Revival

 • • •

I left my apartment, walked down the block, and bought a pack of cigarettes for the first time since a brief flirtation with tobacco in college. There was no smoking in my building, so I sat on my steps to light up. I coughed out the first drag, my head swimming, and I thought, These things would have killed Astrid, if not for Charlie’s intervention.

Yes. Charlie and his miracle cures. Charlie who had a tiger by the tail and didn’t want to let go.

Something happened, Astrid had said in my dream, speaking through a grin from which all her former sweetness had departed. Something happened, and Mother will be here soon.

Then, later, after Jacobs had shot his secret electricity into her head: There’s a door in the wall. The door is covered with ivy. The ivy is dead. She waits. And when Jacobs asked who Astrid was talking about: Not the one you want.

I can break my promise, I thought, casting the cigarette away. It wouldn’t be the first one.

True, but not this one. Not this promise.

I went back inside, crushing the pack of cigarettes and tossing it into the trash can beside the mailboxes. Upstairs, I called Bree’s cell, prepared to leave a message, but she answered. I thanked her for her email and told her I had no intention of ever seeing Charles Jacobs again. I told this lie without guilt or hesitation. Bree’s husband was right; she needed to be finished with All Things Jacobs. And when the time came to go back to Maine and fulfill my promise, I would lie to Hugh Yates for the same reason.

Once upon a time, two teenagers had fallen for each other, and hard, as only teenagers can. A few years later they made love in a ruined cabin while the thunder rolled and the lightning flashed—all very Victoria Holt. In the course of time, Charles Jacobs had saved them both from paying the ultimate price for their addictions. I owed him double. I’m sure you see that, and I could leave it there, but to do so would be to omit a much larger truth: I was also curious. God help me, I wanted to watch him lift the lid on Pandora’s box and peer inside.

 • • •

“This isn’t your lame-ass way of telling me you want to retire, is it?” Hugh tried to sound as if he was joking, but there was real apprehension in his eyes.

“Not at all. I just want a couple of months off. Maybe only six weeks, if I get bored. I need to reco

I had no intention of going near my family in Maine. They were too close to Goat Mountain as it was.

“You’re a kid,” he said moodily. “Come this fall, I’m going to have a year for every trombone that led the big parade. Mookie pulling the pin this spring was bad enough. If you went for good, I’d probably have to close this place down.”

He heaved a sigh.

“I should have had kids, someone to take over when I’m gone, but does that sort of thing happen? Rarely. When you say you hope they’ll pick up the reins of the family business, they say ‘Sorry, Dad, me and that dope-smoking kid you hated me hanging out with in high school are going to California to make surfboards equipped with WiFi.’”

“Now that you’ve got that out of your system . . .”

“Yeah, yeah, go back to your roots, by all means. Play pat-a-cake with your little niece and help your brother rebuild his latest classic car. You know how summers are here.”

I certainly did: slower than dirt. Summer means full employment even for the shittiest bands, and when bands are playing live music in bars and at four dozen summerfests in Colorado and Utah, they don’t buy much recording time.

“George Damon will be in,” I said. “He’s come out of retirement in a big way.”

“Yeah,” Hugh said. “The only guy in Colorado who can make ‘I’ll Be Seeing You’ sound like ‘God Bless America.’”

“Perhaps in the world. Hugh, you haven’t had any more of those prismatics, have you?”

He gave me a curious look. “No. What brought that on?”

I shrugged.

“I’m fine. Up a couple of times every night to squirt half a teacup of pee, but I guess that’s par for the course at my age. Although . . . you want to hear a fu

I wasn’t sure I did, but thought I ought to. It was early June. Jacobs hadn’t called yet, but he would. I knew he would.

“I’ve been having this recurring dream. In it I’m not here at Wolfjaw, I’m in Arvada, in the house where I grew up. Someone starts knocking on the door. Except it’s not just knocking, it’s pounding. I don’t want to answer it, because I know it’s my mother, and she’s dead. Pretty stupid, because she was alive and healthy as a horse back in the Arvada days, but I know it, just the same. I go down the hall, not wanting to, but my feet just keep moving—you know how dreams are. By then she’s really whamming on the door, beating on it with both fists, it sounds like, and I’m thinking of this horror story we had to read in English when I was in high school. I think it was called ‘August Heat.’”

Not “August Heat,” I thought. “The Monkey’s Paw.” That’s the one with the door-pounding in it.

“I reach for the knob, and then I wake up, all in a sweat. What do you make of that? My subconscious, trying to get me ready for the big exit scene?”

“Maybe,” I agreed, but my head had left the conversation. I was thinking about another door. A small one covered with dead ivy.

 • • •

Jacobs called on July first. I was in one of the studios, updating the Apple Pro software. When I heard his voice, I sat down in front of the control board and looked through the window into a soundproof rehearsal room that was empty except for a disassembled drumkit.

“The time has almost come for you to keep your promise,” he said. His voice was mushy, as if he’d been drinking, although I’d never seen him take anything stronger than black coffee.

“All right.” My voice was calm enough. Why not? It was the call I had been expecting. “When do you want me to come?”

“Tomorrow. The day after at the latest. I suspect you won’t want to stay with me at the resort, at least to start with—”

“You suspect right.”

“—but I’ll need you no more than an hour away. When I call, you come.”

That made me think of another spooky story, one titled “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad.”

“All right,” I said. “But Charlie?”

“Yes?”

“You get two months of my time, and that’s it. When Labor Day rolls around, we’re quits no matter what happens.”

Another pause, but I could hear his breathing. It sounded labored, making me think of how Astrid had sounded in her wheelchair. “That’s . . . acceptable.” Acsheptable.

“Are you okay?”

“Another stroke, I’m afraid.” Shtroke. “My speech isn’t as clear as it once was, but I assure you my mind is as clear as ever.”

Pastor Da