Time Travel Omnibus, page 623
“But they told him something else that has not come down to us—why they fled the country. Something scared them, something they found in the mine. They didn’t know what it was; they never got close enough to it to find out. It ticked at them, they said; it sat there and ticked at them. Not regular, like a clock, but erratically, like it might be trying to talk with them, they said. Warning them, perhaps. Threatening them. When they first encountered it, apparently, they went out into the open, like a shot, scared stiff. It must have been an eerie sort of feeling. Then, getting a little over it and feeling sheepish about being scared so easily, they went back into the cave, and as soon as they stepped inside it, the ticking started up again. That did it. You must remember that more than a century ago, when all this happened, men were somewhat more inclined to superstitions than they are now, more easily frightened by what might appear to be supernatural. I remember a fine old Irish gentleman who lived on a farm near my father’s farm. When I was a small boy he was well into his seventies, and I, of course, did not hear his story of the graveyard ghost. But in later years I did hear my father tell it many times. It appears that one night, driving home in a cart that he habitually used in his travels about the countryside, he saw or thought he saw a white-sheeted ghost in the graveyard only a few miles from his home. Ever after that, when he was out at night and coming home, upon approaching the cemetery he would whip up his horse and go past the cemetery as fast as good horseflesh could carry him.”
“It was after the second ticking incident that they left,” I said.
“Yes, apparently. The journal’s not entirely clear. The keeper of the journal was no great writer, you must understand. His syntax leaves much to be desired and his spelling takes a moderate amount of deciphering. But, yes, it seems they did light out after that second incident. The wonder is, frightened as they seemed to be, that they took the time to conceal the cave.”
The screen door banged and I turned around to see who it was. It was Neville. He stopped just inside the door and stood there, straight and calm, the way he always is, but a bit stiffer in his straightness, it seemed to me, than was usual.
“Dora,” he said to the woman behind the counter, “I wonder if you’d phone the sheriff for me.”
I got up from the chair. “The sheriff?” I asked. “What do you want the sheriff for?”
He didn’t answer me immediately. He spoke to Dora. “Tell him that Stefan, up at the Lodge, is dead. Killed by a bear, it seems. Just below the bridge this side of the Lodge. The one over Killdeer Creek.”
Humphrey was on his feet by this time. “Are you sure he’s dead?” he asked.
“Reasonably certain,” said Neville. “I didn’t touch him, of course. But his throat’s ripped out and it would seem his neck is broken. There are bear tracks all about. The slope down to the stream is muddy from the rains and the tracks are clearly seen.”
Dora was on the phone. Neville said to her, “I’m going back. I don’t think he should be left alone.”
“The bear won’t come back,” said Humphrey. “Granted, they are hungry. But if he didn’t eat him at the time . . .”
“Nevertheless,” said Neville, “I am going back. It’s not decent to leave him there any longer than is necessary. Andy, do you want to follow me?”
“Certainly,” I said.
Humphrey dealt himself in. “I’ll wait for the sheriff,” he said. “When he comes along, I’ll flag him down and ride along with him.”
Neville and I got back to the bridge half an hour or so before the sheriff and Humphrey showed up. We parked our cars and walked down below the bridge. And there, only a few yards from the creek, was Stefan.
We better sit down up here,” said Neville. “There’s nothing we can do but watch. We don’t want to go tracking up the place. There’s not much doubt what happened, but the sheriff will want the area to be left undisturbed.”
We found adjacent boulders and sat down upon them. Neville glanced at the sky. It was clouding up again. “There goes my chance for pictures,” he said. “And those blooms only have another day or two to go. Besides . . .”
He said that “besides” and then he stopped. As if there were something he had been about to tell me and then decided not to. I didn’t question him. Maybe one of the reasons we’ve been friends so long is that we do not question one another.
“There are some good trout in that pool just below the bridge,” I said. “One of these days I’m going after them. I picked up some new flies before I drove up. Maybe they’ll do the job.”
“I have to go back to the university,” said Neville. “Tonight, if I can. Tomorrow morning at the latest.”
I was surprised. “I thought you were staying for another week or two.”
“Something came up,” he said.
We sat and passed away the time with inconsequential talk until the sheriff arrived. As I looked at Stefan sprawled out on the stream bank, it seemed to me that he looked smaller than I remembered him. I found myself wondering if life added an extra dimension to a man. Take life away, would the man grow smaller? He lay with his face up to the sky, and there were flies and other insects crawling on his face. The position of his head concealed his tom-out throat, but there were bright specks of red still on the leaves and forest loam, blood that as yet had not turned to brown. I tried to make out the bear tracks that Neville had mentioned, but I was too distant from the body to make them out.
The sheriff turned out to be a genial man, soft-spoken, unofficious. He was a big man, rather fleshy. He looked like the TV stereotype of a hick-town sheriff, but he didn’t talk or act like one. He came clambering down the bank, with Humphrey following. He spoke to Neville, “You are Mr. Piper. I think we met several years ago. And you must be Mr. Thornton. I don’t think we’ve ever met. You’re a geologist, I understand.”
We shook hands and the sheriff said to Neville, “You asked Dora to call. She said you were the one who found the body.”
“I was on my way to photograph some flowers,” said Neville. “He’s just the way I found him. I touched nothing. It was apparent he was dead. There were bear tracks.”
“The ambulance will be along any minute now,” the sheriff said. “Let’s have a look.”
We went down and had a look. There was nothing much to see. It was rather horrible, of course, but the body, the man reduced by the absence of life, was so small and insignificant that it had little impact.
Balanced against the brawling stream, the sweeping extent of birch and pine, the deep silence of the wilderness, the fact of human death canceled out to very little.
“Well,” the sheriff said, “I guess I better have a closer look. This is something that I always hate to do, but it goes with the job.”
He bent over the body and began going through the pockets. He looked through the pockets of the jacket and the shirt and had to roll the body a little to explore the back pockets of the trousers. He came up with nothing.
He straightened up and looked at us. “That’s funny,” he said. “Nothing. Not even a billfold. No papers. He had no pocketknife; most men carry pocketknives. I don’t think I’ve ever run into that before. Even the filthiest old bum, dead in some back alley, always has something on him—an old letter, a photograph, faded and tom, from long ago, a piece of twine, a knife, something. But this one is absolutely clean.” He stepped away, shaking his head. “I can’t figure it,” he said. “Stands to reason a man would have something on him.” He looked at Neville. “You didn’t go through his pockets, did you? No, of course you didn’t. I don’t know why I asked.”
“You’re right,” Neville said. “I didn’t.”
We went back to the road. The sheriff played a dirty trick on Humphrey, and perhaps there was justice in that because Humphrey really had no right to be there.
“I think,” the sheriff said, “we’d better go up to the Lodge.”
“I doubt there’s anyone around,” I said. “For the last couple of days I’ve seen no one there, not even Stefan.”
“I think, anyhow, we should have a look,” the sheriff said. “Just in case there should be someone. Somebody should be notified. Perhaps Humphrey won’t mind staying here to flag down the ambulance.” Humphrey did mind, naturally, but there was nothing he could do about it. Here was the chance to go up to the Lodge, probably to go inside it, and he was being counted out. But he did what he had to do with fairly good grace and said that he would stay.
Passing by the Lodge, of course, one could see that it was a massive structure, half camouflaged by native trees and planted shrubbery. But it was not until one drove up to it, going up the driveway that led to the detached garage that housed the Cadillac, that an adequate idea could be gained of the size of it. From the driveway it became apparent that its true dimensions, as seen from the road, were masked by the fact that it crouched against the hill that rose back of it. By some strange trick of perspective it seemed from the road to be dwarfed by the hill.
The sheriff got out of his car as we drove our cars back of his and parked. “Funny,” said the sheriff. “In all these years I have never been here.”
I was thinking the same thing. On a number of occasions, driving past, I had waved to Stefan, if he happened to be out, but I had never stopped. Sometimes Stefan waved back, most of the time he didn’t.
The garage door was open and the Cadillac parked inside. It seemed to me, as I looked at it, that there was a strangeness to the garage. Then, quite suddenly, I realized what the strangeness was. Except for the Cadillac, the garage was empty; it had not been used as a storage catch-all, the fate of most garages.
A flight of flagstone steps ran up from the driveway to a terrace and the narrow strip of level ground that lay in front of the house. The lawn was intended to be gay, with garden umbrellas, but the gaiety fell a little short, the canvas tom by the wind and faded by the sun.
No one was about. More than that, the place—the house, the lawn, all of it—had an empty feel to it. It felt like a place that never had been lived in, as if it had been built those forty years ago and then been allowed to stand, to age and weather, with no one ever standing underneath its roof. It was a strange sensation and I wondered what was the matter with me that I should be thinking it. I knew that I was wrong. Stefan had done a lot of living here, and occasionally there had been others.
“Well,” the sheriff said, “I suppose we should go up and see if anyone is home.” I sensed the sheriff felt uncomfortable. I felt uncomfortable myself, as if, somehow, I were an unwelcome guest, as if I’d come to a party, the kind of party that you simply do not crash, without an invitation. All these years the people of this house (whoever they might be) had made it a point of honor that they wished to be left alone, and here we were, invading their fiercely protected privacy, using a tragedy as pretext.
The sheriff went heavy-footed up the flagstone stairs, with Neville and me following close behind. We came out on a stone patio that led up to the front door. The sheriff rapped on the door. When there was no answer, he pounded on it. I think that all he was doing was going through the motions; he had sensed as well as I had that there was no one there.
He put his hand on the latch and pressed it with his thumb. The door came open and he stuck his head inside. “Anyone home?” he asked, and then, scarcely waiting for an answer, went on in.
The door opened on a large room; I suppose you would call it the living room, although it was larger than any living room I had ever seen. A lounge would have described it better. The windows facing the road were heavily draped and the place was dark. There were chairs scattered all about, and a monstrous stone fireplace was opposite the windows. But I only glimpsed these things, for standing in the middle of the room, in almost the exact center of it, stood an object that caught my gaze and held it.
The sheriff shuffled slowly forward. “What the hell is that?” he rumbled.
It was some sort of transparent box standing on a platform elevated a foot or so above the floor. A framework of what appeared to be metal held the box in place. Inside the box were unsupported green stripes, like the yardage stripes that mark off a football field. But the stripes didn’t run the way they would on a football field. They were canted at all angles and were of no uniform length. Some of them were short, others long, some of them had zigzags in them. Scattered amid the markings, with no particular pattern, were a number of glowing red and blue dots.
The sheriff stopped when he got to the box and stood looking down on it. He asked, gently, “Mr. Piper, have you ever seen anything like this?”
“Never,” Neville said.
I squatted down, squinting at the box, looking for any sign of wires on which the colored dots might be strung. There was no sign of wires. I poked a finger at the box and struck something hard. Not glass; I would have known the feel of glass. This was something else. I tried several other places and each time the hardness stopped my probing finger.
“What do you make of it, Mr. Thornton?” asked the sheriff.
I made a stupid answer. “It isn’t glass,” I said.
Suddenly one of the blue dots changed position. It didn’t move from one position to another; it jumped so fast I couldn’t see it move. It was at one place and suddenly it was at another place, some three or four inches from where it had been.
“Hey,” I said, “the damn thing works!”
“A game of some sort,” the sheriff said, uncertainly.
“I wouldn’t know,” said Neville. “There is no evidence upon which to speculate.”
“I suppose not,” said the sheriff. “Funny setup, though.”
He moved across the room to the windows, started fumbling at the drapes. “Got to get some light in here,” he said.
I stayed squatting, watching the box. None of the other dots moved.
“Four feet, I’d say,” said Neville.
“Four feet?”
“The box. Four feet square. A cube. Four feet on each side.”
I agreed with him. “Close to it,” I said.
The sheriff got the drapes open and daylight poured into the room. I got up from my crouch and looked around. The place had a barren look. There was carpeting on the floor. Chairs. Sofas. End tables. Candelabra with wilted candles in them. The fireplace. But no paintings on the walls. No figurines on the fireplace mantel. No small pieces at all. Just the furniture.
“It looks,” said Neville, “as if no one ever quite finished moving in.”
“Well,” said the sheriff, “let’s get to work. Let’s see if we can find anything that will give us a clue to who should be notified of Stefan’s death.”
We went through the place. It didn’t take us long. All the other rooms were as barren as the lounge. Necessary furniture. That was all. Not a single scrap of paper. Nothing.
Out on the driveway, the sheriff shrugged in resignation. “It seems unbelievable,” he said.
“What do you do now?” I asked.
“The county registrar of deeds can tell me who owns the place.”
It was almost noon by the time Neville and I got back to the cabin. I started to fry some eggs and bacon. I had the bacon in the pan when Neville stopped me. “Don’t bother with it now,” he said. “We can eat a little later. There’s something I have to show you.”
His voice was more tense than I had ever heard it.
“What’s the trouble, Neville?”
“This,” he said. He reached into his jacket pocket, took something out of it, placed it on the kitchen table. It was a cube, perhaps four inches to the side. It appeared to be translucent.
“Take a look at it,” he said. “Tell me what you make of it.”
I picked it up. It was heavier than I expected. I weighed it in my hand, puzzled by it.
“Look at it,” he said. “Look into it. Bring it up close to your face and look inside it. That’s the only way to see it.”
At first I saw nothing. Then I brought it closer to my eyes and there, captured inside of it, I could see what appeared to be an ancient battle scene. The figures were small, but lifelike and in full color. There was artistry in the cube; whoever had fabricated it had been a master of his craft.
I saw that not only were there warlike figures, but a background as well—a level plain, and in the distance a body of water and off to the right some hills.
“Beautiful,” I said. “Where did you get it?”
“Beautiful? Is that all you can say?”
“Impressive,” I said, “if you like that better. But you didn’t answer me. Where did you get it?”
“It was lying beside Stefan’s body. He’d been carrying it in the pocket of his jacket, more than likely. The bear had ripped the pocket.”
I handed the cube back to him. “Strange thing,” I said, “for a man to be carrying about.”
“Exactly,” Neville said. “My thought exactly. It had a strange look to it. Not like plastic, not like glass. You’ve noticed?”
“Yes,” I said. “Come to think of it, a strange feel, too. A hardness, but no texture to the hardness. Like that box in the center of the room back at the Lodge.”
“Even facing the fact of death,” said Neville, “startled by the fact of human death, I still was fascinated by the cube lying there beside the body. It is strange how one reacts to shock. I suppose that often we may fasten our attention on some trivial matter, not entirely disassociated from the shock, but not entirely a part of it, either, in an unconscious effort to lessen the impact that might be too great if allowed to come in all at once. By accepting the shock gradually, it becomes acceptable. I don’t know, I’m not enough of a psychologist to know, no psychologist at all, of course. But there was the cube and there was Stefan, and as I looked at the cube it seemed to me, rather illogically, that the cube was more important than Stefan. Which, I suppose, is understandable, for Stefan, all these years, had been an object rather than a person, someone that we waved to as we drove past but almost never spoke to, a man one never really met face to face.
