Эд Горман - Riders on the Storm

The night, as I knew it, vanished.

The houses, the stoplights, the store lights were gone as soon as I found the turnoff Donlon’s map led me to. The road was gravel and tall summer corn walled me in on both sides. The quarter-moon hung low and stark. The day had cooled sufficiently so I kept my window down. I also kept the radio off. On the passenger seat were a cop-sized flashlight and my dad’s forty-five.

I thought about Karen. The affair Will had had with Cathy Vance had made me think even more of her and less of Will. She was apparently able to justify it to herself because of his terrible experience in Nam. I tried to do that, too, but somehow I couldn’t. Then I smiled to myself. Monsignor Sam McCain was doing it again, judging people from on high. I was in no position to judge Will. Not after what he’d been through.

A sudden wind tasted and smelled of impending rain.

The intersection of rural gravel roads I was looking for was several yards from a narrow wooden bridge that spanned a ravine. I found it and turned right.

More walls of corn, more gravel banging off my car.

Ahead I saw the silhouetted line of trees that marked the long area of woods I wanted. Hidden somewhere in there was Anders’s cabin. I sped up.

A few times I glanced at the forty-five. Would I actually shoot and maybe kill somebody?

One more turn and I was facing the narrow lane almost lost in the barrier of looming pine trees. I cut my headlights.

To reach the cabin you traveled a dirt path that was potholed as if by intention. I had to slow to under ten miles an hour to keep from being bounced to the ceiling and cracking my head. My window was rolled up again. Mosquitoes dive-bombed in squadrons.

Donlon’s map indicated that this dirt lane was approximately a quarter mile from the cabin. I kept close watch on my odometer. When I’d covered about half that distance I swung off the road and parked in an open area just wide enough to accommodate my car. I grabbed the gun and the flashlight, then got out. I locked my car and set off.

The woods provided a cacophony of sounds, some sweet, some vulnerable, some threatening. Animals of various kinds prowling, feasting, hiding.

Even among the cathedral-like trees the scent of rain was still sharp. The other sharp smell came from the pine trees.

Just before I reached the cabin I came to an open area in the woods. The grass had been mown for one thing and for another there was a green, white-trimmed wooden gazebo sitting arrogant and citylike in the middle of this nowhere.

The “cabin” lay to the right of the gazebo and it was not a cabin at all. It was a summer home, of course, two stories of wood and stone with a long, screened-in porch covering the front. The people who owned expensive places like these liked to take pleasure in dubbing them “cabins.” Rustic, you know.

As soon as I reached the clearing some cosmic force threw the switch on my paranoia. I felt observed. I started studying the darkened windows under the dormered roof. They reminded me of the paperback gothic novels my sister was always reading. Ominous, rife with suggestions and secrets. Her husband joked fondly that she bought them four and five at a time.

The quarter-moon provided enough light that I didn’t need my flashlight even as I got within a few feet of the house. I stood and listened for any sound I could hear above the familiar sounds of the wooded night.

I walked to the side of the house. I’d wondered how you got vehicles in and out of here. The din of a highway explained it.

Behind the house another wide dirt path began. It ran across a stretch of meadow leading to and over a hill on the other side of which was the access road. Two ways in and out.

There were no cars around.

I went back to the screened-in porch. I still had that feeling of being observed but by now I knew it was the situation that rattled me. After all, I was committing a crime.

My clients have paid me in a variety of ways. In lieu of actual currency I’ve been gifted with clothes, food, tune-ups, a banjo, photography lessons, and of course Jamie. Another of my gifts was a three-piece set of burglary tools. Occasionally I’d taken them out and practiced with them on locks at my apartment and at the office.

This was my first time for real. I tried not to think about it being a Class Six Felony.

I had no trouble getting inside.

The first few minutes I spent scanning the place with my flashlight beam. Anders lived well. A huge fieldstone fireplace with what appeared to be hand-tooled pokers (but of course); expensive hardwood flooring; an outsize TV screen mounted on the west wall; this a prosperous man’s idea of roughing it — the kind of pad that would give Hugh Hefner wet dreams. A little Frank on the stereo and the woman would be tearing her clothes off before she’d put even one three-inch high heel on the outside steps.

I had passed a partially open closet door and had started toward a hallway that I assumed would lead to the kitchen. I heard the closet door behind me make a faint but unmistakable sound. I spun around. He charged at me tiger fast and tiger sure. I was prey, long-awaited prey.

I raised the forty-five to fire but before I could he’d slammed into me. The gun hadn’t even slowed him down. He was so sure of himself he knew slamming into me would knock it from my hand. As it had.

His massive hands did not intend to just choke me to death, they were trying to crush everything inside my neck. His force was so overwhelming I felt myself trying to slip to the floor just to make it more difficult for him to hold me up by gripping my neck with such power.

Teddy Byrnes was screaming the way the old Celtic warriors supposedly had. It was said they could half-paralyze their victims with their voices alone. There was great abiding mad pleasure in the sounds.

I was losing consciousness so quickly I operated on instinct. Somehow my knee came straight up. Somehow it reached its target. Somehow my power was enough to temporarily mitigate his power.

Dizzy, gagging, stumbling I searched the dark floor for my forty-five. He was behind me — I chanced looking back — bent over and clutching himself.

I knew it would be only seconds before he charged me again. I wouldn’t have time to find my gun unless I literally stumbled over it.

A small metal statue of some presumably prominent figure stood on an end table. The head was so narrow it was almost pointed. I grabbed it just as the screaming started again.

The charge was pretty much the same kind of tackle-line maneuver he’d tried before. A mistake on his part. I knew when to step out of range. I also knew enough when to sink the statue in his forehead.

Between his rage and his shock and his pain he was temporarily disoriented. He staggered around, arms flailing for balance. The white T-shirt he wore was bloody from his hands swiping it.

I used the time to find my gun.

When I saw it I moved as fast as I could. It was under the coffee table.

And it was then that Byrnes decided to remind me of who and what he was. While I was grasping for the forty-five he got me around the hips, threw me over his shoulder and then heaved me into the fireplace. Bone and stone do not mix, not when bone is hurled against it at a great rate of speed.

Then he was pounding on me.

I hadn’t had time to climb to my feet so he stood over me punching at will. Stomach, sternum, face, skull. This was the pattern he’d no doubt found most successful and most efficient. He was not a dumb man. Stomach, sternum, face, skull.

I kept rolling left and right, deflecting as many punches as I could.

The formula he’d been using must have gotten boring for him because he suddenly felt the need to pick me up and hurl me again, this time halfway across the width of the fireplace and into the stand of tools including the hand-tooled poker.