Thorn

by Fred Saberhagen

  Delaunay Seabright, also in robe over pajamas, slippers on his feet, was standing at Mary’s right. Another ski-masked man was holding the muzzle of another, shorter weapon against the back of Delaunay’s head.

  “Mary,” Delaunay said. There was only a small tremor in his voice, which was basically calm and careful. “Mary? Do what they say.”

  “Oh. Uh.”

  “Mary. Listen to me. Keep control of yourself.”

  To this at last she gave some kind of an assent.

  As if he had been waiting to see what her reaction would be, the masked man holding his gun at Del’s uncombed gray head now spoke for the first time: “Move along.”

  The other gunman gestured and prodded Mary ahead of him, toward the descending stairs. Turning briefly, a few steps down, Mary saw that Ellison and Stephanie had come out of their rooms and were watching. They had stopped as if the first sight of the gunmen had petrified them in their tracks. One of the masked men had turned round too, and was motioning silently for Ellison and Stephanie to follow—keeping them, Mary thought, in sight, away from telephones.

  As Ellison obeyed, advancing slowly, he moved into a patch of security light from one of the hall windows and Mary got a look at his face. It was a good look.

  She was prodded again, and turned, proceeding down the stairs.

  At the foot of the stairs, on the floor of the great hall, some of the household staff were assembled, as for a called meeting. Not pausing in his slow descent, the man who was pointing a gun at Mary raised his voice, including them all as he recited a small speech.

  “You’ll be hearing from us about Delaunay Seabright. Getting him back is gonna cost you a lot of money. But this woman here”—a gun barrel poked Mary’s back—”is just insurance. Now get this clear. I don’t want to see police cars following us—we’ll leave her brains on the pavement for them to run over. I don’t want to see or hear no choppers overhead—they’ll see us put her out of the car doing eighty. We got high explosives out there in our truck too—if worst comes to worst we’ll go that way, and take both these people with us. We got all the cards. That girl on the floor upstairs is there because she ran, she panicked, and to show that we mean business.

  “Got all that? Remember? Don’t forget to explain it all to the pigs when you call ’em in.”

  Mary had turned her head slightly again. Ellison Seabright understood, all right. All too well, as Mary saw. Oh, Ellison’s face was controlled, but Ellison’s face knew. He was frightened, perhaps, but neither surprised nor terrorized. When one of the masked gunmen looked at him, he nodded, twice, and that was the only objective sign of his complicity in the plot that Mary had been able to name to the police later. Other people probably nodded, too. But as she watched him there grew in Mary the incommunicable certainty of his guilt. He had known all along that his brother was going to be kidnapped tonight, and Ellison was very glad beneath his fright.

  Mary and Delaunay went helplessly the rest of the way down the stairs, passing among the motionless, helpless servants to the great front door. Now in an alcove at the far side of the great hall one man of the household staff was observed in the act of trying to pick up a phone.

  “Put it down, you, put it down! Or we kill her right here, and take one of you in her place.”

  The butler put it down.

  Then Mary, Delaunay, and the two kidnappers had passed through the front door and were outside. The great dogs were still savaging the air with their noise, fenced away (by sheer accident, it was later testified) where they could not get at the marauders. The night was a warm one for so early in the spring. On the gravel drive there waited in darkness a late model pickup truck with an elongated cab containing a rear seat. The vehicle was tall as a Blazer, with high road clearance, standing on grotesquely rugged all-terrain tires. Mary was prodded up into the back seat, then pushed down into a crouching position on the floor between the front seat and the back. Her whole body was forced into the narrow space where people riding in the rear seat would ordinarily have some trouble fitting in their legs and feet. The cab was broad, the front seat evidently had plenty of room for three, big Del included. A burlap cloth, under the circumstances an effective blind, was thrown over Mary. Doors slammed. Then one of the abductors, leaning back from the front seat in what must have been a strained position, dug a gunbarrel joylessly into her elevated rump.

  “No jokes, Seabright. You understand that? I’ll blow her ass right off.”

  “I understand.”

  The truck’s engine roared. Gravel flew up from the drive to bang the fenders. In moments they were on paved road, having passed through a front gate that was obviously being held open somehow. Almost from the very start of the ride, Mary lost track of where they were. Different types of pavement roared under the rough, speeding tires, but she could not think coherently to tell what the changes signified. Now they must be on some main highway, for speed was constant. The heavy-duty shock absorbers in this off-road vehicle made even the highway ride a relatively rough one, kept death’s obscene metal organ jiggling against her body. From time to time there was a little talk of some kind among the three men; Mary could hear murmuring but in the roar of rough tires and racing engine she could not understand a word.

  With heartfelt fervor she recited prayers, and fragments of prayers, that yesterday she would not have been able to remember. The ride remained continuously fast; there was little traffic to contend with in these lost hours of the morning, and as far as Mary could tell there were no pursuers either.

  In Mary’s original experience the ride had been mercilessly long, containing lifetimes of terror. But duration in this reliving was somehow modified, her time in the back seat cut short. Moving cautiously in her cramped, aching position, she registered the fact that at some recent time the gunbarrel had been removed from her flank. She tilted her head under the burlap, enough to see that dawn had begun to filter into the cab. By now the truck had slowed somewhat from its headlong highway rush. It seemed to be jouncing at thirty miles an hour or so over an unpaved road.

  The vehicle, without slowing, turned rather sharply. It slowed down, then, and turned again, with a shifting of gears. The men in front had been silent now for a long time. Now Mary felt a perceptible tilting. The road must be climbing rather steeply. Turning, climbing, shifting, went on for another immeasurable time. Mary was taken completely by surprise when brakes brought the vehicle to a halt and the engine was turned off.

  She didn’t try to move immediately; she wasn’t sure she would be able. The door behind her opened, and cold air rushed into the cab along with the new day’s light. Now her burlap cover was pulled off. Groaning, she tried to rise on her numbed arms and legs.

  She was alone in the truck. The men had got out already and were standing together just outside. Del’s head was bowed, his gray hair disheveled. The vehicle had been parked on a steep slope, so it looked almost in danger of tipping sideways. It stood on a segment of primitive road, whose ruts were cut so deeply as to be impassable to an ordinary car. On all sides grew tall trees, the vague shade of their needled branches dimming the predawn whiteness of the sky. One of the masked men, standing just outside the downhill door, reached to take Mary by the arm as soon as she had risen halfway on her deadened limbs. He half-helped, half-pulled her out.

  The other gunman stood patiently pointing his long-barreled weapon right at the midsection of Delaunay Seabright, whose hands, Mary now saw, had been bound behind him. Del had raised his head and was looking at Mary. Across some tremendous gulf, as it seemed to her. The man who held her arm dragged her away from the truck. Her legs were barely functional. They crossed a space of thin tree growth that could hardly be called a clearing, and approached a small, weathered cabin that Mary did not see until it was only twenty feet away.

  “Mary,” Del called after her in a hollow voice. “Chin up. You’ll get out of this.”

  She glanced back at him, but could think of nothing to call out in retur
n. One of her bare feet trod on a patch of hard-frozen snow. They were somewhere high in the mountains, toward Flagstaff. The cabin was almost invisible under the tall pines and fir. Its door squeaked loudly in the still mountain air as the man with Mary yanked it open. Darkness still ruled inside, and when the door shut again behind her, full night had returned. There seemed to be no windows in the rude shack, no openings at all besides the single door. She stumbled ahead across an earthen floor, trying to make her legs start working properly, rubbing her arms. Near one wall her feet found stones suggesting the remnants of a hearth. She bent, groping, to discover a fireplace of sorts, a chimney. The aperture was much to small for her to think of trying to force herself inside.

  Suddenly the door behind her was opened again, letting in some light. One of the masked men, wearing a bolstered pistol and carrying a hunting knife along with some lengths of cord, came in. He said nothing. Repressing an urge to struggle, to scream pointlessly, Mary let him tie her hands behind her back, her ankles firmly together.

  When the job of binding her was done, tightly, the man went out again and vanished from sight somewhere, leaving the door open. Standing in the middle of the cabin floor, she could see just the rear end of the truck, protruding from behind a thick double tree-trunk. Delaunay was standing near the large tree. His robe was open in front, so he must be cold in his pajamas. His hands were still behind his back, and his ankles had been tied now too, so that when he turned toward Mary and the cabin the movement was an awkward shuffle. The second masked demon was still looking over Del’s shoulder from behind.

  “Mary?” Del called again. “Are you all right?” The real concern in his voice was plain.

  “So far,” Mary managed to get out. It seemed that under present conditions such trivia as wrenched joints, numbed limbs, chills, and nervous exhaustion did not deserve notice.

  The man standing behind Del poked him with something, making him sway forward. Then he inched a little closer to the cabin in his bound-ankle shuffle. He cleared his throat. “Mary, they tell me the plan is this. You are to be left here, tied up but unharmed. They’ll phone the police and tell them where you can be found. Returning you safely in this way is meant to show that I’ll be safely returned, too, as soon as the ransom’s paid. Details about the ransom will be passed along soon. Right?” Del turned his head to ask the question; the mask behind him nodded.

  Del went on: “Neither you nor I have seen these men’s faces, Mary. We’ve hardly heard them speak. Neither of us will be able to identify them. So, I believe them when they say they’ll let me go as soon as they’re paid. Now I want you to emphasize that, to everyone, when you’re set free. Will you do that?”

  Set free. Set free. Mary could hardly hear or understand another word beyond those two. Del was staring at her strangely. With a great effort she finally managed to make her brain function, and her tongue. “Tell everyone you believe you will be released. If the ransom’s paid. Yes, yes, I will.”

  “Please do, Mary. They also say they’ll kill me if the ransom isn’t paid, and I believe them about that, too. Is that all?” The two masked men were both standing with Del now; he looked at them, one after the other, and received a single nod.

  Del nodded toward Mary. “You’re going to have to do something to protect her from the cold. It’ll be hours.”

  One of the men moved away, toward the half-visible truck. A truck door opened and closed. He came back, bearing an armload of blankets; rough, brown, army-surplus-looking things. He draped them wordlessly round Mary’s shoulders, front and back. As long as she did not move much, they should remain. Then he went out of the cabin again and with his companion took hold of Del.

  They dragged him off among the concealing trees, out of sight toward the truck. The last words that she heard from Del were: “It’ll be warmer, Mary, when the sun gets up. Hang on. Help will come.”

  Could it be that she had never said goodbye to Del at all? Had never given any last words of encouragement to that old man who had done so much for her. She had heard the truck doors opening and closing, once again. And then, moments later, the totally unexpected blast.

  * * *

  Mary had collapsed onto the earth floor, groaning, at the explosion. Something terrible was happening again, though she could not at first grasp what. The brief thudding of debris upon the cabin roof kept her crouched down. One piece hit so hard that dust and fine fragments fell from the inside of the crude roof. She huddled there for an endless time, in a dazed state approaching madness.

  Light grew slowly outside the cabin door, which had been blocked open with a piece of branch. Day had come officially. Birds started to sing at last. Mary could smell the burning, and she could hear the faint crackle if she listened. The woods were wet, almost dripping, branches decked with late spring snow, or else they might have gone right up. Gas burned, rubber burned, other things burned and she could smell them when the breeze blew some of the smoke toward the cabin.

  When finally she began to try to look out of the cabin door, she could no longer see the pickup anywhere as an integral object. Only debris, unidentifiable pieces of this and that, lay within Mary’s field of vision outside the cabin.

  After a tune she painfully dragged herself, losing some blankets in the process, over to the door. From there she could see more. There lay a fender. One of the truck’s wheels had come to a stop against the cabin wall.

  After another time she raised her eyes. On the other side of the semi-clearing, Del’s robe was draped between two high branches of a Ponderosa pine. The robe sagged like a laden hammock. There was no sign of Del’s head or hands or feet, but the robe was certainly not empty…

  …and the scene of the cabin and the wreckage began to vanish. This vanishment was a process as intermittent as the disappearance of the lights of a house passed on the road at night behind a long screen of trees.

  On the road at night. Driving a lonely road, while slowly and surely things seen passed away.

  Driving, riding, along a desert road, with her head slumped on a shoulder that gave her, oh, such a marvelous feeling of security…

  She was back in the jouncing truck again, but no it was not the truck this time thank God it was the Blazer, and Mary was upright in the right front seat. Ahead of her the headlights speared continuously along a curve of high desert road, narrow unpaved road with bear grass and cactus along its sides. There were no other lights to be seen, in all the midnight land about.

  She had gone to the Seabright house, to pick up her things, with Thorn…

  Thorn.

  He was driving, and he glanced sideways at her for a moment, mildly, as the weight of her head came fully up off his shoulder.

  She drew a hard breath.

  “Softly, Mary. Gently! It is all right. You were remembering some unpleasant things.”

  “I was … I was right there…”

  “No, you were not there tonight. I had started to drive in the direction of the cabin, the place where the explosion happened. But it proved unnecessary to take you there. Everything worked, you were able to tell me all era route. So we are now heading back toward Phoenix—that pleasant glow in the sky ahead is from the city’s lights. We shall be there in a couple of hours.”

  A couple of hours. She yearned for the lovely city. She felt weak inside, as though recovering from an illness. Loneliness and night and disorientation overcame her. She had never felt so far from home in all her life. She had never understood before how runaways must really feel.

  Weakness turned her back toward childhood. She was a bad girl, and she wept now, for all the sins of her past life. For infatuation and sex in Idaho. For broken promises. For living with Robby, endangering his immortal soul. Was it really his idea or hers that they should not get married?

  Thorn glanced at her again. “Ah. You are experiencing a common reaction to the experience you have just been through. It will pass. Presently you will feel much better.”

  “What experience hav
e I been through? What have you done to me?” The words came out in a snuffle.

  “What have I done? Very little. Ah, here we are. I must obtain some petrol.”

  In half a minute the deep invisibility of the night gave forth a small, almost abandoned looking gas station into the headlights. Thorn could hardly have seen the place before the headlights picked it out; he must, thought Mary, vaguely be familiar with this road. Anyway, the place was certainly closed, utterly dark and still.

  Thorn pulled in, though, and up to the gas pumps, and turned off his engine as confidently as if he had seen some of those television-commercial attendants cartwheeling out to give him service. When the headlights went out, Mary saw that a thick crescent of desert moon had risen, to make the setting a ghostly stage.

  “I shall be only a moment,” Thorn said from just outside the vehicle, and slammed the door carelessly behind him.

  Mary was not going to offer any comments on the practicality of trying to get gas here tonight; not now, and not to Thorn. With great relief, though, she found some of her mental strength returning. All right, she had done some things in her life that were wrong, but nothing all that terrible. Even when she closed her eyes again, Thorn’s face seemed to hang before them. It wasn’t his fault that she felt lousy. He understood. And he didn’t want her to cry, to suffer.

  For some reason, what Thorn wanted had suddenly become important to her. Even more important than—than—was it really love that she knew with Robby, after all?

  She opened her eyes again, just in time to see her companion vanish beside the silent station. Yes, vanish was the right word, though the building was near, and the moonlight fairly bright, it seemed that he had just disappeared.

  Mary waited quietly, wondering if the owner perhaps lives somewhere in back, and had heard the car door slam—