The Call of Distant Shores by David Niall Wilson, Bob Eggleton Page A

door.
    "Shit," he said under his breath.   He thanked the man quickly and headed for the front door of the place, hoping against hope that someone with half a brain would be inside, and that they could get out of this madhouse and back on the road quickly.
    Just as he reached up to knock on the door, a breath of fetid air washed across his shoulder, and he realized that the man had slipped up behind him.   An odd sound was filling the air – at first he thought it was just his head buzzing with the sudden burst of adrenalin brought on by the man's sudden appearance – but it was more than that.
    A piano.   It was a tinny, off-key rendition of some sort of jazz tune, and it was coming from inside the house.   Without a word, the man reached around him and pushed the door open, letting the music escape into the night.
    Dave coughed quickly, backing up as the scent of the inner rooms hit him.   There was a moldy, yellowed sheet hanging from the door frame like a curtain.   The place smelled musky, like a huge litter box, or an abandoned barn that rodents had taken over.
    Moving ahead of him, and thankfully pushing the nasty, rotting sheet out of the way, the man preceded him inside.   With a deep breath, which he held as long as possible, Dave followed.   There was a light just to the right – another doorway, similarly curtained to the first.   It was from beyond this that the music was rolling forth, much louder now, still filled with so many discordant notes that he knew the instrument must be horribly out of tune.
    Parting the "curtain" of the second room, he stepped inside and stopped cold.   Seated across the room at a run-down, lop-sided old piano, sat what appeared to be a very greasy Little Richard impersonator.   Dreadlocks hung down to shoulder length in back – greased or extremely dirty – and the man's bony black fingers danced quickly over the chipped ivory of the keyboard.   He swayed from side to side slowly, lost in the music – such as it was.
    Then, with a sudden lurch, he stopped playing and spun his head over his left shoulder in a single, fluid motion, catching Dave staring and meeting his gaze flatly.   There was no emotion in those eyes – no life of any sort, for that matter.   No color.   They were white, empty, blind eyes.   Dave shivered involuntarily and glanced away, but when he gathered the courage to turn back, the pianist was gazing at his own fingers again.   Dave couldn't be certain what he'd seen, but the image of those milky-white orbs strobed in his mind.
    "You looking for Herb?" the man asked quickly, not looking back again, or seeming to really care what Dave might be looking for.
    Shaking his head, Dave answered.   "No.   I'm up here to visit some friends, the Lindberghs .   They live down one of these roads, eight hundred something.   I think the address is 870-B."
    The man continued to stare at him as if he hadn't spoken at all.   "You aren't lookin' for Herb?"
    Holding his anger in check, Dave started to tell him again what he was looking for, but the first man cut in again.
    "I know a guy named Wayne Lindbergh."
    "Great!" Dave cut in quickly.   "Where does he live?   Maybe he lives nearby, or he's related?"
    "Lived in Richmond," the man said flatly.   "Never been around here."
    Now anger was passing off into nervous fear.   This was going from bizarre straight into late-night horror movie reality way too quickly.
    "You don't know where 870-B might be?" he asked, starting to turn for the door.
    "This here's 111," the man at the piano told him slowly, as if dredging the numbers up from far, far back in the abyss he'd once called a mind.
    About 555 short, I'd say, Dave thought.   Aloud, he said, "Well, I guess we'll just go and see if we can't find it ourselves, then.   The road has three grain silos off to the side."   He threw this in as a final hope, but no sparks flew.
    "You can try the trailer park," Manson said, pointing down the road one further