Chapter Nineteen

On the crosshatched grid of light and darkness that is Tracker history, there are occasional streams of pure light. Justice Tracker, John’s father, died of dehydration in his sanctuary. Theophilus sealed Justice in that sanctuary because, after Vera’s death, Theophilus was profoundly afraid. He spoke to Vera’s corpse, and its animating force, the force of the evil of this house, and beyond, answered. Or perhaps Theophilus’ crazed fear caused him to answer himself. But if so, what of John Tracker and Amy? They too imagined—were made to imagine?

The important work of Justice’s life was not his summary, on which he spent his last days and which was too hastily written. His masterwork is the sum of his journals. Because they still exist, his life is almost completely known; his sorrows are recorded, as are his appreciation of the tracery of sunlight through arbors. He writes of music heard and not forgotten, of the intimate and knowing smile of a beloved woman. Failing in life to succeed with the mind and spirits of others, he left his own mind and spirit standing like an intricately worked and beautiful tower. The tower has weak masonry in places, but it is still the sanest production of the house of the Trackers.

Raised in a tradition of violence, Justice became the antithesis of it. Rebellion for him amounted to silent study. He early learned to tell the difference between truths that were told as lies, lies told as truths, and truths told as truths. He developed perfect pitch for lies, which would keep him quiet and working for years.

The failure of his marriage caused sorrow that turned to romantic sadness. Justice was not original in his view of women; was, in fact, a fool about the matter, and there is every indication that he knew it. During the few years when he was teacher to his young son John he was overprotective on all but one occasion. Considering where they lived, and who with, protectiveness was understandable.

To go, or to stay? That question occupies his early middle years. The growing anti-human presence that dwelled in the house of the Trackers was also silent and subtle in its beginnings. Justice, so interested in his own theories, was shocked when he finally understood what was happening.

He did want to leave, and could not. He gets no name for bravery because of this. It appears (being who he was) that he had no choice. It would always be his lot to have peaceable yearnings while living through one battle after another. The evil that grew in the house of the Trackers found its opposition in him, and finally grew beyond him. It was strong enough, because of his death, to make incursions into the countryside.

Justice’s conclusions are unremarkable. He believed that good and evil are not in active conflict. Sometimes when in motion they collide. He believed that time is eternal, but not linear, that it moved back and forth and overlapped itself. He believed that power was different from force, and that the one ruling power in the universe was nature. Hell, and its various replicas, distorted nature, and the world he knew detested nature. Justice believed there were only two real sins: pride and ignorance. He did not believe in original sin. He believed in the possibility of original good.

It was not a matter of cutting losses, it was a matter of consolidating his position. He had to get Amy away from the house. As long as she was a hostage they were both vulnerable. As long as he had to deal with another opinion, another physical presence, another set of movements, he could not control the action on his own end. His only chance was to make this situation one to one. He and Amy could not leave together.

He knew what he had learned. Parts of this house, its tradition, were a part of him. He was bound as surely to this house as was Justice, as was the dangling corpse of Theophilus.

He felt the texture of silence in the house, remembered the muffled silence in Justice’s room, then that first silence when he first encountered Vera.

Vera. When he was little, Vera did not have much time for him. Still, thinking back on it, he could remember no act of Vera’s that actually tried to hurt him. There were plenty of painful words, which was a special kind of hurt. She was a master of the spirit but she had not, like Theophilus, dumped him down a well, or killed his dog, or done anything else that would be terrible in the world of a child.

He sat wondering if Vera was all right. He did not know if in shooting her he had committed a kind of murder, done nothing, or had done her a favor by making her seeming living death, death only.

He was tired, and it was not the good fatigue from action. It was the fatigue of confronting the unspeakable, the unanswerable. It was the fatigue from walking the mile you had to walk that went beyond the mile you could walk.

His mind, he decided, was telling him that it was time to act. “You want something. Stop sparring.” This deal was going to be bad enough. He had to open strong.

He yawned, stood, and went for more coffee. He opened a can of fruit juice, some tinned meat, and searched on the shelves for crackers, then returned to the table and sat chewing the tasteless food.

When the answer came it was from some far recess of the house. It trilled with the quality of an echo. It was, he thought, the kind of sound that the blue light in the sub-cellar would make if light were translated to sound.

Silence. He stood, left the kitchens and walked through empty rooms, probing for the chink or cranny the trilling came from. He was drifting toward an entry he hoped would eventually bring him to the fourth floor.

In this house, with its outrageous contrivances, what he hated only a little less than the well were the stairways. Stairways were tunnels that ran up or down. So they were not much different from wells. He stopped, listened, walked on. He found an entry and climbed to the second floor. This stairway truly was like a tunnel, running as it did beneath the broad set of carpeted steps, which were wide and open like an invitation. You could actually look up and see the underside of the main staircase. You also had to avoid what made the main staircase deadly. Not even Theophilus had ever used that main staircase.

On the second floor the rooms were orderly, and for the most part furnished. No supporting beams appeared, no uncovered rafters. Smooth, bending surfaces and plain fronts on furniture were Edwardian, Empire. On parts of the second floor the styles blended to the stainless steel arcs of Art Deco. The second floor was a floor of bedrooms.

It was also a floor of bizarre faces, of impressionist carving and sculpture and collage. It was profuse with distortion in paint. He stopped, as if weighing facts. He found an entry and climbed to the third floor. This passage wound in circles, dropped lower, rose. He passed by traps he was only partly aware of. Even if he tripped them, the traps did not spring.

As he emerged onto the third floor he again paused. “Put it to the test.”

Off-white walls and a ceiling without apparent fixtures surrounded him. Light came from recessed fixtures in the walls, ceiling and occasionally from the floor. The third floor had half-walls that ran like solid fences, like a maze, beneath lighting arranged so that there were no shadows. He could see over the tops of walls but at a distance he could not see between them. Full walls stood only where they concealed supporting timbers. In the distance was a huge octagonal column that must conceal one of the towers. At first impression the third floor was light and airy, like well-designed museums, or open mental wards. The low walls also ran like a maze, but here the maze was different. Here there were no furnishings, except as the floor was a furnishing. The floor ran in a continuously changing pattern of lines and symbols and colors, like a three-dimensional chessboard. Eventually the floor captured the eye, and then the captured, challenged intelligence would twist the senses into confusion, as was intended. The low walls faded to background and the sky was white and the floors became the sky—the world turned upside down.

He searched for an entry to the fourth floor, moved toward the octagonal column that concealed the tower. There was a pause in the trilling, so slight that it was almost unnoticeable. Time to make his play.

“Let her go away young,” he said. “I get twenty-four hours grace in which there’s no influence. If I can’t deliver by then, I deserve the bath.”

Silence. Then a roar behind him, he turned to see a bank of low walls rising from their seatings in the floor, wood and plaster cracking about him like shrapnel, bouncing from walls and defacing shapes on the floors. Debris lifted, hung in the air, dropped.

“Eighteen hours, then.” He knew the deal would get worse. He paused, the trilling seemed to concentrate, become louder. “Twelve hours then.” He checked his watch. It was a little after seven p.m.

“All right. It’s started.” He turned to retrace his steps, moved as quickly as he could. He had no more time to spend on Amy. He could not afford emotion clouding his thoughts.

When he got to the sanctuary, he was surprised to find her asleep. When he sat beside her he saw the crucifix and thought he understood. It meant nothing to him, but maybe it worked magic for her.

“I did go to the well,” she said when he awakened her. “I was running away, but I was looking too.” Her eyes were puffy with sleep, and now they also held tears. She rubbed at them like a child. When she stood her body was slightly stooped like a child about to be chastised.

“I didn’t help you either,” he said. She was younger, her hair was even thicker. Sadness seemed never to have pursed that mouth. There was no gray in her hair, her face was as smooth as a child’s.

“You’re a lot younger,” he said. “We have to talk and act, and we haven’t much time.” It was difficult to make your voice kindly and businesslike at the same time.

“We haven’t failed,” she said, “anybody else would have been beaten by now—”

“Still, we have to talk. I’m afraid you must leave, and I’m afraid it’s dark.”

She was feeling herself all over, looking at the backs of her hands, pinching at her arms. “I can still act,” she said, “with the best of them—”

“You’ll be no kind of actress at all if we don’t get you out of here.” He explained what he wanted, with neither the time nor the heart to explain why. He could see her misunderstanding.

“Put on your coat.”

She stood, her hand went to the crucifix. The tears that had collected in her eyes were now on her cheeks. Later he would feel badly for having inflicted this pain. Later he would have time for the luxury of feelings. He hoped.

“Amy, when you get over the grade, follow the road that runs by the freeway. There’s a town three miles to the right. It’s still early evening. Chances are someone will come driving along and pick you up. Go to the hotel in Indianapolis and wait.”

“Why?”

The whole truth would slow things. Maybe part of it would speed them up. “While you were sleeping I had a sort of confrontation. You have to leave. I’ll follow you, tomorrow. Something still has to be accomplished here, and time literally is of the essence. I can’t explain any more. I’m sorry.”

She looked at him, trying to decipher how much of what he said was true, and then her eyes widened. “You can’t talk, like in the subcellar.”

“Yes…Now go to the hotel, wait, do nothing else.”

“You love me?”

He was on the verge of losing control. He reached for it, clamped onto a tonelessness. “Always, of course, let’s go now.” He reached for her coat.

“I know what to do—”

“Just get the hell out of here,” he said. “Don’t come back. “

She was shocked. She shrugged into the coat, turned without speaking and began to walk.

“I’ll lead,” he told her.

It was in the kitchens, it drifted behind them. He walked, trying not to show he was aware of it.

“Look straight ahead,” he told her. “Put your hand on my belt. If anything happens close your eyes and let me lead you.” He did not want her to see what he knew was forming out there. They arrived at the front door.

How to tell someone you loved and might never see again just how much she was to you, had been, could be?

“Before you cross the top of the grade feel yourself all over,” he said. “If you’re okay…I mean like always, unchanged, then wave. If not, go anyway. Don’t wave.”

Tracker watched her go—the wind-blown hair, the long and youthful form. She was on her way, and suddenly he realized she was gone. Even if he succeeded here she was gone. He could visualize the long letter that would be waiting in the hotel room. He tried hard to push back the reaction of his emotions to that.

Amy struggled in the snow, slid back three times, and then reached the top of the grade. She felt under her coat, reached into her sleeves. She peered at her hands in the dark. She was a dark silhouette as she waved, and then slid out of sight.