Cage of Night (19 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

It took him an hour and a half.

I waited up in a pine tree just behind the line shack. I could see everything in front of me for maybe a quarter mile. If anybody followed Josh, I'd be able to see them.

Josh came alone.

He had a paper bag tucked under his right arm and a huge flashlight waving from his left hand.

I swung down from the pine, the sweet scent of the juices filling my nostrils.

He didn't know where I was until he heard me land, and then he turned around as if he was going to jump me.

"It's me," I said, realizing that he couldn't pick me out in the shadows beneath the tree.

"Scared the hell out of me."

"Sorry."

He came up to me and handed over the paper bag he was carrying. "Goodies," he said.

Heavier pair of gloves than the ones I was wearing, a couple of roast beef sandwiches, half a box of Oreos and a some dental floss.

I held up the little white plastic rectangle the floss was packaged in. "Now there's something every wanted fugitive needs—floss."

I guess I'd expected him to laugh. That's why I was so surprised when he looked hurt.

"Hey, Josh, I was just kidding."

"I did the best I could."

"Hey, listen, I really appreciate it."

"I just figured that after a day, you might like to floss. I hate it when I have stuff in my teeth."

"Aw, God," I said, and gave him a manly sock on the arm.

He was Josh the basketball star, and Josh the lady killer, but he was still, for a least a moment every now and then, Josh my younger brother.

And it was sweet. Damned sweet.

"I really appreciate it," I said.

"Thanks. Mom and Dad didn't want me to bring you anything."

"Want me to just give up, huh?"

"Yeah. The man hunt is what scares them. Dad knows some of the men who're in it. They're kind of spooky guys."

"Yeah, they are."

"So I'm supposed to convince you to come back."

"I'd give up in a second if I was sure that Cindy had already talked to the Chief."

And there it was again.

The same nervous silence I'd heard when I'd brought up Cindy on the phone.

"There's something else in the sack," he said.

"Yeah, it felt a little heavy."

I opened the sack and stuck my hand way down and wrapped my hand around plastic-covered clothesline rope.

"That was the best I could do."

"It's great, Josh. It'll work fine."

"I'm just kind of surprised you're going to do it."

"I have to do it, Josh. Just to be sure."

"She's really got you going."

The way he said it, I realized for the first time that he didn't care much for Cindy.

He drifted over to the line shack, looked inside the empty doorway.

"Nice place you got here."

"Josh."

He pretended not to hear me. He knew what was coming.

He walked around the west side of the line shack and pounded on a few boards to see how sturdy they were.

"Josh."

Finally, he turned and said, "I don't want to talk about Cindy."

"Why not?"

"Because anything I say is just gonna hurt your feelings."

"Josh, I love her."

"I know that."

"And I think she loves me."

Silence.

"And I think she loves me."

"I think she loves herself," Josh said. "Not anybody else." He huddled deep into his pea jacket, a big, rangy Midwestern kid who managed to look knowing and naive at the same time.

"She'll go to the Chief and get me out of this mess. She said she would."

Another silence.

Then: "She isn't going to the Chief, Spence."

"How do you know that?"

"Because I asked her."

"You asked her?"

"I went over to see her right after dinner tonight."

"I didn't tell you to do that."

He looked irritated.

"No, you didn't
tell
me, Spence. But I decided to because I don't like the idea of my brother having to hide out in the woods."

He was hurt again.

"I'm sorry, Josh."

"After what you told me, about her and Garrett going out to Mae Swenson's and everything, I decided I'd go see her and ask her if I could take her to see the Chief."

"Yeah?"

"She said she didn't know what I was talking about. She said that she'd never had any conversation with you about Garrett, and that she'd thought about lying to help you out but she just couldn't bring herself to lie."

"God."

"Yeah," Josh said, "that's what I thought."

"She's my only hope."

He shook his head, came away from the shack, stood in the pale moonlight once again.

"No, you've got one other hope."

"What's that?"

"Garrett's apartment."

"I don't understand."

"He's at work now. Doesn't get through until after midnight. Then he usually spends an hour at Smiley's Tap playing bad-ass for all the barflies."

"We break in?"

He tapped his pea jacket. "I've got a glass cutter. I drove by his apartment a couple of times. He's got the whole downstairs. We should be able to get in the back door."

"Maybe we won't find anything."

"Maybe. But we've got to try."

"Yeah," I said. "Yeah, I guess we do."

"But we should get going."

I held up the coil of white plastic-sheathed clothesline rope. "In other words, you don't want me to check out the well?"

"I think it's pretty crazy."

"I have to know."

"All right. I just hope you don't slip and break your leg or something."

I smiled. "My brother, the optimist."

Once we got the rope securely tied to the crossbar under the hood of the well, I jumped up on the fieldstone that surrounded the well.

I had to duck down to move around but soon enough my gloved hands held the rope.

I slowly started to lower myself into the well.

Josh was there with his flashlight.

"It's pretty far down," he said. "The bottom, I mean."

"I'll be fine."

"Unless the monster gets you."

"Very funny."

I lowered myself a few more inches.

The interior of the well was the same dusty fieldstone below as up top. Various water levels had stained the stone over the years. Parts of the stone had worn smooth.

I didn't have to go far before I started getting feelings of claustrophobia. Premature burial. I read that Poe story when I was ten or so and was never able to forget it. Gave me nightmares for years. Closed in a coffin, slowly suffocating, screaming to get out, ripping my fingernails off as I clawed at the underside of the coffin lid—

I kept reminding myself that this was a very different reality.

My brother was up there with a flashlight. And any time I wanted to, I could start pulling myself up. And even if I got stuck somehow trying to get back up, Josh would lend a hand and make sure I made it.

My anger with Cindy also kept me from any morbid flights of premature fancy.

Why had she lied to Josh? Why wouldn't she help me when she knew very well I was innocent?

Why had she told me she was in love with me?

The smell started about halfway down. Think of sewer gas and that'll give you a pretty good idea. Sour, oppressive, filthy.

That was about when I heard it for the first time since I'd been in the well, that rumbling not-quite-distinct voice, the voice of one of the ancient dark gods Lovecraft wrote about.

The further I descended, the louder the voice became.

I looked up.

Suddenly, Josh, the flashlight and safety seemed very far away.

I was nearing the bottom of the well now.

And the voice—

She was right, I thought. Cindy was right. About the well. About the beast that could take over your will—

I could see the algae that was growing like a monstrous shining rug over the bottom of the well. I assumed that was part of the filthy smell.

I wondered what lay beneath all the fungus and other types of growth that made up the slimy green cloak—

Was that where the monster lurked?

The voice grew louder, louder and I felt my hands slip on the smooth plastic and—

I dropped at least four feet, afraid that I was going to drop straight into the growth below—

I stuck one of my feet out against the wall and stopped my fall. Then I wrapped the rope around my hands so I wouldn't fall again.

And then I stopped, stopped completely, and I just hung there and I heard the one thing I never ever
wanted
to hear but had feared all my life I
would
hear: silence.

Oh, I don't mean the silence of people not-talking; or the silence of being in a quiet room; or even the silence of deep night when you wake up suddenly and aren't quite sure where you are.

What I'm talking about is not merely the absence of noise—I'm talking about the
extinction
of all noise. Forever.

I've heard people on TV evangelism shows relate how one night they just had this religious experience, and, in less than a few seconds, came to know the true nature of the universe.

Personally, I never used to believe in that kind of thing, that sudden flash of wisdom, that cosmic hunch thing.

Well, what I was hearing was cosmic all right, but it was a lot more than a hunch. It was confirmation of the most terrifying thought of all....

I'd come to know the true nature of the universe, too, you see, at least that universe inhabited by all us woebegone folks of flesh and blood. We prefer fantasies of monsters and aliens and the drooling undead to the one absolute truth we don't want to face—that we are no better than possums or elephants or hissing, coiling snakes. We live and die without making any sense of our journey and then we face—extinction. Utter extinction. I mean, that's the nice thing about vampires and ghosts. They assure us that we can live on in some form or another. But if you want the truth, look at the poor raccoon dead on the side of the highway, or at the fine shiny casket hiding the corpse, or the skeletons that sometimes get washed from their graves in spring floods. There's the reality—extinction, and nothing else.

Cindy and David Myles and Garrett had convinced themselves that they heard voices telling them what to do because that implied that a higher power was controlling their lives. And a higher power, even a
dark
higher power, promised wonderful hushed secrets that assured them there would be no extinction, at least not for them, the chosen.

I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry and maybe, in fact, I was doing a little bit of both as I hung down that smelly Midwestern well and saw how shabby and juvenile the fantasy had been, the fantasy about the well.

Voices, my ass.

Shared Psychotic Disorder.

Myles and Garrett had had the will to commit murder anyway. Cindy's game about the well simply gave them the courage to face their own desires.

I felt like a little boy who sat up in the dark all night staring at his closet, knowing that a monster waited for him on the other side of the door.

But when he opened it—nothing.

Absence. Extinction.

"You all right?" Josh shouted down.

"Yeah," I called up. "Unfortunately, I am."

"Huh?"

"I'll explain later."

I spent a few more moments listening. Oh, God, believe me, I
wanted
to hear that rumbling voice again. I
wanted
to believe that dark and powerful forces could explain the heartbreaking vagaries of life on this forlorn planet of ours.

But I couldn't.

Because I'd learned the truth.

And the truth was a lot scarier than alien voices and caped creeping vampires.

I remembered the Hemingway story, "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," and the old man so afraid to die.

"Our
nada
who art in
nada
," Hemingway says, "
nada
be thy name thy kingdom
nada
thy will be
nada
in
nada
as it is in
nada
."

"You fucking lying sonofabitch," I said to the alien who did not dwell here, or dwell anywhere for that matter, "you fucking lying sonofabitch."

CHAPTER SIX

Garrett lived in the lower half of an old two-story frame house. The place had once had some working class dignity but now the owners were young people who'd left two hot rods up on blocks to die right there on the front lawn. The house needed paint, the roof needed shingles, and several of the windows needed new panes.

We saw all this on our only drive past the front of the house. Then we parked two blocks away in an alley, pulled into an abandoned warehouse, and walked back to Garrett's place.

"You know how to use one of these puppies?" Josh said, showing me the glass cutter.

"I suppose we can figure it out," I said, turning it over in my hand.

"Long as he doesn't have some kind of security system, we should be all right."

We moved fast, not quite a run, and left black tracks in the white snow of the moon-bright alley.

When we got to the cross street, I hid behind a tree while Josh made sure that there was no traffic coming from either direction.

This time we did break into a run, and we kept it up until we stood, panting plumes of silver breath, on Garrett's back porch.

The porch smelled of garbage, due, no doubt, to the six large cans lined along the railing.

I tried the glass cutter first.

I had no trouble.

"Man, I can't believe that," Josh whispered, as I was opening the back door.

"Believe what?"

"The way you used that glass cutter."

"Why?"

"No offense, brother, but you're kind of a klutz."

Then there was no time for jokes.

We were inside.

The dominant smells were cigarette smoke, bourbon whiskey, old pizza cardboards, a bathroom that hadn't been cleaned in a while, and a few layers of Brut.

The furniture was all lumpy, old and done, like dead buffalos.

"You want the bathroom?" Josh said.

"Not if I don't have to."

He laughed. "You smelled it, too, huh?"

"I'm kidding. I'll take the bathroom and his room. You try the kitchen and the basement."

"Fine."

We were shadows, then, gliding through the street-lit darkness of these old-fashioned high-ceilinged rooms. Easy to imagine a player piano in the corner over there, and a family gathered round it singing "Camptown Races" and "Good Night, Irene."

There was nothing much in the bathroom. I tried the closet, the medicine cabinet, the clothes hamper. Nothing useful I could find at all. Then I had to stop and wonder exactly what I was looking for. Garrett had already planted the knife in my car. The murder weapon rested in the Chief's office.

I was just leaving the bathroom when headlights suddenly stared in the front windows like the eyes of a wild animal.

I didn't move.

The headlights held there a long moment.

Josh came out of the kitchen, watched the lights, ready to run.

The sounds of a car radio; headlights dying. Car doors open and closing.

Footsteps coming toward the house.

"Damn," Josh said.

We hoth started to move to the hack of the house when we heard the noise in the vestibule.

"Hey, cool it, man. The guy who lives downstairs is a cop."

"Big fuckin' deal."

"It'll be a big fuckin' deal if he decides to arrest ya."

"What can he arrest me for?"

"Cops can arrest ya for anything they
want
to arrest ya for."

"Bullshit."

"Bullshit, yourself."

"Shut up, you two. Let's get upstairs and eat this pizza."

"Remember, I ordered the half with the beef and hot peppers."

"You're really an asshole, you know that?"

This last line was spoken as they finally started climbing the stairs.

"God, how'd you like to hang out with those guys?" Josh grinned.

"Yeah, right."

"Let's start looking again."

I went into the bedroom and wished I hadn't.

First thing through the door, I smelled Cindy's perfume. I felt sick, thinking of them in the double bed that rested between two long corner windows.

I started hearing their ghosts, what she said to him, what he said to her.

She loves me, I wanted to say to Garrett's ghost.

But there wasn't time.

We had to hurry.

I started with his dresser drawers. One was filled with underwear, two handguns and several bullet clips. The next was filled with socks, a long economy-pack of Trojans, a small cellophane bag of stuff that looked and felt just like marijuana. The third drawer contained two ugly sweaters. Probably Christmas gifts he never wore. The last drawer held a bunch of skin magazines and several videotapes.
The Blonde Blower
was the title of one of the tapes. Kind of made a fella wonder what it was about.

I looked under the bureau and under the bed but found nothing. I looked behind the bed and behind the drapes and behind the small bookcase and found nothing again.

The closet seemed to hold no problem at all.

Garrett didn't exactly have a lot of clothes. There were three shirts on wire hangers that clanged, and maybe three pairs of dark slacks, and two pairs of Levi's. A fleece-lined jacket hung on one hook while a red and black checkered hunting shirt hung on another.

And then I saw them and I knew right away that something was wrong, him not wearing them tonight, and so I picked them up and I carried them out to the head of the basement.

"You down there?" I whispered.

"Yeah."

"I think I found something."

"What?"

"Bring the flashlight up."

That was the trouble with sharing a flashlight.

We put Garrett's new cowhide western boots down on the kitchen floor and then we started examining them.

There probably hadn't ever been a pair of western boots that had been examined with such care.

"Funny he isn't wearing these," I said. "They're his brand new boots."

"Yeah. Real funny."

"What if he didn't wear them because something was wrong with them?"

"That's what I was thinking."

"But what could be wrong with them?"

"I guess that's what we have to find out."

So we kept on looking.

Couple of times, the boys upstairs sounded as if they were standing on chandeliers and dropping big black vaults on the floor. And every so often they would swear at each other and argue about the pizza or the beer or the TV show they were watching. Fun guys.

Josh was the one to find it.

The white stitching on the upper part of the sole of the left boot.

The white stitching was discolored maybe an inch, inch-and-a-half.

Josh held the beam close to the stitching.

"Kind've orange," he said.

"Yeah."

"The way dried blood is kind've orange sometimes."

"Maybe that's why he isn't wearing them."

Then we looked closer and saw that there was also a deep stain—like a splash—right across the arch of the same boot.

"Bet whatever stained the stitching also stained the arch," Josh said.

"I'd bet the same thing."

He turned off the flashlight.

We just knelt there in the faint moonlight, looking at the lone western boot sitting between us.

Josh said, "He gets Mae Swenson's blood on his boots—"

"—but he's too cheap to throw them away—"

"—so he just keeps them in the closet."

"Figuring that after you get convicted of her murder, he can start wearing his boots again."

"Maybe we're full of shit," he said.

"Maybe. But I don't think so."

"Neither do I."

"You know what I want to do with this boot?" he said.

"What?"

"Take it over to the Chief's office. Have somebody lock it up for the night. And you know what?"

"What?"

"I want you to come with me, brother."

"No way."

"It's time, brother. You can't keep running. Mom and Dad're right."

We knelt there for a long time. Neither of us said anything.

Then he said, "I could beat the shit out of you."

"So?"

"So if I could beat the shit out of you, I can make you turn yourself in."

"Maybe you
can't
beat the shit out of me."

"Sure I can."

"It's crazy to turn myself in."

"No, it isn't, Spence. What's crazy is to keep running, and to let one of the local rednecks have an excuse for killing you."

I sighed. He was right.

"Scares the hell out of me," I said. "Turning myself in."

"Scares the hell out of me thinking about you out there all alone in the timber all night. Scares the hell out of Mom and Dad, too."

"How'd you ever get so grown up all of sudden."

"Vitamins."

I laughed. "You crazy asshole."

"Look who's talking."