Shadowland

    Tom stiffened. The boots came along the hall to Del's door and paused. Del's door opened. A second's silence; Del's door closed and the boots moved along to his own door. It opened, and light filtered into his room. 'Keep your head under your wing,' Collins said softly: it sounded almost tender. The door closed, and the room was black again. Tom heard Collins moving back down the hall, down the stairs.

    He waited only a second, then jumped out of bed and groped for his shirt and pants. His feet found his loafers. When he opened the door and went on his knees to the window, he saw the men and the dogs heading out across the flagstones to the woods. Some of the men held flaming torches. Behind them, Collins strode along, carrying a knobbly walking stick. As soon as they had left the flagstones, he trotted to the staircase and began to descend.

6

In the entry the candles still burned, now only inches from their holders. When he turned back toward the body of the house, he saw weak light spilling from the living room into the hall. He saw that he was passing a row of tall posters in frames — a series of theatrical bills behind glass, like time capsules. They loomed beside him, the glass reflecting a little of the dim light from the living room, a little more of Tom's own outline. In the silence, he felt observed.

    Chairs in the living room had been shoved here and there, cigars still burned in ashtrays, glasses stood empty on the wooden tables beside the couches and on the coffee table.

    The glass doors at the far side of the living room were open onto the flagstone patio. Across the clutter of the wide room, Tom saw the lights of the men's torches winding through the woods. He stepped onto soft thick carpet. Cigar smoke drifted through the air.

    Would he keep his head under his wing? He dodged furniture, going toward the open glass doors, and caught beneath the cigar smoke the odors of trees, earth, and night. Head under your wing, Tom?

    'Nuts to that,' he whispered, and stepped through the open glass doors onto the flagstones.

7

The torches bobbed through the woods a hundred yards ahead, appearing and disappearing as the men who held them skirted trees. Tom could hear their loud voices melting into the snarling of the dogs, and sensed their anticipation without hearing their words. They were going off to the left side of the lake, along the curve of the hill where he and Del had seen Rose Armstrong.

    He left the flags, wondering if they were looking for her. On his right a long rickety iron staircase cut straight down the hill to where the moon laid a silvery path across the lake. Tom descended as the men had, his heart stopping when the iron ladder shook and trembled, to a small beach. A building that must have been a boathouse hovered black against the dark water; a few feet from the shape of the boathouse, a white pier thrust out into the lake. No, that scene on the illuminated stage of rock had been public: whatever Mr. Peet and the others were doing now was not.

    Still, he wondered what men like that would do if they caught a girl. Then he wondered what they would do if they caught him.

    Fortunately, he could follow the torches and keep far enough behind so that they would never see him. He looked back as soon as he got into the woods and saw that the lights of the house gave him a clear beacon for his return.

    Twice he walked straight into trees, scraping his fore­head and nearly knocking himself down. The moon, sometimes so bright that he could see the blades of rough grass as silvery individual waves in a leaning, breathed — upon ocean, at times abruptly receded behind tall black trees and left him wandering in a black vastness punctu­ated only by the weaving torches up ahead.

    Like Hansel, he kept looking back, seeing the house retreat into a dense, dreamy integument of branches and bushy leaves. Before long the house was less a beacon than a half-dozen scattered points of light chinking the forest.

    This was nature of a kind he had met only in books — nature fighting for its own breath, crowded and tangled, populated with a hundred thrusting and bending shapes. Every step brought him near fingers and arms of wood reaching out for him; his loafers slipped on wet moss. The third tune he walked into a tree, the moon having temporarily departed, the tree did knock him down.

    Then the lights of torches disappeared. Tom stood absolutely still, afraid to. turn around — if he lost his direction, he would be lost indeed. He thought: Insects. Since leaving the house, he had not heard one; just hours ago, at the station, their noises had crowded the darkness.

    From over the rise where the men had disappeared with the dogs and torches, indistinguishable shouts erupted.

    Very slowly he went forward, his hands out before his face. Something, an animal or bird, chattered at him from far up: he bent back his neck, and furry needles brushed his forehead. The thought that it was a spider sent him vaulting forward. His foot snagged a root immovable as an anvil, and Tom went sprawling face and elbows first into mushy loam.

    He was conscious of a thudding heart, a muddy face, and a drenched shirt. He rubbed his hands over his face and crawled the rest of the way forward.

Finally the voices were very near. He was on his belly, inching up the little slope behind which the torches had vanished. A man said, 'Buster's ready.' The dogs grum­bled; some of the men laughed. Coleman Collins said in a sharp voice, 'Take care with that fire, Root. You want to be able to see.'

    'Umz plug whuzza right place?' asked someone in a thick voice — presumably Root, for Collins answered, 'I said it was, didn't I? Just watch your tinder. Be careful where you squirt that stuff! We want a blaze, not a conflagration.'

    Crawling forward, so scared of being seen that his breath froze in his throat, Tom could now see the lights of the torches — or of Root's conflagration — reddening the trees before him.

    'Herbie, you sure this is the set?' asked Mr. Peet.

    'Of course this is it,' Collins said.

    Herbie?

    Tom crawled to the top of the rise and peeked around the trunk of a red maple set glowing by the fire.

    Mr. Peet and Coleman Collins stood together beside a leaping fire tended by a thick-bodied man in a yellow T-shirt and baggy carpenter's pants — Root. His head was shaved nearly down to the skull. The others had jabbed their torches into the soft ground and were furiously digging. Dirt flew. 'There's your set right there,' said Collins, pointing to a grassy mound on the other side of the fire. In his lumberjack shut, his face ruddied by the fire, the magician looked extravagantly healthy, muscular as Mr. Peet. 'Where'd you get the dogs this time, Thorn?' he asked.

    The man in the army jacket came from the other side of the mound, holding both black dogs by the chains around then — necks. 'Same old shit. Paid 'im fifty-five apiece — claims they're the strongest he had. Couldn't get no bulls.' Thorn's face had been battered into a Halloween jack-o'-lantern. 'Bulls is best, for this.'

    'Bulldogs or terriers,' Collins said.

    'Bulls is best,' Thorn repeated.

    'Thorn, you're an idiot. Give me that bottle again.' Thorn sulkily fetched the whiskey from his pocket. Collins drank and passed the bottle to Mr. Peet. 'Those two will work out fine. I'm pleased. Now, give the chains to Root and help with the pit.'

    'Yeah,' Thorn said. He swaggered away to do as he was told.

    'Hey, let's send the little one in,' Root called.

    'Jesus Christ,' one of the men shoveling dirt said. 'Why not give us a break, huh? Or come over here and shovel for yourself, shithead.'

    'Now, . . . ' Mr. Peet said warningly but too late.

    Root had wrapped the chains around a tree and was charging the man who held a shovel. The others stopped digging and watched the man plant his feet and swipe at Root with the flat of the shovel. Hit in the side, Root went down. 'Shithead,' the man said.

    'Okay, Pease,' Mr. Peet said calmly. 'Root, just hold the dogs. It's too early to try them out. Keep that fire stoked up.'

    'Fucking animal asshole,' muttered the one called Pease, taking up his shovel and digging so hard that dirt