When Michael Calls

by Farris, John

  The boy was standing about ten feet away, and for two or three seconds he was mesmerized by the light, his mouth open, a dull puzzled gleam in his eyes. Then he bolted, and vanished.

  Doremus shifted the automatic to his right hand and made a blind lunge for the boy, grasping the sleeve of his coat momentarily. But the boy twisted free; in the next instant Doremus was hit solidly in the back of the head and he pitched forward to the floor, stunned.

  Now what the hell? he thought, and tried to get up, but only his mind was working—working him up into a panic. He had no idea whether he was still holding onto the automatic, but he tried to roll over on his back. The effort caused him to lose consciousness for several seconds. He awoke with a sickening pain in his skull, feeling helpless and condemned. Somewhere there was movement. Instinctively he sought to protect himself: he turned his head and raised an arm as a searing liquid poured down, soaking him to his toes. The fumes in his nostrils had the effect of ammonia.

  Gasoline, he thought, groping, trying to balance himself on his feet. Gasoline! He coughed and struggled to keep his dripping hands away from his eyes, which had begun to burn frightfully from the fumes and from the gasoline trickling down his forehead. He groaned aloud.

  There was a wavering, orange-yellow light outside the room, showing him the location of the doorway. Doremus, seeing the opening dimly, plunged toward it. Then he stopped in horror.

  Michael stood outside, facing him impassively. He held a burning torch in one hand.

  Doremus retreated instantly, clawing at the buttons of his sodden shirt. When he failed in his efforts to unbutton the shirt he tore it from his body. But the gasoline was still wet on his skin, it singed his skin delicately and suggestively.

  "Now listen, boy," he said, backing away, "you're going to burn us both up with that thing. Don't come any closer." Michael seemed not to hear. He advanced carefully, a step at a time, his eyes solemn.

  "Damn it, the fumes will ignite!" Doremus yelled, still retreating. "Now put that torch out, stomp it out quick, you hear me!" He could feel the wall behind his back and he edged sideways. Michael hesitated, seeming mildly uncertain about what he was doing. Then he smiled and came on, more quickly, holding out the torch. His lips trembled, as if he were trying to speak.

  Doremus threw himself back against the wall, since there was no place else for him to go. The torch was close enough for him to feel the heat of it.

  "No!" he shouted.

  Behind him dry boards splintered and popped like firecrackers, giving way; he toppled out of range of the burning curling torch in the boy's hand, and cried out fearfully, shocked by weightlessness, by a rush of cold air. The side of the gristmill appeared to leap away from him, recede into darkness. Doremus had a confused impression of sky and circling trees and then, luckily for him, he plunged head down into the placid waters of the mill-pond.

  By the time he managed to paddle ashore, covered with slime and still redolent of gasoline, he was exhausted and shaking. He lay in the weeds and leaves for several minutes, half unconscious, until he heard voices. Then he made the necessary effort to pull himself all the way out of the water. Trembling and sick to his stomach, he staggered and crawled as far as the clearing in front of the mill, where a light flashed on him.

  "Just hold it right where you are, mister, we've got two shotguns here!"

  "Did you see him?" Doremus mumbled. "Is he still in there? Where's the boy?"

  "He sure is a mess. Get a whiff of him, Pa. Is that gasoline I smell?"

  "Messing around my mill with gasoline, mister?" the older Hawke said threateningly.

  A third man came crashing through the buckbrush. "What have you got here, Pa?"

  "Just some crazy old bum, Willis," Hawke muttered. "All right, you get walking."

  "I'm trying to explain," said Doremus, standing his ground, "that there was a little boy here just a few minutes ago. He's the one who tried to set fire to your mill . . . set fire to me too. He's about ten years old; dark hair, fair skin. He was wearing sneakers. I don't know where he went but we've got to find him!"

  "Pa," one of the boys shouted, "looks like that bum fell through a winda round back. There's boards swimming in the pond."

  The other son scratched his cheek and said to Doremus, "A little boy, huh?"

  "That's right, did you see him?"

  "Coulda been a little boy I saw hightailing across the meadow two-three minutes ago. Didn't get a good look."

  "Which way was he headed?" Doremus asked eagerly.

  "North. Toward the Overmeyers' place. Pa, you figure there's any truth in what he's saying?"

  Doremus explained who he was, naming Enoch Mills as a reference, and Mr. Hawke seemed a little less inclined to give him both barrels on the spot. "Well," he drawled. "I guess it won't hurt to go along with you far as the Overmeyers'. Jack, you and Willis look in the mill, see if there was any damage done. Willis, give this man your jacket so he don't freeze to death."

  "It's my new jacket, Pa."

  "He ain't gonna steal it. Come with me, mister, and you two watch out for yourselves."

  Gratefully buttoning up the fleece-lined jacket he had borrowed, Doremus followed the farmer, who had a light of the type Doremus had taken with him into the barn. They made good time to the crest of the meadow, and there, in full moonlight, they paused to study the landscape. There was not even a cow in sight.

  "That's the Overmeyer place," Hawke said pointing.

  "Who owns the property down by the road there?"

  "Man named Brunell. Artist of some sort; don't know him well." He turned toward the Overmeyer farm. "Reckon this the way we ought to go, but it don't seem like much use."

  "Why not split up?" Doremus suggested. "The boy might have headed toward Brunell's. There are a lot of trees for cover down there."

  "Yep, but if he knows this pasture he wouldn't have run that way—gets real marshy for about fifty yards below that old barn."

  "He might not know the pasture though. I think I'll have a look at Brunell's. Borrow your light?"

  "What? Oh, take it, otherwise you'll have mud all over Willis's good jacket. Mister, I hope this is worth all the trouble."

  "It's worth it," Doremus said, and he started rapidly down the slope of the pasture while Hawke walked off toward the other farm. With the powerful light it was easy for Doremus to avoid the worst of the marsh when he came to it, and once he had crossed the marsh he found easy going to the big peaked barn above.

  The property seemed deserted. There was a light in the small house a hundred yards away, close to the road, but no dogs came barking and no animals stomped restlessly in the barn at his approach. Looking up, Doremus had an inkling why. There was a large skylight, facing north, on one wing of the roof.

  He killed his light and moved closer to the barn, staying in shadow. The great front doors of the barn were securely chained shut, but there was a sign next to them. Doremus masked his light with his hand and turned it on the sign. BRUNELL GALLERIES, it said. PLEASE ENTER AT THE BACK.

  Doremus looked over one shoulder at the house. For an instant he saw someone silhouetted in the single lighted window. Near the house the woods were thick, a likely hiding place, if Michael had come this way. Chances were he was half a mile gone by now, gaining all the time. . . .

  Inside the barn there was a spate of noise, a curious, flat, metallic clashing.

  Doremus slipped around to the side of the barn and walked past small darkened windows, a dozen or more, until he reached a conventional door with flagstones in front of it. There was another sign but he didn't stop to ponder it, because the door was standing open. He opened it a little more and stepped inside, switching on the flashlight as he did so. The first thing he saw was an enormous, seal-like bronze nude on a granite pedestal four feet high. Behind her there were other seals—or women, but what they were wasn't immediately apparent—and then a spindly forest of cold-steel men, some walking, some running, some kneeling.

  And b
eyond those, stretching on for what seemed like a city block, were globs and thickets of metal, odd-shaped baskets and geometric figures of dazzling complexity, all done in copper wire, or jagged black spokes.

  Doremus lifted his light and discovered a gallery overhead, then a congeries of brightly painted metal pieces, all hanging on nearly invisible wires from the high rafters.

  One of the mobile sculptures was moving, its cleaver parts trembling, brushing together.

  He shifted the angle of his light and saw the hiding muddy boy at the top of the stairs to the gallery. The boy's eyes looked dark and glazed; they scarcely blinked as he turned his head and stared into the flashlight beam. He was breathing hard.

  Doremus sighed. "OK, come down."

  The boy leaped suddenly, away from the light. In his haste he brushed against a spindly column and a fierce white head fell to the gallery floor, rolled, plummeted toward Doremus. He stepped aside quickly, almost tripping, and grabbed a plaited plastic rope for support. Above his head a bell tolled, deeply, momentously.

  "Then I'll come up," Doremus said, and he started up the flight of stairs, raking the gallery with his light. The bell tolled slowly, three times more. The boy backed away. Doremus kept the beam of the lamp low, not wanting to blind him.

  "Time to quit running. . . Michael."

  The boy ran anyway, darting among the groupings of statuary on the gallery floor. Doremus stalked him. Each time the boy paused for breath the light touched him, inspiring a new frenzy, a new leap. He was like a hounded animal, Doremus thought, and despite the fact that this boy had tried to set him on fire, Doremus felt genuinely sorry for him.

  "Easy now, I won't hurt you."

  Sobbing, the boy crouched at the edge of the gallery floor, underneath the rail.

  "Don't try it," Doremus warned, closing slowly. This bell tolled and the boy glanced fearfully at the barn floor, twenty feet below.

  The bell tolled for the eleventh or twelfth time; the boy jerked suddenly, stared in astonishment at Doremus, teetered wildly, lost his balance and started to fall. But as he went over the edge, his windmilling hands seized the iron railing and he swung there precariously. Doremus dived, threw an arm around his waist and hauled him back to the gallery floor. The boy fought him furiously, escaped, stumbled and ran for the stairs. As Doremus got to his feet the lights in the barn flashed on. He limped toward the stairs. Two men had entered the barn. One of them was a burly, bald artist type with an improbable beard. The other man was Craig Young, who was holding the weeping unresisting boy in his arms and looking up at Doremus with an incredulous expression.

  "Good, you got him," Doremus muttered, starting down.

  "Peter?" Craig said to the boy. "Peter, what's the trouble, what are you doing here? How did you get here?"

  "Do you know who he is?" Doremus said, scowling.

  "Of course I know him. He's one of our boys. His name is Peter Mathis."

  "I think he's the one who's been playing Michael on the telephone . . . and there's no end to his versatility: he tried to kill me tonight."

  "That's impossible," Craig said angrily.

  "It is? Let him tell you."

  "I don't know what he's doing this far from the school, but I know he hasn't been making any telephone calls. Not Peter."

  "No! Why are you so sure?"

  "Because Peter is mute," Craig said curtly, comforting the terrified boy.

  Chapter 13

  Wearing a pair of paint-daubed dungarees and a clean if tattered shirt borrowed from the sculptor Brunell, Doremus sat in the office of the Greenleaf School's headmaster. He was barefoot, his shoes having been too dirty for the velvety blue carpet, and his neck was stiffening from the plunge into the millpond, but Enoch Mills had provided him with a good cigar and he felt as if he would get through the night without too much difficulty.

  "Peter couldn't have left the grounds this afternoon without being missed," the headmaster insisted. His name was Quinlan and he had the vestigial crispness of an ex-military man, though his face was lapped and folded from age, and his lips trembled when he wasn't speaking.

  "Saturday's a free day at the school, ain't it?" Enoch Mills asked. "A good many of the boys go into town."

  "Usually, Sheriff. But we played a football game here this afternoon, so all but a handful of the boys stayed on the campus. The others were in the company of parents or relatives."

  "And Peter was here all afternoon?" Doremus said.

  "I'm quite sure of it. Dinner was served at five-thirty, less than twenty minutes after the game ended. If he hadn't been in his place for dinner I would have heard about it. Immediately after dinner a movie was shown in the cafeteria. The movie lasted nearly two hours. The boys then went to their residence halls. In Dobbs Hall, which is

  where Peter and the younger boys live, there is a bed check at eight-forty-five, and the lights go out at nine. In Franklin Hall the boys are allowed to stay up half an hour longer."

  "Peter was in his bed at a quarter of nine then."

  "I would have heard immediately if he wasn't."

  "So he couldn't have slipped off the campus earlier, while the movie was being shown," Mills said. Quinlan shook his head. "But less than an hour later, according to Doremus, he was at the gristmill on the Hawke farm, and that's five miles from here."

  "Could one of Peter's roommates have doubled for him during the bed check?"

  "We're familiar with that ruse," the headmaster said, smiling faintly. "Also Peter doesn't have a roommate."

  "I'd like to have a look at the hall where he lives," Doremus said.

  "Certainly. I'll take you there myself." The headmaster unlocked a drawer of his desk, took out a set of keys and accompanied Mills and Doremus across the misty quadrangle.

  "Is there someone on the gate all night long?"

  "Our watchman. Three or four times a night he patrols the grounds, but not at regular intervals."

  Doremus looked at the rooftops of the Gothic-collegiate buildings. The dormitories which they were approaching appeared to be joined, at right angles, and each was four stories high. They were in turn joined to the building that housed the cafeteria and gymnasium by a covered archway. The school's parking lot was out of sight behind the cafeteria, but it could be reached only by means of the main gate and an unlighted asphalt drive that curved behind the quadrangle. Looming above the campus was the dark and heavily wooded Constable Ridge.

  The bell in the tower of the administration building tolled twice as the headmaster unlocked the door of Dobbs Hall. The entrance was well lighted and clearly visible from the gatehouse. Inside there was a single bright light at each end of the corridor.

  "How many keys are there?" Doremus asked, examining the solid oak door.

  "Only three; I can tell you where each is right at this moment And as you can see, the doors lock from the outside only."

  They went up stairs to the top floor, where Peter Mathis lived. There was another, simpler lock on the door of the suite. Quinlan let them in with a passkey.

  "Each suite contains two bedrooms and a study room," the headmaster whispered as they entered. "Let's see . . . I believe Peter has this room." They walked through a curtained doorway into a cubicle which contained two barracks-style beds and two dressers, nothing more. One bed was bare to the mattress. They other looked as if it had been slept in, at least briefly.

  Doremus felt a draft on his stiff neck and went to the dormer windows. There were three of them, casement-type windows twenty-four inches wide. One window had been cranked open as far as it could go. The ledge outside was granite, about eight inches deep. He looked down at the quadrangle forty feet below. Some of the stones of the wall protruded evenly for an inch or so, but there were no secure handholds.

  Doremus turned his head carefully to the right. The roof slanted outward, past the windows, and where it ended there was a metal rain trough that looked dependable. He put one foot on the ledge and tried to get through the window space, but, th
in as he was, he couldn't make it. He stuck his head out as far as possible and surveyed the gray-and-red slate roof.

  "Peter couldn't have gone out that way," the headmaster protested; "it's far too dangerous. All the boys know it. We lecture them every year on the dangers of trying to climb—"

  "I'm sure most of them take the lectures to heart, but this boy is something else again. I believe he went out this way, and came back this way, not once but as many as a dozen times. Let's go down."'

  From the quadrangle Doremus located Peter's window.

  "If he could negotiate the slate to the point where the roof flattens, then he could walk across the buildings without difficulty. I doubt that anyone would see him against the background of the ridge. The hard part would be the first twelve feet—or the last, if he's returning to his room. With the rain trough to stand on and sneakers for grip he might make it easily to the flat of the roof. I wouldn't care to try it myself though. Let's find a way for him to climb down, now that we've got him up there."

  They walked to the end of the second dormitory. Here Doremus saw a door in the otherwise blank wall, and a covered walkway to the cafeteria. Ivy grew thickly on the rugged facing of the wall.

  "Reckon he clumb down that ivy?" Mills said, looking dubious.

  "It's the only way off the dormitory roof. Not such a bad climb; the roof of the walkway there is a couple of floors high."

  "Peter Mathis isn't a particularly strong or athletic youngster," Quinlan said, his voice thin and doleful. "What could have possessed him to do such a dangerous thing?"