by John Saul
“I hope so,” Jack Conger replied. Then he changed the subject “What about Kathy Burton?”
“Nothing,” Ray Norton replied, shifting to his business tone. “She hasn’t turned up, and no one’s seen her. I don’t know what to think. Marilyn Burton’s out at my house now, and Norma’s staying up with her. I have a feeling they’ll be up a long time.”
“Along with the rest of the town,” Jack observed. He had swung his chair around, and was staring pensively out the window. There was a lot of traffic; cars cruising slowly around the square, and knots of people standing talking under the street lamps. He knew what they were talking about, and it made him uncomfortable. “This town talks too much,” he said.
“Only when they have something to talk about,” the police chief responded, “and that’s not often enough. How much longer are you going to be over there?”
“I’ve about got it wrapped up. What about you?”
“Same here. I was just finishing the calls for the search party when Marty came in. The boys should all be here in another half-hour, and I want you, too.”
“Why me? Not that I’m objecting.”
Norton chuckled. “You’d better not. We’re starting the search at your place, and I need you to help me lead it. Since we know the area best, and we’re both more or less responsible citizens, I thought we’d split into two groups. I’ll take my bunch to the quarry and you can comb the woods.”
Jack felt a sudden chill, and beads of sweat formed on his forehead. He hadn’t been in the woods for a year. He tried to keep his discomfort out of his voice when he spoke again.
“All right. I’ll close up here and head over your way. See you when I get there.”
He didn’t bother to wait for the chief to say good-bye before dropping the phone back in its cradle. He cleared his desk off and locked it, then his office. He left the lights on in the main office of the paper, and made sure he locked the door behind him when he stepped out onto the sidewalk. What with the traffic, and the questions of the curious, it was a half-hour before he made it to the police station. That worked out to just about ten feet a minute.
Rose Conger had tried to work after her husband had left the house, but hadn’t been able to concentrate. She had given it up, and turned her attention to a book, but again had found herself unable to concentrate. Finally she had given it up, and simply sat, listening to the old clock strike away the quarter-hours, the half-hours, the hours. The night was beginning to seem endless. Then she had decided to call Norma Norton, to see if she had heard anything about Kathy. Norma, a bit uncertainly, had invited her to come over and join the watch. Though their husbands were close, the women had never hit it off particularly well—partly, Rose suspected, because Norma Norton regarded her not as a human being but as the Mrs. Conger. She welcomed the opportunity to try to dispel the image.
“I’d love to,” she said. I’ve just been sitting here getting more nervous by the minute. Let me find out if Mrs. Goodrich is still up. If she’s not planning to go to bed for a while, I’ll have her keep an eye on the girls. “I’ll be there in ten minutes, or call you back.”
She found Mrs. Goodrich watching television in her room off the kitchen, and the old woman assured her that she’d be up most of the night. “Seems like the older you get, the less sleep you need,” she said grumpily. “Or maybe it’s just arthritis. But you go ahead. Nothing’s happened in this house for fifty years that I haven’t been able to handle.”
Rose thanked her and went upstairs to check on the girls. They were sleeping peacefully, and she kissed Sarah lightly on the forehead. She didn’t want to disturb Elizabeth. Two minutes before the end of the allotted ten, she had parked her car in the road in front of the Nortons’, and a minute later she was gratefully accepting a cup of coffee from Norma.
“I’m so sorry about what’s happened,” she told Marilyn Burton. “But I’m sure Kathy’s all right. It’ll be just like Anne Forager.” The trouble was, none of them knew what had happened to Anne Forager. They sat together, an uneasy group, and tried to numb their fears with caffeine.
Elizabeth’s eyes snapped open when she heard the click of her bedroom door closing. She didn’t know why she had pretended to be asleep when her mother opened the door. Usually she would have spoken, if only to say good night But she had kept her eyes closed, and maintained the slow, steady, rhythmic breath of sleep. And now, with the door closed again, and her eyes open, she still maintained that slow, steady rhythm. She lay quietly, listening to the night sounds, and heard the purring of her mother’s car as it moved quickly down the driveway.
When the sound of the engine faded from her hearing, she rose and went to the window. She stared off across the field, and almost felt that she could see into the woods that stood darkly in the night For a long time she remained at the window, and a strange feeling came over her, a feeling of oneness with the forest and the trees and a desire to be closer to the sea beyond the woods. She turned away from the window and, her eyelids fluttering strangely, began to dress.
A few moments later she left her room and moved to the top of the stairway. She paused there, seeming to listen to the silence, then began to descend, as silently as the night She passed the grandfather clock without even noticing its loud ticking. At the bottom of the stairs she turned and began making her way toward the kitchen.
She didn’t hear the droning of the television set in the little room next to the kitchen; if she had, she might have tapped at the door, then opened it to see Mrs. Goodrich dozing fitfully in her chair.
Elizabeth opened the refrigerator and stared blankly into its depths for a moment Then her hand moved out and her fingers closed on a small package wrapped in white paper. She closed the refrigerator door and left the kitchen. In the little room next door Mrs. Goodrich’s sleep was not disturbed by the soft clicking of the front door, or by the heavy chiming of the clock as it struck midnight.
Elizabeth moved across the field quickly and faded into the woods. Once she was there, hidden by the trees, her pace increased.
The lights of the searchers bobbed in the darkness around her, but if she was aware of them she gave no sign. Twice Elizabeth disappeared into the shadow of a tree only seconds before one of the searchers would have discovered her, and just before she emerged from the woods onto the embankment she passed within ten feet of her father. She neither noticed him nor made any sound that could have penetrated Jack’s concentration. He was too intent on overcoming his fear of the forest to have heard. He forged on, stolid in his grim search for Kathy Burton.
Soon Elizabeth was once again on the embankment over the sea. She listened to the surf, and it seemed to her to be a sound she was used to, a sound she had lived with for much longer than she could remember. She began making her way down the embankment, until she disappeared into the black shadow behind the boulder.
The sounds of the surf, or something else, prevented her from hearing the snapping of twigs and the breaking of branches behind her as others fought a path through the woods above.
Kathy Burton wasn’t at all sure she was hearing anything, she had been hearing so much in the past hours. First there had been the sound of her own screams, echoing back at her like some vile, dying creature, hammering into her ears. She had screamed until her voice gave out, then had lain on the floor of the pit for a long time, crying to herself, her body heaving with exhaustion and fear. Then the panic had passed and she had begun listening to the muffled sound of the surf, which made a soft backdrop of noise, preventing silence from multiplying the terror of the unrelieved blackness. And then she had begun hearing the small sounds, the tiny scurrying sounds to which she had at first been able to attach no meanings. Her mind began producing images in the darkness, images of rats chasing each other around the cavern, circling just beyond her reach. As the images in her imagination grew stronger, she began to feel the rats, if rats they were, moving closer to her, sniffing the air toward her, and her fear grew. She retreated to the
top of the rock that only a few hours earlier had served as the table for Elizabeth’s manic party.
She had stayed there, huddled against the darkness, and had felt herself growing smaller. She imagined herself disappearing, and it was the least frightening of her imaginings, for if she disappeared she would at least be away. And she wanted to be away, desperately.
As the hours had worn on, her joints had become stiff from the inactivity, and from the dank chill that pervaded the cavern. Finally she had been forced to move, but she had not dared to leave the flat surface of the rock, afraid of what she might encounter in the darkness that surrounded her.
And now she heard a different noise, a scuffling noise from above. She felt a scream forming in her aching throat, but she held it back. The scuffling continued.
Kathy craned her neck, trying to find, somewhere in the darkness above, the shaft that led out of her prison. She thought she knew where it was, for there was the slightest draft, nothing more than a general disturbance of the air, and she was sure that the shaft lay directly above that tiny current of air that was the only real movement in the pit Earlier she had stood up and tried to reach the low ceiling of the cave, but it was just out of reach, and the inability to even locate the limitations of her confinement had only served to increase her fear. She lay on her back now, her face tipped upward into the draft of air she was sure came from the shaft.
And then she was blinded. She felt her face contract as the light struck her eyes, dazzlingly brilliant Like a doe trapped in the beam of an automobile’s headlight, she was frozen to the stone slab.
Above her, Elizabeth held the flashlight and peered down into Kathy’s terrified face. There was a wild look in Kathy’s eyes that somehow comforted Elizabeth, and she smiled to herself. Then she heard Kathy speak.
“Who is it?” Kathy managed, her voice sounding strange to her ears. “Please, who is it?”
“Be quiet,” Elizabeth hissed down at her. “You must be quiet here.”
“Elizabeth?” Kathy asked uncertainly. Then, when she heard no answer, she repeated the word.
“Elizabeth,” her voice rasped. “Please, Elizabeth, is that you?”
Above her Elizabeth continued to hold the flashlight steady with one hand, while the other hand pulled at the white paper that wrapped the bundle she had brought from the kitchen. When the paper was free, she spoke.
“Here,” she said, her voice almost as harsh as Kathy’s strained rasp. “Here’s your dinner.”
She flung something downward, and watched as the piece of raw and bloody meat slapped wetly into Kathy’s face.
Kathy didn’t see it coming, and when the slab of meat hit her she recoiled reflexively, and her voice found itself once more. A howling of fear mixed with revulsion at the unknown wet coldness that had hit her face roared out of her throat and filled the cavern with sound. The dull roar of the surf disappeared, and all the small noises were drowned in the sound of Kathy’s terror. And then Elizabeth’s voice, harsh and ugly, cut through the scream.
“God damn you!” Elizabeth shouted. “Shut your fucking mouth! Shut up!” she kept screaming, as Kathy’s voice slowly died away. “Shut up!” And then the silence closed over the cave again, until the murmur of the surf found its way in once more.
“Eat it,” Elizabeth commanded. “Eat your dinner.”
Below her, Kathy’s eyes began to adjust to the rent in the darkness. She looked down and saw the raw steak gleaming redly in the circle of light from the flashlight above. She stared at it and tried not to listen to Elizabeth’s voice commanding her from above.
“Pick it up,” Elizabeth was saying. “Pick it up, you little bitch, and eat it! Come on, pick it up and eat it. Pick it up. Pick it up. Pick it up.”
The voice from above took on a hypnotic quality, and suddenly Kathy found herself holding the limp and bloody object in her hands. And then the order from above changed.
“Eat it,” Elizabeth commanded. “Eat it. Eat it. Eat it!” Helplessly, Kathy moved the raw meat to her lips. The light clicked off.
Kathy sat for a long time, crouched on the slab of rock, the piece of meat clutched in her hands, listening to the scuffling sounds dying away above her. And then, finally, it was silent; still she sat in the blackness, like some wary animal, waiting for an unseen enemy to leap forth from the night.
She became aware of the fact that she was hungry. Slowly her mind began to focus once more on reality, and she wondered how long she had been trapped in the hole, how long it had been since she had eaten. She thought about the bloody object in her hand. Somewhere in her mind she found some little note, some scrap of information, that told her that some people ate raw meat. She felt her stomach jerk, and for a moment she thought she was going to throw up. Then the nausea passed, and once more she felt the pangs of hunger. She made up her mind.
Kathy forced the raw meat into her mouth and began chewing. She was glad now for the dark. She knew she wouldn’t have been able to eat it if she had been able to see it.
The scuffling began again when she was halfway through the steak. She stopped gnawing at the meat and listened. It grew louder; then, when it sounded as though it was directly above her, it stopped.
Kathy started to say something, then thought better of it. Acting more on instinct than on reason, she suddenly leaped from the rock, something in her subconscious telling her that the danger from the pit was less than the danger from above. She huddled against the wall of the cavern and waited for the beam of light to come once more through the shaft, heralding a fear that would be bigger than the fear of the darkness and the silence. But there was no beam of light, no rasping, ugly voice obscenely commanding her from above. Instead, there was a sharp crash, as though some object—some hard object—had been dropped from above. There was another silence, and then the scuffling began again, fading slowly away until it melded fully into the background of the surf. Kathy stayed huddled against the wall.
When her legs told her that she would have to move, she began groping her way once more toward the center of the cavern. Her hands found the large dab of stone, and she began cautiously going over its surface, not wanting to find the object that had been dropped, but afraid not to find it.
And then her fingers brushed against something. She drew away as though the object were hot, then moved back. She began examining the object with her fingertips. It was hard, and round, and sort of flat It seemed to be covered with some sort of cloth—and then she knew what it was. She picked up the canteen and shook it. It sloshed.
Carefully she unscrewed the top and sniffed at the contents. There was no odor.
Finally she worked up her courage and tasted it. It was water.
Thirstily, Kathy drank. The water was soothing to her painful throat.
As she awoke the next morning, Elizabeth’s eyes widened in surprise at the pile of dirty clothes sitting in the center of her bedroom. She stared at it curiously, wondering where the clothes could have come from. She decided that Sarah must have left them there during the night, and gathered them up. Depositing them in the laundry chute, she went downstairs for breakfast.
A few minutes later Sarah woke up, and she too found a heap of filthy clothes on the floor of the room. She got out of bed and put them on. Then Sarah, too, went downstairs and silently took her place at the breakfast table. Her parents looked at her in horror. Elizabeth stood up, came around beside her, and took her hand.
“Come on, Sarah,” she said gently. “You don’t want to wear those to school.”
Elizabeth led her sister back upstairs as Rose and Jack Conger looked at each other. Neither of them could think of anything to say. They were too frightened.
17
Time crept slowly through Port Arbello that week. Marilyn Burton, still valiantly postponing the inevitable, opened her shop each day, and each day she smiled at her customers and assured them that, no, she was sure nothing too bad had happened to Kathy and she would turn up. Deep inside, though, she kn
ew that Kathy would not turn up.
Ray Norton expanded the search parties, and the men of Port Arbello began a systematic search of the entire area, each day sweeping a wider arc around the town. Norton did not expect them to find anything, but it kept them busy, and kept them from listening too closely to Martin Forager’s charges, repeated drunkenly in the tavern each evening, that the police weren’t doing anything. Norton hoped he could keep the searchers working for at least ten days, at the end of which time he hoped to have something more solid to go on than a simple vanishing.
The women of Port Arbello found they were drinking much more coffee than usual, and burning much more gas than usual, as they all took to transporting their children to and from school. All except the people along Conger’s Point Road, where Anne Forager had allegedly been attacked, and where Kathy Burton had apparently disappeared. The families on Conger’s Point Road did not discuss what was happening, nor did they consult each other on the best way of handling the situation. It was as though, individually, they had each decided that nothing would happen if they did not admit that anything was wrong. So the children of Conger’s Point Road continued to walk to and from school each day. If anyone noticed that there was an unusual amount of automobile traffic on the Point Road as each of the mothers found an errand or two to do in town during the hours the children would be walking, no one commented on it. Silently they preserved the appearance of normalcy, and the sight of the constant search parties reassured them.
Thursday morning Elizabeth found herself almost running from the house to the Conger’s Point Road. She would have cut across the field, coming to the Road at the base of the woods, but she felt slightly embarrassed. When she got to the Road she glanced quickly to the right, then deliberately slowed her pace and tried to assume an air of nonchalance. For the third morning in a row, Jeff Stevens was waiting for her.
Tuesday morning she had assumed it was a coincidence. She hadn’t questioned him about how he happened to leave his house just as she passed the woods. Instead, she had simply fallen in beside him, and surrendered her books when he had taken them from her.