Savage bride

by Cornell Woolrich; Internet Archive

When she tried to raise them toward her ears, he quickly held them down to keep her from removing the stoppers. He sat with her like that a while, watching her closely. In a little while she had quieted, made no further attempt to free her wrists. He got her to lie down, and when her eyes had dropped closed, in either sleep or resignation, he left her and went outside to the others.

  Chris was sitting there with her hands loosely crossed and resting against the edge of the table, in an attitude of enforced calm. The tautness of the lines of her face, and its whiteness, and an occasional palsied vibration of both her hands at once, as if with the unease of their position, showed how insincere the attitude was.

  Jones joined them without saying anything, and roved restlessly about the room, making a complete circuit of the table two or three times at a slow drifting gait. Each time he came around the side opposite her, her eyes would fasten on him and follow him along the short arc of his passing before her, until the curve had carried him to far offside again. They had a pleading, questioning look in them that he was powerless to answer.

  It kept on and on and on. There had never been a time when it wasn't; he couldn't remember any. There would never be a time when it would no longer be sounding; he couldn't visualize, couldn't conceive of any.

  The girl's head suddenly dropped to the table. Mallory shifted closer and put his hand on her shoulder caressingly.

  "Don't cry, honey. It's nothing, it won't hurt you."

  He coaxed her to stand up. She held her face averted from Jones, as if ashamed now that he had witnessed her momentary capitulation. She held it pressed conceaHngly against her father's encircling arm.

  Jones found a curious thought assailing him. With a glance behind him at the doorway through which he had recently passed, he thought, I wish she'd cry too, like that.

  "I'll take her in," Mallory said to him under his breath. He led Chris over to the door at the other side of the room. "I want you to get some sleep," he said. "I'll sit with you a while until you drop off. You're not such a big girl yet after all. Not too big for that, anyway."

  And then, after the door had already closed behind the two of them, Jones overheard Mallory's answer to some low-voiced plaint she must have made to him. "No, he won't think any the less of you. Don't you fret about that. He knows just how it is. Everybody can't be brave all the time."

  Jones shook his head to himself, alone there in the room, in a sort of pantomimic compunction.

  He was still there when Mallory came out again a good while later. Without a word, as though both were moved by the same common impulse toward uninhibited discussion and review of the matter, the two of them went outside to the veranda together and stood there by the rail.

  A pall of silence hung over the finca, a silence that was only emphasized by that ceaseless throbbing. Even the stars seemed to jar in their fixed places with it.

  "Sounds a little closer, doesn't it?" Mallory suggested.

  Jones timed it with his fingertips against the rail. "Either that or the beat's quickening up. Did you get Chris to go to sleep?"

  "She'll be all right. I told her I'd be right outside."

  Jones kept on drumming in time with it; then saw that he was doing it and desisted abruptly. "Let's try to break it down," he said, turning toward the other man.

  "How d'you mean?"

  "Get at it. Do something with it. Not just stand here drinking it in. Well, either it's something dangerous or it isn't. Now to be something dangerous, actively dangerous, it would have to be something human, wouldn't it? Something caused by a human agency. You've been living around here longer than I have. Just what human agencies are there around here that could be responsible for a far-oflF drumming like that?"

  "There aren't any," Mallory answered flatly.

  "I suppose that should be a consolation, but if anything it makes it worse. It's certainly not supernatural; I can feel it right here in my chest, at every vibration."

  "There are no wild Indians, no nomad Indians, on this side of the mountains. They're all people who've been domesticated for generations back, like the ones who work for me. They're afraid of it themselves. You saw how they all ran off."

  "What about the other side of the mountains?"

  "That's an uninhabited valley."

  "Well, has it been established beyond a shadow of a doubt that it's uninhabited?" Jones persisted. "Has it been investigated, or has it just been written off as uninhabited?"

  "It's sort of taboo land. And after all, investigation is, or has to be, a two-way proposition. To investigate a place, you have to go there and then come back again. I've never known anyone to come back from there and bring a report. So you can say that if any investigation ever was made, it was involuntary, and the findings were never publicized. They died with the investigator."

  "What about the so-called government down here? It's national territory, isn't it?"

  "Sure. But they seem content to carry it on the books as a dead loss, so to speak."

  "What about planes?"

  "It's off the beaten airlanes. All the commercial planes go down the spine of Central America. A few have gone over it, mostly off course, but the mountains keep them at a high altitude, and they've reported nothing to be seen but jungle carpet. If there was anything alive, of course, it wouldn't be visible up at that height, anyway. They've made out a few ruins, but ruins are cheap down here. They're not worth their weight in building material."

  "Where does the ghost stuff come in? You said it was called—"

  "Tierra de los Muertos," Mallory supplied. "The Land of the Dead. Local superstition gave it that name, I suppose. The phantom silhouettes of warriors that they thought they saw outlined against the crest from time to time. What could they be but ghosts? Drumbeats like the ones we're hearing now. Maybe it's just the pounding of some subterranean waterfall, which plays up now and then through some freak of mountain acoustics. Anyway, to them it's the Land of the Dead, and you can't tell 'em different. You're as good as dead if you go in there. The Spaniards made their usual passes at it, and for once drew a complete blank." "How do you mean?"

  Mallory hitched his hip up onto the veranda rail and crossed his arms.

  "There was quite a high degree of civilization in all these parts of the world before the Spaniards got here and cracked down on it. I suppose you know that. It was highly advanced, but it was dark and cruel; Prescott'll tell you all about that.'"

  Jones wasn't sure who Prescott was; some local trader or planter whom he hadn't met yet, he supposed. He didn't interrupt the recital to inquire.

  "Anyway, this valley is one place that held out against them. The lowlands were a pushover, but the mountains made a natural barrier. The branch of the Mayas—I guess they were Mayas—that inhabited it retired into their shell, and that was that. 'Come and get us.' One of the earlier viceroys, as soon as he had things in hand down on the coast, sent an expedition in to clean up on them. Just a little token expedition. You know the kind of odds

  they were used to, from Mexico and Peru. About five hundred to one. They were spoiled. Well, he waited, and he waited, and no word. Finally he sent a second expedition in to find out what had beoome of the first. And he waited, and he waited, and no word from them either."

  "Then I suppose he sent in a third."

  "That would be the perfect punch line. But no, the fact is he didn't. They changed viceroys or something, and the new man was too lazy. Or maybe he couldn't spare the men, or figured this one dinky little valley wasn't worth it. Then about two years afterward, one solitary survivor of the whole two expeditions came staggering out. He was one of the friars who had gone in there with them; they always had them along. He was down to skin and bone, but he made it. His tongue had been torn out, so he couldn't say a word. Well, they handed him a parchment and a quill, to see if he could set down what had happened. He only had strength enough to scrawl a single hne. 'Es una tierra de los muertos.' It is a land of the dead. Before they could get anything more than
that out of him, he'd died. One opinion was that what he'd meant was only that the two expeditions had died to a man, killed oflF by the inhabitants. The other was that there was no one alive in there at all, expedition or inhabitants. This one finally won out. The Church was a deciding factor, and the king in Madrid. Funds for a third expedition would have had to come out of his purse, and since no stories of hidden gold had been featured as a come-on, he wasn't interested. The Church excommunicated the valley, proclaimed it accursed. And that's the story."

  Jones screwed up his face. "Grisly, isn't it?"

  "So," Mallory went on, "if there was anything alive in there then, and if half of what there was was male and the other half female, which is the usual arrangement, then chances are there should be something alive in there today, the laws of nature being what they are. And if there was anything alive in there then, back in the fifteen hundreds, sincfe nothing worth speaking of has gone in since, and absolutely nothing whatever has been known to come out, then whatever there is in there should be a little cell of pure undiluted sixteenth century."

  "A little too fantastic, don't you think?" Jones said.

  "What's fantastic and what isn't?" Mallory challenged him. "Who knows any more? What do we really know about the world today? Less than we did a hundred years ago. Then they could still be sure of their world. Today we can't any more. The plane was fantastic in 1902. But in 1903— The atom bomb was fantastic in 1944. But in 1945—Besides, the diflFerence between an aboriginal Indian tribe of the fifteen hundreds and an aboriginal Indian tribe of today is so small that it doesn't really matter much in the end. It would be hardly noticeable to the naked eye. The earlier ones would kill you a little more quickly, maybe; at sight instead of waiting for provocation. Bangles instead of white cotton pants, feathers instead of straw sombreros, sun worship instead of a one-two whitewash of very diluted Catholicism. It's only relative, after all. Don't confuse it with the difference, for instance, between Tudor England and today's England. That's not the same thing."

  "It's still too fantastic for me, thanks," Jones said, with all the irritability of one who feels he is getting the worst of an argument. "I finished reading Henty and Rider Haggard when I was twelve."

  Mallory held up his finger to indicate the throbbing in the air. "And that is—?"

  "You name it," Jones snarled almost belligerently. "You live around here. I don't."

  "It's getting you, isn't it?" Mallory suggested under-standingly.

  "No, I like it! It's like dentists working on you with a drill on twenty-four-hour shifts. It's like a subway being excavated right between your two legs. It's like a concussion you've got already, being tapped with hammers."

  He bowed his head abruptly, clasped his hands, and pressed them down hard across the back of his neck, as though to relieve the strain.

  "I was at Anzio," he said, "but that wasn't like this. Every bang had a reason behind it. And they didn't come even, on the downbeat, each time. Oh, God,'how I wish I were back in the middle of good old Anzio again! There were other fellows all around me, and I wasn't afraid. You could see the flash that came with every crash."

  Mallory didn't say a word, just sat there watching him closely.

  Jones's head suddenly came up again. "I'm a liar," he blurted out unasked. "There is something to this, and I know there is. What am I bickering with you about it for? What am I denying it for? I saw a smoke sign coming up from the opposite side, the far side, only this morning when I was out riding with my wife. I shut up about it. I didn't want to admit it to anyone else, I guess because I didn't want to admit it to myself first of all. There's already been too much strangeness in my life. I didn't want any more. It keeps piling on, and piling on, until I can't stand it any more! If it's me, if I'm going crazy, if I'm riding for a nervous breakdown, why doesn't it happen and get it over with? What do I have to have this long build-up for, what're they trying to prove to me? I'll take their word for it. Only they should hurry up and finish the job. And if it isn't me, then it might as well be, because what's the good of not being crazy, when your whole little private world around you suddenly is?"

  "It isn't you," Mallory consoled him, with shrewd, sleepily lowered eyelids. "I hear it too, as I sit here, don't forget. And if you've seen strange things, maybe I have too, and maybe I haven't spoken about them either. I haven't seen any smoke signals, maybe, but on many a ride when I was out by myself, I've had the feeling of eyes watching me from over a rock. But when I turned to look, there never were any there. And many a hand I've lost"—he swept his arm out expressively—"who didn't go down that way."

  Yes, but you're still better off than I am, thought Jones bitterly. With you, it's still on the outside of you. Not in your very bed with you, like me.

  They fell silent after that. Presently Jones drifted down the steps and ambled about in front of the house.

  At one point he stopped, with his back toward Mallory, and a flickering orange halo outlined his head for a minute while he lit a cigarette. As it went out there was a slight spat from the ground, somewhere close to him.

  He turned his head and looked intently downward.

  "Did you do that? Was that you?" He thought the other man had spat over the rail, over to one side of him.

  Suddenly he'd taken a quick step over, dropped down on his haunches, and stayed that way, peering close.

  "Come here a minute."

  Mallory was already on his way down the steps to him before the summons was uttered. He crouched down alongside him.

  They could barely see it in the dark. Jones struck another match, and it came into view. It was slender, motionless, just a long line on the ground.

  Mallory said to him in a curiously hushed voice, as though there were danger of their being overheard, "You know what that is, don't you?"

  "Certainly I know what it is. What I'd like to know is-"

  Mallory didn't let him finish. "Put that damn light out." He did it for him with a sharp jet of his own breath, without waiting. "Let's get back under the veranda. The light was what attracted it to you, and we're both right out in the open here."

  Jones plucked at the ground, and they both straightened up, turned, and ducked back under the veranda shed again. "Don't touch the point," Mallory warned. "There may be something on it." He opened the door and motioned him in with a swift punch of his thumb. "Bring it in with you. I want to get a good look at it in the light. I can't out here."

  He closed the door quietly after the two of them. "Keep your voice down. Don't let them hear us."

  Jones was teetering it upright alongside of him, running his thumb and one finger up and down its surface. "Look at that. It's nearly the height of a man's body. Ghosts, eh?" He jutted his chin up at the other man. "That wasn't thrown by any ghost."

  "Maybe not, but—" Mallory took it over and looked at it, lengthwise. The color in his face dropped a little. "It's an archaic weapon."

  "What do you mean by that?"

  "Well, I'm no archaeologist, but look at it for yourself. The head's a piece of whittled-down obsidian. That stuflF hasn't been used in hundreds of years. All weapons were fashioned of it in the days of the Aztecs and Toltecs and Mayas. I've seen some just like it in the museum down at Puerto; that's how I know for sure. And hummingbird feathers dyed scarlet; that was another characteristic of—" "It still could have been thrown by a modem." Jones's voice was a little unsteady.

  "Yes, but there's no reason for any modem to have thrown it—against us or anyone else. There's no race consciousness in this country. The whites and the Indians have been living peacefully side by side since the sixteenth century, and now you can hardly tell which is which any longer."

  "In other words, we've had a spear thrown at us out of the fifteenth or sixteenth century, and it is your idea that the hand that threw it is also out of the fifteenth or sixteenth century?"

  "No," Mallory said stohdly. "Hands that were swinging in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are dead by now. But I'm h
olding a weapon from those days in my hand and we're both listening to that thing throb out there. Now let's hear your idea on it."

  Jones swallowed a couple of times, plumbing for an answer. He couldn't seem to get hold of one.

  Mallory took the spear and stood it up in a comer of the room. Then he shifted a chair out before it so that it couldn't be readily seen.

  Jones was back at the door again. He opened it and stared sullenly out into the boiling darkness. "I'm going out there again and see if I can—"

  "Watch yourself," Mallory said tonelessly. He came over and closed the door against the other's staying hand. "This is no time for hero stuiBF. There's just the two of us here by ourselves now, with two women on our hands."

  Jones turned away reluctantlv, moved back to the table, drummed on it rebelliously. "It's the drums that get vou so itchy," he snarled. Then he suddenly clenched his fist, raised it, and pounded it like a mallet.

  "Want a drink?" Mallory asked with quiet understanding.

  Jones shook his head, already repentant over his own outburst. He ran his hand over his hair a couple of times in a sort of unspoken apologv. "Guess I'll turn in," he muttered lamely. "I may as well listen to that lying down as standing up. It'll never stop." Then he added, "Think it would be a good idea to lock things up?"

  "I don't think it would be a bad idea." Mallory went over to the door and drove home a crude cross latch. "The only trouble is it's like locking up a sieve. These

  wooden wedges are no good. The place is nothing but doors with a roof over them."

  "How about one of us sitting up, then, and keeping watch for a while?"

  "I was thinking of that," Mallory agreed. "I'll do it."

  "What's the matter with me?"

  "The place belongs to me, after all. You go inside and get some sleep. I'll call you in about an hour and you can relieve me, if you want."

  He slung a chair over by the door and settled it just inside it. He opened the door leading to his own and ' Chris's living quarters and stepped quietly inside for a moment. Then he came out backward, with a revolver in his hand, and closed the door again. "May as well bring this out with me," he said. He went over to the chair and took up his position in it, the gun loosely across his knees. "Put out the light before you go in," he said.