Vanishing Act

by Thomas Perry

  Martin had been right. A person couldn’t come four days into the forest without carrying four days’ food, some fresh water, a canoe, and enough clothing to stave off hypothermia; and if she did, she had to carry it all on this portage. Some thug from Chicago would probably be lost by now, and begin to think about himself, not Martin.

  Her footsteps converged with the deer run at four in the afternoon. It was narrow and went through glades and up hills, but it was clear. The hoofprints were usually obscured by the leaves, but the weeds were trampled down, and so it was easy to follow. She stopped now and then to glance at her compass, but it was difficult to tell on the winding trail whether most of the straight stretches tended to the west or the south. Finally, she put the compass into her pocket and trusted the deer. They would know how to get to water.

  She had been on the deer run for a long time when she saw the second track. The deer path went down a little hill and crossed a small muddy patch, where their hoofs sunk two inches into it and a trickle of a stream ran. But among the marks of delicate cloven hoofs was the wide, deep imprint of the ripple-soled boot. He had found the deer run, too. Maybe he had known about it from the time when he was a teenager, and remembered.

  She set down her gear and studied the print. It was difficult to tell how fresh it was because the constant flow of the little rivulet kept the mud damp all the time. She had a small feeling of dread that began to grow. If she followed the trail the rest of the way to the lake, there was a risk of coming on him somewhere ahead. He would have seen the tracks too, and he might even be still-hunting, sitting in the brush with his rifle ready, waiting for the deer to come along this path that they had trampled with long use.

  She dropped a leaf into the little stream and watched it float down to her left. She lifted her canoe and followed it. She kept her steps up along the crest of the hill, where she wouldn’t leave a print in the mud, but kept the trickle in view. The going was harder because the constant supply of water had coaxed the brush to grow into almost impenetrable thickets wherever the ground was flat, but she managed to get around them and find the stream again and again. After a few hundred yards, the stream joined another and grew. It still wasn’t big enough to float her canoe, but it was heading somewhere.

  At last, as she was beginning to lose the sunlight, the stream emerged from the woods where she had hoped it would, where it had to, in the place where streams emptied: the nearest lake. She eased the canoe to the ground, slipped off her pack, and sat staring at the water. Somebody had named it Charley Pond, but there was no telling when or who Charley had been.

  She stayed back in the trees and kept low to take in what she could see of the pond. He had been here. The track proved it. He had led her along a chain of four lakes, and now he might think he had gone far enough. From here on, he could be anywhere.

  She had done all of her tracking with her mind. He had bought a canoe, so he must plan to travel by water. He had hidden the Bronco at the edge of big Tupper Lake, so she had followed. He had chosen a canoe that was light enough to carry, so he must plan to portage to the next chain of lakes. From now on she would not be able to do it by reasoning; she was going to have to rely on her eyes and ears.

  Jane made her camp in a deep thicket a hundred yards back from the lake. She finished just as the sun went down. Without artificial light or even a fire, she had now taken on the rhythm of the forest, and she lay down with the sun.

  This time when she awoke it was late, nearly midnight. She lay still, but slowly touched the smooth stock of her rifle. She used the next two minutes to listen for the sound that had awakened her. There was a wind in the treetops, millions of leaves fluttering softly, but it felt cold. In another minute, she heard the first rain-drops. She had chosen the thicket in the little hollow so she couldn’t be seen, but it was a terrible place to be in a downpour. In the darkness she quickly hauled her gear up the slope to a spot under some tall trees, overturned the canoe, put the pack and rifle under it, stretched the nylon tarp from the canoe’s gunwale to the lowest branch of the closest tree, and used the sling from the rifle to lash it there.

  She curled up with the canoe over her like a shell as far from the open side as she could go. The rain came harder now, pelting down steadily. In the distance she heard the rumble of thunder. She lay there for a long time, not exactly comfortable, but not wet, and then she fell asleep.

  Sometime in the night she woke up to loud thunder-claps and then she could see the next flash, lighting up the forest around her for a second, and then the crash came, shaking the earth. The storm kept on until three in the morning, until the rain slowed and then stopped. She rolled out from under her canoe, crawled out of the lean-to, and stood up. She had not caught much of the rain, but the moisture had leached up from the ground into her clothes and she was wet and cold.

  When she saw the moon, she knew it was time to move. It took her only a few minutes to stow her gear, and then she lifted the canoe once again. She slipped and slid as she carried it down the slope, but then she reached the water. Once she was launched and paddling on the dark pond, she felt strong again.

  27

  Jane had paddled across Charley Pond and Lake Lila by five in the morning, and she was still paddling. Her clothes had dried and the old feeling of competence had returned. She began to look for a place to head in as soon as she entered Lake Nehasane. It was still dark, the lake overshadowed by thick forests that ran up a mountainside to the east, and the sky clouded over.

  She began to search in earnest after a couple of hundred feet. While she looked for shelter, she didn’t stop watching for the enemy. The rain had been hard enough to wash away any marks he had made in the woods, but it had also been hard enough to make him take some measures that he wouldn’t have taken in clear weather. He might hang clothes or a bedroll out to dry, and it was cold enough now to make anyone want to build a fire.

  She kept her rifle propped on the seat beside her, muzzle upward. The big hunting knife with the hollow handle was in her belt. Before long, she saw the place to pull the canoe out of the water. It was a low bank with big rocks on both sides. She was almost certain that Lake Nehasane was where he would be. It was a big oval with lots of depths and a complicated shoreline, and it was fed on the upper end by the outlet of Lake Lila and emptied on the other into the Stillwater Reservoir. It was big enough to have plenty of fish. The lures he had bought were for lake fishing—flatfish and poppers for bass and northern pike and sinkers for bait-casting in deep water.

  She would go ashore and hide her gear in thick cover and wait. Sooner or later he would be visible somewhere along the shore or on the lake. After a few more minutes, she realized that she had misjudged the time a little. She could see that dawn was coming, so she paddled harder. She took a shortcut across open water and began to paddle with determination. As she reached and held her top speed, the silence exploded in her ears. The bullet hit the canoe with such velocity that she felt it swat the craft a few degrees to the side.

  Jane ducked low, and the next shot gave a whip-crack sound before she heard the deep, echoing report of the rifle. As she reached out with her paddle to pull the canoe along, she looked down and saw the entry and exit holes of the first bullet, just below the waterline. The canoe was filling up,

  The next shot shattered the left strut beside her leg. The canoe seemed to buckle and founder, and then she was sideways and going down. The canoe just listed to the side and scooped itself under. In an instant she was in water so cold it seemed to clap the breath out of her lungs. She gasped, and her legs kicked in a reflex to try to lift her body out of the water. The fourth shot hit ahead of her, smacked into the water and threw up a splash so close she could feel droplets on her face.

  She ducked again, putting her head under, and saw the canoe sinking far down below, looking yellowish, then green, then brown as it slowly drifted into black depths. She held her breath and swam under the surface, her hands scooping the water and her legs pulling he
r wet boots in a clumsy frog kick.

  She saw the next bullet from under the water. It shattered the mirror surface ahead of her, not there at all one second, and then a bright silver streak made of bubbles and speed, and then lost. She came up and broke into a freestyle, swimming as hard as she could, and then her hand hit rock. She hoisted herself out, and when her feet touched, she was running. The trees started six feet back from the rocks, and then she was among them, sprinting into the woods.

  She ran hard, through brambles and thickets and across glades blanketed with ankle-high plants that could have been poison sumac or ivy, scrambling higher up the side of the hill. After a time she found herself far above the lake. She lay face-down on a big rock and looked back down the way she had come, but she could see no movement in the forest below her. Then she saw the canoe.

  He must have been shooting from across the lake. He had gotten into his canoe and paddled to the place where she had run into the woods. He was drifting offshore, scanning the woods and hills. Then she heard his voice. It made something in her reverberate. It was the voice she had listened to at Grand River and tried to make herself remember afterward, but now the familiarity of it made her feel sick.

  "Jane!" he called. "It’s me!"

  She pressed her face against the rock, trying to disappear into it.

  "I found your pack in the water. I didn’t know it was you. Don’t be afraid!"

  She pushed herself backward on her belly and down behind some stunted pine trees, then looked down cautiously. His head was turned up toward the woods around the lake, looking for movement or color. She couldn’t see her pack in his canoe, and she couldn’t imagine how it could have floated back up, but she did see the binoculars. He lifted them off the floor of the canoe and began to search the hillside. She dropped to her belly again and slithered away from the rocks into the trees.

  In a moment he would land and come for her on foot. She stood and ran again. The ground was slippery from the rain and every step was uphill. There was no doubt that he would follow, and she knew she was leaving tracks. She had to go for distance now, just paces that she could put between them. The trees and brush seemed to grab at her and hold her back, and at every clear space she could almost feel the crosshairs settling between her shoulder blades.

  It must have been an hour later when she stopped to catch her breath. She lay down with a stitch in her side and limbs that felt like stone. She was too tired to think, but she listened and stared into the woods she had come from, trying to gasp for air without making noise.

  Then the voice reached out to her again. "Jane!" he called. "You’re making a mistake!"

  She held her breath and then realized that she had to go on, and she needed to keep breathing hard to do it. Hiding would just give him time to catch her. "You’re alone, with no food or water!"

  She sprang to her feet and ran on, higher into the woods. At noon she was at the peak of the mountain. It was bare rock, nearly at the tree line, with only scraggly pines to hide her. She moved along the ridge, trying to see him coming. If only she could find a hiding place, a cave or something. But there was nothing up here that would hide a rabbit. She started down the far slope, then rested again when she reached the heavy growth of leafy trees below.

  Then she saw him. He was up on the summit exactly where she had stood, and he was combing the valley below with the binoculars. Above his shoulder she could see the barrel of the rifle and the sling across his chest.

  She moved down lower on the mountainside. For once, he wasn’t lying. She had already pushed herself to exhaustion, and she hadn’t eaten or had water since midnight. In about four or five hours the mountain air would turn cold, and she was dressed in wet clothes. Even if he didn’t find her, she was going to be in trouble.

  But he was carrying a pack and rifle and ammo and binoculars. All she had left to weigh her down was the knife in her belt. She could take advantage of her loss and try to outrun him. They had both been moving fast through the woods for hours now, up a fair-size mountain. If she was this tired, he must at least be feeling the strain.

  Jane slipped deeper down into the forest, controlling her breathing now, stretching her legs, and shaking her arms to loosen the tightness in her back and chest as she broke into a trot. The going was easier now, all downhill, so she ran harder, trying to keep her momentum from building out of control and making her turn an ankle. She took no care to hide or stay quiet, only to build up her speed. She ran for fifteen minutes and then came to a rocky, clear streambed. She could tell it had filled up in the rain the night before because the banks were muddy, but now it was shallow again. She sloshed into it, and then realized it could help her. She rushed upstream thirty feet and took a dive up the bank to the right, a belly flop into the mud. Then she pulled her knees in and got to her feet and walked down backward into the streambed.

  She looked at her work. It wasn’t bad. It looked as though she had gone up the bank, slipped, and gone on to the east. She cupped her hands and drank deeply from the stream, then hurried on downstream a hundred feet before she found a place where there were three stones she could use as steps, back up into the woods to the west.

  She concentrated on picking up the pace again, her eyes always searching the forest ahead for the next twenty yards that would afford a foothold and her legs lengthening her strides to take them as quickly as possible.

  She ran on for two hours before she found a rocky outcropping, like a shelf near the top of the next mountain. She gained it, chose north, and picked up her speed again. This was the place to lose him, while darkness was coming and there was nothing to retain her tracks. After half a mile, the rock and the sunlight both ran out. She kept going into the dusk until she found a huge thicket of thorny bushes in a hollow.

  As night fell, she went down on her belly and crawled into the thicket below the level of the thorns and foliage. When she was fifteen feet into the middle of it, the bushes were taller and older, the spaces between them wider, and she could make better progress. She crawled another thirty feet before she found a patch of weeds. She rolled over and over on them until they were flat, then curled up, consciously relaxed each aching, strained muscle, and lay there for a moment with her eyes open. It made her feel dizzy and light to lie there staring into the darkness, as though she were floating.

  The dream started as soon as she closed her eyes. She still couldn’t see anything, but she could feel that she was being held. She was in her mother’s lap, lying against her breast, her face on the soft silk, where she could smell the perfume. She could feel the smooth, strong hands gently stroking her back. "Mama?" she said.

  "Shush," came the whisper. "Go to sleep, Janie. You need your rest." Her mother’s voice began to hum to her softly, tunelessly.

  Jane whispered, "How did you come?"

  "I’m not out there anymore, Jane. I’m inside you now, and my mother is inside me, and her mother is inside her, all the way back. We’re all here, just like those Russian dolls, one inside the other."

  "What am I going to do, Mama?" Jane could hear her own voice, and it was the voice of a child.

  Her mother treated it like the question of a child. She held her, rocked her, and said distantly, "Whatever you can, dear." Then the voice came from farther away, as though her mother were holding her out to look at her. "Are you hungry?"

  "Yes," said Jane.

  "You should eat," said her mother. "In the morning. But now you need to sleep."

  "He’s coming for me."

  "Yes, he is," her mother said. "That’s why you have to lie still now."

  Her mother’s arms held her and rocked her back and forth, back and forth. "You’ll always be my baby girl." She began to hum again, the low, breathy sound that had always put Jane to sleep.

  28

  It was after midnight when she heard him on the rock shelf above her. He walked without trying to muffle his footsteps, and then he stopped and shouted, "Jane! I know you can hear me!"

&nbs
p; She sat up, her heart pounding. She had forgotten where she was and a thorn jabbed into her back. She winced and slowly bent down again. She could feel the thorn slipping out, and then her shirt was wet in the back.

  "Jane!" he called from up the mountainside. "You’re not going to lose me. I was born up here. I can track you longer than you can run." He waited, probably listening to hear her breaking from a hiding place and running, then called, "I don’t want to hurt you." There was another pause, and now he said, "You’ve got to understand. I can’t let somebody who hates me run around loose in the woods where I can’t see her." She could hear him walking along the ledge now. Whether he was just shouting into the woods and was trying to send his voice in every direction or had seen her and was trying to get a better angle for a shot, she had no way to tell. "All you have to do is come in, and you can have food, water, everything. I’ll only tie your hands when I’m asleep."

  Jane felt the heat well up from her belly and move up her spine to her throat. She wanted to scream out at him, but that was what he wanted, too. She clenched her teeth and stayed still. It was like a hot iron pressed against her skin. She had taken him into hiding out of pity. He had used her, and done so with a cold, efficient detachment because he could—because she had let him. Now he didn’t even have to make up a nice lie anymore.

  She was cold, wet, dirty, and hungry in a place where those conditions weren’t just discomforts but could kill her. He offered what?—to make her his slave in exchange for scraps of food and a chance to lie by the fire? It occurred to her he might not even be lying. It might appeal to him to keep her alive for a time, maybe for the whole summer, while he waited.

  Then, some evening in September the sky would turn iron-gray and there would be frost on the ground in the morning. It might be a quick bullet in the head while she was still sleeping—tied up to sleep, he had said. More likely it would be a knife across her throat, the way he had done Harry. Winter would be coming and he would have to leave the mountains. Maybe he would explain it to her first: You have to understand. I don’t want to do this, but I can’t set a woman who hates me loose in the world.