The Man in the Net (17 page)

“There he is!”

The hemlocks were terrible. He hadn’t thought of that. The limbs intertwined with each other and grew, some of them, right down to the ground. It was like being in a cage, a cage of dark, feathery elastic branches. Running forward, he tripped; he got up again; he collided with a lattice of branches as impenetrable as an iron grille. He swung to the left, fell on all fours, tried to push himself under a low-growing limb, stuck and only dragged himself through by an effort. Suddenly the immediate panic of the hemlocks was worse than the other panic of the men behind. The tiny twirling twigs curled around him like fingers; the leaves were in his mouth. Almost hysterical, his bearings lost, he beat his way forward and then precipitously he was out of the trees, staggering forward into a dim clearing with the rock wall in front.

He felt himself falling and made no effort to check the fall. He lay on his face, quite still, his breath coming thickly in great sobbing wrenches.

Behind him were the shouts. No, not just behind him, to his left, to his right. The morbid, end-of-tether sensation came again that he wasn’t himself, that he had lost all identity, that he was merely something that belonged to the men behind him, their puppet, their thing—inescapably theirs.

He got up, his breathing still wrenching his chest like a pain. Quite pointlessly he started groping his way along the wall of rock, keeping a hand on it as if the cold, impersonal surface of the rock was somehow steadying.

The rock wall swerved to the right with the wall of hemlocks still following on the left. He made the turn and then in front of him was a figure.

In the first second it was just a figure, a faceless, shapeless thing, part of the horror that was pursuing him. He stopped dead, shaking his head as if to deny the existence of everything. Then it wasn’t just a figure. It was Emily.

Her finger was up to her lips in a strange ritualistic gesture which brought the sensation of unreality to a climax. They stood in total silence, looking at each other. Then she held out her hand. Automatically he reached his out for hers. The shouts were all around them, no more real now than Emily’s hand, or his own hand for that matter. Stealthily she guided him forward, picking her way, avoiding twigs. He imitated her in this, automatically, too. She was leading him along the rock wall to a place where the hemlocks in front pushed right up against the rock itself. They were moving, it seemed, into a dead end of branches. They came up to the trees. Emily released his hand, dropped down on all fours and disappeared among the branches. He dropped down too. He was back in the hemlock cage again. Dimly in the submarine light, he saw Emily ahead. She swerved sharply to the right and vanished into what seemed like the face of the rock. He reached the point where she had been and her hand, small and pale, came out from the rock. He saw then that there was a semi-circular hole, hardly more than two feet in diameter. Flattening himself out, he squeezed through the aperture into a vague, shadowy dimness. He could feel dry dirt under him as he crawled. Then he was through the hole and Emily’s hand was tugging at him, indicating that he could stand.

He scrambled up on to his knees and then cautiously stood up. Her hand was drawing him forward, deeper into the cave. Now that his eyes were seeing better he could vaguely make out its general outlines. It wasn’t completely dark. There was a sort of twilight. Looking up, he saw yards above him a thin fissure in the rock ceiling.

“It’s all right here, John.” Emily’s whisper sounded faint as the ringing in a sea-shell. “Nobody knows this. Nobody at all except Angel and me. It’s the secret.”

HE STOOD close to her as if she as much as the cave itself meant safety. His body was quivering, but the painful rasping in his chest was growing less. The shouts were all around them. He could hear them and the crash of running bodies as clearly as if there was nothing between him and them but the thinnest sheet of paper.

“You mustn’t be scared,” said Emily. “They can’t hear us in here. Angel and I have tried. It’s something funny about the cave. You can shout in here and right outside you can’t hear a thing. It’s all right. They’ll go away. Listen, they’re going now.”

The shouts and the crashes were fainter now, weren’t they? Weren’t they fading away to the right?

“After I left you,” she said, “I came here to be alone. And I heard the shouts and people running and I knew what it was. I went out. I didn’t know what to do. Then I found you.”

With the slackening of tension, exhaustion came. He felt his knees sagging under him. Emily’s hand touched his.

“You’re tired. You better lie down. Here … on my bed. Not on Angel’s. She won’t let anyone lie on her bed.”

John obeyed the gentle tug on his sleeve.

“Here,” said Emily. “They’re not beds really; they’re only blankets with pine needles under them. But we call them beds.”

He sat down and then stretched himself out on the barely visible blanket, sinking into the soft embrace of the pine needles. Yes, his pursuers were way off to the right now. They were heading down the gulley—away.

“We’ve got furniture and everything,” said Emily. “Orange crates from the store and candles and things. It’s our house. We come here most every night too and sleep. Mother never knows. We climb out of the window and we’re back just when it’s light. We practically live here. And Louise lives here all the time.”

“Louise?”

He felt Emily slip away from him; then he heard a struck match. As a flicker of light came, he turned violently to see her standing with a lighted candle in a coke bottle in one hand and in the other a large shabby, sunbonneted doll.

“This is Louise. She …”

“Put out the candle, Emily.”

“It’s all right, they’ve gone.”

“But they’ll be back, maybe.”

She stood a moment looking at him gravely, then she blew out the candle.

“All right. But that’s Louise. She’s the queen of all Angel’s dolls. I think dolls are dopey, but I don’t let on. You see, it was really Angel who found the cave. I really lied that day. I mean, it really actually is Angel’s cave and Angel gave it to Louise.” She came back and squatted down on the floor next to him. “So it’s really Louise’s cave, I guess.”

This world of the children’s cave was as unreal to him as his panic flight through the woods. And, with the shock of what he’d found in the cow-barn still as raw as a wound, his mind had only the feeblest power to plan. He was safe for the moment; that was all that had seemed to matter. But now he started imperfectly to grapple with the future. He’d run away. He knew that, and he knew that by running away he’d admitted his guilt. That’s how they would see it—because they would want to see it that way. The thing in the barn was there to damn him utterly, but now there was this too: he’d run away. What then should he do? Try to get to Vickie? Gamble on the respect the rabble had for the Careys to keep him safe until the troopers came? And then give himself up?

‘I didn’t run away. I was only trying to get to the Careys because I was afraid of what the men would do…”

Captain Green’s solid, uncompromising face seemed blurrily to watch him from the twilight above.

Maybe that’s what he should do. Wasn’t it the only thing anyway? But not yet—not while the men were still in the woods and might at any minute swing back.

A voluptuous irresponsibility descended on him. There was nothing to do at the moment—nothing but to lie here in the darkness on the pine needles, miraculously exempt from making a decision.

“John.”

Emily’s voice came through to him.

“Yes, Emily.”

“Was it Steve and the men—or was it the troopers?”

“Steve and the village.”

“They came up to your house and you ran away.”

“Yes.”

“What were they going to do to you?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you ran.”

“Yes.”

“I hate them,” said Emily. “I hate them.”

“Yes. And it’s worse now.”

He had to tell her. Why not? There could be nothing valid between them until she knew and took her stand.

“They found cement on the blue jeans and someone had called up a store in Pittsfield, using my name, and ordered cement. They were to dump it, he said, by the bend in the creek beyond the house. For a dam. I went to the bend and there were wheelbarrow tracks and a trail of cement. They led up to the cow-barn, and in the cow-barn …” How did you tell this to a kid? Suddenly, in his mind, he was back running into the cow-barn. He broke off.

Emily said, “And the cement was in the cow-barn?”

“Someone had made it into a floor for one of the stalls— a new cement floor.”

“So she’s there,” said Emily almost perfunctorily. “Mrs. Hamilton’s there. She’s dead and under the cement.”

“I guess so, Emily.”

“Who did it?”

“I don’t know.”

“But someone did it, didn’t they? Someone put her there and then tried to make believe it was you.”

“Yes.”

Telling her hadn’t helped. It had only made his predicament more sharply defined to him. Cement on his blue jeans; his voice ordering the sacks on the phone; Linda there under the new cement in his barn. It was all a monstrous illusion fabricated by an enemy. But who would ever believe that? Captain Green? A district attorney? A judge? A jury? A jury—twelve ruddy, blue-eyed men and women sitting in the courtroom, watching him as the town meeting had watched him, as the men in the meadow …

“John? What are you going to do, John?”

“I don’t know.”

“You didn’t do it.”

“No.”

“Someone did it.”

“Yes.”

“Shall I go out? Shall I see if they’ve gone?”

“Not yet. Wait a bit.”

“John.”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to stay here?”

“I don’t know.”

“Because if you are going to stay here—Angel’s coming any minute.”

He had been only half listening, answering mechanically, tied up to his own thoughts. His attention came sharply back.

“Angel?”

“Yes. She’s coming. She said so. We’re going to have a picnic with Louise. And I’m afraid.”

Angel, kicking and screaming in his arms.
You shan’t know the secret. You beat up your wife.

“It’s the secret, you see,” said Emily. “She’ll be mad that you’re here because of the secret, and then—it’s the other thing. What she says—like Mother and all of them. You did it, she says, and …”

Weirdly, from high in the shadowy area above them, came the faint hoo-ing of an owl. Emily clutched his arm. The sound came again. Where had he heard it before? The owl, of course, wailing out beyond the apple trees at night.

“It’s Angel.” Emily’s lips were pressed against his ear. “It’s our owl signal. She’s up at the window. She’ll come right down. That’s what we do. Hoot and come right down.”

John jumped up.

Emily jumped up too. “Where are you going?”

“Out in the woods again.”

“But they’re still there. You can’t. And she’ll see you going out. She …”

He started toward the aperture in the rock. Emily ran after him, tugging at his sleeve.

“No, John. No. Stay. I’ve thought. It’ll be all right. We can fix her. We can fix Angel.”

He stood hesitating between panic and the insistent tug at his sleeve.

“Louise,” said Emily. “Talk to Louise.”

She ran from him. He heard a match striking and she was returning with the lighted candle. In the quavering illumination, he could see the sunbonneted doll, propped against the cave wall on an orange crate. Emily put the candle down by the doll.

“Sit down. Sit with Louise. When she comes, say Louise invited you.”

“But she won’t believe me …”

“She’ll pretend to believe you. She’s got to pretend about Louise. And say I came later. Say I don’t believe you, say that I say Louise is just a dopey doll who can’t invite anybody.”

Emily ran back into the shadows at the furthest end of the cave. John paused a moment, thinking dimly: Has it come to this? Am I more frightened of a seven-year-old child than of all the men in the woods? Then he squatted down in front of the doll. He kept his gaze on the aperture. The circle of candlelight didn’t quite stretch that far. There was a vague impression of movement. Something was pushed through into the cave. A paper sack? Then a small dark head appeared, wriggling forward, and after it a small plump body. Angel scrambled to her feet and started finically brushing the dirt from her blue jeans. Then she bent and grabbed up the paper sack and, clutching it tightly to her front, turned toward the candlelight. She saw John and the round black eyes in the pudgy face shone like sequins.

“Hello, Angel,” said John. “I was passing by and Louise invited me in. I hope you don’t mind. Emily’s mad. She says …”

“Of course Louise didn’t invite him.” Emily was running out of the shadows toward Angel. “I found him here. He’d come in by himself. And he pretends that Louise … as if Louise could invite anyone—a stupid dopey nothing old doll.”

Angel stood clutching the paper sack, looking first at John and then at Emily. She blinked.

“There are men out in the woods. I heard them. All those men. They came up from the village. They’re looking for John.”

“What’s that got to do with it?” cried Emily. “It’s the secret that matters and he says Louise …”

“He was bad,” said Angel primly. “He was very bad with Mrs. Hamilton. That’s why they’re looking for him.”

“But I wasn’t, Angel,” said John. “That’s all a mistake. If you don’t believe me, ask Louise.”

“She wouldn’t know,” said Emily jeeringly. “How would a stupid old doll know anything?”

Very deliberately Angel stooped and deposited the paper sack on the floor. Then she turned her back on both of them and stood respectfully in front of the doll.

“Good morning, Louise. Did you pass a pleasant night? Louise—is Emily a stupid, wicked dope?” After a fractional pause, she turned triumphantly back to Emily, her face flushed with malicious excitement. “She says, yes. She says you’re a stupid, wicked dope.” She spun back to the doll. “And did you invite John here, Louise? Did you figure out that the men were looking for him and you were inviting him here because they were wrong and because Mrs. Hamilton is bad anyway and sneaky, saying: Dearest Angel, it’s our secret, isn’t it, and I’ll give you one just like it, saying …” Once again, after a pause, she spun round to Emily and put out her tongue. “Drip,” she said, “you don’t know anything. Louise invited him. And Louise says …”