by Fortune Kent
She gasped—in front of her she saw the boulder and the chokecherry tree. The earth trembled beneath her feet. The snow fell thicker about her as the ground shook, the rumbling growing, and she looked into the swirling snow toward Jon but could no longer see him. Did she hear his voice? She couldn’t be sure. Covering her face with her hands, she waited until the trembling of the earth lessened and then stopped. When she lowered her hands the tree and the boulder had vanished. A chill ran up her legs and along her spine.
“What have I done?” she whispered aloud.
“Jon!” She called his name, all of her anguish in her cry.
Only the wind and the waves answered. She ran to the edge of the slide with the snow flying about her, looked into the chasm only to see a veil of white. She waited, hands clenched at her sides, felt the wind shift, and all at once saw the lake. Jon lay facedown on the rocks below, the waves licking onto his bare head.
I’ve killed him, the thought. I willed him to be dead and he died. But it’s not my fault, the opal is to blame. She brought the pendant from her pocket and as she held the stone in her gloved hand a snowflake struck its surface. The opal clouded over and at the same moment Lesley felt a spasm of pain as though a hand had clutched her heart. She looked from the opal to the lake, shaking her head. I can’t, she thought, the opal is all I have. She thrust the pendant back into her pocket.
Lesley wanted to cry but, though her throat was tight, her eyes were dry. She felt the wild pounding of her heart. I must go to him, she told herself, hastening down the slope, stumbling and falling, pushing herself to her feet again. The ground leveled and snow whispered in the branches of the pines above her.
She gasped. A man stood in front of her, unmoving, his hands in the pockets of his black overcoat, his hat pulled down against the snow. Charles Randall. Lesley backed away until her foot struck a small fallen tree. Off balance, she staggered sideways and he strode to her and grasped her arm.
“Where is he?”
She shook her head, not understanding what he meant.
“Where is he?” Charles Randall asked again, shaking her.
“Dead, he’s dead.”
“Your husband? Jon?”
“The cliff. The slide. He fell. He’s down there on the rocks. He’s dead, dead, dead!” Her voice rose to a cry as the enormity of what she had done overwhelmed her.
Charles Randall released her arm and she lowered her head into her hands, sobs shaking her. She was numb; could not think. With his hand beneath her elbow he tried to urge her forward. Was he talking to her? She couldn’t hear his words above the roaring in her ears.
“Oh!” The slap spun her face to one side. Stunned, she drew in a deep breath and opened her eyes. Charles Randall’s face loomed inches from hers, chin and cheeks dark with the beginning of a beard, glasses streaked with water so she could not see his eyes. His lips pursed in a mirthless smile.
“I’ll take you to Iron Ridge,” he told her, “then come back and look for your husband, make sure he’s dead. I should have done this my way from the first.”
“Done what? Why are you here?”
“To finish what he”—she knew he meant Jon—“didn’t have the guts to finish.”
She started to speak but he shook his head impatiently at her. Ice particles clung to her eyebrows and eyelashes and she brushed at them with her sleeve, then searched her pockets for a handkerchief. He thrust his at her and as she wiped her face she sensed his eyes on her. When she looked up he was laughing softly to himself.
At that moment she knew. Her eyes widened in terror. San Diego. Her apartment. He was the man who had stalked her in the darkened bedroom.
Not seeing her panic, Charles Randall took back his handkerchief, removed his glasses and, both eyes squinting, leaned away from the fall of snow and began to wipe the water from the eyeglass lenses. Lesley stepped back and to one side. When he glanced at her she stopped, seeing his eyes, the pupils small, the irises opaque and colorless.
Lesley walked toward him with her head down. When she reached him she pushed her hands against his chest with all her strength. He grunted, sprawled backward over the tree, holding his glasses away from the ground.
She ran through the snow into the trees, hearing him scramble to his feet behind her. She ran twisting and turning among the trees, ran as fast and as hard as she could, the snow stinging her face. Crossing a clearing she glanced over her shoulder to see dark woods behind a curtain of white, heard only the rustle of the snow in the branches and the rasp of her own breathing. At the far side of the clearing the lower limbs of a large pine swept the ground. Exhausted, she crawled beneath its branches to the trunk where she knelt with her head on the prickly surface.
She took long, deep breaths, her throat raw. A dark form came into the clearing from the snow-shrouded woods. Charles Randall, his hands in his pockets and his head down, as though he was attempting to follow a trail. Tracks. Had she left tracks in the snow? Looking back she saw her footprints near the trunk of the pine but, in the clearing, the falling snow had covered her trail.
Charles Randall stood in the clearing. Lesley, watching him, gripped the tree in front of her until the tips of her fingers stung. Randall raised his head, shook the snow from his shoulders, and took two quick steps toward her. She drew in her breath. He swung around and walked away in the direction he had come. The falling snow closed about him and he was gone.
She let out her breath in a long sigh. Safe, she was safe. Wait, she cautioned herself, don’t be too sure. A trick, this may be a trick. Don’t move; he could be only a few yards away, waiting, listening. She knelt behind the tree, motionless, pain shooting along her thighs.
Water from snow melting on her face found its way beneath her collar to run chillingly down her neck. She pulled off her gloves, undid the hood’s drawstring and then retied the bow. The snow fell thicker than before, so heavy she could see only a few feet to either side, a wet and clinging snow, a child’s snow.
At last she stood. The tingling in her body was more pronounced now and her face felt hot. A fever? Her head ached, not the piercing pain of the day before but with a dull, permeating heaviness.
She walked hesitantly around the edge of the clearing, pausing every few steps, listening. The wind had risen, whining in the pines and swirling the snow. She heard nothing else. Charles Randall was no longer in the woods, she felt sure. I’ll go back to the beach, she thought, and follow the shore north to the cabins. I can find help there or, if they’re deserted, get inside, build a fire, and wait until the storm ends.
She headed back the way she had come, against the wind, the snow driving into her face, soaking through her shoes to soak her socks and feet. A sneeze brought tears to her eyes. She plunged ahead, stepping on a branch concealed under the snow, jumped at the loud snap. Once more she stopped but heard nothing. He’s gone, she reassured herself.
Why did Charles Randall come to Iron Ridge? she wondered. What did he want from her? The power of the opal? And Jon. She didn’t understand the relationship between the two men. With a start she realized she had thought of Jon as being alive. Lesley’s fingers closed over the opal in her pocket as she shut her mind to his death.
Charles Randall. She shivered. Had he been at Iron Ridge all night, hiding, or had he left to return this morning? Had he followed them from the house? Was that why Jon called to her from the bluff?
The ground sloped downward ahead of her. The lake, she thought, I’m coming to the lake. The wind changed direction but still the snow limited her vision to some six feet on either side.
She sensed a lightening ahead of her—the edge of the forest. As she hurried forward, her side began to ache. The ground rose and she climbed a hillock, went down the other side, and was out from under the trees. She listened for the waves. Why couldn’t she hear the waves? As she ran forward she felt clumps of grass under her feet.
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br /> A meadow. Panic gripped her. Where was the lake? She walked a few feet in one direction, then another. Which way should she go? She could not tell; there were no clues. Snow whirled wetly onto her face, rustled in the dead grass all around her. Tired, lost, she stumbled ahead into the trees. Straight ahead, go straight ahead, she told herself. On and on she went, across another clearing, into a gully, following the downhill slope in the hope it led to the lake. Instead she came to a hill.
Leaning against a pine trunk, she saw a bare patch of ground a few feet farther on in the shelter of two large trees. She sat on the bare ground, drew up her knees and lowered her head. I’m so sleepy, she thought. If only I can rest here, I’ll be all right. Her breathing slowed as she relaxed and she felt a great peace and after a time she slept.
Chapter Nineteen
Lesley opened her eyes. Beyond the shelter of the trees the snow still fell steadily. A warmth had wakened her, a warmth neither from her feet and ankles, which were wet and chilled, nor from her face, stung by the cold wind. She sat up and brought her hands from her pockets and held them before her. The chain of the pendant twisted about her wrist and the opal flashed in its setting. She pressed the stone to her face and the warmth spread through her.
Holding the opal in her palms with fingers cupped to protect it from the snow, she gazed deep into her birthstone. The opal glowed with a red, flame-like shimmer. Almost as though the gem lived and willed her to live as well. Putting the pendant back into the jacket pocket Lesley pushed herself from the ground. Her feet were numb so she moved her toes and her ankles before taking an experimental step. Stiff, awkward, yet she could walk. She wouldn’t give up; she would find her way out of the forest.
Before she left the sanctuary of the trees, she pondered what she must do. Go in one direction and one direction only; that was the most important thing. If she wandered aimlessly she would never reach the beach or the highway. She frowned. The highway was at least five miles away. I’ll never get that far in this storm, she thought, I must find the lake.
She began to walk, then hesitated. Her head still ached and her face was hot and flushed. And she was tired, so very tired. Think, she told herself. The wind was usually off the lake, yet time after time she had felt its direction change. Which way should she go?
Would the storm never let up? Two or three inches of snow covered the ground under the pines; the snow had bent the branches earthward and drifted around the trunks. Lesley climbed from the gully, looking at the ground next to the trees, noticing that the snow lay deeper on one side than the other, deeper in the direction of the wind coming off the lake. The way I should go, she decided.
Yet could she be sure she traveled in a straight line? So many times she had heard of hikers wandering in circles when lost in a forest. A shattered tree rose in front of her, the trunk split a few feet above her head as though by lightning, the top jackknifing to the ground. Looking past the severed tree in the direction she wanted to go, she saw the black underside of a boulder. After she walked over the uneven snow to the boulder, Lesley glanced back to the tree and then directly ahead to a small fir. When she stood beneath the fir a few minutes later she sighted from the boulder behind her to a white mound ahead where the snow covered a fallen tree.
Slowly, laboriously, she made her way from landmark to landmark and, although her feet were leaden, she now had a definite goal, a task to accomplish. The lack of feeling in her feet frightened her so she talked to herself, hummed, and tramped ahead vigorously until she felt a tingling in her toes. I’ll find the lake, she said to herself, I’ll find the lake.
She came to a level clearing a few yards wide. To her right a narrow swath had been cut in the forest to form a lane over which the tree limbs touched. To her left the swath curved out of sight. The driveway. She knelt, trembling with relief as she saw the snow lying in miniature hills and valleys over the frozen ruts.
There were no tire tracks in the snow. This must be the road from the state highway to Iron Ridge. The highway lay to her right, miles away, the house probably only a short walk to her left.
Did Charles Randall wait at the house? I have to take the chance, she thought. Even if I reach the highway, how do I know I can find help there?
She trudged along the middle of the drive. The road curved in a lazy S and she thought she recognized where she was, a short distance from the house, though she couldn’t be sure for the snow changed the forest, creating a strange and virginal land. How I wish I could come to Iron Ridge again for the first time, she thought. If only Jon and I could arrive from California today, if only this last month had been obliterated as the snow obliterated the tracks in the road.
“Shouldn’t we put on chains?” she could hear herself ask as she watched the drifting snow through the twin arcs of the windshield wipers.’
“No, we’re almost there. Iron Ridge is just around the next bend in the road.”
“After you told me about Iron Ridge when I drove you to the airport, I dreamed of coming here, pictured what it would be like, just the two of us, alone. I never imagined I would, not really. Yet here I am.”
“Are you happy you came?”
“Oh, yes. This is all I ever wanted. Not the house, not Iron Ridge. Being with you.”
“Lesley.” Jon laughed as she kissed him. “Remember I’m driving.” She leaned her head on his shoulder, feeling his body warm against hers. The car sluiced toward the trees and he drove into the skid, the car straightening, and then they rounded a curve and she saw the house.
“So many chimneys,” she said.
Tears stung her eyes as she blinked the vision away. If only I could go back, she thought, and start again. Why didn’t I even let him explain? I must shut Jon from my mind, I need all my strength merely to survive. She trudged through the falling snow, around the curve of the drive and Iron Ridge loomed darkly ahead with its many chimneys jutting above the roofline. Something stirred within her, relief, a sense of thanksgiving, but more, a feeling that she was coming home. No smoke rose from the chimneys. The heat could still be on, she knew, for the oil furnace smoked little or not at all. She saw no car in the driveway, nor any parked in the direction of the garage, though that building itself was hidden by the falling snow. Where was Charles Randall? The windows of the house stared blankly down at her.
“I love Iron Ridge,” Jon had said once. Was she beginning to feel the same? Though old and weather wracked, the house endured. Storms drove rain and sleet and snow against its shingled roofs and clapboard sides, the lake washed ever closer to its foundations, and the house endured. Year after year the Hollisters had lived and died here, hating and loving the house, alternately lavishing care on it and neglecting it, and the house endured.
Grasping the opal in her hand, Lesley stepped behind a tree at the side of the drive, shut her eyes, and her mind closed.
Warm, she felt so warm. Steam knocked in the radiators, hissed in the old pipes. She entered the bedroom, her gown sweeping the floor, the opal pendant on her breast. The room was the same, yet changed, brighter than she remembered, with a larger bed, vanity and dressers matched in a style she didn’t recognize, the floor thickly carpeted in colors which shimmered, seeming to mingle one into another as she watched. Her rocker sat next to the window, the draperies were open, the night was black outside. She sat at the vanity and began to brush her hair.
Gray hair. And her face in the mirror was older and thinner with lines at the corners of her eyes, yet a poised, assured face: A sound came from behind her and she turned, smiling.
Lesley’s eyes opened and she found herself standing in the snow staring between the trees at the house. The tingling in her feet had stopped and once more they felt numb. The house. She had to get into the house. After glancing again at the empty windows she walked boldly to the steps, climbed them and tried the door. Locked. She listened but heard no sound from inside.
The wi
ndows. The ground rose on the left side of the steps so in places it was higher than the top of the house’s foundation. She walked to the first window, luckily one of those not yet fitted with storm windows. No light shone from the room but she recognized the bedroom where the coats had been piled on the night of the party. Last night, in fact only a few hours ago. She pushed on the window. Locked. All the windows and doors were probably locked. The garage? There was no heat in the garage; she had to get into the house. Tears came to her eyes. She was so close.
Her breath misted the pane of glass as she examined the window. Like most of the others at Iron Ridge it had a top and a bottom half, the bottom sliding up, the top down. At the joining of the two halves the window was fastened on the inside with a single crescent-shaped catch. She pushed the snow from the ground at her feet. There—a stone as large as her fist. Holding the stone in one hand she struck the window, yet the glass did not break. Again she pounded the rock on the pane and glass cascaded to the bedroom floor as the window shattered.
Lesley held her breath, listening, and heard the snow and the waves on the shore at the far side of the house. From inside the house she heard nothing. A gust of warm air struck her face. Around the hole in the window the glass had cracked in star-like spokes. She reached inside and up, feeling along the frame with her fingers, her jacket sleeve pressed lightly on the edge of the broken glass. She touched the catch and pulled its knobbed end inward. Removing her arm, she pushed up the lower half of the window. More glass clattered into the room but she heard no other sound. Lifting her leg over the sill, Lesley bent forward, touched the floor with her toe, then swung her other leg inside. She slid the window shut behind her. A few snowflakes drifted through the hole to leave wet circles on the wood floor.
The radiator. She knelt with her hands pressed against the ridged iron and felt the heat flow into her. After a few minutes she sat back and pulled off her shoes and socks. A tingling began in her feet, which were white and puckered, then a painful ache, and she rubbed them briskly with her hands. Feeling returned to her feet and with it a hot, burning sensation. Her jacket now seemed bulky so she slipped out of the coat and laid it on the floor beside her. A draft from the window blew her hair, yet she was warm and she nodded drowsily.