The Well

by Jack Cady

  Without dreams, now; without plans.

  The white hair was luminous and changed to soft blue. The face in its last constriction was contoured like a blue mask. The eyes stared at Tracker so intensely as to claim that death itself was vital. The face hovered above him, a dead moon circling, staring down, while the once muscular arms of Theophilus were raised high enclosing his face.

  Tracker tried to back away but felt compelled to confront what he was certain must be the final outrage of the house of the Trackers.

  Theophilus was strappadoed. That accounted for the ungainly long arms, the grotesque position of the head. Theophilus’ hands were tied behind him. He had then been hoisted by the wrists.

  In times past, the strappadoed victim was dropped or yanked on, causing immeasurable pain. The force of the drop popped shoulders from sockets, tore at the neck and chest, ripped muscles in the back.

  Theophilus had suffered worse. Whatever force had brought him here, and had raised him had also pulled him down. The shoulders were reversed. The joints of the arms were cracked. Rolled sleeves drooped to show sharp fragments of bone thrusting through flesh. Theophilus hung connected only by muscles and flesh. In the drying heat he would shrivel; the water sucked from the body until paper-thin skin could no longer support even the lessened weight.

  The force that had brought him here, bound him high, and bore him down could have been no less than, in effect, hydraulic. No mere set of hands, no matter the power of their owner, could so wrench apart living joints, bones, cartilage. A force like a suction of darkness, like the pull of evil into a well; a force that could shatter steel or toss aside the doors of the house — oaken, heavy.

  The light dimmed, and the features of Theophilus became more vivid with shadow. The eyes took on a new aspect; they seemed knowledgeable, wise. As the light dimmed, the eyes centered with darkness, dulled as the blue light moved down the long frame of Theophilus Tracker, and pulled John Tracker’s gaze down, downward.

  The gray dog was silvery blue in the light as it lay at Theophilus’ feet, as if protecting its former enemy. Tracker backed away, braced on uncertain legs and tried to call out to Amy to run.

  The dog remained silent. It did not pant in the heavy heat. The thick fur did not raise; rather it lay rich, nearly luxurious. It was not until Tracker approached with two hesitant steps that he saw that the fur seemed slightly ruffled in places. Another step.

  The dog was an assemblage. Flayed chunks leaned their weight against each other. The loose head rested as if sleeping on legs and paws that were ungainly, torn and then tucked lifelike beneath the carcass. The dog was an aggregate, an approximation, lying silently before the strung corpse of Theophilus Tracker. The light faded. His last sight of the pair was of a flash of silver gray, and the black of a lolling tongue.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Light and darkness crosshatch Tracker history. Figures struggle, looking as if they stand on a stage and before a curiously illuminated grid. When they fall to struggle, or even when they fall to pay attention, they are taken over by the enmeshing force of a darkness that seems preordained.

  Tidings Snider was John Tracker’s great grandfather on his mother’s mother’s side, and he was a farmer. He married Ruth Miller, who had been sired by a preacher and birthed by an idiot.

  As a child, Ruth had been passed from one family to another. The stigma of bastardy followed each move. She was not happy until at age fourteen she took up with a family of Creek Indians, who, having fled their lands during the Removals of 1836-37, fished along the Ohio River.

  After their marriage Tidings Snider, who as a boy had witnessed the murder of his father by his mother, isolated himself and Ruth on eighty acres and was rarely seen off his place. This suited Ruth, who knew the value of solitude.

  Their daughter, Amy, was married. Ruth disappeared into the Kentucky hills after Tidings was killed in a freak accident at age fifty-seven.

  Tidings died painfully. He was in the haymow guiding the carrier rope as hay was plucked from a wagon by hooks and carried aloft. He glanced away for a moment, stumbled and fell, impaled by a pitchfork.

  The darkness that lay in Tidings’ history seemed much like the darkness in the history of John Tracker. Tidings was caught in a moment of total inattention. John Tracker faced capture in his moment of revolt against his history.

  As he walked he became stronger, but his mind was filled with questions he couldn’t name, questions between himself and Amy, even more than about what he’d seen — what he’d been forewarned of, in a sense, by Justice’s journals.

  By the time he reached Amy he felt as strong as he’d ever been. He felt sure, capable. He looked down at Amy as she crouched. She looked at him, at his normal forty-year-old face, and began to recover. When she was sufficiently in control they left without hindrance, walking through the shadow-making blue light.

  Tracker stumbled, slid on the slick stairs and felt himself clumsy again. He began to manage better as they progressed, and Amy walked ahead. Her narrow shoulders and long, tapering back were like lines of good sense. Her hair moved gently across her shoulders.

  Tracker was still confused about her actions in the subcellar. He felt he should tell her about her strange voice. Instead, watching, he wanted to tell her how important she was, wanted to say that if he was decent, human, it was because of her. A moment before the generators died, and the lights went out, he moved to her side and put his arm around her waist.

  “I think we at least have a temporary stalemate. We can leave now, I think.”

  She smiled. “There go the lights. We have this thing on the run.” She seemed eager, restless. She whirled away from him and began climbing. He shot the beam of light ahead of her, and they soon emerged from the cellar.

  “Part of the house will still have light” — he didn’t know how much time they had. He wanted to hurry.

  “We don’t have to leave now,” she said.

  “We do. I want to get Justice’s journals to the truck, if it’s still driveable. Otherwise I just want to get out.”

  “I have to figure something out, I have some questions — ”

  “So do I,” he said, “but I’m willing to ask them after we get out of here.”

  When they got to the kitchens Amy wouldn’t go on. Instead, she began to make coffee. They were still reacting to the awfulness of the subcellar; he felt they were not talking well to each other. Any delay seemed like a wanton waste of opportunity, and he said so.

  Amy was behaving the way she dealt with scheduling when they made a business trip. Her competence, or at least her attitude, worked to put him slightly at ease. He went to one of the sinks to clean himself. The pistol was lost. It had been just luck or a good defensive reaction that had allowed him to retain the flashlight.

  “What did we see?” she asked.

  “We saw a man dead of incredible force. We’ve got to leave. Now. It’s not farfetched to say we are in the presence of possession.”

  “What does that mean?” He suspected she was stalling for time.

  “I’ve already told you.”

  “You’ve changed, how do you know all that?”

  “I know a lot more…for a long time I forgot I knew it, I wanted to forget.” He walked to the table, sat down and tried to figure out his next move. “One cup of coffee and we leave.”

  Amy poured coffee, pursed her lips, leaned against a counter. She seemed distant, away in her thoughts. “What else did we see?”

  “Unreason, the absence of the rational,” he said. “I wasn’t able to move. You were twittering around like a slx-year-old — ”

  “What?” She seemed shocked, but her beginning anger seemed larger than any shock. She flushed, but he thought it came more from confusion than anger.

  He told her what he’d experienced.
r />   “It wasn’t like that at all,” she said. “I tried to lead you, you couldn’t move.” She was angry, but the anger was stitched with something else. John Tracker had been in too many business situations to miss what he was hearing. Amy was defensive, she was defensive because she was lying. Either that or she wasn’t telling all that had happened. He flipped it through his mind. She had seen the corpse of Theophilus first. She had screamed and returned. Amy had been leaving. She had been leaving him.

  He had been leaving her, thinking he couldn’t help her.

  Betrayal. Both of them.

  He felt sick. His hand trembled. The coffee scorched his mouth. He scarcely felt it. She was watching him, looking puzzled.

  “You told me to go find the lights,” she said. “You said, ‘Amy, turn on the lights.’”

  Maybe it was better not to know. “You went to the well? You found money?”

  “No.”

  “Could you have hallucinated?”

  “Honey, you were stopped. You couldn’t move. I don’t know what was going on with you.” She sounded neither unfriendly nor friendly. “John, you were not in control. I was desperate, but I was in control.”

  It would have to do. He could see her revising as she went along, and believing her revision.

  The house of the Trackers.

  “Horrible, horrible.” He sat looking into the empty coffee cup. He didn’t know whether to remain sitting or to stand. He didn’t know whether to stay or try to escape.

  The heat that began to gather at his back was like all the pressure he had ever known or imagined.

  “You have to be young,” she said, “you have to be young to act — ”

  “You’re the same as you were, the same as when you came here.”

  “Yes.”

  It was shock on shock. Now she thought of becoming younger.

  “I had it all going for me ...” The words were full of regret.

  “Can I help you?”

  “No,” she said. “This is private, this isn’t your business.”

  “You can’t be younger than you are — ”

  “I was, you said I was. I could be again.”

  “I’m going to go now,” he said, not wanting to argue with her. “I’m going outside and touch the snow, taste it, hold it in my hands and watch it melt.” He stood, and it was not age that made him dizzy. He went to her. Stopped. “For the record. To keep it straight” — he felt himself choking on guilt — “for the record, I have to tell you that in these kitchens when we were attacked by this heat…I thought of trading you…it was terrible and I’d die before I did it, but I did think about it.” He passed by her, determined not to look at her face, or her brown eyes in which tears were beginning to gather. He walked through the empty dining room, looked through the leaded windows, and saw the light fading. His watch said it was five o’clock.

  He walked across the dining hall. In the center of the wall of windows a door led onto the terrace. Cold air poured through the window that was broken. He opened the door, stepped onto the first floor terrace, which lay like the bottom of a well between the enclosing sides of the house. This whole house was a well. Snow was piled higher in the center because there was no wind. He leaned over, picked up a handful, compressed it in his hand and felt the melt begin to trickle down his wrist. Snow overtopped his shoes.

  If she was such a good actress, why hadn’t she acted? Why hadn’t she lied without hesitation? Instead she’d put on an act, pretending she’d not been running away from him. He could have easily handled the truth, understood it. He’d been doing the same thing to her…To save himself, he’d told himself. As though everything he did — or she did — was totally voluntary, not influenced by what had possessed this house. As if the house was not trying to manipulate him, and her, playing on, exploiting old weaknesses and desires. He thought he was so rational, did he? She wanted to be young again to act, to be innocent and never rejected, did she? Well, it would show them no doubt. Above him was the huge breath of the sky; wind blowing and churning and expressing the mouth and fury of storm.

  But the storm was decreasing, wasn’t it? He no longer remembered.

  He remembered when she said she loved him. It was true then, only a little over a day ago. Maybe it was still true. Maybe, at least, it could be true — if they could survive intact.

  He turned back and walked through the dining hall. She was not in the kitchens. He decided she would either be in Justice’s room or struggling on that grade, rushing from this thing that had risen up between them.

  He went to the front door through rooms so familiar he didn’t even need the light. He checked the trapdoor as automatically as he would put his car in gear or stub a check. He went through and looked into the tunnel of blowing snow. The storm was diminishing, but it still blew. There were no footprints on the porch. He looked at the grade, where dark pieces of steel lay fractured, rapidly being covered by the blowing snow.

  Those things had once been a truck.

  Amy would be in Justice’s room poring over blueprints. If she was set to track down the evil in this house, then she would go about it methodically, efficiently, just as she did a problem or task in his business. She would find her problem all right. Unless it found her first.

  The freeway ran in front of the house toward an invisible horizon. In another year cars would be running there. The dead spruce stood in front of him. A spruce depended on a long tap root, you had to get pretty close with a bulldozer to root-cut enough to kill it. In a year cars would hammer along the top of that grade. They would whistle across the bridged river, disappear over that invisible horizon, and occasionally end torn and burning in a brake- squealing, tireburning crash that would cure their driver’s frustration.

  He turned, went back into the house.

  The business-efficient part of his mind ran like a calculator. It told him that now was the time to leave, to trudge through that snow and climb that blown and feathery grade and walk away from this place as he had twenty years ago. Apparently, this side of his mind was not going to cooperate in trying to save Amy. It wasn’t pressing, would make no decisions. It lay on idle, giving advice.

  All right, then. He’d look into John Tracker, and what he saw, felt, was a spark of encouraging warmth. It got him going.

  Through empty rooms there was no immediate feeling of presence, no outrageous heat even in the kitchens. He knew it was hovering, though. The house surrounded him. Still, it was familiar now, unspectacular, he passed around traps as easily as a man taught to wait on red lights, go on green.

  His mind began running like a computer, fed information and he listened. It was figuring the meaning of events, juggling weights and balances, projecting the deal to be constructed, just as he might figure the intent when a wholesale distributor dropped inventory at cut-rate. First, you thought of fraud, second that you might be party to an act of bankruptcy. You judged all the information, checked the distributor’s money and supply sources — if you could. You calculated the percent of risk. You made a decision. Yes, that’s what you did in the real world, and just now he felt this house was in the real world. It was so familiar.

  The truck was torn up. Before, it had only turned sideways on the grade. He chewed on the implications of that. Vera had taken on strength from the force of his hatred and fear of her. The force in the house had directed Vera, he suspected, into the cellar so that he would destroy her. It had made no attempt to keep him from knocking out the generators. He had helped build force against them; and force had destroyed Theophilus because destruction fed its need and eliminated the competition of its creator.

  Even when the deal was setting up against you there was the thrill of knowing you were going into it armed, smart. His calculating mind told him that Amy was safe, for the time being. He turned back to the kitchens, went
to the stove and heated the coffee. When he sipped at it his scalded throat hurt momentarily, but the coffee tasted good.

  Of course, he had to admit the deal looked lousy. But it was also the only game in town. If Amy was a hostage, then she was safer when they were not strong. This force had attacked her with the obvious intent of pressing them apart, and he had to admit that it was doing a good job. But this force of evil did not want him dead. Otherwise it would have had him dead. It would not allow them to leave, which meant he was needed for something.

  Which brought him right back to Vera and Theophilus. They were destroyed because they were no longer needed. They were shifted to the debit side of the ledger. He stood to go to the stove and pour more coffee.

  “Through the acquiescence and cooperation of Trackers…” The words from his father’s journal seemed to form in the air around him, to imprint on his brain.

  And John Tracker knew why he was needed.

  Of course, damn fool. He had not been needed for as long as the house was not attacked. It was self-sufficient. The force, evil, even tried to run him away on his first visit. Now it needed him…it needed a different kind of Tracker. It needed John Tracker, the expert in the world outside. He sipped at the coffee and looked at the deal. It wasn’t promising, not for him. He was needed as a creature that was equal to legislatures and boards of directors. A creature, as Vera and Theophilus had become. And then victims, when they’d become no longer operational. Think on that, John Tracker.

  He sat drinking the coffee, trying to figure which way to jump. He was, as people in his world put it, caught by the short hair. He remembered a retailer once saying that whorehouses were like banks. You hated to go there, but sometimes you just had to. In a manner of speaking, he had to go to the bank.