The Captive (7 page)

The great stupid creature stretched out with his face in a muddy pool, one leg bent under him, the other stretched out in pain, broken ribs starting to heal in masses of scarred flesh. The back and the belly and the head a mass of painful swellings and oozing wounds where the pelt has been torn away. A train whistles in the distance. It will be dawn soon, for the train comes before dawn, and then the cars will come, only one or two most mornings although sometimes I have heard voices along the edge of the little woods. They are children's voices and have meant no danger, so I have paid little attention to them. Now, as I drag myself back toward the hole under the fallen tree, I begin thinking of where I am, how long it will be until I can move to a better place, what next I will be doing. I will not think of anything beyond this for a time. Death is still very close, and I must concentrate  practically every thought and power of will on the healing  of my body. I must be alert to deadening of the flesh, to undue swellings and oozings where they should not occur, to the healing of the many lacerations that could infect or turn gangrenous overnight. The weather is good, I think, as I drag back to the hollow. Only one rain, and it is warm at night. At the edge of the scraped out hole I have a ridiculous time trying to get back down into it without injuring myself further. Finally I can do no more than roll down into it limply, ducking head and holding my broken parts together tightly. Once in the hole again, I am so exhausted that I must relax my will and sleep. The last thing I perceive is the waking birds, the smell of sun hitting wet earth, and a far off train whistle.

The excited voice has been chirping in my ear for a long time, blending with a dream in which it was a chorus of crickets and frogs, which now I can hear separately as I rise toward wakefulness. The voice is narrow, high and has a metallic quality.

"It's a knockout, folks, in the twelfth round. Joe Louis, the Brown Bomber, has just been knocked out by Max Schmeling in the twelfth round. The crowd is going wild here in Madison Square Garden, folks. I wish you could see these people. They are in a frenzy."

I come all the way to consciousness and the pain comes rushing in again, duller than it has been, but very sharp in areas I have not felt before. It is night again. I extend my spatial sense at once, feeling for life and the source of the radio voice. An automobile is pulled off the road into the first trees about a hundred yards away. I sense two humans in it, and the radio is coming from it. The voice is still going on in its artificial hysteria about the two fighters as I seek some explanation for the humans being there. Are they aware of me? Why are they parked there when there are no houses about? I turn up my hearing to the limit, ignoring the raucous chatter of the radio, seeking for sounds from the humans.

"Please...."

"No. Now take me home...."

"I love you, Barbara. if you really loved me ..."

If I were not in such pain, I would laugh. As it is, a laugh would probably tear one of my broken ribs out again.  Lovers. Young people parked in the darkness, fumbling about with their passion. I listen for a time to their mounting efforts to transcend the taboos of their society, and then, tired with the efforts they are making and aware of the great hunger in my stomach, I tune them out as best I can and begin seeking about for small game. The radio noise has about driven everything into hiding for a long ways around, but there is something sniffng about on the far edge of the woods. I concentrate on drawing it to me. As it responds, I realize it is a small dog. Well, better than nothing, although I particularly do not like eating too much of the terrible canned food humans give their dogs. I feel it coming closer in the darkness, and perhaps because my hunger is so great, I do not notice noises coming from another direction until they are very close. Then a shuffling in the leaves hits me with such alarm that I lose concentration on the dog, and it goes leaping away in fright. The sounds of feet in the leaves are almost at my shoulder. I scan quickly in that direction. The two young people are walking directly toward me!

I lie as still as stone. They have stopped at the same moment as the dog ran away. Now they are standing silently no more than ten feet from my hiding place. It is quite dark for them, so they probably cannot see me, although in these past days I have not been as sanitary as I usually am, and there is an unmistakable odor about my lair.

"What'd you come out here for, Stan? There's so many mosquitoes," the girl said softly.

"I dunno," her friend answered, puzzlement in his voice. "I just felt like walkin' around."

"Well let's go back. They're just biting me everywhere."

"Yeah. O.K. I just felt like walkin' around," he said again.

I heard one of them begin walking away, the other standing  still in the dark so that I could hear the catch in his breathing as he scented me. At the same moment, I caught the first whiff of his own fear scent.

"Hey, Barbara," the boy said in a low, excited voice. "It smells like a bear out here."

"Stanley! Come on. The mosquitoes!"

"No. C'mere and smell this. There's a bear out here in the woods, sure enough."

I hear the girl shuffling back through the leaves. Her scent is covered with some sort of rank perfume that smells metallic,  like a painted tin flower. She and the boy are standing even closer to the hole now. I am breathing silently, trying to decide if I could possibly get out and grab them before they ran away. But it would be useless. I could not move that fast without undoing much of the healing process. Only a direct danger could make me move fast now. I will wait them out.

"It sure does stink," the girl says. "Is that a bear? It smells like granddad's cowbarn when he hasn't cleaned it out all winter."

"That ain't a cow. That's bear," the boy says, excited and moving about near the stump of the fallen tree. "I smelled it one time when Fred and Uncle Jake and I went up to Wyoming to hunt cougars and stuff. There was a cave there that we almost got the bear from, but he smelled us and got back out of the canyon before we could get to the horses."

"Well, I don't want to find a bear in the dark, and neither do you," the girl says, very sensibly, I think.

"I bet Uncle Jake could bring his 30-30 right out here and, get that old bear," the boy says, stamping around in the leaves like a buffalo.

The danger is slow to dawn in my mind, dulled as I am with pain and the constant effort on keeping many sets of muscles in a state of tension. What if the boy does bring men with guns, and dogs, perhaps, to this woods? I am sure to be discovered, perhaps killed in my weak state. I would have to move, and I do not know the area. I don't know if I am even near the same city or in the same state. Bill Hegel could have driven anywhere to set up my death. His name in my mind brings on a feeling that I put down because it is totally inappropriate, but there is a mixed rage in it against the agent of my near death. He has succeeded in maiming me for a long time, perhaps ultimately killing me. I think about the feeling and put it away for later.

The young boy isstill kicking through the leaves. I will have to stop this or he will stumble right in on top of me. I feel anger toward him and want him to stop. I hear his feet suddenly stop. The giri's feet also stop. At that I realize what has happened. In my intense need for food, I drew them to me as I was drawing the dog. They left their car and came walking through the woods at my command. And now we are all trapped. The boy has scented me, and if what he says is true, he might bring back men and dogs to kill me, so in a very real sense I cannot allow him to leave. I could kill them both, but their automobile is not far away, and there would be an even more intense hunt for clues to their murder. I consider briefly trying to eat them both and burying  what is left. But again, what of the car? I cannot stand upright, much less push an automobile down the road. What if I could push it? Could I push it back onto the railroad tracks and let another train do what was done to me? It is out of the question. I am probably too weak to even make a grab at one of them, much less do all that is in my mind. Even if I were healthy, it would be an onerous task, as I do not relish eating humans any more than I do their dogs. They are simply not creatures that it is a pleasure to eat, and my growing feelings of identification would make it  difficult, an act almost of cannibalism. I can do this thing, I am thinking while I hold the two of them motionless in the dark woods with my will, but I do not want to. It is more trouble than it is worth. I try relaxing my hold on them to see what they do.

"Oh Stanley, what are we doing out here?" the girl almost screams. "I'm scared. Come on!" And she is off, running toward the car.

"OK, OK, I'm coming," the boy says, taking off after her at a run.

Stop!

I hear them skid to a stop near their car. They are motionless.  I can still stop them, even at that distance. Perhaps desperation adds somewhat to the power I hold over their individual wills. Now I know they are frightened, and that if I release them for an instant they will be gone before I can concentrate and grab them again. The strain is beginnning to make me dizzy and weak. An idea begins to grow, so that I make them turn and begin walking back toward my lair.

As they approach with reluctant feet through the dark leaves, I plan as far ahead as I can with another part of my mind, and at the same time my body is moving various muscles,  preparing for an effort that I convince my body is necessary.  Some sacrifices at this time so we may survive, is the message. The two young people are standing at the edge of the dug-out place by the fallen tree now, their minds held steady by my own will. I reach up to the edge of the pit with my unbroken arm.

"Help me!"

They reach down, grasp my arm and pull with all their might as I scramble with my one good leg to get out of the hole. They are doing very well, but clumsily. They are strong for their size, and then I realize I am ordering them to strain to their utmost, and I relax the hold somewhat. No use injuring one of them. They would be of no help if I forced one of their muscles to lock or break a bone by  overpowering the body's regulators. My necessity for survival is very strong. I order my own reactions to tone down somewhat.  We have a lot of time, at least. Take it slowly. They each put a shoulder under one of my arms and help me up to my one good leg. It is very painful, but at last I am upright for the first time in many days and nights. I do not have any idea how many. My head is muggy with pain and there are bloody places opening up on my body. I pause for an internal inspection and find nothing immediately fatal letting go,  apparently. The locked muscles in my leg and chest are painful,  of course, but holding well. It is even possible to put a bit of weight on the broken leg if it is exerted straight  downward. I feel the young people staggering beneath me as we drag and hop toward their car. I command them with all my will to hold my weight, not to drop me, to assist me as if I were a beloved parent, using every image of help, love,  affection, duty that I can recall from my human lives. They do so well that the girl is even murmuring words of  encouragement to me as she staggers with the weight of my left arm over her shoulder. I feel the arms of these young humans  around my middle, getting bloody with my own blood as they almost carry me to their car. It seems immaterial to me at that moment that I am controlling them. They are assisting me, and it gives me a good feeling.

At the car comes the delicate job of hoisting my bulk into the back seat. I thank the luck that they have a back seat, that the car is not a coupe or something unmanageable. As it is, the task of getting me into the rear seat is almost  superhuman, as I am stiff, larger than an adult human being, and not made for getting in and out of automobiles in the best of circumstances. I get a brief flash of that horrible moment just before the train hit when I got out of the car's windshield. That car must have been larger than this one, or else I was more desperate than I had supposed. At last I am lying in the back of their sedan, half on the seat, my shoulders against the driver's side, my one leg still protruding  from the other door. I cannot bend it much because of the muscles holding the bone in place, so I have to crumple at the waist. It is painful and awkward, but at last I seem to be all inside the car. The girl shuts the door very carefully.

After they are in the front seat of the car, I begin my questions.

Where do you live?

About three miles from here, across the highway.

Is there a secret place where I can hide and get well?

(A pause.) The girl answers, I know! In the cellar of the old McKinley place. Yeah, the boy says. That's a swell place, and nobody goes there.

Take me there.

I lie back as well as I can, bracing my body against the bumps that make me bleed and send lightning jabs of pain through my chest and leg. The boy is driving carefully, slowly over the railroad tracks. I wonder how much of my hold on them will last if I relax it. I have never tried  permanently influencing a human. But that one time I crept into Mrs. Stumway's house and whispered to her as she slept. Was that what made her take Charles in? If these young people can be so influenced, I will not have to kill them. But I am a horrible object to them now in my natural form. Still, I must try and hope they will not betray me to people with guns. As the car bumps along through the cool night air, I see the girl has her head turned, watching me over the back of the seat.

Do not be afraid. I will not harm you. I am badly hurt. A train hit me. I will get well, but I must have a safe place to rest, water, food. Will you help me?

The girl nods her head in the darkness, but I am aware that I am manipulating her mind. She is under the direct influence of my will which I am afraid to relax at this point. I ask the boy, and he too nods his head. But I cannot tell. I must wait and see if, when they are released, they run in fright. Then I will have to call them back and kill them. The car jolts over the washboarded road, making me weak with agony. I can only hold on now to the necessity of keeping these two creatures under my control. I manage to remain conscious until the car turns off the road into a lane. We go very slowly, and I notice the boy has turned off the car lights. At last the car turns around in a stand of thick weeds beside the dark bulk of a house. There are a couple of out buildings falling to ruin off to one side. The crickets and frogs keep up a background music that makes me want to sleep. I am having great trouble staying conscious. The boy and girl are helping me out of the car now. I swing my head back once in great agony as I slip and come down on the broken leg, and the stars seem a field of burning, sparkling eyes in the dark sky.