The Seven Whistlers (10 page)

The nurse had also given him a full bottle of extra strength
Vicodin, which was a lot easier to manipulate than the gauze and tape, but he’d
taken one of the little devils that afternoon and it had barely made a dent in
the ache. Since the stuff wasn’t really working for him anyway, and he wanted
to drink tonight, he’d forgone taking another dose in the evening. He figured
two or three Black and Tans would do a fine job of taking the edge off his
pain.

The Pennywhistle was swinging when Mike pushed open the
double doors and stepped inside. The air was thick with conversation and liquor
. . . and something else Mike couldn’t put his finger on. He spied Alan, Rose,
and Jenny sitting in their usual spot in the back of the bar, already knee deep
into their first round. Mike gave them a nod, then sauntered over to the bar
where one of Dave’s latest barmaids, Elektra, was manning the taps. She was a
buxom girl from Greece. Elektra and her twin sister, Leni, were spending a year
abroad, touring America and working odd jobs here and there for cash.

The Pennywhistle was notorious for its barmaids. The owner,
Dave, had an eye for the ladies, and he was always hiring the prettiest
specimens he could find. Local guys flocked to the bar, making a sport of
seeing who could score with the new hires.

Dave knew that men who needed confidence needed liquor, so
his hiring practices had a
very
positive effect on trade. More
customers, drinking more. Business was so good these days, Mike had heard that
the owner of the Pennywhistle had even talked of retiring early to the Florida
Keys, putting the sailboat he’d bought on a whim at a government auction in
Montpelier to good use.

Elektra gave Mike a wink as she grabbed a tall glass and
started pouring his favorite. She had never said as much as two words to him,
but he got the feeling if he were ever interested, she’d be willing. Maybe he
was fooling himself, but the self-deception felt good, if that was the case. Elektra
slipped the glass onto a coaster and slid it toward him, brushing his good hand
with the side of her palm.

If this wasn’t an invitation, he didn’t know what was. Flattered,
he left her a three-dollar tip, which she expertly slipped into very enticing
cleavage.

Maybe she just knows how to play the game better than I
do,
Mike thought to himself, retracting his earlier inclination as he
watched her ply the next guy with the same inviting smile she’d just used on
him. Shaking his head in wonder at the female species — and his complete
and utter lack of understanding where they were concerned — he walked
over to his friends’ table and sat down. At least here, he knew where he stood:
Jenny was taken, and Rose . . . well, Rose was just Rose.

“We’ve got a lot more to worry about than just wolves and
bears picking our trash,” Rose was saying when Mike tuned in to the
conversation.

It took him a few seconds to figure out what she was talking
about, and then he remembered the front page of the
Gazette
from that
morning.

“She’s right,” Mike said, taking a sip of his Black and Tan.
The head tickled his nose, making him almost sneeze his next words.

“I’ve seen them, and believe me, they’re not wolves.”

“You saw them, too,” Rose said, almost breathless with some
combination of surprise and relief.

“Yeah, When I did this,” he said, holding up his bandaged
hand. Everyone gasped.

“What the hell happened to you, Mike Richards?” Jenny
demanded as she leaned forward in her seat to get a better look at his
gauze-wrapped right hand. After the doctor had sewn the missing piece back on,
he’d wrapped the whole of Mike’s hand to keep the finger stable, and Mike had
repeated the process after he’d changed the dressing,

“Little fight broke out between the table saw and my pinky
finger,” Mike replied. “Finger got the worst of it, and I don’t think anyone’s
hoping for a rematch. As for these animals, I saw two of them — biggest
damn dogs I ever laid eyes on — right before it happened. Wolves, my
ass.”

“Is your hand gonna be okay?” Rose asked.

Mike grinned. It pleased him that Rose would worry about
him. If he’d known cutting off a body part would get the girl’s attention, he
would have done it ages ago. Or not. But it still felt nice, the way Rose was
looking at him. Almost enough to dull the pain.

“The doc at the emergency room said I’d gotten to him just
in time,” Mike said. “The EMTs were smart enough to put my pinky on ice, so
they were able to reattach the tip —”

Alan shook his head in wonder.

“Didn’t I warn you about takin’ a finger off, man?”

Jenny smacked Alan hard on the arm, motherly concern and
annoyance etched on her face.

“Alan Scott Bryce, put a little brain back in your head! Mike
nearly lost his hand, and you’re making jokes!”

Alan grinned sheepishly. “Not my fault he can’t keep his
fingers attached —”

Jenny whacked him again, and then they were off and running.
All they needed was a catalyst to incite the playful couple bickering that
usually made Mike feel like he was an outsider. He turned to Rose, hoping to
catch her eye, see if the affection between their friends distanced her in the
same way, but her dark eyes were lost in thought.

Mike noted the worried set of her brow, the way she was
slowly shredding a paper drink napkin between her fingers, and reached out,
touching her softly on the shoulder. She jumped, instinctively tensing at his
touch.

“You okay?”

Rose blinked, and then her eyes cleared and she shook her
head, an embarrassed frown turning down the corners of her mouth.

“Fine. Just thinking, that’s all.”

Mike sensed there was more to this than Rose was saying, but
he didn’t want to push the issue and make her feel like he was trying to want
to push her away or intrude on her private thoughts, so he just shrugged,
playing the moment off like it was any other.

“No worries. You need another drink?” he said, gesturing to
her empty glass.

She shook her head. “I think I’m good, but thanks for
asking.”

She turned away, back to her thoughts, a sad, distracted
look on her beautiful face. Mike found himself wishing for the days when Rose
was just a face in the crowd . . . because it was killing him to be her friend.

Rose declined Jenny’s offer to spend the night.

Her thoughts were too chaotic to deal with entertaining
another person. She had to go up to the cabin to feed Lucy and let her out. By
the time Lucy had done her business and scampered back into the cabin, Rose
felt exhausted. All she wanted was to crawl under her parents’ down comforter
and think. She had a moment of trepidation as she thought of the hounds, but it
seemed like they were just as likely to show up downtown as in the woods, and
there was no reason for her to think they’d come back to this very spot. Rose
knew she was as safe here as she would be anywhere else in Kingsbury.

Her own safety was not what troubled her.

Ideas had been whirling in her mind for hours. At first,
she’d pushed them away, thinking they were crazy. But now, as she tried to
relax and let sleep take her, she began to realize that they were not crazy
ideas at all — they were purely logical connections she had only just
begun to make.

And they terrified her.

If she was right, it would change everything. 

The alarm clock went off at seven, but Rose was already
awake. She’d been lying awake since half past four, scrunched up between the
thick down comforter and Lucy, turning her thoughts over and over in her head. Once
again she had been having horrible nightmares — crazy dreams that even
now, hours after she’d woken, still upset her. She hadn’t wanted to go back to
sleep after that, so she’d laid there in the darkened cabin, listening to the
night sounds and the conflict that raged in her own heart.

Now, though, Rose got out of bed and quickly dressed, not
bothering to shower. She had questions that required answers, and she was
determined to find them before her Grandfather’s wake later that evening.

While she fed Lucy, she sipped at a cup of tea, but her
stomach was in such knots that she didn’t dare try and eat anything. She didn’t
have time to spend the morning in the bathroom retching it back up.

As she stood by the kitchen sink watching Lucy wolf down her
breakfast, she stared at the teacup in her hand. She couldn’t believe it was
only two days ago that she sat in this very kitchen watching her grandmother
freak out at the mention of the Seven Whistlers.

What a fool she’d been not to have put the pieces together
sooner. Although, if she really was honest with herself, it seemed more likely
that she didn’t
want
to see the truth than that she couldn’t. It had her
hit hard last night, like lightning. Something Mike had said had jarred her
memory, and the image of her grandmother gripping that tea cup right before she
dropped it, her skeletal fingers clutching at the cup as if it was somehow
keeping her tethered to reality, had risen up in her mind, and wouldn’t leave.

Her grandfather had died. The Whistlers had come to
Kingsbury. Now that Rose had begun to believe that these beasts were not simply
the wild dogs the chief of police wanted the town to think they were, now that
she knew the legend . . . well, once she’d remembered her grandmother’s
reaction that day, how could she not have begun to think the worst.

God, it was the worst.

Rose felt certain that her grandmother knew
exactly
why the seven Hounds from Hell were in Kingsbury . . . and whose soul they
sought.

The gravel drive crunched under her shoes as Rose climbed
the last few feet to the front door of the Glen Valley Rest Home. She slipped
her hand around the door pull, and slid open the opaque glass door, noting
— for what she hoped was the last time — the way the name of the
place was haphazardly stenciled in thick black courier across the top half of
the smoky glass.

The heat was on inside, turned up high to contend with the
thin blood of the ancient human relics living out their final years or months
or days there. Closing the door behind her, Rose slipped off her thick jean
jacket, and wrapped it around her waist. She walked over to the reception desk,
her shoes squeaking on the institutional gray linoleum floor. The nurse behind
the desk looked up and smiled, recognizing Rose instantly. Then the woman
seemed to remember that Rose wasn’t here for a visit, that there was no one
here for the girl to see anymore.

She put down the file she was holding and gave Rose a
sympathetic half-smile.

“Oh my goodness, Rose, I’m so sorry about your grandfather.”

Rose smiled back at the woman, letting her know it was okay.
“Thanks, Viola. I appreciate that. It’s been rough, but we’re doing alright.”

Viola nodded, her thin, angular face bobbing up and down on
her pencil-thin frame. Rose had often envied the Nurse her boyish figure; still
did, even now.

“I was wondering if my grandmother had picked up Grandad’s
stuff yet. She asked me to come by days ago, but I just couldn’t yet, you
know?”

Viola nodded vigorously. “I completely understand. A shock
like that can really knock you for a loop. Let me look, but I’m almost positive
we boxed up his stuff and put it in the basement.”

The nurse looked down, eyes scanning the desk until they
spied the black, leather-bound patient logbook. Flipping through the stiff
pages, she found what she was looking for, and gave Rose a nod.

“It’s here,” she said. “I’ll just have Bill go down and get
it for you.”

Rose waited in the reception area, her spine straight
against the back of a sturdy wooden chair. Her head throbbed and her heart
raced, making her feel queasy. From the moment she’d stepped through the door
of the rest home, a terrible dread had nestled down inside her. It made her
skin crawl.

The place was rank with the stink of death and infirmity. It
filled her throat and nose, so that she almost couldn’t breathe. She didn’t
know why the place had never affected her this way before. Maybe because she’d
been filled with hope when she was visiting her grandfather; hope that he would
get better, that he would again be the man she had known.

“Got them for you,” a voice called from behind her. Rose
turned in her chair to see Bill, the facility’s aging caretaker, coming down
the hall with two boxes under his arm.

Rose almost cried when she saw how little was left to show
for her grandfather’s life. Forcing back the tears that threatened to leak down
her cheeks, she mustered a
thank you
for Bill.

He set the boxes down in the chair beside her and took off
his cap, letting it dangle at his side. His wizened brown skin glowed like
caramel under the fluorescent lights, and Rose found her heart breaking just a
little more under his sympathetic gaze.

“I was real sorry to hear about your Granddad, Rose,” he
said. “He was a nice man, and I know you all will miss him greatly.”

Rose didn’t trust herself to speak. She wanted to let the
old man know how much his sympathy meant to her, but she also didn’t want to
cry.

He held out his hand. “You don’t gotta say anything. I just
wish there was more for you to take with you,” Bill said, indicating the two
small boxes.

“Thank you,” she managed. “Me, too.”

Bill watched as she retrieved the boxes, slipping them under
her arm. She gave him a wave as she turned, and walked toward the front door.

The old man stood in the hall long after the girl had gone,
watching the spot where she’d disappeared through the door. Trouble followed
that girl. He could taste the darkness that dogged her every step.

He only wished he knew how to help her.