by Cave, Hugh
Getting no answer from the man on the cross, the scout leader motioned to the one with the whip. That man obediently took a step forward and drew his right arm back. His shoulder muscles rippled. The leather thong whistled as it flashed forward to its target. Wrapping itself around the belly of its victim, it wrung a groan from his lips.
"There is still time to change your mind, soldier," Grant said. "You have a wife and children, don't you?"
"It because me have them me not serving you," the victim mumbled. "We is church people, damn you!"
"Very well, then." Grant turned to peer at the man kneeling by the fire, which now blazed brightly. The smell of it told Peter the sticks were pine, which would soon turn the iron bar crimson.
God in heaven, no! he thought.
The whip whistled again, this time opening a line of pink across the victim's dark hips, barely missing his genitals. Again he groaned. The pink deepened to red as blood oozed out.
The next cry was Peter's, as he snatched the shotgun from Manny Williams and lurched forward. "No!" he yelled. "Stop it!" But he took only four steps before stumbling to a halt.
The green light had been waiting, it seemed, just as the green mist had before. He felt as though he had lurched into an invisible web, soft enough to let him struggle but too thick to be bored through. It held him squirming like a trapped insect, while an unseen giant spider swiftly spun more strands to hold him fast.
"Manny!" he sobbed. "Help me!"
The shotgun fell from his grasp and he followed it to the floor. Then the room with its tableau of torture became merely a sea of green in which he knew he was drowning, and the voice of the man in the brown scout uniform said calmly, "So at last you have found us, have you, Mr. Sheldon? Welcome, friend, to the Devil's Pit."
27
FOR THREE DAYS HE HAD BEEN A PRISONER.
The watch on his wrist told him that. It was one of those that told the date as well as the time. Without it he would not have been able to keep track of the passing hours, for his prison cell was illuminated by the same green glow he had seen in the torture room. In fact, most of the cavern appeared to be so lighted, and by now he must have seen nearly all of it. Enough, at least, to know it must be one of the largest caves in the island.
When his captors were not walking him about, one end of a chain only three feet long encircled his left leg above the ankle. The other end was attached to a rusty iron ring in the wall of his cell.
"With you, Sheldon, we are in no great hurry," the man in the scout uniform had said. "We think you are worth a prolonged effort."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"Well, now, in a way it's a confession of my personal inadequacy. You see, when I first met you at Armadale, I scarcely gave you a second thought. I asked one of my scouts about you—his mother had worked at the Great House under a former owner—but he knew almost nothing. Then Georgie Dakin and another lad volunteered information that made me change my mind."
"What information?"
"That you are much admired in the Armadale district. That almost all the people employed by you are fond of you. In short, that I could use you."
This conversation had taken place soon after Peter's blackout in the room of the cross and his return to consciousness in his prison cell. The scout leader had been standing over him when he opened his eyes.
"If you thought you could use me, why did you try to destroy me?" Peter said.
"Ah—you mean at the John Crow's Nest?"
"That was one time."
"A mistake," Linford Grant said with a shrug. "When you—or rather the woman with you—picked up that little map I had drawn to show the boys where we were going, I was afraid it might lead to trouble for me."
"Because the map stopped here at Blackrock?"
"Which wasn't very bright of me, was it? But I was in a hurry and told them that when we reached here, the route to the north coast would be clear to them. I should have realized, of course, that anyone finding my sketch after we disappeared might think . . ." He shrugged. "So when it was picked up and I did realize the danger, I had to destroy it."
Incredulous, Peter returned the man's gaze. "You mean you saw us looking at that map and were able to make it burn?"
"You have much to learn about me, Mr. Sheldon. We who serve Lucifer are not without certain abilities.'
There had been other conversations, interspersed with walks through the cavern. On most of the walks Grant had been his guide, wearing the holstered handgun and casually carrying a second weapon. Peter had seen a photo of such a weapon in the island's leading newspaper, after police in the capital had shot dead one of two gunmen who attacked them. Taken from the dead man, the gun was apparently the first of its kind to fall into police hands, and the photo caption had described it as a submachine gun only nineteen inches long, yet capable of firing thirty rounds of .30-caliber ammunition. Called an M-1 Enforcer, it was made somewhere in Florida. Grant carried it, Peter supposed, to discourage any panic-inspired attempt on his part to escape.
On a few occasions the task of walking him about had been delegated to others, one of them a soldier from Sergeant Wray's group. All were naked—as, it seemed, were all the inhabitants of this sinister underworld except Grant and himself.
By his guides he had been led along tunnels of green light to rooms wherein he was made to watch things happening. What he and Manny had witnessed in the first torture chamber was no special event in this den of horrors, he knew now. There were many ways of inflicting pain.
"Who are you, Grant?" he had demanded on one occasion after the leader returned him to his cell. Seated on the floor, with his leg again chained, he looked up at his captor and prayed for some shred of information that would help him.
Grant smiled down at him. "One of the chosen ones, friend. But still only one of many."
"Chosen by whom?"
The heavy shoulders moved in a shrug. "Your Bible refers to him as Satan. Or the devil."
"You're a servant of Satan?" The man was mad, of course. But perhaps by humoring him. . .
"Let's say I am a colleague who is given certain tasks to perform, Sheldon, as are many others throughout the world. Or even, I suspect, throughout the universe. This is war, Sheldon. It may be the final confrontation. The Armageddon your Bible talks about."
"How long have you been doing this?"
"I was selected when I chanced upon this place several years ago."
"As a scout?"
"No, not as a scout. I was not a scout then. There were three of us, three adventurous sons of the St. Alban elite, if you will, and we were on a wild-pig hunt. Not for food, you understand. Purely for the pleasure of it. And I became separated from the others—not by accident, I know now—and was guided to the cave here."
"Guided by whom?" Peter demanded, more to keep him talking than with any hope of being given an intelligent reply. That was the way to deal with insane people, wasn't it? Make believe you thought them sane?
Grant's gesture this time was not a shrug but a lifting of his hands, palms upward. "By whom, you say. You see, friend, you persist in thinking of a person. I have never met any such person. It was a mind that reached out to me. The contact has always been mental."
"All right. But how?"
"The same way my mind nearly caused your destruction at the John Crow's Nest and later instructed you to burn the Great House. The latter was stupid of me, of course. But, as I've explained, I was not then aware how valuable you could be to us."
"The Great House." Peter frowned. "How did you know about the gas line in the kitchen?"
"I've told you. The mother of one of my scouts used to work there. Her son knew the house well."
"So you picked his brain."
"I asked questions."
"If you wanted me to burn down the Great House, why didn't you have me splash some kerosene around and strike a match, for God's sake?"
"My powers are limited, Sheldon. You, too, have a mind, you know
—or you had—and at that time it might have alerted you against any instructions so obvious. Ihad to take that into account."
A mind of his own? That, Peter thought, might explain why the man on the cross had been able to say no despite being tortured. And why others were being put through various degrees of torment. But, obviously, there came a time when this disciple of Satan felt he was more firmly in control of his victims' minds. Following the incident with the gas line, he hadn't seen a need to be devious in instructing Peter Sheldon to commit murder, had he?
"You say there are others like you, Grant?"
"Oh, many."
"Where?"
A smile of satisfaction flickered across the man's face. Perhaps even one of triumph. "Wherever what the uninitiated call 'terrorism' is becoming a way of life, friend. Here in little St. Alban we haven't machine-gunned an airport yet, of course. Orbombed churches. Orthrown grenades into crowded markets. Ormurdered an Olympic team. Orseized an embassy and taken its people hostage. We're young yet. We don't send our soldiers after protesting college students and slice the girls' breasts off with machetes, as was done in Uganda, nor do we yet execute political prisoners by bashing their skulls in with iron bars." Grant chuckled. Describing atrocities obviously gave him intense pleasure.
"That bus that went off the road when it was bringing a church group out to Armadale," Peter said. "You were responsible for that?"
"Of course, Sheldon."
"Then the Post columnist is right about what's happening in St. Alban. What he calls the increase in violence. The senseless brutality of it."
"The Post columnist? Ah, yes, we have plans for him."
"What about Private Pennock. Is he one of you or did you just get to his mind when he was weakened by his ordeal?"
"He has been one of us for a year or so, Mr. Sheldon. I recruited him when he and his older brother came up here on a holiday hiking trip. The brother refused to cooperate, I regret to say, and died here in one of our persuasion rooms."
"You bastard," Peter said.
Grant chuckled again. "You understand, of course, that this unit of Lucifer's organization was here before I was placed in command of it," he continued. "But before me, the ones selected to be in charge were incompetent. About all they accomplished was the creation of a Devil's Pit legend when they caused a few persons to disappear."
Stepping to the wall, he idly examined the iron ring to which Peter's ankle chain was fastened. "Still," he went on with another of his shrugs, "we are not doing too badly now, I would say. We're improving."
Peter had to suppress a surge of revulsion as the man turned and smiled at him. "But why?" he demanded hoarsely.
"I told you, this is war. The ultimate struggle. And you will soon be in the front line of it."
"Not if I can help myself, damn you. Where is Miss Craig?"
"Who?"
"Edith Craig! The woman you lured away from the Great House. Don't tell me you don't know where she is. You've just admitted you sent Pennock back with Sergeant Wray to bring her here!"
But the man in the brown uniform had decided to answer no more questions, it seemed. "You know," he said, peering down at Peter, "winning you over is going to be an interesting diversion, I think. And when we've enlisted you, we should be quite a team. Think what we can do with an army of your uneducated plantation workers." Again the smile Peter had learned to loathe. "Ignorant people are our brightest prospects everywhere, Sheldon. Lucifer thrives on ignorance. I'm sure you appreciate that."
The man was totally mad, Peter told himself on being left alone—except that on several unforgettable occasions he had indeed displayed dark powers. But even if Grant were insane, there was no comfort in the thought. Escape still seemed impossible.
They had fed him since his capture, but not well. Twice a day he was given a chunk of hard-dough bread and a battered aluminum bowl half-lull of lukewarm gruel or watery soup. At times the soup contained a few small freshwater crayfish, probably caught in some nearby mountain stream, or bits of dark red meat that appeared to be wild pig. He was hungry now, though at first the meagerness of the rations had not seemed to matter. Fear evidently had a way of dulling one's appetite.
For the rest, it was simply a situation to be endured while he waited for whatever might happen next, though the agony of not knowing what had happened to Edith Craig was always with him. He had been given a bucket to use for a toilet, and kept it as far away from him as the length of the chain allowed. The smell was annoying but endurable. Every now and then one of the naked people came for the container and brought it back empty.
Where, he wondered, was the old pig hunter, Manny Williams? He had not seen Manny since they were seized.
Other questions hammered at his mind while be sat there in the green glow hour after hour, his back against the cold stone wall, contemplating some of the things the scout leader had said to him. What must the plantation workers and Miss Coraline be thinking of his disappearance, not to mention the disappearance of the new owner and her fiancé? What must Bronzie Dakin be thinking? He had promised to take her boy to the hospital, and she knew him to be a man who kept his word.
"I have something interesting to show you," Linford Grant said on his next visit.
Peter had been dozing and had opened his eyes on hearing the footfalls approach his cell room. He sat up now. For the first time, Grant was not in his scout uniform. Perhaps it was being washed for him—certainly the devil's advocate would not do his own laundry. This time he wore a khaki shirt and pants probably stripped from a captured soldier.
He really was a well-built man, Peter thought. In a one-on-one encounter Peter Sheldon would probably come out second best. But the scout leader had not come to provoke a fight, and in any case was again armed with an M-1 Enforcer.
"Come," Grant ordered, releasing Peter's leg iron. "I've decided to let you watch a former worker of yours in training."
Peter rose stiffly from the floor. A former worker? Georgie Dakin came to mind but had to be dismissed when he remembered that Georgie, through his twin brother Gerald, had already reported an act of ghastly violence and must therefore be already "trained." Dear God, had they won Manny Williams over? That deacon of the church and rock-solid man of God? The prospect filled him with dread as he trudged out of the chamber ahead of his captor.
The passage down which he was guided this time was one of the longest be had traversed—wide enough, too, for Linford Grant to have walked beside him had Grant wished to. The man seemed content, however, to stay behind and voice directions. "Turn left at the fork head, Sheldon." "Keep to the right at the next junction, Sheldon."
The so-called Devil's Pit must indeed be one of the island's largest caverns, Peter decided. The largest he had been in before was an underworld called Glowrie Cave in the parish of Dorchester, a river cave some five miles long with passages on several levels and a number of "ducks" where one had to crawl under long stretches of low ceilings.
But this cave was not dark, as Glowrie had been. That eerie green glow was as omnipresent as the air itself, and neither flashlights nor torches were necessary. As he proceeded quietly along one of the easier tunnels, where the floor was level enough to require no really strenuous effort, he said experimentally to the man at his back, "Where does this light come from, Grant?"
"From him, I suppose. A product of his will. It was here when he brought me here."
"You keep saying 'he' but insist you're serving a mind, not a person. Others have had that notion, you know—that all of us and the world we live in are merely an idea of some great mind."
"So I've read."
"You believe it?"
"I have not yet been instructed on that point. But it occurs to me that if our world is merely a thought, the universe itself may be the same."
"God's thought," Peter said.
"You say. And who knows—maybe it was in the beginning. But whose mind will control it in the end? Take the passage on your left here."
&
nbsp; Peter did so, and after only a brief stretch of new tunnel found himself in yet another torture chamber. Or training room, as Grant called them.
"Stand against the wall, please, and observe." His captor motioned with the rifle. "I've brought you here because I want you to see how well your friend has responded to instruction. Also because I plan to begin your own instruction tomorrow, and this should persuade you not to be foolishly stubborn."
The room was a duplicate, though smaller, of the one in which Peter had been captured, containing the same kind of cross and table. On the table lay another of the automatic rifles. Within reach of it stood a man Peter thought he had seen before—perhaps one of the missing soldiers.
On the cross was a naked figure he recognized without question—one of Grant's own scout group, a youth no more than fifteen or sixteen years old. He had had a camera, Peter recalled, and had promised to bring back a picture of the Devil's Pit if they found the place.
There was no fire in this chamber, thank God. But there was a whip, in the hands of a naked man who stood before the cross, awaiting the command to use it.
"Manny," Peter said. "Don't do it."
The pig hunter turned slowly toward the sound of his voice and looked at him. Simply looked, without comment. Then without a word he turned back again.
"Please, Manny. For God's sake," Peter begged. "Don't do it. He's just a boy!"
"One of my scouts," Grant supplied without emotion. "They have surprised me a little. Two have been real problems."
Peter said dully, "This one and who? Georgie Dakin?"
"No, not Georgie. Hunger and cold soon put an end to his scruples."
Even as he numbly watched Manny Williams, Peter recalled what Georgie Dakin's twin brother had said about being desperately hungry in a cold prison that terrified him. "So you starved the boy into submission," he said bitterly.
