The Witch of the Wood (20 page)

A minute later he was carrying his baby in the car seat and walking with the group, all of them taking turns killing monster-bitches along the way, keeping a tally. When Brian Duffey got to Front Street, he had twenty-five followers.

By the time he reached the Interstate, they were two hundred strong.

“Tell me about the prophecy,” Rudy said softly. He’d made his way to the sofa, hoping she would follow in tow.

“It’s nothing.”

“Not true. It’s all relevant, and I need to know, Caroline.” He smiled gently. “No deal on the blood donation until I have all the facts, miss. No ticky, no laundry.”

“So you’re tough as nails, huh? Balls of steel, the poker face of the century?”

“That’s right. Sit, please.” He patted the area next to him. “One old couch-pillow, no waiting.”

She came over and took her place next to him, close enough so the other side of her cushion was raised up an inch.

“It’s prophesized in my storybook,” she said, “that the Provider only serves you briefly. The symbol for ‘The Father’ is a face with no features. It scared the shit out of me when I was a child, to tell you the truth.” She went pigeon-toed, knees together. “My point is that the icon for ‘The Provider’ shares space with the Father for a page and that’s it. The only other mention of her is the very next page where her symbol is surrounded by skulls.”

“A page could mean fifty years, Caroline. It’s a book of riddles, and the timelines sound blurry.”

“Easy for you to say.”

Rudy nodded acknowledgment.

“So what’s you’re symbol,” he said, “your icon?”

She smiled ruefully. “It’s the letter Y, but drawn in a curvy way that always made me think it was a vagina. Made me feel naughty as hell for thinking so too.” She glanced at him sideways with slitted eyes. “Don’t get any ideas, mister.” Rudy laughed it off like a gentleman.

“If it’s not . . . well . . .
that,
then what is it?” he said.

“A fork. A crossroads.”

He considered this for a moment.

“Anything else on the page?”

“Yes.”

“Do tell.”

“It’s a sign at the bottom, a squiggled line with an optical illusion, like an Escher picture.”

“What’s the illusion?”

“There are two dots above the line, but when you turn the book upside down, the two dots are on the top again where the underside was. And if you look at it long enough, the dots disappear altogether.”

“What’s it mean?”

“I can’t be sure, Rudy, but I think it’s a symbol for irony.”

He smiled. That was clever, he had to admit it. He looked over, ready to say something complimentary, but she was making study of her nails in a way that made him pause.

“You know,” she said finally, “my favorite of yours is the one titled ‘Word Choice and Politics: A New Semiotics.’”

“You read that?”

“I’ve read a lot of things. And I liked the . . .
irony,
Rudy. You’re really a funny guy; your humor is just so dry a lot of people might think there’s no wine left in the wrinkled old vine.”

“Thanks for the image.”

“Don’t mention it.”

They smiled at each other. She looked down first, and Rudy had no idea what exactly that meant. But he was suddenly sure that any “skull” coming within fifty yards of this particular fork in the road was going to have to deal with this old professor’s protective wrath, even if it took a baseball bat or a tire iron. Again, he had the strong desire to kiss this young woman, but of course he couldn’t bring himself to initiate it.

“Caroline,” he said softly.

“Yes, I’m right here. No need to shout.”

“Ha ha.”

“Ha ha back at you,” she said. She looked up eyes dancing just a bit, but she was scared too, Rudy could see it.

“The skulls might not symbolize your death at all,” he continued. “They could mean that, well . . . that
you
are the one killing the bad guys.”

She laughed at that one.

“I’ve never killed anyone, Rudy! I don’t even kill spiders; I throw them outside. The gun collecting was part of the compulsions, but I’ve never even dry-fired one.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Not even a little bit. I did my job hoarding, and now when the shit hits the fan you can go pick your favorite. I can tell you all the brands and serial numbers by heart, I can break them down, wire-brush them with oil, and load them. But I can’t fire one, Rudy. I’ve just always been afraid of that part, and I wouldn’t even know how to aim it. There. I’m a dweeb. My secret’s out.” She looked up at him from under her lashes. “Some ‘Provider,’ huh?”

“Wait now,” Rudy said. “Maybe you’re not ‘The Provider’ at all. Maybe you’re ‘The Preparer of the Basement’ or ‘The Gun Collector’ or ‘The Digger of Tunnels,’ someone subordinate to this character with such a dark future.”

She reached for the bottom of her shirt and hauled up a bit so he’d get a good view. And there, on her hip, was what appeared to be a tattoo. It was a squiggly line with two dots over it. Rudy didn’t bother testing it by moving up and behind her to see if the dots would still appear on the new upside, but after a few seconds, as advertised, the dots seemed to disappear from view altogether.

“This was raised up on my skin right before the trees started falling, Rudy. I am your Provider. I just have to face the fact that my time may be short, and pray that I’m the right girl for the job when push comes to shove.” She got up. “Speaking of which, and I hope you’ll excuse this poor segue, we didn’t shove this couch over for nothing. Help me pull open this trapdoor. It’s made of six inches of concrete and I don’t have Mother to help with the up-n-over anymore.”

She turned the bolts on three sides of the square cover, and even though their hasps were anchored with what looked like contractor’s wedge bolts, Rudy seriously wondered how difficult it would be to break in from the underside. He dismissed this, however, writing it off to the theory that all this was built on the idea of illusion, passing glances failing to register the truth in the architecture both upstairs and out at the bank of the river.

They both took hold of the iron ring and pulled. The door came up, hinges squealing, and they let it fall to the floor with a thump.

There was a noise then.

From down in the hole. They both peered over the edge, and there were eyes down there looking back up at them. Slanted yellow eyes.

Hundreds of them.

The tunnel was packed with dogs, and Caroline was already squatting back at the trapdoor, digging her fingers under to throw it back over. Rudy put out his hand.

“No, wait!”

She paused, and he gave her a half-look, ear cocked.

“Do you hear it?”

“Hear what?”

“Exactly.” He peered back down the hole, and the eyes stared back, waiting. He went down to a knee for a better angle and looked over the rim of his glasses. Yep. They were a throng that went all the way back as far as the eye could see. And no nipping or barking, no jumping, no growling. He pushed up and put his hands on his hips.

“I have a feeling about this,” he said. “A strong one.” He pointed to the floor by his feet and said, “Come! Now!”

The dogs trotted up the ramp single file, quickly, efficiently, a flood of them filling up the basement floor space: collies, Rottweilers, bulldogs, Labradors, greyhounds, pit bulls, Newfoundlands, and Siberian huskies. There were wild dogs and dogs with collars, an English mastiff with one eye and a limp, and a Great Dane standing four and a half feet high. And then came the wolves, gray and black. Foxes too, the lot of them jockeying for position, the biggest canines in the rear, the smaller nose-nudged to the front with a few of the very largest spot-positioned up there like sentries. When the room was filled the parade stopped abruptly, the remaining animals waiting patiently down in the tunnel, one last dog trying to be included up in the light—a tiny Cavalier King Charles Spaniel puppy scampering up the ramp, hind legs low to the ground in anticipation, tail wagging furiously. An Old English sheepdog with an especially sad-looking expression bared its teeth and growled, and the spaniel went flat on his stomach, ears back in terror. Caroline bent to pick him up immediately.

“There, there,” she said, trying to cradle him. The puppy kept kicking his soft paws to find purchase on her chest, licking her face, shaking with it.

Rudy turned to the pack.

“Sit,” he said, and in militaristic synchronicity they all did. So did the remaining animals in the tunnel.

“What on earth is this?” Caroline said.

“I suppose,” Rudy answered, “that it’s one of the ‘powers’ that I was destined to gain after the trees fell.”

“But it wasn’t in the book.”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s in our collective psyche. And your ‘book’ could have been a copy of a copy of a copy fifty times over, this one small part lost through the translations. In terms of the last few days, think about the players who have surfaced, all of them classic figures that represent ‘the horrific,’ those who were actually foreshadowings of a new world order. There’s the witch, the warlock, and now the ‘werewolf’ or the king of dogs. And the prisoners coming out of their ground-holes in a temporary trancelike state are the zombies. These iconic characters were passed down to us first in verbal story-code. Of course, we made them into caricatures over time because it is in our nature to euphemize, but now is the time for perspective. It makes more than perfect sense that my army is canine.”

The cavalier spaniel was in Caroline’s ear now, licking and nudging with its tiny black nose.

“Shh,” she was saying, trying to control him. Finally, she let him down to the floor gently. He had a wild moment where he hunched and gave darting, frightened glances all around, tail wagging madly. The sheepdog gave a quick bark, and the spaniel went over, turned, and backed in between the bigger dog’s feet, quieted now in his little safe haven.

“I’m not an expert with pop culture and Gothic,” Caroline said, still smiling about the little one, “but aren’t we forgetting the Vampire?”

“Your mother,” Rudy said. “She needs my blood.”

“Hmm,” she said. Her smile had vanished, but Rudy didn’t think she was offended, not quite. Maybe she was thinking what he was, that it was possible Mother-Dearest had more to do with this than gaining a few disease-free bonus years. Still, it didn’t warrant further discussion, not at the moment. There were priorities.

“Get your video camera,” Rudy said. “I have a message to send out, and I want the dogs in the background. They make for a powerful visual presentation, and we should capture it on tape, or whatever you’d call it nowadays, before they start having to go outside to piss and poop in shifts.”

“You hope,” she said, moving through them nervously, the lot making a path for her. “If they make in here, I’m just letting you know, Rudy, I am not cleaning it up.” She opened one of the storage units and reached inside. “I’m still a bit pissed that they breached my river entrance. I mean, it’s just camouflaged tarp with a slit down the middle, but it’s
good
camouflage. I walked past it hundreds of times when it went up, and you literally couldn’t distinguish it from the background.”

“Old icons and images, Caroline. And triggers. They’ve had that dressed-up river doorway in their collective consciousness for as long as we have been erecting these cartoonish archetypes with their Halloween storylines.”

Caroline came back through the mass with her palmcorder.

“I wish I could have taken one of your classes,” she said.

“I never taught Gothic.”

She tilted her head slightly.

“I’m not talking about content, Rudy. It’s the delivery I’m starting to like.”

She was looking at him. It was awkward and electric, and neither of them budged.

A dog growled, another barked to shut the first one up, and a third chimed in to let the second one know he or she was just as guilty as the former for the interruption. Or that’s the way it seemed.

“So,” Rudy said.

“So.” She had a rueful grin, but it was warm, saying for all intents and purposes,
“Another time, maybe . . .”

Yes. Another time: Rudy’s theme song.

“You know how to work that thing?” he said flatly.

“Sure do,” she replied, “but you’ll still need to hide your face, unless you want every witch who’s stolen a laptop to die for it. Hold this.” She handed over the camera and moved through to the stairway. Its underside was cloaked by a white gauzy material, and she ripped it down, next reaching under to pull out an old groundcloth that looked as if it had seen its best days in the 70s. She came back through the hoard, and the dogs didn’t seem to mind that she dragged the things over their heads. In fact, Rudy could have sworn they felt privileged by the touch of them, smelling up at them, licking their chops after they passed over.

She paused at the couch and nodded toward her hat.

“Put it on backward the way a catcher does,” she said.

Rudy did it, and Caroline tossed the gauze back into the crowd of dogs, giving the command, “Eyes, nose, mouth!” as she did it. The dogs dove to it, and when it resurfaced, they had bitten holes in the fabric. Caroline draped it over Rudy’s head with the holes coming over his face in the proper places. She then proceeded to put the old dirty canvas over his head in a hood rather than simply across his back like a cloak. The last piece was a hank of rope she took off the top of the dryer and tied around Rudy’s neck.

She backed off a step.

“Well?” Rudy said. It smelled like mothballs and old camp gear, and he imagined he looked like some cartoon Western bandito who couldn’t afford pantyhose to go over his face. Caroline shivered.

“You’re the faceless man in my old book who frightened me as a child,” she said. She brought up the camera and shot for a second, next hitting rewind, then play. She touched the pause button and showed him the screen.