Without further hesitation, I crawled out of the tunnel and onto a flagstone, where I crouched, ready to fight. I was, at last, inside the castle.
THIRTEEN
For all my anxiety at having breached my quarry’s stronghold, I must now confess that, at this moment, that anxiety was twinned with a second emotion, one less easy to identify, and more surprising. It was a feeling of belonging, if not of actual familiarity—a sense that, though I was far from safe standing here in the castle courtyard, my presence here had a rightness, that it represented the fulfillment of some previously unknown desire. It was as though something hanging crookedly in my mind had finally been righted.
For all the peculiarity of this feeling, however, I did not have time just now to stop and consider it at length. I studied my surroundings until I was confident that I had indeed gone unseen, then I reached back into the tunnel to grab hold of my pack and quiver. I dragged them through, and after a moment’s thought, wriggled in once again and took hold of the inside handle of the block. With some concerted effort, I was able to wedge it back into place from the inside. I realized that it might cause me trouble if I were to need to retreat quickly; but to leave the block lying there would signal to the Doctor, should he be outside and approach through the gap, that his fortress had been penetrated. The element of surprise was a reasonable trade for the seconds I might lose trying to escape. I did not, of course, plan to need to escape. Whatever happened, I intended to leave the castle without fear or haste.
I shouldered my belongings and slowly stood up.
The castle had appeared quite imposing from outside, but now that I had come through the wall, it seemed smaller, and less threatening. It had more of the look of a ruin, as well. Debris that had fallen from the crenellated walls was piled, seemingly untouched, around the edges of the courtyard; a few stones even lay on the roof of the building to my left. The flagstones were heaved and cracked, and weeds—even entire trees, like the shrub I now stood behind—sprung up between them. And contrary to my observations of the path outside, I could detect no clear evidence of any human presence. If the Doctor lived here, he concealed himself well. The castle looked abandoned.
I took one last visual survey of the grounds, and began to move.
From over my shoulder I drew my bow, and an arrow, which I nocked and held at the ready. I kept close to the western wall, stepping stealthily, swiftly, keeping my eyes on those obstacles in the courtyard which might conceal a man. I sidestepped along the curtain until I reached the edge of the compound; then I inched silently east. I passed underneath a small square barred window, and soon reached the corner.
The only part of the courtyard that had been invisible to me from the tunnel opening was on the other side of this corner. This would be the small area underneath the large watchtower. There was likely to be some kind of entrance into the compound, and another into the tower; if my foe lay in wait for me, it was almost certainly around this corner that I would find him. In fact, it was possible that he stood there now, his bow aimed.
After another scan of the visible courtyard, I decided upon a course of action. I unchocked my arrow, gripped it and the bow in one hand, and took a breath. There was a wooden structure up ahead, a sort of crooked, broken table around which tall weeds had sprung, and it was there that I now directed my gaze. From behind it, I would be able to peer into the hidden corner of the courtyard. I marked my decision with a quick nod, and sprinted toward the structure.
Only ten feet separated me from my goal, but my feet slipped and skidded on the crumbling flagstones, and my mad dash felt more like a labored, heavily burdened trek. In any event, I made it. I crouched down behind the wooden table and inspected my body for wounds. There were none. If an arrow had been fired, it had missed me.
I took a moment to gather myself, then peeked over the top of the table.
The hidden section of courtyard was much as I had imagined it. There were open doorways, yawning into darkness, leading into the compound and tower, and a large pile of rubble that appeared to have fallen from the tower’s southwest corner. There was also another wooden structure, a kind of cage, with chains and other metal apparatus hanging inside it. The sight of this object gave me pause—it had an aura of sinister intent about it, and impending danger. No one was visible anywhere, but I smelled smoke.
I chose to wait a few minutes, in an effort to detect movement anywhere on the castle grounds. As I waited, I examined the structure I was crouched behind. I could see now that it wasn’t a table, not precisely—rather, it was a heavy, circular wooden platform balanced upon a roughly carved inverted wooden pyramid, the two attached by a fist-sized and tightly fitted peg. Overall it had the appearance of a very large child’s top. The platform, though thick, was cracked down the center from exposure, like an old kitchen cutting board left soaking in water. The flagstones underneath it were worn down and cracked, as if from its weight and motion.
Again, I felt uneasy looking at it. It seemed to evoke some nameless anxiety or desperation, which I could not put my finger on. I began to feel as if I were being watched. I quickly shot glances up to the four towers, the walls, the roof of the rock. But there was nothing, and no one. I was still alone.
At last it was time to move on. The nearest wall was that of the watchtower, so it was there that I dashed, my footing surer this time, the journey swifter. Again I arrived unharmed. I slid along this wall, peered again into the once-hidden area of the courtyard, and slipped around to just beside the watchtower door. After a brief pause to listen, I ducked in.
It was clear that no one else was here. My eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness, and a flight of stone stairs made themselves visible before me, spiraling up into dim light. There was a strong scent of rodents, and fungus. I climbed the staircase slowly, quietly, stopping after every three steps to listen for my enemy. In this manner, I reached the top and emerged onto the broken roof.
In the minutes I spent climbing, it had begun to rain, a stinging, spitting rain accompanied by a warm wind. Gunmetal clouds were racing in from the west, promising a powerful storm. Looking down, I could make out the overgrown path to Minerva Road, and the approximate place where I had avoided the bear trap; above me loomed the barren rock. No people or animals could be seen, not to the east nor in any other direction. The wind picked up, and I felt very desolate and helpless, in spite of my commanding view of the surroundings.
A few moments later I was back in the courtyard. Again there was no one. I moved along the castle’s north wall, giving the wooden cage a wide berth, and quickly arrived at the doorway that led into the compound. As in the tower, I smelled a rats’ warren, and the chemical tang of mildew; but in addition I again detected woodsmoke—and a human scent, the stink of living. Fear enveloped my body like a sack, and I suppressed a shiver. My eyes adjusted to the light, and I could see now that I was in a large open room, with the blackened remains of a fire off to the center, underneath a small hole in the peaked roof. A flat stone sat beside the fire, and a small pile of sharpened twigs. It appeared that food had once been cooked here, though there was no indication that the fire was recent. In front of me and to the left, a rectangular hole was dug in the dirt floor and a flight of crude stairs led down into darkness.
No—not darkness, not quite. There was light, and not the gray light of the stormy sky outside; rather, it was a yellow light, flickering faintly. A fire, somewhere below. That was where the smoke had come from—not the dead fire here in front of me, but the one burning at the bottom of those stairs.
Slowly, I crept across the room and began to descend. Once again I nocked my arrow and held it before me. One step, then another, and another—I paused between each, listening, knowing that this must be the place where he waited. Fourteen steps, fifteen, and I was standing one step from the doorway on the other side of which burned the fire. Smoke stung my eyes. I leaned against the stairwell wall and inched my head closer and closer, until I could see the outlines of a room
. A rough corner, walls of stone. A bundle lying on the ground—blankets, perhaps, brown in the dim. And a pair of shoes. Moccasins, by the look of them, sewn together out of deerhide.
He was here—I knew it. The moment had come. I closed my eyes, breathed in and out to clear my head, and then stepped forward, into the light.
The room was about twenty feet square and undivided, like the room above, and I realized that it had been hollowed out underneath the rock. The walls, as I have said, were of stone, not milled and fitted together as in the castle walls, but irregular and jagged, as if they had been found on the ground outside, or dug up during the room’s excavation. The wadded-up bundle I had noticed was indeed a pile of blankets—a bed, in fact, laid right in the dirt—and the wall I faced, across the fire, was lined with bookshelves—crude, crooked planks, heavily weighted with books, their spines obscured by years of smoke. The planks were supported by the books themselves, so that the bottom few rows were hopelessly squashed and bent, their bindings ruined, and only the top two shelves’ contents were even removable.
Something, however, stood in front of that wall: a small wooden table. It was old, a bit lopsided, the kind of table one might find in a child’s playhouse or a kindergarten classroom. On it lay an apparently random collection of objects. Something about them—some familiar pattern in their arrangement—made me take a step closer.
As if in keeping with the table, the objects seemed to belong to a child. There was a homemade slingshot, made from a stout branch and a thick rubber band; there was a military action figure—a G.I. Joe. These lay beside a mushroom hunting guide, a small canteen, a penknife, a cigar box full of bones.
I should clarify here that the cigar box was closed. Yet I knew that it contained bones—the tiny bones of birds and squirrels, and perhaps the husks of cicadas. The box was cardboard, with a fabric-hinged lid, and it bore the name CABAÑAS above a kind of heraldic crest. The lip of the box was ragged with torn paper, which once had sealed in the cigars.
I reached out and ran my thumb along the lip, feeling the paper’s uneven edge. After a moment, I lifted the lid.
It was just as I had imagined. Several skulls, some of them beaked, and a scattering of tiny thin bones. The cicadas’ husks were in a separate compartment, an unlidded jewelry box, to keep them intact. From underneath the bones poked the corner of a thick, folded piece of paper; even as I reached for it I knew that it was a map, a hand-drawn treasure map, marking the places in and around my childhood home where I had concealed things that were valuable to me. The weightless bones clattered faintly as I drew out the map; it unfolded with a dry rustle, revealing the drawings and symbols I knew would be there, rendered in pencil, then traced over with calligraphic ink. There was the house, the shed; there stood the catalpa tree and the sugar maples. The trash pit, the gravel drive—it was all there, the diagram of my childhood, as I had drawn it thirty-five years before.
The smoke in the room was thick and choking; the flickering of the fire cast disorienting shadows across the walls, and I gazed down at my lost possessions: my slingshot, and my book, and my canteen. All of it was mine.
From behind me, over the crackle of the fire, I heard the small noise of a bare foot shifting against the dirt floor.
I stood and turned. It was him. He held a hollowed-out twig to his mouth and, with a terrible grin, blew. I felt something sting my face, and moved my hand to brush it away. But my hand merely hung at my side, immobile.
My knees buckled and I lost my balance; my arm landed in the fire. The old man acted quickly to move it, tucking it in close to my body, and as I lost consciousness I felt gratitude for his alertness and concern, and tried, but failed, to form my lips into a gesture of thanks.
FOURTEEN
I don’t know where or how my father met Avery Stiles, but it is not difficult to imagine a scenario by which the two, working after hours on campus—my father at his maintenance chores and Professor Stiles on his research—struck up a conversation and, eventually, a friendship. My father, though cold and distant with his family, was quite amiable around others. In retrospect, this may seem strange, but as a child I never thought to question the drastic change in personality that overtook him at the hardware store, the bank, the municipal dump, when he encountered perfect strangers. I accompanied him on these errands for many years, and distinctly recall the tense silence that enveloped the truck as we drove. My father’s back never seemed to touch the seat—he leaned forward, his chin out over the steering wheel his bony fingers gripped, his jaw tight, his eyes darting across his field of vision. Any attempt on my part to speak was met with a terse “Quiet,” and so I sat in nervous boredom, my body rigid, waiting for the journey to end.
But when we reached our destination and climbed down from the truck, my father changed into a different person. His compact frame loosened, his forehead smoothed, his hooded eyes grew wide. When he encountered a familiar face, he initiated a handshake from ten feet away, striding forth with a confident gait and a broad smile. He chatted with great intensity, usually about the weather, or a description of some project he was engaged in, and people in town seemed to like him. You wouldn’t think, looking at such a man, that he was friendless. Indeed, he appeared to enjoy broad social acceptance in our town. And then, when his errand was over, and he turned his back on his acquaintances, his face and body tightened up again, and by the time we climbed back into the truck, he had assumed his usual truculent demeanor.
I was not conscious, at the time, of harboring any particular feelings about my father’s transformations. Now, of course, it is easy to imagine that I must have felt jealous, that I wished he would bestow this kind of cheer upon my mother and me. But the truth is, I don’t remember feeling that way, and I don’t believe I did. I didn’t regard this version of my father as having anything to do with my mother and me. I thought of the cold, angry man I knew as my real father, and this gregarious fellow as a character he played. If anything, his manner embarrassed me—living as I did, I had come to regard this kind of social display as foolish and false, and though I have since overcome this misapprehension, I remain uncomfortable in my relations with others. But I digress.
Quite probably my father was very friendly to those he encountered at the college. And I suspect that he regarded himself as the equal of any professor who taught there—indeed, he likely considered himself more intelligent than the average academic, and he might well have been right. So it was not surprising that he would befriend a man like Professor Stiles, a misfit in the university community whose work had fallen into disfavor with his colleagues and superiors. He and my father were outsiders, and natural allies. This, anyway, is what I imagine may have been the case.
In any event, it came to pass that Doctor Avery Stiles was invited to our house for dinner one night, and my mother ordered to prepare some elaborate meal. I don’t recall what it was we ate, but my father spent an unprecedented amount of time in the kitchen, overseeing her work, dipping his fingers into things, demanding to know what she was doing and why she was doing it. I was a boy at the time—I would guess around eight—and understood only that a guest would be coming for dinner, and that I was supposed to be on my best behavior. Largely, though, I expected to be ignored that night, because it was my sister who was the ostensible focus of the evening.
Jill was around thirteen and in the early stages of her delinquency. She had begun to smoke cigarettes—I had seen her and her friends doing it behind the school—and wear makeup, and she sulked in the presence of my parents and often disappeared when family meals were in the offing. Perhaps as a result, she had lost weight, and no longer looked like the child she must still have been. She had begun to take on the twiggy roughness that she would settle into, in her adulthood.
I didn’t fully understand what my parents were talking about before Doctor Stiles’s arrival at our house. But it seemed to me that Doctor Stiles had been called in to meet Jill, assess her social problems, and suggest some course of
action that would “cure” her. My mother insisted that she didn’t like the idea of a “psychologist coming into our house,” and my father said that he wasn’t a psychologist, he was a scientist, and he would “use science on her.” After a while the discussion became heated, and my mother, as always, backed down. But the evening was already unprecedented, not only because a college professor was coming over, but also because my parents had spoken to each other at such length, and with such passion.
The dinner was not to work out as planned, however, because just before Doctor Stiles was to arrive, my sister went missing. My mother called her down from her room, but she was not in her room, and she wasn’t anywhere else in the house, either. Her jacket was gone from the coat rack, and her bicycle from the garage.
My father blamed my mother for letting her leave, and insisted that she get in the car and go find her. But before the issue could be resolved, Professor Stiles appeared on the doorstep.
He was a tall, gaunt man with a long face, a narrow chin, and a round pair of eyeglasses. His clothes were drab and brown and threadbare, and his sparse black hair was snarled at the crest of a high, pale forehead. But he carried with him an air of quiet authority, to which my parents responded by taking his coat and leading him to the sofa, where he was handed a drink.
On the one hand, the Professor looked weak. His skin lacked color, and his arms and legs were thin as a waif’s. But he moved with a precision and assurance that bespoke a great physical dexterity, and his eyes ranged around the room, absorbing, one imagined, every detail. He appeared, in fact, to hold us all in judgment—but what sort of judgment was unclear. He betrayed nothing of his opinions. Such a person had never been in our house before, and I would have been hard pressed to recall when anyone besides ourselves had ever sat on that sofa.
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