The Thing in the Woods 14 – Williams · Verses Across
Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
The Thing in the Woods 14The Cry in the Night
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Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
The Thing in the Woods 14
The Cry in the Night
WilliamsEnglish
A few minutes after we reached the bungalow Mrs. Searle appeared. She brought a letter for Herrick which had come by the afternoon mail.
"It had a special-delivery stamp on, so I thought it might be important," she said. "Pete was busy, so I took the liberty of bringin' it over myself. I was glad of the walk, anyway."
I had my own opinion of Pete's busyness, when it came to an errand up the hill, and I tried to catch Mrs. Searle's eye, but her gaze was discreetly lowered.
"It's awfully good of you," said Herrick. He slipped the envelope in his pocket, with a glance at the writing. "Won't you rest a minute, Mrs. Searle? I'm sure Miss Lessing would like you to."
Mary was getting tea at the moment, but Lessing seconded him promptly. Mrs. Searle shook her head.
"I'll be gettin' back, sir, thanks just the same. There's things to see to. It's done me good to get the walk."
"You needn't walk back, anyway," I put in. "I'd be glad for the mare to be home, and Mr. Herrick and I can walk over, later. You can drive yourself, Mrs. Searle, can't you?"
"Certainly, sir, if you'd rather."
She untied the mare and turned the buggy carefully around before getting in. "Ask Pete to give her a good rub down," I called. "Mr. Herrick and I will be back by supper-time."
As it happened, we stayed fairly late. The tea resolved itself into a semi-supper, with the addition of chocolate cake, canned pineapple, and sardines prepared by some special and deadly recipe of Lessing's in a chafing-dish. It was a combination that induced a certain languor afterwards in soul and body. Later, Lessing having re-engaged Herrick in the game of chess that our return had interrupted, Mary and I found ourselves once more left to each other's company at the far end of the porch. She had attempted some quite ridiculous excuse about dish-washing, but either the sense of Herrick's near presence or the meal just finished lent me moral courage to vanquish her objections on the spot.
"Either you invite people to your house," I said, "or you don't invite them. If you do, it's your business to entertain them. I'm not an exacting person, but if it comes to contesting my rights against those of mere crockery, I warn you that I'm going to be exceedingly disagreeable."
Our talk on the homeward drive had broken the aloofness of the past week, and I was minded not to let her slip back into it at will. She sat down on the wicker armchair opposite me, her hands folded on her lap.
"Would you like to see the family photograph album?" she suggested. "We none of us collect picture-postcards, so I'm afraid that's the only interesting object I can offer you. Or I might take you round the garden and show you the site for next year's rose bushes."
"I should be delighted!" I said ruthlessly.
She made a mouth at me.
"I don't think you are in a mood to appreciate the exquisite sentiment of next year's rose bushes," she returned. "It calls for a totally different range of sympathies from yours."
I lit a cigarette.
"You don't know anything about my range of sympathies," I remarked. "For all you know, they may extend to objects even more ethereal than unborn roses."
"Impossible!" She pulled a spray off the woodbine that grew round the porch pillar, and began to pull it to pieces, leaf by leaf. "By the way," she said after a moment, "did you tell me that that queer little friend of yours was a botanist?"
"Of Herrick's," I corrected. "I entirely disclaim him. He described himself as an amateur, whatever he may mean by that. I gather that it's his way of amusing himself on a holiday. There are a good many people who seem to feel lost unless they have some definite hobby for their vacations. I suppose really it gives him mild exercise and an excuse for grubbing about in the open."
"He takes other mild exercise," said Mary, her mouth curving in sudden recollection. "He was engaged in some the other morning, and that's what made me so interested. I'm afraid I interrupted him."
"You'd seen him before, then?"
She laughed.
"I was taking Leo for a run before breakfast, down the hill, the other morning, and I came upon him just in the hollow there near where the stream is, and I'd give you a hundred dollars to guess his occupation. I don't know if you've ever noticed a cedar there, Doctor Haverill, growing quite near the road, on the right-hand side? It branches off some little way from the ground. Well, there he was engaged, of all things in the world, in solemnly climbing up into this tree and jumping out again. I was walking along the footpath where the ground is soft, so he never heard me coming, and the performance struck me as so interesting that I stood still for a minute and watched him. He did it four or five times, and it looked as if he was trying to see how far he could jump. The last time he landed quite near to the edge of the stream, and that seemed to satisfy him, for he didn't try any more after that. Then he looked about on the ground and began to smooth over all the footprints he'd made. He'd just finished when he caught sight of me. He had taken his glasses off for jumping, I suppose in case he smashed them, and as soon as he saw me he grabbed them out of his pocket and walked off. It was for all the world as if he was ashamed at having been caught doing it. I suppose it did look ridiculous for a man of his age to go doing stunts like a schoolboy. I guess it was some sort of an exercise, and he does it pretty often, for he was certainly active at it. I thought maybe he was a physical-culture crank."
"A mild lunatic, more like!" I smiled. "Perhaps the giddiness of youth returns to him at times and he has to work it off. Maybe it's a religious exercise--some obscure sect of jumping Baptists. I'll ask him when we meet."
Mary laughed, but her brows were drawn in a puzzled frown.
"Do you know," she said, "I have a conviction that I have seen that man before. I don't know in the least why. Generally I remember people quite well. I feel that I have not only seen him, but spoken to him. A thing like that bothers me, because I ought to remember it. I will sometime."
"You'd remember if you had spoken to him," I said. "He stammers quite badly."
"Then that settles it," returned Mary gaily. "I have only known two people who stammered in my whole life, with the exception of Aaron Menning, and one was a chemistry professor at school and the other a spinster aunt!"
My appointment with George Freeman was at nine, and it was nearly that hour when we left the bungalow. Herrick and I walked briskly down the hill, and as we passed Dutchman's Hollow I cast a curious glance at the tree which had been the scene of Mr. Crowfoot's acrobatic performances. It stood, as Mary had said, almost overhanging the footpath, a strong twisted-limbed cedar, noticeable as being the only tree of its kind along the road. The fork was a good six feet from the ground, and I reflected that Crowfoot must possess more agility than his appearance warranted.
Herrick followed my glance.
"A queer tree, that," he said. "Looks as if it had been stuck there for some purpose. Do you ever notice, Haverill, how some inanimate things--if I may call a tree inanimate--strike one unpleasantly? Now that tree, to me, suggests a suicide every time I look at it. A man might hang himself among the upper branches, and you'd merely take his body for a part of the tree."
"Another horror to the mystery of Dutchman's Hill!" I said lightly. "Heaven's sake, Jack, but you're in a cheerful mood tonight! You seem to have creepy things on the brain. It you stood and looked at any tree long enough you could hypnotize yourself into seeing things."
"I merely called it unpleasant," returned Herrick argumentatively. "To me it is. You think that because I have taken a fancy to dislike a tree I'm ready to imagine unpleasant things about it. I believe that if it impresses me that way, for no apparent reason, it is because the unpleasant things have in all probability already happened."
"Oh, argue that stuff with Lessing," I protested good-humoredly. "It's more in his line. I heard you at it tonight. I'm a normal man, and I object to having my free imagination harrowed over things that don't count. That tree is a tree, and that's all about it."
Our fooling had brought us to a pause at the beginning of the little plank bridge, and Herrick, leaning against the rail, had employed the interval in making a cigarette. He smiled, slipping his tobacco pouch back, and began to feel through his pockets for the little automatic tinder-box he always carried. He was methodical over trifling things to a degree that occasionally irritated me.
"Then go up and touch it," he said. "I would like to test that sensitiveness which you boast that you don't possess."
"All right."
I walked up to the tree, impatient at my own encouragement of such nonsense, and laid my hand on the trunk. Almost as my fingers touched the bark I heard distinctly a low cry, cut suddenly and horribly short. The woods, especially at night, are deceptive both as to direction and distance, and, already half-expectant of some trick, I could have sworn that Herrick himself had done it. I wheeled on him angrily. He was standing in the roadway, the cigarette at his lips, the tiny flame of the tinder-box flickering in his lifted hand, and by its light I saw his face white and startled.
"Did you do that?"
"Do you think I'm a fool?" He caught my arm and swung me round, facing the woods, of a sudden ominously silent. For a moment we listened acutely. Then Herrick flung his unlighted cigarette away. "Come on. It was over there."
He started forward, in the direction where the dam lay, breaking through the underbrush. I followed at his heels. Along the road there had been still a glimmer of light, but once under cover of the trees we stumbled through dense blackness, with nothing to guide us save Herrick's vague sense of direction. Once he stood still to shout. There was no answer.
"Follow the stream," I said.
We had struck the edge of it again; I felt my boots sink in marshy ground, and thereafter we made quicker pace. The brook was narrow at this time of year, running a mere trickle in its bed. It branched off from the creek just below the mill sluice, and in spring carried off some of the excess of water when the creek itself was swollen. Just now, as I knew, there was a scant foot of water at its deepest. I was taking no particular heed therefore to my steps when Herrick, a few paces to my left, called out.
"Take care!" he said. "We're nearly in the creek!"
As he spoke I heard, somewhere near us in the darkness, the unmistakable sound of rushing water. I stopped abruptly, bewildered, with the sense of having somehow lost my bearings. As we were going, the creek should have been a good hundred yards on our left.
And the sound was not the sound of the creek. I had paused at the moment near the edge of the brook; I could feel soft, saturated moss underfoot, and I fancied that it grew even softer and damper as I stood. Something swirled at my ankles, and taking a step forward I was knee-deep in sudden icy flood.
Incredible as it seemed, the stream was rising. I had barely grasped the meaning of it when Herrick shouted again. This time he was answered. A strong shout caught up the echo of his voice.
"Hello, there! Where are you?" It was Herrick.
And the answer came promptly, near at hand now in the darkness:
"Hello! By the dam. Keep clear of the stream; the sluice-gate is giving!"
