Night Relics (28 page)

And if she came home while he was there? His heart quickened its pace. He licked his lips and set out again, reminding himself
that he was merely going to have a look around, nothing more than that.

T
HE WOODS WERE FULL OF NOISES.
T
HE WIND BLEW
through the treetops with a continual rustling sound, and small things scratched through the dry leaves. Something as tiny
as a bird sounded like a bear. Bobby wondered if there
were
bears out there. His mother said there weren’t, but how did she know,
really
? There were plenty of places for bears to hide. He knew there were mountain lions around. He had seen one once at the zoo
in Santa Ana. Its fur looked like an old rug and its eyes were drippy and it always slept in the corner of its cage. What
you did if you saw one was throw your arms over your head so that you looked bigger. Mountain lions didn’t like big things.

He looked back behind him, down the creek, but he couldn’t see Peter’s house at all anymore. Ahead of him lay the fallen sycamore
tree, and he could easily climb up onto it and have a better view of things. Although the tree had fallen across the stream,
maybe years ago, it was still alive, and you could walk across the trunk like a bridge. He could tell a sycamore tree because
of its leaves shaped like hands, and because it had bark that you could peel off like paper, in sheets. He and his mother
had made a treasure map out of it once.

Something hit him in the shoulder just then and fell to
the path. Somebody throwing rocks? He looked around, listening hard, but he couldn’t see or hear anybody. The wind had fallen
off, and the forest was nearly silent. A big acorn lay beside his shoe. It hadn’t fallen from the trees above, because they
were alders and they didn’t have acorns. He picked it up, in case he had to throw it back at someone, and suddenly he wished
he’d brought his spud gun along. But he’d left it back at Peter’s, and if he went back after it they’d probably make him stay.

The wind sighed through the treetops again, and the willow leaves shivered along the edge of the creek. He climbed out onto
the fallen sycamore and sat down, dangling his feet above the moving water. He peeled two little pieces of bark off and tossed
them into the creek a few feet upstream, and immediately they were swept up in the current and came racing back down at him,
bumping around rocks. One of them got caught in a little whirlpool and slowed down. The other one sailed beneath the fallen
tree and out of sight behind him. Next time he’d bring out a couple of boats to race, with two of the aliens for riverboat
captains. Maybe he could follow them all the way down to the arroyo.

A woodpecker landed in the branches of an alder next to the creek. It stood there nearly upside down and began knocking a
hole in the bark. Maybe the woodpecker had hit him with the acorn. After it made a hole in the tree it would come back and
stuff an acorn into the hole, like a cork, and then the acorn would rot and bugs would get in it and the woodpecker could
eat the bugs. His mother said that all those little holes were like woodpecker TV dinners.

He leaned back against the branch and listened to the creek water burble around the rocks below. His mother knew the names
of every little thing out there, and was always talking about them as if she liked to hear the sound of their names. She could
spend a half hour following a newt around. There was nothing wrong with newts, but there were at least ten million of them
out there, and they
all looked exactly alike—little gumby things made out of root beer-colored rubber.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw something move— something white down among the oaks along the base of the ridge. He sat
perfectly still, holding on to a branch, ready to run if he had to. Whatever it was, he could be up the bank and out to the
road before it could catch him. That was the quickest way back to Peter’s house.

It darted into the open now, from behind a trunk—a kid, throwing acorns! One pinged off the branch that Bobby leaned against
and plopped into the water below. The kid disappeared, back into the shadows, then appeared again farther up the canyon, heading
across a clearing toward the abandoned cabin. Bobby could barely see it through the trees—just the front corner of it and
the edge of one dark broken-out window.

He jumped down onto the ground and began picking his way up the creek again. There were a couple of big oak trees not far
ahead. He could fill up his pockets with acorns just in case the kid wanted to start a war. The creek turned in toward the
ridge right there, and straight ahead of him was a sort of clear space, overgrown with weeds and autumn-colored poison oak
and partly shaded by big, low-limbed trees. A stone chimney sat all alone in the clearing, half-crumbled and with weeds growing
out from broken places and from holes between the bricks.

Bobby poked around in the leaves with a stick, picking up the biggest acorns he could find. He looked for the kid again, but
couldn’t see him. A scattering of leaves lifted in a clump on a fresh gust of wind and blew away up the canyon, and the wind
began to blow strong and steady. He grabbed a couple more acorns and then set out cautiously toward the empty cabin, which
sat on the other side of a little grove of nearly bare fig trees. That’s where the kid would be, maybe inside, maybe outside.
Bobby held his biggest acorn in his hand, ready for the kid to pop up and throw one.

He could see the house clearly now through the branches of the fig trees. Although the walls were still standing, the roof
was caved in at the front corner and the porch had fallen into the dirt. A couple of boards had been nailed across the black
rectangle of a broken-out window, and tendrils of wild grapevine grew up the wall and over the sill, the leaves yellow and
falling because of the season. If the kid was hiding inside, that wasn’t really fair. There wasn’t any other cover around
the outside of the house except for the concrete shell of an empty cistern twenty feet or so from the front door.

At the edge of the trees there was a barbed wire fence, rusted and broken, the wire lying along the ground and most of the
posts fallen over. Bobby stepped carefully over the wire, watching the house and listening for sounds, but all was still and
quiet except for the deep drifts of leaves shifting and whispering in the wind. The kid was around somewhere. Bobby could
feel it—eyes watching him. He crossed the driveway, making his way toward the cistern. The driveway was disused, overgrown
with dead grass and scattered with branches.

Warily, he crouched behind the cistern for a moment, then broke from cover and ran across to the wall of the house, ready
to turn and bolt for the cistern again if the kid stood up to throw an acorn. He should have brought more ammunition, especially
if he was going to be trapped so far from any oak trees. Maybe the kid had a whole pile of it in there and was leading him
into a trap.

Cautiously he looked through the hole where the window had been. Inside, the dirty wooden floor was covered with leaves and
bottles and torn-up magazines. Clearly someone had been there off and on, but right now the place felt empty and was utterly
silent. If the kid was there, he was in the back somewhere.

The wind blew hard just then, and a flurry of dust and leaves drove down along the side of the house, straight at him. He
turned away, hiding his face with his jacket. It
would only get more windy as the afternoon turned into evening. Santa Ana winds always seemed to blow hardest at night, just
like it always rained more at night, or like it was almost always sunnier on Sundays than on any other day of the week.

The wind blew harder now against his back, pushing at him, and the sound that the wind made blowing through the broken-out
windows of the house was almost like a voice whispering. Inside there was shelter. The leaves and trash on the floor barely
stirred. It was quiet and warm. He walked slowly around to the front again, where the door yawned open now on the wind. He
stepped to the doorway and listened.

“Hello!” Bobby yelled after a moment, but there was nothing but an answering silence. Stepping completely into the room, he
tried again. “I
know
you’re there.”

Again there was nothing but silence. Then, with a wild gust, the wind threw the door open wider, and it banged off the side
wall of the porch and slammed shut with enough force to shake the old house. Bobby spun around, grabbing the rusty doorknob,
and turned it. A rush of leaves and paper blew up from the floor, whirling around the walls of the room and clinging to his
clothes and hair, and right then the doorknob twisted off in his hand, scattering a shower of rust flakes onto his shoes.
He dropped the knob and looked at his open hand, stained the color of dried blood with the rust.

He was trapped. He knew there was a back door, but finding it meant going through the rest of the deserted house. He looked
over his shoulder. Opposite the front door was another door into the back—maybe the kitchen. It was open about an inch and
revealed a vertical line of shadow. He stepped toward it, trying to see through. If he had a stick or something he could push
it open without getting too close.

There was nothing around to use, and when he reached out a hand toward the dirty white panel, the door swung
partway open by itself, revealing boarded-up windows beyond, sunlight slanting through the gaps between the boards and more
vines growing through into the dim room and curling down onto an old wooden countertop littered with yellow leaves. Then the
door creaked entirely open, and a boy stepped slowly out from the shadows behind it and stood looking silently at Bobby, his
gaunt face a shade of pale white like the color of a moth.

P
OMEROY WAS OUT OF SIGHT OF ANY OF THE HOUSES AT
the back of Rose Canyon. The wind swept through the grasses, making the landscape doubly lonesome and alien, and he stopped
for a moment and looked behind him at the perfectly empty hills. Overhead a vulture circled slowly. He might have been the
last man alive in the world. The thought thrilled him and horrified him both.

Hurrying now, he set out through the grass again. He didn’t have the luxury of daydreaming. There wasn’t time. Beth might
return at any moment, and Klein along with her. Pomeroy wasn’t afraid of Klein, except in the sense that you’d be a fool
not
to be afraid, say, of a rattlesnake or a cocked gun. A man like Klein was liable to go off without warning, and so you had
to be certain you were in control when dealing with him.

Sweating, he climbed to the top of a hill, glanced over his shoulder again, and jogged down into the little valley beyond.
Dust rose around him, and he wiped his face with the back of his hand, then tried unsuccessfully to flatten his
hair back down. A dry creek bed ran between the hills, edged by willow scrub. He pushed his way through it, the soles of his
shoes scrunching in the crusted sand of the creek. Flies rose from a muddy little pool, swarming for a moment around his face,
and he broke into an uphill run, fanning himself with both hands.

From the next hill he could see another barbed wire fence off to the left, stretched along a windbreak of eucalyptus. It had
to be the back of one of the little streets running off Parker, probably just north of the steak house. He angled west, climbing
along a cattle trail that edged a thicket of greasewood and castor bean. The shrubbery shook stiffly in the wind, hiding him
from the eyes of people in backyards. Another couple hundred yards to go, maybe less.

The trail abruptly cut upward, rising steeply toward the ridge in exactly the wrong direction. He pushed his way into the
scrub, crouching down and peering through the dry foliage. He could see Klein’s backyard now, the poolhouse and the blue rectangle
of water enclosed by a wrought-iron fence. There’s where he’d have to watch himself. He couldn’t allow himself to be seen.
That would introduce a hell of an awkward variable.

When he was sure the yard was deserted, he stepped boldly out through the bushes, half running and half sliding down the hillside
toward the redwood fence that marked the perimeter of Beth’s yard. And then, just when he was entirely exposed, striding through
the dead, knee-high grass, he saw something move off to the west, among the trees beyond Klein’s place.

He dropped flat onto his stomach and lay there breathing hard. Cautiously he pushed his head up and peered over the waving
grass. The wind poured down off the ridge now, making a weird thrashing noise in the eucalyptus trees at the edge of the field.
It was a woman that he’d seen. She stood near the fence now at the back of Klein’s yard. She was dressed in a flowing black
gown of some sort, although it seemed at least as likely that she stood in some kind of
dark and inexplicable shadow. Even from that distance the skin of her face looked as pale as milk. He realized that she wasn’t
in the yard after all, and neither was anybody else. Like him, she had come down out of the hills.

But what the hell for? Dressed like that, she must be some kind of local hippie or something. What did Klein have going here?
Pomeroy watched her carefully. Slowly he became certain that she didn’t pose any kind of threat to him. She was dressed too
strangely, and she looked through the black wrought iron as if she were utterly lost and only half recognized the place, perhaps
as somewhere she’d once been. Abruptly she turned around and walked toward the hills again, lifting the hem of her dress above
the windblown grass. When she reached the shadows of a stand of sycamores she disappeared utterly from view. He waited another
moment, but she didn’t reappear. Apparently she’d gone on up toward the ridge.

He stood up and ran toward the fence behind Beth’s house. It had been twenty minutes since he’d checked her driveway. Maybe
she was home already. Time suddenly seemed desperately short, but he couldn’t quit now, not after having come so close to
his goal. One quick look over the fence and that would be it. He would satisfy his curiosity and then go.