Swan Song (50 page)

The Fountain and the Fire

Signs and Symbols /

The Surgeon’s Task /

Bones of a Thousand Candles /

The Seamstress/

Fifty-Five - [The Fountain and the

Fire]

The Jeep rumbled over a rutted, snow-covered road, passing wrecks and derelict vehicles that had been pulled to both sides. Here and there a frozen corpse lay in a gray snowdrift, and Sister saw one whose arms were lifted as if in a final appeal for mercy.

They came to an unmarked crossroads, and Paul slowed down. He looked over his shoulder at Hugh Ryan, who had jammed himself into the rear compartment with the luggage. Hugh was gripping his crutch with both hands and snoring. “Hey!” Paul said, and he nudged the sleeping man. “Wake up!”

Hugh snorted, finally opened his heavy-lidded eyes. “What is it? Are we there yet?”

“Hell, no! I think we must’ve taken the wrong road about five miles back! There’s not a sign of life out here!” He glanced up through the windshield and saw the threat of new snow in the clouds. The light was just beginning to fade, and Paul didn’t want to look at the gas gauge because he knew they were traveling on fumes. “I thought you knew the way!”

“I do,” Hugh assured him. “But it’s been a while since I’ve ventured very far from Moberly.” He gazed around at the bleak landscape. “We’re at a crossroads,” he announced.

“We know that. Now which road do we take?”

“There should be a sign. Maybe the wind’s blown it down.” He shifted position, trying to find a familiar landmark. The truth-which he had not told Paul and Sister-was that he’d never been this way before, but he’d wanted to get out of Moberly because he feared he’d be murdered in the night for his cache of blankets. “Let’s see, now: I think I remember a big grove of old oak trees that we turned right at.”

Paul rolled his eyes. On both sides of the narrow road stood thick forests. “Look,” he said. “Read my lips: We’re out in the middle of nowhere, and we’re running out of gasoline-and this time there are no fuel tanks around for me to siphon. It’s going to be dark soon, and I think we’re on the wrong road. Now tell me why I shouldn’t wring your damned skinny neck!”

Hugh looked wounded. “Because,” he said with great dignity, “you’re a decent human being.” He glanced quickly at Sister, who had turned to deliver a scathing gaze. “I do know the way. I really do. I got us around that broken bridge, didn’t I?”

“Which way?” Sister asked pointedly. “Left or right?”

“Left,” Hugh said-and immediately wished that he’d said “right,” but now it was too late and he didn’t want to appear a fool.

“Mary’s Rest better be around the next bend,” Paul told them grimly, “or we’re going to be walking real soon.” He put the Jeep into gear and turned left. The road wound through a corridor of dead trees with branches that interlocked and closed off the sky.

Hugh settled back to await judgment, and Sister reached down to the floorboard for her satchel. She unzipped it, felt inside for the glass ring and drew it out. Then she held it in her lap as the trapped jewels sparkled, and she stared into its shimmering depths.

“What do you see?” Paul asked. “Anything?”

Sister shook her head. The colors pulsed, but they had not yet formed pictures. How the glass ring worked, and exactly what it was, had remained a puzzle. Paul had said that he thought the radiation had melded the glass, jewels and precious metals into some kind of supersensitive antenna, but what it was tuned to neither of them could say. But they had come to the agreement that the glass circle was leading them to someone, and that to follow it meant giving up that part of yourself that refused to believe in miracles. Using the glass ring was like a leap in the dark, a surrendering of doubt, fear and all other impurities that clouded the mind; using it was the ultimate act of faith.

Are we closer to the answer, or further away? Sister asked mentally as she peered into the ring. Who are we searching for, and why? Her questions, she knew, would be answered with symbols and pictures, sights and shadows and sounds that might have been distant human voices, the creaking of wheels, or the barking of a dog.

A diamond flared like a meteor, and light sizzled along threads of silver and platinum. More diamonds burst with light, like a chain reaction. Sister felt the power of the glass circle reaching for her, drawing her inward, deeper, deeper still, and all her being was fixed on the bursts of light as they flared in a hypnotic rhythm.

She was no longer in the Jeep with Paul Thorson and the one-legged doctor from Amarillo. She was standing in what looked to be a snow-covered field stubbled with the stumps of trees. But there was one tree remaining, and that one was covered with diamond-white blossoms blowing before the wind. On the tree’s trunk were palm prints, as if seared into the wood-slim long fingers, the hands of a young person.

And across the trunk were letters, as if fingerpainted in fire: S… W… A… N.

Sister tried to turn her head, to see more of where she was standing, but the dreamwalk scene began to fade; she was aware of shadowy figures, distant voices, a moment perhaps trapped in time and somehow transmitted to Sister like a photograph through spectral wires. And then, abruptly, the dreamwalk was over, and she was back in the Jeep again with the glass ring between her hands.

She released the breath she’d been holding. “It was there again,” she told Paul. “I saw it again-the single tree in a field of stumps, the palm prints and the word ‘swan’ burned on the trunk. But it was clearer than last night, and this time… I think I could smell apples.” They’d traveled all day yesterday, heading for Mary’s Rest, and had spent last night in the ruins of a farmhouse; it was there that Sister had looked into the glass ring and first seen that tree with the blowing blossoms. The vision was clearer than it had been; she’d been able to see every detail of the tree, every scraggly branch and even the tiny green buds that peeked out from under the blossoms. “I think we’re getting closer,” she said, and her heart was racing. “The image was stronger. We must be getting closer!”

“But all the trees are dead,” Paul reminded her. “Just look around. Nothing’s in bloom-and nothing’s going to be. Why should that thing show you the image of a tree in bloom?”

“I don’t know. If I did, I’d tell you.” She concentrated on the glass ring again; it pulsated with her quickened heartbeat but did not invite her to go dreamwalking. The message had been delivered and, at least for now, would not be repeated.

“Swan.” Paul shook his head. “That doesn’t make a damned bit of sense.”

“Yes, it does. Somehow it does. We’ve just got to put the pieces together.”

Paul’s hands gripped the steering wheel. “Sister,” he said, with a trace of pity, “you’ve been saying the same thing for a long time. You’ve been looking into that glass ring like you were a gypsy trying to read tea leaves. And here we are, going back and forth, following signs and symbols that might not mean a damned thing.” He glanced sharply at her. “Have you ever thought about that possibility?”

“We found Matheson, didn’t we? We found the tarot cards and the doll.” She kept her voice firm, but there had been many days and nights when she’d let herself fear the same thing-but only for a moment or two, and then her resolve returned. “I believe this is leading us to someone-someone very important.”

“You mean you want to believe it.”

“I mean I do believe it!” she snapped. “How could I go on if I didn’t?”

Paul sighed deeply; he was tired, his beard itched and he knew he smelled like a cage of monkeys in a zoo. How long had it been, he wondered, since he’d had a bath? The best he’d been able to do in the last few weeks was scrub himself halfheartedly with ashes and snow. For the past two years, they had danced around the subject of the glass ring’s fallibility like a couple of wary boxers. Paul himself could see nothing in the ring but colors, and he’d asked himself many times if the woman he was traveling with-indeed, had come to love and respect-wasn’t making the signs up, interpreting them as she saw fit in order to keep them on this lunatic quest.

“I believe,” she told him, “that this is a gift. I believe I found it for a reason. I believe it’s leading us for a reason. And everything it shows us is a clue to where we need to go. Don’t you under-”

“Bullshit!” Paul said, and he almost stomped on the brake, but he was afraid the Jeep would skid right off the road. Sister looked at him, her face with its hideous growths mirroring shock, anger and disillusion. “You saw a fucking clown’s face in that damned thing, remember that? You saw a beat-up old Conestoga wagon or something; and you saw a thousand other things that just don’t make any sense! You said go east because you thought the visions or dreamwalk pictures or whatever the shit they are were getting stronger; and then you said go back west again, because the visions started fading and you were trying to focus in on the direction. After that you said go north, and then south-and then north and south again. Sister, you’re seeing what you want to see in that damned thing! So we found Matheson, Kansas! So what? Maybe you heard something about that town when you were a kid! Have you ever considered that?”

She was silent, clasping the glass circle closer to her, and finally she said what she’d wanted to say for a long, long time. “I believe,” she told him, “that this is a gift from God.”

“Right.” He smiled bitterly. “Well, look around. Just look. Have you ever considered the possibility that God might be insane?”

Tears burned her eyes, and she looked away from him because she’d be damned if she’d let him see her cry.

“This whole thing is you, don’t you see that?” he continued. “It’s what you see. It’s what you feel, and what you decide. If the damned thing is leading you somewhere-or to somebody-why doesn’t it show you right out where you’re supposed to go? Why’s it playing tricks with your mind? Why does it give you these ‘clues’ in bits and pieces?”

“Because,” Sister answered, with just a slight waver in her voice, “just getting a gift doesn’t mean you know how to use it. The fault’s not with the glass ring-it’s with me, because there’s a limit to what I can understand. I’m doing the best I can, and maybe… maybe the person I’m looking for isn’t ready to be found yet, either.”

“What? Come on!”

“Maybe the circumstances aren’t right yet. Maybe the picture’s not complete, and that’s why-”

“Oh, Jesus!” Paul said wearily. “You’re raving, do you know that? You’re making up things that aren’t true, because you want them so much to be true. You don’t want to admit that we’ve wasted seven years of our lives searching for ghosts.”

Sister watched the road unfolding before them, leading the Jeep into a dark, dead forest. “If you feel that way,” she finally asked, “then why have you been traveling with me all this time?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because I wanted to believe as much as you do. I wanted to think there was some method to this madness-but there’s not, and there never was.”

“I remember a shortwave radio,” Sister said.

“What?”

“A shortwave radio,” she repeated. “The one you used to keep those people in your cabin from killing themselves. You kept them going and gave them hope. Remember?”

“Okay. So what?”

“Didn’t you yourself at least hope there’d be a human voice on that radio? Didn’t you tell yourself that maybe the next day, or the next, there’d be a signal from some other survivors? You didn’t go through all that just to keep a handful of strangers alive. You did it to keep yourself alive, too. And you hoped that maybe one day there’d be something more than static on that radio. Well, this is my shortwave radio.” She ran her hands over the smooth glass. “And I believe it’s tuned to a force that I can’t even begin to understand-but I’m not going to doubt it. No. I’m going to keep on going, one step at a time. With you or without-”

“What the hell…?” Paul interrupted as they came around a curve. Standing in the middle of the road, beneath the overhanging trees, were three large snowmen, all wearing caps and mufflers, with stones for their eyes and noses. One of them appeared to be smoking a corncob pipe. Instantly Paul realized that he could not stop in time, and though he put his foot on the brake the wheels skidded through the snow and the Jeep’s front fender banged into one of the snowmen.

The jolt almost threw Paul and Sister through the windshield, and Hugh made a croaking sound in the back as the collision rattled his teeth. The Jeep’s engine stuttered and died. Sister and Paul saw that where the snowman had been was now a pile of snow around a disguised roadblock of scrap metal, pieces of wood and stones.

“Shit!” Paul said when he could find his voice. “Some fool’s put a damned-”

A pair of legs and scuffed brown boots slammed down on the Jeep’s hood from above.

Sister looked up and saw a hooded figure in a long, tattered brown coat with one hand wrapped around a rope that was tied in tree branches over the road. In the figure’s other hand was a.38 pistol, aimed through the windshield at Paul Thorson.

More figures, scurrying from the woods on all sides, were converging on the Jeep. “Bandits!” Hugh bleated, his eyes wide with terror. “They’ll rob us and cut our throats!”

“Like hell they will,” Sister said calmly, and she put her hand on the butt of the shotgun that was wedged beside her seat. She pulled it up, aiming it at the figure on the hood, and was about to fire when both of the Jeep’s doors were wrenched open.

A dozen pistols, three rifles and seven sharpened wooden spears thrust into the Jeep at Sister, and an equal number of weapons threatened Paul. “Don’t kill us!” Hugh shouted. “Please don’t kill us! We’ll give you anything you want!”