“Yes, for a fact.” The man in the red cap made a merry smile. “Next spring.” He giggled.
“You have a gun with you, mister?” the old man asked.
“Shhhhh, Charlie! Don’t scare the man.”
“Should be scared. Damnedest goings-on I ever heard of. Whatever it is, it ain’t human. Did you ever hear of any force on earth could twist a horse’s head like that? Ever hear of one that wanted to?”
The man in the red cap examined Brendan’s clothes. He looked from the knee-high laced boots to the wool pants and the fleece-lined coat and to the heavy ski mittens, finally to Brendan’s wool hat.
“Where you going?”
“Woodmere Lake,” Brendan answered.
“You walking in with that suitcase?” He shook his head. “It ain’t nothing but an old logging road full of ruts and boulders. There’s over a foot of snow down and there’s drifts three feet high. It’s going to be a bitch kitty of a walk, mister. More’n three miles through absolute wilderness. You could get lost and freeze to death in there.”
“Or get your neck broke,” the old man said. He nodded at the horse’s head.
Brendan bought a length of line in the store and made a shoulder sling for the suitcase. At best there were only a few hours of daylight left, and he set off in face of a blinding, wind-driven snowstorm.
T 421 bore off almost aimlessly, following the natural contours of the terrain. Brendan felt a rising grade under his feet. He was evidently walking up a high hill, but how high, how far he couldn’t tell for the snow cut visibility to a few feet.
It was going to be a long, difficult walk. He had to lift each foot successively high over the snow, push it down until it reached the ground. Often he stepped in a rut or on a boulder. With any step he might break his ankle. If so, he knew he would freeze.
When he came to snowdrifts, he turned and pushed his back through. Or sometimes he lay like a swimmer and bellied his way over. He felt as ungainly and slow as a turtle. And with every step he was still dogged with the feeling that had been with him since he left New York; he kept looking over his shoulder for a pursuer. Something was following and gaining on him. The blinding snow gave him claustrophobia. Grimly he attacked the next drift. He was alone in a limitless wilderness that stretched all the way to Canada, with only the gentle sound of falling snow. When he tumbled out of one particularly high drift, he paused to readjust the rope sling of his suit case. He heard a sound. He turned and looked back. It was the crunch of a foot in the snow. He stood waiting. Then he shrugged and told himself to calm down. Snow falling off the boughs of the trees made occasional plopping sounds. It might even be a small animal—a squirrel, a rabbit, a raccoon. He adjusted the case and struggled onward.
The conditions seemed to grow worse, the snowfall heavier, and visibility poorer, the grade steeper. He could barely find the road under the snow, and he had to guard against wandering off in a tangent. He lost all sense of direction. Abruptly, with barely any leveling off, he found himself on what seemed to be the crest of the hill. He paused to adjust his suitcase. He was concentrating on the knots when he heard the steps. Three this time in clear sequence. He fought down the impulse to bolt. The steps could have been no more than twenty or thirty feet behind him. He was now convinced; something was stalking him. He needed a weapon. A branch, a stone, a club—anything. All he saw was a world of featureless white. He felt as if he were blindfolded. He tried to increase his speed and soon found himself galumphing downhill, slipping, sliding, the suitcase pounding on his hip, ponderous as an elephant. He realized he was frantically making an easy footpath for his pursuer. When he stumbled on a boulder, nearly spraining his ankle in the process, he knew he had to slow down.
He came to a downward sloping grade that had been in the lee of the wind and was relatively free of deep snow. His descent became more rapid until he encountered another deep drift. He flung the suitcase over and rolled across it. He was considering abandoning the suitcase. On the other side of the drift he lay and waited. Squeezing his eyelids against the snowflakes he squinted intently backward. It seemed he saw a looming form but it quickly disappeared in the snow. He listened. Uncanny. He felt it was listening for his steps, waiting just outside the range of visibility. Why was it waiting? Why didn’t it attack and have done with it? Was there another ahead of him?
Hefting the suitcase once more, he struggled downward, panting, perspiring, still trying to make haste. His left foot struck a high rock on an angle and he took a sliding header in the snow. To his surprise he came up against a square pole stuck into the ground. He stood up and saw a sign nailed to it. EALING 7 MI., it said. This was the place he was looking for, the rendezvous point. Here he was to be met. But there was no one there. “Hello,” he called out. “Is there anyone here?”
It would be the sheerest folly to go beyond this point in the limitless wilderness that surrounded him. He simply had to wait with something malevolent silently standing not twenty feet away.
He dropped the suitcase and looked around for a weapon. He scuffed at the snow, seeking a fallen branch to use as a club. All he found was stones. Quickly he rooted through his suitcase until he found a sock and he put the stones in the sock and swung it tentatively. It wasn’t very reassuring. He stood by the pole and faced the path he’d left and listened for the slightest sound. He waited for a long time in complete silence. He began to feel foolish. There was no pursuer. It had been a small animal. He looked anxiously in the other direction. Where was his guide?
Now his body began to cool, and he felt the chill of the bitter temperature penetrate his boots. The thermometer was dropping with the oncoming darkness. His knees and thighs became cold.
He heard three footfalls then. Distinctly. There could be no mistake. Back up the path. In a rage born of fear, he struck off in a rush toward the sound. It was nearly twilight, but just for a microsecond he glimpsed a form before it was swallowed again in the snow.
It seemed to be a figure wrapped in tatters and rags. But he could not be sure. It might have been a man in a white parka. He scrambled up the path farther but it was gone. The snow had been so dragged and churned up he couldn’t even be certain if there was more than one set of tracks.
Then he found a print like a bare hand. It couldn’t be his. He wore ski mittens. He looked closely at the print. Unless it was a trick of the eye, he was looking at a hand print or even a footprint with a thumb and five digits. An animal with six fingers. He pulled off his mitten and placed his hand on the print. It was at least twice the size. The creature must be gigantic.
Brendan struggled back to the pole as though it was sanctuary. EALING 7 MI. It was growing darker. He couldn’t stand there much longer. He would freeze during the night. He thought about the struggle back up that long hill and down again the other side to the country store. He thought about the possibility of finding it closed for the night and everyone gone, except him and a dead horse. But mostly he thought about himself alone in the woods with a huge six-fingered creature in total darkness.
He stood by the pole shivering, unable to go, unwilling to stay, swinging his silly sock full of stones. He heard another crunching footfall behind him. He panted in fear, listening. Silence. As he watched, one branch of a hemlock rocked by the wind spilled its great burden of snow and a cascade of white spilled from branch to branch all the way to the ground.
Where was his guide? Was he armed? Brendan decided he would count to one hundred, then bolt up the hill to the store. Then he heard another footfall. And a giggle. Moronic it was. Or mad.
Brendan scuffed for more stones and seized a handful and flung them in the direction of the sound. He flung them in a rapid series, then waited. A few moments later he heard the low giggle again. Did it giggle like that before it twisted the neck of a horse?
Now the footsteps were clear and purposeful, and they were making directly toward him. At first it was just an amorphous shape coming down a slope through some hemlocks, appearing and dis
appearing alternately in the snow. It was in a dark gown of some sort, mantled thickly with snow, the face a black shadow deep within the cowl. It lumbered, rolling from side to side, a huge creature, with great sloping shoulders, and it was making directly toward him. The closer it got, the larger it grew. It seemed to bring the dusk with it as it advanced. Brendan backed away a step, then another. He was awed by the creature’s size. Too big. Brendan turned to run and fell over his own suitcase. He rolled over in the snow as the figure towered above him.
“Brother Brendan?” the figure asked. It bent over and pulled him to his feet without the slightest effort. “I’m Brother Luke.” The man was nearly seven feet tall and probably weighed close to three hundred pounds, and Brendan saw now why his face was so hard to make out. He was black. From a capacious sleeve, a huge black hand extended. “Welcome.”
Brendan took it and felt it envelop his hand, warm as freshly baked bread.
“I was followed.”
“Followed? Here? Who would follow you here?”
“A creature—huge, in white rags, with enormous hands and feet with six fingers.”
Brother Luke looked doubtfully at him, then he cast his eyes about. “Where is it now?”
“It’s been circling me. It laughs.”
Brother Luke looked at him thoughtfully. “There’s no creature like that in these woods. Must be someone’s idea of a joke. Well, we can’t stand here for long. It’s going to be dark soon. Let’s get out of here.”
Brother Luke picked up Brendan’s suitcase as if it were a handbag and strode off toward the hemlocks. Brendan hastened after him.
They walked without talking. The man’s huge and powerful strides moved through the snow with ease while Brendan had to scramble to keep up. Soon he was panting. At the top of the rise, the monk paused.
“Woodmere Lake,” he said. “This is our dock. The monastery’s out there on the island in the middle of the lake.” Without further ceremony, he set out in his great swinging stride, following his own footsteps back across the frozen lake. The wind out here in the clear was fierce and blowing directly at them.
Brendan paused for a moment and glanced back toward the dock on the shoreline. Already it was nearly invisible. It was almost dark. Then he heard the giggle again. He glanced ahead at Brother Luke. If he’d heard it, he didn’t show it. Brendan hurried after him.
After a while he lost all sense of time, concentrating solely on the next slip-sliding step. Several times he stumbled over frozen logs in the ice. Brother Luke would stop and patiently wait for him to stand, slap off the snow and go on.
As it grew darker, Brendan became more apprehensive and constantly turned to look over his shoulder. Was he going to run for the rest of his life? He shook his head at the question. How long was the rest of his life? A day, a week, a decade? Would it last through the night?
Walking abruptly became difficult, uneven. They’d reached the island and they stood by a clump of stark maple trees. There was a high stone wall. Brother Luke paced to the left a few feet and pulled a rope. Somewhere on the other side of the wall a bell pealed.
As they stood waiting, Brendan realized that it had stopped snowing. The wind had shifted too, and it was turning bitter cold.
“A clearing wind,” Brother Luke said.
Brendan looked back at the lake. Darkness was complete.
A wooden door bolt banged and the gate swung open. Another cowled figure stood there, head bowed, hands hidden in sleeves. When they’d entered, the monk locked the heavy wooden door behind them.
“Dear God, it’s cold,” he complained.
Brother Luke pointed. “Vegetable garden there. Vineyards there, southern exposure. Workshops. Library there. Refectory. Sleeping quarters, kitchen and so forth.”
It was all and-so-forth to Brendan. In the darkness he saw nothing except a few lights through some trees. He was eager to be in the warmth and safety inside. Sanctuary. He was spent and chilled to the marrow.
When they got to the entrance, Brendan perceived that the monastery was a series of modern octagons put together in a rambling chain. The flooring was slate flagstones throughout and there were many walls made of single panes of glass.
He followed Brother Luke down a long corridor past a library in which three or four monks sat reading. Another room contained a carved circular bench with a wood stove in the middle. This room was empty. They passed several rooms, obviously bedrooms and carrels.
They came to the last room and stepped in.
“He’s here,” Brother Luke said to a figure on a bed.
The man who looked at Brendan was gaunt. Sick. With great staring eyes. His color was pasty and his lips were a pale purple. He waved Brendan to his bed with a weak hand. “Sit sit.”
Brendan sat in a wooden chair by the bed. There was a small stove nearby and it was radiating heat. Brendan gratefully felt the warmth wrap around his frozen cheeks.
“Bad heart,” the old man said, then patted his chest. “But I got twenty-five years extra from this rotten old pump after they’d counted me dead. Not bad. A quarter of a century. You look like your father.” He paused and lay in silence for a moment, gathering his breath. “I’m Brother Matthew—the den mother. Good thing you came tonight. A day or so more and you might not have found me among the living. And I’m the only one who knows your secret. You don’t know who I am, do you?”
Brendan shook his head.
“Well—” he paused again for breath. “I was a good friend of your father’s. I was in the stock market. His broker, I was. I made pots of money. When they told me how bad my heart was, I came up here and built this place. A retreat for puzzled men. Originally, your father put me in touch with Father Joseph in Ireland. I was going to join his monastery. But he convinced me to come up here instead. We’re not affiliated. You know what that means?”
“No.”
The old man motioned Brendan to lean closer. “I can’t throw my voice very far.” He coughed, then lay back patiently, waiting for his breath to return. “We’re not affiliated with any established religion. We’re part Christian, part Jewish, part atheist, part Zen and part nightly arguments.” He pointed his hand. “You saw the circular bench?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Almost every night for twenty-five years we’ve been sitting in there and arguing. We’ve had as many as twenty monks here. Now we’re down to nine.”
“Why?”
“It’s the way the cards fall. Next year we may be back up to twenty again. That’s our limit. There are only three of us originals left. Well, you’ll get them sorted out later. A good bunch. But if they’re not careful this place is going to come apart when I die.” He panted for breath. “Things have got quite out of hand since I got sick. Weird things. Haven’t talked this much in weeks. Listen—” He waved a letter. “I don’t know much about your problem but I owe your father and Father Joseph a great debt of gratitude. So if you need a place of concealment, this is it. You’re welcome to stay as long as you want. I just want to give you one rule. You either become a monk and accept the ground rules we live by or stay whatever you are and don’t mix in the affairs of the monastery. If that sounds like solitary confinement, I’m sorry. I can’t have one more disruptive influence here. Okay? Deal? Promise?” He held out his hand. “Shake on it, Davitt.” He smiled, then shook a finger at Brendan. “Watch your step out there. I think one of my fellow monks has taken to worshiping Satan. Isn’t that a kick in the head?”
He ate with the eight other monks. The supper consisted of oatmeal, whole-wheat bread, cheese, apples and herb tea. They were the strangest group of men Brendan had ever met. There was no pretense at cordiality. Those who wished to speak did; the silence from the others was accepted without question; several conversed in low voices; several sat totally withdrawn, unaware of the others, absently chewing. Here he would hide until death claimed him, in this string of octagonal clusters on an island in the middle of a lake in one of the remotest parts of
New York State. This little monastery, this oasis of warmth and light in a vast winter wilderness, was the same as a life sentence in prison. How many times would he see that moon pass over his head before he died and escaped his incarceration? What had he done to deserve this?
For the first time in his life, he felt despair.
Brendan sat on the bench with Brother Luke. Someone had started a crackling wood fire in the open fireplace and eager flames leaped up at the hood.
At eight several monks arrived with books. They slouched on the bench and read. More arrived to sit with chins on fist or arms crossed to stare at the fire.
Three monks arrived together, and Brendan found himself staring at them. “What are their names again?” he asked Luke.
“Vincent, Beaupré and Zen—the Holy Trinity.”
Vincent was a chain smoker and there was a spillway of gray ash down the front of his cassock. Through thick eyeglasses, he looked at the world with the narrowed eyes of a scoffing skeptic.
Brother Zen was Oriental. His skin seemed as thin as brown paper and it was drawn drum-tight over a skull with protruding cheekbones. His eyes had an ogling lemurlike quality, as though he had been staring too long at eternity.
Brother Beaupré had the pasty narrow face of a fanatic.
The three of them had the same expression—the shocked eyes of survivors, men who had crossed a desert without water or who had lived for weeks in an open boat with others who had died; three men who shared a burdensome secret.
They sat close together. In fact, they huddled together, and when Brother Zen put his hands wearily over his large eyes the image was complete. They looked like a ceramic arrangement of the three monkeys: See-no-evil, Hear-no-evil, Speak-no-evil.
For a long time no one in the room spoke. The only sounds were made by the crackling wood fire and the soughing wind against the glass windows, a winter lament.
At last Brother Matthew arrived, aided by Brother Benedict. Luke stepped quietly to the doorway to help also. The huge black man seemed even larger beside the sick old head of the monastery.
The Monk Page 17