Visions of Fear - Foundations of Fear III (1992)
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don’t make sense? God? That’s a laugh.” He swung away.
Two or three great strides and the storm took him.
That was about two o’clock. For four hours I was alone
in the house. Warmth returned, with the bedroom door
closed and fires working hard. I carried the kitchen lamp
into the parlor, and then huddled in the nearly total dark
of the kitchen with my back to the wall, watching all the
windows, the ten gauge near my hand, but I did not
expect a return of the beast, and there was none.
The night grew quieter, perhaps because the house was
so drifted in that snow muted the sounds. I was cut off
from the battle, buried alive.
Harp would get back. The seasons would follow their
natural way, and somehow we would learn what had
happened to Leda. I supposed the beast would have to be
something in the human pattern— mad, deformed, gone
wild, but still human.
After a time I wondered why we had heard no excitement in the stable. I forced myself to take up gun and
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flashlight and go look. I groped through the woodshed,
big with the jumping shadows of Harp’s cordwood, and
into the bam. The cows were peacefully drowsing. In the
center alley I dared to send my weak beam swooping and
glimmering through the ghastly distances of the hayloft.
Quiet, just quiet; natural rustling of mice. Then to the
stable, where Ned whickered and let me rub his brown
cheek, and Jerry rolled a humorous eye. I suppose no
smell had reached them to touch off panic, and perhaps
they had heard the barking often enough so that it no
longer disturbed them. I went back to my post, and the
hours crawled along a ridge between the pits of terror
and exhaustion. Maybe I slept.
No color of sunrise that day, but I felt paleness and
change; even a blizzard will not hide the fact of dayshine
somewhere. I breakfasted on bacon and eggs, fed the
hens, forked down hay, and carried water for the cows
and horses. The one cow in milk, a jumpy Ayrshire,
refused to concede that I meant to be useful. I’d done no
milking since I was a boy, the knack was gone from my
hands, and relief seemed less important to her than
kicking over the pail; she was getting more amusement
than discomfort out of it, so for the moment I let it go. I
made myself busy work shoveling a clear space by the
kitchen door. The wind was down, the snowfall persistent but almost peaceful. I pushed out beyond the house and learned that the stuff was up over my hips.
Out of that, as I turned back, came Harp in his long,
snowshoe stride, and down the road three others. I
recognized Sheriff Robart, overfed but powerful; and Bill
Hastings, wry and ageless, a cousin of Harp’s and one of
his few friends; and last, Curt Davidson, perhaps a
friend to Sheriff Robart but certainly not to Harp.
I’d known Curt as a thickwitted loudmouth when he
was a kid; growing to man’s years hadn’t done much for
him. And when I saw him I thought, irrationally perhaps:
Not good for our side. A kind of absurdity, and yet Harp
and I were joined against the world simply because we
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had experienced together what others were going to call
impossible, were going to interpret in harsh, even damnable ways; and no help for it.
I saw the white thin blur of the sun, the strength of it
growing. Nowhere in all the white expanse had the wind
and the new snow allowed us any mark of the visitation
of the night.
The men reached my cleared space and shook off
snow. I opened the woodshed. Harp gave me one hopeless glance of inquiry and I shook my head.
“Having a little trouble?” That was Robart, taking off
his snowshoes.
Harp ignored him. “I got to look after my chores.”
I told him I’d done it except for that damn cow. “Oh,
Bess, ayah, she’s nervy. I’ll see to her.” He gave me my
snowshoes that he had strapped to his back. “Adelaide,
she wanted to know about your groceries. Said I figured
they was in the ca’.”
“Good as an icebox,” says Robart, real friendly.
Curt had to have his pleasures too. “Ben, you sure you
got hold of old Bess by the right end, where the tits was?”
Curt giggles at his own jokes, so nobody else is obliged
to. Bill Hastings spat in the snow.
“Okay if I go in?” Robart asked. It wasn’t a simple
inquiry: He was present officially and meant to have it
known. Harp looked him up and down.
“Nobody stopping you. Didn’t bring you here to stand
around, I suppose.”
“Harp,” said Robart pleasantly enough, “don’t give
me a hard time. You come tell me certain things has
happened, I got to look into it is all.” But Harp was
already striding down the woodshed to the bam entrance. The others came into the house with me, and I put on water for fresh coffee. “Must be your ca’ down the
rud a piece, Ben? Heard you kind of went into a ditch.
All’s you can see now is a hump in the snow. Deep freeze
might be good for her, likely you’ve tried everything
else.” But I wasn’t feeling comic, and never had been on
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those terms with Robart. I grunted, and his face shed
mirth as one slips off a sweater. “Okay, what’s the score?
Harp’s gone and told me a story I couldn’t feed to the
dogs, so what about it? Where’s Mrs. Ryder?”
Davidson giggled again. It’s a nasty little sound to
come out of all that beef. I don’t think Robart had much
enthusiasm for him either, but it seems he had sworn in
the fellow as a deputy before they set out. “Yes, sir,” said
Curt, “that was really a story, that was.”
“Where’s Mrs. Ryder?”
“Not here,” I told him. “We think she’s dead.”
He glowered, rubbing cold out of his hands. “Seen that
window. Looks like the frame is smashed.”
“Yes, from the outside. When Harp gets back you’d
better look. I closed the door on that room and haven’t
opened it. There’ll be more snow, but you’ll see about
what we saw when we got up there.”
“Let’s look right now,” said Curt.
Bill Hastings said, “Curt, ain’t you a mite busy for a
dep’ty? Mr. Dane said when Harp gets back.” Bill and I
are friends; normally he wouldn’t mister me. I think he
was trying to give me some flavor of authority.
I acknowledged the alliance by asking: “You a deputy
too, Bill?” Giving him an opportunity to spit in the
stove, replace the lid gently, and reply: “Shit no.”
Harp returned and carried the milk pail to the pantry.
Then he was looking us over. “Bill, I got to try the woods
again. You want to come along?”
“ Sure, Harp. I didn’t bring no gun.”
“Take my ten gauge.”
“Curt here’ll go along,” said Robart. “Real good man
on snowshoes. Interested in wild life.”
Harp said, “That’s funny, Robart. I guess that’s the
funniest thing I heard since Cutler’s little girl fell under
the tractor. You joining us too?”
“ Fact is, Harp, I kind of pulled a muscle in my back
coming up here. Not getting no younger neither. I believe
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I’ll just look around here a little. Trust you got no
objection? To me looking around a little?”
“Coffee’s dripped,” I said.
“Thing of it is, if I’d’ve thought you had any objection,
I’d’ve been obliged to get me a warrant.”
“Thanks, Ben.” Harp gulped the coffee scalding.
“Why, if looking around the house is the best you can do,
Sher’f, I got no objection. Ben, I shouldn’t be keeping
you away from your affairs, but would you stay? Kind of
keep him company? Not that I got much in the house,
but still— you know— ”
“I’ll stay.” I wished I could tell him to drop that
manner, it only got him deeper in the mud.
Robart handed Davidson his gun belt and holster.
“Better have it, Curt, so to be in style.”
Harp and Bill were outside getting on their snowshoes;
I half heard some remark of Harp’s about the sheriffs
aching back. They took off. The snow had almost ceased.
They passed out of sight down the slope to the north, and
Curt went plowing after them. Behind me Robart said,
“You’d think Harp believed it himself.”
“That’s how it’s to be? You make us both liars before
you’ve even done any looking?”
“ I got to try to make sense of it is all.” I followed him
up to the bedroom. It was cruelly cold. He touched
Droopy’s stiff corpse with his foot. “Hard to figure a man
killing his own dog.”
“We get nowhere with that kind of idea.”
“Ben, you got to see this thing like it looks to other
people. And keep out of my hair.”
“That’s what scares me, Jack. Something unreasonable did happen, and Harp and I were the only ones to experience it— except Mrs. Ryder.”
“You claim you saw this— animal?”
“ I didn’t say that. I heard her scream. When we got
upstairs this room was the way you see it.” I looked
around, and again couldn’t find that scrap of fur, but I
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spoke of it, and I give Robart credit for searching. He
shook out the bedspread and blankets, examined the
floor and the closet. He studied the window space,
leaned out for a look at the house wall and the shed roof.
His big feet avoided the broken glass, and he squatted for
a long gaze at the pieces of window sash. Then he bore
down on me, all policeman personified, a massive, rather
intelligent, conventionally honest man with no patience
for imagination, no time for any fact not already in the
books. “Piece of fur, huh?” He made it sound as if I’d
described a Jabberwock with eyes of flame. “Okay, we’re
done up here.” He motioned me downstairs— all policemen who’d ever faced a crowd’s dangerous stupidity with their own.
As I retreated I said, “Hope you won’t be too busy to
have a chemist test the blood on that sash.”
“We’ll do that.” He made move-along motions with
his slab hands. “Going to be a pleasure to do that little
thing for you and your friend.”
Then he searched the entire house, shed, bam, and
stable. I had never before watched anyone on police
business; I had to admire his zeal. I got involved in the
farce of holding the flashlight for him while he rooted in
the cellar. In the shed I suggested that if he wanted to
restack twenty-odd cords of wood he’d better wait till
Harp could help him; he wasn’t amused. He wasn’t
happy in the bam loft either. Shifting tons of hay to find
a hypothetical corpse was not a one-man job. I knew he
was capable of returning with a crew and machinery to
do exactly that. And by his lights it was what he ought to
do. Then we were back in the kitchen, Robart giving
himself a manicure with his jackknife, and I down to my
last cigarette, almost the last of my endurance.
Robart was not unsubtle. I answered his questions as
temperately as I could— even, for instance: “Wasn’t you
a mite sweet on Leda yourself?” I didn’t answer any of
them with flat silence; to do that right you need an
accompanying act like spitting in the stove, and I’m not a
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chewer. From the north window he said: “Cornin’ back.
It figures.” They had been out a little over an hour.
Harp stood by the stove with me to warm his hands.
He spoke as if alone with me: “No trail, Ben.” What
followed came in an undertone: “Ben, you told me about
a friend of yours, scientist or something, professor— ”
“Professor Malcolm?” I remembered mentioning him
to Harp a long while before; I was astonished at his
recalling it. Johnny Malcolm is a professor of biology
who has avoided too much specialization. Not a really
close friend. Harp was watching me out of a granite
despair as if he had asked me to appeal to some higher
court. I thought of another acquaintance in Boston, too,
whom I might consult— Dr. Kahn, a psychiatrist who
had once seen my wife, Helen, through a difficult
tim e .. . .
“Harp,” said Robart, “I got to ask you a couple, three
things. I sent word to Dick Hammond to get that
goddamned plow of his into this road as quick as he can.
Believe he’ll try. Whiles we wait on him, we might’s well
talk. You know I don’t like to get tough.”
“Talk away,” said Harp, “only Ben here he’s got to get
home without waiting on no Dick Hammond.”
“That a fact, Ben?”
“Yes. I’ll keep in touch.”
“Do that,” said Robart, dismissing me. As I left he was
beginning a fresh manicure, and Harp waited rigidly for
the ordeal to continue. I felt morbidly that I was abandoning him.
Still—corpus delicti— nothing much more would
happen until Leda Ryder was found. Then if her body
were found dead by violence, with no acceptable evidence of Longtooth’s existence— well, what then?
I don’t think Robart would have let me go if he’d
known my first act would be to call Short’s brother Mike
and ask him to drive me into Lohman, where I could get
a bus for Boston.
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Johnny Malcolm said, “I can see this is distressing you,
and you wouldn’t lie to me. But, Ben, as biology it won’t
do. Ain’t no such animile. You know that.”
He wasn’t being stuffy. We were having dinner at a
quiet restaurant, and I had, of course, enjoyed the roast
duckling too much. Johnny is a rock-ribbed beanpole
who can eat like a walking famine with no regrets.
“Suppose,” I said, “just for argument and bec
ause it’s
not biologically inconceivable, that there’s a basis for the
yeti legend.”
“Not inconceivable. I’ll give you that. So long as any
poorly known comers of the world are left—the Himalayan uplands, jungles, tropic swamps, the tundra—
legends will persist and some of them will have little
gleams of truth. You know what I think about moon
flights and all that?” He smiled; privately I was hearing
Leda scream. “One of our strongest reasons for them,
and for the biggest flights we’ll make if we don’t kill
civilization first, is a hunt for new legends. We’ve used up
our best ones, and that’s dangerous.”
“Why don’t we look at the countries inside us?” But
Johnny wasn’t listening much.
“Men can’t stand it not to have closed doors and a
chance to push at them. Oh, about your yeti— he might
exist. Shaggy anthropoid able to endure severe cold, so
rare and clever the explorers haven’t tripped over him
yet. Wouldn’t have to be a carnivore to have big ugly
canines— look at the baboons. But if he was active in a
Himalayan winter, he’d have to be able to use meat, I
think. Mind you, I don’t believe any of this, but you can
have it as a biological not-impossible. How’d he get to
Maine?”
“Strayed? Tibet— Mongolia— Arctic ice.”
“Maybe.” Johnny had begun to enjoy the hypothesis
as something to play with during dinner. Soon he was
helping along the brute’s passage across the continents,
and having fun till I grumbled something about altema-
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tives, extraterrestrials. He wouldn’t buy that, and got
cross. Still hearing Leda scream, I assured him I wasn’t
watching for little green men.
“ Ben, how much do you know about this— Harp?”
“We grew up along different lines, but he’s a friend.
Dinosaur, if you like, but a friend.”
“Hardshell Maine bachelor picks up dizzy young
wife— ”
“She’s not dizzy. Wasn’t. Sexy, but not dizzy.”
“All right. Bachelor stewing in his own juices for years.
Sure he didn’t get up on that roof himself?”
“Nuts. Unless all my senses were more paralyzed than
I think, there wasn’t time.”
“ Unless they were more paralyzed than you think.”