Night Songs by Charles L. Grant Read Free Book Online Page A

no pain.
        "Gran, come back to me," she whimpered between sobs. "Gran, please. Don't leave me alone, not now when I need you."
        The floor creaked rhythmically. The moon began to dim as the night fog returned.
        "Gran, listen," she whispered earnestly.
        A bloated brown spider walked over the old man's shin.
        "Gran, listen, please don't go. Please, Gran? Gran?"
        She spread the dead man's fingers until the skin between was taut, near to tearing, took the thumb into her mouth and bit down slowly, not too hard-she wouldn't have him screaming. She lifted her head to glare at the night; to curse the dark and the fog and the moon and the stars; to curse the sea and the island and the shack where she knelt.
        The faint cry of a gull, the scrabbling of a rat, the rubbing of sawgrass like the husk of a ghost.
        And her voice was a woman's ten times her age. "I won't let you go, Gran. You're all I have, and I won't let you go."
        For a long moment there was a last bit of fear and a brief troubled wondering if her mind had let go. Then she took a deep breath and held it until her lungs were aching. She released it in slow spurts and in doing so released her hold on the shack, on the beach, on the island in the ocean. There was only Gran now, and the old songs, herself in a universe of slow-stirring shadows.
        The Atlantic spoke, and she listened; the fog whispered, and she cocked her head; the lamp hissed, and she nodded.
        Carefully, moving as if dealing with cold, fragile black crystal- do now all I tell you, child, do it all now and it will all come right-she positioned his hands over his sunken stomach, one above the other, the fingertips angled toward the shoulders. She did not close the blind eyes-she wanted him to see everything so he could correct her mistakes. If she made a mistake. But she would not, dared not. Not now. Not now.
        The Atlantic; the fog; the eye of the lamp. The creaking of the shack; the dead silence of the moon.
        She moved on her knees to the foot of the bed, her hands in position to mirror Gran's exactly.
        A last thought that momentarily brought life to the brown eyes: is this what they taught you in school, is this what you learned from Colin and the others, is this what you believe in, is this sane… is it… sane… is this…
        The sea whispered.
        The thought died.
        "I will sing you, Gran," was a prayer and a query, and her voice filled the shack though its volume was low, the words swooping like ravens, darting like hawks, waiting like predators on the dead man's heart. Without joy, without promise, but a hard hopeful urging that surged to match the tide and hold, hold, until the words became a humming that lasted until dawn.
        The words Gran had taught her to call on his gods.
        And when she had finished and had slept for an hour, she started again.
        For five days she worked at the luncheonette until seven, then returned to the shack where she ate, slept, and passed the night singing-staring at the cheap decanter she'd bought at Peg Fletcher's. There was gleaming red liquid in the cut-glass container, and each night a little more.
        Five days later she walked into the police station and told them Gran was dead.
        
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        Dead.
        And she didn't notice the way people looked at her now-except during those brief moments when the mind fog lifted and she wondered where she was.
        A movement. Her eyes shifted. There. There on the water. Seven longboats making their way south just beyond the breakers. Dark against the sea, the figures within black in their slickers. She blinked rapidly to drive off the hazy past, and saw the people on the beach. Only a few yet, but a few more stumbling down the dunes; not one of them looked in her direction.
        The boats turned, pitched, and rolled as they crested the waves and made