He thought of Walt Sorenson leaning close to him at the roadhouse the night they’d met, that story of the fortune-teller who’d seen death in the rain and told him to be aware of travelers in need.
He might have believed, Arlen thought. He was one of the few who might have believed, and I didn’t see a damn thing before he died. Couldn’t warn him.
Why couldn’t he? The man had died; Arlen had watched his body burn, had seen his flesh melt from his bones. Why hadn’t Arlen been offered any warning? Why hadn’t he looked into Sorenson’s eyes and seen smoke?
It’s this place, he thought. There’s something wrong with this place. Death hides here, even from me.
The Cypress House, it was called. The Cypress House. That brought back memories, too. Not of a highway tavern, though. No, no. The cypress houses of Arlen’s youth had been quite different than that. They’d been houses of
death
another sort entirely. The last Pope was in one now. Every Pope who’d passed on was, as far as Arlen knew. Always would be. Cypress wood was required in the sacred burial rites of many faiths in many lands. The branches of the trees themselves were symbols of
death
mourning. Arlen’s father had carved them many times. The trees were not an uncommon symbol among German gravestones. The leaves stayed evergreen even after the tree had been felled, and this was believed to be a sign of spiritual immortality, a representation of the insignificance of the body’s passing. It went back to the Romans or the Greeks or some such, went back countless years, this idea of the cypress as an emblem of
death
morbid significance. What a terrible name for an inn. The Cypress House. He was edging toward sleep in a cypress house. He was edging toward—
death a coffin sleep in a cypress house death you are edging toward death
“We’re leaving soon as we can,” Arlen said, speaking to no one. “Soon as we can, we’re going home.” Then he brought his hands up and dropped them over his face, because keeping his eyes shut in this room with the boarded-up windows still didn’t offer enough darkness.
12
HIS SLEEP WAS RESTLESS and oppressive, the tossing-and-turning, half-conscious slumber of a drunk. Dreams blurred with reality, and coherent thoughts spun a tangled dance with dark visions and memories. Men with skeletal faces leered at him, then vanished and turned back into the dark walls of the room before another blink conjured up a rattlesnake coiled on a slab of West Virginia stone and another brought forth a slick of burgundy liquid on soil in France, mustard gas after it had settled to earth.
He heard Paul’s voice and Rebecca Cady’s and tried to listen to them, but they became his father’s voice and then Edwin Main’s, the man who’d come to kill his father many years ago. Life was rushing past, stacking days upon days, but still some things wouldn’t stay buried. Not Isaac’s face, not his voice.
You’re all I have in this world, son, that death can’t take. This world isn’t anything but a sojourn, to be sure, but death removes every trace unless you’ve taken pains to leave one behind. You’re my trace, Arlen.
Isaac Wagner’s bearded face split into a smile of crooked teeth, and he started a laugh that ended in a howl. The howl went on and on, a howl of madness, a howl of… wind.
The wind was roaring now, pushing at the walls of the Cypress House, the building shuddering in its grasp. Arlen tried to open his eyes, but the lids slid down again. He had to get on his feet, had to get out of here. There was something wrong in this place, terribly wrong, and he’d brought Paul Brickhill here and now was responsible for getting him out. They had to get out. It was time to get on his feet, and then they could hike to a train station… but he had no money. Someone had taken his money. His protection from hard times was gone, taken from him so easily when it had been so hard to build.
A voice whispered again, and he expected Isaac’s and cried out against it, but this voice was disembodied, distant.
The seawall may not hold… most of the water has been drawn out of Tampa Bay… the storm will be weaker than when it passed through the Keys, but if the seawall fails…
A radio. They were listening to a radio. Let them listen; listening wouldn’t change a thing. The storm would do what it would do, and they would be here for it. He had nowhere else to go. He was but another soldier in the trenches again, in a place where the trenches were filled with desperate, lost men.
He woke when the wind reached a scream. The door swung open, and he spun with a grunt and found himself facing Paul Brickhill.
“Arlen? Rebecca says you’d best come downstairs. It’s getting close.”