To Nick’s left the sun had hardly topped
the low trees. It was a ball of red fire; today was going to be a
scorcher. He hoped he could make it into the woods road before the
heat really hit. Of course he had wanted to start earlier, but there
was always some good reason why—Behind the faceplate of his helmet
Nick scowled at the road ahead.
Always some good reason why the things he
wanted to do did not fit in with plans, not his plans,
naturally. Did Margo actually sit down and think it out, arrange
somehow ahead of time so that what Nick had counted on was just
what was not going to happen? He had suspected that for some time.
Yet her excuses why this or that could not be done were so
perfectly logical and reasonable that Dad always went along with
them.
At least she had not ruined this weekend. Maybe because she and
Dad had their own plans, or rather her plans. Give Nick
another year—just one—and Margo could talk to the thin air. He
would not be there to listen to her. That—he relished the
satisfaction that thought presented—was the day he was going to
start living!
Dad—Nick’s thoughts squirmed hurriedly away from that
path. Dad—he had chosen Margo, he agreed with Margo’s sweet
reasonableness. All right, let him live with it and her! Nick was
not going to a minute longer than he had to.
The trees along the road were taller now, closer together. But
the surface over which the motorbike roared was clear and
smooth. He could make good time here. Once he turned into the lake
road it would be different. But in any event he would reach the
cabin by noon.
His thoughts soared away from what lay behind, already seeking
the peace ahead. The weekend, and it was a long one from Friday to
Monday, was his alone. Margo did not like the lake cottage. Nick
wondered why she had never talked Dad into selling it. Maybe she
just did not care. There was plenty else for her to own. Just as
she owned Dad.
Nick’s scowl deepened, his black brows drawing together,
his lips thinly stretched against his teeth. That scowl line now
never completely faded, it had had too much use over the past three
years. He swayed and adjusted to the swing of the machine under him
as an earlier generation would have ridden a horse, the metal
framework he bestrode seemingly a part of his own person. The
bubble safety helmet covered his head front and back. Below that he
wore a tee shirt, already dust streaked, and faded jeans, his feet
thrust into boots.
Saddlebags, tightly strapped against loss, held the rest of his
weekend wardrobe and supplies, save for the canned food at the
cabin and what he would buy at the store going in. He had a full
tank of gas, he had his freedom for four days—he had himself! Nick
Shaw as he was, not Douglas Shaw’s son, not Margo’s
stepson (though, of course, that relationship was hardly ever
mentioned). Nick Shaw, himself, personal, private and alone.
A twisting curve downhill brought him to the store at the foot
of the bend, a straggle of houses beyond. This was Rochester,
unincorporated, with no “Pop.” on the sign Nick flashed
past. He came to a stop at the store. A Coke would go good. Ham
Hodges always had those on ice.
Bread, cheese, Nick had no list, just had to remember to get
things that would not be affected by the bumpy ride in. His boots
thumped on the porch as he reached for the knob of the screen door.
Behind the screening a black shape opened its jaws in an almost
inaudible but plainly warning hiss.
Nick jerked off his helmet. “I’m no Martian invader,
Rufus,” he said to the big tomcat.
Unblinking blue eyes stared back but the jaws closed.
“Rufe, you there—move away from the door. How many times
am I going to tell you if you sit there you’re going to be
stepped on someday—”
Nick laughed. “By whom, Ham? Some customer pounding in for
bargains, or one going out because you ran the prices up on
him?”
The cat moved disdainfully back a little, allowing him to pass
by.
“Nick Shaw!” The youngish man moved out from behind
the counter on the left. “Your folks up for the
weekend?”
Nick shook his head. “Just me.”
“Sorry your Dad couldn’t make it. Larry Green
sighted some big ones in the cove. He was just saying to me no
more’n an hour ago that Mr. Shaw sure ought to come up and
cast a line for one of those. He hasn’t been here for a long
time now.”
Ham was being tactful, but not tactful enough. Nick shifted
his feet. They never mentioned Margo, but she was always right
there, in their minds as well as his, when they talked about Dad.
Before Margo Dad had loved the lake, had been here in the summer
and the fall every minute he could get away. How much longer would
he even keep the cabin now?
“No,” Nick answered in a voice he kept even with an
effort. “He’s been pretty busy, Ham, you know how it
is.”
“Don’t suppose I can sell you any
bait—”
Nick managed a smile. “You know me, Ham. I’m about
as much a fisherman as Rufus is a dog lover. What I do want is some
stuff to eat—what I can carry on the bike without a smashup. Any of
Amy’s bread to go?”
“I’ll see. No reason why we can’t spare some
baking—”
Hodges turned to the back of the store and Nick moved around to
pick other items. A package of bacon from the freezer bin, some
cheese. From all the years he had been stopping at Ham’s he
knew where most things were. Rufus was back on guard at the screen
door. He was about the biggest cat Nick had ever seen, but not fat.
Instead, in spite of the plates of cat food he could and did lick
clean each day, he was rather gaunt. His conformation was that of
his Siamese father, though his color was the black of the
half-breed.
“How’s hunting, Rufus?” Nick asked as he
returned to the counter.
An ear twitched, but the cat’s head did not turn even a
fraction. His interest in what lay outside was so intent that Nick
moved up behind him to look out, too. There must be a bird, even a
snake—something in the road. But he could see nothing.
Which did not mean that nothing was there. Cats saw above and
below the human range of sight. There could be something there all
right, something invisible—
Nick wondered just how much truth there was in some of the books
he had read—those that speculated about different kinds of
existence. Such as the one that had suggested we share this world
with other kinds of life as invisible to us as we might be to them.
Not altogether a comfortable thought. You had enough trouble with
what you could see.
“What’s out there, Rufus? Something out of a
UFO?”
The cat’s attention was manifestly so engaged that it made
Nick a little uneasy. Then suddenly Rufus yawned widely, relaxed.
Whatever had intrigued him so was gone.
He returned to the counter. There was a paperback turned upside
down open, to mark the reader’s place. Nick turned it around
to read the title—Our Haunted Planet—by somebody named
Keel. And there was another book pushed to one side—More
“Things” by Sanderson. That one he knew, he had
read it himself, urged by Ham to do so.
Ham Hodges had a whole library of that type of reading, starting
with Charles Fort’s collections of unexplainable happenings.
They made you wonder all right. And Ham had a good reason for
wondering—his cousin and the Commer Cut-Off.
“Got you a loaf of whole wheat, a raisin one, and a
half-dozen rolls,” Ham announced coming into sight again,
“Amy says give the rolls a warm-up, they’re a day
old.”
“They could be two weeks old and still be good if
they’re hers. I’m lucky she can spare so much a day
ahead of baking.”
“Well, we had some company who was going to come and
didn’t, so she was overstocked in the bread box this week.
Funny about that.” Ham thudded the bread and rolls down in a
plastic bag before Nick. “This fellow called up last
Friday—just a week ago. He said he was from the Hasentine Institute
and they were gathering material about the Cut-Off. Wanted to come
out here and ask around about Ted and Ben—” Ham paused.
“Hard to think of it being all this time since they
disappeared. At least it scared people off from trying that road
for a while. Only somebody’s taken the Wilson place for the
summer and, since the new highway to Shockton went in, the
Cut-Off’s the only road to reach that side of the lake now.
So it’s getting traveled again.
“Anyway, this fellow said he was doing research and asked
about a place to stay. We’ve that cabin, so we said
we’d put him up. Only he never showed up or called
again.”
“How long has it been, Ham?”
“Since July 24, 1955. Why, you and your Dad and Mom were
up here at the lake that summer. I remember your Dad was out with
the search party. I was just home from Korea, right out of the
army. We sure gave that land a going over—Ted was a good guy and he
knew the country like it was his own backyard. Ben was no fool
either, he’d buddied with Ted in the Navy and came up for
some fishing. No, they just disappeared like all the others—that
Caldwell and his wife and two kids in 1946, and before them there
were Latimer and Johnson. I made it my business to look it all up.
Got out my notebook and read it through this week so I could answer
any questions the fellow from the Institute might want to ask. You
know, going as far back as the newspapers had any mention of it,
there’s been about thirty people just up and disappeared on
the Cut-Off. Even before it was ever a road, they disappeared in
that section. It’s like that Bermuda Triangle thing. Only not
so often as to get people all excited about it. There’s
always a good long stretch of time between disappearances so people
sort of forget in between. But they should never have opened up
that road again. Jim Samuels tried to talk the new people out of
it. Heard they didn’t quite laugh in his face, but I guess
they took it as some superstition us local yokels believe
in.”
“But if it’s the only way to get into the Wilson
place—” Nick knew the legend of the Cut-Off, but he could
also understand the frustration of outsiders needing an easy
access.
“Yes, I guess it is a case of needs drive. You can’t
get the county interested in laying out a new road to serve just a
few summer cabins because there’s a queer story about the one
already there and waiting to be used. You know, this writer—”
Ham tapped the book with a fingertip—“has some mighty
interesting things to say. And this one”—he indicated the
More “Things” volume—“makes it plain,
for instance, that we think we know all about this world, that
it’s all been explored. But that isn’t the truth, there
are whole sections we know nothing about at all, mountains never
climbed, places where nobody civilized has ever been.”
“ ‘Here abide monsters,’ ” Nick
quoted.
“What’s that?” Ham looked up sharply.
“Dad’s got a real old map he bought in London last
year—had it framed and hung it down in his office. It shows England
and part of Europe, but on our side of the ocean just some markings
and dragons or sea serpents, with lettering—‘Here abide
monsters.’ They filled up the unknown then with what they
imagined might be there.”
“Well, we don’t know a lot, and most people
don’t want to learn more’n what’s right before
their eyes. You point out things that don’t fit into what
they’ve always accepted, and they say it’s all your
imagination and nothing like that is real. Only we know about the
Cut-Off and what’s happened there.”
“What do you think really happened, Ham?” Nick had
taken a Coke from the ice chest, snapped off the cap, and now
drank.
“There’s this Bermuda Triangle, only this writer
Sanderson says it’s no ‘triangle,’ but much
larger, and also they’ve made some tests and it’s only
one of ten such places all around the world. Ships and people and
planes disappear there regularly—nothing ever found to say what
happened to them. A whole flight of Navy planes once and then the
rescue plane that went out after them! It may have something to do
with magnetic forces at those points. He makes a suggestion about
breaking into another space-time. Maybe we have one of these
‘triangles’ right here. I sure wish that Hasentine guy
had shown up. About time some of the brains did some serious
investigating. And . . . ”
What he was about to say was drowned out by a wild yapping from
without. Rufus, his back arched, his tail a brush, gave a warning
yowl in reply. Ham swung around.
“Now what the heck’s all that about?” He
headed for the door.
Rufus, ears flattened against his skull, his Siamese blue eyes
slitted, was hissing, giving now and then a throaty growl of
threat. The yapping outside was apparently not in the least
intimidated.
A car, or rather a jeep, had drawn up, and a girl slid from
under the wheel, but had not yet stepped out. She was too busy
trying to restrain a very excited and apparently furious Pekingese
that fought against her hold, his popping eyes fixed on Rufus.
She glanced up at Ham behind the screen, Nick looking over his
shoulder.
“Please,” she was laughing a little. “Can you
cope with your warrior? I want to come in and I certainly
can’t let go of Lung Hsin!”
“Sorry.” Ham stopped to catch up Rufus with
practiced ease in avoiding the claws the big cat had already
extended to promise battle. “Sorry, Rufe, you for the
storeroom temporarily.” He departed with the kicking and
growling cat, and Nick opened the door for the girl. She still held
the Peke who had fallen silent upon witnessing the unwilling exit
of the enemy.
“He’s mighty little to think of taking on
Rufus,” Nick commented. “Rufe would take one good swipe
at him and that would be that.”
The girl frowned. “Don’t be too sure about that!
This breed were once known as dragon dogs, lion dogs—they helped
guard palaces. For their size they’re about the bravest
animals alive. Hush now, Lung, you’ve made your point. We all
know you’re a brave, brave Dragon Heart.” The Peke shot
out a tongue and licked her cheek, then stared about him
imperiously as if, having chased the enemy from the field, this was
now his domain.
“Now what can I do for you?” Ham came back, licking
one finger where Rufus had apparently scored before being
exiled.
“I need some directions, and a couple of cases of Coke and
. . . ” She had Lung Hsin under one arm now as he no longer
fought for freedom, and with her other hand she pawed into the
depths of her shoulder bag. “Here it is,” she said with
relief. “Thought it might have gone down for the third time
and I would have to empty this thing to find it.”
She had a list ready now. “If I can just make out
Jane’s writing. She really ought to print, at least with that
you can make educated guesses. That’s right, two cases of
Coke, one of Canada Dry, one of Pepsi. And she said you’d be
holding melons—oh, I should have told you, I’m Linda Durant
and I’m picking all this up for Jane Ridgewell—they’ve
taken over the Wilson place. She said she’d call and tell
you.”
Ham nodded. “She did and I’ve got it all together.
Won’t take us long to load it up for you—” He glanced
to Nick who obligingly moved away from the counter again.
He was willing to give Ham a hand. Though they should be in no
hurry to speed this one off. This Linda was almost as tall as Nick. A lot of girls were tall
nowadays. Her hair had been tied back from her face with a twist of
bright red wool, but it was still long enough to lie on her
shoulders in very dark strands. Her skin was creamy pale. If she
tanned she had not started that process yet this season.
Her jeans were as red as her hair tie and she had a sleeveless
blouse of white and blue dolphins leaping up and down on it.
Sunglasses swung pendant from another red tie about her neck and
she wore thong sandals on her feet. He was not usually so aware of
a girl’s clothes, but these fitted her as if to complete a
picture.
Nick shouldered one of the melons Ham pointed out and took a
second under his arm, carrying them out to the waiting jeep. Ham
was busy stowing in Coke.
“Wait ’til I get some sacks,” he told Nick.
“Shake those melons around and you’ll get them stove
in.”
Linda Durant had followed them out. “That sounds,”
she commented, “as if I have a rough road ahead. You’ll
have to give directions, Jane’s are vague.”
For the first time Nick realized that she meant to travel the
Cut-Off. He glanced at Ham who looked sober. After what Ham had
just been saying—to send a stranger, and a girl, down the
Cut-Off—But if there was no other way in now—only Nick had a queer
feeling about it.
There was one thing—he could take that way, too. It was really
shorter to his own cabin when you came to think about it. And it
had been almost his whole lifetime since Ted and Ben had
disappeared. This was broad daylight and these Ridgeways must have
been up and down there maybe a hundred times since they moved in.
So, why look for monsters that did not exist?
“Look here,” Nick suggested as Ham reappeared with
sacks and newspapers and proceeded to wedge in the cargo.
“I’m heading that way. It’s rough and we’ll
have to take it slow, but if you’ll match your speed to
mine”—he motioned at the waiting bike—“I’ll guide
you in. I’m Nick—Nicholas Shaw—Mr. Hodges here knows me. My
people have had a cabin on the lake for a long tune.”
Linda gave him a long, intent survey. Then she nodded and
smiled.
“That’s fine! From what Jane said the road’s
pretty rough and I could miss it. I’m very glad of your
company.”
Ham packed the last of the papers in, and Nick gathered up his
own purchases and bagged them in a bundle he could tie over the
saddlebags. Several indignant yowls from the storeroom brought an
instant sharp response from the Peke.
Linda adjusted her sunglasses and got behind the wheel. But Ham
spoke to Nick in a low voice.
“Take it easy now. I have a funny feeling—”
“Not much else we can do if she’s going to get to
the Wilson place,” Nick pointed out.
As he gunned the bike to life he wondered what looming danger
one could watch for along the Cut-Off. No one who had ever met
whatever peril lurked there had ever returned to explain what he or
she had faced. No, Nick was not going to let his imagination take
over. He’d end up seeing a UFO or something lurking behind
every tree. He waved to Linda and swung out. She nodded and
followed.
They turned off the highway about a half-mile farther on and
Nick cut speed, concentrating on the rough surface ahead. He had
come this road enough times to memorize every rut and bump, but the
heavy rains last week would have done damage, and he had no
intention of being spilled through carelessness.
A mile and a half to the Cut-Off. In all the years he had been
coming up here he had always looked for the overgrown entrance to
what had become a sinister road to nowhere. Could she get the jeep
in there at all? But they had been using it, so they must have
cleared a passage through. July 24, 1955—he’d been too little
then to realize what had gone on. But he’d heard plenty about
it ever since. All that searching—the neighbors, the sheriff and
his deputies. And not so much as a track to tell them why two young
men in the best of health had vanished from a half-mile strip of
road one sunny morning.
They had been seen entering, had stopped and talked to Jim
Anderson about the best place to fish. Jim had been going to the
store. He had watched them turn into the Cut-Off. But they never
came out at the lake where a couple of guys were waiting to join
them.
Mouth of the Cut-Off—like a snake with jaws wide open to swallow
them down.
Nick took firm control of his imagination. If he did not see
Linda to the lake she would go by herself. And he somehow could not
let that happen and be able to look at himself in the mirror when
shaving tomorrow.
It was only a half-mile, perhaps a little more. They could run
it in minutes, even if it were rough. The sooner they got through
the better. He wondered what this Linda would say if she knew his
thoughts. She’d probably decide he’d been smoking pot.
Only when you heard about the Cut-Off all your life—well, you had a
different point of view.
He had borrowed a lot of Ham’s books, bought some of his
own, knew all the things that did happen now and then that
nobody seemed able to explain. Maybe Fort and those other writers
who hunted out such stories had the right of it. The scientists,
the brains who might have solved, or at least tried to solve, such
puzzles, refused even to look at evidence before their eyes because
it did not fit in with rational “facts.” There could be
facts that were neither rational nor logical at all.
There was the turn-off ahead. And there certainly had been
changes since the last time he was here. Looked as if someone had
run a bulldozer in to break trail. Nick gave a sigh of relief at
the raw opening. There was a healthy difference between wriggling
down an almost closed and ill-reputed trail and this open, scraped
side road, which now looked as good as the one leading to his own
cabin. He flagged the jeep as he came to a stop.
“This is it,” he called. Something in him still
shrank a little from entering that way, but he refused to admit it.
Only he continued to feel that odd uneasiness, which had come to
him earlier as he had seen Rufus watch something invisible that
Nick had been convinced against his will was there.
“Take it slow,” he cautioned, also against his will.
He wanted to take that road at the best speed they could make.
“I don’t know how good the surface is.”
“Yes.” The dark glasses masked her face. She surely
did not need them here in the shade of the trees, but she had not
let them slide off as she had at the store. The Peke was on the
seat, his forepaws resting on the dashboard, looking ahead with
some of Rufus’ intensity. He did not bark, but there was an
eagerness in every line of his small, silky body, as if he wanted
to urge them on.
Nick gunned his motor, swung into the Cut-Off, his speed well
down. The jeep snorted along behind him at hardly better than a
walking pace. The road crew had run the scraper along, but the rain
had cut gullies across, here and there, and those had not been
refilled.
The lane was all rawly new, bushes and even saplings gouged and
cut out and flung back to wither and die on either side. It looked
ugly—wrong, Nick decided. He supposed it had to be done to open up
the road, but it was queer the road crew had not cleaned up more.
Maybe the guys who had worked here knew about the sinister history
of the Cut-Off and had not wanted to stay around any longer than
they had to.
That broken stuff walled them in as if it were intended to keep
them in the middle of the road, allow them no chance to reach the
woods. Nick felt more and more trapped. Uneasiness was rising in
him so that he had to exert even more control. This was plain
stupid! He must keep a grip on his imagination. Just watch the road
for those ruts and lumps so he would not hit something—do that and
keep going. They would be there in no time at all.
It was still, not a leaf moved. But the trees arched over well
enough to keep out the sun. Probably it was very quiet, too, if the
noise of the bike and the jeep had not advertised their coming.
Advertised it to what? Nick hoped only to those in the Wilson
place.
Right ahead was the turn, a blind one. And this was a narrow
road. No place to meet anyone coming the other way. But surely they
were making enough noise—
Noise! The Peke had begun to yap, almost as when he had
challenged Rufus. Nick heard the girl call out:
“Down, Lung! Down!”
He half-turned his head, the bike hit something and wobbled.
Nick had to fight to keep it away from a mass of dying brush. But
there was something else, a cloud—like a fog trapped under the
trees. It was thickening, coming down like a blanket—fast!
Nick thought he cried out. Behind him he heard an answering
scream and a crash. Then he hit something, was thrown, and skidded
painfully into total darkness.
To Nick’s left the sun had hardly topped
the low trees. It was a ball of red fire; today was going to be a
scorcher. He hoped he could make it into the woods road before the
heat really hit. Of course he had wanted to start earlier, but there
was always some good reason why—Behind the faceplate of his helmet
Nick scowled at the road ahead.
Always some good reason why the things he
wanted to do did not fit in with plans, not his plans,
naturally. Did Margo actually sit down and think it out, arrange
somehow ahead of time so that what Nick had counted on was just
what was not going to happen? He had suspected that for some time.
Yet her excuses why this or that could not be done were so
perfectly logical and reasonable that Dad always went along with
them.
At least she had not ruined this weekend. Maybe because she and
Dad had their own plans, or rather her plans. Give Nick
another year—just one—and Margo could talk to the thin air. He
would not be there to listen to her. That—he relished the
satisfaction that thought presented—was the day he was going to
start living!
Dad—Nick’s thoughts squirmed hurriedly away from that
path. Dad—he had chosen Margo, he agreed with Margo’s sweet
reasonableness. All right, let him live with it and her! Nick was
not going to a minute longer than he had to.
The trees along the road were taller now, closer together. But
the surface over which the motorbike roared was clear and
smooth. He could make good time here. Once he turned into the lake
road it would be different. But in any event he would reach the
cabin by noon.
His thoughts soared away from what lay behind, already seeking
the peace ahead. The weekend, and it was a long one from Friday to
Monday, was his alone. Margo did not like the lake cottage. Nick
wondered why she had never talked Dad into selling it. Maybe she
just did not care. There was plenty else for her to own. Just as
she owned Dad.
Nick’s scowl deepened, his black brows drawing together,
his lips thinly stretched against his teeth. That scowl line now
never completely faded, it had had too much use over the past three
years. He swayed and adjusted to the swing of the machine under him
as an earlier generation would have ridden a horse, the metal
framework he bestrode seemingly a part of his own person. The
bubble safety helmet covered his head front and back. Below that he
wore a tee shirt, already dust streaked, and faded jeans, his feet
thrust into boots.
Saddlebags, tightly strapped against loss, held the rest of his
weekend wardrobe and supplies, save for the canned food at the
cabin and what he would buy at the store going in. He had a full
tank of gas, he had his freedom for four days—he had himself! Nick
Shaw as he was, not Douglas Shaw’s son, not Margo’s
stepson (though, of course, that relationship was hardly ever
mentioned). Nick Shaw, himself, personal, private and alone.
A twisting curve downhill brought him to the store at the foot
of the bend, a straggle of houses beyond. This was Rochester,
unincorporated, with no “Pop.” on the sign Nick flashed
past. He came to a stop at the store. A Coke would go good. Ham
Hodges always had those on ice.
Bread, cheese, Nick had no list, just had to remember to get
things that would not be affected by the bumpy ride in. His boots
thumped on the porch as he reached for the knob of the screen door.
Behind the screening a black shape opened its jaws in an almost
inaudible but plainly warning hiss.
Nick jerked off his helmet. “I’m no Martian invader,
Rufus,” he said to the big tomcat.
Unblinking blue eyes stared back but the jaws closed.
“Rufe, you there—move away from the door. How many times
am I going to tell you if you sit there you’re going to be
stepped on someday—”
Nick laughed. “By whom, Ham? Some customer pounding in for
bargains, or one going out because you ran the prices up on
him?”
The cat moved disdainfully back a little, allowing him to pass
by.
“Nick Shaw!” The youngish man moved out from behind
the counter on the left. “Your folks up for the
weekend?”
Nick shook his head. “Just me.”
“Sorry your Dad couldn’t make it. Larry Green
sighted some big ones in the cove. He was just saying to me no
more’n an hour ago that Mr. Shaw sure ought to come up and
cast a line for one of those. He hasn’t been here for a long
time now.”
Ham was being tactful, but not tactful enough. Nick shifted
his feet. They never mentioned Margo, but she was always right
there, in their minds as well as his, when they talked about Dad.
Before Margo Dad had loved the lake, had been here in the summer
and the fall every minute he could get away. How much longer would
he even keep the cabin now?
“No,” Nick answered in a voice he kept even with an
effort. “He’s been pretty busy, Ham, you know how it
is.”
“Don’t suppose I can sell you any
bait—”
Nick managed a smile. “You know me, Ham. I’m about
as much a fisherman as Rufus is a dog lover. What I do want is some
stuff to eat—what I can carry on the bike without a smashup. Any of
Amy’s bread to go?”
“I’ll see. No reason why we can’t spare some
baking—”
Hodges turned to the back of the store and Nick moved around to
pick other items. A package of bacon from the freezer bin, some
cheese. From all the years he had been stopping at Ham’s he
knew where most things were. Rufus was back on guard at the screen
door. He was about the biggest cat Nick had ever seen, but not fat.
Instead, in spite of the plates of cat food he could and did lick
clean each day, he was rather gaunt. His conformation was that of
his Siamese father, though his color was the black of the
half-breed.
“How’s hunting, Rufus?” Nick asked as he
returned to the counter.
An ear twitched, but the cat’s head did not turn even a
fraction. His interest in what lay outside was so intent that Nick
moved up behind him to look out, too. There must be a bird, even a
snake—something in the road. But he could see nothing.
Which did not mean that nothing was there. Cats saw above and
below the human range of sight. There could be something there all
right, something invisible—
Nick wondered just how much truth there was in some of the books
he had read—those that speculated about different kinds of
existence. Such as the one that had suggested we share this world
with other kinds of life as invisible to us as we might be to them.
Not altogether a comfortable thought. You had enough trouble with
what you could see.
“What’s out there, Rufus? Something out of a
UFO?”
The cat’s attention was manifestly so engaged that it made
Nick a little uneasy. Then suddenly Rufus yawned widely, relaxed.
Whatever had intrigued him so was gone.
He returned to the counter. There was a paperback turned upside
down open, to mark the reader’s place. Nick turned it around
to read the title—Our Haunted Planet—by somebody named
Keel. And there was another book pushed to one side—More
“Things” by Sanderson. That one he knew, he had
read it himself, urged by Ham to do so.
Ham Hodges had a whole library of that type of reading, starting
with Charles Fort’s collections of unexplainable happenings.
They made you wonder all right. And Ham had a good reason for
wondering—his cousin and the Commer Cut-Off.
“Got you a loaf of whole wheat, a raisin one, and a
half-dozen rolls,” Ham announced coming into sight again,
“Amy says give the rolls a warm-up, they’re a day
old.”
“They could be two weeks old and still be good if
they’re hers. I’m lucky she can spare so much a day
ahead of baking.”
“Well, we had some company who was going to come and
didn’t, so she was overstocked in the bread box this week.
Funny about that.” Ham thudded the bread and rolls down in a
plastic bag before Nick. “This fellow called up last
Friday—just a week ago. He said he was from the Hasentine Institute
and they were gathering material about the Cut-Off. Wanted to come
out here and ask around about Ted and Ben—” Ham paused.
“Hard to think of it being all this time since they
disappeared. At least it scared people off from trying that road
for a while. Only somebody’s taken the Wilson place for the
summer and, since the new highway to Shockton went in, the
Cut-Off’s the only road to reach that side of the lake now.
So it’s getting traveled again.
“Anyway, this fellow said he was doing research and asked
about a place to stay. We’ve that cabin, so we said
we’d put him up. Only he never showed up or called
again.”
“How long has it been, Ham?”
“Since July 24, 1955. Why, you and your Dad and Mom were
up here at the lake that summer. I remember your Dad was out with
the search party. I was just home from Korea, right out of the
army. We sure gave that land a going over—Ted was a good guy and he
knew the country like it was his own backyard. Ben was no fool
either, he’d buddied with Ted in the Navy and came up for
some fishing. No, they just disappeared like all the others—that
Caldwell and his wife and two kids in 1946, and before them there
were Latimer and Johnson. I made it my business to look it all up.
Got out my notebook and read it through this week so I could answer
any questions the fellow from the Institute might want to ask. You
know, going as far back as the newspapers had any mention of it,
there’s been about thirty people just up and disappeared on
the Cut-Off. Even before it was ever a road, they disappeared in
that section. It’s like that Bermuda Triangle thing. Only not
so often as to get people all excited about it. There’s
always a good long stretch of time between disappearances so people
sort of forget in between. But they should never have opened up
that road again. Jim Samuels tried to talk the new people out of
it. Heard they didn’t quite laugh in his face, but I guess
they took it as some superstition us local yokels believe
in.”
“But if it’s the only way to get into the Wilson
place—” Nick knew the legend of the Cut-Off, but he could
also understand the frustration of outsiders needing an easy
access.
“Yes, I guess it is a case of needs drive. You can’t
get the county interested in laying out a new road to serve just a
few summer cabins because there’s a queer story about the one
already there and waiting to be used. You know, this writer—”
Ham tapped the book with a fingertip—“has some mighty
interesting things to say. And this one”—he indicated the
More “Things” volume—“makes it plain,
for instance, that we think we know all about this world, that
it’s all been explored. But that isn’t the truth, there
are whole sections we know nothing about at all, mountains never
climbed, places where nobody civilized has ever been.”
“ ‘Here abide monsters,’ ” Nick
quoted.
“What’s that?” Ham looked up sharply.
“Dad’s got a real old map he bought in London last
year—had it framed and hung it down in his office. It shows England
and part of Europe, but on our side of the ocean just some markings
and dragons or sea serpents, with lettering—‘Here abide
monsters.’ They filled up the unknown then with what they
imagined might be there.”
“Well, we don’t know a lot, and most people
don’t want to learn more’n what’s right before
their eyes. You point out things that don’t fit into what
they’ve always accepted, and they say it’s all your
imagination and nothing like that is real. Only we know about the
Cut-Off and what’s happened there.”
“What do you think really happened, Ham?” Nick had
taken a Coke from the ice chest, snapped off the cap, and now
drank.
“There’s this Bermuda Triangle, only this writer
Sanderson says it’s no ‘triangle,’ but much
larger, and also they’ve made some tests and it’s only
one of ten such places all around the world. Ships and people and
planes disappear there regularly—nothing ever found to say what
happened to them. A whole flight of Navy planes once and then the
rescue plane that went out after them! It may have something to do
with magnetic forces at those points. He makes a suggestion about
breaking into another space-time. Maybe we have one of these
‘triangles’ right here. I sure wish that Hasentine guy
had shown up. About time some of the brains did some serious
investigating. And . . . ”
What he was about to say was drowned out by a wild yapping from
without. Rufus, his back arched, his tail a brush, gave a warning
yowl in reply. Ham swung around.
“Now what the heck’s all that about?” He
headed for the door.
Rufus, ears flattened against his skull, his Siamese blue eyes
slitted, was hissing, giving now and then a throaty growl of
threat. The yapping outside was apparently not in the least
intimidated.
A car, or rather a jeep, had drawn up, and a girl slid from
under the wheel, but had not yet stepped out. She was too busy
trying to restrain a very excited and apparently furious Pekingese
that fought against her hold, his popping eyes fixed on Rufus.
She glanced up at Ham behind the screen, Nick looking over his
shoulder.
“Please,” she was laughing a little. “Can you
cope with your warrior? I want to come in and I certainly
can’t let go of Lung Hsin!”
“Sorry.” Ham stopped to catch up Rufus with
practiced ease in avoiding the claws the big cat had already
extended to promise battle. “Sorry, Rufe, you for the
storeroom temporarily.” He departed with the kicking and
growling cat, and Nick opened the door for the girl. She still held
the Peke who had fallen silent upon witnessing the unwilling exit
of the enemy.
“He’s mighty little to think of taking on
Rufus,” Nick commented. “Rufe would take one good swipe
at him and that would be that.”
The girl frowned. “Don’t be too sure about that!
This breed were once known as dragon dogs, lion dogs—they helped
guard palaces. For their size they’re about the bravest
animals alive. Hush now, Lung, you’ve made your point. We all
know you’re a brave, brave Dragon Heart.” The Peke shot
out a tongue and licked her cheek, then stared about him
imperiously as if, having chased the enemy from the field, this was
now his domain.
“Now what can I do for you?” Ham came back, licking
one finger where Rufus had apparently scored before being
exiled.
“I need some directions, and a couple of cases of Coke and
. . . ” She had Lung Hsin under one arm now as he no longer
fought for freedom, and with her other hand she pawed into the
depths of her shoulder bag. “Here it is,” she said with
relief. “Thought it might have gone down for the third time
and I would have to empty this thing to find it.”
She had a list ready now. “If I can just make out
Jane’s writing. She really ought to print, at least with that
you can make educated guesses. That’s right, two cases of
Coke, one of Canada Dry, one of Pepsi. And she said you’d be
holding melons—oh, I should have told you, I’m Linda Durant
and I’m picking all this up for Jane Ridgewell—they’ve
taken over the Wilson place. She said she’d call and tell
you.”
Ham nodded. “She did and I’ve got it all together.
Won’t take us long to load it up for you—” He glanced
to Nick who obligingly moved away from the counter again.
He was willing to give Ham a hand. Though they should be in no
hurry to speed this one off. This Linda was almost as tall as Nick. A lot of girls were tall
nowadays. Her hair had been tied back from her face with a twist of
bright red wool, but it was still long enough to lie on her
shoulders in very dark strands. Her skin was creamy pale. If she
tanned she had not started that process yet this season.
Her jeans were as red as her hair tie and she had a sleeveless
blouse of white and blue dolphins leaping up and down on it.
Sunglasses swung pendant from another red tie about her neck and
she wore thong sandals on her feet. He was not usually so aware of
a girl’s clothes, but these fitted her as if to complete a
picture.
Nick shouldered one of the melons Ham pointed out and took a
second under his arm, carrying them out to the waiting jeep. Ham
was busy stowing in Coke.
“Wait ’til I get some sacks,” he told Nick.
“Shake those melons around and you’ll get them stove
in.”
Linda Durant had followed them out. “That sounds,”
she commented, “as if I have a rough road ahead. You’ll
have to give directions, Jane’s are vague.”
For the first time Nick realized that she meant to travel the
Cut-Off. He glanced at Ham who looked sober. After what Ham had
just been saying—to send a stranger, and a girl, down the
Cut-Off—But if there was no other way in now—only Nick had a queer
feeling about it.
There was one thing—he could take that way, too. It was really
shorter to his own cabin when you came to think about it. And it
had been almost his whole lifetime since Ted and Ben had
disappeared. This was broad daylight and these Ridgeways must have
been up and down there maybe a hundred times since they moved in.
So, why look for monsters that did not exist?
“Look here,” Nick suggested as Ham reappeared with
sacks and newspapers and proceeded to wedge in the cargo.
“I’m heading that way. It’s rough and we’ll
have to take it slow, but if you’ll match your speed to
mine”—he motioned at the waiting bike—“I’ll guide
you in. I’m Nick—Nicholas Shaw—Mr. Hodges here knows me. My
people have had a cabin on the lake for a long tune.”
Linda gave him a long, intent survey. Then she nodded and
smiled.
“That’s fine! From what Jane said the road’s
pretty rough and I could miss it. I’m very glad of your
company.”
Ham packed the last of the papers in, and Nick gathered up his
own purchases and bagged them in a bundle he could tie over the
saddlebags. Several indignant yowls from the storeroom brought an
instant sharp response from the Peke.
Linda adjusted her sunglasses and got behind the wheel. But Ham
spoke to Nick in a low voice.
“Take it easy now. I have a funny feeling—”
“Not much else we can do if she’s going to get to
the Wilson place,” Nick pointed out.
As he gunned the bike to life he wondered what looming danger
one could watch for along the Cut-Off. No one who had ever met
whatever peril lurked there had ever returned to explain what he or
she had faced. No, Nick was not going to let his imagination take
over. He’d end up seeing a UFO or something lurking behind
every tree. He waved to Linda and swung out. She nodded and
followed.
They turned off the highway about a half-mile farther on and
Nick cut speed, concentrating on the rough surface ahead. He had
come this road enough times to memorize every rut and bump, but the
heavy rains last week would have done damage, and he had no
intention of being spilled through carelessness.
A mile and a half to the Cut-Off. In all the years he had been
coming up here he had always looked for the overgrown entrance to
what had become a sinister road to nowhere. Could she get the jeep
in there at all? But they had been using it, so they must have
cleared a passage through. July 24, 1955—he’d been too little
then to realize what had gone on. But he’d heard plenty about
it ever since. All that searching—the neighbors, the sheriff and
his deputies. And not so much as a track to tell them why two young
men in the best of health had vanished from a half-mile strip of
road one sunny morning.
They had been seen entering, had stopped and talked to Jim
Anderson about the best place to fish. Jim had been going to the
store. He had watched them turn into the Cut-Off. But they never
came out at the lake where a couple of guys were waiting to join
them.
Mouth of the Cut-Off—like a snake with jaws wide open to swallow
them down.
Nick took firm control of his imagination. If he did not see
Linda to the lake she would go by herself. And he somehow could not
let that happen and be able to look at himself in the mirror when
shaving tomorrow.
It was only a half-mile, perhaps a little more. They could run
it in minutes, even if it were rough. The sooner they got through
the better. He wondered what this Linda would say if she knew his
thoughts. She’d probably decide he’d been smoking pot.
Only when you heard about the Cut-Off all your life—well, you had a
different point of view.
He had borrowed a lot of Ham’s books, bought some of his
own, knew all the things that did happen now and then that
nobody seemed able to explain. Maybe Fort and those other writers
who hunted out such stories had the right of it. The scientists,
the brains who might have solved, or at least tried to solve, such
puzzles, refused even to look at evidence before their eyes because
it did not fit in with rational “facts.” There could be
facts that were neither rational nor logical at all.
There was the turn-off ahead. And there certainly had been
changes since the last time he was here. Looked as if someone had
run a bulldozer in to break trail. Nick gave a sigh of relief at
the raw opening. There was a healthy difference between wriggling
down an almost closed and ill-reputed trail and this open, scraped
side road, which now looked as good as the one leading to his own
cabin. He flagged the jeep as he came to a stop.
“This is it,” he called. Something in him still
shrank a little from entering that way, but he refused to admit it.
Only he continued to feel that odd uneasiness, which had come to
him earlier as he had seen Rufus watch something invisible that
Nick had been convinced against his will was there.
“Take it slow,” he cautioned, also against his will.
He wanted to take that road at the best speed they could make.
“I don’t know how good the surface is.”
“Yes.” The dark glasses masked her face. She surely
did not need them here in the shade of the trees, but she had not
let them slide off as she had at the store. The Peke was on the
seat, his forepaws resting on the dashboard, looking ahead with
some of Rufus’ intensity. He did not bark, but there was an
eagerness in every line of his small, silky body, as if he wanted
to urge them on.
Nick gunned his motor, swung into the Cut-Off, his speed well
down. The jeep snorted along behind him at hardly better than a
walking pace. The road crew had run the scraper along, but the rain
had cut gullies across, here and there, and those had not been
refilled.
The lane was all rawly new, bushes and even saplings gouged and
cut out and flung back to wither and die on either side. It looked
ugly—wrong, Nick decided. He supposed it had to be done to open up
the road, but it was queer the road crew had not cleaned up more.
Maybe the guys who had worked here knew about the sinister history
of the Cut-Off and had not wanted to stay around any longer than
they had to.
That broken stuff walled them in as if it were intended to keep
them in the middle of the road, allow them no chance to reach the
woods. Nick felt more and more trapped. Uneasiness was rising in
him so that he had to exert even more control. This was plain
stupid! He must keep a grip on his imagination. Just watch the road
for those ruts and lumps so he would not hit something—do that and
keep going. They would be there in no time at all.
It was still, not a leaf moved. But the trees arched over well
enough to keep out the sun. Probably it was very quiet, too, if the
noise of the bike and the jeep had not advertised their coming.
Advertised it to what? Nick hoped only to those in the Wilson
place.
Right ahead was the turn, a blind one. And this was a narrow
road. No place to meet anyone coming the other way. But surely they
were making enough noise—
Noise! The Peke had begun to yap, almost as when he had
challenged Rufus. Nick heard the girl call out:
“Down, Lung! Down!”
He half-turned his head, the bike hit something and wobbled.
Nick had to fight to keep it away from a mass of dying brush. But
there was something else, a cloud—like a fog trapped under the
trees. It was thickening, coming down like a blanket—fast!
Nick thought he cried out. Behind him he heard an answering
scream and a crash. Then he hit something, was thrown, and skidded
painfully into total darkness.