Moonheart (8 page)

Shifting his guitar case from right hand to left, he stepped from the shadows and headed for the car. He walked calmly, with his loose stride, crossed the street, and was almost at the car before the man noticed him. Daydreaming, Kieran thought. Bored more than likely. Kieran reached inside himself to find where his strength lay and drew it up. He leaned against the window on the driver's side, his eyes blazing in the darkness with a strange feral glow— like the reflection of a cat's eyes caught in a car's headlights.

"Don't call in," he said.

He spoke softly, but his words penetrated the thick glass. The man's finger hesitated on his radio's control. The witchlight flickered in Kieran's eyes and before the man knew what he was doing, he'd taken his hand from the radio's controls and used it to roll down his window. A fine sheen of sweat beaded his brow.

"I... I won't call in," he said slowly, his voice slightly slurred.

He was a large man, broad-faced and thick-shouldered, with short dark-brown hair and the look of a policeman stamped into his features. He wore a quilted ski-jacket and pressed brown trousers— his disguise, Kieran decided. Kieran smiled. He'd been lucky with this one. It wasn't easy to bend someone to your will this quickly. You had to catch them off guard, otherwise it took considerable preparation. Or power.

"Who do you work for?" Kieran demanded, holding the man's gaze with his own. "The horsemen?"

The man nodded. "Special Branch."

"What kind of Special Branch?"

"PRB— the Paranormal Research Branch."

Lord dying Jesus! What did the horsemen want with him? And what were they doing with a Special Branch studying the paranormal? This was something out of a bestseller. It didn't have any place in real life and Kieran found it hard to put into any sort of reasonable perspective. But if it
was
true, how had they keyed on to him?

The horsemen were the RCMP— the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The Federal police. Canada's finest with their Musical Ride and fancy red coats. The Mounties who always get their man. The horsemen. But—

"What do you want with me?" Kieran asked.

"Nothing. You're to be kept under surveillance."

"Why?"

There was no reply. Kieran wanted to shake the man by the throat to get an answer, but forced himself to stay calm.

"When's your relief?" he asked.

"Six A.M."

Kieran did a rapid calculation. That left him about two and a half hours. No— he'd have more than that. No one would know he was gone until Jean-Paul woke up and whistled them down on him again. No one, except his man here.

"Do you know a Thomas Hengwr?" Kieran asked.

Again there was no reply. The witchlight in Kieran's eyes burned dangerously, but either the man truly didn't know, or it would take a deeper probe to dig the information out of him. Kieran didn't have the time for a deeper probe.

Well, this was great. He'd really learned a lot. The old man was still gone without a trace, and now he had the Mounties on his ass as well. The witchlight intensified momentarily as he spoke again.

"You never saw me leave," Kieran said.

The man nodded.

Kieran sighed and broke eye contact. There was a tiny ache in his temples that came from the abrupt use of energies he'd utilized. As he stepped back, the Mountie rolled up the window again and returned to studying Jean-Paul's house as though Kieran was no longer present.

Kieran set off east on Powell, heading for Bank Street. He kept a wary eye open on the off chance that his horseman had some backup with him, but sensed nothing out of the ordinary. Ottawa, unlike most big cities, seemed to shut down around eleven most nights. After twelve, all you saw cruising the streets were police cars and taxis. There was a seamier underside to the nation's capital— Kieran knew that all too well— but it required a firmer sense of purpose to uncover it than it did in most cities. Like anywhere, if you wanted something badly enough, it could be found.

Like a place to stay? Kieran asked himself.

He had to decide what he was going to do. He could scratch Jean-Paul. Was there anyone else he could call up? What? At three or so in the morning? And who was to say that anybody could be trusted now?. He would've bet his life on Jean-Paul...

He paused as he reached Bank. Across the street, the thin strip of Central Park lay peaceful in the darkness. Beyond it rose the dark bulk of Tamson House. As his gaze rested on that curious building, a queer sense of disquiet settled upon him.

He knew a little more about the House and its owners than most people might, but that wasn't very much. There was an older man, a patriarch of sorts, and his niece. They were the owners. They were filthy rich, but spent most of their time playing at being "of the people." The man, James Tamson, was some sort of an authority on the anthropological aspects of the paranormal, but the one time Kieran had mentioned him to the old man, Tom had laughed him off.

"He means well, Jamie does," Tom had said, "and you'll rarely find a nicer or more obliging fellow, but he's as close to following the Way as you were before I met you. Though that's not entirely fair. It's not that he's a charlatan. It's just that he doesn't
know,
and without that
knowing,
he'll never be more than a collector of curiosities. You should meet him sometime, Kier. You'd probably like his niece."

Kieran recalled laughing at the teasing look in the old man's eyes, and that had been the end of it. Except now he remembered the stories that used to go around about Tamson House— that odd things happened in it, that it was run as a commune of sorts and every sort of character who came through Ottawa eventually made their way through its doors.

He regarded the building thoughtfully. He'd never been in the place himself, but if all he'd heard was true, it could well be the safe harbor he was looking for. Except... There was that queer sensation that had come to him when he first viewed it, that there was something wrong about Tamson House, as though there was an evil abroad tonight and it had settled upon those strange gabled eaves before moving on.

Kieran felt overcautious, but perhaps justly so. Because there was this: he didn't have only the horseman outside of Jean-Paul's and all the implications of RCMP surveillance to worry about. There was also the fact that the old man was missing and Kieran was sure of one thing. Whatever was involved in Tom's disappearance, it was something beyond the pale of the herenow. Less corporeal than the horsemen, to be sure, but no less real or dangerous for that. Understanding that, it made no sense to seek shelter in a place that seemed so disquieting.

He watched the House for a few minutes longer. The feeling was gone now, but he was no more inclined to go into Tamson House than if it had remained. "Someone's stepped on my grave," Tom used to say about a feeling like that. There was a sense of ill luck about it, like seeing a raven at sea before starting a voyage. Fisherman's superstition. But he had the east coast in his blood now, for all his growing up in Ontario.

His best bet, he decided, putting aside any further considerations of Tamson House, was to head up the few blocks to the bus depot on Catherine Street, stash his guitar and knapsack in a locker, and then make the best of it for the rest of the night. He needed to keep a low profile for now. With the streets empty, he'd stand out too much. But later, when they filled up with people going off to work or whatever, he'd merge with the crowds. Then he could put out some feelers about finding a new place to stay.

Well, hello, Ottawa, he thought as he headed north on Bank. Nice to be back.

5:15, Wednesday morning.

Kieran sat nursing his third coffee in a twenty-four hour Italian restaurant called Tomorrow's on the corner of Bank and Frank Street. His pocket was heavier by the weight of one locker key and he was getting a little wired on caffeine. He rolled a cigarette, lit it, and set it on the edge of a filled ashtray. Except for the bored waitress with the beehive hairdo and the short-order cook in back, he had the place to himself.

He could remember— it was what? Five, six years ago?— when there'd been a folk club downstairs and he'd played there with a couple of fellows on St. Patrick's Day. Tim Anderson on fiddle and big smiling Eamon Mulloy on accordian. He couldn't remember what the place'd been called then. Later it'd been turned into a punk rocker's bar— The Rotter's Club. He wondered what it was now. Probably a wine bar that played loud Euro-pop music and aimed itself at the singles set. That seemed to be happening to most live bars these days.

Things changed. They always did. Sometimes it seemed too much, or too inexplicable. Like with Jean-Paul. Kieran could remember the old days when it seemed that every second pub had a single act or small band playing in it. He'd enjoyed those times, gigging around town, playing everything from C&W and "Mr. Bojangles" to traditional Celtic music, weekends up in the Gatineau with the old man, learning the Way.

He hadn't planned on coming back. At least not so soon, and not like this. But, he supposed, he should have expected it. Nothing lasted forever.

When he and the old man'd moved to Nova Scotia, Kieran had felt he was home for the first time in his life. There was something about those rocky seascapes and rolling farmlands that struck a chord in him. He had a room in Billy Field's farmhouse near Peggy's Cove, southwest of Halifax, and spent his time wandering around, taking the odd job on a fishing boat when they were short-handed, gigging with Billy's group The Islanders or on his own. He'd been content. Even after the old man left. He'd missed Tom, but they'd kept in touch. With the bond that lay between they were never far from each other.

That bond was important— not just for the affection between them. Kieran had a long way to go still, following the Way, and the old man was his mentor. He smiled, thinking of him.

"Hengwr" literally meant "old man" in some language or other— or so Tom insisted. Tom looked like a gremlin out of a fairy tale, standing a head shorter than Kieran's five-eleven, with a hooked nose, grizzled beard and hair, and bird-bright eyes that protruded alarmingly, like the British comedian Marty Feldman's.

But for all his comical appearance, accentuated by his penchant for floppy hats and baggy overcoats, the old man surely knew his stuff.

That had become apparent from their first meeting across a table in the visiting rooms of St. Vincent de Paul Penitentiary outside of Montreal. The old man had been the visitor.

It was in late '69 and Kieran was Serving two years for B&E and another two years for possession of cannabis with intent to traffic. The sentences ran concurrently. In real time, he'd do sixteen months. He had two left to go, having been passed over in his parole review.

He met the old man in the middle of three days of solitary confine-merit— having been sent there for talking out of turn with a guard. The detention cell, called the hole, was six feet by ten, with a pallet on the floor, an enamel sink and potty, and little else. They took away all your clothes except for your underwear and gave you a pair of white overalls. Then, when they locked the big iron door that took up almost the whole of one wall of your cell, you sat there for however long a term you'd pulled. He'd been surprised when the guard came for him. Naturally the guard hadn't told him anything; just as naturally, Kieran hadn't asked where they were going. He changed from overalls to grey pants and shirt, put on his jacket and boots, and silently preceded the guard across the compound to the buildings that housed the prison's offices. It wasn't until they were inside that the guard finally spoke.

"You've got a visitor, Foy. Go on through."

A visitor? You didn't get visitors when you were in the hole. You lost all your privileges. He opened his mouth to ask what was going on, then thought better of it. What the hell. A visitor? He couldn't think of who it might be, but went on down the hall, stopped to be frisked by another guard before going into the visitors' room, then went in and saw Thomas Hengwr for the first time.

That first view made him reconsider his earlier thought of, well, whatever was going on, at least it was a break in the monotony. He'd never seen such a weird-looking individual before, but what stopped him from laughing outright, or even smiling at the old man's appearance, was the uncomfortable sense of... In retrospect years later, he realized it was the sense of power that hung over the old man that'd kept him from laughing. He learned later that few people saw Tom in that light.

"Kieran Foy?" were the old man's first words. "Come in, come in. Have a seat. I'm very pleased to meet you."

Kieran stayed by the door.

"Who're you?" he demanded.

"Thomas Hengwr," the old man replied, bowing comically. "At your service. Sit, sit! Don't be shy."

Shaking his head, Kieran crossed the room and sat across the table from him. Before he could speak again, Tom'd dug a sheaf of ratty-looking paper from one of the voluminous side pockets of his overcoat.

He showed Kieran a picture of himself, taken before he was busted.

"Not a bad likeness, don't you think?" Tom asked.

"Sure. But listen—"

"Now," Tom interrupted, studying his papers. "Let's see. You became a ward of the Children's Society in... hmm. Sixty-four. Is that correct? Quit school as soon as you legally could— you were quite a troublemaker, weren't you? Then..." He riffled through the pages. "There's not a whole lot more really, except for hearsay and rumors. Fascinating material, though. A couple of vagrancy charges. Drugs, nothing major. One conviction— you pulled probation on that one. What was it? A year? Then you were arrested in Hull for breaking and entering and drew time on both charges."

"Is there a point to all this?"

The old man straightened the papers, laid them on the table between them and lifted his gaze to meet Kieran's. There was something eerie about his eyes.

"Are you very happy with the way your life seems to be going?" Tom asked.

Kieran shook his head— not so much in reply, as for amusement.