Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 02 (7 page)

 
          
I
moved at the door again, and this time he cleared the way. As I walked out on
the porch, I thought I heard Callie sort of gasp, but I didn’t look back. Down
the steps I went, and along the flagstone path where the three Slio- nokins had
tried to make Mr. Ben fling down his alexandrite.

 
          
I
came to a place with a show of blood. It was a scatter of dried red specks in the
grass, more or less like any blood. That was where Mr. Ben's bullet had ripped
into one of the Shonokins. I stepped across it, paced along to the edge of the
yard, and just beyond I saw the track where, they all said, it would lead you
to the old Immer settlement.

 
          
I
stopped before I set my foot into that track, and looked off along it. It led
northwest, more or less, and again I noted how straight it ran. Like a string
drawn tight, like a foot ruler many, many feet long; like, well, like the way
those bees had flown earlier in that morning, zip, a line drawn through the
air, a beeline. It looked hard- pressed down, like as if a many feet had walked
it, and it went to where the trees hid it yonder.

 
          
I
stepped onto it, and right that same second I felt the hum in me, the little
quiver in my blood. It was like a warning signal to go back. I didn't go back.
I took off on the way, toward wherever it would lead me.

 
          
Trees,
there were trees a-growing to each side, thick as a snake fence. I knew those
trees,
I saw oak, hickory, short- leaf pine, locust, beech,
all kinds. Thick they grew there in their green summer leaves. They were so
thick there might
could
have been an army a-hiding
behind them either side, all ready to jump out at whoever walked that path. Underfoot,
the ground was as hard as stone, like as if it had been tromped flat.
Here and there showed a little tag of moss, but mostly just the
ground.
Dark ground, with the droppings and rottings of long years of
leaves and twigs. It would be
rich, that
ground, rich
to grow a garden. But the hardness of it would blunt the share of a plow, it
seemed like to me.

 
          
Up
ahead, where the close-grown trees had blotted out the track, they opened up as
I walked toward them. Beyond I could see more of the way
Fd
chosen to walk.
Always drawn as straight as a line made with
a straight-edge.
And always, the tingle in my blood,
the hum there.
I stepped off to the side once, to see what would happen.
The tingle left off; stepping back, I got it with me again.

 
          
This
was something special, I told myself as I felt it, this was a thing
Fd
never felt before, never dreamed before. Maybe it was a
Shonokin thing, put on here to keep ordinary folks off this trackway. But how
did it work?

 
          
Not
a-knowing how, I quit the study of it the best way I could, and looked on
ahead.

 
          
Always
up ahead, the straight, hard track, straight, straight. I kept a-walking it,
the way
Fd
vowed I would. The jangle stayed in me,
made my ears ring like silver bells. It got stronger, stronger. I wondered why.
I could stand it, though, and I kept on my way till I came to where I saw rocks
piled up in a clear space by the track side.

 
          
They
were a great big rock on a little one, and, gentlemen, I mean that great big
rock was great big. The bottom one was maybe the size of a dishpan turned
upside
down,
and on it was set a round boulder that
must have been six feet through. I reckoned it would weigh tons. It would have
taken a derrick to set it thataway. I stopped there to look, while my blood and
belly and ears jangled.

 
          
That
boulder had a ribbed, green look that reminded me of some sort of a melon. I
couldn't rightly say what kind of rock it was, though I mostly know the rocks I
see as I wander the mountains. The one it stood on, or balanced on, was a dark,
slaty kind, such as sometimes a man will break off into chunks to make a
foundation for his house or barn. Whatever did they mean, I wondered myself,
and who’d set them up there, and when? I put out my hand to touch the big top
rock.

 
          
And
quick I took my hand away again, the way you’d pull back from a-touching a hot
stove. That boulder had sent a stabbing shock through me like electricity. As I
stepped away, I saw that it bobbed, swayed back and forth, so much, I wondered
if it would come off the little underneath rock and maybe roll on me.

 
          
If
it had, I couldn’t have got myself out of its way. I stood where I was, like as
if roots had come out of my boot soles and grown down into the ground. I hate
as much as the next man to admit a-being scared, but right then I was. Somebody
who says he’s nair been scared likely nair came up against something to scare
him.

 
          
I
watched that big old darnick of a boulder sway itself at me, back away from me,
at me again for maybe six seconds before I jumped back on the hard-pounded
trail and sort of ran crookedly there to get clear. I took up my journey once
more. The stir in me fell off a little bit, and I looked behind me as I walked.
The boulder was still a-rocking from my touch on it. I didn’t look back again
as I went on ahead.

 
          
After
all, the way I told myself, there were other balanced rocks in this world. I’d
heard tell of them in
England
, quite a good few there. And there was one
in the Chimney Rock part of these very mountains where I was, and a right big
one somewhere in the
Colorado
mountains
. You could come on such things. The
only point was
,
such balanced rocks were usually one
and the same with the chunks they balanced themselves on. And this one was
another sight different from the piece underneath.

 
          
Which,
I figured as I kept on a-going, meant it must have been put there by somebody,
by the hands of somebody. Put there for a purpose. What purpose?

 
          
I
couldn’t reply myself on that. I felt right glad that I’d left the thing behind
just now, and that the jangle in me had gone quieter. Felt glad, till I
reminded myself that
Fd
meet up with it again on the
way back. But all right,
Fd
decide on that when I came
back. Just now I’d do what
Fd
said Fd do, go on to the
settlement they'd once called Immer, the settlement where the Shonokins were
supposed to be. I came to a stream, narrow but fast-flowing, right across the
track. I jumped it.

 
          
After
dark, the Shonokins, that's what Brooke Altic had said to me. I was glad that
the sun kept a-climbing and a- climbing, with now and then a patch of it
amongst the trees. That was a comfort to me, and right about then I sort of
needed comfort.

 
          
I
tried to reckon how long 1'd been on the way. I hadn't brought a watch; I don't
often have one. I looked up at the sun—it wasn't much up from when
Fd
started, probably no more than twenty minutes' worth.
Usually I do a mile in better than that time, but then
Fd
stopped a little while to study the balanced rock. I decided to make my trip so
far a mile's way.

 
          
And
as I went on for what might
could
be the start of
another mile, I kept a-watching the trees to left and right. They were the same
trees as before, but there was difference in there with them. They were grown
up, across from one another, with vines. And not only ivy and honeysuckle and
woodbine; another kind of vine, new to me who'd always watched such things. It
was a knotty-looking thing, with round leaves so dark as to look almost black,
and blossoms on it with pale milky petals and out of each a red scrap like a
tongue stuck out at you.

 
          
I
didn't like that kind of flower, and I kept my feet on the track that seemed to
keep its quiver in my blood.

 
          
Then
I came to a stop again.

 
          
A
sort of shallow ditch went down at the side of the track. In it
lay
a quiet somebody, a somebody that didn’t move, that
wouldn’t move again in this world.

 
          
I
bent to look. Sure enough, a Shonokin. I could tell that by the long black coat
he wore, by his long, snaky black hair, and by one outflung hand that had a
third finger longer than the middle one.

 
          
He
was dead. I’ve seen enough dead things in this life to know death when it lies
there before me. I bent closer but I didn’t touch him. His lips were dragged
back and I saw his clenched teeth, small and narrow and grubby-looking. He was
bloody in two places, the chest of his black coat and the side of his neck
above it. Ben Gray’s two rifle shots, I told myself. Mr. Ben didn’t mess round
when he aimed at you and pulled the trigger.

 
          
And
the Shonokin’s two friends had got him that far
along,
and then just went off and left him. He must have died right there, and they’d
dropped his body and let it lie. It must be the truth what Jackson Warren
said—nothing threw a scare into Shonokins like their own dead. That would be
why the old-timey Indians had whipped them in war; Indians, even far back then,
were bound to be good killers with spears and arrows and tomahawks. I stood
a-looking down at that poor dead Shonokin who’d scared his own kin so bad.

 
          
But
there was nothing I could do for him now, so I went on ahead.

 
          
Along
a little way farther, I thought for a second I was a- coming to the end of the
straight track. Then I saw that wasn’t so—it just came to a big hike in the
ground and went up over. I walked to the place and stopped to figure. Why
hadn’t they run their trail to right or left, where the ground was easier? The
Shonokins must know the answer, but I didn’t. I went up the trail over the
hump, and it was so steep I almost had to go on my all fours. I reckon I had to
go eighteen-twenty feet to get to the top, twice my height above the track if
you measured straight up.

 
          
When
I got there, I saw the settlement that had been Immer.

 
          
The
trees thinned out round it, so I could see houses. Only they didn’t truly look
any great much like the houses built by folks, by people like us, by men.

 
          
And
that settlement once named Immer was way back beyond, at that; it was sort of
closed in most of the way round by a laurel hell, grown up so thick and matted
together you'd figure a man might could get up and walk on top of it. If you
don't mind, you can push into a laurel hell and get so trapped you'll nair get
out again. In the open space stood a couple dozen houses, if they were sure
enough houses.

 
          
For
one thing about it, there wasn't what you could call a straightaway street.
That wondered me, when I thought how dead straight had run the track I'd
traveled. The houses, such as they were, stood in little circles of ground for
yards. Paths curved round the circles, onto paths round other circles for other
houses. I reckoned a man had better know where he'd be a-going from one part of
the settlement to the other. But the Shonokins must surely know, and men didn't
belong there.

 
          
I
walked down the other steep side of the rise, and stepped off the track where
it came to its end. Right when I did that, the humming and jangle left out of
me, and I was glad of their going.

 
          
I
stood there and studied the houses. No movement amongst them,
nor
in the dark patches that might could do them for
windows. No smoke went up from the houses. When it comes to that, I saw naught
on air roof that looked like a chimney. I made out growing things in the yards,
but those weren’t plants like what I’d air seen before; and I recollected that
vine that had grown beside the track, the one with the unchancy flowers. Though
there were flowers on some of these plants. I stood and studied.

 
          
Chiefly
there seemed to be sort of shrubby growth. I was close in enough to the nearest
house to make plants out. They had thick, slobby leaves with red veins, like as
if blood flowed in them. What at first I’d thought were blossoms had more the
look of tags of pink meat, more or less hand-shaped. The breeze stirred them, I
told myself; but just then there wasn’t a breeze, so they must be a-stirring of
their own notion. They had spiky edges like
fingers, that
halfway opened and then halfway closed like sure enough fingers.

 
          
I
didn’t feel a call to come too close to such things, agrowing there in clumpy
beds. Because I had the notion that they might
could
get hold on you like real hands; drag you down, even.
And
then what?
Eat you? Gobble you up, like as if you’d fallen into a penful
of mean hogs? I couldn’t reply myself exactly, though I had ideas—scary,
chilling ideas. Plants like that had the look of something able to suck the
blood out of you and then the meat off your bones. Who knew, who could rightly
say? Maybe them it had happened to were past all saying about it.

 
          
Here
and there such things grew up, up above the rest of them, taller than a man.
Almost like trees. On them, the hand-flowers hung down and looked ready set to
grab hold of aught within reach.

 
          
That
nearest house, amongst plants like that and others near about as strange, was
more or less a plumb ruin to see. It looked bent thisaway and that by time’s
heavy hand, though when it came to that the folks hadn’t left out of Immer so
many years back. I put my eyes on the house. It didn’t show logs in the
building of it; it was smooth, like brown plaster. What had at first look
seemed to be shingles on the roof weren't like the shingles I rightly knew.
More like flattened-out lumps, to remind me of the lichens you see a-growing
out on dead trees and rocks. They could have been some kind of wood
slabs,
they could have been grass bundles, or either
something else. And the whole roof, instead of squared-off lines, had
a sag
to it, a roundness to the edges of it, more or less
like the cap of a toadstool.
And, as I've said, no chimney on
it.
The windows weren't like windows, either. More like
eyes,
drooped under crossbars like eyelids. Secret eyes you
can't see into.

 
          
But no movement, not a flick of it whatsoever, that I could make
out round the houses or in the yards.
I had a lone feeling right then,
like the last man left on earth. I made myself walk on closer.

 
          
In
the nearest yard I could make out other sorts of plants beside those bushes
with the hand-flowers. On the ground there looked to be little blades of stuff,
no bigger than the tines of dinner forks. Then, a row of stalks like com, but
with clusters on it instead of ears, purplish- colored.
And,
twined round the stalks, vines with fruit, pure down strange-looking fruit, all
shapes and sizes.

 
          
The
house, I made out to see by now, didn't have a true door, just a sort of drape
hung there, of what dark stuff I couldn't make out. If I walked to it, I could
push it aside easy and go on in. But I wasn't about to do that.

 
          
For
I recollected, right clearly, tales I'd heard about the sort of house not made
with hands. You can come across it here and there in lonesome places, the thing
they call a gardinel. I can't tell you where that name comes from, what
language or meaning it is. It grows up somehow to house size, they say, and
it's there to hope some man will think it's a house sure enough and go in and
not come out again.

 
          
Because gardinels eat men, so I'd heard tell.

 
          
But
Shonokins—Brooke Altic had said they weren't true men. Did Shonokins go into
gardinels?

 
          
"Good morning to you again, John."

 
          
It
was like as if the thought of him had called him up. Yonder came Brooke Altic,
in another suit of his bright, sharp city clothes and his dark glasses; yonder
he came round one of those curvy paths to meet me. In one of his gloved hands he
toted a cane of polished black wood, with a silver knob at one end and a sharp
silver spike to the other.

 
          
"So
you did come," he said, with his teeth all there in a gleam in his smiling
mouth. "I hoped you would. I more or less expected you would."

 
          
I
stood and looked him up and down, from his grinning face to his polished boots
and back, before I answered. "I just sort of thought I'd come along and
see what your settlement was like," I said.

 
          
"We
wanted you to come."

 
          
"No,
it was my own idea," I told him, while I wondered myself what he'd be up
to with me.

 
          
"Was
it?" Still he smiled. "Very well, maybe it was partly your idea and
partly ours. We know ways of using your own thoughts and fancies to get
something from you."

 
          
I
watched that silver-headed, silver-spiked stick of his. Its tip was sharp
enough to stab, if so be a man would want to stab.

 
          
"You
said you expected me here," I reminded him. "Expected me here to do
what?"

 
          
"To see wisdom.
Recognize profit. And now you're
here."

 
          
I
looked again at that nearest house, with its eye-windows, its draped door.

 
          
"Go
on,” Brooke Altic bade me. "Go on in. There's no danger.”

 
          
"No
danger feared, but I won't go in where I don't reckon I'm wanted.” I stood with
my feet apart, and tried to act as easy about things as he did. "Mr.
Altic,” I said, "you can just call me a truth seeker. I'd admire to know
the whole truth about you Shonokins.”

 
          
"But
I've already tried to tell you some things,” he said. "And I've tried to
reach peaceable terms with you.”

 
          
"Peaceable terms,” I repeated after him.
"Peaceable like those three Shonokins that came with guns
after Mr. Ben Gray, to rob him and maybe kill him?”

 
          
"They
weren't sent after you, John.”

 
          
"One
of them nair made it back to here,” I said. "He's a-laying back on that
straight, straight track of yours, where his friends left him to lie. I wonder
myself if I shouldn't go bury him, a-seeing you Shonokins don't seem to have
much mind to it.”

 
          
"I
was told he fell, but I didn't hear where.” He didn't seem to let on to feel
aught of sorrow for the death of one of his own kind. "But you say you
came here to know the truth.
Truth about what?”

 
          
While he was a-saying that, he walked toward the yard of the
nearest house.
I walked along beside him. Again I saw the things, the
strange
things, that
grew in the yard. The
hand-flowers on the bushes had flecks and streaks of deeper color in their
pink, like a sort of orangey brown. And they stirred and half opened, then half
shut again.

 
          
On
the ground grew the little blades I'd noticed, but they weren't grass as at
first I'd thought. They looked tight and a lively green.

 
          
"You
can eat those shoots,” said Altic to me. "When you chew them, it clears
your mind for better thinking. It nourishes your body for whole days of
effort.”

 
          
He
stooped down and tweaked off a couple and chewed them. I didn't do likewise.
Instead, I looked at the fruity clumps on other plants.

 
          
"Go
ahead,
eat some of those,” Altic invited me.
"They’re like wine to the taste. And they can cure sickness, almost any
sickness.”

 
          
"I
thank you, but I’m not ailing,” I said. I looked at more of the houses, farther
back. "Where’s the rest of your crowd?”

 
          
"Resting
quietly in their
homes,
or perhaps busy with certain
affairs. John, I wonder at you. You came almost two miles to get here, but all
of a sudden you’re not curious enough to do any investigating.”

 
          
"Almost
two miles,” I repeated him, for that had been near about what I’d guessed the
distance to be.
"Two miles, dead straight over the face
of the land.”

 
          
"Naturally,”
he said, a-looking at me through his dark glasses.

 
          
"No,”
I said. "Not naturally, Mr. Altic.
Because a straight
line isn’t natural.
And anyway, a track usually turns and bends back and
forth, to follow the best, easiest ground for it to run.”

 
          
He
smiled his smile. "But straight lines are indeed natural. Think about it.
A beam of light is perfectly straight. The fall of an object, by the law of
gravity, is straight.”

 
          
I
thought back on the flight of those bees Mr. Ben and I had traced that morning—shoo,
was it just that morning? So much had been a-happening since. There
might could
be a lot in what Altic said. I turned from him
and headed back for where I’d left the track. He strolled along beside me,
a-swinging his polished black cane.

 
          
Right
all of a sudden I didn’t want to be round him much, not that I’d truly wanted
to from the start. I reached the track and headed back along it. Right away, the
jangle came back in my blood and nerves. He moved to come alongside me, he
moved right well, like a man in good shape. I sort of wore my way up that steep
rise, and at the top he was with me.

 
          
"Now,
suppose we pause up here a second/' he said to me
. "
I
don't think I have to ask you if you experience a certain interesting
sensation."

 
          
"There’s
a hum or a shake inside," I said. "It was with me all the way
here."

 
          
"Now
look at this."

 
          
He
jammed the silver point of his stick down hard. It drove into that packed
ground. He let go of the knob and looked at it, a-smiling. I saw the thing
begin to bob back and forth, slow at first, then faster.