The Edge of Sleep

by Wiltse, David

  Becker paused to catch his breath. He had been running when he could through the woods and up the increasing slope during his long spiral around the mountain. Now he was at the point he guessed to be opposite Lamont’s ascending path on the other side. From here on it was straight up. If he had judged correctly, Lamont would be coming down on a route close enough to Becker’s own that Becker would be able to see him, or at least hear him, when he crested the peak and started down. The peak itself was problematic at this juncture since Becker could see only a few yards ahead of himself through the trees.

  Becker listened carefully, holding his breath a moment, trying to catch the sound of branches breaking, loosened rocks, heavy feet in the dead leaves and needles of the forest floor. Anyone coming from the top of the mountain would have to come the first third of the way down on the seat of his pants, clutching at handholds as he came. He would be as easy to hear as a small avalanche. If the man was not in a hurry, he could descend backwards, of course, picking his way carefully—and silently—but that would take time and Becker assumed Lamont was going to be traveling fast.

  Hearing only the normal sounds of the woods, Becker started upwards, reaching for tree trunks and roots to propel himself forward up the ever-increasing slope. He had dropped to his hands and knees, digging for handholds in the rocky forest soil when the trees abruptly fell away entirely and he faced a sheer wall of stone. Becker stopped, his breath thundering in his ears from the effort of his climb, trying to assess his situation.

  He had reached the point of some geologic accident where the steepness of the incline, the force of gravity, and the effects of erosion had conspired to rip away part of the mountain face and leave a cliff as sheer as if it had been sliced from a cake by a giant saber.

  A few saplings had sprouted from crevices in the rock, jutting out at very shallow angles before curving almost perpendicularly and shooting directly skyward. Tufts of weeds and grass were scattered here and there upon the vertical face, and, most incongruously, several small clusters of flowers, their bouquets taunting anyone foolish enough to climb up after them; but for the most part, the escarpment was jagged, reddish-brown rock, high and wide and forbidding, filling Becker’s vision in either direction before it disappeared around the curve of the mountain. The crest of the mountain had split and crumbled like a rotting molar biting into a stone.

  Becker tried to estimate how long it would take to skirt the cliff and come around it on either side. Too long, either way, and worse, he had no way of telling which side Lamont would choose for his descent If he struck off in the wrong direction, he could miss Lamont entirely.

  As he pondered his choices, his breathing gradually subsided, and it was then that he heard the voice.

  It was a high, piping squeak of alarm, almost a squeal, shut off in the middle of its sound and followed by a man’s deeper, startled tones. Looking in the direction of the sound. Becker saw a small shower of leaves and pebbles cascade down the escarpment. Something, or someone, had come very close to tumbling over the edge. Still on his hands and knees at the end of the tree line. Becker watched as a man’s head and upper torso appeared above the cliff edge. Becker drew silently back among the trees and observed the man as he peered downwards at the straight fall before him.

  There was no mistaking him. It was the big man from the Restawhile motel. Becker remembered him sitting on the motel bed, looking stupid. Not nearly as stupid as I was, Becker thought. The man looked stupid now, too, his eyes searching the precipitous plunge as if hoping to see a magic staircase open before him. Another head appeared beside him. It was Jack, chastened by his near fall and crawling on his belly now to see what lay ahead. Both man and boy were panting heavily, sorely winded by their climb.

  Jack’s eyes glanced in Becker’s direction, then flickered away. Becker did not know if the boy had seen him or not, but if he had he had shown the presence of mind to keep quiet about it. Becker prayed that the boy could retain his poise for the next several minutes. His life might depend on it.

  It took Becker no time at all to make up his mind. He could not afford to guess which way to go and guess wrong; Jack would be lost and gone. He could not afford to wait and hope that Blocker had summoned help to back him up. There was no available help in the first place, not much chance Blocker had called for them in the second. To sit and wait was worse than guessing the wrong direction. If he stayed where he was, Lamont would evade him no matter which way he went. There was only one way to go, and it was forty feet straight up the cliff.

  The big man turned away from the escarpment and looked back down the mountain in the direction of his pursuers. As Becker began his climb he could hear Lamont talking to the boy, but within seconds his ears were filled with the harshness of his own breathing as he hauled himself upward, hand over hand.

  Ash could hear the men coming up the mountain, still calling to each other. Their voices were sounding winded now and they were stopping frequently to catch their breath. Ash had no choice but to wait until Tommy caught his breath, too. It was impossible for him to carry the boy along terrain this steep; he needed his cooperation.

  “Are you ready?” Ash asked.

  Jack breathed deeply, exaggerating his condition.

  “Not yet,” he panted. “I’m so tired.”

  Ash looked uncertainly at the boy, then back down the mountain.

  “Okay,” he said. “But hurry.”

  “I can’t breathe,” Jack panted. He was not certain if he had seen a man at the bottom of the cliff or not, but clearly there were men coming up the mountain behind them. Jack knew that running away would do him no good; the big man would catch him in a second and Jack was afraid of tumbling down the rocky slope. His only chance was to stall for time and he did not have to feign very much; he was genuinely exhausted. He resisted the urge to look back down the cliff to see if the man was really there.

  From a distance of six inches the iron pyrite in the rocks looked fuzzily pink. Becker eased his way upwards, his face close to the stone, his vision focused only as far away as his next handhold. Under normal circumstances, it was a climb he would never undertake without equipment. He needed a hammer and pitons to build himself a ladder in the rock, a safety rope to keep a slip from becoming a fatal fall to the bottom. But these were not normal circumstances. He climbed faster than he knew was safe, but the result of delay seemed worse than the danger of a fall.

  There were no ledges to sit on, no rifts in the rock wide enough for him to secure himself, no place to rest, no grips firm enough for him to even lean out from the wall and look upwards. He could not plan his ascent any further than one set of holds at a time because he could see no further up with his face so close to stone. He could not hear anything over the sound of his own breathing. He dared not look down to see how far he had come; he could not look up to see how far he had to go. Fingers scrabbling above him to find a ridge of rock that would hold his weight, toes seeking for the tiny outcroppings his fingers had left, he inched his way upwards.

  Becker tried to pause to ease his aching muscles, but it required more energy to hang there on three fingers and a toe than to keep moving upwards. Meanwhile, the part of his mind not concentrating on the climb was racing. If Lamont was the man from the motel, and Becker was convinced that he was, then the woman who was with him, the nurse, was involved too. His idea of searching for the uniform left in a laundry was not a bad one, after all. He remembered the motorist’s description of the woman who had been driving the car from which Lamont emerged. “Charming,” the man had called her. A woman who could make a man think she was charming after a few seconds of talk at a roadblock. The woman at the motel had worked like that, leaping into a conversation without preamble, as if she had known a man all her life. It had to be the same woman, and she conned us both. Bicker realized. Diverted us both, took our minds off of our business almost immediately. She did it to me by flirting, Becker thought, remembering his sexual reaction to brushing against her in the
motel room. And she distracted Karen by using Jack, by both flattering her and suggesting she was an unfit mother all at once. She put us both off balance and kept us there. Mentally, he cursed himself. Karen had to be told; she had to be warned whom she was looking for—and how dangerous she was. But there was no way to do it now.

  His left arm began to go into spasm, the bicep jerking wildly from the unremitting strain. Becker released the fingers of that hand, letting the arm hang at his side as he pressed closer to the rock, trying to merge with it so that he could cling with face and chest and hip.

  “We have to go now,” Ash said. He had been peering down the mountain toward his invisible pursuers for the last several minutes, his face thrust forward as if he could see them that much sooner.

  “I can’t,” Jack said, still panting.

  “We have to,” Ash said.

  “I’m too tired,” Jack insisted, shaking his head, then dropping it between his knees. “I just can’t. Honest.”

  Ash looked back down the mountain, bewildered. The climbers had become silent, but he knew they were getting close.

  “We have to,” Ash repeated.

  “Can’t ... ”

  Ash grabbed Jack under the arm and pulled the boy to his feet. Jack sat again as if his legs could not hold him. With a trace of annoyance. Ash lifted the boy again and swung him around so that he rode piggyback, leaving Ash’s arms free. Ash took his first tentative steps along the crest of the mountain with the boy on his back.

  Becker was falling, but his body hadn’t submitted to gravity yet. He had reached the top. He could see it even with his face against the rock, the horizon hovering tauntingly just one more reach above him. But it was a reach he could not make. As he lifted his left foot to hip level to give himself the purchase to push up for the final grasp, the thin ridge of rock crumbled under his weight and his left leg swung down uselessly. His bloody fingers were barely holding on as it was and his feet had no way to move higher to relieve the weight. He hung two feet from safety, clinging to sheer stone with two fingers on one hand, three on the other, and a toehold for his right foot that was more wish than security. There was no way to change position without falling, no way to ascend without plummeting down forty feet to the waiting granite below. His fingers began to dance with cramps, then his biceps. It was a matter of seconds, Becker realized, before the spasming of his own muscles jerked him right off the mountain.

  It was then he saw the foot before his face. Lamont stood above him along the crest, staring down, his mouth open in wonder.

  “Who are you?” Lamont asked.

  “Help me,” Becker said.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to fall. Help me.”

  Jack’s head appeared over the big man’s shoulder and he gaped wide-eyed.

  “Help him,” Jack said.

  “We have to go,” said Lamont.

  “Please!” Becker cried. His right foot slipped off its tiny ridge, forced back by the twist of his body as he looked straight up at Lamont. Both arms and fingers were jerking wildly.

  Jack slid off Ash’s back and reached down for Becker, but his arm was too short. Jack tugged at Ash’s pant leg, imploring him to help. Slowly, uncertain what to do. Ash knelt and reached down and grabbed Becker’s shirt collar. He pulled him upwards, then caught one of his flailing arms and lifted him onto the crest of the mountain.

  Becker sprawled forward onto the ground, his arms splayed out to either side. Still spasming, they flopped like landed fish.

  “You hurt yourself,” Ash said, looking at Becker’s bleeding fingers.

  “My arms,” Becker moaned. “Rub my arms.”

  “We have to help him,” Jack said. The boy began massaging one of Becker’s twitching biceps.

  “Harder,” Becker said, gritting his teeth against the pain.

  “We have to go,” Ash said, but he took the other arm, watched what Jack was doing, and imitated it.

  “Harder, harder.”

  Becker’s whole body began to jerk as the tension of the climb took its toll on his legs and his back as well as his hands and arms. The spasms rocked him, doubled him in pain, made him convulse so violently he threatened to roll back over the cliff.

  Jack sat on his back, digging his hands into his bicep, then his leg. Ash followed the boy’s lead, trying to bring the spasms under control.

  A voice rang out from below them, startling in its clarity and closeness. The pursuers were coming on. Ash stared down the mountain. He still could not see them, but the nearness of the voices frightened him.

  “We have to go,” Ash said. He lifted Jack to his feet. “Come on. Tommy.”

  “Help me,” Becker said, but the big man ignored him this time. Jack tried to pull away, but Ash lifted him off the ground and held him to his chest.

  “Taylor. Leave the boy with me,” Becker said. He managed to flex the toes of both feet toward his body and gradually the cramps in his calves eased.

  “She said to leave him with me, Taylor,” Becker continued.

  “Who said?” Ash asked, still holding Jack off the ground.

  Becker struggled to remember the woman’s name. He bent his wrists and forearms backwards, pronating them as far as he could to counteract the convulsing biceps muscles. The woman’s name wouldn’t come to him.

  “It was Dee,” Jack said quickly. “Dee said.”

  “Dee said?”

  “That’s right, it was Dee,” Becker said. “She wanted you to give the boy to me.”

  Ash hesitated. Becker managed to bring himself to his hands and knees and move closer to the big man.

  “She never told me,” Ash said.

  “You had already gone. I just spoke to her; she sent me to get the boy.”

  “That’s right,” Jack said. “Honest.”

  Ash tried to understand. Dee didn’t trust anyone but Ash, he knew it, she told him all the time. She never let anyone else take care of the Tommys, never. Why would she want him to give Tommy to this man who was crawling toward him? She knew that Ash could take care of Tommy better than anybody.

  “Dee said give him to me,” Becker said again. He managed to crawl another step closer, willing his muscles to hold off, just hold off another minute. A few more feet and he would be close enough to get the man’s leg. If he could just get him off balance, bring him down, he had some sort of a chance. But he couldn’t do it as long as the man was holding Jack. He was too close to the edge; they could both go over if Becker made a lunge.

  “Dee said.” Jack struggled vainly in the man’s arms. Becker was amazed at how calm the boy had remained. If he stayed that way, they had a chance.

  “Give him to me, Taylor.”

  “How come you know my name?” Ash asked. No one had called him Taylor in years. Not since the hospital. His mother was the only one who had ever used his given name. His mother, and strangers.

  “We’ve met. Dee introduced us.” Becker inched closer.

  Ash heard the voices calling to each other below. They were very close now. He remembered what Dee had said. He was not to let them get Tommy back.

  “I don’t know you,” Ash said.

  “I’m a friend of Dee’s,” Becker said. He was almost there. Another foot and he could grab the man.

  “You’re a Lyle,” Ash said contemptuously as he made up his mind. Dee said to kill the boy rather than let them take him back. Everyone would be better off that way.

  Ash held Jack over the edge of the cliff and let him fall, then began to run. Becker lunged forward and grabbed Jack’s leg. The boy’s momentum yanked Becker closer to the edge and he came to a rest with his elbow over the void, the boy dangling in space at the end of Becker’s right arm.

  The spasm in his right bicep began again immediately, and as Becker tried to grab Jack’s free-swinging other leg, his left arm started to cramp, too. He caught Jack’s trousers, but the grip was too small for his fingers and they spasmed. He grabbed at Jack’s ankle and the
larger grip allowed him to hold on. Beyond that, there was nothing he could do. He had no leverage lying on his stomach and holding the boy at arm’s length, and when he tried to wriggle backwards, his legs and back began to convulse.

  The pain was so intense it forced Becker’s eyes shut. He clenched his teeth and groaned as loud as he could, a forced keening sound as if he were lifting the world’s heaviest weight. As his muscles jerked, his whole body bucked and inched him toward the edge. They were both going over together unless he could do something, but he could not even dig in with his toes without his legs bouncing up again in agony.

  He could hear the shouts of the police coming up the mountain, but he had not the breath or the control to call out. Even drawing a full breath would make him give up and give in to the pain.

  “Scream, Jack,” he said desperately through clenched teeth. “Scream.”

  Chapter 24

  THE FIRST TWO MOTELS WENT quickly. Karen checked the registry first, then, with the manager’s assistance, she and Reese visited each room that appeared even remotely suspicious. They worked fast but deliberately. After each of the first two motels, Karen radioed back to the headquarters to learn about Becker’s progress. Each time she was informed that he was last seen backing the cruiser down the mountain at high speed.

  The third motel caused a delay when the manager made a fuss about calling his superiors before authorizing a search of the rooms. Frustrated, Karen walked off, leaving Reese to deal with the manager, and found a maid who was changing sheets. Karen flashed her badge, took the maid by the arm, and proceeded to have her unlock every locked door on the first level of the motel. By the time Karen reached the second level, Reese appeared, grinning, with the manager in tow. Eager to appear to be in control, the manager assisted her with the remaining rooms himself.

  Karen called the headquarters once more. They were still unable to raise Becker on the radio in the cruiser that he had commandeered from Blocker. Blocker himself had last reported in just before starting up the mountain with two patrolmen. Because of the mountains, the walkie-talkies were useful only for the men to communicate with each other; they could not reach headquarters with so weak a signal.