Spiders and snakes in the dark.
Casey'd pitched me two out of three.
There was a great urge to say fuck this and light a match. I crushed
it between gritted teeth.
When I stopped trembling, I moved on.
I was trying to remember whether the clock was to the left or the
right, but I couldn't. There had been too much junk there. It numbed
the mind. I'd have to do it slowly, by feel mostly. Finally I reached
the wall. In front of me was a small plow- at least I thought it was a
plow. I felt like one of the old blind men with the elephant in that
proverb. ('This here's an anaconda.') But I was pretty sure I had it
right.
As I moved to the left, my foot scraped a bucket of some kind. I
reached down into it and felt a dusty old belt buckle. There were
other pails too. Nails, window fittings. I was beginning to remember.
If I'd been able to muster the patience, I knew my eyes would
eventually adjust even to this level of darkness. But that spider had
unnerved me.
Memory told me the clock was in this direction. The whole big mound of
stuff was to my right. So the clock was left. I kept going.
I leaned toward the wall and felt it with the palms of my hands. The
tines of a garden rake. Beside it, as hovel I scraped along slowly
There was a tenpenny masonry nail in the cement and, dangling from it,
a big brass key. Something that felt like a birdcage beside it.
Horseshoes. Another shovel. A whip. The wall felt cold, rough and
slimy.
The breeze was stronger here.
I kicked something hard and metallic, felt it slide away a little. I
edged toward it and bent down.
The washtub.
I remembered the washtub. It had been propped up right beside the
clock. Now it was down, resting on its base. But that meant the
Right here.
I could even see its outlines now. I reached for it.
The cabinet doors were open.
Inside, it was empty.
Something sour started happening in my stomach, and it wanted out of
me. There was too much darkness. It was making me dizzy, the way you
feel after a night with too much beer and nothing to eat when you lie
down in bed and close your eyes and everything starts to move on you,
swirling, rolling like film badly sprocketed in a projector. I
couldn't understand it. Where was she? Incomprehension buckled half
my brain, and what was left was instinct, and instinct told me the
appropriate emotion was fear. I needed badly to sit down, to stop the
sudden sweating, the cold sweats that had come on with the urge to
vomit. Because if she was not here.
She was nowhere.
Not possible
There was a trick somewhere. Had to be. Remember Kim at the window?
Something fishy. Hoaxing the local kid.
Not nice, Casey. Cut it out. I will wet my drawers if you don't.
'Casey! Goddamn you, Casey! Get the fuck out here, right
NOW!'
You are roaring, son. Like a lunatic. And not a thing has come of it.
Nobody home. No results to your inquiry. Inefficacy. Failure.
'Please!'
You are whistling, so to speak, in the dark.
That part of my mind that was still working told me to get the others,
fast, that this was not for me alone anymore and no game. So I turned
for the stairs. And forgot the clutter.
I don't know what tripped me. A rake, maybe, a hoe--something with a
long wooden handle. But I went down like a sack of flour, flat down on
my chest, stomach and thighs, feet flying out behind me. I heard two
sounds simultaneously: the thunk of my forehead against concrete and
the woosh of air out of my lungs. Then a moment of pain and a slow
struggle with unconsciousness. At first strictly touch and go. Out of
one blackness into another. I fought it. It cost me a massive effort
of will just to sit up, another to check for damages.
There was a wet spot on my forehead high up near the hairline, chilly
in the cold draft across the floor. And that was all. I figured I'd
gotten off easy.
I was aware of a strong, fetid odor. The smell of old meat
spoiling.
I'd smelled it before but it was much stronger now, infecting the cool
summer breeze. I thought of death. I thought of a stale shallow tide
pool of sea water and rotted bivalves. I thought of skeletons
scattered throughout the litter of pots, pans, pitchforks and knives
around me. Not the skeletons of mice, either. I saw Ben and Mary
crawling out from under. The skeletons of cannibalized dogs.
The floor was wet, slick to the touch. I pushed myself up. I reached
into my pocket for a match. The game was over. I lit one and held it
in front of me. I cupped the match in my hands and stared into the
breeze. I thought of what Rafferty had told me about long ago, a quiet
warning none of us had heeded.
I moved along on hands and knees. There was no sound but my own
scraping sounds and the relentless gentle wind breathing at me. I
crawled in the dark. No more falling. In the match light I had seen
it well enough- a rough circular hole broken through the wall, no more
than two or three feet in diameter. Room to crawl through, or out of,
but no more. I followed the current of air, the damp scent of it,
slowly.
I approached it like the doorway to hell.
I knew she'd gone inside.
