The Digging Leviathan (37 page)

A half hour later he was in a cab driving south down La Brea. He had to get closer to the coast. He hadn’t enough money in his wallet for a trip all the way to the peninsula, so he watched the meter fly, the cab motoring through Inglewood, Lennox, and Hawthorne—closer and closer to freedom.

Then he caught the driver’s eye in the rear view mirror. It was furtive, suspicious. “I’ll just get off at Rosecrans,” said William, gathering his gear.

“I thought you said Palos Verdes,” the driver put in, irritated.

“No,” said William. “I’ve changed my mind. This is fine.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said the driver.

Something was wrong, and dangerously so. The driver was an agent of someone—Frosticos, the police. They’d gotten to him. He was leading William into their clutches. The traffic signal at Rosecrans was green, fifty yards away. The cab accelerated. The light switched to yellow. The driver sped along, then slowed as he approached the next intersection.

“Palos Verdes it is, then,” said William. “I was just a bit nervous about money. The tip and all.”

“Don’t worry,” said the driver again. “We’re in business to make friends, not money.”

William started for his wallet, considered for half a second, then leaped from the cab, leaving the door gaping on its hinge, just as the driver pulled into the intersection.

“Hey!” shouted the driver, lurching, slamming on the brakes. Horns honked. The driver jumped out, his car stalled in the intersection. Traffic was a mess in an instant. William ran off down an alley and into a residential neighborhood, banging along with all his supplies. The cab driver hadn’t made any money on him. William laughed aloud and slowed down. He’d write a note to the company, thanking them for their friendship.

It was clearly time to disappear into the sewers. No one, apparently, could be trusted. He’d sleep for an hour or two, then travel the rest of the distance on foot. He found it impossible, though, to sleep. There was water almost everywhere, at least a little trickle—sometimes a river of it—running down the center of the pipe. Some of the tunnels were wide enough for him to stroll along comfortably above the flood, but if he tried sleeping on the curved wall of pipe, he’d have rolled down into the water as soon as he dozed off. Either that or the level of water would rise in the night and float him away. He found a dry pipe, finally, and unrolled the bag, crawling in and lying there in the darkness. He was ten or twelve miles from Palos Verdes, a distance he could cover fairly easily, even after spending three hours asleep.

He read Pince Nez in the lamplight, studying the charts, tracing the straightest route to the storm outfall south of Lu-nada Bay. Every once in a while a car rumbled past overhead, but they were fewer and fewer as the night wore on. He began to imagine that he was in a tent formed of thin, yellow light, that the darkness was a canopy around him. With the light on he could see nothing at all outside its little sphere of radiance. Several times he directed his flashlight beam into the surrounding night, illuminating nothing at all but the empty gray concrete swerve of pipe. He was surè, once, that he saw the dark bulk of some fleeing animal, just vanishing from the sudden splash of light, but when he shone the flashlight round about, searching, it had disappeared utterly. It began to seem to him as if creatures must be crouched just out of the lamplight, studying him.

No light, he decided, would be preferable to inadequate light, so he snapped off the flash, insisting to himself that he’d steep and then push on. It was nearly three in the morning. He lay fully clothed in the sleeping bag, forcing his eyes shut. Water gurgled somewhere close by. His foot began to itch. He shifted, scratching his leg, and became tangled in the bag. His shoes, somehow, insisted on gluing themselves to the cotton lining so that when he crossed or uncrossed his legs the entire bag folded over him, strapping his legs together like the wrappings of an Egyptian mummy. He turned over onto his side, and seemed to teeter there on his hipbone, grinding it against the suddenly thin bit of polyester fluff that separated him from bare concrete.

He
had
to lie still. He must focus on something. That was the key. He realized that he had been playing a tune incessantly in his head, perhaps for hours. “Ding-dong, the witch is dead; witch-o, witch-o, witch-o, witch; ding-dong the wicka-dold-witch is dead,” over and over again. He didn’t have the foggiest notion what the rest of the words were or whether the song had another verse. But there it was, maddeningly, appearing and reappearing, playing and replaying. He’d try counting backwards; that sometimes worked.

But in the middle of his counting he heard a noise—he was certain of it—away down the sewer. He’d heard the echo of something, of hasty footfalls or of the scrabbling of animals. And it wasn’t the first time he’d heard it. He had fancied, in fact, the faint sounds of pursuit shortly after he’d eluded the cab driver on Rosecrans. But the sounds vanished almost as soon as he paid them any heed.

He shined the flashlight into the darkness, but in the thirty feet of its influence there was nothing. He clicked it off, lay there breathing shallowly, and listened. There it was again—a faint scraping, the pad of quiet feet. It was impossible to say whether it was behind him or before him. He flipped the light on once more, hoping to surprise whoever—whatever—it was that
approached
. He wondered if lamplight would ward off wild beasts the way firelight was supposed to. He couldn’t at all see why it should. It would simply make him visible. They knew by now exactly where he was, perhaps that he lay completely immobile in a sleeping bag. He was a sitting duck.

He slipped the bag down toward his waist, sitting up and putting on his miner’s helmet. He had to shake it to get it to
work at all. Latzarel had fiddled the thing half to death, probably. He waited and listened. Something was impending. He could feel it along his spine. He shared the ability with Chinese laboratory pigs. The sewer was dead silent and absolutely dark. He slipped the bag over the tips of his shoes, hauling himself into a crouch. He groped around for Pince Nez and shoved it into his backpack, which he slung over his shoulder. He squinted fiercely, dying to pierce the gloom. There it was again—the scraping and padding, just a few short steps that came to an abrupt halt. Then silence. It was in front of him. Lord knew what it was: a blind sewer pig? A boa constrictor as big around as a cow? He gripped his flashlight in his right hand, holding his breath, reaching with his left hand for the switch on the helmet.

He could hear breathing, unnaturally loud. It might have been a foot from his face, an inch. He flipped the switch on the helmet. A quick flash of light burst out, cut off in an instant with an audible click. It illuminated the black tunnel of the sewer in one frozen moment and was gone. Disappearing with it, back into darkness, was the pale standing figure of the white-suited Hilario Frosticos, clutching a black bag of instruments, smiling impassively, a smile devoid of all meaning.

There wasn’t a sound following the night-shattering click of the useless helmet. No footsteps rushed toward William. There was only utter darkness and silence. William was empty. His chest seemed suddenly hollow. His legs disappeared. He felt himself tottering forward onto his knees, caving in. He fought against it, expecting at any moment to be seized. And it was that moment, when he would first feel the probing, clutching fingers that he feared the most. He was possessed with the urge to crawl into his sleeping bag and yank it over his head, holding it shut from within. But he didn’t. He couldn’t move in any direction, since in the absolute, haunted darkness, all directions were equally threatening. He stood and quaked, his knees bent. Nothing stirred.

Had it been an illusion? Had he been asleep? Dreamed it? Leaped to his feet in fright? He held his flashlight in his right hand—a puny weapon, risible. He couldn’t bear to wait in the darkness. He suddenly couldn’t bear the darkness at all. But if he switched on the light and saw again what he thought he’d seen a moment before. … He clutched the backpack in his left hand, and slowly raised his right arm. He could imagine
the sudden clutching of his wrist and the doctor’s cold laugh. Or worse, fingers without warning on his throat.

He flipped the switch, A cone of light played out, revealing nothing. A dark veil of night lay beyond. A car bumped along the road overhead, an absolutely friendly and substantial sound that lent momentary substance to the otherwise empty night-land. William had no idea how far from a manhole cover he was, but he intended to find out. Damn the cumbersome sleeping bag. He’d leave it. It was four in the morning anyway. He’d head straightaway for Palos Verdes.

Suddenly he was struck with the cold fear that Frosticos had somehow gotten round behind him—that he was at that moment slipping up, smiling. William dropped the pack, whirled around, and with a single sweep of his arm, flung his useless helmet straight as an arrow down the center of the pipe at head level. If anyone had been there … but no one was. The helmet bounced, skittered along, then spun to a dizzy stop just out of sight in the darkness. William was after it with his pack and flashlight, loping along. To hell with looking over his shoulder. If Frosticos were ten paces behind, William didn’t want to know. Either they’d catch him or they wouldn’t.

He stormed up onto a manhole almost at once and passed it in his haste. He didn’t go back. There’d be another. But when the next appeared, he sailed past it too, not because he saw it too late, but because he was making awfully good time. Fear had lent him impossible stamina. If he paused to climb out they’d be on him. If they were there. If they weren’t, he’d find himself traveling unknown streets at four in the morning. He’d be taken in minutes. And if he were to hide from passing cars, to dart in and out of bushes, to slow up and pretend to simply be taking an early morning constitutional, he’d never get to Palos Verdes.

They’d leave without him. His life would be through. There would be nothing for it, he realized, but to turn himself in, and that would mean, like as not, a return to the sanitarium and to some inconceivable fate. He’d get to Palos Verdes if he had to run all the way. By God, he’d the in the attempt. Just how he’d the he didn’t know, but they’d find him a rough customer. That much was certain.

He dug into his backpack as he jogged along, yanking out his compass. He was heading south beneath Hawthorne Boulevard, straight as an arrow toward the coast highway. Abruptly
the sound of pursuing shoes, of someone running along in his wake, joined the clatter of his own shoes on the concrete. He was sure of it. Stopping would reveal the truth, unless, of course, the pursuer were to stop too. There’d be time enough for stopping later, though. In a few minutes he’d be compelled to stop. But at least then he might be a mile closer to his goal, whatever that was worth. And when he did it wouldn’t be to give up. He determined to launch an attack of his own.

He’d run until he was played out. Then, with the last dregs of energy, he’d spin around and run full on into the face of his surprised attacker. He’d smash his head with the flashlight—break his teeth in. He pulled the backpack over his arms so as to free his left hand. Then he dug his penknife out of his pocket and opened the blade as he ran along. If Frosticos had blood in his veins, William would see the color of it shortly.

He gasped for breath, digging deeply into his lungs each time. In another minute or two he’d simply collapse. His flashlight had burned down to a muddy yellow which brightened momentarily when he shook it. In the dark, heaving for breath, he’d be a useless wreck. It was time. William stopped and tried to spin round, but it was a weary, plodding spin, and he realized right away that he hadn’t the strength left to lunge at anyone. He collapsed over forward, staggered a few feet, and shined the weakened light down the tunnel, his knife open and ready. Darkness stared back at him. He waited, enveloped in dread, but nothing appeared out of the black.

Finally he turned and staggered on. He’d run again, he decided, as soon as he caught his breath. But ten minutes later he was still walking wearily, wishing he’d been able to sleep for the two hours he’d lain awake in his bag. His flashlight wouldn’t last another ten minutes. He shook it and banged it to keep it alive, knowing that at any moment he’d have to stop and shove in the batteries he’d bought earlier on Spring Street. And that would mean a minute of absolute darkness, maybe more. What were the odds that he’d get the batteries in right end forward? What if he dropped one and had to go groping after it? But he had no choice. The light, finally, died, and wouldn’t be thumped back to life.

He pulled off his backpack and groped for the batteries, tearing at the plastic that encased them, cursing himself for not having opened them hours earlier so as to be ready. He stopped and listened, imagining he could hear the faint scrape of
footsteps back up the corridor. He fumbled with the batteries, feeling for the little knobs on the end. The spring and bulb tumbled out of the cap onto the concrete, rolling, no doubt, toward the water that ran six inches deep down the pipe. William scrambled for them, reaching and groping in the darkness, gripped by a growing dread and a tense anticipation of the pressure of a hand on his back. He found them, juggled them along with the new batteries in his left hand, and swung the flashlight cylinder in a broad arc with his right, the batteries within sailing out and thudding away down the pipe. He dropped in the fresh batteries, listening for footfalls, but hearing nothing. He twisted on the cap, flicked on the switch, and spun around, flooding the tunnel with light. No one was there. It must have been his imagination. He shouldered his pack and walked on, still clutching his knife and remembering suddenly, five minutes too late, the penlight in his pack. He’d panicked. Lost his mind. He would have to get a grip on himself and think things through.

Every hundred feet or so he passed the mouth of perpendicular tunnels, keeping well away from each even if it meant slogging through water. He shined his light into each methodically, simply for the sake of knowing there was nothing there. And then, when William passed his light across the dark circle of another adjoining pipe, there stood, well up into it, the doctor. He was clearly not a product of William’s imagination. William didn’t have to pinch himself. He hadn’t any time to. He was off like a shot, any plans for a sudden assault on Frosticos, for getting a grip on himself, abandoned.