Nocturnes Read online

  t. r. stingley

  Table of Contents

  Dedicationiii

  Preludev

  Chapter One1

  Chapter Two17

  Chapter Three30

  Chapter Four36

  Chapter Five48

  Chapter Six58

  Chapter Seven63

  Chapter Eight69

  Chapter Nine74

  Chapter Ten83

  Chapter Eleven91

  Chapter Twelve99

  Chapter Thirteen114

  Chapter Fourteen123

  Chapter Fifteen128

  Chapter Sixteen137

  Chapter Seventeen145

  Chapter Eighteen158

  Chapter Nineteen165

  Chapter Twenty180

  Copyright183

  Dedication

  A writer depends, as much as any human can depend on anything, on a circle of friends and family who tirelessly remind him/her of their talent. I would be remiss not to mention my late mother, Sue Lewis, who sparked my love for literature at an early age. And my old friend Matt Hogan, who was with me all those years ago when I bought my first typewriter. And within that small circle, there is, it seems to me, one in particular who refuses to accept anything less than the fulfillment of the dream. That “one in particular” in this case is my wife, Tami. She has been my muse, my confidante, and the tireless advocate for whatever gifts the universe has lent me. This book is as much hers as it has ever been mine.

  Prelude

  He could feel it building. That all-too-familiar yearning was waxing anew. Soon, very soon, he would have to kill again. It was not a thing he took lightly. Most days, he would gladly trade places with nearly anyone. Anyone but a stage four cancer patient, or an AIDS sufferer… or the homelessly insane. He could only feel pity for those people. And that is why he would choose them over everyone else.

  Chapter One

  (Summer, 1996)

  From the end of a long line of searching souls, the old man took a step and paused. Up ahead, over the bowed heads and shoulders of the faithful, he could see the tall, distinguished figure of Father Evan Connor. Step, and pause. Closer to salvation? One foot forward, and pause. Finally, he stood, hands clasped, before the priest. Father Connor looked into the old man’s eyes, took two hosts and dipped them into the crimson wine. “The body and blood of Christ.”

  Amen. Isaac received the sacrament on his tongue and crossed himself with a trembling hand. Returning to the pew, he knelt and began the same prayer that he had whispered for more than forty years. This was the only hope that was left to him. And he would continue to cling to it unto death.

  *

  “Scat! Scat cat!”

  The orange and black tabby scurried around to the street-side of the rambling brownstone that Isaac called home, followed in hot pursuit by the elderly man himself. Isaac was brandishing his infamous “cat broom,” Bane of Felines, Scourge of the Cat-Kingdom, Widow Maker, Destructor. He closed in on the tabby as its paws scrambled for purchase on the leaf-littered walkway. Isaac emitted a low meowling that rose in pitch and volume as the broom rose over his head, readying for the swat that would send the cat sprawling across the uncut lawn.

  Suddenly, a big, gray tomcat darted from beneath the front steps, circled Isaac’s feet, and bolted after the tabby. Isaac swung the broom like a scythe, hoping for the rare double-spank, but only managed to disturb several elm leaves and a fur ball.

  “The dried carcass of a previous victim, no doubt,” Isaac grinned.

  The cats gained the far corner of the house and turned in unison to see if he had given up. Isaac paused, then started a soft, casual whistle as he walked nonchalantly in their general direction, sweeping a few leaves from the sidewalk as he went. The cats allowed him to move within a broom’s-length, then sprang quickly towards him. At his feet they split up and shot past him in a blur of snarling color. Isaac swung the broom wildly, making several noises intended to convey a religious conviction to the martial arts. The cats were not impressed. They scaled the wrought iron fence near the street and turned once more in a victorious smirk before sauntering up the avenue.

  Isaac sat down on the steps, chuckling at their clever tactics. His weekly exercise accomplished, he leaned back against the cool cement, feeling considerably younger than his years. And if there was anything to be gathered from the faces of the two elderly women who had paused to witness his broom-wielding antics, he didn’t act it either.

  His neighbors considered him eccentric…a little off. He had lived alone in that house for more than twenty years, and was rarely seen except in the company of fleeing felines. He received few visitors and paid no calls.

  He was rumored to be engaged in any manner of perversions, from serial killer to union sympathizer. Most folks in the neighborhood wondered how much longer it would be before they hauled the old man off in some anonymous van to some anonymous home, to eventually wither into an anonymous grave.

  But Isaac had no intention of withering anytime soon. While he had formerly retired several years earlier, he remained a respected freelance writer for a handful of travel magazines. And while his life did not include an abundance of intimate friends, he was still a healthy, active, and intellectually-inquisitive man.

  His cat-carnival was a source of fuel for the local gossip. He knew this. But he enjoyed the company of the cats. And they came from blocks around to participate in the games. The cats were certainly more tolerant than the faces watching him from behind narrowly-parted curtains. They depended upon his longevity, instead of anticipating his vacancy.

  *

  The late afternoon shadows hung like tapestries upon the otherwise barren walls as Isaac wandered restlessly among the quiet rooms. He had been packing for the past three days. Actually, he had been procrastinating for the past three days. He walked into the bedroom and gazed mournfully down into the suitcase. Two pair of socks and an undershirt accused him.

  He was booked on the 15:10 to Atlanta, which meant that he had less than two hours to get to the airport. But his heart just wasn’t in this assignment. The travel and timetable involved seemed rather overwhelming, even for a veteran of his stature. He was to cover eleven four- and five-star hotels in eleven different southern cities. Everything from wine lists to room service, all to be accomplished in less than a month. Just the thought of it all was enough to send him retreating to his wing chair with a tumbler of brandy and a good book.

  He paused for a moment to reflect upon the reasons that he had accepted such an arduous task at his age. Money had nothing to do with it, to be sure. He had, in fact, entertained the idea of permanent retirement for more than a year now. But he could not quite figure out what to do with his time.

  For some fifty years, he had carried the burden of time upon his reluctant shoulders. He had thrown himself into work and various projects. He read voraciously and wrote prodigiously, all in the effort to expel from his consciousness the incessant ticking of that cosmic clock.

  With permanent retirement would come the anxiety of heavy moments laid end to end: the gazing out of windows on autumn afternoons, the recollections of fields and leaden skies, visions of another world, of another time…now, and forever, ash.

  Truth was, Isaac had become indifferent to the rolling wheels of the world out of painful necessity. Being around the vibrancy of youth and laughter bordered on the unbearable. Now there was little vitality left in reserve to carry him through the winter years of retirement. He would settle into the background of these rooms like a piece of dusty furniture.

  And because of his self-imposed exile from his neighbors, there woul
d be a harvest of loneliness to reap as well. So there was little reason for him not to work …not to continue until sickness or death came for him.

  “Enough,” he thought aloud. “Time to put it in gear, Isaac.” He assumed a false interest and prepared for the task at hand.

  *

  He arrived in Atlanta in the late afternoon. “The Belle Epoch,” he told the questioning eyes in the taxi’s rearview. It was a long ride from the city’s perimeter to its heart. The home rush was on and the traffic was locked in a slow crawl past the campus of Georgia Tech. Isaac leaned back in the air-conditioned cocoon and closed his eyes.

  There was never any homesickness when his work called him out into the world. That Boston brownstone was mostly a place to store his things: a mantle for his pictures, a room of shelving for his books…a fireplace to stave off winter’s increasing chill. What home he still possessed he carried in his heart. As the cab’s motion lulled him, he could see her, running toward him in that summer dress that filled and burst his heart. She took his hand and pulled him down into the tall grass. The field was a lover’s field. And they were very much at home. She loosened his shirt as he kissed at the hollow of her soft throat, and murmured against her skin, “Lessa, Lessa…”

  “Hey, sport. You OK back there?”

  The questioning eyes in the mirror that see only an old man in a fit of sleep, speaking in the tongue of ancient memories.

  “Yes. I just dozed off. I’m fine.”

  “Do you always speak foreign languages in your sleep?” the driver inquired.

  Isaac frowned. “Only when I dream.”

  *

  Isaac settled into his room, ordered the paper and a bottle of Sancerre, and made a few calls. He maintained business acquaintances across the country, and during his assignments he would place short courtesy calls to inquire of his associates’ health and families. It was strictly professional, a part of his travel habit that included a daily investigation of the obituaries to look for familiar names.

  The wine arrived and he poured himself a tall glass, declining the steward’s services. He tilted the bowl against the light and watched the facets leap across the tight surface of the straw-colored liquid. As the wine opened, he walked slowly around the room, inhaling the subtle notes of hay and grapefruit. He lowered himself into a chair, scanned the paper, and finished two glasses of the heady summer wine.

  After a warm shower he walked out onto the balcony and gazed across the city’s horizon. He had mixed feelings about Atlanta. There were certainly more hospitable southern cities. Atlanta had become a transient town, pulling its population from around the country and across the globe. One of those places which few of the inhabitants were actually “from.” In an attempt to be a little of everything for everybody, she had lost some of what southern charm she had managed to resurrect from Sherman’s punitive arson.

  It was Savannah that still retained the Georgian grace. But what Atlanta did have going for her was a kind of blunt-force tolerance that had been hard-won in the struggle for Civil Rights. Many a beating had been taken upon many courageous shoulders, and many of those heroes had come from the poorest quarters of Atlanta. Money and the working class didn’t mix much in class-conscious Atlanta even now, but no matter your color or sexual preference, you could walk with head high in Hotlanta today. And she did have one hell of a skyline.

  He decided to take the last of the failing sun and stroll for a bit. It was now dusk, and the city was wrapped in that peculiar blue-gray garment that all southern cities wear at that time of evening. A Confederate twilight that would soon surrender to an early moon.

  He turned east onto a less-populated sidewalk and walked headlong into the leafy, emerald-dusk of Piedmont Park. It had been several years since he had visited the city, and this park had been a favorite spot in which to take his crowded thoughts for a stroll. But there was a difference now. Like so many urban parks around the country, there was an air of neglect, careless litter, and the aimless shuffling of the homeless. He was immediately overcome by a vagrant melancholy.

  The homeless were scattered about like an encamped army awaiting some phantom order. There was a vast anonymity. The scene conjured sharp and immediate memories. As a former refugee who had shuffled through the camps after World War Two, Isaac knew the formless, faceless mob, and their detachment from the world even here, in the midst of a great city.

  Where did these people come from? What had detoured them from the wide boulevard of what they had longed to be onto this dead-end street of what they had become? There was no evidence of will. He found it ironic that this state of non-attachment, this submersion of the will, was in fact the high-ground sought by mystics and sages the world over. But for these people it was only the slow-footed grind of life on the mean streets. There was nothing holy about it. This was not the land of the enlightened.

  He was mesmerized and walked deeper into the gathering darkness of the park. Past a long row of benches, each now occupied by a supine figure, claiming territory in the simple act of lying down now that the play and the leisure of the living had vacated the lawns. He looked closely at each of them, wondering at the whisper-thin line between them and himself.

  On the last bench in the row, removed from the others by a small group of trees, he saw an elderly woman lying on her back, wrapped in several layers of worn clothing and the fetid odors of urine and alcohol. She was clutching a ragged flop doll with mop-string hair to her breast. Isaac glanced down at her, then hastened to move past the wretched figure when he caught part of a phrase from the lullaby she was singing.

  He glanced around, then edged closer to the woman so that he might hear her words more clearly. She took no notice of him, lost as she was in the sweet escape of precious memories. Now he could discern her words all too clearly.

  “Hush little baby, don’t say a word.

  Daddy’s gonna but you a mockingbird.

  And if that mockingbird don’t sing…”

  Isaac flinched away from her, her words too close to his own recurring dreams. It almost seemed a cruel hoax but for the undeniable poverty of this creature on the bench. He reached out a hand to touch her hair, lightly, not wishing to disturb her reverie, but acknowledging a sublime thread between them.

  He rose and turned away, swallowing hard and already captured by the haunt of her. This casual encounter would never leave him. But he was going to leave this park. Right now.

  Retracing his steps, and walking quickly now among the full bruise of the deepening shadow, it occurred to him that he had officially entered “the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  What in the world was he doing? Hadn’t seven and a half decades of life taught him anything? Why not just hang a sign on his back, preferably in neon, “I am an old and desperately helpless fool with a rather large sum of money in my pocket. Which way to the cleaners?”

  There were only a hundred yards to the street; no need to panic. But he would have to remember to give himself a stern talking-to when he got back to the bright security of his room. And maybe a shot of Drambuie.

  He was just beginning to loosen up, smiling at the carelessness that had gotten him into this situation, when one of the shadows that crowded the path up ahead detached itself and began to move deliberately in his direction.

  Several varieties of bells and klaxons sounded in his head. He hadn’t felt such a keen awareness of danger in nearly fifty years. His feet came to a halt on their own, neither wanting to advance nor finding the will to turn and flee.

  The figure approached, and Isaac’s apprehension grew. “Calm down,” he told himself. “It’s only a man out for a walk in the park. He is probably as uncomfortable as you are.”

  But he knew without question that it wasn’t true. There was something supremely confident in the way the stranger strode the dark path. Something powerful, and sinister. Isaac was in trouble.
r />   As the stranger drew parallel to his paralyzed position, Isaac was suddenly engulfed by the conflicting energies of sympathy and great indifference. He turned to face the man, half expecting an introduction. And for one spiked and icy moment, Isaac saw his error. The dense veils of reality parted and something unnatural peered through. He felt as though he had taken a blow to the forehead and stepped backward to steady himself. Just as abruptly, the world regained its orbit as the man moved on, leaving a dozen questions lingering in the air behind him. Isaac glanced back just once, but the figure had already moved beyond the spectrum of light. Isaac hurried back to his suite.

  That night as he lay in bed, fingers laced behind his head, he allowed his thoughts to return to the incidents in the park. Oddly enough, it was easier for him to dismiss the bizarre encounter with the stranger than it was the memory of the old woman on the bench.

  The poor woman was caught in, and represented, the vein-like webs of a life that gathered in the gossamer corners of his dark memories. The shadowed places that he sought to avoid had been thrust once more before his eyes. There was nothing to be done now but close those eyes and allow her to come to him.

  Down and back, he floated through the misty sorrows of his years. It was so bittersweet to be back home, again…

  He was a boy, running through the sparse woods on the outskirts of Warsaw. Twelve years old, free and sun-warmed as he darted between the trees. He was going to see his uncle, as he did every Saturday. It was his favorite part of the week. Aunt Ruth would have made hamentaschen or Rugelach cookies. And if Uncle Jonah wanted to ramble on about Theodor Herzl, as he often did, then the day would still be salvaged down at the creek, by the tug of a fish at the end of his line.

  He veered from the path and dashed down the steep bank of the creek, running hard now, gathering speed for the final sprint to his uncle’s house. Suddenly he pulled up hard and stopped in his tracks. There was a voice coming through the woods, not far off…though it might as well have come from Heaven. It was sweeter than Aunt Ruth’s pastry, a completely new appreciation for him. The sound of a young girl singing.