Shorecliff (30 page)

At least for her there was an objective in crashing through the woods. I stood motionless, not knowing which way to go or whom to seek out. Gradually, as my eyes adjusted, I began to see the dim bushes and tree trunks all around me. They were indistinct shapes, and some of them were moving in the breeze. It took about two minutes for me to convince myself that the nearest one hid a hulking murderer out for blood. Fear washed through me. Logically it was ridiculous, but logic is unimportant when you’re alone in the dark. Every bush I saw became a crouching psychopath, every tree the shield for a slavering killer. Some people fear wild animals, but I was petrified by the wicked cunning of which only humans are capable. I had read enough comic books and mysteries to be able to imagine the appearance of all the murderers who surrounded me. Each one was dressed in black, and whether he was short or tall, bulky or wiry, each had the same glint of homicidal dementia in his eyes.

Suddenly, and with great vividness, I remembered Uncle Kurt’s story about walking through the snow-covered woods with his platoon and being surrounded by Germans. I looked around, my heart beating so forcefully that I thought I might be about to die. The woods seemed to be covered in a blanket of snow. I waited for white German faces to burst out from the darkness. The breeze picked up for a moment, and one of the bushes nearby rustled and swayed. It was all I needed. With a squeak of pure panic, I put my arms over my eyes and ran.

The strip of woods between Shorecliff and the Stephensons’ farm was in fact quite sizable, and though by day the sunlight shining in on either side was enough to show that the trees did not go on forever, in the darkness one could wander for a long time without finding a way out. I probably ran for about ten minutes, though it seemed like hours. I fell several times, hit my head on branches, collided with trees. A few minutes into my galloping retreat I began to cry, and the tears did nothing to clear my vision. I was a wreck. The only reason I stopped moving was that my breath was getting ragged, and I had just run into my fourth maple tree. Leaning against its corrugated bark, I wiped my dirt- and tear-smeared face and looked around. Instantly the gang of spectral murderers encircled me again. I couldn’t escape them. It began to seem as if I would never leave the woods, as if I would be trapped in a hell of leafy killers forever. I was becoming nearly hysterical. Then I turned my head and saw a white face peering at me through the bushes.

Immediately I thought, “A German!” and screamed like a rabbit being slaughtered. Unlike Hennessey, I recovered my voice only when my fear reached unprecedented heights. I shrieked and shrieked and fell to my knees. Even when hands gripped my shoulders and shook me, it was at least a minute before I stopped. Eventually, however, I couldn’t find any more energy to scream, and I opened my eyes. Simultaneously I heard a voice that I realized had been speaking for some time.

“It’s okay, Richard, buddy! It’s me—Fisher. It’s just me, boy scout. Stop shouting! You’re all right. It’s just me. It’s Fisher.”

Gentle, kindly, lovable Fisher out in the woods, searching for owls. The relief was so strong I practically fainted. The murderers vanished. I knelt on the ground, unspeakably grateful for Fisher’s hands on my shoulders, and wiped my eyes, snuffling. Something glinted by my knees, and I reached down and found my telescope. Fisher had dropped it while trying to comfort me.

“It’s not much use in the dark,” he said, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “But I like to have it with me just in case.”

I murmured an unintelligible response and clasped the telescope in my fist. The feel of its cool metal casing reassured me.

Fisher let me recover for a moment longer and then asked, “What are you doing out here, boy scout?”

“Everyone’s out here,” I replied. “I came with Isabella. We were following Tom and Philip. They went out to visit Lorelei. Delia and Delia are out here too—I don’t know why. Isabella thinks they’re going to visit Barnavelt.”

“The only person I’ve seen is Pamela,” Fisher said.

“Pamela?” I echoed. Hers was the last name I expected to hear.

The explanation for her presence came only later in the night, however. First came Barnavelt, for he was the one who began the night’s fiasco.

While I was racing through the woods in panic, Delia and Delia arrived at Condor’s cottage without mishap. They had visited so frequently that they knew the way better than everyone else, except of course Condor himself and Uncle Eberhardt. Eberhardt, however, was someone they had forgotten about. Cautiously they opened the door—Condor didn’t believe in locks, claiming he owned nothing to steal—and crept into the main room. The bedroom door was closed, and no sound came through it. Barnavelt lay curled in his wooden house, his black nose resting on his bushy red tail.

Delia Ybarra found the leash hanging on the wall and bent over the wooden house to fasten the end of it around Barnavelt’s neck.

“Should we, Eel?” Delia Robierre whispered suddenly.

“Of course we should! Don’t be stupid. We’ve come all the way out here, and this is our one chance.” Cordelia slid the loop at the end of the leash over Barnavelt’s head.

He watched her with his black eyes, his snout quivering. When she had finished, he jumped up and ran to the door of the cottage.

“See?” she crowed, clutching the leash. “He knows what’s happening! What a smart fox you are!” she crooned at him. These comments were probably what woke Great-Uncle Eberhardt.

Just as the Delias were following Barnavelt outside, the bedroom door crashed on its hinges and Eberhardt appeared in black long johns, his white hair flying. “Get back here, you hooligans!” he shouted. “Thieves! Kidnappers! I’ll have your hide! I’ll whip you until you bleed!”

Delia and Delia heard every word, and though they laughed about it afterward, at the time they were terrified. They sprinted into the woods with Barnavelt and soon discovered the same thing I had—that running in a pitch-black wood is sure to result in bruises and scrapes. Behind them Eberhardt was crashing nearer.

“Turn left, Lia!” Delia Ybarra said in a hoarse whisper. The two girls veered, Barnavelt still at their heels, and some minutes later, they stopped to listen. A few indistinct shouts sounded in the distance and one terrifying scream—mine, they discovered later—but no furious old man pursued them.

“We’ve shaken him off,” Delia Robierre whispered.

Now that they were out of danger, the girls regained their appreciation of the adventure. It took them no time at all to collapse in a storm of giggles.

Barnavelt, however, had gotten a taste of late-night running and wanted more. Seeing that the two girls weren’t going to provide any more entertainment, he wriggled this way and that, curled in a ball, tugged and kicked at his leash, and in a few moments slipped out of it and bolted into the darkness.

The two Delias screamed his name and tried to follow him, but he had disappeared. Condor explained later that he had deliberately made the leash loose enough for Barnavelt to slip out of if he tried, to avoid the danger of strangulation. And it was this that finally convinced the Delias of Barnavelt’s complicity in his own captivity. After all, it was only when they foxnapped him that he took advantage of the possibility of escape.

The fox ended up in one of the Stephenson fields, where Lorelei was taking a walk. Barnavelt lolloped right up to her, grinning his foxy little grin, and waited for her to take him back to Condor’s cottage. She did so, thereby finding a path into the night’s final catastrophe—and it was a good thing she did because when we returned to Shorecliff at the end of the night, the aunts didn’t bother to tell her to leave, and we regained her as a companion in the last harried days before the end of the summer. Given that we were all emotionally as fragile as butterfly wings during those days, her soft, practical presence was an inestimable gift.

The reason Uncle Eberhardt had failed to catch the two Delias, in spite of being more familiar with the woods than they were, was that he had been distracted by another pair of delinquents. He had just begun his crazed pursuit of the foxnappers when Tom and Philip, bursting into the clearing around Condor’s cottage from the opposite direction, ran straight into him. All three fell to the ground in a tangle. Many years later Philip told me that one of the things he remembered best from that night was the horrible sensation of Uncle Eberhardt’s bare leg pressing against his cheek. When they finally disengaged themselves and rose to their feet, Eberhardt was so angry he was nearly foaming at the mouth.

“What are you doing out here, you useless brats?” he sputtered. “How dare you run into me in the middle of the night! I’ll paddle you! I’ll beat you black and blue! Get away from my cottage. How dare you enter my woods!”

He looked so fearsome, a dim figure leaping up and down and shaking two gnarled fists in their faces, that Philip and Tom exchanged a look and raced back into the woods, away from Condor’s cottage and also away from the Delias, though the only reason they had stopped by the cottage in the first place was to check on the two girls. They were no better at avoiding trees than the rest of us and ran into several in their flight from Eberhardt. Tom twisted his ankle, and Philip nearly impaled his right eye on a branch. For the remainder of our stay at Shorecliff, he sported a cut on his cheek that made him look like a Caribbean pirate.

I, meanwhile, was awash in relief that our most experienced tracker had found me and taken me under his wing. Fisher was the only one who avoided getting lost that night. It was strange and soothing to see how confidently he navigated the forest while the rest of us bashed through it like blind bears. I was telling him as best I could why everyone else had come into the woods when he shushed me and lifted his face.

“Can you hear that?” he whispered, rapt.

I thought I could make out a small rustling. “What is it?” I asked.

“An owl catching a mouse!”

“How do you know?”

Fisher didn’t answer. We both stood listening. Probably the sound he heard came from the Delias escaping from Uncle Eberhardt. Whatever it was, it distracted us into staying in one position, and that was why Philip and Tom happened upon us when they did. Tom came barreling from behind a bush and ran into me, casting me headlong. Yet again I tasted dirt. A short-lived shouting match ensued.

“Who the hell is that?”

“Stop pushing me!”

“Ow! Who is that?”

“Get the hell off me!”

“I’m trying to!”

“Fisher? What are you doing here?”

Philip’s surprised question ended the spat. Tom and I got up off the ground, and the four of us looked at the white blotches that were all we could see of each other’s faces.

Tom chuckled and said, “Isn’t this quite the family gathering,” but Philip punched him on the arm and asked, “Is Eberhardt still after us?”

We obligingly listened to the wood noises. Fisher heard more rustling and returned to his naturalist mode, but there were no more owls for him that night.

“I think we shook him off,” said Tom.

“What was he doing up anyway?”

“The Delias must have woken him. They were kidnapping that stupid fox, weren’t they? Crazy kids.”

As if on cue, a fifth figure stumbled up to us. “I heard that, Tom,” said Delia Robierre, sounding breathless. “Have any of you seen Delia? I’ve lost her.”

“Were you two really trying to kidnap Barnavelt?” Philip asked.

“We thought it was a good idea! I don’t know why you have to make fun of it. We thought it was important. But then Uncle Eberhardt chased us, and Barnavelt got away, and we heard voices, so we tried to follow them, but we were separated somehow. And Isabella’s out here too, but she ran away from me.” Her voice wavered.

“Isabella came out too?” Philip interrupted.

Delia paused and then said, “Yes.”

At this point I broke in. Pamela’s presence had been bothering me ever since I’d heard about it, and I asked, “Why haven’t we seen Pamela too, if she’s out here?”

Tom sighed. “She’s probably lost. We’ll have to find her.”

A ghostly figure appeared behind him and said, “No, I’m here.”

It was Pamela in her white nightgown, the top half covered by a sweater. The rest of us had had a second to register that someone was standing behind Tom, but he leaped in terror. We burst out laughing, and Pamela, a smirk of satisfaction on her face, joined our circle. It was the first time I understood how much she enjoyed being secretly in the know. She was too proud to join me in most of my eavesdropping expeditions—they were crude and lacked the thrill of the chase—but when she could combine dignity with cunning, there was no one more skilled at stalking people like a secret agent.

“The gang’s practically all here,” Tom said when we had finished laughing at him. He was still disgruntled and glared at Pamela.

“All except Isabella,” said Philip. “And my Delia.”

“How about the others? Has anyone seen Charlie or Francesca or Yvette?”

“Yvette was still asleep when I left,” said Pamela.

“So was Charlie when I left,” Fisher said. “But I’ve been out here for hours.”

Philip glanced at him affectionately. “Do you often spend all night in the woods, pal?” he asked.

“It’s the best time for owls.”

“We’d better find Isabella then,” said Tom.

“I wouldn’t look for her if I were you,” Delia Robierre broke in.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I…I just think she’d rather be left alone.”

“What are you talking about?” said Philip. “If she’s lost, we have to find her. Did she tell you where she was trying to go?”

“Yes,” Delia replied after another long pause. “But she was upset, and I promised I wouldn’t mention having seen her. Except then she ran away, and if she’s actually lost…”

“Why was she upset?” Tom asked. The thought of Isabella in danger roused his protective blood.

“No reason,” said Delia.

“Don’t be stupid, Delia. Obviously she was upset about something, and you know what it is. Tell me now!”

As usual, his older-brother insistence won the day. “First of all,” she began angrily, “you two wouldn’t let her come out with you.”