“Let’s get out of here.” I readjusted her blouse and fastened the buttons for the second time, realizing that if she had not stiffened, I would have had to unhook her bra and I had no idea quite how that was done.
“Thank you, Commander.” Her marvelous blue eyes danced with mischief.
Later in the night, in the midst of the horror, I had the strange feeling that none of it would have happened if I had made love to her at that moment—not in the first wild rush of passion, but in the magic of our eyes dancing happily with one another. Or maybe it was the other way around. Maybe if I had not stirred up our passions as the storm closed in on us, the thunder gods would not have been angry.
Because I didn’t believe in God, it did not follow that I did not believe in the thunder gods.
“I think those corsets you swim in would come off very easily, even if they are wet.”
“That’s because you never had to take off a real corset.” She rocked back and forth in laughter. “Though you would enjoy every uncomfortable, frustrating second of it, wouldn’t you?” She leaned her head against my chest. “Maybe God did send you, Lieutenant Commander Daugherty. If he did, he has good taste in angels.”
“I don’t believe in God,” I said somewhat testily. “I told you that.”
“Maybe it doesn’t matter to Him.” She jabbed my ribs and discovered I was ticklish.
“I will take care of you, Andy.” I touched her face gently with my fingers. “Please believe that, at least.”
We strolled, arm in arm, back to the Chevy—two strong, happy young people rejoicing in the prospects of life ahead of them, hardly aware of the half mile of rough mountain trail down which they were stumbling.
I must insist on that point. Whatever sense of doom she had felt since Hoagy Carmichael and the train station, and I had felt driving up the far side of the Superstition Mountains, had vanished. Neither of us sensed evil closing in.
I opened the door of the Chevy for her.
“Thank you, Commander, sir … no, wait a minute, please, Jerry. Let me apologize for having been so boorish. You’re a good and kind and wonderful man. You should never have adopted me the day before yesterday. I should never have come along. Regardless of that, I’m not as bad as I’ve behaved.”
I went around to the other side, noticing that the first torrent of rain was racing along the gorge toward us.
I turned the ignition key over. Nothing happened. The Chevy had its temperament, but it always started. I pulled out the choke, cranked the gas pedal once, and flipped the key again.
“That’s funny,” I said. “It always starts.”
The rain was on us, plunging the inside of the car into midnight darkness.
“It’s coming for us,” she said calmly. “Don’t worry, Jerry, I’ll take care of you.”
Whatever it was, it came all right.
The doors of the Chevy swung open as though a giant had flipped them open as he raced by us. Wind, I told myself.
It wasn’t wind, however, which grabbed the two of us, hurled us out of the car, and carried us through the air, like parachutists in free-fall, back up the half mile of steep trail, as the thunder boomed and the lightning crackled, and toward the main building and through the door, which opened just before we slammed into it.
I must be careful here. That’s what seemed to be happening. My images are as vivid as though it all happened yesterday instead of forty-two years ago next week. But they are not like any other memories from a life which has not been devoid of excitement. The images are real enough, but whether they ever had any reality outside my head even during that terrible storm on the side of Fish Creek Mountain, I do not know.
Ask me today and I will say it all happened. Ask me tomorrow and I’ll tell you it was just a wild and especially vivid nightmare.
Anyway, we were swept into the main building of the ghost town of Clinton and our hell began.
The thick black cloud was there already, licking its chops in anticipation. We were both slammed against the wall across the room and pinned against it, a couple of feet off the floor. Invisible hands jabbed and poked at us, the way Indians were supposed to torture their victims before killing them. For a few moments I saw Andrea twisting and turning against the wall, then she was lost in the inky darkness. Her screams continued for a long time. Then they, too, stopped.
What happened next seemed like the whole of eternity. In fact, it lasted at the most only a few hours, and maybe only a few minutes. It was like being tumbled down the side of a mountain in a landslide of nightmares, yet the experience was more real than any nightmare and not so much less real than being awake as being a different kind of real.
My nightmares and Andrea’s fused and consumed us both. I was being destroyed by these combined nightmares, and even if I could no longer hear her screams, she was being destroyed with me.
My first accusers were the men I’d lost in VF 29—Rusty, Hank, Tony, Marshall, all the others. They circled around me, their dead distorted faces and empty eyes fading in and out in the blackness, screaming curses and accusations. I had cut short their lives, stolen them from their wives and sweethearts and from the children they never knew. I had sent them all to hell.
I shouted my innocence, I had tried to protect all my men, war was hell, casualties were inevitable, I had done my best.…
Either they did not hear or they did not care. They were dead and in hell and I was still alive.
And the heat of the wall to which I was pinned became with each accusation more like a frying pan.
Rusty turned into a tiny baby, gurgling helplessly as he was held under water; Tony changed into a sailor half of whose head had been shot away. They, too, accused me of cutting short their lives.
“I didn’t kill you,” I shrieked. “She did!”
So much for taking care of Andy.
My betrayal did not save me, the screams of outrage continued, my frying pan was now white-hot, the invisible hands tormenting me became more insistent and determined.
Then the new dead were replaced by the old dead—brown-skinned, primitive people from long ago; Spaniards; Apaches; other Indians; Americans; my relatives from Ireland; men and women whom I did not recognize, from her past, not mine.
The Dutchman was there, a horrible grin on his ancient bearded face. And Peralta and Miez and the Mexicans the Dutchman had killed. And the victims of the Apache massacre. And Clara Thomas—all the people in the legend, all come back to judge me guilty of their deaths.
They all died horribly, tortured, scalped, raped, butchered, ravaged by disease; men burned at the stake, women cut into tiny pieces which were then roasted over campfires, children whose heads were smashed against the rock walls of the canyon.
They all accused me, I was the master murderer, the true Hitler of all history. I was the death which had slain them all.
“No! No!” I screamed. “I didn’t do it! She did! She is death, not I!”
As I try to recall those psychotic images, an exercise which has fascinated me for forty years (my wife says that I’m the kind who can’t keep his tongue off an infected tooth), I think that even then the one or two sane cells that still were working in my brain wondered when the Japanese whom I had undoubtedly really killed in aerial combat would come to accuse me of their murder.
They never showed up, make of that what you will.
The dead and the dying faded into the blackness and the blackness itself slowly lifted, to hover like the threat of pestilence beneath the ceiling. The dead returned to dance.
They whirled and spun, leaped and cavorted, jumped and gamboled like they were celebrating a graveyard Mardi Gras, all the time performing unspeakably lascivious acts on each other. I was pulled off the wall, like a prize trophy, and made to dance with them. Why not? I would soon join them, if I had not done so already.
Did I believe that the horror was more than illusion when it was happening?
Then and now. It was not illusion. It was as re
al as the Compaq 286 on which I am setting down the story of Andy King, or the first chapter anyway.
Maybe the horror was on a different plane of reality (whatever that means) than my microcomputer, but it was still real. More real.
Why am I alive then? Why did I receive a several-decade—still indeterminate—stay of execution?
I don’t know. Not for sure. Anyway, they didn’t get me that night in the Superstition Mountains. Or, obviously, I wouldn’t be writing this story.
The dead left me, with a strong promise that they would be back in a little while. I was again pinned against the wall in total blackness. I shouted for Andrea, but she did not or could not reply.
Then I heard a clink beneath my feet, coins falling on the floor. Despite the darkness I could see the glint of gold. Hundreds, then thousands of gold coins piled up beneath me, around me, rising rapidly to my throat. I was being buried in gold.
I pleaded with the horror to spare me. I had not come looking for gold.
But you did, the darkness screamed, you wanted to search for the mine of the Dutchman.
Only as a joke.
The clinking stopped.
Then the Dutchman again. Not the Flying Dutchman. The Lost Dutchman, though he did not think he was lost. And he wasn’t lost. It was the mine that was lost.
Jacob Walz was only dead.
He was a tall cadaverous old man with a bald head and a dirty white beard. He told me where his mine was. All the searchers are totally wrong about where it might be.
More gold than in South Africa and Russia put together. A mountain, quite literally, of gold. I know exactly where it is.
Why haven’t I gone back to get it? I don’t need it. I don’t want it. And I wouldn’t return to the Superstition Mountains for all the gold in the world.
I stayed away from Arizona for thirty-five years. Then, on a vacation to Vegas with my wife, we flew down to the Grand Canyon for a couple of days, both of us hating Vegas. By the end of the trip, the compulsion to drive down to Phoenix was almost irresistible. I barely escaped back to Vegas, which seemed a paradise of sanity and rationality.
No, I’ll never go back to the Superstitions, not anywhere near them. The horror is still lurking out there somewhere.
Which is probably why the Dutchman told me where his lost mine was.
Or maybe it’s all in my head. Practically speaking, it doesn’t matter. Just don’t book me anywhere through Phoenix.
The Dutchman disappeared with his horde of gold, and the dead—the other dead—returned for more dancing. The men of VF 29 and Andrea’s half-headed husband and drowned baby with them.
I knew I was going to die. The danse macabre was for me. I spun faster and faster as I was passed from one set of obscene hands to another. I teetered on the brink of an eternity of hell, where the torments of my dance of death would endure forever.
Then, made bold by a surge of courage whose origin I did not know, I informed my tormentors that I was very sorry, but I was not about to join them on their return trip to Hades. I didn’t belong there. Purgatory, maybe, but not hell. So the bus would have to leave without me.
They didn’t like it. The violins screeched more wildly, the dancers whirled more insanely. Jeremiah Gregory Peter Daugherty, USNR, dug in his heels. No. And I mean no.
All right we’ll take her. She’s the one we want anyway.
Fine. You can have her. She belongs in hell.
They tossed me back to the wall and continued their feverish gavotte. Yes, she is the one we want. We will come for him later.
It’s all right with me. I thought she looked like she was dead the first time I saw her. Take her and you’re welcome.
Exhausted, burning with heat, terrified, ready to die if only to escape the madness, I thought about my decision.
Coward.
Wait a minute, guys, you can’t have her either. Why not? Because she’s mine, not yours, that’s why not. I have staked my claim on her. The Dutchman can have his damn mine. I’ll take her. The matter is not subject for discussion.
The air group commander says so! Pilots, man your planes!
Many years later I wondered if what came next was a war in heaven.
Leyte Gulf on a bigger scale. Between good and evil. Was she that important?
At that moment, despite my pain and fear and near madness, I had no doubt.
Whatever it was, the struggle for Andrea King, if that was her name, was titanic. Not a debate, not a trial, not an argument, but a furious tug-of-war. I wanted her and they wanted her. I loved her and they hated her. We fought all night. Or so it seemed. Sometimes I thought I had won her. Other times I thought the black cloud had defeated me and carried her off.
Then darkness settled in on me, permanently, it seemed. I was not sure whether I had won or lost.
Much later, consciousness slowly ebbed back into my organism. At first I thought I was in hell. Well, maybe purgatory. Wherever, I was on fire. I tried to open my eyes. The lids wouldn’t move. I tried again, hard. Finally they flickered open. Before they closed, I realized that I was neither in hell nor in purgatory but under a blazing sun on the edge of a cliff. Highway 88 on the far side of the Superstition Mountains.
What was I doing here?
Then I remembered the horror.
Andrea!
I struggled to my feet. The Chevy stood mutely next to me. I looked in the window. The key was still in the ignition. I opened the door and turned the key.
My faithful mount purred contentedly.
Where was Andrea!
No luggage in the backseat. No trace of her, not even of the remains of our picnic lunch.
I turned off the ignition and raced, well, hobbled up the trail to the ridge. It took a couple of eternities to make it to the top. Clinton, Arizona Territory, what was left of it, stood serenely at the edge of Lost Dutchman Canyon, as though nothing had happened there since the last miners left.
“Andrea!” I screamed. No response.
I rushed to the main building of the ghost town. She wasn’t there.
I searched desperately in every corner of that shriveled old town. Not a trace.
I collapsed on the dilapidated steps of the main building. She had departed, of that I was absolutely certain. I glanced at my watch—1:15 in the afternoon. If she had started at, say, midnight, she would have had time to walk to Tortilla Flat, which was only a couple of miles away, and catch the morning “stage” to Apache Junction or even to Phoenix. She might have thumbed a ride in the opposite direction, back to Globe—if there were any cars on the treacherous dirt road. Who would turn down a pretty girl, lugging a heavy bag, on a hot, dusty morning?
Improbable? Sure. It was all improbable. Maybe she had been carried off to hell, cardboard suitcase and all.
I stumbled back to the car and, ignoring the dangers, drove as rapidly as I could down to the general store, which was about all there was to Tortilla Flat. Yes, the stage had left several hours ago. No, there was no young woman with dark red hair on it.
I got much the same answer at Canyon Lake and in Apache Junction. No one could remember. Well, there might have been a pretty girl, but, gosh, I can’t recollect, young man. Sorry.
She might have jumped on a train in Apache and gone back to Globe or to Phoenix or anywhere in the world.
Or nowhere in this world.
I raced recklessly back to Globe on U.S. 60. No, the woman at the registration desk of the Pioneer had not seen my wife. She regarded me suspiciously. Is there something wrong? Maybe you ought to walk down to the court house and talk to the sheriff.
Back in the car, I realized that I was making a fool of myself and taking a big chance. If the police became interested and asked for an explanation … what would I say?
They’d want to send me to an asylum, much to the horror of my poor parents.
What was there left to do?
I would drive as far as the Arizona Biltmore, on the chance I would see her. Then …
&n
bsp; Then it didn’t matter.
What had happened? Had she somehow become a magnet, drawing evil energies down to that sick old place?
Or was she really dead, as I thought the first moment I had seen her? A lost soul seeking her way to hell?
Was she being punished, perhaps, for having murdered her husband and child? Doomed to wander the earth like …
Like a Flying Dutchman!
Or had I imagined it all?
Halfway back to Apache Junction, with the gray clouds gathering again, I turned off the ignition once more and, much as I used to overfly the ocean before returning to the Big E searching for life rafts, thought about the possibilities.
I’d try the Biltmore. If she wasn’t there, I’d fly one more sweep over the ocean to make sure. The hotel was being refurbished, as was everything else in America at that time. The manager responded to my Irish charm by saying that they had not hired any waitresses recently.
Doggedly I filled up the tank of the car and, ignoring the rain, drove back through Tempe, where there is a big university now, toward Apache Junction.
It was dusk when I climbed the trail from the road up to Clinton for the last time.
Flashlight in hand, I strode bravely into the main building. Navy Cross hero at work.
The hero nearly jumped out of his shoes when the glare of his flashlight caused a stirring in one corner.
Only rats. Or some similar desert creatures.
After they left, there was total silence.
Carefully I explored every corner, as though my precision would exorcise the demons. As the minutes slipped away I realized that I was no longer afraid.
The full moon bathed the desert outside in quiet light. Inside, everything seemed peaceful.
Time to return to Tucson.
I swept the room with my beam for the final time. Then I noticed that the dust had disappeared from the floor.
As though there had been a dance the night before.
And I saw in one corner of the room a bit of white cloth crumpled into a loose ball. I picked it up and rubbed it with my fingers. Cloth from her blouse.
It was my turn to shiver. I should call the state police. What could I tell them? A woman whose name I did not know had disappeared I knew not where, because demons out of hell had swept through a ghost town in the Superstition Mountains.
All About Women Page 19