9780689859946

Chapter 9

That ungodly moan brought me upright, immediately aware that Dad was not in the house.

The sound dwindled into a sort of choking gurgle. I moved to swing my legs over the edge of the bed, eliciting a grunt from Buster when I shifted position, though he didn't wake up. Some watchdog he was. Maybe Dad was right, that he was getting a bit deaf in his old age.

I jabbed him with an elbow, and he grunted again, then raised his head against my outstretched hand.

"Get up, Buster! You're coming with me," I said, knowing I couldn't just burrow under the covers and wait for whatever was going to come next.

I reached for the lamp, remembered it was on the opposite side of the bed from the one at home, and flopped over to turn it on.

It was a small bulb -- nobody'd ever be able to read in bed in this room -- but it sent a welcome circle of light around me. My traveling digital clock showed 12:07 A.M.

Buster was looking at me as if I'd lost my mind. Then, when the sounds were repeated, he lifted his ears and jumped off the bed to follow me.

The door to the boys' room stood open, and I hesitated there. Nothing from them. I knew Dad had brought a flashlight, but I thought he'd kept it in the master bedroom, so I didn't have it.

I crept along the chilly hallway in my bare feet, and the moan was repeated, this time with words: "No! No!"

I hesitated at the door of the room where Crystal was sleeping alone. The light from my open doorway didn't come this far, certainly not into the room.

"Crystal?" I asked hesitantly, praying she wasn't being strangled in her bed by some fiend who had gotten in in spite of locked doors and windows.

For a moment there was no sound, and then she gasped and I sensed movement.

"Crystal?" I said more loudly. "Are you all right?"

"Wha -- ? What is it?"

"What's wrong? Were you having a bad dream?"

"Dream," she muttered. "Nightmare, yes. Who is it -- Nikki?"

"Yes. Are you okay?"

"Oh, it was...horrible. All that...blood. They were all dead. Just like..." Her voice trailed off. "Jeff, where's Jeff?"

"Dad had to go home to Seattle," I reminded her. The bare floor was icy beneath my feet and I was shivering.

"Oh. Oh, yes, I remember now." She inhaled raggedly. "I'm sorry. I'm awake now, Nikki. I'm sorry I woke you up."

"Do you have nightmares like this very often?" I asked uncertainly. It must have been a doozy, and I wasn't sure if I should leave her now or not. Dad would probably have put his arms around her in reassurance, but I didn't feel I could do that.

"Not so often anymore," she said. She was bringing her breathing under control. "It was soreal.Oh, my heart is still racing. But it was all a dream, wasn't it?"

"Nothing else has happened," I told her. I remembered my own last nightmare, years ago, before Mom got sick. "Sometimes it takes awhile to get over it. Mama sometimes made me some cocoa and we talked until I calmed down."

"Cocoa. Yes, that would be good. Just a minute, let me find a robe. And slippers. Gosh, it's cold in here."

"I didn't bring a robe with me," I said, feeling colder by the minute.

Crystal emerged out of the darkness and thrust a garment into my hand. "Here, wear your dad's."

I shrugged into it, wrapping it tightly around me (it was almost big enough to wrap twice) and holding it in place by tying the belt. I still didn't have anything on my feet, but when we got downstairs there were some rag rugs and I slid one over in front of my chair at the kitchen table.

"I'm going to turn the furnace on for a little while," Crystal said, and pushed at the thermostat just inside the dining room door. "Where did we put the cocoa?"

I got it out while she brought milk and got down mugs. While she was heating milk in the microwave, I sat with my feet curled on the rug and thought about what she'd said when I woke her out of the nightmare.

It was horrible. All that blood. They were all dead. Just like...She hadn't finished that sentence. Just like...what? Had she really seen something like that at one time? People covered with blood? Dead? That would have given me nightmares, for sure.

And when I'd asked if she'd had them often, she'd said,Not so often anymore.

Meaning, I guessed, that in the past she'd had them frequently. Always the same dream? About dead people, and blood?

Gradually the furnace heated the room, and I stopped shivering. When she brought the cups to the table, we stirred the cocoa to dissolve the powder and warmed our hands on the big china mugs before we drank.

She had been shaking when we reached the kitchen, turning on lights all the way. I didn't know if it was from the nighttime temperature of the house or from the nightmare, or both. She seemed to be calming down now, taking sips of the hot cocoa.

"It's good, isn't it? I'm glad you thought of it, Nikki."

"Are you all right now?" I asked.

"Just give me a little more time, and I will be. I wish your father hadn't had to leave us here."

"Me, too," I agreed. "Does Dad know you have nightmares like this? Really bad ones?"

It was a moment or two before she responded. "No. No, I haven't had one since we've been married." Her smile was wan. "It's nice to wake up next to someone after a dream like that. Thank you for coming and waking me up. I hope I didn't scare you."

Half to death,I thought, but didn't say it. "It took me a minute to realize what I was hearing."

"Thank you," she said again, and drained her cup. "I hope I can go back to sleep now."

We stood up and put our cups, unwashed, in the sink. I hesitated. Crystal had never demonstrated any particular fondness for animals, but I then asked, "Would you like to take Buster into your room for the rest of the night? I know he's not supposed to sleep on the beds, but he's really a clean dog, and he's nice and warm to curl up with, even when he's on the top of the quilts. I know you got pretty chilled."

That sounded better than mentioning her terror again, and pointing out that the presence of a big dog could be rather comforting.

Crystal hesitated, then nodded. "Thank you, Nikki. If he'll come with me, I'd like to have him."

Buster would go with any member of the family who invited him. I didn't know if he got onto the bed with her or not, which I would have invited him to do. I went back to bed myself, still wearing Dad's robe with the scent of his shaving lotion on it, and waited to get warm enough to go back to sleep, still pondering Crystal's words and knowing I wasn't brave enough to ask her to explain them further.

Maybe, I thought just before I fell asleep, I'd tell Dad about the nightmare and the things she'd said. Maybe he could figure it out. He certainly wouldn't be afraid to ask her.

The next morning was Sunday. We decided we were smart enough to make pancakes -- measure out the pancake flour and add water and fry them on the big griddle we'd found in the cupboard -- so we were having a substantial breakfast.

"Are we going to church?" I asked. At home, we never missed a Sunday unless somebody was sick.

Crystal was taken aback. "I hadn't planned on it," she demurred immediately. "We don't know anybody here."

"We know God," Sam said unexpectedly. "He's everywhere the same, isn't he?"

"I don't even know where there's a church," Crystal said.

That struck me as absurd. There were churches all over the place. "There's at least one in Trinidad, only a few miles away. And Arcata and Eureka are full of churches. I saw the spires and the crosses when we were driving around."

"I...don't think I feel like going. I hadn't planned on it."

"What's to plan? This is tourist country. I doubt if anyone would object if we went in jeans, but we've all got something dressier than that. It would only take a few minutes to change."

"Not this week," Crystal said with more firmness than she usually displayed. "Maybe next week, when Jeff is back."

We could have gone by ourselves, but it was just a little too far to walk, I decided. The boys didn't really care. They voted for the beach.

"Oh," I said to Crystal as we were clearing the table, "I'll need a ride to my job tomorrow. Eight o'clock in the morning."

She nearly lost the sea of syrup still standing on Jeremy's plate, tilting it toward the sink just in time. "Job? What job?"

"I'm going to be transcribing a handwritten manuscript for the father of the boy who works at the general store. On a computer."

She stared at me as if I'd suddenly become a kumquat. "When did all this come about?"

"The day Dad left. He said it was okay. I'll earn enough money for my school clothes next fall, and maybe somewhere near enough to get me a used computer so I don't have to use Dad's."

"But you can't even know this person!"

"Does anybody usually know the people they go to work for? He's just a man in a wheelchair who can't use the computer himself, and he's written this book in long-hand. You know you can't submit it that way -- "

Crystal ran an agitated hand through her silvery hair, leaving it standing in wisps. I knew she had her moments of being beyond understanding, but I wasn't prepared for her vehemence. "No, I can't let you do this, Nikki."

Stupefied, I felt my jaw drop. "What do you mean you can'tletme? Dad already said Icould."

"Your father isn't here," she snapped, as if the tension had suddenly become too much for her, though why it should have left me baffled.

"I know that. But he said I could. He talked to the man, and we went to his house and met his housekeeper, and Dad said I could do it. I'm expected to be there at eight in the morning, and I need a ride because it's too far to walk."

"No," Crystal said flatly.

Well, we'd not become bosom buddies, and I wasn't happy that my dad had married her, and I didn't expect we'd ever be best friends, but I certainly hadn't anticipated anything like this.

"I want to call Dad and ask him, then," I said finally. "He said Icould,so I don't see how you can say Ican't."

"Because I'm in charge while he's gone," Crystal said, still in that flat, noncompromising tone.

"I'm calling Dad," I repeated. But when I tried, I couldn't reach him. He wasn't at home, and when I tried his office at B&B, he wasn't there, either. I even tried Harborview, thinking he might be at the hospital where Mr. Billock was, but though they admitted Mr. B was a patient, they said there was no one visiting him at the moment and when they paged Dad, nobody answered. Surely he'd keep his cell phone on him, but he didn't answer that number, either. Frustration was at a boiling point.

It didn't make for a pleasant day. I smoldered, and Crystal went into her studio to work. We each fixed our own lunch -- at different times -- and didn't speak to one another all afternoon. I decided if she was in charge, she could deal with supper on her own, and I didn't even show up to clean vegetables for a salad.

Finally Sam peeked his head into my room and asked, "What's going on? How come nobody's fixing anything to eat?"

"Crystal informed me she's the boss while Dad's gone, and that I can't go to my new job, so we're not speaking," I told him. "Fix whatever you can find in the refrigerator. Eating junk for one night isn't going to hurt you any. By tomorrow, I'll be able to talk to Dad."

He regarded me with troubled eyes. "What are you going to do?"

"I told Mr. Gyasi I'd be there at eight, and I will be."

"You're going to walk all that way?"

I'd had time to think about it by this time. "It's too far by road, but I can cut three or four miles off the distance if I go by the beach. Incidentally, unlessshegoes with you, you stay off the beach while I'm gone."

His dismay struck at my conscience, but what could I do about it? Of course Dad had expected to be here to look after the boys, but he hadn't changed any of the rules before he left.

I relented a little. "I don't know how long I'll have to work, but if I start at eight, I'd think I'd be able to come home by four or so. I'll go down to the beach with you then."

He brightened a little. "Can we watch for you from the top of the stairs? And come down when we see you coming?"

"I guess so, but don't start watching until at least four o'clock," I told him.

If Crystal got anything to eat that evening, it was when the rest of us weren't in the kitchen. I tried again to reach Dad at home, and had to leave a message on the answering machine. I didn't explain it -- I thought I'd better tell him my side of the story in person -- and just said I needed to talk to him as soon as possible.

I hoped he'd call back before I went to bed. He didn't. So I had to make up my own mind what to do.

I decided to simply get up early and walk over to the Gyasis' by way of the beach and the stairs. I didn't leave a note. If I didn't show up the next day, I figured Crystal would be smart enough to come to the conclusion that I'd walked to work without her permission.

Did I deliberately neglect to tell her where I'd be working? I don't know. Maybe. She wasn't being receptive to anything I said, and I had no reason to think it would matter to her where I went and who my employer was. At least that's what I told myself when I set the alarm for six-thirty the next morning.

Buster was back in bed with me that night, and I didn't steer him toward Crystal's room. If she had any nightmares, she kept them quieter. If she wanted Buster's company, she'd have to ask for it, but she didn't.

I slept restlessly, waking before the alarm went off.

I didn't want it to wake Crystal up. I wasn't sure what she'd do if she knew I was defying her and going to work against her direct forbidding of it. But I wasn't eager to find out.

Why was she taking such an attitude? What difference did it make to her whether I took a job or not? Especially when I'd explained to her that Dad had met the man and his housekeeper and was satisfied that I'd be perfectly safe and that the material I'd be typing was acceptable?

I didn't put on my shoes until I got down to the kitchen. It was only a quarter of seven and Crystal wasn't likely to be up for some time yet. I ate cold cereal and a banana, and then, because nobody had said what I'd do about lunch, I made a sandwich and stuck an apple in a paper bag to take with me. I could always go down and eat on the beach if I needed to.

I'd allowed plenty of time to get over to the Gyasi house, but by the time I'd gone down our stairs, walked along the beach and around the jutting rock barricade separating our section from theirs, and up the other flight of stairs, I was winded.

Mrs. Mallory let me in, smiling. "Good morning, Nikki. Mr. Gyasi is waiting for you in his study."

"Am I late?" I asked in alarm, but she shook her head. "No, no, you're early. He's always up with the birds, often has trouble sleeping, poor man. He hurts quite a bit, you know."

"What happened to him?" I blurted, and then realized that maybe I'd better learn to curb my tongue.

"Oh, he was in a terrible accident. He never wanted to go back to teaching at the university after he was in that car wreck, though being in a wheelchair wouldn't have kept him from conducting classes. His wife died in the mishap, and that took the heart right out of him, they say. I didn't work for him then, only after he came back to Trinidad to live."

"I thought he'd always lived here," I said, trying to remember the conversation with Mr. Gyasi.

"Oh, he grew up in this house. It's belonged to his family practically forever." She led me along the hallway toward the study that overlooked the ocean. "But he went away to school and taught in a college somewhere. I forget which one, one of those prestigious ones. He only came home after the accident. He'd always owned the house, after his parents died, but he hadn't wanted to live here. But I suppose it seemed a reasonable place to bring his motherless son to grow up." She had been pleasant, smiling, but now her face twisted. "If only those miserable young whelps in the village weren't so unmerciful with Julian. I don't think he's especially happy here, but he's going away to school next year. Here you are. She's here, Mr. Gyasi."

The man swiveled in the mechanized chair to face us. "Well, at least you're on time," he said gruffly. "I'll show you the manuscript -- here -- and the paper you're to use. This for my copy, that heavier bond for finished copies, of which I'll need two. They're to be put into these boxes. I'll be checking them over for accuracy before they're shipped out, of course."

The look he gave me suggested that he thought I might try to get away with covering up my errors.

"There's a spell-checker on the computer," I told him quietly, subduing my nervousness. "It should catch any mistakes."

I could tell by his reaction that though he might have heard of spell-checkers, he didn't really know how they worked.

Without a further invitation, I sat down and turned on the computer, giving it a chance to warm up and give me a blank page. I typed out a line, deliberately misspelling a couple of words. "See? If the spelling is wrong, it makes a wiggly red line under the word. And if you click on it with the right side of the mouse," I demonstrated, "it gives the correct spelling, and then when you click again, it makes the correction on the screen."

He clearly knew nothing about computers. I wondered what he had taught, that he'd remained so uninformed about a tool that was so universally in use. I had the impression that he was impressed but not about to admit it -- not with my knowledge of it, but with the computer's ability to detect misspelled words.

"What shall I do if there's a word I can't interpret?" I asked, reaching for the first page of his handwritten text. "Shall I come ask you, or mark it to check on later?"

"Ask me," he said. "I do not want any mistakes in what you print out."

"All right." I hesitated. "Do you have a publisher for this, or are you printing it yourself?"

Somehow he managed to draw himself taller in his chair, indignation barely under control. "It will be published," he informed me, which didn't answer my question. Maybe I should have kept still, but I was used to having some facts to work with.

"Self-published?" I persisted. "Or do you have a contract with a publisher, or will you be looking for one when it's been printed out?"

"It will not be necessary for me to self-publish," he said, so I got the idea that he expected to find a publisher, and that he was insulted that I would assume it wasn't good enough to find a commercial publisher who would pay him for it, rather than having to pay to get it into print. I knew enough to know that most professional authors expect to be paid, rather than having to pay a subsidy publisher.

"I'm asking because my dad's an editor," I explained. "At Billock & Brandbury Books, out of Seattle. So I've seen a lot of manuscripts." And I remembered how many books he had to read to find one worth publishing, but I didn't tell him that.

His nostrils flared perceptibly. I didn't think he'd ever heard of B&B. It wasn't one of the big New York companies like Simon & Schuster or Doubleday, but it was a respectable publishing house.

"You may begin," he said. "I will be just across the hallway in my own room, reading and revising the last few chapters. If you need to consult with me, you may knock on the door over there."

He wheeled away, leaving me to start the job. I was glad he wasn't standing over me, watching, because I made a few boo-boos before I got everything set up to do manuscript form pages, with numbers and margins set appropriately.

When I'd done the first chapter, I decided I'd better show it to him to make sure it was satisfactory before I went on. When I stood up, I could see the tranquil blue of the ocean beyond the big windows, with a freighter heading toward Humboldt Bay. I hoped the boys wouldn't go down on the beach without Crystal, and I wasn't sure how much time she'd be willing to spend with them, instead of in her studio.

I took in a deep breath and prepared to knock on the door of Mr. Gyasi's room and show him what I'd done so far. Actually, I thought it looked great. I knew the right format for printing it out, and he had a superb printer that turned out completely professional-looking material.

I opened the door into the hallway and ran right into a tall, bulky figure I hadn't been expecting. I gulped aloud and almost fell over backward, while this stranger's face stared down at me in what I could only describe as an unfriendly manner.

Excerpted from Undercurrents by Willo Davis Roberts
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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Undercurrents

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