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Authors: Gene Wolfe

BOOK: Castleview
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THE NUMBER YOU HAVE REACHED
LISA WAS still weeping when Shields and Ann pulled up. Shields shouted, “Bob! Hey, Bob!” and waved as he threw open the door of the Cherokee.
Roberts hurried across the muddy stableyard to shake hands. “By gosh, Mr. Shields, it’s good to see you again!”
He was still too old to be selling cars and his teeth were still false, but Shields found he was delighted to see Roberts, too. As he asked, “Are you all right, Bob?” he could not keep from grinning.
“I’m right as rain, Mr. Shields. Never felt better. Oh, a little tired, but I’m okay.”
Ann had thrown her arms around Lisa Solomon. “Don’t cry. Please don’t cry.”
“Now Sissy’s gone.”
Tall and swarthy, the girl who had run from the barn looked from the two men to the two women. Lifting her hands to heaven, she uttered a prayer no one but herself understood. Something like a hornet (though much swifter) flew across the stableyard, followed instantly by a flat
crack,
the sound of a two-by-four breaking. The tall girl dropped her arms and looked stunned; a dark blotch appeared on her faded denim jacket, and spread.
Perhaps no one but Shields saw it. He lunged for her and caught her as she fell.
The hornet flew again. A second two-by-four snapped, and the windshield of the Cherokee exploded into frosty shards.
“Get down!” Shields yelled.
Ann and Lisa froze. Crouching, moving surprisingly fast, Roberts grabbed each by an arm and started for the lodge.
“Can you walk?” Shields asked the tall girl.
She tried to reply; but blood bubbled at her lips, drowning her words.
He got his arms beneath her and lifted, finding her flaccid body astonishingly light. Trying to bend, struggling to run, he scuttled after Roberts and the women.
Then the doorway was before him, and he had nearly cracked the tall girl’s head against the frame. At the last second, he turned sidewise and stumbled through. Roberts slammed the door behind him, and twisted the handle of a brass-plated night bolt.
They propped her up on the couch and staunched the bleeding with towels while Lisa tried to telephone the hospital. After a dozen rings, she hung up.
Ann asked, “Don’t they have an emergency number here? At home it’s nine eleven.”
“Not in Castleview,” Lisa muttered. “It’s too small.”
“Ours doesn’t work very well,” Ann told her, “but at least we’ve got one.” She was studying the wounded girl.
Her bloodless cheeks seemed gray—a dingy gray like the sky at the end of a bad day, Ann thought. Roberts had cut the denim jacket and torn away the faded work shirt beneath it; the lacy top of a brassiere, scarlet now with blood, showed above the towels. Dimly, Ann felt that the brassiere should have been discarded, too; but that the humiliation of naked breasts might in some way kill the wounded girl—though she would die anyway. A small gold crucifix lay upon her throat, a premature memorial.
Roberts asked, “How is she?”
“Breathing a little easier, I think,” Ann told him.
“That’s because we stopped the wound from sucking. Bullet nicked her right lung.”
Her wheezing exhalations measured out each silence like the laggard ticking of a grandfather clock.
Ann knelt beside the couch. “Shouldn’t she be down more? Flatter?”
Roberts shook his head. “She’d drown in her own blood.”
“Is she going to die?”
“She’s young. I think she’ll make it.”
Catching the lie in his voice, Ann said, “Can’t you get the hospital, Lisa?”
“I’ve dialed twice. Nobody answers.”
She was shaky, Ann thought, too shaky. She said, “Let me try. You read out the number for me.”
Gratefully, Lisa surrendered the telephone. “It’s three nine one. All the Castleview numbers are three nine one.”
Ann discovered that her own hands shook as she pressed the buttons. She tried to count the chirpings from the earpiece.
“Nine nine nine eight. Got it? Three nine one, nine nine nine eight.”
Ann wanted to shout shut up, be quiet, you’re confusing me. She bit down on her tongue instead, punching numbers valiantly.
Somewhere a telephone rang. Would they answer? Recalling how Wrangler had bled all over the back of the Buick—Another ring, and still no answer.
“Here,” Lisa whispered. She held out the white pages of a slender directory. “Do you want to look at it?”
“I’ve already entered the number.”
Another ring.
“If you have to do it again. Maybe it would be better if you could see it. Three nine one, nine nine eight.”
“That’s not enough—”
An answer in the middle of the ring: “Howard residence.”
“What? What did you say?”
“I said that this is the home of the Howard family. I’m Dr. von Madadh—Mrs. Howard’s engaged at the moment. For whom were you calling?”
Ann swallowed hard to keep herself from shouting. “You’re a doctor? A real medical doctor? We’ve called and called, but the hospital doesn’t answer, then I got you. Doctor, a woman’s been shot. We’re trying to give her first aid. What should we do?”
“You say there’s been an accidental shooting? Where is the wound?”
Lisa was beside Ann now, leaning close to hear. Ann said, “In her chest, just underneath her right breast. There’s a man here, doctor, who was in the Second World War—he was on Anzio Beachhead, he says, whatever that was. He says the bullet hit her in the back and went through. What should we do?”
The calm voice at the other end of the wire murmured, “It might be better if you told me first what you’ve already done.”
“She’s lying on the couch, propped up. The man says you’ve got to keep their heads up—he says the bullet went through her lung. We’ve got lots of towels around her. They’re all bloody, but I don’t think she’s bleeding much any more—except sometimes there’s blood in her mouth. She coughs up blood.”
“Touch her face. How does it feel?”
“I wiped it a minute ago, doctor. She’s perspiring, but her skin’s terribly cold.”
Shields came in and went to the couch to look at the wounded girl.
“Is she covered?”
“You mean with a sheet?” Ann thought of the grim canvases used to shroud corpses in a morgue.
“Covered with blankets—with anything.”
“No, but it’s warm in here.”
“Cover her, with blankets or coats or whatever you have. Your patient’s in shock. You’re in a home?”
“In a camp,” Ann told him. “We’re in the lodge at a camp.” Lisa was leaning closer than ever. Behind her, Ann could hear Shields and Roberts conferring in low tones. She said, “Meadow Grass—it’s a summer camp for girls.”
“If there’s an electric blanket, use it. Turn it to High. She must be kept warm. Other than that, I can’t help you. You need a surgeon, blood transfusions, and oxygen. You said you’d been calling the hospital. I suppose someone must have made the wrong connection at their switchboard, because the hospital just called us. Mrs. Howard’s son’s been in an accident; we’re going there now. Anyway, try them again and keep trying—try anyplace that might send an ambulance.”
“Don’t you know?” Ann asked.
“I’m from out of town. Keep your patient warm, and get her to a hospital as quickly as you can. I’ll tell them about this when I get there.” He hung up.
Ann passed the handset to Lisa, then snatched it back. “Go get the blankets, you know where they are and I don’t. He said to cover her up, keep her warm, understand? Oodles of blankets. Willie, how does it look?”
Shields shrugged. “I’ve checked all the doors and windows I can find. Most were locked already, but we can’t do more than patrol this place—it’s too big. If the sniper wants to get in, he’s going to get in.”
“It might have been an accident, Willie. Have you thought of that? It might have been somebody shooting at a rabbit or a tin can or something.”
“It might have been,” Shields admitted. “I don’t believe it was.”
“Well, I was talking to this
doctor
—” Ann pushed buttons on the handset. “And
he
said it might have been an accident.”
“You got the hospital?”
“No, I got a wrong number, but it was a doctor. He said we have to get her to the hospital right away, and to cover her up and keep her warm. Lisa’s getting blankets. He said he’d tell the hospital where we are, too.” (There was only silence in the
earpiece.) “This time it didn’t go through,” Ann muttered. “Go away, Willie, you’re distracting me.”
He had already turned back to Roberts and the dying girl. “What do you think, Bob? Is he out there?”
Roberts shrugged.
“Why her?”
“Why not? Truly, Mr. Shields, I don’t believe it makes any difference to them.”
“You think it was the people who got you? So do I. Who were they, Bob?”
The old man shrugged. “Be darned if I know, really. Some were kids, or anyhow they looked like kids. But …”
“But what?”
“They weren’t all of them kids. But they were always sort of messing around, messing with this and that, and showing each other things. Know what I mean?”
“Certainly,” Shields told him.
“So if they had a gun and saw somebody standing out there, they might try a couple of shots. Or not.”
Ann was only half listening, the majority of her attention on the slow buzzings in the earpiece; now they were interrupted by a hushed voice: “Fouque’s Mortuary.”
“I’m sorry, I must have—no, wait! Do you have ambulance service? Sometimes you do, I know, around Chicago. Do you? Please!”
“Not any more, ma’am. The insurance got to be too much.”
“Could you—a woman’s dying. Could you call the hospital
for
me? I think there’s something wrong with this phone.”
Lisa returned with an armload of blankets.
“No, ma‘am. You’ll have to call them yourself, ma’am. The number’s three nine one, ninety-nine ninety-eight. Did you say the lady’s dying?”
“Yes!”
“All right, when she’s dead you have to get your doctor to sign the certificate, and then we’ll come and get her. We’ll be glad to.”
Ann hung up. Three nine one …
“It’s those damned lights on the barn,” Shields said. He might have been addressing the whole room or talking to himself. “Miss Solomon, where’s the switch to turn them off?”
She was spreading a gaudy Indian blanket over the wounded girl. “In the tack room, but he’ll be able to see you even if you go around back. There are lights all around the barn.”
“Maybe not,” Shields said. “There’s a rear entrance to the barn?”
She nodded. “It’s padlocked, but I have a key.”
Ann slammed down the handset, picking it up again at once. “Willie, you’re not going to go out there and get shot!”
He grinned at her. “I certainly hope not.”
“Hello,” a distant voice said in the earpiece. “Hello? Hello?”
“I’m here! Is this the hospital?”
Speaking mostly to Roberts and Lisa, Shields said, “He may be gone, whoever he was. If he’s not, our big problem is those lights.”
“No,” replied an elderly voice. “Heavens no, I’m not the hospital, dear. Did they find you already? This is Emily.”
“If I can switch them off, I’ll pull the car up as close to the door as I can,” Shields continued, “with the headlights off, of course. If he doesn’t start shooting, we can lay the girl on the back seat and make a run for the hospital.”
Ann pressed her hand against her ear. “Excuse me—they’re talking in here, and I couldn’t hear you. Who did you say you were?”
“Emily, dear. From the Red Stove Inn—you got my receipt for pear jelly?”
“Oh, yes. Yes, of course.”
“I called there because your husband got me to read him the number of it. And I knew your voice right off. Only I didn’t recollect him phoning till Alfred reminded me. Are you quieted down, dear? You sounded kind of upset there for a minute.”
“Yes, I am,” Ann lied. “I’m fine.”
“All right. I’m awfully glad I’m not the first one to give you the bad news. I only called you because the hospital’s been calling us about your daughter, trying to find you. I’m awfully sorry, dear, honestly I am.”
Ann looked around wildly for Shields, but he was gone. So was Lisa.
HIDE AND SEEK
SALLY INSISTED on paying when the cab let them out in front of the hospital. Von Madadh shrugged and acquiesced, scrutinizing with equal curiosity the modest brick building and the dimly lit street. “Rain has cleansed the air,” he muttered. “Old smells are gone, and none but the new remain: your perfume; that dirty car, which has left its traces on our clothing; and these trees, weary for their winter sleep.”
Sally told him, “I have to see if Seth’s—if he’s not hurt too much.” She had already turned away from the cab driver and was hurrying up the steps to the hospital.
“I did not intend to distract you,” von Madadh apologized, “and I’m as anxious about your son as you are yourself. But the physician who becomes emotionally involved—” he pulled open the hospital’s heavy glass door for her, “—does a disservice to his patient.”
The gray-haired woman at the reception desk proffered an official smile. “Can I help you?”
“I’m Seth Howard’s mother.” Sally gasped for breath. “And I came just as fast as I could—we had to call a taxi. Somebody phoned, and said … .” She found she could not complete what she had begun; no words came.
“Oh, yes. Mrs. Howard.” The receptionist looked properly concerned, as she had no doubt looked concerned many
hundreds of times before. “That was me. At night, we’re supposed to. The paramedics go through their pockets and purses, you see, and if there’s any identification—sometimes there isn’t—they bring it in here to me, with the money and the other things.”
“I want to see him.”
“Of course you do. I’ll have to call the Trauma Center and have them send somebody to take you back there. It’s what we used to call our Emergency Ward.” The receptionist smiled and shook her head. “Makes us seem more up-to-date in Castleview to call it the Trauma Center, I suppose. Besides, most folks don’t know what it means. I think they think that helps.”
She had pushed numbers on her switchboard while she talked. Now she spoke into the tiny microphone held before her lips by a wire brace. “Trauma Center? Mrs. Howard’s here, can I send her back?”
She listened, then nodded. “Mrs. Howard, they’d like you to wait just a minute. It shouldn’t be long. They have injured coming in right now, so they’re rather busy.”
Sally gripped the edge of the desk. “Can’t you tell me how he is?”
“Oh, he’s fine. He’s been hurt, of course, but they don’t think he’s in any danger.”
Sally said, “He was playing football—it’s his senior year. He’s on the first team.”
The receptionist shook her head. “He should have been more careful about his driving. Of course it might not have been his fault. When one of them is a teen-age boy, you always think he caused the accident, but that’s not always true.”
Chimes sounded softly. The receptionist pushed a button, listened for a moment, and shrugged. “It’s been doing that all night,” she said. “The phone rings, but when I answer there’s nobody there. I suppose it’s a problem with the wires. Won’t you sit down? Those chairs are very comfortable, and there are magazines and things. It shouldn’t be long.”
Sally looked around. “Where’s the doctor?”
“The one treating your son? That’s Dr. de Falla. He’s still in the Trauma Center.”
“Dr. von Madadh,” Sally said. “He came in with me.”
 
Lisa caught up with Shields as he was about to slip out the rear door of the lodge. “Mr. Schindler! Wait, won’t you? For just a moment, please.”
He unbolted the door. “My name’s Shields, actually.”
“I wanted to remind you about Sissy. Do you remember her? Your wife met her.”
He nodded. “I talked to her when I called here. To some foreign girl, and then to Sissy. I suppose the foreign girl …” He jerked his head toward the lounge.
Lisa told him, “We have two, poor Sancha and Lucie. Lucie disappeared first—or anyway I thought she’d disappeared. She’d hidden in your wife’s car. Then Wrangler didn’t come back, and didn’t come back, and finally I went looking for him and Lucie, and found Mr. Roberts. I left him with Sissy and Sancha when I went out again, and Sissy went to check on the horses; she was like that.”
Shields nodded—encouragingly, he hoped.
“And she never came back. That’s what Mr. Roberts and poor Sancha told me just before Sancha was shot. So if you’re going into the barn, if you should find her …”
Shields nodded again. “I’ll keep my eyes open.”
“And Boomer. I forgot all about poor Boomer. He’s still out there, if they haven’t killed him.”
“I’ll keep an eye out for Boomer too,” Shields promised.
“You’ve got the key. Do you have a flashlight? It will be pitch dark in the barn, even with the lights on outside—they’re on a different switch.”
“No, I’m afraid ours got left in the Buick.”
“I’ll get you one, if you’ll just wait. Will you wait?”
He said, “All right,” and watched as she hurried off. The truth was that he did not want to wait. If he was going to get
shot, he wanted to get it over with, to take the bullet before his nerve failed. He told himself that as soon as Lisa handed him the flashlight he would turn without a word, open the door, and go out—describing to himself exactly how he would move, how he would shut the door behind him.
No, it might be best to turn off the lights in here first, so they would not see him when he went out. Whoever they were.
He pondered that for a moment or two. Then Lisa was back, a long black flashlight in one hand and a big butcher knife in the other. “I thought you might need this, too,” she said. “We don’t have another gun; Wrangler’s was the only one. He used to get a deer every so often.”
“That’s all right,” Shields told her.
“Only during deer season, of course, and he kept it locked up when he wasn’t using it. Don’t you want the knife?”
Shields was examining the flashlight; he switched it on and off, and thumped the larger end against his palm. “Thanks, but I don’t think so. I don’t have a sheath for it, and it would be pretty awkward if I had to hold it all the time.”
“You could stick it through your belt.”
He shook his head. “This is the kind of flash the police use, bigger and heavier than a nightstick. Besides, you or Bob may need the knife yourself while I’m gone.”
He had found the light switch when he had toured the lodge inspecting doors and windows; now he flicked it off. “So they won’t see me going out,” he explained. “You can turn them back on when you hear the door close.”
Then there was nothing left but to open the door and step outside. He did so, braced for the shot.
It did not come, and he shut the door behind him as quietly as he could.
The lights inside flashed on at once, illuminating a window six feet to the right of the door. Lisa had been afraid, then—a good deal more frightened than she had appeared. Shields was frightened, too; Sancha’s blood had washed away the bravado he might otherwise have felt. Crouching instinctively, he
jogged off into the gloom, wishing he were not quite so tall, and very much for a familiarity with the ground that he did not in fact possess. It would be madness, he knew, to use Lisa’s flashlight out here.
He used it just the same, not as a blind man does his cane—though long, it was not long enough for that—but extending it above shoulder level to feel his way. Soon he found himself in what seemed a grove of young trees, each an inch or two through the trunk. Their bare limbs spattered him with water and twice slapped him in the face; but there was ample room between them, and the ground was reasonably, blessedly, level.
A twig snapped under his right foot. He started, thinking for a second that it had been the snick of a rifle bolt.
Despite the darkness (and it was still very dark, the moon and stars masked with cloud) his eyes began to adjust. The tree trunks became visible, narrow bands of blacker darkness against the night. He had been angling left ever since he had fled the lights of the lodge; the barn was in sight now, remote-seeming in its circle of electric glare. Walking parallel to it until he was well behind it, he swung sharply left again to approach it from behind. He glanced at the luminous dial of his watch; the trip had occupied about ten minutes. Not bad, he thought, for an amateur.
Ahead, from the direction of the barn, faint and yet quite distinct, he heard the mournful clanking of a chain.
 
Judy’s mom braked in Aunt Sally’s driveway, and Judy opened the door and bounced out. Only recently had Judy been permitted to stay up this late. It was still a thrill, unfamiliar enough to be exciting. “I’ll do it!” She clattered up the porch steps far in advance of her mom and rang Aunt Sally’s doorbell.
The slow, sad chiming from Aunt Sally’s house reminded Judy that her uncle was dead, though that seemed a long, sad time ago and Judy did not like to think about anything being dead. “It’s all dark,” she called to her mom.
Coming up the steps, her mom said, “She’s probably gone to bed. Grandpa said he called but nobody answered.”
“But we have to wake her up.” Judy was afraid they would have to go home.
“She’ll want to know that he’s all right. She’s got enough trouble without worrying about your grandpa.”
There were soft footsteps inside the house, though no light showed through the glass in the front door.
“Somebody’s coming!”
Judy’s mom nodded. “Maybe she’s having a problem with the electricity, a blown fuse or something.”
The door was opened by a big man with a thin, black beard. He did not speak, and after a few seconds Judy’s mom said, “I’m Sally’s sister Kate. Is she home?”
The man answered, though he seemed to be addressing Judy. “Not at the moment. I expect her very soon. Won’t you please come in?”
He opened the door wide, and Judy walked slowly into her aunt’s dark hall.
Judy’s mom asked, “May I turn on the lights?”
“Yes, of course. I have just awakened; I have been looking for the controls, but I fear I am not adept at it. Per’aps you know where they are?”
Judy whispered, “Mommy, I’m scared,” but so softly that her mom did not hear it.
Then some lights came on and Judy felt better—although it seemed to her that they should have been brighter, Aunt Sally’s lights coming on all of a sudden like that after the dark. But the man looked a lot smaller in the light, which Judy considered a great improvement.
Judy’s mom was looking at him, too. “Did you say you just woke up? Have you been sleeping here?”
He nodded. “We concluded a business transaction and had a few drinks on it—or at least I did. I was extremely fatigued; I have been traveling a good deal. I ought to have known better than to drink on an empty stomach. Would you care for
anything, by the way?” He opened the living room door and motioned them in.
Judy’s mother shook her head and switched on the chandelier.
“Anyway I nodded off, and when I woke the lights were out. I suppose your sister thought it would be best to let me sleep, which was kind of her.”
The man had been standing with his back to the door; Judy’s mom did not hear the faint squeak as the key turned in the lock, but Judy did, and the rusty snick of the bolt.
Judy’s mom said, “And you have no idea where she’s gone?”
“Not the slightest, actually. I can only tell you that she did not mention an errand during our discussion. Since she left me here, I assume she will return shortly.”
“I noticed that the Oldsmobile was gone as I drove up, but I didn’t think Sally would go out. I thought Seth probably took it.”
The man nodded. “He did, as a matter of fact. Mrs. Howard expressed some anxiety about him while we spoke. For myself,” he touched his chest, “I can say only that I felt her concern a bit premature; I doubt that there is any need for you and this enchanting child to share it. Tell me, does your daughter come here often? It must be a wonderful place for a little girl to play hide-and-seek, this big old house of mine.” As he spoke, he advanced to the center of the room. Judy edged toward the dining-room door.
“Of yours?” Judy’s mom sounded surprised.
“Yes. I have purchased it. Mrs. Howard and I concluded the arrangement tonight.”
Judy’s mom pursed her lips. “Tom didn’t want to sell it, not really. I could tell.”
The man nodded again. “Only too true. When I approached him, he confided that he had decided to retain it, commuting to his new position. He assured me that he could make the trip in less than an hour. Thus when I heard that he had passed away, I contacted your sister.”
“I see. That was quick.”
“We wanted this house very badly, and neither your sister nor I saw any reason to delay. Per’aps I should also tell you that she will continue in residence here, as my tenant.”
“Really?” Judy’s mother bent to pick up the card lying on the coffee table. “Is this yours? Are you Dr. Rex von … ?”

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