Blair’s Nightmare (16 page)

It was Blair who noticed the cut foot first. “Look,” he said. “He's limping. He's bleeding, David. He's bleeding.” By then things had quieted down a little, and Nightmare was standing still—and holding his left front foot up off the ground. They made him lie down; and when they inspected the foot, they found a deep puffy-looking cut between the pads. When they turned his foot over to look at it, Nightmare looked too, sniffing and licking the cut, then looking up at them with a funny expression as if he were embarrassed, and apologizing for causing a fuss. Finally he put his chin down on the ground
and lay still, only wagging his tail limply whenever they spoke to him or said his name. After a while he raised his head and sniffed at the pocket of Blair's jacket.

“Oh,” Blair said, “I almost forgot.” He dug in his pockets and brought out a few handfuls of kibble. Nightmare wolfed it down as if he were starving.

“See,” Blair said. “I said he needed us. He's hungry. He's really hungry. And he's sick, David. I think he's sick.”

“I don't think he's really sick,” David said, “or he wouldn't want to eat at all. He's probably just weak from loss of blood. From the looks of things he really lost a lot of blood.” He pointed to the rocky ground of the ledge. In several places there were big dark blotches of dried blood, and here and there there were a few fresh smears of bright red where he'd probably broken the wound open again in the excitement of greeting them. It was then, when David was looking at all the blood and thinking it was no wonder that Nightmare didn't feel very well, that he noticed something else.

Halfway hidden behind a jutting boulder, a long narrow crevice made a dark slash on the face of the cliff. It wasn't until David was moving toward it curiously, that he realized what it was—a cave. Inside the narrow entrance, the cave widened into a deep rocky cavern. He moved forward slowly, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dim light.

“It's his house,” Blair said. “It's Nightmare's house. It's where he goes everyday.”

David turned around. Blair was standing in the entrance of the cave, and behind him was Nightmare. Limping badly, Nightmare moved ahead of them into the cave and then turned around and looked back and wagged his tail. David was thinking that he seemed to be welcoming them in, when Blair said, “He says come in. He wants us to come in.”

There was a shallow depression in the soft mossy soil against one wall and near it, half buried in the dust, a couple of large well-chewed bones. David picked one up and examined it, wondering if it might be the remains of Mr. Golanski's ham. He was still inspecting the bone when Blair said, “Look David. Is it real?”

It was real, all right, a pistol, heavy and dark and deadly-looking. Blair was holding it in both hands with the barrel pointing right toward David's legs. David took it away from him in a hurry. “Ye gods,” he said under his breath.

Blair showed him where he'd found it, right there on the ground, half-buried under a bunch of dead leaves. It was dusty and there was dirt in the barrel, but there was no rust, and it didn't look all that old. David didn't know much about pistols, not even enough to know how you went about checking to see if they were loaded. He was examining it gingerly, making sure
to keep the muzzle pointed at the ground, when Nightmare began to growl.

“No, Nightmare,” Blair said. “It's all right,” and the growling stopped; but the dog's eyes were still on the gun and David could see that he was trembling. He kept watching, alert and tense, while David took off his backpack and put the gun in between his binder and his math book, and zipped it back up. It wasn't until the gun was out of sight that Nightmare wagged his tail sheepishly and limped over and licked David's hands, as if he were apologizing for distrusting him.

Even before Blair found the gun, David had been antsy to leave. The sun had disappeared over the western hills, and the sky was darkening. Under the trees it would soon be too dark to see the path. And—not too long ago someone had been to Nightmare's cave. Someone who carried a pistol. David had to make a decision in a hurry, and he decided that they had to take Nightmare with them. It was risky and it might be very hard to do, but there just wasn't any way they could go off and leave him—hungry and thirsty and with a wound that seemed to be festering.

“We'll take you home with us,” Blair told Nightmare, which was exactly what David was thinking at the moment. “Won't we?”

“I guess we'll have to,” David said.

“Right now?”

“Right now. As soon as we bandage his foot.”

“What with?”

“My T-shirt,” David said, taking off his jacket.

Fortunately the T-shirt was an old one and tore easily. David ripped it up, and after he'd wrapped the foot snugly, he tied the bandage in place with lots of long thin strips of shirt. Nightmare watched the whole proceeding with polite interest, and afterward he didn't seem to limp quite as much when he walked. When David and Blair climbed down the path into the ravine, he followed slowly and carefully.

Nightmare stayed close beside them as they made their way down the ravine, but David noticed that he was breathing very hard, and if they stopped for even a moment he immediately lay down. He seemed weak and tired; but when they moved on, he struggled to his feet and followed. He followed, that is, until they reached the place where the path led up out of the ravine and on up to the top of the ridge. At that point Nightmare refused to follow. Instead he began to move on down the hill, walking more rapidly than he had before. When they called him, he looked back and whined and then went on.

“He wants us to come with him,” Blair said and began to run. David followed, protesting, until he suddenly realized
where they were going. The lake was only a few yards away, and Nightmare was probably very thirsty. David stopped arguing then and followed. He caught up with Blair and Nightmare just as they got to the lake.

At the edge of the lake David and Blair sat down and watched while Nightmare drank and drank for a long time, and then flopped down beside them panting, his long wet tongue lolling out one side of his mouth.

“He feels better now,” Blair said.

David nodded. He felt better too—even though the water of the lake was already changing from blue to black and the long shadows under the trees were blurring into darkness. He was just opening his mouth to say they had better get going when Nightmare's head jerked up and he growled softly. Following the dog's gaze, David turned in time to see two men emerging from the underbrush only a few yards away.

T
HE TWO MEN BURST OUT
from behind a clump of bushes and staggered a few steps toward the lake before one of them stopped. Leaning against the trunk of a tree, he slowly sank down to the ground. The other one went on a few steps before he stopped and went back. The one on the ground had a dirty gray blanket draped over his head and shoulders, but the other was wearing light blue denim pants and shirt, and there were some big white numbers on his back. For a moment he bent over the man in the blanket, and then he hurried on down to the lake. Stooping, he lifted some water in his cupped hands and was starting back—when Nightmare growled loudly. The man jerked as if he'd been shot and whirled around. David gasped, and then almost choked in horror. The man in blue denim had no face.

Until that moment David hadn't really been frightened. Instead, when he realized what was happening, there was only a weird kind of sharpening of his senses, as if everything had suddenly gotten clearer and brighter. While the figures of the two men moving through the strange, colorless evening light seemed to be printing themselves on his brain, he was only feeling an excited curiosity—a kind of wonder about what was going to happen next. But then the man turned toward them.

Where the escaped prisoner's face should have been, there was only a shapeless discolored mass, with tiny slits for eyes. David swallowed hard. His heart was suddenly beating so hard it seemed about to explode. He jumped to his feet and reached for Blair. Nightmare was on his feet, too, and the hair on his back had risen into a stiff, bristly ridge. David took hold of his collar.

“Oh my God!” The faceless man staggered backwards until he bumped into the trunk of a tree. “Don't turn him loose,” he said in a high-pitched whine. “Please, don't turn him loose.” The other convict, the one on the ground, turned then, and there was a momentary glimpse of a thin, dark face with large sunken eyes. The eyes stared wildly, and the mouth opened and let out a strange high-pitched moan. He pulled the blanket up over his head and fell forward into a blanket-covered heap. The other man slid around behind the tree and peered
out, and it was suddenly apparent that he wasn't actually faceless. It was just that his cheeks and forehead and even his nose were so blotched and bumpy and swollen that the whole hardly resembled a normal face.

“We give up,” he said. “We're on our way to turn ourselves in. Hang on to that dog, kid. We give up. Honest.”

David swallowed hard. His heart had stopped exploding, but his tongue felt stiff and uncooperative. He thought he ought to say something, but he couldn't think of anything that seemed appropriate. His first impulse was to say, “It's all right. The dog won't hurt you.” But he quickly realized that might not be a good idea. Finally all he said was, “Who-o-o are you?” in a quavery voice, which was pretty stupid, because, of course, he knew who they were.

“Steve Hutter,” the lumpy face said. “And that's Herbie Boston. He's real bad sick. I gotta get him to a hospital real quick.”

“What's the matter with your face?” Blair said.

“My face?” The escaped prisoner named Steve Hutter moved cautiously out from behind the tree. “It's not just my face. It's all over me. Hang onto that dog, okay?” He pulled up the front of his shirt, and even in the dim light it was obvious that his stomach was just as red and lumpy as his face. “It's all over me. Poison oak. It's driving me crazy.”

“Does he have poison oak, too?” Blair asked.

“Herbie? No. Not poison oak. He's got a lot worse than poison oak.” Keeping his eyes on Nightmare, he took a step forward, glanced at the lump under the blanket, and put his hands up around his mouth. “He thinks he's got rabies,” he whispered.”

“Rabies?” David gasped. “Why does he think that? Did something bite him?”

Steve Hutter made a snorting noise. “Yeah, something bit him. That dog of yours almost bit his arm off, nine or ten days ago. His arm is swole up bigger'n a pumpkin, and he's burning up with fever.”

“Nightmare bit him?” David said. Beside him, Nightmare was standing quietly but the hair was still up on his back, and now and then a soft growl rumbled in his chest. “Are you—sure?”

Hutter, who had begun to scratch frantically on both sides of his neck, stopped long enough to say, “Am I sure it was that dog that done it? Well, if it wasn't, it was one that looked just like him. You got some more big as that?”

“Well, look,” David said. “Your friend couldn't have rabies if it was this dog that bit him—because Nightmare doesn't have rabies.”

The man under the blanket swayed to a sitting position and
pulled the blanket away from his face. His eyes looked wild and feverish. “Are you sure?” he asked in a croaking voice.

“I'm positive,” David said. “If he bit you nine or ten days ago, and he was rabid then, he'd be dead by now. So he couldn't have had rabies when he bit you.”

Herbie Boston, alias “The Weasel,” stared at David with bloodshot sunken eyes and then threw back the blanket. “Look,” he said.

But when David started forward, still hanging onto Blair with one hand and Nightmare with the other, The Weasel cringed away in terror.

“Keep away,” he pleaded. “Keep him away from me.”

So David told Nightmare to stay, and Blair to keep a tight hold on his collar, and then he moved a few cautious steps closer. Not too close though, in case the man under the blanket wasn't as sick as he was pretending to be.

The Weasel's right arm was in a makeshift sling made from a strip of plastic that looked as if it might once have been a garbage bag. With his left hand he very carefully pushed the plastic back until David could see a swollen, discolored mass, punctured by a series of deep, festering indentations. It wasn't a pleasant sight.

Pulling the sling back in place, The Weasel cradled his arm against his chest and looked up at David with his strange
feverish stare. Rabies or not, he was definitely sick—and frightened.

“It couldn't be rabies,” David said, “but it might be blood poisoning. You'd better get to a doctor right away.”

“Yeah,” The Weasel said, “we got to get to a doctor.”

Steve, the other convict, had edged out from behind the tree. “We was on our way to the road,” he said. “We was going to flag down a car and ask them to call an ambulance—and the law. We was going to give ourselves up. Only Herbie couldn't go no farther.”

David thought fast. The road was about half a mile away. In the other direction, Golanski's place was not much farther, and mostly down hill. And Mr. Golanski had a gun, in case the prisoners decided to change their minds about giving themselves up. “We could go to Mr. Golanski's,” he said.

“Golanski's?” Steve said.

“The old coot with the shotgun,” The Weasel muttered, rocking back and forth over his arm.

“I don't know,” Steve said to David. “We thought about going there. But we been over that way before, and we seen that old guy with his cannon. He'd probably blow us away and ask questions afterwards.”

“He wouldn't if we were with you,” David said. “And it would be a lot easier to get there.”

“The kid's got a point,” The Weasel said.