December's Thorn

by Phillip DePoy

  “To me?”

  “It now seems possible that you’re the progenitor of her madness,” she said firmly, “the object of her fixation, and the interpreter of her fantasy—all in one.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  But I knew what she meant. She meant that the very fact that I had discovered what I believed to be the source of Issie Raynerd’s illness is exactly what implicated me in its origins.

  She read the realization on my face, and went on. “So we do have to find her. But we apparently have to do it without much help. Skidmore’s down for the count, I’m afraid, and I’m not certain how much more Melissa Mathews can take.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t dismiss her quite so easily,” I said. “She’s been shot at more times than I have, and threatened in the line of duty in ways you can’t even imagine. Her looks are deceiving. She tougher than almost anyone I’ve ever met.”

  “Yes,” she said briskly, “I believe that. What I meant was that she’s got her own problems dealing with Skidmore. She’s in love with him.”

  “No she’s not.”

  “I don’t mean romantically,” Ceri hastened to say. “I mean— well, in the more chivalric sense, in keeping with the current mode around here. She loves him chastely, and with purity of heart. But it’s still love and she can’t stand that he’s suffering and she can’t avoid thinking that his suffering is partly her fault.”

  I thought about it for a second. “Oh.”

  “And, for a change, I don’t recommend calling Lucinda at this point. She’s worried enough as it is.”

  I nodded. “I think you’re right about that. And Andrews is— he’s already made it clear he won’t be able to help for a while.”

  “And the state patrol,” she began.

  “They already think I’m crazy.” I took a deep breath. “Plus, I’m more of a do-it-yourself kind of person anyway.”

  “So.” She stood and looked me square in the eye. “We’re on our own.”

  21

  Downstairs, coats on, gearing up for a cold winter’s night, I began to have a kind of sinking feeling. Although the moon was low, it was still quite dark outside. We would, of course, go back to the cave first, but unless she was completely out of her mind, Issie wouldn’t stay there.

  “It’s a bit supernatural the way that woman jumped out of your window and into the snow without anything on,” Ceri said, pulling on her gloves and shivering already, despite the nice warm embers in the fireplace. “You know that I’m still not entirely convinced she’s a real person.”

  “And I’m still not entirely convinced that you’re a real psychiatrist,” I told her, adjusting my black knit cap a little over my ears. “Especially when you give out with that kind of a pronouncement.”

  “Okay.” That was all she said.

  “Cave first,” I said, “but then if we don’t find anyone there—”

  “And we avoid being shot to death by the very bizarre David Newcomb,” she interrupted.

  “Right, good point,” I went on, “but I’m saying if we don’t find anyone in the cave, what do we do after that? Just wander around in the snow and hope for the best?”

  “Let’s examine this for a second.”

  We were both standing right at my front door. It had begun to snow again, and the flakes were thick and slow to fall, nearly impossible to tell from the thousand stars in the sky.

  “So far,” she continued, “we’ve had no luck following Issie and David into the depths of the cave.”

  “But,” I brightened, seeing where she was going, “we now have newfound knowledge about the other end of the cave, given to us by the only slightly dazed Melissa. We might actually be able to find our way in there, or even come across another hiding place, deeper in the mountain.”

  “Good thinking,” she agreed, hand on the doorknob.

  “Right, then, let’s head for the other cave entrance, by the squad car wrecking tree.”

  “Sold.” She pulled the door open and we stepped onto the porch, and then into the night.

  The air was razor cold and once we were out of the buttery glow from the windows of my home, dark as an unlit cave. The crescent moon that had only a short while before lit Issie’s retreat had now sunk low enough to be obscured by tall pines and higher mountain peaks. Occasional stripes of pale light only emphasized the shadows along the road, and in the deeper woods.

  We made our way along the edges of the road, flashlights out, scarves pulled tight. The wind that was blowing the snow all around us found any opportunity to invade the slightest opening in our clothes. My face was already stinging, and I pulled the wool cap down over the rest of my ears, nearly over my eyes.

  After what seemed a half an hour we found a pine tree with damaged bark and low-hanging broken limbs. The snow had obscured the wheel ruts and errant gravel, but as we slipped off the road and down the slope, I found enough faulty footing to support our assumption that this was indeed the place where Melissa had wrecked her squad car.

  The flashlights seemed feeble swords against the demon night, like looking at the world through a pinhole. And if we moved them back and forth to cover a wider area before us, the sensation quickly became unnervingly dizzying. A sense of vertigo set in that, alas, threatened a return of the impulse to throw up that had so nearly capsized my attention when Issie had invaded my bed.

  I stopped for a second, trying to regain equilibrium, and Ceri came to a halt a few feet in front of me. We were both breathing hard, and the woods around us were incredibly obscured.

  Just as I was trying to think of a better way to search for an invisible doorway to an underground cave in all that snow, Ceri started her trek again. Loath to appear less than her equal, I forged ahead, still trying to catch my breath.

  I decided that the best I could do would be to take a few steps with the flashlight pointed to my left, stop, survey a little to the right, then move a few more steps. It seemed more methodical, less thrashing, and it certainly was easier on the nausea.

  It did, however, have the unfortunate effect of widening the gulf between my compatriot and me. After a very short while, Ceri was, perhaps, thirty feet farther down the hill than I.

  After the briefest of considerations, I felt it best to catch up with her, so, I switched off my flashlight, let my eyes become a little more accustomed to the darkness, and then picked up my pace in pursuit of her lighthouse-precise position.

  I made my way easily past trees and larger rocks, but after ten feet or so I hit a stump with my foot, and it nearly toppled me. I grabbed for a nearby limb and wrenched my side, slipping and sliding down the slope like a cartoon character.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Ceri called out, sweeping her flashlight my way.

  As she did, the light caught a flash of steam or fog, I thought. And then I went down, face-first into the snow.

  Ceri floundered upward toward me. “Fever? Are you all right?”

  The genuine concern in her voice, all lighthearted humor gone, was sincerely touching, but I scrambled to my feet, embarrassed, before she made it all the way to where I had collapsed.

  Partly to defer further examination of my clumsiness, partly because I was curious, I pointed in the direction of the curious steam.

  “Just over there,” I said, squinting, “was a patch of smoke or fog or something that you caught in your light for a second. But it might be heat or air from the cave entrance.”

  “You fell down,” she pointed out.

  “And now I’m up,” I said firmly, “and walking toward what might be the other entrance to the cave.”

  I lumbered down the mountain, switching on my flashlight again.

  “Look.” I shook my flashlight to indicate the place I meant.

  There was a distinct plume of smoke or something rising from behind a patch of rhododendrons.

  “That’s it!” She seemed elated.

  We rushed to the site, and indeed, if one got down belly first and c
rawled, it would have been possible to fit through the small, horizontal opening. Barely.

  “I don’t think that’s it,” I said.

  “It could be it.” She didn’t sound at all convinced.

  I suddenly remembered that we’d had an easier time finding the other entrance from below, and turned around. I raked my light slowly side to side and steadily upward. Ceri saw what I was doing and joined in.

  After five shivering minutes, we saw something. It was another rock outcropping, small and squat, obscured by small evergreens. It could have been something, but some of our vigor and enthusiasm had been undermined by the previous false alarm.

  We made our way toward the huge stones without speaking.

  Then, as we drew nearer, it became quite obvious that we were in luck. There was a small, flickering light coming out between the two main boulders. I switched off my flashlight and Ceri followed suit.

  The light coming from inside the cavern seemed to be from a fire or maybe a torch. It was flickering but didn’t appear to be getting any closer to us, or farther away. We stood close to the entrance for a few moments, neither quite certain what to do.

  Then Ceri leaned my way and whispered into my ear.

  “If David Newcomb is in there with a gun and baling wire,” she told me, “maybe I’d just rather go on back to the house.”

  “But if Issie Raynerd is in there,” I countered, nearly soundlessly, “we have to go in and get her.”

  She let out a silent breath. I watched the ghost it made as it swirled in the air around her head.

  Without further discussion, I turned and rushed toward the entrance holding my flashlight like a short club.

  Ceri, surprised by my sudden move, reached out for my arm to stop me, but I was just a little too far gone.

  I shoved past the evergreens, turned sideways, back to one of the boulders, heavy snow pelting my face, and edged my way quickly into the cave.

  There was a burning wooden torch set in a handmade column of rocks. Beside the torch were a sleeping bag and some cans of soup. Otherwise, I was alone—until Ceri nudged in beside me.

  I put my finger to my lips instantly. I was afraid that the sleeping bag belonged to David and that he’d heard us coming toward his hiding place. I imagined that he stood just out of the light, gun pointed at us, finger on the trigger.

  Then there was a tumble of stones and a low growling from ten or twelve yards deeper into the cave. For a second I believed that my fears about David had been confirmed. Then I heard the growling sound again, and turned to Ceri.

  “Run.” I began shoving her out of the cave.

  “What?” She resisted.

  “Run!” I insisted. “Bear!”

  A split-second of registration produced an astonishingly fast exit. I was close after.

  As I emerged from the cave, I saw Ceri making for a nearby tree from which depended several low limbs. It was obviously her intent to try to climb.

  “Go on,” I shouted. “I’ll give you a boost up.”

  Behind me I could hear the bear complaining as it squeezed out of the cave. It sounded big. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have been so alarmed. Black bears were plentiful in the hills; I’d seen hundreds of them in my life. And as far as I knew, there had never been a bear-related fatality in our community. Ever. But tell that to the bear, whose knowledge of statistics might have been, I felt, less accurate than mine. I was fairly certain that the bear ought to have been in hibernation but if someone like David had awakened me from a long winter’s nap, I’d be in a foul mood, and willing to bite just about anyone.

  This thought flashed like lightning through my brain in the seven or eight leaping steps it took for me to catch up with Ceri. She already had her gloves locked onto a low branch. I put my hands together and she stepped into them, lifting upward to a higher branch. I grabbed onto another limb and jumped. Both of us were making gasping noises a little like prizefighters. I was, perhaps, ten feet off the ground before I dared to take a look downward to see the bear.

  When I did, I was attacked by a confusing mixture of embarrassment and irritation. The bear was a cub, all by itself, and, I guessed, not yet a year old.

  “Hey, Hieronymus,” I called to Ceri, “have a look at the menacing beast.”

  She stopped scrambling and, after a split second of observation, gave me her assessment of the situation. “Oh, for God’s sake, we’re morons.”

  “Well,” I admitted, “we are a little.”

  She started down.

  “Hang on,” I told her. “Just because it’s a little one doesn’t mean it can’t bite or claw or otherwise give you a very unpleasant nature experience.”

  “Oh.” She stopped moving.

  “It is very curious, though,” I went on, “that this little thing would be in a cave where people have been living, and would be awake, and would be this mad.”

  The bear was at the bottom of the tree growling like an animal three times its size. Still, seeing its size greatly abated my worst concerns.

  “He was in the cave already when David and Issie moved in,” Ceri surmised. “He was hibernating. Then, somebody woke him up, the same somebody who put the sleeping bag and the torch and the chunky soup cans by the entrance. That person took off because the bear was upset, and still is. Obviously.”

  The bear was, indeed, impatient with us. It had begun to claw at the tree and was attempting to climb up our way, all the while snarling and snorting.

  “Or,” I offered, “what if David, or Issie, trained the bear? What if it’s a watch bear?”

  “A watch bear.” She wasn’t asking a question, she was offering derision.

  “People used to use geese as watch animals,” I continued.

  “That’s not a goose,” she pointed out. “It’s a bear.”

  Then, out of nowhere, Issie appeared. She was standing at the bottom of the tree, dressed all in black, with an old-fashioned taper holder in one hand. It was as if she’d appeared out of thin air.

  “It’s my bear,” she said softly, looking down at the animal. “Aren’t you?”

  The bear seemed confused for a moment, then sniffed and sat down in the snow.

  “Your bear?” I asked. “Like a watch bear?”

  She looked up at me, but didn’t answer.

  “Can we come down?” Ceri asked.

  “If you want,” said Issie. “I was afraid it was David coming into the cave there. That’s why I set the bear on you. I’m afraid of David. He might be out of his mind. David tied up the sheriff with wire and hurt him bad.”

  I glanced up at Ceri, who stared right back.

  “You’re sure that bear will let me come down?” I asked Issie.

  Issie started back toward the cave and the bear followed her, and then Issie called out, “It’s a bear, Mark. It does what it wants to.”

  “It seems to do what you want it to,” I countered.

  “All right,” she said.

  “Why is that?” I asked, venturing down the tree a little.

  “David shot her mother. For no reason. I took care of the cub. She’s all on me, you understand that?”

  “Yes,” I answered, “sort of.”

  I found it was harder to understand why David might have killed a female black bear, but I thought of the abandoned deer and felt very uncomfortable.

  “Well,” Issie called over her shoulder, “come on, then.”

  Wary that the bear might decide that I was worth a nip or a snap, I nevertheless continued my way down the tree and stood ready to help Ceri. She did not, as it turned out, need said help in any way.

  She jumped. She landed in the snow a few feet in front of me and started talking to Issie.

  “You’re not hurt?” Ceri asked.

  “What, me?” Issie said, not looking back.

  “You hurled yourself out of a second-story window into a snowbank—naked,” Ceri said, hurrying to catch up with the woman in black. “You weren’t at least a little chilly?”
/>   “I don’t seem to feel the cold the way some others do,” she said as she stepped inside the cave.

  The bear turned around, gave Ceri a sniff, and then disappeared.

  I made my way toward Ceri, speaking as softly as I could. “Are you sure you want to go in there?”

  “You’re the one who said we had to find her and figure her out,” Ceri answered. “We found her. Now we have to go in there if we want to figure her out, right?”

  “Let me think about it.”

  Ceri didn’t even bother to look at me; she just plunged headlong into the cave.

  I followed, straining for any sight of a crouching bear cub.

  That part of the cave was colder than the other entrance. The torch didn’t put off much heat. Aside from the soup cans and sleeping bag, there was nothing to indicate that any human being had been there. The smell, on the other hand, significantly warned of an ursine presence, though the actual bear was nowhere to be seen.

  Issie stood with her back to us, fiddling with something in her hands, or maybe rubbing her hands together for warmth. She turned around to face us, and in the light of the torch I got my first good look at her in a while. When she’d been in my bedroom, I’d looked at her as little as possible. Now, I studied that face. The eyes were sunken, her skin was pallid, her hands were skeletally white. The black clothes she wore seemed, at that moment, more a costume, rags and scarves and— something very theatrical, the Madwoman of Chaillot.

  I was surprised to find her expression frightening until I realized that most of my reactions to this woman had been a result of fears. Her expression was dazed and vague and more than a little mad, with a hint of a smile at one corner of her mouth. Still, I’d seen crazier people. I’d probably been crazier people at some point or other. Why did this particular person fill me with such primal dread? I couldn’t make sense of it.

  “Here’s the potion.” Issie held out a bony hand to reveal what she’d been fussing with: a small paper packet, yellowed, in which there was secured a white powder.

  “The potion?” Ceri asked.

  Issie looked down, ashamed. “I know I ought to leave off taking it. But once you feel the love of it, it’s hard to put it down. David tried to take it away from me at the hospital, but he didn’t get it all.”