Shackles

by Bill Pronzini

  The First Day

  * * *

  It came off with almost no effort. All the long days of waiting, all the struggle and frustration of trying to work it free, and on this last day, this first day, it came off with the same ridiculous ease as removing a shoe.

  I dragged the chain into the bathroom, I sat on the floor and took off my left shoe and sock, I greased my ankle with a mixture of soap and a little fat from the last can of Spam, I eased the leg iron over the heel and pushed it down the instep. And there was a moment of binding and resistance, just a moment, and then it slid right off, all the way off, and I was sitting there looking at it—an empty pair of locked iron jaws held in both my hands, shining a little from the grease, like a skinny obscene gray doughnut with a huge hole in the middle. I must have stared at it stupidly for a few seconds before I reacted. Then I yelled out loud and hurled the thing away from me, couldn’t bear to be touching it any longer, and half-crawled, half-stumbled out of the bathroom.

  The next several minutes were an emotional blur. I laughed a little, cried a little, grabbed up a pen and wrote the word FREE! in big block letters on the journal pad. Found myself at the cabin’s front entrance, pawing at the door knob, and it was unlocked and I threw the door open and lurched outside and stood there in a patch of old snow with my face upturned, dragging in the cold mountain air, free air. The wind, chill and blustery out of a dirty gray sky, and the snow cold-burning my bare foot, eventually started me shivering and drove me back inside. And when I shut the door and leaned against it I was all right again, back in control again.

  My naked foot was numb in places, tingling in others; I returned to the bathroom, sat on the floor to pull on my sock and shoe. There was a shrieking urge in me, then, to gather up some things and get out of here for good. I refused to give in to it; summoned logic to keep it at bay. Things to do first, several things. And it was already past noon. I’d be a fool to leave now, with only a few hours of daylight left and snowdrifts on the ground and no clear idea of where I was or how far I would have to walk. I could stand the rest of today and one more night in this place, now that I was free of the chain and the leg iron. Couldn’t I? Not much choice in the matter: I had to, so I would.

  I took a couple of breaths and made myself walk slowly across the room. I was conscious now of my unshackled leg and it felt odd to be walking normally, without the restricting weight of the chain. When I got to the chair he’d hauled out and sat in on his night prowl I had another impulse, gave in to this one, and kicked at the chair, sent it clattering against the front wall. One of its legs broke; I laughed when I saw that. It felt good to laugh again. It had been so long that the sound came out cracked and rusty.

  I stopped in front of the door that was standing ajar, pushed it wide open with the tips of my fingers. Bedroom, empty except for a roll-away bed topped with a pillow and two blankets and a comforter—the bed he must have slept in the night he brought me here. I went in, opened a closet door, found the interior empty except for an accumulation of dust: Nobody had lived here in a long time, possibly as long as a year or eighteen months. I left that room, went through the second door in the same wall. Another bedroom, this one without furniture of any kind and an equally barren and dusty closet.

  The door in the inner wall next to the fireplace led into a smallish kitchen. Gas stove, unplugged refrigerator, corner table with two chairs, nothing much else. I opened the cupboards, drawers, the storage area under the sink. All empty. A screen door gave on a rear porch; I moved out there. Clutter of discarded things in one corner—a ginger jar lamp with a water-stained shade, some folding chairs, an old mattress, bundles of old magazines, an easy chair with its backrest bleeding white stuffing. Grouped in another corner, a narrow stall shower and a laundry sink and a twenty-gallon water heater. And against the inside wall, a small stack of cordwood and kindling festooned with spiderwebs.

  Another cupboard hung crookedly above the laundry sink; I opened that and found more emptiness. There didn’t seem to be anything in the cabin to tell me who owned it, where I might find him—at least not on this first look-through. Later I’d go through it again, much more carefully. I had plenty of time. Time had almost run out on me but now I had a fresh supply: Freedom buys time, freedom equals time, freedom is time.

  I gathered an armload of wood and kindling, took it back into the main room, and laid it out in the fireplace. No matches on the premises but that wasn’t a problem. I tore up some of the magazines the whisperer had provided, stuffed them under the logs with the kindling, then switched on the hot plate and twisted pages from another magazine together to form a paper torch and lit that off the burner. In minutes I had a fine hot blaze going. I sat on the floor in front of it, close, letting the heat radiate over me and penetrate deep, bone-deep, to melt away three months of chill.

  The flames had a hypnotic effect; the more I stared into them, the more everything around me seemed to recede, to take on the quality of images in smoke or thick mist. I saw Kerry’s face in the flames, and the hurt started again, but it was tempered now by a thin yearning, an even thinner joy. I tried to hang on to the yearning and the joy, to make them grow into something strong and sustaining, but they were caught under a layer of hate like a fibrous membrane you could see through but couldn’t tear loose. And pretty soon it wasn’t her face I was seeing, it was his masked one. I imagined him cooking there in the fire, screaming while his skin blistered and crackled and burned away from his skull, and for a time the illusion gave me much more pleasure than the prospect of seeing Kerry again.

  Somewhere inside me, a small voice seemed to be murmuring, “You’re not all right, you’re a long way from being all right.” I heard it, but I paid no attention to it. It was just a voice in a crowded place.

  The heat itself broke the spell, became so intense that it forced me back away from the flames. I got up—and found myself staring at the corner that had been my home for the past three months. It seemed strange from this aspect, unreal, unfamiliar, as if it were part of a hallucination or delusion under which I had been laboring for a long time. I put my back to it, walked into the first bedroom and rolled the bed with its pile of bedding out in front of the fireplace. That was where I would sleep tonight. For one thing, it didn’t stink of my own sweat. For another, it would be softer, warmer than the cot.

  Something drew me to the side window—the shed, I realized after a few moments. Was there anything in it I could use? I was warm enough now in my clothing and the blanket I had tied around my body under the overcoat; I went outside, slogged through snowdrifts and the icy wind, and managed to dislodge the seal of frozen snow on the lower third of the shed door, then to drag the door open. All that the shed contained were some rusty tools and a crippled wheelbarrow and a pair of old snowshoes hanging on one wall.

  I started back out, stopped, and went ahead to the showshoes. One of them had a cracked frame, and some of the gut stringing on the second was frayed and loose, but they both looked serviceable enough. There might be deep drifts somewhere along the road or roads I would have to follow tomorrow, if I could even make out where the roads were: There had been a steady and sometimes heavy snowfall over the past few days. The road that led up here was invisible as far as I could see downslope to misty stands of spruce and a hillock even higher than the one on which the cabin had been built. At least, I judged that that was where the road must be; there were trees everywhere else.

  So I might need showshoes at some point. I had never been on a pair in my life, but how difficult could it be to learn to walk on them? Nothing seemed very difficult anymore, after what I had been through.

  Back in the cabin, I propped the snowshoes against the wall inside the door. The fire was still burning hot and the room had warmed considerably. Mountain cabin on a winter afternoon: very cozy, very rustic. I laughed again and went out to the rear porch for more wood. I made four trips and built a stack of logs alongside the hearth, where they would be within easy reach whenever
the fire began to die down. I wanted it warm in here tonight, all night. That would make it a little easier to face the cold tomorrow morning.

  Now I was ready for another search of the place, a slow and methodical one this time. I started with the first bedroom, as I had before, looking for something, anything, that would give me a lead to the identity and whereabouts of the whisperer. And I found something, out on the rear porch—the last area I searched. It wasn’t anything definite, but it was more than I had expected to find. And I had started past investigations with much less.

  Studded on the front of the water heater, just above the control panel, was a little metal plate with words stamped into it: RITE-WAY PLUMBING AND HEATING, 187 SLUICEBOX LANE, SONORA, CA. The heater didn’t look to be more than seven or eight years old; plumbing contractors usually keep records dating back that far. If Rite-Way Plumbing and Heating was still in business—big if, these days—the people there could probably tell me who owned the cabin, or at least who had owned it when the water heater was installed.

  The plate gave me something else, too: confirmation of my guess about the general location of this place. Sonora was a town in the central Mother Lode, east of Stockton. Too low in the Sierra foothills to be getting this much snow, which meant that the cabin was situated at a higher elevation; but it still had to be close enough to Sonora to warrant a contractor from there being called in to do its plumbing. Somewhere off Highway 108, maybe … no, too populated up that way, too many ski resorts, until you got up as far as Pinecrest. There was another state road, I couldn’t remember the number, to the north of Sonora, out of Angels Camp; its upper reaches were closed in the winter, but the lower sections around Murphys and Arnold ought to be passable except when the snowfall was unusually heavy. And that area was sparsely populated at this time of year.

  It was near dusk by this time and I realized I was hungry. An hour ago, the thought of food would have made me gag; now I craved something to eat. I made myself go back into the cell, open cans, put water on to heat, mix the last of the Spam with a can of spaghetti and put that on to heat. When the food was ready I took it and a cup of tea over to the bed, put another log on the fire, and sat in the heat to sip and chew and swallow. Before I was finished, darkness closed around the cabin, blackout-thick. The fireglow created weird, restive shadows in the room that made me think of demons and hungry things creeping, made me edgy enough to get up and turn on the lamp. Afraid of the dark, afraid of firelight. Just two of the things he’d done to me … two of the more minor things.

  After a while I took off coat, blanket, filthy sport jacket, and cardboard insulation, and lay down on the bed with the comforter over me. I wasn’t sleepy; the edginess was still inside me. I lay watching the fire, with thoughts running around and around in my head, running into each other and caroming off until a pressure built up and started a pounding in my temples. I got up and paced for a while. Remembered I hadn’t done my nightly exercises—no sense abandoning the program now—and went through an hour’s worth of calisthenics, working up a good sweat in the heat from the fire. I felt better then, calmer, calm enough to turn off the lamp before I got back into the bed.

  My thoughts were sharper now, less chaotic. Some of them: What if he decides to come back again tonight? Not much chance of it, with the weather being what it is and all the snow on the ground … but suppose he managed it? He’d see the fireglow, he’d know I was free—would he come in after me or would he run? And if he ran, suppose it was far enough so that I might never find him? No, he couldn’t run that far. I’ll find him no matter where he is, where he goes. Let him come tonight. Let him come tomorrow night or any other night between now and the day I find him, let him discover I’ve escaped. Better that way, much better. Let him know I’m free, let him know I’m after him, let him live with fear for a while …

  Eventually I tried to direct my mind away from him, to focus on Kerry and Eberhardt and going home again, but he kept getting in the way. He was like a parasite growing inside me, some kind of poisonous fungus that had to be destroyed before I could even begin to think about resuming my old way of life.

  First things first. Tomorrow first, escape first. I wasn’t out of the woods yet … ha! I wasn’t, for a fact. It was probably better than a mile to the nearest neighbor, more miles to the nearest town, and at that I couldn’t just walk up to somebody’s door, looking and smelling as I did. I’d be turned away, or somebody would insist on calling a doctor or the authorities. Contact with a law-enforcement agency was the last thing I wanted right now—word to get out that I was alive and of my ordeal. Avoid people, except in case of an emergency, until I got myself cleaned up and presentable again—that was a priority item. There would be a way to manage it. There are ways to do just about anything if you’re determined enough.

  And after the outside of me was spruced up so that I didn’t frighten women and little children? Visit the neighbors then, find out if any of them knew anything? No. It would take too much time, and chances were it wouldn’t get me anywhere. Most mountain cabins are deserted in winter; and people who do choose to live in one year-round like their privacy and aren’t always acquainted with their neighbors, especially if the neighbors are summer residents and haven’t occupied a place in more than a year. Even if somebody could supply a name it was doubtful he’d have a current address to go with it, or any idea of where the owner could be found.

  Rite-Way Plumbing and Heating was my best bet, at least for starters. If it turned out to be a dead end, then I could come back up here, wherever here actually was, and begin canvassing other homes in the area.

  One way or another, I would find out who the whisperer was and then I would find him.

  And then I would kill him.

  Bad night.

  Dreams, ugly and distorted and mercifully unclear. I woke up once sweating and believing I was still shackled to the wall, and something like a wail came out of me before I groped at my left ankle, felt nothing there, separated illusion from reality. Another time I came awake thinking I had heard something, thinking he’d come back, he was there in the cabin with me. I jumped out of bed and caught up a piece of cordwood and prowled the rooms for ten minutes, listening to night sounds and the cry of the wind. Nobody here but me. I ached when I finally accepted that: I couldn’t put an end to it here and now, in the very same execution chamber he had built for me.

  Bad night, yes, but I had had so many bad nights. And it didn’t really matter anyway.

  All that mattered was that I was free.

  * * *

  The Second Day

  * * *

  Eight-thirty A.M.

  Cold and gray again today. More snow had fallen during the night—there was a layer of fresh, ice-filmed powder over everything—and there would probably be more flurries before the day was finished. Dry out there now, though, and not much wind.

  I turned away from the window, restless and impatient to be on my way, to put distance between myself and this place. But there were preparations to be made first. And I wanted the temperature to rise a little higher, to take the knife edge off the chill of night and early morning.

  I put water on to boil for tea, opened the last two cans of chili and emptied them into the saucepan, and set that on the other burner to heat. I had no appetite but it would be foolish to go out into that snowy wilderness without fueling up beforehand.

  The snowshoes caught my eye. I went and got them, sat on the bed to see how they fitted on my feet—something I should have done yesterday. The foot straps on both were all right, but on one the things that evidently fastened around the ankles were badly frayed; one good tug and they would break. Was there something among the clutter on the rear porch that I could use to replace or reinforce them?

  Yes: some twine that had been used to tie up a bundle of old issues of Life and Look. It was thin twine but when I worked it off the magazines and tested it, it seemed sturdy enough. I carried it back in, broke it into smaller pieces, doubled th
e pieces and tied knots in them at intervals to strengthen them even more, then tied each together with a thong to bridge the frayed spots.

  The chili and the water were boiling by then. I made a cup of strong tea, gagged it down with the food. The need to get out of there was urgent in me now, almost a physical hurt. I held it down by force of will. If I left without taking precautions I might well regret it later.

  One corner of the pillow casing had a tear in it, revealing the foam-rubber entrails. I widened the tear, ripped the casing in half and then into strips; took off my shoes, tore up some pieces of cardboard, and bound those around my socks with the strips for added protection against the cold. Then I wrapped both blankets around my body, over my regular clothing, and buttoned and tightly belted my overcoat to hold them in place. I had lost so much weight that even with the two blankets I did not quite fill out the coat. In the bathroom I tied the larger of the hand towels over my head and under my chin, like a babushka. Not much protection against wind and snow, but I had no other kind of headgear and I needed to wear something.

  Almost ready.

  There was a package of Fig Newtons left, the only remaining item of food that wasn’t canned; I stuffed it into one overcoat pocket. Into the other one I put the journal pages, all of them, torn off their cardboard backings and folded in half. I didn’t want the whisperer to find them if he came prowling before I caught up with him. They were for my eyes only. No one, I had decided, would ever read them except me.

  That was the last thing; now I was ready. I caught up the snowshoes, went to the door, and walked out into the chill morning.

  Whiteness carpeted everything within range of my vision. Downhill to my left, an avenuelike break in the spruce forest marked the probable course of the access road. After I had gone forty yards or so I stopped and turned to look back at the cabin, to fix in my memory its exterior design and its exact location. I hoped to Christ I would never have to come back here; but if I did I wanted to be able to recognize it easily from a distance.