Dreamthorp

by Williamson, Chet

  Tom frowned. "'The best laid plans . . .' Well, at least now we know what we're fighting. What next?"

  "We get the carving."

  "And how do we do that? Our friend Spencer isn't going to hand it over."

  Charlie's eyes danced. "He doesn't have to. You're going to steal it."

  "Bullshit."

  "There's no other way we can get it, is there? You want to go to the authorities and explain this whole thing to them? See how fast they'll help us out?"

  "It's not going to be any help at all if I get caught."

  "Tom, you won't get caught."

  "How can you be so sure?"

  "Trust me, will you?"

  "I trusted you to talk Spencer into selling us the carving, and look how effective you were."

  "It's not nice to use irony on your elders."

  But ultimately Tom trusted Charlie enough to listen to him tell how he could steal the carving.

  The next day, a Thursday, they spent most of the day in the museum, going from room to room, checking on the comings and goings of the museum guards and the areas of the building in which Tom might be able to remain unseen until closing time. They finally decided upon a replica dry goods store that stood, with a number of other dimly lit establishments known as the Village Square, on the first floor of the vast building. That afternoon, on the way back to Dreamthorp, they stopped at a cycle shop in Cleona and bought an inexpensive helmet and a small biker's backpack.

  That evening over dinner, Tom told Laura that they had been unsuccessful in retrieving the carving. "So what now?" she asked him.

  "We're going to take it anyway."

  "Steal it?"

  He nodded. "Charlie and I have it worked out. I'm going to spend the night in the place. I'll have a backpack on, and I'll be carrying a helmet. I'll have food and whatever else I'll need, I'll hole up behind one of the exhibits, grab the thing at night, and leave the next morning."

  She shook her head. "Tom, this is going . . . too far. If you get caught, you'll go to jail, it's no joke."

  "And it's no joke that if I don't do it, these killings might keep happening until everybody dumb enough to stay in this town is dead."

  "That's still just a theory."

  "And the only one we've got." He took her hand. "Laura, I've got to do this."

  "I love you. I just don't want anything to happen to you. I don't want you in jail. They're bound to have an alarm system."

  "They do. A Pyrothonics X63. I don't know what it does, but with that name I wouldn't be surprised if it fired heat-seeking missiles."

  "Tom . . ."

  "It's not like I'm breaking in. I'll already be there. And I won't get caught, I promise. All right?"

  She squeezed his hand hard. "If you really think you have to."

  Tom smiled. "Hey, a man's gotta do—"

  "What a man's gotta do, I know." She smiled back. "That's what the Duke said before the Indians shot him."

  At the mention of Indians, their smiles faded. They sighed, and finished their dinner in silence.

  Tom and Charlie didn't go to the museum until mid afternoon, and were surprised and dismayed to find several groups touring the facility. "Friday must be bus day or something," Charlie said despondently.

  "Good timing, mastermind."

  "Well, how the hell was I supposed to know? It doesn't matter anyway. They'll clear out. The place is dark, you can see if anybody's coming, and once you're behind that counter, nobody will know you're there."

  "What if there's an electric eye? Or guard dogs? Or heat-sensing devices—that X63 thing?"

  "This is a state-funded museum, pal, not Star Trek. And you think they'd leave guard dogs where they could gnaw on all these expensive antiques? Hey, do you have to go to the bathroom? You're going to be hiding back there a long time, and you really shouldn't use them once the place is closed. The less you have to move around the better."

  Tom went one last time, and rejoined Charlie in the Village Square. "Four-thirty," Tom said. "Closing's in a half hour. And there's nobody around."

  Charlie nodded and stuck out his hand. Tom shook it. "Go for it," Charlie said.

  Tom climbed over the wooden barrier onto the porch, and stepped inside the small building. He paused for a moment, his heart thudding, expecting to hear alarm bells go off at any second. But nothing happened, and he moved quickly behind the counter. He was relieved to see that there was nothing already behind it, and that it was open underneath, so that he could lie in its shelter. The only way anyone could see him would be for them to come the whole way around the counter, and the odds against anyone doing that were long. He hoped.

  "Okay?" he heard Charlie whisper.

  "Okay," he replied, and listened to Charlie's footsteps moving away across the wooden plank floor. He was alone now, and he felt scared and excited all at once. It made him feel like a kid again, playing hide and seek, crouching in the dark summer night, listening for the soft footfalls of the person who was seeking, but hearing only his own heartbeat, his own quick breaths, so loud he thought the whole world had to hear them.

  The excitement was strangely sexual as well. He had had his first waking erection playing hide and seek, and he realized he had one now. For a moment he wished Laura were with him, and that they were both naked under the counter, making hot, quick love, stifling their moans of pleasure, feeling their silent climaxes only in the other's trembling.

  Okay, he thought, enough of that. Keep your mind on business. Be quiet. Just remember to be quiet.

  He sweated each time he heard footsteps, and before too long a group stopped right in front of his building, and a, guide began to talk about it for what seemed an interminable amount of time. As the lecture went on, Tom realized with a shock that he recognized the voice and in another second he knew that it was Spencer.

  He listened, hardly daring to breathe, as Spencer described what commerce was like in the nineteenth century, the types of dry goods sold, the prices paid, and a number of dry details. Just as Tom thought there was no more to say, he heard Spencer speak words that cramped his gut and brought his heart rate to a rapid tattoo.

  "And now, so that you can get a better idea of what these old general stores were really like, I'll open this gate, and you may step inside for a moment. Please be careful not to touch any of the items on display, as they are all authentic and some are very delicate."

  Oh Jesus, Tom thought, I've had it, I am fucking dead. There was, he felt, no alternative to discovery. A dozen scenarios raced thought his mind as he heard a latch click open, and by the time the first footsteps hit the porch, he thought the best one would be to simply wait until they filed in, then stand up and try to join them, stick to the rear of the group until they hit a place where he could slip away, and hope to God that no one was boorish enough to say something like, "Hey, what were you doing behind that counter?"

  Now the footsteps were crashing dangerously near him, and he tensed, preparing to slip around the side of the counter and straighten up, praying that he would not do so directly in front of Spencer's beady eyes.

  But just as Tom was about to move, he heard Spencer say in the tone of a maiden aunt who observes her rambunctious nephews preparing to gambol in her glassware, "All right, that's far enough, I think you can see everything from here."

  Attaboy, Spencer, Tom thought wildly. Keep 'em back. Don't let 'em touch those cracker boxes.

  Then, just as Tom was feeling as if he could finally take a very quiet, very shallow breath, a child's head came around the side of the counter, and the child's eyes looked directly at him. Tom froze.

  "Is any of this stuff still good to eat?" another child's voice asked.

  "Oh no," Spencer said. "All of these boxes are empty. There's no food in them."

  The boy continued to watch Tom. There was no expression on his face at all.

  "Where'd they keep the ice cream?" another voice said.

  "Well, they didn't sell packaged ice cream. They had to mak
e it at home. You see, back then there were no freezers. . . ."

  Spencer rambled on, and Tom and the little boy kept looking at each other. It was a standoff, Tom thought, in more ways than one. The kid saw him, but it could have been worse. Tom could have stood up and attempted to surreptitiously mingle with a bunch of four-foot-high children.

  "Well, it's almost closing time, so let's all go back out to the lobby now," said Spencer wearily.

  The little boy kept looking at Tom. Finally his mouth opened. "There's a man back there," he said.

  Tom scarcely had time to shudder before he heard another adult's voice. "Come on, Bobby."

  Bobby took one last look, then turned and walked out of Tom's line of vision. "There's a man back there," Bobby said again, in the same flat tone.

  "Yes, all right, come on," said the blessedly unbelieving parent or teacher or chaperon, and the voices and the footsteps slowly faded away, leaving Tom in safe, lovely silence.

  "Thank you, God," he whispered so that only he and God could hear, and then he relaxed, let himself slump down onto the wooden floor, his hands beneath his head, and began to wait.

  Tom did not stir from his shelter until after midnight. By then he had become familiar with the schedule of the guard, at least for the area in which he hid. He had heard someone walking by, keys jingling, at 6:20, 8:24, and 10:27. He waited for the guard's return, and was not disappointed, for at 12:22 he heard the familiar footsteps.

  Just before they faded away, he crawled out from under the counter, stretched his legs, and went in the direction he thought the guard had taken. It would be better, he and Charlie had figured, to stay near the guard. That way he would know where the man was at all times, and the guard would not be able to take Tom by surprise.

  Tom drifted silently in his Reeboks across the smooth floors and followed the guard toward the lobby, where Tom waited until the gray-clad man climbed up the escalator steps to the second and then the third floor. When Tom heard him walk into the exhibit area on his right, he ran up the stairs himself, three at a time, dashed around the huge curving mezzanine that surrounded the gigantic sculpture of William Penn, and leapt up the steps to the third floor. At the top he listened for the guard's progress through the Hall of Geology, then stepped inside the doorway and stood behind a giant globe, where he waited until he heard the guard come out the other side and descend the escalator stairs again.

  On his way back down, Tom thought. He wasn't, thank God, checking the offices on the fourth floor where they had talked to Spencer and where the carving was stored. He found the nearest stairway, but hesitated before pushing it open, wondering if an alarm would sound. Then he decided it probably wouldn't, that if power to the escalators and elevators was shut off, any alarms on the stairs would probably be disconnected for the guards. God, but there were a lot of things he hadn't thought about. And Charlie hadn't either. When and if Tom got out of here, he intended to roast the older man thoroughly for it.

  It turned out to be easier than he had thought. Unlike the exhibit areas, the offices were dark but unlocked, and Tom used the flashlight he had brought in his backpack to find Spencer's desk. The room behind it, however, where Spencer had indicated that the carving was kept, was locked, as was the desk, and there was no way of forcing it. But Tom had worked around offices, so he slipped on his Playtex gloves and found a thin, silver key under the carpet remnant on which Spencer kept his typewriter. The key unlocked the desk, and in the center drawer Tom found a ring of larger keys, one of which fit the storage room lock. He entered the room, closed the door behind him, shone the flashlight around to make sure there were no windows, and flicked on the light.

  Wooden shelves lined the room, making it feel smaller than it really was. The shelves were quite worn, and Tom suspected that they had been moved here from some older building. Tables ran the twenty-foot length of the room as well, and on them were a variety of objects—a multitude of arrowheads and axe heads, dusty beads of all shapes and sizes, a scattering of what looked like very old human bones, and a number of crude carvings. Tom saw the quartz almost immediately.

  It must be his imagination, he thought, but the white quartz seemed luminously bright, and when he picked it up he could have sworn that it shivered like something living in his grasp, as if it knew it had a purpose to fulfill and that he was the instrument of its rescue.

  Attached to it with a piece of string was a tag that read, "Lenape/S. Hershey-6/24." Tom put the carving in his backpack, moved to the door, turned off the light, and went back into the office. He locked the storage room, replaced the keys in Spencer's desk, locked it, and slipped the desk key back into its hiding place. Then, listening for the footsteps of the dutifully constant guard, he made his way back down to the exhibit area, down the escalator stairs, and into the prototypical turn of the century town, where he crawled into his under-the-counter sanctuary with a great deal of relief.

  He did not dare sleep for fear of snoring while the guard passed by, so he put the knapsack under his head and let the hard, irregular carving prod his skull as he considered how he and Charlie—and Laura, if she were willing—would replace it in the grave from which it had been taken.

  Despite such morbid thoughts and the physical discomfort his knotty, quartz pillow caused him, Tom fell asleep, and awoke to the sound of footsteps and strange voices. He almost cried out when he opened his eyes and saw the panel of rough wood above him. For a split second he thought that he was dead and in his coffin before he realized where he really was. Then he breathed a sigh of relief and stretched his limbs. He looked at his watch and saw that it was just after opening time, nine o'clock. Charlie was due to arrive between nine-thirty and ten.

  Just after ten o'clock, Tom heard Charlie's voice. "Allie-allie in free, campers," it said.

  Tom wasted no time. He rolled out from under the counter, grabbed the backpack, and jumped to his feet. His legs, cramped from their long rest, nearly buckled under him, but he stayed on his feet, came out on the porch, climbed over the rail, and stood next to Charlie Lewis. His smile told Charlie all he needed to know.

  "You got it," Charlie said.

  "I got it.''

  "Excellent. Then may I suggest, Raffles, that we get the hell out of here before the swag is missed?"

  Tom was apprehensive as he crossed the lobby and rode down the escalator, but no one approached them, no burly guard yelled, "Hey! What you got in that knapsack?" and in a few minutes they were out on the street walking toward Charlie's car. "And now?" Tom asked as they drove toward Dreamthorp.

  "And now we bury it. The thing you risked life, limb, and liberty for, we're going to stick in the ground."

  "Did you call Laura?"

  "Yeah. She's going to meet us."

  Despite the hot summer air blowing in through the car windows, a chill ran through Tom. "Jesus, Charlie, not at the grove?"

  "Of course not, you think we're stupid? At her cottage." Charlie frowned. "She doesn't seem too enthralled by all this."

  "Doesn't believe it, you mean?" Charlie nodded. "Laura's a very practical lady. And there are easier things to believe."

  "Not about all this, my boy," Charlie said.

  On many a day in every year does a man remember what took place on that selfsame day in some former year, and chews the sweet or bitter herb of memory, as the case may be.

  —Alexander Smith, Dreamthorp

  As she waited, Laura thought about magic. If what Charlie and Tom believed was true, then magic existed. Old magic. The magic of shamans and medicine men and painted primitives dancing beneath trees, worshipping strange gods.

  She couldn't believe it. She had tried, had endeavored with all her might to enter into their fantasy, to believe that all these deaths were caused by old magic, by disturbed spirits, by wood haunted by long-dead Indians, still vengeful, still violent.

  But it seemed too absurd, like an old movie on Night Owl Theatre with Christopher Lee, and she wondered how many of those Tom and Charlie
had seen in their lives. Maybe it was easy for them to believe such things with the evidence they had.

  But Laura was different from them. Laura had gazed upon the face of true evil in a lantern-lit tent on a summer night, and she would know forever after that what she had then seen was the true magic, the new magic, the twentieth century magic of madness and hate that no incantation could drive away. No mystic words or charms or gestures could defeat the magic of nameless Gilbert Rodman and his faceless kind. Only force, heavy and terrible, could destroy that heavy and terrible magic. No weaving of spells, as delicate as a tapestry, would do. Instead of a tapestry, this new magic called for a plastic bag, thick as lead, tied over the face of this new evil to suffocate it in the breath of its own depravity. Instead of a quartz amulet, it called for a bullet in the head, a knife under the heart, a shotgun blast to the face. Only such things could wipe away its smug, confident leer, its expression of power, supreme and lofty, knowing and unknown.

  Laura's hands drifted over her collection of firearms, picking them up one by one, feeling the superb balance, the craftsmanship visible in the fit of the housing, the silken polish of the wood, beautifully grained and finished. She hefted a twelve-gauge Purdy that had been her father's, held the butt to her shoulder, aimed across the room at the opposite wall, felt the warmth of the wood against her cheek, caught the scent, light and spectral and momentary, of her father, then the odor of burnt gunpowder, power released.

  She brought the shotgun down and touched the stock where her cheek had rested. It was still warm from her skin, beaded like dew with her sweat. She brushed away the light dampness, but the warmth remained, and the walnut wood seemed alive and stirring, like a pool into which her fingers might gladly plunge.

  Wood.

  This was wood too, wasn't it? Just like deadly pillars, fatal trunks, treacherous planks and boards. But this wood could protect her. This wood and this metal, for in it was power, power to kill the new magic, the modern magic that still haunted her, despite love and what she knew to be truth.