Charles L Grant - [Black Oak 04] - Hunting Ground

"You ever seen a dead body?"

"Yes."

"Not like this you haven't."

Proctor saw the sheet-covered body, smelled the blood. "Gladman?"

She nodded.

"The Ripper?"

She nodded again.

"So what's so different about this that 1 have to see it?"

She nodded, and the sergeant yanked off the sheet.

Proctor swallowed hard.

"That's not all," she said quietly. She touched her forehead, and Proctor squinted through the dim light. The blood

was smeared across Gladman's face, soaked into his shirt and the top of his trousers. "Closer," she said.

"I don't think so."

She touched her forehead again. "Above his eyes."

He looked again, and shrugged. "I don't get it."

"Neither do I. He carved a P in there, Proctor. Right into the bone."

Praise for the Black Oak series: Black Oak: Genesis

"A truly great gothic tale... Charles Grant is a grand

storyteller." —Harriet Klausner, paintedrock.com

Black Oak: The Hush of Dark Wings

"Relies more on atmosphere and suggestion .. . [Grant's] quiet approach is highly effective." —Science Fiction

Chronicle

"Attractive entertainment... moves crisply along." —Locus

Other praise for Charles Grant:

"The leading exponent of subtle dark fantasy."

—Publishers Weekly

"As usual, Grant eschews gore for more subtle chills."

—Kirkus Reviews

Previously, in Black Oak

T

o all those who apply for a position at Black Oak Inves-tigations, Ethan Proctor eventually asks: "Do you believe in

ghosts?"

Taylor Blaine, a wealthy businessman living in Connecti-cut, has hired Black Oak to find his daughter, Celeste.

She has been missing for thirteen years.

Blaine promises Proctor all the money he needs to find even one small hint that she's still alive. However, his other

children, the twins Frederick and Alicia, are opposed to the idea.

"He doesn't like you," Lana Kelaleha tells her boss. "I think he thinks you're just in it for the money."

"He's a snob," Proctor answers. "I can handle it. Don't worry."

"You'd better handle it soon. Frederick has just taken over the company and fired us."

Proctor has a dream:

A vast obsidian plain under a huge faceless moon. Obsid-ian trees whose stiff sharp leaves clack and clatter in the

wake of a swift dark wind. The ground's surface smooth and even, reflected moonlight giving the surface a depth that

makes crossing it seem like crossing clear ice over still black water. Winged creatures in the sky, silent, gliding, leaving

faint trails of gray smoke that twisted and tore and soon vanished.

Proctor knows it's a dream.

He has been here before.

* * *

Ellen Proctor hasn't said a word in almost seven years.

While in England, Proctor receives a telephone call from his mother's physician:

"Proctor? It's Paul Browning."

Proctor can't speak, can barely breathe.

"Proctor, you there?"

"Tell me quick," he says, tries to swallow, and can't. , A pause before Browning laughs. "No, Proctor, it's all right.

Honest to God, it's all right. Your mom's okay."

He doesn't know whether to be angry or relieved. "Then what's—"

"She spoke, Proctor. Last night, she spoke. I heard her, man, I actually heard her."

On the Boardwalk in Atlantic City, a two-bit gambler named Shake Waldman talks to a female colleague:

"You're leaving?"

"Gotta move on," she says, her accent not quite true. "You know how it is."

"Gonna miss you."

"Thanks."

"Do something for me?"

"If I can."

He gives her a folded piece of paper. "Take care of this, okay? If something happens to me, read it, you'll know what

to do."

"Shake, what's going on?"

"Don't worry about it, Petra. Just do an old friend a favor. That's all I ask."

do you believe in ghosts?

EPISODE 4

Hunting Ground

PROLOGUE

H

ushed voices in a large room. A handful of candles in soot-black twisted candelabra throw more shadows than light,

and in the background the sound of a slow steady wind.

In the darkness above, where candlelight cannot reach, the muted flutter of wings.

There are scents and odors collected in pockets where the air does not move, where drafts do not reach

them—candle wax and burnt logs, sweet fruit and rotting fruit, rodent drop-pings winged or not, flowers of all kinds,

meat cooled and raw, perfume, cologne, new clothes and old clothes, dust, flesh.

There is no telling how large the room actually is. But by its echoes and its silences a visitor knows it is vast.

And old.

The barely seen walls of dark wood made darker by the twisting smoke from the candles, from torches now unlit,

and the natural aging process; the stone floor made darker by the shoes that have trod across it, the furniture dragged

across it, and the natural aging process; the long table in the center, most of it dull, some of it polished by arms and

hands drawn across it, has legs thick as trees and chairs with high backs carved in patterns with no discernible

meaning, all of it dark-ened by age beyond measure.

The sharp tap of a sharp fingernail against wood, a call for attention.

When the voices finally quiet, there is only the wind, and the wings.

A full minute later a series of soft chimes sound, a chair scrapes back, and a voice clears its throat and says, "All

goes as it should. We are well."

Another voice disagrees, with deference but not subservient: "Maybe it does, and maybe we are, but he's still

alive."

The first voice sounds amused: "You actually expected him to die?"

A soft chuckle from the complainer. "All right, maybe not, but one can dream, right?"

. Laughter fills the cavernous room. When it fades, when si-lence returns, the first voice says, "A lost battle is not a

lost war." A pause for more laughter, and not a few groans. "He will do what he will, and believe what he believes, but

in the end, just like all the rest, he will die."

A third voice, a woman's: "I don't care. He frightens me."

"And me," admits a fourth, this one a man who sounds very young to be in a place like this.

No one else speaks, just the wings and the wind, until: "Fear is neither a sin nor a crime. It will keep you alert. It will

keep us all alive."

"Maybe so," the woman answers, "but I still want Proctor dead."

ONE

5 January

They say the beach is haunted.

When midnight slips into the dead hours of morning, the Boardwalk is deserted more often than not, the Atlantic

City streets empty and cold. A patrol car cruising the side streets, trailing faint static; a desperate hooker in fake fur

clinging to the shadows; a corner bar with sputtering neon; a vacant lot strewn with rubble and garbage; a dead rat in

a gutter, mat-ted fur slick with oil.

The glow of casino lights reaches over the sand, doesn't quite reach the ocean. Streetlamps along the boardwalk

aren't bright enough to reach each other. And a flurry of headlights from automobiles leaving a multitiered parking

garage aim west, not east. This isn't Las Vegas; night and day do not blend.

It's winter, and the wind off the Atlantic is dull and cold and damp. Flapping pennants sound like crackling ice, and

footsteps sound as if they tread on hollow wood. An icicle hangs from a back corner at Caesar's, another from one of

the garish turrets at the Taj. It hasn't snowed yet, but it feels as if it has. Many of the tourists, day-trippers and

weekenders, wish it would, if only to cover the rest of the city so it would be easier to pretend they're someplace

special when their wal-lets finally empty.

Once in a while a gambler leaves one casino to hustle up to another, shoulders up and head down, hands in

pockets, paying no attention to the sand that stretches into the dark. Once in a while lovers, bundled for the season,

stand arm in arm at the boardwalk railing and watch the flashes of white out there in the dark, early cresting waves

pushed toward them by the wind. Once in a while a lone man or woman will take the stairs down to the sand, peek

under the boardwalk, look over at the waves, and climb up again, quickly, with a shiv-ering that has nothing to do with

winter winds.

They say the beach is haunted, and they're right. But not quite.

"Listen, Murray, I don't want to be the wet blanket," said Fred Dailey, "but in case you hadn't noticed, it's goddamn

cold out here." To prove his point, he stamped a foot hard on the boardwalk as he walked beside his friend. "Frozen,

see? Damn foot is frozen solid. I'll have to thaw my shoes just to get them off."

Murray, twice his normal size in a Russian greatcoat al-most as long as he was tall, adjusted his Russian lamb's wool

hat with one gloved hand, and walked on without respond-ing. His cheeks and pointed chin were red, the

condensation of his breath had frozen on his mustache, and his eyes were half closed against the wind that nudged

and poked him.

Fred, taller, thinner, his bloodhound face just as red, glared over Murray's head at the sand off to his right, men out

to the ocean. It's too cold, fifty bucks gone, only one hundred left, what the hell kind of a way to celebrate a birthday

was this?

"Murray."

"Fred, we're going, we're almost there, why complain all the time? You don't like it, go back. Or sit on one of these

benches, they look very nice."

"I don't like it, it's too far to go back, it's too cold to sit, we've already passed four very respectable hotels ... I don't

get it."

Murray lifted a hand, pointing at the sky. "They didn't feel right."

"What, they were too warm?"

"They didn't have the feel, Fred, you know? They gotta have the feel."

"Well, I feel like ice, what do you think about that?"

"I think you should've gotten a better coat," Murray said, and laughed so hard he veered into the steel railing at the

boardwalk's eastern edge, ricocheted off, and bumped into his friend. Laughed again, a series of wheezes that ended in

a vi-olent coughing.

Fred, resigned, patted the other man's back gently until the spasm passed. More gently now: "Murray, this is

crazy."

But it wasn't just this that was crazy. The whole idea was crazy: Two old men drive all the way down here in a car

that should have been junked when Moses was pulled out of the reeds, get a room too expensive by half, eat enough

fatty food to kill an elephant, and proceed immediately to start giving the casino all their money. And for what? So

former New York City police detective Murray Cobb can celebrate his six-tieth birthday in the vain and futile hope of

turning one whole pension check into a fortune.

"A onetime thing," Murray had argued when Fred protested. "A onetime thing. You're my friend, you going with me

or you staying in Queens and watch the sidewalks rot?"

The sidewalks rotting, Fred thought now, was a better bet than anything Murray had bet on tonight.

Still, it was his pal's birthday, and what was a little frost-bite between men who'd been friends for almost half a

cen-tury.

Murray, the coughing finally done, scrubbed a hand under his nose and spat over the railing. Then he grabbed the

top rail and leaned against it, lifted his chin to point at the surf. "You ever go out there, Fred? Cruise ship, I mean. You

ever go on a cruise?"

"Nope." He looked around nervously. They were in one of the dead spots along the Boardwalk, a place where the

casi-nos' light didn't fully reach because the distance between them was too great. It wouldn't have been that bad if all

the Board-walk streetlamps were lit, but they weren't—burned out or shot out, only one working dimly a few yards up

ahead, it didn't do him much good at all, here in the dead spot.

Behind him were a dozen or so summer shops boarded and chained until spring, the two-story building they were in

so run-down, it was a wonder it hadn't been condemned already.

It was too dark here, and too cold. He adjusted his scarf, checked to make sure all his coat buttons were fastened,

and looked north and south, positive there were gangs of muggers out there, just waiting for a chance to knock guys

like him and Murray off.

Then Murray asked a question, and he said, "What?"

"You hear one word I say?"

"I'm making sure we don't get murdered."

Murray laughed, wheezed, coughed but controlled it. "What I said was, cruises aren't what they're cracked up to be.

And if you hate it, you can't walk away, go home, have a better time."

Fred closed one eye. "The point being?"

"The point being," Murray said, a finger raised to the sky, "that I forget what the damn point was, you got me off

track by not listening." He leaned over and spat again. "Son of a bitch."

"Hey," Fred said. "No call for that. My mind was wan-dering, that's all. To, I might add, someplace warm."

"No, that's not what I meant." Murray began to sidle along the railing, looking over every few feet, then checking to

his right to judge the distance left to the next set of stairs. "I wasn't talking about you."

"I'm blessed."

"Think there's a body down there." He began to move more quickly, leaning over the rail almost all the time now. "I

think there's a body down there."

Fred followed slowly, putting a shoulder to a gust that tried to knock him into a shop. "Murray, there's no body

down there."

"You a cop?"

"You?"

Murray stopped and straightened, and Fred realized he'd just made a huge mistake. Murray had not taken well to

re-tirement, still thought of himself as the same cop he always was, except without as much work.

Fred put a hand to his forehead. "Sorry. I didn't mean that."

"You owe me one."

"Yes. Yes, I do."

"Good." Murray sagged against the railing. "Then, you go down there, see if I'm right."

"I am not going down there to touch a dead body."

"You don't have to touch it, for God's sake. Who said any-thing about touching? Just go down there, see if I'm

right, okay? If there's someone lying there, maybe he's hurt, we'll go get a cop. If there isn't, you can buy me a drink at

the next bar."

Fred opened his mouth to make a suggestion, shook his head, and walked over to the stairs. As he passed his

friend he could hear faint wheezing, but when he looked, Murray just waved him on impatiently.

"I'll be right up here," he said. "Got you covered the whole way."

"With what? That hat?"

"I got a gun."

Fred stopped before he'd taken the first step down. "You've got a what?"

Murray shrugged. "A gun."

"Jesus, Murray, we're gonna end up in jail, for God's sake."

Murray pointed. "Go. It's freezing up here."

Oh, great, Fred thought; now you're cold.

The steps were wide, wood, and worn, a little slippery, and Fred held tightly to the railing as he climbed down to the

sand. When he looked up, he found himself staring right at Murray's shoes, which, even in this dim light, looked as old

as their owner.

"See anything?" Murray whispered.

Yeah, Fred thought sourly, and what he saw he didn't like.

The streetlamp's faint glow slipped between cracks in the boards, pale slants and hazy cones that barely reached

the sand. He could faintly see empty liquor bottles, crushed beer cans, clumps of dried seaweed, broken shells, bits of

glass.

He could hear the surf magnified under there.

He could hear his own breathing.

What he couldn't see was anything that looked even vaguely like a body, or somebody that had been hurt.

Just the dark, and the sound of the surf.

He gave himself another fifty feet, just to be sure. Murray hadn't said anything, but Fred could hear those shoes

shuf-fling along the boards, keeping impatient pace, could hear the rail groan a little whenever his friend leaned against

it.

This is stupid.

He had to bend a little to see under each time, and his back had begun to complain.

This is stupid.

At the end of his fifty feet, he shook his head and looked up. "Nothing. Just junk."

Murray scowled. "Could've sworn."

"Shadows, Mur. You saw shadows, that's all."

His old friend shrugged acceptance so quickly, Fred had to blink. Then snarl. Then grin.

"Don't be so smug, Dailey. I'm sitting down. Come on up."

Fred checked under the boards one more time, just in case, and wondered if that piece of fallen piling over there was

what Murray saw. Had to be. From the right angle, with the right lighting, he supposed it could pass for someone lying

on his back. Except it would have had to have been out here more, not back there, or Murray wouldn't have seen it at

all.

He bent lower and eased under, one hand gripping a pil-ing as he leaned closer. Just in case.

Not enough light; there wasn't enough light, but it sure as hell looked like someone's stiff leg. An illusion of some

kind, he'd have to ask Murray.

Keeping the edge of the boardwalk directly above his right shoulder, he took a few steps up and in, grabbed

another pil-ing for balance, and squinted.

It moved.

He straightened in surprise, caught himself just before he cracked his head against the underside of the boards.

"Fred," Murray whispered.

Fred waved a hang-on-a-minute hand before he realized Murray couldn't see it, and took another step, another, until

he faced the length of piling and, with a gasp, sa\v the shoe on the end of it. Realized that he wasn't looking at one leg,

there were two.

Son of a bitch, he thought; the old fart was right.

Visibility was too shallow here; he could only see as far as the fallen man's waist, and when the legs trembled again,

he said anxiously, "Mister? Hey, mister, you all fight? You need some help?"

A weak voice: "Help."

Fred looked behind him, up at the boards, was about to call out to Murray when the voice spoke again, low and

husky: "Help. Help me up."

A drunk, he decided; damn, it's just a drunk. But he reached out anyway.

And a hand drifted out of the dark, as pale as the pale light that barely reached the sand.

Fred automatically gripped it and pulled gently, frowned, and pulled again; frowned and inhaled sharply when those

fin-gers squeezed until he thought his knuckles would shatter. He went instantly to his knees, feeling the cold sand

through his trousers and the cold wind turning the back of his neck to ice.

He opened his mouth to cry out, but the only sound he could make was a desperate quiet choking.

Movement, then, back there in the dark as he was pulled forward, and he had to snap out his other hand to keep

from falling on his face.

Another face, barely seen, as though it were covered in a thin black veil.

"Please," Fred said, no louder than a whisper.

A death's head smile, eyes made of fire.

The hand yanked, and he was pulled off the ground, landed on his back, all the breath gone from his lungs in an

explo-sive gasp. He couldn't speak, couldn't breathe, and when he saw what had taken him, he couldn't even scream.

TWO

9 February

T

he January thaw was a month late. Although the situation was much worse in the high hills of the northwestern part

of the state, there was still enough snow on the ground in the rest of North Jersey to cause major problems when the

overnight temperature charged out of the teens and into the high forties by noon without half taking a breath. Over the

next three days cellars flooded, streams and creeks ran faster and higher, low roads slipped under small instant lakes,

storm drains overflowed. Icicles melted, a skin of water rippled over the ice on ponds and lakes, and half the

population prematurely shucked their topcoats and heavy sweaters.

Paul Tazaretti's mother called it pneumonia weather, and if she could see him now, she'd probably die. Or worse—

drag him into the house by the ear and stand at the foot of the steps, her arms folded across her chest, waiting until he

was dressed warmly enough to suit her.

At the moment he stood, in white T-shirt and jeans, in front of an open empty garage, trying to decide if it was

worth going on, this emergency operation on his old Jeep. He'd been able to keep ahead of the rust, but the engine

was something else, and he was pretty sure he was losing that race hands down.

The problem was, he had gotten the old junker for gradu-ation, it was his first car, and it thereby had great

sentimental value; he couldn't bring himself to get rid of it, replace it with something else.

A loud, self-pitying sigh, and he peered into the empty garage, looking for something that might perform the miracle

he needed. But it was preternaturally clean in there. No spi-derwebs, no grease or oil stains on the concrete floor, the

few garden and lawn tools all hanging neatly from nails pounded into the walls and ... nothing else.

It was as if the man who owned the house not only didn't own a car, he didn't even live here full-time.

Taz leaned back against a fender and shook his head. It wasn't natural. It just wasn't natural.

Still, Taz was lucky he was back here at all, lucky that his boss had no problems with him working on the Jeep

during company time, as long as he made sure his other work was done.

It was.

In fact, the last report had been filed over a week ago, and with no new cases either assigned or pending, the

inactivity was getting on his nerves. His, and everybody else's at Black Oak Investigations. Proctor, for whatever

reasons, hadn't been attending each day's routine mail check. Which meant any possible new clients had so far gone

unnoticed or unexplored. Which meant he was about ready to go out of his mind from boredom.

The most exciting thing he'd done over the past couple of days was pick out goofy valentines for the women who

worked here. He'd managed to kill most of an afternoon with that one. Aside from that, it was curse at and mourn for

the Jeep, flirt a little with Eri, the new girl hired to fill in for RJ when RJ was at class, and throw snowballs off the

redwood deck to see how far he could get them across the Hudson-He was about ready to see if he could climb down

the face of the Palisades without a rope, but he figured Proctor would skin him for that stunt.

Still, it was better than doing nothing, which was what try-ing to fix this damn Jeep pretty much was.

A breeze coasted over his arms, and he shivered, rolled his shoulders, considered going into the house to grab a

sweater, and changed his mind. Lana, Black Oak's office manager and computer wizard, was still talking to that guy

who'd arrived a few minutes ago. She stood in front of the kitchen door, a coat thrown over her shoulders, and from

the set of her head and the way she kept snapping a finger at her squared bangs, she definitely wasn't happy. Still, it

was weird that she hadn't invited him in; that wasn't like her. And since the guy clearly wasn't a bill collector or

something, he figured it was better if he just stuck around, just in case.

The man was on the bottom of three steps, which put him and Lana almost eye to eye. Taz didn't know who he was,

but he didn't like him anyway. Didn't like the way he stood with his gloved hands crossed in front of him, his head

cocked in that way that told Taz he was only pretending to listen to whatever she had to tell him. Doc had often told

Charles L Grant - [Black Oak 04] - Hunting Ground

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