Cage of Night (17 page)

Richard Mitchell, KNAX-TV:

"Even in the rain, the anti-capital punishment group continues to march in protest in front of the prison gates. A man beats a drum that makes a lonely, chilling sound in the darkness tonight. You have to wonder if the condemned prisoner can hear that drum in the death chamber. There are only a few minutes to go now, a few more minutes before a human life is snuffed in retribution for a horrible crime. Listen to that terrible lonely drum sound in the night, just listen to it."

Tape 40-D, December 2. Interview between Attorney Risa Wiggins and her client in the Clark County Jail.

A: That was the night you set fire to the well?

C: Yeah. I figured if I dumped enough gasoline down there and set a fire, maybe that would get rid of the alien.

A: Did it?

C: I thought it did. For a few days, anyway. But then the chanting in my head started again. (Pause) I don't think anything can kill that alien. I think it's indestructible. You know, just like in the Sci-Fi movies. I mean, they could drop a nuclear bomb on it and it wouldn't make any difference.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I took Cindy home in a circuitous way through alleys so that Garrett wouldn't have a chance to see us.

"I'm afraid of going back to the mental hospital, Spence."

"You're not going back to the mental hospital."

"Garrett'll say I made him do it."

I looked over at her and smiled. "Nobody'll believe that, Cindy."

"But the well."

"Remember the Shared Psychotic Disorder?"

"Then you don't believe there's an alien in the well?"

"There isn't one, Cindy."

"Then you're saying I'm crazy?"

"I'm saying that you have a great imagination. So do I."

"I really hear stuff down that well."

"I heard stuff that one night myself," I said.

"But you still think it was just your imagination?"

"Absolutely."

"I'm still worried about prison."

I reached across and took her hand. "I'm going to the Chief and tell him everything, Cindy. He'll believe me and then he'll arrest Garrett."

"You really think it can be that easy?"

We had just reached her garage. Moonlight painted her back yard a glowing gold color.

"I love you, Cindy."

She leaned over and kissed me.

"Thanks for believing me, that I didn't have anything to do with the murders I mean."

"I'll talk to you tomorrow."

When I got home, I spent a few minutes talking to my folks and then I went upstairs to my room.

I was just reaching for the light switch when I noticed a flash in the back yard where I'd parked my car next to the alley.

Somebody was down there with a flashlight.

I went to my bureau and got my binoculars.

I expected to see Garrett down there.

At first, I couldn't see anything, just darkness, a dark human form leaning into the back seat of my car.

No police vehicle was any place in sight.

Then I let my eyes adjust to the binoculars and to the darkness.

The figure finally finished in the back seat and stood erect outside my car again.

It was the Chief.

He was holding something almost delicately in his hand. He took some kind of plastic bag from the pocket of his parka and lovingly, carefully slid the object inside there.

I couldn't see what the object was.

But I knew what the plastic carrier was: an evidence bag. They get tagged with a letter and a number and are used in court when the prosecutor is trying to nail the defendant to the wall.

All I could think of was how my car door had been slightly ajar when I'd gone out tonight.

All I could think of was that somebody had seen my car out at the Swenson place.

A knock came behind me.

I turned around and saw Josh silhouetted in the doorway.

"You got a minute?" he said. Then, nodding to the binoculars, "What's going on?"

"Chief's down at my car."

"Oh."

His reaction was odd. I'd expected him to he excited or upset when I told him about the Chief.

He said, "That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

"Oh?"

"Mind if I turn the light on and close the door? I don't want Mom and Dad to hear this."

"To hear what?"

But he didn't answer my question. He clipped on the light, shut the door, and came over and sat down on my desk chair. I sat on the edge of the bed.

"One of the guys on the team has a cousin who works at the police station," Josh said.

"So?" His mysteriousness was beginning to irritate me.

"So, he told me that the Chief got this anonymous note this afternoon."

That was the first time I felt fear. You know how it is—suddenly your bowels turn queasy, and your hands begin to twitch, and you sense that terrible trouble lies just ahead?

"What did the note say?" I tried to act as if I was holding up just fine but I think Josh could see that I was scared.

"Said you killed Mae Swenson."

"Oh, shit," I said.

"Yeah. That's what I say."

"I didn't kill her, Josh. I swear I didn't. And Cindy can testify to that." I told him what Cindy had said about Garrett.

He got up abruptly, clipped off the light and walked to the window again. He picked up my binoculars and put them to his eyes.

"The Chief's gone," he said. "I wonder what the hell he was looking for."

"He found something," I said. "In the back seat. He put it in one of those evidence bags."

Josh shook his head and set down the binoculars. He went back and sat at the desk chair. He didn't bother to turn on the lights.

"Maybe you should talk to Mom and Dad."

"What would I say?"

"Say what you said to me."

"Everything?"

"Yeah, everything."

"They won't know how to handle it, Josh."

"They're stronger people than you think, Spence. They really are. You probably need an attorney right now. Dad knows a couple of good ones in town here."

I got up and started pacing, gaping out the window every few seconds, half-expecting to see the Chief down there again.

"Should I tell them about the well?"

"I guess," he said. "But I sure wouldn't say you believe there's something down there."

"I talked to a shrink about that."

"Yeah?"

I told him about Shared Psychotic Disorder.

"I'm glad you had that talk. I was starting to worry about you."

I paced some more.

He just watched me.

I kept thinking that the Chief could never actually suspect me. I wasn't the killer type. I was this harmless kid who read a lot of Sci-Fi paperbacks and served in the Army and then came back home to settle into adulthood. I guess most of us think that way—that most people see each of us as innocents who couldn't do anything that was terribly wrong, that they see that overall we're good, decent people just like they are. But for the first time, I wondered if that was true. Maybe that wasn't how people perceived me at all. Maybe they saw me as sinister in some way, maybe they wouldn't have any trouble at all seeing me as a murderer.

But I kept seeing him bent into the back seat there, retrieving something. And putting it into an evidence bag.

"This is gonna be hard, Josh. Telling Mom and Dad."

"You better do it before the Chief does."

"I guess that's a good point."

"She's got to tell the truth."

"She?"

"Cindy Brasher."

"Oh."

"She's got to go to the Chief and tell him exactly what happened."

"She's afraid of being sent back to the mental hospital."

"Tough shit, Spence. This is your life we're talking about here."

I went to the window, looked out again. The snow was blue now that the moon had disappeared behind the clouds, that winter night blue that is the wan color of an alien landscape.

Downstairs, the doorbell rang.

"Shit," I said.

"What?"

"It's late for company."

"Yeah, I guess you're right."

"Would you go down and see who it is?"

He stood up and came over to me and took me roughly by the arm. "You've got to get control of yourself, Spence. You understand?"

I did understand.

I took several deep breaths.

His big hand was still cinched on my arm.

I guess he could see that I was calming down.

"I'll be back up right away."

"Thanks, Josh."

"Just keep control of yourself."

"I will. I promise."

"This thing is going to come out all right. It really will."

I knew he'd said that just to make me feel better but I appreciated it.

From downstairs, I could hear the faint rumble of voices. Mom and Dad talking to the visitor.

He gave me a buck-up hit on the arm and then left my room.

I went back to the window and looked out.

Night is so different from day. Two completely separate worlds. That's why vampires always made sense to me. They're truly creatures of the night.

It seemed like a hour, waiting there for Josh.

He came up the stairs very, very slowly. Usually he bounds up them two at a time. I knew this was a bad sign. Walking slowly mean that he was reluctant to give me bad news.

He came into the room and stood there for a moment looking at me.

My bowels went cold and my heart started hammering so hard, it scared me.

"The Chief's downstairs talking to Mom and Dad," he said. Then he paused a really long time. "I guess he did find something in your car tonight."

"What?"

"A knife."

"Oh, God."

"With blood all over it."

"Garrett planted it. That sonofabitch."

"The Chief thinks it's the murder weapon."

I felt as bad for Mom and Dad as I did for me. I couldn't imagine what they must be feeling right now—terror, fear, embarrassment—the Chief standing there and implying that perhaps their son was a killer.

"The Chief would like you to come down."

"All right."

"Right away, he said."

"I'll be down. Just give me a minute. I need to go to the john." And I did. My body felt as if it were starting to run amuck, organ by organ. I couldn't think clearly at all. Reality seemed to be lost behind a wispy fog of horror.

"You really should come down."

"Just tell him I needed to go to the john."

Josh nodded. "We're going to fight this, Spence."

He didn't sound nearly as positive as he had right before he'd gone downstairs.

Then he surprised me by coming over and hugging me. I almost cried. I really did. Because I felt in the hug not only brotherly affection but fear. After seeing the Chief, Josh was as frightened for me as I was.

I spent a quick minute in the john and then hurried back to my room.

I had to move quickly.

Before the Chief got curious and came upstairs.

I stuffed a scarf, gloves, and hunting knife into my jacket. I slipped my jeans off and slipped on a pair of long johns then tugged on my jeans again. I put on one of my heavy Army sweaters. I even put on those old lace-up hunting boots that I'd inherited from Dad.

I was warm as I could be and still remain ambulatory.

Raising the window without making any noise was difficult. I had to raise it a quarter-inch at a time.

As I eased it up, I could feel the cold night air slipping into the house.

In a strange way, the cold air felt good, almost inviting. I was going to be one of those night creatures now. Running for my life. The way so many of the comic books and paperbacks had depicted the lives of their heroes, misunderstood people hunted by stupid and vicious mobs.

I raised the window only as high as absolutely necessary, and then I pushed myself through the opening and stood on the snow-laden roof of the back porch.

I dropped to the ground, the shock to my knees considerable, despite the snowfall.

Then I started running.

I didn't know what else to do.

All I could think of was the bloody knife the Chief had found. Pretty convincing evidence. He'd mark me guilty and not listen to anything I had to say.

I couldn't let that happen. I couldn't.

PART THREE

CHAPTER ONE

After a time, I was beyond pain. I slipped and fell so many times, hurt so many parts of my body, landing on hands and knees torn raw, that I became numb.

I had no idea where I was going.

To reach the edge of town, I took a succession of alleys. The sight of chimney smoke had a sentimental effect on me. I thought of all the lucky people in those snug little houses. I envied them, and in a way I even hated them. They'd believe what the Chief told them to believe. They'd think I was guilty. They'd say, Oh, yes, he always was a strange boy. I guess I ain't exactly surprised he killed old Mae.

I ran.

When I reached the edge of town, I swung over to the rail yards. The half mile or so of double-track box cars hid me pretty well.

I thought of swinging myself up into one of the cars and hiding there for a time. But the rail yard was probably one of the first places they'd look. Freight trains came in twenty-four hours a day. They'd probably figure I'd hop one.

Then I ran down empty gravel roads that cut between fallow cornfields covered with midnight blue snow. The harder I ran, the more dream-like it all seemed to me. I saw a hawk glide down the moonbeams, and I was so touched by its majestic loneliness that I almost cried. I didn't want to escape on a box car. I wanted to escape on the back of a hawk, have him take me to one of the faraway lands I read about in my paperbacks.

A car came rumbling up over the hill behind me.

I pitched myself straight down into the ravine. More pain. I barely felt it.

I crawled around until I came to a shallow culvert. I scampered in there, my hands feeling broken glass, dead weeds, gnarled cigarette packs, and the hard dried pebble-like feces of rats and rabbits.

The car came down the road. I could feel the vibrations in the concrete of the culvert.

It seemed to slow as it drew closer. I had an image of the Chief's car, Garrett sitting next to him with a shotgun, winking at each other. They knew where I was but they were going to be coy about it. They'd slow down a little right here to scare me but then they'd go on, as if they didn't suspect anything at all, and then they'd stop about a quarter mile down the road, just pull off on to the shoulder the way pheasant hunters do in the autumn, and then start their trek back for me.

The car rolled on.

I listened to its weight and rumble recede into the night. What if it was the Chief? What if he was just trying to trick me?

I was already tired of the culvert. I was scrunched up inside almost foetally, the damned thing was so small.

I had a terrible moment of claustrophobia. What if I couldn't get out of here? What if I was stuck?

I forced myself out of the culvert and back into the night.

Where to go?

In the morning, a road like this would be heavily traveled with trucks bringing milk to market. Somebody was bound to see me.

I started running again. All I could think of was that Cindy would tell the Chief the truth and the manhunt would be called off.

This time I didn't fall. I felt sure-footed in a way I never had before in my entire life.

My feet crunched through snow and ice. My eyes roamed the vast blue-white fields that stretched to the moon itself. My breathing came deep and natural, as if my lungs were adjusting to this pace, even though I'd rarely exercised since coming home from the Army. The cold, far from stinging me, balmed me. I felt one with winter the way a wolf must.

I ran.

When I finally collapsed after four or five miles, I began to wonder what Josh and my parents were doing right now.

I doubted they were asleep. Sleep was going to be impossible for them tonight. For many nights, probably.

Even though I'd done nothing to bring on my fate, I hated myself for making them suffer for me. They were good and decent and true people.

I thought of suicide. Maybe that would be best for everybody. No more struggle, no more shame.

The trouble was, I wasn't suicidal. I was one of those people who'd be screaming for life right up to my last breath.

When I finally began to look around, I realized that I was standing in a beaten old deserted barn that sat directly above the line shack and the well in the timberland below.

I walked out into the empty barnyard and looked down into the timber.

Down there. Cindy and that crazy obsession of hers. Alien beings.

Shared Psychotic Disorder.

I had my place for the night.

In one of the horse stalls, I found an ancient dusty horse blanket that didn't smell too badly of horseshit, and I draped myself in it, and I parked my butt in the deepest darkest corner of the stall, and stayed there until dawn, when a plump mother raccoon appeared at the head of the stall and started staring at me.

Her gaze woke me. I sensed it—and her—on some kind of pure animal level.

I wished I had something for her to eat. I wanted to show her I was friendly.

I wanted to pet her the way you would a cat. I needed that animal warmth and love.

I moved as carefully as I could.

Maybe she wouldn't spook and run away.

But spook and run away, she did.

I felt spurned, as if a lover had walked out on me. I wanted to plead with the raccoon to come back. She was a mother, she could mother me.

Then, slowly, I realized that fear and lack of good sleep had made me more than a little crazed.

She wasn't a human being, she was a raccoon, and she hadn't spurned me, she'd simply done what raccoons do when they encounter species larger than themselves—run away.

I stood up and walked down to the open barn door and took my morning piss.

The dawn sky was gray and low. The color had been blanched out of everything. It was like looking at a black and white photo.

I went back to the barn for the horse blanket and set it on a piece of tumbledown fence to let it air out for a while.

Then I heard them.

Voices.

Coming up the hill through the timber.

The Chief.

Running away as I had, the Chief was sure to use a posse to find me. They never use that word anymore, "posse"—they call them "concerned citizens" now or something like that—but that's what these men were.

A posse with guns and mean intent.

I ran out to the blanket and brought it back inside. I didn't want any signs of me hanging out there for them to see.

I had to make a quick decision.

I could hide here, probably up in the hay mow, and maybe they wouldn't find me, and I'd be safe for a day or so till they doubled-back to some of the places they'd covered before.

But I'd have a better chance running.

I looked at the horse blanket. It might be the only thing I'd find to keep me warm tonight.

Take it with me?

No, it'd be too bulky to carry, and if I was forced to drop it somewhere, they'd find it and be able to track my course.

I reluctantly pitched the blanket into the corner of the stall and then I went to the far eastern door of the barn, the one that pointed away from the timber, and even higher up into the hills.

I got outside and then I did the only thing I could do.

I ran.