The Stranger

by Caroline B. Cooney

  When she came to the place where pools of water lay below each side of the raised pathway, snow had covered the ice, and had Nicoletta not seen the lakes before, she would have thought they were fields; she would have thought it was safe to run over them, and dance upon them.

  The cliff wall was hung with frozen water from springs deep in the earth. Snow danced in gusts, spraying against the cliff like surf and falling in drifts at the foot of the rocks.

  A piece of the cliff moved toward her.

  Nicoletta held out her palm like a crossing guard, as if she could stop an avalanche that way.

  It was stone, and yet it walked. It was snow, and yet it bore leaves. It was a person, and yet—

  It was the creature.

  She could see its eyes now, living pools trapped in that terrible frame.

  She could see its feet, formed not so differently from the huge icicles that hung on the cliff: things. Dripping stalagmites from the floor of the cave.

  She felt no fear. The snow, falling so gently, so pure and cleanly, seemed protection. Yet snow protected nothing but ugliness. Ugliness it would hide. Filthy city alleys and rusted old cars, abandoned, broken trikes and rotting picnic tables—snow covered anything putrid and turned it to perfect sculpture.

  Even the thing, the monstrous thing that had stank and dripped and scraped—it was perfect in its softly rounded snowy wrap.

  “Go away,” it growled. “What is the matter with you? Don’t you understand? Go away!”

  “I want to find Jethro.”

  It advanced on her.

  She backed up. What if I fall off the path? she thought. What if I fall down on those ponds? How thick is the ice? Will I drown here?

  “Go away,” it said.

  “I know Jethro lives here somewhere,” she said. “You must know him. He takes this path. The path stops here! Tell me where he turns off. Tell me where he goes. Tell me where to find him.” She could no longer look at the thing. Its face was scaly, like a mineral, and the snow did not cling to its surface, but melted, so that it ran, like an overflowing gutter. She looked past the thing and saw the black hole of the cave. It wanted her. She could feel its eagerness to have her again. She tore her eyes away and wondered how she would get past the cave to wherever Jethro was.

  “Why does he matter?” asked the thing.

  Why does Jethro matter? thought Nicoletta. I don’t know. Why does anybody matter? What makes you care about one person so deeply you cannot sleep?

  She said, “He wasn’t in school today.”

  The creature said nothing. It turned around and moved toward its cave.

  “Don’t go!” said Nicoletta. “I’m worried about him. I like him. I want to talk to him.”

  It disappeared into the cavern.

  Or perhaps, because it was stone and sand itself, it simply blended into, or became part of, the cliff.

  She followed it. She ran right after it, inside the flat and glowing walls of the entrance.

  “Stop it!” the thing bellowed. Its voice was immense, and the cave echoed with its deep, rolling voice. “Get out!”

  “I love him,” said Nicoletta.

  In the strange silence that followed, she could see the thing’s eyes. They had filled with tears.

  Only humans cry. Not stones.

  “Who are you?” she whispered.

  But it did not answer.

  The only sound was the sharp unmistakable report of a rifle. Nicoletta whirled.

  “Hunters. They think I’m a bear,” whispered the thing. “They’ll come in here to shoot me. Poachers.”

  “Have they come in before?” she whispered back.

  “They don’t usually find the cave opening. Sometimes they see me, though, if I’m careless, and they follow me.”

  She could hear the loud and laughing voices of men. Cruel laughter, lusting for a kill.

  “If they see you move, they’ll shoot you,” it told her. “They shoot anything that moves.”

  “I’ll go down in the cave with you,” said Nicoletta. “We’ll be safe together.” No snow remained on the humanoid creature. Its stink increased and its stone skin flaked away. Its hair like dead leaves snapped off and littered the floor. As long as she didn’t have to touch it, or look too closely, she was not afraid of it.

  “No,” it said. “You must never, never, never go down in this cave.”

  “I did before.”

  “And you only got out because I brought you out. If you go any farther into the cave, the same thing will happen to you that happened to me.”

  “What happened to you?” she said. She forgot to whisper. She spoke out loud.

  From out in the snow came a yell of satisfaction. “I see the cave!” bellowed a voice. “This way! We’ll get it this time! Over here!”

  The thing grabbed Nicoletta and the horrible rasp of its gruesome skin made her scream. It put its hand over her mouth and she could taste it. A swallow of disease and pollution filled her throat. She struggled against the thing but it lifted her with horrifying absolute strength. She was carried down the tunnel and into a small low-ceilinged pit beside the shaft.

  “Don’t make any sounds,” it breathed into her ear. Its breath was a stench of rot.

  She was weeping now, soaking its ghastly skin with her tears. The acid of her very own tears dissolved the thing. Its coating was soaking off onto her.

  I’ve been such a fool, thought Nicoletta. My parents will kill me. I deserve anything I get.

  She fought but the thing simply pressed her up against the back of the dark pit. When the slime of the wall came off on her cheek, Nicoletta sagged down and ceased struggling. She tried to crawl right inside herself, and just not be there in mind or in body.

  But she was there. And all her senses—smell, sight, sound, touch—all of them brought her close to vomiting with horror.

  If I can let the hunters know I am here, thought Nicoletta, they will save me. They’ll shoot this horrible animal and take me home.

  The hunters came into the cave.

  There were two of them.

  They had a flashlight.

  She saw the light bobble past her little cavern but she knew that if they glanced in her direction, they would see only the stony side of the creature. To their eyes, the thing gripping her would look like cave wall.

  She took a breath to scream but the thing’s handlike extension clapped so tightly over her mouth she could taste it, toxic and raw.

  “This is neat,” said one of the hunters. His voice was youthful and awestruck. “I can’t imagine why I’ve never heard of this place. Never even seen the opening before.”

  “Me either,” said the other one. “And I’ve come around here for years. Why, it’s—it’s—”

  “It’s beautiful! I’m calling the TV stations the minute we shoot that bear.”

  “Let’s put the body right outside of the cave opening,” agreed the other one. “It’ll make a great camera angle.”

  Their voices faded. The creature’s grip on Nicoletta did not.

  They walked more deeply into the cave. No! she thought. They mustn’t go in farther! The cave will turn! I’ve been at that end of it! It isn’t beautiful, it’s the opening to some other terrible place. I’ve got to warn them. I’ve got to stop them.

  She flung herself at her captor, but its strength was many multiples of her own. Nothing occurred except bruising against its stony surface.

  Her heart pounded so hard and so fast that she wondered if she would live through this. Perhaps her own heart would kill her, giving up the struggle.

  So distantly that Nicoletta was not confident of her hearing, came two long, thin cries. Human cries. Threads of despair. Cries for help.

  The final shrieks before the final fall.

  The two hunters, plunging down the black end of the shaft. Hitting bottom, wherever that might be.

  She knew what they felt. The textures and the moving air, the shifting sands and the touching walls.

/>   The thing released her. Her mouth and lips were free. Shock kept her silent. The entire cavern was silent.

  Silence as total as darkness.

  No moans from the fallen pair. No cries of pain. No shouts for help.

  They had hit bottom. They were gone. Two eager young men, out for an afternoon of pleasure.

  The monster’s sand clung to her face and wrists. She could not move. She could not run or fight or think.

  After a moment, it picked her up like a pile of coats and carried her out of the cave.

  The snow was now falling so heavily that the world was obliterated.

  If there was a world. Perhaps this horrible place was the only place on earth, and it was her home.

  She wept, and the tears froze on her cheeks.

  “I’m sorry,” it said. “I had to do that.”

  “How will they get out?” she said, sobbing.

  “They won’t.”

  How matter-of-factly it gave an answer. How will the hunters get out? They won’t.

  She backed away from him. “You are a monster,” she said, and she did not mean his form, but his soul. “You let them go down in there and fall. You knew they would fall! You knew they would come to a place where there was no bottom.” She began to run, slipping and falling. The path was invisible. The snow came down like a curtain between them. When she fell again, she slid perilously close to the ice over the deep, black lake.

  He picked her up out of the snow and set her on her feet. “I’ll go with you some of the way. In this weather there will be no more of them.”

  He held her gloved hand and together they walked between the lakes. On the straight and slender path they could not walk abreast, and he walked ahead, clearing the snow for her.

  She had given him gender and substance. Her mind had taken him out of the neuter-thing category. The monster was a he, not an it.

  They reached the boulder. “Promise you won’t come back,” he said. His voice was soft and sad.

  Her hair prickled. Her skin shivered. Her hands inside the gloves turned to ice.

  “You must go home. You must not come this way again.”

  She looked into the eyes. Deep, brown, human eyes. And a human voice that had said those same words to her once before.

  Chapter 9

  HER FIRST REAL DANCE. Her first real date.

  And Nicoletta was as uninterested as if her parents had gone and rented a movie that Nicoletta had seen twice before.

  “What is the matter with you?” yelled Jamie.

  True love is the matter with me, thought Nicoletta. Jethro is the matter with me. Instead of having Jethro, I’m almost the captive of Christo.

  It wasn’t that Christo had taken her prisoner. Christo was his usual gentlemanly self. It was more that she was not arguing about it. She was not saying no. She was allowing events with Christo to take place because they did not matter to her at all.

  “I don’t think you even care about Christo,” said Jamie, flicking a wet towel at her half-dressed sister. “Even the middle school knows that Christo asked you out.”

  “They only know because you told them,” said Nicoletta. “How else could they know who Christo is?”

  “Nicoletta, you’re so annoying. He’s a football star, isn’t he? Me and my friends went to every game last fall, didn’t we? We won the regional championship, didn’t we? He has his picture in the paper all the time, doesn’t he?” Jamie made several snarling faces at her sister.

  Nicoletta never thought of Christo as an athlete. She thought of him exclusively as a baritone in Madrigals. She thought of him, not in a football uniform, but in the glittering turquoise and silver he wore for concerts, a king’s courtier, a royal flirt.

  Christo was a football player, and she did not even know, had never attended a game, never considered his practice schedule. And Jethro. Did he play sports? What was his schedule? Where did he live?

  “You don’t even care what you’re wearing!” complained Jamie. “You didn’t even ask Mom to buy you a new dress for this!”

  Her dress lay on the bed, waiting for her to put it on.

  She felt as if there were a veil between her mind and her life. The veil was Jethro. She was as consumed by him as if he had set her on fire. It was difficult to see anything else. The rest of the world was out of focus, and she did not care whether she saw anything clearly but Jethro.

  Jamie held the dress for her and she stepped carefully into it. It was Jamie who exclaimed over the lovely silken fabric, the way it hung so gracefully from Nicoletta’s narrow waist, and dropped intoxicatingly at the neckline, like a crescent moon sweeping from shoulder to shoulder. Nicoletta had borrowed her mother’s imitation ruby necklace. The racing pulse at her throat made the dark red stones beat like her own blood.

  “You’re in love, aren’t you?” whispered Jamie suddenly.

  Nicoletta turned to see herself in the long mirror.

  I’m beautiful, she thought. She blinked, as if expecting the beauty not to be there at the second glance. But it was. She was truly beautiful. She had to look away. It felt like somebody else in that gown.

  And it is somebody else! thought Nicoletta. It’s somebody in love with Jethro, not somebody in love with Christo.

  Jamie was also reflected in the mirror: a scrawny little girl, still with braces and unformed figure—a little girl utterly awestruck by her big sister. For the first time in their lives, Nicoletta was worth something to Jamie. For Nicoletta was in love, and beautiful, and going to a dance with a handsome boy.

  “Do you think you’ll marry Christo?” said Jamie, getting down to basics. “What’s his last name? What will your name be when you get married? I’ll be your maid of honor, won’t I?”

  But Christo’s last name did not matter. Only Jethro’s.

  Who is he? thought Nicoletta. Where is he?

  Love was like clean ice.

  Nicoletta skated through the evening. All things were effortless, all motions were gliding, all conversations spun on her lips.

  Christo was proud of her, and proud that he was with her.

  And if she glittered, how was he to know she glittered for someone else?

  They left the dance shortly after midnight.

  Snow had begun again.

  There was a full moon, and each snowflake was a falling crystal. The night world was equally black and silver. Even the shadows gleamed.

  They drove slowly down the quiet streets, rendered perfect by the first inch of snow.

  “Where are we going?” said Nicoletta.

  “That road,” said Christo. He smiled at her. “I never noticed that road before. It looked quiet.”

  He wants to kiss, thought Nicoletta. He is going to drive me down Jethro’s road, to park at the end of the lane where Jethro’s stone will see us. What if the stone tells? I know they talk. I don’t want Jethro to find out about Christo.

  She was dizzy with the magic of her thoughts. There is no stone, she told herself, and if there is one, nobody talks to it.

  Jethro had not been in school. The gloomy skies and early dark of winter had been a perfect reflection of Nicoletta’s emptiness when there was no Jethro in Art Appreciation. He was the only art she appreciated.

  How she wanted Jethro to see her in this gown!

  For she was beautiful. She had been the princess of every girl’s dream at that dance. She had been as lovely as if spun from gold, as delicate as lace, as perfect as love.

  She saw herself in the snowy night, floating down the path, her long gown flowing behind her, her golden hair glittering with diamonds of snow. She saw herself untouched by cold or by fear, dancing through the dark like a princess in a fairy tale to find her prince.

  O Jethro! she thought. Where are you? What are you thinking? Why weren’t you in school? Are you ill? Are you afraid of me? What promises do you have to keep? What does the stone know about you that I do not?

  Driving with his left hand, Christopher touched her bare shoulder
with his right. He was hot and dry, burned by the fever of wanting Nicoletta.

  She thought only of Jethro, and of Jethro’s hand. The first time he touched Nicoletta, his fingers had not felt human. The first time he touched Christo, he had left behind grains of sand.

  A strange and terrible thought had formed in Nicoletta’s mind, but she refused to allow it a definite shape.

  Christopher kissed her once, and then again. The third time he shuddered slightly, wanting a hundred times more than this—wanting no car, no time limit, no clothing in the way. The calm young man who easily flirted with or touched any girl because it meant nothing, was not the one driving the van tonight.

  Touching meant a great deal to Christo tonight.

  Think of Christo, Nicoletta told herself, accepting the kisses but not kissing back. But she could not think of him at all. She could hardly see him. He felt evaporated and diffuse. She felt sleazy and duplicitous. What have I done? thought Nicoletta. What have I let happen? How am I going to get out of this? “Good night, Christo,” she said courteously. “And thank you. I had a lovely time.”

  She put her hand on the door handle.

  Christo stared at her. “Nickie, we’re in the woods, not your driveway.”

  But she was out of the van, standing in her fragile, silver dancing slippers on the crust of the snow. She knew she would not break through, she would not get snow in these shoes. She touched the ruby necklace. The moon came out from behind the snow-laden clouds, and rested on her face and her throat. The ruby and the red rose of her cheeks were the only heat in the forest.

  Like a silver creature of the woods, she found the path, swirling and laughing to herself.

  “Nickie?” said Christo. He was out of the van, he was following her. He could not stay on the surface of the crusted snow, as she could. His big feet and strong legs slogged where she had danced. “You don’t even have a coat!” he cried.

  The boulder carried a shroud of snow. Nicoletta was a candle flickering in the dark. She quickstepped around the immense rock. The boulder shrugged its shoulders as Christo passed and dropped its load of snow upon him. Muffled under layers of white, his cry to Nicoletta did not reach her ears. “Wait up!” he said to her. “Don’t do this, Nickie. Nickie, what are you doing?”