Scare Tactics (36 page)

As soon as he was within the wall line of the prison he wished he had brought a flashlight, but he wasn’t willing to go all the way back to his car for one.

The heavy doors of the entrance to the larger of the two buildings were still secure on thick hinges, and he passed them by, looking for a window low enough or a hole big enough for a boy Chris’s size to get through.

He used a pile of fallen stone to reach one of the windows and peered inside, but couldn’t see much.

“Chris!” he called, and listened patiently. If the boys had come this far, the odds were they had made only a cursory inspection and then wandered off. Unless ...

“Chris?”

He shrugged, pulled a sharp stone off the window ledge, and crawled carefully through, letting himself drop the seven feet to the floor below. He stood for a few moments under the window, until his eyes had become adjusted to the faint light inside. There were rents in the timber roof, and a couple of crossbeams sagged dangerously. Pools of water stood
where sections of the thick flooring had tilted and sunk into the ground. In one corner there was a faint scratching, as if a rat had backed away at his intrusion.

He called again for Chris, more loudly this time, and waited, his eyes on a far doorway. Then he made his way across the floor and brushed aside cobwebs before passing through.

Light came weakly into the cellblock from several sources. Practice glanced at the rows of cells with their old-fashioned latticework iron. Some of them bulged from the pressure of stones and timber fallen from the roof. He listened intently, hearing the slow drip of water, and shuddered. It was cold and wet, and the stones at his feet were slippery from the drainage of water into the underground cells. He picked up a bit of wood and tossed it down the nearby stairwell, but there was no answering splash.

Then he froze, staring at an object on the floor ahead of him, just out of reach of a pale shaft of light from above. He made his way across the treacherous floor and picked it up—new and shiny, a school lunchbox. He lifted the lid and read the name of the boy printed inside: Hugh McAdams.

Hugh hadn’t touched his lunch.

Again Practice called, feeling tension and alarm in his heart. He called out the names of both boys, but still there was no reply. Squatting, he examined the floor beneath the shaft of light. Some of the green slime had been scraped away near the place where he had seen the lunchbox. There were two long skid marks, as if one of the boys had fallen.

He rose and walked slowly toward the stairway, looking into corners, trying to see into the cells.

His foot hit something and sent it skidding across the stones. Puzzled, Practice struck a match and held it near the floor. A halo of light flickered over the boy’s shoe he had kicked. He picked the shoe up and studied it.

One of the boys had lost a shoe. Then why hadn’t he retrieved it and put it on?

Because he had been running and hadn’t wanted to stop, or even think about stopping.

Practice made his way back to the stairs and struck another match. The stones here were dry, covered with dirt. He saw footprints in the soft dirt, the imprint of shoes and of a foot wearing only a sock.

But there were three sets of footprints. The third set was that of a man, and the prints obliterated some of the smaller ones.

“Chris!”

Practice hurried down the iron stairs, one hand on the railing for support, and found himself in a chamber with iron rings around the walls and half a dozen doorways. Iron doors leaned from sprung hinges. The sound of water dripping onto stone was louder, faintly echoing. Practice struck another match, looking around in dismay.

Then he heard the sounds, distant, regular sobs, ghostly and disembodied.

He plunged toward one of the doorways, then backed off, finding the passage choked with rubble. He started into the passage to the right of the first one, pausing to strike another match.

Some light filtered through the blackness at the other end of the passage. He went toward the light, but the sounds of his own hurried footfalls obliterated the cries.

The passage ended in a huge, many-pillared room filled with overturned, rotting benches. The light was poor and, cursing, Practice fumbled with his matches, listening again for the cries.

He called Chris’s name several times, then dropped the burned-out match and struck another, turning, holding out his match, the light stabbing into the corners of the room, over the heaped shadows and tumbled stone, over the thing that hung heavily from the crossbeams by a rope.

He wasn’t even aware of the match until it seared his fingers, leaving him in darkness. He didn’t want to light another. He shook his head, dazed, and his fingers reacted automatically, scraping the head of another match against the side of the box. Flame dazzled him; he looked up slowly, at the rope, the heavy, lumpy burlap sack, slashed and torn and stained. He stumbled forward, not able to take his eyes from it. In the light of the match the stains seemed to turn red before his eyes. Blood dripped slowly from the soaked bottom of the sack to the stones below. There were three red pools on the floor.

He held the match higher. In the last flicker of light, through a rent in the burlap, he saw the dark, mutilated head of a child.

For a few moments, in the darkness that followed, he thought that he must be losing his mind, because the dead child seemed to be calling out to him. Then he realized that the cries, echo-distorted, came from somewhere else in the depths of the prison.

Backing away from the sack that hung dripping from the beams, he took two more matches, and struck one.

“Where are you?” he shouted. But he had seen a doorway, and stumbled toward it.

Inside the passage, he heard running water. The passage sloped downward and, as he followed it, the cries were louder, desperate; the terror in the child’s voice seemed to accelerate in concert with a different guttural sound: something heavy and metallic, like a manhole cover, dragging over concrete.

There was meager light in the passage from a tower window high above; Practice could distinguish the rippling of water in near darkness. Apparently all or part of the creek had been diverted so that it flowed under the prison and spilled down into an aqueduct, then was channeled through a sewer to the river. The aqueduct was about half filled.

He had two matches left. The scraping of iron on concrete continued; and he heard heavy breathing as the screaming abruptly stopped. Not hearing the childish screams anymore was unendurable: Practice screamed himself as light flared above his fingertips.

“I’ll help you! Where—”

He had a glimpse of the far wall, an uncovered well near where the racing waters of the aqueduct dropped underground. And something was moving swiftly toward him, a shadow on the wall that could have been a beast or a man. He heard a terrible low grunting sound, and as the match flickered in a draft, saw the curved blade of an upraised sword.

He had no weapon, no time to think. It was combat again, always the unexpected—groping for the enemy in darkness, the swift, violent encounters where you killed men whose faces you never saw. Instead of backing up, which probably would have been fatal, he hurled himself down and forward in a rolling block, cut the legs of the sword-bearer from under him, heard a hard
whang
of steel on the stone floor as he went rolling toward the opposite wall.

He got up slowly and silently, holding his breath. His ribs were bruised and one hand smarted from skinned knuckles. He heard footsteps echoing, then nothing except for a soft splash, no louder a sound than a frog would make jumping into a pond.

Disoriented, trembling, he waited, not knowing if the other man had run or if, perhaps, there was more than one. Someone might be waiting, only a few feet away in the dark; a misstep, the slightest miscalculation, and he risked dismemberment.

When he moved he went quickly, sideways, crouching, brushing against the rough damp wall opposite the aqueduct. He could just make out the surface rippling of water again. And heard the child whimpering.

The well,
he thought. He could barely make it out across the chamber.

But where was the man with the sword?

He knew he had to take the chance that he was alone now with the child in the well ... oh, God, God, had it been Chris Guthrie hanging up back there in the bloody Hack? The survivor might be seriously wounded or dying. He moved again cautiously across the uneven floor, pausing to listen, trying to see through the gloom to hiding places, frightened of the terrible swift sword, reluctant to light his last match and make of himself an unmissable target.

“Bastard!” he whispered, ashamed of his fear. “Bastard, if you’re here, come and get me!”

The well. His right foot stubbed against the iron cover on the floor. He looked down into the well but could see nothing. The nape of his exposed neck felt cold. He was sluggish with dread, but he had to light the remaining match.

“W
ho’s there?” Practice whispered into the well, striking lire from his thumbnail.

Chris Guthrie, his face dead white around a puckered scar of a mouth, gazed up blankly at him from three feet of swirling water.

“Oh, God,” Practice moaned, and threw the match away, He reached blindly into the shallow well, got his hands under Chris’s arms, and lifted him, drenched and shivering, from the water, knowing that this would be the moment the attacker might have waited for: waited until he was certain that Practice, with the boy in his arms, could not defend either of them.

Practice turned, his back to the well, and wrapped the boy in his trench coat. He saw nothing, heard nothing but Chris’s chattering teeth.

He hurried then, avid to reach daylight, feeling his way back to the room where the murdered boy hung from the ceiling, but not stopping there, clattering up the iron stairs, falling once but holding tightly to Chris. On the first floor of the prison he crawled up a pile of stone to the roof, where there was enough space between the beams to force his way through, and drew Chris up after him. He made his way to the back of the building where an earth slide had buckled one wall, and clambered down the slope to the ground. In the light of day he looked anxiously at Chris’s face. The boy’s lips were still a ghastly blue, and only the whites of his eyes showed beneath the lids.

He knew Chris might die if his body temperature couldn’t be raised. He jogged across the lowland to his car, placed Chris in the front seat, and drove up the hill. Without taking time to think about what he was doing, he turned into Major Kinsaker’s driveway and stopped by the front porch. In another few seconds he was ringing the bell and swearing under his breath.

The door opened a couple of inches and Steppie peered out.

“Why, Jim ...”

“Don’t stand there, let me in.”

“
I can t ...
”

“For God’s sake, Steppie, this boy is dying!”

He shoved the door open, unbalancing Steppie, and carried Chris inside.

“Where’s the bedroom?”

“Jim! Please! You can’t ...”

Without waiting for a satisfactory reply he started up the stairs, and on the second floor opened the first door he came to. He went inside, stripped the wet clothes off Chris, wrapped him in a blanket taken from the foot of the bed, and put him under the covers.

“Call Dr. Childs,” Practice said to Steppie, who was staring at Chris’s face. She wavered a little on her feet, and he smelled whiskey. “And get me some of that stuff you’ve been drinking.”

When he saw that she wasn’t going to move he looked around for a telephone, failed to see one, and went into the adjoining room. More than likely this bedroom belonged to the Major himself, but Practice spotted a telephone on the bedside table and didn’t waste time looking around.

Dr. Childs hadn’t come in that day, according to his receptionist, and she sounded miffed, as if she had spent an unhappy morning placating angry patients. Practice asked her who usually covered for Childs, and then quickly dialed that number.

This time the doctor, a man named McLemore, was in, and Practice quickly explained the situation. He was told to keep Chris warm and not to move him again.

The receiver of the phone clattered against the table, and Practice realized how badly he was trembling. He used both hands to set the receiver in its cradle, then slumped on the edge of the canopied bed, clenching his hands between his knees.

Steppie came toward him uncertainly, with a decanter in one hand and a glass in the other.

“Are they going to take him to the hospital?” she asked. “Maybe if they do the Major won’t find out ...”

“Damn the Major,” Practice said between clenched teeth.

She poured some of the whiskey into the glass without spilling any; Practice took it and raised it to his lips. He seemed to realize then what he was doing.

Seeing his hesitation, Steppie said, “Go on, Jim. You need it.”

He grimaced and put the glass down.

“Look at you, you’re a mess,” Steppie complained. “At least get off the bed.”

He stood up, drawing a deep breath.

“Your bed now, Steppie?” he said, for no good reason; she looked at him hatefully, then shrugged, as if it weren’t important.