Cage of Night

by Ed Gorman

  My claustrophobia was back. Not only did the oppressive clutter get to me, so did the sense of the life lived here—the life of a hardscrabble isolated packrat. In my romantic world, people shouldn't live this way.

  She waggled her Colt .45 at me.

  "Hands up."

  "I didn't kill her."

  "Shit," she said. "If you didn't kill her, why'd they find that knife in your car?"

  "Somebody put it there."

  "Shit." Then: "She was one of the few friends I had." Her tears were quick and plentiful, softening the hard lined face into a semblance of beauty. You could see the young woman she'd been. A sad strange history had probably led her to this shack.

  "I'm sorry she's dead."

  She snuffled tears. "You're sorry for yourself. Sorry you're on the run, and sorry they'll put you to death up at the state prison. That's who you're sorry for."

  There was a black dial telephone, much older even than her TV set, sitting on the far arm of the couch.

  "If you move, I'll kill you."

  "I know. You told me that already."

  "I could probably get away with it, just sending you over right here and now. Self-defense. And who could prove it wasn't?"

  The queasy coldness seized my bowels again.

  "Could you not point that at me?"

  "You think I don't know how to handle this?"

  "I'm sure you do, ma'am. But it could still go off accidentally."

  "Can that 'ma'am' shit. I hate it."

  She walked backward across the living room to the far edge of the couch. Then she eased herself down and with her empty hand lifted the receiver.

  "They should have operators the way they did when I was a girl. All you had to do was say 'Mavis, get me Mrs. Mally' and ten seconds later Mavis would have you connected."

  She leaned over awkwardly. She had to hold the gun in one hand and with the other dial O.

  I had already figured out my last best hope. If I could pick up the Santa Claus mug fast enough, and throw it hard enough, there was a chance I could jump her and tie her up.

  She leaned further, as if she were doing some kind of hip exercise, and that was when I grabbed the mug and hurled it at her.

  When she yelped, I felt sorry for her. I'd thrown harder than I'd intended, and the mug caught her in the eyebrow.

  She fired but by that time, I was ducking down and charging at her.

  I tackled her, grabbing her hips, slamming her back into the couch, snatching the gun from her hand.

  For a long moment, we just sat there, me in her lap like a favorite grandchild, both of us panting, the air harsh with gunsmoke.

  "You're bleeding," I said.

  "Screw yourself."

  "God, I didn't mean to hurt you."

  "I been hurt a lot worse than that." She looked beyond me a moment, and I could tell she was staring down the long corridor of time. "Lost my husband and two babies in a car accident. I was in the hospital for eleven months."

  "I'm sorry, ma'am."

  The sentiment was gone from her eyes now. She was once more the hard prairie loner. "What'd I tell you about that 'ma'am' shit?"

  "Excuse me."

  I got up, gripping her .45 in my right hand as I did so.

  "I'll have to do some things I don't want to do."

  "Like what?"

  "Like tie you up and tear your phone cord out."

  "And you say you didn't kill her."

  "I didn't. But nobody believes me so I don't have much choice except to act like I'm guilty."

  She didn't look especially swayed by my argument.

  There was some clothesline rope on the kitchen sink. I cut off two long pieces and went back and got her wrists and feet tied. Then I went over and ripped

  the phone cord out of the plug.

  "There's one more thing," I said.

  Before she could ask what it was, I went into the tiny toilet, which smelled surprisingly sweet—some kind of lilac perfume—and a few moments later I was leaning over her with a Band-Aid and a bottle of iodine and a clean hot soapy wash cloth.

  "What the hell you doing?"

  "I'm going to clean out your cut from where I hit you."

  "Don't bother."

  "I didn't mean to hurt you."

  She watched me in a kind of disbelief as I treated her small wound.

  "You're crazy, you know that?" she said.

  "Look who's talking."

  When I finished up, the Band-Aid too big for the job and giving her an injured look that was at least a little bit comic, she said, "You really didn't kill her?"

  "I really didn't kill her."

  "Then who did?"

  "A guy named Garrett."

  "The cop who works for the Chief?"

  "Right."

  "Why would a cop kill Mae?"

  "I don't have time to explain. But he killed her all right." I went to the window, looked out past dusty red curtains. "When's the next time you're expecting somebody?"

  "Tonight, I guess. Why?"

  "I just want to make sure you'll be all right."

  She stared at me a long moment. "Kid, I sure as hell don't know what to make of you."

  I smiled bleakly. "Sometimes I don't know what to make of me, either."

  I stepped out of the living room, into the narrow little room where the sleeping cot lay. I picked up the comforter and brought it back to the couch and spread it over her.

  "Don't want you to get cold," I said.

  I took a last peek at her wound.

  "Headache?"

  "Not any more."

  "Good. Your eyes look fine. I didn't give you a concussion or anything."

  "A lot of them men looking for you, you know they'll kill you the minute they see you."

  "I know."

  "Aren't you scared?"

  "I can't tell you how scared."

  "So you're gonna keep running?"

  "I don't have any choice."

  I went to the window, looked out again. The sky was grayer and lower than before. There was no sign of the men but overhead, in the distance, I could hear the choppers. That meant they'd brought in the state police to help with the search.

  I needed to head for the timber. Fast.

  "I'll get your gun back to you some way," I said. "I'm sorry to have to take it."

  She nodded to the kitchen. "On top of the refrigerator's a box of bullets. Take 'em, kid."

  "God, that's really nice of you."

  "And inside the refrigerator's a couple of bologna sandwiches. With mustard and mayo. That's how I fix 'em. Take them, too. I can make more for myself."

  "That's damned nice of you."

  And for the very first time, I saw her smile, and it took forty years from her face. "Yeah, it is, isn't it?" Then, the smile quickly gone: "You better hit the timber fast."

  I got the bullets and the sandwiches and went to the door.

  "Sorry for hitting you with the mug."

  Another long look from her. "Take care of yourself, kid. I guess now I really don't think you did kill Mae."

  I felt good about having her blessing as I closed her door behind me, and started running for the timberline.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I spent the afternoon backtracking.

  It was still my intention to get back to the line shack and the well. There was a pay phone on the northernmost edge of the nearby state park. After dark, I could call Mom and Dad and let them know that I was all right.

  Late in the afternoon, a soft snow fell, giving the grim gray day a needed grace note.

  A few times, cold snowflakes touching my nose and cheeks, I was even able to forget about Mae Swenson. I was a kid again, sledding or making snowmen or tucked into the corner of my bed with a Werewolf At Night comic.

  But then I'd hear the distant drum of semis on the road that ran parallel to my course, and I'd be reminded again of reality.

  Darkness came by five that afternoon. By now, the snowfall had lost its allur
e. There was enough of it to make walking difficult.

  Far, far away, I saw the lights of the town, my town, and for a moment it had the quality of a nightmare. I'd always had dreams of being driven out of society, seeing people whom I cared for wanting nothing to do with me, passing me by on the street with only scorn and malice in their gazes. In these nightmares, I'd never known what my sin was, only that people no longer deemed me worthy of their friendship. And eventually, I began to believe them, to feel that I was unworthy, and so, much as I was doing now, I fled into a dark forest where I hid from the disapproving stare of society.

  A couple of times, I was tempted to eat the sandwiches the old woman had given me but I stopped myself.

  I envisioned a feast tonight. On the one hand, it was almost laughable. Bologna sandwiches and the leaky roof of a line shack do not a feast make. On the other hand, it made sense. I'd been on the run for the better part of a night and day now. I needed to stop, rest. The line shack was a good place because the posse had probably covered it several times already, different groups crisscrossing it at different points in the search, and so I'd probably be safe.

  Safe—and with two bologna sandwiches, complete with mustard and mayo, to complete my feast.

  An hour later, the sky cleared.

  There was an icy quarter moon. I reached the top of a hill and looked down on the town again.

  This time, the haze having lifted, it was postcard pretty, all church steeples and smoking chimneys and the first bright decorations for Christmas. The sentimental quality of the scene only made my sense of loss cut deeper.

  I reached the line shack just as two raccoons were leaving it. They watched me for a moment, seeming neither particularly interested in me or afraid, and then waddled away into the snow and the night.

  I found a nice dry corner in the shack and sat down. All I did for the first half hour was let myself drift in and out of a frenzied sleep.

  I am running down a long endless blacktop road and right behind me are four cop cars with screaming sirens and men leaning out the windows with shotguns.

  I am up in my room and I am ten years old and I'm reading my first Leigh Brackett paperback and I doze off and I have this real weird dream about being twenty-one and being accused of murder.

  I am dancing across a glass floor sparkling as black diamonds and in my arms is gorgeous, tender, vulnerable Cindy Brasher. Her hair is wind-caught, drifting like golden seaweed in this ocean of perfect night. She wears a gown of impossible glowing ivory, a gown that flatters her soft white skin and lovely face. The music is beautiful but it is the kind of beauty that is not without the price of melancholy—and so I watch Cindy's face as every few minutes sadness touches then flees her eyes. And then we're one again, and dancing on.

  I am twenty-four years old and I am being strapped to a gurney. This is an execution chamber. There are three men in there with me. They don't seem to notice me. They simply go about their business. I scream but it is a silent scream. I pray but there is no God to hear me. The needle, sharp and silver and shining, descends.

  I am—

  I am twenty-one years and sitting in a line shack and freezing my ass off.

  I possess a bladder that needs emptying, a belly that needs food, and a soul that needs peace.

  I get up and take care of my bladder first, just outside the empty doorway. I wash my hands in the snow and then I come back in and take care of my belly.

  The bologna sandwiches turn out to be a feast. No steak, no lobster, no fancy French gourmet meal ever tasted better.

  I am so happy to be eating that even the occasional piece of gristle in the meat has a certain sumptuousness to it.

  When I am finished, after having licked every crumb from the waxed paper, I put my head back and doze off again.

  And then it happens. Very quickly, really.

  The noise from the well that I heard that first night, the noise that is probably a voice whose words I can't quite make out, a rumbling ominous frightening voice that seems somehow both ancient and unworldly.

  I am on my feet—

  I am moving toward the door—

  I am walking out into the freezing winter night—

  The voice is clearer now, rumbling, rumbling just below my hearing—

  I am moving inexorably to the well—

  —the well

  —and what waits for me in the well—

  The dream scared the shit out of me.

  I wasn't hearing voices.

  I wasn't up on my feet.

  In the tumbledown silence of the line shack, I sat huddled and trembling, frozen and fearful.

  No voice. No well.

  But I knew then that I would have to make my peace with the well, that I would have to see what lurked down there.

  And I knew how I was going to find out.

  "Mom."

  "Oh, honey."

  She started crying right away, sobbing.

  "Honey, we've been so worried about you."

  "I know, Mom. I'm sorry. I didn't kill Mae Swenson, Mom. I really didn't."

  "We know that, son."

  Then Dad came on the line. "The best thing you can do, Spence, is call the Chief and have him come and get you."

  "I didn't do it, Dad."

  "That isn't the point, honey."

  He hadn't called me honey since I was eight or so. It felt right, though, in a corny endearing sort of way. I was his little boy again and he was scared as hell for me.

  "Dad, is Josh there?"

  "Sitting right here."

  "I need to talk to him."

  "Are you all right?"

  "Pretty much. A little cold, I guess."

  "You're not going to call the Chief are you?"

  "Dad, if I call the Chief, he won't do any more investigating. He'll just assume I killed her. I've got an idea that might work. I at least need to try it."

  "We're worried about you, Spence."

  "I know, Dad. I love you and Mom very much but I really have to do this."

  "It's your decision."

  "Thanks, Dad."

  He gave the phone to Josh.

  "You think you could meet me at the line shack?"

  "Sure."

  I told him what to bring.

  "All right," he said.

  "You know what I can't figure out?"

  "What?"

  "Why Cindy hasn't talked to the Chief yet and told him that Garrett killed Mae Swenson."

  There was a long silence. "Yeah, I guess it is kind of strange." He sounded a little funny when he said that but I thought it was the strain of the moment.

  "You leaving now?" I said.

  "Few minutes. But it'll take me a while to get there."

  "How come?"

  "Garrett follows me everywhere I go. I guess he thinks I'll lead him to you."

  "That sonofabitch."

  "So I'm going to take the old road, out past the saw mill, and get him good and lost, and then double back up to the line shack."

  "Great."

  "It'll take me a while, though."

  "I know."

  "I love you, Spence."

  He'd never said that to me before; nor had I ever said that to him. Being on the run this way, so scared and confused all the time, had left me vulnerable. Soon as he said that, I had tears in my eyes.

  "I love you, too, Josh."

  "You want to talk to Mom and Dad again?"

  "No, I'm standing in a spot where somebody could see me pretty easily. I'd better hang up."

  "See you soon," he said.

  "Thanks, Josh. Just be careful."

  He laughed but I could tell he was nervous. "I'll even bring you the frozen Snickers I have in the fridge."

  I laughed, too. "Just what I need tonight. Cold food."

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It took him an hour and a half.

  I waited up in a pine tree just behind the line shack. I could see everything in front of me for maybe a quarter mile. If anybody fol
lowed Josh, I'd be able to see them.

  Josh came alone.

  He had a paper bag tucked under his right arm and a huge flashlight waving from his left hand.

  I swung down from the pine, the sweet scent of the juices filling my nostrils.

  He didn't know where I was until he heard me land, and then he turned around as if he was going to jump me.

  "It's me," I said, realizing that he couldn't pick me out in the shadows beneath the tree.

  "Scared the hell out of me."

  "Sorry."

  He came up to me and handed over the paper bag he was carrying. "Goodies," he said.

  Heavier pair of gloves than the ones I was wearing, a couple of roast beef sandwiches, half a box of Oreos and a some dental floss.

  I held up the little white plastic rectangle the floss was packaged in. "Now there's something every wanted fugitive needs—floss."

  I guess I'd expected him to laugh. That's why I was so surprised when he looked hurt.

  "Hey, Josh, I was just kidding."

  "I did the best I could."

  "Hey, listen, I really appreciate it."

  "I just figured that after a day, you might like to floss. I hate it when I have stuff in my teeth."

  "Aw, God," I said, and gave him a manly sock on the arm.

  He was Josh the basketball star, and Josh the lady killer, but he was still, for a least a moment every now and then, Josh my younger brother.

  And it was sweet. Damned sweet.

  "I really appreciate it," I said.

  "Thanks. Mom and Dad didn't want me to bring you anything."

  "Want me to just give up, huh?"

  "Yeah. The man hunt is what scares them. Dad knows some of the men who're in it. They're kind of spooky guys."

  "Yeah, they are."

  "So I'm supposed to convince you to come back."

  "I'd give up in a second if I was sure that Cindy had already talked to the Chief."

  And there it was again.

  The same nervous silence I'd heard when I'd brought up Cindy on the phone.

  "There's something else in the sack," he said.

  "Yeah, it felt a little heavy."

  I opened the sack and stuck my hand way down and wrapped my hand around plastic-covered clothesline rope.

  "That was the best I could do."

  "It's great, Josh. It'll work fine."