“Nonsense, Heathcliff,” she said. “I’m going to save your worthless life.”
10
HURLEY SEEMED TO BE unconscious at the foot of the cliff. As quickly as he could, Jeff climbed back down. As he passed Michael and Charlie, they looked at him in puzzlement for a brief moment before beginning to backtrack themselves. Locke, nearly at the top of the precipice, noticed their absence right away. In an instant, he started back. To Jeff’s astonishment, Locke actually beat the other three to the ground. Well, Jeff thought, in a surreal world, surreal things happen.
The four men surrounded Hurley’s inert body, unsure of what to do next. The cacophony made by the invisible beast was ear-splitting, but it seemed to come from no specific direction. The men knew that they were just seconds away from contact with the thing and now they were all just sitting ducks.
“We’ve got to get out of here!” Locke shouted.
Jeff thought that was the most stupidly obvious thing he had ever heard. In a different situation he would have made a snide remark in reply, but being moments away from a horrible death had a way of squelching irony.
Jeff knelt beside Hurley. “Hang on!” he shouted over the roar. “Just hang on!”
Hurley may have tried to respond, but all that came out was a strangled gargle. His face was covered in blood. With each breath he took, crimson bubbles flecked his lips.
Jeff’s mind was racing: What do we do?
To his amazement, there was an even louder, enraged roar and Hurley abruptly stopped and lay still.
Jeff crawled close to him and whispered, “Are you all right?”
Locke grabbed one of Hurley’s arms and started tugging. “There’s no time for talk. We’ve got to get out of here.”
Instantly, Charlie and Michael were there, helping Hurley and Jeff to their feet. Hurley’s face was terribly scratched and his shirtfront was in shreds, but from a quick glance, Jeff determined that most of the injuries were minor, if painful.
In a hoarse, low voice, Hurley said, “I’m okay. Let’s go.”
Hurley’s arms were draped over Locke’s and Jeff’s shoulders and Charlie and Michael stayed close to offer additional support. In this awkward bunch, they ran as fast as they could back to the rock hill, now about a hundred yards away. Before they had covered half the distance, they heard the frightening roar behind them.
Locke yelled to Michael, “Help Hurley.” Michael ran to Hurley’s side and helped him to his feet. As they ran toward the rocks, Locke’s hand closed around the butt of his pistol, but he couldn’t bring himself to pull it out and fire. As the invisible fury approached, he turned and followed the others to what he hoped was safety.
When they reached the rock face Charlie said to Hurley, “Can you climb?”
Hurley smiled weakly. “Try and stop me.”
But before they could start, Jeff spotted something. “Look!” he cried. At the base of the mound, nearly covered by a thick bush, there was an opening in the rock, about three feet high.
Immediately, the four men pushed past the bush and crawled in, hoping desperately that the opening was large enough to offer all of them a safe haven. Jeff stood outside until Locke arrived. “Come on!” he shouted, then ducked through the entrance. Seconds later, Locke leapt through after him.
It was pitch-black inside. Carefully, Jeff stood up. He reached his arms high above his head but still didn’t touch the ceiling.
“What the bloody hell was that?” Jeff croaked in a hoarse whisper.
No one answered.
“Well?” Jeff said. “Could anybody make out what it was?”
After another long pause, Charlie said, “We’ve never been able to make out what it is.”
“You mean you’ve seen this thing before?” Jeff said. “All of you?”
Michael said, “Well, not seen exactly. But yes.”
Locke’s voice sounded in the darkness. “Let’s move as far inside as we can. Whatever that thing is, I don’t think it can fit through that opening.”
Jeff felt like he was losing his mind. “You’ve encountered it before? What is it?”
“Good question,” Locke said calmly. “Now, everybody grab onto somebody else’s arm. We don’t want to leave anybody behind.”
Forming a human chain, they advanced cautiously into the darkness. Jeff was surprised to find out how deep the tunnel seemed to be. He also noticed that there was a distinct breeze coming from inside somewhere.
“Feel that?” he said.
“Yeah,” Michael said. “There must be another entrance somewhere down here.”
“Hold on,” Locke said. And then, with a scratch and a whiff of sulfur, the chamber was filled with dim light. Locke carefully held the lighted match in his right hand and a thick, misshapen candle in his left. When the wick was lit, he lifted the candle over his head.
Charlie chuckled. “Leave it to you to come prepared.”
Jeff said, “Yes, that’s great—but where in the world did you get a candle? There wouldn’t have been any on the plane.”
Locke smiled. His eyes glinted in the candlelight. “That’s another gift the boars give us. I render the fat to make tallow. If I only had some lye, I could make soap, too.”
“Lovely,” Charlie said. “Bathing in pig fat.”
Michael said, “Now that we can see, let’s check Hurley out.”
Hurley had been leaning against the wall and began to slide downward into a sitting position. Jeff knelt beside him. Locke held the candle close to his face. Michael took the piece of cloth in which he had wrapped the fish and dampened it with water from one of the plastic bottles. Carefully, he wiped the blood from Hurley’s face, pausing two or three times to rinse out the cloth.
“Let’s get this shirt off,” Jeff said.
“Aw man,” Hurley said.
“What?” Charlie asked.
“Dude,” Hurley said. “I don’t like to take off my shirt in public.”
Jeff smiled. “This is no time for modesty. We have to see if you’re hurt.”
“It’s not modesty, dude,” Hurley said.
But he allowed Jeff to lift his T-shirt over his head. Hurley closed his eyes, his face red with embarrassment. “Hey,” he said. “No fat jokes, okay?”
Jeff quickly crossed his heart with his index finger. “You have my solemn promise. What happens in the tunnel stays in the tunnel.” Jeff wet the cloth and repeated his ministrations over Hurley’s torso.
“Nothing but superficial bruises and scrapes,” Jeff said after a few moments. “You’re a lucky man.”
“Speaking of which…” Locke said. Everybody looked at him. “Haven’t you noticed we haven’t heard a thing since we got inside?”
The other four listened carefully. A short distance away, a tiny glow of light surrounded the tunnel’s opening, but they saw no savage claw pawing through it. Jeff thought, This must be what the mouse feels like when he knows the cat is lurking about just outside.
“Maybe it’s gone away,” Charlie said.
“Maybe,” Locke said, without looking convinced. “But since we feel that breeze, I think it would be a better idea to continue in that direction for a while, see where this thing comes out.”
Jeff nodded. “I agree. This place is so narrow, it shouldn’t be any trouble to find our way back out again.” He knelt beside Hurley. “Are you up to doing a little bit of traveling?” he asked.
“Sure,” Hurley said.
Locke doused the candle and instructed everyone to keep one hand on the shoulder of the man ahead of him and the other hand on the wall. They wouldn’t be able to travel very fast that way, but at least they would stay safely together.
The little human train continued its journey through the darkness for the next hour. Conversation was kept at a minimum, as each man strained his senses to listen, sniff, or even feel anything unusual or dangerous. When they did speak, they kept their voices as low as possible, as if afraid of being overheard. Occasionally someone would rem
ark on the breeze, which wafted through the chamber with increasing power.
“I keep hoping we’ll see the light from the entrance,” Jeff whispered.
Two bodies ahead, Locke answered, “It’s night.”
Jeff almost laughed. “Oh, right. I forgot.” They had been in the dark for so long that he had no clue as to what time it was.
They walked in silence for another half hour until Locke, at the head of the line, stopped abruptly. “Listen!” he hissed. They all stopped and strained to hear whatever had caught Locke’s notice. Jeff heard it at once—breeze wafting through trees. And there was another sound, too—rain. The entrance must be just ahead.
Locke lit the candle again. “Stay here,” he said. He walked forward into the chamber and disappeared around a curve. The other four stood nervously until he returned a few minutes later.
“There’s an entrance just ahead,” Locke said. “We should make camp here. It’s raining pretty hard and I don’t know exactly where we are.”
The others murmured their agreement. Each of them was exhausted enough to just drop where they were. Jeff sat down and pulled his water bottle from the pack and took a long sip. His throat was nearly dry from exertion and terror, and he luxuriated in the intoxicatingly refreshing liquid, lukewarm as it was.
Locke kept the candle lit until everyone had chosen a place to sleep. The golden light flickered and played on the wall behind him. Jeff thought the swirls and designs of the rock patterns were fascinating—they almost looked like deliberate…
Oh my God! he thought. Oh my God!
On the wall was a design that was not only obviously deliberately placed there, but quite familiar to Jeff. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the wooden talisman he had been carving the night before. Almost in a daze, he stood up and walked over to the wall. As the others looked on in puzzlement, Jeff held the talisman by the side of the carving on the wall. They were identical.
Jeff took a step back and thought once again, Oh…my…God.
11
JEFF WAS SEATED AT the desk in his office, grading papers. This was the most depressing part of his job. He had some gifted fledgling artists in his class and it was a pleasure teaching them new techniques and watching them learn them and adapt them to their own burgeoning visions. At the same time, he was continually shocked at how inarticulate many of them were and what distressingly poor writers. For the art history portion of his lectures, he had assigned essays, and it genuinely pained him to read most of them.
For God’s sake! he thought. They can’t spell “Impressionism.” They don’t even seem to know what it means.
Savannah’s paper was, of course, a different story. She was as witty, concise, and informed on paper as in the spoken word, and she truly loved learning more about the history of art. She had chosen the pre-Raphaelites as her subject. Jeff wondered if her interest in that odd group developed because he had once told her admiringly that she reminded him of the Lady of Shalott as painted by John William Waterhouse. But, he thought, she probably knew all about the pre-Raphaelites long before he ever mentioned that to her.
The obvious quality of Savannah’s paper, and its vast superiority over those of her fellow students, once again gave Jeff a twinge. She would receive an A, and the best of the others would receive Cs. Her excellent grade was clearly earned, and Jeff knew that it was given without bias of any kind. But would others look at it that way?
You see? he said to himself. This is just the sort of thing you need to avoid.
There was a soft knock on the door, and Mr. Blond walked in.
“Hello, hello, hello,” he said, with what seemed to Jeff to be forced heartiness.
“Mr. Blond,” Jeff said pleasantly, also forcing his own heartiness a bit. Since his first day at the college, Mr. Blond had struck him as someone to avoid.
“Is this a bad time, Mr. Hadley?” Mr. Blond said. “I have something rather interesting to discuss with you.”
Jeff gestured at a chair. “Please,” he said.
Mr. Blond sat down and regarded the stack of papers. “Ah,” he said with a smile. “Grading essays. I hope your students have illuminating things to say.”
Jeff smiled grimly. “Yes, the papers are illuminating, but not quite in the way the students intended, for the most part.”
Mr. Blond nodded sympathetically. “Yes, I fear we are moving toward a postliterate age. The power of the image is overtaking the power of the word, would you agree?”
Jeff nodded. “I fear there is a great deal in what you say.” And, fearful that Mr. Blond would say a great deal more, which was his wont, Jeff quickly added, “But what did you need to see me about?”
Mr. Blond looked a little disappointed that his many thoughts on the postliterate age would have to wait for later expression, but quickly rallied. “You will soon be receiving a communication from the Newton Museum of Art in Sydney, Australia. You’ve heard of it?”
“Of course,” Jeff said. “It’s one of the leading museums in Australia.”
“They contacted us first about your availability and we assured them that we would by no means stand in your way. By no no no means,” Mr. Blond said.
“I’m sorry,” Jeff said. “You seem to have skipped over the most important point. My availability regarding what?”
“Oh oh oh,” Mr. Blond said. “I see what you mean. I have skipped past the main theme into the footnotes, as it were.”
Since Mr. Blond obviously considered this a witty and erudite remark, Jeff smiled appreciatively.
“The Newton wishes to mount a major retrospective of your work,” he said.
Jeff now smiled with genuine pleasure. “Well, that is good news.”
Mr. Blond smiled back and continued. “But the best is yet to come. They would like for you to, um, accompany the exhibit, as it were. They’ve asked that you give a series of lectures and master classes in conjunction with the museum’s program. And they will offer you quite a handsome honorarium.”
“How long would they require me to be there?” Jeff asked.
“Six months,” Mr. Blond said. “At the very least.”
Jeff frowned slightly. “But if I accept, won’t I lose my position here?”
“Not at all, not at all, not at all,” Mr. Blond said. “We are happy to give you this sabbatical and will be just as happy to invite you to return to your post at its completion.”
Jeff pondered the idea. At first blush, the project seemed to be more trouble than it was worth. The invitation was certainly flattering, but money wasn’t a concern, and he liked it here at Robert Burns College.
“I don’t know…” he began.
The vacuous smile left Mr. Blond’s face. “We cannot, of course, insist that you accept the Newton’s offer,” he said, “but we strongly urge you to, um, under the circumstances.”
Jeff stared at him. “What do you mean? What circumstances?”
“We are not puritans, Mr. Hadley,” Mr. Blond said. “And certainly a robust young man like yourself may be excused for, er, living life with a certain degree of zest.”
“What are you getting at?” Jeff said. But he was beginning to understand.
“Your, shall we say, relationship with young Miss McCartney…”
“McCulloch,” Jeff corrected.
“Indeed, indeed, indeed, McCulloch,” Mr. Blond said. “A relationship of this kind between a student and a teacher, um, it can be…misconstrued, let us say, by others who are perhaps not men of the world such as you and I.”
“Not that this is any of your business, you pompous braying jackass…” Jeff said, standing up suddenly. Mr. Blond flinched and moved as far back in his seat as he could. “…but Miss McCulloch and I are adults and may live our lives as we please. As to any kind of scholastic impropriety…”
Mr. Blond waved his hand, visibly afraid that he was about to be punched in the nose. “No such impropriety has been alleged or implied,” he said. “But people talk. And I believe you know as
well as I do that here in academe, general impression is sometimes more compelling than actual fact.”
Mr. Blond rose from his chair and backed toward the door. “All I am trying to convey,” he said, “is that this might be the perfect time to accept such a flattering offer as the Newton is about to make. When you return, Miss McCart…um, McCulloch will have graduated and then your relationship can be a matter of interest only to yourselves.”
He opened the door, but before he left he turned and said, “As for your personal remarks, I will ascribe them to the heat of the moment.” He walked out, closing the door behind him.
Jeff sat down. A brief wave of rage washed over him, but he recognized it as his natural reaction to being scolded by an annoying pipsqueak like Mr. Blond. As he began to think more rationally, he realized that the offer from the Newton Museum was like a gift from heaven. He was still ecstatically happy with Savannah—so, by his lifelong schedule, it was obviously time to cut things off. Actually going out of the country immediately thereafter could only help matters. She would be hurt at first, he thought, but if he was not around, she would forget about him soon enough.
And besides, he thought, he had never had an affair with an Australian woman. He began mulling over the possibilities, but suddenly stopped. He didn’t want to have an affair with an Australian woman. He didn’t want to have an affair with anybody except Savannah.
You see? piped up his inner mind. More proof that now is the time to end this thing. If you don’t, you’re looking at romantic lockup—a life sentence.
When Jeff got home that evening, Savannah was in the kitchen cooking. As he opened the door, she ran to him, throwing her arms around his neck and covering his face with kisses. “You’re late!” she said. “Another ten minutes and the spaghetti would be ruined.”
“Spaghetti?” Jeff said.
“Oh, yes,” Savannah said. “All those rumors about me being a horrible cook are just the talk of jealous minds. I make an amazing spaghetti sauce.”
Jeff felt a definite twinge of déjà vu.
“Oh, yeah,” Savannah said, hurrying back to the kitchen, “a registered letter came for you an hour or so ago.”
Lost: The Novels Page 34
