He lapsed into a state of mental inertia, his thoughts on holiday while he broodingly stalked the mountainside to his destination. A miasma of dogged determinism hung over him like a care-worn coat. A craving to succeed dragged him forever up and up toward the clouds, toward the hideaway near the mountaintop.
Finally he spied the rock ledge. It sparkled like a sheet of fool's gold to his weary eyes. Sunlight glanced off its smooth, mottled surface. They crossed the brook flowing at its foot, Carla hanging back so that he had to drag her into the shallow water. The knotted rope hanging down the ledge side swung loosely in the wind. "Turn around," he said.
"What for, so you can kill me when I'm not looking? You said I wouldn't know when it was coming."
"Carla, I don't want to have to knock you out again, but I will if you don't do this. Now, turn around."
She gave him a dangerous smoldering look, then slowly presented her back to him. He let drop the duffel bag from his shoulder and rummaged inside. He brought out a coil of rope. He quickly fashioned a noose and before Carla moved, slipped it over her head.
She spun, her eyes radiating fury. "What are you doing?"
"Now, listen to me. I'm climbing this rope hanging down the ledge. I'm taking with me the other end of the rope around your throat. I want you to remember I have it, that I'll yank you up and strangle you if you don't do what I say. If you raise your hands to take off the noose, I'll yank it tight, you got it? Right?"
She glared at him silently.
"Right. Now, when I get on top of the ledge, I want you to climb the rope up, too. I'm going to untie your hands so you can do it. You move from knot to knot and you'll make it. I'll have the noose rope all the time. You don't do it right, Carla, you won't live to see the rest of this day."
With Carla's hidebound attitude he expected some back talk, but when she spit on him, the saliva striking his shirt to slide down, he was taken by surprise. "Now, why'd you do that?"
Her eyes went glassy, and he could see miniature reflections of himself in their brown depths. "Are you going to cry?" he asked, amazed. He curiously watched blood suffuse her face as she called up an effort to keep from weeping. He was enormously interested, waiting to see if she could defeat the natural flow of emotion.
"It's nice up there," he said lamely. This act of hers confounded him. She had fought every step, her propensity for thwarting him like a ball rolling downhill gathering speed and force. Now she trembled, craning her neck in the noose like a little unfeathered bird in an empty nest.
The fear she exuded was so palpable, he thought he might be able to reach out and explore it with his hands. He pretended to be unfazed while a small bomb detonated in his brain. He had looked out the palace window, put space between himself and everyone on earth. Until this moment he believed people and their emotions, their petty day-to-day strivings, their half-baked attempts to clutch at majesty or fame or glory or material possession, were thankfully removed from ever touching him. When he saw Carla's pumped up, feverish little facade of courage shatter into a thousand pieces, the bomb exploded and with it lifelong strongly held beliefs.
He tumbled lost in a torpid, viscous net of conflicting thoughts. While untying her hands, he utilized all his faculties to pull himself back from looking down over a precipice into a void that jangled with pulsing calamity.
"I'm going up." He roughly pushed her out of his way. He looped the coiled rope over his shoulder and to his chest. "You follow me, Carla."
He did not bother to look down at her as he climbed, secure in the knowledge she was too broken to try an ill-fated escape. He started coughing before he reached the ledge top, and by the time he dragged himself onto level ground, he was hacking and having trouble catching his breath. He peered over the side, jerked lightly on the rope attached to Carla's neck. She looked up at him, squinting against the sun. One perfect jeweled tear clung to her cheek, but an obstinate look crept back into her eyes even as he watched.
"Now, Carla. Grab the rope and come up here with me. We've made it home."
All evidence of his captive's weak spell that disordered his world so thoroughly was gone. Carla had regained the contemptuous, mocking, furtive self that had preserved her throughout the night.
He stationed himself on his knees and pulled in the slack on the rope as she obeyed him and climbed up the ledge. When her scraped hands felt for the top, he caught them and tugged her over the sharp edge. She rolled into his lap, within the scope of his arms, and at once they both pulled apart as if scalded. A hiss escaped her lips as she hid her face from him. This was the plucky, churlish girl he knew, the girl he'd selected to spend private time with him. He could kill her now, slip the switchblade from his pocket, flick it open, and bury it in her heaving chest without a qualm, without reluctance or regret. It was the other face she had shown: the fallible, luminous, aggrieved face of helplessness that he could not bear and knew, with an insight that frightened him, he could not kill.
Could not kill? The idea, a new one, preoccupied him for long seconds while Carla stared out over the drop at the wooded mountain and around them at the floating clouds. When had there been a time when he could not kill? Never. Not in a lifetime of murder. Victims fought him and died for it. People did not give up a right to life without battle, and it wasn't easy to make them give it up to him. Survival was all; this law he knew well. And what had he seen in Carla's face at the bottom of the cliff? A lapse, a blunt, clear refusal to work toward survival any longer. And her wish surfaced like oil through water to baffle him, disorient everything he knew and felt about humankind. Surely, she had not wanted to die? For if it happened again and she welcomed death, he realized now he could not give it to her. It nettled him to come to this conclusion, but he knew it to be as much truth as any invented throughout historical time.
"Where are we?" The wind caught at her short dark hair and flung it away from her ears. There was down on her earlobes, thin and soft. She was vulnerable and as unprotected as a spotted fawn.
"This is my place." He gestured with his hand behind them to a natural rock opening in the face of the mountainside. '"They won't find you here."
She peered into the gloomy dark behind them, and he saw her involuntarily shiver. It made him cold and goose bumps broke out on his arms. He, too, shivered, not from fear of the unknown, but from the lingering sickness.
He gathered the hanging rope up the ledge until he had it all in a neat coil on top. If they came looking they could not see above the sheer rock face to know there was a cave here. Even if they suspected, they could not climb up with his rope put away. If they brought bloodhounds, the brook which supplied him with water would stop the dogs, have them running up and down the rocky landscape trying to pick up the scent. He and Carla were as safe on the ledge as bald eagles who built nests on mountain spires. Even from the air his hideaway was protected by an outcropping above the cave, and unless a chopper hovered level with the ledge, they could not detect him here.
Once he had the ladder rope settled, he moved to take the rope noose from around Carla's neck. He found she had already done it and now sat holding it in her hands.
"I probably should have let you strangle me," she said.
"Hold out your hands, I have to tie them again."
"Screw you."
"Now, don't start bad-mouthing me..."
"I'm not going to help you anymore. It won't be so easy for you now you've got me up here."
She jumped to her feet and backed off at his approach. She glanced toward the dark opening in the rock face, at the high overhanging lip of stone above it.
"There's nowhere to run, Carla." He advanced. She retreated. For each step he took, she matched it. Her resurrected spirit shimmered from her pores like a sheen of sweat. He thought he could almost see her defiance as an aura. She had her head down low and looked up at him from beneath stern, merciless brows.
A crooked smile curled his lips.
"You're not getting my hands, and you're not g
etting me into that stupid lion's den of yours."
He took another step. She backed away, had to make a turn to keep from going over the edge. She was now backing toward the cave all the while denying she would enter it.
"It's not a lion that lived there," he corrected with the smile twitching at his lips though he tried to stop it, "but cats stayed there before. Wildcat. Same as you, huh, Carla? Isn't that right? Wild as a mama cat, right? You like to use your claws." He touched the dirtied bandage wrapped tight around his head. "You would like to rip into me again, I see it in you face. If you were closer to me I might hear you snarling like a cat. Right?"
She kept glancing over her shoulder, then she would meet his eyes to warn him off with a determined glare.
"You're a..."
He tuned out the names, the variations of names, the names heaped upon names. He whiffed fury and courage on the rebound, and he carefully maneuvered her back step by slow step until the shade of the overhang wrapped her in shadow, and still he plodded onward the way he had taken the mountain when it seemed it could not be done, one determined step at a time.
CHAPTER 2
Wrestling Carla into submission so that he could bind her hands and feet took every remaining ounce of Lansing's strength. Afterward he slept so deeply that nightmares did not haunt him. He woke in the afternoon, blinking, culling matter from his good eye so that he could see in the flickering candle and lantern light. Carla might have slept, too, but now she lay on her side staring at him.
"This is a mausoleum." She watched him steadily.
Lansing thought Carla meant to further insult him. "What is that?" he asked, willing to argue with her if need be. This was his special place, and it would be better if she understood it from the beginning.
"It's a...tomb. Look what you've done."
He drew up his knees and studied his home with a stranger's eyes, trying to see what it was she must see. "I've made it comfortable," he said.
Carla's laugh was a splutter of breath. She gave him a cynical look. "You're worse than I ever imagined."
Again, he surveyed the cave. Within holes and indentations in the rock walls he had placed white candles to give off light. This to him made his place look holy and church-like besides providing light. A heavy battery lantern stood upended on the rough, uneven-legged table in the cave's center, the steady beam striking the cave's ceiling and illuminating a wide circle of gray and tan rock formations.
In wooden crates placed one atop the other were his supplies. Canned goods, candles, extra batteries, ropes, cooking utensils, a portable battery-powered radio, stacked blankets, chipped and faded plastic dishes, changes of clothes. It had taken him weeks and strenuous effort to get it all up the mountain and into the cave.
Where he slept his bed consisted of a carefully arranged rectangle of dead leaves covered with a blanket. This too had taken him many trips with the duffel bag to get enough leaves to cushion an area for sleeping.
In all these things he could not fathom why she called it a tomb. Except, of course, for the old witch. Maybe that was what she meant, her lip curling slightly to the side in honest disgust.
"Do you mean the skeleton? Oh, that's nothing but bones."
"Just bones? Jesus, you're sick. Who was it?"
He trembled with a sudden chill and drew the top blanket from the bed around his shoulders. Although he felt stronger now that he'd rested, the sickness was on him. He knew in minutes he would be hot and sweating and would have to peel off his shirt to cool his fevered body. Beyond the cave opening he could see the day was on the wane, the sunlight splintered and shifting like something sentient. Waiting. Malignant.
"It was the old witch," he answered finally, getting to his feet to find a can of chicken soup in the stacked crates.
"Old witch? Who on earth...?"
"You have too many questions, Carla. She doesn't concern you. She's been dead nearly fifteen years."
"Fifteen years! Why is she here?"
While he lifted cans to read the labels in the candlelight, he thought about how much he was willing to tell Carla, decided spontaneity could not hurt anyone. Certainly not him. "She's here because she was my first. And... I like to keep an eye on her. She can be...slippery."
"First? The first person you ever killed, is that it, Lansing?"
"Yes."
He found a can of Campbell's Chicken and Stars, reached for the can opener, and moved lethargically to the table.
"Fifteen years ago. Unbelievable. Who was she, Lansing?"
"Why do you care?" He had the can open and poured the congealed contents into a battered, soot-streaked pot. He added water, sprinkled in pepper, struck a match, and lit a Coleman propane camping stove. The flames leaping to life caused him to draw back. It was all this talk about the old witch. She had no power to harm him now. He must take control of himself, disallow the sickness that weakened him and recalled ghosts to life.
"Just humor me," Carla was saying. "Tell me who she was."
"She was the last one to hurt me," he said softly, placing the pot of soup on the lit burner. The blue, gold, and orange flames mesmerized him with a magical display of shifting colors. His palms began to itch. It felt tike slugs crawled just beneath the flesh. He believed he had conquered this. He believed he had defeated that old pain years ago. She had hurt him, he was sure of it.
"She harmed you? Was she your mother?"
"No, she was just a fat, crazy, hateful old witch." Now it would spill out of him, urged to the forefront of his memory by Carla's persistent questions. He felt the wave of hatred rise within him like mercury in a thermometer. It reached his mouth and his tongue moved, his lips parted, all the unreleased venom poured forth hot and bitter from a buried receptacle where he kept it locked. "She took me when I was ten. She took boys for the welfare money, that's all she wanted. She was a widow and childless, a disgusting woman with hairy arms and legs who loved watching little boys burn."
No, that wasn't right, he had not meant to say burn. He had meant to say "squirm," and it came out wrong. Never mind. He was sure it was she who had placed his palms over the flame. She was the only one who could have.
"I hid away in the palace window most of the time, and she couldn't find me, she couldn't hurt me. She tried, but she kept missing me. When I came back she'd show me my bandaged hands and it meant nothing to me. I would stay home from school until they healed, and she told the school I had been sick with the flu or measles or whatever she thought would throw off their suspicions. She even took me to psychologists the welfare provided, but I told them I did it. I told them I was the one who ran to the stove and held my hands over the fire. They believed me and told the old witch they didn't know how to stop me. They said I'd always been sick, and if she didn't think she could stand it, it was okay, they'd take me back." He laughed at the recollection.
"Then one day after two years with her I found my knife." His hand went to his pants pocket; his fingers manipulated the cold black handle. "It was on the street where someone had dropped it. It was my knife. I took it home and I knew I had to use it before she found it and took it away. That night I did. When I left there I took her with me. I've had her with me ever since."
"Why?" came a whisper.
"Because I have to watch her. She's a witch. She can come back if I'm not watching." Wasn't it obvious?
The soup boiled up the sides of the pot to recapture Lansing's attention. He had lost himself in the flames, had forgotten the empty, hungry feeling in the pit of his belly. Now he turned off the Coleman stove and moved away to the crates for bowls and spoons.
"Well, fuck a duck..."
"What?" Lansing swiveled from the waist, dishes in hand, to look at her. "What's wrong? Aren't you hungry?"
She averted her face, refused to answer.
He waited patiently for a reply. He had enough soup for them both. He never meant to starve her.
"Carla? You're starting to look sick. Do you need something to throw up in? Did y
ou want something else to eat? I have all kinds of things. Do you want some macaroni and cheese? It's Kraft. Huh? Carla...?"
An acrid, overpowering smell filled the cave as Carla hunched over on the packed earth and vomited, harsh wet sounds accompanying each violent constriction of her body.
"Carla, Carla." He set down the pot of soup on the table and went for a towel and water. He couldn't imagine why she was sick when it was he who suffered the chills and fever, the racking cough, the chest pains. He would have to minister to them both. He needed to replace the bandage over his empty eye socket, he knew, and he needed nourishment and aspirin to lower the fever. Maybe Carla had caught what he had, the tuberculosis. Maybe they would both succumb together before he could kill the enemy he'd rightly perceived in Carla Cohen. And while they died, the old witch would laugh from the corner of the cave, her wispy-haired skull watching over him with silent glee. He could not let that happen.
She would do it. Laugh at him. She had always done it. Even when she used to ask him to stop...no, that, too, was wrong. It was her fault, no matter what memories gushed up to refute it. She had burned his hands. He had not done it. He wouldn't do that to himself just to get to the palace window when it receded and he couldn't climb the walls to the peaceful seclusion. It was the old witch's fault.
He stooped over Carla, wiping her face with the damp towel dipped in water. "Don't worry about her," he advised. "She can't hurt you."
"But you can, Lansing." Carla's voice was an odd croak. "You don't even know what you're doing."
"I do, too." He gave her his most unjustly criticized look.
"Lansing...untie me. Let me go. I won't do anything to you, I promise. I'll climb down the ledge on the rope and I'll go away."
CRIME THRILLERS-A Box Set Page 40