Blood River Down

by Lionel Fenn

  QUEST FOR THE WHITE DUCK 01

  BLOOD RIVER DOWN

  Lionel Fenn

  CHAPTER ONE

  On a Wednesday evening in the middle of May, Gideon Sunday opened his pantry door, took one step over the threshold, and shrieked.

  All things considered, the reaction was a natural one even for a not-quite-middle-aged man who used to play football for a living, and he wasn't the slightest bit ashamed when he jumped back into the kitchen and slammed the door, put his back to it, and closed his eyes as tightly as he could. After all, he had only gone in there to fetch a jar of his late sister's plum preserves, a perverse treat to cap the end of a dismal and rainy evening. Seeing the rear wall of his small New Jersey home unceremoniously replaced by something so monotonously pastoral that it would test the soul and sanity of any human being was, to say the least, rather unexpected.

  The shriek, then, was justified.

  And that, he thought as he opened his eyes slowly and was reassured by the familiar sight of the stainless-steel sink with its dripping cold-water faucet, is what I get for tampering with tradition.

  Normally, instead of being in the kitchen at this hour in the first place, he would have been in the living room, where he would have opened a bottle of mediocre but serviceable liquor, sat in front of the portable black-and-white television, and watched an old movie while he read the sports sections of the local and national newspapers and tried to figure out the daily crossword puzzle. Having not seen his name yet again in any of the sports sections' syndicated columns, and having given up on the crossword but not the liquor, he would have made himself satisfactorily sleepy by ten, would have gone to bed by ten-thirty, and would have been asleep by eleven, forgetting, for the nonce, the unpleasantly undeniable fact that he was slumping dangerously into his ninth consecutive month of unemployment.

  Tonight, however, as he was changing into his pajamas after mowing the lawn by moonlight to get a jump on his neighbors, who consistently woke him at dawn with their own trimming and gardening, he had come across an old wallet-sized photograph of his sister, lying at the bottom of his jewelry case. It had been taken at the Jersey shore when she was twenty-four, ten years before her death. She was beautiful, her cockeyed smile defying the camera's attempts to freeze it into a wooden snapshot pose. He had held it for quite some time, remembering, before deciding that in her honor he would break down and break open some of her godawful preserves, make some toast, and toast her memory.

  She would have appreciated that—he had never touched the stuff while she was alive.

  But now even that bit of solace had been taken from him.

  After testing the pantry doorknob several times to be sure nothing untoward would happen when he moved, he passed a harsh knuckle across his eyes, sat at the kitchen table, and stared at the door.

  It didn't seem to have changed since the last time he'd seen it. He wasn't in the wrong house because he recognized it the moment he came into the room. And behind its peeling but still presentable white surface were hundreds of memories of his mother and father, his sister, his childhood... and a meadow that didn't belong there.

  The memories he could deal with; they were so ordinary he often used them to put himself to sleep when he struggled with bouts of insomnia.

  It was the meadow that threw him.

  It's got to be the preserves, he told himself. Just the thought of ingesting them had probably triggered a subtle chemical reaction which had, not surprisingly, induced hallucinations in an already weary brain.

  He sat for ten minutes.

  The door didn't change.

  He wondered if the hallucination might have been brought on by the fact that he was worrying himself grey over finding a new job before the generous but not bottomless inheritance from his sister ran out. What he had seen might be the perfectly logical result of wish fulfillment on the part of a desperate man, a piercing and not inexplicable desire to escape to an untroubled world where he was not bothered by the realities of feeding, housing, and clothing himself.

  There were not, as he had unhappily discovered, many lucrative or even marginally pleasant positions available in the real world for a professional football player whose team franchise had been disbanded. All but eight of the team members and coaching staff had been gleefully and cheaply swallowed up by other organizations within a month of the announced dissolution; four of the remaining players went into insurance, one found hope in men's shoes, one married a senator, and the seventh opened a sports bar in Kansas City.

  He, however, the seldom used backup to the backup quarterback, discovered that his average physical skills and tendency to bruise before the ball was hiked prevented him from being asked to tryouts even for the semipros, while his liberal arts degree in ancient history, cum laude graduation notwithstanding, wasn't worth the fake lambskin it was printed on in today's high-tech, low-literacy market.

  He sat for ten minutes more.

  The door still didn't change.

  He considered the remote possibility that he had mistakenly thought the postage-stamp backyard he had known for over three decades was a meadow. It was an idea that might have been convincing, had he not then looked over his shoulder at the clock over the sink and seen that it was only twenty-four minutes shy of ten.

  Either the moon was damned bright for this time of night, or he was still in his easy chair, sleeping and dreaming.

  "Hey!" he said, smiling at himself.

  Speculation was worthless if one only speculated and never acted.

  With a determined squaring of his shoulders, he walked around the table and put his hand on the knob. He tilted his head and listened. He kicked the door lightly, once.

  Then he flung it open and stood boldly on the threshold.

  The shriek this time was more like a squeak.

  —|—

  On the left and right pantry walls were the white-painted shelves that held his fading larder; the narrow floor was still a pale green-and-red-checked linoleum; and the back wall where the window used to be, looking out on the backyard, was gone.

  So was the backyard.

  "All right," he said, stepped back, and closed the door a second time.

  He rubbed his eyes methodically with the heels of his hands, went to the sink, splashed water on his face, and dried it with a succession of harsh paper towels. He drank out of his palm. Then he walked into the living room, opened the cabinet under the stereo turntable, and pulled out the bottle of scotch he had given himself on his birthday, three months ago. This, he knew, would solve nothing and most likely only add to his confusion; on the other hand, it might provide him with the stimulus necessary to face whatever it was that had invaded his pantry.

  He eyed the level of the bottle, nodded, and returned to the kitchen. A deft twist of his fingers had the top off; a deft turn of the wrist filled his mouth; a swallow made him bold once again.

  His next move was not unlike the only thing he did better in the league than anyone else—the "last second, the team's behind and we need a score" Hail Mary play. He had been known, on more than one spectacular occasion, to throw a ball over a hundred yards when he was feeling particularly pressed by approaching tacklers; he was also known for not always being able to put it where he aimed it.

  A bold desperation play that once in a while even worked.

  Gideon flung open the door.

  "Incredible," he said when he saw the meadow waiting.

  He took another drink, rather larger than the first, and decided to investigate; what the hell, you only live once, and who knows what the morrow may bring. He propped the pantry door open with his chair, the table, and the portable dishwasher. A run to the hall closet got him a baseball bat since he didn't own a gun.

&n
bsp; A sudden and embarrassing thought occurred to him, and he opened the back door to look out at the yard. It was there, it was dark, and it wasn't anything like a meadow.

  "Nuts," he said.

  Then he turned off all the lights, set the bat on his shoulder, and walked into the pantry.

  "Calm," he ordered himself when his knees threatened to turn the rest of him around. "Think of it as an adventure."

  He took a deep breath, sneezed, and put out a hand—no glass, only warm, summer-like air that caressed his palms and made his fingers curl in anticipation of a nymph's kiss.

  "So far so good."

  He withdrew the hand, examined it for signs of rotting or alteration, then inserted a foot through to the grass and tested the ground—firm, slightly damp, the grass coming softly to his ankles and twinkling with a dew that should have evaporated shortly after dawn.

  He retreated, thinking he was pressing his luck and shouldn't stick out his neck. Further examination was necessary before he went any farther.

  He held out the bat and waited for laser beams to char it.

  He called out a "Hello!" to see if the natives were responding.

  He searched for large, ominous shadows on the grass that would indicate someone lurking suspiciously just to the side of his peripheral vision.

  He pressed himself against the righthand shelves and squinted into the bright sunlight beyond, half hoping he could spot the tops of the screens on which the scene was painted, or the lights that passed for the sun, or the wind machine hidden just around the side of the opening.

  The meadow was, he judged, several hundred yards wide, equally as long if not longer, and marked by gentle undulations of the ground which gave it a vaguely sea-like appearance. It was surrounded by a dense forest of towering pine, which he could smell disturbingly clearly. Directly ahead, beyond the forest, was a range of high mountains, peaks hazed by distance. There were flowers in colorful abundance, a few darting insects that made no attempt to fly into the pantry, and a flock of dark birds wheeling about in the sky.

  He shook his head with a disgusted groan.

  "This," he said, "is crazy."

  He turned around immediately, went back into the kitchen, moved the chair and the table and the dishwasher back into their places, put the bat on the table, closed the door, and went to bed.

  In the morning he would get the preserves. When he was sober.

  But sleep refused to come when he wanted it. He spent several minutes punching at the pillow, rearranging the covers, stretching stiffly in order to relax more fully, punching the pillow again, and counting black-faced sheep. None of it worked. He went into the bathroom and took a drink of water, examined his eyes for signs of age lines, his neck for signs of sagging, his chest and arms for signs of deterioration—not, he told himself glumly, that he was all that marvelous a physical specimen. He was, in proportion, like his abilities as a player—adequate. He was a nice guy who tried to talk tacklers out of hitting him and never once argued with a ref about a lousy call.

  He grinned at himself, shook his head, and returned to bed.

  In more than one way he was relieved that he had never become a star, or even a journeyman player. At least now he didn't have scrambled brains, a destroyed knee, and a few fused discs in his back.

  All he had were zero prospects for the future, and a meadow in his pantry.

  Things, he thought, could hardly get worse.

  Unless, he thought further when he heard the crash of crockery downstairs, someone has broken into the house and is going to clean me out of my furniture, too.

  He scrambled out of bed and moved silently into the hallway, his head cocked as he listened, almost convinced he had been dreaming when he heard it again—a plate dropping onto the kitchen floor and shattering. Muffled footsteps. A soft muttering.

  Halfway down the stairs he paused and swore when he remembered that he had left the bat on the kitchen table. Quickly, he turned into the dining room at the bottom of the staircase and picked up a vase from a corner table. Then he returned to the foyer, listened again, and made his way down the short hall.

  The light was on.

  He distinctly remembered turning it off.

  He pressed against the wall and took a deep breath, prayed the burglar wasn't armed, and rushed into the room.

  No one was there.

  But the pantry door was open.

  CHAPTER TWO

  "That," Gideon whispered, "is impossible. No way. I shut it. I know I shut it."

  He closed his eyes tightly to produce painful sparks behind his lids, rubbed his free hand hard and fast over his face to be sure he was awake and not still in bed having another one of his unemployment nightmares, and opened them again, one at a time and slowly.

  The door was still ajar.

  Definitely out of the question, he told himself as he took a tentative step forward, changed his mind, and stepped quickly back again; I simply don't do things like that. Everybody knows that. I just don't.

  Even his dead sister, who had been lovingly tolerant about many things in his life—and had even politely called them foibles instead of idiocies—had laughingly chided him more than once about his meticulous attention to such details as closing a door and turning out all the lights as soon as he left a room, even if he was going to return in five minutes. And more than once, she also tended to remind him not so laughingly, he forgot there were other people still in there.

  She, however, had been just as notorious at home before she'd run away to California, and during her career, for leaving her purses in restaurants, keys in the ignition, money and credit cards in department stores, and five or six pieces of luggage on airport carousels, then practicing her hysterics until all items were recovered.

  Gideon never listened to her.

  Shortly after his mother died and left him this house, he had been more than close to fanatical about making sure all the doors and windows of his various apartments, homes, and motel rooms were securely locked against all intrusion save the eventuality of a determined tank in the outer hallway. It drove his room- and teammates crazy.

  But it was, his mother had told him sternly on too many occasions to mention, the only way to insure one's tenuous safety against the encroaching viciousness of the crime-ridden jungle engulfing the universe and driving all decent people to Arizona. Do this, she offered, and you will never regret it, though the hardships be great.

  As a child he had performed the task out of habit, his mother's teaching, and fear of his father's large-buckled belt ominously hanging on a meat hook beside the back door; as an adolescent he had done it because the nightly chore was necessary for the Friday collection of his meager allowance so he could go to the movies just to get out of the house; and as an adult he had done it because he couldn't sleep until the ritual had been completed.

  So he was positive that, aside from the improbability though not impossibility of divine intervention in terms of his kitchen environs, he had closed the pantry door when he had decided to go to bed.

  Positive, however, did not account for what he was seeing.

  His first thought was to back stealthily into the living room, find the telephone in the dark, and call the police; his second was to cancel the first because he didn't think he would be able to explain the meadow in his pantry or the empty liquor bottle on the counter or the consequences of the empty liquor bottle on his breath. Nor could he simply retreat to the upstairs and pretend it hadn't happened since it obviously had or he wouldn't be here now. Nor could he rush to any of his neighbors for assistance since they never had appreciated his mowing by moonlight, and besides he was obviously big enough to take care of himself, being a football player and all; not, he recalled somewhat bitterly, that they had ever asked for his autograph.

  Despite the glare of the fluorescent light in the ceiling, the doorway was filled with a soft golden glow.

  His nose wrinkled and he shuddered when he caught the distinct odor of pine.
>
  Maybe, he thought, it's a poor lost deer or some other meadow creature looking for food; and maybe the manager of the Green Bay Packers will call first thing in the morning and make you his starting quarterback next season, complete with a record bonus, a new car, and options.

  "Hell," he said.

  Stuck then with the flimsy vase in his right hand and no alternative but to proceed, he bolstered himself with vengeful thoughts of the potential violation to his dead sister's preserves and eased into the kitchen, following as best and as silently as he could the contours of the refrigerator and the dishwasher until he reached the pantry door.

  He listened.

  There wasn't a sound.

  He tried to ignore the prickling that had started to erupt along his spine and paid no attention to the fact that the house wasn't talking anymore.

  He listened again, leaning hard against the wall as though he might be able to hear right through it, and swore silently when he knew there was only one thing left to do.

  Snatching up the bat in his left hand and holding the vase over his head, he leaned swiftly around the frame to expose the intruder in the act of doing whatever the act was, holding his breath, his shoulders and stomach tightening as though expecting a blow.

  "Damn," he said, and lowered his arms.

  The pantry was empty save for the can of pork and beans on the floor; and the meadow was still there, cheery as ever.

  There was no sign of anyone, any thing, or any distressing combination thereof; nor were there signs that anyone had been in here since he had left over two hours ago.

  Yet he knew he had shut the door, and he knew he had heard the sounds of dishes breaking.

  A slow turn of his head and a look to the floor stopped him from giving in to the temptation of relief. Lying in front of the sink was what remained of a plate that had been in the drying rack since he'd washed up after dinner; a foot or so away were two others in similar states of breakage, along with a handleless cup and a chipped and cracked saucer.

  The bat swung tightly at his side like a spooked cat's tail.