by Cave, Hugh
Frightened, he looked around and saw his clothes in the road, close to fresh tire tracks in the dirt. The kind of tracks a car would make if clawing for quick acceleration in a drag race. A car had been here, then, and left in a hurry.
His car? Had he driven it here?
He had stopped at the junction of a shortcut along the western shore of Lake Okeechobee, he remembered. Sandy had questioned the wisdom of leaving the safety of the main highway when neither of them knew what the man in Gifford might do next. But he had overruled her objections.
Then what? His mind was a blank. He remembered nothing.
He stepped into his shorts, pulled his slacks on, knelt in the dirt to put on his shoes. As he struggled into his shirt, he saw a flash of yellow speeding along some kind of road nearby. A pickup truck, perhaps. The road could be the lakeshore highway he should be on with Sandy.
Why had he turned off it, along these ruts?
He began walking, though scarcely able to put one foot in front of the other. His head was made of lead but filled with stabs of pain. Lifting his left wrist, he peered at his watch and saw with dismay that the hands stood at twenty past ten.
They had left the motel at daybreak and couldn't have come more than thirty miles. Where had the time gone?
Where was Sandy?
Just a few yards ahead of him now, another vehicle sped along the road. A car this time, old, with a young black couple in it. Too late he called out and struggled to wave. They had not seen him.
The effort sapped the last of his strength and he pitched forward on his face in soft sand.
This time when he came to he was not on his feet, naked, but still sprawled in the road. And looking through the spokes of a bicycle wheel at a pair of tanned bare legs that disappeared into cutoff blue jeans. Lifting his gaze higher, he saw a freckle-faced boy about twelve years old clutching the bike's handlebars and peering down at him.
"Hello," Ken mumbled.
Jerking the bike with him, the youngster abruptly stepped back, as though intending to leap onto the saddle and ride away.
"Wait, please! I need help!"
Jerking the bike again, the boy did leap onto the saddle.
"Please! Wait! Help me!"
But the bike and its panic-stricken young rider had reached the blacktop. In a moment they were out of sight.
Ken struggled to his feet again. Again he began walking. On reaching the end of the ruts he turned to his right. How far was it to the nearest town? Miles. Too many miles for him to walk in this condition.
Please, God, let some good Samaritan come along.
He lost track of the time then, and his watch was no good to him. Something must have happened to it when he fell the second time. It had stopped and would not start again. The road went on and on, and though he halted on hearing cars coming and begged with outstretched hands for help, no car even slowed.
The sun pulsed like boiling metal in a cloudless sky. Heat waves floated up from the blacktop. Drenched with sweat, he plodded on.
Then up from behind him rattled an ancient green pickup, and in desperation he staggered into the middle of the road so it had to stop or run him down.
With squealing brakes it stopped. The two men peering at him were past middle age. Their prominent cheekbones and high coloring reminded him that he was on a road that ran through an Indian reservation.
They dropped to the road and approached him. From ten feet away one said, "Whatsa matter wit' you, mister? You tryna git yourself kilt?"
Ken hardly had the strength left for a reply but managed one. "I need—help—please."
The two halted a couple of yards from him and stood with arms akimbo, heads thrust forward, scowling. The clothes they wore were as decrepit as the pickup. They made no move to come closer.
He stumbled toward them. "Please . . ."
They glanced at each other and abruptly spun themselves about. Running now, they clawed themselves back into the truck as though fleeing from a devil. The engine came to life with a roar and the vehicle lurched forward.
Passing Ken, the driver veered so wide to avoid hitting him that the vehicle was briefly in danger of ending up in a roadside ditch. Then, all at once, its engine stalled and it came to a bucking halt.
Calling on his last reserve of strength, Ken ran after it.
A door flew open. He found himself looking at the muzzles of a double-barreled shotgun.
"You come one more step and I shoot, mister!"
He stumbled to a halt. The truck's starter snarled and its engine sputtered to life. As it pulled away down the road, the man leaning out of it continued to point his weapon at Ken.
Then it was gone, leaving silence in its wake. Through the stillness Ken staggered to the side of the road and sank into tall grass beside the ditch.
Why? Why had the boy with the bike fled from him in panic? Why had these Seminoles been willing to shoot him rather than give him a lift?
Why had Sandy gone off with the car, leaving him in the middle of nowhere?
He put his fingers to his face, half convinced he would feel some awful change there. Some transfiguration that could have occurred while he was lost in the swamp with the snakes. But it seemed no different from the face he shaved every morning.
He looked at the ditch, ten feet wide and water-filled. Unwilling to rise, he reached it on hands and knees, parted the grass at its edge, and peered at his reflection.
"My God!" he heard himself whisper.
It was not the same face. Oh, it might have passed for the same in a black-and-white photo if the camera wasn't too probing. All its parts were in place. But there was something in the eyes that did not belong there. Something too intense, cruel, even evil.
He put his hands to his eyes and rubbed them. Looked again at his face in the water. A breath of breeze had stirred the surface, and the reflection now seemed about to disintegrate. But the eyes—good God! They were even more fiercely staring than before, and seemed flecked with color.
Not their normal brown. These eyes were red.
Turning, he crawled back up to the road's edge and struggled to his feet. He had to go on. Had to find help.
Then find Sandy.
And then, with her, get to Gifford and rescue her daughter from the man who was causing these horrors to happen.
Chapter Twenty-six
When his father returned at seven, Brian Dawson was waiting apprehensively in the older man's apartment, thinking about the house in Gifford.
About the people in that house. His daughter, Merry. The man with no legs. The fat woman. The mousy Jumel.
There was no way he could free Merry by force or subterfuge, he knew now. That could be accomplished only by obeying the bocor's instructions. Meanwhile he was rested, had showered and shaved, had cooked and eaten a steak from his father's refrigerator, and had helped himself to a discreet amount of Scotch from his father's liquor supply.
There still remained the question of whether he had been able to carry out the bocor's commands.
It was a relief, in a way, to hear a knock on the door.
He went to the door and opened it. Looked at the man in the hall and almost felt a twinge of pity. In a single day the handsome Rutherford Dawson had aged ten years.
Brian drew him inside and shut the door. "Are you all right?"
"My God, my God, what a day." Clutching his attaché case, the older man sank onto a chair and leaned back with his eyes closed.
"You can rest later." Brian stood there glaring. "Talk now. Did you get what I told you to?"
The eyes grudgingly opened. A trembling hand thrust the attaché case toward him. "Here."
Snapping the case open, Brian eagerly took from it the three articles it contained. A bloodstained handkerchief. A sheet of paper covered with handwriting. A typewritten letter on presidential stationery, with a signature.
"These will do, I think. How did you manage it?"
"I did it." The voice was a groan. "Isn't that e
nough?"
"Tell me. This, for instance." Brian waved the letter.
"I had it in my desk. I was to check it for accuracy before sending it out."
"And this?"—holding up the handwritten page.
"He was rough-drafting a speech. I suggested he let me type it to make the rewrite easier." Anger flickered for a second in the eyes of Dawson Senior. "Damn you, Brian! This is the first time I've ever deceived that man. I despise you for making me do it!"
"You'll live with it." Brian held up the bloodstained handkerchief. "And this? Why the blood?"
"You said to bring you something he had worn or used."
"I know what I said."
"Well, for Christ's sake, I couldn't ask him to take something off and hand it to me, could I? So I—well, look." Rutherford Dawson thrust his left hand into his son's face. The tip of the longest finger had been sliced by something sharp, and there was dried blood in the wound. "I had a penknife open in my pocket. When I went in to give him the typed speech, I put my hand in and deliberately cut myself. He thought it an accident."
"And tried to stop the bleeding with his handkerchief?"
"That's the kind of man he is. I went off with it wrapped around my finger."
Disappointment curdled the son's face. "So this is only your blood? If it were his—"
"What are you talking about? Brian, I don't understand any of this, but I know I don't like it!" The older man sat up straighter, finding strength in anger. "If anything happens to him because of what you've made me do, I—I—"
"You'll what?" Brian sneered.
His father was silent.
"All right, I'm leaving now." Brian replaced the items in the attaché case. "I'll be taking this."
"No! It was a gift from him!"
"Even better."
"You don't understand! It belonged to him!"
"He used it, you mean? Handled it?"
"Yes!"
"Good."
"But you can't—"
"Be quiet, Dad."
"No! I tell you—"
"Be quiet." This time the command was unspoken, but the senior Dawson seemed struck by a bolt of lightning
"Y-yes," he whimpered. "Yes, master."
With the case in his hand, Brian walked into his father's bedroom. Reappearing a moment later, he tossed a remark over his shoulder on his way out of the apartment. "Be seeing you, Dad. You'll be coming to Florida soon."
"I will not!"
"Yes, you will." You will, Daddy dear because a certain Haitian sorcerer wants you there. And because this attaché case now contains, along with those other items, an old pair of shorts that you've worn many times.
The shorts might not be needed, of course, now that he also had a handkerchief stained with Daddy's blood. But Margal had instructed him to obtain them.
On his way to the elevator he looked back and saw his father watching from the doorway. "Florida, Dad," he called back. "And I doubt you'll be coming alone."
Chapter Twenty-seven
Even for August the day was hot. Trudging along the blacktop, Ken felt the road's heat through the soles of his shoes, as though he were walking barefoot through fire.
He had seen that done once at a voodoo service near Savane Zombie in Haiti. Holding a red-hot iron bar aloft in both hands, a barefoot woman possessed by Ogoun Fer, one of the fire loa, had stood ankle deep for what seemed three or four minutes in the charcoal fire from which she had snatched the bar. Then she had stepped out unharmed, singing the loa's praises.
He plodded on. The heat waves rising from the road blurred his vision and made him dizzy. His watch had stopped. He had no idea of the time. But he must make himself keep walking. He must pray that someone would come along who would help him in spite of what the sorcerer in Gifford had done to his face.
He walked. He sat by the road to rest, and then walked again. When he could no longer put one foot in front of the other, he sank onto the roadside grass again and slept.
For how long? When he struggled to his feet and trudged on again, the sun, on his left, was close to the horizon. He was still on the road through the reservation.
Through the heat haze he saw a car coming. It was going the wrong way, but in desperation he stumbled into its path anyway and weakly raised a hand.
It stopped. It was the car he had rented in Miami. Behind the wheel was Sandy Dawson.
Leaning from the wheel to open the door for him, she stared apprehensively as he approached. When he dragged himself onto the seat, she continued to stare. Not until he had pulled the door shut did she find her voice.
"Your eyes are still the same," she said. "But you don't know, do you?"
"I know. I saw my face in a ditch."
"Oh, God, Ken—what's happening?"
"It has to be Margal's work. I don't know how or why."
"Wait." She turned the car around, not the easiest thing to do there with grass growing in loose sand on both road shoulders. Shutting the engine off, she turned to study his face intently.
"At least, your eyes aren't as frightening as they were when I left you," she said at last. "You must be getting over it."
"I don't know what they were like when you left me. I don't know why you left me." They were wasting time, Ken decided. "Look, we have to get to Gilford. We can talk while you drive."
With the car in motion again he leaned back in gratitude. God, how different this was from trudging along a fiery road under a blazing sun, with his head pounding!
Sandy said, "I came back to give you what you wanted."
Puzzled, he turned to look at her. "You what?"
"After getting away from you I drove nearly to Gifford. At least, I think I did. Then I realized I couldn't do anything by myself, not even go to the police. I don't know the name of the man whose house Merry is in. Or the address or phone number. Only you know those things. So I came back." She paused, then said again, "To give you what you wanted, in return for your help."
"What did I want?" He was almost afraid to ask.
"Don't you remember?"
He shook his head. "We took the shortcut, though I seem to remember you were afraid of it. What happened next I don't know. I came to with my clothes on the ground and blood on me from—I think—falling naked into a mess of thorns."
"You didn't fall. I pushed you."
"What?"
"You almost had my clothes off. You would have raped me."
"Oh, my God," he said.
"We'd been talking about the time we were in love, before I left you and married Brian. About how good it was, and how foolish I was to walk away from it. Then, without any hint of what was on your mind, you suddenly drove off the road and stopped in the middle of nowhere and dragged me out of the car and tried to tear my clothes off. Look" She twisted toward him to show him her blouse, which had buttons missing and was ripped across one breast, exposing her bra. "And your eyes were like something in a horror movie."
"My God."
"I panicked. I didn't know what was happening."
"That bastard Margal was happening," Ken said savagely. "Can you ever understand? Ever forgive me?"
"I'm here."
"1 know you're here, but—"
"I came back for you." She reached out to touch him. "You'll never know how I prayed I'd be able to find you. All the way back, one prayer after another."
"Well—you needed me, you said."
"Yes, I needed you. But there was something else. Something more. Since we've been back together. . ."
She left it unsaid, and Ken responded by grasping and holding for a moment the hand that was still touching him. It was enough for now. He would be a long time forgiving himself for trying to take her by force, even if it had been Margal's idea.
"You must be tired," he said. "Want me to drive?"
"Should you, do you think? He has some power over you, Ken."
"Well, yes."
"Next time might be even worse. He might persuade you to drive into a ditch,
or an oncoming truck. Something really final."
"All right. But if you get too tired . . ."
How, he wondered, had Margal known she was with him? Was it because they had been talking about the time before Brian, when they'd been in love and sleeping together? The Haitian was a reader of minds, and that conversation had created some vivid mental images.
Did he know what I was thinking about and order me to do it, to turn Sandy against me? To make her do just what she did, so we wouldn't be able to find him?
Sandy interrupted his thinking. "You know, if you had just told me you wanted me, the way we used to sometimes with each other, I'd have loved it. I know I wanted you. We were talking about it, remember?"
"Hey. We were trying to get to Gifford."
"Well, it was there. On our minds, I mean. We were planning it for later, sort of."
"Don't talk about it now," Ken warned. "Don't even think about it."
She shot an uneasy glance at him. "You mean you think—"
"He can read our minds. Mine, anyway. Talk about something he can't get a grip on."
Well . . . suppose you talk. I'll just listen." She frowned in thought. "Tell me about flying. What it means to you."
He hesitated. If he talked about flying, was there some way Margal could use his thoughts to destroy him? He didn't see how. Maybe if he were actually flying a plane, the bocor could give him a bad time, even cause a fatal crash, but what link could there be between thoughts of flying and this car, with Sandy driving the car?
All right, then. And, yes, it might be good for him to talk about what flying meant to him. Sandy had never really understood, had she?
Chapter Twenty-eight
In Gifford, Clarisse ate supper at the kitchen table with little Merry Dawson and the owner of the house, Elie Jumel. The three ate in silence, but suddenly Clarisse lifted her head as though listening. Then, abruptly, she stood up.
Sprawled near the back door, the two black dogs watched her every move. Both bared their fangs, as though to make sure she knew her place in this house.
Going to the door of the bedroom where Margal had eaten his supper alone, Clarisse tapped for permission to enter. Then she obeyed a second silent command and opened the door and said, "Yes?"
