Forever never ends Page 17

  The scene didn't make sense to Emerland, and that made him uneasy. Someone who could afford to drive a new SUV could pay for a tow truck. And what was somebody with a new car doing in this neck of the woods? Or was it Mull's, bought with DeWalt's money? And where was the driver?

  He saw the Mull farmhouse a hundred yards down the slope. An old pickup truck was parked by the porch, its grill and round headlights making a grinning mask. The farmhouse itself was supported by locust poles and bordered with field stones, constructed back before the days of building codes. Emerland noticed that Mull had electricity and a telephone line, but no cable television or satellite dish. No doubt the old bastard had been dragged kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century, but probably had developed a taste for technological and material comfort by now. From such seeds, Emerland grew gardens.

  He drove up to the farmhouse and got out, smelling the damp woodsy humus and barnyard rot, and the rich odor of manure and stale hay. The air was heavy with the pollen of poplar and wild cherry blossoms. It seemed that the leaves had come out in the last few hours. The fields were actually rolling hills, just like the cliche, and Emerland tried the words on his tongue as a possible name for the new resort.

  "Hello. Mister Mull!” He was peeved that Mull hadn't come outside to greet him. At least the old bastard could have stood on the porch barefoot with a flintlock across his arm, the way Emerland had imagined.

  But whoever had spilled that Pathfinder might have gotten such a cold and menacing reception, which may be why the driver lost control.

  He had acquaintances who were developers, and they always talked about how obstinate these old mountain families were. Rumors went around that some of these backwoods rednecks shot at every three-piece suit that turned a cuff on their land. That they believed anybody who showed up without a hound at their heels was either a Revenuer or an evangelist, both of which meant you’d better be on your toes. That anybody who had all their teeth couldn't be trusted. But that was ridiculous. The movie Deliverance was not a documentary. At any rate, Emerland wasn't scared off that easily.

  Emerland enjoyed the hunt. The faint-hearted could go elsewhere, to backfill the Everglades or build shopping malls over abandoned toxic dumps in Jersey, making easy money. But their dreams were flat. Even if they built an eighty-story office building in Atlanta, they'd never reach as high into the sky as Emerland did with his mountain monuments. No one would be able to look down on him.

  He shouted Mull's name again, growing impatient. He'd at least expected barking dogs. In the city, he would have clamped down on the car horn until he got results. But right now, he wanted to be the slick seducer, not the head-butting goat.

  He looked around at the land that would be his. The decrepit outbuildings looked like they'd be no challenge to a stiff wind, let alone Emerland Enterprises's bulldozers. But maybe he'd let the barn stand, renovate it into an old-timey saloon, with rusty cross saws and staged photographs of moonshiners on the walls. The bar could charge eight bucks a shot for drinks named "Mountain Squeeze" and "Blue Ridge Brandy" and "Olde Firewater." And maybe he'd leave the outhouse standing so the tourists could have their pictures taken in front of it.

  He yelled once more, then stepped onto the porch. Yellow-green chicken shit and old black stains covered the planks. The windows were boarded over and shuttered with pine slats. An old rocking chair, held together by twine and spit, showed an imprint of two bony buttocks in its frayed seat cushion.

  Yes, this old bastard would hop at the chance to move into a high-class condominium.

  The screen door was broken, splinters and wire mesh sagging from brown hinges. The front door was open. Emerland peered into the dark interior. The place was a mess, with furniture tilted over and shattered Mason jars covering the floor like spilled silver. Mull must have pitched a hell of a drunk.

  "Mister Mull, are you home?" he shouted through the doorway. His words were swallowed by the cold warped walls.

  Damned old coot. True, I didn't make an appointment, but that must be his truck there. I doubt if that SUV came to take him away. And from the seedy look of this place, I'm positive Mull's not out somewhere tending his farm.

  Emerland put his hands on his hips. He might as well walk around and get a feel for the place. Maybe he'd step into the woods and peek over the ridge at the view. Look at Sugarfoot and admire his own handiwork. But first, he wanted to check out the Pathfinder.

  Emerland pressed a hand to the SUV's hood. The engine had cooled, which meant the vehicle had been there for a while. He knelt and stuck his head inside the shattered sunroof. Papers and cards had spilled from the glove box to the driver's-side door. He shuffled through them until he found the white registration sheet. He pulled it out into the sunlight, looked at it, and let out a grunt.

  "I'll be damned. Herbert DeWalt. Now what the hell is he doing over here?"

  He put this piece into the puzzle. Could DeWalt have been tipped off about Emerland's plans? Emerland didn't trust any of his assistants. He'd bought or stolen most of them from rivals, and he knew that the practice worked both ways. A well-placed bribe, forty pieces of silver here and there, had been known to tempt even the most faithful of inner circle members.

  But DeWalt had had three years to make a move on this property and apparently hadn't reached Mull's price yet. If DeWalt was after the land, he must have lost his old edge, the skill and instinct that had chopped millions from the bank accounts of others. True, the rich bastard had wheedled a few acres off of Mull, but that was a drop in the bucket. Emerland believed in buying entire mountains.

  He stood up and looked at the bristled pine ridge tops. Mull might be showing DeWalt around right now, pointing out boundaries and right-of-ways. And it would be just like DeWalt, from what Emerland had heard, to pretend not to give a damn that he'd just wrecked his expensive toy. Probably wrecked on purpose just to show off, like a cartoon character lighting cigars with a hundred dollar bill. Emerland clenched his fists in rage. If DeWalt wanted to go to war, Emerland was ready to bring out the big guns.

  Because he had made up his mind that this was his land. He walked toward the woods.

  James walked beside Aunt Mayzie, prepared to catch her if she stumbled. He wondered why she couldn't watch from the porch like any normal person would. She could have seen plenty from there, the city workers decorating the stage and some of the vendors setting up their displays. But no, she just had to stick her nose into things, get right in the middle of those white people and bump their shiny shoes with the rubber tips of her crutches, smiling and saying ‘scuse me.

  All around them, people shouted and chatted happily, excited about tomorrow's Blossomfest. Decorations hung from the light poles, giant yellow tulips that could be turned upside down and spray-painted silver for use as the town’s Christmas bells. Traffic had been detoured from Main Street and the asphalt was covered with hay-packed replica wagons and folded plywood booths. A banner proclaimed "Welcome to Blossomfest" in red letters on white vinyl, with Mayor Speerhorn's blown-up signature at the bottom. The banner fluttered stiffly beneath a power line, catching the spring wind.

  James felt like a period typed onto a blank page, the way the white folks clustered around them. But with Aunt Mayzie, that made two periods, or maybe a colon. And he was so busy helping Mayzie weave through the crowd that he couldn't keep an eye out for the mushroom creature in the Red Man cap.

  Oh, but I thought you decided that was a dream, bro'. Just a drunken nighttime sideshow. A wrong turn by that gray ball of meat you keep under your flattop.

  But James hadn't convinced himself it was only his imagination. Because he wasn't really the imaginative sort. In grade school, when the English teacher had told the class to get out a sheet of paper and play "What if?" James had stared at the tip of his pencil until his eyes crossed. He was always more concerned with "What had been." And at the end of class, he'd turned in a page with one sentence scrawled across the top: What if I can’t think of anythi
ng?

  But if the subject was history or science, something with a past, James filled the front and back of a page in fifteen minutes. He was too analytical and left brained to create phantasms, fictions, or things that go bump. Not to mention thinking up a fruit salad scarecrow with green eyes and an alfalfa wig. So that would be that.

  Still, he found himself looking into the white eyes, searching for green light.

  Aunt Mayzie was having a grand time, talking to people she knew or asking vendors about the merchandise. They wandered past the soap makers and the tobacconists and barbecue cooks. One old man wearing fireman’s suspenders and a dark “NYPD” ball cap was weaving a basket from brown reeds. A blotchy-faced woman at the next booth, who was almost as wide as an elevator, stapled canary yellow bunting to the edge of a table.

  "What are you going to be showing, ma'am?" Aunt Mayzie asked, leaning forward on her crutches, her shortened leg angled behind her.

  "We're delivery florists, but we also do flower arrangements. Weddings, funerals, that kind of thing. You want our business card?" the blotchy woman said without looking up.

  James looked around. The words "floral arrangements" had flooded his mind with too many unwanted images. He looked into the tops of the trees that lined the main street, expecting some sort of overgrown spider to drop down.

  "I'm not in any danger of either a wedding or a funeral," Aunt Mayzie said to the woman. "Where's your store?"

  "Down in Shady Valley. We get a lot of business from the university. You know, academic functions and such. And boys saying thanks to the girls, if you know what I mean."

  The blotchy woman opened a gym satchel and handed Aunt Mayzie a card.

  “Petal Pushers,” Aunt Mayzie said. "Ain't that a cute name, James?"

  James nodded, anxious to move on. The sun was starting to flatten out above the western ridges, growing fat and orange the way it did before it dropped over the side of the earth. And then the darkness would come. And even the sodium street lamps and the heavy police patrols wouldn't make James feel safe. He cleared his throat.

  "We'd better go on and see the rest of the sights before dark, Aunt Mayzie. Plus, we have all day tomorrow, and I'm sure this lady wants to get back to her work."

  "All right, James. You young folks are always in such a rush. Good luck to you tomorrow, ma'am,” Aunt Mayzie said.

  The woman nodded absently, already turning her attention back to her bunting, the heady aroma of flowers rising on the evening breeze.

  They walked to the Haynes House, a nineteenth-century home that had been restored as a community center. The music stage had been built on its grassy lawn beneath a big, dying oak that had been throwing down leaves since before the Cherokee hunted the hills. A couple of husky guys in flannel shirts were setting up the sound system, black Marshall stacks that had cones as big as manhole covers. Teenage kids hung from the porch rails of the Haynes House or clustered around the stage, sipping Pepsis and dreaming rock-star fantasies.

  Aunt Mayzie pegged up to the Haynes House porch. Hay bales had been scattered around to make seats for a storytelling area, and one end of the porch had been blocked off with hay to muffle the music that would be blaring from the stage the next day. James helped Mayzie up the stairs and she leaned against the Colonial columns that supported the roof.

  "Why don't you have a seat, Aunt Mayzie?" James said. She was breathing a little too hard to suit him.

  "I'm okay, honey," she said. "Just let me look around a little more and catch my breath, then I'll go on home. I know you want to watch the basketball tonight."

  James had forgotten that Georgetown was playing in the tournament. He took it as one more sign that his brain was out of alignment. He had it together now, though. But as long as the hay bales didn't rise up and start walking, he'd be okay.

  They went home just as one shimmering edge of the sun hit the far mountains. The clouds tapered out in pink and red swatches, the ridges as bright as hell’s foundry. The evening air was fresh with new life, the blossoms arriving just in time for their namesake festival. He looked past the hills that crowded the town, off toward the distance where the granite face of Bear Claw loomed like a great majestic beast. James thought perhaps moments like this were why Mayzie endured the harsh winters, the isolation, the white world.

  The white eyes.

  And now, the green eyes.

  Eyezzzz.

  The alien assimilated the symbol, gathered it into its collection. Shu-shaaa tah-mah-raaa eyezzzz.

  The symbols were nonsense, free of any pattern. This planet had no intelligent life. The creature could feed without fear of destroying higher life forms. It was growing faster now, healed from the impact with the soil, its roots and spores spreading. The heart-brain throbbed in unison with its tendrils.

  A symbol triggered itself again, repeating, like the pulse of a quasar.

  Tah-mah-raaa tah-mah-raaa tah-mah-raaa.

  The creature opened itself, let the vibrations of its new home settle into its center. The symbol’s source of origin had grown more intense, nearly meaningful. The creature took that as a sign of healing.

  Soon it would have enough strength to contact the others, those also making their journeys across distant space. The closest could join it here and help convert this planet. It was rich in microorganisms, wealthy with cellular activity. The creature was fulfilling its biological imperative.

  Growing.

  Thriving.

  Harvesting.

  It shivered in the verdant pleasure of survival and propagation.

  Tamara slowed the Toyota and gazed toward the top of Bear Claw. She should be getting back home, she knew. But something about the mountain compelled her to search its slopes. It was an itch, a tingling of some deep-seated knowledge.

  She braked slowly, finally able to open her eyes. The world was exactly the same as it had appeared before, only more vivid somehow. The grass along the sloping hills was a swaying green sea, the trees reached for the sky like happy worshipers, and the clouds had stitched themselves into the fabric of the sunset. The air tasted rich and her head swam in its intoxicating glory.

  Something pinched her arm and she looked down to see a mosquito perched there, its proboscis needling into her skin. Its wings were slim and irradiant, almost glowing, and its body was jeweled with amber sap. The eyes were bright and she was struck by their intelligence; it appeared to study her in a speculative manner.

  As if I’m on the wrong end of the magnifying glass. Well, you’re on the wrong end of a free meal.

  Tamara raised a hand from the steering wheel to swat at it. She was suddenly struck blind by darkness, gasping in pain and surprise as her skull reverberated with that phrase she had come to dread:

  Shu-shaaa.

  And behind it, so fast that it seemed to blur into the same blend of symbols, came Tah-mah-raa.

  Her own name.

  She clutched her head, the mosquito forgotten. She’d heard that migraine sufferers could become physically incapacitated from the agony of their attacks and wondered if that was what was happening to her. Her stomach knotted in nausea at the intensity of the invasion. The piercing needles withdrew a bit and the pain lessened enough for her to open her eyes.

  Brain tumor. Oh God, what if I have a brain tumor, and that’s what’s been causing my delusions? Or what if I’m schizophrenic?

  She tilted the rearview mirror and a stranger gazed back, one with wild eyes and tangled hair, a twisted face that would make a convincing textbook picture for a schizophrenic. The pain had moved from the center of her cranium to the back of her eyeballs. She rubbed her forehead and the sharpness receded to a distant, dull throbbing.

  When she felt a little better, she rolled down the window and let the cool breeze dry the sweat beneath her eyes. She scratched at her arm, then remembered the mosquito. Its bite had left a grayish-green ring, a tiny red dot of dried blood in the center.

  Tah-mah-raaa tah-mah-raaa tah-mah-raaa.

&
nbsp; She looked around, confused. Maybe this was how brain tumors progressed, the obscene mutated cells manipulating the healthy cells, multiplying and altering, squeezing out the host cells in their drive to spread. Maybe the thing inside her head was even programmed to know that it was killing its host, but could no more turn away from its silent mission than a hungry mosquito could ignore warm flesh and blood.

  No. She was fit and healthy, in the prime of life. Such a thing could never happen to her. She would rather believe Shu-shaaa

  — that she was nuts, losing it, having a nervous breakdown.

  But, in her heart of hearts, she couldn’t buy that, either. Hearing imaginary voices was one thing. She was quite sure this voice was real.

  And she knew now from where it was speaking.

  The mountain called to her again. She put the Toyota in gear and headed for the gravel road that her instincts told her climbed the spine of Bear Claw.

  Jimmy wanted the last time with Peggy to be special, but it was hard to get intimate with that moron Howard watching. The bills rustled in his shirt pocket and that made him feel a little better. The bed squeaked as Howard and Peggy went at it. Jimmy put on his boots, anxious to leave the room. He was no saint, but there were some things that turned even his stomach.

  He opened the hollow door and an old one-eyed bastard in a faded military uniform stood there, his ear cupped to the door. One-Eye was grinning like a possum in a dumpster. Jimmy pushed him backward and closed the door, shutting off the sound of Peggy’s sex factory.

  "Who the hell are you?" Jimmy said.

  The old man licked his lips. "Just a concerned neighbor, is all. Thought there might be trouble over here."

  "Ain't no trouble and ain't nobody else's business."

  "Old Sylvester might think otherwise, don't you reckon?" The old fart squinted past Jimmy with his good eye as if trying to see through the door. "Seeing as how you fellows is over here taking turns with his wife."