Instruments of Night Part 1

Instruments of Night.

by Thomas H. Cook.

For my mother, Mickie Cook.

And in loving memory of my father, Virgil Cook (1917-1996).

Terror sharp as spurs.-Paul Graves, The Lost Child

PART ONE

The truth always whispers in the ear of the deceiver.-Paul Graves, Into the Web

CHAPTER 1.

Looking out over the city, imagining its once-coal-blackened spires, he knew that he did it to keep his distance, that he set his books back in time because it was only in that vanished place, where the smell of ginger nuts hung in the air and horse-drawn water wagons sprayed the cobblestone streets, that he felt truly safe.

It was nearly dawn, and from the narrow terrace of his apartment, Graves could see a faint light building in the east. He'd been up all night, typing furiously, following Detective Slovak through the spectral back streets of gaslight New York, the two of them-hero and creator-relentlessly pursuing Kessler from one seedy haunt to the next, the groggeries of Five Points, the wh.o.r.ehouses of the Tenderloin, its boy bars and child brothels, watching as Kessler's black coat slipped around a jagged brick corner or disappeared into a thick, concealing bank of nineteenth-century fog. Together, they'd questioned bill stickers and news hawkers and a noisy gaggle of hot-corn girls. They'd dodged rubberneck buses and hansom cabs and crouched in the steamy darkness of the Black Maria. For a time they'd even lingered with a "model artist" who'd just come from posing nude for a roomful of gawking strangers, Slovak mournfully aware of the woman's fate, his dark eyes watching silently as her youth and beauty dripped away, her life a melting candle. They'd finally ended up on the rooftop of a five-story tenement near the river. Slovak teetered at the brink of it as he searched the empty fire escape, the deserted street below, amazed that Kessler had done it again, disappeared without a trace. It was as if he'd found some slit in the air, slipped through it into a world behind this world, where he reveled in the terror he created.

Graves glanced back into his apartment. The chaos that had acc.u.mulated during the night was spread throughout the room, small white cartons of Chinese food, dirty cups and gla.s.ses, a desk strewn with papers, his ancient manual typewriter resting heavily at the eye of it all. Compared to the sleek computer screens and ergonomic keyboards most other writers now used, the typewriter looked like a perverse relic of the Inquisition, a mechanical thumbscrew or some other infinitely refined instrument of medieval torture. Once, at an exhibition of such artifacts, Graves had seen a dagger made in the form of a crucifix, its handle cut in the shape of Christ's body to provide a better grip. Years later he'd written a scene in which Kessler had pressed an identical weapon into Sykes' trembling hand, forced him to draw it slowly across the sagging folds of an old woman's throat. Sykes. Kessler's cowering sidekick. The s.h.i.+vering, panicked instrument of Kessler's will.

Graves took a sip of coffee and let his eyes drift out over the East River, the bridges that spanned its gray waters, cars moving back and forth on them like ants along a narrow twig. Within an hour traffic would become an unbroken stream, the noise of the city steadily increasing down below, so that even from his high aerie, perched like an eagle's nest on the fortieth floor, he'd have to close the windows to keep it out.

It was nearly five hours before he had to catch a bus upstate, to the Riverwood Colony, where he'd been invited to spend the weekend. He'd need to get a little rest before then, since his mind was too easily alarmed by changing scenes, distant voices, unfamiliar smells for him ever to sleep in transit. Instead, he'd stare out the bus window, alert and edgy, as towns and villages flashed by, inventing tales as he went along. Pa.s.sing an empty field, he might suddenly envision the moldering bones of some once-desperate girl, a runaway who'd knocked at the wrong door a hundred years before, young and vulnerable, pale and hungry, wrapped in a threadbare woolen shawl, snowflakes clinging to her l.u.s.trous hair, her small, childlike voice barely audible above the howl of the wind: I'm so sorry to disturb you, sir, but might I warm myself beside your fire? I'm so sorry to disturb you, sir, but might I warm myself beside your fire? He could see the man beyond the door, imagine what he imagined, her quivering white b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the cold-stiffened nipples, feel his fingers probing the latch as he drew back to let her in, his voice sweet, unthreatening, He could see the man beyond the door, imagine what he imagined, her quivering white b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the cold-stiffened nipples, feel his fingers probing the latch as he drew back to let her in, his voice sweet, unthreatening, Of course, my dear, come in. Of course, my dear, come in.

It was always the isolated farmhouses that called up the most dreadful scenes. Graves knew firsthand the horror that could befall them, how vulnerable they were to sudden violence and death. Once, edging close to the forbidden, he'd actually described a young woman's murder in such a place: Kessler, the arch villain in all of Graves' books, directing Sykes through the brutal ritual while Slovak, Graves' tireless hero, knowing where Kessler was, what he was doing, and desperate to stop him, had pounded up the flickering, smoke-filled aisles of a stranded s...o...b..und train, panting heavily by the time he'd finally reached the engine. But once there, he'd found the engineer too terrified by the storm to press onward, so that once again Kessler had escaped due to some unexpected cowardice, fear the servant upon which evil could most confidently rely. It was a circ.u.mstance often repeated in Graves' books, one of his abiding themes.

Graves drew in a breath and felt a wave of exhaustion settle over him. He knew where the weariness had come from and why it was so heavy. He and Slovak had just trudged up five flights of stairs, slammed through a thick wooden door, and raced across a wide black roof, arriving breathless and exhausted at its edge.

Now, looking out over the city, it seemed strange to Graves that within an instant he had transported himself to this quiet terrace where he stood, calmly sipping tepid coffee in the early morning light while in the world of his creation, Slovak remained on the other side of town, thirty blocks away in s.p.a.ce and more than a century instant in time, staring out over the same enigmatic web of streets and rooftops as Kessler crept up from the rear, grinning as he drew the little silver derringer from beneath his coat, good and evil about to face each other squarely in the dawning light.

Graves left his apartment for the Port Authority Bus Terminal a full thirty-two minutes before he needed to. His early departure sprang from his sense that being on the move was safer than remaining in place. A bird in its nest, warming its eggs, with something to protect, that was the predator's best mark. To Graves, this truth amounted to a law of nature and applied equally to both animal and human worlds. To stop allowed the net to fall, the trap to spring, the hand to reach out from behind, to grasp the unsuspecting shoulder.

Once at the bus station, Graves remained on the move. He wandered through the terminal's wide corridors, watching strangers as they lounged near their boarding gates, his eyes roaming freely until they settled upon a particular person. It was a behavior he'd given to Kessler as well, directing him into densely packed railway stations, his keen, predatory eyes forever searching the throng for the one who was lonely or the one who was abandoned, cutting from the herd the straggler and the cripple, sniffing the air for the scent of open wounds. "Victims are born for my pursuit," Kessler had once written in one of the letters he used to taunt and torture Slovak. "Just as villains are born for yours."

On this particular morning Graves' attention was drawn to a woman with tangled gray hair who sat at Gate 35. She was eating a huge m.u.f.fin, using a brown paper bag both as a plate and, occasionally, a napkin. Since the woman was neither young nor beautiful, Graves supposed that she might well be less alert, believing that none around her could possibly take an interest. If that were true, she would be the perfect victim for Kessler. Isolated, un.o.bservant, dully focused on a slab of cornmeal rather than the black-coated figure who, in Graves' imagination, had just eased himself into the seat beside her.

Graves was still watching the woman a few minutes later, the tale developing effortlessly in his mind. By then Kessler had engaged her in conversation, the two of them nodding and smiling, the old woman quite flattered by the unexpected attention of such an interesting and well-mannered gentleman. While they talked, snow fell over the streets outside, blanketing Edwardian New York in a dream of purity, horse-drawn carriages struggling through its ever-deepening mounds. Inside the great terminal, gaslights flickered and coal glowed red in the heating stoves, steaming the nearby windows as Kessler gave the signal and Sykes crept forward tremblingly, his pale, boyish face in shadow beneath the wide bill of a tattered cap, his hands nervously slapping snow from the shoulders of a ragged wool cape.

The plan was now in operation. Graves could feel the odd heat that always rose in Kessler at such moments, how moist his fingers became as they toyed with the slender cord he kept coiled in the pocket of his leather coat.

Sykes' shadow had just fallen over the old woman's face when Graves heard the announcer call his destination. He rose and headed for his bus, glancing only briefly toward the woman with the m.u.f.fin. She was alone now. Kessler was no longer seated beside her, but returned to Graves' mind, the gray chamber where he lived, silent, sinister, forever plotting his next violation, the instruments he would use to pa.s.s the night.

Despite the traffic, the bus moved smoothly up the West Side Highway, across the George Was.h.i.+ngton Bridge, and finally through a ring of squat suburban towns. The trees and fields swept in after that, and Graves gazed out the window and looked for deer, hoping that no human being would come into his view, since, inevitably, the sight of some isolated figure on a deserted country road would summon images he could not easily shake off.

It was mid-afternoon when the bus reached its destination of Britanny Falls, a village snuggled among the hills of the Hudson Valley. Graves remained seated while the other pa.s.sengers left the bus. It was a tactic he routinely employed in order to avoid the uneasy sensation of having people close in from behind him. Just outside the window, he noticed a small, slender woman in a flowered dress. She had s.h.i.+mmering blond hair and looked to be in her early twenties. A little girl stood beside her, clinging to a cone of ice cream. The woman was talking to a short, portly man in drab work clothes, and as they talked, she often threw back her head and laughed. Watching her, Graves guessed that in all likelihood she could not imagine the possibility that at that very moment, as she bade good-bye to the man in work clothes and headed for her car, idly reaching for her daughter's hand, one of Kessler's countless minions might be peering through the slit in her kitchen curtains, staring out at her empty driveway, waiting. For as Graves knew, until it happened to you, until you'd seen it eye to eye, smelled its breath, you could not imagine how quickly terror could fall upon you, do its hideous damage, then leave you, if not dead, then partly dead. Dead to the love of open s.p.a.ces and solitary walks. Dead to the pleasures of silence and the peace of empty rooms. Even dead to other people, to the as-yet-unharmed, the world irrevocably divided between those so darkened by experience they saw evil everywhere, and those who, having never felt its grip, saw it not at all. But more than anything, dead to the comforting notion that terror's depths were not infinitely deep, fear not the marrow in our bones.

CHAPTER 2.

The invitation had instructed Graves to remain at the bus stop at Britanny Falls, a.s.suring him that transportation to Riverwood would be provided. He sat on the wooden bench, watching as the town's life unfolded before him. In its leisurely pace and unruffled tone, it reminded him of the small North Carolina town not far from the farm where he'd lived for the first twelve years of his life with his mother and father and his older sister, Gwen. Like Britanny Falls, Claytonville had been a peaceful, unhurried place. Graves could remember how utterly unthreatened he'd felt as he moved freely down its one main street, how casually his mother had talked to Mr. Casey, who ran the general store, or to Mr. Banks, who sold farm goods and occasionally made small loans or extended credit to the farm families who lived in the surrounding area.

As a family, they'd gone into town nearly every Sat.u.r.day, all four of them piled into an old '56 Ford. It was a battered car, the color of dishwater, with only three hubcaps, the radio antenna broken off. His father had called it the "Old gray mare," and sometimes kicked gently at its threadbare tires with a comical affection.

Jasper Graves had been a tall, lanky man, and each time Graves remembered his father, it was first as a long, lean shadow moving fluidly across newly seeded fields. He'd worn overalls and a weathered hat that his sweat had soaked through so many times the felt had finally taken on a look of perpetual dampness. He'd been oddly shy around strangers, but quick and lively when at home, forever making jokes and acting boyish. He could imitate animals, particularly the old brown dog that had suddenly appeared in the yard one day and never left. He'd named her Ruby for some reason that had never been explained, and Graves could recall sitting on the front steps, watching his father lope languidly past, his eyes taking on the same laziness as Ruby's, moving at the same slow pace across the yard, his hands cupped over his ears, until he stopped, stared about, the right hand jerking up suddenly, just like Ruby's did when she suddenly heard something unfamiliar, the screech of a crow or the distant rumble of an approaching car. Then he'd grin or give a wink and continue on toward the barn or the chicken coop, his shadow following behind like a ragged cape.

But it was his mother Graves most often recalled when he suddenly found himself reminded of his boyhood. His father had been a gentle, kindly man, and there'd been something docile and accepting about him, something that never looked for anything beyond the nearby fields. His mother, on the other hand, had had a curious drive, a keen sense that beyond her world there was another one she yearned to see. On summer evenings, when her ch.o.r.es were done, she would sometimes sit on the porch, thumbing through magazines, gazing at photographs of faraway places. She knew that the great cities were out of the question, that there would never be either the time or the money to visit such extravagant sites. And so she thought of Florida, instead, and on those few occasions when the truly far-fetched took hold of her imagination, she even contemplated the prospect of a trip to California. Once, she'd actually gone so far as to mention the possibility to her husband. Graves remembered how his father had not so much as glanced up from the local paper before making his reply, "Lord, Mary, you know the old gray mare couldn't ever make a trip like that."

But it had been the old gray mare that had taken them away on that last day. "We'll be back by supper time," his mother had said as he and Gwen stood in the yard that summer morning. She had knelt and run her fingers through his hair. "You be good now, Paul." His father had laughed at that. "He's practically grown-up, Mary," he'd gently scolded his wife as he bent and grasped his son's small, round shoulders. "You be the man around here until we get back," he'd said with a smile. Then he offered his familiar wink and uttered a line that haunted Graves still, particularly on summer nights, when the darkness seemed arrayed against him, something watching him sleeplessly from its black depths, Don't let nothing happen to your sister. Don't let nothing happen to your sister.

They were the words Graves most often heard when he thought of his father. They'd been said softly, trustingly, but Graves had long ago stopped hearing them in that tone. Instead, they returned to him accusingly. And always tied to other words, said with a grunt, in a hard, mocking voice, You didn't know what you was, did you, boy? You didn't know what you was, did you, boy?

He knew precisely what he'd been. A boy. Just a boy. Twelve years old. You thought you was a man You thought you was a man, the voice repeated through the years, Now what you think you are? Now what you think you are?

"Nothing," he whispered, then glanced about to see if anyone had heard him. No one had. The people of the village moved through their afternoon obliviously.

Watching them, Graves fought to keep his attention focused on where he was, Britanny Falls, the present. But slowly, like someone drawn into deeper and more dangerous waters, he found his mind returning to the day he'd been left in charge of things, in charge of Gwen, of making sure that nothing happened to her, despite the fact that his sister was four years his senior, along with being far closer to adulthood in other ways time couldn't measure.

In a sense Gwen had always seemed like a woman, he thought now. Strong. Knowing. With a dignity his father lacked, and a central quietness unknown to his mother. It was Gwen who'd first read to him, taking him with her to a place beside the river where she liked to sit in the shade and watch the green water drift past. She'd begun with short stories from a collection she'd been given by her high school English teacher. It was called Stories for Girls Stories for Girls, but Graves had felt that they were for boys too. He had said just that to Gwen on the day she'd read the last of them, and he could stall remember how she'd smiled at him, as if she'd accomplished some goal she'd had in mind when she'd first begun to read.

Only a week later, Graves had begun a story of his own. He'd called it "A Story For A Boy," and had scribbled its first paragraphs in one of his school notebooks. He'd planned to give it to Gwen on her upcoming birthday, and had nearly finished it by the time his father and mother left for Ellentown that day, his father reminding him that he was "the man of the family" and that he should not let "nothing happen" to his sister.

He could remember that day with extraordinary clarity, how he and Gwen had stood in the yard and watched the old car back out onto the dusty road, then head east, noisily, a slow trail of dust following behind it like a yellow tail. They'd gone about their separate ch.o.r.es after that, Graves feeding the chickens and pigs, Gwen dusting the furniture and sweeping off the porch.

By noon, the summer sun had begun to bake the house and fields. They'd sat down beneath the shade of the thick oak that rose in the front yard, and eaten their lunch together. Gwen had made a fresh pitcher of lemonade, and there were times when Graves could still taste it.

It was the smell of chocolate that returned Graves to that particular day, June 14, 1962, since Gwen had made a chocolate cake for their dessert that evening. They'd taken it outside to escape the heat, sat down on the steps of the front porch, and watched the scores of lightning bugs drift over the yard as night began to settle over them.

They'd expected their parents to return by nightfall, but by nine o'clock, the old gray mare had not yet brought them home. They'd played checkers, then a game of cards, and finally gone out to the road, first to linger beside it, then to wander down it, in the direction toward which their parents had gone that same morning. It was something animals would do, Graves later thought. He and Gwen were like two bear cubs that had waited all day at the mouth of the burrow, then timidly headed down the unfamiliar hillside, silently, hesitantly, sniffing the dying trail of the parents who had abandoned them.

Even now, over thirty years later, sitting on a chipped wooden bench in a town far north of that dusty country road, Graves could easily remember the feel of that evening walk, the ominousness that had gathered around them, the moist touch of Gwen's hand as she'd taken his, the increasing pressure with which she'd grasped his fingers as their walk lengthened and the darkness and their bewilderment deepened, and still the old gray mare did not come rumbling up the road.

It was a far different car that finally pulled into their driveway. It was nearly midnight by then, but he and Gwen were still awake when Sheriff Sloane brought his car to a halt, got out, and walked toward where they sat together on the front steps.

"Evening, Gwen," Sloane said when he reached than.

"Evening, Sheriff," Gwen answered quietly, her voice already fixed in a tone of dark expectation.

"You have any relatives in the area?" Sheriff Sloane asked.

"No, sir."

"None at all?"

Gwen shook her head.

Sheriff Sloane drew in a loud, weary breath. "Well, why don't you and your little brother come home with me, then."

Gwen did not move. "Where's Daddy and Mama?"

Sloane's features appeared even darker than the darkness that surrounded him. "Come along, now. You and your brother can stay with me and my wife tonight.

On the way to his house, Sheriff Sloane answered Gwen's questions one by one, so that by the time they reached it, everything had been revealed. Their parents were dead, killed in a fiery collision with a jackknifed truck. The truck had been hauling wood for the paper mill in Harrisburg, Sheriff Sloane said, and when it overturned, it sent a waterfall of logs tumbling over the embankment. In all of this, he offered only one consoling fact. "It was instant," he said. "I don't think your parents suffered."

They'd stayed the next few days with Sheriff Sloane, then returned to the farmhouse. There seemed no other place to go. Neighbors dropped by, bringing food and hand-me-down clothes, but otherwise the two of them had gone on alone, doing the ch.o.r.es as they always had, then sitting on the steps together, just as they had the night Sheriff Sloane had finally pulled into the dusty driveway, told them of their parents' deaths. Autumn brought its usual rains, winter its spa.r.s.e snow. Through it all they remained together, living in the family home, walking to school each day, returning to the house at night, equally determined to continue on their own. After a while, no one pressed them to do otherwise.

When spring came, they leased the fields to other farmers, keeping only a small parcel for themselves, one at the far end of the field, nearly a mile from their farmhouse, but an area of rich, moist earth that was perfect for a large garden.

Graves worked that garden all the next summer, planting, hoeing, weeding, working in the hot sun with the same sort of persistence he'd observed in his father. At noon, he would drop the hoe in the gra.s.s beside him, sit under the shade of an old elm, naked to the waist, and wait for Gwen to bring his lunch. It was at those times, sitting alone, waiting, that his mother and father most often returned to him. He saw his father's face boiling in the flames, his mother's hair a mane of fire. They melted like candles thrown into a furnace, their features blending into one charred ma.s.s. The pain that accompanied these imaginings was the deepest he had ever known. He could not imagine a deeper one, nor that anything in life might ever hurt him more. And yet, for all that, one thought sustained him. That he still had Gwen. That he was charged to love and protect her. And that he always would.

"Are you Paul Graves?"

Graves abruptly returned to Britanny Falls, glancing to the left, where a tall, gray-haired man stood, peering down at him.

"I'm Frank Saunders," the man said. "I've come to take you to Riverwood. The car's just over here."

The past still surrounded Graves like humid summer air. He realized he did not know exactly how long he'd been waiting on the bench. Rising, he glanced at his watch. He was relieved to discover that it had been only a few minutes.

"Riverwood isn't far," Saunders told him. "Just a short ride. The car's over here. You don't have any bags?"

Graves patted the small traveling case that hung from his arm. "Just this one."

"This way, then," Saunders said. They walked half a block to a dark blue Volvo station wagon.

"Riverwood's a nice place, Mr. Graves," Saunders said as he casually guided the car through the short main street of Britanny Falls. "With a big lake for swimming and rowing. All the summer guests have their own cottages, you know. So you'll have a lot of privacy."

"I'm just here for the weekend," Graves told him. "I haven't been invited for the summer."

"So that accounts for the lack of luggage," Saunders said as if it were a small question that had been gnawing at him. "Well, however long you stay, I'm sure you'll enjoy yourself. Everybody does."

The car continued down the road, the woods thickening, a dense undergrowth spreading across its shaded ground. From time to time Graves spotted hikers as they made their way along a narrow trail. Each time, he turned away and focused his attention on the road ahead, not wanting to conjure up the things such people sometimes came upon in their lonely forest rambles.

"Did they send you any information about Riverwood?" Saunders asked.

"Yes."

"So you know its history? I don't need to go into that?"

"No, you don't," Graves told him, instantly recalling the major points, how the Colony had been founded in the early 1960s, cottages added to the manor house and vast grounds of an estate that had once been the summer home of Warren Davies, but now accommodated the various artists, writers, and thinkers to whom his daughter, Allison, the current owner, saw fit to extend her hospitality.

"All kinds of people come to Riverwood for the summer," Saunders said. "Writers. Poets. Playwrights."

Graves could not imagine himself among such people, chatting confidently, easily holding forth while others listened attentively to whatever he might say. He thought of his apartment, its modest furnis.h.i.+ngs, spare as a monk's cell, the only voice his own, a whispering in his mind.

They arrived at a broad green pond, then circled it, moving past a line of small wooden cottages, all of them empty, deserted, with nothing but the neatly tended lawns to give the impression they'd ever been occupied at all.

About halfway around the pond, Graves saw the main house rise in the distance. It rested on a gentle incline that swept up from the water.

"That's where Miss Davies lives," Saunders told him.

The big house had wide steps and high white columns, and from the booklet he'd received about Riverwood, Graves recognized it as the architectural centerpiece of the estate. The mansion had been built in the years just preceding the Depression, and in every way it seemed to suggest its own invulnerability to such cyclical catastrophes. A s.p.a.cious side porch looked down over the front lawn. A stream ran from the pond to a boathouse that was joined to the main house by a long covered shed.

"Mr. Davies had the channel dug just before the war," Saunders explained. "It connects the pond to the boathouse, then goes all the way to the Hudson. You can't see the river from here, but it's only a couple hundred yards from the back of the house." He smiled. "Nice idea, don't you think?"

Graves nodded but said nothing as the Volvo continued on along the edge of the pond until it reached yet another wooden cottage, one that was slightly larger than the others, and somewhat set apart, though a second, more or less identical cottage was situated only a hundred yards or so away.

"This is your place," Saunders said cheerfully. "Not exactly a five-star hotel, but nice enough. Come on in, I'll show you around."

The cottage was indeed very nice, rustic in a carefully manicured sort of way, with oak furniture that had been regularly oiled, checkered curtains, a scattering of furniture that included a small sofa, a few chairs, and a rolltop desk in the far corner, its top thrown open to reveal a complex of tiny drawers and slots.

"There's a kitchen, but you won't need it," Saunders told him. "There's a tray of cold cuts in the refrigerator. Tomorrow morning, someone will bring your breakfast." He smiled. "Room service, you might call it." He glanced at the small travel bag into which Graves had hastily packed his clothes and toiletries. "Is there anything else you need?"

"No, nothing," Graves replied.

Saunders nodded. "Well, have a good evening, Mr. Graves," he said crisply, then turned and walked back to the Volvo.

Left to himself, Graves walked through the cottage. In the adjoining bedroom he found a bureau with four drawers and a narrow closet. There was a gooseneck lamp on the right side of the bed, and a little table with a pen and writing pad on the left. Everything appeared well made, but decidedly plain and functional, as if purposely selected to provide ample accommodation without creating a distraction.

The kitchen had the usual appliances, and when he opened the refrigerator, Graves found a large silver tray spread with an array of meats, pickles, olives, all tightly sealed beneath plastic wrap. Several plastic food containers held potato salad and coleslaw; others, mustard, ketchup, mayonnaise. Breads-white, whole wheat, even pumpernickel-had been placed in a rectangular container on the shelf below. A bottle of white wine stood upright in the refrigerator door, surrounded by an a.s.sortment of beer, soda, mineral water. On the table, a bottle of red wine rested in a wicker basket.

It was a generous spread, but Graves wasn't hungry and he never drank. And so he returned to the porch and sat down in one of the wooden rocking chairs he found there and vaguely wondered why he'd been invited to Riverwood in the first place. Certainly he was not the type of literary writer Saunders had mentioned as the estate's usual guest. His books were void of any symbolic complexity. There was nothing in them academics would be likely to discuss. And as for being an intellectual, Graves had long ago realized that he did not think think so much as brood. so much as brood.

But if Graves could not fathom why Allison Davies had invited him to Riverwood, neither could he clearly understand why he'd agreed to accept her invitation. He did not like to leave New York and very rarely did so. The countryside held more dread than charm. Meeting other writers meant nothing to him. Even his earlier yearning to be with other people had long ago withered. He no longer felt the aching loneliness that had sometimes plagued him in his youth. He was accustomed to living thinly, without connections, the sort of life that was, in Slovak's phrase, "mere breath." Because of all that, Graves suspected that the real reason he'd come to Riverwood was his need to think things through a final time, decide once and for all if it was time to stop it altogether, shut down the little engine that dreamed nothing but dark tales. He had never doubted that one day he would kill himself. He'd hung a metal bar across the narrow corridor that led from his bedroom, and bought the rope that now lay coiled in the top drawer of his dresser. He knew the chair he'd stand upon. And the name he'd utter with his final exhalation: Gwen. Gwen.

A sentence slashed Graves' mind: You took me to her, boy. You took me to her, boy. A terrible alarm swept over him. He heard Gwen scream, felt the rope bite into his arms as he struggled to free himself, come to her aid. Then the scream died away just as it had that night, absorbed by fields and hollows, alerting none but owls and field mice, summoning no one who might put an end to pain. A terrible alarm swept over him. He heard Gwen scream, felt the rope bite into his arms as he struggled to free himself, come to her aid. Then the scream died away just as it had that night, absorbed by fields and hollows, alerting none but owls and field mice, summoning no one who might put an end to pain.

He felt his agitation spike suddenly, a name leap inside him. He quickly stood, took a deep breath, and let the silence surround him. Looking out over the grounds, he was relieved that there were no boats on the water, no campers at the picnic tables, no sounds but what came from the night birds and insects, no movement but the wind through the dense trees and over the otherwise placid water. The stillness sank into him like a drug. Silence, final and eternal, seemed all he yearned for now.