The Digging Leviathan (35 page)

The dog disappeared behind the wall. Yamoto clambered up onto the fence and pulled himself onto a branch, wrenching at the device in the tree. That was for Edward’s benefit. There’d be no evidence of machinations in the morning, no explaining the horror in the yard.

Yamoto dropped back onto the fence, grinning. He crouched, peered toward William who stood frozen with terror, and ran along the copings toward the old Koontz house, toward William’s sanctuary, his white, billowing trousers lit
by moonlight. He was far older than William remembered. William had seen his face before, and recently too. He had a little droopy beard and wore earrings beneath the brim of his bowler hat—dangling goldfish with the face of Giles Peach. Yamoto’s face was empty of expression. Dead. And he seemed to run on and on along the fencetop, sure as a cat, scampering closer and closer.

William gasped with terror. Choked with it. Tried to move, but could do nothing but watch Yamoto running toward him through the wind, his white robes whipping and snapping like loose sails on a mast. He saw suddenly that a steamer trunk lay propped against the wall, its lid slamming shut and falling open, bang, bang, bang, until the entire chest rose above the ground, hovering and dancing for a moment before sailing off, shrinking in the distance. Yamoto ran inexorably along and was suddenly lifted by the wind and flung head over heels, his bowler hat spinning away and he following after, an untethered kite, glowing and dwindling in the agitated moonlight. The roof of the Pembly house blew loose and spun off. The elm cracked and bent and tore out bodily, pinwheeling away. Clouds raced in the sky, and through the rents torn by the wind, William could see shooting stars, showers of them, blown through space, the wild gale sweeping the heavens clean and piling stars and planets, bowler hats and lawn chairs against some rusted and teetering chainlink fence in the void.

Sunlight shone through the curtainless window, straight into William’s eyes. It was eight o’clock. It had been a hellish night. The wind still blew, but somehow daylight masked the sound of the rustling palm fronds. William remembered having nightmares. It was impossible, though, to say when he’d fallen asleep, and whether he had seen anything at all out the back window. It was all peculiarly real to him.

He was damned if he was going to spend the day in the empty house. He’d have been wise to sneak home before dawn, but he’d just have to risk it now. He’d never been quite so desperate for a cup of coffee. Edward would sweat at the idea of him exposing himself so, but
c’est la vie,
as the Frenchman said. He’d lock himself in and not answer the door or telephone. He could always nip back over the fence in a crisis.

He stood for a moment at the back door, watching the Pembly house. Nothing stirred. He opened the door and darted out, hunched and running toward the fence. He stopped, peeked over, saw nothing once again, and then clambered up onto a pile of brick and over the wall into the door of the aquarium shed. From the maze shed he looked out again. There was no use taking chances. He started out, then checked himself, stopping and staring at the grass under the elm where a clump of dog waste gathered a multitude of early morning flies.

William’s heart smashed away in his chest, half in anger, half in fear. There was no sign of a winch in the treetop. Of course there wasn’t. They’d taken it out. If he looked over the
wall, there it would be, rusting in the weeds, the picture of innocence. He came to himself suddenly and hurried into the house.

The morning dragged along. He tried to read, but couldn’t. So he tried to write, but it was a waste of time. He came up with nothing but nonsense, nothing but first paragraphs full of mystery and promise that led to the wastepaper basket. He roamed the house, poking into closets, flipping on lights and flipping them off again. He spent more and more time watching through the window, speculating on the activities of his neighbor. He arranged the drapes. The hibiscus hadn’t grown so much as to obscure his view, but until almost noon, there was nothing at all to see. Mrs. Pembly remained invisible, ignoring her weeds. Once she came outside with something for the dog, an enormous knucklebone, from the look of it, or, thought William giggling at his post by the drapes, the boiled head of her husband. She disappeared straightaway into the house. William didn’t like it a bit. It was unnatural. Something was in the air.

At around noon William dozed in the green chair. He awoke with a jerk, but couldn’t remember what it was that had roused him—a noise of some sort, vaguely threatening. He listened, cocking an ear toward the street. There was a creak and a bang, the sound of a tailgate being lowered. William stood up and crept to the front window, and there was Yamoto, in his trousers, messing with a bamboo rake and a grass catcher, scrabbling in the little bed of begonias that separated part of the Pembly lawn from William’s own.

William was furious. He could see in his mind a crouched and running Yamoto, wearing a bowler hat, his white clothes fluttering, the remnants of a nightmare. He shuddered and paced back and forth. A tiny Edward St. Ives sat on his shoulder, admonishing him, belaboring his conscience and his better judgment. William brushed him off onto the floor. “I know what they’re up to,” he said aloud. He stopped in front of the window. Yamoto was weeding with a triangular hoe, dangerously close to William’s side of the begonias. If he touched the orange tuberous …!

A man can’t be pushed that far, thought William.

“Discretion is the better part of valor,” said a tiny, irritating voice.

“Discretion! Don’t talk to me about discretion. And I hate
cliché. Look at that! He’s jarred my angel wing! Those green stalks can’t take that kind of abuse. The butcher!”

William raged around the room. The tiny Edward vanished. And just as well for him. This was an affair of honor. The white glove had been cast long ago, and it was time for William to pluck it up and slap Yamoto silly with it. The old lady too. Their villainy had reached new heights the past night.

But William was shrewd. He thought of his lesson with the toothpaste tube. Slow and easy, that was his way now. Yamoto would be at it for an hour at least. There was time for preparation. He routed out an old backpack and hauled it into the kitchen, shoving in a package of saltines. A can of peaches followed along with a can opener. He found part of a bag of Oreo cookies in the cupboard and put that in, then added a half dozen little cardboard cartons of raisins, an apple, and a piece of salami.

He dug out a one-quart canteen and filled it with water, found a flashlight—not quite the bone crusher he was used to, but heavy enough in his hand to lend him a certain contempt for the casual villain—and finally the third of the army-navy store miner’s helmets. It belonged to Russel Latzarel, but he would understand. He wouldn’t need it aboard the diving bell anyway. William set the stuffed backpack, the canteen, and the miner’s helmet by the back door. Then, considering, he fetched the copy of Pince Nez, a compass, and one of the little penlights he’d gotten from Phillip Mays. He stuffed the lot of it into his pack, slipped out through the maze shed, and dumped them over the fence into the back yard of the vacant Koontz house. He might, after all, be moving quickly.

The preparations gave him a sense of urgency. Ready for anything, that’s how they’d find him. He’d tackle Yamoto now. He could hear the roar of his mower. It would be best not to simply charge out and confront the wily gardener. That had been his mistake the last time, when he’d been defeated by a garden hose. There must be a way to vindicate himself now, not only in his own eyes, but in the eyes of the law. It could easily come to that. It was odds-on that it would. And if it did, some link between Yamoto and Frosticos would go a long way toward justifying his own actions, his escapes from the sanitarium. Paranoia, after all, ceases to be paranoia in the light of revealed evidence. Edward would agree with him there.

William slipped out onto the front porch, flattening himself
against the wall of the house that enclosed the end of the porch. He peeked around the corner of it. Yamoto chased his mower across the lawn. He jerked around in a tight little turn and headed back. William ducked away, waiting. As soon as Yamoto reversed direction again, William was off, scampering across the lawn toward the pickup truck. He was safely hidden by the fender when Yamoto reversed again, and in the next instant he was clambering into the cab, as quietly as he could, throwing himself fiat on his back atop the seat.

He breathed hoarsely, out of fear rather than exertion, and ran his hand along under the seat. There were nothing but springs. He had no idea what he hoped to discover. A walkie-talkie? A gun? A medical bag? His hand closed on a book. He hauled it out It was written in Oriental characters. William couldn’t tell which end was which. He tossed it to the floor in disgust. ‘Then why can’t he
talk
like a man,” he muttered, quoting Huckleberry Finn, and popped open the glove box. An avalanche of debris cascaded out onto the floor. He shoved his hand in and swept out the rest: cigarettes, hard candy, street-maps, napkins, little plastic containers of mustard and ketchup, a fountain pen, another book, nuts and bolts. Nothing, though, that really sewed the case up. Nothing damning, as the lawyer would say. Nothing but a little wooden box, carved, it seemed, out of rosewood—in the figure of a goldfish, bent in the middle like the yin half of a yin and yang. William popped the top off. There were pills inside, Bayer aspirin, from the look of them. William touched his tongue to one. It was bitter.

Of course they would look like aspirin. In an organization of the magnitude of Han Koi’s it would be a simple enough business to press morphine and heroin into false aspirin tablets. And the goldfish—a dead giveaway. It would mean nothing, of course, to the casual observer. But to William, to someone with knowledge of the arcana, the machinations of the world by the clever Han Koi. … William shoved it into his pocket.

He raised himself onto his elbows and looked back over his shoulder at the house. Yamoto cut on, oblivious. William laughed. Damn it! he thought to himself. If only he’d brought a potato to jam into Yamoto’s exhaust pipe. He’d wait in the bushes, watching. Yamoto would try to start the truck. Nothing would happen. He’d crawl down out of the cab, scratching his head, and open the hood. The engine would tell him nothing. It would leer at him. Puzzled, he’d creep around, peering
under the truck, wiggling things, chattering. Mrs. Pembly would come out with her arms folded and commiserate. Both, of course, would harbor suspicions, fears. They’d look around in vain. Was William Hastings about? Had he been coming and going like a ghost in the night?
Had
it been he who had destroyed the plan to penetrate the Earth?

Mrs. Pembly would shake her head. Yamoto would crouch on his hands and knees at the rear of the truck, staring in horror at the business end of a potato stuffed up his exhaust pipe, thwarting the flow of necessary vapors, stopping utterly the workings of the engine. He’d poke at it. Mrs. Pembly would marvel, perplexed, asking him why on Earth? Then both would stop. There’d be a rustling in the bushes behind them. William Hastings would step out, smiling, wearing a suit and tie. He’d bow, inquire after the health of the dog. Suggest modifications in the sling and harness affair in the tree. They’d be dumbstruck, Yamoto holding the potato like a fool, Mrs. Pembly falling back at the sight of him. “Aspirin?” he’d ask, holding out the incriminating box. Yamoto would pale.

William giggled, thinking about it. If he hurried, he might still have time to pull it off. He stared at the fabric stretched across the ceiling of the cab. There seemed to be a million little holes in it, all in uniform lines. It was just possible, though, that they weren’t holes, that they were little dots painted on.

“Aspirin?” asked William aloud, canting his head and widening his eyes.

An unimaginable scream jammed him against the seat—a short, violent scream like the scream of a man in mortal terror. William sprang up, slamming his head into the ceiling. Yamoto, his mouth working, stared in at him through the open window, gibbering, looking as if he’d seen his own corpse in a bush.

“Hah!” shouted William after his initial surprise. He waved the rosewood goldfish at him. “So this is your game? Heroin, morphine? What is it? What do you know of Han Koi?”

Yamoto stumbled backward, waving his open palms before him in a sort of ritualistic dance. William reached for the dashboard to steady himself, found Yamoto’s book, and pitched it out the window. He could think of nothing else to do with it. The same was true for the debris on the floor. William picked up a handful and tossed it out onto the lawn, furious. They’d see who it was they’d run afoul of. He pushed open the
door and shoveled the rest into the gutter. Mrs. Pembly was on the porch. If she had any sense, she’d stay there.

Yamoto ran toward his tools. So it was that way. He’d been spooked by William’s knowledge of the pills in the box. This wasn’t ten-cent bets on baseball games anymore. Yamoto was desperate. William climbed out of the cab and into the bed of the truck. He tripped over a bamboo rake. The bastard. He cursed at it, stomping the little bent fingers of the thing. He picked it and sailed it into the bushes like a spear. Yamoto waved his hoe menacingly. William laughed aloud, dumping a gunnysack full of grass clippings out onto the road and rolling a power edger out after it down the lowered tailgate, the red and yellow machine clanging to the street on its side and lying there dead. William shouted at it. Then he shouted at Yamoto, who, he could see, was keeping his distance. He leaped off the truck onto the parkway, stumbled, and clambered to his feet again before Yamoto had a chance to be on him with the hoe.

He advanced toward the porch. Yamoto was a gibbering wreck. It was Mrs. Pembly who now most desperately required comeuppance. “Do you think,” shouted William, waving his arm, “that I know nothing of your little game with the dog?”

Mrs. Pembly shot into the house like a rocket, slamming the door. She reappeared at the window. William made a hash of one of her begonias while Yamoto protested loudly and incoherently. William stomped another. “Keep your filthy dog off my lawn!” he shouted. The speeches he’d rehearsed in past weeks were taking flight in the face of his rage. He yanked a third begonia out by the roots, tore it to bits, and flung it at Yamoto, then stomped another into scrap.