The keepers, p.11
The Keepers, page 11
He stepped carefully over fallen, rotting logs and avoided setting his foot down in piles of leaves. Posey had said the woods were safe, no bears, or wolves. Still, there were snakes. But if you walked along crashing through the leaves and branches, making noise and watching where you stepped, they would wiggle out of the way. Posey had explained this and Andy trusted Posey.
Close by the river the tall oak and hickory grew in a tangle of brush and vines, it took all of Andy’s attention to fight through them. He wasn’t going anywhere special, just away from the confusion and turmoil of the lodge. Andy sniffed the air as he walked. There was the sharp scent of green and the nose tickling clearness of fresh water riding on top of a deep brown odor of leaves turning into moldering mulch. Nature’s unrelenting machine was constantly grinding ahead with the process of death and renewal, while high above Andy’s head, blue-jays and redbirds darted through the branches weaving the forest together with bright flashes of color. The woods were alive in a slow eternal way. The concept of time slipped away from Andy, it had no meaning in this place. Here, where things happened in terms of years and centuries, it was wrong to chop the afternoon up into tiny seconds or minutes. Andy slid easily and naturally into the longer flow of time, which changed only with the smoothly rotating seasons.
Andy was into the clearing before he saw it. The shock of suddenly being free of short slapping sumac and grasping grapevines made him stop and jerk his head up to inspect the small glade at the edge of the river. Then a rush of excitement hit him and his mouth dropped open.
“Oh, the bridge.”
The words came out soft and rounded with awe. Posey had said it was there, but to come upon it so unexpectedly brought a rising joy of discovery. He walked toward it with a spring in his step and an eagerness to examine its every part.
Four huge heavy ropes were anchored to two trees on either side of the river. Two of the ropes were the top lines and running down from them shorter ones were tied to the bottom ropes and then woven through boards, which formed the footpath. It swung suspended between the banks with the silvery slate water rushing beneath it like something out of a jungle movie. The fact that the ropes were frayed, and some of the sidepieces rotted, and the long sections of boards missing, took nothing away from the wonder of the bridge. Andy saw it shining and bright as new. He stood on the bank and reached up to put his hand on one of the top ropes.
The rough scratchy fibers pricked the moist skin of his palm giving him the sense of being a brave adventurer. He put one rubber-soled shoe onto the first plank. The ropes swayed and the planks trembled. Then he reached up and tightly grasped the other top rope and slid his left foot onto the bridge. He stood there breathing carefully not daring to disturb the delicate balance. Even with the excitement of finding the bridge and actually touching it, reality set in. It was old and crumbling; no one could ever walk across it again. That was disappointing, but it was still there and that was pleasure enough.
To satisfy his tingling bravery Andy took one more step, moving out until there was nothing but water, deep and heavy green, flowing under his feet. He looked wistfully toward the far bank, but there were too many missing boards. The spaces were too wide to jump and even if he did the sudden weight of his landing might snap the rotten ropes. Andy slowly backed up and in a minute stood again on the brown, leaf-encrusted bank. He couldn’t play on the bridge, but he could look at it.
Keeping a watch on the bridge, Andy walked to the base of a walnut tree, sat down on a clump of moss, and leaned back against the sturdy trunk. If his dad saw this, he’d have to think it was interesting. Andy was going to tell him about it, how great it was, and ask him to come with him tomorrow. His mom could pack a lunch for them; they’d have lots of fun, the two of them. Then in an explosion of goodwill he decided to ask his mom to come, too. Even Denise if she wanted. His bridge would impress them. While Andy stared at the bridge, lost in his thoughts, the outline of a girl began to take shape in the middle of the bridge. Andy stopped thinking and watched in amazement, as she became more distinct.
The hairs on the back of Andy’s neck rose straight and stiff as wood splinters and his scalp puckered, lifting his eyebrows and ears. The girl was clearly visible now.
She was about his age, white and thin with lank blond hair hanging to her shoulders and cut into bangs across her forehead. She wore a dress of blue cotton; it had a small white collar and white cuffs at the ends of the long sleeves. She looked oddly old fashioned, right down to her scuffed high-topped shoes, which were firmly planted in an open space between the crossing boards!
“Hey,” The hoarse cry tumbled from Andy’s dry lips with no conscious effort. It was an involuntary response to the girl’s precarious position, and the shock of her being where no one could possibly be.
She didn’t come from the other side of the river. She was simply, and suddenly, there.
“Hey,” Andy said again, so softly that the sound barely reached his own ears.
The girl clutched the top rope with one white claw-like hand. Her fingers were bent and stiff as an eagle’s talon. As she looked over her shoulder at the far bank, her eyes were wild and round. Andy’s stomach quivered. He tried to stand. His heel slipped on the damp moss, his knees wouldn’t lock to straighten his legs, and he pushed against the tree trying to pull himself up. There was no strength in his arms or legs. His eyes never left the girl and, as her fear and terror leaped out to land in his own heart, his chest rose in a deep shuddering breath. Andy fought to stand up.
“Wait, don’t move. I’ll help you.” Andy’s words drifted away light as dandelion fluff on a summer breeze.
There was nothing under her feet. She should fall. Maybe she was hanging on by the rope. However she managed to stand there, she was in great danger and Andy was far too frightened to figure it out. He finally forced his shaking legs to hold him.
Not once did the wisp of a girl look his way. She was absorbed in watching the bank behind her. Then a man in a high collared black suit came hurling out of the woods toward her. She tried to run, further across the bridge, but in four long strides, the man was on her, lashing out his strong arm to encircle her waist. As he lifted her she struggled and kicked.
The man was tall and his full beard and thick hair were a burnished red-gold. He held the girl tightly, her arms and legs thrashing, while he lifted his head and scanned the woods on Andy’s side of the river. His eyes matched the flashing blue-green of the tumbling water under the bridge. Andy shrank back against the tree. He was in plain sight at the edge of the clearing.
The man had seen him. He had to. Yet, the man’s expression remained the same. The girl’s jaw worked up and down, opening wide and then snapping shut as she was jerked higher and tighter under the man’s viselike arm.
The strange and fearful scene rooted Andy to the base of the walnut tree like a sapling. Andy heard the pumping of his heart, but there wasn’t another human sound in the forest; the leaves rustled in the trees tops, the river slid along with a silken sigh, and in the distance an angry jay screamed. As the man turned, holding the terrified girl, and started toward the far side of the river, Andy’s stunned mind registered something else. When the man’s feet touched, or seemed to touch, the wooden planks the bridge didn’t sway or move an inch.
The entire area was like the painted backdrop of a stage, with only the man and girl in violent motion. The lack of sound made the action horrifyingly vivid.
When the man set his feet on solid ground a woman came running out of the woods. She had the same buttercup yellow hair as the girl. The woman’s long brown dress whipped around her legs making her stumble and trip, but still she rushed toward the man. Her mouth was stretched in a silent scream of agony, it echoed in her eyes as she lunged forward. The man saw her and ran in the opposite direction, the girl flopping in his grip like a bundle of rags. Yet, he wasn’t fast enough, the woman caught him. She hurled herself on him, for a moment he staggered. The woman clawed and pounded at the man and at the same time she grabbed and pulled at the struggling girl. Andy’s jaw hung slack. The strength drained from his muscles, leaving them to hang over his bones like wilted leaves.
As the three on the far bank did a strange and dreadful dance a second, dark-haired, man appeared. Short and powerfully built, he grasped the woman from behind and wrestled her to the ground. Then his hand clutched a fist-sized stone.
He raised it high into the air.
The rock, in its setting of stiff curved fingers, was outlined against the blue sky like a huge corroded jewel. The terrible weapon hung there, poised for one breath-stopping moment, then in a blurring slash it came crashing down into the woman’s skull.
Andy squeezed his eyes shut and his heart shrank to a tiny pulsing clod. His mind shouted, no, but his eyes opened anyway.
The first man, with the flaming Viking hair, disappeared into the forest carrying the pitiful struggling girl under his arm. Andy saw a flash of her blue skirt before the solid green closed behind them. As they left, the second man was dragging the woman toward the bridge. His hands were under her armpits, and as he pulled, the woman’s head bobbed from one shoulder to the other like an apple on a string.
And it was apple red, too.
Blood had dyed her hair and stained her face, the round bouncing mass no longer looked like a head. Andy was cold and stiff as if he were frozen in a block of ice, yet his blood surged and bubbled like boiling corrosive acid. His body oozed a slick sweat. On the outside he was wet and shivering, inside, his guts were dry. They rasp against the wall of his skin like coils of leather. His throat and mouth ached with a dehydrated scream. Andy had felt fear before but this went beyond that to something he could not name. He wanted, with all his soul, to run screaming into the woods. He was trapped in a body that refused to obey.
In the middle of the bridge, over the deepest part of the river, the man lifted the woman’s sagging body and dumped it into the rolling swells.
It sank.
Then it rose to the surface and made a lazy flop to the right. Andy’s stomach turned with it.
When the teal blue water mercifully closed over the woman, Andy was glad. He was sick with perverse relief.
The man looked around as the other man had done and then left the bridge. Andy waited, planning with the last working filament of his mind to run at the first chance. But the man took up a position on the opposite bank destroying Andy’s fragile plan.
Andy stood paralyzed; his spirit drifting in time and space on a slow easy breeze that blew toward a land from which he might never return. Only a dim flickering part of Andy Nolan remained. He had one hazy thought. It was about dying, but it seemed to have nothing to do with him. It was an idea as impersonal as the death of the dry crackling leaves, which dropped to the ground each fall. The woods were restful and welcoming, willing to absorb Andy into their endless cycle. He slid down to his seat on the moss, barely feeling the rigid bark fingers raking his back. As he sat there stunned and numb, his arms hanging stiff as dead branches, the horror show across the river began to play again.
Intermission was over.
The red-bearded man came into sight. He was carrying a patchwork quilt, the four corners drawn up making a huge sack. The other man hurried to him and between them, they took the bundle to the middle of the bridge. Tiny points of hot white light pierced the air above Andy’s forehead, but they didn’t interfere with his view. The men put the blanket down on the bridge and threw back one side to reveal the contents.
It was the girl. A wet leaf-shaped scrap of her blue dress clung to one stark white thigh. Her bare bloodless body, pale as alabaster, was split from neck to crotch. As the men picked her up by the legs and arms, the cavity fell open. Andy saw it; grayish pink and empty, before a flap of stomach skin flopped over hiding the raw wound. Andy’s eyes rolled like marbles in a cup. His head dropped with a soft clunk against the tree, while his last bit of reason cried in a weak thin voice; Oh no, oh please, no. Yet, the cry never found its way to his lips. It wandered, lost and lonesome, in the emptiness of his mind. As the girl’s body dropped into the river, Andy slid past panic, fear, or terror.
Andy left before the men did. He went away in a smoky fog that turned to heavy suffocating black and it pulled him down, down, down. Into the place where It roamed wild and free.
Chapter Fourteen
As Jessie drove back to the lodge Denise sat silent and sulky against the right hand door of the Lincoln. The hooded insolence in Denise’s eyes, and the provocative pout of her full pink lower lip, made Jessie grip the steering wheel in anger. The mannerisms were a grotesque imitation of Melanie’s sophistication. They came naturally to Melanie and worked to her advantage. Denise looked as if she should be leaning against a lamppost in the French Quarter of New Orleans. The horrible possibility that Jessie was losing Denise turned Jessie’s anger to fear. Jessie put on her brightest smile and reached over to pat Denise’s honey-tan leg. Denise didn’t pull away, yet there was a subtle withdrawal.
“Did you have a good time at Melanie’s?”
Denise shrugged with one shoulder and the corner of her mouth lifted in a secret half-smile.
“Well, what did you do? What did you talk about?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? Surely you talked about something!”
“You wouldn’t be interested.”
“Sure I would. Good grief, Denise, I’m interested in everything you do. I know things have been strained lately, us moving, and strange people, but that doesn’t change anything about you and me. I love you, you’re my baby...”
The sneer on Denise’s face censured Jessie.
“Okay, I’m sorry. You’re not a baby anymore. I know you’re almost grown, but please try to understand. Even when you are older my love and concern doesn’t stop.” Jessie chuckled softly. “I suppose when I’m eighty and you’re sixty I’ll still think of you as my little girl. Look, Denise, this is new to me, too. I didn’t have a mother to go through this with when I was your age. Oh, Aunt Mae was there but it was different. What I’m saying is that we have to work this out together. Okay?”
Denise hugged the soft leather purse in her lap and the baffling, callous smile she had affected lately played across her face.
“Sure, don’t worry, Mom. We’ll work it out.”
As they pulled into the circle in front of the lodge, Jessie’s concern shifted to Andy. He should be back by now. She absolutely refused to let her imagination work against her by dreaming up unfounded fears. No sense borrowing trouble. Jessie got out of the car, pulled the sack of groceries from the back seat, and followed Denise into the lodge.
Inside Andy was sitting on one of the couches across the room from the fireplace. His face had the sheen of polished white marble, his eyes a dull flat green. Stan was bending over him, his fingers locked around Andy’s drooping shoulders. Stan was shaking Andy. With each rough jolt Andy’s head, limp and heavy, bounced against the maroon leather. Denise put one hand on her out-slung hip and shook her head.
“So, what’s the little weirdo been up to now?” she asked.
Jessie was too shocked to correct Denise or say anything. Her arm tightened around the sack, smashing the soft loaf of bread. Posey cowered behind Stan; his face crumpled and near tears while he twisted his red baseball cap in front of his bell-shaped body.
“Andy didn’t do nothing, Mr. Nolan.”
For an instant, Jessie was fragmented between fear for Andy, pity of Posey, and confusion at what Stan was doing. She jammed the sack of groceries into Denise’s arms and ran across the polished oak floor.
“Stan,” she cried. “Stop it! What on earth are you doing?”
Jessie threw herself down on the couch beside Andy and gathered his wilted cold body into her arms. Stan towered above them, his face red and swollen with rage.
“Coddling him won’t bring him out of it any sooner. I’ve had enough of his attention-getting antics. I will not have a fit-throwing, whimpering sissy for a son, I won’t cater to his every whim. I’ll not take him out on the river at the drop of a hat, and he pulls something like this!”
Stan’s fury sucked the air out of the room and Jessie struggled to breathe. Stan drew up tall and straight, his eyes flashing with the expectation of being obeyed, but in what? Jessie didn’t understand. Andy slumped against her, his damp hair brushing her cheek.
“What did he do? Why is he like this?”
With a jarring chill, Jessie realized she was speaking as if Andy couldn’t hear. She leaned over and put her hand under his chin to lift his head.
“Andy, it’s Mother. Are you okay? What happened, baby?”
A condescending look passed between Denise and Stan. Denise, totally calm and unaffected by the confusion, raised her eyebrow in amused interest as she came closer to watch. Andy swallowed and closed his eyes. His eyelids were almost transparent and the small blue veins clearly visible.
“I...I,” Andy’s pale lips moved up and down.
Jessie pressed his head against her breast to stop the painful stuttering. She jerked her head up toward Posey. “Do you know what happened?”
Posey stopped twisting his cap and stepped forward like a child called to recite in class. His chin trembled and his morning-glory-blue eyes widened with fear, but he straightened his narrow shoulders and nodded solemnly.
“Yes’um, Andy’s a good boy. He didn’t do nothing. Just fell asleep under an old walnut tree. He couldn’t wake up so Posey carry him back. The woods they is nice, but little boys got to sleep at home, ain’t that right, Miz Nolan?”
Jessie managed a stiff smile.
“That’s right, Posey. You did the right thing. Now, you go home and get some rest. We’ll see you in the morning when you come back to work.”
