by Gene Wolfe
“I’ll take that.” Suddenly conscience-stricken, he added, “If you don’t mind walking—”
Roberts grinned, showing perfect teeth Shields felt certain were false. “I won’t melt, and this slicker’s about new anyway. Hold on a second.” He vanished into the building.
Alone at the edge of the rain, Shields tried to recall the attic of the Howard house, the window, the driving rain that had sometimes spattered its glass, and what he had seen through it. I’m chasing a phantom, he thought, an illusion. I may need that four-wheel drive.
Roberts reappeared and hurried off into the rain, moving among motionless vehicles with white-numbered prices on their windshields and in their windows: $12,999; $9800; $8750; $6900. After a minute or so, Shields heard the engine of the Cherokee start, cough, die, and start again.
There was a pause as Roberts let it warm up, a long pause in which Shields could not be certain it had not died a second time. At last it roared forward, headlights glaring, out onto Dixon—hurried down Dixon, and turned the corner to Main.
In a moment more it was braking in front of him, Roberts having circled the building so that the passenger’s door was before Shields. Shields opened it and climbed in.
“Figured I might as well drive,” Roberts said. “I know where it is.”
“Sure,” Shields told him. They pulled away; and suddenly, insanely, Shields felt that he had been standing before the gate of a fortress. This gray-haired man—an old squire or a master-at-arms, perhaps a master-of-horse—had just led up the charger he was to ride.
And it was not young and elegant, or even very clean, but a big, rough, rust-colored stallion with flashing eyes.
The next question, Ann felt, was whether to take Mercedes. She would have liked her company, but Mercedes would not want to come, and would not understand in the least why Ann herself was going.
Would not, that is, unless Ann explained, which she had no intention of doing. She drove past the motel without stopping, forcing herself, actually, to slow down to take the mileage at the sign. Five miles, Emily had said, by road. What was it called? Meadow Gold? That sounded like butter.
An antlered buck stepped daintily onto the road and halted, spellbound by her headlights. Icy-footed mice scampered up and down her spine as she stopped. Not only because she might have hit the buck (though that would have been horrible) but because for a fleeting instant the graceful buck had seemed an object of supernatural dread.
Like the horse and its rider.
She blew the horn, and the buck bounded away—no more than a common deer, a deer to be shot in all probability on the first or second day of hunting season. Or had hunting season already begun? Perhaps it was over already. Who would want to hunt in this rain?
She had started forward again when she saw a dark something in the rearview mirror. It swelled and roared around her, tires screaming and throwing up combs of rainwater, a rusted-out sedan without lights. Already it was gone, leaving Old Penton Road as dark and silent as before.
According to the odometer, she had gone exactly three and three-tenths miles since passing the motel. Five miles by road, Emily had said. Abruptly, the road dipped. A sign: TRUCKS USE LOW GEAR. Not a bad idea for her either, Ann decided, shifting the transmission into second. What had the sedan done? It must have been going eighty when it hit this section.
Around every bend, Ann expected to see the orange flames of its demise.
She wished—very much—that she had brought Mercedes after all. Any companionship would be welcome, even that of a sulky sixteen-year-old. And Mercedes would—The radio! How could she have forgotten?
She switched it on. “—all along Old Penton Road. Flash floods may also—”
Off again. What was the good of a radio if it just scared you? What had Goethe said? Willie would know. “Nature reacts not only to physical disease, but to moral weakness: when danger increases, she gives courage.” Something like that. Well, come on, Nature, get busy.
Cooking with Goethe.
Cooking for Nature.
An infant waterfall appeared out of the darkness far above her, tumbling down onto the already-drowned asphalt. Ann gunned the Buick and crashed through it. This road must have dropped several hundred feet in the last quarter mile, she thought. Or was it a quarter mile in the last several hundred feet?
The engine sputtered, caught again. Something inside had gotten wet; Ann knew that much about engines. It had dried out again because the engine was good and hot. Willie had told her, and Willie used to race—Willie should know. If it stopped, she would be stuck here until the police came, or the rain stopped, too. Maybe all night. Damn!
Meadow Grass—that was it. And there was the sign, big but old, flaking a little now.
Ann stopped the Buick, got a flashlight out of the map box, and lowered the window half way. MEADOW GRASS SUMMER CAMP, with a picture of a cowboy—no, a girl—on horseback. A girls’ camp, then; she should have guessed. Nobody would call a boys’ camp Meadow Grass.
“When they’re supposed to be asleep,” Emily had said, “a kid will sneak out and get a horse and ride into town.” Girls for sure. Boys would ride at night, but not into town. Boys would jump fences or something.
Hearing the thud of hooves, Ann redirected her flashlight. Someone was riding toward her, galloping down the curving road on the other side of the gate. Through silver rain, the light glinted on the oiled barrel of a rifle.
Mercedes had decided to get a shower two minutes before the knock. Hurriedly she hooked her bra again and slipped back into the pink sweater she had taken off. “Coming! Just a minute.”
When she opened the door, Seth was standing outside in the rain. “Oh,” she said. “Come on in. Get out of that.”
“Thanks.” He shook himself (rather like a wet dog) before stepping inside.
“You can hang your jacket in the closet here.” Tentatively she extended one of the motel’s plastic hangers.
“Where’s your mom and dad?”
“Gone off someplace. Mom’ll be back pretty soon.”
“Too good.” He was wearing a Castleview High letter jacket. The blue wool showed indigo spots where drops of rain had soaked the fabric; others rose in crystalline warts from the nearly new green leather sleeves. He unzipped it and hung it up.
“Listen,” Mercedes said, “I’m really terribly sorry about what happened to your dad.”
A sudden spasm twisted Seth’s features. “So’m I.”
“How’s your mom taking it?”
He shrugged. “Not so good, I guess.”
“He’s dead, right?”
“Yeah, he’s dead. How’d you know?”
“We guessed, or Dad did. I thought he was probably right.”
“He fell. That’s what they say.”
There were brown vinyl chairs beside the little table that held Ann’s abandoned book; Mercedes sat down in one and motioned toward the other.
“Hey, would you like to go out and get a Coke or something? You could leave a note. I’ve got Mom’s Olds.”
“How many legs on a horse?”
Seth stared at her for a moment. “Four?”
Suddenly decisive, Mercedes stood. “I’d love to. We just about—I’m a little shook, to tell the truth. I need to get out and do something.”
“Too good. Me, too.” Seth sighed. “Rain’s quitting, so maybe we can chase the castle, after. You ever done that?”
4
THE VIEW AT NIGHT
ROBERTS UNLOCKED the door, stepped inside, and switched on the lights. The County Museum had been a private house once, and they stood in what had been its foyer; there was a desk for an attendant, a few cabinets against the walls.
Roberts said, “What was it you wanted to see, Mr. Shields? I can take you right to it.”
“The castle,” Shields told him.
“We’ve got a whole exhibit on that. Over this way. You believe in it?”
Shields nodded. “I saw it.”
“Really? I guess that would make a man interested. Right through here, this was the music room when old Doc Dunstan built the place. About the castle’s in the next room, the studio.”
Shields nodded. The music room held coins, mostly, and a few sad-looking violins. He stopped for a moment to peer at the faded pages of a diary.
“My great-grandpa’s,” Roberts told him proudly. “He was a Wells Fargo agent for a while. Saw some interesting things, and had some interesting things to say about ’em.”
Shields nodded. “I’ll bet.”
“They were after me to donate it, but if I did, what would happen to it if they close this place? So it’s just loaned.”
Shields said, “You should keep it in the family. Got any children, Bob?”
“No more Robertses—I’m the last. Two daughters, though, and two grandchildren.”
Shields straightened up. “They’ll value this, when they’re older.”
“I hope so. He had a theory of his own about the castle—thought it was rocks out in Arizona. A mesa, he called it.”
“He’d seen it, too, then.”
“Oh, sure. He’d grown up right around here. Everyone that does sees it. It doesn’t really stand to reason that the kids should see it more than the grownups, but that seems to be the way of it. You’d think that kids wouldn’t see it so much ’cause they’re shorter, nearer to the ground.”
Shields said, “Grownups don’t climb trees.”
“That’s a fact. Could I ask where you were when you saw it, Mr. Shields?”
“In the attic of a two-story house with high ceilings. The Howard house—we’re thinking of buying it.”
Roberts nodded. “I know about that.”
“I guess it’s true, what they say.” Shields bent over the diary again, trying to decipher its florid, faded handwriting. “News travels fast in a small town.”
“Sure does,” Roberts confirmed. “Specially if you’re Mrs. Howard’s father.”
Shields turned to look at him. “That’s right, she said her maiden name was Roberts. I never put two and two together.”
“That’s my daughter Sally.”
Shields hesitated. “Do you know that your son-in-law got hurt this afternoon, Bob?”
“Tommy? Lord, no. Was it serious?”
Shields nodded. “I think so.”
“Sally should have called me. Maybe she called Sarah—no, Sarah would have called and told me.”
“Maybe you ought to call her.”
Roberts nodded. “If you’ll excuse me just a minute, Mr. Shields.”
“Of course.”
Roberts hurried back to the hall. Shields could hear the dial of the old-fashioned telephone spin, then Roberts’s muted voice. Somewhat embarrassed, he bent over the diary once more.
The page to which it lay open began with the continuation of a sentence: “—a shock? Why, I would not have gone to the door to see a ghost after that, nor suffered anyone to speak to me of it. To find someone from home out here, homesteading on the Santa Cruz, beat seeing the elephant.”
Roberts said, “Sarah’s with her. Sarah says she’s taken something and gone to bed. She didn’t want to wake her up.”
Shields nodded.
“Tommy’s dead—I guess you knew. You wanted to break it to me easy. I appreciate that.”
“I thought he probably was,” Shields admitted. “I didn’t know it.”
“Sally called Sarah, didn’t say what was wrong, just asked her to come over. Naturally, Sarah came. After she found out, she tried to phone me. Teddie told her you and me were already gone.”
“If you’d like to go there, Bob … .”
Roberts shook his head. “Not right now. Sally’s asleep, and there’s nothing I can do. Seth’s off someplace—Seth’s my grandson. He’ll be all right, he’s Tommy’s boy.”
“I’m sure he will,” Shields said.
“Tommy was a tough one,” Roberts told him. “Tommy was a fighter.”
Shields nodded again, not knowing what else to do in the face of the older man’s controlled grief.
“You were wanting to see the stuff about the castle. It’s in that room there. That’s the studio. Switch is on the wall, to your left as you go in.”
“Thanks,” Shields said. He went into the studio and turned on the lights. Behind him in the music room, he heard Roberts blow his nose. Bob wasn’t tough, Shields reflected. Bob wasn’t a fighter. Or perhaps, he was.
The rider reined up, his horse stopping so abruptly that it appeared to crouch. He pointed his rifle at Ann like a pistol, keeping the reins in his left hand. “Get out of that car.”
Ann nodded, opened the door, and stepped out into the rain. It was no longer falling quite so fiercely as it had been, Ann decided. She thought of her body sprawled on the wet grass, the last gentle rain tapping at her upturned face. The gun was the kind you saw in cowboy movies; it seemed strange that such a gun could fire anything but blanks. Its muzzle followed her like a menacing eye.
“Come over to the gate.”
Ann did as she was told.
He tossed her a bunch of keys. “Unlock it.”
The big padlock was drowned in darkness. Ann clamped the flashlight beneath her chin, found a key that looked as though it might fit.
Freed from the hasp, the gate swung toward her. The horse tossed its head, watching her sidelong through the rain; its rider’s eyes were lost beneath the brim of his rain-soaked hat.
“You get back in that car. If you think you’re real smart, you’ll cut the lights and throw her in reverse. And I’ll have six or seven bullets in her before she’s thirty feet back down the road.”
Ann shook her head. “I’m not going to do that.”
“Then you ease her by the gate. Go real slow. When you’re through, get out and lock the gate.”
She nodded, saw him try to peer through the windshield when the domelight came on. It seemed odd and almost unnatural to be inside the car once more, away from the rain. She shifted into drive and let the Buick creep forward.
When she opened the door, the rider said, “Kill the engine. Give me my keys back, and the keys to the car.” He dug a heel into his horse’s flank; the horse turned obediently, presenting its left side to Ann. He dropped his reins on the horse’s neck, took both sets of keys with his left hand, and stuffed them into the pocket of his jeans. “Open the doors of that car,” he told her. “All the doors.”
“All of them?”
For an instant she thought he was going to shoot, leaning from the saddle, his left hand grasping the wooden part of the gun in front of the trigger. She turned quickly, opened the rear door on the driver’s side, trotted around the car to open the other doors.
“Open the trunk,” he said.
“I can’t,” Ann told him. “You’ve got my keys.”
He dismounted. “Shut that gate and lock it.”
She did so. The lock was large and shiny, well-oiled. He wasn’t really much taller than she was, Ann decided.
“Get into the car on the other side. I’m goin’ to drive.” He put his rifle flat on the rear seat, slammed the doors, raced the engine as he started it.
Ann closed the other rear door and got in beside him. “I could have grabbed your gun,” she said. “I could’ve turned it around and shot you.”
“I know,” he said. “But you’re not goin’ to do that.” He tapped the horn to get his mount off the road, and wrestled the shift lever in a way that showed he was accustomed to a stick.
Ann clutched the armrest as the Buick rocked around a sharp curve. “What about your poor horse?”
The rider chuckled. “Buck’ll be along. Wants to get back to the barn, get his saddle took off. You very wet, ma’am?”
“Not as wet as you are,” Ann said.
“I guess that’s right.” He was driving the gravel road much faster than she would have, but he obviously knew every twist and turn of it. “If they hadn’t of busted my jeep, I wouldn’t have had t
o take him out in this.”
Ann said, “I’m sort of sorry I went out in it myself.”
“That’s somethin’ I was wonderin’ about, ma’am. You come to see one of the kids?”
Ann shook her head. “I just wanted to talk with whoever is in charge.”
“In charge of the kids, or in charge of the place?”
“I hadn’t thought about that,” Ann said. “In charge of the horses, I suppose.”
“Then you got him. You want to go through our barn? Maybe you’d like a chance to dry off first. We got a big fire goin’.”
“That sounds good,” she said. Actually, it sounded heavenly; she imagined a red-hot pot-bellied stove in a bunkhouse, cowboys spinning tall yarns (or was that sailors?), while a battered old stoneware coffeepot bubbled. Despite the heater, her teeth were chattering.
Triumphantly, the Buick roared to the top of a small, steep hill; at the bottom, under a brilliant light on a tall pole, in a valley that seemed separate from the rest of the world, stood a big white barn and a red-roofed rambling fieldstone building.
“This is a girl’s camp, isn’t it? I’d have thought you’d be closed by now.”
He nodded without speaking as the Buick rattled over an old wooden bridge.
When he had switched off the engine and returned her keys, he got his rifle from the back seat. “I guess you ought to open up that trunk, ma’am. Just to be sure.”
Ann did, and he glanced inside. She closed it again and made certain it had latched. “Just what are you so frightened of, anyway?”
“I don’t rightly know,” he told her. “Come on in.”
She followed him into a wide rustic room, one wall of which was mostly fireplace; it held a bigger, redder, hotter fire than Ann could ever have imagined. Four young women were sitting on a long sofa dividing the room, not so much watching a television set as talking above the noise of it.
The rider said, “We got company, Miss Lisa.”
All four looked around and stood up.
Wearily, Joy Beggs opened the front door of her own little house on Willow and hung her coat in the hall closet. Her son Todd called, “That you, Mom?”