The Dead Path (8 page)

“…  around here?” asked Tristram.

Nicholas shook his head, clearing it. “What?”

“I beg your pardon,” said Tristram.

“Fuck off,” said Nicholas.

Tristram looked at him, shocked for a moment—then he burst out laughing at the bold use of the King of Swear Words. “You fuck off!”

Nicholas joined in giggling, and Tristram’s laughter redoubled.

Tears rolled down their faces, an innocent baptismal to mark the last time the F-word would offend either of them. Nicholas stood and wiped his face. He saw a car pull up on the far side of Carmichael Road: an unremarkable olive green sedan.

“So, guttersnipe,” said Tristram, pointing, “here’s about where I found the dead cat.” The last two words stole the humor from the air. “Where’d you find the bird?”

Nicholas looked around, getting his bearings, and pointed. They moved up the path twenty paces or so.

“Here somewhere …” He stopped on the track. “Jeez.”

It was still there. Tucked into the grass, invisible to a casual glance, the bird’s little body had swollen in the heat, its feathered skin now a round balloon. Legs snipped off clean exposed matchstick sections of bone. The death-tightened claws for horns. The sharply dangerous lines painted in rust-brown blood. There was nothing accidental or joking about it. The bird was murdered, and its corpse twisted and changed into a thing that felt … 
evil
.

Tristram was staring at the dead bird. His jaw was slack and his eyes were wide. A smile curled his lips. “It’s beautiful,” he whispered. Without hesitation, he knelt and gingerly took hold of the woven head. It was still securely spiked to the body and he lifted the tiny carcass out. As he did, white fluid began to drip from the bird. No, not fluid, but pale, wriggling pupae. Maggots.

“Wow …” The delighted smile grew wider on Tristram’s face.

Nicholas felt his stomach roll sickly, the way it did when he had the runs, weak and afraid. “You shouldn’t touch it, Tris. Tris!”

He bumped Tristram’s arm and Tristram dropped the desecrated creature on the path. The swollen body popped open with a bright whiff of rot and maggots started worming out from their nest.

Tristram stared at the infested thing, suddenly horrified. “Oh, yuck.”

Despite the drop, the round woven head was still attached to the tiny corpse, as if determined to see a job through.

“I can’t believe you picked it up,” said Nicholas.

As he rocked back on his feet, movement across Carmichael Road caught his eye. The driver’s door of the green car opened. A man was alighting: a large man in a dark suit. In the harsh overhead sun, his face was cast into binary tones of sharp light and dense shadow, yet it seemed he was looking at the boys.

He
is
looking at us,
thought Nicholas.
I can feel it.

“Tris. We should go home.”

Tristram was wiping his hands on his shorts, staring at the dead bird. “I thought it was—”

“Let’s go,” hissed Nicholas. Tristram looked up.

The man strode across the road toward them, straight at them through the grass. He was even bigger than Nicholas had thought: solid as a rugby player, but older, in his forties. Somehow, middle age made him even scarier. The man turned his head left then right with deliberate slowness, calibrating the surrounds. He wasn’t looking for other adults to join him in chastising these boys for throwing stones and carrying toy guns.

He’s checking for witnesses.

There were none, and the man hastened his pace.

Nicholas and Tristram looked at each other. They couldn’t run to the road. If they tried to dart left or right up the path, the stranger could cut them off without even trying. There was only one way to flee.

They ran into the woods.

  I
n his ten years, Nicholas had been afraid many times. But this was his first taste of terror. Adrenaline on his tongue was bitter. Low branches and tough shrubs tore at his face and bare legs. Beside him, Tristram’s eyes were wide and his fair hair flew out behind. They ran like men in snow, having to take exhausting, high-kneed steps to clear the thick, ancient knots of vine and undergrowth. From behind them came the steady crach-crunch crach-crunch of heavier footsteps. Nicholas dared a look back. The suited man was a rhino between the trees, his heavy strides smashing through the stems that would trip the boys.

He was gaining.

Nicholas could see the fear on his friend’s face. Neither of them needed to ask why a strange man was chasing them. They both knew—
everyone
knew—that there were men who took children.

“Which way?” he whispered. His cheeks were wet; he realized he was crying.

“We should …” gasped Tristram, “…  split up.”

The thought of being alone with the man after him sent a shock of new terror through Nicholas. “No way!”

“That way … he can’t … get us both.”

The woods were becoming denser and darker as all but the tiniest chips of sky remained visible overhead. Wide trunks and buttressed roots grew closer together, forming a shadowed and slippery maze. Flinty rocks peeked sharply from under wet brows of rotten leaves.

The boys scrambled up a steep slope, grazing knees and palms on spiny vines and hidden shale. The man was just a dozen steps behind them. Nicholas’s ears were ringing as his blood thudded, but over that he could hear the man’s breath pistoning in and out with horrid monotony.
He could keep this pace up all day!
But it wouldn’t take all day to catch them. Just minutes. Moments.

The prospect of seeing Tristram disappear between the trees and being alone with that huge, unstoppable man after him made his bowels watery. But Tris was right.

“Okay,” Nicholas gasped. “Over the ridge. We’ll split.”

Tristram nodded.

Nicholas stole a glance back, and let out a yelp. The man was only two body lengths behind, striding up the sharp rise, arms stretched out for balance. Years later, he would be watching Boris Karloff in James Whale’s
Frankenstein
, and the image of the monster lumbering, arms out wide, made him suddenly lose control of his bladder. The most terrible thing of all was the man’s face. It was slack and expressionless. There was no anger, no lust. He was as emotionless as a crocodile. And he would catch them.

Nicholas felt fresh hot tears sting his eyes. Lungs burning, he drew the deepest breath he could and yelled: “Help!!”

The word died without an echo, swallowed by the trees.
What idiots! Why didn’t we yell when we were near the street?
Their stupidity made Nicholas cry harder.

“Help us!” yelled Tristram. Again, the words were held tight by the greedy trunks of black figs, the dark ferns, the endless leaves.

They were nearly at the top of the slope. Nicholas looked at Tristram. No tears, but his face was tight and pale. A wave of jealous love went through him. Tristram pointed at himself, then left. Nicholas nodded—he’d go right. They crested the hill.

Their plan fell apart as Tristram suddenly vanished.

Nicholas, a step or two behind, saw him simply drop away into nothing. He slowed a second, just enough to brake his momentum so he, too, didn’t fall over the steep edge.
Crash!
Tristram hit the gully floor three meters down.

“Oh.” The small sound was much worse and packed more pain than a scream.

Nicholas swung to look behind. The man was only a few steps away, powering up the last of the slope—close enough for Nicholas to smell him: a mist of sweat and cigarette smoke and Old Spice.

Without another thought, Nicholas jumped.

He dropped through the air for what seemed an endless moment, waiting for huge hands to snatch him back … then hit the moist, leafy gully floor. Tristram was rolling onto his feet, nursing his right arm; his wrist was bent at the wrong angle.

“Your arm—”

Tristram shook his head and looked up.

The man had reached the cliff edge above. His massive chest, thick as a horse’s, swelled and sank with huge breaths. He regarded the boys, the drop, the cliff that diminished as it ran left. Then he cocked his head as if listening to something far off, some distant siren song only he could hear.

“Come on!” hissed Nicholas.

He and Tristram ran up the creek bed at the bottom of the gully, their feet rocking on the smooth stones, risking sprains for speed.

Tristram stopped. “Oh, no.”

Ahead, a huge shape had appeared behind the trees. Horrible despair returned like a forgotten nightmare. “The pipe.”

They’d rarely come this far in, and only once down here to the gully and the huge, old water pipe that crossed it.

The man was clambering down the cliff face, hands neatly grasping the wild quince and cudgerie saplings growing stubbornly from the rocks. He moved with the speed of a gorilla born to the forest.

There was no splitting up. The woods to the right were choked so thick they were impenetrable. The very air seemed dark green—not a glimmer of sunlight, just ancient shadow. Nor could they go back: their pursuer was less than thirty paces away. Left was the only course, unless …

Tristram peered at the base of the pipe. Two tunnels, like barrels of a giant shotgun, penetrated the concrete. Nicholas knelt to look in. The circles of light at the far ends were thickly dotted with familiar shapes. Spiders. Hundreds of them.

His heart seemed to stop in his chest and his eyes watered. The thought of a single spider made his skin crawl. These long, dark nests turned his terror into panic. The world grew silver at its edges—he was going to faint.

“Tris, I can’t …”

“Get help.” And without another word, Tristram dropped to his knees and crawled into the closest tunnel.

Nicholas looked around. The man was striding toward him. His hands were huge. For the first time he noticed the bulge at the man’s crotch.

“Fuck you!” he yelled. He turned and ran.

Smack into a branch.

He had just enough time to stagger back and see the man’s silhouette fill his vision … then everything fell away to instant, coal-black night.

  H
e woke to the whisper of leaves.

His eyes flickered open. The trees surrounding him were so deep and dark that he could have been a drowned sailor on the cold floor of the sea. No wind moved the ocean of black branches above him, yet leaves still rustled somewhere out of sight. He turned his head.

The movement made nausea flood through him. He opened his mouth and a pitiful stream of half-digested biscuits and cordial spilled out. But now the sound of movement was louder. His vision rolled like a poorly tuned television, lurched, rolled, then steadied.

A small distance away, white flesh drifted above the ground. Limbs drooped like the necks of dead swans. Everything was so dark. Nicholas raised his head and strained to focus.

Tristram was being carried past, cradled in large, dark hands. The boy’s naked limbs were starkly white in the stygian gloom, swaying loosely. His head lolled back too far, his fulvous hair streaked with something darker. A wedge of darkness divided the white of his throat. Then Nicholas caught a glimpse of bone.

He tilted his head to see who carried Tristram, but the world slipped off its axis, heeled, and fell … He retched again, and his eyes rolled back in his head.

  H
e woke a second time to feel tears on his cheeks.

No. Not tears. Rain. Drops clattered on the canopy of leaves overhead, coalesced, and fell in heavy, cold dollops.

Nicholas rose to unsteady feet, and, arms outstretched in a pose that, had he been able to see himself, would have reminded him horribly of the man who had pursued them. Nicholas began shuffling his way home.

  F
our hours later, he was wrapped in his mother’s arms. After seeing her brother was home safe, Suzette had curled on the sofa and fallen asleep. Police cars were parked out front, their blue lights coruscating sapphires in the downpour. A bath, and a policewoman with his mother inspecting his head, his neck, his penis, his bottom. Questions, questions, questions. Did he know the man who chased them? What color was his car? Did he say anything while he chased them? Was he bearded or clean-shaven? Tris’s parents sat with Gavin in the next room. Mrs. Boye sent hollow glances through the doorway at Nicholas, as if by the intensity of her concentration he might suddenly transform into her youngest son.

The Boyes left. The police left. The kettle boiled. Sweet tea. Bed.

And, through it all, rain.

  T
he search of the woods for Tristram Hamilton Boye was postponed due to the unseasonably heavy rain. As it turned out, a search was unnecessary: the Frankenstein’s monster man told police where to find the child.

Nicholas sat rigid beside his mother watching the news. A television reporter described how Winston Teale, second-generation owner of furniture retailer Teale & Nephew, had presented himself at Milton Police Station and told the desk sergeant where they could find the body of the missing Tallong child, Tristram Boye. The television flashed images of plainclothes detectives poking around a demolition site not a kilometer from the police station, two suburbs from Tallong.