Holland Suggestions (19 page)

He walked out of the room and up the dark stairs. I returned to the refrigerator and made a ham sandwich, then sat in the dark at the bar and ate it and drank a cold beer. I tried again to think through my options. Clearly there were only two: to stay or to go. Both seemed inconceivable. That old depressed restlessness came over me, and I knew that I could no more turn away from it now than I could have long ago in West Virginia. It was a clear choice of the lesser of two evils, and now that I had made the commitment, now that I had found Robert Holland’s fourth journal, now that I had reached the trail of the caves, there could be no double-cross of that commitment. There were several beachheads to attack, and I did not know which one to handle first, or, in fact, how to go about any of them. Strangely, it was not the Holland journal that bothered me now; that would be there when I wanted it, and I would have another go at Jill’s room as soon as I saw an opening. What was bothering me was the trail of the caves. That was the one part of it that I could not handle alone. Sometime after midnight I made that commitment too. I felt my way upstairs and stopped just outside Jill’s door. There was no sound anywhere in the inn. I turned to Max’s room and rapped three times lightly. A bedspring creaked and a light went on. In a few seconds Max opened the door, looking very sleepy and slightly annoyed.

I held my fingers to my lips. “I need help,” I said in a whisper. “Can we talk?”

“T
HAT’S QUITE A STORY,
” Max said

We were sitting in the darkness of his car, the one place where I knew we would not be overheard. The two photographs of the mountain trail were in my lap. I had not intended going quite this far with it, but once I started to tell it I had to fill in the gaps to maintain credibility. Piece by piece, then, it came out, the whole story of Robert Holland and the cave and the man of the black Oldsmobile. The one thing I did not tell him was Jill’s part in it, partly because my story did not need that for credibility; mainly because, even after finding the Holland journal in her room, I was not sure of the thrust of her involvement. There was another factor, of course: my reluctance to admit, in the face of cold proof, that she
was
mixed up in it and had been for some time. Whatever the reason, I avoided mentioning her. Max sat through it without reacting either way. When I had told it all, he held the pictures and the gold coin under the dashboard light and examined them closely. “Do you mind if I take this tape loose?” he said. “We should probably look this coin over on both sides.”

I nodded and he peeled back the tape. The coin dropped in his hand.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt that this is Spanish,” he said after a time; “it’s damn old and probably worth a bit of change too.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“And you say this ledge you found is the same one shown in these pictures?”

“I’m sure of it. The pictures were shot from another part of the ledge, farther along. I couldn’t see the cave from where I came out, but I know it’s there.”

“Could it be that the pictures were shot looking back toward you? Maybe the cave showed here is the one you came up through.”

“No, there’s another cave; I’m sure of that. The tunnel up to the ledge was just a hole at that point, just big enough for a man’s body. I can’t be sure, but this cave with the Maltese cross looks like a walk-in cave, and it’s at the end of the ledge near the base of the mountain.”

He studied the picture some more. “I think you’re right. It’s an exciting thought. What are you going to do about it?”

“I don’t know.”

He looked at me curiously.

“I’d just about reached the end of my rope with it,” I said. “First I almost fell into that mineshaft, then I almost fell off the goddamn ledge. If I keep on with it, it’s just a matter of time till I get killed. Yet…”

“Yet you can’t leave it.”

“Not this way.”

“I can understand that, all right. Why did you tell me?”

I shrugged. “You’re a climber. I assume you’ve got the technical ability to get across that ledge, and I haven’t. I had to trust somebody.”

“I’m flattered,” he said dryly. Another pause, then: “Assume the cave does exist and that we can get to it along that ledge. You have any idea what we might find there?”

“I can’t begin to guess.”

“I can,” he said.

I knew what he was thinking; I too had thought more than once of Harry Gould’s mountain tales, but the possibility seemed too remote to consider seriously. I wasn’t interested in that anyway, not while there were so many personal questions unanswered. Max had lapsed into deep thought. Once he glanced at me and said, “You know my wife will kill me, don’t you?” Wife or not, there was no doubt that he was going with me. Somewhere in the middle of a thought he stopped talking about Philadelphia and Christine and started talking about climbing equipment. He had some equipment in the trunk, but he would need a day in Pueblo, perhaps Denver, to get the rest. We could plan a trip to the cave day after tomorrow at the earliest.

“It might be just as well for both of us to go through the motions of leaving,” he said. “Everybody knows I’m going anyway, and if you clear out too maybe the heat will be off. Is there any chance you were followed up to the cave today?”

“Anything’s possible,” I said. “I thought I was being careful, but I’m no woodsman.”

“Even so, if it’s as tough a climb as you say, they’ll have as much trouble getting in as you had. I think we’ll have a day to get ready. Anyway, that’s what it’ll take.”

“I could use the day—to rest.”

“Yes, you do look run down. Listen, let’s sleep on it, both of us. I’ll get up and leave as I planned. You pull out sometime tomorrow afternoon. Tomorrow night we’ll meet in town—there’s a motel there called the Sangre East—and we’ll see how it looks then.”

We parted on that promise. At Max’s door we shook hands, and I went to my room hoping that at last I would find the peace of mind to sleep. It didn’t happen. I sat at my window until thick black clouds covered the moon, then I lifted the window and pushed my head through the crack. The valley was so dark that I could not see down the balcony to Jill’s room. The street was a black presence below me, felt rather than seen. I looked toward the hill and remembered that my car was still parked there, in the forest above the house. I would have to get it early in the morning, before anyone was up. I went to bed but tossed restlessly for half an hour and got up again. Just to be doing something, I decided to get the car now. I looked again at the hill and saw a blaze of light. Surprised almost to shock, I groped for the telescope, sat behind it, and adjusted the eyepiece; I turned it until the light came clear. What I saw was the porch of the house, with light pouring through an open door. At first there were no people, but then the woman came to the door. She was only a silhouette to me, and she stood there for no more than ten seconds. The man appeared in the circle of light, walked up the stairs and into the house. The door closed and the hill was dark.

I watched for another ten minutes, but there was nothing more to see. Lightning flashed and the house and grounds were revealed in a staccato white light. Rain fell against my window; my restlessness increased with the patter of the raindrops and I felt a need for some strong, positive action. I dressed quickly, slipped into my coat and went quietly out into the rain. Already the street was turning to mud again. The rainfall was steady, soaking through my hat and trickling down my face. I stumbled off the road and into a patch of briars, realizing then that I had forgotten the flashlight, but I did not turn back. I moved ahead by memory, blundering around until I came across the path that led up the hill from the valley floor.

I climbed in almost total darkness, looking back once at what must have been the town. I could not see even the outlines of the buildings. From the ridge the old house was a mere shadow; black on black. Lightning flashed again and I saw the porch about thirty yards ahead. I climbed the steps and crossed the porch to the oval glass, but the drapes had been drawn tightly and I could not find a crack of light between them. I had a sudden terrible vision of the door being jerked open, strong enough to send me scurrying down the stairs double-time. On the bottom step I fell and went belly first into the mud.

I got up and moved around the house, feeling my way along toward the rear. There was light there, but dim and high, coming from a third-floor window. I did not know if the window had a shade, but the hill behind the house was steep and I guessed that I could move higher until I could see better. But the higher I went, the thicker the forest was. I did reach third-floor level, but the view was lost in a mass of tangled branches.

There was more lightning, prolonged and jagged. It lighted the whole area. I saw the garage at the rear of the house and the scaffolding that was still there from the work project. The lightning had quit then, and I felt my way down the hill. The only light for a long time was that steady flat yellow of the window on the third floor. I probed the texture of the house bricks with my fingertips, moving along toward the garage until I bumped into the scaffold. Looking up, I saw that it was perhaps as high as the house itself; it went beyond the lighted window, possibly to the roof. There were small two-board platforms at each level, with skinny crossbars holding it together. Taking hold of the outer bars, I started to climb. On the lower level the scaffold was sturdy; it became shakier as I went higher. Once, between the second and third levels, I thought it was turning over. I gripped the side of the house with my fingernails; the nails scraped against stone and the thumbnail broke. I shifted my weight forward, toward the house, and that helped stabilize it. As I climbed above the second landing I saw the woman’s figure pass across the windowshade. There was another lightning flash and I saw the windowsill just above my head. But again the scaffold shook, this time clattering against the house.

The shade came up and the woman peered out. I flattened against the scaffold boards and froze there. The scaffold was still swaying; she could not miss that if she looked carefully. But the shade was up for only a second, then it was jerked down and the silhouette moved away from the window. I did not waste time wondering if she had seen me; I pulled myself to my hands and knees and reached up for that final level. My feet found the crossbars and I pulled my face up to the windowsill.

I was looking into a bathroom. The woman stood naked less than two feet away. She was drying her body with a bath towel. The shade had been pulled almost to sill level and I could see only the lower half of her body. She bent over once, but her face was in shadow. She dried her toes carefully, then opened a medicine cabinet built into the wall near the window. I got a full view of her pubic area; a long hysterectomy scar stretched up from the thick mound of hair. Suddenly the light was out and, still nude, she walked out of the bathroom and down a semilighted corridor. She put out the corridor light and went into a room at the head of the stairs.

I climbed down, undecided about what to do next. But I had no time to consider it. A noise from the front of the house sent me stumbling through the darkness toward the garage. I heard it again, closer now, and my groping fingers found a small side door in the garage and pushed it open. I left the door cracked slightly so that I might watch, if I could see, what happened in the backyard. Nothing happened and no one came. The inside of the garage was, if possible, a deeper black than the outside. Only a flash of faint bent light came through a window somewhere and reflected from the glass of the Oldsmobile. With that, I knew that someone had turned on lights in the lower level; because of the angle, I could not see who it was or what he was doing. The hell with it; I turned my attention to the car. I moved around it, feeling along its length and kneeling at the front, at the license plate. I felt the words
Florida
and
Sunshine State,
and the numbers 38-3414.

More noises, closer now. A scraping noise just outside the garage and the sounds of someone coming. Keys falling on a keychain, then a man swore, as though he had just remembered that he had not locked the door after all. I ducked behind the car, near the right rear tire, then flattened on the floor and rolled under the car as the door opened and the man came in.

He was dragging a heavy chest and talking to himself. Obviously he had been drinking, but I heard the words
whore
and
bitch
and figured that they had been quarreling. He dropped the chest and turned on a light, which shocked me into a muscular freeze. I held my breath as he came partly around the car and stopped. His foot was inches from my face.

“Goddamn cunt,” he said.

He leaned on the car and looked out of a window; the car dipped slightly under his weight. A movement off to the side caught my attention and I shifted my eyes just as a puffy black rat crawled out of a ragpile and moved toward my leg. It moved slowly, staggering as though it was sick, but its eyes were wide and its nose, wiggling, pointed right at my leg. It stopped to leave some droppings in its path, then moved toward me again. The man kicked at something, and there was a clatter as a shovel fell to the floor. The rat held still and so did I.

“Bitch,” the man said.

The rat pricked its ears but did not move. The man opened the chest and began to unload climbing gear; spiked shoes and coiled ropes, heavy picks and a pointed ax. There were shovels too, three of them, with heads of different shapes. He walked to the rear of the car, opened the trunk, and began to load the gear. I felt something soft brush my leg and I clenched my fist and closed my eyes. Then the trunk was slammed shut and the light put out; the door opened and the man was gone. I kicked out with my foot, but the rat had moved on to other things.

I blundered out into the rain, and the light from the lower room fell full upon my face. I saw the woman’s silhouette pass the window, then the man came in and there was some shouting. I moved closer. Between the angry outbursts from the man came the soft voice of the woman. I was close enough now to touch the window; I did touch it, but their voices were muffled beyond understanding. The shade was pulled tightly against the sill, but the lower edge was torn slightly. I pressed my face against it just as the man walked past. The water flowed down and blurred my vision. I rubbed the glass with my sleeve, but the water ran down faster than I could get rid of it. I was getting only occasional glimpses of the man’s back; the woman seemed to be sitting in a chair beyond my vision. She sat there for a long time. When she did move, she went to the fireplace, directly across from my window. She turned and regarded the man with a look of scorn.