by Gene Wolfe
Lisa said, “That maniac smashed the windshield the second time he shot.”
Roberts was tucking a blanket around Shields, who had not been aware of it until now. “How’s Sancha?”
“About the same,” Lisa told him. “Once in awhile she says something, but it’s in Portuguese.”
“Sancha’s on the back seat,” Roberts explained to Shields. “Lisa’s taking care of her. We put her in there first, and we didn’t want to move her again.”
“Bob, what happened to the ape?”
Ann called, “What’d you say, Willie?”
“The ape—I was wrestling with an ape.” Painfully, Shields lifted himself on one elbow, impelled by an invalid’s weak anger in the face of contradiction. “And don’t tell me I wasn’t, Ann. I was.”
She called triumphantly, “See! I told you.”
Roberts whispered, “She said she ran over a gorilla. Lisa and me were still ducked down, so we didn’t see it. I figured she’d hit one of those horses. I don’t know what Lisa thought.”
“It was going to kill me,” Shields said. “It was trying to break my back.” He remembered how near he had come to death and shook with a chill against which the blanket could do nothing.
“ … and so you could see Sancha was going to die.” Roberts was advancing some argument whose opening phases Shields had not heard. “So I said the heck with this, give me the keys and I’ll put her in the car, and if he gets me he gets me. But your wife said you had the keys and if she’d had them she would’ve gone already. Then Lisa said there was another set, up in Wrangler’s room. So we did it, and she got in back with Sancha. I was up front with your wife.”
Ann called, “She was dying, Willie. The lights hadn’t gone off, and we didn’t know where you were. Besides, Emily called—So Lisa gave me Wrangler’s keys and Bob carried Sancha.”
“Anyhow,” Roberts continued, “your wife started her up, and we were about to pull out when we heard something—”
“I heard you, Willie. You yelled just like you do when you have nightmares. I’d know that yell anywhere, because it always wakes me up.”
Shields muttered, “I think I must have been dreaming about this. You saved my life.” But he spoke too softly for her to hear him.
Roberts said, “She just spun this clunker around and went bang through those doors. I never seen anything like it outside of a movie.”
“And there was this tall ape, Willie, right in my lights. I knew he must have been after you, so I went for him. At the last minute I got chicken and put on the brakes, but we still hit him pretty hard. Where were you?”
“I’ll tell you later. Did you see a little boy?”
“A kid?” Ann asked. “No, I certainly didn’t, just the ape or gorilla or whatever it was, and it was dead, I think. Where it came from, I can’t imagine, unless it escaped from some zoo. Calamity Annie meets King Kong! Was it really chasing a kid, too, Willie?”
Ann braked for the main gate, and Lisa sprang out to open it. For a moment the domelight flooded the inside of the old Cherokee with weak illumination. In it, Roberts caught Shields’s eye. Shields said, “No, Ann, I don’t think it really was.”
There was an old rug on the wall behind the candlesticks. Judy hid in back of that for what seemed like a long while, but when she came out it was still dark, and all the candles were still burning.
At least they looked like candles when she looked right at them, tall candles with wax the color of skin, some thick, some thinner, and some very thin, all of them tall; but if she looked at something else—at the floor or the old rug with its bounding lions and sad unicorns—they were not candles at all, but ladies crowned with fire, ladies who stood and burned as quietly as if they were thinking, with eyes and faces shut like little stores that have turned against you, locking up their doors while their lights are still on inside and the people who seemed so friendly walk around moving things and pretending not to see you. Judy spit on two fingers and tried to pinch out one of the candles. Fire rose around her wet fingers, hotter and madder than ever, and she snatched them away.
She had heard nothing and no one while she hid in back of the rug; it had seemed to her that she had this whole place to herself. She knew that the man with the terrible hands had not followed her because she would have heard him. Quiet though he was, he was not that quiet. Now she listened again, and again heard only stillness; and yet it did not seem the stillness of mere emptiness. It was, she told herself, just like the whole place were full of people with bees on them, people not moving at all. Standing or sitting absolutely still was a thing that Judy could not do, although she often tried. Even when she had hidden behind the rug, she had moved, even though she had been so quiet—swaying from side to side without moving her feet, and pushing back her hair with one hand and then the other.
She chewed a lock of hair ruminatively while listening to the bees. Would the people talk if she told them she knew? She doubted it—not coming out would make her feel silly, and they wanted her to feel silly. Or at least she hoped it was no worse than that.
The door by which she had come into the tower stood open. Night breezes crept through like the smallest children and tried to wake the candles by touching their hair. The tower room of Aunt Sally’s house was gone; Judy should have been able to see Aunt Sally’s through the doorway, but the stars were there, far and cold and bright, like the lights of Davenport when Mom had gone away with Judy in the back pretending to sleep but really peeking out through the wide back window and watching lights get smaller and smaller as they grumbled across the river and purred up into the hills.
She went out onto the balcony and looked around.
The tower—this tower—was higher than she had thought; she could see a long way. Aunt Sally’s house was there, but it was far away and getting farther and farther all the time, floating off like the bright toy boat she used to sail on the lake in the park. Between Aunt Sally’s tower and this one were black waves, more waves and more water than Judy had ever seen.
The air had a new smell. Inside, even the little breezes had been scented by the candles, as warm and bright as so many waxy flowers. The new smell was not a sweet one but sharp and stinging, like Daddy’s aftershave. Judy spit out the hair and patted her mouth. This was not a good smell, but she liked it; lately she had noticed that she liked bad smells, sometimes.
But Aunt Sally’s house was floating away with Mom inside; Judy would have to go downstairs and find somebody with a boat. She returned to the room where the candles burned, eyes leaking tears.
It felt hot and stuffy inside the tower now, and the candle ladies were just candles, because Judy was watching them. The other door was made of wide boards and looked thick and heavy. It had no knob, only an iron bar from which a string hung. The bar lay in a bent one fastened to the doorframe. Judy tried to lift the first bar, but both were old; they had rusted together like glue. The big hinges were rusty too, rotting into a rough powder that blackened her thumb and stained her fingers orange, green, crimson, and violet.
Judy did not like to knock on doors (it hurt her knuckles) so she kicked it instead. Her kicks made an empty booming noise like men emptying garbage cans in the next block. At the sound, all of the people she could not hear stirred without making any noise, though the bees did not seem to care. The stirring made her stop kicking.
She examined the door to the balcony. It was smaller, and its latch and hinges were hardly rusted; she could move it with a touch. The wind ran through the doorway and ruffled all the candle flames. Judy discovered that when its hands were in the fire she could see them, fingers and thumbs, and that it had a great many more hands than she, enough to touch all the flames at once.
She went out onto the balcony again and leaned across the railing to watch Aunt Sally’s house. The railing was stone and came almost up to her armpits, but it felt old and shaky, as if nothing was holding its stones together except the ivy. Once, ever so softly, she heard two stones grate, on
e sliding on the other. She stood up straight and just rested her hands on the stones after that.
All of Aunt Sally’s lights were on, all her windows bright and yellow, like the eyes and noses and mouths of a whole family of jack-o’-lanterns. Judy pictured her mom running from room to room in that big house, switching on the lights and calling her. Her mom had even gone up into the high old attic, where Judy was not allowed because she would get dirty—all the little windows that pulled the roof around their heads were yellow, too. And it seemed to Judy that they and all the rest became brighter as they floated away. Pretty soon Mom would ask somebody to help, Judy decided, but no nice policeman would ever find her up here. Nobody would ever find her to take her home.
There was a loud click behind her.
The door of the room filled with candles had swung shut. A moment passed before Judy pushed on it, but if she had pushed at once she would still have been too late. She might as well have matched her small strength against the great, dark stones of the tower.
When it was quite clear that the door would not budge, she stopped, gasped for breath, and dried her eyes on the hem of her skirt. There was a hole not much bigger than her finger in the door where a doorknob should have been. When she put her eye to it, she could peer into the room beyond, bathed in golden light as before; and in fact she could see the tall candle ladies even when she looked right at them: so many smoothfaced ladies, all ivory and white. Their big dark eyes were open wide and moved, looking now at Judy’s own as it peeped at them through the hole, now at one another, now at something moving, that Judy could not see.
Effort had left her warm, but the wind from the sea chilled her quickly. Soon, she thought, she would be very cold. In a long time it would be morning; the sun would come, and then—perhaps—people on the ground could see her when she waved from this high porch. They would (maybe) climb the stairs and open the door in the room where the candle ladies burned.
Or at least they would, Judy thought, if it weren’t that the latch was latched on the inside. They would have to break down the door, probably; and meanwhile she would starve if the cold wind had not frozen her first. She did not know how long it took somebody to starve, but she suspected it was not very long.
She went back to the stone railing. Aunt Sally’s house had drifted out of sight; there was nothing left but the sea, tossing handkerchiefs in the starlight. She stood on tiptoes and leaned over, looking way down. It was so far to the bottom that she could not tell how far it was, but not straight up-and-down like the wall of a house. It sloped instead, exactly like the side of a steep hill covered with ivy. That would be thickest at the bottom, she decided—or if it was not thick, then at least there would have to be a lot of big branches like a tree’s. Judy had climbed big trees before.
Far below, an owl fluttered slowly against the leaves like a moth. There were little day-birds hiding there, and she heard their soft, clear voices: “Look out!” “Don’t go!” “Look out!” “Don’t fly!” “Look out!”
The wind stirred the ivy as she scrambled over the railing, but there were a million places to put her feet and jillions of handholds, although some tore loose when she put her weight on them. She laughed a little bit—just to herself—thinking about how scared she had been.
24
TOM’S TARGET PISTOL
“No,” THE sheriff said, “I’ve finished with the Howard boy.”
“He’s not up in his room, either.” The plastic surgeon gnawed his lip.
“I’m sure you’ll find he’s around here someplace, Mr.—”
“Doctor,” the plastic surgeon corrected him absently. “Dr. von Madadh.” He snapped his fingers. “I think I’ve got it.”
“Might be in X-ray,” the sheriff suggested helpfully.
“And you’re the girl who assisted him.” Von Madadh stepped into the room. “You were wonderfully brave, I’ve heard.” With grace surprising in so large a man, he crouched beside Mercedes’s wheelchair so that their eyes met at a level.
He’s like a tame lion, Mercedes thought. And indeed there was something leonine about his sleek, wavy, red-gold hair and full, curling beard.
The sheriff said, “She didn’t just assist—she was the main one. She yelled at the Chinaman, and that’s what made him stop. That’s when her boyfriend—that’s the Howard boy, the one you’re looking for—got hold of him. Then she hit him with the plastic dingus they had her arm in. That took the fight out of him, and her boyfriend threw him down.”
“Wonderful!” von Madadh exclaimed. For a moment he stared into Mercedes’s face, and she could almost hear the click of the shutter.
He rose as gracefully as he had crouched, and brushed the fingers of her good hand with cool lips. “What’s your name, my child?”
“Mercedes Schindler-Shields.”
“The merciful one. What a lovely name! What a noble name! But what is mercy toward this is so often cruelty toward that. How well we physicians know it! You saved a life—yet wasn’t it at some cost to an unfortunate Chinese?”
Mercedes shook her head. “I didn’t think of that then, but it wasn’t. If I hadn’t stopped him, he’d have been a murderer, and he might have been electrocuted. He couldn’t have escaped with so many people around.”
Von Madadh nodded and smiled. “Well reasoned, although one can never be certain. I thank you both.” He smiled again, and was gone, leaving them alone in the little conference room.
“Not from around here,” the sheriff said. “Nice fellow, though. I guess he’s just come to work here.”
Mercedes nodded cautiously. “I suppose.”
“You were about to tell me about this blonde.” The sheriff glanced at his notes. “Ms. Morgan—you say you and she were in the back?”
Mercedes nodded.
“And Seth Howard was driving?”
“No. Jim was driving. I heard his last name, but I don’t remember it now. It was his car, I think.”
The sheriff leaned forward in his chair and scratched his nose. “And what did he look like, this Jim?”
Mercedes reflected. “Tall. Probably six four or six five. Seth’s pretty tall, and he was a lot taller. Real skinny. You could see the cords in his neck, you know? All the parts. His cheeks pulled in—that might have been because there were teeth gone in back. He needed a shave.”
The sheriff had scribbled once or twice while she spoke (he was probably writing his mother, Mercedes told herself); now he asked, “How was he dressed?”
“Old felt hat, leather bomber jacket, jeans like everybody wears, and I didn’t notice what kind of shoes. I think he had on a plaid flannel shirt under his jacket.”
“And he was out with this Morgan woman? Seemed to be?”
“That’s what he said. When he came up to our car, he said his was broken down and he and his date were stuck out there, or something like that. Some girls have funny tastes.”
“Uh huh. This was a different car, the one this Jim came up to, your car.”
“Seth’s mother’s car; that was what he told me.” After a moment Mercedes added, “I’m sure it was true—there isn’t any reason it shouldn’t be.”
“Where’d all this happen?”
“I don’t know the name of it, but it’s up on a hill, pretty close to here. There’s places to park about a dozen cars, and a stone wall. Seth said we might be able to see the castle from there, but we didn’t.”
The sheriff nodded. “That’s the scenic view on Baker’s Knob. It’s a lover’s lane—I have a man check it a couple of times every night.”
Mercedes said, “Well, there wasn’t anybody up there when we were.”
“I can’t keep somebody up there all the time. I don’t have that kind of manpower. If you two gave this Jim a lift, why was he driving? Are you telling me Seth Howard let a stranger drive his mother’s car?”
“That wasn’t Seth’s car—his mother’s.” Mercedes paused. “This gets pretty complicated.”
“I’ll listen.�
��
“Well, Seth had Jim get in our car, and we drove down the hill to his car. But his girlfriend—Ms. Morgan—wasn’t there. We thought she’d started to walk home.”
The sheriff nodded again, pencil poised.
“So we went down the road a little farther, maybe a quarter mile, and we found her. But then Seth’s car wouldn’t start. So Jim walked back up to his car, and this time his car worked, and he said he’d give us a ride back to town.”
“His car wouldn’t run,” the sheriff said slowly, “but then it would.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So all four of you got in that one—you and this Morgan woman in back, Seth Howard and Jim in front, with Jim driving.”
“That’s right, sir. That’s exactly how it was.”
“You went down Baker’s Knob Road to the state highway—”
“No, sir,” Mercedes interrupted. “We took a shortcut, a dirt road.”
“From Baker’s Knob onto the highway?”
“Yes, sir.”
The sheriff stared at her, tapping the table with the end of his pencil. At last he dropped the pencil, folded his hands, and said, “About how far down does this shortcut turn off?”
“If you mean in elevation, like maybe four hundred feet.”
He shook his head. “How far down the road.”
“Half a mile. Maybe a little more.”
“Does it turn off to the right or the left?”
“To the left, sir.”
The sheriff sighed. “Miss Schindler, I’ve—”
“Schindler-Shields, sir.”
“Right, thank you. I was going to say, Mercedes, that I’ve been sheriff of Castle County for almost five years. I’m in my second term now.”
“Good for you, sir.”
For a moment he regarded her narrowly. “Before that, I was a state trooper for eight years, and for most of that time I was assigned to the Castleview Barracks, ten miles outside of town. I know the roads around here like the back of my hand. I know Baker’s Knob Road like my wife’s face.”
