Shadowland (68 page)

 
   
Joan can't be moved. Can't figure it out — doctors can't either. Going crazy with this thing.

 
   And I saw the owl over your cabin, Nick . . .

 
   Can't get her out, can't stay. . .

 
   
And Philly's wife dead — something in the air or something in the water
. . .

 
   
Heard they sold the whole place. The devil must have bought it.

 
   Waft the gin this way, Nick. Keep having these terrible nightmares.

 
   The other two slept in the perfect blackness. Tom lay rigid in his blanket, listening to their even breathing as the captured voices lilted from the tunnels, moving and changing until there was only one voice left.

 
   
Good-bye, all, good-bye. . . All alone. Just me, chicken inspector number 23. Better waft myself some more of this gin and keep the boogies away
. . .
allalone, all alone . . . with the moon a-bove, da da dum dum . . .

 
   He knew that if he looked deeply enough into one or another of the tunnels, he'd find a skeleton. Twenties Nick, with a supply of prewar gin and something going with Philly's wife while his own wife sickened and died and while a plausible but sinister young expatriate bought up the resorts where he had come for a pleasant summer of gambling and lovemaking. Twenties Nick, who hadstayed on until it was too late and now was never going to leave . . . Crooning 'Sweet Sue' in the tunnel that had allowed him and his mistress to be in two places at once.

 
   Collins had killed them off, the ones that couldn't be scared away. Then he had taken the old resort and perfected himself, toying with Del Nightingale in the summers when he thought that Del might be his successor: later, just sharpening his skills, waiting for the successor to come, fending off anyone who tried to invite himself, knowing that in time the only person in the world who meant danger to him would appear.

 
   And when his extorted money had run out, he had killed Del's parents. Brought their plane out of the air and claimed his share of the inheritance and bided his time, keeping his ears open — knowing that sooner or later he would hear about some young fellow who still didn't know what he was.

 
   
Waft myself some more of that good stuff, sport.

 
   Plenty of wafting went on over the years. Here's to you, Nick.

 
   
And to you, Sweet Sue.

 
   He heard it as though someone had spoken from the very mouth of the tunnel nearest him. Tom turned over inside his blanket — or was this too a dream? — and felt a chill breeze advancing toward him.

 
   The devil, M., emerged wrapped in the breeze from the mouth of the tunnel. He shone palely, as if lit by moonlight. M. was no longer dressed in the uniform of a private-school teacher, but in a blazer and high stiff collar. Above the collar his face still radiated sympathy and intense but misdirected intelligence. He knelt down before Tom.

 
   'So you took the low road after all, and here you are.'

 
   'Leave me alone,' Tom said.

 
   'Now, now. I'm offering you a second chance. You don't want to end up like our friend back there, do you? Salted away like a herring? That's not for you.'

 
   'No,' Tom said. 'It's not.'

 
   'But, dear child, can't you see that this is hopeless? I'm giving you your last chance. Stand up and get out. Leave them — they're of no use to you. Take my hand. I'll put you back in your room.' He held out his hand, which wasblack and smoking. 'Oh, there'll be a little pain. Nothing you won't get over. At least you'll save your life.'

 
   Tom shuddered back from the awful hand.

 
   'Reconsider. I promise you, that creature you think you've in love with is going to sell you out. Take my hand. I know it's not very pretty, but you have to take it.' White curls of smoke hovered over the extended hand. 'Mr. Collins has explained it all to you. She's not your way out, boy.'

 
   Tom saw the inevitability of it: a final betrayal, like Rosa Forte's. 'Even so . . . 'he said.

 
   M. retracted his hand, which was now pink and smooth. 'I wonder where you will end up. Down here? In the lake? Nailed to a tree to be eaten by birds? I'll come back and remind you that I tried to help.'

 
   'Do that,' Tom said:
I told you so
must have been one of the devil's favorite sentences.

 
   M. sneered and flickered away.

 
   'Not like that,' Tom said to himself.

 
4

 
'What time is it
now?'
Del asked several hours later.

 
   The flashlight flared out light: illuminated Rose's wrist and bare arm. 'Twenty minutes later than the last time you asked. Six-fifty-one. Is everybody awake?'

 
   'Yeah,' Tom said, jolted out of deep sleep. Rose played the light around the vaulted chamber, shining it in his face, then in Del's. Finally she turned it on herself. She was sitting against the wall, and unlike Del and himself, did not look disheveled. Her hair was in place; Tom saw with astonishment that she was even wearing lipstick. 'There's still coffee in the thermos, and I've got some hardboiled eggs. We can have breakfast before we start.'

 
   'I have to pee,' Del said, sounding embarrassed. 'So do I,' Tom said.

 
   In pitch darkness they stumbled into the first tunnel and splashed the walls; came back guided by the light to eat the hardboiled eggs.

 
   'Now, which tunnel do we take?' Del asked.

 
   'That one.' Rose stabbed the light toward a gaping hole in the curving wall. She walked to the entrance of the tunnel and played the light on a white chalk line. 'I made this when I brought everything down. This is the one.'

 
   'Didn't you say the one next to me?' Tom said.

 
   'This was the one next to you,' Rose said. 'You got mixed up walking back here. This is the one I marked.'

 
   'How far does it go?' Del asked.

 
   'Long way,' Rose said. 'We'll have to be in it about half an hour.'

 
   'You're sure this is the right one?' Tom asked.

 
   'I marked it. I'm sure.'

 
   . . .
sell you out.
Just an unhappy dream: but had it not been from this tunnel that he had heard the lost and captured voices spinning through their eternal and terrible summer? 'Shine the light on your face,' Tom said. 'Humor me.'

 
   Rose lifted the flash and pointed at her face. She squinted in the glare, but her hand was steady.
That creature you think you love.
She was the girl in the window; she was the girl in the red cape carrying a basket down the wooded, path. He wrapped his fingers around the broken figure in his pocket.

 
   Farewell, Nick.

 
   
Come back anytime, Sweet Sue.

 
   In the lake? Nailed to a tree to be eaten by birds?

 
   'Let's get started,' Tom said.

 
5

 
The light bobbed before them, touching timber after timber. Their feet hushed on the dirt. An unrecognized image, almost a sense of
deja vu,
troubled Tom. But it was not
deja vu,
because he knew he had never been in this place before. Still, the sense of a parallel experience hung in his mind — something that had led to . . . what? A taste of unpleasantness, a hint of wrongness, of things being not what they seemed.

 
   'What did you think you heard back there?' Del asked quietly.

 
   'I guess I was just nervous.'

 
   'So was I,' Del confessed.

 
   Down they went, feeling as much as seeing their way. The air in the tunnel grew damper and colder. Rose's flashlight picked out beads of moisture on the wall.

 
   'Did you really come here this summer to . . . you know. Protect me?' Del could ask this because of the darkness which hid his face.

 
   'I guess I did.' Tom's voice, like Del's, went out into pure blackness.

 
   'But how did you know I'd need it?' Del's piping voice seemed to hang in the air, surrounded by charged space. How could he answer it?
Well, I had this vision about a wizard and an evil man, and then later I saw that the evil man had overtaken the wizard. Bad things were coming for you, and I had to put myself in their way.
It was the truth, but it could not be spoken: he could not send out his own voice into the waiting blackness if it were going to say those things.

 
   'I guess it was that 'towers-of-ice' night — remember?'

 
   'When I didn't know if you were taking Uncle Cole away from me or not,' Del said.

 
   'God.'

 
   Del actually giggled.

 
   Then he had it, the memory: Registration Day: walking down the headmaster's stairs after filling out forms in the library, following Mrs. Olinger's flashlight and fat Bambi Whipple's candle. Going toward their first sight of Laker Broome.

 
   For a long time they walked in silence as well as darkness, going always down, down, as if the tunnel led to the center of the earth instead of Hilly Vale.

 
6

 
A long time later, Tom felt the ground changing. The drag forward which had tired his legs had become a drag backward. They were going uphill now: muscles on the tops of his thighs twanged like rubber bands.

 
   ''Was that halfway?' Del asked.