at all; his eyes looked tired and hollow because he’d been staying up so late, watching television or trying to work downstairs in the basement. But Kay could have counted on both her hands the number of keys she’d heard strike paper. Those were familiar symptoms, and they were setting her nerves on edge as badly as were her nightmares.

  The one the night before had been the worst yet. She’d awakened in the gray hours with a cry of pain caught in her throat. Through the whorls of smoke and dust, the hordes of swarthy, black-bearded invaders had advanced, swinging blood-edged swords; archers on horse back wheeled across fallen walls and around roaring fires where corpses crackled and split. She and three comrades had fought back to back, swinging their gore-splattered axes from side to side like a ferocious, maddened fighting machine. She’d cleaved one of the enemy with a blow that had burst his skull into fragments, and then she’d heard a name—Oliviadre—which she’d recognized as her own, called in warning. Whirling to the side, she’d met the strike of the sword with her battle-ax and slashed the invader’s hand off at the wrist. The stump had gouted blood, and it had been a simple blow to end his life. Behind her, Coliae had fallen with an arrow in her throat; Demusa shrieked her war cry even as a blade struck her shoulder and a second blade pierced her chest; Antibre was struck in the face by a dashing sword, and even as she fell to her knees, she cleaved the head from the warrior who’d struck her down. Through the smoke the warriors came forward, shoulder to shoulder, their chests heaving. Oliviadre backed over a heap of fallen comrades, hand clenched around the handle of her weapon. All around burned fires of defeat: the great city, the great nation, finally trodden down beneath the boot of the destroyer. Torn bodies littered the stone pathways, and blood splattered murals of glorious, breathtaking color. And now Oliviadre, her gaze sliding from side to side like a cunning animal’s, saw the fear in their eyes, but knew the time of her own death was fast approaching. One of the warriors, a large man both courageous and foolhardy, rushed forward, his arm coming back to fling a spear. Oliviadre shrieked in rage, felt the hot graze of the spear as she stepped quickly to the side; at once she was upon the man, striking, striking, striking. The mutilated body fell, head hanging from strings. She spat upon it and readied herself for the others. They hesitated, sensing in her the fury that had almost brought Athens to its knees over a hundred years before. A bow hissed, and an arrow flashed over the heads of the men. It struck Oliviadre in the shoulder, forcing her back a few paces. The warriors, seeing the stream of blood, pushed forward.