Lion's Head Revisited

by Jeffrey Round

  An hour went by. He hadn’t heard a thing from the front room. When he looked out, Eli was sitting up reading with his back to Dan. Good for you, Dan thought. You stayed awake after all.

  He lay back down with his arms behind his head. He was just drifting off when a splintering sound sent him bolt upright. For a moment, he held completely still and listened. Outside, the wind thrashed around the eaves. Something thudded against the cabin wall. He was out of bed and racing for the living room.

  Eli looked up, stunned. “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know. It came from outside.”

  A moment later, Janice and Ashley emerged from their room.

  “Stay here. I’ll go out,” Dan said.

  “I’ll come with you,” Eli said.

  “No, you’re still the watch. Keep your eyes on the box. I’ll call if I need you.”

  Rain lashed his face and chest as he opened the door and headed out. At first there was nothing to see. Then he saw a branch fallen across the drive, just missing his car. It would have to be moved before they could leave.

  He came back in, dripping rain. The box was still beneath the table.

  “It’s okay,” he told the others, who stood watching anxiously. “Just a branch. It came down in the storm.”

  “I was sure someone had come for us,” Eli said.

  Dan shook his head. “We’re safe,” he said, though he wasn’t as certain of that as he would have liked. “Everybody okay?”

  “Of course. We’re fine,” Ashley said.

  Janice rolled her eyes. “Ashley’s fearless. But I’m terrified. ”

  “If you want, I can stay up the rest of the night and let you get some rest.”

  “No,” Janice said. “You need to rest too.”

  “All right then,” Dan said, heading back to the bedroom.

  This time he removed his pants and shoes.

  EIGHTEEN

  Deliverance

  MORNING BROUGHT A SHARP KNOCK at the door. Dan leapt out of bed, cursing his lack of foresight as he raced out of the room wearing only his boxers. Ashley glanced up from the couch with a curious expression just as Janice and Eli exited from their rooms.

  “Who knows we’re here?” Janice demanded.

  Dan pulled the door open. Horace stood on the step holding a large tote bag.

  “Thought that was your car, Daniel of the Lions.”

  “Horace. Good morning.” He felt absurdly naked.

  His expression must have been comical. Horace laughed a belly laugh. “Didn’t mean to scare you!”

  “No, of course not. What brings you up here?”

  “Saw you folks had a branch down. Just being neighbourly.”

  “Right,” Dan said, trying to make sense of things. “It came down last night in the storm.”

  “Lost a couple myself. If you want, I can come around with the tractor and help haul it from the driveway.”

  Dan looked over at the fallen limb. It seemed less daunting by daylight. “Thanks. I think we can manage.”

  Horace glanced inside past Dan and caught sight of Janice and Ashley. Eli stood beside them, all three staring out at the farmer.

  “Hi, Horace,” Janice said timidly, holding her dressing gown together by the edges.

  “Ah, the young misses.” His manner softened. “I saw young Daniel’s car here and thought I’d bring him some fresh eggs and homemade bread, plus a few leftover strawberries. Season’s long done, of course.”

  He held out the bag. Dan took it from him.

  “Thank you, Horace. It’s still a bit early for us.”

  “I understand.” He looked disappointed, as though he’d expected to be invited in for coffee. “I won’t bother you folks. I hope things are okay. That boy of yours come back?”

  Janice shook her head without speaking.

  “No, of course not. Excuse my speaking out of turn. But he will.” He raised a finger. “‘Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him?’ Jeremiah 23:24.”

  Janice stepped onto the porch and grasped his hand, squeezing it. “I never got a chance to thank you properly before, but I am so grateful for your help.”

  “It’s my pleasure, miss. I won’t keep you. Enjoy those eggs.”

  He turned and walked away, a forlorn figure hobbling down the drive.

  “Thank you, Horace,” Dan called after him.

  He shut the door and stood there holding up the bag. The others were watching.

  “Creepy,” Ashley said.

  “Who was that?” Eli asked.

  “That was the farmer who rescued me after I fell on my way back to the parking lot,” Janice said.

  Eli made a face. “That was him?”

  “Him,” Janice echoed. “A strange man.”

  Dan looked out the window. Horace had reached the end of the driveway. He turned and waved.

  “Very strange,” Eli agreed.

  Dan emptied the bag, placing the eggs in a bowl and a pint of berries on the table alongside a loaf of bread.

  “At least we have breakfast,” he said. “I’m glad to see we all made it through the night. Did you check to see if there were more texts?”

  “I checked,” Janice said with a shiver. “Nothing yet. This is crazy.”

  Ashley put an arm around her. “We’ll get through it. Jeremy will be home soon.”

  “I hope so.”

  Janice sat at one end of the couch, contracting her body and wrapping her arms around her knees like a child.

  “I suggest we all eat so we’re prepared for whatever the day brings,” Dan said, nodding to the table.

  A Bible-quoting, egg-delivering farmer and a two-and-three-quarter-hour ride across the country in a rainstorm to deliver a hat box full of money. Nothing makes any sense here, he thought. But he was prepared to see it through at any cost, short of loss of life. Maybe it would all make sense afterward.

  He went to his room and dressed while the others fixed breakfast. When he returned they ate in silence, their expressions set, then cleared the dishes.

  Afterward, Dan went out to survey the branch lying across the drive. There was a dent in the siding where it had fallen against the cottage. He grabbed an end and pulled. At first it resisted then suddenly swung around and moved slowly, a foot at a time.

  At last he had it pushed aside so it no longer blocked the drive. It was only when he turned back to the car that he saw the envelope tucked under the wiper.

  Thinking about it later, he was sure it hadn’t been there in the middle of the night when he went out to check for damage. Someone had taken a big risk leaving it.

  The note was addressed to Jeremy Bentham in a childish purple scrawl. Crayon. Dan brought it in and laid it on the table.

  The others stood watching as he slit it open with a knife, taking care to keep his fingerprints off the surfaces. Donations go to 36 Whippoorwill Road. Eight thirty sharp. And a smiley face.

  Dan looked at his watch. It was ten past eight. They still had time.

  Eli and Janice looked surprised, but Ashley was angry. “Who the hell could do this?” she demanded of no one in particular.

  Dan’s mind was racing. “Who knew we were here?”

  “That farmer did,” Ashley said.

  Janice put a hand to her mouth. “I texted Dennis last night, just in case he might be at the cottage. I didn’t tell him why we were coming, just that I needed it for one night. He said it was okay.”

  Eli turned to Dan. “You said yesterday you thought Janice’s phone might be tapped. Do you still think that?”

  “Anything is possible,” Dan said. “The kidnappers know her number. The fact that she even texted to say where we were going could have tipped someone off.”

  “This is unbelievable,” Janice said. “I feel so vulnerable and exposed.”

  “That’s how they want you to feel,” Dan said.

  Eli set the hat box on the table then sat and watched it, as though afraid it might disappear if he
took his eyes off it.

  “Shall we?” Dan asked.

  “We’re ready,” Janice said.

  “We’ll go in my car.” Dan hefted the box. For a moment, he thought it felt lighter, though he couldn’t have said for sure. “Have you counted it?”

  “My mother wouldn’t lie,” Janice said.

  “Then let’s go.”

  The town of Lion’s Head hugged a natural harbour at the base of the peninsula. Its population, under a thousand during the peninsula’s cold, squally winters, swelled to far greater numbers than it could contain with the influx of tourists each summer. The grey-white cliffs unfurled along the promontory, providing a backdrop to the town.

  Traffic slowed noticeably as they approached the town limits and passed a makeshift cabin that constituted the local LCBO. Dan tried to recall if it had been there when he was a boy. More likely back then you would have had to drive south to Owen Sound or north to Tobermory for alcohol. The good old days, when Sunday shopping was illegal and bootleggers did their best business after hours. There was always an eager entrepreneur waiting to make a buck on someone else’s backward laws.

  The downtown core bustled and crackled with people heading to the marina and its rows of tethered masts. Here, all roads ended at the water. Dan turned onto Whippoorwill Road. The street sign was riddled with holes. It might have been a woodpecker’s dream or somebody’s idea of a shooting gallery.

  The pavement curved out of sight up ahead, but the promontory across the way stayed with them as they drove. Janice began to call out lot numbers as they passed. Some of the lots were empty and overgrown with weeds and evergreens. Dan slowed as the numbers increased, keeping an eye out for signs they were being followed. So far, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

  He didn’t recognize it at first. But there was something about the curve in the road and how it gave onto a view of the bay. Even then he still wasn’t sure till they were passing the drive and he saw the outhouse with the sun and crescent moon carved into the door. Some things stayed with you forever. For Dan, that was one of them.

  He still recalled that final trip with his parents. The details came back effortlessly. On the fourth day there’d been an argument — over what he was never sure. The result was that they were leaving immediately. This very moment! his mother screamed. Get your things and get ready, Danny. His royal highness wants to go home, so we’re going home.

  That morning on their walk Sandy had stopped to sniff at something on the ridge behind the cottage. When Dan called him he’d taken off, enjoying his little game of hide and seek. He’d done it before and always showed up later, but now here was his mother telling him to get his things as his father packed the car.

  “Sandy’s not back yet,” Dan wailed.

  It had been a mistake to defy his father.

  “We’re going with or without that damned dog,” Stuart Sharp declared. “Too stupid to know what’s good for it. And that’s final.”

  Dan packed slowly, pretending to forget where he’d put one thing or another. Every now and then he went to the window and whistled, hoping Sandy would hear. But Sandy hadn’t returned by the time they were ready to leave. Against Dan’s protests, his father gunned the motor and headed down the road.

  Dan felt a sickness in his gut as he cried silently in the back seat. His dog was out there somewhere in the bush behind them, only he didn’t know where.

  It was the last time he saw Sandy. Then, just after Christmas, his mother had died. Both of them gone. Now here he was back again. For a moment he held his breath, feeling the same tension in the pit of his stomach, the remnants of the cottage floating past as the car headed around the curve.

  Number 36 lay just up ahead, a white, family-style cabin with a wraparound porch. The drive was obscured with tree branches. Dan parked on the side of the road. For a moment no one moved. They all sat there looking at it.

  “I’ll check it out,” Dan said. “I want you all to wait here.”

  “What about Jeremy?” Janice asked.

  “He won’t be here,” Dan said. “They’ll be keeping him somewhere safe till they get the money.”

  He stepped out and shut the car door, looking carefully around as he headed up the drive. The air was still. Nothing moved in the morning’s slowly accumulating heat. He climbed the stairs and tried the door handle. It opened easily onto a darkened interior. He stepped inside. The place smelled as though it had been shut up for years.

  It was a shadowy world cut off from everything. Time, people, places. As if it existed on its own, beyond good or bad. He turned at the sound of footsteps following behind him on the stairs.

  Eli came up carrying the hat box. “This it?” he asked softly, as though afraid of being overheard.

  Dan resisted the urge to snap at him for disobeying his order. Instead, he said simply, “Looks like it.”

  They wandered from room to room. In the kitchen, avocado-coloured appliances gleamed. Seventies retro. With a start Dan realized these were originals, barely touched. Mint condition. Somehow, the past had stood still. It was as though he were four again.

  They waited there, hardly daring to breathe. The feeling was intimate, like being so close to another person you felt the warmth of their breath on your skin. The silence pressed in, suffocating where it should have felt comforting.

  Dan couldn’t shake the sense that someone might suddenly spring out from a closet or behind a closed door. A note on the table in the same purple scrawl read: Gifts to be left here. Thanks for stopping by. Your present will be delivered by the time you get home. Don’t think about sticking around.

  “Put it there,” Dan said, pocketing the note.

  Eli placed the box on the table as carefully as if he were setting down a newborn baby.

  He stepped back. “Now what?”

  “Now we do exactly as we’re told. We leave.”

  “What if Jeremy’s around here somewhere?”

  “He won’t be anywhere near here,” Dan said. “Trust me. We’re probably being watched.”

  For a moment Dan thought he might have to take him away by force, but finally Eli submitted with a last troubled glance around the room.

  Back in the car, no one spoke. Dan turned to Janice and shook his head: No Jeremy. She understood. Her face fell.

  As he drove away, Dan looked in the rear-view mirror until the place was swallowed by trees. All roads led to the water. Someone in a boat would never be seen from the road. That’s how they will come, he thought.

  He stopped at a curve up ahead and turned to the others.

  “I’m getting off here. You drive on up ahead. When you get to the highway, find a place to stop and wait for me.”

  Eli grabbed his shoulder. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going back to see who shows up. I don’t want any of you with me.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Eli said.

  Dan turned and jabbed a finger in his face. “You stay here!”

  Eli froze. For a moment no one spoke.

  Dan turned to Janice and Ashley. “Don’t let him leave this car. When I’m ready, I’ll text you to come for me.”

  “You’ll get killed,” Janice said in a voice laced with panic.

  “They won’t see me. Now drive before it’s obvious we’re here.”

  Ashley slid behind the wheel as Dan stepped out of the car.

  Dan ducked into the brush and made his way back to the cottage. Crouching low, he could see the shore while staying hidden by the trees. Any abrupt movement on his part, however, and he would be seen by anyone watching from the water.

  It was another ten minutes before he heard the outboard motor. A small craft, it moved sleekly toward him across the bay. There were two men on board. One of them had a pair of binoculars. Dan watched him scan the shore. He’d brought his own binoculars, and noted the lack of identifying markers on the boat, no doubt making it handy for running cigarettes and alcohol across the border.

  The m
en wore caps and sunglasses. They were dressed in lightweight tracksuits, just a couple of pleasure riders out for a spin. From their movements, Dan could tell they were young, late twenties or early thirties. He snapped a couple of shots with his phone, holding as still as possible.

  The one behind the wheel directed the craft in to shore while the other secured it with a loop around a piling.

  It was all over in minutes. The man on shore made his way to the cottage and returned in less than thirty seconds with the box. Taking a quick look around, he slipped the rope off the piling and stepped back into the boat. They sped off. A minute later they were no more than a speck heading for the far side of the promontory.

  Dan traced his route back through the brush, texting as he went. A minute later he saw the car coming toward him.

  The mood was solemn.

  “Did you see anything?” Janice demanded.

  “Two men in a boat,” he told them. “I’m sorry. There was no sign of Jeremy.”

  “You always said it was a ‘they,’” Eli said.

  “Had to be. It was all too well coordinated. Let’s go. No sense sticking around here.”

  They stopped at Dennis’s cottage for the second car.

  “I’ll drive back with Janice and Ashley,” Eli said.

  “Okay, but be extra careful driving.” Dan looked at Ashley. “We’re all tired and a little tense.”

  She nodded. “I’ll be careful.”

  He let them get a head start as he checked his messages. There were three unanswered calls from Nick. Nothing in his voice mail. On my way back, he texted. No boy yet, but the drama’s over. The reply was immediate: You better be all right.

  He would have to get used to Nick worrying about him.

  He had just passed Owen Sound when his phone rang. Unknown number, unknown name.

  “Sharp.”

  “Is this Mr. Dan Sharp?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “This is Elroy James.”

  Curious timing, Dan thought.

  “Thank you for returning my call, Mr. James. I was beginning to think you didn’t exist.”