Savage bride

by Cornell Woolrich; Internet Archive

  She'd said she'd be here when the moon came up. The moon had already been up for ten minutes now, for fifteen, for who knew how long? Every added minute was a minute taken off their chances. A remark she had made one of the other times came back to him now in agonized foreboding: "If I stay too long, then I may never come again." They might have— They wouldn't, would they? Of course they would, why wouldn't they? If they had torn the living heart out of an elderly man, and he had seen them do that with his own eyes, why would they spare her? The distinction between the sexes, the sparing of women, that was something that had only come into being with feudal Europe, with knighthood. That wasn't known among primitives. And she, the other one— He'd

  heard somewhere that women could be far crueler toward other women than toward any man. Maybe it was true and maybe it was not; he only knew she wasn't here, and the moon was high, and something must have happened to her.

  He'd have to go look for her, then, and try to find her, and try to save her. If it wasn't too late. And then the thought occurred. But if I leave here, if I start out, she may come by another way, and I may lose her altogether. We may never find each other at all that way.

  Three times he started out from the shelter of the inked-in doorway, and three times he lost his courage, his feet faltered to a stop within a few paces, and he slunk back again to wait some more.

  The moon was far above the rim of the world now, and condensed to about the size of a tennis ball. The moon of the Mayas, haunted, lonely, come back to look for its own. A moon of the fifteenth century.

  He did things that a year ago he wouldn't have done. But then a year ago he wasn't as he was now. The long solitude, the confinement, the impoverished diet had unmanned him. He breathed her name in desperation toward shadows that fooled him into thinking they were she. "Chris! Chris! Hurry, Chris!" But the shadows stayed where they were and didn't come on any closer after all. He turned and buried his face within his squared arms against the side wall of the passage, and his face writhed, and his body shook, but without tears. He pounded desolately against the wall with his palm, then stopped, for that made a sound that might attract attention.

  Suddenly he left his place of concealment, and this time, he knew, there was no turning back. Either he'd die with her, or they'd find each other and escape together. Even freedom wasn't worth the price that he'd been paying the last few minutes.

  The moon of the Mayas seemed to swell and gloat as he came out within its ken. Hungry for death, never tired of looking down on death, not even after five hundred years.

  He tried to orient himself as best he could, after just one look at the scene many months ago and with his eyes glazed by exhaustion after the long travail through the mountain. And to make it harder, the whole world was piebald now, patches of black, patches of white, with no in-between gradations.

  But he remembered the direction from which they'd been brought toward the temple, into which Mitty had gone, and Chris with her. He could remember the shape of its doorway, broader at the bottom than at the top, like that of an ancient Egyptian temple. And peering ahead, he could see something like that right now, milk-white in the moonlight, jet-black in its recesses. Its upper tiers made shadowy cubes against the spangled sky.

  He crept along, hugging the walls closely, staying deep within their shadows whenever he could, in case unseen eyes were awake in the night around him. Where there were gaps between the structures, he leaped quickly across the canals of white that these formed, into the sheltering dark again, like an animated chessman hopping from black square to black square, to keep from being checkmated in a game in which death was the opposing player.

  He reached the pylon-shaped opening at last and stopped cautiously before it. Moonlight showed on the inside as well as tlie out. There must be a court open to the sky in there, with the lintel forming just a squared-off black bridge between.

  This was it. He'd seen her go in here that first day.

  He passed under the massive stone lintel. It threw a brief bar of black across him, no more, then he emerged into full moonlight again. Beyond there was a peripheral courtyard or compound, a sort of dry moat, separating the temple proper from the outer wall that ringed it.

  A second, inner entrance faced him, smaller than the first, and black, black as doom, black as perdition. It was set higher from the ground then the first, steps going up to it. And at the foot of these, one on each side, were two things that made him quail for different reasons.

  On the one side was a warrior sentry, sleeping huddled. Not across the steps, it is true, as his own guard had been back there, but at their side. And on the other side, discarded, lay an empty earthen jug, such as was used for carrying water. But it was not upright; it lay on its side, as though it had rolled over several times. As though the bearer, seeking to slip out with it, as a subterfuge for fetching water had been discovered and stopped and forcibly dragged back inside again.

  He crept over toward the steps. For a moment he was going to kill the guard, as he had the other. But the slumbering figure never moved, and that gained it its life. It was more important to try to find her first. This could come later, on their way out, if it had to be done.

  He went up the steps sideward, knife at the ready, face turned toward the sleeper, who was now below him.

  A moment later, as if he were one of its own, the darkness swallowed him in.

  The steps continued on the inside. He guided himself along with hand to one of the two facing walls, careful of each toehold, careful of each footrest.

  Then presently a faltering dim light was seeping down to meet him. It strengthened almost imperceptibly. The black walls and steps shaded off into murky amber, then tan, then finally into a dark gold tint. It gave him a shadow that fell behind him; It gave him his eyes back, at least. There must be a lamp or something, up above.

  He reached the head of the steps, and just beyond them was one more opening. It was through this that the low-toned effulgence was peering.

  It was a shadowy chamber. At its far end he could see still more steps, rising palely into the night imder the moon, for they were unroofed once more. They probably led to the very topmost part of the temple.

  He didn't need to go any farther than this, though. They were here, they were both here.

  A single lazy tongue of flame flickered from a vessel holding oil, a sort of lamp or censer supported by a tripod. He stood there rooted, taking in this incredible place of superstition and of shadows. Over against the opposite wall, on a low pallet covered with ocelot skins, lay a motionless figure asleep, one arm trailing along the floor. Jugs of varying sizes were ranged against the wall, but whether they contained water or cosmetics, or simply were empty, he could not tell. A spray of hummingbird feathers attached to a wand, with which it must have been part of Chris's duties to fan her, lay discarded beside the pallet.

  And then, on the other side of the place, in a huddle against that wall over there, lay the contorted form of Chris, also asleep, but with her arms stiffly bound together behind her, as his own had been only a little while ago. The ragged tunic or shirt she wore had been pulled down low over her back, and even at that distance he thought he could see angry marks there, as though she had been recently beaten.

  He moved cautiously across the barren stone-surfaced flooring until he had reached her, and his shadow fell across her where she lay. He glanced over at the other one for a moment, as a precaution. She hadn't stirred.

  He turned back to Chris again. He crouched down to bring his face more to a level with hers. It was important to wake her first, before he tried to free her. Otherwise she might wake herself and cry out. He put out his hand, and placed it lightly across her mouth, more in readiness than in actual pressure. Then he touched her lightly on the curve of her unclad shoulder. Then he breathed her name, lips to ear.

  Her eyelids flew up and he was looking into the same candid aquamarine-brilliant eyes that he could remember from the finca. Nothing about them ha
d changed. They could know everything bad and everything sad there was to know in the world, and they'd still be innocent. The eyes of youth, which have no shadows, hold no secrets.

  He pressed down hard with his hand against her mouth for a moment. He could feel her lips close against it in a kiss. It wasn't necessary to hold it there after that.

  "Larry," she breathed gratefully. A drop of excess brightness formed in the corner of each eye.

  "Bend out of the way a little. Let me get at these thongs."

  "I was at the foot of the steps, with my empty pitcher. He woke up and dragged me back to her. She is going to have us both killed today."

  "No, we won't die today," he said in grim undertones. "Dont talk any more now."

  Her hands, free, flew toward his shoulders. Then they fell back again as suddenly. "Larry!" She shivered warningly, and crouched down low against the wall.

  He turned. Her head was reared, on the ocelot couch. If death could have flown out of her baleful eyes, it would have struck the two of them down right where they were, there was such hatred in them. The sounds that came from her lips were the gibberish that was their language, hissed viciously at him, snarled malevolently. She was

  like one of the creatures on whose pelts she lay. She was afraid of him, and angered at the nearness of him. Outraged as at some unspeakable defilement.

  "So you're awake," he said softly, with grim vindictive-ness. He left Chris and went slowly over toward her.

  She drew a little away from him, dragging herself along the skins, pulling them after her as a sort of wary defense.

  He watched her expression closely. Her face showed no compunction, no leniency, no vestige of any emotion but blended fear and animosity. Yet she knew him; if she had shown no recognition, he could have forgiven the rest. But he could tell by the cast of her eyes that she recognized him.

  A dull glow of resentment, such as one feels after an unspeakable betrayal, filled him in spite of himself.

  Suddenly she had jumped to her feet with animal-like agility and run for the stairs. Not the ones from below, up which he had just come himself, but the inner flight leading to the temple roof above.

  Chris cried out suddenly from the background, "Look out, Larry! The war drum! It's up there. She may—"

  He sprinted after her, overtook her, gave her a circular fling around at the end of her extended arm that sent her crashing back onto the floor of the chamber behind them. She bared her white teeth at him, in a grimace of hatred more lethal than anything he had ever seen on a face yet.

  "Larry," he heard Chris whimper, "there's no hope for us now. It means death to have put your hands on her."

  He didn't turn his head to acknowledge the sacrilege. He kept his eyes fixed steady on Mitty, in a hatred that almost matched her own now.

  She tried to rise. He put his hand to her shoulder and flung her roughly back again to where she'd been.

  "Larry," Chris kept pleading in a stifled voice, "Larry."

  Mitty spoke at last. Haltingly, in English, as though she had already lost the feel of the language. "Because of you, I lose my soul. Because of you, I go down into the underworld."

  "And that's where you belong."

  "I serve a god. You have desecrated a Virgin of the sun. And in the sight of that fiery eye above, nothing goes unseen."

  His open hand cracked across her face like a cap pistol.

  "I was the one desecrated by ever touching you, not you. I could forgive what you've done to me. But for what you've done to this kid here—and what you did to her father—" He backed his forearm at her, in a threatened second blow, and then didn't deliver it.

  She strained backward, away from him. She averted her head, as though the sight of him were insupportable.

  His arm dropped back to his side with a swing of disgusted futility.

  "Larry," Chris whispered fearfully. "Larry, the moon's setting. In a little while it'll be too late." She tugged at his arm.

  He still faced Mitty. "Why did I have to lose my way that night in the car? And having lost my way, why did I have to go and knock on the door of that house at the crossroads, to ask for directions? With you hidden in the window above, waiting your chance, and then dropping a little note down to me as I was turning away. That wasn't enough. I had to come back again the next night, and the next, and for a whole week of nights, and throw pebbles up at your window and stand whispering underneath it by the hour. Then I had to get the bright idea it was up to me to rescue you from your 'wicked guardian.' Rescue is good. I was the one needed rescuing, not you. Sir Galahad, that was me. Just like in the storybooks. Falls for someone whose face he sees at a window in the moonlight. Because you whispered like a dove, and you leaned way over, and the neckline of your dress had a habit of— And I was young, and it was springtime, and apple blossoms were in the air."

  "Strange ugly people in a dream," she said contemptuously. "Ugly people with their ugly houses and their ugly ways. Love—pah!" She spat toward his feet. "And pecking at each other with their lips, like a parrot nibbling a mango. Yes, I remember that bad dream, now that you have brought it back. But it will go again. When you die, it will go and never come to me again.

  "We have met across a bridge, I don't know how. You from one side, I from the other. And now the bridge has fallen, and we are apart. 1 have my god to atone to. Let your god help you.

  "It has been told to me what it was that happened. Two men of your kind came here and found us in our

  valley. They broke open the sleeping places of our dead and brought them out one by one. They made many marks on paper, they made many quick flashes like lightning. I was sick with the fever that brings sleep. I had been placed in the coolness of a cave to die. They found me there, and found that death had not yet claimed me. In ways they had, that we had not. By feeling the weight of my wrists, by listening with long feelers to the voice of my heart.

  "Then they emptied out one of the sacred molds of the long-ago dead, and placed me in instead. They fastened it to the back of one of the little gray-coated animals they had brought with them. Eyes watched them from the jungle, saw everything they did. They carried me with them that way, and my people could not stop them, for they had the iron fingers that point, and cough fire, and kill from beyond the reach of the farthest arrow or spear. Two of my people they killed that way, when they came too close, and one they withered the arm of, so that he had to be destroyed."

  She had crept unnoticeably nearer while she spoke. Now she began to rise up, close to him. The hate in her eyes, if it were still there, was veiled; the lids drooped half closed over them.

  He kept staring at her, unable to take his eyes away.

  "Larry!" he heard Chris gasp.

  This time there was a sharpness needling the cry that made him snap his head around.

  The warrior, the sentry from the steps below, was right at his back, eyes twinkling malignantly, like black sequins sewn into his seamed face. The knife was already up, poised to fall.

  Chris's scream and the knife both slashed the air simultaneously.

  He swerved, with an instinctive, floundering loop of the waist, and the knife and the warrior's whole body came down on him. He went over backward against the pallet, and managed to deflect the knife by crossbarring the flat of his own arm to the arm that drove it, so that it glanced too far out and plunged deep into one of the skins just back of his prone shoulder, with a thrumming crunch.

  The two of them sidled intermingled to the floor, and he had a horrid feeling for a moment of having a maniac octopus squirming upon him. The knife came free again, reared up a second time. But it never fell.

  His own came out of his waistband, but in the wrong hand, and there was no room between their two bodies to aim it for a driving blow. Instead he just pointed it upward between them and gave a sudden nudge. It went in somewhere, probably the abdomen, with such effortlessness that there was no feel to it at all. For a moment he thought it had missed entirely.

 
Then the handle turned warm, almost hot, and as he let go of it with a sort of horror, the octopus-like arms and legs stopped their movements, and the whole mass slithered oflF him to the floor, leaving tracks of spongy red across his own body, as though a wet paintbrush had been streaked across him.

  The warrior's mouth was open a little wider, showing more of the yellowed tusks than before, that was all. The indented sequin-like eyes had disappeared completely into two blind tucks of skin.

  "The sun should try to save him now," Jones panted aloud, to no one in particular.

  He turned and looked, and she was gone. He jumped to his feet. Chris was lying sprawled at the bottom of the staircase leading up, as though flung back in an unsuccessful attempt to hold her. She pointed upward in frozen fright, toward the temple rooftop. The rooftop where the war drum was.

  He understood. He raced over to those stairs, sprinted up them. The stars burst into full flower as he emerged onto the flat superstructure above, and she was outlined against them like a darkling figure of doom. The drum was round and vast and shoulder-high. It reared there like an enormous caldron. A little block of stepping-stones, meant to gain sufficient height for the drum-beater, stood against it on one side, and atop this she already stood poised, arms flung overhead and back, a long-handled mallet-shaped implement caught in her double grasp, about to strike it.

  Dark-outlined against the sky like that, she was like one of their own idols, something malefic, a Mayan goddess of vengeance. Though he couldn't see her features, her figure expressed it in every line, bent outward at the middle like a taut bow about to loose an arrow.

  There was no time to do anything but fling himself bodily against her, hoping to overthrow her before the imminent blow fell. He ran at her crouched low, buffeted himself into her shoulder-first. The drumbeat never fell. Her arms scissored wildly, the mallet kited out of her grasp, glancing harmlessly off the side of the drum. She went toppling off the perch, and her body struck against the squat parapet edging the roof just on the other side of it. He went down on hands and knees, short of it, and she fell across it, her back curved over it. For a moment she lay there like that, helpless. But too much of her weight was too far out upon it.