Lost Cipher

by Michael Oechsle

  George was still picking his way down the rocks along the stream, making much slower progress than even the old man with a boy on his back. He was carrying Alex’s boot in one hand. When he spotted Lucas, his wide-eyed glance toward the old man revealed his fear.

  “I didn’t find him. He found me.” Lucas kept his voice low, watching the old man resting against the trunk of a tree. “All I managed to do was fall off this waterfall and hit my head.”

  The man pushed himself off the tree, ready to move again. “I know you trespassers would like to talk all day, but it ain’t gettin’ any lighter. And your friend needs to get some pain medicine in him. Lucky for him I keep some around. Comes in handy when you ain’t got a phone.”

  No phone. Lucas had been so happy to find someone, he’d forgotten what the man in the store had said about the old hermit.

  No phone.

  No car.

  They were going back to the snake man’s house, and there’d be no way to get help. No one would even know where they were. Lucas wanted to tell the old man he’d changed his mind, that he’d just stay put with Alex and George and let the rescuers find them.

  But the rescuers were probably just getting started. Even if they found the message on the rock, they would never get down this far by tonight. He didn’t have a choice. He had to trust the old man.

  CHAPTER 21

  After giving George less than a minute to rest, the old man walked over to Alex, grabbed him by the shirt, and lifted him from the ground with one hand. He bent over, wrapped an arm around the boy’s legs, and tossed him over one shoulder like a sack of concrete. Alex grunted in pain from all the jostling, but he didn’t protest.

  Lucas couldn’t believe the old man’s strength. “Are you going to carry him like that the whole way?” he asked.

  “I sure ain’t dancin’ with him.” The man started off through the woods, going away from the falls Lucas had tried to descend.

  “Where are you going?” Lucas asked. “I thought your house was down there somewhere.” He pointed downstream, but the old man kept walking.

  “I ain’t gettin’ past them falls with your friend here on my back,” he yelled over his shoulder. “And I’m guessin’ he don’t want to get down the way you did. If you’re comin’, stay close and stop flappin’ your yap. This hollow’s been my backyard for seventy years. I believe I can find my way home.”

  Lucas and George fell in behind the old man, dropping back just enough to whisper.

  “Where’d you find this guy?” asked George. “Talk about creepy.”

  Lucas wasn’t sure George remembered the old man from Aaron’s story, and he didn’t see any reason to let the younger boy know who was leading them through the woods.

  “Like I said, he found me. He says we’re on his land. All I know is, he’s the only chance we’ve got for getting Alex some help and getting out of here.”

  “Yeah, but you heard him. He doesn’t even have a phone. No one’s gonna know where we are.”

  Lucas was still worried about the same thing, but the alternative was even worse. “You want to stay out here another night?”

  Before George could answer, the old man hollered back at them. “You all can either keep up, or you can keep lollygaggin’ back there and end up just as lost as when I found you. But I sure ain’t comin’ back to get you.”

  With every one of the man’s bouncing steps, Alex let out a feeble moan. Lucas and George gave each other one more nervous look, but they hurried after the strange old man carrying their friend.

  At first the man made his own path through the thick forest. To Lucas it seemed impossible for him to know where he was going. But after some time, he saw that they were following a faint trail, no wider than a boot. To Lucas it looked like no more than a game trail. It didn’t seem to lead to anything but more empty wilderness.

  The old man never slowed. He had more than a hundred pounds slung over his shoulder, but Lucas still had a hard time keeping up. It didn’t help that his stomach was empty, or that he’d gone more than a day now without water. Or that he was constantly stopping to wait for George. When the old man finally paused for a break and lowered Alex to the ground, Lucas plopped down, exhausted, in the middle of the path. A few seconds later, George emerged from a bend in the trail and did the same.

  “Don’t get too comfortable,” the old man said. He wasn’t breathing nearly as hard as Lucas, and he didn’t even sit down to rest. “We got another half mile.”

  “Jeez, I need food,” gasped George.

  “Yeah, and that’s about the hundredth time you said so since I found you,” the hermit told him.

  “We at least need some water,” Lucas said defiantly. “Especially Alex.”

  “Well, unless you can figure a way to suck it out of these trees, I’d say the nearest water’s at my place. You ain’t gonna die before then, are you? Let’s go,” the old man said, hauling Alex up onto his shoulder again and trudging off through the trees, seemingly unconcerned whether Lucas and George followed.

  Soon they came to a rusted and fallen barbed-wire fence with a broad clearing on the other side. The sun had sunk below the mountains, but the light at the edge of the woods was enough to make Lucas squint after being in the dim forest all day. The clearing had probably been a farm field long ago, but now it only sprouted spiky cedars from a tangle of tall grass and wild roses. Lucas still didn’t know where the old man was taking them, but they finally seemed to be leaving the wilderness.

  They skirted the edge of the field, walking along the old, rotted posts of the fence for a few hundred yards. Lucas was looking at the ground, watching for half-buried strands of rusty barbed wire, when the old man finally spoke.

  “Down there,” he said more to the boy slung over his shoulder than the others trailing behind. The old man didn’t break stride, but Lucas stopped and looked up.

  A house lay below them in another field. If it was the old man’s, it wasn’t what he’d expected.

  This house was easily more than a hundred years old, but it was clean and painted a fresh white, with bright blue shutters. Its redbrick chimney was straight and sturdy looking, and its shiny tin roof had only a few streaks of rust. Even from far away, Lucas could see neat curtains in all the windows. The house seemed totally out of place, especially considering the rough character that lived there.

  Behind the house was an enormous tree, much taller than the building, its deep, green canopy spreading out more than twice its height. Away from its shade, a neatly tended vegetable garden sat surrounded by a high deer fence, and several straight rows of orchard trees lined the slope of a hill. Farther away from the house, one tiny outbuilding stood near the foot of a rock outcrop that jutted out from a green hillside like the bow of a long-buried ship. Lucas recalled that the man didn’t have a bathroom, so he guessed the little building was his outhouse. It was the only part of the picture that didn’t surprise him. Otherwise, nobody who saw this house could have guessed much about the character living in it.

  They came up to the house from the back, below the little orchard and past the vegetable garden. From up close, the yard was even tidier. Beneath the wide, shady tree, a thick bed of acorns crunched under Lucas’s feet. An oak. He saw from its massive and knotted trunk that the tree was much older than the old farmhouse, like maybe the big oak was the reason the house was there in the first place. For a second, he paused under the old tree and surveyed the little farm and its valley, thinking how nice it would be to grow up in such a place.

  The four of them went up onto the back porch. Without saying a word, the man disappeared through a screen door, Alex still dangling from his shoulder. Lucas didn’t want to leave his friend, but he didn’t feel right just following them in. The old man sure hadn’t invited them. So he and George stood on the porch, staring back out at the garden in the twilight.

  That’s when Lu
cas saw the gravestones.

  “Look,” he said to George.

  They were no more than fifty feet from the house. From up on the hill, they’d been hidden in the shadow of the big tree. It was a family plot, maybe a dozen headstones surrounded by a low iron fence. Some of the markers looked ancient, tilted and covered in clumps of crusted moss. Most were too small or too eroded by time to make out the names and dates carved into their faces.

  One, however, stood out from the rest. It was larger than the others, and it rested nearly in the center of the crowded plot. In large letters weathered smooth by the years, it was marked with the name Morris.

  Just then a voice boomed from inside the house, making both boys jump.

  “You come all the way down that mountain to spend the night outside?”

  CHAPTER 22

  The old man had already set Alex in a chair and propped up his bad leg in another. He had removed the crude splint and was wrapping a cloth bandage around the boy’s ankle. Alex was trying hard not to make noise, but the look on his ghost-white face told Lucas how much pain he was in. While Lucas and George stood and watched, the old man made up an ice pack and wrapped it against Alex’s ankle with another bandage.

  When he was finished, he said, “Let’s see that bite, boy.”

  Alex had been holding the snake-bit hand against his body, and he extended it for the old man to examine. The swelling didn’t seem any worse, but it obviously pained Alex to move it.

  The old man looked closely at Alex’s thumb for a minute. “Looks like he just got you with one.” He put two fingers to Alex’s throat, which made the boy flinch. “Just checkin’ your pulse. Don’t get all jumpy on me.” The old man waited a few seconds, counting the beats in Alex’s neck. “Not racin’ at all,” he said. “Probably mostly a dry bite. Lucky.”

  “Lucky?” said Lucas. “Maybe it was one of your snakes that bit him in the first place.” He figured the snake man would snap at him or maybe worse, but instead he just shook his head and laughed.

  “Your busted-up friend here was mutterin’ somethin’ about that all the way down the mountain. Sounds like I’m gonna have to have a talk with them people over at the camp. They ain’t exactly paintin’ me in the best light.”

  “They said you put snakes out there to keep treasure hunters away.”

  The old man didn’t respond at first, just went to the sink and refilled the ice tray he’d emptied for Alex’s ice pack. He set the tray back in the freezer, and when he spoke, his voice was carrying a threatening edge.

  “Look, boy,” he said. “It’s true I don’t take kindly to trespassers, especially money-grubbin’ ones. But that don’t mean I like messin’ with snakes.” He shook his head. “Aaron told you that bullcrap, didn’t he? I sure bet he did.”

  Lucas was surprised the hermit knew any of the counselors by name. Something told him Aaron would rather stay anonymous to the creepy old man. He kept his mouth shut while the old man retrieved a glass from a cabinet and filled it with water. When he was finished, he turned back to Lucas.

  “Boy, I don’t suppose you know what the name of this place is, do you? It’s called Moccasin Hollow. Been called that for more’n two hundred years. ‘Highland moccasin’ was what them old timers used to call a copperhead. This place was so thick with ’em, they named it after the snakes—Moccasin Hollow. Now, I may look two hundred years old to you, but it sure weren’t me that put all them copperheads in this hollow.”

  When he spoke to Alex, his voice was only a little gentler. “I’ll get you something for that pain, but your bite ain’t a bad one.”

  Alex held up his arm gingerly. It was still swollen past the wrist, and his hand was a deep red with a bluish bruise around the bite. “What do you call a bad one?” he asked weakly.

  Without speaking, the old man set his boot up on a kitchen chair and slid his pant leg up to expose his calf. Above his tattered wool sock, the muscle was half gone and what remained was twisted and glossy, like the wax from a melted candle.

  “Jeez!” George muttered.

  He touched his own calf. “That’s what a full load of venom can do. ’Course that was a timber rattler, and it didn’t help I had to walk six miles into town for the right kind of doctorin’.”

  The old man set the glass of water in front of Alex and went out of the kitchen. They heard him climb the stairs, and when he returned, he had a brown prescription bottle half-full of white pills. “This is some strong stuff, and I ought not give it to you.” He broke one of the pills in half with his thumb and handed it to Alex. “But I can guess how that hand’s feelin’.”

  If Alex was afraid to take medicine from the man, he didn’t show it. He swallowed it down and finished off the water in a hurry.

  “That medicine will probably put you out for a while, so I’m gonna set you where you can sleep.” He scooped Alex up off his chair, cradling him like a baby. Before he left the kitchen, he turned back to Lucas and George.

  “You two gonna just sit there?”

  They followed the old man toward the front of the house, to a bedroom off one side of the main room. He told George to click on a lamp by the door. The bedroom looked like it hadn’t been used in years. Even if it had, it was too girlish to be the old man’s.

  White lace curtains framed a big bay window that let in the warm glow of the setting sun. A high-backed, red-velvet chair with flowers carved along the arms and legs rested in one corner. Across the room sat a small dresser and mirror with a little flowered stool set in front of it, the kind of place where a lady would put on her makeup. The bed was stark white, with lacy fringes along the bottom of the bedcover and a dark, carved headboard.

  Next to the bed was a nightstand with a small lamp, its shade fringed with tiny golden tassels. On the nightstand was a single dusty book with a green cover and old-fashioned, gold lettering—The Life and Letters of John Muir. Lucas recognized the name from the quote above the camp office.

  Without pulling back the covers, the old man laid Alex down on the bed. If he minded the bed getting dirty, he didn’t show it. He pulled the tall red chair and the little stool to the side of the bed and motioned Lucas and George to sit down. “You all can set here with him a while. I suppose I’ll have to get to feedin’ you too.” He walked back in the direction of the kitchen, grumbling.

  To Lucas, the clean, white bedcover surrounding Alex made his battered friend seem even more frail, like someone lying sick in a hospital bed. “Does it hurt bad? The snakebite, I mean,” he asked.

  “Not as much now, but maybe I’m just getting used to it,” said Alex feebly. “It still burns pretty good though. But my ankle only hurts when I move it.” He perked up a little. “Hey, what’s with this place? Practically a mansion, and it’s just him livin’ here?”

  “He probably murdered everyone in it,” whispered George. “I bet they’re buried in the basement. Or maybe in that graveyard out back.”

  “I doubt it, George,” Lucas whispered back. “He’s mean all right, but he’s taking care of Alex, isn’t he? Why would he do that if he was just going to make us disappear?”

  “Who knows?” replied George, glancing back at the door in case the old man was there listening. “But the sooner we get out of here, the better. You know he doesn’t have a phone? We’re just as lost as we were last night. Only now, nobody even knows where to look for us.”

  “Well,” said Lucas, “if them rescuers are any smarter than a box of rocks, they’ll figure out whose hollow we went down into. I wouldn’t start worryin’ unless they don’t show up here by morning.”

  Alex opened and closed his eyes slowly, looking drowsy already. “Whew, I think that medicine he gave me is already kicking in.”

  “Maybe he’s going to knock us all out with the same medicine,” said George.

  “Good Lord, George,” replied Lucas. “Maybe we all slept in a cave last ni
ght, and Alex here is beat. Jeez.” He glanced out the cracked door toward the kitchen and lowered his voice to a whisper again. “Look, Alex, you sleep. We’ll talk to him and try to find out what he’s thinking. If you’re still awake, we’ll let you know somehow.”

  Alex nodded. Lucas turned off the light but left the door ajar. He and George headed back to the kitchen and the strange old man waiting there.

  CHAPTER 23

  The old man was at the table. A bowl filled with some kind of dark stew sat in front of him, and a pot on the back of the stove was steaming. The smell that filled the kitchen set Lucas’s stomach rumbling.

  “Go ahead,” said the old man. He pointed with his spoon to a couple of spare bowls already set out on the counter. “Toilet’s around the corner if you want to clean yourself up first.”

  George pushed past Lucas to the bathroom and was already back in the kitchen filling his bowl with stew before Lucas even had a chance to wash up.

  When Lucas closed the bathroom door behind him, he recalled the words of the storekeeper again, about how the old man only had an outhouse. One rumor about him that ain’t true at least, Lucas thought. He was glad to know he wouldn’t have to trudge past the graveyard and up the hill to the little shack in the rocks if he needed to go in the middle of the night.

  Back in the kitchen, Lucas ladled his bowl full of stew. He recognized the smell—venison stew. He doubted George had ever had any, but the younger boy was standing near the kitchen sink, hunched over his bowl and shoveling stew into his mouth like he hadn’t eaten in a week. As worried as the younger boy was about the old man drugging them, he didn’t seem concerned enough to refuse his food. Lucas moved his own bowl to another spot on the counter and began to eat.

  “I ain’t gonna bite,” the old man said gruffly. He kicked the two chairs across from him so they slid out from under table. “There’s cups up in that cabinet there.”

  Lucas found two clean glasses and passed one to George. He filled his at the sink. It was the first water he’d had in more than a day, and he drank down a whole glass then refilled it after George had done the same. The boys took their stew and water over to the table and sat down across from the old man without saying a word.