Nightlight (22 page)

“That's exactly how you're behaving. Pretending like your cousin is a harmless eccentric, and that I turned on the tape recorder with my elbow when I was in here a few minutes ago.”

“I was trying to be reassuring. I know there's something wrong. Besides, I don't like being afraid. It makes me stubborn.”

“It makes me want to leave.”

“I have to stay here. It's a matter of pride. Besides, we don't have much choice.”

Lise's distant voice rose from the recorder. “Death be not proud, though some have called thee—” He punched the off button. “I wonder why he doesn't come out and see us.”

“Because he doesn't want us to see him.”

Paul looked at her sharply. “You think you have it all figured out.”

“I'm afraid I do. And I'm beginning to think I'd rather spend the night in the rain than spend it in here.”

“You'll get hypothermia, and die,” Paul said without conviction. It was dangerous for her here in the cabin, and it would be wrong to ask her to stay.

“I'll wear one of the nylon raincoats over a blanket, and climb an oak tree.”

It was a plausible plan, Paul had to admit, even if it did smack of cowardice. “Go ahead,” he said. “Go ahead and spend the night up a tree, I won't stop you.” He added, with unfelt courage, “I think you're making a big deal out of nothing.”

“He's watching us, Paul.”

“I'm going to get some more wood, and then I'm going to at long last have some pork and beans, and then I'm going to spend a long and very toasty night.”

She followed him with the flashlight to the firewood under the roof behind the cabin. The bark of the wood gleamed bright as copper in the light, but as he loaded his arms with as much as he could carry the flashlight surged brighter for a moment, then faded to a dim brown eye in the darkness.

The stump of a branch stabbed into Paul's ribs as he trotted back to the cabin. The flashlight still cast a pale circle of light, but it was a meager improvement over total darkness. “It's a miracle it has lasted this long,” he gasped. “A couple of batteries like that, stuck into the bottom drawer for who knows how long. They leak all their power.”

Logs rumbled across the hearth, and one of them rolled across the floor. Paul parried an invisible foe for a moment, using the poker like a rapier. “So,” he said. “We're all set.”

His mock bravado had the opposite of the desired effect. She shook a red blanket off the sofa, and folded it into a shawl.

“I've always been athletic,” she said.

It was news to Paul.

“And I've always been independent,” she continued. She looked into his eyes, telling him things he could not understand.

Paul nearly said “So what?” but he watched the shadows that deformed her face and waited for her to speak.

“We have two alternatives,” she said at last. “You can have the hatchet, or I can. I think you should keep the poker. It is a heavy weapon, really, and you seem to have a natural affinity toward using it.”

The hatchet had been honed to a bright edge by someone in the recent past. He held it toward her, the head in his hand. She wrapped her hand around it, and let the weight of it swing her arm down.

“Don't go,” he whispered.

“I am speaking very simply, and very calmly. I think someone is listening to us, and if that person tries to climb the tree after me, I will chop off his fingers.” Her eyes were bright. “And his hand. And his arm, so help me God.”

“I will not give in to it. I have a right to be here,” Paul began.

Lise smiled. “Of course you do. If I weren't such a coward, I would stay.”

“I will, of course, escort you to your tree.”

“You are very kind.”

Paul grinned, and it hurt. He heaved a log into the fire and smacked it with the poker. Sparks belched out from the coals, and steam rose from the bark with a sigh.

“Although, there are those who might say that if you stay in this house tonight, you're crazy,” she said, zipping the nylon.

Never in his life had Paul had so little to say. He opened the door for her, and walked, feeling numb and too small for his clothes. He wanted to ask her not to go. He wanted to tell her that he needed her.

He wanted to tell her that he was afraid, but he did not want to admit to himself exactly how afraid he really was.

She walked straight to the tree, and Paul knew that she had spied it perhaps hours ago, and had planned this moment. It was as big around as a man, and three branches snaked out from the trunk just above Paul's head. Paul gave Lise a leg up, and she shinnied further up the highest branch, until he could not see her in the darkness.

The dim, gray eye of the flashlight stared down at him. He patted the tree. He had to admit, to himself, that the tree looked safe. He stroked the tree, as if the tree could feel him, as if the trunk would begin to purr. For a moment the tree seemed to quiver, faintly, as if a creature were trapped inside it, as if the tree had been a human and had been transformed into a rooted thing.

And then Paul realized that it was only the struggle of Lise high up in the tree to go even higher that made the faint shivering of the oak. “Good luck,” he called up to her.

“Don't go back,” she called down in an even voice.

“I have to,” said Paul.

He patted the tree again, and when he wished good luck, a second time, he said it as if to the tree itself: Protect her. Keep her safe.

Water pattered around him:. Stay here, stay here, stay here.

Paul had dropped the poker as he helped Lise into the tree. Now he had trouble finding it, and when he did it was hairy with needles and oak leaves. He held it into the rain as he walked, knowing that water was not the best thing for iron. “I'll dry you off,” he said, and wanted to laugh at his concern for a lifeless thing.

But his lips were stiff. He touched the front door, but could not push it open. When he did, he expected to see someone there.

There was no one. Firelight glistened off the floor. The firewood sprawled where he had dumped it. Water dripped off the rain jacket as he flung it over a chair.

He had to. He had to spend the night here. Proving something, but he did not know what. Did he want simply to be proud of himself? Did he not want to appear a coward in his own eyes?

Perhaps, he thought. Perhaps he simply wanted to stay warm. He thrust the poker into the fire, but from moment to moment he turned around to see if anyone stood on the stairs, watching.

His own shadow, and the shadow of the poker in his hand, danced on the floor, a slow, lumbering dancing, the celebration of an event without joy.

Lise was right. It was an evil place, and crazy as it was to spend the night in a tree in the rain, it made sense compared with standing rigid with a rod of wet iron in his hand, looking upward at the ceiling, unable to move.

Why didn't Len just pop out from wherever he was? If he was watching them, why didn't he show himself? What was he afraid of?

Afraid of being seen.

Paul could no longer rationalize what Len had done. He had tried to be cheerful. Now he had to be honest with himself. Len was more than shy. He was not simply a man who wanted to be alone. Besides, he wasn't a complete hermit. That man with the rasping whisper, that voice on the tape. That was a visitor, wasn't he?

But whatever Len was, he was sick. There was no question about that now. False cheer could not save Paul. The old, rational world had melted away.

Paul paced the floor, carrying the poker like a stick with which he was about to beat a dog. The shadow of the poker rose and fell against the wall, a misshapen club. Paul plucked a pinecone off the hearth, and tossed it into the fire. It hissed, and blazed with white flame.

He stabbed the poker into the fire, deep into the coals. People alone like this had to be careful. They could become so frightened, so terrified, that they might begin to imagine things. No doubt, he reasoned, that was what gave a haunted house its reputation. The house had a combination of ingredients, appearance, location, whatever, that awakened the imagination.

This simple, solid building of native stone and redwood was exactly such a place. It looked harmless, but it was not. He would simply have to be strong. He would have to combat whatever forces were here with his own common sense. He had always had a good, skeptical mind. That's why he was so successful as a restaurant critic. His mind had a hard edge to it.

A lot of people thought it was easy to be a restaurant critic, even fun. The sort of job it was ridiculous to be paid to do. But it wasn't easy. It required fairness, for one thing. And powers of description. And a willingness to sample new foods, even if they looked like something mummified.

The poker was a dull red where its head was buried in the coals. Paul banged the glowing poker on a log, and cut a black mark into a length of unburned wood. Then he broke open an incandescent log, and gray, transparent flames danced from its heart.

The floor overhead moaned. A low cry, so much like a voice he thought, for an instant, that it was someone speaking. It moaned again, like a word repeated so someone might understand what was being said. And another voicelike groan farther on across the ceiling, a procession, Paul realized, of footsteps. A door opened like air exhaled slowly, a nearly silent sigh of pleasure. A floorboard creaked, and whoever it was did not hurry, did not, for a moment, walk at all, but waited, listening.

There was nothing to hear. Rain, as always, a sound so constant that it was like silence. The snapping of the fire, and a whistle as the last resin in the pinecone ignited. The pinecone rolled, a living thing now completely consumed into a shape black and definite as the head of an ax. Paul stared into the fire, his back to the stairs, as though the fire were a source of strength.

Footsteps again, to the head of the stairs, and Paul's back was alive as if a powerful heat were applied to his skin, and the shirt he wore seemed to shift, trying to escape his body. His feet were anchored, and his thighs knotted hard. He could see nothing but the seething fire, and his breath stopped.

Steps descended the stairs, slowly, one step at a time, as if there were no hurry. As if there were plenty of time to do anything; the night was long and there would be other nights after this one. No one ever had to hurry again as long as they lived, because there was time enough for everything.

The steps reached the bottom of the stairs and Paul struggled to clear his mind of the fierce whiteness that filled it like silt. There is no one behind me, he thought. It is the terrible pressure of this house, the power of it gripping my skull and sucking my sanity out like a syringe.

He commanded himself to move. He commanded his feet to uproot themselves, and turn because there was, he knew, no one there. He was alone in this house, and there was no reason to be afraid.

But his legs did not move, and he froze into a column of ice as the steps crossed the floor and a hand fell on his shoulder.

32

The Thing crept beyond the trapezoid of light thrown by the window. Rain streamed down its arms, and what was left of its face.

The living were still here. They had come for Him. They wanted to take Him back to the place of the dead. He hated the living, and wanted to destroy them. They were everything He was not.

He had been listening to their stupid, birdlike voices. He had seen them pawing through the possessions that were not theirs. He had smelled them—they smelled of warmth. Food.

He would destroy everything about them. The chimney smoke was dragged down to the trees by the rain. So He would punish them, like so much smoke.

The air hissed through his nonface. He was afraid of them, too. He was not alive, as they were. What could a Thing do, but wait, and hide? He was good at waiting. The dead do nothing but wait.

He made a noise like a laugh, but it was not a laugh. At first He had thought they would leave. There was nothing for them here. This was a place for creatures that were not alive. These chattering, lively beasts strolled from room to room. He crept from window to window, listening, watching.

He climbed up the rusting pipe and crawled along the roof. He could easily work one of these windows loose, and slip inside. He was good at slipping, and hiding. He was made of shadow. He knew how shadow crawls, when no one is watching, like the approach of night.

He made His noise again, His snort of anguish. Why were they here? It was because they knew He was here. They wanted to take Him back to the bronze husk, and leave Him there in a cold stew that would last forever. He crept along the peak of the roof, the very spine, where the roof would bear His weight without a whisper. Rain streamed into the holes in His head that emitted breath.

He crouched behind the chimney. The stones were warm, and He could not hear their mindless voices. The living had nothing to say. What could they report to one another? They knew nothing.

The not-living knew. They were the creatures with secrets. He gnawed at his hand, angrily.

He climbed along the roof, and slipped down the pipe. He panted, listening.

He was good at waiting. And he had a plan. It was a trap. They wanted to be here. Now they could not leave. He would wait for them to separate, and then He would take them. It would not be an act of cruelty, although they deserved pain. It would perfect them.

Even now He heard their voices. Brittle, empty voices, worse than the bleating of the lowest animal. But He would wait. He had waited for many years. A night, or two, more was no time at all.

A wait like this is like turning into stone. The Thing turned to granite. There were no sounds. There was no rain. No world. Only the wait. Not even a single point of fire in His mind. Nothing.

Vacant. Cold.

And then: One of them was gone. Steps, the door shutting. The one that fled did not matter. What mattered was that He could return to the place He belonged to.