by Gene Wolfe
Teddy told her, Shields reflected. She’d called for Bob, and Teddy told her we’d come here. No, her mother told her, of course. Bob spoke with her over this very phone—but possibly Teddy had told someone else, possibly that was why someone had broken a glass case or a window, the reason for the silence now.
He dialed the dealership. “This is Shields, Teddy. How’s business?”
“I wish I could say good, Mr. Shields.”
“Anybody been in?”
“Not a soul, Mr. Shields.”
“Any calls for me?”
“I’m afraid not, Mr. Shields.”
“What about calls for Bob?”
“That’s right, I should have told you. His wife phoned, looking for him—some kind of family matter, I believe. Is he still with you, Mr. Shields? Maybe he ought to call her.”
“Didn’t you tell her where we were?”
“I didn’t know,” Teddy said. “You and Bob just went off. Where are you?”
Shields nearly told him, biting back the words barely in time. “It doesn’t matter, Teddy. Lock up at nine and go home. If I see Bob, I’ll let him know.”
He hung up before Teddy could protest.
Upstairs next; there was nothing else to do. With no great hope he shouted, “ROBERTS!” and waited, listening. There was no reply, not even a whisper of sound.
He’s had a heart attack, Shields thought, sprinting up the steps. Why the hell didn’t I think of that? Bob’s an old man. Probably felt bad, sat down somewhere …
And died.
But maybe not. Maybe Bob’s still alive, and if I call for an ambulance in time—
The upper floor was dark. The switches Roberts had thrown when they came in obviously did not control the lights on this floor, so that was where Roberts would have gone first: to the upstairs switches, wherever they were.
He had not reached them. Whoever had broken the glass had reached him first.
And yet they’d be right here, Shields thought. Here at the head of the stairs. They’d have to be. He imagined the doctor and his wife returning from a late dinner party. Their children would be asleep; they would probably have given the housekeeper and the maid the evening off. They would unlock the front door and let themselves in, turn on a light in the foyer, climb these stairs, and turn on another light in this upstairs hall to find their bedroom.
His fingers groped along the wall, feeling only smooth oak paneling. The rain dripped from the eaves as before; but when a second or two had passed, the house was no longer weeping alone in the silence. An instrument with a voice as deep as an organ (though it was not really an organ) sobbed, too, its notes long and throbbing, reedy and infinitely sad. Hearing them, Shields froze. Seconds passed before he identified the melody. It was the “Valse Triste” from Peer Gynt.
It’s recorded music, he thought, it has to be. There’s a speaker system, and I’m listening to a record or a tape.
Yet the wall he touched seemed to vibrate ever so slightly in sympathy with the deepest tones; it seemed that he could hear the squeak of the pedals.
There’s no switch here. So it must be—has to be—on the other side of the hall. Why would an intruder play music? To cover the sounds of his movements, of course, now that breaking the glass has given him away. Most burglars wouldn’t be that smart—this is no kid, a clever man, a dangerous man.
Shields’s fingertips swept the paneling to his left, found a switch plate, and pushed in the old-fashioned switch.
Light flooded the hall.
It was empty save for three ill-assorted occasional chairs. “Valse Triste” moaned on and on, seeming to gather strength from the light. He could no longer hear the rain.
He had not been frightened earlier in the dark. Or rather, he had been afraid only for Roberts, afraid that the older man was dead or dying. Now it seemed that the yellowish hall light must soon reveal some abomination, showing him the naked face of Hell, or revealing that his own hands were drenched with blood. Those hands shook; so that he would not see them, he jammed them into his pockets. Sick now with fear, stomach churning and legs shaking, he went slowly down the hall.
A doorway opened into a dark room on his right. He reached inside and found the switch; the room was empty except for five display cases pushed against its walls.
And yet something prowled the old house. He wanted to run, to climb into the rusty Cherokee outside and—
The keys! The thought steadied him, giving him something to think about beyond his own terror. Bob had driven; no doubt Bob had the keys. If he ran now, he would have to run in actual fact, flee along the rain-swept sidewalks of Castleview. As he realized it, he realized too that he would not run; his fear was ebbing—he had not run when it had been worse.
He returned to the hall and strode to the next door; this time the doorway was on his left. When he pressed the switch, floodlights in the ceiling revealed a model town: red brick and shiny black asphalt streets, tiny red and white houses flanked by bright green trees, a town as charming as a child’s drawing. Castleview, of course. He chuckled softly at his own fears as he crouched to look beneath the big table that held the model. The shadowy space was empty of all but dust; and yet something stealthily walked, and there was a pervasive animal reek, faint but distinct, throughout this upper floor.
As he straightened up, he felt illogically sure that Bob was no longer in the building. He would find Bob, dead, behind the wheel of the Cherokee, perhaps. Or never find him at all.
From the floor below came the sound of breaking glass.
8
HITCHHIKERS
THE HEADLIGHTS seemed merely to polish the oily black road that wound through the tunnel of trees. Mercedes studied its asphalt surface obsessively, afraid to close her eyes and equally afraid to look squarely at the back of Long’s rain-soaked hat. Black-and-yellow signs crowded by trees warned of steep descents and abrupt curves ahead, yet it seemed to Mercedes that it was the trees themselves that moved, skipping lightly by the motionless car: rapt in their secret dance, they twirled left, then right.
Something inky and shapeless crouched by the road, its eyes glowing green in the headlights.
Seth hit the brakes hard, and the Olds spun in a sickening skid. It was as though the giant on the horse were back again, as though she were in the Buick again; she implored God that it be so, that Mom and Dad be with her as before, in their own car on the way to the safety and warmth of a motel.
It was not. The Olds stopped, angled diagonally across the narrow road. “That’s her,” Jim Long said. “Damn, but I’m glad we found her.”
The dark, shapeless thing rose, became a human figure with a pale blur of face. Long left the car, edged around the front bumper (it was among the trees) and hurried over. They did not embrace, though they joined hands; for a moment they talked, or so it appeared—Mercedes could not hear what was said, and did not want to hear. “Seth, let’s get out of here.”
He glanced back at her, surprised. “We can’t just go off and leave them.”
“Please.”
He rolled down his window. “Everything all right?”
Turning toward them, Long said, “Sure. She’s just a little upset, is all.”
Seth switched off the ignition and got out. Mercedes heard him through the open window: “I’m really sorry. I didn’t expect you to be in the middle of the road.”
Mercedes opened her door and got out, too; it seemed to be the only thing to do. The white-faced figure was a woman, very blond, whose pale hair fell to her waist. Mercedes said, “Are you okay?”
The blond woman nodded. “Yes, I am fine. It was too quick for me to be frightened.” She dabbed at her eyes with something that looked like a rag.
Long told Seth, “Dead animals—dead things in the road get her upset.”
“It was a mother and her baby,” the blond woman explained. Her voice was low and sweet. “What do you call the babies? Her cub, her kitten. They killed them both.”
Merc
edes looked. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness now that they no longer followed the headlights. A large raccoon lay dead. Near it, almost touching, was a much smaller raccoon; it, too, was dead.
The blond woman said, “They drive so fast, even when they cannot see. They never think that there may be little ones in the way.”
Seth nodded slowly. “Yeah. Well, we can’t help them now.” He sounded embarrassed.
“We can weep for them, as I do. It is a terrible thing, to die as this little one did, with no one to mourn.”
Long put his arm around the blond woman’s shoulders, then drew it away as though afraid she would object.
Seth cleared his throat. “I better move my car. Somebody coming up this road might hit it.”
Long said, “Sure.”
Seth went back to the Olds; Mercedes wanted to go with him, to get into the front seat beside him again and beg him to drive away; but the blond woman was speaking to her. “It is very kind of you to take us. Jim told me. It is not where we wish to go, but perhaps we may get a ride there. If not, we will walk. We shall manage in some way.”
“Okay,” Mercedes told her. “That’s okay.” The blond woman was half a head shorter than she, but Mercedes felt she must be a good deal older—twenty or twenty-five at least. Even so, she seemed far too young for Long. Awkwardly, Mercedes held out her hand. “I’m Mercedes Schindler-Shields.”
The blond woman clasped it briefly; her slender fingers felt hot, almost burning, as though she were running a fever. “Viviane Morgan.”
Her breath held the pensive sweetness of a spring morning; Mercedes found it an effort to speak. “I’m happy to meet you, Ms. Morgan.”
“Call me Viviane, please.”
The hoarse grinding of the Olds’s starter interrupted. The engine sputtered and fell silent. Mercedes walked to the open window. “Won’t it start?”
Hunched over the wheel, Seth shook his head angrily. He twisted the key and pumped the accelerator. The starter motor snarled on and on, but there was no answering sound from the engine.
Long peered over Mercedes’s shoulder. “You oughta turned off your lights.”
Seth told him, “The battery’s good. It just won’t catch.” There was a faint smell of gasoline.
“Oughta turn ’em off anyhow. Won’t do no good to run the battery down.”
“I guess not.” Abruptly, the lights were gone. Darkness dropped like a snare from the overarching trees, and Mercedes shivered.
The starter snarled again, perhaps a trifle less strongly.
“You got her flooded now,” Long said. The gasoline smell had grown pungent.
Seth’s voice floated out of the night, astonishingly near. “I guess so.”
“I thought that mighta been what was wrong with mine. If that’s what was wrong, she mighta fixed herself by now. They do that—they dry out. Gas dries up pretty fast.”
Mercedes said, “We can wait. I suppose we’ll have to.”
“We oughta push it outa the way, Miss.” Long spoke from some unknown place in the darkness. “There might come a car up this way and slam into it.”
Seth muttered, “That’s right. Mercedes, would you steer? We’ll have to push—Mr. Long and me.”
“Okay,” she said. The dome light came on as Seth got out, a too-brief reminder of the world of day. She got in, shut the door, and switched on the headlights.
“Maybe you ought to leave those off,” Seth suggested.
“What’s the use of having somebody steer if she can’t see where she’s steering?” Although Mercedes had no license, she understood steering well enough, she thought.
Seth and Long got in front of the Olds, bent their backs, and pushed with all their might. “Straighten out the wheels!” Seth shouted.
Mercedes tugged at the steering wheel, finding it extremely hard to turn.
“That’s the way! More!”
Slowly, inch by inch, the Olds crawled back onto the road again. Its lights picked up Ms. Morgan, still standing beside the dead racoons, a slight smile on her face.
“She could do something,” Mercedes whispered to herself. “If she helped them, it would be that much more.”
“Okay!” Seth shouted, and they stopped pushing and stepped aside. The Oldsmobile crept down the steep slope until Mercedes stamped on the brake pedal.
Seth came to the window. Tiny drops of water on his lashes gleamed like diamonds in the dash lights. “Now just let it roll slow, okay? Park it off out of the way.”
“We could coast! Seth, we can coast to the bottom of this hill. Get in!”
He shook his head impatiently. “I wouldn’t want to try it—it’s got power steering and power brakes. Get it over to the side like I told you, and I’ll see if I can find out what’s the matter with the engine.”
It was a bit easier to steer with the car rolling forward, but Mercedes had to force down the pedal with both feet to stop.
Seth called, “A little more off to the side.”
She edged the Olds over until both right wheels were well out upon the road’s soft, narrow shoulder, wondering whether it would not be stuck there even if Seth got the engine running.
“Okay!”
Thankfully, she put the transmission into Park and set the parking brake.
“Fine,” Seth called. “Pull out the hood release.”
She had to look for it, but it was not hard to find, a knob with a picture of a car with its hood up.
“Turn off the lights.”
Mercedes did, and left the car. There was a small light on the underside of the hood; Seth bent over the engine, prodding here and there. Long mumbled, “Could be the distributor’s wet,” and wandered away.
Seth glanced up at Mercedes, shaking his head. “This has a solid-state distributor. He’s out of it.”
She smiled sympathetically. “He’s probably used to working on old cars like his.”
“Sure.” Seth had turned back to the engine too quickly to catch the smile.
The night was dark and wet, and there was nothing to do but watch Seth. Mercedes got back into the Olds and looked for her Coke. It had spilled on the floormat, its paper cup crushed by Long’s feet; she cleaned up the mess as well as she could in the dark.
Seth called, “Slide over onto the driver’s side, will you? I want you to crank it for me.”
She guessed that meant she was to turn on the starter. She did, producing a feeble groan.
“Again. Pump the gas.”
The grinding of the starter trailed away to silence.
As though lit by lightning, the road and the mist, even the black trees, sprang back into existence. A car was coming down from the scenic view, a silent old sedan with a single headlight, though at that moment that headlight seemed like the sun.
Seth jumped into the road in front of it, waving his arms. It slowed and stopped. Mercedes knew there was only one car it could be before she heard Long’s voice. “Got mine runnin’,” he said. “Hop in. Boys in front, girls in back.”
Seth exclaimed, “Great!” He opened the front door and got in, presumably beside Long. “Come on, Mercedes.”
Slowly, she left Seth’s car, thinking about Seth and Seth’s dead father; she wanted her own father as badly as Seth no doubt wanted his, wanted his hand on her shoulder, wanted very badly to hear him sing his crazy Irish song.
She opened the rear door of the rusted-out sedan. Viviane Morgan was a faint sheen in its cavernous, musty interior. “Sit down,” she said. “There is plenty of room.”
Mercedes did, reluctantly, shutting the door; she did not intend to speak, but she said, “You know, the other time, when Mr. Long opened the door of this car, that light up there came on.”
“Indeed?” Ms. Morgan sounded amused. “But I was not here then, was I?”
With a clank from the universal joint, the old car lurched ahead.
“No, you weren’t. This is a setup, isn’t it? Some kind of a setup. This car would always run.”
> Ms. Morgan laughed.
“Who sabotaged Seth’s car while we were talking to you?”
Ms. Morgan had a soft laugh, a truly attractive laugh; and it was accompanied by breath that seemed perfumed, as a garden does after a warm rain. It continued for so long that Mercedes grew uneasy, and at last frightened. Ms. Morgan’s hand was on her thigh, stroking its soft flesh through the threadbare blue denim. A seam had given way for an inch or so; burning fingers found the spot and crept through.
“Stop that!” Mercedes hissed. The low laugh and fevered exploration continued as before. She groped for Ms. Morgan’s wrist to force her hand away; but there was no wrist or so it seemed, no wrist and no arm—only five burning fingertips and the pinching, tweaking thumb.
Long slowed the old sedan and wrenched its wheel, swerving off the pavement and onto a narrow dirt road that wound among a thousand trees. “Too good!” Seth exclaimed. “I never noticed this. Where’s it go?”
“Goes where you’re goin’,” Long told him. “It ain’t very far.”
Seth nodded, trying to mark mentally the exact place where the dirt road turned off. Long’s girlfriend was giggling about something with Mercedes in the back seat. She had a nice laugh, Seth thought.
9
THE STOWAWAY
ANN HIT the brakes as hard as she could, nearly catapulting the girl in the back seat into the front. “Who are you!”
“One who has hurt her poor nose, madame. You must be more careful how you drive.”
Ann shoved the transmission into Park and stared into the rearview mirror, which showed nothing at all. “Damn it! You just about scared me into a heart attack.” Turning the knob of the headlight switch lit the dome light; she loosened her seat belt and twisted around to look back at the girl huddled on the floor. “I’ve seen you before someplace.”
“We have been introduced, madame,” the girl said. “Now, again, I think. Sang! I bleed!”
“Here.” Ann fumbled in her purse for her handkerchief. “Back there. At that camp. You’re one of the foreign girls. Here, take this.”