“I’m … not killed,” Cochran said. He rolled over and got to his hands and knees, and then, hitchingly, straightened all the way up to a standing posture, bracing his hands on the back-hoed clay walls; and the color of the exposed dirt darkened from orange clay toward black topsoil as he painfully hiked himself erect. “Pete,” he said, trying to pitch his voice so that it would carry in the changed air, “give me a hand.” He tossed the Swiss Army knife up onto the grass by Plumtree’s feet.
Pete and Plumtree both leaned over so that he could grasp their wrists, while their free hands extended back to Angelica, who clasped them firmly and braced herself. With a heave from above, Cochran was able to walk up the side of the grave and take two balance-catching steps out across the grass.
I don’t feel any different, he thought cautiously. I swear I don’t. If the god’s riding on me now, he’s riding lightly.
Pete had bent to pick up Mavranos’s knife, and now he twisted the cork off the corkscrew and held the cork out to Plumtree, who shoved it into the open mouth of the bottle as if hoping to stifle some shrill sound.
But in fact it was the silence that Cochran wished would stop. The plywood sheets thumped underfoot as he followed Plumtree and the Sullivans to the gravel road and hurried down it toward the distant front gate, but the sound of their footsteps seemed to agitate the air only very close by. No rain fell, and Cochran couldn’t shake the notion that all the raindrops were hanging suspended under the clouds, like rocks in a Magritte painting.
As he reeled past the Snow White and the Seven Dwarves statues, Cochran was nervously ransacking his memory. He had forgotten something here today—he had known the wine would make him forget it. But what had it been? Then he remembered saying to Cody, My dead wife; and, my wife was more married to the god than to me. Apparently he had been married, and the wife was dead. He had to concentrate to keep the idea from sliding out of his mind, like thoughts that occur late at night in bed when the light has been turned out. I was, he thought—what? Somebody was more married to the god than to me. When was anybody ever married to me …? Married to the god—to Dionysus? I must have been thinking of the woman in that strange version of A Tale of Two Cities, Ariachne. Something about a Dickens novel …? I can’t remember.
Finally he was just aware that he had forgotten something; but the awareness carried no anxiety. It didn’t have the mental flavor of importance. If it was important he thought, I’ll no doubt be reminded of it.
He remembered vividly the climb down the chimney in the Winchester House and the supernatural black man in the wine cellar, and Mrs. Winchester’s occupation of Plumtree’s body, and her insistence that they perform the resurrection soon, today, now.
Twice—once as they passed under the stone gate, and once as Pete pulled open the driver’s-side door of the red truck—Cochran got the impression that Mrs. Winchester had come on; both times Plumtree gasped, and blinked around in a terror that was not Cody’s, and then only a moment later recognizably was Cody, catching her balance and gripping the bottle and counting her companions.
They had all got into the truck and pulled the doors closed, but Pete was still fumbling with the key ring, when the engine roared to life. Pete stared at the empty ignition keyhole, then stared at Angelica beside him. With a shrug he put the key into the ignition anyway, and turned the switch into the on position.
Slowly he clanked it into reverse gear, and then tugged at the wheel as he backed out of the parking space; the truck wobbled obediently. “I was afraid it was going to drive itself again,” he muttered, “like it did when Arky got shot.”
“Don’t speak,” choked Angelica. “Get us—out of here.”
Pete steered the truck in a back-and-fill star pattern to drive back down to El Camino Real. A white car going north squealed to a halt and honked twice as Pete turned south, and then brake lights flared redly at the back of the shiny new white car in front of the truck.
“What are these white Saturns,” said Pete.
Cochran was already frightened—the wine he had drunk was making him dizzy, and he had the crazy impression that the action and speech around him were subtly happening at the wrong speed, as if somebody had filmed cars and actors moving and speaking too rapidly, and then projected it at a slowed-down speed to make it all appear normal—but with the gaps between the frames subliminally perceptible now—and Pete’s remark about Saturns seemed to carry huge portent.
“There’s another,” said Angelica, her finger repeatedly bumping the windshield as she pointed toward the oncoming lane; and though her voice was if anything shriller than normal, Cochran thought he could hear every click and release of her vocal cords.
“This flop is all face-down,” said Plumtree hoarsely—her voice too was muffled and fragmented, and even though he was sitting right beside her in the back seat Cochran could hardly make out her words—
Abruptly a harsh animal roaring shattered the stale air inside the truck, and the physical shock of it peeled Cochran’s lips back from his teeth and jerked his right hand to the small of his back, where his revolver was holstered. Squinting against the stunning noise, Angelica fumbled the stuffed toy pig up from the front seat—and Cochran realized that the bestial clamor was coming from the pig. But, he thought in real, angry protest, it hasn’t even got a battery in it!
In the center of the cavernous roaring, Angelica was frenziedly bashing the toy against the dashboard, to no apparent effect—the toy pig was smoking, and Cochran could see bright dots of tiny burning coals in its pink nylon fur—
Out one of the windows—in the confusion Cochran somehow couldn’t tell if it was through one of the side windows or through the windshield—Cochran glimpsed a glittering golden vehicle, and in it a carved wooden mask; and an instant later he was deafened by a tremendous metallic crash, and the truck was halted, rocking violently as its passengers rebounded from seat-back and dashboard.
Cochran had wrenched open the door and reeled out onto the pavement, and the smoking pig bounced past him, rolling toward the gutter. The rain was coming down again like a battering avalanche, and the car behind the truck—a white Saturn—had stopped, and a portly white-haired man had opened the passenger-side door and stepped out.
Cochran waved at him. “Cet ivrogne m’est rentre dedans!” he shouted over the roar of the rain. He stopped speaking, wanting desperately to run to the side of the road and throw himself down on the wet grass; what he had just said was French, meaning, This drunkard crashed into me. “Do you,” he shouted, listening to his own words to be sure he was speaking English, “have a cellular—”
The man standing by the other car was staring at him, in obvious surprised recognition. Cochran cuffed rain water from his eyes and peered at the man…and with a sudden cold hollowness in his chest recognized Dr. Armentrout.
Someone was tugging at Cochran’s sleeve, and shouting; he turned and saw that it was Cody, and that she didn’t seem to be injured. “The truck started again!” she was yelling. “It’s not hurt, nobody’s hurt, we didn’t even hit anything—get back in!”
She hadn’t noticed Armentrout. Cochran nodded at her and put one foot up on the truck floor as she climbed back inside—but he saw Armentrout getting back into the Saturn.
The truck was shaking as Pete gunned the engine; it did seem to be capable of driving.