The Maddening

by Andrew Neiderman

Tami didn’t say anything. She was grateful for Shirley’s impatience and the speed with which Shirley started for the house. They moved at almost a trot, back through the field and up the small hill. Tami was afraid to look anywhere but down. Even the stars above them were frightening out here. This time, however, for some reason Shirley took them around the other side of the barn and they approached the house from the west. She paused when they reached the backhoe.

  “Let’s go back inside,” Tami pleaded.

  “Wait.” Shirley was quiet for a moment. “Listen.”

  At first Tami heard nothing. Her heartbeat was still too emphatic. Her ears were drowning in the sound of her own pulse, but when her pulse faded, she heard it. She heard it distinctly and a cold, sharp chill rippled up from her stomach into her throat. Something, somewhere, was scratching dirt.

  “It’s…Arthur,” Shirley whispered. “He’s going somewhere under the ground.”

  Tami’s mouth froze open. She was numbing quickly from the feet up, feeling as though she was sinking into ice water. At any moment Arthur would emerge from under the ground. He would pop up right before them.

  Shirley keyed in on the direction from where the sound came and started to move toward it. Tami didn’t feel her feet lifting and falling to the earth. She felt as light as a feather; she felt as if Shirley maneuvered her like a kite on a string.

  They were moving toward the well.

  “Shirley.” Gerald’s voice shattered the darkness. Tami thought it sounded like a thousand icicles falling around her and smashing into diamonds. “Shirley, Damn you!”

  “Oh, no,” Shirley muttered. “Shh,” she said, but Tami thought she said it to herself.

  “Where the hell are you?”

  “We’re comin’,” she shouted.

  “Get your ass in here,” Gerald responded.

  They hurried to the back of the house. Gerald stood on the porch, his hands on his hips. He seemed to be swelling into a bigger and bigger version of himself as they approached. Tami shrank behind Shirley. When they reached the steps, Gerald slapped his hand down on Shirley’s neck and practically lifted her bodily up to the porch. She screamed in pain and Tami cowered.

  “Who told you you could go out there? Who told you?”

  “Nobody.”

  “So why did you go?”

  “I wanted to see Arthur. I wanted to show Donna Arthur.”

  Gerald seemed stunned. “Didn’t I tell you never to go there without first asking me? Didn’t I?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Now get your ass into this house and get ready for bed.”

  He pushed her toward the door and looked down at Tami. “Move it,” he said. She hurried to the door. Shirley turned around before opening the screen door.

  “We heard him. We heard Arthur,” she said. “He’s digging his way toward the house,” she said. Gerald saw Irene standing just inside, listening.

  “Get the hell inside, you idiot,” Gerald responded. He looked to Irene to see if she had heard what Shirley had said. If she had, she didn’t let on. “Go on,” he said and the children scrambled in. Irene greeted them and took them upstairs.

  As soon as they were gone, Gerald looked out into the night. He listened and then felt stupid for doing so.

  Arthur is gone, he thought. It was a mistake to let Shirley know where he was buried, but she had seen him plant the small tree and he felt some obligation to Arthur to let his sister know.

  Scratching in the earth. The image filled him first with horror and then with anger.

  “We’re all scratching in the earth,” he muttered. He turned to go back into the house where at least there was light and warmth and the promise of some bodily pleasure.

  David heard the man crying out. He stopped his slow and careful climbing and listened keenly, recognizing the sound of a young girl’s cry in response. But he didn’t hear the sound of Tami’s voice. What did that mean? The voices faded and then the silence returned. He continued to wait, standing precariously on the few inches of ledge provided by a protruding stone.

  Actually, he had traveled only half a dozen feet upward, worming his way in a zigzag direction determined by where the rocks jutted out sufficiently to get a good foot and hand-hold. All the while he forced himself to fight against allowing the pain in his leg to overwhelm him, blocking the constant messages from his brain. He did it by putting all of his attention and concentration on groping for a stone with which to raise his body inches at a time.

  Whenever he rested, the pain surged over him, and with it would come reprimands. Why did he go out by himself? Why didn’t he wait for the police? Why didn’t he insist some patrolmen join him once he found out that Stacey had indeed taken Willow Road? Didn’t he know that a man alone always placed himself in more jeopardy? Now he had succeeded in only making things worse.

  The chastisement was justified. It depressed him, but he told himself he had no choice but to fight the trouble he had brought on himself. The only alternative was to surrender to the horror.

  Besides, he had been in bad situations before. He had faced seemingly insurmountable odds and found solutions. Crisis was a keynote of his job. True, they weren’t life and death crises, but they were serious nevertheless, and he had to suffer the consequences for failure. He had the grit and the determination; he was confident.

  He reached upward again, feeling his way along the rough stones. What worried him now was the condition of his hands. If he should bawl himself out for anything, he thought, it would be for having let himself go soft since graduate school. He should have been out there with his men more often, working beside them, getting away from the blueprints and paperwork.

  All of the excuses he had concocted for not exercising now flooded back to him like the bad taste of sour food. He was never a good athlete in school, but he had been harder and at base physically fit. Something like this would never have happened to Bill Cullen, his foreman, he reflected, then criticized himself for the useless thought.

  No one could have anticipated this. Even a policeman might have been taken by surprise, and although the policeman could’ve boasted more physical strength, he might not have matched David’s determination. He wasn’t going to berate himself anymore. He was doing all right. Sure, his fingers and palms were skinned and felt as though little pins were in them, but he would ignore that pain just as well as he was ignoring the pain in his leg.

  He pulled himself up farther, dangling for a moment by grasping two rocks securely and bringing his left leg up until it jutted out. Then he straightened up very slowly, feeling his way along the well wall until he found what he considered to be a solidly embedded rock.

  As he climbed in this torturously slow fashion, he began to hallucinate. The stones took on personalities. There were good ones and bad ones: they were filled with sympathy for him and wanted to help him, or they favored the madman and tried to prevent David’s escape. When a rock scratched him or pressed into his skin painfully, he cursed it. But when a rock appeared miraculously above him, thrusting out enough to give him a good grasp or support, he thanked and stroked it with appreciation.

  He was grateful for the darkness now. True, if there was a good deal of light, he would see his way upward and scale the wall more quickly; but he might also be tempted to look down, and once he reached the last third of the journey, he could grow dizzy and invite disaster. To fall again might very well prove fatal, he thought; so he was happy that whenever he did look down to check his footing he saw only a thick mat of darkness.

  He estimated that he was now only a few more feet to the halfway point. He had no idea how long it had taken to get this far. His concept of time was distorted, maybe a result of his other hallucinations. At this moment he had the impression it would soon be morning. He had been down here all night. The sky above did look brighter, he thought, or was that some mirage?

  Questions about what he would do once he did pull himself out of the well needled him. He brushed them aside, n
ot wanting to deal with them now; he didn’t want anything to break his concentration. It was too dangerous. This climbing was more like critical surgery. He was cutting his way up through the darkness and a mistake could spell his doom.

  He couldn’t help wondering what would happen if he plunged to the bottom. What if his good leg broke? What if he broke an arm in the fall? Even if nothing else happened to him, did he have it in him to start over again? Would he just lie back and cry for help?

  Forget that, he told himself. Forget it. The rock ahead, that’s all that matters. Funny, he thought. After all the years of education and work; after all the experiences, all the politics and all the success, his life boiled down to a piece of rock jutting out far enough for him to get a sufficient grasp. If he found no rocks to serve him ahead, then all he had achieved would end up crumpled at the bottom of a useless well.

  I’ll never look down on rocks again, he promised and almost laughed aloud. He was definitely cracking up. The effort and the mental strain was driving him mad. Even if he did reach the top of the well and pulled himself up and out of it, he would reenter the world a raving maniac.

  Reenter the world, he thought. That’s what I’m doing. I’m coming back up from the land of the dead. This is a resurrection of sorts. At least I have a chance to resurrect. How many poor souls dropped into the earth have a chance to pull themselves out of their graves?

  “Lazarus Oberman,” he heard himself say. This time he did laugh aloud. Actually, it brought him some welcome mental relief. There was a small echo and then…in his madness…he heard all the “bad” rocks chide him.

  They thought he would fail; they expected him to slip and fall into the abyss.

  “Shut up,” he said. “Shut up.”

  He reached upward again, found another firm rock, and began to pull himself upward. But then his foot slipped and for a moment he dangled, held only by the strength in his left hand. He didn’t know from where he drew the strength, but he was able to regain his footing and begin to hoist himself again.

  He scaled another good five feet before he stopped and pressed his face against the well wall. He had to rest. The pain was excruciating. It made the aching in his arms and shoulders seem insignificant, even though he knew that to be almost as intense. All this forced him to wonder what he would do once he got up and out. Perhaps he would be worthless after it was over. Perhaps he would collapse on the ground above and the madman would simply find him and toss him down again.

  Can’t think like that, he thought. Can’t defeat myself with my own thoughts. Stacey…Tami…think of them. Think only of them.

  He took some deep breaths and risked wiping his face with his right hand. He was surprised at the roughness of the palm. So many scratches and blisters had formed that his hand was numb. For a moment he was afraid he wouldn’t get it to work. Those fingers couldn’t lock on him now. They had to bend and grasp or he was doomed.

  “Don’t let me down now,” he whispered. Indeed, every part of his body seemed independent of the rest of him. He told his good foot it had to do its job and he told his arms and shoulders not to feel so sorry for themselves; they weren’t any worse off than the rest of him. “How would you like to be my broken leg, huh? Think of that before you send some more of that pain into my brain.”

  He pulled himself back in very tiny, slow motions again, and groped upward to test the stones for the right one. When he found it, he felt a sense of elation. He would do it; he would make it. He grasped the stone and felt along the wall with his other hand until he found another. Then he pulled himself upward again, climbing toward the opening, climbing toward the stars.

  9

  Maggie Ross looked up slowly from the love seat in the living room when she heard the front door slam. She had dozed off in front of the television set while waiting for Chicky to return. It was far from the first time she had had to eat alone, spoiling an evening. They were supposed to go with the Kasofskys to the Forestburg Theater to see the summer stock production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

  Even though she ended up not going anywhere, she did not rush to take off her dark blue silk dress, the one she had worn to the Stanfords’ wedding last year. She didn’t have many opportunities to wear a formal dress and she had been looking forward to going out tonight. The theater, even a summer stock theater, seemed like an appropriate occasion. After all, she had gone to Metamorphosis to have all the gray taken out of her hair, and then had it cut and styled after the hairdo Linda Evans had on the cover of TV Guide last week. Chicky had admired it so much, she thought, or was he just admiring Linda Evans?

  She couldn’t blame him if he was, and besides, she was proud of the fact that she didn’t have the insecurity some women felt when their men cast admiring glances at other women. Why, look at Toby Robbins. She even forbade Carl’s bringing Playboy magazine into the house, though they had no young children at home.

  Chicky had never given her a reason to feel insecure. He’d joke with the boys and say things like, “If my wife let me out of this marriage, I’d never get into another one,” but she knew he didn’t mean it. They had been married for nearly thirty-four years and, during that time, he never gave her reason to be jealous of another woman. If she was jealous of anything, it was his job. Just look at what happened tonight.

  Now she sat in her living room, her dress unzipped down the back to her waist, falling asleep to the hum of the television. She was frustrated, but the frustration deepened when Chicky entered the house. One look at his face told her she couldn’t blame him.

  At first he didn’t see her so she caught him unaware before he could school his features into a mask of satisfaction. His face was still streaked with dirt from crawling under the bungalow casino. His shirt was unbuttoned and he slouched with fatigue. He wore a tired, disgusted expression, his eyes half closed, his mouth pinched in a grimace. After he closed the door softly behind him, she spoke.

  “What happened this time?” she asked. She continued to look at the television set, pretending only vague interest.

  “We broke this burglary case and had to wrap it up. Sorry.”

  Maggie had propped her right elbow on the arm of the love seat, her face resting against her hand. She provided an emphatic contrast to Chicky. She was small-framed and petite and stood just five foot two. Old friends had nicknamed them Laurel and Hardy, and indeed one Halloween they had gone to a costume party dressed that way.

  “The Kasofskys didn’t go either,” she said. “They felt sorry for us and they exchanged our tickets for next Tuesday. You’re off next Tuesday, right?” she asked quickly. “I checked the calendar.”

  “As far as I know. But you know how Krammer gets. He could wake up one morning and decide the whole department has to be rearranged.”

  Maggie straightened up and shook her head.

  “Your hair really looks great,” he said. “And you’re still dressed. Maybe I should take you out anyway.”

  “No, it’s too late,” she said. She had half considered that possibility, but the moment she set eyes on him, she knew it wouldn’t be fair. “I bet you didn’t eat a thing. Are you hungry?”

  “For what? Another gourmet diet platter? No. Just thirsty,” he added before she could respond. “I’ll shower and have a stiff Tom Collins.”

  “Go ahead. I’ll put out some cheese and crackers and fix your drink,” she said.

  “Low-fat cheese, I bet.” He made a face like a kid who wasn’t going to get his ice cream.

  “You know it, fatso.”

  He laughed and started for the bedroom.

  “Oh, guess what. Your brother did another bang-up job on my car. Now my radio’s out. It’s like a patient going to the hospital with a cold and coming out with pneumonia.”

  “Sonny keeps telling you to get rid of that…that vehicle.”

  “That’s the trouble with people today. They don’t have any loyalty to things. Just because something’s a bit rundown, I’m suppose
d to forget all the good years it’s given me.”

  “A bit run-down!”

  “Besides, it would be a lot easier to get rid of my in-laws instead.”

  She laughed and he went to shower and change. The hot water and fresh change of clothes revived him. Marching from the room, he grasped the tray of drinks and escorted her out to their screened-in back porch. There they sat in subdued light, the only illumination spilling from the kitchen behind them.

  They had a comfortable but modest bi-level home in the Pine Tree development, a complex of two dozen homes constructed on a gently rising mountainside. Because they had been one of the first to build there, they overlooked one of the best views of the valley below. The only child, Debra, was married, so the house was just the right size for the two of them. Maggie had gone back to working part time for an accountant to supplement their income. Now, in their middle years, they felt secure and content. The main thing to look forward to was Chicky’s retirement from the police force.

  Chicky usually shared the details of his work with his wife. Despite Maggie’s slim, fragile appearance, she packed inside that frame a strong personality. Although she abhorred violence as much as anyone else, she wasn’t overwhelmed by it. She could listen to the descriptions, the grisly details. At times her hardness astonished Chicky, but whether it was a facade or not, she often buoyed him. It was comforting to come home to someone with whom he could share his daily trials.

  After he told her about the burglar, he was anxious to tell her about David Oberman. The story intrigued her and he found himself feeling renewed excitement about the case because of her interest.

  “No trace of her car?”

  He shook his head.

  “It’s like she left the face of the earth shortly after she started for the Catskills,” he said.

  “Not a clue?”

  “Not only that. Now I can’t find him.” He told her about Chief Krammer wanting him to put the case aside and leave it for the state authorities.

  “But you don’t want to do that?”