Devil's Race

by Avi

I said nothing.

  Then she said, “I’m going to lie down for a while.” Her voice was soft, sad. It was all an act. I didn’t believe her and I didn’t care what happened to her either.

  She crawled into the tent.

  I stood outside, alone.

  37

  Faintly, the thumping of the guns. At first they were distant, as they always had been. But as the barrage continued, it grew louder. Vaguely, I remembered we were much closer to the military area.

  Anger had taken me over. I had been tricked, humiliated, turned into a fool. Wanting nothing more than just to go away, I went back down by the creek, into Devil’s Race. There I watched the water, watching its surface constantly fold in upon itself, back, down, and around.

  How long I sat there I don’t know. It might have been minutes. It might have been hours. When I looked up it had grown darker. Thin gray filled the air. The stillness smothered me. I felt like an empty shell, hollow at the core. I was cut off, isolated even from myself, lost in my own wilderness.

  He had returned.

  He appeared quite suddenly, a few feet from where I was sitting. I looked at him.

  “Well, now,” he said, “we’ve come a decent way, haven’t we? You seem to be very much a wiser young man.” He gave his smile.

  “Let me show you how far we have progressed,” he said. “You are sitting on rock, aren’t you? Now then, take your hand and lay it, palm down, flat against it. Go on. Do it.”

  Reluctantly, I did as he told me.

  “Now push, push.”

  I looked at him, at my hand . . . and then . . . I pushed. To my astonishment my hand sank into the rock until I could no longer see my fingers or my wrist.

  He laughed.

  “Wiggle your fingers. Go on. You can do it.”

  I did.

  “What do you feel?”

  What I felt was an even, unyielding pressure, as if my hand was encased in a strong, but somewhat gentle, cool mass.

  “You are feeling the inside of a stone,” he said. “Like death, in fact. Not so bad, is it?”

  I attempted to snatch my hand out. For a moment it held. I felt terrified. Then I broke free and held my hand before my face.

  “All there,” he said. “But you see, the more I am, the less you are. Just as I promised. Death isn’t so very bad, John. Peaceful. No one can bother you. Think of it.” He stood up.

  I did the same.

  “Why don’t you just give up, John? You would like to.”

  All I wanted was to get away from him. I slid down the gorge, plunged through the water and across.

  “Trying to lose me?” he called.

  I sprang to the other side, taking the incline. Repeatedly slipping, I had to scramble on all fours, grabbing rocks and shrubs. I reached the top and looked back where I had come from. He had vanished. Only the blue dome of the tent stood like some window to another world behind me.

  I looked about, searching the dark woods for some way to escape. I no longer cared about anything. I wanted nothing to do with anyone.

  I wanted to give up.

  Turning from him and from Ann, I walked into the woods. I heard his laughter. I kept on going. There was nothing I did not hate, myself most of all.

  38

  I wandered with no trail, no particular direction. St. Anthony’s Wilderness. I might have been on the moon for all the life I saw. Wherever I moved the silence, his silence, seemed to hover. Whatever lived there—animals, birds—hid, waiting for me to pass so they could live again. I was being shunned.

  I did not care what happened to me.

  I came to an old tree, its roots exposed and bent above the earth. The area overlooked something of a hollow, at the bottom of which lay decaying rubbish. I sat down, leaned against the tree, and closed my eyes. I was so very tired.

  I tried to think over what had happened, holding my greatest anger for Ann. Once again I saw how she had used me, tricked me. And now, in her way, by abandoning me, she was about to destroy me.

  The more I thought about her, the less I thought about John Proud. The idea that I had liked her so much, wanted to make love to her, was awful to me. I supposed I had loved her.

  At some distance the guns beat. The pounding, slow and methodical, seemed to be at one with my heart.

  A piece of rotten wood lay on the ground. I picked it up. White bugs that had clung to it scurried away. I poked the damp bit with my finger, pushing it through. But when I removed my finger there was no hole.

  “Maybe,” I thought, “Ann is dead.”

  “Maybe,” I thought, “I am.”

  Nothing mattered.

  The silence around me became suffocating. I gagged for breath. John Proud. I didn’t care about him either.

  I cared about nothing. Not even myself.

  I stood up, trying to decide which way to go. I started to walk back in the direction I thought I had come from. Sure enough, as I went on, I found evidence that I was going the right way. A footprint here, there, matching mine. A broken twig now and again suggested I was moving correctly.

  I was proud of myself. I wasn’t lost. I didn’t need anyone to show me the way. I knew exactly where I was going. I was in charge.

  Out of nowhere came his laugh.

  I saw then. It was too easy what I was doing, simply following signs in the woods. Too many signs. Had I made them? Or had he?

  I felt my skin prickle. . . .

  That day, that day when I had first come to the Wilderness, I had been glad that Tom Fenton had not been able to come. I had wanted him to be called elsewhere. I had wanted Ann to come. And I had wanted Uncle Dave out of the way.

  Other thoughts began to pour in on me. I began to think of all the things I had wanted. I had wanted to get rid of Ann.

  I! I!

  My heart was racing.

  Everything I had wanted had been done for me.

  “All that happens will be your doing. Your wanting. Don’t ever forget that, ever!”

  John Proud had said that the first time.

  So all those things that had happened, all of them, were things that had let me do what I wanted. . . . I, myself.

  But if that was so, why had I wanted to hurt Ann, to leave her? . . . Because I did not want her to know that truth—that evil—in me.

  For another moment I stood there. I saw then that John Proud had not fooled me. He had only shown me a way to fool myself.

  I began to run, leaping, crashing through the underbrush, back to where I had left Ann.

  I hit the top of the gorge—Devil’s Race—almost at a full gallop. I hurled myself down through the water, up to the other side and the tent.

  There I stopped, afraid to look.

  I dropped to all fours, went to the tent, and threw back the entrance flap. Ann was there, lying absolutely still.

  “Ann?” I called softly. “Ann . . .”

  She gave no answer.

  Frantic, I scrambled inside. “Ann,” I called again. Shaking, I put out my hand, let my fingers touch her lips. I could feel nothing.

  And I, I had done it, done it all, every bit. I, John Proud.

  In a daze I backed out of the tent. And he was there, directly opposite, on the other side of the ravine.

  “Yes, you did that too,” he called, “and she trusted you, John. Well, surely now you know I’ve all but won. It’s time to finish, isn’t it?” And he turned and began to run away in long, easy strides.

  That time I ran after him.

  That time I would not give up.

  39

  I ran blindly, falling as I ran, down the steep hills, following where he had gone. It was an area thickly set with boulders and broken trees, the trees like bowling pins knocked this way and that. I careened from point to point, my eyes trying not to lose him.

  From time to time I did. Never for long. He seemed always just beyond, just out of reach, with an ease that only made me angrier.

  “Here,” he would call, taunting me. “Here!�
�

  And I followed.

  We kept moving down. The murky light of the long dusk made false shadows. Then I would break into a small clearing, and again it would be day. I was running through time.

  I had no idea what I would do when I caught him. More than once I was certain I never would. Worse, I felt like I was chasing myself. He not only looked like me, he seemed to be able to read my mind, to be my mind. I would think of going one way to cut him off. He would appear to fall into the trap, but then at the last moment he would break free.

  I broke out onto a dirt road that cut at right angles to the way he was going. I stood there, trying to get my breath back, wondering which way he had gone. For the moment I lost him.

  I waited, sure he would show himself. And he did, below, beyond the road. I took a deep breath, and raced after.

  Soon I came to a small creek. I skipped across and once more the land shifted. Now I was laboring up. More and more it seemed to me that he had some particular place in mind. On all fours, crawling much of the time, I pressed on, catching glimpses of him above.

  I reached the topmost ridge, and another dirt road. But on the far side was a steel mesh fence, seven feet high. On top, tipped forward, barbed wire. It extended to either side as far as I could see along the fence.

  Beyond this fence was an open area of some forty feet, and then another fence, equally high, also topped with barbed wire.

  I looked up and down and saw no way to get through. I wasn’t sure if John Proud had. After walking up and down a bit, I noticed that on the inner fence was a sign:

  WARNING! KEEP OUT! DANGER!

  U.S. MILITARY RESERVATION!!!

  He was nowhere in sight. Spent, I leaned against the fence, trying to make up my mind which way to go. And there he was against the second barrier, leaning too and looking right at me!

  Casually, as if he had nothing to fear from me, he turned and began to move away. In my frustration I gripped the metal hard. To my astonishment, my fingers slid through the wire. I thrust my hands forward and my arms too. They went through. I stood there, awed, looking at my hands on the other side of the fence.

  With a sudden, impulsive push, I flung myself at the fence and . . . went through to the other side.

  Horrified yet elated, I stood there, trembling. Then I raced for the second fence, and without flinching tore through it.

  Catching a glimpse of him below, I dove after him, redoubling my speed, crashing down to the bottom and onto a field. There I stopped and looked about to see where it was I had come.

  The field was horribly mangled, with nothing but splintered stumps of trees, some charred, some smoldering. Even the ground felt warm. Gaping holes in the ground seemed to have been scooped out by giant hands. I made my way around them.

  I stood, listening, for I had again lost sight of him. The deep silence told me he was close, very close. Then I heard something new. It was a high, shivering, whispering whistle. I could not place it. Then I saw it, a black stroke against the sky. The next instant, some thirty yards in front of me, the earth erupted, a fountain of dirt and rock. At almost the same time there came a roar. Wind hurled upon me, threw me down in a rain of earth.

  I pushed myself up on my hands and knees, wiping the dirt from my face. I heard a distant thud. Then again the whipping, whishing sound, followed in seconds by a crash, as elsewhere in the field, that time behind me, the earth shook, leaped and rained.

  He had led me into the cannon target zone.

  40

  I felt tears running down my face, the bursting emptiness inside, my own voice telling me that I deserved to die, that this was fair punishment for all that I had done.

  “I’m here!” I screamed. “I’m here!”

  Only that ghastly roar gave reply, and the shaking of the earth. And through it all, like strokes of a whip, the high, whispering whine of the shells as they slit the air.

  Then I saw him—John Proud—standing in the middle of the field as if he were at the beach taking his ease. He was watching me, watching what happened to me, waiting for me to die so he could take my place.

  I hated him. I wanted to destroy him.

  Slowly, carefully, focusing on him, I began to move. He had made me all but nothing. The cannon could not hurt me. Pain would have been relief, some proof that some of me was left. I was beyond pain.

  I drew closer.

  He held his place, waiting.

  I picked up a rock, a large one, and hefted it in both hands.

  He stood there waiting, patiently waiting.

  I came within a few feet of him. He had not so much as moved or flinched. Lifting the stone, feeling its great weight, I hurled it with all my strength right at him.

  It struck with a crash.

  To my amazement he shattered, shattered like so many bits of glass. A mirror.

  For a second my heart leaped at the thought that I had destroyed him. But even as I felt that joy he was there again, exactly as before, the image of myself, only stronger, clearer.

  “You must kill me,” he taunted, “with your own hands. That’s the only way. I want you to!”

  I stood there, my hands up, ready to do his bidding. He waited. He wanted me to kill him. He wanted me to act.

  But standing there I began to understand something: He was my mirror, but then I must be his. If I destroyed him, that very act would make me him. That was what he wanted. My hatred would match his. And he would then be able to take my place. That would be his ultimate victory, his triumph.

  So I stood there, staring at his face that was my face, watching myself, hating myself. I no longer knew who he was. Had he become me? Or I him? Had we already switched?

  Questions . . . answers . . .

  “Kill me,” I heard a voice say. “It’s what you want.”

  I did not even know who was speaking.

  Were we one, or two . . . or both . . . ?

  “Hate me!” he screamed. “Hate me!”

  And then . . . I did know. It was not a question. It was not an answer. “Were we one, or two?” The question was the answer.

  They were not separate. They were one. As we were. Inseparable.

  And I knew then the only way to save myself.

  Instantly, I leaped upon him. But instead of trying to kill him, I embraced him.

  Taken by surprise, he struggled to get free. I would not let him go.

  As the earth exploded all around us, I clung to him with a desperation and pain I had never known. All I knew was that I must not let him go. I must hold him, accept him.

  In the middle of that field of fire, locked together, he now in terror, as I was, we were equal—good, bad—two parts of one come together at last. And I screamed with all the voice I ever had, “We are one!”

  There was a gigantic explosion.

  I was lifted, turned, spun through the air, high, higher, on a spiral, until I landed with what felt like the weight of all matter over me, deep, deep, within the dark of my own heart.

  It was as if I had entered into the middle of a stone.

  41

  I woke slowly. My mind was floating free in some place, some time. “Am I dead or alive?” I asked myself.

  I opened my eyes to blackness.

  Gradually I saw the flickering of light. Starlight.

  Painfully, I pushed myself up. Dirt fell from my body.

  The pale light of the moon filled the broken field with a gentle, yellow-rose glow.

  I heard night sounds.

  Working hard, I managed to stand up. Not sure which way to go, I looked about in a wide circle. In one direction was high ground. That would be, I knew, St. Anthony’s Wilderness. I went that way.

  I reached the first fence. Remembering how I had come through before, I held up my hands and attempted to push through the wire. My hand sprang back. I could no longer get through that way.

  I walked along the fence in search of some way to get through. A hole perhaps.

  I found a tree that had f
allen against the fence, tearing down the topmost barbed wire. I shimmied up and dropped over.

  The second fence was harder. No trees. No holes. But, increasingly impatient, I climbed it with only a few scratches.

  I walked across the road, then down from the ridge. Once more I began to climb. Now I was in the forest, in the absolute dark. I no longer knew which way to go.

  My thoughts returned to Ann. Grief filled me. I had betrayed her.

  I began to cry then, the tears slipping down my face. I was crying not just for myself but for her, what she was, what I had destroyed. I had loved her. I wished that she was there with me, that she loved me. What was I to do with what I had done?

  I wanted her to be alive.

  And then I heard it.

  It was faint at first, but unmistakable. It came to me like a thin bright thread of hope, gliding through the trees, the clear, simple tune of her penny whistle.

  It was beautiful. And it sang to me, called me, led me.

  42

  I came out on the far side of Devil’s Race, directly opposite the tent. Ann was sitting there, her legs crossed, her feet bare, her ankle still wrapped in the bandage.

  “Ann!” I called.

  The music stopped. She looked up and smiled. “I thought,” she said, “that if I played long enough you would find your way.”

  We crawled into the tent and lay down side by side.

  She put her arms around me, pressed her face close to mine.

  “I love you,” I said.

  “I love you too.”

  We held each other.

  And I knew that I was there, all of me at last, whole and free.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  AVI is the author of more than sixty books, including CRISPIN: The Cross of Lead, a Newbery Medal winner, and CRISPIN: At the Edge of the World. His other acclaimed titles include THE TRUE CONFESSIONS OF CHARLOTTE DOYLE and NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH, both Newbery Honor Books, and most recently THE SEER OF SHADOWS. He lives with his family in Colorado. Visit Avi at www.avi-writer.com.

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