The Tea Party - A Novel of Horror (2 page)

THE GUESTS

ONE

1

The season was summer, not known for dying.

The weather was stifling, with no sign of storms.

The densely wooded hills were low and unimposing, the thick heavy foliage a slow-fading green. The hazed, white-hot sun had bleached the blue from the sky for well over a week, yet the streams were still deep enough for trout to hide in the shallows. Crows with talons, hooks and beaks open circled low, hunting carrion on the roads; hawks with eyes hooded, talons tucked, coasted high, hunting anything that moved. A blue jay stared at an acorn on the ground. An aged copperhead dozed on a bed of exposed slate. Pasture-land cleared the slopes in uneven arcs where dairy cattle grazed and alfalfa grew for hay and an occasional yellow tractor belched black exhaust into the grey dust clouding the horizon. The contour-hugging, two-lane roads that once were cowpaths were dull ebony and deserted. No breeze touched the ponds. The dogs that watched the farms lay in deceptive shifting shade, panting, dreaming, ignoring the swarming flies.

But under the trees that had lost their spring’s shine it was cooler, though not cool, and the buckskin mare that picked her cautious way along the dirt trail seemed less weary than ambling, once in a while reaching for a tempting moist leaf, her heavy black tail switching flies from her rump. She skirted the few deadfalls without having to be guided, tossed her head and snorted whenever she caught the sharp scent of the greenland in the valley.

The trail followed the hill’s contour halfway up its southern slope, dipping only when it had to around huge boulders or sudden hollows. Her rider knew it well; the buckskin knew it better.

Douglas Muir slumped comfortably in the tooled western saddle, left hand holding the reins, right hand flat along his thigh. He wore brown boots a season too old, jeans patched and faded, and a loose blue plaid shirt that let his skin breathe. His hat was a rumpled Stetson, once a startling white until the day he’d brought it home, dropped it on the living room floor and kicked it around with his bare feet until the stiffness was gone and the color less sterile.

He shifted, and the saddle creaked—the blue jay squawked and vanished, the copperhead tested the air with its tongue, uncoiled and slipped beneath a dark copse of briar.

He massaged his knee, the back of his neck, checked his watch and smiled. It was nearly four, almost suppertime, something his stomach had already told him. He began to whistle randomly, not quite on key, until he settled on a spirited rendition of “The Flight of the Bumblebee,” which he preferred to remember as the theme from
The Green Hornet.
The buckskin tossed her head and whickered a protest. Doug laughed and urged her forward—faster now, until the trail aimed straight down the eastern slope, flattened, and the trees stopped.

A tug at the reins, and the horse paused blowing at the clearing’s shaded edge.

They were on the left side of a two-acre expanse of grass, a nonprofessional but functional paddock enclosed by a greyed split-rail fence whose two upper corners were hidden by stands of thick-boled oak. Not twenty feet from the fence, at the back and on the far side, the hill rose again, almost vertically nearly two hundred feet; most of the trees there were white birch and spruce, and the underbrush gave way to stacks and stairs of boulders.

Doug slipped out of the saddle and opened a plank gate to lead the animal through. Once the gate was relatched, he and the horse walked side by side, paying no attention to the grey squirrels that bounced away, scolding.

A second gate, the grass here worn in patches to the ground, and they were behind the garage, house, and stable.

The house was clean and weathered, a two-story log cabin with a steeply pitched slate roof, small windows top and bottom, and a single screen door off a narrow concrete stoop. The dark red garage was to the left, the matching low stable to the right, the backyard itself less than ten yards wide. There were no rusting tools here, or lawn chairs and redwood tables beneath a suburban sun umbrella; only a raised and covered stack of drying firewood to one side of the stoop.

The horse needed no prodding. She headed directly for the tackroom and waited patiently, eyeing Doug, who took his time crossing over and smiled when she finally pawed at the ground.

“You’re worse than a wife, you know that, Maggie,” he said, stripping off her saddle, blanket, and bridle. And as he turned to put the gear in its place, the buckskin reared, whinnied, and raced back through the gate. She sped across the grass, bucked, called again and rolled on the ground to scratch her back and sides.

He shook his head slowly, stepped back outside and pulled the tackroom door closed.
You really have a way with animals, almost like you can talk to them,
he’d been told more than once. But talking to Maggie had nothing to do with it. It was training, patience, and a damned healthy respect for a big dumb creature that could squash you flat or bite through your arm if it decided it was angry. Not to mention the hooves that could take a piece of your skull without half trying.

Still, he thought as he headed for the house, there were times when he almost believed the twelve-year-old mare could actually read his mind.

He had one hand on the doorknob, ready to turn it, when something made him turn around.

Maggie was standing abnormally still, her ears pricked high and stiff, her tail snapping hard from side to side.

He stepped down to the grass and pushed his hat back.

Then Maggie’s ears flattened and she reared, her forelegs kicking out as if aiming for an invisible, dangerous target. Her teeth were bared, and her angry snorting punched the air like the sound of muffled gunshots.

“Maggie,” he called, “what’s up?”

His head cocked in bewilderment as he watched her lash out, then settle back to paw fiercely at the ground and shake her head violently.

“Hey, Maggie?”

She bolted suddenly, racing toward the back fence, circling once before ducking under the oaks to stand trembling behind the largest trunk.

Worried now and perplexed, he was halfway to the gate, ready to break into a run himself, when he felt it—a stirring of the ground, a sensation of
rumbling
without the earth moving. He looked down, frowning, until the
rumbling
passed like a train beneath his feet.

Maggie snorted, backed away, and pawed divots from the grass.

Son of a gun, he thought, and felt something else that made his head snap up.

The air was moving not quite in a breeze, and carrying with it a definite slice of winter. He looked around, the fingers of his left hand snapping nervously. Glancing between the stable and the house, he could not shake the feeling that whatever was coming had started on the other side of a tree-hidden wall, the northern boundary of the Winterrest estate.

The light seemed to shimmer, blurring the foliage, making him blink to clear his vision.

Maggie called out, defiant from behind the trees.

He scanned the hilltops—what the
hell
was going on?—and saw the trees begin to quiver, sway, give rasping voice to the breeze that quickly became a wind.

A strong wind.

A gale.

A hurricane’s high keening that charged without warning around the front of the house and lifted a swirling crest of hard-edged dust and sharp dead leaves from the yard, surrounding him with it, pelting him with small stinging pebbles as he rushed back toward the door.

He heard Maggie again.

He hesitated, and something cracked viciously across the backs of his knees, shoving him forward with his spine arched and his head up. He whirled with a half-spoken curse and was hit again, harder, and fell face down with hands out to catch himself, turning away from the wind that howled now, grew to a shrieking, and made him gasp with the cold that sliced through his clothes, while his hat was yanked off and spun toward the garage.

Maggie challenged—high-pitched, almost screaming.

A knobbed section of dead wood thudded against his side and made him grunt with pain, and he quickly covered his head with his hands and curled himself into a tight ball, still kneeling, leaning to the right to keep from falling over.

The tackroom door was thrust open, cracking over and over against the stable wall.

Grit stung his cheeks and slipped beneath his eyelids; twigs knifed across the exposed backs of his hands; another branch slammed into the center of his spine, and he yelled in anger and surprise.

His nostrils clogged and he opened his mouth to breathe, and it instantly filled with dust he could not spit out.

The cold intensified, and he felt his skin tighten and split across his knuckles.

A rock bounced off his ribs, another off his elbow, and he could feel his shirt beginning to tear along the seam on the left side. He was hard put to keep from dashing for the house, knowing that the moment he raised his head he would be pummeled unconscious.

Sound was muffled as the air pressure altered and his ears were stoppered.

Deafened, partially blinded, he was prepared to wait it out until he realized that in a very short time the banshee gale was going to pump the air from his lungs, that the cold was going to freeze him—that in the middle of July he was going to be battered to death or die of the cold.

And as he opened his mouth to shout . . . it ended.

As abruptly as it had begun, it was over, and he toppled onto his side, no longer braced against the wind.

“God . . . damn!”

He lay for several long seconds gulping for a breath before he moved his arms down, slowly, to avoid cramping. His chest ached, and his legs stung and throbbed in a hundred different places. The taste of blood mingled with dirt made him spit several times. Then he lifted his head and pushed himself up until he could sit with his forearms draped over his knees. The backs of his hands were an angry red, and a thin line of blood trickled down over one knuckle. A palm ran gently over his sides to test for broken ribs. He blinked once and hard, and shook his head vigorously before realizing that the heat had returned and sweat was already breaking out under his arms. The yard had been scoured clear, and dead branches were piled in a huddle on the garage’s far side.

Maggie was beneath her oak, grazing.

The trees were still.

“Jesus,” he whispered, and struggled awkwardly to his feet, dusted himself off, and stared at the sky. There were no storm clouds that he could see, no thunder he could hear; only the sun heading west and the humidity’s clinging haze.

“Jesus, what the hell was that?”

Maggie raised her head, shook her mane, snapped her tail at a fly.

When he felt he could take a step without falling, he walked clumsily to the fence and leaned heavily against it, watching the calm buckskin shift from spot to spot in search of the perfect meal. There was no indication she was still disturbed, and when he called to her, she only lifted her head, shook it, and snapped at a green leaf spiraling out a tree.

He grunted, more than willing to believe it had all been a hallucination brought about by the week-long heat wave; more than willing, and virtually praying, until he saw the divots Maggie had tossed aside in her inexplicable rage, and felt the dull pain in his thighs and side where the rocks and branches had struck him.

The only plausible explanation was the arrival of a new frontal system; here in the eastern foothills of the Appalachians it wasn’t unusual for abrupt, powerful winds to sweep through minutes ahead of a changing weather pattern. And though they were often preceded by impressive cloud formations, neither was it odd for a front to barrel through out of a perfectly clear sky.

He checked the mare again and decided that that answer was just as good as any. Just as good, and it would have to do.

A brisk shake of his shoulders as he recalled the knifing cold, and he exhaled as loudly as he could in forced relief. The aching subsided. The stinging on his hands faded until he could ignore it. He strode to the back door, opened it, and stepped inside without turning.

Just as good, but he didn’t like it.

* * *

The kitchen was the smallest room in the house, with just enough space for a table by the back window, and the appliances, counters, and cupboards, none of which were more than six years old. To the immediate right a doorway opened onto a cluttered study/office lined with bookshelves, and he glanced in without entering, wincing guiltily at the drafting table by the window.

He supposed he ought to get to work. The ostensible purpose of the ride had been to sweep his head clear of conflicting ideas, to settle on the design so he could take care of it the instant he walked back through the door. The trip, however, had taken longer than he’d planned, and the incident with the wind made him a little jumpy. No sense trying anything now. He’d have to calm himself a bit more, no question about it; and no, he answered a small nagging at the back of his head, I’m not procrastinating.

A quick grin; he was a liar.

The water ran disturbingly cold when he turned on the faucet, and he waited a second before he rinsed out his mouth, spitting, grimacing at the blood that swirled down the drain. A tentative prod found a loose tooth on the right side; another rinse, and the bleeding stopped. Then he washed his hands without soap, and dried them on a succession of plain paper towels. After taking a can of beer from the refrigerator, he walked stiffly down an unlighted hallway to the large front room that swung away to his right, twenty feet square, a cathedral ceiling, and a gallery off of which opened four doors.