Shadowland (32 page)

 
   'Well, I'm going to sleep,' Del said, going up the stairs.

 
   'And what if you want a glass of water? What if you have to take a leak?'

 
   'There's a bathroom attached to your room.'

 
   'What if you want to look outside? We don't have any windows?'

 
   'Look, aren't you tired?' Del said furiously. 'I'mgoing to sleep. I'm not going to parade around and look at stuff I'm not supposed to see, I'm not going to look at the stars, I'm just going to bed. You do what you want to.'

 
   'Don't get so angry.'

 
   'I am angry, damn you,' Del said, and moved away from Tom to open his door and disappear inside.

 
   Tom went to his door. Del was tearing his shirt off over his head, not bothering to unbutton it. Their beds had been turned down. 'So why are you so all — fired hot all of a sudden?'

 
   'I'm going to bed.'

 
   'Del.'

 
   His friend softened. 'Look. I'm tired enough to drop. It's our first night.' Del sat on his bed and kicked off his shoes. He undid his belt, stood up, and pushed his pants down. 'And I'm going to close these doors so I don't have to know if you're going to get into trouble.'

 
   'But Del, he
wants
us to think about — '

 
   'You're tired, aren't you?' Del said, tugging one of the pocket doors out of the stub wall.

 
   'Yes.'

 
   'Then go to bed and forget it.' He went to the other stub wall and pushed its door across, cutting off his room from Tom's.

 
   'Del?' Tom said to the door.

 
   'I'll see you in the morning. I'm too tired to think about anything.'

 
   Tom turned away. His own room glowed: bed so neat it appeared to have been opened by can opener, soft lights. The second Rex Stout book he had brought in his suitcase lay on the bedside table. He touched the switch beside the door, and the overhead lights darkened. The light beside the book made that end of the room, the book and the bed and the lamp, as inviting as a cave. He undressed quickly to his underpants and slipped into bed. Tom picked up the Rex Stout book and turned to the first page. After a few minutes the print swam, and then seemed to make unrelated but pointed comments about some other story. He realized that he was dreaming about reading. Tom turned off the light and rolled into his cool pillow.

 
   An indeterminate length of time later the barking ofdogs brought him back up to consciousness. First one dog, then two. Sounds of a fight followed. A door slammed somewhere, men cursed, one dog screamed in rage or pain. A man shouted
'Bastard!'
and the dog's sound of agony turned into a yelp. Tom sat up in bed. His hand was asleep, and he rubbed it until it throbbed. Downstairs, men were moving with heavy footsteps across the floor, going in and out. A glass broke, the other dog began to growl. 'Del?' Tom said. Several loud male voices raised at once.

 
   Tom went to the pocket doors and pushed one a few inches back into the wall. Del lay face down in the dark, breathing deeply. Tom slid the door to again and groped across the room to the hall door, expecting that it would be locked.

 
   But it was not: he opened it a crack. The lights in the hall dimly glowed. Now he could hear the voices and the dogs more clearly. The men sounded as brutish as the animals. Tom opened the door wide and saw himself reflected in the big window opposite. The lights in the woods shone through his body. He stepped out into the hall. Downstairs, at the back of the house, a man shouted, 'Get that mutt over —
god damn —
shake that damn . . . ' It was not the voice of Coleman Collins.

 
   A pool of light suddenly appeared on the flagstone terrace beneath his window, outlining a man's tall shadow. Tom stepped back from the window. A burly man in an army jacket stepped into view, hauling a large black dog on a chain. The dog turned to snarl at him and the man jumped forward and cuffed its mouth. 'Jesus!' the man bawled. Protruding from one of the pockets of the green army jacket was the neck of a bottle. He dropped the chain, vanished back under the window for a moment, and reappeared with a shovel. He feinted at the dog with it, set it down, and vanished into the house again. When he came back he carried a set of long-handled tongs with metal-banded clamps at the end. This too clattered down onto the flagstones, and the man swaggered back toward the house, shouting something. He had a short bristly brown beard. One of the men from the train: Tom's heart nearly stopped, and his eyes jumped up to the illuminated woods.

 
   
Oh, no.

 
   On a flat boulder directly under a light, so far away Tom could not see details of face or clothing, a slight figure in a long blue wrap and red cap set on blond hair was holding up a small glittering box. The little figure wonderingly turned the box over in its hands. Then the head turned and looked directly at him. He backed away in panic, and the boy's head looked aimlessly away, first to one side, then to the other.
'Del,'
Tom whispered. He looked back at the boy on the rock.
'Del!'
The boy was still turning the box over and over in his hands. Tom sidled over to Del's door and rapped his knuckles against it twice. 'Get out here,' he said, only just not whispering. He knocked again — the noise downstairs was so loud they would not hear him if he took a hammer to the door. The blond boy set the box down on the slab and dreamily brushed his fingers along the rock. 'You have to see this,' Tom said, speaking almost normally.

 
   The door opened a crack. 'Go away. Go in your room.'

 
   'Look,' Tom said.

 
   Now the boy held up an object that must have been a silver key.

 
   'Oh,' Del said, and opened his door all the way and came a step out into the hall. The men downstairs roared.

 
   On his little stage of rock, the boy held the key to the box.

 
   'He wanted us to see it,' Tom whispered. In his pajamas, Del hugged himself beside him. One of the black dogs screeched again — had the bearded man struck it with the tongs? He did not want to get close enough to the window to find out.

 
   The boy in the blue coat put the box to his ear and then held it out at arm's length. He must have used his thumbs to pop open the lid.

 
   Evil black smoke gouted from the box. They were able to see the figure on the rock dropping it, then the smoke obliterated the entire scene in a coiling, billowing mass.

 
   'Like our show,'_Tom murmured. 'When the smoke blows away, no boy.'

 
   'That wasn't a boy,' Del said, going back into his room.

 
   'It was a
girl?'
Tom asked.

 
   'That was Rose Armstrong. Now go to bed.' Del turned around and closed his door.

 
   Tom glanced back at the light: the last vestiges of black smoke drifted over a deserted rock. The leaves around it shook. Down below the windows, the dogs continued their argument.

 
   A man's loud voice rose: 'Get
that fucking
. . . '

 
   Another answered: 'Goddamn soon. Okay with you?'

 
   'Oh, everything's dandy with me.'

 
   Coleman Collins, very clear: 'Are you finally ready?'

 
   The downstairs door slammed open and shadows sprang across the flags, immediately followed by a crowd of men, most of them carrying shovels, two of them pulling the chained dogs. Coleman Collins came behind, now wearing a bright plaid shut, wash pants, and laced boots; a lumberjack. 'Give me that bottle,' he ordered. The man in the army jacket pulled the bottle from his pocket. Collins tilted it over his mouth and handed it back. 'Okay. I'll be back after I . . . '
Check on my guests?
Tom hurried back into his bedroom.

 
   He jumped into bed, pulled the sheets over himself, and waited.
I might even go to sleep,
he told himself,
and not have to do anything else.
But his heart drummed, his nerves simmered. He heard the sounds of men moving randomly around on the flags, then the sound of boots coming up the stairs.

 
   Tom stiffened. The boots came along the hall to Del's door and paused. Del's door opened. A second's silence; Del's door closed and the boots moved along to his own door. It opened, and light filtered into his room. 'Keep your head under your wing,' Collins said softly: it sounded almost tender. The door closed, and the room was black again. Tom heard Collins moving back down the hall, down the stairs.

 
   He waited only a second, then jumped out of bed and groped for his shirt and pants. His feet found his loafers. When he opened the door and went on his knees to the window, he saw the men and the dogs heading out across the flagstones to the woods. Some of the men held flaming torches. Behind them, Collins strode along, carrying a knobbly walking stick. As soon as they had left theflagstones, he trotted to the staircase and began to descend.

 
6

 
In the entry the candles still burned, now only inches from their holders. When he turned back toward the body of the house, he saw weak light spilling from the living room into the hall. He saw that he was passing a row of tall posters in frames — a series of theatrical bills behind glass, like time capsules. They loomed beside him, the glass reflecting a little of the dim light from the living room, a little more of Tom's own outline. In the silence, he felt observed.

 
   Chairs in the living room had been shoved here and there, cigars still burned in ashtrays, glasses stood empty on the wooden tables beside the couches and on the coffee table.

 
   The glass doors at the far side of the living room were open onto the flagstone patio. Across the clutter of the wide room, Tom saw the lights of the men's torches winding through the woods. He stepped onto soft thick carpet. Cigar smoke drifted through the air.

 
   Would he keep his head under his wing? He dodged furniture, going toward the open glass doors, and caught beneath the cigar smoke the odors of trees, earth, and night. Head under your wing, Tom?

 
   'Nuts to that,' he whispered, and stepped through the open glass doors onto the flagstones.

 
7

 
The torches bobbed through the woods a hundred yards ahead, appearing and disappearing as the men who held them skirted trees. Tom could hear their loud voices melting into the snarling of the dogs, and sensed their anticipation without hearing their words. They were going off to the left side of the lake, along the curve of the hill where he and Del had seen Rose Armstrong.