The Thing in the Woods 21 – Williams · Verses Across
Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
The Thing in the Woods 21The Thing in the Woods
18
Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
The Thing in the Woods 21
The Thing in the Woods
WilliamsEnglish
Together we managed to get Lessing back to the house and laid him on the couch, and while Herrick held the lamp I did the best I could for his injuries with the means at my disposal. It was an ugly job. One arm and shoulder were badly mangled and the collar bone broken; he had lost a great deal of blood and there was a nasty contused wound above the temple. A flicker of consciousness came back while I was working over him, but the loss of blood told, and he lapsed back again almost immediately. There were stitches to be taken; nothing much could be done except to check the bleeding with temporary bandages and as soon as I could manage single-handed Herrick rode off to Lennox for help.
In reality it was not long, though it seemed to me an eternity that I kept that nightmare vigil, my ears strained for any sound from without, bending all my will-power on my task to keep me from the one thought that I dared not face, Mary. Where had she gone--what had happened to her? I went over a thousand possibilities, trying to find some reasonable explanation to which I might cling, though as each moment went by the stillness became more and more a torture. If she had merely missed her brother and gone down the road to call for him we should have met her, or she would be back by now. If she had been with him at the mill, or had followed there ... I thought of the deep blackness of the water at the end of the dam, where we had passed that evening, the sheer drop blow the sluice-gates, and shuddered.
It was with infinite relief I caught the approaching noise of the motor cycle and saw Herrick reappear, followed only a few moments later by Lennox with the light spring-wagon. It was decided to take Lessing straightway to the doctor's house, where he could be better looked after than in the bungalow. We laid a mattress in the bottom of the wagon and lifted him on to this, and Herrick and I on the motor cycle accompanied Lennox beyond the hollow at the foot of the hill. Before we started Herrick, his face grim and set in the lamplight, pulled out the revolver I had lent him that morning and handed it to me.
"Keep that, Austin. I bought another today. Lennox has his own."
"There was an extra box of cartridges," I said, "in the table-drawer."
"Lennox gave them to me."
When we had seen the wagon well along the road we turned, and rode back to the bungalow.
"Now," said Herrick, when we stood once more in the lighted room, "the first thing is to find Mary. And then ... there has got to be an end to this. Are you ready to face it?"
He did not need to ask me. I looked round on the little room, gay and friendly with its rugs and books and the great bowls of wildflowers that Mary loved--the countless little signs of her occupation, a sweater flung across a chair, her work-basket of Indian grass on the table--the room in which I had spent so many happy hours, now suddenly sinister in its desertion. And then my eye fell on the couch where we had laid Lessing, and the hideous litter I had left in my haste--stained wads of cotton and the torn strips from his shirt with which we had striven to check the blood before we carried him up from the mill.
"For God's sake," I exclaimed impulsively, "let's get that cleared away before she gets back!"
Before Mary got back ... the words died in my throat. But I gathered up the telltale evidence all the same--every last scrap and fragment--and thrust them out of sight behind the kitchen woodbox, before I turned to Herrick.
"We'll try Sliefers' first," he said. "There's just the possibility she is there."
It was a slight chance, and as it proved, fruitless. The farmer was still up, and opened the door to us in stockinged feet. No one there had seen Mary since the afternoon. Sliefer heard our errand with a grave face.
"There's no house she'd have come to but this," he said. "There's only Scholl's and Nevill's at the Bend, and they were both asleep as you passed? They're a-bed by ten. Besides, if there was anything out of the way they'd either one of them have sent over here straight. No. Unless the young lady's missed her way, or met with some accident...."
He looked at us doubtfully. It was no time to mince matters. We told him, as briefly as we could, what had happened that evening and how we had found Lessing at the mill.
He heard us out, his jaw set grimly. When we had finished he rose without a word, a tall, still stalwart figure in his stockinged feet, and crossing the kitchen took down his gun that hung on a rack above the door.
"I guess I'm coming with you," he said.
I glanced at Herrick. He nodded.
"Three are better than two, Austin. We may be glad of an extra hand before the night's out." He turned to Sliefer, who had laid his gun on the table, and was pulling on a pair of heavy boots. "Have you got a good dog? I don't mean the collie."
"Aye. There's old Spot, back in the barn. He'd pick up a trail anywheres. Nor he ain't none too friendly to Menning, either, that's one reason we've kep' him tied up, most of the time. Now I guess I'll step up an' leave word with Mother."
He opened the stairway door and tip-toed up, curiously noiseless on his heavy feet. We heard whispering, a smothered exclamation; then he came down, gently closing the door behind him.
"I ain't told her nothing, only that you'd missed Miss Lessing and we was going out to hunt her up. There's no need she should know about the rest of it. This ain't no woman's job, nor it ain't no sheriff's job either. If they'd come to me first off I know every track in these woods back an' forth, and it won't be easy for anyone to get away from me, not once we pick his trail up. Menning can run these woods like a fox, but he won't run far, not when I got a gun in my hand. Not that I'd be scared to meet him anywheres, gun or no gun, and I bet he knows it."
A strange expression flitted across Herrick's face as he measured the farmer's sturdy figure with his eye. But he only said gravely: "You're a good neighbour, Mr. Sliefer. As you say, this is no sheriff's job now; it's up to us. And we're going to see it through."
We closed the door behind us.
"I told Mother to bolt that, once we're gone," Sliefer said. "Reckon we don't need no lantern."
"Better not," Herrick said.
The old man crossed to the barn and came back a few minutes later with the dog on a chain, a cross-bred hound by the look of him, heavily built and brindled white and brown.
"That's what they used to call a bear-dog," the farmer said, "when I was a boy. The breed's pretty well died out now. I've had old Spot here eleven years, and I had his mother an' grandmother before him. You don't see 'em nowadays, any more. They raise these light-built hounds now, but they ain't the fighters these dogs were."
The farmer was a brisk walker. He picked his way through the woods, turning here, pausing there, at what seemed to us invisible signs and landmarks, making his way unerringly through the trees and undergrowth, the hound close to his heels, till presently we stood once more on the open road a little below the bungalow. I looked eagerly towards the house, only to see the turned down light burning just as we had left it.
"We'll try here first," Sliefer said.
He took two or three turns about the road and clearing, but the dog took no interest. We recrossed the road to the farther side, and here, among the underbrush near the path Herrick and I had taken, he showed the first signs of keenness, sniffing to and fro, his nose laid close to the ground. In a few moments he was off at a leisurely trot along the path.
"Picked up the other dog's scent, most like," said Sliefer, watching him. "Come on. We'll find him at the mill."
He took us by a short cut through the bushes, across a cleared space of stumps and blackberry vines, and turning into the woods at the left again, brought us in a few minutes on the sawmill road. The hound was there before us, moving shadow-like about the clearing. When we came up to him he was clearly puzzled and uneasy. He moved warily, his forefeet stiffly braced, his ears laid back, the hair along his spine bristling as he snuffed to and fro.
I touched Herrick's shoulder. "Do you see that? It's the same way Leo was acting this afternoon."
"Give him time," said Sliefer. "I know Spot. He ain't made his mind up yet."
Shifting the gun under his arm, he pulled out a can of tobacco and began to roll a cigarette. Somehow that natural matter-of-fact action did much to relax my tense nerves. With Herrick I watched the hound closely. He approached the broken doorway, sniffed, peered, circled off a couple of times and then, as though suddenly making up his mind to it, plunged inside, only to reappear an instant after and set off, head down, with a queer muffled whine, through the underbrush. I made a move to follow but Sliefer checked me.
"Wait a bit. He ain't sure yet. He'll give us the holler when he's sure started."
He was right. After a little while Spot came back, breaking cover near the back of the mill, and returned to us, uneasiness and perplexity in every line of his taut body. With his eyes fixed on his master's face he waited, eager and yet strangely reluctant, and again with a thrill I noticed that involuntary bristling of his spine, the trembling of his lower jaw, as though at some unfamiliar and disturbing proximity. Twice the farmer spoke to him encouragingly, and twice the dog circled off, checked abruptly and came back. Sliefer grew impatient.
"I don't know what's got into the dog. He ain't never acted that way before. Hey there, Spot! Get to it! Fetch em' boy!"
For a moment the hound eyed him. Then, with the same abruptness with which he had entered the mill he raised his head, gave a low whine, and was off in a straight line through the underbrush. Almost immediately we heard his first call, the warning bell-like note of a hound on the found trail.
"He's picked it up all right," the farmer said. "Come on. I back Spot to keep a scent once he's got it."
We started after him, keeping as steady a pace as we could in the darkness. It was well that Sliefer was with us. He made his way with the unerring ease of a man used to the woods from boyhood, to whom night is almost the same as day, and all we needed to do was to follow in his tracks. The hound seemed to be keeping an even course, some couple of hundred yards ahead of us; his deep warning cry, pitched always on the same two notes, rang out at intervals and Sliefer had no difficulty in guiding his way by the sound.
Once, in the neighbourhood of the Menning house, the dog was at fault; he hesitated and all but turned aside towards the out-buildings, but in the end picked up the scent again and struck out in a northerly direction through the woods.
For nearly an hour we followed him, through tracts of dense second growth and across spaces of stony pasture, out again on a back road, with an occasional darkened house tranquil in its grassy yard, looping and turning here and there, but on the whole keeping a fairly straight course. We crossed two sloping pastures, plunged into a thicket of young trees, and presently found ourselves on a space of rising ground, strewn with huge boulders and set with stunted juniper and spruce.
Ahead of us the hound's voice rang out clear and mournful, as it seemed to me with a deepening note. Sliefer paused and looked about him. The moon was rising. It showed the sharp line of hills, densely wooded on either side, with the dark cleft of a gorge between. Through the gap in a ruined stone fence we could see a cart track, all but obliterated, that wound into obscurity.
"I know this place," the farmer said. "It's near what they call Rocky Hollow. I haven't been here in years, but I used to know it well when I was a boy. I sort of suspicioned he was heading for here, right along. Once in them big rocks in there you won't trap a man easy, not if he knows his way. If we'd had time to head him off, now."
I glanced at Herrick. He was staring straight at that narrow closed-in gorge, his eyes keen and fixed.
"Is there any other outlet there?"
"Not easy. It's straight-up rock at the far end and the woods are pretty thick. A man would have to make slow going, either way he took it. If he's in there----"
We followed the cart track till it ended in a little grassy clearing from which a few steps brought us to the spot Sliefer had called "Rocky Hollow." It was a small, narrow valley, filled with masses of piled boulders, some enormous, some small, the remains evidently of some ancient moraine. They looked as if giant hands had flung them there in sport, one upon another. Seen by daylight, with the black wooded hillside shutting it in, the place would be desolate enough; by the faint growing moonlight it had a look indescribably grim and sinister. Here, one felt, among those barren stones and piled boulders, that took fantastic shapes in the play of light and shadow, would be a fit hiding-place for anything evil.
Higher up the ravine, near us but hidden from sight, the hound was baying furiously, no longer the bell-like note that had guided us through the woods, but a hoarse deep voice of warning and anger. We made our way towards the sound, scrambling over the stones, and found him standing before an opening between two boulders, where an overhanging rock formed a sort of rough cavern. There was a glimpse of something white within, and for a moment my heart turned sick with fear. But it was only a sheet of crumpled greasy newspaper that had evidently contained food. There were the charred remains of a small campfire and an old tin can lay in one corner.
Sliefer caught the dog by his collar as we peered inside. He picked up the crumpled sheet.
"A week old," he said. "Here's where he hung out, all right. No tramp ever comes here; it's too far off the main road."
Stooping forward, I had rested my hand on the rock at one side. It was warm to the touch, and I turned quickly to the blackened embers near.
"He's not far off, either. That fire----"
"Is cold," returned Herrick quickly, touching the ashes.
The stone was warm, I could have sworn it. Somebody, only a moment ago, had lain there. There was a sudden oath from Sliefer, and I turned to see, a hundred feet down the gorge, something that twisted and moved, a stealthy misshapen shadow, between the gray boulders. It was a bare glimpse, seen in a flash and blotted out immediately against the grayish rocky background, but in that second I thought of Lennox and I too felt cold down my spine.
The farmer's face had gone a curious sickly white. He stood holding his gun stupidly, with fingers that shook.
"That ... that weren't no man ... that...."
"Did you see?" cried Herrick.
There was a sharp note of excitement in his voice. I nodded. "It ... went off down there."
Sliefer had pulled himself together. He swung round, his face suddenly savage.
"Man or beast, by God, we'll get him now! That shan't run the woods another night, not if I drop in my tracks!"
He shouted to the dog, but the hound, with the rare stupidity of his race, was still snuffing round the cave. Dragged away, he tried one scent and another in and out the boulders, but the tracks had been crossed and confused a dozen times and we lost precious minutes before he picked up his right trail at last, halfway down the gorge, and was off again on his slow loping gait.
He ran silently, this time, and in deadly earnest. Only occasionally his voice came back to us, low-pitched and warning. Downhill, over the shoulder of that same sloping pasture we had crossed before, then a wide detour to the right, skirting a swamp where our feet sunk deep between the tussocks--more open fields and then again back to the woods. On we kept doggedly, through hours it seemed to me--more slowly now, for the steady pace was beginning to tell on us--in silence only broken by Sliefer's heavy breathing as he forged ahead, his ear bent always for the sound of the dog's voice. By his old hunter's instinct he knew which way the hound was running, and was able to save many a turn by short cuts which we followed unquestionably, relying on that seventh sense of his which never seemed to fail us.
It was getting on towards dawn when Sliefer paused finally at a cross-road which seemed to me familiar.
"See that?" he said. "There's the right-hand fork that turns back to the Bend, past the old Sullivan house. He's circling back on his old tracks. A while back I thought he was trying to make that tract of woods the other side of the State road, but the dog's headed him out of that. It's getting on for daylight now, and the way I figure it he'll try and make for some place he knows. He daren't show up round the village and I reckon he'll keep clear of the old house, for he knows that's been watched. By the way he's headed now, it's either the saw-mill or some other place near it. He knows he can't give Spot the slip again in the woods and he's hard pushed--ain't got much chance now to pick an' choose. I say we won't waste time but jest chance it and cut in right here towards the mill. There's an old wood-road just a little ways further up that'll be easier going than if we took the long way round."
"Right," said Herrick. He loosened the revolver in his belt. "Are we agreed? Whatever we see, close in on it, but don't fire unless you have to."
Sliefer gave him a quick, grim look.
"I reckon nothin'll get by me again. That don't happen twice. We ain't any bunch of girls that he can fool with his damn play-acting."
Again that queer look flitted across Herrick's face, but he said nothing, only fell in silently beside me as we followed Sliefer into the path.
It was darker here. The trees shut in close about us. Sliefer was a few paces ahead. Presently I felt Herrick's hand on my arm.
"Less than half an hour to daybreak! God, Austin, if we can only beat him to it!"
He quickened pace as he spoke.
"What do you mean? We'll get him anyhow."
"We'll get Menning, yes ... but we mayn't get the thing that attacked Dick. Yes, they're the same, but--Austin, I can't explain to you now, but I tell you we've got to make every effort in these last few minutes. If Sliefer's right, and he's doubled back, we're all right. Otherwise...."
"But he must know----"
"He knows. He isn't playing for safety; he knows that's over. He wasn't playing for safety when he made that big detour, he's playing for time. It's time that matters, and it's there we've got to beat him. Austin, Sliefer talks of play-acting, but is it play-acting that can keep a man ahead of a dog for the best part of the night? Was it play-acting that half-killed Lessing? No, if we're ever to know the truth we've got to know it now, within these next twenty minutes. Ah!"
It was the hound again, sudden, sharp, and near at hand. Sliefer had been right after all. We were within a few steps of the saw-mill clearing, but the dog was there before us. He was circling the ground, barking furiously as he had done in the gorge, his attention divided between the mill itself and the group of trees, with an old dead chestnut among them, that stood within a dozen feet of the building and a little nearer the sluice gate. But he left the trees when we came up and flung himself savagely against the boarded doorway.
"That was open when we left it, Herrick--do you remember?"
He took out his revolver.
"Go round to the back, Sliefer, and take the dog with you. Austin, watch this end from outside. I'll go through; I've got the flashlight."
"I'm coming with you," Sliefer said.
"All right. One must stay outside, in case ... Austin, it'll be you, then. If anything--anything, you understand--tries to get past you, shoot to cripple it. Fire low. Remember what I told you!"
He flung the door open; I heard the quick rush of the dog's feet. With every nerve tense to straining-point I listened, but the seconds slowly passed and there was no further sound. I moved a few paces back, to get a clearer view of the building and waited.
From within I fancied once I could hear Sliefer's voice. The flashlight moved to and fro, its gleam visible through the cracks of the old walls. Now they were going through the upper floor.
There was a stillness in the air, that chill hush which comes just before dawn. Already the light was changing, becoming faintly clear and shadowless. Somehow, with this drawing-near of daylight, of the return to common day shapes and things, the nightmare feeling of those dark hours dropped from me; I seemed to see it as something fantastic, monstrous, a bad dream. All the events of the last few hours crowded in upon me--the finding of Lessing, Mary's disappearance, our grim chase through the night woods. How far were these things connected--what was Herrick's idea? What were we after--a criminal, hunted and desperate, endowed with animal strength and cunning, but yet a man like ourselves--or a figment of Herrick's brain?
From within the building I heard an exclamation, the dog's sharp whine. Nerves suddenly taut, I waited, my eyes fixed on the broken doorway. And then some instinct--I don't know what--made me turn and look up.
I was standing almost directly under the old dead chestnut, near which the dog had been nosing when we arrived. Its bare greyish limbs, gnarled and twisted, stretched above me, bare in the growing light. Bare--but as I looked one of those twisted boughs seemed to stir and change, heave slowly, detach itself in some monstrous way from the rest and take living shape. I tried to cry out, dragged helplessly at my revolver, but before I could get it free something fell on me, clutching, I was borne to the ground beneath a hairy living weight, bestial, loathesome, an unnameable horror.
For an eternity, it seemed to me, we struggled there. The thing was stronger than I, and strive as I would I could get no clear view of it. Coarse long fur, indescribably filthy, was against my mouth and nose, and my clutching hands met in it helplessly. I made a supreme effort and twisted my head to one side till my face pressed the earth, in a blind instinct of preservation. Long curved nails caught at my throat, and once I fancied a hand that was partly human. Strangely, through it all, I kept my mind somehow clear; the fear of losing consciousness was stronger in me than any other. This, I remember thinking, was the Thing that had attacked Lessing, that had killed the two cyclists, falling on them as it had fallen on me. Herrick was right ... I would tell Herrick ... and I wondered what they would say when they found me. Darkness shut down; I was lying under a heavy mountain, and then the mountain lifted, I heard the hoarse snarl of the dog and an oath and Herrick's voice crying sharply: "Don't shoot!"
There was a blinding report close to me. Somehow I staggered to my feet. Herrick was supporting me. The smoke cleared away, and through it I could see Sliefer, the gun in his hands, and on the ground something that writhed and twisted in beastlike shape and yet cried out with a human voice and dragged itself, still dreadfully crying, up the slope to the water's edge, swayed there for a sickening instant and fell with a splash into the black depths below.
