A stone pathway led away from the terrace steps, winding through tall grass to an enormous wall of neglected privet at the rear of the house, vanishing somewhere beyond it. I knew from aerial photographs it led into the estate’s sprawling gardens, which had featured prominently in Cordova’s To Breathe with Kings. A check of Google Earth had revealed that hints of the elaborate landscaping were still there—pebbled pathways and sculpture—though most of it was shrouded under wild greenery.
“I’ll see if anyone’s home,” Hopper said.
“What? No. We’re waiting here.”
But before I could stop him, he stepped right out onto the lawn, jogging nonchalantly down the hill. Reaching the steps to the terrace, he ducked and slipped right up them, out of sight.
My shock over what he’d just done quickly turned to outrage. I should have known he’d be reckless, follow his own private agenda. I had every intention of going after him, dragging him back, when I froze.
A dog was barking. It sounded close.
Nora turned to me, horrified. I held up my hand. We’d considered the possibility of dogs and had bought clothing with scent elimination, which supposedly masked our smell from animals.
The dog barked again, angry and insistent.
And then a single faint light appeared in a gabled window along the roof. It was shrouded with a heavy curtain but unmistakable.
Someone was home.
The dog went silent as a sudden gust of wind whipped through the trees. There was no sign of Hopper. Presumably he was hiding somewhere on the terrace, waiting for the chance to make his way back. But then I heard the unmistakable thud of a heavy door heaving open, followed by staccato thumping and the jingling of a dog collar.
I unzipped Nora’s backpack, groping through the clothing, finding the pepper spray. I shoved it into her hands just as a massive hound, barking furiously, came bounding across the mansion’s front entrance.
It looked like something between a Russian wolfhound and a coyote, its mangy coat splotched gray and white, a long curled tail.
The dog froze and howled another warning bark as it stared down the grassy hill toward Graves Pond, ears pricked.
A second dog appeared, this one bigger and all black. It loped around the house exactly in our direction, stopping some twenty yards from the terrace where Hopper was hiding. It growled ominously. Then, nose to the ground, the dog loped up the hill toward us, zigzagging through the grass.
“Get back to the canoe and wait for me there,” I whispered.
Nora hesitated.
“Do it.”
Petrified, she took off, barking exploding around us, as I ran in the other direction out onto the lawn. I headed straight down the incline, racing past the terrace and along the stone path, making a beeline for the privet. When I glanced over my shoulder I saw what I expected: Both dogs were chasing me now, plowing through the tall grass.
I tore along the hedge, finding an opening, and barreled blindly through, careening down a white-pebbled path overrun with weeds.
The dogs sounded close behind me, paws ricocheting across the stones.
I appeared to be running through a garden maze, tall walls of privet growing high around me, birdbaths scarred with lichen, plants clinging to trellises. I could make out crumbling statuary—a headless girl, a man’s naked torso entwined with a snake. Colossal shrubs—probably once topiaries—rose around me, their animal shapes long melted away.
I tripped down some steps and raced into a narrow alcove with a dried-up fountain, a wrought-iron gate.
I stopped, listening.
The dogs sounded as if they’d multiplied, coming from every direction.
I crept over to the wrought-iron gate.
Suddenly a dog leapt up on the opposite side, snarling. I lurched away, expecting, at any moment, its jaws to sink into my arm, but only frustrated yowls exploded behind me. I swung back out, instantly spotted another dog bounding toward me at the opposite end of the corridor.
I bent down, finding a hole in the hedge, and scrambled through, running out into an open yard, a large swimming pool at the center covered with a plastic tarp.
I sprinted to the farthest corner and bent down, yanking off my gloves, groping at the nylon strings.
I could hear the dogs whimpering, searching for the way in. I managed to undo a few knots, pulled back the tarp, and almost gagged when I saw what was inside.
It was putrid black water.
I yanked off my backpack, plunged my boots in first, and then, gritting my teeth, slipped inside, the icy water seeping into my clothes, swallowing me up to my neck. I pulled my backpack in—doing my best to keep it dry, though there was only about a foot of space between the tarp and water. I removed the camera from the front pocket, yanked the corner of the tarp back into place, and, blinking in the sudden darkness, floated away from the opening.
Instantly, I heard that insidious jingling. The dogs had found me, barking, racing around the perimeter, whining, their paws clicking rhythmically across the flagstones.
I fumbled my way along the perimeter as quietly as I could, groping at the broken tiles covered in slime, the coldness starting to eat away at me.
I kept my eyes on the ribbon of light cutting between the tarp and the side of the pool, my left foot striking something underneath me. A drowned deer? I’d reached the next corner, kicking my way around it, a ripple of water splashing a little too loudly. I froze.
I could hear footsteps, heavy-set. Someone was coming, striding along a paved path and entering the yard.
“What is it, boys?” It was a man’s low voice.
The dogs whimpered as they continued to race around the pool, the man coming closer. Then he stopped.
Cordova?
Suddenly—the powerful beam of a flashlight danced across the tarp, sending a spasm of panic through me, the gold circle gliding to the corner where I’d crawled in.
I pressed my back against the tiles, trying to remain motionless.
I heard faster footsteps, the whisk of the tarp being flung back.
The flashlight sliced across the water, illuminating blackened leaves and branches, disembodied shapes—frogs, maybe squirrels—floating deep inside the pool.
The beam hovered a few feet from my backpack, slipping closer. I tucked the camera under the tarp on the ledge, took a deep breath, and carefully sank all the way underwater, pulling my backpack in behind me. I fell a few feet and then opened my eyes, trying to ignore the searing sting, watching the beam of light slip over my head.
I waited, my lungs feeling like they were going to explode, trying to remain calm. We’d been fine, the three of us, just a few goddamn minutes ago. How had it all unraveled so quickly?
The beam hovered over me for a few more seconds, then at last slipped away to inspect another corner. I floated back to the surface, gasping for air.
Suddenly a sharp scream pierced the night. It sounded like a woman.
Nora?
The dogs erupted into vicious barking, their paws thumping, flashlight streaking away. I heard fumbling, then footsteps striding across the stones.
Soon there was only silence around me. They were gone.
I grabbed the camera, then kicked back toward the opening, but when I reached the corner, I saw the tarp had been pulled back into place. Ignoring my alarm—my mind instantly killing me off, evoking my corpse wafting through here with the other debris—I reached out, my fingers groping underneath the plastic.
The strings had been retied.
I set the camera on the ledge, pulled my backpack over, fumbling inside the front pocket, found the pocket knife, yanked it open with my teeth, and, gripping the knife awkwardly in my frozen fingers, began to saw at the ties.
I managed to sever a few. I shoved the backpack out first, then blindly heaved myself onto the pool’s edge, freezing wind instantly pummeling me. I lifted my head and saw with relief—I was alone.
I crawled to my feet, dragging my backpack up ov
er my shoulder. I grabbed the camera and staggered across the yard, heading toward the arched opening in the hedge, rancid water squelching from my boots with every step.
I hoped Nora was safe and Hopper was with her. I’d meet them back at the canoe and we’d come up with a new plan.
The dogs—and the man with the flashlight—appeared to have gone quite far, because the night was still again.
I stepped outside the enclosure, finding myself on another stone path, what had to be the garden’s western boundary. To my right, beyond a stretch of overgrown lawn, loomed a forest of dense pines, vast and black, and to my left, sitting high on the hill, beyond tangled greenery, the mansion.
It remained in darkness.
I took off across the grass and into the cover of the forest, following the tree line southward, back around the hill toward Graves Pond. A dank cold was shuddering through me, but I ignored it, trying to break into a jog. My legs wouldn’t respond. I stumbled over branches and tree trunks, cutting east when I could see a clearing to my left—shimmering water through the trunks. Within minutes, I reached the same mouth of the stream by which we’d entered the pond and lurched across it, thigh-deep in the water and mud, moving as fast as I could up onto the bank.
I reached the western side, traipsing along the shoreline, and saw with relief—and amazement—the small branch Nora had stuck in the mud.
“Nora,” I whispered, walking straight into the woods.
When I found the fallen log, I stopped dead.
The branches and dirt had been thrown aside.
And the canoe was gone.
I looked around the trees seemingly locking me in an infinite jail.
I stepped back to the lake’s edge, staring out at the moonlit water.
It was deserted.
Hopper and Nora must have been caught. Or they took off, leaving me stranded. Or they’d been chased, escaped, planned to make their way back when the coast was clear. Or someone else had found the boat and confiscated it, someone waiting for me, watching.
I listened intently for footsteps but heard nothing.
I couldn’t stay here. And I couldn’t use a flashlight for fear someone in the distance would notice it. I took off around the perimeter of the lake, following the general direction the three of us had originally taken.
A dog barked.
It sounded miles away. But I picked up my pace and headed directly up the hill, feeling the last bit of warmth somewhere in my gut flickering, as if seconds from going out.
I stopped, staring far off to my right. There was some type of structure standing beyond the trees, glowing faintly blue in the dark. I took off toward it.
It was a gigantic warehouse, a flat roof, no evident windows. I rounded the first corner, finding a set of steel doors, a rusted chain looped through the handles, secured with a padlock. I quickly searched the ground, found a suitable rock, carried it back, and smashed the lock a few times until it twisted off. At this point, I didn’t care if the world heard me.
I slung the chain to the ground, pulled the door open, and stumbled inside.
The moonlight flooding in behind me illuminated a crude beamed wall, a concrete floor, the back of a brown couch farther ahead, a blanket folded neatly over the back—all of it retreating into pitch darkness as the metal door closed behind me with a resounding thud.
I slung off my backpack, untied my boots, stripped down to my boxers, and, nearly tripping over a raised step, collapsed on the couch. I fumbled for the blanket, pulling it over me. And I huddled there, shivering uncontrollably, willing my mind to thaw. I realized after a dazed moment that all I really wanted to do was sleep, which made me figure I had mild hypothermia, but I shoved that idea away as soon as it came.
Sleep will kill you. It’s the drug your body gives you before closing up shop.
Minutes passed. I didn’t know how long, as I couldn’t move my arm to check my watch. My thoughts kept slipping out of reach, tiny deflating buoys I was trying to grab ahold of to stay afloat. I imagined myself sitting in my bed at Perry Street, staring up at the ceiling. I wondered if we’d gotten into a car accident on the way to Weller’s Landing and this was what it felt like to be unconscious, detached from the world, bobbing between life and death, the Earth and the unknown.
Maybe I was still in that rancid swimming pool.
Maybe I’d never climbed out.
But after a while, I realized my eyes had adjusted to the dark. I was staring at an open newspaper sitting on a coffee table in front of me.
The Doverville Sentinel.
POLICE PROBE BOY DEATHS.
I blinked. I was sitting in a modest furnished living room. There was a white shag carpet on a wooden floor, and modern chairs, curtained windows, a brick fireplace.
I’d been here before.
I’d been inside this room.
Hanging on the wall opposite were three framed pictures beside a tiny kitchenette. A floor lamp with a cream shade hung over the couch. I reached up and tried the switch.
Instantly, pale light illuminated the room.
A wicker chair stood beside the front door, a man’s herringbone overcoat slung over the back. To my right, atop an end table, there was an Art Deco bronze statue of a woman balancing a crystal ball on her head. Emily, weeping in terror, grabs that statue to use as a weapon before dashing down the hall, hiding in a bedroom closet. This couch I was on, Emily sat right here in the opening scene, reading the newspaper about the latest child murder, as Brad entered, slinging his coat and briefcase on that chair beside the door.
I looked up. There was no ceiling, only scaffolding some forty feet overhead. Lights had been rigged up there, a few pointing down at me.
It was a film set.
I was in Brad and Emily Jackson’s living room from Thumbscrew—“an ominous tale of suspicion, paranoia, marriage, and the inscrutability of the human psyche,” according to Beckman.
Brad, a handsome professor of medieval studies at a small liberal arts college in rural Vermont, is newly married to Emily, a young woman with a lurid imagination. She becomes preoccupied with a string of local unsolved murders of young boys, every one eight years old, and begins to suspect her husband is the killer. Thumbscrew ends without a definitive conclusion as to whether or not Brad is guilty. I felt he was, though the Internet and almost certainly the Blackboards were rife with arguments for both sides. Beckman devoted an entire chapter to the film in his book American Mask: Chapter 11: The Brief Case. He wrote that the truth, which will set both Emily and the audience free, ultimately exists in Brad’s beaten-up leather Samsonite briefcase, which Brad fastidiously locks away in a safe along with his thumbscrews—the medieval torture device—every night when he returns home from teaching at the college.
Brad’s briefcase dominates the film so entirely—Emily becomes obsessed with it, desperate to steal it, break the locks, see what her husband was stowing inside—it was actually a main character, featured in more shots than Brad himself. Neither Emily nor the audience is ever allowed to see the inside, a narrative device Tarantino used in Pulp Fiction fifteen years later.
In the film’s third act, during the confrontation between Emily and Brad, when they fight each other—Emily convinced she must fend off a psychopath; Brad convinced his wife has gone crazy—the briefcase inadvertently slips down onto the floor between the bed and the wall. It remains there, unnoticed, tucked inside this tiny Vermont cottage, which, with Emily—an orphan—taken away to a mental hospital and Brad dead, will remain deserted for an unknown period of time.
The final shot of Thumbscrew is the briefcase, a slow tracking shot pulling out from under the bed, winding down the hall, out the front door past the police, into the woods, fading to black.
I rolled off the couch—some feeling had returned to my legs—and stepped across the room to the fireplace.
I walked over to the bookshelves. Thumbscrew, I remembered, had been made in 1978, and the worn-out paperbacks were from that time: L
ooking for Mr. Goodbar, Salem’s Lot, The Gemini Contenders. So was the geometric brown-and-mustard-yellow wallpaper, the lacquered furniture, the orange swag lamp hanging by the front door, the orange-tiled kitchenette, an old GE waffle maker on the counter.
The place had a frozen-in-time feel, as if life had stopped here mid-conversation. No one seemed to have set foot here in decades.
I stepped through the doorway, heading down the narrow corridor. It was dim. I fumbled my way, opening two false doors—they opened back into the warehouse—though the one at the end led into another room.
It was the Jacksons’ master bedroom. I moved to the closet and slid aside the door. Emily’s clothing hung along the racks, housedresses, a pair of bell-bottom jeans, pairs of platform sandals and go-go boots. I stepped to the other end, which had Brad’s clothes, wool slacks, tweed jackets.
I grabbed a pair of the brown corduroy trousers from the top shelf, and a yellow polyester button-down. And I put them on rapidly, because I didn’t want to even attempt to get my mind around the fact that I was donning Brad Jackson’s seventies-era clothes, that I was literally rummaging through Thumbscrew.
The slacks were a few inches short in the leg, but they fit well enough. So Ray Quinn Jr., who played Brad Jackson, unlike most Hollywood leading men, wasn’t a homunculus. I pulled on a red sweater far too tight in the sleeves, found a pair of argyle socks in the chest of drawers, an orange portable Philips record player on top, James Brown’s The Payback on the turntable. After putting them on, I was about to head back to the living room to regroup, when I stopped in the doorway.
I had a sudden vision of Wolfgang Beckman—how he’d shout at me, eyes bulging: “You stumbled, by accident, into Brad and Emily Jackson’s Vermont ranch house and it didn’t occur to you to look under the bed for the briefcase? You’re dead to me now.”
Indulging this hallucination, I crouched down, squinting under the bed.
It was too dark to see anything, so I stood back up, stepped to the bedside table, switched on the lamp, and yanked the bed away from the wall to get a better view.
Immediately, there was a clattering thump. It was there.
Night Film: A Novel Page 45