Aaron Elkins - Gideon Oliver 02 - The Dark Place

by The Dark Place

  "Indian stuff?" Gideon asked.

  "Yeah. Baskets, that kind of thing. I wish I could go to the ledge with you," he said halfheartedly, "but I can’t spare a couple of days. I’ll send an agent along with you, though."

  "What for?" Julie asked quickly. "Protection?"

  "That’s right, protection," John said, blustering and concerned. "A bunch of people have been killed in there, you know."

  "Two people," Julie said. "And that was six years ago. Claire Hornick is still missing. Look, John, we haven’t sealed the place off to ordinary weekend hikers, and we don’t send a bodyguard in with them, do we? So why us?"

  John appealed to Gideon. "What do you think, Doc?"

  What he thought was that he didn’t want some grumpy, griping agent horning in on his night under the stars with Julie. "I think she’s right," he said. "There are thousands of hikers in the park all the time, and as far as we know there have been two murders in the last six years. Those are better odds than I get in San Francisco."

  "Damn it, let’s not play games. You spent all morning with a guy with a big, ugly hole in his head. There’s something skulking around in there with a Stone Age spear and murder on its mind. And superhuman strength, from what you tell us. Or an atlatl, which is just as bad."

  "John," Julie cut in, "I have a sidearm, and I know how to use it, and I mean to carry it. We’ll be all right."

  "Yeah," John said, the fight draining out of him, "but—"

  "She also has me. Don’t worry about it, I’ll protect her."

  "Protect me?" Julie said. "I’m going to have to hold his hand the entire time to make sure he doesn’t get lost."

  "That," said Gideon with a grin, "is far and away the best offer I’ve had all day."

  "Be right back," Julie said, giving his hand a preliminary squeeze. "I want to change into civvies. Then I’ll bring the truck around."

  After two miles on the trail, the crowds began to thin out. After three, they were alone. They walked steadily but gradually uphill, beneath giant limbs that blocked the sunlight a hundred and fifty feet above them, through translucent and ethereal archways of club moss that hung from the branches in exquisite, two-dimensional crescents and vaults. Indeed, it was like a haunted forest, Gideon thought, in which they’d shrunk to Lilliputian size. The ferns and herbs and flowers and mosses that covered the forest floor were all familiar, but grown to monstrous proportions. He half expected to see a house cat the size of an elephant poke its nose around a tree and leer at them.

  They walked quietly for the most part, listening sometimes to the singing of far-off wrens and thrushes, but mostly absorbed in the dreamy, heavy silence that seemed to hang like a fog over them. Even their steps made no sound on the spongy trail. It had been a long while since Gideon had had a pack on his back, but he quickly fell into a hiker’s steady, swinging stride. The incredible foliage and immense trunks enchanted him now, and he was comfortable and relaxed, enjoying the odd illusion that he was not walking, but floating through a green and dappled ocean, far below the surface, where the water was dark but pure and gloomily transparent.

  After two hours…three?…four?…the pack began to weigh on him, his feet to drag. Julie seemed as fresh as ever.

  "How are you doing?" she asked cheerfully as they paused at a rough wooden bridge.

  "I’m doing fine," he said. "Great. I could do this all day. It’s fantastic." Say you’re tired, he willed her ferociously, so I can take this miserable pack off my back and rest for a while.

  "That’s fine," she said, "because here’s where it starts getting hard. We don’t cross this bridge. Here’s where we leave the trail. This is Pyrites Creek. We follow it up the hill."

  He swung his eyes to the left, up the nearly vertical waterfalls. "Hill?" he said weakly. "Good God, I hope we don’t have to go up any mountains."

  Julie laughed. "If you think you’ve had it, there’s no reason why we can’t camp here and call it a day."

  "Not on your life," he said grimly. "On we go." Hopefully he added, "Unless you’re really tired?"

  "Oh, no. I could do this all day. Let’s go."

  To climb the next half mile took them an hour of rugged scrambling. Sometimes they had to pull themselves up by grasping branches or exposed roots. When they came to a small cove made by a gravel shelf about ten feet wide at one of the creek’s few level spots, Gideon flung his pack to the ground.

  "That’s it. As fresh as I am," he said, gasping, "I have no right to subject you to this pace. Let’s take a breather."

  Julie sat heavily down. "Foof," she said. "I thought you’d never quit."

  For five minutes they lay back and caught their breath, looking at the tops of the trees waving against the bright sky and listening to the tumbling water. Julie pulled the map from her pack and studied it. "Gideon," she said, "I think we’re there. The ledge ought to be across the creek, about halfway up the other side."

  Gideon got to his elbows and stared. "Halfway up that?"

  "What would you say," Julie asked, "to stopping here for the night and going up there in the morning? We could leave our packs down here."

  "I would say yes, by all means, yes. It’s nearly six anyway. And," he said, suddenly realizing it, "I’m starving. We wouldn’t have any powdered escalope de veau in those shiny little packets we’ve been lugging around, would we? Or a few freeze-dried quenelles?"

  "It’s beef stroganoff. And don’t laugh. It’s not bad, considering."

  It was awful, but they gobbled it down happily, leaning over the camp stove for warmth when the sun dropped behind the peaks at their backs and plunged the cove into shadow. Afterwards, they made a tiny campfire and drank several cups of hot cocoa out of tin mugs, using water from the creek, and talked and laughed for several hours.

  There was a little awkwardness and uncertainty when it came time to bed down, but they agreed, after a dignified and objective discussion, that precocious sexual relations might damage a burgeoning friendship. They would, therefore, as mature and rational adults, sleep in their separate sleeping bags.

  But there was nothing wrong with putting those sleeping bags side by side and holding hands, and it was thus that they drifted to sleep after talking another hour. Julie fell asleep first, and Gideon watched her for a while, hungry for her but happy, too, with the way things had gone.

  The first premonition came in the depth of the night. Awakened by some imperceptible movement, some soft, furtive sound, Gideon opened his eyes suddenly. He was lying on his back, holding his breath, and straining to listen. The air was fragrant and luminous, the huge plants sharply defined and frighteningly still. Next to him, Julie lay in her sleeping bag, her breath slow and steady. She had turned away from him onto her side so that now he could see only her black hair, stirring gently in the soft breeze.

  There was the sound again. Not just the river burbling over the stones, but another sound, a sinister, dry whispering, a faint, drawn-out whirring that seemed everywhere, closing in on them with a terrible, hushed intensity. Still half asleep, he had almost leaped up shouting when he saw what it was.

  He fell back then, relaxed and feeling foolish, and watched the fir needles float down. From the highest branches they came, pulled loose by a passing puff of wind far above and drifting to earth in a pale, twinkling rain, glinting silver as they passed in and out of shafts of moonlight. And they rustled minutely as they came. He closed his eyes as they neared the ground and let them fall like flakes of snow on his cheeks and eyelids.

  A headline in thick black print ran across his mind: Professor Panicked by Attack of Fir Needles. He must be feeling very edgy indeed. He laughed softly but knew as he did that it was forced. There was a crawling tightness at the back of his neck that told him he was still tense; there was something else…

  He had never had the feeling before, so it took a while before he recognized it and still longer until he owned up to what it was. Once, in fact, he had spent half an hour trying to prove to a stubborn
ly unconvinceable John Lau that there could be no possible validity to it, that it was a silly superstition without an ounce of empirical support. Nevertheless, silly or not, there was no question that he felt he was being watched; he knew he was being watched. He could feel the very points in his neck where the eyes bored in.

  As inconspicuously as he could, he turned slowly to survey the scene around them. They were in a small cove made by a gravel shelf about ten feet wide, on the outside of a bend in the creek, their feet toward the water, their heads at the base of a hillside covered with ferns and giving root to great spruces and firs. Dark as it was, things stood out in the moonlight with a hard-edged, flat-planed clarity. Nothing moved, nothing sounded except Julie’s breathing and the faint hiss of the water over the pebbles. But somebody was there, on the mountainside, watching him, studying him, somebody—Gideon refused to even think "something"—somebody stood silent in the shadows of the somber, moss-laden trees, waiting to…what?

  He looked at the trees for a long time and listened but he heard nothing, saw nothing, and after a while the feeling gradually passed. It must have been a dream that had set him off, or the delicate fall of the pine needles on his face, or the mere fact of lying in the dark and fantastic rain forest. He yawned and looked around once more, then nestled down, sleepy again, into the warm sleeping bag.

  Julie’s back was still toward him, and he watched as the quiet eddies of air softly set the dark ringlets of her hair trembling, ringlets sculpted like those on the ancient stone busts of Assyrian kings.

  Feeling positively degenerate but unable to resist the urge, he reached across the gravel between them and gently cupped the dense mass of hair. Some of it, not heavy at all but weightless and cool, fell over his hand, and he shivered as it brushed the backs of his fingers. He briefly considered waking her, thought better of it, and quietly pulled his hand back. When he put it under his cheek he could smell her hair’s fragrance, already familiar.

  There was another gust of wind far above, another rustle, and another twinkling rain of fir needles. Julie moved, turned on her back, wrinkled her slightly convex nose—a movement that Gideon had always found attractive in a pretty girl—and brushed the needles from her face. He saw her eyes open.

  "The moon’s so bright," she said.

  "Uh-huh."

  "It’s like…do you know that picture, Rousseau, I think, where that Arab is sleeping under the moon, with these gigantic flowers—"

  "’The Sleeping Gypsy.’"

  "And that strange, still lion is watching him… Doesn’t it look like that here?"

  It did, and Gideon said so, strange, and still, and surreal.

  "Rousseau wasn’t a surrealist," Julie said, "he was a primitive."

  "Don’t be pedantic."

  "Gideon, do you have the feeling," she said, and he knew perfectly well what was coming, "that something’s watching us?"

  "No."

  "Well, I do."

  "Julie, don’t be silly. The idea of knowing when you’re being watched is based on the invalid idea that some kind of energy flows from the observer to the observed object. The most elementary principles of vision make it clear that light travels the other way around, from the stimulus—"

  "Did someone say something about being pedantic?"

  "Okay, in simple, nonevaluative terms: It’s stupid. You’re being ridiculous."

  "Yes, sir." A long silence. She turned to face him. "But I feel it."

  "Julie, the absurdity of it is empirically demonstrable, and there—"

  "I liked it when you touched my hair."

  "—were several experiments in the late sixties… What?"

  "I liked your hand on my hair."

  "I…didn’t mean to wake you. I’m sorry." Like hell he was.

  She lay on her side, looking at him, her eyes enormous. The wind whispered in the tops of the trees again, and another gleaming rain of pine needles fell. Gideon brushed some from her cheek. Her face was warm.

  "Gideon," she said, "you know that conversation we had about being adult and not letting animal passions interfere with a burgeoning, mature relationship?"

  "Mmm."

  "Did I really say that?"

  "I think maybe I did. It sounds more like my style."

  "Mmm. Dumb, huh?"

  "Boy, dumb is right," he said. "I mean, like, I know dumb, and that’s what that was. Dumb."

  She raised her arm, lifting the top of her sleeping bag. He could barely hear her whisper, "Come to me."

  Unmindful of the cold, he threw back the cover of his own bag and went, kneeling on the sharp gravel and bending to kiss her. He could hear his heart pounding, feel his chest vibrate with the hammering, but the kiss was chaste and almost austere, a gentle, tranquil touching of lips while their bodies held apart. They moved their heads slowly back and forth, so that their lips brushed softly. Her hand lay lightly on the back of his neck; his fingers traced the line of her cheek.

  In another moment, each with a small cry, they were in an embrace of furious intensity, their mouths seeking each other’s lips, throats, eyelids, ears; kissing, nuzzling, licking, inhaling. Urgent and clumsy, they tore at each other’s clothing. Gideon pulled her body roughly to his. It was over in a few seconds, and they rolled apart, gasping.

  After a while she spoke in a tiny voice: "Oh, my goodness, was that really me? How embarrassing."

  Gideon took a deep, slow breath and let it out. "Wow. Talk about animal passions. I’m afraid I got carried away."

  "Yes. Wasn’t it terrific?" She giggled, and he thought: This is serious. Even her giggling sounds wonderful. Watch out, Oliver.

  "Terrific," he said.

  They turned to each other and embraced, more gently this time.

  "Mmm," she said, nestling against his chest, "hairy devil, aren’t you? That’s nice. Very appropriate for a physical anthropologist." She ran her hand down his side to his knees, then slowly up his body and over his chest. "I must say, Dr. Oliver, for a grand old man of anthropology, you are built."

  "Thank you, I think. You’re quite well preserved yourself." With his face buried in her hair, he slowly stroked her smooth back from shoulder to waist and cupped her ample, firm buttocks in both hands.

  "Ah, Julie, you feel marvelous: solid and soft and sexy and female."

  She lay without moving, purring quietly as his hands roved over her, caressing, rubbing, gently kneading. "Gideon," she said, her voice muffled by his chest, "this feels so lovely, but I’m falling asleep. I can’t help it. Do you mind terribly much?"

  "Shh, no. Go to sleep. Why should I mind?"

  "Don’t you want to despoil me again, you beast?"

  "Despoil you—?"

  "Well, violate me, then?"

  "No, I don’t even want to ravish you. Well, maybe a little."

  Her hands worked down over the hair on his belly and grasped and held him. "What’s this then?"

  "A mere, mindless, purely physical reflex. Pay no attention." He kissed her hair. "Really, I’m happy, believe me. Anyway, I can ravish you better when you’re asleep."

  "You’re sure you don’t mind?" she said, barely awake, her cheek warm against his chest, her breasts pressed to his side.

  "Shh, sleep."

  He shifted slightly to let her snuggle in more comfortably and lifted one of her breasts for the pleasure of letting its warm, soft weight come down on his ribs again. Breathing in the fragrance of her hair and putting one hand protectively on her shoulder, the other one possessively on her thigh, he settled himself for sleep.

  "Hey," he said suddenly, "why are you wearing perfume? Who wears perfume in a sleeping bag? You were expecting this, weren’t you, you hypocrite?"

  "Well," she murmured sleepily, her lips moving deliciously against his chest, "a girl never knows."

  They woke later and made love again, but slowly this time, laughing, and whispering, and learning each others’ pleasures. When they were done they slept again, only now it was Gideon who lay in Ju
lie’s arms, his face between her breasts.

  In the coldest part of the night, just before dawn, Gideon woke once more, cramped and confined in Julie’s narrow sleeping bag. He climbed out, shivering and grumbling, to try to fit the two bags together.

  "Put some clothes on," Julie said thickly. "It must be forty degrees."

  He slipped quickly into his shirt and jeans and tried some more, unsuccessfully. They finally settled for simply moving the bags together and leaving them open along the connecting sides. When they finally settled down again, Julie warmed him in her arms, then gave him a motherly little pat on the behind, turned away onto her left side, and wriggled her own posterior into his lap so that they lay spoon-in-spoon fashion.

  She reached around and patted him again, on the hip this time, and sighed. "Isn’t this nice, Gideon, dear?"

  "Ah, God, Julie…it’s nice." He blinked in confusion. He had almost blurted out, "I love you."

  She found his right hand and moved it to her breast, gently molding his fingers around the yielding flesh. Then, after she seemed to be asleep, she lifted his hand, kissed the back of it, rubbed her cheek against it, and placed it again around her breast.

  "Why are you wearing clothes?" she asked sleepily.

  "You told me to put them on. Do you want me to take them off?"

  "Well, certainly." But when he began to move, she clamped his arm down with her own, keeping his hand on her breast. "No. Too comfortable. Want to stay just like this. Besides…"

  "Besides what?"

  "Besides, it feels so decadent being naked next to a fully dressed man. I feel like a harem girl." She giggled softly and began to breathe slowly and deeply.

  "Julie…" he whispered. He’d nearly said it again: I love you.

  "Hmm?" she said from a million miles away. Then she laughed again, sighed, worked her buttocks still more securely against him, and quieted.

  Gideon lay there, his mind inflamed and perplexed. Did he love her? Not likely. Love as he knew it—and he knew it—came maybe once in a lifetime, and he had had his once; an overflowing, never-to-be equaled once.