The Stranger (4 page)

They were only a table’s distance apart when Christo caught Nicoletta’s arm.

Nicoletta could not have been more astonished if an army had stopped her. She had thought her coming together with Jethro was inevitable, was destined, was a part of the history of the world before it had even happened. And yet Christo, who touched anything and whose touch meant nothing, had stopped it from happening.

“I’m over here, Nickie,” Christo said eagerly. “You didn’t see me.”

She looked up at Christo.

She looked back at Jethro.

Jethro had already turned. There was no face at all, let alone the smile she wanted. There was only a back. A man’s broad back, unbent, uncaring. Departing.

Jethro! her heart cried after him.

But this time she did not follow him. She sat with Christo, and within moments everybody that Christo and Nicoletta knew had learned that Christo had arranged his first date ever. With Nicoletta.

The attention was better even than Madrigals. Better even than solos or applause.

And she didn’t want it.

She wanted Jethro.

A
FTER LUNCH, JETHRO DID
not come to Art Appreciation.

Nicoletta stared, stunned, at his vacant seat.

“Is Jethro absent?” asked the teacher.

“He was here at lunch,” said Nicoletta. Her lips were numb.

“He’s cutting,” said Mr. Marisson disapprovingly. He pressed down hard with his pencil in the attendance book.

He cut class because I cut him, thought Nicoletta. Oh Jethro! I was going to explain it to you—I was going to—

But what was there to explain? She had behaved terribly. She had arranged to meet Jethro in the cafeteria. He had done so and then what had she done? Walked off with another boy.

His empty seat mesmerized her as much as the occupied seat had.

His name filled her head and her heart, as if it really were her heartbeat:
Jeth-ro. Jeth-ro.

Like a nursery rhyme her head screamed Jeth-ro, Jeth-ro. And of course, after school up came Chris-to, Chris-to, smiling and eager and offering her a ride home.

It was by car that romance was established. When a boy gave you rides, or you gave him rides, it meant either you lived next door and had no choice, or you were seeing each other. If you didn’t want the school to make that interpretation, you had to fill your car with extras. Christo had always filled his van with extras. But now he stood alone. He must have told them already that they had to find another way home. For the usual van crowd was not there and the much-complimented Anne-Louise was not in evidence.

But Nicoletta could not go home with Christo.

She had to find Jethro. She had to go back down that lane, follow that shortcut he took to his house, and locate him.

How many lies it took to make Christo go on without her! How awful each one of them was. Because, of course, he had to believe her lies, or else know that she was dumping him. Know that she did not want to be alone with him and go for a ride with him.

When you’re in love, the possibility that the object of your love has better things to do is the worst of all scenes.

So Christo just smiled uncertainly and said at last, “I’ll call you tonight.”

“Great,” said Nicoletta, smiling, as if it were great.

They did not touch. For Christo it was the not-touching of a crush; physical desire so intense it pulled him back instead of rushing him on. For Nicoletta, it was a heart that lay elsewhere.

But Christo did not know.

Love rarely does.

Nicoletta waited inside the lobby until she saw Christo’s van disappear.

And then she gathered her books and her belongings and ran out the school doors, up the road, across the street, and down the quiet lane.

There was no Jethro ahead of her. Of course not. He had left at noon, abandoning his lunch and his classes. Because of her.

She ran, and was quickly out of breath.

Today there was no sun. The last of the snow had vanished into the brown earth. The words Jamie had used were now, horribly, the right ones. These woods were dank and dark.

At the end of the lane she saw the boulder, big and scarred and motionless. Of course it’s motionless, she said to herself, it’s a rock. They’re always motionless.

And yet the huge stone sat there as if it had just returned from some dreadful errand.

The stone waited for her.

It’s a rock, she said to herself. Put there by a glacier. That’s all it is.

She might have come to the end of the world instead of the end of a little dirt road. The sky lay like an unfriendly blanket over a woods that was silent as tombs.

She clung to her books as if to a shield. As if spears might come from behind that great gray stone and pierce her body. It took all her courage to edge around the boulder.

On the other side of the rock was a footpath of remarkable straightness. In a part of the world that was all ups and downs, crevices and hills, rocky cliffs and hidden dells, here was an utterly flat stretch of land and a trail from a geometry test: The quickest way between two points is a straight line.

What are the two points? thought Nicoletta. Is his house at the other end?

Jethro, she thought. I’m coming. Where are you? What will I say to you when I find you? Why am I looking?

She walked down the trail.

When she looked back over her shoulder, the boulder was watching her.

She whimpered, and picked up speed, running again, trying to turn a corner, so the stone could not see her. But there were no corners and no matter how far she ran, the stone was still there.

The silence was complete.

She could hear nothing of the twentieth century. No motors, no turnpikes. No doors slamming, no engines revving, no planes soaring.

The only sounds were her own sounds, trespassing in this dark and ugly place.

Abruptly the trail descended. She heaved a sigh of relief as mounded earth blocked her from the terrible boulder. She wondered where she would come out, and if perhaps she could return to her own home from another direction. She did not want to go back on that path.

The trees ended, and the vines ceased crawling.

The ground was clear now, and the path became a narrow trail on top of a man-made earthen embankment. Suddenly there were lakes on each side of her, deep, black, soundless lakes with a thin, crackled layer of ice. She could go neither left nor right. Not once had there been a choice, a turning place, a fork in the road. Now she could not even blunder off into the meadow or the forest, because the trail was the only place to put a foot.

The trail ended.

She could not believe it.

It had stopped. Stopped dead. It simply did not go on.

In front of her was a rock face, a hundred feet high. Behind her lay the narrow path and the twin lakes.

She was being watched. She could feel eyes everywhere, assessing her, wondering what she would do next. They were not friendly eyes.

She wanted to scream Jethro’s name, but even drawing a breath seemed like a hostile act in this isolated corner. What would a shout do? What horrible creatures would appear if she screamed?

She put a hand out so she could rest against the rock face, and her hand went right through the rock.

She yanked her hand back to the safety of her schoolbook clasp. Tears of terror wet her cheeks. Mommy, she thought. Daddy. Jamie. I want to go home. I don’t want to be here.

It was a cave.

It was so black, so narrowly cut into the cliff, that at first she had not seen it. It was nothing natural. It had been chipped by some ancient tool. The opening was a perfect rectangle. She did not even have to duck her head walking in.

The wonder was that she did walk in.

Even as she was doing it, she was astonished at herself. She—a girl who hated the dark, or being alone in the dark, or even thinking of the dark—was voluntarily entering an unknown cave. Was she so terrorized that terror had become an anesthetic, flattening her thoughts? Or was she finally getting a grip on her ridiculous, fabricated fears and handling them like an adult?

She stepped into the cave.

She had expected absolute black darkness, especially with her own body blocking whatever weak sunlight might penetrate at this angle, but the cave walls themselves seemed to emanate light. They were smooth and polished like marble. She slid a bare hand over them and the texture was rich and satisfying. The cave was not damp or batlike. It seemed more like an entrance to a magnificent home, where she would find beautiful tapestries and perhaps a unicorn.

She followed a shaft of fight. Even when the cave turned and the opening to the world behind her disappeared. Even when the cave went down and she had to touch the wall for support.

Part of her knew better.

Part of her was screaming,
Stop this! Get out! Go home! Think!

But more of her was drawn on, as all humans are drawn to danger: the wild and impossible excitement of the unknown and the unthinkable.

She did not know how far she went into the cave. She did not know how many minutes she spent moving in, deeper in, farther from the only opening she knew.

She paused for breath, and in that moment the cave changed personality. Gone was the elegant marble. In a fraction of a second, the walls had turned to dripping horrors.

Holes and gaping openings loomed like death traps.

Whistling sounds and flying creatures filled her ears and her hair.

She whirled to run out, but the cave went dark.

Completely, entirely dark.

Her scream filled the cave, echoing off the many walls, pouring out the holes like some burning torch.

“Jethro!” she screamed. “Jethro!”

She touched a wall and it was wet with slime. She fell to her knees, scraping them on something, and then … the something moved beneath her.

She was not falling. The earth was lifting, arranging itself against her, attaching itself to her. She actually tried to fall. Anything to free herself from the surface of the underworld that clung to her, sucking like the legs of starfish.

“Jethro!” she screamed again.

Tentacles of slime and dripping stone wrapped themselves around her body.

I will die here. Nobody will know. Who could ever find me here? Nobody has been in this cave in a hundred years. This is some leftover mine from olden days. Abandoned. Forgotten.

And Jethro—he could live anywhere. What on earth had made her think that the walk through the woods necessarily led to Jethro’s house? What on earth had made her think that she would find Jethro by following a path that led only to a cave?

Nothing on earth, she thought. Something in hell. This is an opening to some other, terrible world.

The creatures of that other world were surfacing, and surrounding her, dragging her down with them.

“Jethro!” she screamed again, knowing that there were no creatures, there was only a mine shaft; she must stay calm, she must find her own way out. She must stop fantasizing. She must be capable.

She tried to remember the calming techniques that Ms. Quincy used before Madrigal concerts. Breathe deeply over four counts. Shake your fingertips. Roll your head gently in circles.

It turned out that you had to be pretty calm to start with in order to attempt calming techniques. Screams continued to pour from her mouth, as if somebody else occupied her.

I’m the only one here, Nicoletta told herself. I must stop screaming. This is how people die in the wilderness. They panic. I must not panic. I am the only one here and—

She was wrong.

She was not the only one there.

The cave filled with movement and smell and she was picked up, actually held in the air, by whatever else was in the cave with her.

A creature from that other, lower, darker, world.

Its skin rasped against hers like saw grass. Its stink was unbreathable. Its hair was dead leaves, crisping against each other and breaking off in her face. Warts of sand covered it, and the sand actually came off on her, as if the creature were half made out of the cave itself.

She could not see any of the thing, only feel and smell it.

It was holding her, as if in an embrace.

Would it consume her? Did it have a mouth and jaws?

Would it carry her down to wherever it lay?

Would it line its nest with her, or feed her to its young?

She was no longer screaming. Its terrible stench took too much from her lungs; she could not find the breath to scream, only to gag.

And then it carried her up—not down.

Out—not in.

And spoke.

English.

Human English.

“Never come back,” it said, its voice as deep and dark as the cave itself.

She actually laughed, hysteria crawling out of her as the screams had moments before. “I won’t,” she said. I’m having a conversation with a monster, she thought.

“It isn’t safe,” it said.

“I could tell.”

The walls became smooth and they glowed. The beautiful patterns of the shiny entrance surrounded them.

She looked at what held her and screamed again in horror. She had never had such a nightmare, never been caught in such a hideously vivid dream. The features of the thing were humanoid, but the flesh dripped, like cave walls.

Old sayings came true: There was literally light at the end of the tunnel.

Real light. Sunlight. Daylight!

She flung herself free of the thing’s terrible embrace. Falling, slipping, running all at the same instant, Nicoletta got out of the cave.

Never had a gray sky been so lovely, so free, so perfect.

Never had dark lakes and bleak woods been so appealing, so friendly.

She held up her hands to the real world, incredibly grateful to be back. The sight of her bare hands reminded her she no longer held her schoolbooks.

The thing stood slightly behind the mouth of the cave, so that its shadow but not itself was visible. The books sat neatly in a pile by the opening. Had Nicoletta set them down like that?

“Don’t come back,” the thing said again, with a sadness so terrible that Nicoletta dissolved from fear into pity. Nicoletta knew what loneliness was, and she heard it in that awful voice.