by John Farris
"But I—I just wondered what happened to her," Marjory said, cringing and sniffling, wiping her nose on the handkerchief of a long-ago preacher. She had tremors again, that abject fear of displeasing Birka, who meant everything to her. So much more than—Marjory felt a slight but definite tightening of the mind, as if every thought, all memories except those Birka wanted her to have, was being wrung out. Which didn't leave many. But not thinking made Marjory less agitated. Content to do whatever Birka wanted. Even to play down here where the air was old and musty and smelling, just a little, of rotten potatoes, the breath of an alcoholic.
Birka was smiling again, thinly; Marjory smiled back and tenderly rubbed her swollen nose. She could see a lot better. The celler room was thick with luna moths, a floating church window that glowed with supernal light. Birka turned away and looked around as if trying to remember just where she was. Alastor lost a toe-hold on the wall he was exploring like a fly on sponge cake and tumbled down, laughing. Birka gave him a no-nonsense hand up and pulled him along with her.
"Now that's enough; we don't have time to play. Hmm. I think this may be it."
One wall of the small cellar of the parsonage was natural rock, loose but not quarried, as if it had been piled up following blasting. Birka picked through the lesser chunks of rocks like a fox picking through chicken bones, putting some back where she'd found them, setting others aside. She had a thoughtful expression, as if she were playing a game involving a code, or distinct strategies. Some of the rocks she lifted and put elsewhere with no show of effort were so large Marjory would have had trouble rolling them across the floor. Marjory watched dumbly by luna-light until Birka had uncovered a slit of passage through which more pastel moths streamed like wine through a bottleneck.
"She can't get by there," Alastor said of Marjory. "She's too fat."
"I'm not fat," Marjory said, wiping her eyes, unable to hide her feelings. "I just have b-big bones."
"We will simply have to try," Birka told them impatiently. "There's no other way for us. And we can't leave Marjory behind. Come over here, Marjory. What do you think?"
Marjory peered into a closetlike aperture, unable to see much for the moths fluttering around. "What's in t-there?"
"Oh, Marjory, we only have to climb down a little way. I'll go first, then you, and Alastor will follow." She touched Marjory's bruised cheek, lightly, but Marjory jerked away as if singed by a torch.
"That is a problem," Birka said. "I'd forgotten how quickly human flesh freezes. Enoch's face . . . well, for every problem there is a solution. The two of you stay here, and no monkeyshines." She directed this admonition to Alastor, who shrugged. Birka went swiftly up the cellar stairs, paused there to listen, then opened the door and disappeared.
Marjory and Alastor looked at each 'other. He stuck his tongue out at her.
"S-same to you, b-brat." Marjory had a headache. It wasn't so bad when Birka was nearby. Now that she wasn't, Marjory experienced such a brainstorm of confusion, so much emotional churning in her breast, that she was dizzy. This odd little boy she had to deal with, mud all over his vividly pale body. Her brain reeling and stuttering, he seemed to be part of that. "Stop," she said crossly, turning away.
"Stop what?"
"You know w-what. What you're doing."
Not doing nothing.
"Yes you are. That." Marjory put a hand to her breast and throat. Panic; the urge to run. She had run once before, and it was coming back to her, but confused, murky as an ominous dream. The girl she'd been with, in the barn. What had happened to her? Marjory wouldn't look at Alastor, but she felt him grinning. A big mind-grin, and she shuddered violently. Little as he was, he'd done something unpleasant, maybe hideous was the word, to that girl, and he wanted to do it to Marjory as well.
You'll get in trouble if you run away again!
Marjory made no reply. She was trying hard to squeeze him out, but his thoughts were oozing everywhere down private pathways of her mind. Colorless, formless, nonsensically childish, yet an occupying force as frightening as a Mongol horde. She hated him, and was powerless. The seductive urge to run, the hopelessness of flight, increased the velocity of her trembling, until she thought she would fly to pieces.
There, there! What's all this?
Birka was back, on the creaky cellar steps, and Marjory turned a woeful tear-streaked face to her.
Birka came toward her, and the storm in Marjory's mind blew itself out, replaced with the tranquility of a twilight summer's pond, only the faint reflection of Alastor remaining on the surface, sulky and watchful.
"This is what you need," Birka said, handing her a pair of long kid-leather gloves. She also had a length of rope with her. Marjory looked with a mild expression of apprehension at the rope, but Birka smiled at her so winningly, with such confident good cheer, that Marjory was able to smile, too. This was going to be fun.
Just slip into the gloves, Marjory, then tie the rope around your waist. We'll be there in no time.
"Where?"
Oh, below. You know about Eden, don't you? Of course you do. Well, that's where we're all going: to Eden. Now isn't that a nice surprise?
33
"Help."
Rita Sue looked up, startled, and the magazine she'd been leafing through disinterestedly, an old copy of Field and Stream with a tattered cover that featured springer spaniels and flocks of pheasant, fell from her lap. She was sitting with her feet under her in a chair cleverly made from deer antlers, and she had nodded off smarting from sunburn and drearily wondering what she was going to do if she was pregnant. Drown herself in the stock pond, more than likely. She'd always been able to control Boyce, only to find out at a really crucial moment that she couldn't control herself. This revelation, that her slender body had its own sense of direction, of destiny, was depressing. Her sister Rosemary had run off at nineteen to get married; Rita Sue now had more insight as to why she'd been so impulsive, but already Rosemary had three kids and was a total wreck. No fair! Even more depressing, now that she'd gone all the way with Boyce, Rita Sue really didn't have all that much interest in him any more. They hadn't spoken ten words to each other in the last couple of hours. What if she had to marry him? But wait a minute, Rosemary had once confided that a woman was aware the very instant she conceived. Rita Sue didn't know any such thing, she was just worried about the possibility, because for now she was stuck here and there wasn't much else to do—
"Help!"
It was that girl, Smidge, the one who'd had a fit and was lying down on a daybed in an office. The blond fuzz on the backs of Rita Sue's reddened forearms prickled. Rita Sue was alone at the front of the one-story log building where they had a small museum and large framed maps of the campsites and hiking trails. Boyce had gone somewhere with a park ranger. Twenty minutes had passed since they'd brought Smidge to the park headquarters building, and an ambulance was supposed to be on the way for her. But nothing was going right tonight.
Now the girl was crying. Rita Sue got up slowly, grimacing, looking at the front door of the building, hoping Boyce would appear. Or anyone else. Rita Sue didn't want to go into the office, answer the frantic plea for help. What could she do? Even before Smidge had fallen in a jerky heap with foam on her lips, Rita Sue had been—well—scared of her. The unkempt hair, the carnal mouth, the slight cruel jut of teeth, the way she stared at Rita Sue—she was just outright trashy, dirty, and suggestive. Rita Sue was properly contemptuous; but at the same time she was weak in the knees, pierced through the heart, a submissive, love-doomed hurt she'd never experienced with Boyce, even when giving in to the urge to screw him until his teeth rattled.
"Oh, help. Help. It's happening. No. I don't want to. Want to. No, no, don't let me die."
Rita Sue trembled. She stared at the office door for a few moments, then walked toward it. Smidge wasn't screaming; her voice was weak. She sounded delirious, out of her head. No threat in her. So fetch her a drink, talk to her a minute or two. Tell her help was coming.
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The office was small, ten feet square. A desk, two metal folding chairs, the shabby daybed with a plaid cover. Smidge rolled carelessly into an olive-drab blanket on top of the daybed, shoeless feet sticking out. Quivering lumpishly, her face to the wall, to the formless humped shadow of herself cast by a gooseneck lamp on the desk.
"Hi—it's me—Rita Sue. C-can I get you anything? Smidge?"
"God. What's happening? Don't don't. Let me die."
Rita Sue couldn't see her face. There was a powerful odor in the room. Putrefaction. It locked Rita Sue's throat, she couldn't breathe or speak.
Smidge sat up suddenly, wildly, casting aside the blanket. When she tried to scream something came out of her mouth that wasn't sound.
Rita Sue backed out of the office as if impelled by the muzzle of a shotgun thrust right between her eyes. She remembered to close the door. As if that would keep it in. She breathed then, more or less clean air acting like rockets to the brain, walked herself to the front door of the building, tripping over a woven hemp rug by the entrance but not falling, went outside, took another big lungful of air, leaned on the railing, looked at the hint of a three-quarter moon in an inky sky, and then, with her head still back and her eyes rolling, began to -howl like a dog beside a newly filled grave.
34
Just when he was about to give up, and submit to the fear grinding against his heart like abrasive stones, Duane thought he heard voices.
He had no idea where he was, or how long he'd been searching for a way out. By flashlight, caverns and passages all begun to look alike after a while. He wasn't wearing a watch. Having so thoroughly lost track of time, he couldn't be sure that he had not doubled back on himself, trekked the same way two or three times. He was cold to the marrow and nearly exhausted. Thinking was difficult; his brain was occupied mostly with childhood memories that had a dreamlike gloss and, frequently, confounding twists and turns of hallucination. Dreaming on his feet, shuffling, climbing laboriously, the gradually weakening beam of the flashlight sliding aimlessly through bowels of rock, glittering in teardrop geode palaces. The voice he heard was feminine but unidentifiable, and in a cramp of fear he imagined that Puff had risen, ghostlike, and was pursuing him. How? He had smashed off her head like an overripe peach. Nothing much left above the collarbones. But probably more than one of these caverns had its ghost; mummies, he knew, were everywhere, and, morbidly, he often watched his feet as he walked. He didn't like the idea of coming across more mummies, but precious light hovered over them, like sun through misty stained glass:
Or a radio.
Could it be? Puffs radio? Still operating and reporting in an obscure language the laments of the chambered dead—or not so dead, as it had turned out. If it was the radio, then his fears were realized, he had not made any progress, and he was so tired, footsore and aching, he didn't think he could go another hundred yards, even on a downward course. On the other hand, the voices might mean cavers, searching for him. Duane's blood raced, his throat swelled. He inhaled shakily and was about to call out, but changed his mind. It wouldn't help just yet, the way sound traveled here and became distorted, blurring like a mirror when you breathe on it.
Better to remain still and listen hard, because the voices, occasional but not growing fainter, might serve as a beacon in this convoluted void. He dared to hope that they might even be coming his way. Faces: light, warmth, food—Duane began to cry, softly, struggling to hold most of it in.
He didn't know how long that went on, pawing his face, gulping, sniveling, his cheeks wet and salty, but he dried up suddenly when he heard a familiar voice, although neither his heart nor his head believed until she spoke a second time.
"Birka, you're going too fast! I need to stop and rest."
Marjory.
But where was she? Sound still had no focus. Duane held his breath, listening, but his heart was going so fast, pounding blood to the temples and his ears, he couldn't hear anything else but his heartbeats. He skidded down from a pedestal of rock where he'd been crouched in the dark, not wanting to wear out the waning flashlight batteries, and thought he saw something: not the tiny intermittent flashes that occurred behind closed lids when he tried to relax his overstressed eyes, but a dawnlike glow in the darkness. He lowered his head for a few moments, looked up again.
"All right, if you're sure it's not much farther," Marjory said reluctantly, as if she were replying to a question Duane hadn't heard. The glow was still there, tinted, and seemed to be in motion, like light on the surface of mildly rippling water. Luna moths, he thought. He didn't know how far away they were. He turned on the flashlight, aimed at his feet, but tried not to look at the beam for more than a second or two at a time. Without his own light he wouldn't be able to follow the slowly drifting moth-cloud. Any kind of fall down here (he reminded himself again), a twisted knee or broken ankle, could be disastrous, even with help nearby.
Maybe he should have yelled to Marjory, told her to wait. She was looking for him, wasn't she? Duane was frantic to catch up. He held his breath and swallowed, staring into black space at a single small pulsating galaxy across a chamber of unimaginable proportions. He was about to call her name, when he heard the unmistakable chatter of alien voices over Puffs radio. The uproar like that at a World Series game when somebody hits a home run. The crowd cheering for a hero, and Duane had the creepy iced-over sensation that the cheers he was listening to were all for Marjory, just as the illuminating moths somewhere overhead were for Marjory too, lighting her way to the chamber filled with lying-in-wait mummies. Pain stitched through Duane's stomach: Who was she with? He didn't want to think about Puff again—crushed, headless Puff. Puff was out of the picture. Don't think about Puff. Just go get Marjory.
It wasn't a bad floor, where he was. Trickles of water everywhere, much of the rock crushable from centuries of softening; no matter how carefully he walked he left footprints. And came eventually to other footprints in the sedimentary bottom of the cave. Someone was wearing narrow shoes. There was a second set of footprints, bare, womanly feet, too small to be Marjory's, tracking with the first set up a slope and into a passage, the entrance of which was beneath a trickly curtain of very cold water. There were a few neon-green moths along the way, perched on outcrops, wings swaying gently in the current of air from the passage. He didn't need them any more. The chattery radio was beacon enough; so were traces of finely spun silk in the air, brushing against his wet face. Mummyweb. Cocoon thread. His blood was thin, sluggish, cold.
Marjory said, in a surprisingly childlike voice, "Is that Páll? He looks funny lying there. Who tied him up like that?"
"Just untie him," a woman said, in an accented voice, and the hairs on Duane's forearms spiked as if he'd stepped suddenly into an electrostatic field. He paused, letting out some light through fingers spread over the lens of his flashlight, seeing in the fragmented yellow glow the passage crooked left and slanting down. He couldn't be more than a hundred feet away from the chamber he'd never wanted to set foot in again.
"Okay," Marjory said, in that same high-pitched, slightly squeaky voice, "but we have to go home after this. I'm tired of playing, Birka. It isn't any fun. It's a dumb game."
"The vine, Marjory. Undo the vine from around his neck."
"But it's on too tight."
"Try again."
"You do it."
"I told you, Marjory; now for the last time: I cannot."
"Why?"
"Those are the rules."
"Who made up the rules?"
"Who indeed?" the woman said, with a faint distressful sound. "Try again, please, darling. Oh, I see. There are two knots. Damn Enoch! Never mind that. Simply give it—a good hard—yank."
Duane walked into the chamber and saw what he thought was Puff, only with her bald head intact, then realized it wasn't, and saw a man bending over one of the silk-wrapped mummies, but realized it wasn't a man: it was Marjory in old-fashioned men's clothing. He blinked his light on both of them and croak
ed, "Marjory. No. Don't. Get away from it."
Just as the bald woman flashed a stormy blue look at him Duane heard a chortling sound that froze him worse than the rage in the woman's face; he looked up and back with the wavering beam of the light and saw Alastor crouched on a side wall of the cave a good ten feet above his head, Alastor's own grinning face hanging upside down. Then Alastor came unstuck from the rock and plummeted straight toward Duane, hands outstretched. On one of his small hands, the little finger missing. In its place, the sharp black thorn he had nearly driven through one of Duane's eyeballs the last time Duane saw him.
As Duane ducked most of Alastor's weight landed on his shoulders and the back of his neck, and they both fell into the midst of the cushiony silk cocoon.
35
The park ranger named Tilghman aimed his flashlight at the back door of the Dante's Mill parsonage, across the street from the churchyard with the white paling fence. He said, "Looks like the padlock and hasp was pried clean off."
Enid said quietly, "Marjory's here. Or she was here."
"Then she had company," Ted remarked, studying the muddy footprints on the steps of the unscreened back porch. "Two of them were barefoot. Those little prints, what do you make of them? Whoever it is can't be more than six years old."
"Well, it's plain they broke in. Might better find out if they done any more damage."
Tilghman opened the door and Enid, behind him, said sharply, "Marjory! It's me! Where are you? Are you all right?"
No answer. Enid looked at Ted, who touched her arm, a stay-put gesture, and said calmly, "Let us have a look around first."
