The Cypress House (12 page)

    "We're
leaving," he said.

    "Not
yet," Paul said.

    "No,
I'll rest, but then . . . we're leaving, Paul. Got to leave. Got to."

    Paul
was standing in the doorway, staring at him with a frown. "Those men from
the train . . . they died in the storm, didn't they, Arlen?"

    Arlen
looked into the kid's eyes and for a moment felt as if he'd stared his way into
some small circle of sobriety. The men from the train. Wallace O'Connell and
the rest who'd climbed back on board with laughter on their lips . . . yes,
they were dead.

    "You
already asked me that," Arlen mumbled.

    "I
know it. And you said you didn't think they were dead, but honestly you're sure
of it. That night at the station, you were right."

    The
kid had begun to shift in front of Arlen's eyes, tilting first one way and then
the other, and there were three or four versions of him now, each one staring
with intense eyes.

    "How
did you?" Paul said. "How in the hell did you know?"

    Arlen
flopped his head back down on the bed and squeezed his eyes shut. "Go away.
Lemme sleep."

    Paul
didn't say anything. There was no sound from the doorway, and after enough time
had passed Arlen was sure he'd left, but then he heard a footstep followed by
the thud of the door swinging shut and knew the kid had been standing there the
whole time, staring at him.

    
How
in the hell did you know
?

    He
just knew, damn it. Wasn't a thing could be said to explain it; Arlen Wagner
saw the dead, knew when the hour tolled and the lives of men both friend and
stranger would come to a close.

    
They
didn't have to die,
he thought
.
The selfish bastards. All I can
do is give a word of warning. The boy believed me simply because he is a boy.
Grown men aren't allowed to believe such tales, even when they must. Even when
it's all that can save them, they won't allow themselves to believe
.

    He
thought of Walt Sorenson leaning close to him at the road- house the night
they'd met, that story of the fortune-teller who'd seen death in the rain and
told him to be aware of travelers in need.

    He
might have believed,
Arlen thought
.
He was one of the few who might have believed, and I
didn't see a damn thing before he died. Couldn't warn him
.

    Why
couldn't he? The man had died; Arlen had watched his body burn, had seen his
flesh melt from his bones. Why hadn't Arlen been offered any warning? Why
hadn't he looked into Sorenson's eyes and seen smoke?

    
It's
this place,
he thought
.
There's something wrong with this place.
Death hides here, even from me
.

    The
Cypress House, it was called. The Cypress House. That brought back memories,
too. Not of a highway tavern, though. No, no. The cypress houses of Arlen's
youth had been quite different than that. They'd been houses of

    death

    another
sort entirely. The last Pope was in one now. Every Pope who'd passed on was, as
far as Arlen knew. Always would be. Cypress wood was required in the sacred
burial rites of many faiths in many lands. The branches of the trees themselves
were symbols of

    
death

    mourning.
Arlen's father had carved them many times. The trees were not an uncommon symbol
among German gravestones. The leaves stayed evergreen even after the tree had
been felled, and this was believed to be a sign of spiritual immortality, a
representation of the insignificance of the body's passing. It went back to the
Romans or the Greeks or some such, went back countless years, this idea of the
cypress as an emblem of

    
death

    morbid
significance. What a terrible name for an inn. The Cypress House. He was edging
toward sleep in a cypress house. He was edging toward —

    
death
a coffin sleep in a cypress house death you are edging toward death

    "We're
leaving soon as we can," Arlen said, speaking to no one. "Soon as we
can, we're going home." Then he brought his hands up and dropped them over
his face, because keeping his eyes shut in this room with the boarded-up
windows still didn't offer enough darkness.

    His
sleep was restless and oppressive, the tossing-and-turning, half-conscious
slumber of a drunk. Dreams blurred with reality, and coherent thoughts spun a
tangled dance with dark visions and memories. Men with skeletal faces leered at
him, then vanished and turned back into the dark walls of the room before
another blink conjured up a rattlesnake coiled on a slab of West Virginia stone
and another brought forth a slick of burgundy liquid on soil in France, mustard
gas after it had settled to earth.

    He
heard Paul's voice and Rebecca Cady's and tried to listen to them, but they
became his father's voice and then Edwin Main's, the man who'd come to kill his
father many years ago. Life was rushing past, stacking days upon days, but
still some things wouldn't stay buried. Not Isaac's face, not his voice.

    You're
all I have in
this
world, son, that death can't take. This world isn't
anything but a sojourn, to be sure, but death removes every trace unless you've
taken pains to leave one behind. You're my trace, Arlen
.

    Isaac
Wagner's bearded face split into a smile of crooked teeth, and he started a
laugh that ended in a howl. The howl went on and on, a howl of madness, a howl
of . . . wind.

    The
wind was roaring now, pushing at the walls of the Cypress House, the building
shuddering in its grasp. Arlen tried to open his eyes, but the lids slid down
again. He had to get on his feet, had to get out of here. There was something
wrong in this place, terribly wrong, and he'd brought Paul Brickhill here and now
was responsible for getting him out. They had to get out. It was time to get on
his feet, and then they could hike to a train station . . . but he had no
money. Someone had taken his money. His protection from hard times was gone,
taken from him so easily when it had been so hard to build.

    A
voice whispered again, and he expected Isaac's and cried out against it, but
this voice was disembodied, distant.

    
The
seawall may not hold . . . most of the water has been drawn out of Tampa Bay...
the storm will be weaker than when it passed through the Keys, but if the
seawall fails
...

    A
radio. They were listening to a radio. Let them listen; listening wouldn't
change a thing. The storm would do what it would do, and they would be here for
it. He had nowhere else to go. He was but another soldier in the trenches
again, in a place where the trenches were filled with desperate, lost men.

    He
woke when the wind reached a scream. The door swung open, and he spun with a
grunt and found himself facing Paul Brickhill.

    "Arlen?
Rebecca says you'd best come downstairs. It's getting close."

    Arlen
just stared at the kid for a moment, too disoriented to speak or move. Then he
managed a nod and struggled out of bed. A blanket was snarled around his foot
and he almost fell, but caught himself and tore free. The motion set off a bolt
of pain that began in his head and ended in his gut, nausea sliding in behind
it. He bent over, bracing his forearms on his knees, and sucked in a few
breaths until it passed. Paul moved from the door as if to help, but Arlen held
a hand up, breathed a few more times, and then straightened. His eyelids
scraped like sandpaper with each blink, and his throat was dry and scorched.

    "Sorry,"
he said, his voice harsh as a rasp on a cedar plank. "I shouldn't have . .
.I didn't mean to drink like that. It's just the money was gone and I —"

    Something
tore on the side of the house, and Paul looked at the window as if he might be
able to see through the boards to the other side.

    "Let's
get on downstairs, Arlen."

    "Time
is it?"

    "Noon."

    
Noon.
He'd been up here for an entire night and morning.

    They
went down the steps and out into the barroom. The electric lights were still on
and the fan still blowing, but even so the room was dark and hot with all the
windows and doors sealed. Rebecca Cady was sitting with a radio at a table in
front of the bar. The radio was off. She looked up as they entered, let her
eyes hang on Arlen's for a moment, and then said, "The water's coming
up."

    "Out
of the ocean ?" Paul said it like he didn't believe it.

    She
nodded.

    Paul
crossed the room and went to one of the windows. Arlen noticed now that there
was a jagged shaft of gray light where a piece of the board had been torn away.
Paul put his face to the glass and stared at the beach.

    "How
high will it get?" he said. "It's getting close to the porch."

    He
was trying to say it calmly enough, but there was a tremor in his voice.

    "I'm
not sure how high it will go," Rebecca Cady said. There was no tremor in
hers.

    Arlen
crossed the room and joined Paul at the window, nudged him aside and looked out
at the shore. The palm trees to the side of the back porch were bent at an
incomprehensible angle — how the trunks didn't split, he couldn't imagine — and
the Gulf of Mexico had turned into a wild, thrashing expanse of gray water
speckled with white froth. Where the beach had once ended, now there was only
water, furious water, pushed ahead by the wind and climbing with ease. The
waves splashed no more than twenty feet from the base of the porch now, and
even as Arlen watched, they seemed to grow closer.

    "House
is raised?" he said.

    "Yes,"
Rebecca Cady said.

    "By
how much?"

    "Three
feet," Paul said quietly. "Block pylons. It'll move through them
instead of around the sides of the house. Higher than that, it'll be on the
porch."

    Arlen
didn't answer, still looking out at the water. A frond tore loose from one of
the palms and snapped through the air, plastered onto the window just below
Arlen's eye with such force that he gave an involuntary jerk. The wind's scream
rose, as if it were laughing at him as it flattened the tops on the waves in
the tossing sea. He stepped back from the window and shook his head. How could
anything unseen have such savage strength? You could only watch its effects;
the beast itself was invisible.

    He
followed Paul to the table and sat with Rebecca Cady, each of them listening to
the sounds of the storm. He nodded at the radio.

    "What
do they say?"

    "That
it's here."

    "That's
all they say?"

    "The
seawall failed in Tampa. There's flooding."

    "How
far away is that?"

    "Fifty
miles south. That's nothing like what happened in the Keys. They still don't
have a death toll settled on."

    Arlen
and Paul looked at each other until something crashed against the back of the
house and gave them an excuse to turn away.

    "Why
don't you turn it back on?" Arlen said, pointing at the radio.

    "Saving
the batteries."

    "I
can't believe your lights are still on."

    "It's
a good generator."

    "Sure
is," Arlen agreed. "How'd you pay for it, with no business?"

    This
time her silence lingered. He'd just about given up on a response when she
said, "My father put that in. Things were different then."

    "Where
is he now? "

    "In
a coffin."

    "A
lot of good men are," Arlen said.

    She
scowled and turned away. Arlen said, "Is there beer in that icebox?"

    "I
should think the last thing you'd need right now is another drink."