The Servants of Twilight Read online

  That Sunday afternoon in February, when death suddenly stepped up and grinned at Joey, it wasn’t in the form of the viruses and bacteria about which Christine worried. It was just an old woman with stringy gray hair, a pallid face, and gray eyes the shade of dirty ice.

  When Christine and Joey left the mall by way of Bullock’s Department Store, it was five minutes past three. Sun glinted off automobile chrome and windshield glass from one end of the broad parking lot to the other. Their silvergray Pontiac Firebird was in the row directly in front of Bullock’s doors, the twelfth car in the line, and they were almost to it when the old woman appeared.

  She stepped out from between the Firebird and a white Ford van, directly into their path.

  She didn’t seem threatening at first. She was a bit odd, sure, but nothing worse than that. Her shoulder-length mane of thick gray hair looked windblown, although only a mild breeze washed across the lot. She was in her sixties, perhaps even early seventies, forty years older than Christine, but her face wasn’t deeply lined, and her skin was baby-smooth; she had the unnatural puffiness that was often associated with cortisone injections. Pointed nose. Small mouth, thick lips. A round, dimpled chin. She was wearing a simple turquoise necklace, a long-sleeved green blouse, green skirt, green shoes. On her plump hands were eight rings, all green: turquoise, malachite, emeralds. The unrelieved green suggested a uniform of some kind.

  She blinked at Joey, grinned, and said, “My heavens, aren’t you a handsome young man?”

  Christine smiled. Unsolicited compliments from strangers were nothing new to Joey. With his dark hair, intense blue eyes, and well-related features, he was a strikingly good-looking child.

  “Yes, sir, a regular little movie star,” the old woman said.

  “Thank you,” Joey said, blushing.

  Christine got a closer look at the stranger and had to revise her initial impression of grandmotherliness. There were specks of lint on the old woman’s badly wrinkled skirt, two small food stains on her blouse, and a sprinkling of dandruff on her shoulders. Her stockings bagged at the knees, and the left one had a run in it. She was holding a smouldering cigarette, and the fingers of her right hand were yellow with nicotine. She was one of those people from whom kids should never accept candy or cookies or any other treat—not because she seemed the type to poison or molest children (which she did not), but because she seemed the type to keep a dirty kitchen. Even on close inspection, she didn’t appear dangerous, just unkempt.

  Leaning toward Joey, grinning down at him, paying no attention whatever to Christine, she said, “What’s your name, young man? Can you tell me your name?”

  “Joey,” he said shyly.

  “How old are you, Joey?”

  “Six.”

  “Only six and already pretty enough to make the ladies swoon!”

  Joey fidgeted with embarrassment and clearly wished he could bolt for the car. But he stayed where he was and behaved courteously, the way his mother had taught him.

  The old woman said, “I’ll bet a dollar to a doughnut that I know your birthday.”

  “I don’t have a doughnut,” Joey said, taking the bet literally, solemnly warning her that he wouldn’t be able to pay off if he lost.

  “Isn’t that cute?” the old woman said to him. “So perfectly, wonderfully cute. But I know. You were born on Christmas Eve.”

  “Nope,” Joey said. “Febroonary second.”

  “February second? Oh, now, don’t joke around with me,” she said, still ignoring Christine, still grinning broadly at Joey, wagging one nicotine-yellowed finger at him. “Sure as shootin’, you were born December twenty-fourth.”

  Christine wondered what the old woman was leading up to.

  Joey said, “Mom, you tell her. Febroonary second. Does she owe me a dollar?”

  “No, she doesn’t owe you anything, honey,” Christine said. “It wasn’t a real bet.”

  “Well,” he said, “if I’d lost, I couldn’t’ve given her any doughnut anyway, so I guess it’s okay if she don’t give me a dollar.”

  Finally the old woman raised her head and looked at Christine.

  Christine started to smile but stopped when she saw the stranger’s eyes. They were hard, cold, angry. They were neither the eyes of a grandmother nor those of a harmless old bag lady. There was power in them—and stubbornness and flinty resolve. The woman wasn’t smiling anymore, either.

  What’s going on here?

  Before Christine could speak, the woman said, “He was born on Christmas Eve, wasn’t he? Hmmm? Wasn’t he?” She spoke with such urgency, with such force that she sprayed spittle at Christine. She didn’t wait for an answer, either, but hurried on: “You’re lying about February second. You’re just trying to hide, both of you, but I know the truth. I know. You can’t fool me. Not me.”

  Suddenly she seemed dangerous, after all.

  Christine put a hand on Joey’s shoulder and urged him around the crone, toward the car.

  But the woman stepped sideways, blocking them. She waved her cigarette at Joey, glared at him, and said, “I know who you are. I know what you are, everything about you, everything. Better believe it. Oh, yes, yes, I know, yes.”

  A nut, Christine thought, and her stomach twisted. Jesus. A crazy old lady, the kind who might be capable of anything. God, please let her be harmless.

  Looking bewildered, Joey backed away from the woman, grabbed his mother’s hand and squeezed tight.

  “Please get out of our way,” Christine said, trying to maintain a calm and reasonable tone of voice, wanting very much not to antagonize.

  The old woman refused to move. She brought the cigarette to her lips. Her hand was shaking.

  Holding Joey’s hand, Christine tried to go around the stranger.

  But again the woman blocked them. She puffed nervously on her cigarette and blew smoke out her nostrils. She never took her eyes off Joey.

  Christine looked around the parking lot. A few people were getting out of a car two rows away, and two young men were at the end of this row, heading in the other direction, but no one was near enough to help if the crazy woman became violent.

  Throwing down her cigarette, hyperventilating, eyes bulging, looking like a big malicious toad, the woman said, “Oh, yeah, I know your ugly, vicious, hateful secrets, you little fraud.”

  Christine’s heart began to hammer.

  “Get out of our way,” she said sharply, no longer trying to remain—or even able to remain—calm.

  “You can’t fool me with your play-acting—”

  Joey began to cry.

  “—and your phony cuteness. Tears won’t help, either.”

  For the third time, Christine tried to go around the woman—and was blocked again.

  The harridan’s face hardened in anger. “I know exactly what you are, you little monster.”

  Christine shoved, and the old woman stumbled backward.

  Pulling Joey with her, Christine hurried to the car, feeling as if she were in a nightmare, running in slow-motion.

  The car door was locked. She was a compulsive doorlocker.

  She wished that, for once, she had been careless.

  The old woman scuttled in behind them, shouting something that Christine couldn’t hear because her ears were filled with the frantic pounding of her heart and with Joey’s crying.

  “Mom!”

  Joey was almost jerked out of her grasp. The old woman had her talons hooked in his shirt.

  “Let go of him, damn you!” Christine said.

  “Admit it!” the old woman shrieked at him. “Admit what you are!”

  Christine shoved again.

  The woman wouldn’t let go.

  Christine struck her, open-handed, first on the shoulder, then across the face.

  The old woman tottered backward, and Joey twisted away from her, and his shirt tore.

  Somehow, even with shaking hands, Christine fitted the key into the lock, opened the car door, pushed Joey inside. He scra
mbled across to the passenger’s seat, and she got behind the wheel and pulled the door shut with immense relief. Locked it.

  The old woman peered in the driver’s-side window. “Listen to me!” she shouted. “Listen!”

  Christine jammed the key in the ignition, switched it on, pumped the accelerator. The engine roared.

  With one milk-white fist, the crazy woman thumped the roof of the car. Again. And again.

  Christine put the Firebird in gear and backed out of the parking space, moving slowly, not wanting to hurt the old woman, just wanting to get the hell away from her.

  The lunatic followed, shuffling along, bent over, holding on to the door handle, glaring at Christine. “He’s got to die. He’s got to die.”

  Sobbing, Joey said, “Mom, don’t let her get me!”

  “She won’t get you, honey,” Christine said, her mouth so dry that she was barely able to get the words out.

  The boy huddled against his locked door, eyes streaming tears but open wide and fixed on the contorted face of the stringy-haired harpy at his mother’s window.

  Still in reverse, Christine accelerated a bit, turned the wheel, and nearly backed into another car that was coming slowly down the row. The other driver blew his horn, and Christine stopped just in time, with a harsh bark of brakes.

  “He’s got to die!” the old woman screamed. She slammed the side of one pale fist into the window almost hard enough to break the glass.

  This can’t be happening, Christine thought. Not on a sunny Sunday. Not in peaceful Costa Mesa.

  The old woman struck the window again.

  “He’s got to die!”

  Spittle sprayed the glass.

  Christine had the car in gear and was moving away, but the old woman held on. Christine accelerated. Still, the woman kept a grip on the door handle, slid and ran and stumbled along with the car, ten feet, twenty, thirty feet, faster, faster still. Christ, was she human? Where did such an old woman find the strength and tenacity to hold on like this? She leered in through the side window, and there was such ferocity in her eyes that it wouldn’t have surprised Christine if, in spite of her size and age, the hag had torn the door off. But at last she let go with a howl of anger and frustration.

  At the end of the row, Christine turned right. She drove too fast through the parking lot, and in less than a minute they were away from the mall, on Bristol Street, heading north.

  Joey was still crying, though more softly than before.

  “It’s all right, sweetheart. It’s okay now. She’s gone.”

  She drove to MacArthur Boulevard, turned right, went three blocks, repeatedly glancing in the rearview mirror to see if they were being followed, even though she knew there wasn’t much chance of that. Finally she pulled over to the curb and stopped.

  She was shaking. She hoped Joey wouldn’t notice.

  Pulling a Kleenex from the small box on the console, she said, “Here you are, honey. Dry your eyes, blow your nose, and be brave for Mommy. Okay?”

  “Okay,” he said, accepting the tissue. Shortly, he was composed.

  “Feeling better?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Sorta.”

  “Scared?”

  “I was.”

  “But not now?”

  He shook his head.

  “You know,” Christine said, “she really didn’t mean all those nasty things she said to you.”

  He looked at her, puzzled. His lower lip trembled, but his voice was steady. “Then why’d she say it if she didn’t mean it?”

  “Well, she couldn’t help herself. She was a sick lady.”

  “You mean . . . like sick with the flu?”

  “No, honey. I mean . . . mentally ill . . . disturbed.”

  “She was a real Looney Tune, huh?”

  He had gotten that expression from Val Gardner, Christine’s business partner. This was the first time she’d heard him use it, and she wondered what other, less socially acceptable words he might have picked up from the same source.

  “Was she a real Looney Tune, Mom? Was she crazy?”

  “Mentally disturbed, yes.”

  He frowned.

  She said, “That doesn’t make it any easier to understand, huh?”

  “Nope. ’Cause what does crazy really mean, anyway, if it doesn’t mean being locked up in a rubber room? And even if she was a crazy old lady, why was she so mad at me? Huh? I never even saw her before.”

  “Well . . .”

  How do you explain psychotic behavior to a six-year-old? She could think of no way to do it without being ridiculously simplistic; however, in this case, a simplistic answer was better than none.

  “Maybe she once had a little boy of her own, a little boy she loved very much, but maybe he wasn’t a good little boy like you. Maybe he grew up to be very bad and did a lot of terrible things that broke his mother’s heart. Something like that could . . . unbalance her a little.”

  “So now maybe she hates all little boys, whether she knows them or not,” he said.

  “Yes, perhaps.”

  “Because they remind her of her own little boy? Is that it?”

  “That’s right.”

  He thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah. I can sorta see how that could be.”

  She smiled at him and mussed his hair. “Hey, I’ll tell you what—let’s stop at Baskin-Robbins and get an ice cream cone. I think their flavor of the month is peanut butter and chocolate. That’s one of your favorites, isn’t it?”

  He was obviously surprised. She didn’t approve of too much fat in his diet, and she planned his meals carefully. Ice cream wasn’t a frequent indulgence. He seized the moment and said, “Could I have one scoop of that and one scoop of lemon custard?”

  “Two scoops?”

  “It’s Sunday,” he said.

  “Last time I looked, Sunday wasn’t so all-fired special. There’s one of them every week. Or has that changed while I wasn’t paying attention?”

  “Well . . . but . . . see, I’ve just had . . .” He screwed up his face, thinking hard. He worked his mouth as if chewing on a piece of taffy, then said, “I’ve just had a . . . a traumamatatic experience.”

  “Traumatic experience?”

  “Yeah. That’s it.”

  She blinked at him. “Where’d you get a big word like that? Oh. Of course. Never mind. Val.”

  According to Valerie Gardner, who was given to theatrics, just getting up in the morning was a traumatic experience. Val had about half a dozen traumatic experiences every day—and thrived on them.

  “So it’s Sunday, and I had this traumatic experience,” Joey said, “and I think maybe what I better do is, I better have two scoops of ice cream to make up for it. You know?”

  “I know I’d better not hear about another traumatic experience for at least ten years.”

  “What about the ice cream?”

  She looked at his torn shirt. “Two scoops,” she agreed.

  “Wow! This is some terrific day, isn’t it? A real Looney Tune and a double-dip ice cream!”

  Christine never ceased to be amazed by the resiliency of children, especially the resiliency of this child. Already, in his mind, he had transmuted the encounter with the old woman, had changed it from a moment of terror to an adventure that was not quite—but almost—as good as a visit to an ice cream parlor.

  “You’re some kid,” she said.

  “You’re some mom.”

  He turned on the radio and hummed along happily with the music, all the way to Baskin-Robbins.

  Christine kept checking the rearview mirror. No one was following them. She was sure of that. But she kept checking anyway.

  2

  After a light dinner at the kitchen table with Joey, Christine went to her desk in the den to catch up on paperwork. She and Val Gardner owned a gourmet shop called Wine & Dine in Newport Beach, where they sold fine wines, specialty foods from all over the world, high quality cooking utensils, and slightly exotic appliances like
pasta-makers and espresso machines. The store was in its sixth year of operation and was solidly established; in fact, it was returning considerably more profit than either Christine or Val had ever dared hope when they’d first opened their doors for business. Now, they were planning to open a second outlet this summer, then a third store in West Los Angeles sometime next year. Their success was exciting and gratifying, but the business demanded an ever-increasing amount of their time. This wasn’t the first weekend evening that she had spent catching up on paperwork.

  She wasn’t complaining. Before Wine & Dine, she had worked as a waitress, six days a week, holding down two jobs at the same time: a four-hour lunch shift in a diner and a six-hour dinner shift at a moderately expensive French restaurant, Chez Lavelle. Because she was a polite and attentive waitress who hustled her butt off, the tips had been good at the diner and excellent at Chez Lavelle, but after a few years the work numbed and aged her: the sixty-hour weeks; the busboys who often came to work so high on drugs that she had to cover for them and do two jobs instead of one; the lecherous guys who ate lunch at the diner and who could be gross and obnoxious and frighteningly persistent, but who had to be turned down with coquettish good humor for the sake of business. She spent so many hours on her feet that, on her day off, she did nothing but sit with her aching legs raised on an ottoman while she read the Sunday papers with special attention to the financial section, dreaming of one day owning her own business.

  But because of the tips and because she lived frugally—even doing without a car for two years—she had eventually managed to put enough aside to pay for a one-week cruise to Mexico aboard a luxury liner, the Aztec Princess, and had accumulated a nest egg large enough to provide half the cash with which she and Val had launched their gourmet shop. Both the cruise and the shop had radically changed her life.