Frank Tuttle - Dead Man's rain

There wasn’t much talk. Each of us seemed content to stare out at the storm, which had become as mesmerizing as any blazing campfire. I tried a few early prods and digs about the will and the children, but got nothing but glares and nods from the widow and grunts and sighs from Jefrey, so I let it drop.

The kids remained in their rooms, aside from Elizabet’s single foray downstairs for coffee and cold cuts from the kitchen. She even dressed for the occasion-high-slit skirt and cross-tied peasant blouse she hadn’t had time to finish lacing all the way-and hinted that she might need help with the tray. Jefrey ignored her, and Mama’s hex showed me skull and hollow eyes through the too-white skin of her face, so I affected a sudden interest in the window and she stalked off, glaring at my back.

The dogs raised doggy Hell once, just before dark. Jefrey groaned, rose and bade me sit.

“It’s only that fool grocer Vernon,” he said. “Right on time. Anybody with any sense would wait till tomorrow.” He sighed and rose. “Now I’ll have to unload it in this mess.”

I went with him, flash-paper concealed in my left hand. But it was only a wagon, a driver and a week’s worth of cabbages and carrots. I stood in the door while Jefrey and the driver hauled in crates, but no one and nothing entered the yard or the House but us and assorted green leafies.

The leaden sky grew darker. Jefrey and I made the rounds, checked every window, checked every door. I noted that of late, housecleaning at the Merlat estate meant gathering up piles of dirty laundry or dirty dishes and shoving them in stacks behind locked doors. I pretended not to notice and Jefrey pretended he didn’t care. And if either of us noticed that we were unconsciously preparing for trouble neither of us mentioned it.

The storm raged on, and Mama’s hex had me jumping at shadows. Jefrey had ghosts of his own, I suppose. I saw him turn quickly away from a mirror once, face ash pale, eyes wild.

“Nasty storm,” he said, shaking off whatever he’d seen. “Reckon it’ll blow itself out right soon.”

I didn’t think so, but I just nodded and lit a fresh candle.

The goblin-clock clicked and spun and gonged out the first hour of the night.

I sat and watched the lightening.

The storm raged and flailed and beat. There was scarce silence now, between the peals of thunder. The Merlat lawn was lit by lightening, showing blood-oaks bending and whipping and tossing. Paper-trash and bits of debris rode the wind, scampering across the grass in herds, tangling in the fireflower beds and thrashing, trapped and melting, in the face of the furious rain.

But Ebed Merlat did not walk. Sometimes I saw shadows fly, but they were just that-shadows, and rain and storm. I wondered why Mama’s pet hex wasn’t turning the lawn into a spook show.

Probably, I reflected, because it was too busy turning House Merlat into one. Seated in my chair in the Gold Room, I heard snatches of faraway music, heard laughter and footfalls and once even a baby’s cry from beyond the gold-gilt door. I smelled lilacs and a heady perfume and once the stench of meat rotting. Sounds and scents all faded when I turned my attention to them. Phantoms?

Some of the voices were familiar. Some of the music I knew.

Phantoms, perhaps-but whose?

This was Ebed Merlat’s storm, according to Mama. I listened to voices I knew weren’t there, and I began to wonder just what else had blown in with Lord Merlat’s angry tempest.

Voices joined the thunder. Mama’s hex stirred, and I almost made out the words.

“This is crazy,” I said, and I bounded out of my chair and stretched. Lightening struck right in the yard, rattling glass and ringing my ears, but Jefrey didn’t budge. In fact, he began to snore.

“Wake up,” I said, clapping my hands. “Wake up or I’m liable to start looking for jewelry to steal.”

Nothing.

I walked over to him, put my hands on his right shoulder, shook him. Shook him again, harder this time.

His head lolled, fell chin-down on his chest.

On the floor, on the far side of his chair, his coffee-cup lay where he’d dropped it. Something black and thick like tar had oozed out of it and pooled in a shiny black drop on the floor.

Even the widow’s coffee shouldn’t have done that.

I slapped Jefrey, hard. His head just flopped, but his eyelids never moved.

Thunder broke again, shook the House so hard lamp-flames flickered. I checked Jefrey’s pulse, found it and peeled back an eyelid to check his pupils.

While I did so, all the hair on the back of my neck stood on end, and though my back was to the window I knew in my bones that if I turned, if I looked, that Ebed Merlat was just beyond the three-bolt glass, waiting to meet my gaze.

“Two years in the grave,” came a whisper. “Dead mouth wide open.”

I bent and picked Jefrey up and heaved him over my shoulder. “Go,” said a voice, close by my ear. “Just go.”

The voice was that of the Sarge. The window at my back radiated cold, like a chunk of a Northland glacier shoved up tight against the House, white ice resting on the window-glass.

“Saving up a scream,” came a whisper.

A child’s hand slipped into mine. I looked to my feet, saw nothing, heard a soft giggle.

The hand in mine tugged me toward the door.

I went. I flung the gold door open, banged Jefrey’s head on the jamb lunging through and banged it again when I pulled the door shut.

The Hall went left and right. It was lit by two lines of new white candles, each standing in a brass dragon’s-claw set, eye-level along the walls.

One by one, starting at the left end of the Hall, the candles began to go out.

I turned and charged to my right.

“I cannot,” came a shout. I heard it, though it was faint and shrill and it sounded in the midst of an awful blast of thunder. It came from above. From the sick-room, locked and shut, the key buried with Ebed Merlat.

“I cannot,” it came again. “I love you.”

And this time, in the thunder, I heard the words “You must.”

Jefrey’s head struck a candle-holder. “Sorry,” I muttered. Then the Hall opened into the tile-floored foyer, and I stepped well away from the door and hid myself as best I could in the shadows at the edge of the candlelight.

Jefrey was as limp as a sack, but his breathing was steady and his pulse was strong. I thanked fate I’d only sipped the widow’s bitter coffee and hoped it had been laced with a sedative and not a poison.

Jefrey was getting heavy. I shifted him around, and I was deciding what to do next when I heard the sound of someone chopping wood.

I shook my head and pinched my nose. The sound of music from the ballroom faded, but the chopping sound continued.

Meaning it was real. Meaning that someone upstairs had an axe, and unless they were carving garden-gnomes, I figured they were chopping at a door.

The widow’s door.

All the servants gone. Jefrey and Markhat left insensate by drugged coffee. The widow alone in her room, too frightened to flee outside the House, too weak to fend off villains within.

Say you were a jilted heir. Say you decided the widow couldn’t file a new will if she, for instance, accidentally fell down three or four flights of hard granite stairs while fleeing from a revenant that everyone knows doesn’t exist. What if you told the Watch that Jefrey quit and left the country? What if you told them a finder named Markhat had departed the day before, after arguing with the widow and storming away, his pockets full of her money?

They’d shake their heads, make “there, there” sounds and quietly collect their inheritance tax and that, as they say, would be that.