His dark mood from the plateau returned and deepened. During the last year, before the writing, Ray had imagined himself at the bottom of something. Even in the bitter weeks after Liz’s departure, even at his most vilely hung-over, he’d never gotten this low. He tumbled into an abyss of black thoughts.
His true love, the past, was doomed. All his attempts to remember, all the attempts anyone had made to remember, all the history books, photo albums, memoirs added up to nothing against the landslide of forgetting. From the dreams of these quarrymen long dead to all the lost ancestors of the human race, it was all gone. Trillions of sea creatures had died to make this limestone, and no one gave a thought to them. All the memories of everyone alive were merely feeble wisps crushed under mountains of forgetting.
He’d set his history with Karl in words, thinking it would set him free. That was delusion. All along the writing had just been a final embrace from his true love.
There was a word for this feeling. Despair. It was substantial, black and viscous, like that poison in the quarry pit. It seeped into his veins, weighing his limbs down. The muscles in the back of his neck strained to keep his head from rolling down onto his chest. He felt a terrible urge to lie down on the dirty rock, shut his eyes, and just give up.
But he kept standing for long minutes, as the place worked its malignant spell on him. Finally, he shook it off like a wet dog and dragged himself behind the wheel of the car.
Ray squeezed the Volvo between a shed and one of the larger buildings, satisfied that it was well hidden. Not that anyone was coming here. With the pack and sleeping bag in it, he locked the car. He hiked along the fence towards the saddle, the quarry yawning to his right. He clung to the fence, grabbing its links here and there. It ended at a tower of rock, all that remained of the original top of the mountain. He skirted it to the right and reached the saddle between the quarry cliff and the cliff behind The House. It was fifteen feet across and at least a hundred wide. The ground was flat, bare limestone. There wasn’t a hint of snow up here. It was midafternoon and sunny. The wind was steady, with a bite that quickly chilled his sweaty chest and promised a bitter night. He stood and drank in the sight of the Mohawk valley with hazy bumps of the Adirondacks in the distance. A fine view, but not the one he’d come for.
Now that he was here, he was reluctant to look. Some superstition told him that once he set eyes on the thing, he’d be committed. There was also the cliff before him. He didn’t like heights, and it was a hundred feet to the bottom. In order to see, he’d need to get close to its edge.
So he remained rooted to the rock. The desire to see rose in him and pushed him forward a single step, and then another. The torpor of a few minutes ago was gone. His eyes were wide, a cold knot in his belly, his limbs coiled. A new feeling arose: dread. In just a moment, he’d see, and then it would be too late. He took another step.
The top of a chimney. The image flew into his eyes, and he froze. Seeing the roof on Google Earth at Bodine’s had been a shock. This was hyperreal, as jolting as a sudden hallucination. He stared, and the bricks and concrete lost their solidity and shimmered against the sky.
Another step and half of the roof came into view. They can see me! No, not unless they were up on the roof, which was very unlikely. Ray inched forward a half step, and there was the edge of the roof, and he was in Bodine’s shoes, eyes closed, walking that lethal perimeter. The cliff edge before Ray, the great expanse of air below tugged at his core, pulling him down, toward disaster.
He hopped back from the precipice, turned and ran several paces. He stopped short. The other cliff yawned right in front of him. He pivoted back toward The House. Got down on hands and knees and crawled towards it. With his head a foot from the edge, he fell to his belly and squirmed forward the last inches. His chin rested on the edge.
He could see the whole back of The House. He focused on the center of the first floor, on two bricked in windows.
The Backroom.
Karl knew everything about Ray. Certainly about his compulsion to watch. Karl had known Ray would eventually come here, which was why he’d sealed those openings, so Ray couldn’t see in.
Craziness. He shook it off. It was just sealed windows in a big, ugly house. Not Google’s picture of it, or Ray’s recent words depicting it, or the fantastic place that had lived all these years in his imagination, but the actual house, as real and solid as this mountain of limestone.
And it was made of that same limestone. It was what gave these mountains their name, Helderberg, In Dutch, it meant “light stone.” Which was how it looked in the quarry. But it was moody stuff. This time of day, the back of The House cast a massive shadow that swallowed most of the garden, and the stone appeared a dark blue-gray that seemed to bleed coldness out into the yard.
He sat cross-legged on the hard ground. He tried the cellphone. No bars. And he was high up. Karl must have gone someplace to call Susan. The wind had died down. He listened. He picked up a faint rushing sound—traffic up on the interstate? blood in his ears?—but not a peep from The House.
Which room was Karl in? Across from him was the window at the southeast corner on the second floor, the vague shape of curtains inside. The matching one was to the northeast, but all he could see was a corner of the frame.
He inched back from the cliff and moved toward the east to where the saddle ended in trees. He crawled forward again to the edge and gazed at the northeast corner. He could make out more of the window frame, but the angle was still too sharp to see in. Damn. He needed to move north.
He crept away from the cliff, stood, and headed forward into the woods. He was glad that, despite the spindly trees, wind had blown most of the snow from the rocky soil. He’d be able to see those treacherous cracks Bodine had warned about. Not ten feet and he came upon one, over a yard wide. He looked down. Fifteen, twenty feet, then blackness. Could he jump it? He shuddered. He returned to where he’d been and sat.
He was obsessing about that room, The Bedroom. Letting his emotions rule. From what Bodine said, depending on how many people were there, they could be in any or all of the rooms of The House.
Whoever was there would presumably use the kitchen. It was on the first floor, also in the northeast corner. Its three windows extended closer to him. He could, in theory, see into the nearest, but right now it was dark.
Come night, whoever was in there would use a light. And he’d see who was there, see Karl, even if he just had a candle.
Ray studied the tower of rock that had been the top of the mountain. Its surface facing him was flat except for a dark slot at the bottom, two feet high and extending the width of the saddle from one cliff to the other. He crouched down and poked his head in. A little cave, going in about six feet. He flashed on that cave Bodine had taken him in. It had started with hundreds of feet of crawlway. He didn’t like tight places. Didn’t like caves.
This one had been truncated by the quarrying. That was probably the reason they’d stopped working the limestone up here. If it were riddled with holes, it would be useless. According to Bodine, all the caves in the area were connected, though in some cases “you’d have to be a flea to make the connection.” By that token, this teeny one was connected to the huge one Bodine had taken him in, and also to the grotto in the garden below. But Ray wasn’t crawling around to find out if it was true.
He didn’t like caves, but this one might keep him dry if it rained. He wasn’t stumbling down to the car in the dark, along that quarry cliff. He’d sleep up here. He went to his Volvo in the light and brought his sleeping bag and pack to the saddle. He inched into the cave, pulling his gear in with him, fighting the shrinking inside as he breached the tight space. He turned and crawled toward The House. He lay with his head at the edge of the cliff and looked. His loathing of the closed space was somewhat mollified by the sense that the ceiling would keep him from tumbling over. He was also invisible to anyone loo
king from The House, even if they were on the roof.
This was his new aerie, with hard rock to lie on instead of a comfy couch. There was no round window to keep out the elements. But it provided the essential of any aerie: a place to spy on prey unseen.
Now that he was safe he could really look. The House was as ugly and ill-proportioned as he remembered. This angle did not flatter it. The roof was too tall, the cornice too wide, its edge laden with the ruins of concrete gargoyles. The effect was not only rude to the eye but caused a visceral sense that the whole top of the house might at any moment tumble down on anyone looking up from below.
The gargoyles had suffered in the years since the group. Some were missing, leaving scars like yanked teeth. It was impossible to tell if the remaining lumps of concrete had intended to be gods or demons, for the weather had eroded most of their features. In the center of the roof’s edge a few segments of a serpent remained. Ray looked down to the ground for fallen parts.
None were visible, because most of the garden was still blanketed in snow. That was too bad, because otherwise he’d see evidence of a group here. A group would surely keep up the gardens. There were no footprints below, not even rabbits.’ How recently had it snowed? There was no telling.
For all of Karl’s insistence that they grow a fine garden back there, the yard between the cliff and the rear of The House saw precious little sun. What had grown was stunted and anemic no matter how Karl exhorted them to try harder to make it grow.
Ray’s perch was almost even with the southeast corner of The House. He could see through the five-foot gap between the south side of the building and the cliff to a patch of road. He remembered that to the left, out of sight, was a garage carved in the rock.
He studied The House from top to bottom. Aside from those gargoyles, the roof looked fine. Karl had said of it, “This will last a hundred years, longer than any of us,” adding with a twinkle, “Probably.”
Was he hinting he might live forever?
Ray gazed lower for signs of occupation. The stones of the back wall gave no clue. They’d look the same in three hundred years whether someone was there or not. The windows were framed in stone, so there was no telltale peeling paint. With all that snow, the only difference he could see in the gardens was the trees. He remembered planting some of them. Now they were thirty feet tall. They’d actually turned out okay once they’d grown high enough to get some sun.
There was no group in there. The place was just too silent. Someone had always been going out to the well to the right side of The House. He looked in that direction for a path in the snow but couldn’t see it because the land dipped down there.
Then he remembered. It was this time of year, early spring, that Karl led the pilgrimage to his teacher in England. That guy, miraculous longevity aside, had to be dead by now. But maybe they still went anyway, out of habit. For all Ray knew, they were there at this moment, and he’d come to spy on a vacant house.
No. Someone from here had delivered that mannequin just yesterday.
On pilgrimage, when Karl began fucking Susan.
Ray shook away the thought. What was important was that Karl always left some people behind when they left. Including the deliverer of Ray’s smoking doppelganger, who Karl presumably directed via email. So where were they? Ray was missing something. He stared a long time.
What was it about the chimneys? He stared at them.
There was no smoke. Unless someone was in there freezing their ass off, the place was empty.
Except some person had been in The Bedroom, shot the video of the cat there. Had they left? Just come to The House to do that? None of it made any sense.
He waited for dusk. What time was it? He fumbled for his cell phone. Switched it on. Six-thirty. He remembered Bodine warning him about the batteries and turned the phone off. Up here, it was just a glorified clock.
A brilliant flash of light. Ray recoiled and banged his head against the ceiling of his lair.
He scurried back into the gloom, his head throbbing.
Karl was on the roof, training a klieg light into the place he hid. Karl had known he was there all afternoon, was just waiting to… No. It was only the last of the sun peeking into the narrow cave entrance. And he was invisible here.
He lay motionless. The sun crept into the lair, drenching him in light. In minutes, it was gone. It only shone in here that brief time each day.
The dark came fast, and with it the temperature plunged. The cold penetrated his legs first, borne by a breeze coming into the cave from the direction of the new quarry. He pulled out a Mag-Lite, made a peanut butter sandwich and ate. He struggled into the sleeping bag and inched forward to watch.
The House gradually dissolved in the murk. Finally, its back was just a black mass, the roof peak lit by the moon, itself invisible from this narrow aperture. The dread had leaked away over the hours, leaving him bored and lethargic. He struggled to stay conscious.
A faint whirring sound and he looked up. An instant later, light spilled from the northeast corner of the second floor, illuminating branches and the cliff below. He came wide awake, his heart thundering.
Karl was there. In The House, just a few hundred feet away. In The Bedroom. That was no candle. So he had electricity. Which was why there was no smoke coming from the chimneys. He had electric heat. Karl was probably at the computer right now, checking his email. As Bodine said, people change.
Ray had to see him. He wormed from the cave and stood. To see into that window, he needed to work his way across the saddle to the east, then north into the woods.
Bodine had said he would have to bushwhack and do it in broad daylight.
A three-quarter moon lit his way across the saddle, but as he entered the trees, their shadows swallowed it. He fished the Mag-Lite from his pocket and clicked it on then immediately off. It was much too bright. If Karl looked out the window, he would see it. Ray crept forward, feeling with his foot for that lethal crack.
He stubbed his toe on something and grunted involuntarily. Too loud? This was crazy. He wasn’t jumping that crevice in the dark even if his foot found it in time. He turned and started back. In the minutes he’d been in the woods, it had gotten darker. It would not do to get lost. He moved through the trees a step at a time, feeling the ground. He clicked the light on for a second. Rock. He was back on the saddle.
He huddled in the sleeping bag. The rock hurt to lie on no matter which way he turned. This morning’s despair in the quarry seeped back into him, as though it originated in the limestone itself, the grave of those long dead sea-things.
He’d gotten what he came for. Karl was here. He should get up tomorrow, go home and consult Bodine.
Around eleven, the light winked out and the whirring sound stopped. Ray lay awake until after two.
Finally, he dozed.
Ray opened his eyes and flinched at the sight of rock six inches above his face. He remembered where he was. He turned over and gazed at The House. It was early morning, most of The House deep in shadow. Sun gleamed on roof slates.
The sound of an engine came from somewhere in the direction of The House. It must have been what woke him up. He looked to the five feet of road visible between The House and the cliff and saw the flash of a car passing to the left before it disappeared. Had it come from The House? No. The garage was uphill to the left. The car must have come up from the village. He fished the binoculars out and trained them on the swatch of road.
The whine of an engine, and another vehicle appeared, this time from the opposite direction. It was an old pickup truck, the driver invisible from this angle. Someone on their way to work. The only way to get to the garage was by walking past that gap between The House and the cliff. So if Karl went out, Ray was sure to see him. It was a lot easier than scrambling over to that window.
He munched a granola bar, training the binoculars on
the gap. He finished his breakfast and kept looking. He’d decided last night to bag it and go home. But he hadn’t actually seen Karl. There was no harm in waiting a few hours.
Birds periodically flew up and squawked. He didn’t remember that from yesterday. Had he taken their nesting place? Would Karl notice their fuss? He remembered how silent it had been in there with those thick stone walls. He’d never heard a thing from outside except once during a violent storm. Even then, the thunder was just distant thuds.
Yesterday’s despair was gone. Dread sat cold and heavy in his gut. But something light and fluttery stirred around its edges. He was going to see Karl!
He watched The House for hours. A couple more cars appeared, then there was nothing.
Twinges in his forehead grew into a nasty headache. He rarely got headaches, but he’d never been in this situation before.
His head hurt, but his brain still worked. He was suffering from caffeine withdrawal. How could he forget to bring coffee? He lived on the stuff. And he hadn’t brought Advil or Tylenol.
The fluttery feeling leaked away, and gray boredom seeped in. He gazed heavy lidded down on the white-blanketed gardens. As the sun worked its way down to the backyard, it revealed next to The House two dark patches where the snow had melted. Stones, the beginnings of The Path. The fluttering came again.
The first thing he’d written about Karl involved that path. He hadn’t finished it. He fussed the computer out of his backpack. He could barely get it open in the cave. This was too awkward for writing. He brought it out onto the rock saddle. It was windy but not too cold. Bodine’s binoculars were ready by his side in case he heard something.
The battery was already down by a half-hour, and he hadn’t even used the laptop. He hadn’t remembered to shut it down before bringing it here. He must be more careful.
He found the file and read: It was chilly that morning working in the shadow of The House….
Never Speak: A Mystery Thriller (The Murderous Arts Series) Page 24