Lost (27 page)

“Yes,” she said before she realized how it would sound. “Oh, Walter, no, it's not that. I just don't want anybody to get hurt any more.”

She did not know how long she drove. The bleary lights trickled away and the highway narrowed to an asphalt road among hills. This isn't right, she thought; this isn't the highway. Somewhere she had missed a turn or turned once too often. She slowed and went on, looking for a wide place where she could turn the car around.

The road was packed with snow. She wasn't aware that they were riding on ice until she felt the back end of the car slip to the side. Quickly she turned the wheel against the slide and for a moment the car seemed to correct itself. Then the rear end spun out completely and the Buick was gliding sideways down the road in a smooth, effortless slant.

She turned the wheel to no avail. She pumped the brakes but couldn't stop the skid. Stunned, she realized they were sliding crosswise down a long, gradual slope. In front of her, the headlights ghosted through a snowy wire fence to nothing. And the children were sitting up, sleepy and puzzled. “What happened?” they asked. “Where are we?”

Very little time had passed. She could tell by the drift of the car that they were headed for the snowbank edging the road. When they hit it, the impact would at least slow them or maybe even stop them. “Get up here,” she said, throwing them a glance, both her hands clenched on the wheel. “Walter, you and Mamie get up here beside Patsy.” If she tried to get them out through the driver's door, they would fall in the path of the car. “Come on,” she commanded. “Quick, get up here!”

They were climbing over the seat when the Buick jolted into the snowbank. With its back end dragging through the snow, the car crested forward, temporarily slowed. All at once, she had a terrible premonition of what was to come. She strained past the three of them and pushed the passenger door open. “Get out!” she cried. “I can't get it to stop. Go! Get out! Get out!” Patsy jumped out and fell. “Go, Mamie. Quick, get out!” Mamie jumped. Walter scooted to the edge of the seat, but hesitated; Leona had to push him out.

With a faint tamping of snow, the car straightened along the raised spine of the road and gained speed. She reached for the doorway herself but everything dipped—the headlights, the nose of the car, the track of her eyes—and she knew she was moving much too fast.

Brush and gravel scraped the undercarriage with a scattering noise and then nothing, no sound. The road lay in a steep trough, one side shelved with stone slabs, the other side woods. She could see ice, full plates of ice, where the wind had blown the road smooth and luminous. And in between the plates of ice, drifts of purest silver.

The front end of the Buick was already sliding when it hit the first expanse of ice and sped forward. The foreground of shelved sandstone went by in a blur. She tried to stop the car; she pressed down on the brake with all her strength. “Please,” she moaned, “please, God, get me out of this.”

The Buick crashed like a bullet against a wall of snow six feet high. Glass shattered. The steering wheel wrenched from her hands so quickly that both her wrists snapped and throbbed. She grabbed the wheel and jammed down on the brakes, again using the full power of her body. But the car erupted onto the ice once more. Ice as far as she could see. And it was like moving out across the mute drum of the universe.

Then she realized that the land was falling away. The empty roar of the engine came to her and she knew the car was aloft, flying through the air.

Suddenly before her staring eyes, the concrete sidewalls of a bridge jutted through the night. In a thunderous crash landing, the Buick straddled one of the walls and flew forth as if on a rail. She was pitched forward. Her body crumpled, her head smacked the windshield glass, and she was slammed back. Like a spent meteor, the car spewed a few feet down the concrete length, the gutting of the undercarriage awesome. In the midst of the jarring clatter, the door flew open and Leona was thrown out into the snow, unconscious.

Then, silence.

Snow fell off the trees. Water in the creek below trickled on its way. The wind whined on the road and under the bridge it snored like sleep itself. Perched delicately atop the low girder, the old blue car groaned and tottered and fell, crashing into the snow. The quiet of the woods resumed.

Still brushing the snow from their clothes, the children scurried to the bridge and down the bank. One by one they went to her, the three of them gathering to look down on the woman who had watched over them as they slept and saved them from the wreck. She was sprawled face up on the snowbank among some brush, her arms flung wide as if to greet the heavens. There was blood on her face. They stood as if spellbound. Then, bending down, Mamie reached out and touched the blood on Leona's forehead. After a moment she drew away. Slowly she turned and beckoned the others to follow. And they left her lying there.

Leaning into the wind, the three children set off down the moon-swept road that vanished in the waiting trees.

PART THREE

14

Night branches swooped down at them; shadows darted across the phantom road in a crazy web, surrounding them, flickering over them. And the moon chased through the sky, appearing and disappearing in clouds. Once, Patsy cried out, “I can't see. I can't see nothing!” She groped for the other two children and fell silent, overcome with the immensity of their solitude.

One by one, they sobbed for breath, shuddering from the cold and to keep from breaking down completely. Each child's face was stricken, on the verge of crying out. They ran a few steps, then walked, huddled, then split apart, their shoes creaking through the snow.

Slowly, Patsy and Walter began to whisper to each other; then more excitedly they debated what to do, their voices growing loud and edgy. “Let's go back and wait till somebody comes,” Walter pleaded. “Who else'll take care of us?” Hurrying along beside them, Mamie kept quiet, paying no attention to their argument. Walter craned his head back, then drew it down inside his coat collar like a turtle. “Please,” he said. “Come on. We gotta go back there.”

“No,” Patsy said, her voice sharp, surprisingly vehement. “Let's get outa here! There's monsters out here! Can't you hear 'em?”

“I do,” Walter said. “I hear 'em. That's why we gotta go back.”

“I won't go back. I have to go home.
There was blood on her!
I saw it. Didn't you see it?
Blood?
I did.”

“But we'll get lost,” Walter said. “We're all gonna get
real lost
. And
freeze to death
.”

From the woods by the road came a wild thrashing of sticks and twigs, bushes stamped on, stones clattering. Terrified, the children wheeled toward the violent noise. “See?” Patsy exclaimed, “There
is
something out there!
See?
I toldja.” But the wind howled in their ears, drowning any recurrence of the sound. Together they moved backward, staring toward the dark place where the noise had been. No one spoke. They exchanged frightened looks, and Mamie turned, hurrying farther and farther away down the white winter road, and the other two children fell in behind her. “What
was
that?” Patsy asked quietly.

“Don't know,” Walter said, his voice strange. They crossed a bridge of snow-covered planks that bounced lightly under their feet. The wind blew from the trees; it was as if the storm had never stopped. “It's that monster,” Patsy decided. “It's watching us. It's gonna get us. It's
gonna get us!
” Uncontrollably she began to chant it, each word gasped and quivering, “
It's gonna get us! It's gonna get us!
”

Suddenly behind them, on the far side of the bridge they had crossed, the snowy bushes combusted in a furious spasm. Like a wild engine of snow and wind, something swung out onto the road and raced at them. “Run!” Walter shouted. “
Run! Run!
” They scattered down the empty length of road but the whirlwind quickly engulfed them. Shrieking, they pitched into the snow-ditch weeds; then as the churned-up snow sifted down around them, the terrible presence materialized under the moonlight: a deer, ice-frocked and majestic, stood at the edge of the road. For a split second, the children thought they shouldn't be afraid, but the deer was so big and domineering—the air around them shook with the snorted blasts from his black nostrils.

Regal and towering, the buck loomed over them. The massive expanse of his chest twitched with packed energy. The sight of it drew away what little courage the children had left and held their eyes suspended in terrified wonder. Lifted very high and erect, the murderous points of its antlers gleamed yellow-tipped. In a rush of nervous muscle, its hooves stabbed the snow and the buck took an abrupt step forward, snorting white streams. Frightened beyond limits they could endure, the children whimpered and squirmed back from the animal. For something so large, the deer's carriage was tipsy and delicate. The ponderous crown of killing bone tipped and nodded lightly, then grew still. His black liquid eyes studied the night above them. With a long slow droop of his mighty head, the buck peered at them and they saw the pure cruelty of his eyes. They moaned for breath. Immediately, without any noticeable gathering of power, the buck vaulted over them and thudded away into the night.

The glittering silence returned to the road.

Badly shaken, the children climbed from the ditch. As they dusted the snow from their clothes, Mamie finally spoke. She was every bit as frightened as they were, but what she told them that night changed the way they thought of her for a very long time. It was the night she told them about Sherman.

The cold wind wailed in the trees like a continuous lament of voices. When it blew very hard, it nearly lifted the children, as if to push them on their way. In the dull moonlight, Mamie's eyes looked smoke-colored. She was shivering, too, walking fast beside the others, but the small features of her face were determined and hard-set. She said they couldn't get away by themselves, but that someone was coming after them, to take them away. She would tell them a secret, she said, if they would cross their hearts. They drew X's on their coats. The cold, cutting wind blew; they turned their backs to it; their teeth chattered, yet they went on. Mamie told them what had happened that afternoon in the motel drive, that she had seen the Chinaman with her brother Sherman. She asked them if they had seen the dog, and they said they had. “The one that hurt her,” Walter said, and Mamie nodded. “That was the Chinaman,” she said, “and I used to give him sugar.” She cringed against the cold, her voice shaky. Hurriedly she told them about her house burning up, fire everywhere, and she got out of it and Sherman got out, but nobody else did, not her mommy or her daddy or Toddy—all killed in it. And how Sherman had come to get her in the hospital, but that woman, Leona, took her away instead.

Their eyes were apprehensive, yet they were mesmerized by her sudden revelations. Then she told them her awful truth, the fearful thing she had kept swallowed up inside her these many weeks. “If you tell—if you say anything, people will think you're crazy. That's what the nurse told me.
So don't ever tell
. They'll put you in a room with other crazy people in it, without any doors or windows, and you can't never get out. You can't come home or go anyplace, cause they won't letcha. Because people will think you're crazy. If you tell …” She saw the terribleness of it strike them and sink through them, and afterward they looked about, almost incoherent with their imaginings.

“Will we go to jail?” Walter asked finally, his face contorted with dread.

“It's like jail,” Mamie said, “only you can't never get out.” Afraid of what she said, they scooted away from her and shuddered, drawing their coats tighter about them. They went over a hill that seemed large to them and down the other side of it. Then, deep in trees, they saw the lighted windows.

“Remember,” Mamie said, “not to tell. If you do, they'll call the police and take us away.”

At the two mailboxes they turned down the snow-flattened lane. As they passed the barn, Patsy lagged behind. “I'm not goin' over there,” she said, staring at the tall dark eaves of the house some distance away. “What if there's witches in there? What if it's like that story? I don't want to be changed into something.” They looked at each other, then across the lot strewn with chicken pens and stacks of firewood. It was snowing again, the air suddenly dense and white.

“There's no place else,” Walter said. “Look all around. There's no place else but this one.”

“Patsy, we can't wait to go home out here,” Mamie said. “There's not been any cars go by. Not even one.”

“Yeah,” Walter said, “and we're freezin'.”

They passed the scatter of sheds and outbuildings and pens and came to the gate in the picket fence that surrounded the house. Their mittens and gloves closed on the wooden latch and turned it, and they crossed the flawless snow to the screen door. “What was that?” Patsy said, and ran back to the other side of the gate. Walter shrugged. “I didn't hear nuthin',” he said.

The screen door led to a dark, screened-in porch cluttered with tools and washtubs, old harnesses and horse collars, a pump built into a box. When they knocked on the door, it clapped in the frame. “They can't hear us,” Mamie said. Cupping their hands to the sides of their eyes, Mamie and Walter peeked through the screen and saw two other doors, one on either side of the enclosed entryway. “I'm not goin' in there,” Patsy said, standing outside the gate. “You can't make me.”

“Me neither,” Walter said. “It's scary in there.”

“Somebody has to,” Mamie said. “Remember, don't tell.”

They dug the ends of their gloved fingers into the crack of the door until they could squeeze it open, and Mamie stepped up across the stone threshold, crept to the door inside the porch, struck it with her fist, and dashed back. They closed the screen door and stood there, shivering, peering in.