The Calling

THE CALLING

by

Richard Sanford

Copyright 1990, 2012 by Richard Sanford

Published by Odeon Press at Smashwords

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Darkness has called to darkness…

Robert Lowell, As a Plane Tree by the Water

PART I

Alpenhurst

Chapter 1

Rising in the air, pausing, then dropping like an icicle from a ledge, the spike sunk in deep. Surprisingly deep.

A quick yank couldn't free it. Only by working it forward and backward, side to side. Pushing against the hole it had made, pulling it wider. Then lifting.

In the shadow of the roof, the evening air was cool. The scent of pine and balsam fir carried from the heavy trees across the wide lawn. From far off, the smell of the lake was pure, clear, like a vesper bell.

Surprisingly deep.

Not that anyone was left to surprise. The grounds were quiet. The caretaker had gone.

The old house stood mutely behind, and the only sound under the overhang of the roof at the corner was like a rough whisper. It could have been a hoarse breath at the end of a phone in the senseless pit of night. Or a sardonic whistle through dry lips. Or a July evening settling through sun-dried grass at the edge of the woods.

No one else heard it, the sound like air slipping up through a throat like a dry sleeve, and there was no one to see. Nothing could have seen but the red-tailed hawk.

Two thousand feet up, circling on its wide bank of air, the sound in its ears was a thin rush. Far below, the oblong lake flashed white, like a chunk of mirror, in the corner of its eye.

It could have spotted what was happening beside the great house, beyond the black fingers that stretched across the grass from the tall firs. The hawk's eyes, like precision lenses, could have tightened on the spike as it rose just inside the square shade of the eave then drilled down in the same patch of shadow, at the corner of the long slate-colored roof.

It was drawn to imperfection. Any quick glint of a blade would catch its eye, or the slash of something not quite a blade but a blade of sorts, a kind of claw.

It would spot the small detail, even in the forest, the hard sharp whistle that ripped the leaves, long before the dark burst and the gushing warmth it could nearly taste on its black whip tongue, or the dead weight going down on heavy knees then tilting, pitching forward, mouth gaping in wet rot.

The spike rose again and hovered there, as though considering its target. The air was still.

Down. Tock.

Down and in deep. Tock. A hollow pop like suction in an empty skull.

There. That would do.

Dark patches spread over the grass. Long before they joined the shadow of the eave, the spike had been ground back and forth and lifted free.

Hands had reinserted it into the hole it had come from, out in the middle of the caretaker's green lawn. The hose, reattached, lay in precisely the same path, the wavy green tracing from the old house to the sprinkler. No one had seen.

In the patch of shade made by the corner overhang, the cross-shaped holes in the black dirt had been tamped shut. Hands had patted and smoothed the deep punctures made with the spike. The hands had closed all but one—so whoever saw it would know.

As deepening shadows spread all the way to the eave, the heady smell of firs and matted needles and rich, dry earth in evening slipped from the mouth of the forest. It settled like a dark breath against the walls of the old house which sat cooling, and waiting.

Chapter 2

Dana touched her lip with her tongue and looked down. The road was winding up a steeper grade. Faces of sheared-off granite walled the left side of the incline, and black tree roots stuck straight out of the cliffside like bony fingers. Below the roots, small slides had piled stones by the pavement in natural cairns.

The lake lay somewhere on the right side of the car, but they were too far away to see it. When Dana looked down the hill, it was like a wonderland forest. White firs and balsam firs beside the road towered above them like sleepy giants. She could see the same kinds of trees from the middles and tops as they descended the hill. It was mysterious and thrilling looking down on the tall ones from above.

Louis, you have to see this! She pulled her knees up under her, rising in the seat, and gave his leg a squeeze.

Okay, okay. You're supposed to be telling me where I'm going. They don't mark the damn roads up here. They just assume you know... wow, that is nice. He glanced over the side for a moment.

Nice, Dana said, grinning at him behind her shades.

Was this really happening to them? She shook her head. She slipped her fingers into her black hair and shook it out. Nice, all right. Then she slid back down in the seat and traced their progress on the Altos Realty map.

She knew Louis was in no mood to miss the turn. They had already coasted past the cutoff to Tallac Lane, the unlikely-looking two-lane access road, and had spent half an hour getting back. She studied the map. In the next ten minutes they saw no other cars on the winding road, but Dana knew it was coming, just beyond the Lapis Creek bridge.

There! A mailbox on a bright yellow post was coming into view on the left. The brochure had mentioned it at the end of the property.

There's no name, Louis protested as they got close.

Turn here, just turn.

He did, and it was suddenly darker. The little road entered a heavy patch of trees that clumped together, making a dense canopy above the car. They bounded down the narrow dirt trail. Ten yards in front of them, the road made a turn and disappeared in the trees.

You sure? he glanced at her before they took the bend to no return.

Dana flashed on the possibility that they were trespassing, soon to be spotted by the owner or his henchmen, jumped by some crazy pack of backwoods inbred types. She took comfort in the fact that what you could imagine rarely happened.

Yes! she shouted.

They rolled around the bend and the car began to vibrate, but it was a pleasant vibration, the kind that comes with a transition to stone surface after rutted dirt road. A little farther along, past the granite cinders and wider flat stones, the trees opened and a token of civilization appeared like a mirage, not quite real, a patch of grass under bright sun.

The sky opened and the grass was all around them. The stone road had become a driveway, rising gently up a long sloping yard.

See! I knew it!

You knew it all right.

It looked bigger than their memories of the slides. It was only two stories, but the high roof gave Alpenhurst dominance over the two-hundred-foot yard. Tall firs framed the back and grew close enough to cast shade on the west wing.

The driveway ran along the east side of the yard and circled back on itself. A second branch of the drive looped past the tall front door. The short east wing was a single story that joined under the broad overhang of the main roof.

The bay windows on both floors would look dazzling in morning light in midsummer, but afternoon shadows had subdued them. The same shadows fell over the windshield as Louis and Dana pulled up before the front door, peaks of shade from the broad roof that overspread Alpenhurst like dark wings.

Hey, where are you going?

Dana was out the door, running into the yard. She turned and looked back. Her face was pure delight.

It's magnificent, Louis.

He got out too and looked up, suitably awestruck.

Of course it's magnificent. What did you expect? Let's rent out that entire wing. We'd never know they were there.

Dana surveyed the house, especially the bay windows. She thought back to the slides they saw during the presentation by Altos. The breakfast nook was on the west end. She spotted the rose garden outside it on the left side of the house, somewhat smaller than the pictures had made it seem, but a garden nonetheless.

She took a deep breath. She couldn't quibble about the rose garden. One of the select timeshare properties in the world, the Altos representative had said at the drawing, and Dana recalled it as her eyes roamed over the spreading chalet, a Black Forest manor with walls dripping in ivy and a huge door beneath an arched lintel.

The four bedrooms were all upstairs. The set of windows on the left were the guest bedrooms, and the bay window on the right... Dana blinked. She squinted at the bay window of the master bedroom and blinked again.

She thought for a moment that something had moved there, just inside, behind the curtain on the right. But now the white panel was hanging undisturbed. A bird had flown by, reflecting for an instant in the glass, or it had been her imagination.

Shall we? Daintily between forefinger and thumb, Louis was holding up the keys.

Dana glanced at the window again, just for a moment, then joined him. They each took a suitcase and climbed the broad front steps of cement and stone. There was a heavy metallic click as he turned the key in the tall front door that was dark as railroad ties.

At the same moment, in the back of the house, a door was easing shut, the lock quietly turning.

Chapter 3

They went in and put the bags down, and for a long moment they could only stare. On the right the living room ceiling soared upward in dark beams. Straight ahead, a staircase rose toward the back wall then turned and ascended. A leaded window admitted enough light to reveal intricate carving on the dark panels that framed the stair.

In the room a long brown sofa, comfortably sagged, sat across from two stuffed chairs, an Ansel Adams photo book on the heavy coffee table between them.

Is it for us? An elaborate fruit basket occupied the rest of the table, and Dana crossed into the living room and plucked an envelope from it. It's from Altos. She passed the card to Louis, a welcome to Alpenhurst with the company logo—isosceles mountains—in the background.

I know what's in here, it has to be. Dana strode the other way, past the stairs, and reached for the double doors to the west wing. This is going to be my favorite room, I know it. She turned the knobs.

She stepped into the breakfast nook, an airy, intimate room. On the far side of white table and chairs, French windows opened on the little plot of roses.

I know what I'm looking for, Louis called and she followed him into the next room. The kitchen looked old and tall and practical with cabinets above and below, long white tile counters flanking the sink, and heavy pots and pans suspended above the gas range.

All right! He was through the kitchen, holding open a redwood door. By the time she reached him, he was already setting the thermostat. This is going to be stop number one on the path to ultimate decadence. Nice to be home, isn't it?

They stood together in the door of the sauna. In a minute, a little heat began to rise from the stones in the corner. Dana was thinking they could have won the pocket calculator in the drawing, or one of the color TVs. Instead they had the Alpenhurst sauna all to themselves for a month—and the rest of the house.

Let's build up some heat, he said, closing the door, backing out.

In the meantime, care for a snack? Wait'll you see what I saw.

Nachos? Escargot?

He followed her back through the kitchen. They entered the dining room and Dana spread her arms. Ta da.

Above a wide table surrounded by eight chairs hung an elaborate chandelier. French provincial china filled a tall cherry hutch, and windows with quaint interior shutters looked onto the back yard and the forest.

Wasn't this one of the slides? She was thinking of the presentation at the drawing. Louis joined her at the wall opposite the hutch.

I think you're right. It was one of a series of old photos of Alpenhurst. They were all mounted in dark frames, and beneath each picture was a legend of a paragraph or two.

The first shot showed the house as it once had been, somewhat smaller but seeming just as grand, ladies under parasols and bonnets and whiskered gentlemen in light suits standing stiffly, one foot forward, on the lawn. She read the note.

Alpenhurst was constructed in 1897, the second home of San Francisco mining magnate R.S. Marquand. On summer evenings at the turn of the century, the Marquands received guests from the city who typically arrived at Agate Bay then travelled the rest of the way in carriages sent down to meet them.

They moved to the next picture, a similar view, but the trees were blackened and part of the east wing was charred. Louis read the legend.

In August of 1919, a portion of the grounds of Alpenhurst was destroyed by fire. A bucket brigade from the town of Lapis—and an opportune shift in the wind—finally spared the house.

And they restored it. Dana went on to the next photo.

The Hale family completely restored the east wing and added the porte-cochere, which afforded shelter for guests who arrived during inclement weather. The Hales installed leaded glass in the entryway and in windows on both floors. In addition, the original first floor was replaced with tessellated flooring throughout, a mosaic of beech and oak laid by craftsmen from Washington State.

Jacks Peak, Echo Summit, Boomerang Lake, Bloodsucker Lake. Check this one—Lover's Leap. Louis was surveying a wall map of the Tahoe area. He chuckled, but at the same time he imagined how terrifying it could be to be lost out there. In the winter you could make an SOS with rocks or branches in the snow. Funny, in the summer... it could be harder.

Tessellated, he thought suddenly, and checked the floor. The geometry of alternating woods was like parquet but more intricate. A puzzle under foot, a grand design.

Dana glanced out of the dining room toward the foot of the stairs. She didn't like them. They were making her feel cold, and at first she didn't know why. Then it got clearer.

It had been her imagination. Definitely. She had made it up—the one behind the curtain in the room up there. If so, she could fix it, that was for sure. She knew what she could do. When she was finished, there would only be... PULL OUT! Get conscious.

And she did. She didn't sink in that time, only skimmed the surface. But she was being drawn away. She began walking toward the stairs. Louis was saying something.

The view out the front window caught her eye. Whoever it was could have come across that lawn. There could be others. They despised her sudden good luck, her decadent little sojourn. Ragged creatures from the city were dragging up the long yard, ones Dana might have seen that morning, heaped in a doorway that smelled of urine, wrapped in filthy blankets, bare soles clubbed by night sticks, pitched out of paddy wagons into cells and morgues and puddles of vomit and two-dollar red wine. They wanted a little of their own back, that was all. They were staggering in close, paying Dana a visit, half a dozen of them, sores on their faces. The one in front with the torn coat, shoulders steaming, was lifting his hand—

Don't you think so? Louis was walking past her.

Think so what? she said, shaking her head. Not normal.

I said, this must be a den, don't you think?

He was already opening the door on the other side of the stairs. Her heart was racing. What else was new? She could tell it was, but barely. It was so common it was second nature, just the other way of being. Downshift. Slow it down. Not normal, thoughts like that weren't. Neither was she, and Dana could not recall a time when she hadn't known that, deep down. It didn't keep her from feeling cold. Lost. She glanced again at the front window and beyond, the empty front yard.

Louis stepped into the sitting room. Tall bookcases filled with hardbound volumes covered an entire wall, and he noticed a set, something like Trollope or Balzac or, he hoped, Conan Doyle. A brandy decanter and glasses sat on a table between deep chairs. Behind him, he heard her bounding up, feet hitting the landing.

He left the room and followed, taking the stairs two at a time. At the top, the second floor hall ran right and left. Louis turned right.

The first door opened on a bedroom with a graceful old armoire and canopy bed. No Dana. Two other bedrooms lay at the end of the wing, a matching pair of guest rooms that shared a chimney stack, the fireplaces in the rooms built back-to-back. No Dana.

Louis? She sounded a little petulant or a little scared. It came from the far end of the hall.

There was only one door at the east end and it was open. That wing was darker, opposite the afternoon light that had begun to lose itself