THE TRAP

by Tabitha King

  Hunching into the wind, he abandoned the snowmobile and made his way back to the house as quickly as he could and still be quiet. Again he went to the blind corner of the porch. This time he hoisted himself right onto the railing and, from there, reached for the roof. With the gutter in his grasp he swung himself over and up onto the porch roof. The thin sheeting of snow covered a glaze of ice on the old shingles. He scuffed wildly for footing, at the same time scrabbling for purchase with his hands. Here the thick, slick-skinned gloves worked against him, binding his fingers and desensitizing them. The wind whipped over the ridgepole and spit hard granules of icy snow into his face. It gusted and shrieked and all at once his footing gave way with one of the treacherous old shingles, and he lost his tenuous hold. He felt himself going as in a dream, the roof slipped away from him, and he reached frantically for the gutter.

  He caught it with a shock, jerking his arms in their sockets, and hung from it. As he dangled in the wind, the gutter creaked in its moorings. He felt the metal channel twisting, widening with the downpull of his weight. He tried to still the swaying of his body to lessen the stress on the gutter. Gritting his teeth against the pain in his hands and his shoulders, and against the curses that roared in his head, he concentrated on lifting himself evenly and steadily as he would on a chinning bar. The gutter shook and shivered under his weight. He could feel it tearing away from the roof, nail, and bracket. Sweat dripped from his eyebrows onto his lashes and he blinked it rapidly away. As he lifted himself above the roof line, the wind attacked him again, whipping snow into his eyes. When he grimaced with effort, he felt the freezing sweat on his face crackle. The gutter shuddered and dropped a few inches, and he dropped with it, expelling all his breath in sudden shock. But the gutter held there in its distorted brackets, a few inches below the eaves. Rand gasped, and grabbed with both hands for the eaves. The gutter shrieked at the sudden lifting of his weight. With the woody security of the eaves in his grasp, Rand swung one leg, then the other over the suspended gutter and the edge of the roof, and scrabbled once again for footing.

  This time his head was down, and his body paralleled the eaves, which gave protection from the wind. It was much safer, but it was also the wrong direction. He grinned and began to scrabble in a counterclockwise direction, until he lay flat on his belly holding mostly by strength of his widespread hands. He looked as if he had been crucified there, facedown, pointing toward the roofbeam. He could hear the gutter clanking below him with every twist of the wind. He groped for footing, and found it, raising himself until he was hunched like a four-legged spider. He was able to crab a few steps upward, slipped, regained his footing, and slipped again.

  The porch roof joined the house in a low gable end. A louvered vent was set into the gable to ventilate attic crawl space under the eaves. The roof of the house, a little less steep than that of the porch, was two feet higher, an easy lift for Rand. The ridgeline ran at a ninety-degree angle to the porch roof. The worst news was that the shingles were slate, and crusted with old snow. The new snow frosted the roof erratically, and the wind continued to blow it into his eyes and ears, and down his collar, and up his sleeves, and under his boots. It was a long sweaty time before his fingers encountered the pitted copper flashing at the base of the chimney, swept clean of snow by the wind. It wasn’t much to hold onto, but the fieldstone above it, crusted as it was with ice and snow, was still rough enough to provide a nearly perfect handhold. He hunched against the chimney, in the lee of the wind, cheek to cheek with the abrasive stone, and the first thin spice of smoke prickled in his nostrils. Instinctively, he glanced upward, expecting to see smoke trailing from the chimney, but there was nothing above him except white sky, and wind-puffed snow. Then, like a perfume, the smoke triggered its own name. Excitement ballooned tightly in his chest, and he looked back toward the Russells’ place. Go-devils of snow veiled the vista, but it was still possible to make out evil colored tatters of smoke being sheared heavenward by the wind. He took it for a good omen.

  Wedged between the walls of the passage, Liv and Travis shared each other’s body warmth and waited. Tired and increasingly weak and foggy, Liv revived a little at the sound of the snowmobile. Travis shifted restlessly against her, and now and again slipped a few steps up or down on his bottom or in his stocking feet in hopes of hearing something else besides the lowing and hooting of the wind.

  And they did hear noises, scraping and scrabbling. Each time, Liv squeezed Travis’ hand and whispered, “Branches on the roof,” and he squeezed back, to let her know he agreed and wasn’t frightened.

  Walter McKenzie babied his Jeep along the backroads, dropping the plow where necessary, at a speed calculated to keep him moving through the soft patches, over the icy ones, and on the right side of the road. The blowing snow kept the visibility dangerously low. It was an ironic comfort that at least no one else seemed to be fool enough to be out on the road. He took the roads closest to the lake, and kept an eye peeled for Pat, meaning the dimmest glimpse of a human shape foundering out there on the shelterless plain of ice. And never did see him. By the time he reached the Dexter Road, Walter was telling himself earnestly that Pat had taken shelter somewheres, in some summer place or boathouse or somewheres, like any sane man would, or else had miraculously reached home and hearth by now. So intently was Walter assuring himself that Pat was safe somewheres, with all of his attention that was not fixed on the business of getting along the Dexter Road to the Russells’, which a man of his experience in the vagaries of ice and snow did not trust to experience at all, and noticing the snow-covered shape of the Pacer at the turn and understanding at once that Liv Russell had sensibly left it there the previous evening, he did not see the smoke until he was groping his way around the turn and into the Russells’ driveway, pushing the snow before him with the plow, when the snow blowing over his windshield suddenly turned dirty. Soot flicked onto the glass like snowflakes, his windshield wipers smeared them in arcs and he hunched over the wheel, punching the windshield washer button and peering through the streaks. His heart hammered wildly. He fought the instinctive urge to stop the Jeep in its tracks; on this hill, with the plow down, it would skid sure as beans make a man fart, and he would be lucky if he didn’t wind up ass over teakettle in a snowbank, just like old Joe Nevers a year ago at the Christopher place. He rolled down his window one handed and craned his head out to see what he was going into. Snow and soot blew in, bringing the angry sound of fire with them. He got a good glimpse of the house, with a hellish glow in its windows, and a noseful of hot stinking housefire, an evil tragic smell of wood and plastics and human possessions, cloth, and glass, and paper and insulation, someone’s life being wrecked.

  The only worse smell he knew of was that of burning human flesh, which he had encountered few times, but unforgettably. He never forgot the names of the dead he had helped drag from fires, not Dana Bartlett, the Portland lawyer who had died when the old Christopher place had burned decades ago; nor Matthew and Brandy McAvoy, old Doc’s grandchildren, who had perished in a trailer fire in 1979; nor Binny Porter, the Pigeon Hill hermit who had accidentally lit himself up from the inside out when he knocked back a slug of badly distilled antifreeze and then, befuddled, stuck the lighted end of a cigarette in his mouth, what was it, two winters ago. Walter’s nostrils widened, drawing in the polluted air, searching for that scent within all the others, and found none.

  He brought the Jeep to a stop at the first safely level spot, and jumped out.

  “Miz Russell!” he screamed, but the roar of the fire drowned him out. He galloped through the snow to the back porch. Frantic as he was to get Liv and Travis out if they were still inside, he noticed the condition of the back door. The inside door was battered, as if someone had kicked at it. Holding the storm door open with his shoulder, Walter grasped the door knob carefully with his gloved hand and then snatched it away. He touched the door panels and they, too, were hot. He backed off, and then ran around the house, foundering in hip-deep
snow, jumping up and down to look in windows blackened by smoke and soot, or broken by the heat. He circuited the house, even going up onto the lakeside deck where the fire raged visibly through the glass doors, and then around the other side, and fetched up, panting and gasping against the side of the Jeep. He hauled open the door and clambered in, and almost fell out again reaching out to pull the door closed behind him. With shaking hands, he turned on his CB radio and pulled the mike from its holster on the dash. Punching buttons frantically, he raised Reuben Styles at home.

  “What say?” Reuben said genially.

  “F-f-f-fire,” Walter stuttered, and then in a rage with himself, shouted into the mike. “Russells, off the Dexter Road! They’s people inside!”

  Reuben, who was remarkably quick when he needed to be, responded at once.

  “Fire at Russells’ off the Dexter Road,” he repeated. “Is that you, Walter?”

  Walter cursed fluently.

  “Calling it in, Walter,” Reuben said, and the mike picked up Reuben’s voice as he turned away and shouted to one of his boys.

  Then he was back again. “That’s fire road thirty-one, ain’t it, Walter?”

  “ ‘T is,” Walter said.

  “Can we get the trucks down there?” Reuben asked.

  “I’m here, ain’t I?” Walter snapped back. “I didn’t fly in.”

  “You coulda snowshoed in,” Reuben said.

  “I ain’t got no goddamn radio on my snowshoes,” Walter shouted.

  “We’re on our way,” Reuben said, and was gone.

  Walter started the Jeep, and plowed the circle of the Russells’ driveway to get himself turned around. Going up the driveway, he was still gasping for breath. His lungs burned and his head ached fiercely.

  “Goddamn it to hell,” he whispered hoarsely and wiped tears from his cheeks with the knuckles of his gloved hands. The knitted wool snagged a little on the stiff bristles of his stubble. “Goddamn it to hell,” he said angrily, and pounded the steering wheel. Then he took himself in hand and stopped wasting energy. He widened the turn to make himself a parking space next to the Pacer, parked the Jeep to get it out of the way, but left the keys in it, because it was a rule to leave the keys in any vehicle at the site of a fire. He jumped out again and stared up the road, straining his ears for the sounds of the fire trucks, and then down the driveway, at the burning house. Finally he couldn’t wait for the trucks any longer, and he hurried back down the driveway on foot, slipping and sliding as he went. He landed on his sit-me-down several times, picked himself up, and scuffled on, too distracted to even feel humiliated.

  Once at the bottom of the driveway again, he paced back and forth, then started around the house again. It seemed easier this time. He had made himself a trail, huffing and puffing around it before. It was only then it struck him that there was another path. Someone else had broken a trail around the house since the snow began to fall and while the snow had filled it up some, and the wind had blurred it, it was still here, real close in, as if the trailbreaker had been hugging the walls. He followed the path he had not made to the beach, and saw that there, too, the snow had been disturbed, by at least one snow machine, and that recently. Again, it was plain that more than one machine had been on the beach for a considerable period of time. He followed the almost clear, recent track north along the shore a few yards and then, hearing the sirens of the fire trucks, turned back.

  He huffed and puffed his way up the beach to the house again, and was on one foot and then the other, at the bottom of the driveway, when Reuben Styles jumped off the braking pumper.

  “Goddamn it,” Walter said.

  Reuben was too busy shouting orders to the volunteers to greet Walter with more than a nod. First chance, he nudged Walter away from the trucks and the noise, and said, “Anybody in there?”

  Walter shrugged. “Goddamn if I know.”

  Reuben rubbed his gloved hands together mournfully. “They ain’t nothing we can do, you know,” he said with a glance at the burning house.

  “Shitagoddamn,” Walter said. “Missus Russell and the boy was here. I don’t know where they are.”

  Reuben nodded. “Talked to Frankie on the CB. He said Pat’s wagon’s abandoned at the narrows.”

  Walter stared at the house. “He might be in there, too.” Walter looked at Reuben. “There’s something you oughta see,” he said in a low voice. “I cain’t figger it out.”

  Reuben looked at Walter, then turned back to his crew and shouted another series of orders. Then he took Walter by the elbow. “Better show me.”

  Walter led him to the beach. “Tried the back door,” he said. “Somebody tried to kick in the back door.”

  Reuben stopped and looked back over his shoulder at the house. “Boys taken the ax to it by now,” he said. “Nothin’ we can do.”

  Walter grunted. “Same with these tracks. They’ll be gone in no time. You better see’m for a witness.”

  “Ayuh,” Reuben said. He stared at the trodden snow, the snowmobile tracks, and hunkered down to take a closer look.

  “Russells ain’t got no machines,” Walter said.

  “Think Pat borried one?” Reuben asked.

  Walter shrugged. “These is last night’s tracks. There’s more’n one. Now this one, this is today. This might be him, if he did. Borry a machine. There’s some stored down to the marina. I didn’t see no sign of break-in down there, but I didn’t look too close. Mighta missed it.”

  Reuben stood up, and took off his cap. He scratched behind his ear and put the cap back on and sighed. “I hope he stole himself a machine and come up here and took his family out, Walter.”

  “If he din’t, he’s wandering around there,” Walter said, indicating the lake. “Goddamn fool.”

  “Ayuh,” Reuben said. “Maybe the fire’ll draw him. It oughta be visible to the causeway.”

  “If he didn’t,” Walter said, “who was here? Banging on the door.”

  Reuben stared at Walter. “There’s fellas I could name I hope to Christ wasn’t here.”

  Walter’s jaw dropped and snow flew in, little spots of cold on his tongue and gums. He hadn’t ever heard Reuben Styles take the Lord’s name.

  Reuben turned back to the fire.

  “Where’d they go?” Walter asked him.

  Reuben trudged up the beach. “Who?”

  “All of ‘em,” Walter shouted furiously. “Missus Russell. The boy. Whoever the Christ was on them machines.”

  Reuben looked back at Walter. “What business these folks got here this time of year, Walter?” he asked. “They don’t belong here.” He stared at the burning house. “We cain’t do a goddamn thing for ‘em. They’re too far off the road. By the time we know, the fire’s won. I like to puke, seeing it. What are we s’posed to do?”

  Walter caught up with him. “We gotta try,” he insisted. “That’s the least we can do.”

  The two men plodded around the house to the back. They stood and watched the roof fall in.

  Ansel Partridge, short and bald and looking fifty since he was fifteen, who had a university degree in agriculture and the best run farm in the township, hustled up, smearing soot across his brow. “That’s the son of a whore,” he said. “Nothin’ left to do but wait for the frigging ashes to cool.”

  Reuben nodded.

  Ansel hesitated. “Folks get out?” he asked.

  Reuben shrugged.

  Ansel grimaced. “We’ll hope.”

  Walter turned away, fighting tears. He shuffled toward the woods, seeking privacy. Closing his eyes, he prayed not with words but with inarticulate yearning. Please don’t let this be bad as it looks like being.

  Something caught around his ankles. He opened his eyes and met the wide, mad eyes of The Poor, twisting between his boots. Bending arthritically he picked her up.

  “Well, well,” he said.

  Suddenly Reuben was next to him. “Where’d the cat come from?” he asked, reaching for her.

  Walter gav
e her to him. “Just opened my eyes and there she was.”

  The two men looked around their own feet, locating the cat’s paw prints.

  “Probably she was out all night,” Reuben warned.

  “Mebbe,” Walter said. He was a lot more interested in the cat’s tracks than he was Reuben’s cautions. She had come out of the woods. And there, at the edge of the woods, she had used a path broken by people. Like the other tracks, it was blurred and partly filled up, but it was there.

  “Somebody’s been into these woods,” Walter said gleefully.

  Reuben nodded. “Today, too.”

  “Her studio’s out there,” Walter said, pointing down the direction of the path. “I’ll just take a look,” he said.

  Reuben handed him the cat. “You okay by yourself?”

  “Fit’s a fiddle,” he said huffily.

  Reuben grinned. “Okay. I’ll come lookin’ for you, you ain’t back in the half hour.”

  Walter set the cat down and crunched off into the woods. The Poor trotted at his heels.

  Liv and Travis listened to the noises on the roof. Branches, Liv whispered to Travis, again. The wind scourging the roof with branches from the nearest trees. But there was too much, and it stopped suddenly. He was on the roof, Liv thought, and did not say anything to Travis, because just then he squeezed her hand tightly and she knew he knew. Something rattled down the throat of the chimney. Travis gasped. Liv clapped her hand over his mouth and hissed softly. Instinctively they shrank against each other. Liv’s mouth was dry and tasted of old blood, carrion, as it had after she had had her tooth pulled. She pushed Travis away from her and began to shift herself rapidly down the steps of the passage on her bottom.

  Rand heard the sirens and looked up from staring into the throat of the chimney. He grinned and returned to studying the problem at hand. There was nothing to see but blackness. She was down there, he was sure. The woman and the boy. They were hiding there, stiff as pokers with fear, hugging the sooty walls of the huge old chimney, balanced on the ledge inside. It was, he figured, a two-story drop—four foot of chimney above the roof line, six and half foot of second story, six and half of first, a little less than eighteen foot. Less than three times his height. Lowering himself from the top, his arms would give him two foot of that, making the drop closer to twice his height. He could handle that. He imagined hurtling down on them from above, grabbing them as he came, pulling them down onto the wood in the hearth. Terror would immobilize them. He could even scream at them, and the drop was short enough so it wouldn’t make no difference, he would still be on them before they had time to react. Rand hoisted himself to the mouth of the chimney, and swung his legs inside. A chip of ancient mortar rattled down the chimney. He froze, and listened. He thought he had heard a gasp, a muffled hushing sound, even as the mortar bounced downward. Then there was scuffing, someone below shifting. Shit, he thought. They’re leavin’ the chimney. They’ll hunker on the hearth until they think it’s safe again. In the chimney.