Blink & Caution

by Tim Wynne-Jones

  She maneuvers the car until it is facing out onto Tumble Road but pretty well hidden. Then she stops and turns off the ignition. You catch the time on the dashboard just as the lights go out.

  “It’s not even five,” you say. “We’ve got lots of time.”

  “I hope so, because there’s not going to be any moon.”

  “Really?”

  She shakes her head. “Trust me. And you’re not going to want to be stuck in bush this dense after dark.”

  You stare straight ahead at an impenetrable wall of green. “So we’d better get a move on, right?”

  She nods, her face all business. But neither of you move. And the quietness rushes into the Jeep.

  “No army,” you say, but you whisper it.

  “Not so far,” she says.

  You climb out, close the doors quietly. She pockets the key.

  “No one should be able to see the car,” you whisper.

  “I guess,” she says. “But I wish the damn thing were green.”

  You’re still a ways from the turnoff, and then it’s another kilometer to the lodge, according to Alyson’s directions. You walk in the eerie silence along Tumble Road. Then you stop and without saying a word point ahead. Kitty nods; she’s seen it, too, about a hundred meters ahead: another turnoff. And beyond it is a clearing where an old tractor sits. The tractor is ancient, with metal wheels and spokes — an overgrown antique sitting in a clearing. That’s where you were supposed to park. She pulls you into the bush. You watch and wait. You make a move to go, and she stops you, her finger on her lips. You do as she says. You are in her territory now.

  Finally, she gives the go-ahead. You make your way to the new road that goes off to the right.

  Private Road says the sign nailed to a tree trunk. No Exit. It has no other name. The road is downhill, a long, slow decline. There are many turns, a winding path, sandy, with soft-looking grass growing between the tracks and everything covered with pine needles. There are alien fluorescent orange toad stools.

  Kitty suddenly stops.

  “What?” you whisper. But she doesn’t answer, just stares into the bush and up into the canopy. You follow her gaze. See nothing.

  You remember what she said about wolves and bears up where she was from. You’re not sure how far that is from here, but these woods look like they’re jam-packed with carnivores. Who knows what’s in there, you think: cougars, wildcats, a madman with a hockey mask and machete.

  You want to get this job done, climb back into the safety of that yellow Jeep, open up a bag of SunChips, and beat it back down to Kingston — mission accomplished. Instead, you pick up the pace. You have no idea how long this road is, but before you know it you’re running.

  Suddenly you’re aware of being alone.

  You stop and turn around. Kitty has fallen behind. She’s leaning against a tree, not casually but as if the tree is holding her up. You head back. She’s breathing hard.

  “Are you okay?” you whisper right up close to her ear.

  She shakes her head. “We could lie,” she says. “We could just turn around and head back. Tell the Ice Queen the place was empty. Take the money and run.”

  You think about it. Now that you’re here, the whole thing is a lot scarier. But you shake your head. “Yeah, but then there’s no way we can make any big money. We only get three hundred measly bucks.”

  “Don’t be so greedy,” she says. She’s looking scared, and that scares you because she doesn’t seem the type.

  “What is it?” you say. Something is eating her.

  She looks around. She rubs her hands up and down her thighs.

  “This place,” she says. “I don’t know . . .”

  “If we see anything, we split,” you say.

  “It’s not that,” she says. “Listen.”

  So you listen. “I don’t hear anything,” you say.

  “Exactly,” she says. “No birds. No animals. Nothing.”

  You touch her arm, and she shrinks from you. “Kitty,” you say, pleading a bit. “Don’t cack out on me now. We’ve got to find out for sure.” And right then — right that very instant — you think you hear laughter. You listen hard. You’re sure you heard something.

  Was it your imagination? Or was it the Captain, having a good laugh? Funny how you haven’t thought about him in . . . well, pretty much since you met Kitty. But now that she’s gone all psycho on you, he’s back, just like that.

  “It’s not natural. The quiet,” she says. Then she seems to snap out of it. She stares hard at you, and then she smiles. The fear is still there, but she’s smiling through it. “I won’t let you down,” she says. And for some reason, that only makes it worse. But you nod.

  “I’ll hang back,” she says. “But I won’t desert you.”

  You feel weak. You hadn’t realized how much you were depending on her. Breathe, Blink. Get on with it, boy.

  You wipe the hair out of your eyes and head down the road. When you’ve gone another fifty strides or so, you look back and she’s following at a distance. Covering your back.

  You round a bend, and there it is. You see it, kind of blurred, through the trees, just the jutting angle of the roof at first, a glint of last sunlight off a window. Then the road rounds one last bend, and there’s this big clearing and the lodge about sixty meters down the hill over on your right. You pull back into the shadows. Hide behind a tree.

  The lodge is massive, two stories high, built from dark logs with white caulking between them. The roof is steeply pitched, and there are three, four, five gables on this side and a tall stone chimney stack but no smoke coming out of it. Beyond the lodge there’s a bay with a thick fringe of bulrushes, the dark green of water. The bay opens up onto a wide lake, almost black but with long smears of orange-and-pink sunset, and beyond that, a long way off, the silhouette of the far shore.

  You pull back behind a tree, hold your breath. There’s noise down here, the wind, the lapping of the water.

  You lean into the tree out of sight and close your eyes the better to concentrate. You want to hear voices. Or if not voices, then something human: music, hammering, a window opening.

  You open your eyes again. You want to see a door open up right now and see Jack Niven step out onto the hard-beaten dirt to cross the yard to the outhouse over there on the left, clear across the yard. There are another couple of sheds there, too, and a van.

  A van!

  There’s a van parked in the shadows behind the shed. But it’s pretty old looking. Could be abandoned. You turn to Kitty and point toward the van. But from where she is, she can’t see it and she shakes her head. Her eyes are wide, her face angry. Stop looking at her, you idiot! That’s what she’s trying to tell you.

  Right. Best to act as if you’re on your own, in case . . . Well, you don’t want to think about what might happen.

  You kneel and peer out from behind your cover. Take it all in. A red canoe pulled up on the shore, a narrow dock leading out into the bay, an aluminum boat sitting in the water at the end of the dock, rocking ever so slightly up and down in an onshore breeze. You can feel the breeze off the water, just a tendril of it, all the way up here in the trees at the very edge of the clearing. It cools the sweat on your face and makes the branches above you stir and crack.

  The outboard motor is tipped up. Fishing rods stick up from some holder contraption on the rail of the boat.

  Fishing rods?

  People might leave a boat in the water — how would you know? But fishing rods? Would there be fishing rods left out like that if there wasn’t somebody here? And the canoe: it’s just sitting there on the beach.

  You risk a glance back toward Kitty, but she’s gone. Nowhere to be seen. Vanished.

  Your heart is beating like a jackhammer. She did desert you! No, you don’t believe that. You can’t believe that. She’s taken cover — that’s all. But a part of you wishes you had those car keys.

  You turn your attention back to the clearing. Someone is
here. No one is supposed to be, as far as Alyson knew, but someone is here. She was right. Alyson was right. You were right, too. Her daddy wasn’t kidnapped. He’s hiding out. He’s here! This comes crashing into your brain all in a rush. You could go now, you think, but then you imagine the look Alyson would give you if you didn’t do the job right. You’ve done a lot of lying in your life, but you’re not sure you could get away with lying to her. She’d have some test, anyway. She’d know. You need to clamp your eyes on him.

  So you move from tree to tree, around the clearing, your eyes peeled. You wait. You ignore the Captain, who is yelling at you at the top of his lungs, deafening you. You take your time. The upstairs gable windows are shuttered, which is good because it means no one can see you. The downstairs windows, however, are not. What does that mean?

  It means be careful!

  That’s what the Captain screams. But those naked windows mean something else, too, just like the fishing rods and the canoe and the van.

  You watch the dark of the windows for anything like movement. There are no lights on inside. You move with stealth, staying close to the trees, every nerve and fiber tensed. You watch your tread so you don’t step on some damn branch. You are thirty, twenty, ten meters from the place, sneaking up toward the back of the building as far away from any window as possible.

  You want to get close enough to look in just one window.

  Then without warning an enormous pair of arms wraps around your chest and holds you tight.

  “Where the heck you think you’re going?” says a voice you almost recognize. You struggle without any chance of getting away, but in your squirming you catch a glance of the man who has soundlessly stalked you and now has you bound tight to his chest.

  It’s the Moon.

  Down there in the hold of who you are, Captain Panic has found himself a fire ax, and he’s swinging it around like crazy, screaming “Bitch” and less savory words he picked up along the way, some of them from your stepdaddy. But you say nothing, Blink. Instead you yowl and groan in agony and try to tear yourself from the Moon’s huge embrace.

  “Whoa, there!” he says. “Take it easy, kid.”

  He crushes you against his massive chest. You groan not from pain but treachery.

  Alyson did this to you!

  She was in on it, just like Kitty told you — warned you. Alyson sent you here to this, and you came like the fool you are — the fool your stepdaddy always said you were and beat into you lest you failed to see in yourself what he saw.

  “Calm down,” says the Moon. “No one’s going to hurt you.”

  You moan and twist and jerk, because what does he know about hurt? You are hurt — mightily injured. Not by his hold on you, but by life with its never-ending snares and pitfalls and dire consequences.

  You try to elbow the man, but your arms are pinned to your sides. You kick back at him hopelessly. Your blows might as well be aimed at a tree. You fling your head around, arching your neck back, teeth bared, like a dog wanting to grab any part of him and tear it out by the roots. But by now the pressure on your skinny chest has forced most of the air from your lungs, and you can hardly breathe.

  Finally, you stop. Your chin falls forward. The Moon lessens his grip, enough to let you breathe, but not enough to wriggle free.

  It’s only then, winded, close to fainting, that you remember Kitty. You fight hard against the instinct to look back to see if she, too, has been grabbed. You resist the temptation. You’ll know soon enough.

  “What you got there?” says a voice from across the yard. You lift your eyes enough to see Tank coming from behind one of the sheds, wiping his big hands with an oily cloth. He’s wearing jeans and a white sleeveless T-shirt, as though it’s the middle of summer.

  The Moon frog-marches you out from the shadows at the back of the lodge, into the dying light of the yard.

  Then a door in the lodge opens, and Jack Niven steps out. He’s in khaki canvas flight pants and a checkered shirt, with the long sleeves rolled up. His neat beard has filled in a bit, so that his clean, tanned cheeks are a patchwork of salt-and-pepper bristle. His hair is mussed. Except for the casual shirt, he looks just like he did in the video: the captured man — the prisoner of SPOIL. Except the prisoner has a coffee cup in his hand and a pissed-off look on his face that has everything to do with you.

  “What the hell is this?” he says.

  The Moon half shoves, half carries you over to be presented to Niven, who stands just out of kicking range, guarding his coffee cup. Tank grins crooked-toothed at you as if the Moon just fished you out of the lake and they’re about to fry you up for dinner. Niven is the one who does the talking.

  “You are trespassing,” he says. “Didn’t you see the sign saying this was a private road?”

  It’s not what you expected him to say. Is he playing a game with you? Does he really not know who you are?

  “Son, I asked you a question.”

  “I’m sorry,” you say. You clear your throat, try to shake the Moon off you. He loosens his grip. You could still get out of this. “I was just, you know, tooling around, and I didn’t know what was down here.”

  “Yeah, right,” says Tank. “Maybe thinking of breaking in, huh? Making off with some stuff ?”

  “What do you mean tooling around?” says the Moon. “You got a car?” He turns to look back up the road. You idiot, Blink. You try to think of an explanation and then realize anything you say will only make it worse. “I’m sorry,” you say again. “I’ll just head out, okay? I didn’t mean to trespass or nothing.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet,” says Tank.

  “What do you say?” says the Moon to Niven.

  Niven is looking at you hard. He steps closer. He reaches out to grab your chin; you turn away. “You see this?” he says to the Moon.

  “What?”

  “The way he blinks like that.”

  “Well, I’ll be,” says the Moon.

  “It’s that kid!” says Tank. “The one that —”

  “Shut up!” says the Moon.

  You try to take off, but he wraps you up again.

  “Brent?” says Niven. “Was that the name? Brent Conboy.”

  You collapse a little inside, shrink a little bit more. “My name’s not Brent. My name’s Bruce.” You’re blinking like crazy. Is this what the blinking is about? Have you always looked out at the world, never quite able to make sense of it?

  “Well, Bruce, I don’t know how you got here,” says Niven. “But we don’t want to hurt you, okay?” His voice is businesslike. “Are you listening?”

  You look at him, wondering if it would be a good idea to spit in his face. But you’re not sure you have that much juice left in you. And, besides, you are one squeeze away from a broken rib.

  You nod.

  “Good. Have you got any ID?”

  You shake your head. “I left it at home. I live up 509 a piece,” you say, nodding your head in some direction — it doesn’t matter which.

  The Moon slackens his hold a little. You don’t thrash about. You’re innocent, just this country kid messing about. You don’t so much as fidget or give him any reason to tighten his grip again. You sag, defeated, take deep breaths. Wait.

  “So, no driver’s license?” says Niven.

  “Sure,” you say, feeling a little more confident. “Not on me, though. Like, who’s gonna check out here?”

  Niven nods. He wants to believe you. He doesn’t want you to be who he thinks you are. You’d like to help him out.

  “This is a cool place,” you say, looking around.

  There was a fourth guy, the one with the snake on his arm. You keep half expecting him to make an appearance, dragging Kitty with him. Maybe right now he’s chasing her back up the road. There’s nothing you can do about that. Look after yourself. Like always, Blink: it’s you alone.

  “It is,” says Niven. “A cool private place, Bruce.” He grins at the Moon as if things are looking up, except that there’s a l
ot of grimace in that grin. “So what do you think we should do to convince you not to trespass here, even when there’s a sign?”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t do it again,” you say quickly. “And I won’t tell nobody about it, either.”

  “Tell them about what?” says Niven.

  “This place. That’s all I meant.”

  Niven frowns.

  “Puny son of a bitch to be causing so much trouble, huh?” says Tank, shoving the dirty rag into his back pocket.

  Niven looks irritated. Then he glances at the Moon.

  The Moon speaks into your ear, nice and soft. “I’m just going to ask you to lean up against the wall here, son.”

  “Why?” you say. “Hey, what is this?”

  “Can we do this nice?” says the Moon.

  You nod reluctantly. And feel him lessen his hold on you slowly, carefully. You swallow hard. But Tank must have read the look in your eye, a shifty look you couldn’t hide, and he maneuvers his brick shit-house body into position, arms out in case you try anything funny. From the look on his face, he’d love you to try something funny. You look beyond him toward the sheds and the van on the sundown side of the clearing, already dense in shadows. The Snake hasn’t made an appearance. There’s just the three of them so far. Hold fire, Blink. Assess your odds. It’s how you face every day. If there’s going to be a chance to make a break, this is not it.

  The Moon makes you spread your legs, and he pats you down, just like in the movies. He digs out your cash, hands it to Niven.

  “My, my,” says Niven. “Planning a night on the town?”

  Then the Moon digs out the picture of Alyson that you stole from Niven’s wallet. “Oh, boy,” he says. He hands it to the boss.

  You glance sideways at him. He stares at her picture, stares at his daughter, and when he looks up, his face is filled with distaste. “Hell,” he mutters. His face hardens. “What are you doing with this?”