Soulstorm. Part 32

The ambulance arrived a short time later. Monckton, still unconscious, was lifted on first, followed by Wickstrom and Gabrielle. The body of Sterne would follow later.

On the way down the mountain Gabrielle became aware at one point of flashing red lights that were not the ambulance's, and a roaring engine that grew louder and then faded into silence. "What was that?" she asked the attendant.

"Fire engine and the tanker," he told her. "Probably called for a cinder truck. They can't get up the mountain. Too icy."

"Good," she said. "Good. Let it burn."

The attendant checked Monckton's vital signs once more, then sat in the front. Wickstrom turned his head and looked at Gabrielle. "I'm sorry I screamed," he said. "I saw . . . the light, so white and big, and I thought it was one of the faces . . . that it was starting all over again."

"No," Gabrielle said softly. "It's over now."

They rode for a while longer. "Did you see his face?" Wickstrom finally asked, gazing up at the whiteness of the ceiling. "Not when he was after us, but when he did it, when he . . . freed us. It was like, like he'd won, like he'd planned it that way all along, like . . . whatever it was, he beat it."

It was a long time before Gabrielle replied. "I'd like to believe that." she said. And later still, she whispered to herself, "I think I will."

Epilogue.

Of human blood and stone.

We build; and in a thousand years will come Beyond the hills ...

-Conrad Aiken, "The Road"

Nearly a year later Whitey Monckton rounded a sharp corner on a battered side road, and saw once more the caretaker's cabin near the foot of Pine Mountain. Smoke was drifting placidly from the chimney, and an addition had been put on the building, doubling its original size. He pulled his car up in front of the freshly painted wooden porch, and got out. The door of the house opened and a tall lanky man in his mid-fifties appeared, a cigarette in one hand. "Yeah?" the man said, neither friendly nor rude.

"My name's Monckton. I worked here last year."

Recognition shone on the tall man's face, and he smiled. "Sure, Mr. Monckton. I remember you now. You look a lot different. Lost weight?"

Monckton nodded. "Been spending most of my time in hospitals. Got out last week."

"Yeah, I remember they thought you were a goner. Any bones in your body that didn't break?"

"Not many." Monckton smiled. "They patched me up pretty well though."

"What can I do for you?"

Monckton hesitated, and the tall man pursed his lips. "I'd like to go up the mountain," Monckton said. "I'd like to see the place one more time."

The man shook his head. "Nothing to see. Just walls is all that's left."

"Well, I'd like to see them anyway."

"I got orders not to let anybody up there. Besides, the gate's welded shut. n.o.body can drive up there now."

"I'd walk. It's not far."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Monckton."

Monckton reached into his pocket, took out five new hundred dollar bills, and extended them to the man. "I've got no camera, nothing. You can frisk me before I go up and when I come down."

The man snorted. "Nothing to steal up there." He looked at the money for a while, then pocketed it. You stay quiet, I stay quiet."

"It's a deal." He looked at the road leading upward.

"Go ahead," said the man. "I won't stop you."

Monckton stepped around the gate and started walking up the road. At first he stopped and listened every few yards, but he heard and felt nothing strange, although there were still no sounds of insects or birds in the brush and trees. Halfway up he stopped, a small pain in his side. A half-mile walk up a steep grade was more exercise than he'd had in ages, but he knew he could make it to the top and down again. He had to. He had to find out the answer to what he'd been thinking of for a year, a year of lying in hospital beds staring at those white casts above and beside him like ghosts of limbs, a year of stretching and compressing muscles and bones to try to get them to work, if not like before, at least enough to propel him like a living man again, a year of wondering where it was, what had become of it.

And now, as he climbed the road one final time under the gray canopy of snow-sky, he hoped again that it would be here, confined here on this mountain forever, away from curious and weak men. His side aching, he toiled up the hill, the cold air stinging his nostrils, burning his lungs.

At last he cleared the final curve and saw what was left of The Pines. It sat brooding like some ancient abbey in its clearing, beginning to be overgrown with brush. The walls had not fallen. They stood as solidly as they had for seventy years, no longer gray, but charred black by the fire's breath. He walked across the thick weeds and dead leaves that covered the lawn, walked up until he was within the shadow of the blackened walls, until he could see through the breach into the Great Hall, the huge copper shaft of the chimney lying amid the rubble like the fallen trumpet of a G.o.d. Only then did he stop and listen.

There was nothing. Not a whisper of force, not a purr of energy entered his open mind.

Where are you then? he thought. Only two people had left the house-Gabrielle Neville and Wickstrom. They had both visited him at Mt. Sinai, and he had sensed nothing from either of them, only perhaps a newly found joy in life and a tremendous sense of relief to have escaped from what had touched them all so strongly at The Pines. Wickstrom had bought a restaurant in Queens, and seemed to be enjoying the venture. Gabrielle Neville had seemed happy as well, but there was a sense of sadness about her, too, even though she had been a good many months pregnant at the time of her visit. It was akin, he thought, to the sadness of the Madonna, bearing the child she would live to lose.

But perhaps the sadness was normal at that. It would be difficult to bear a child alone. He had read two months ago in the Times that it was a boy, David George Neville.

He had wondered then, only for a moment, who the father really was. He wondered again, and an infinitely remote possibility made the wind far colder as he gazed at the suddenly empty sh.e.l.l of the house.

I hope he was born in innocence, he thought. I hope we all are.

Or did innocence have to be earned, searched for over the years in the dark forest of the soul? Conceived in sin, do we buy innocence with our own blood? Or with something even more precious?

And those who had died in the shadow of The Pines-what price had they paid?

The trees whispered above Monckton's head, and any answer they could give they kept to themselves. He looked up at them, then beyond to where the clouds were darkening. If he walked quickly, he might reach the bottom of the hill before the snow began.

Thank You For Reading!.

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