Cage Of Night Part 36

"I'll be fine."

"Unless the monster gets you."

"Very funny."

I lowered myself a few more inches.

The interior of the well was the same dusty fieldstone below as up top. Various water levels had stained the stone over the years. Parts of the stone had worn smooth.

I didn't have to go far before I started getting feelings of claustrophobia. Premature burial. I read that Poe story when I was ten or so and was never able to forget it. Gave me nightmares for years. Closed in a coffin, slowly suffocating, screaming to get out, ripping my fingernails off as I clawed at the underside of the coffin lida"

I kept reminding myself that this was a very different reality.

My brother was up there with a flashlight. And any time I wanted to, I could start pulling myself up. And even if I got stuck somehow trying to get back up, Josh would lend a hand and make sure I made it.

My anger with Cindy also kept me from any morbid flights of premature fancy.

Why had she lied to Josh? Why wouldn't she help me when she knew very well I was innocent?

Why had she told me she was in love with me?

The smell started about halfway down. Think of sewer gas and that'll give you a pretty good idea. Sour, oppressive, filthy.

That was about when I heard it for the first time since I'd been in the well, that rumbling not-quite-distinct voice, the voice of one of the ancient dark G.o.ds Lovecraft wrote about.

The further I descended, the louder the voice became.

I looked up.

Suddenly, Josh, the flashlight and safety seemed very far away.

I was nearing the bottom of the well now.

And the voicea"

She was right, I thought. Cindy was right. About the well. About the beast that could take over your willa"

I could see the algae that was growing like a monstrous shining rug over the bottom of the well. I a.s.sumed that was part of the filthy smell.

I wondered what lay beneath all the fungus and other types of growth that made up the slimy green cloaka"

Was that where the monster lurked?

The voice grew louder, louder and I felt my hands slip on the smooth plastic anda"

I dropped at least four feet, afraid that I was going to drop straight into the growth belowa"

I stuck one of my feet out against the wall and stopped my fall. Then I wrapped the rope around my hands so I wouldn't fall again.

And then I stopped, stopped completely, and I just hung there and I heard the one thing I never ever wanted to hear but had feared all my life I would hear: silence.

Oh, I don't mean the silence of people not-talking; or the silence of being in a quiet room; or even the silence of deep night when you wake up suddenly and aren't quite sure where you are.

What I'm talking about is not merely the absence of noisea"I'm talking about the extinction of all noise. Forever.

I've heard people on TV evangelism shows relate how one night they just had this religious experience, and, in less than a few seconds, came to know the true nature of the universe.

Personally, I never used to believe in that kind of thing, that sudden flash of wisdom, that cosmic hunch thing.

Well, what I was hearing was cosmic all right, but it was a lot more than a hunch. It was confirmation of the most terrifying thought of all....

I'd come to know the true nature of the universe, too, you see, at least that universe inhabited by all us woebegone folks of flesh and blood. We prefer fantasies of monsters and aliens and the drooling undead to the one absolute truth we don't want to facea"that we are no better than possums or elephants or hissing, coiling snakes. We live and die without making any sense of our journey and then we facea"extinction. Utter extinction. I mean, that's the nice thing about vampires and ghosts. They a.s.sure us that we can live on in some form or another. But if you want the truth, look at the poor racc.o.o.n dead on the side of the highway, or at the fine shiny casket hiding the corpse, or the skeletons that sometimes get washed from their graves in spring floods. There's the realitya"extinction, and nothing else.

Cindy and David Myles and Garrett had convinced themselves that they heard voices telling them what to do because that implied that a higher power was controlling their lives. And a higher power, even a dark higher power, promised wonderful hushed secrets that a.s.sured them there would be no extinction, at least not for them, the chosen.

I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry and maybe, in fact, I was doing a little bit of both as I hung down that smelly Midwestern well and saw how shabby and juvenile the fantasy had been, the fantasy about the well.

Voices, my a.s.s.

Shared Psychotic Disorder.

Myles and Garrett had had the will to commit murder anyway. Cindy's game about the well simply gave them the courage to face their own desires.

I felt like a little boy who sat up in the dark all night staring at his closet, knowing that a monster waited for him on the other side of the door.

But when he opened ita"nothing.

Absence. Extinction.

"You all right?" Josh shouted down.

"Yeah," I called up. "Unfortunately, I am."

"Huh?"

"I'll explain later."

I spent a few more moments listening. Oh, G.o.d, believe me, I wanted to hear that rumbling voice again. I wanted to believe that dark and powerful forces could explain the heartbreaking vagaries of life on this forlorn planet of ours.

But I couldn't.

Because I'd learned the truth.

And the truth was a lot scarier than alien voices and caped creeping vampires.

I remembered the Hemingway story, "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," and the old man so afraid to die.

"Our nada who art in nada," Hemingway says, " nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada."

"You f.u.c.king lying sonofab.i.t.c.h," I said to the alien who did not dwell here, or dwell anywhere for that matter, "you f.u.c.king lying sonofab.i.t.c.h."

CHAPTER SIX.

Garrett lived in the lower half of an old two-story frame house. The place had once had some working cla.s.s dignity but now the owners were young people who'd left two hot rods up on blocks to die right there on the front lawn. The house needed paint, the roof needed shingles, and several of the windows needed new panes.

We saw all this on our only drive past the front of the house. Then we parked two blocks away in an alley, pulled into an abandoned warehouse, and walked back to Garrett's place.

"You know how to use one of these puppies?" Josh said, showing me the gla.s.s cutter.

"I suppose we can figure it out," I said, turning it over in my hand.

"Long as he doesn't have some kind of security system, we should be all right."

We moved fast, not quite a run, and left black tracks in the white snow of the moon-bright alley.

When we got to the cross street, I hid behind a tree while Josh made sure that there was no traffic coming from either direction.

This time we did break into a run, and we kept it up until we stood, panting plumes of silver breath, on Garrett's back porch.

The porch smelled of garbage, due, no doubt, to the six large cans lined along the railing.

I tried the gla.s.s cutter first.

I had no trouble.

"Man, I can't believe that," Josh whispered, as I was opening the back door.

"Believe what?"

"The way you used that gla.s.s cutter."

"Why?"

"No offense, brother, but you're kind of a klutz."

Then there was no time for jokes.

We were inside.

The dominant smells were cigarette smoke, bourbon whiskey, old pizza cardboards, a bathroom that hadn't been cleaned in a while, and a few layers of Brut.

The furniture was all lumpy, old and done, like dead buffalos.

"You want the bathroom?" Josh said.

"Not if I don't have to."

He laughed. "You smelled it, too, huh?"

"I'm kidding. I'll take the bathroom and his room. You try the kitchen and the bas.e.m.e.nt."

"Fine."

We were shadows, then, gliding through the street-lit darkness of these old-fashioned high-ceilinged rooms. Easy to imagine a player piano in the corner over there, and a family gathered round it singing "Camptown Races" and "Good Night, Irene."

There was nothing much in the bathroom. I tried the closet, the medicine cabinet, the clothes hamper. Nothing useful I could find at all. Then I had to stop and wonder exactly what I was looking for. Garrett had already planted the knife in my car. The murder weapon rested in the Chief's office.

I was just leaving the bathroom when headlights suddenly stared in the front windows like the eyes of a wild animal.

I didn't move.

The headlights held there a long moment.

Josh came out of the kitchen, watched the lights, ready to run.

The sounds of a car radio; headlights dying. Car doors open and closing.

Footsteps coming toward the house.

"d.a.m.n," Josh said.

We hoth started to move to the hack of the house when we heard the noise in the vestibule.

"Hey, cool it, man. The guy who lives downstairs is a cop."

"Big f.u.c.kin' deal."

"It'll be a big f.u.c.kin' deal if he decides to arrest ya."

"What can he arrest me for?"

"Cops can arrest ya for anything they want to arrest ya for."

"Bulls.h.i.t."

"Bulls.h.i.t, yourself."

"Shut up, you two. Let's get upstairs and eat this pizza."

"Remember, I ordered the half with the beef and hot peppers."