The Stranger (6 page)

“I love the woods,” said Christo happily. “I’ll teach you, Nickie. That’s what we’ll do this weekend! We’ll go to the state forest and hike down to the waterfalls! They’re so beautiful in winter.” Christo led Nicoletta to his van as he gave her a long, lyrical description of frozen waterfalls and gleaming ice.

How easily he used words! Not like Jethro, who could hardly bear to let a syllable out of his mouth. “Nice to have met you,” Christo called cheerfully back to Jethro.

How strange romance is, thought Nicoletta. I was following Jethro and Christopher was following me. To Christo this is the beginning of a beautiful romance in which we share the great outdoors. I don’t care about the outdoors at all. I don’t care about Christo either. I care about Jethro.

And I wonder about the cave.

And the monster.

And the promise that mattered so much.

To whom was I making that promise? she thought suddenly, frowning. To the creature? Or Jethro?

Christo, backing his van down the narrow rutted lane, suddenly lifted his right hand from the wheel and stared at it. He shook his hand slightly.

“What?” said Nicoletta. Her eyes were glued to the place where Jethro had stood. He stood there no longer. He had circled the stone, and must even now be tracing the straight path. Even now Jethro was going toward the cave, on a path that seemed to go nowhere else, a path he had wanted her to promise she would never follow again.

But I will, thought Nicoletta. I will follow Jethro forever.

“There’s sand on my hand,” said Christo. “That guy’s hand was all sandy.”

N
EVER BEFORE IN HER
life had Nicoletta intentionally done something stupid and dangerous. Her parents were cautious in all things but money. They had taught Nicoletta and Jamie to steer clear of strangers, to look both ways before crossing streets, to be home before dark. They were full of warnings and guidance, and Nicoletta had spent a lifetime listening carefully and obeying completely.

But not today.

The snow was falling lightly when she left the school building. She had hidden in the library stacks until Christopher had definitely driven away. Hidden among the dusty pages and unread texts until there was not a single soul left in the school whom she knew.

Little homework had been assigned for the night. Nicoletta was able to leave her bookbag in her locker. How strange to be unburdened, to have hands and arms free. She ran all the way, feet flying, hair streaming behind her, heart filled with excitement.

How lovely the woods were, dusted with snow, crisp and clean and pure in the fading afternoon.

The snow was dry and separate. Snowflakes touched her cheeks like kisses.

The road narrowed and she had to slow down, unable to find easy footing on the snow-hidden ruts of the dirt lane. At first she did not even see the boulder; snow had draped it like a cloak. It did not look like a stone, but like an igloo, a place that would be cozy inside. She patted the stone as she rounded it and her glove left a perfect five-fingered print.

On each side of the slim, straight path, the dry weeds stood up like snow bouquets. Ice flowers.

The snow came down more heavily.

There was no sky anymore; just a ceiling of white.

When she came to the place where pools of water lay below each side of the raised pathway, snow had covered the ice, and had Nicoletta not seen the lakes before, she would have thought they were fields; she would have thought it was safe to run over them, and dance upon them.

The cliff wall was hung with frozen water from springs deep in the earth. Snow danced in gusts, spraying against the cliff like surf and falling in drifts at the foot of the rocks.

A piece of the cliff moved toward her.

Nicoletta held out her palm like a crossing guard, as if she could stop an avalanche that way.

It was stone, and yet it walked. It was snow, and yet it bore leaves. It was a person, and yet—

It was the creature.

She could see its eyes now, living pools trapped in that terrible frame.

She could see its feet, formed not so differently from the huge icicles that hung on the cliff: things. Dripping stalagmites from the floor of the cave.

She felt no fear. The snow, falling so gently, so pure and cleanly, seemed protection. Yet snow protected nothing but ugliness. Ugliness it would hide. Filthy city alleys and rusted old cars, abandoned, broken trikes and rotting picnic tables—snow covered anything putrid and turned it to perfect sculpture.

Even the thing, the monstrous thing that had stank and dripped and scraped—it was perfect in its softly rounded snowy wrap.

“Go away,” it growled. “What is the matter with you? Don’t you understand?
Go away!”

“I want to find Jethro.”

It advanced on her.

She backed up. What if I fall off the path? she thought. What if I fall down on those ponds? How thick is the ice? Will I drown here?

“Go away,” it said.

“I know Jethro lives here somewhere,” she said. “You must know him. He takes this path. The path stops here! Tell me where he turns off. Tell me where he goes. Tell me where to find him.” She could no longer look at the thing. Its face was scaly, like a mineral, and the snow did not cling to its surface, but melted, so that it ran, like an overflowing gutter. She looked past the thing and saw the black hole of the cave. It wanted her. She could feel its eagerness to have her again. She tore her eyes away and wondered how she would get past the cave to wherever Jethro was.

“Why does he matter?” asked the thing.

Why does Jethro matter? thought Nicoletta. I don’t know. Why does anybody matter? What makes you care about one person so deeply you cannot sleep?

She said, “He wasn’t in school today.”

The creature said nothing. It turned around and moved toward its cave.

“Don’t go!” said Nicoletta. “I’m worried about him. I like him. I want to talk to him.”

It disappeared into the cavern.

Or perhaps, because it was stone and sand itself, it simply blended into, or became part of, the cliff.

She followed it. She ran right after it, inside the flat and glowing walls of the entrance.

“Stop it!” the thing bellowed. Its voice was immense, and the cave echoed with its deep, rolling voice. “Get out!”

“I love him,” said Nicoletta.

In the strange silence that followed, she could see the thing’s eyes. They had filled with tears.

Only humans cry. Not stones.

“Who are you?” she whispered.

But it did not answer.

The only sound was the sharp unmistakable report of a rifle. Nicoletta whirled.

“Hunters. They think I’m a bear,” whispered the thing. “They’ll come in here to shoot me. Poachers.”

“Have they come in before?” she whispered back.

“They don’t usually find the cave opening. Sometimes they see me, though, if I’m careless, and they follow me.”

She could hear the loud and laughing voices of men. Cruel laughter, lusting for a kill.

“If they see you move, they’ll shoot you,” it told her. “They shoot anything that moves.”

“I’ll go down in the cave with you,” said Nicoletta. “We’ll be safe together.” No snow remained on the humanoid creature. Its stink increased and its stone skin flaked away. Its hair like dead leaves snapped off and littered the floor. As long as she didn’t have to touch it, or look too closely, she was not afraid of it.

“No,” it said. “You must never, never, never go down in this cave.”

“I did before.”

“And you only got out because I brought you out. If you go any farther into the cave, the same thing will happen to you that happened to me.”

“What happened to you?” she said. She forgot to whisper. She spoke out loud.

From out in the snow came a yell of satisfaction. “I see the cave!” bellowed a voice. “This way! We’ll get it this time! Over here!”

The thing grabbed Nicoletta and the horrible rasp of its gruesome skin made her scream. It put its hand over her mouth and she could taste it. A swallow of disease and pollution filled her throat. She struggled against the thing but it lifted her with horrifying absolute strength. She was carried down the tunnel and into a small low-ceilinged pit beside the shaft.

“Don’t make any sounds,” it breathed into her ear. Its breath was a stench of rot.

She was weeping now, soaking its ghastly skin with her tears. The acid of her very own tears dissolved the thing. Its coating was soaking off onto her.

I’ve been such a fool, thought Nicoletta. My parents will kill me. I deserve anything I get.

She fought but the thing simply pressed her up against the back of the dark pit. When the slime of the wall came off on her cheek, Nicoletta sagged down and ceased struggling. She tried to crawl right inside herself, and just not be there in mind or in body.

But she was there. And all her senses—smell, sight, sound, touch—all of them brought her close to vomiting with horror.

If I can let the hunters know I am here, thought Nicoletta, they will save me. They’ll shoot this horrible animal and take me home.

The hunters came into the cave.

There were two of them.

They had a flashlight.

She saw the light bobble past her little cavern but she knew that if they glanced in her direction, they would see only the stony side of the creature. To their eyes, the thing gripping her would look like cave wall.

She took a breath to scream but the thing’s handlike extension clapped so tightly over her mouth she could taste it, toxic and raw.

“This is neat,” said one of the hunters. His voice was youthful and awestruck. “I can’t imagine why I’ve never heard of this place. Never even seen the opening before.”

“Me either,” said the other one. “And I’ve come around here for years. Why, it’s—it’s—”

“It’s beautiful! I’m calling the TV stations the minute we shoot that bear.”

“Let’s put the body right outside of the cave opening,” agreed the other one. “It’ll make a great camera angle.”

Their voices faded. The creature’s grip on Nicoletta did not.

They walked more deeply into the cave. No! she thought. They mustn’t go in farther! The cave will turn! I’ve been at that end of it! It isn’t beautiful, it’s the opening to some other terrible place. I’ve got to warn them. I’ve got to stop them.

She flung herself at her captor, but its strength was many multiples of her own. Nothing occurred except bruising against its stony surface.

Her heart pounded so hard and so fast that she wondered if she would live through this. Perhaps her own heart would kill her, giving up the struggle.

So distantly that Nicoletta was not confident of her hearing, came two long, thin cries. Human cries. Threads of despair. Cries for help.

The final shrieks before the final fall.

The two hunters, plunging down the black end of the shaft. Hitting bottom, wherever that might be.

She knew what they felt. The textures and the moving air, the shifting sands and the touching walls.

The thing released her. Her mouth and lips were free. Shock kept her silent. The entire cavern was silent.

Silence as total as darkness.

No moans from the fallen pair. No cries of pain. No shouts for help.

They had hit bottom. They were gone. Two eager young men, out for an afternoon of pleasure.

The monster’s sand clung to her face and wrists. She could not move. She could not run or fight or think.

After a moment, it picked her up like a pile of coats and carried her out of the cave.

The snow was now falling so heavily that the world was obliterated.

If there was a world. Perhaps this horrible place was the only place on earth, and it was her home.

She wept, and the tears froze on her cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” it said. “I had to do that.”

“How will they get out?” she said, sobbing.

“They won’t.”

How matter-of-factly it gave an answer. How will the hunters get out?
They won’t.

She backed away from him. “You
are
a monster,” she said, and she did not mean his form, but his soul. “You let them go down in there and fall. You knew they would fall! You knew they would come to a place where there was no bottom.” She began to run, slipping and falling. The path was invisible. The snow came down like a curtain between them. When she fell again, she slid perilously close to the ice over the deep, black lake.

He picked her up out of the snow and set her on her feet. “I’ll go with you some of the way. In this weather there will be no more of them.”

He held her gloved hand and together they walked between the lakes. On the straight and slender path they could not walk abreast, and he walked ahead, clearing the snow for her.

She had given him gender and substance. Her mind had taken him out of the neuter-thing category. The monster was a he, not an it.

They reached the boulder. “Promise you won’t come back,” he said. His voice was soft and sad.

Her hair prickled. Her skin shivered. Her hands inside the gloves turned to ice.

“You must go home. You must not come this way again.”

She looked into the eyes. Deep, brown, human eyes. And a human voice that had said those same words to her once before.

H
ER FIRST REAL DANCE.
Her first real date.

And Nicoletta was as uninterested as if her parents had gone and rented a movie that Nicoletta had seen twice before.

“What is the matter with you?” yelled Jamie.

True love is the matter with me, thought Nicoletta. Jethro is the matter with me. Instead of having Jethro, I’m almost the captive of Christo.

It wasn’t that Christo had taken her prisoner. Christo was his usual gentlemanly self. It was more that she was not arguing about it. She was not saying no. She was allowing events with Christo to take place because they did not matter to her at all.

“I don’t think you even care about Christo,” said Jamie, flicking a wet towel at her half-dressed sister. “Even the middle school knows that Christo asked you out.”

“They only know because you told them,” said Nicoletta. “How else could they know who Christo is?”