The Shrinking Man (27 page)

“Oh, my God.” The horror of the situation was billowing in his mind. He turned and looked out fearfully at the snow-swept yard. Everything was dazzling white. The ground was a livid desert of snow, the wind blowing powdery mists of it across the high dunes. The trees
were vast white columns topped with skeleton-white branches and limbs. The fence was a leprous barricade, wind ripping off snowy flesh, exposing the bony pickets underneath.

Realization came bluntly: if he stayed out here very long, he’d freeze to death. Already his feet felt like lead, his fingers ached and tingled from the cold, his body was alive with shudders.

Indecision tore at him. Should he remain and try to get in, or should he leave the porch and seek shelter from the snow and wind? Instinct bound him to the house. Safety lay on the other side of the white, paneled door. Yet intelligent observation made it clear that to remain was to risk his life. Where could he go, though? The cellar windows were locked from the inside, the doors were much too heavy for him to lift. And it would be no warmer underneath the porch.

The front porch! If somehow he could climb the front-porch railing, he might be able to reach the bell. Then he could get in.

Still he hesitated. The snow looked deep and frightening. What if he were swallowed in a drift? What if he got so cold he never reached the front porch?

But he knew it was his only chance, and the decision had to be made quickly. There was no guarantee that his absence would be noted soon enough. If he stayed here on the back porch, Lou might find him in time. But she might not, too.

Gritting his teeth, he moved to the edge of the porch and jumped down to the first step. Piled snow cushioned his drop. He slipped a little, regained his balance, and scuffed to the edge of the step. He jumped again.

His feet slid out from under him and he spilled forward, arms plunging into the snow to his shoulders, face slapping into its flesh-numbing chill. He jerked up, gagging, and stood with a lurching movement, brushing at his face as if it swarmed with icicle-legged spiders.

There was no time to waste. Quickly he moved to the edge of the step, putting down his feet carefully. He poised at the brink a moment, looking down, then, with a quick breath, jumped.

Again he skidded, arms striking at the air. He slid to the side edge of the step, held on for a moment, then pitched into space.

Four feet down, his body plowed into a cone of snow like a knife driven into ice cream. Frost crystals floured across his face and
down his neck. He pushed up, spluttering, then fell again, legs imbedded in the icy packing. He lay there, stunned, snow clouds powdering over him.

Then cold began creeping up his limbs and he pushed to his feet. He had to keep moving.

He couldn’t run. The best he could manage was a sort of lurching, staggering walk, feet torn loose from the clinging snow, then put down again, his body hitching forward as his legs sank in. As he flopped across the yard, the wind whipped his hair to lashing ribbons and tore at his clothes, cutting through the material like frozen blades. Already his feet and hands were going numb.

At last he reached the corner of the house. In the far distance he saw the covered bulk of the Ford, its tarpaulin covered with scattered peaks of snow. A groan wavered in his throat. It was so far. He sucked in a mouthful of the lip-chilling air and lurched forward again. I’ll make it, he told himself. I’ll make it.

An object spilled across the sky like a plummeting stone.

One moment there was only wind and cold and thigh-deep snow. The next, a weight had crushed against him suddenly, knocking him down. His face a snow-cottoned mass of shock he flung himself over just in time to see the dark sparrow diving at him again.

Gasping, he flung up an arm as the bird flashed over him, swooping up on rigid wings. It shot into the air, circled sharply, and came at him again. Before he’d reached his feet, it was hovering before him, so close that he could smell its wet feathers. Its wings beat savagely at the air; the double sabers of its beak lunged at him.

He fell back again, snatching up a handful of snow and flinging it at the sparrow’s head. It rose into the air, chattering fiercely, whirled about in a tight arc, then began to circle him in narrow, blurring sweeps, dark wings beating.

Scott’s stark gaze jumped to the house, and he saw the cellar window and the missing pane.

Then the bird was at him again. He flung himself forward on the snow, and the dark, wing-flashing bulk shot over him. The sparrow swooped up, circled sharply, then bulleted back. Scott ran a few feet, then was knocked over again.

He stood up, flinging more snow at the bird, seeing the snow splatter off its dark, flaring beak. The bird flapped back. Scott turned and
struggled a few more strides, then the bird was on him again, wet wings pounding at his head. He slapped wildly at it and felt his hands strike the bony sides of its beak. It flew off again.

It went on like that endlessly. He would leap through the icy snow until he heard its wing-drumming approach. Then, falling to his knees, he would whirl and fling a cloud of snow into its eyes, blinding it, driving it off long enough to push on a few more inches.

Until, finally, cold and dripping, he stood with his back to the cellar window, hurling snow at the bird in the desperate hope that it would give up and he wouldn’t have to jump into the imprisoning cellar.

But the bird kept coming, diving at him, hovering before him, the sound of its wings like that of wet sheets flapping in a heavy wind. Suddenly the jabbing beak was hammering at his skull, slashing skin, knocking him back against the house. He stood there dazedly, waving his arms in panic at the bird’s attack. The yard swam before him, a billowing mist of white. He picked up snow and threw it, missing. The wings were still beating at his face; the beak gashed his flesh again.

With a stricken cry, Scott whirled and leaped for the open square. He crawled across it dizzily. The leaping bird knocked him through.

He fell, clawing, his screams ending with a breathless grunt as he crashed down on the sand beneath the cellar window. He tried to stand, but he had twisted his leg in falling and it refused now to bear his weight.

Ten minutes later he heard running footsteps up above. The back door opened and slammed shut. And all the while he lay there in a snarl of limbs. Lou and Beth walked around the house and through the yard, trampling down the snow, calling his name over and over until darkness fell. And they didn’t stop even then.

In the distance he could hear the thumping of the water pump. They forgot to turn it off. The thought trickled like cold honey across the fissures of his brain. He stared with vacant eyes, his face a blank. The pump clicked off, and silence draped down across the cellar. They’re gone, he thought. The house is empty. I’m alone.

His tongue stirred sluggishly. Alone. His lips moved. The word began and ended in his throat.

He twisted slightly and felt a stirring of pain in the back of his skull. Alone. His right fist twitched and thumped once at the cement. Alone. After everything. After all his efforts, he was alone in the cellar.

He pushed up finally, then sank down instantly as pain seemed to tear open the back of his head. Lying there, he reached up gingerly and touched a finger to the spot. He traced the edges of the brittle lacework of dried blood; his fingertip ascended and descended the parabola of the lump. He prodded it once. He groaned and dropped his arm. He lay there on his stomach, feeling the cold, rough cement against his forehead.

Alone.

Finally he rolled over and sat up. Pain rolled sluggishly around the inside of his head. It did not stop quickly. He had to press the palms of his hands against his temples to cushion its stabbing rebound. After a long while it stopped and dragged down at the base of his skull, spikes sunk in his flesh. He wondered if his skull were fractured, then decided that, if it were, he would be in no condition to wonder about it.

He opened his eyes and looked around the cellar with pain-slitted eyes. Everything was still the same. His dismal gaze moved over the
familiar landmarks. And I thought I was going to get out, he thought bitterly. He looked up over his shoulder with a wince. The door was closed again, of course. And locked too, probably. He was still trapped.

His chest shuddered with a long exhalation. He licked his dry lips. And he was thirsty again too, and hungry. It was all senseless.

Even the slight amount of tensing in his jaws sent pain gnawing through his head. He opened his mouth and sat limply until the aching had diminished.

When he stood, it came back again. He pressed one palm against the face of the next step and leaned against it, the cellar wavering before him as though he saw it through a lens of water. It took a while for objects to appear clearly.

He shifted on his feet and hissed, discovering that his knee was swollen again. He glanced down at its puffiness, remembering that it was the leg that had been injured in his original fall into the cellar. Odd that he’d never made the connection, but that was undoubtedly why that leg always weakened first.

He remembered lying on the sand, the leg twisted under him, while outside Lou was calling him. It was night and the cellar had been dark and cold. Wind had blown snow confetti through the broken pane. It had drifted down across his face, feeling like the timid, withdrawing touches of ghostly children. And, though he answered her and answered her, she never heard him. Not even when she came down into the cellar and, unable to move, he had lain there, crying out her name.

He walked slowly to the edge of the step and looked down the hundred-foot drop to the floor. A terrible distance. Should he labor down the mortar-crack chimney or—

Abruptly, he jumped.

He landed on his feet. His knee seemed to explode and a knife-edged club smashed across his brain as he fell forward to his hands. But that was all. Shaken, he sat on the floor, smiling grimly despite the pain. It was a good thing he’d discovered that he could fall so far without being hurt. If he hadn’t discovered it, he would have had to climb down the chimney and wasted time. The smile faded. He stared morosely at the floor. Time was no longer something to be wasted, because it was no longer something to be saved. It was no longer a commodity to be spent or hoarded. It had lost all value.

He got up and started walking, feet padding softly over the cold
cement. Should have got the sponge shoes, he thought. Then he shrugged carelessly. What did it matter, anyway?

He got himself a drink from the hose, then returned to the sponge. He didn’t feel hungry, after all. He climbed to the top of the sponge and lay back with a thin sigh.

He lay there inertly, staring up at the window over the fuel tank. There was no sunlight visible. It must be late afternoon. Soon darkness would fall. Soon the last night would begin.

He looked at the twisted latticework of a spider web that blocked off one corner of the window. Many things hung from its adhesive weave—dust, bugs, bit of dead leaf, even a stubby pencil he had thrown up there once. In all his time in the cellar he’d never seen the spider that made that web. He didn’t see it now.

Silence hung over the cellar. They must have turned off the oil heater before they left. There was that faint crackling, creaking sound of warping boards, but that couldn’t even scratch the surface of the silence. He could hear his own breath, uneven and slow.

Through that window, he thought, I watched that girl. Catherine; was that her name? He couldn’t even recall what she’d looked like.

He’d also tried to get up to that window after he’d fallen into the cellar. It had been the only one available. The window with the broken pane was too far above the sand, only a vertical wall beneath it. The window over the log pile was even less accessible. The only one that had presented the slightest possibility had been the one over the fuel tank.

But, at seven inches, he hadn’t been able to climb the boxes and suitcases. And, by the time he’d found the means, he was too small. He’d gone up there once, but, without a stone, he’d been unable to break the pane and had had to go down again.

He rolled over on his side and turned away from the window. It was unbearable to see sky and trees and know he’d never be out there again. He breathed heavily, staring at the cliff wall.

And here I am, he thought, back to morbid introspection again; all action undone. This could have ended long ago. But he had had to fight it. Climb threads, kill spiders, look for food. He clamped his mouth shut and stared at the long net pole leaning against the cliff wall, the long pole leaning against the wall. His gaze moved along the pole leaning against the wall, the long pole leaning against the wall.

He jerked up suddenly.

With a breathless grunt, he scrambled to the edge of the sponge and jumped down, ignoring the pain in his knee and head. He started racing for the cliff wall, stopped. What about water and food? Never mind, he wouldn’t need it; it wasn’t going to take that long. He ran toward the pole again.

Before he reached the net, he ran into the hose and got a drink. Then, running out again, he began to shinny up the metal rim of the net past the body-thick cords. He climbed until he’d reached the pole, then pulled himself up onto its wide, curving surface.

It was better than he’d imagined. The pole was so wide and it was leaning against the wall at such a low angle that he wouldn’t have to clamber up, hands down, for support. He could almost run erect up the long, gradual slope. With an excited cry he started up the road to the cliff.

Was it possible, he wondered as he ran, that things had worked out in a definite manner? Was it possible that there was purpose to his survival? It was hard to believe, and yet, in a greater measure, hard to disbelieve. All the coincidences that had contributed to his survival seemed to go beyond the limits of probability.

This, for instance; this pole thrown here in just this way by his own brother. Was that only chance? And the spider’s death yesterday providing the final key to his escape. Was that only chance? Most importantly, the two occurrences combining in just this way to make possible his escape. Could it be only coincidence?