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Authors: Gene Wolfe

BOOK: Castleview
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HITCHHIKERS
THE HEADLIGHTS seemed merely to polish the oily black road that wound through the tunnel of trees. Mercedes studied its asphalt surface obsessively, afraid to close her eyes and equally afraid to look squarely at the back of Long’s rain-soaked hat. Black-and-yellow signs crowded by trees warned of steep descents and abrupt curves ahead, yet it seemed to Mercedes that it was the trees themselves that moved, skipping lightly by the motionless car: rapt in their secret dance, they twirled left, then right.
Something inky and shapeless crouched by the road, its eyes glowing green in the headlights.
Seth hit the brakes hard, and the Olds spun in a sickening skid. It was as though the giant on the horse were back again, as though she were in the Buick again; she implored God that it be so, that Mom and Dad be with her as before, in their own car on the way to the safety and warmth of a motel.
It was not. The Olds stopped, angled diagonally across the narrow road. “That’s her,” Jim Long said. “Damn, but I’m glad we found her.”
The dark, shapeless thing rose, became a human figure with a pale blur of face. Long left the car, edged around the front bumper (it was among the trees) and hurried over. They did not embrace, though they joined hands; for a moment they
talked, or so it appeared—Mercedes could not hear what was said, and did not want to hear. “Seth, let’s get out of here.”
He glanced back at her, surprised. “We can’t just go off and leave them.”
“Please.”
He rolled down his window. “Everything all right?”
Turning toward them, Long said, “Sure. She’s just a little upset, is all.”
Seth switched off the ignition and got out. Mercedes heard him through the open window: “I’m really sorry. I didn’t expect you to be in the middle of the road.”
Mercedes opened her door and got out, too; it seemed to be the only thing to do. The white-faced figure was a woman, very blond, whose pale hair fell to her waist. Mercedes said, “Are you okay?”
The blond woman nodded. “Yes, I am fine. It was too quick for me to be frightened.” She dabbed at her eyes with something that looked like a rag.
Long told Seth, “Dead animals—dead things in the road get her upset.”
“It was a mother and her baby,” the blond woman explained. Her voice was low and sweet. “What do you call the babies? Her cub, her kitten. They killed them both.”
Mercedes looked. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness now that they no longer followed the headlights. A large raccoon lay dead. Near it, almost touching, was a much smaller raccoon; it, too, was dead.
The blond woman said, “They drive so fast, even when they cannot see. They never think that there may be little ones in the way.”
Seth nodded slowly. “Yeah. Well, we can’t help them now.” He sounded embarrassed.
“We can weep for them, as I do. It is a terrible thing, to die as this little one did, with no one to mourn.”
Long put his arm around the blond woman’s shoulders, then drew it away as though afraid she would object.
Seth cleared his throat. “I better move my car. Somebody coming up this road might hit it.”
Long said, “Sure.”
Seth went back to the Olds; Mercedes wanted to go with him, to get into the front seat beside him again and beg him to drive away; but the blond woman was speaking to her. “It is very kind of you to take us. Jim told me. It is not where we wish to go, but perhaps we may get a ride there. If not, we will walk. We shall manage in some way.”
“Okay,” Mercedes told her. “That’s okay.” The blond woman was half a head shorter than she, but Mercedes felt she must be a good deal older—twenty or twenty-five at least. Even so, she seemed far too young for Long. Awkwardly, Mercedes held out her hand. “I’m Mercedes Schindler-Shields.”
The blond woman clasped it briefly; her slender fingers felt hot, almost burning, as though she were running a fever. “Viviane Morgan.”
Her breath held the pensive sweetness of a spring morning; Mercedes found it an effort to speak. “I’m happy to meet you, Ms. Morgan.”
“Call me Viviane, please.”
The hoarse grinding of the Olds’s starter interrupted. The engine sputtered and fell silent. Mercedes walked to the open window. “Won’t it start?”
Hunched over the wheel, Seth shook his head angrily. He twisted the key and pumped the accelerator. The starter motor snarled on and on, but there was no answering sound from the engine.
Long peered over Mercedes’s shoulder. “You oughta turned off your lights.”
Seth told him, “The battery’s good. It just won’t catch.” There was a faint smell of gasoline.
“Oughta turn ’em off anyhow. Won’t do no good to run the battery down.”
“I guess not.” Abruptly, the lights were gone. Darkness
dropped like a snare from the overarching trees, and Mercedes shivered.
The starter snarled again, perhaps a trifle less strongly.
“You got her flooded now,” Long said. The gasoline smell had grown pungent.
Seth’s voice floated out of the night, astonishingly near. “I guess so.”
“I thought that mighta been what was wrong with mine. If that’s what was wrong, she mighta fixed herself by now. They do that—they dry out. Gas dries up pretty fast.”
Mercedes said, “We can wait. I suppose we’ll have to.”
“We oughta push it outa the way, Miss.” Long spoke from some unknown place in the darkness. “There might come a car up this way and slam into it.”
Seth muttered, “That’s right. Mercedes, would you steer? We’ll have to push—Mr. Long and me.”
“Okay,” she said. The dome light came on as Seth got out, a too-brief reminder of the world of day. She got in, shut the door, and switched on the headlights.
“Maybe you ought to leave those off,” Seth suggested.
“What’s the use of having somebody steer if she can’t see where she’s steering?” Although Mercedes had no license, she understood steering well enough, she thought.
Seth and Long got in front of the Olds, bent their backs, and pushed with all their might. “Straighten out the wheels!” Seth shouted.
Mercedes tugged at the steering wheel, finding it extremely hard to turn.
“That’s the way! More!”
Slowly, inch by inch, the Olds crawled back onto the road again. Its lights picked up Ms. Morgan, still standing beside the dead racoons, a slight smile on her face.
“She could do something,” Mercedes whispered to herself. “If she helped them, it would be that much more.”
“Okay!” Seth shouted, and they stopped pushing and stepped
aside. The Oldsmobile crept down the steep slope until Mercedes stamped on the brake pedal.
Seth came to the window. Tiny drops of water on his lashes gleamed like diamonds in the dash lights. “Now just let it roll slow, okay? Park it off out of the way.”
“We could coast! Seth, we can coast to the bottom of this hill. Get in!”
He shook his head impatiently. “I wouldn’t want to try it—it’s got power steering and power brakes. Get it over to the side like I told you, and I’ll see if I can find out what’s the matter with the engine.”
It was a bit easier to steer with the car rolling forward, but Mercedes had to force down the pedal with both feet to stop.
Seth called, “A little more off to the side.”
She edged the Olds over until both right wheels were well out upon the road’s soft, narrow shoulder, wondering whether it would not be stuck there even if Seth got the engine running.
“Okay!”
Thankfully, she put the transmission into Park and set the parking brake.
“Fine,” Seth called. “Pull out the hood release.”
She had to look for it, but it was not hard to find, a knob with a picture of a car with its hood up.
“Turn off the lights.”
Mercedes did, and left the car. There was a small light on the underside of the hood; Seth bent over the engine, prodding here and there. Long mumbled, “Could be the distributor’s wet,” and wandered away.
Seth glanced up at Mercedes, shaking his head. “This has a solid-state distributor. He’s out of it.”
She smiled sympathetically. “He’s probably used to working on old cars like his.”
“Sure.” Seth had turned back to the engine too quickly to catch the smile.
The night was dark and wet, and there was nothing to do but watch Seth. Mercedes got back into the Olds and looked for
her Coke. It had spilled on the floormat, its paper cup crushed by Long’s feet; she cleaned up the mess as well as she could in the dark.
Seth called, “Slide over onto the driver’s side, will you? I want you to crank it for me.”
She guessed that meant she was to turn on the starter. She did, producing a feeble groan.
“Again. Pump the gas.”
The grinding of the starter trailed away to silence.
As though lit by lightning, the road and the mist, even the black trees, sprang back into existence. A car was coming down from the scenic view, a silent old sedan with a single headlight, though at that moment that headlight seemed like the sun.
Seth jumped into the road in front of it, waving his arms. It slowed and stopped. Mercedes knew there was only one car it could be before she heard Long’s voice. “Got mine runnin’,” he said. “Hop in. Boys in front, girls in back.”
Seth exclaimed, “Great!” He opened the front door and got in, presumably beside Long. “Come on, Mercedes.”
Slowly, she left Seth’s car, thinking about Seth and Seth’s dead father; she wanted her own father as badly as Seth no doubt wanted his, wanted his hand on her shoulder, wanted very badly to hear him sing his crazy Irish song.
She opened the rear door of the rusted-out sedan. Viviane Morgan was a faint sheen in its cavernous, musty interior. “Sit down,” she said. “There is plenty of room.”
Mercedes did, reluctantly, shutting the door; she did not intend to speak, but she said, “You know, the other time, when Mr. Long opened the door of this car, that light up there came on.”
“Indeed?” Ms. Morgan sounded amused. “But I was not here then, was I?”
With a clank from the universal joint, the old car lurched ahead.
“No, you weren’t. This is a setup, isn’t it? Some kind of a setup. This car would always run.”
Ms. Morgan laughed.
“Who sabotaged Seth’s car while we were talking to you?”
Ms. Morgan had a soft laugh, a truly attractive laugh; and it was accompanied by breath that seemed perfumed, as a garden does after a warm rain. It continued for so long that Mercedes grew uneasy, and at last frightened. Ms. Morgan’s hand was on her thigh, stroking its soft flesh through the threadbare blue denim. A seam had given way for an inch or so; burning fingers found the spot and crept through.
“Stop that!” Mercedes hissed. The low laugh and fevered exploration continued as before. She groped for Ms. Morgan’s wrist to force her hand away; but there was no wrist or so it seemed, no wrist and no arm—only five burning fingertips and the pinching, tweaking thumb.
Long slowed the old sedan and wrenched its wheel, swerving off the pavement and onto a narrow dirt road that wound among a thousand trees. “Too good!” Seth exclaimed. “I never noticed this. Where’s it go?”
“Goes where you’re goin’,” Long told him. “It ain’t very far.”
Seth nodded, trying to mark mentally the exact place where the dirt road turned off. Long’s girlfriend was giggling about something with Mercedes in the back seat. She had a nice laugh, Seth thought.
THE STOWAWAY
ANN HIT the brakes as hard as she could, nearly catapulting the girl in the back seat into the front. “Who are you!”
“One who has hurt her poor nose, madame. You must be more careful how you drive.”
Ann shoved the transmission into Park and stared into the rearview mirror, which showed nothing at all. “Damn it! You just about scared me into a heart attack.” Turning the knob of the headlight switch lit the dome light; she loosened her seat belt and twisted around to look back at the girl huddled on the floor. “I’ve seen you before someplace.”
“We have been introduced, madame,” the girl said. “Now, again, I think.
Sang!
I bleed!”
“Here.” Ann fumbled in her purse for her handkerchief. “Back there. At that camp. You’re one of the foreign girls. Here, take this.”
“Merci.
My name, it is Lucie. You are Madame Schindler. You are German, I think. At least you have a German name, no?”
“My grandparents. What are you doing in the back of my car, Lucie?”
“Begging that you will please take me to the town with you, Madame Schindler. That is all. It is so very important that I go, and that woman, that Lisa at the camp, would not permit it.
Because of the rain and the many things that have occurred—such terrible things, madame, they did not tell you the worst—and I should have to ride a horse.”
“I don’t blame her,” Ann declared. “I’ll have to take you back.”
“Oh, madame …” As agilely as a monkey, Lucie was over the back of the front seat and seated beside her. “You must not try to turn your large auto about here. You will be mired, madame, truly you will. The road, it is so very narrow and the ground now a paste.” She had wide, dark eyes, which were fixed upon Ann’s own in a disconcerting stare.
“I suppose you’re right, but I can turn around when we get to the gate.” Ann pushed the Buick into Drive. The road itself was getting soft; she could sense its give beneath the tires.
“That is wise, madame. That is very wise indeed. Let us go far from this terrible place. But I must find someone. It is so urgent, and he is in the town.”
Ann nodded, keeping her eyes on the gray strip of road. “A boy?”
“No, madame. A man. A gentleman,
un homme comme il faut.
You think him my lover? No, no! Only a man who does not know me, or only a little, though I must speak with him.”
“All right. If Lisa Solomon says you can go, I’ll take you with me.”
“But she will not, madame!” Lucie’s soft voice rose to an agonized whine. “She will say, how shall you return? No! You may not go.”
“I doubt that you should go myself, if you haven’t any way to get back.”
“You might drive me, madame, in this auto. Or perhaps your husband? Then all should be well. Do you not have to meet your husband? So you said as you left the barn. I was there behind, and overheard you.”
Ann glanced at the dashboard clock; it was seven-fifteen. “I can’t do that,” she said. “I’d like to—I’m going to be late as it
is—but I really can’t. We’re just going to have to turn around and go back when we get to the gate.” It seemed to her that they should have reached it already, but no gate showed in her brights. The road wound down a narrow little valley, hardly more than a gully, that Ann did not remember at all. She asked, “How much farther is it?”
“Two kilometers, perhaps.”
How much was that in miles? About a mile and a half, Ann thought, maybe.
“It seems longer, does it not, by night?”
“It certainly does,” Ann agreed. Almost against her will, she added, “We went across a little bridge—Wrangler and I, when he was driving the car. You and I haven’t gone over that bridge yet.”
“And we will not,
Dieu le veuille!
There is no bridge this way. It was old this bridge, and of wood? One which shook much as you crossed? I fear always that it shall fall with us.”
Ann nodded grimly.
“Then you have taken the wrong road from the lodge, madame. You arrived by the back, which is nearer the town and now locked always by Wrangler before the light has gone. This road that we take, it marches to the main gate.”
“Is that one open?” Ann had forgotten about the padlock; she berated herself for it now. “Can we get back to town that way?”
“Oh, yes. It is farther, but that is all. You must turn to the right when we reach the big road—the high way, is that what you call him? Then it is—” Lucie grabbed at the top of the dashboard.
“What’s the matter?”
“The water! Don’t you see it? Be careful!”
Born of the rain, an infant stream formed a waterfall over a miniature cliff and cut a dark path across the road. Ann let up on the accelerator, then decided the water could be no more than a couple of inches deep, if that. The Buick’s wheels sent up
geysers left and right, as she drove through it with a scarcely perceptible pause.
“I am sorry, madame. Once nearly I drowned, when I was a little child—thus I have the fear of waters. I do not know the name in English.”
“Aquaphobia, I suppose. But the water didn’t really hurt us, now did it?”
Lucie shook her head. “It terrified me, madame, and that hurts me very much. I would rather I pricked the finger.”
“Well, let’s hope we don’t have anything worse than that to cross,” Ann said.
The road wound out of the tiny valley, considerably rutted in places, and crested a small hill. Ann’s dashboard clock read 7:21. Unconsciously she drove faster, until they were rattling through the wet night at nearly thirty miles an hour. Something long—something that was not white but lighter in color than the mud and wet grass—lay beside the road. She slowed and stopped.
Lucie murmured, “It is nothing, madame. Drive on, please, I beg you.”
It lay outside the beams of her headlights, a dim hump that might almost have been a small log. Ann rolled down her window and peered at it.
“Madame, you do not know this place. Terrible things may occur. Go on, for both our sakes.”
Ann said, “That’s somebody hurt.” She got out, turning on her flashlight. The rain had stopped, leaving behind it a mist and a sense of vague disquiet. When she touched the prone man’s face, her fingertips came away warm and sticky with blood. They got him, she thought, whoever they are. They got him, and they may still be nearby.
Just as she had once or twice felt that a roast was burning before she could smell it, she felt now that Lucie was about to drive away in the Buick. She had left the keys in the ignition and the engine running. She glanced up; but the French girl was only watching her, her face taut and expressionless.
“It’s Wrangler,” Ann told her. “Come here, you’ll have to help me.”
 
“I was supposed to meet my wife and daughter here,” Shields told the hostess at the Golden Dragon. “I’m afraid I’m a little late. Have they been looking for me? I’m Will Shields.”
The hostess shook her head.
“My wife’s a little taller than you. Reddish-brown hair, blue raincoat?”
The hostess said, “I’m afraid not, sir. Actually nobody’s been here looking for anybody. It’s been a slow night, because of the rain.”
“Maybe they just came in and got a table?”
“I’m afraid not, sir,” the hostess repeated. “But you can look for yourself if you like.”
He did. Only three tables were occupied, and none of the diners at any of them resembled Ann or Mercedes in the least.
At his elbow the hostess asked, “Would you like a table, sir? You could wait for them.”
Shields shook his head. “I’d better call. Do you have a public phone?”
“Certainly, sir. Down those steps. It’s just outside the lounges.”
Shields went down the stairs as quickly as he could. Tired and ravenously hungry, he felt as if his knees might give way on every step. The “lounges” were restrooms, of course, with a pay telephone on the wall between them. He groped in his pocket for change.
“Red Stove Inn.”
It was the old woman; he had to rack his brain for the room number. “Cabin ten, please.”
It rang and rang again.
She’s in the bathroom, Shields told himself.
A third ring.
But they couldn’t both be in the bathroom; if Ann was in there, Merc would be in the bedroom watching TV or reading.
A fourth ring.
If Mercedes was in the bathroom …
A fifth ring.
Ann had said something about running errands. She must’ve taken Merc with her. They were stuck somewhere, or some errand had taken far longer than Ann had anticipated. What were those errands anyhow? They were probably on their way right now.
A sixth ring.
He glanced at his watch. Ten minutes past eight.
“There’s no answer,” the old woman said. “I think probably they went out.”
“Are you certain you were ringing ten?”
“Sure was. Is this Mr. Shields?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Well, your wife came up to talk to Alfred and me earlier. She asked me about the camp down the road. You think she might have gone there?”
“An army camp?”
“No, for kids,” the old woman said. “They teach them how to ride and swim and so forth. Some just stay a couple weeks, but some all summer—mostly teenagers. Belongs to Syl Baxter, or it did. She’s gone now.”
“And Ann asked about this place?”
“She asked where do they have horses, and that’s the main one. Some folks have a horse or two, but that’s the main one.”
“Could you give me their number?”
“I can look it up for you. Hold the line a minute.”
“If you would, please.” Shields leaned against the wall, waiting, suddenly aware of the silence of the place, the smell of food from the dining area above. There was no one, he felt sure, in either restroom. If there had been, they would have come out by now, would have flushed a toilet or run the water. Very faintly, he heard the murmur of the diners’ voices; they faded until it seemed to him that he waited alone, in an empty building, in an abandoned town.
At his ear, the old woman at the motel said, “Here ’tis. Got something to write with?”
“I’ll remember,” Shields assured her, wondering whether he would. Whether he could.
“Three nine one—all the numbers ’round here are three nine ones. Maybe you’ve noticed.”
“Yes,” Shields said. “Three nine one.”
“Eight eight seven eight.”
“Eighty-eight seventy-eight. Thank you.”
“Happy to help,” the old woman said, sounding as if she meant it; she hung up.
He hung up as well and groped in his pocket for more coins. Another telephone, no doubt on another line, was ringing faintly upstairs, ring after ring.
He pushed two dimes into the slot. Three nine one, eighty-eight seventy-eight. A pause, then somewhere—at the camp where they had horses, presumably—a third telephone rang.
Two rings. Three.
“’Ello?” It was a young woman’s voice, not Mercedes.
“Is this the camp?” He berated himself for not knowing its name.
“
Sim
. Thes’ Meadow Grass.”
“I’m calling about my wife—Ann Schindler? Is she there?”
“Sheeler?” (A second girl’s voice, more distant from the mouthpiece: “Let me talk.”)
“Schind-ler,” Shields repeated hopefully. “Ann Schindler. Or our daughter, Mercedes. Have they been there?”
“This’s Sissy Stevenson,” announced a new voice. “Are you looking for Mrs. Schindler? Who are you?”
“Her husband, Will Shields.”
“Did you say Shields?” The distant voice sounded doubtful now, yet excited.
“Yes. Will E. Shields.”
“Wait a minute!”
A
thunk
as the handset fell, and a babble of girlish voices from a distance.
“This is Sissy Stevenson again, Mr. Shields. Do you by any chance know a Mr. L. Robert Roberts?”
The hostess’s voice came from the top of the stairs. “Sir, there’s a Mrs. Schindler on the phone. She says that she’s your wife.”

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