Black Creek Crossing

by John Saul

  At first she saw nothing, but then, below them and tucked so deeply into one of the fissures in the bluff that it was almost invisible, she spotted something that looked like a wooden wall. “What is it?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Seth said. “Nobody ever comes out here but me, and I’ve never seen this before—I mean, I’ve been in the clearing, but I always thought the rock was just heaped up against the face of the bluff.”

  They picked their way down the bank of rubble, to find Houdini scratching at a door that was barely taller than Seth and held closed by a simple wooden latch.

  Both of them stared at the door, which seemed so out of place in the cleft of the granite that they could hardly believe it was real.

  Finally, Seth reached out and tested the latch.

  The door swung slowly open, and the moment the gap was wide enough, Houdini dashed through, vanishing into the darkness. Neither Seth nor Angel made a move to enter until the door had swung far enough that they could see what lay within.

  It seemed to be a tiny cabin constructed entirely of great oaken logs, and their unevenness and the adze marks on them made them look to Angel like the hand-hewn timbers that supported the floor of her own house. The cabin was only a single room, but it wasn’t rectangular, or even square. Rather, it was oddly wedge-shaped, to conform to the shape of the fissure within whose confines it had been built; none of its four walls were the same length, and every angle where two walls met was different. At the rear there was a crude fireplace built of uneven chunks of granite that must have been gathered from the slag heap at the base of the bluff. The entire surface of the firebox was covered with a layer of soot, and a heavy wrought-iron pothook was mounted in one wall. To one side of the fireplace there was a stack of split wood and a small pile of kindling.

  From the pothook hung a kettle that looked every bit as old as the cabin itself.

  Glancing nervously at each other, so dumbstruck by what the cat had led them to that neither of them could say a word, first Seth, then Angel, stepped through the small doorway and into the peculiarly proportioned room. A slab of oak nearly four inches thick had been mounted along one wall to serve as a counter, and three worn wooden ladles hung from pegs in the wall. At the far end of the counter an immense block of granite, nearly two feet on a side, had been hollowed out to form a sink.

  A sink that was full of water, the surface of which was shimmering even in the dim light that came in through the open door.

  Angel stared at it, her heart racing. “Somebody must live here,” she breathed.

  Seth’s eyes were also fastened on the sink, which was full nearly to the rim. But nowhere was there any sign of a faucet, or even a pump handle.

  As they stood silently gazing at it, there was a soft plink, and the water’s surface rippled.

  A moment later they heard the plinking sound again, and as the third drop of water fell, Seth finally spotted its source: high up on the wall above the sink, a small piece of wood protruded, and water dripped from the end of it.

  “But where’s the water coming from?” Angel asked as they moved closer to the sink. Now they could see a notch cut in the rim of the sink, perhaps an inch deep, that let overflow water run out through a small wooden trough that also pierced the wall.

  “It probably just seeps out of the face of the bluff,” Seth said. “There’s a spot up closer to the stream where it does that, even when it hasn’t been raining in weeks.”

  They gazed at the water, which was crystal clear, then Seth took one of the wooden ladles off its hook, dipped it in the water, sniffed it, and tasted it.

  “It’s good!” He offered the ladle to Angel, but she shook her head.

  “Just because it tastes good doesn’t mean it’s safe. My mother says you should always boil water if you don’t know where it came from.”

  “So does mine,” Seth said. “But I’ve been drinking water out of the stream all my life, and I haven’t gotten sick yet.” As if to prove his point, he took another deep gulp from the ladle, poured the rest back in the sink, then turned to look at the rest of the room.

  There was something that appeared to be a small frame for a mattress in the corner behind the door, though there was no trace of rope webbing to support a mattress, even had there been one in the room. The ceiling was supported by beams low enough so Angel could touch them without stretching, and they had been hewn from the same kind of logs as the walls.

  “This is too cool,” Seth breathed.

  “Who do you think built it?” Angel asked. “It’s like nobody’s even been here in hundreds of years.”

  “But there aren’t any water stains,” Seth said as he gazed at the low ceiling. “If it’s as old as it looks, how come the roof doesn’t leak?” Now his eyes roamed over all the other surfaces in the tiny cabin, all of which—the floor, counter, bed frame, even the rim of the sink, except for the notch that served as an overflow drain—were covered with a thick layer of dust that was undisturbed, except for the footprints on the floor where first Houdini and then Angel and Seth had trod. Even the firewood and kindling were almost lost under coats of dust. “It’s got to be as old as your house!”

  “But if it’s that old, how come nobody even knows it’s here?” Angel asked.

  His eyes fixed on the cat, Seth didn’t seem to hear her question. But when he finally spoke, Angel realized that he had. “You think maybe Houdini led us here on purpose?” he asked, his voice carrying a hollow tone that told Angel he’d already answered his own question.

  “I—I don’t know,” she stammered. “I mean, I guess maybe sometimes dogs—”

  “He led us to the book,” Seth said. He turned away from the cat and looked into Angel’s eyes. “He didn’t just get us to go down into the cellar—he was sniffing at the exact stair it was hidden in.”

  Once more Angel felt the apprehension that had come over her when she and Seth stood at the head of the cellar stairs. “M-Maybe he smelled it,” she suggested.

  Seth’s eyes went back to the cat. “You don’t know where he came from, do you?”

  “N-No,” Angel stammered uneasily.

  “He just showed up in the closet in your room, with the door closed.”

  Angel nodded, and tried to quell the uneasiness rising in her stomach.

  “And he follows you around, and he showed us where the book was hidden, and then he led us out here.”

  “Maybe this is where he lives,” Angel said, certain she knew what Seth was going to say next, but not wanting to hear it. “Maybe we were just following him home.”

  “Or maybe we weren’t,” Seth said. “And we didn’t just follow him, remember? He made us go where he wanted us to go. Maybe dogs do that sometimes, but did you ever hear of cats doing it? I saw on TV once where a woman claimed her cat yowled to wake her up when the house was on fire, but if you ask me, the cat was just scared and wanted out before it got burned up.”

  “But if Houdini really was showing us where the book was, and really did lead us here . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she knew she didn’t want to go any further in the direction in which the thought was taking her.

  “What about the marks on the mirror?” Seth asked. “The ones that made us look for something under the stairs in the first place?”

  “He’s a cat, Seth,” Angel said, her voice taking on an edge. “Cats don’t write on mirrors with lipstick!”

  “Then who did it?”

  “I don’t know! Maybe I did it! Maybe I was sleepwalking or something! But it wasn’t Houdini! He’s just a cat!”

  “What if he’s not?” Seth shot back. “What if he’s—” He hesitated, then the words came out: “What if he’s something else?”

  The words hung between them as the silence stretched. They both turned to look at Houdini, who was still sitting on the hearth. But he was no longer grooming himself. Instead, he was staring at them, as if waiting for something.

  “I-If he’s not just a cat,” Angel finally bre
athed, her voice barely audible, “what is he?”

  Now it was Seth who couldn’t quite bring himself to voice the thought taking shape in his mind. “I don’t know,” he said. “But let’s try something.” He took off his backpack, opened it, and removed the ancient leather-bound book.

  As both Angel and Seth watched, Houdini’s tail began twitching, then his body tensed as he rose to his feet and stretched his neck toward the book.

  “I think we better see if we can figure out what this is,” Seth said, setting the book on the counter.

  “How old do you think it is?” Angel whispered.

  The book lay on the dusty counter, and even though barely enough sunlight filtered through the open door to make it possible to read, the tome had lost none of its strange glow. Indeed, the illusion of it somehow being lit from within was even stronger here than when they brought it out of the shadows of the basement. Nor did it look quite as ancient. The leather seemed slightly less worn, and though the three ornately embossed letters—or symbols—on the cover were still unreadable, the gold seemed slightly brighter than Angel remembered it.

  Seth reached out as if to open it, but hesitated, his fingers hovering above the cover. “It’s got to be hundreds of years old,” he replied, his voice as low as Angel’s, even though they were alone in the tiny cabin. “It looks like it might fall apart if I even try to open it.”

  “But we can’t even see the title if we don’t open it,” Angel said, her voice trembling with anticipation.

  Still Seth hesitated. If he tried to open the book and the cover fell off or the pages fell out, the book could be ruined. Yet even as he thought about the damage it might do, his curiosity overrode his caution, and his fingers touched the book.

  And instantaneously jerked away.

  “What’s wrong?” Angel asked.

  Seth’s gaze remained fixed on the book. “It—It felt hot,” he stammered.

  Gingerly, Angel reached out, but instead of touching the book, she let her hand hover over it. Though she knew it was impossible—knew it had to be some kind of illusion—the strange glow from within the volume appeared to brighten.

  Very slowly, ready to jerk her hand away in an instant, Angel lowered her palm until it was resting on the book.

  It felt warm, but certainly not hot.

  She lifted the right edge of the cover, gently opening it.

  The cover held, and inside it was a page that was blank except for an inscription done in a handwriting that looked so old-fashioned that Seth was certain it had been written when the book was new. It was near the top of the page, slightly off center:

  “Wow,” Seth breathed. “Look at that handwriting! It looks really, really old!”

  “But what does it mean?” Angel asked, her voice trembling with excitement. “ ‘For Forbearance’?”

  “Maybe it was a present,” Seth suggested. “Like if someone was having some kind of trouble, but got through it, you know?”

  Gingerly, Angel turned the flyleaf and they found themselves staring at the title page, whose words were in the same ornate lettering as that which was embossed in gold on the cover. Here, though, in stark black against the white of the page, they were far more legible:

  Carefully, Angel reclosed the volume, and now, after they’d seen the title page, the gold embossing on the cover became clear:

  “Do you suppose it’s some kind of cookbook?” Seth asked. “Or maybe like folk medicine? You know—herbs and stuff like that?”

  Angel reopened the book and began turning the pages.

  All of them were beautifully illuminated, the first letter of each word so intricately drawn that they were almost lost in decorative imagery. Indeed, most of the initial letters were only identifiable after they’d deciphered the rest of the words the letters began.

  Each page had a heading, but none of them seemed to make sense; beneath the word “Spring” there were four lines of verse that seemed to mean nothing:

  The initial D of the quatrain was entwined in a beautifully colored mass of flowering vines that, though rooted in that first capitalized letter, wandered all over the page, framing the entire verse in flowers and foliage. All but concealed in the vines was some kind of serpent, its mouth wide open, its fangs curving with such menace that Angel shuddered as she gazed at it.

  For several long seconds, Angel and Seth studied the verse, and then Angel resumed turning the pages.

  On each page there was another verse, each as incomprehensible as the first.

  “Do you understand any of it?” she finally asked Seth as she turned the last page and closed the book.

  “Yeah,” Seth sighed. “A few words.”

  “It’s like it doesn’t mean anything,” she said. “It’s almost like the stuff in Alice in Wonderland.” As the words came into her mind, Angel began to recite them, letting them roll around on her tongue, enjoying the sound of them now as much as she had when she first read them, back when she was only eight. “ ‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves/Did gyre and gimble in the wabe’—”

  “ ‘All mimsy were the borogoves,’ ” Seth finished. “ ‘And the mome raths outgrabe.’ ”

  Angel looked at him in surprise. “You memorized it too?”

  “When I was a little kid,” Seth replied. “The first time I read it. I still don’t know what most of the words mean, but they just sound good.” His eyes drifted to the book. “But most of these are real words. Or anyway, they sound like real words.”

  Both of them gazed at the strange book that lay on the table between them.

  “What should we do with it?” Angel asked. “It’s got to be really valuable, doesn’t it?”

  “I guess,” Seth replied, his eyes still fixed on the book. “Maybe I can find out about it on the Internet.”

  “But what do we do with it right now?” Angel asked. “You think maybe I should take it home?”

  Seth shook his head. “I think we should keep it right here. At least until we can find out what it is.”

  “Here?” Angel echoed. “What if somebody comes and finds it?”

  “Look at this place,” Seth said. “Nobody’s been in it for practically forever. I bet nobody but us even knows it’s here—I mean, I’m practically the only one who ever comes out here anyway, and I didn’t even know about it.”

  “But if we just leave it here and somebody does come—”

  “Look!” Seth uttered the word so sharply it startled Angel into silence, and she turned to look where he was pointing.

  Houdini was no longer on the hearth. Now he’d moved around to the right side of the fireplace and was pawing at one of the stone blocks just above the floor. The cat moved aside as soon as Seth and Angel went over to get a closer look. Seth crouched down, felt around the rock the cat had been pawing, and a moment later found just enough of a groove for him to grip it. He pulled, and the rock slid out, revealing another cavity, a little bigger than the one in which they’d found the book an hour earlier.

  “Still think he’s just a cat?” Seth asked as he went to the counter and picked up the old leather-bound book.

  As she watched Seth slide it into the cavity in the wall of the fireplace, Angel tried to tell herself that it was just a coincidence, that the cat couldn’t possibly have been showing them anything. But even as she tried to convince herself, Houdini rose to his feet, went over to the book, and sniffed at it.

  Then he looked up and his glowing golden eyes seemed to bore straight into her.

  And Angel knew that not any of it—finding the book, the cabin, and the niche in the fireplace—was a coincidence. “It’s for us,” she said, her voice so soft that Seth could barely hear her. She turned to face him, and Seth saw her eyes glowing almost as brightly as those of the cat. “Don’t you see?” she said, her voice edged with the excitement growing inside her. “It’s for us. That’s why he led us here! He wanted us to have the book, and he brought us here! But what are we supposed to do with it?”

  “Fi
rst we have to find out what it really is,” Seth said. “So here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll hide the book here, at least until we can find a better place for it. And tonight I’ll look on the Internet. Or maybe tomorrow night we’ll meet at the library and see if we can find out what it is. Okay?”

  Angel hesitated. What if someone did find the cabin and the book? What if they came back tomorrow or the next day and it was gone?

  But before she could say anything, Seth slid the book deep into the recess inside the fireplace, and replaced the rock that hid the niche. The stone block slid perfectly into position, leaving no sign that anything could be concealed behind it.

  Angel stared at it for a long time, trying to see any hint that the rock that now hid the book was not set firmly into the chimney.

  There was none.

  The book would be safe.

  A few minutes later they left the cabin. When they’d climbed once more over the mound of rubble in front of it, Angel turned to look back. Just as Seth had said, no trace of the cabin was visible at all. From where she stood, all that could be seen was the face of the bluff.

  Houdini too had vanished.

  “How are we going to find our way back?” Angel asked, knowing there was no way she’d remember all the twists and turns they’d taken while following the cat through the woods. “Are we lost?”

  Seth shook his head. “All we have to do is head west, and we should come to Black Creek Road. We should be a little farther out than your house, but not very far.”

  He started through the forest, and Angel followed him, still not certain they were going in the right direction. But no more than three minutes later they came to what looked like a path. The floor of the forest appeared worn, and here and there she thought she saw marks on the trunks of trees. By the time they came out on Black Creek Road—almost exactly where Seth had told her they’d be—she was almost sure that if she had to, she could find her way back to the tiny cabin by herself.