by Cave, Hugh
After performing the same operation on the other wall, the pig hunter studied his handiwork. "All right," he said, and wriggled backward. Discarding the length of sapling, he positioned himself to grip Peter's wrists.
"You ready, squire?"
"What must I do?"
"Me going pull. You push with both you foot. The stick will do the rest."
"What?"
"Never mind, squire. Just push."
But it was not Peter's boots that provided the forward motion. They could find no secure hold on the wet floor. What freed him from the tunnel's grasp was the pull of Manny's powerful hands on his wrists and the remarkable new slipperiness of the walls. First his shoulders, then his hips slid past the pressure points, and a few minutes later he was at the end of the passage, with the pig hunter grinning at him as he emerged.
"Thanks, old buddy," Peter said.
"No problem, squire."
"What was that stick you rubbed the walls with?"
"Pudding whisk, squire. People use it for soap sometimes. All the same, we lucky it grow here."
Peter looked around. This was a wild part of the plantation, one he had not been in or even seen before.
The river descended into it over a narrow, boulder-strewn bed, through a wilderness of tall trees and massed undergrowth, to disappear underground at the base of a barrier cliff through which he and Manny had just crawled from the gorge.
"Where are we, Manny?" A place as dramatic as this was probably noted on that old map of Armadale.
Manny shrugged. "Me see it from above whilst pig hunting a few times, squire, but don't believe it have any name. Tell the truth, me never have any reason to come down here and never knew the river go underground like this."
"Can we get out?"
"More'n that, squire. If you believe Miss Craig been taken to Blackrock, we can get there quicker from here than the soldiers will."
"I don't understand."
"Look up there." Manny pointed to a ridge gleaming in the late-morning sunlight. "To get there from the house is hard. Is just no track. But we did save miles of walking by coming up the gorge and crawling out through the tunnel here. Now we can reach Blackrock by a shortcut whilst the soldiers must have to go to Morgan Peak and along the ridge."
Still suffering mentally from their experience in the gorge and tunnel, Peter needed time to think about it.
Right now, nothing seemed more desirable than a long sleep on the four-poster in his room at the Great House. Then he remembered what Edith had written in the note he had found in her room there.
"Peter, something is happening to me. . . . I am being sent for and must go. . . . Try to follow. . . ."
"All right, Manny," he said. "Lead on."
25
HOUR AFTER HOUR, NOT KNOWING WHERE HE WAS, Peter struggled to follow in the steps of the veteran pig hunter.
He should be hungry by now, he supposed, but he was not. When he and Manny did need food, the old pig hunter would know what they could eat and where to find it—trust him for that. As for being thirsty, they had walked in enough water for Peter to feel he would never want a drink again.
These tropical mountains were densely wooded and for the most part without trails. He and Manny had clawed their way up almost vertical slopes by using the dry beds of old watercourses or the wet ones of streams presently flowing. They had slid down into seemingly bottomless gullies by using their boots for brakes and their butts for toboggans. Almost never had they arrived at a point from which they could obtain a clear view of anything. Peter had been forced to rely almost completely on his guide.
Manny Williams employed wild-pig runs for trails, too, and seemed to know where they would lead him.
To follow him was to take an advanced course in woodcraft. It was also raw, hard work. By the end of the day Peter was silently screaming for rest.
Manny sat and looked at him. "Last night, squire, Sergeant Wray and the man we trying to find had a moon. We not so blessed tonight."
There had been no clouds in the sky during the late afternoon. Could Manny be wrong for once? But when the moon should have risen, it did not. And the pig hunter had been so certain it would not, he was already sound asleep on a bed of leaves, with his old felt hat folded under his head for a pillow.
With conflicting emotions Peter, too, sought a bed. A moonlit night would have allowed them to keep going, perhaps to find Edith Craig sooner. But he hadn't the pig hunter's endurance and knew he needed sleep.
Resuming the hike at daybreak, they trudged on again through the same killing terrain, and at midday, according to Manny, were at the junction of Blackrock Peak and the ridge. It was here, if the reports of the two rescued scouts and Sergeant Wray were accurate, that first the scouts and then the men of the Defence Force group had encountered some inexplicable peril—some horror that had left the forestry man headless.
But there seemed to be nothing unusual here. Nothing different. Only the same high mountain trees and dense undergrowth, now all too familiar.
Peter sank onto a fallen juniper to rest for a moment, and Manny Williams said, "Is supposed to be that helicopter here somewhere, squire. Suppose you get your breath back whilst me look for it."
"Oh, no you don't," Peter countered quickly. "We stay together, man!"
"You don't trust me, squire?"
"Ofcourse Itrust you." Peter rose, wishing he could have rested a few minutes more. "But things have been happening to people here, Manny. Let's not get too far apart."
Half an hour later the pig hunter found his first sign.
ToPeter it would have been nothing—merely a cracked green branch on a sapling. He would have guessed that the wind or an animal had split it. But Manny pointed out that the tree was a tough young bulletwood, and there had been no strong winds in the past few days. And the only animal large enough to do such damage would be a wild pig. "Pigs-them don't climb trees, squire."
With his gaze on the ground, Manny plodded on, grunting every now and then to indicate he had found something. The trail led him through a jungle of vine-draped trees to a black rock cliff that remained hidden until he burst through to it. At the base of the cliff he stooped to pick up a piece of a broken pop bottle. It was the neck, and it was black. He held it out to Peter. "You know what this was, squire?"
Peter rubbed a finger over the blackness and found it greasy. "A bottle lamp?"
"Right. But the scouts-them would have flashlights, no?The soldiers-them, too."
"And wouldn't have carried kerosene, Manny."
"True. Me wondering if is a cave here somewhere, squire. Maybe hunters from some other district using it for shelter."
"From some other district, Manny?"
"Nobody from ours don't come this far up, squire. The only time me was ever here before was once when me and young Witford Cushie did track a hurt pig up here." Manny shook his head. "Something queer happen to Witford that day."
"Queer, Manny?"
"Well, me did leave him to rest a little when him too tired to seek the pig further, and when me return, him did gone. Then when him turn up quite a while later, him was like in a daze. Of course"—Manny shrugged—"him never was too bright anyhow."
"Is this the boy they call Witless?"
"The same, squire."
"I see." Knowing about the lad—having, in fact, once tried to give him work—Peter dismissed the matter and went on to something he considered more meaningful. A cave, Manny had suggested. A cave here?
Well, why not? There most certainly could be one; these mountains were honeycombed with them. Not all the caverns in St. Alban had been explored, either. According to the university's geology department, there were probably some that hadn't even been discovered yet.
The existence of a cave here might explain some of those puzzling reports, Peter thought. What if the scouts had stumbled on one and become lost while investigating it? And after the scouts, the soldiers? It was dangerous to explore a wild cave with only flashlights, a
nd neither the scouts nor the soldiers would have carried anything more suitable.
But there was no time for further speculation; Manny Williams was in motion now along the base of the black Cliff. Trailing him, Peter had to step over rocks and rubble that must have fallen from above. Even when close enough to the wall to brush against it, both men were forced to thread through a labyrinth of vines and tree roots.
If a cave did exist here, Peter thought, it must be one of those least likely to be stumbled on, for the cliff face vas almost wholly curtained.
Suddenly Manny Williams held up a hand and halted.
Just ahead was an opening in the base of the cliff.
No more than a yard wide and four feet high, the aperture was still large enough for a man to crawl into. Out of it came a sighing sound and a current of air colder than the midday heat of the forest.
"Seem like we has found something, squire," the pig hunter said. His voice was low, with a note of apprehension. "Me should go in alone, me think." Reaching to his shoulder, he unslung the shotgun and grasped it in both hands. "Is only me have one of these."
"We stay together, Manny. No argument. But we won't be able to see in there."
"Well, now—"
"We need a light. You're a woodsman. Isn't there some tree or bush we can use for torches?"
Manny looked thoughtful. "Well—is one or two, if them grow here. You wait for me, squire."
He and the shotgun disappeared.
Time crawled while Peter angrily asked himself why he hadn't had the sense to bring flashlights. But, of course, neither Manny nor he had anticipated spending night or nights in the mountains. Then, while leaning against the cave entrance—if it was a cave entrance—he heard approaching footsteps and tensed to defend himself.
It was only Manny Williams returning with a fistful of slender, pale brown sticks.
"Bamboo, Manny?"
"If it dead. And is almost always some dead where you find a live root, squire."
"But for torches?" Peter had expected something like pine.
"It easy to burn and give a good light. Let we use two of these, eh?" Thrusting the rest into his rope belt, Manny held two close to the cliff for shelter while Peter struck a match.
The sticks caught quickly enough, and when Peter crawled after his companion into the cave, he discovered Manny was right about the light they provided, too. It was even adequate when the tunnel widened some hundred feet in and they were able to stand up and walk abreast under a ceiling ten feet high.
Had the missing scouts stumbled on this place? Had the soldiers found it and asked themselves that very question, and then become lost, themselves, while seeking an answer to it? With every forward step, Peter became more convinced that that was what had happened.
It wouldn't explain the disappearance of Edith Craig, of course, or the note she had left saying she was being sent for. How could she and the other two have reached here from the intake pool? How could she be here now?
But the answer to that might well be here, too, Peter decided.
Then, when they had advanced through the tunnel for five minutes or so, a warning hiss from the pig hunter stopped him in his tracks.
He saw Manny snuff his torch out against the passage wall. He put his own out. For a few seconds the blackness that filled the tunnel was frighteningly solid. Then, to his surprise, a faint green glow became visible ahead as his eyes adjusted.
He felt he should be very careful now to make no noise. "What is it, Manny?" he asked in a whisper.
"That a strange kind of light, squire. Let I find out what go on there."
So silently that he might have been a mere wraith against the green glow he was investigating, Manny went on down the passage. Peter stood without moving, hearing the pounding of his own heart as he waited. Then, just as silently, the pig hunter ghosted back to him.
"Squire," he said in a hoarse whisper, with his mouth close to Peter's ear, "the light is in a big room down there. Me don't see what making it; it just seem to be there. But in the middle of the room is a man on a cross, like our Lord when them crucify Him, only this man naked." Moving back a step, he peered wide-eyed at Peter's face. "What you think we must do?"
"A man on a cross?"
"Yes, squire. A cross made of two pine tree, with a base to hold it up. Him tied on it, not nailed like Jesus. Him alive, too, for him struggle and make moanings."
The Devil's Pit, Peter thought. Or was something going on here that used the legend of the Devil's Pit as part of some hellish ritual?
26
SOUNDLESSLY THEY STOLE THROUGH THE PASSAGE, Manny Williams holding his weapon ready for action. The green glow puzzled Peter. No power plant that he knew anything about could be providing a light so unnatural. It seemed to be alive, not the product of a machine.
Was it really pulsing with some mysterious power, or was his imagination tricking him? Just as the mist earlier had caused him to do weird things—to shut off the gas in the Armadale kitchen and go after Bronzie Dakin's Gerald with a gun, for instance—this green glow was having an effect on him, he realized with alarm. It was making him feel stupid, as though he were drugged or drunk. He stumbled. Manny reached out to steady him.
Peter froze. There was a sound in the tunnel now. It must be the moaning Manny had mentioned. Just ahead, where the glow seemed to become a more intense shade of green, must be the entrance, to the room the pig hunter had spoken of.
As Manny inched forward again, Peter followed closely with a hand on the man's right shoulder, and could feel him trembling. And why not? This was not a situation in which a man like Manny Williams could be expected to display his usual composure. A mysterious underworld in a place rumored to be an abode of the devil? An unearthly light? A man crucified, perhaps in some grisly reenactment of the death of Christ?
Manny must be badly frightened.
He, Peter Sheldon, certainly was. If his heart drummed any louder, someone was likely to hear it.
Suddenly the tunnel opened up before them and he found himself staring into a room as large as a country church, with a ceiling as high as the usual church roof. But there was nothing of a religious nature in it—unless the presence of the man on the cross could be considered such through association.
The man was naked, as Manny had said. He was black. He appeared to be fairly young, perhaps in his twenties. The cross on which he hung consisted of two young pine-tree trunks held upright on a crude stand. Near it stood another crude piece of carpentry: a table some six feet long, with a top fashioned of saplings laid crosswise.
Because of the way it was constructed, the table looked like a xylophone, Peter thought, and he found himself wondering if someone would come and play it while the crucified man died. A kind of devil's requiem, perhaps. When three other men suddenly appeared from the far side of the chamber, this fanciful notion seemed actually to make some sense.
Two of these were naked also. The third wore the dark brown uniform of a scout. On the table he placed an iron rod four feet long, a bundle of sticks, and what appeared to be a long leather thong with a wooden handle. A man in his late thirties or early forties, he was at tall as Peter and at least ten pounds heavier, with a handsome, bearded, medium brown face.
Linford Grant, Peter thought. The leader of the scout group that disappeared. The one who did most of the talking when they were asking permission to go up through the plantation. But with that strange green glow causing distortions and perhaps affecting his judgment, he could not be certain.
In any case, the man was apparently in charge here. The naked two who had entered with him now stood motionless by the table, gazing at him in silence as though waiting to be told what to do.
"You," said Grant, if it was Grant. "Make a fire on the floor. Heat the rod."
The one spoken to took the sticks from the table and carried them to a spot only a few feet from the cross. Kneeling, he arranged them and put a match to them without even glancing up at the man being tort
ured.
The latter had stopped moaning and was gazing at the fire builder as though mesmerized by fear.
Grant turned to the second man. "You will use the whip. And I warn you, use it the way you have been shown or you will take your friend's place on the receiving end of it!"
Peter glanced at Manny Williams. What was happening before their eyes in this underground room with its eerie light was having its effect on the pig hunter. His tight-pressed lips quivered. The hands clutching the shotgun seemed to be all knuckles. The taut look on his face said he was about to do something reckless.
Peter touched him and warned in a whisper, "Careful, man."
Manny's voice was a low growl. "Mr. Peter, them going kill that man!"
Peter peered again into the green glare that seemed so hideously alive here. The man who resembled the scout leader stood with his arms folded, watching the one he had told to use the whip. That one advanced toward the figure on the cross. There was a weapon, Peter noticed—a handgun of some sort—in a holster at Grant's hip.
"Have you changed your mind, soldier?" Grant asked the intended victim.
No answer.
"You can save your foolish life if you want to, you know. All you need do is prove you can be one of us, the way these other two have. Are you better than they?"
The man on the cross raised his head very slowly, as though it had become almost too heavy to be lifted. When his gaze finally focused on his tormentor, he said in a rasping voice, "It too late, damn you, Grant."
"Perhaps not." The scout leader shrugged. "Don't you owe yourself the benefit of the doubt?"
"Me say it too late. Me dead already."
"You are still able to talk, soldier."
No answer.
"He will whip you worse than before, you know, if you persist in refusing to join us. He will whip you until there is very little Skin left on your body, I promise you. Then your other friend here will take the iron rod from the fire and blind you with it." Grant spoke as calmly as though he were addressing students in a classroom. As though, Peter suddenly thought, he had been doing this for a long time and was perhaps even bored by it. But the evenness of his voice did not detract from the horror of what was happening.
