Suffer the Children (25 page)

In the pit, Kathy Burton was not immediately aware of the scuffling sounds from above. She lay on the floor of the cave, the water container clutched in her hand. She had lost it once in the darkness, and had had to spend what seemed like an eternity searching for it, ranging back and forth across the cold damp floor of the cavern, not knowing whether she was searching all the area or only circling over a small portion of it. At one point in her gropings in the dark her hand had closed on a strange object, and it had been a few moments before she realized that it was a bone, a part of the skeleton that still lay neatly along one wall.

Another time her hand had brushed against the furry surface of the corpse of the cat, and she had retched for a few moments before being able to continue her search.

The smell in the cave was getting foul, for the flesh of the cat was beginning to rot, and Kathy had had to relieve herself several times. Mixed in was the sour smell of her retching.

She had found the water bottle at last, and had developed the habit of clutching it whenever she was awake. When exhaustion overcame her and she fell into a fitful sleep for a few moments, the bottle stayed beside her, and it was the first thing she groped for when she woke up.

She had stopped hearing the sound of the surf long ago, she wasn’t sure when, and the only sounds that still registered on her mind were the scrapings of what she thought had been rats. It had turned out that they weren’t rats, but tiny crabs, scuttling among the rocks, finding refuge and food among the small pools of sea water that collected here and there from seepage. She had not yet tried to eat one of them, but she was afraid
she was getting close to the point where she would have to. She was pondering the wisdom of this when she suddenly became aware of the sounds from above.

She froze where she was and waited quietly. She wanted to cry out, but was afraid to; she didn’t know what was above her. And then the beam of the flashlight hit her, for the first time in three days. By now her eyes were so used to the total blackness that the light was physically painful. She heard a voice above her, but could not make out the words.

“Look,” Jimmy Tyler was saying, his voice kept low by sudden fear. “There’s somebody down there.”

“Shh,” Elizabeth said. “They’ll hear you.”

“I’m afraid,” Jimmy said, his fear of the cave overcoming his fear of being thought a coward.

“It’s all right,” Elizabeth soothed him. “They can’t get up here.”

And then Kathy Burton opened her eyes, and moved her head into the beam again, looking upward. She tried to speak, and found to her dismay that she couldn’t. All that came out was a low gurgling sound.

“It’s Kathy,” Jimmy said. “We’ve found Kathy Burton.”

“Yes,” Elizabeth said slowly. “We have, haven’t we.” Jimmy Tyler did not notice the strange tone that had crept into her voice, the odd rasping sound.

“What’s wrong with her?” he whispered. “Is she all right?” He raised his voice. “Kathy,” he called. “It’s me. It’s Jimmy.”

Below, Kathy Burton felt a surge of relief come over her. She was safe. Jimmy Tyler would bring help, and she would get out of here.

“Go get someone,” she whispered hoarsely.

“I can’t hear you.”

She heard his voice echo down. “Help!” she croaked, a little louder.

Jimmy turned to Elizabeth. “We’ve got to get her out of here,” he said. “I’d better go get someone.”

“No,” Elizabeth whispered. “Let’s get her out now. There’s a ladder here. Look.” She showed him the ladder. “It won’t hold me, but I’ll bet it would hold you. You can climb down and find out if she’s all right. If she is, she can climb back up with you.”

Jimmy considered it for a moment He had never climbed a rope ladder before, but, on the other hand, he was the best climber he knew. And he thought of how neat it would be if he got the credit for saving Kathy Burton after the whole town hadn’t been able to find her.

“It’s all right,” he called down the shaft. “I’m coming down.”

And suddenly, in the pit, Kathy realized with terrible clarity what was about to happen. She tried to call out to him, but her voice wouldn’t carry through her fear. She watched in horror as the rope ladder appeared in the shaft. She tried to get up, to move to the ladder and grasp the end, but she was too weak. She watched in silence as Jimmy Tyler started climbing slowly down the ladder.

It happened when he was a little more than halfway down: Above him, Elizabeth gathered all her strength, and clutched at the rope ladder with both hands. And then she yanked.

If he’d been expecting it, Jimmy would have been all right. But he wasn’t expecting it, and he felt first one hand and then the other come loose from the slippery ropes. He was falling. He tried to break the fall, but it was too late. He landed on his head beside Kathy Burton, and lay still.

The shock of it forced a scream from Kathy’s ragged throat, and she found enough strength to make a single lunge at the rope ladder. Helplessly she watched it disappear up the shaft once again. And then she heard the ugly, rasping voice that she had come to associate with Elizabeth.

“Take care of him,” Elizabeth said. “Take care of your little brother. He needs you.”

The light clicked off, and Kathy listened as the scuffling sounds faded away once more. She began groping in the dark for Jimmy Tyler.

It was almost dusk as Elizabeth and Sarah made their way through the woods, and as they crossed the field night fell darkly over Port Arbello.

The next day there was no school in Port Arbello. The school had opened as usual, but by nine o’clock it had become obvious that the teachers would be sitting in all but empty classrooms. The few children who showed up were dismissed. But they refused to go. All had explicit instructions from their parents not to leave the school. They would be picked up, even the ones who lived only a block or two away.

The panic had built all through the night, from the moment Jimmy Tyler’s mother had called Ray Norton to advise him that her son had not come home that afternoon. Well, actually, he had come home, she admitted under questioning, but he had gone right out again to play. And then he had not come home.

No, she did not know where he had gone.

Yes, she supposed she should have found out, but she had assumed that he was going to stay near their house; after all, there weren’t any children his own age to play with. In fact, the only children close enough to be convenient were the Conger children.

Ray Norton’s forehead creased into a frown when Lenore Tyler mentioned the Conger children. That made three cases in the area, though he was still inclined to doubt Anne Forager’s strange story. He wondered what time Marty Forager would show up to begin abusing him about his handling of things in general and the case of his daughter in particular.

When he finished talking to Lenore Tyler, Norton started to call Jack Conger, then thought better of it. He decided to wait awhile and see what developed. He turned his attention instead to another problem, a problem that he thought could be potentially worse than the one of the missing children. The children’s disappearance was a fact. There was nothing he could do about it for the moment, except try to find out where they had gone.

The reaction of Port Arbello to the disappearances was something else again. This, Ray Norton thought, was predictable, and he didn’t like what he saw coming.

Port Arbello was not used to dealing with crime. Port Arbellans, in fact, were part of that great mass of Americans who knows that calme exists but never feels it personally. They lived in an atmosphere of trust; they had no reason not to. For most of his career, Ray Norton’s time had been taken up with citing speeders (most of them tourists) and keeping the peace at the tavern. There had been an occasional suicide in Port Arbello, but that was not unusual for New England, particularly during the winter. The crimes that plagued the country, the urban crimes that make urban people barricade their doors, were essentially unknown in Port Arbello. There had never been so much as a mugging, let alone a murder, at least not in the last hundred years. The town was so innocent, indeed, that it was only in the last few days that the people had begun installing new locks on their doors. Until now they had felt perfectly comfortable with the old locks, locks that could be opened with almost any key that came to hand.

But now they were frightened, and Ray Norton found it worrisome. Particularly with a man like Marty Forager doing his best to fan the fires. Ordinarily nobody paid much attention to Marty Forager, but now he had something to use as leverage, and Ray Norton was convinced that he would use it to his best advantage. Ray was very much aware that Martin Forager resented
the position lie held in Port Arbello. Not that he could blame him; who, after all, would want to be known as “poor Marty Forager”—a phrase always accompanied by a sorrowful shake of the head and words of pity for his wife and daughter.

He was pondering the situation, trying to figure out the best way to defuse it, when his main worry appeared in his office.

Marty Forager loomed over him, and Ray Norton could see immediately that he had already been drinking.

“I came to tell you,” Forager said, his voice surly. “There’s going to be a meeting tonight A town meeting. Since you don’t seem to be able to do anything about what’s going on in this town, we’re going to see if we can come up with some ideas of our own.” He stared down at the chief of police as if waiting to be challenged. Ray Norton looked up at him.

“Am I invited?” he asked mildly. The question apparently took Forager by surprise, as he stepped back a pace.

“No way we can keep you from coming,” he said reluctantly. “But you ain’t running it,” he added.

“I would assume that Billy Meyers will be running it,” Ray said quietly. “He’s still president of the council, isn’t he?”

“This’s a citizens’ meeting,” Forager sneered. “Not a council meeting. Nobody’s gonna run it.”

“I see,” Norton said, standing up. He was pleased to note that Forager moved back another pace. “In that case, you can count on me showing up. I always wanted to see a meeting nobody was running. It ought to be fascinating.”

Marty Forager glowered at him, and Ray thought he was going to say something more. Instead, Forager simply wheeled and stalked silently out of the police station. Norton watched him go and decided it was time to call Jack Conger.

“Jack,” he said when the editor was on the phone. “I’m afraid we’ve got trouble.”

“Not another child,” Jack said. “I don’t think the town could stand it.”

“No,” Norton replied. “It’s not that. It’s the town I’m worried about now. Martin Forager was just here again.” Quickly he filled Jack in on what Forager had told him, and made sure that the editor understood Forager’s manner as well as his words.

“In other words,” Jack said after he’d heard Ray Norton out, “you see a lynch mob developing.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Ray said slowly.

“Not for publication, anyway,” Jack gibed at him. “But that
is
what you’re saying, isn’t it?”

“Well I don’t think it’s gone that far yet,” the police chief began.

“—But that’s the direction it’s taking,” Jack Conger finished for him. “Any ideas about who Forager wants to string up?”

“I think I’m at the top of the list,” Ray replied, trying to put some banter into his voice. Then he became more serious once again. “Frankly, it’s you I’m worried about.”

“Me?” Jack said, his voice reflecting a disbelief he did not feel. “Why me?”

“Well, we might as well face the facts,” Norton said. “All the things that have been happening have been happening near your place.”

“That’s not quite true,” Jack corrected him. “Anne Forager says she was near our place, but no one knows for sure. Kathy Burton was last seen near our place, but it would be more exact to say she was in front of the Stevenses’ house. After all, Elizabeth said they parted at the woods, and that’s right at the property line. And as for Jimmy Tyler, we don’t know anything about him at all. The Tylers live a good quarter of a mile farther out than we do. So why do you think they’ll focus on me?”

“It’s natural,” the policeman said smoothly. “Everything’s happening on Conger’s Point Road. So who comes to mind when you think of Conger’s Point Road? Conger, of course.”

“I see,” Jack said slowly. “What do you think I should do?”

“I think you should come to that meeting tonight, and I think you should come to it with me.”

“After what you told Marty Forager about us?” Jack said, still managing to cling to a shred of humor, however black. Ray Norton chuckled.

“Well, if we have the name, as the man says, we might as well have the game. Seriously, though,” he went on. “I think you’d better plan to be at that meeting tonight, if for no other reason than not to be conspicuous by your absence.”

“Well,” Jack said doubtfully, “I’m not sure I go along with your reasoning, but I’ll be there, if not as a private citizen then as the editor of the
Courier
. If they all know they’re going to be quoted, it might help to keep the lid on things.”

“Maybe with some of them, but not with Marty Forager. I think he’s beginning to think of this whole mess as a one-man crusade.”

“Yes,” Jack mused. “He is that sort of person, isn’t he? Do you want to ride in to the meeting with me?”

“Fine,” Ray agreed. “Tick me up a little before seven. I’ll find out where it’s going to be, and either get back to you or tell you when I see you.” The conversation ended.

“Is there anything I ought to do?” Rose asked.

They were in the small study. Rose had listened in silence as Jack told her of the meeting he would have to attend, and the direction that Ray Norton was afraid it was going to take.

“Maybe I ought to go with you,” Rose continued.

“No,” Jack said. “I don’t see any reason for that I think you ought to stay here with the girls.”

Rose looked at him, trying to fathom his mood. He seemed worried about something, but she wasn’t sure what it was.

“Surely you don’t think anything’s going to happen to them, do you?” she asked.