After checking on the man in the well, Gerald went back to the house. He decided that sometime in the morning he would start up the backhoe and bring a couple of buckets of earth to the well. That would cover the man’s body sufficiently, just as it had for Marlene and her daughter. Never once did he worry about anyone discovering them. Who came on his land anyway?
After he dropped enough dirt in, he would steer the backhoe to the east field and leave it next to the man’s car. Later, in the evening, he would dig the pit for the car. He felt confident that everything would work out fine. He still felt that he was in control of events, as long as they occurred in his house and on his land.
A mystical pall hung over the farm. He had always felt it was a world unto itself, a feeling he had inherited from his father. Whenever the two of them went hunting, his father would never venture beyond the borders of their land, no matter how enticing their quarry. It was as though stepping over the line would make him weak and vulnerable.
His father often complained about the sale of huge parcels of their land. According to his father, Gerald’s grandfather was foolish and nearsighted. He liquidated some of the land for funds with which to buy more livestock. This was true, but in doing so, their safe refuge shrank in size as the outsiders moved in nearer. “The sounds a neighbor makes should be damn well out of earshot,” he said.
Years later when Gerald was running things, he, too, had to sell some of the land. He couldn’t forestall trends, or bank on family loyalty; it was a matter of survival, but to his father it was betrayal. Gerald tried to explain the situation, but the old man turned to stone. That was the year the well had gone dry. Because they suffered a great drought, his crops had gone bad and they had needed the funds. Even though the drought ended and they had some pretty good rain in the years that followed, the well never made a significant comeback.
It was part of the old man’s curse, he thought, or the land’s way of punishing him. Of course, they weren’t dependent on that well anymore. It was just something special. “The nectar of our land,” his father called it. They had well water from a submergible pump implanted over two hundred and fifty feet down, cool, fresh, and delicious; but the water from the well that had been his great-grandfather’s main source of house water was gone.
Now the well was a tomb, accepting the dead playmates and the intruder. It had retained its status as something special.
He didn’t look in on the children when he reentered the house. Instead, he went directly to the living room and turned on the television set. It was a tube type, fifteen-inch black-and-white, almost twenty years old. Out here where they lived, there was no cable hookup. They still ran the set off the old antenna and received only two stations clearly enough to view. Neither he nor Irene watched much television, but they kept it going for Shirley. For Gerald it was simply a distraction.
More often than not, he would fall asleep in front of its glow, the music and the dialogue acting as a lullaby. Tonight was no exception. In fact, when he sank into the big easy chair, the large soft pillows accepting his body as though they were fitted to his form, he realized just how tired he was. He stared blankly at the wavy picture. For some reason tonight the images faded in and out and made him dizzy. He didn’t fight hard to keep his eyes open.
It was quiet upstairs. Apparently Irene had that situation under control; the children must be occupied with whatever activity Shirley had started. For the first time all day, he felt secure enough to permit himself to relax. He knew that if he did fall asleep, it would be only for a short period anyway. More and more these days, he slept in spurts and whenever he awoke, it was with a jolt.
Perhaps that was because his sleep was filled with ugly scenes, nightmarish images. What he found unusual, even somewhat frightening, was that he saw himself from another viewpoint in these scenes. Whether at his mother’s graveside or out in the night secretly reburying Arthur, he never visualized events from his own eyes; he was a witness to himself, as he stood at his mother’s grave staring into the cold earth, or watched himself scratch out a hole in the earth for Arthur.
It was as if all of these things happened to someone else, someone he once knew, but who was no longer here. He occupied this person’s body, but…he was not the person. Whatever happened to him?
At times now, Irene seemed like a stranger to him, too. He’d come upon her in these dreams and wonder, Who is this? What is her name? There was nothing familiar about her. The same was true for Shirley; she was someone else’s child. And then he’d look at himself in the mirror and he’d think, I’m a stranger, too. That’s not me; that’s not who I am.
The dreams had become maddening and brought on wrenching headaches. Irene would find him sitting there, his forefinger and thumb pressing so hard into his temples that they would leave bright coin-sized circles on his skin, and she would come to him and stroke his head gently, muttering, “Poor Gerald, poor Gerald.” Lately he couldn’t stand it. He would brush her aside and go outside.
The darkness always brought him welcome relief. The darker it was, the better it was. He got so he hated the stars and despised the moon. He liked the overcast nights because there weren’t any shadows. Nothing haunted him. Sometimes Irene would send Shirley out looking for him. She’d stand on the lawn and bellow like some dumb beast in pain. He got so he hated the sound of his own name when it came from Shirley’s lips.
That’s why he was so happy when she had a playmate. She was preoccupied and he wasn’t tormented by her presence. He would never say anything to Irene; he couldn’t even bring himself to say it to himself, but he had come to despise his own daughter. There was no hope in her, no promise for the future.
He thought there could have been such hope with Arthur. He could have taught him the good things; he could have taught him how to use the land well. He could have shown him the magic in the farm. Maybe together they would have built something out of the wasteland. Maybe…
Such thoughts were tormenting. It was better not to think them. When they surfaced, he forced himself to remember carrying the tiny coffin from the car into the night. He remembered how he fit his son into the earth and then closed it over him. It was more like he had planted him than buried him. After all, he was still a farmer, wasn’t he?
And he did have this dream—he hesitated to call it a nightmare—in which Arthur sprouted from the earth. First his fingers appeared, the tips showing like little stones, and then the top of his head pressed upward until his eyes cleared the ground. Arthur was coming back stronger and straighter and healthier. Gerald woke up when he started to water him with Shirley’s blood.
Now, in front of the television set, his eyes closed completely, but he wasn’t asleep long before he fell down the well, waking up with a start when he hit the bottom and confronted the pale white face of his father poking out of the damp earth. It was as if the well was the doorway of the dead, their only way to return from their graves. Why his father appeared in these tortured dreams he couldn’t fathom, since the old man had to be at peace, since he’d been buried lovingly, in a traditional if sparsely attended funeral, in the family’s mausoleum at Harwood Cemetery.
“Gerald.”
He spun around in his chair. For a moment he was totally disoriented. He wiped his face with his rough palms and shook his head.
“What? What is it?”
“Where are the children?”
“The children? In the basement. They’re in the basement.”
“No, they’re not, Gerald. I just came up from the basement. Didn’t you hear me shouting for them?”
“Well, maybe they went upstairs.”
“I was upstairs, Gerald. I came down to get them to put them to bed.”
He stared at her, struggling to find meaning in what she was saying.
“They’re not upstairs and they’re not down in the basement?”
“That’s what I’ve been saying, Gerald. Don’t you know where they are?”
“No. Shirley’s not playing that dumb hide-and-seek game, is she?”
“I don’t know, Gerald. I just came downstairs. I went down into the basement…”
“All right, all right. Dammit, I’ll break her neck. Shirley!”
“I’ve been calling, Gerald. They must have gone outside.”
“Outside?” Suddenly he realized she was right and he sprang up from his chair. “Why’d you let them do that?”
“I didn’t let them, Gerald. I was busy upstairs. Why didn’t you see to them? What were you doing?”
“I’ll break her neck,” he repeated and started out.
When Shirley and Tami scrambled up the stairs from the basement, they heard the television blaring in the living room. For a long moment, Shirley hesitated. She was drawn to watch television almost as much as she was driven to show Tami where Arthur was buried. What helped her make her decision was the realization that she hadn’t been to see Arthur for quite a while. It was also exciting for her to show someone else where Arthur was, so she turned toward the back door.
Tami had released Shirley’s skirt and didn’t immediately follow. Thinking about her mother, she looked longingly toward the stairway. She was about to bolt for it when Shirley turned and anticipated her action. She stepped back to her and seized Tami’s wrist.
“Shh,” she said before Tami had a chance to howl. “Come on,” she whispered. Still holding on to her, Shirley continued through the house to the back door. There, she looked back once to be sure no one had heard them, and then she opened the door and the two of them stepped out into the night.
To Tami the evening darkness never looked so black, nor did the shadows look so threatening. As long as she was with Shirley, it was natural for her to anticipate even more terrible things to happen out here. The farm structures, the machinery, and the nearby trees loomed about them, silhouetted like the creatures in her worst nightmares.
In the daytime she wouldn’t have any trouble recognizing a backhoe or a tractor. She had been on job sites with her father before and she had seen construction machinery. But tonight they looked monstrous. The moment she set her eyes on them, she could swear she saw them move threateningly toward her.
The cry of an owl to her right made her gasp. She was so frightened she even squeezed Shirley’s hand, but when she looked at Shirley, she was surprised at how nonchalant the other was. She didn’t wince at the nocturnal creature’s hoot; she didn’t seem in any way intimidated by the shadows and the shapes.
“This way,” she said and dragged Tami off to the left. Although there wasn’t any discernible path, Shirley moved quickly, leading Tami out behind the vegetable garden, around the wire fence, and down a small hill toward the west cornfield. It wasn’t that steep a hill, but because she was so small, Tami lost sight of the house behind her rather quickly.
The house was no haven of safety for Tami; far from it, considering the kinds of things that had happened to her and to her mother inside, but that was where her mother was kept so she went into a small panic when it was no longer visible.
“I want my mommy,” she said loudly. She pulled back suddenly, bringing Shirley’s forced march to a halt. “I wanna go back.”
“Come on, Sooey-face.”
“No. I wanna go back.”
“I said come on,” Shirley repeated. She tugged hard on Tami’s wrist and Tami fell forward on her stomach. She started to cry and made no effort to scramble to her feet. Shirley began tugging harder on her arm, dragging her over the grass. Small rocks cut into her chest and legs and she screamed. Shirley stopped. “It’s not far,” she said, attempting a reasonable tone.
“I wanna go back to my mommy.”
“Oh, what a baby.”
“I wanna go back.”
“Arthur’s not going to like this, and when Arthur gets mad,” Shirley said, imitating Irene, “he comes into the house and crawls right into your dreams.”
Tami lowered her sobbing and looked around. The shadows were thicker and darker out here. The trees loomed higher and closer. Something rustled in the forest to their right and a strange animal cry tore the air directly ahead of them. She didn’t recognize it as the cry of a raccoon, but thought it resembled the cry of a small baby.
“That’s Arthur,” Shirley whispered. “He knows we’re coming. He knows we’re close. Get up. Quick!”
Tami pushed herself into a sitting position. They heard the cry again.
“Quick,” Shirley repeated in a loud whisper.
Tami’s tiny heart was beating so hard the vibration shook her spine. She stood up and brushed the pebbles from her clothing, her eyes wide, her lips pressed tightly together to form a grim line.
“That’s better,” Shirley said. “Come on.” She took Tami’s wrist again and dragged her through the field at a run. With the darkness and strange surroundings all around her now, Tami was afraid to do anything but follow.
After a short distance, they came to a small clearing. When they reached the rim of it, Shirley hesitated. The raccoon’s cry drifted off to their right and away. Tami was grateful for the silence, but by now she was afraid to make a sound; she was almost afraid to breathe.
Shirley moved them forward again, but now she moved with distinct caution. Because she was obviously a bit frightened herself, Tami’s terror intensified. Where were they going? Who was Arthur? Why was he out here in the darkness?
With a sudden move Shirley brought them to a stop. She said nothing as she stared ahead into the darkness. Tami peered into the night. What was there? She quieted her panic enough to focus on what looked to be a small tree growing in the middle of the clearing.
“That’s where Arthur sleeps,” Shirley said. “That’s his tree.”
Tami said nothing. She wiped her eyes with her free hand and waited. Then Shirley moved them closer.
“I’ve got to shake the tree,” she said. “That’s how Arthur knows I want to see him.”
Tami didn’t cry, but as Shirley reached out slowly toward the young tree, a thin, humming sound began at the base of her throat. She sounded like a frightened and angry cat. Shirley didn’t notice; she was concentrating too hard on the tree. When her fingers clasped around the narrow trunk, her body stiffened. Tami felt Shirley’s hand grow cold. It was as though she was clasping the hand of a statue. They waited; the silence that had fallen around them was deafening.
Shirley shook the tree gently and then pulled her hand back quickly. Tami looked about, anticipating the arrival of some horrible monster, perhaps a creature like the ones she had seen in that comic book Jamie Jo Grossman always carried with him. But nothing happened. The night remained quiet and still.
“He’s not here,” Shirley concluded. “He’s gone somewhere. He travels through the ground like a worm.”
“Let’s go back,” Tami said. “I want my—”
“I know; I know. You want your mommy. We’ll come back tomorrow night. Maybe he’ll be here then.”
Tami didn’t say anything. She was grateful for Shirley’s impatience and the speed with which Shirley started for the house. They moved at almost a trot, back through the field and up the small hill. Tami was afraid to look anywhere but down. Even the stars above them were frightening out here. This time, however, for some reason Shirley took them around the other side of the barn and they approached the house from the west. She paused when they reached the backhoe.
“Let’s go back inside,” Tami pleaded.
“Wait.” Shirley was quiet for a moment. “Listen.”
At first Tami heard nothing. Her heartbeat was still too emphatic. Her ears were drowning in the sound of her own pulse, but when her pulse faded, she heard it. She heard it distinctly and a cold, sharp chill rippled up from her stomach into her throat. Something, somewhere, was scratching dirt.
“It’s…Arthur,” Shirley whispered. “He’s going somewhere under the ground.”
Tami’s mouth froze open. She was numbing quickly from the feet up, feeling as though she was sinking into ice water. At any moment Arthur would emerge from under the ground. He would pop up right before them.
Shirley keyed in on the direction from where the sound came and started to move toward it. Tami didn’t feel her feet lifting and falling to the earth. She felt as light as a feather; she felt as if Shirley maneuvered her like a kite on a string.
They were moving toward the well.
“Shirley.” Gerald’s voice shattered the darkness. Tami thought it sounded like a thousand icicles falling around her and smashing into diamonds. “Shirley, Damn you!”
“Oh, no,” Shirley muttered. “Shh,” she said, but Tami thought she said it to herself.
“Where the hell are you?”
“We’re comin’,” she shouted.
“Get your ass in here,” Gerald responded.
They hurried to the back of the house. Gerald stood on the porch, his hands on his hips. He seemed to be swelling into a bigger and bigger version of himself as they approached. Tami shrank behind Shirley. When they reached the steps, Gerald slapped his hand down on Shirley’s neck and practically lifted her bodily up to the porch. She screamed in pain and Tami cowered.
“Who told you you could go out there? Who told you?”
“Nobody.”
“So why did you go?”
“I wanted to see Arthur. I wanted to show Donna Arthur.”
Gerald seemed stunned. “Didn’t I tell you never to go there without first asking me? Didn’t I?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Now get your ass into this house and get ready for bed.”
He pushed her toward the door and looked down at Tami. “Move it,” he said. She hurried to the door. Shirley turned around before opening the screen door.
“We heard him. We heard Arthur,” she said. “He’s digging his way toward the house,” she said. Gerald saw Irene standing just inside, listening.
“Get the hell inside, you idiot,” Gerald responded. He looked to Irene to see if she had heard what Shirley had said. If she had, she didn’t let on. “Go on,” he said and the children scrambled in. Irene greeted them and took them upstairs.
As soon as they were gone, Gerald looked out into the night. He listened and then felt stupid for doing so.
Arthur is gone, he thought. It was a mistake to let Shirley know where he was buried, but she had seen him plant the small tree and he felt some obligation to Arthur to let his sister know.
Scratching in the earth. The image filled him first with horror and then with anger.
“We’re all scratching in the earth,” he muttered. He turned to go back into the house where at least there was light and warmth and the promise of some bodily pleasure.
David heard the man crying out. He stopped his slow and careful climbing and listened keenly, recognizing the sound of a young girl’s cry in response. But he didn’t hear the sound of Tami’s voice. What did that mean? The voices faded and then the silence returned. He continued to wait, standing precariously on the few inches of ledge provided by a protruding stone.
Actually, he had traveled only half a dozen feet upward, worming his way in a zigzag direction determined by where the rocks jutted out sufficiently to get a good foot and hand-hold. All the while he forced himself to fight against allowing the pain in his leg to overwhelm him, blocking the constant messages from his brain. He did it by putting all of his attention and concentration on groping for a stone with which to raise his body inches at a time.
Whenever he rested, the pain surged over him, and with it would come reprimands. Why did he go out by himself? Why didn’t he wait for the police? Why didn’t he insist some patrolmen join him once he found out that Stacey had indeed taken Willow Road? Didn’t he know that a man alone always placed himself in more jeopardy? Now he had succeeded in only making things worse.
The chastisement was justified. It depressed him, but he told himself he had no choice but to fight the trouble he had brought on himself. The only alternative was to surrender to the horror.
Besides, he had been in bad situations before. He had faced seemingly insurmountable odds and found solutions. Crisis was a keynote of his job. True, they weren’t life and death crises, but they were serious nevertheless, and he had to suffer the consequences for failure. He had the grit and the determination; he was confident.
He reached upward again, feeling his way along the rough stones. What worried him now was the condition of his hands. If he should bawl himself out for anything, he thought, it would be for having let himself go soft since graduate school. He should have been out there with his men more often, working beside them, getting away from the blueprints and paperwork.
All of the excuses he had concocted for not exercising now flooded back to him like the bad taste of sour food. He was never a good athlete in school, but he had been harder and at base physically fit. Something like this would never have happened to Bill Cullen, his foreman, he reflected, then criticized himself for the useless thought.
No one could have anticipated this. Even a policeman might have been taken by surprise, and although the policeman could’ve boasted more physical strength, he might not have matched David’s determination. He wasn’t going to berate himself anymore. He was doing all right. Sure, his fingers and palms were skinned and felt as though little pins were in them, but he would ignore that pain just as well as he was ignoring the pain in his leg.
He pulled himself up farther, dangling for a moment by grasping two rocks securely and bringing his left leg up until it jutted out. Then he straightened up very slowly, feeling his way along the well wall until he found what he considered to be a solidly embedded rock.
As he climbed in this torturously slow fashion, he began to hallucinate. The stones took on personalities. There were good ones and bad ones: they were filled with sympathy for him and wanted to help him, or they favored the madman and tried to prevent David’s escape. When a rock scratched him or pressed into his skin painfully, he cursed it. But when a rock appeared miraculously above him, thrusting out enough to give him a good grasp or support, he thanked and stroked it with appreciation.
He was grateful for the darkness now. True, if there was a good deal of light, he would see his way upward and scale the wall more quickly; but he might also be tempted to look down, and once he reached the last third of the journey, he could grow dizzy and invite disaster. To fall again might very well prove fatal, he thought; so he was happy that whenever he did look down to check his footing he saw only a thick mat of darkness.
He estimated that he was now only a few more feet to the halfway point. He had no idea how long it had taken to get this far. His concept of time was distorted, maybe a result of his other hallucinations. At this moment he had the impression it would soon be morning. He had been down here all night. The sky above did look brighter, he thought, or was that some mirage?
Questions about what he would do once he did pull himself out of the well needled him. He brushed them aside, not wanting to deal with them now; he didn’t want anything to break his concentration. It was too dangerous. This climbing was more like critical surgery. He was cutting his way up through the darkness and a mistake could spell his doom.
He couldn’t help wondering what would happen if he plunged to the bottom. What if his good leg broke? What if he broke an arm in the fall? Even if nothing else happened to him, did he have it in him to start over again? Would he just lie back and cry for help?
Forget that, he told himself. Forget it. The rock ahead, that’s all that matters. Funny, he thought. After all the years of education and work; after all the experiences, all the politics and all the success, his life boiled down to a piece of rock jutting out far enough for him to get a sufficient grasp. If he found no rocks to serve him ahead, then all he had achieved would end up crumpled at the bottom of a useless well.
I’ll never look down on rocks again, he promised and almost laughed aloud. He was definitely cracking up. The effort and the mental strain was driving him mad. Even if he did reach the top of the well and pulled himself up and out of it, he would reenter the world a raving maniac.
Reenter the world, he thought. That’s what I’m doing. I’m coming back up from the land of the dead. This is a resurrection of sorts. At least I have a chance to resurrect. How many poor souls dropped into the earth have a chance to pull themselves out of their graves?
“Lazarus Oberman,” he heard himself say. This time he did laugh aloud. Actually, it brought him some welcome mental relief. There was a small echo and then…in his madness…he heard all the “bad” rocks chide him.
They thought he would fail; they expected him to slip and fall into the abyss.
“Shut up,” he said. “Shut up.”
He reached upward again, found another firm rock, and began to pull himself upward. But then his foot slipped and for a moment he dangled, held only by the strength in his left hand. He didn’t know from where he drew the strength, but he was able to regain his footing and begin to hoist himself again.
He scaled another good five feet before he stopped and pressed his face against the well wall. He had to rest. The pain was excruciating. It made the aching in his arms and shoulders seem insignificant, even though he knew that to be almost as intense. All this forced him to wonder what he would do once he got up and out. Perhaps he would be worthless after it was over. Perhaps he would collapse on the ground above and the madman would simply find him and toss him down again.
Can’t think like that, he thought. Can’t defeat myself with my own thoughts. Stacey…Tami…think of them. Think only of them.
He took some deep breaths and risked wiping his face with his right hand. He was surprised at the roughness of the palm. So many scratches and blisters had formed that his hand was numb. For a moment he was afraid he wouldn’t get it to work. Those fingers couldn’t lock on him now. They had to bend and grasp or he was doomed.
“Don’t let me down now,” he whispered. Indeed, every part of his body seemed independent of the rest of him. He told his good foot it had to do its job and he told his arms and shoulders not to feel so sorry for themselves; they weren’t any worse off than the rest of him. “How would you like to be my broken leg, huh? Think of that before you send some more of that pain into my brain.”
He pulled himself back in very tiny, slow motions again, and groped upward to test the stones for the right one. When he found it, he felt a sense of elation. He would do it; he would make it. He grasped the stone and felt along the wall with his other hand until he found another. Then he pulled himself upward again, climbing toward the opening, climbing toward the stars.