Crying Child (14 page)

My progress was slow because I wanted to inspect as much of the surrounding terrain as I could without actually leaving the path. Mary might have fallen, fainted, or hit her head; she could
be huddled unhearing behind any tree trunk or fallen log. She might even be hiding. It was a nasty thought, but it was probable. Yet my main reason for delay was one I was reluctant to admit to myself. I didn’t want to search the graveyard.

I kept telling myself that there was no special reason why Mary should have gone there, but I knew there was. It was a crazy reason; but Mary’s present actions weren’t exactly sane. Throughout the ages the bereaved have tried to call back the dead. No part of Mary’s flesh and blood lay in that isolated clearing in the woods; the thing she wanted had never been hers to lose. But I didn’t know what mad logic ruled her mind, and there was a pull, an attraction, from that place. If I felt it, God only knew what Mary might feel.

I had to cross the cemetery in order to follow the path to its end and circle around back to the house. It was the only part of the terrain I knew well enough to search without running the risk of adding myself to the list of those missing. So I had to go to the cemetery in any case; but I shrank back from it with every nerve in my body.

Almost half the allotted time had passed—about twenty-five minutes—when I heard sounds behind me. My first thought was that it might be Mary; I turned and started back along the path. My torch was held low, so that I could avoid obstacles underfoot and at first, when I saw the dark
form come around a turn in the path, my heart leaped with relief. Then I realized it was too tall and bulky to be Mary and at the same moment I saw the flash of the light it carried. The light struck me full in the face and I stopped, putting my hand up to shield my eyes.

“Jo. It’s you.”

“Ran?” I knew why his voice had that flat defeated sound; he had hoped I might be Mary. “How did you get out here? You were dead to the world the last time I saw you.”

“Bertha. She’s a devil, that woman…No sign of Mary?”

“Not yet. But it’s so damned dark….”

“I know. She could be three feet away and you wouldn’t see her.”

“Ran, let’s get help. Now. Twenty or thirty men combing these woods…”

“Not even a posse can do much before morning,” Ran said flatly. “Come on. We’re wasting time here.”

I hesitated, resisting the pressure of his hand on my shoulder.

“You have no idea where she might have gone?”

His hand fell away. In the diffused light I saw his eyes narrow as he stared down at me.

“Why do you ask that? Don’t you think, if I knew anything…”

“I didn’t mean that. I don’t know what I’m saying.”

“None of us know.” Ran passed his hand over his face. He looked sick, physically as well as mentally, and I knew that despite the efficacy of Mrs. Willard’s methods he was driving himself to the limit of his endurance. “Let’s go on, Jo. If I don’t keep moving I’ll lose my mind.”

We searched the graveyard together, circling it from opposite directions, flashing our lights behind every stone, and under the dark eaves of the mausoleum. I couldn’t see Ran after we separated, but the glow of his flashlight was reassuring. I wasn’t alone.

When we met at the farther gate, neither of us had anything to report. Ran was hatless and his face was shining with rain. Under the intertwined branches the drizzle was reduced to a drip, but here in the open it was hard enough to soak us. I thought of Mary, perhaps lying unconscious in the cold rain, and my stomach twisted.

“Nothing here,” I said. “I’ll follow the path, Ran. Why don’t you go some other way?”

“Time’s getting on.” Ran consulted his watch. “Maybe we ought to get back to the house.”

“But you said—”

“Maybe I was wrong. We need an army and searchlights. She might not be in the woods. She
might be on her way to town, or…We’re wasting time, Jo!”

I couldn’t blame him. I felt the same way myself, wanting to rush off, beating at bushes, flattening all obstructions. As I hesitated, I saw his nostrils flare. His head turned sharply. My senses were duller, but I heard the next sound, a slither and soft crackle, as if some walker had slipped on the mud of the path.

Ran was off without speaking, moving at a speed that was reckless on the narrow way. I pelted after, almost as fast, and it wasn’t long before the inevitable happened—a crash, a curse, and a fall; and I jumped a tangle of leaves and dead branches to find Ran sprawled on the ground, head and shoulders propped at a crazy angle by the trunk of the tree whose low-hanging branch had knocked him flat. He wasn’t unconscious, for as I dropped to my knees beside him, he groaned and sat up. There was a trickle of blood just starting from a cut above his eye.

“You heard her,” he gasped, and tried to stand. At the movement his eyes fogged and he fell back against the tree.

“Yes. Wait a minute. You’re stunned.”

“Can’t wait—she’ll get away—”

“I’ll go after her, just sit till you get your wits back. I’ll go—”

His hand caught at my arm as I stood up.

“Not there, she left the path—that’s why I ran into this damned tree; she’s out there somewhere—”

Before the silence of the twisted darkness he indicated, we both fell silent. Ran shook his head frantically, as if trying to clear it; a small red drop fell onto the back of my hand and I stared at it as if mesmerized.

And then, through the silence, came the sound that, once heard, could never be mistaken for any other sound. Soft but oddly distinct, it was a child’s voice—the voice of a small child crying.

It was pitiful and yet horrible; the most pathetic sound I had ever heard, and the most dreadful. When it died away, in a last tremulous wail of misery, Ran and I were both on our feet. My hands were so numb I couldn’t feel them; and then I realized that we had clasped hands and that his grip on my fingers was hard enough to leave bruises.

“What in God’s name?” I gasped.

“Not—God’s,” Ran said oddly; his voice broke in what might have been a hysterical chuckle. “That’s what Mary hears. That’s what she is following.”

“No wonder,” I said, shaking. “Let go, Ran, you’re hurting me. She can’t be far ahead. We’ve got to find her.”

I left him standing there; swaying and white-faced, with blood streaking down his cheek and dissolving as the rain mingled with it. The blow
on the head had been damaging, but I couldn’t stop to look after him then; Mary’s need was more urgent.

After a time I heard him stumbling along behind me. When I stopped he bumped into me; I turned on him with a fierce demand for silence. Even his ragged breathing made too much noise. I couldn’t sympathize with him, my thoughts were too concentrated on Mary. To be so close, so close that we had heard her, and to lose her now…Then I saw her, on the very edge of the light—only a flicker of movement, quickly stilled, but I knew.

“Mary! Please—Mary, don’t run away.”

Only silence answered, but that was encouraging; I would have heard her if she had moved.

I called again. I willed Ran to silence. He said nothing. Even his heavy breathing slowed.

“Mary,” I called. “Please, Mary, come back. I’m wet, and I’m so tired….”

A flicker, a shadow stirring, furtive as some trapped wild thing…. Motionless, barely breathing, I realized that the rain had stopped and that a rising wind was breaking up the heavy clouds. Straight ahead, above the trees, a star flickered and was obscured and shone out again steadily. We must be on the edge of the woods. Straight ahead was Will’s house, and the cliff….

And the cliff.

“Mary!”

Perhaps it was the shrill new note of alarm in my voice that broke the spell I had been weaving—with, I think, some success. Or perhaps it was the ghost of a sobbing cry, mingled with the murmur of the wind. Whatever it was, the shadowy shape at the outer limit of the flashlight beam moved away. After the first second I couldn’t see it any longer, but I heard it, crashing through underbrush with the careless disregard of quarry that sees safety within easy reach.

I went off down the path as if I had been shot from a gun, and I came crashing out of the woods in time to see—too much. There was light now, it seemed brilliant by comparison to the dark woods, for a half-circle of moon was free of cloud and the coarse grass between the house and the cliff edge lay pallid under its rays.

I saw Mary right away. She was on the road, almost halfway to the cliff. She wasn’t running, she was walking steadily and quickly toward the edge.

While I hesitated, remembering stories of potential suicides who had been sent over the edge by a shout, Ran came bursting out of the trees behind me. Simultaneously, another figure appeared on the road to the right, where it dipped around to join the wider road. The figure was Will’s; his height and walk were unmistakable.

At the sight of Mary he stopped short, held,
probably, by the same reasoning that kept me silent. But Ran was beyond coherent thought. He went staggering past me, evading my outflung hand, calling her name.

Mary stopped. She glanced back over her shoulder, and for a second I thought Ran had been right and I had been wrong. Then, for the last time that night, the crying came again.

It was softer this time and still unlocalized. It might have been the weeping of the night itself, if the night had had a human voice. It turned me sick with pity and cold with terror; and on Mary it acted like a goad and a spur. She started to run. I took a few frantic, running steps, and then stopped; it was obvious that she would reach the cliff before Ran could stop her, and I was even farther away. Will was no closer.

Will crouched and straightened up. I saw his arm move. And on the very edge of the cliff Mary staggered and swayed and fell—safely onto the grass, five feet from the edge.

6

“I STILL SAY YOU WERE TAKING A TERRIBLE CHANCE.”

“For God’s sake, Jo,” Ran said angrily. “He saved her life.”

“If that stone had hit her in the head—”

“But it didn’t,” Will said. “It hit her in the midriff, which is where I meant it to hit her. It didn’t even knock her out. She fainted. If she’d gone over the cliff…Oh, hell, this is beside the point. Why should I defend myself from the hysterics of a female? You’re the one I blame, Ran. Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know.” Ran’s hand went to his forehead, and the square of bandage that covered a three-inch gash. He looked terrible. Like the rest of us, he had changed into dry clothes, but he kept
shivering. “I couldn’t believe it myself, I guess. Or—maybe I was scared to admit that I did believe it.”

“You didn’t use to be that stupid,” Will said.

He crossed to the bar and poured a stiff jolt of brandy into a glass and carried it over to me. I was huddled on the rug by the fire; I felt as if I’d never be warm again. But I didn’t want any brandy. Will ignored my scowl and shake of the head. He forced the glass into my hands.

“Medicinal purposes,” he said. “God knows you need something to clear your brain. Ran, you’d better stick to coffee. I suspect you may be slightly concussed and even if you aren’t, alcohol doesn’t mix with that sleeping prescription.”

“I can’t figure out how she got it into me,” Ran said dully.

“You never even imagined that she would try; why should you have been suspicious?”

That had been hard for me to face, though I had suspected it when I saw how Ran slept—that Mary had deliberately spiked one of his drinks with several of her sleeping pills. Her flight had not been the result of a sudden uncontrollable urge; she had been planning it all day. Her improved behavior must have been part of the plan, to throw us off guard.

I began to feel better—physically—as the brandy and the fire warmed me. I was thinking
about offering to make some coffee when Jed came in with a tray.

“Bertha’s upstairs,” he said. “That shot you gave Mary seems to be working, Will, but Bertha thought she’d better stay, just to be on the safe side.”

“Right,” Will said. “I don’t want her left alone for a minute. Coffee or brandy, Jed?”

“Coffee keeps me awake this time of night,” Jed said gravely, and accepted a glass from Will. He took a chair, and Will looked at him suspiciously.

“Did you and Bertha know about this—this quest of Mary’s?”

“You mean did we know about the crying?” Jed drank brandy. “Bertha suspected.”

“Well, of all the dirty tricks—! What was this, a conspiracy of silence?”