William H. Hallahan - (23 page)

He heard three footfalls then. Distinctly. There could be no
mistake. Back up the path. In a rage born of fear, he struck off in a
rush toward the sound. It was nearly twilight, but just for a
microsecond he glimpsed a form before it was swallowed again in the
snow.

It seemed to be a figure wrapped in tatters and rags. But he could
not be sure. It might have been a man in a white parka. He scrambled
up the path farther but it was gone. The snow had been so dragged and
churned up he couldn't even be certain if there was more than one set
of tracks.

Then he found a print like a bare hand. It couldn't be his. He
wore ski mittens. He looked closely at the print. Unless it was a
trick of the eye, he was looking at a hand print or even a footprint
with a thumb and five digits. An animal with six fingers. He pulled
off his mitten and placed his hand on the print. It was at least
twice the size. The creature must be gigantic.

Brendan struggled back to the pole as though it was sanctuary.
EALING 7 MI. It was growing darker. He couldn't stand there much
longer. He would freeze during the night. He thought about the
struggle back up that long hill and down again the other side to the
country store. He thought about the possibility of finding it closed
for the night and everyone gone, except him and a dead horse. But
mostly he thought about himself alone in the woods with a huge
six-fingered creature in total darkness.

He stood by the pole shivering, unable to go, unwilling to stay,
swinging his silly sock full of stones. He heard another crunching
footfall behind him. He panted in fear, listening. Silence. As he
watched, one branch of a hemlock rocked by the wind spilled its great
burden of snow and a cascade of white spilled from branch to branch
all the way to the ground.

Where was his guide? Was he armed? Brendan decided he would count
to one hundred, then bolt up the hill to the store. Then he heard
another footfall. And a giggle. Moronic it was. Or mad.

Brendan scuffed for more stones and seized a handful and flung
them in the direction of the sound. He flung them in a rapid series,
then waited. A few moments later he heard the low giggle again. Did
it giggle like that before it twisted the neck of a horse?

Now the footsteps were clear and purposeful, and they were making
directly toward him. At first it was just an amorphous shape coming
down a slope through some hemlocks, appearing and disappearing
alternately in the snow. It was in a dark gown of some sort, mantled
thickly with snow, the face a black shadow deep within the cowl. It
lumbered, rolling from side to side, a huge creature, with great
sloping shoulders, and it was making directly toward him. The closer
it got, the larger it grew. It seemed to bring the dusk with it as it
advanced. Brendan backed away a step, then another. He was awed by
the creature's size. Too big. Brendan turned to run and fell over his
own suitcase. He rolled over in the snow as the figure towered above
him.

"Brother Brendan?" the figure asked. It bent over and
pulled him to his feet without the slightest effort. "I'm
Brother Luke." The man was nearly seven feet tall and probably
weighed close to three hundred pounds, and Brendan saw now why his
face was so hard to make out. He was black. From a capacious sleeve,
a huge black hand extended. "Welcome."

Brendan took it and felt it envelop his hand, warm as freshly
baked bread.

"I was followed."

"Followed? Here? Who would follow you here?"

"A creature--huge, in white rags, with enormous hands and
feet with six fingers."

Brother Luke looked doubtfully at him, then he cast his eyes
about. "Where is it now?"

"It's been circling me. It laughs."

Brother Luke looked at him thoughtfully. "There's no creature
like that in these woods. Must be someone's idea of a joke. Well, we
can't stand here for long. It's going to be dark soon. Let's get out
of here."

Brother Luke picked up Brendan's suitcase as if it were a handbag
and strode off toward the hemlocks. Brendan hastened after him.

They walked without talking. The man's huge and powerful strides
moved through the snow with ease while Brendan had to scramble to
keep up. Soon he was panting. At the top of the rise, the monk
paused.

"Woodmere Lake," he said. "This is our dock. The
monastery's out there on the island in the middle of the lake."
Without further ceremony, he set out in his great swinging stride,
following his own footsteps back across the frozen lake. The wind out
here in the clear was fierce and blowing directly at them.

Brendan paused for a moment and glanced back toward the dock on
the shoreline. Already it was nearly invisible. It was almost dark.
Then he heard the giggle again. He glanced ahead at Brother Luke. If
he'd heard it, he didn't show it. Brendan hurried after him.

After a while he lost all sense of time, concentrating solely on
the next slip-sliding step. Several times he stumbled over frozen
logs in the ice. Brother Luke would stop and patiently wait for him
to stand, slap off the snow and go on.

As it grew darker, Brendan became more apprehensive and constantly
turned to look over his shoulder. Was he going to run for the rest of
his life? He shook his head at the question. How long was the rest of
his life? A day, a week, a decade? Would it last through the night?

Walking abruptly became difficult, uneven. They'd reached the
island and they stood by a clump of stark maple trees. There was a
high stone wall. Brother Luke paced to the left a few feet and pulled
a rope. Somewhere on the other side of the wall a bell pealed.

As they stood waiting, Brendan realized that it had stopped
snowing. The wind had shifted too, and it was turning bitter cold.

"A clearing wind," Brother Luke said.

Brendan looked back at the lake. Darkness was complete.

A wooden door bolt banged and the gate swung open. Another cowled
figure stood there, head bowed, hands hidden in sleeves. When they'd
entered, the monk locked the heavy wooden door behind them.

"Dear God, it's cold," he complained.

Brother Luke pointed. "Vegetable garden there. Vineyards
there, southern exposure. Workshops. Library there. Refectory;
Sleeping quarters, kitchen and so forth."

It was all and-so-forth to Brendan. In the darkness he saw nothing
except a few lights through some trees. He was eager to be in the
warmth and safety inside. Sanctuary. He was spent and chilled to the
marrow.

When they got to the entrance, Brendan perceived that the
monastery was a series of modern octagons put together in a rambling
chain. The flooring was slate flagstones throughout and there were
many walls made of single panes of glass.

He followed Brother Luke down a long corridor past a library in
which three or four monks sat reading. Another room contained a
carved circular bench with a wood stove in the middle. This room was
empty. They passed several rooms, obviously bedrooms and carrels.

They came to the last room and stepped in.

"He's here," Brother Luke said to a figure on a bed.

The man who looked at Brendan was gaunt. Sick. With great staring
eyes. His color was pasty and his lips were a pale purple. He waved
Brendan to his bed with a weak hand. "Sit sit."

Brendan sat in a wooden chair by the bed. There was a small stove
nearby and it was radiating heat. Brendan gratefully felt the warmth
wrap around his frozen cheeks.

"Bad heart," the old man said, then patted his chest.
"But I got twenty-five years extra from this rotten old pump
after they'd counted me dead. Not bad. A quarter of a century. You
look like your father." He paused and lay in silence for a
moment, gathering his breath. "I'm Brother Matthew--the den
mother. Good thing you came tonight. A day or so more and you might
not have found me among the living. And I'm the only one who knows
your secret. You don't know who I am, do you?"

Brendan shook his head.

"Well--" he paused again for breath. "I was a good
friend of your father's. I was in the stock market. His broker, I
was. I made pots of money. When they told me how bad my heart was, I
came up here and built this place. A retreat for puzzled men.
Originally, your father put me in touch with Father Joseph in
Ireland. I was going to join his monastery. But he convinced me to
come up here instead. We're not affiliated. You know what that
means?"

"No."

The old man motioned Brendan to lean closer. "I can't throw
my voice very far." He coughed, then lay back patiently, waiting
for his breath to return. "We're not affiliated with any
established religion. We're part Christian, part Jewish, part
atheist, part Zen and part nightly arguments." He pointed his
hand. "You saw the circular bench?"

"Yes, I did."

"Almost every night for twenty-five years we've been sitting
in there and arguing. We've had as many as twenty monks here. Now
we're down to nine."

"Why?"

"It's the way the cards fall. Next year we may be back up to
twenty again. That's our limit. There are only three of us originals
left. Well, you'll get them sorted out later. A good bunch. But if
they're not careful this place is going to come apart when I die."
He panted for breath. "Things have got quite out of hand since I
got sick. Weird things. Haven't talked this much in weeks. Listen--"
He waved a letter. "I don't know much about your problem but I
owe your father and Father Joseph a great debt of gratitude. So if
you need a place of concealment, this is it. You're welcome to stay
as long as you want. I just want to give you one rule. You either
become a monk and accept the ground rules we live by or stay whatever
you are and don't mix in the affairs of the monastery. If that sounds
like solitary confinement I'm sorry. I can't have one more disruptive
influence here. Okay? Deal? Promise?" He held out his hand.
"Shake on it Davitt." He smiled, then shook a finger at
Brendan. "Watch your step out there. I think one of my fellow
monks has taken to worshiping Satan. Isn't that a kick in the head?"
 
 

He ate with the eight other monks. The supper consisted of
oatmeal, whole-wheat bread, cheese, apples and herb tea. They were
the strangest group of men Brendan had ever met. There was no
pretense at cordiality. Those who wished to speak did; the silence
from the others was accepted without question; several conversed in
low voices; several sat totally withdrawn, unaware of the others,
absently chewing. Here he would hide until death claimed him, in this
string of octagonal clusters on an island in the middle of a lake in
one of the remotest parts of New York State. This little monastery,
this oasis of warmth and light in a vast winter wilderness, was the
same as a life sentence in prison. How many times would he see that
moon pass over his head before he died and escaped his incarceration?
What had he done to deserve this? For the first time in his life, he
felt despair.
 
 

Brendan sat on the bench with Brother Luke. Someone had started a
crackling wood fire in the open fireplace and eager flames leaped up
at the hood.

At eight several monks arrived with books. They slouched on the
bench and read. More arrived to sit with chins on fist or arms
crossed to stare at the fire.

Three monks arrived together, and Brendan found himself staring at
them. "What are their names again?" he asked Luke.

"Vincent, Beaupré and Zen--the Holy Trinity."

Vincent was a chain smoker and there was a spillway of gray ash
down the front of his cassock. Through thick eyeglasses, he looked at
the world with the narrowed eyes of a scoffing skeptic.

Brother Zen was Oriental. His skin seemed as thin as brown paper
and it was drawn drum-tight over a skull with protruding cheekbones.
His eyes had an ogling lemurlike quality, as though he had been
staring too long at eternity.

Brother Beaupré had the pasty narrow face of a fanatic.

The three of them had the same expression--the shocked eyes of
survivors, men who had crossed a desert without water or who had
lived for weeks in an open boat with others who had died; three men
who shared a burdensome secret.

They sat close together. In fact, they huddled together, and when
Brother Zen put his hands wearily over his large eyes the image was
complete. They looked like a ceramic arrangement of the three
monkeys: See-no-evil, Hear-no-evil, Speak-no-evil.

For a long time no one in the room spoke. The only sounds were
made by the crackling wood fire and the soughing wind against the
glass windows, a winter lament.

At last Brother Matthew arrived, aided by Brother Benedict. Luke
stepped quickly to the doorway to help also. The huge black man
seemed even larger beside the sick old head of the monastery.

"You're not supposed to be out of bed," Brendan heard
Luke say.

Brother Matthew, summoning his gusto, banged his hands together.
"It's a good night for a fight!" Then he looked longingly
at the fire. "Gawd, I could crawl right in there. I don't think
I'll ever be warm again. What was it Mark Twain said? Heaven for
climate; hell for company. On a night like this, maybe hell has the
climate too." He sat down in their midst and suffered them to
wrap two blankets around him.

"Smells great," he said to Brother Vincent.

"Damned things." Vincent threw his cigarette into the
fire.

"Thirty years," Matthew said, "I quit thirty years
ago and I still miss them. I'd go back to smoking tonight if I
could." He smiled at Brendan. "Young man, you are in very
bad company. Well, who's got the ball?"

Luke cleared his throat. "This is Brother Brendan. I know you
have all met him. Tonight he was followed from the general store by a
creature with six fingers."

In his heavy Bronx accent Brother Benedict cried, "You don't
say so! What did it look like?"