Ritual. Part 28

He felt his clothes clinging heavily around him as he swam below the surface towards the submerged car. The water was so murky that he found it impossible to see anything except the vehicle's lights until he was almost on top of it. It was tilted downward, with its nearside b.u.mper already buried in the ooze, its pa.s.senger compartment still half-full of air, giving it a lumbering buoyancy. Charlie could hear the blurting of bubbles, however, as the air steadily poured up to the surface, and he guessed that it couldn't be more than a matter of seconds before the car filled up completely. He swam around it, short of breath now, staring as wide-eyed as he could.

He heard thumping, and something that must have been a shout for help. He kicked himself around to the car's offside, and saw M. Fontenot, his white face pressed against the driver's window, a mask of absolute terror. In the pa.s.senger seat, the big-shouldered man called Henri was sitting, his face equally strained, but making no effort to open the Buicks' doors. Charlie tried to s.n.a.t.c.h at the driver's door handle, but he was out of oxygen now, and he had to thrash himself up to the surface.

Robyn was sitting in the skiff watching for him. Charlie gulped for air, and doggy-paddled around in a circle. 'Did you find them?' called Robyn. 'Are they still alive?'

'They're alive all right. But they don't have long. It's that Fontenot guy from the Celestines, and the other one, the big one. But they don't seem to be making any effort to get themselves out.'

'Can you open the doors?'

'I don't know,' Charlie gasped. 'I'm going back to give it a try.'

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He took two more giant breaths, then plunged back under the surface of the bayou once more. He had never been a good underwater swimmer, and it took him several strenuous strokes of his arm to get himself back down to the car. Even then he had to tug himself further down by holding on to the drip-rail around the car's roof.

M. Fontenot and Henri were still sitting where they had been before. The water had already filled up to M. Fontenot's chest. His eyes were bulging and his teeth were clenched, as if the skull that had been hidden inside his head for so many years had caught the scent of freedom. Henri's expression was extraordinary, and even more frightening because it was so resigned. Charlie wrenched the door handle, but the door was either locked or jammed, or too heavy to open because of the water pressure. Charlie banged on the window, and gestured frantically that M. Fontenot should try to open it from the inside. That way, the pressure inside and outside the car would equalize.

But M. Fontenot shook his head, and screamed, 'I'm trapped! I'm trapped behind the wheel! My legs are trapped!'

Charlie realized with cold dread what he was witnessing. M. Fontenot refused to open the Buick's doors because he was unable to get out; and obviously he had ordered Henri to remain where he was, too, so that he could have just a few more seconds of life. Henri's lungs must have already been bursting for air, but obediently he remained where he was, drowning for the sake of his master. Because the car was tilted towards the nearside, the water would reach Henri's face first. It was already filling up to the side of his chin, but he made no attempt to lift his mouth clear of it.

Charlie banged on the door again, and gestured towards the door locks. But M. Fontenot did nothing but stare at him in desperation. Charlie couldn't stay down any longer, and he released his hold on the car and kicked himself up to the surface.

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Robyn had untied the skiff and brought it closer. Charlie, coughing, spitting up water, clung gratefully on to the side of it. 'Tried,' he choked. 'No d.a.m.n good. Fontenot's legs are trapped.'

Robyn leaned forward and took hold of his hand. 'Just get on board, Charlie. If there's nothing you can do, there's nothing you can do. I don't want you to drown too.'

'One more try,' said Charlie, but just as he was taking his second deep breath, there was an abrupt and noisy rush of bubbles from below the surface, and the Buick's lights went out.

'It's no use,' said Robyn. 'G.o.d knows you did your best.' Charlie trod water for a few minutes, waiting to see if Henri had managed to get out, but after a while the bayou returned to steamy stillness, and the frogs took up their regular chorus as if nothing at all had happened. 'Okay,' said Charlie. 'I'm coming aboard.'

With Robyn tugging at his soaking shirt, he clambered into the wildy rocking skiff, and sat on the plain plank seat, with water running from his clothes, his head bowed, trying to cough up as much of the Normand Bayou as he could.

'Well,' he said, 'we licked them, didn't we? And all that's going to look like is accidental death. Come on, let's get back to the jetty. I want to see if Eric's okay. Then we can take the car and get the h.e.l.l out.'

Robyn balanced her way to the middle of the skiff and picked up the paddle. She leaned forward and kissed Charlie's wet tangled hair. 'You were fantastic,' she whispered. 'You were better than Lloyd Bridges.'

Charlie gave a wry, slanting smile. 'Can't you ever love me for myself?'

They began to paddle their way back toward the jetty. As they did so, however, they heard the warbling sound of an ambulance siren in the middle distance. They heard something else, too - the whip-whipping of a police siren.

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's.h.i.t,' said Charlie.

'Do you think we can make it to the car in time?' Robyn asked him.

'Oh sure. But there's only one way out of here by road, and what do you think the police are going to do when two fugitives from justice come steaming toward them in a stolen vehicle? Come on - we don't have any choice. We're going to have to paddle our way out of here. Eric said to keep heading southwest.'

Charlie quickly checked the contents of the skiff. At the prow, there was a heap of clumsily folded rubberized sheeting, which Eric had presumably used to cover himself up with when it was raining. There was a broken fishing basket, a collection of baling-hooks and rusty screwdrivers and some piece of machinery that looked as if it had once belonged to an outboard motor. There was also a spare paddle and a bottle that contained about half a pint of clear liquid. Charlie uncorked it and sniffed. 'Bad Eric,' he remarked. 'This is raw corn whiskey.' He wiped the neck, took a cautious swig and swallowed it.

'Benedict Arnold,' he swore, as it soaked down his throat like lighted kerosene.

They took up their paddles, nudged the skiff around, and began to splash their way south-westward along the bayou. They bayou was nearly sixty feet wide here, but Charlie could already see that it narrowed up ahead. The steam enveloped them in mysterious swirls, floating over the brown surface of the water like the ghostly hands of all those who had lived and died on the Normand Bayou. It seemed to clutch and cling at their paddles, and then whirl away as they splashed into the water. The sound of the police siren soon became m.u.f.fled and distant. After a while they could hear nothing but the frogs and the watery guttural noise of their own paddling. They didn't speak for a long time. They were both tired and shocked, and Charlie was beginning to feel chilly and uncomfortable in 299.

his soaking wet clothes. He thought of Eric dying in his field. Perhaps Eric's spirit was travelling with them now, in the skiff from which he had fished so often, with his bottle of raw corn whiskey and his broken basket full of catfish. Charlie began softly to whistle 'Laisser les Cajuns Danser', although he had never realized that he had picked up the tune.

The morning pa.s.sed and the steam thickened and then began to clear; so that by eleven o'clock they were paddling on water that was livid yellow-ochre in colour, and sparkling with sunlight, in between high levees where catalpa and willows draggled their roots, and mud-turtles basked at the water's edge. Charlie in his damp-dry clothes suddenly lowered his head and said, 'I'm just going to have to rest up for a while. Why not let's pull under that bridge?'

About a quarter-mile up ahead of them was a wooden bridge; not much of a bridge, because here the bayou was comparatively narrow, but closely surrounded by water oaks, thick with dangling vines, so that the underneath of the bridge was curtained off like a dark, private room. They gently b.u.mped the skiff into the cool shadow, stowed away their paddles, and sat for a while in the gloom looking at each other. A few c.h.i.n.ks of sunlight penetrated the wooden walkway of the bridge above them, and played on the water and on Robyn's hair. Turtles splashed and plopped; catfish finned by in swirls of grainy silt. They felt so far away from the rest of the world that they could have been children again.

'Today's Thursday,' said Robyn, as if to remind them both of the urgency of what they were doing, and why they were here.

Charlie nodded. 'It shouldn't take us very much longer to get to Acadia.'

'Go on rest up,' Robyn told him soothingly. He smiled at her, she smiled back and he realized without any fear whatsoever that he loved her.

He eased himself down into the well of the skiff, resting his 300.

head on her lap. She straightened his tousled hair with her fingers. 'We're not exactly the world's best dressed couple, are we?' she said.

Charlie closed his eyes. All that diving into the the bayou to try to rescue M. Fontenot - on top of the shock of seeing Gumbo burn and Eric Broussard lie there dying began to overwhelm him, like a cloak of lead. He could feel the skiff dipping and bobbing beneath him. He could feel Robyn's fingers stroking his forehead. He wasn't sleeping, but he was already in that strange anteroom to sleep, where reality and illusion intertwine, and so he didn't pay any clear attention to the slight shifting sound in the back of the skiff, where the rubberized sheets were stored.

Nor did he open his eyes when the sheets were gradually nudged back, and the dull blade of a machete appeared from underneath them, like the claw of some monstrous crab.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.

Charlie began to dream about the dark monkish restaurant again, although this time the dream seemed to be subtly different. He was sure that he could hear chanting, from the direction of the kitchen doors. It sounded like a Gregorian chant, disciplined and sweet, and yet he could also hear the dull erratic thumping of a primitive drum.

He left his seat and began to walk between the tables towards the kitchen. Other diners turned to watch him as he pa.s.sed. All of the men were dressed in formal evening wear, although not all of them appeared to be real. Some of them had faces that were as smooth as wax, and others had eyes that burned in their heads like coals. The women wore decorative masks, covered with mother-of-pearl and gleaming peac.o.c.k feathers and gla.s.s jewellery; as well as heavy bodices embroidered with gold and silver thread. From the waist down, however, almost all of them were naked, and they sat with their thighs wide apart in order to expose themselves to whoever was pa.s.sing. They giggled and t.i.ttered beneath their masks as Charlie walked towards the kitchen. He had a terrible feeling that they knew something he didn't - something frightening and dire.

The kitchen doors came nearer and nearer - as if they were gliding towards him instead of him walking toward them. They were stainless steel with circular porthole windows in them. The windows were totally black, impenetrable, like tunnels to nowhere at all. As he approached, Charlie's heart began to tighten with fear, and his feet began to drag on the carpet, as if his shoes where soled with Velcro. Don't go inside, his sense of survival cried out to him. It's the ritual kitchen, don't go inside!

He stopped walking, but the kitchen doors continued to glide nearer, until he was standing right up against them. He put out his hand. The stainless steel was utterly cold. He knew there were faces watching him through the porthole windows, but he didn't dare to look at them. They were blind faces - faces with eyes like the eyes of freshly boiled fish.

Don't go inside! his sense of survival screamed. It's the ritual kitchen, don't go inside!

One of the women approached him. She wore a mask like a hawk, with a solid silver beak and glossy black feathers. The eyes that looked out at him through the apertures in the mask were Velma's. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were covered in a sleek black bodice with silver fastenings. A plaited cord of black silk was pulled tight between the lips of her v.u.l.v.a, so that they pouted vivid pink with shining black pubic hair. She reached out and touched his lips with her fingers, and whispered, ' You're one of us now, my darling. You've tasted the holy bread now. You're one of us.'

Then silently, her fingers dropped off, and fell pattering on to the floor, leaving her with nothing but a mutilated paddle instead of a hand. Her eyes smiled at him through the mask, ' You're one of us noa>', she repeated, and screeched with laughter. 'One of us now! One of us!'

And then...

... with a sinister swishing sound, the kitchen doors swung open. Charlie screamed. But instantly, he understood that it wasn't he who had screamed at all. He was splattered all over with something wet, and the skiff was rocking wildly, and then Robyn tumbled over him, still screaming, and fell heavily into the stern.

Charlie glimpsed a dwarfish, hooded figure, and eyes that stared malevolent and pale. He glimpsed a curved upraised machete, strapped to a stunted arm. He twisted around, tried to get up, overbalanced, and then the machete sang like a bird and hit the plain plank seat. Charlie stood up, crouched, 302.

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breathing hard, facing the dwarf with both hands held out in front of him. His good right hand, and his left hand, from which one finger was missing.

'Robyn!' he snapped. 'Robyn! Are you okay? Did he hurt you?'

The dwarf cackled and danced, deliberately rocking the skiff from side to side. 'Stupid b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Stupid b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Running away! Running away!'

'Robyn?' Charlie repeated. 'Robyn, for Christ's sake!'

Robyn said, in a high voice, 'He hit my shoulder.'

Charlie stared at the dwarf with renewed fury. 'You runt, David,' he breathed, taking two awkward steps forward in the bottom of the skiff. But David laughed, a ridiculous hysterical laugh, and swished his machete from side to side, and taunted Charlie as if he were taunting a dog.

'Come on then, bozo. Come here and get it. You think I'm a runt? I'll show you who's a runt! I gave my arms and legs to the Lord Jesus Christ, that's how much of a runt I am! Would you dare do that? Would you give your c.o.c.k and your b.a.l.l.s to the Lord Jesus Christ? That's what I did! I cut them off myself, with a big sharp knife, and I ate them! You can't do anything to me that I haven't already done to myself, bozo, so you listen good. I'm going to kill you, you and your harlot too! I'm going to cut you into little pieces, the same way I did with Mrs Kemp! I'm going to drink your blood, bozo! I'm going to drink it out of your arteries while you're still alive! You got me? So come on here, come on - and make me happy!'

Charlie remained crouched in the middle of the skiff, watching the dwarf intently, lifting first one hand and then the other to give the impression that he was skilled in some kind of martial art. He wanted to say all kinds of things to David to psyche him out, but somehow the words wouldn't come. The only noises he could make was a series of attenuated burps. Fear, he thought. I'm afraid.

Tm going to take your manhood first,' the dwarf promised him, whistling his machete around his head. 'Your manhood - and then your head. Just think how pleased Mme Musette is going to be, if I bring her your head.'

'You a.s.shole,' snarled Charlie. 'You couldn't even go the whole way, could you, and do a good job of killing yourself?'

The dwarf let out a noise that was halfway between a retch and a scream and hobbled violently towards Charlie with his machete swinging. Charlie threw himself sideways out of the skiff, splashing noisily into the muddy water under the bridge, and the dwarf toppled after him, still screaming. Robyn fell into the water, too, clutching her injured shoulder; but Charlie knew that it was only three or four feet deep, and that she wouldn't come to any. serious harm.

For David the dwarf, however, the water was overwhelming, and his scream of fury turned to a gasp of shock. Charlie immediately waded towards him, with a surge of muddy wash, and gripped the stump to which his machete was strapped. David bucked and jumped and heaved his amputated limbs, but Charlie smacked him hard in the side of the face, and twisted the machete free of its leather strap. He tossed it away, into the water, and it skipped just once on the surface before sinking.

David screeched, 'Heretic! Heretic! b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Heretic!' in a voice that sounded completely unreal. But then Charlie seized hold of the back of his neck, and forced his head under the water, into the mud. David struggled and thrashed like a maniac. Charlie found it almost impossible to hold him. But he knew that if he didn't kill David now, he would return time after time to haunt him, and that in the end he would destroy him, and Martin, and Robyn too. With that determination firing him up, he kept David's face pressed deep into the mud, two feet below the water, and he held him there and he held him there and he wasn't going to let him go for anything.

David struggled and struggled, but gradually his convulsions became weaker, and more spasmodic. His back arched 304.

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in one final shudder, and then he floated face down in the water, nudged by the current, a torso with stumps for arms and legs, wrapped in a soaking robe. A dwarfish parody of Ophelia, 'Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, / Pulfd the poor wretch from her melodious lay / To muddy death.'

Juddering with cold and exertion, Charlie waded his way back around the skiff. Robyn had pulled herself up on to the muddy bank of the bayou, underneath the trailing vines, and she was pressing her hand over her shoulder where David had cut her. She was white-faced, and shaking. Charlie sloshed up to her through thigh-deep mud and put his arm around her and held her very close. 'It's all right. You don't have anything to worry about. He's dead.'

Neither of them turned to watch David's body float like a water-sodden cotton bale out from under the bridge and slowly away down the bayou. Charlie carefully opened Robyn's blood-soaked blouse and lifted her hand away from her wound. It was a vicious, blunt, nasty cut, and there was no doubt that it needed st.i.tches. But David had missed her vital arteries, and chopped his machete into nothing but muscle and bone. She was lucky: a second blow could have caught her in the skull.

'Listen,' said Charlie, 'I don't know even the first thing about dressing wounds. But if you can hold on until we reach the next community, I'll make sure that you get this properly st.i.tched.'

'They'll call the police,' Robyn protested. 'The next thing I know, they'll put me under arrest. Or worse - they could hand me over to the Celestines.'

'Listen, don't worry about it,' Charlie rea.s.sured her. 'We'll find ourselves a country doctor. One who doesn't ask too many questions.'

'Are you kidding?' said Robyn. 'Country doctors who don't ask too many questions died out with Young Dr Malone.'

''Young Dr Malone? You're too young to remember that.'

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'If you think I'm too young to remember Young Dr Malone, then you're too old.'

Charlie helped Robyn back into the skiff, and made her comfortable, padding her wound with the tail torn from his shirt. Then he paddled out from underneath the bridge, into the glaring sunshine, noon in south-western Louisiana, with the cypress trees turning crimson, and the sky clear. Robyn said, 'G.o.d, this hurts,' but a little while later they pa.s.sed the body of the dwarf David, dipping in the bayou, and Robyn didn't complain after that. All she said was, 'I wonder who his parents were? I mean, they must have sent him to school, and been proud of him. And look at him now.'

Charlie said, 'My mother always told me, "Never ask questions when you know that you're never going to be able to find out the answer".'

'Is that what they call homespun philosophy?' asked Robyn.

Charlie didn't answer, but carried on paddling. He was finding it increasingly difficult to shake off his dreams. In fact, he was beginning to wonder whether this journey to rescue Martin was in itself a dream, propelling a flat-bottomed skiff along a narrow Louisiana bayou on a warm October afternoon, while the police were hunting for him high and low, and Marjorie was fretting, and M. Musette was lasciviously sharpening his butcher's knives for the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Around three o'clock, dry-throated, exhausted and hungry, Charlie finally raised his paddle out of the water and let the skiff glide. Robyn had been drowsing, her head couched against her arm. 'What's the matter?' she asked him. She kept his shirt tail pressed to her shoulder. It must have been hurting pretty bad by now.

'I think I've had it,' Charlie admitted.

'We can't go on like this,' said Robyn. 'We have to find someplace to stay for the night; and another car, too.'

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'Another car?' said Charlie.

'Sure. How else are we going to take Martin away from the Celestines? On bicycles?'

Charlie knelt up, setting the skiff tilting from side to side. He shaded his eyes and peered at the fields spread out on either side of the bayou. 'There's a girder bridge, no more than a half-mile ahead of us. I guess we could land right there, and hitch ourselves a ride. That's always supposing somebody comes by.'

'What if they don't?' Robyn wanted to know.

'Then we'll walk,' said Charlie. 'Acadia can't be too far from here.'

He paddled towards the bridge. The bayou was wider here, and the bridge was a steelgirder construction, with tarred wooden slats for a roadbed. It was only when he was far too near to it to turn back that Charlie saw the Louisiana State Police cars parked on either side of the bridge's ramps, and the wide-hatted officers standing waiting with pump-guns resting on their hips, their eyes concealed by orange Ray-Bans, their faces laconic and bored, as if homicide suspects came paddling their way down the bayou every d.a.m.n day of the week.

There was, of course, no chance of escape. One of the officers lifted a loud-hailer from the roof of his car, and called out, 'You there! Charles McLean and Robyn Harris! We're arresting you here for homicide in the first degree, kidnap, and grand theft auto. Would you pull your boat into the side here, please? We have instructions to shoot you if you try to get away.'

Robyn said urgently, 'Do you really think that they'd shoot?'

'Do you really want to put them to the test?' Charlie said.

He guided the skiff towards the muddy bank, until its flat bottom sc.r.a.ped against the mussels that cl.u.s.tered below the waterline. Then he balanced his way on to dry land, turning around to help Robyn out. Two young police officers came 308.

down to the edge of the bayou to guard them, and to drag the skiff right out of the water. Charlie climbed the levee and stood in the sunshine with his hands on his hips, exhausted, out of breath, and resigned at last to being caught.

The officer with the loud-hailer came forward and took off his sungla.s.ses. 'Sergeant Ron Dupree, Louisiana State Police,' he said, in a very slow drawl. 'You've been causing us a whole lot of trouble, sir.'

Charlie said, 'If you're going to arrest me, don't you think you ought to read me my rights? You wouldn't like to be responsible for having my indictment disallowed, would you?'