"But some of his people may listen. The woman I helped after I nearly ran her over," Sandy suggested, her voice sharp with hope. "I've got to try. If I don't stop them, who else will?"
Roger knocked on his plastered leg. "Behold the knight in armor."
"More like a knight who's fallen off his horse."
"Well, I guess that'll make me seem less threatening and give me more of a chance. You drop me once we get to their road and then you can go on to meet them, okay?"
She gave his arm an affectionate squeeze. "What are you thinking of? Using your leg as a roadblock?"
He hitched himself around in his seat, uncomfortably, to face her. "Don't you want us to do everything we can to stop what you're afraid of? If they won't listen to you they might listen to me. I recall enough of how I used to feel to sympathize with them. I dropped out for a while myself, until I got lazy and wanted to be comfortable."
She felt touched and yet angry with him. "Roger, how could I ask someone in your condition-was
"You're not asking. I'm saying what I'll do. These guys aren't violent, I'll be in no danger. Look, there's the road they're on. Turn left here."
She had been turning the wrong way at the junction, she was so distracted by the argument her thoughts were having. Roger was determined to prove he was of use, but need that mean he wouldn't be? How could she abandon him in the middle of nowhere when he wasn't even able to run? If she did, wouldn't that force her to try harder to stop Enoch so that Roger wouldn't need to? Perhaps she was angry because Roger seemed not to realize the demands he was making on her. "This is it," he said suddenly, urgently. "Drop me now or they'll see what we're doing."
Her foot faltered on the accelerator, and then she braked. As soon as the car was stationary she dragged at the handbrake, which made a harsh toothed sound, and held on to his arm with both hands. "Roger, I truly don't think you should do this. You've been more help than you realize."
He opened the passenger door and leaned over to kiss her. "Then let's see what more I'm capable of," he said, and heaved himself out of the car, turning his wince into an expression of relief at being able to stretch. "Hand me my crutches, would you?" he said, his voice muffled by the roof. "Better be quick."
The metal shafts of the crutches were as cold as the wind that was creeping out of the fields and through the open door. She wanted to refuse, but she thrust the crutches at him and wedged the rests beneath his armpits. As he stepped back, she heard the muddy verge smack its lips. He ducked in order to grin at her. "Don't wait around or you'll ruin my chances. Look at me now, how could these guys not take pity on me? Never mind worrying about me, you take care of yourself."
"You make sure you do," she said fiercely, the wind flattening her voice.
As she started the car he waved, wobbling so much he had to clap the hand to His prop. He was having a good time, she thought as he grinned, so why should she worry about him? In the mirror she saw him standing like a bemused sculpture, the tips of his crutches sunk in the verge, his plaster heel touching the grass. He tossed his head to flip back an unruly curl, and the field at his back quivered toward him. It was the motion of the car that swept him away, not the landscape that was carrying him off, but she twinged her neck for a last sight of him, lonely and immobilized and too unaware of how he looked.
She resisted the temptation to lift her foot from the accelerator. Now he was out of sight, at least a mile back, but there was no sign of Enoch's folk. She could have talked to Roger at more length, she might have been able to persuade him to stay in the car. Her hands clenched on the wheel, her head ached with indecision, and then, above a dip in the road ahead, she saw a roadside oak grow momentarily blue with the light on the roof of the foremost police car.
She braked and veered the car across the road, backed almost into the ditch, swung the car onto the yielding verge on the nearside of the convoy. As the blue lamp glared beneath the oak, she climbed out of the car and leaned against the door. The police car rose from the dip, and then Enoch did, as if the police were drawing him along behind the vehicle, a captured warrior. The driver stared hard at Sandy, and she did her best to look like a casual spectator, though her throat felt blocked by her pulse. "Stay there until all this is past," he called out to her, and drove on as soon as she nodded, hardly hearing him, bracing herself to meet Enoch's scrutiny.
He frowned at her over the police car, then he stared straight ahead. He hadn't recognized her. Perhaps he was too exhausted, if he had led the procession on foot ever since she had last seen him. Dust from the roads had dulled the glint of his wiry hair and beard, had turned the ropes of which his vest and trousers were woven the color of dry earth. The veins of his weathered arms were more prominent than ever. The veins made her want to shout a warning to him or stand in his way, except that the police would intervene.
An ancient station wagon fumed by, the amiable moon- faces that were painted on its sides sinking into layers of dried mud. A hearse sprayed with rainbows passed, and then she saw the van embellished with clouds and sunbursts. The order of the vehicles had changed. The woman she'd helped was driving the van, and her son was beside her. "There's that lady," he shouted.
His mother craned across the wheel to peer through the sunlit grime of the windscreen, her thin pink face unpromisingly blank. Her son looked delighted, and slid back the door as the van reached Sandy, who jumped onto the running board. "Hello," she said. "Can I ride with you a little way?"
"I told you not to open that door when we're moving, Arcturus," the woman muttered as he made room for Sandy on the seat, "and you know what Enoch said."
The boy gave Sandy a glum look. "About me?" Sandy suggested, sliding the door shut.
"He won't answer you," the woman cautioned him.
"But you needn't be afraid to. Couldn't Enoch be wrong?"
"You would say that."
"Not necessarily. I'm on your side, remember. I helped you when you fell."
"Enoch says you did that so your crew could film us. Maybe you made me fall so you could help me, he says. I don't think you made me fall, but I don't like being used by anyone."
Pots and pans were jangling in the van's brightly painted interior, where a stove and two sleeping bags took up most of the floor space, and the noise wasn't helping Sandy's nerves. "There you are, you're agreeing he was wrong," she said, and heard herself sounding even more suspect. "I'm not saying he's wrong in his beliefs. It's partly because of things he said to me and things you said that I'm here now."
The woman looked both incredulous and uninterested. "Don't say you want to join us."
"No, I want to warn you about where you're heading. I've just come back from there. I'm sure Enoch wouldn't lead you there if he knew what it was like."
The woman gave Sandy an ominous smile. "Well, now you can tell him," she said, and the door beside Sandy slammed open.
She had been so intent on her task that she hadn't noticed Enoch waiting for the van. His bristling face was almost level with hers, his smell of sweat and rope was overwhelming. "I didn't realize it was you. I didn't expect we'd see you again," he said, so grimly that she thought he was about to heave her out of the van.
"I only came back because of what you told me. You said that land can grow hungry because people have forgotten what it wants."
"I did?"
"Something like it, anyway," Sandy insisted, desperate to stop the progress of the vehicles and Enoch's inexorable march before they came in sight of Roger, never mind Redfield. "The point is, the place you've been invited to is like that. They used to make human sacrifices to the land, and the bloodshed hasn't stopped. It's happened every fifty years, up to fifty years ago."
She sounded grotesque to herself. She was suddenly unconvinced, but did that matter? Surely it was the kind of thing Enoch believed. The woman driving the van was visibly troubled. "You mean you think we've been invited so that-"
"She doesn't think that at all," Enoch rumbled. "She's acting, can
't you tell? She thinks she's in one of her films, some horror film she made."
"I don't make films," Sandy said, and saw that she was undermining her credibility even further. "I'm not suggesting you've been invited so you can be harmed. I've met the man who invited you, and I think he may not even realize what will happen, but doesn't that confirm what you were saying about how we've lost touch with the land?"
Enoch growled in his throat. "Stop the van," he said.
As soon as the woman braked he leaned toward Sandy, his shoulders almost filling the doorway. "I don't believe you want to help us. I think you're still looking for something to film."
"I never have been. I wasn't when I met you," Sandy protested, hating her voice for trembling. "I'm telling you I've been to Redfield, and they don't like strangers. I only just got away safely myself."
"Sounds like you're not popular anywhere. You're beginning to know what it feels like, are you?" He took hold of her wrist with a gentleness that felt like a threat of crushing her bones. "Get down. We've no more time to waste."
She appealed to the woman. "Please listen to me, for your own sake and Arcturus's."
The great hot rough hand tightened on her wrist. "I know what she wants," Enoch said. "To keep us on the road so they can film us. To cause us more trouble that their audience want to watch in their homes while they eat their dinner."
"You're right, that must be why they sent her," the woman cried. "This is my home, you bitch. You fuck off out of it right now."
Did the hysterical edge to her voice mean that Sandy had reached her? Sandy could only hope. She climbed down onto the verge and waited for Enoch to let go of her. She wouldn't plead or cry out because he was squeezing her wrist; he wouldn't dare to injure her, the police were too near. "Leave us alone," he growled, and released her. "Don't try to speak to any of my folk. I won't let you spoil this chance for us."
The procession was moving again. She peered beyond the repetitive glare of the police car, but couldn't see Roger. Enoch watched her as she began to hurry to her car, half a mile back. She rubbed her bruised wrist when she was sure he couldn't see what she was doing, and ran past the vehicles, slipping on the verge. She would never get to Roger ahead of the convoy if she went on foot. She had to stop him, for wouldn't Enoch know that Roger was connected with her as soon as he began to warn them as she had?
But the police who were following the convoy refused to let her drive past. When she tried to overtake, the driver gestured her back, looking ready to arrest her if she continued trying. The convoy wouldn't pick up Roger, she assured herself. Surely he would appear too suspicious, stuck in the middle of nowhere with no indication of how he had got there. Then her heart sank, for she could see the junction where she had joined this road. She must already have passed the spot where she had abandoned Roger, and there had been no sign of him.
She followed the convoy for miles, hoping to see him put down at the roadside again, until the police car stopped in front of her. The driver tramped back to her, his face red, his lips thin. "If you don't leave off following," he said, "I'll declare you and your car unfit for the road."
***
So she had to go to Redfield after all. If necessary, she would have to block the road where it descended into the copse. She felt spiky with anger and frustration, but all the same, she had to be grateful to the police: at least Roger ought to be in no danger while they were near. Surely he was in no danger anyway; surely if he was suspected he would have been dropped by now. He must have realized that he needed to avoid sounding like her. She turned the car and drove south, feeling more watched than ever, even when the police were well over the horizon. At least she would be able to tell Roger when they next met that she had Giles Spence's film.
She found a phone box in a village so small it could barely have freckled the map, and called Norman Ross's son. "I'm in your part of the country earlier than I expected. I'm sorry it's such short notice, but I wondered…"
"I assure you, the sooner you relieve us of this legacy the happier I'll be. When had you in mind?"
"Would today be inconvenient?"
"Not unbearably. If you can be here at least half an hour before the bank closes, that will be appreciated."
"I'll do my best."
"Then that must suffice." As soon as he had told her how to find him he broke the connection, presumably to start her on her way. The weeks-old comments in the Daily Friend must have made him nervous about the film, she thought, but there was no longer any reason for them to trouble her.
She drove northwest to Lincoln. The cathedral rose over the horizon like a stone crown for the fields of wheat. Soon she saw a ruined Norman castle above steep streets the color of the fields. There were Roman ruins too, and the sight of them beyond the wheat reminded her uncomfortably of the Roman account of the history of Redfield. She would be there ahead of Roger, she vowed, and just now she was here on his behalf as much as on her own.
She drove across a bridge above clattering trains and turned toward the river. A side street almost choked with students slowed her down. The river flashed in her mirror, and ahead of her she saw the insurance broker's she was looking for. As she parked, her tires bumping the curb, a tall potbellied man with a long face whose mouth drooped toward his pointed chin darted out of the broker's. "You mustn't park there," he announced.
"I'm picking someone up from your office."
"Miss Allan? In that case, ignore the line." He called "I'll be an hour or less" to a colleague, and sidled into the passenger seat. "Please, drive. I'll tell you where."
He directed her through Lincoln, past cobbled streets of houses that looked old as the Redfield chapel. "I was sorry to hear about your father," Sandy said.
"Ah, well. He'd about run his course. He still had his imagination, but not the use of his hands. The industry had put him out to pasture in favor of younger technicians such as yourself. I haven't inherited his imagination, and I won't pretend I wish I had."
"That's obvious."
"Turn left here. I wouldn't care to die as he did."
Another cobbled street drifted by like a steep shadow full of houses carved with symbols secretive with age. "How was that?" Sandy said, wishing that he wouldn't make her ask while she was driving.
"Of his nerves. I can only conclude he felt guilty about possessing this film but couldn't bring himself to destroy what might be the sole surviving copy. Once he'd gone I considered destroying it myself. I would have if it hadn't been for his express wish that you should be told."
"I'm sorry I couldn't have taken the film away sooner."
"So am I," he said, so coldly he seemed to be blaming her rather than himself. "He spent his last days in a panic convinced he was being watched. Here, park here."
Sandy drove into the car park and backed into a space, her hands nervous on the wheel. "Watched by whom, do you know?"
"By his own doubts, I imagine. Possibly by his memories. He claimed he'd felt spied on while he was helping edit the film, though I don't know how much credence that warrants. My wife had to ask him to keep his fears to himself, because he was upsetting our small daughter. Toward the end he wouldn't have her pet dog anywhere near him. We had to stop the child from going in his room, because he started saying that a dog or some such thing came into the room at night and watched him, stood at the foot of the bed all night with its paws on the rail. I'm afraid his imagination was quite out of control. During the last week, for some reason, he wouldn't even have flowers in the room. This is the bank."
The interior of the building was so much newer than the exterior that it felt intrusive and unreal. Ross marched to an information window and thumbed a button while Sandy followed him, trailing questions which she could hardly ask him in the bank and which made her uneasy about framing them at all. An official came to the window and recognized Ross and the key in his hand. When the official opened a security door Sandy started forward, but Ross frowned curtly at her. "We won't be long."
<
br /> Sandy sat on a straight chair at a table with a blotter, on which someone had doodled a rudimentary face almost buried in a tangle of scribbling. A queue shuffled forward as tellers lit up their signs, a typewriter clacked like impatient claws. Sooner than she expected, Ross appeared beyond the thick glass door, his arms laden with a cardboard carton. As she stood up, his companion glanced toward her. For a moment she thought he was looking behind her, or at something she had dropped under the table, but all she could see there was a deep rectangular shadow. She hurried forward as the door buzzed open. "We'll go straight to your car," Ross muttered.
He mustn't want to be seen with the film. His secretiveness made her peer warily about the car park. He trudged to the rear of the car and waited truculently for her to unlock the boot. As soon as he'd dumped the carton into it he wiped his hands on a handkerchief. His palms must be damp with exertion, of course.
Sandy gazed at the squat square carton sealed with heavy tape. It was big enough to contain two cans of film, but she had a sudden grotesque thought: what if after all her searching the carton proved to be empty, or full of something else entirely? She would have opened it there and then if Ross hadn't been drumming one heel nervously on the concrete. She slammed the lid of the boot and climbed into her seat and eased the car forward, anxious not to run over the stray animal which had just dodged behind the vehicles next to hers. "I'll drop you at your office, shall I?" she said.
"I thought you might want to make sure this film is what it's claimed to be."
He sounded resentful. "I will as soon as I can," Sandy assured him.
"Then assuming you've nothing better to do, it may as well be now. A friend of my late father's is renovating a cinema and used to let him watch films there. I spoke to him after you called. He'll put on the film for you."
"I thought nobody outside your family knew about it except me."
"Apparently my late father let him into the secret, and he's been hungry for a viewing ever since. Of course he was sworn to secrecy, but I made him renew the vow, on your behalf, you understand. I shan't be watching. Cross the bridge."
Ancient Images Page 24
