The Voice of the Night

sky, staring down.

He can’t see me, Colin told himself. At least he can’t see me as clearly as I see him. He’s there with the sky behind him; I’m here in the shadows.

“It is you,” Roy said.

He charged down the hillside.

Colin got up, stumbled over the railroad tracks, and hurried into the wasteland beyond.

26

Colin felt terribly vulnerable as he raced across the field. As far as the moonlight revealed, there was no cover, no place for him to hide. He had the crazy thought that a giant shoe was going to come down on him at any second, squashing him as if he were a bug scurrying across a vast kitchen floor.

In the stormy season, rain saturated the hillsides, then gushed off the slopes into natural drainage channels that cut through the flat land west of the railroad tracks. At least once every winter, the gullies overflowed, and the plain became a lake, part of the water-retention system created by the county flood-control project. Because the earth was underwater an average of two months every winter, it boasted very little vegetation even in the summer. There were patches of grass that had a tenuous hold on the silt, beds of the wildflowers that thrived nearly everywhere in California, and prickly tumbleweed; but there were no trees, no dense undergrowth, and no bushes in which Colin could conceal himself.

He got off the bare land as quickly as he could by jumping down into a small arroyo. The gulch was fifteen to twenty feet in width and more than seven feet deep, with almost vertical walls. During a winter storm, it was a surging river, wild and muddy and dangerous, but now it held not one drop of water. He sprinted along a straightaway, pain stabbing through his calves and side, lungs burning. As he came to a broad curve in the arroyo, he glanced back for the first time since he’d crossed the railroad tracks. So far as he could see, Roy had not yet come down into the big ditch in pursuit of him. He was surprised that he had such an encouraging lead, and he wondered if it were possible that Roy had not seen where he’d gone.

Beyond the bend, seeking shelter, he turned into a secondary watercourse that branched off the main channel. This was about ten feet wide at its mouth, but the walls rapidly drew nearer to each other as he progressed to the source. The floor rose steadily until the depth of the gully decreased from seven to five feet. When he had gone no more than a hundred yards, the passageway had narrowed to six feet. If he stood erect, his head would be above ground level. At that point the channel split into a pair of short, dead-end corridors that cut no more than four feet below the surface of the field. He moved into one of these cul-de-sacs, wedged himself into it, each shoulder pressed firmly against a sandy embankment. He sat down, drew his knees up to his chin, clamped his arms around his legs, and tried to be invisible.

— Rattlesnakes.

Oh, jeez.

— Better think about it.

No.

— This is rattlesnake country.

just shut up.

— Well, it is.

They don’t come out at night.

— The worst things always come out at night.

Not rattlesnakes.

— How do you know?

I read it in a book.

— What book?

Can’t remember the title.

— There wasn’t any book.

/tMt shut up.

— Rattlesnakes all over the place.

jeez!

He hunched down in the dirt, listening for rattlesnakes, waiting for Roy; and a long time passed during which he was not bothered by either nemesis. Every few minutes he checked his digital watch, and when he had been in the ditch for half an hour, he decided it was time to leave. If Roy had been searching the network of drainage canals all this time, he would have come close enough for Colin to be aware of him, or at least he would have made a noise in the distance; but he had not. Evidently he had abandoned the pursuit, perhaps because he’d lost track of Colin in the dark, hadn’t seen in which direction he had gone, and had no clear idea where to look for him. If true, it was a tremendous piece of luck. But Colin felt that he would be pushing Fate too hard if he stayed where he was, in this den of vipers, expecting to be safe forever from rattlesnakes.

He crawled out of the trench, stood, and studied the scarred, moonlit landscape. Within his limited circle of vision, there was no sign of Roy.

With extreme caution, stopping again and again to listen to the night, Colin headed southeast. Repeatedly, at the comers of his vision, there was movement; but it always proved to be a clump of tumbleweed rolling in front of the wind. Eventually he recrossed the flat land and reached the railroad tracks once more. He was at least a quarter of a mile south of the junkyard, and he quickly began to put even more distance between himself and Hermit Hobson’s place.

An hour later, when he reached the intersection of the tracks and Santa Leona Road, he was weary to his bones. His mouth was dry. His back ached. Every muscle in his legs was knotted and throbbing.

He considered following the highway into town. It was tempting: fairly straight and direct, with no holes or ditches or obstacles hidden in its shadows. He already had shortened the trek as much as he possibly could by going overland. From this point on, continued avoidance of the roads would only prolong the journey.

He took a few steps on the blacktop but realized again that he did not dare pursue the easy route. He almost surely would be attacked before he reached the edge of town, where people and lights would make murder more difficult than it would be in the lonely countryside.

— Hitchhike.

There’s no traffic at this hour.

— Someone will come along.

Yeah. Maybe Roy.

He left Santa Leona Road. He veered southwest from the railway line, striking out through more scrubland where only he and the tumbleweeds moved.

Within half a mile, he came to the dry creekbed that paralleled Ranch Road. It had been widened and deepened for flood-control purposes, and the walls of it were not earth but concrete. He descended on one of the regularly spaced service ladders, and when he stood on the floor of the creek, the rim was twenty feet above him.

Two miles farther, in the heart of town, he climbed up another ladder and through a safety railing. He was on the sidewalk along Broadway.

Although 1 A.M. was fast approaching, there were still people on the streets: several in passing cars; a few in an all-night diner; an attendant at a filling station. An elderly man walked arm-in-arm with a pixie-faced, white- haired woman, and a young couple strolled past the closed stores, window-shopping in spite of the hour.

Colin had an urge to rush up to the nearest of them and blurt out the secret, the story of Roy’s madness. But he knew they would think he was a lunatic. They didn’t know him, and they didn’t know Roy. None of it would make sense to strangers. He wasn’t even sure it made sense to him. And even if they did comprehend and believe, they couldn’t help him.

His first ally would have to be his mother. When she heard the facts, she would call the police, and they would respond to her much more quickly and seriously than they would to a fourteen-year-old boy. He had to get home and tell Weezy all about it.