Lucifer's Eye

by Cave, Hugh

  Witford hadn't been crazy when he asked to be taken along that day. A little queer, sure—the boy was always a little queer because his mum was that way and nobody even knew who his daddy was. But he had seemed almost normal when he rapped on the gate that morning just at daybreak.

  In the morning light he had looked almost handsome, too, standing there in clean pants and shirt, with boots on his feet and his hair combed. Anyone would have thought he was a lot older than fourteen.

  "Manny, me hear you going pig hunting today. Can me come along, maybe, and carry you gun?"

  "Why you want to do that, Witford?"

  "Just to be with you, Manny. To learn how you does it."

  At first Manny had thought, No, him will only be in the way. Then he thought, Well, look now, me don't have no dogs today to keep me company, so why not let the boy come along? He will be someone to talk to, anyway. So he took time to put some extra bammies in his lunch bag—those cassava cakes were easy to carry and could keep a man from being hungry—and he set out with Witford Cushie struggling to keep up with him. A man seventy-some years old; a boy fourteen.

  He'd seen his first pig in an old run on Wakely Ridge, but never got into position for a clean shot at it, and didn't fire off his rifle for fear of scaring away every other pig in hearing range. Then on the ridge above he did get a shot at one, but only hurt it.

  That was a big boar for this part of the Morgan Mountains, running close to two hundred pounds, and there was no way he was going to lose such a prize. It bled enough to leave a trail. So even though it was soon out of sight and sound, he was able to follow it. Here was a chance, too, to give his companion a few lessons in woodsmanship.

  They went on slowly, the two of them, because if that pig was hurt bad, it would eventually have to stop and rest, and if it wasn't hurt bad, they'd never catch up to it anyway. He took time to tell his companion what to look for.

  "We must have to follow him sign, see? Now a hurt pig don't going to travel any regular pig run; him will just go crashing through the brush. So we must have to find broken branches and maybe footprints in wet places, and because him is wounded, we must have to watch out for blood on leaves and things. You understand?"

  "Yes, Manny. Me understand."

  But that was a big, strong pig. They never did catch up to it. And by the time Manny realized they were not going to, they were high up on the ridge between Morgan Peak and Blackrock—through Albert Gap, in fact, and close to Blackrock itself. He was astonished that young Witford had been able to keep up with him.

  "You a good boy, Witford."

  "Thank you, Manny."

  "Plenty others you age would be only stumbling along now."

  "Well . . . me got to admit me a little tired."

  All right. Why you don't sit here and rest you self awhile, sonny, whilst me have one last look around? It might be the pig, too, got tired about now, and me will find him resting."

  "Well . . ."

  "You not afraid to be left alone, is you? If you is—"

  "No, no, Manny! Me not afraid!"

  "All right, then. Me won't gone long."

  He was not gone very long, either. He hadn't worn a watch, but thinking back on that day now, he was still certain he had not been away from the boy for more than half an hour. Yet when he returned to that place, Witford Cushie was gone. The not-bright boy had foolishly wandered off somewhere.

  And it was raining.

  No chance to follow signs.

  Lord, have mercy.

  He called the boy's name. Over and over, every minute or so, he called it until he was hoarse from yelling. A yell would travel a long way up there, but not when rain was falling hard. Rain made such a racket in the forest, pounding down on the thick carpet of dead leaves, that a man's voice was next to nothing.

  But he yelled and he searched. He searched for hours, not stopping to rest until he was so tired he just had to. Dear God, he never should have brought a boy like Witford up here, knowing a thing like this might happen.

  Then, just at dark, he heard a sound of crying, and hurried toward it, and came upon Witford Cushie stumbling aimlessly through the forest twilight like a drunk trying to find his way home from a rum shop. Stumbling along, not knowing where he was going or what he was doing, and without even holding a hand out in front of him, the boy could have walked into a tree at any minute and knocked himself unconscious.

  Manny had run to him and eased him to the ground, then sat down beside him, with an arm around the boy's shoulders, and tried to talk to him. But you couldn't talk to him. He wouldn't stop crying and sobbing long enough to listen.

  There were words mixed up in the crying and sobbing, though. When Manny realized that, he listened.

  "Please, suh, let me go!" Witford Cushie babbled. "Me cold and frighten here. Please. Oh, please. This green light making me feel sick-like!"

  "What you talking about, Witford?" Manny asked.

  "Me don't supposed to be in places like this, suh," the boy whimpered. "The one near where me live—the one them call Bat Cave—me did go in there once and Mum did whup me for it. Please, oh please let me go!"

  Manny leaned closer, with an ear all but touching the boy's lips. It was important to hear every word, he felt, and hard to do that because of the noise the rain was making. Who was Witford talking to, anyway? Where did he think he was?

  "Wha', suh?" the boy babbled on. "Well, yessir, me did go to school once, a long time ago, but them send me home. Me fourteen, suh. Please, oh please, this green light in here making me sick in me head, like when people yell at me and call me the name. Please let me go!"

  The name, Manny thought. Witless. And it was true, when people called the boy that—Witless instead of Witford—it sometimes made him so crazy his eyes would go wild and his mouth would fill up with spit.

  "Witford, come," he said then. "We goin' home now." In the rain, in the dark that would soon come down on them, getting there would be a problem, but he had to try. They couldn't sit here and shiver all night in the high mountain cold. Besides. . .

  It was up here near Blackrock Peak somewhere that folks said the Devil's Pit was, and Witford Cushie's talk was making Manny Uneasy. Lots of people believed there truly was a place of evil around here. They said nothing else could explain so many disappearances over the years. If the missing ones had only just got lost up here, their remains would have been found, no? Some of them, anyhow. Bones didn't rot for years, and animals didn't eat them.

  It was important, Manny felt, to get himself and Witford away from here now, right now, before black night came down to make the going even more difficult. Because what else could the boy be babbling about if not some kind of Devil's Pit? And who in such a place would he be calling "suh" except. . . well, who?

  "Sonny, come now. Get up."

  "Manny, me cold and wet. And so tired. And so scared. That green light. . . those people . . .

  "You can tell me all about those things later. We going home now. Come!"

  With Manny's help, the boy struggled to rise. "Manny, me not sure—"

  "Yes, you can. Just put you mind to it now. We have a big way to go, and it getting dark."

  Swaying on wide-apart feet, the boy leaned forward to peer into Manny's face, and his own face twisted into a frown of incomprehension. "Who you is? You not one of them did talk to me before."

  "In the cave, you mean?"

  "Me is not in the cave now? Them did let me go?"

  "No, you is not in any cave now, Witford." Manny got an arm around him and forced him to start walking. "Them must did let you go like you ask, and you is safe again with me, Manny Williams, and we going home. So come!"

  "But—"

  "Witford, we not talking no more now. It time for we to get out of this place! You can tell me all about it some other time!" With that, Manny simply stopped listening and made the boy walk.

  Thanks to Manny's experience as a pig hunter, they reached his home without incident some four hours la
ter, despite the rain and the dark. There, Manny made the boy drink some bush tea and eat some warmed-up porridge, then put him to bed. Manny, too, turned in, expecting to find out later just what had happened to the lad up there near Blackrock.

  But on that score he was in for a surprise.

  "Now, then, Witford, suppose you tell me where you did go when you did wander off up there."

  It was past noon, and Witford Cushie gazed at him uncomprehendingly over a bowl of goat stew. "Huh?"

  "Up there near Blackrock, when you did get into that cave. Or whatever it was."

  "Cave, Manny? Blackrock? What you saying?"

  "When we was hunting pig up there, Witford."

  "When, Manny?"

  "Yesterday, for heaven's sake, man! When you did beg to go along with me and we did shoot a pig and follow him sign to near Blackrock, and you did wander off by yourself and get lost! What the matter with you?"

  The boy gazed at him with eyes full of questions. "Manny, me don't understand what you telling me."

  Manny tried for an hour to find a word, a phrase, anything, that would bring it back. It wouldn't come. Apparently it just wasn't there anymore. Giving up, he took the lad home and talked to his mother. "Miz Cushie, if him should remember and tell you anything, me beg you let me know."

  She grasped her son by his shoulders and shook him in anger. "You hear what Manny saying? Put you mind together now and tell him!"

  Witford Cushie began to cry.

  "It all right, Miz Cushie," Manny said quickly. "Leave him be. If he remember, me sure him will come and tell me."

  The boy did not, though. And to this day he did not remember what had happened up there near Blackrock when he wandered off.

  Unless, of course, he was lying.

  But Manny did not think he was lying. His mind had simply emptied itself of something it didn't want to hold, that was all. Orit had been emptied for him.

  From that time on, in fact, Witford Cushie had gradually become more and more a boy without any mind atall, until today he was unable to remember much of anything. All he did now was wander around like a zombie, failing even to recognize anyone. Askhim his name and he would roll his eyes and grin at you and say, "Me name Witless."

  NotWitford. Witless. The name he had hated.

  With a shake of his head Manny Williams emptied his mind of the memory. Machete in hand, he walked back to where he had been weeding the coffee. But before resuming work, he allowed his mind one more distracting thought.

  What had happened that day to Witford Cushie was a lot like what Bronzie Dakin's boy was talking about now, no? And Gerald's twin brother was one of the scouts who were lost up there near Blackrock.

  Something bad had happened to Witford that day, but he, Manny Williams, had never talked to anyone about it because he knew the boy would not or could not back him up. No man, by God, was going to be given reason tocall proud old Manny Williams a fool!

  But now something equally bad was happening again. It was a time to be on guard.

  16

  "THIS IS THE PLANTATION INTAKE," PETER SAID AS Edith and her fiancé reached him. "All our water comes from here."

  He stood at the edge of a circular pool, twenty feet in diameter, into which, from an inaccessible niche some sixty feet above, thundered the most spectacular cascade they had yet encountered. It had always seemed to him an eerie kind of place because so little sunlight ever penetrated its noisy, deep green shadows. Most of his workers felt the same, and shunned it except when duty sent them here to clean the screen in the concrete feeder trough.

  Because the rain higher up had raised the water level so swiftly, the screen was half-choked now with leaves and forest trash. Deciding to clean it, Peter sat at the pool's edge and removed his boots, then emptied his pockets before sliding into the water. Waist-deep where he entered it, it was cold enough to make him shiver.

  After all, it came untouched from near the top of seven thousand-foot Morgan Peak, nearly four thousand feet above the pool here.

  As he used one hand to steady himself and the other to claw the matted leaves away from the mesh, he saw Alton Preble frowning down at him.

  "This is the whole installation?" the barrister asked, seemingly finding that hard to believe.

  "This is it. The trough directs the water into an eight-inch iron pipe. That feeds into a two-inch galvanized pipe farther down, which carries it half a mile or more to the plantation buildings. You may have noticed it crosses the river in a couple of places, suspended from overhead cables."

  "You designed this?"

  "Not altogether. I did replace an older pipeline, but I couldn't improve on the intake here." Peter discarded the last handful of trash and boosted himself up onto solid rock again. "As you see, all we have to do is clean this screen after a storm."

  "There is no need for a pump?"

  "No pump, Alton. You're much higher here than you may think. Much higher than the Great House. In fact"—Peter pointed to the waterfall confronting them—"just above that is the start of the long, deep gorge Edith and I were telling you about. The one we looked down on from the John Crow's Nest."

  "Have you ever been in that gorge, Peter?" Edith asked.

  "I tried once with Manny Williams, but we couldn't find a way to climb the cascade here. And there's no way to get down into it from above, as you know."

  "It's unexplored, then?" Preble asked.

  "So far as I've been able to find out. But that's not exactly unusual. A number of places on the property are considered inaccessible. I must show you. . ." Peter's voice ran down and was lost in the roar of the waterfall at which he was staring.

  "Show us what?" Preble frowned at him.

  "A map. . ." Peter had to grope for the word. "An old map I have . . ." Still gazing at the cascade, he squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, hoping the mist he was seeing would disappear. It did not. It continued to flow down from the gorge above, not opaque enough to blot out the jagged rift through which the cascade arched into space, yet swirling down toward him like a thing alive.

  He had the fantastic notion it was a giant green slug, nearly transparent, slithering down from some secret habitat in the gorge he had just been talking about.

  He had to get out of here!

  Willing himself not to look at the thing, and trying to keep the fear out of his voice, he said, "Well, there's nothing more to see here. Shall we go back?"

  His companions looked at him in some surprise. "Are we in a hurry?" Preble asked.

  "I think we should be, a little. The river is still rising, if you've noticed. And we've seen everything there is to see here."

  It seemed to satisfy them, though if the stream was still rising, it was certainly not doing so with any speed. Without further protest they followed him down the track. Twice he turned to see if the mist was in pursuit. It was not, and presently he convinced himself it had been no more than a mental invention brought on by the movement of the waterfall.

  Perhaps his gazing at the fall and envisioning that dark, never-explored gorge above it had triggered some fear-producing mechanism in his mind.

  By the time they reached the tree bridge he was beginning to feel a little foolish, all but convinced his imagination had been playing games with him.

  Then it happened again.

  He had reached almost the precise center of the span, with Edith two or three steps behind him and, as before, the barrister from London bringing up the rear. Suddenly the greenish mist swirled around him, blinding him.

  A misstep here would mean a possibly fatal plunge into the swollen stream. He stopped.

  Edith, watching her feet, walked blindly into him and all but knocked him from his precarious perch.

  She cried out in alarm as she lost her balance. For a few seconds she teetered like a performer on a tightrope, trying to save herself by using her out-flung arms as a balancing pole. Then she went down, but in a last-second effort twisted her body and fell with her arms across t
he tree.

  Her feet hit the water and the current pulled at them as she struggled for a grip. Just as the river seemed certain to drag her clear, the fingers of her right hand found one of the machete-cut grooves and she was given a second or two of grace.

  It was enough for Alton Preble, behind her. In one bold leap he reached her and caught her by a wrist. Struggling to maintain his own balance, he lifted her by sheer strength and wrapped his arms around her, then held her suspended until her groping feet found the tree again. When he succeeded in steadying himself, Edith was safe in his embrace—gasping for breath, terrified by the closeness of her escape, but safe.

  Peter had seen it all, first through the swirling green mist that distorted everything around him, then more clearly as the mist slowly faded.

  Holding Edith steady, Preble glared at him in a rage. "My God, man, why did you stop like that?" he shouted. Then, controlling himself with a visible effort: "All right, all right, never mind now. Go on, will you? Let's get off this damned thing!"

  In a daze Peter finished the crossing and turned to await further condemnation. Numbly he watched Preble steer Edith to solid ground by walking behind her with his hands firmly gripping her waist. On the bank, with the river roaring past at their feet as though enraged at having been deprived of an expected victim, the barrister spoke again.

  "Why?" was all he said this time, but his caustic voice spoke volumes more.

  "Didn't you—see it?" Peter finally managed.

  "See what?"

  Peter looked at Edith. "You were right behind me. Didn't you see anything?"

  "I don't know what you mean." She gazed at him wide-eyed. "I was watching my feet, Peter."

  "That damned fog. The thing that blinded me up on the John Crow's Nest. My God, Edith, how could you not—" Then he remembered that she had not seen it there, either. In telling Preble about it afterward, she had made that point clear. The mist had affected only him. Up there on the cliff she had become confused, disoriented, and had tried to walk off into space, yes, but she had actually seen nothing.