by Cave, Hugh
Turning to gaze at the spot where the car had been meant to go into the water, Jeff wondered how far beneath the dark surface the bottom was. The whole pond was spooky. Along the shore grew a tangle of bushes covered with explosions of white flowers, and beyond that stood a vast jumble of boulders that could have passed for a madman's castle. "So this is the Everol place," he said, rubbing his jaw.
Verna Clark shook her head. "Not quite. As I said, their property begins—" She caught herself and gazed at him wide-eyed. "You mean you know about the Everols?"
"In a way. Like you, I'm a teacher—Jeff Gordon, English Language and Lit—but I moonlight in affairs psychic. Right now I'm here with the Everols' grudgingly given permission to look into what's been happening to them."
"Then you must have made contact with them!" Still gazing at him, she clutched his wrist. "It's incredible that you came along just now! My guardian angel must have sent you!"
"One of us has to be crazy," Jeff countered.
"No, no. Really." Her grip tightened, and suddenly she was a very mature young woman talking to him calmly in a low, intense voice. "Listen to me, Jeff Gordon. I've been trying might and main to persuade the Everols to let me do some fieldwork on their property, but they won't talk to me. And I don't dare set foot on their place without permission. You see what happens when I even get close." Turning her head, she scowled at the car fender protruding from the gloomy waters of the pond. "And this isn't the first time."
"You want to search for fossils on the Everol property?"
"Yes! It's a treasure house!"
He shook his head. "Look, Miss Clark, my position here is shaky." Briefly he told her how, after reading about the Everols, he had pressed for permission to come and investigate. "I'm from Connecticut. I've never met these people. I do know Everett was hard to convince and could easily change his mind even now."
"Yet you've come all the way from New England?"
"As I said, I'm probably a little crazy. Have you heard the Everol story? About the unexplained death? The madness?"
"Well, yes." She shrugged. "But in this off-beat part of Florida—"
"Anyway, I know nothing about fossils. So suppose you fill me in on what you're up to while I drive you to town."
She did that. Some time ago, while on a field trip, she had unintentionally trespassed on the Everols' land and made some exciting discoveries, she told him. "I was just scratching around, mind you, and found what could be the start of something big, like those seven-thousand-year-old human skulls, with brains intact, unearthed near Titusville a few years ago. Or the fossil pockets found in that riverbank near Gainesville in 'sixty-one, where almost the first thing discovered was that huge carnivorous bird."
Though not in the habit of taking his gaze off the road while driving, Jeff jerked his head around to scowl at her. "Was what?"
Those remarkable blue eyes were suddenly wider. "A huge carnivorous bird! Yes! And one of the creatures supposed to be preying on the Everols is a huge vulture, isn't it? You don't suppose—no, no, let's not be foolish. Nobody really believes those people. They're weirdos."
"I'll take a rain check until I've met them." Jeff had already returned his gaze to the highway. "Go on with your story."
But she was pointing. "Look. That's where you'll turn in when you come back."
In the dusk he saw two very old stone gateposts rising from a clutter of weeds, with a mailbox on a post beside one of them. The name on the box was EVEROL. "Nothing there to keep out intruders," he observed.
"Oh, the property isn't fenced, if that's what you mean. It's so big, fencing would cost a fortune. What keeps people away is their attitude."
"I see. Well, you were saying?"
"That's it, what I've told you. I found a fossil pocket that could really be important, but the Everols aren't interested. They won't even see me. So I've just been—well, snooping around the edges, you might say, in the hope of finding something not on their property."
A small cemetery beside the road trapped Jeff's attention for a moment. You sometimes learned things from gravestone markings. "How long have you been here?" he asked.
"Since the close of school."
"How long will you be staying?"
She shrugged. "Who knows?"
"And what happened to your car isn't the first trouble you've had? What else have they done to discourage you?"
"Well, I was in a rock pit near another part of their property—not on the property, only near it again—and a boulder came crashing down on me from the pit's edge. It could have killed me if it hadn't hit a ledge and bounced." She moved her shoulders again. "It might have been an accident, of course, but I don't think so."
His frown deepened. 'Lady, these are serious charges. Did you see anyone at that rock pit?"
"I thought I saw someone running away."
"Would the Everols really go to such extreme lengths to discourage intruders?"
"Yes," she said, "I think they would. They're not your everyday people, even for this part of the state. They stay by themselves in that huge old house as if they've resigned from the human race."
"Perhaps because they're frightened," Jeff suggested.
"Well—perhaps."
"Sounds as if I'm in for a rough time, anyway."
"I hope not. But do be careful."
The road had become a small town now, and Jeff drove more slowly. Under the gray sky with its scudding lumps of darker cloud, Clandon seemed deserted, even dying, with its broken sidewalks empty of life. "You live here?" Jeff asked with a frown, then answered his own question. "You don't, of course."
"I'm from Fort Lauderdale. I just rent a room here." She smiled at his expression. "It really isn't so depressing when the weather is more cheerful. The countryside roundabout is peaceful and pretty, lots of trees and water." Leaning forward, she pointed. "That's the house I'm staying at, just ahead. That old gray one. And thanks for going out of your way to give me a lift."
"It's been my pleasure." Stopping by a mailbox with the name EARL WATSON crudely painted on it in weathered red letters, Jeff added, "How will you get your car out of that pond?"
"There's a garage in town with a tow truck. Look, will you speak to the Everols for me? Try to make them understand the importance of what I want to do?"
"You haven't told me what you want to do, exactly."
"But I have!"
Jeff smiled. Maybe something good would come of this wild-goose chase to Florida, after all. "Not nearly enough for me to be convincing, if these people are as touchy as you say they are. I need a more thorough briefing, don't you think? Say tomorrow evening, after I've had time to size up the Everols and the situation there?"
After those dark blue eyes had reappraised him for a moment, Verna Clark nodded. "All right. Tomorrow evening."
It was twilight now as Jeff made a U-turn to drive back out of town. With more rain likely to fall, the night promised to be a dark one. He drove slowly, thinking about what Verna Clark had told him.
What would he encounter at the Everol place, anyway? A challenge beyond anything he had tackled before, if the reports were even half true. So far, no one had come up with any plausible answer.
As he passed the cemetery again a light touched his rearview mirror, creating a brief glare inside the car. He looked up. There was a car behind him, coming fast. Coming much too fast.
Careful, his mind warned. Someone tried to drown Verna Clark in that pond. You may have been seen with her.
Chapter Two
The car overtaking Jeff Gordon's was an old, souped-up clunker. With its windows rolled up against the weather, it reeked of marijuana. Seventeen-year-old Dan Crawley had just finished a joint. Sixteen-year-old Nick Indrotti was smoking one as he drove.
The clunker closed in on Jeff's sedan at sixty-odd miles an hour.
In his mirror Jeff watched the weaving gleam of its headlights and was apprehensive. Preparing to take evasive action, he shifted his right foot from gas pedal
to brake. His grip on the wheel tightened. His body became a coiled spring. No one but a fool, a drunk, or an enemy, he told himself, would be driving that fast on this road under these conditions.
As the clunker came roaring up beside him, he swung as close to the road's edge as he dared, to avoid being swiped. But the overtaking car swerved and swiped him anyway.
The soft, deep sand of the road shoulder trapped the right front tire of Jeff's car. The steering wheel spun in his hands. His foot was jarred from the brake pedal. Out of control, the car lurched off the blacktop into a shallow, grassy ditch, then climbed the far side of the ditch and lunged into a grove of shadowy trees.
He was a deft enough driver to miss the first two trees the car seemed likely to crash into, but not the third. Striking that one a glancing blow with its right front fender and door, the machine reared over on its side.
After sideswiping Jeff's car, the jalopy had slowed from sixty-plus to barely fifteen miles an hour while the skinny hands of its driver clung to its wheel in panic. The rest of Nick Indrotti's body shook like the wings of a dragonfly clinging to a reed in a stiff breeze.
"Jesus, Nick!" his companion was shouting wildly. "You hit him! You knocked him off the road!"
"I couldn't help it. He swerved into me."
"Like hell he did! You swerved into him! Turn around, for Christ's sake. He may be hurt."
"We can't go back there," Nick wailed. "If he's not hurt, he'll get our license number and report us." But even while protesting, he braked the clunker to a full stop and turned to peer through the rear window.
"Listen, will you?" Dan Crawley was calmer now, more in control of his feelings. "Nobody saw it happen, so nobody can blame us, see? If he says we swerved into him, we just say he's lyin'. And this car stinks. I'm gonna air it out."
They argued a moment more while Dan was opening the windows. Then Nick turned the clunker around and drove back down the road to where they could see the other car's headlights shining through the trees on the far side of the ditch.
"Looks like it tipped over," Dan said. "Halfway over, anyhow."
"I don't see nothin' movin' in there." Nick was shaking again. "Dan—jeez! Come on! Let's clear out of here!"
"Well. . . but hold on a minute. If he's out cold, we could maybe. . . You wait while I go look." Leaping the ditch, which was dry, Dan hurried to Jeff Gordon's car.
To look into it he had to go to the front and peer in through the windshield. The driver was bent grotesquely against the door the car was resting on, with one arm limply draped over the steering wheel. There was no way Dan could open that door.
Climbing onto the car, he worked on the high-side door, badly creased from its impact with the tree. A less husky youth might not have been able to get even that one open, but in the end he succeeded. Leaning in and reaching down for the unconscious man's arm, the one draped over the wheel, he felt for a pulse at the wrist. That was what they did when things like this happened on TV, right?
He felt a pulse, and there was no blood on anything, so the guy was alive and would probably be okay when he came to. Pulling himself farther into the car, Dan took the man's wristwatch and emptied his pockets.
Afraid to take time to look at what he was stealing—he could have done that in the light from the dash, which like the car's headlights was still on—he simply jammed the loot into his own pockets to be appraised later. Then he emptied the glove compartment. Lots of stupid people kept valuable stuff in glove compartments, he knew from the dozens of cars he'd broken into. Finally he snatched the ignition key, which was only one of several on a ring with a plastic tab that glowed in the dashboard light.
Wriggling back out of the sedan like a worm from its hole in the ground, Dan worked with the keys until he found one that opened the car's trunk. There was a suitcase in the trunk—real leather, from the looks of it. He hauled it out and fled with it, leaving the trunk lid open. Stumbling back through the trees and across the ditch to the road, he wrestled the grip onto the seat beside Nick Indrotti and yelled, "Okay, let's go! He's out but alive, and I got us some stuff!" Then, as the old car roared down the road, he pulled the treasures from his pockets and examined them.
"One big, fat billfold, Nicky." Counting the bills in it, he became so excited that his feet performed a kind of dance on the floor mat, even with the suitcase across his knees. "Jeez, Nick! More'n five hundred bucks in cash! And a Visa card, two gas company cards, a driver's license and car registration. That was a Connecticut car, by the way."
"Yeah," Nick said. "I seen the plate before he swerved out and hit me."
"Oh, sure. Before he hit you. Sure. Anyway, the guy's name is Jeffrey Gordon and he's from New Haven, Connecticut." Returning the billfold to a pocket of his black vinyl jacket, Dan eagerly shuffled through the rest of what he had stolen.
That was mostly disappointing. One item was a small notebook containing names and notes. The names were unfamiliar, and some of the notes were just plain weird, such as "Ethel Everol, age 68, was visited by psychiatrist R.J. Walther at the institution where she is a patient. Claimed she actually saw the creature that killed her brother and tried to kill her. Dr. Walther says he is inclined to believe her." A high-school dropout, Dan shook his head and put the book away.
Some coins and a handkerchief made up the rest of the loot from Gordon's pockets, and the glove compartment treasures were even more disappointing. This driver, it seemed, kept only road maps and a car owner's instruction manual there.
Well. . . what about the suitcase?
A key on the ring opened it, and as Nick drove on down the road, Dan flipped up the lid. Nothing. At least, nothing you could hope to sell, and he and Nick sure wouldn't be wearing anything that might tie them in with looting a car. Some clothes, a razor, shaving cream, toothpaste and a toothbrush and even dental floss, for God's sake; a pair of bedroom slippers; none of it worth two cents. Disgusted, he slammed the bag shut.
While putting distance between them and the wrecked car as fast as possible, Nick Indrotti had been watching his pal out of the corner of his eye, knowing he'd be dumb not to. Dan might be a buddy, but this buddy had a fast pair of hands. His tone betraying his disappointment, Nick said now, "That's it? Five hundred bucks?" His earlier panic had vanished.
"More'n five hundred, I told you. And the credit cards; don't forget the credit cards." Dan Crawley shoved the suitcase off his knees onto the floor. "Gimme a joint. What the hell, Nicky, it may not be big, but it's somethin'. When you figure it was just an accident, nothin' we even planned, you got to say we're plain shit lucky."
Chapter Three
Long after the departure of the two teenagers, Jeff Gordon opened his eyes and asked himself what had happened.
He did not remember.
His head throbbed. He put his left hand to his forehead and discovered there a lump the size of a hen's egg. Just touching it caused a stab of pain as bright as a bolt of lightning. He looked at his fingers. There was no blood on them.
Why was he here? What car was this, and why was it resting on its side in the dark with its headlights on and its dashboard glowing? The headlight beams revealed a number of trees, some of them pines, grouped around the machine like giant spiders about to pounce on a crippled insect.
He looked up at the car door above him. Could he boost himself up to it and crawl out without causing the machine to turn over on its back? He must try. Failing that, he would have to get the window open. Perhaps that would be best: to open the window. A car like this might have automatic window controls, but first you probably had to turn on the ignition. He reached for the ignition key.
There was none.
What now?
He was finding it hard to think straight. When he struggled to concentrate, the throbbing in his forehead became all but unendurable. But the struggle finally paid off. Go back to opening the door, his mind instructed. You can pull yourself up to it.
Squirming out from behind the wheel, he reached up for the
door and found he could not work the release. There was a weakness in his fingers. But with beads of moisture forming on his face and salting his lips, he persisted, and the door latch finally yielded.
Now he had to boost or pull himself higher to push the door open, which meant forcing it up. This took time and increased the pounding in his head, but he won the battle, only to find that a tree beside the car, apparently the one the machine had sideswiped, was so close that the door would open only partway. He had to stretch his aching body to the limit and crawl out like a damaged caterpillar.
At last, though, he stood outside the machine on ground covered with dead leaves and pine needles, and was able to run his hands gingerly over his body in search of injuries.
There seemed to be no major ones except the swelling on his forehead. None that caused any such sharp pain when touched, at any rate. Nor could he discover any rips in his clothing. But again, why was he here? Whose car was this? Most important, who was he?
He was wearing tan slacks and a lightweight brown sport jacket, and had a feeling there should be a billfold in the jacket's inside pocket. But the pocket was empty. All his pockets were empty. Maybe the license plate on the car would tell him something.
He went to look but learned nothing except that the car was from Connecticut. Was he in Connecticut now, close enough to walk home if he could remember where home was? He didn't think so. The trees seemed wrong, what he could see of them. The rest of the vegetation, too. Even the air felt alien.
The trunk lid was open, he saw—perhaps it had sprung open when the car hit the tree—and the trunk was empty except for a spare tire. Well, maybe something in the glove compartment would help him. Climbing back up on the car with the greatest of care, he worked the door partly open again and reached down to the dash.