Fool on the Hill (43 page)

ON THE ROAD

I.

Far west of Ithaca, in the uncharted wasteland of rural Ohio, Luther was talking to the Devil.

A full chronicle of the mongrel’s travels from the Wisconsin outback would make a book in itself. Suffice it to say that the weather, the great distance, and the lack of companionship had made it a much harsher journey than his and Blackjack’s initial Heaven-trek. Not the least of the obstacles in Luther’s path had been Lake Michigan, which had balked him for over a week. Then one night a beautiful woman with a voice like music and a silver whistle on a chain around her throat had led him onto a ship in Milwaukee Harbor; he had crossed to the far shore in a cargo hold laden with case upon case of Meisterbrau, a ready wet dream if only Z.Z. Top could have been there. He had scavenged his way through Michigan and down to the Buckeye State, where this morning a quick-handed dairy farmer had tried to indoctrinate him into the ranks of the domesticated. The fellow had actually got a rope leash around Luther’s neck when the dog broke and ran, charging across frost-covered pasture while a shadowy groundhog looked on in alarm. A quarter mile flew by and then Luther, rope still trailing behind him, leapt through a stand of bushes and discovered—surprise!—a low, steep bank and a slow-moving river beyond. He had plunged toward the water, only to be jerked back when the end of the makeshift leash caught on a bush.

Luther did not know what sort of swimmer he would have made, but at the moment it was the leash that was the greatest threat to him. The river bank turned out to be crumbly and unclimbable; unable to go up or down, Luther perched precariously near the water’s edge and fought to keep his balance. The wind came, cajoling the bush into lifting its branches, drawing the leash noose-tight.

Beginning to choke, Luther gazed into the depths of the river as if he expected it to rise up out of its bed and untie him. The river’s only response
was to show him a picture of a silly little dog with a rope around its throat. Luther turned away and tried to scramble up the bank. The bank tumbled him over, slid him right back down; now he was nose to nose with the other dog, and the leash had pulled so tight that neither of them could breathe at all.

As he watched, the image in the water rippled and began to change. It grew; no longer was it a tousled mongrel, but a Purebred, large, white, and sharp of tooth. Luther tried to back away but could not. His old nemesis addressed him in tones of brash fury, bold and triumphant.

Mange!
he cried.

“Dragon . . .” Luther’s legs seemed to flow out from under him. “No.”

Did you think I forgot you, mange? I didn’t. You’re all I think about. And I’m coming for you.

“You can’t. The ‘catchers took you . . .”

They took me,
Dragon agreed.
They
took me and put me in a cage, and there was a mange there just like you, and what do you suppose I did to him? I’m in another cage now, but I’ll get out. I’m almost out already.

“No. You’ll never find me, even if you do get out.”

Of course I’ll find you. We’re both going to the same place, but I’m closer. I’ll kill the cat first, and when you get to The Hill I’ll be waiting there with his corpse.
. . .

A sudden gust of wind drew the rope so tight that Luther became convinced his head had separated from the rest of his body. Tears filled his eyes, and as darkness drew down around him he found himself facing another apparition, infinitely large, a feral hound composed entirely of light and shadow. Its eyes were the color of mortality.

You know who I am, don’t you, dog child?
the Hound thought into him. Terror and wonder warred for Luther’s attention.

“Raaq,” he answered. “You’re Raaq, you’re the Deceiver, you’re the Devil.”

I am Raaq,
the Hound agreed.
The Ender of Life. When should I end your life, dog child? Today? Now?

“No,” Luther pleaded. “I have to get back—back to Heaven.”

The Hound made a sound like human laughter.
Heaven. And what will you do there, when your enemy comes? Will you fight to save your life? Kill, if necessary?

“I’ll never kill another dog. Whatever it costs me. I won’t let you into my heart.”

It’s not your heart I’m after
. . .
how little you understand me. But as for this place you think of as Heaven, what makes you think you deserve to return there? You were given Questions, I believe.
. . .

“Questions?”

Surely you remember. Five Questions they gave you. How many answers have you found, dog child? Do you know the nature of the Divine? The meanings of life and love?

Luther had no answers. His mind, his self, was dwindling down to a point, a candle flame which must soon be snuffed out.

What about the Fourth Question, dog child?

“Fourth . . . ?”

The Fourth Question. Answer me, dog child: Which is the superior breed of canine?

“Superior breed?” Old anger flared, giving Luther a last surge of strength. His reply was swift and indignant: “The superior breed of canine is the breed that admits it can’t answer the Fourth Question, because there is no answer and it’s a bad Question in the first place. Which must make me the superior breed.”

And what breed are you, dog child?

Dwindling: “No breed at all.”

Again, the sound like human laughter.

Live a little longer, then.

Somewhere Else, a rope loosed itself from a branch; Luther plunged head first into the river. For a moment all was struggling and water, and next he was lying on the far bank, the leash gone from around his neck.

The mongrel’s senses came back slowly. When they did, his first thought was not of the Devil, but of the Purebred.

I’ll kill the cat first.

“Blackjack.”

Luther was back on the Road as soon as he could walk.

II.

Tyson Riddle, a Class Two animal handler at the Adams Research Station, had once dated a vegetarian for a period lasting about two weeks. Actually, he tended to think of it as simple fucking rather than something more fancy, for he was damned if he’d ever held the slightest shred of respect for the woman. Busty, yes, but more than a little too educated for Riddle’s taste, and when she said she wasn’t a meat-cater, she meant it in every way possible. Their fling had ended in a scuffle during lunch one afternoon—he’d been stewing a clam, she slicing a cucumber—when Riddle pointed out testily that the average meat source could at least put up a token defense, scream or whatever when you went to kill it, whereas a typical fruit or vegetable didn’t have such options. Exasperated with the bargain-basement I.Q. she’d been sharing a bed with, the vegetarian set her pacifist ideals aside for a moment and became violent. After a brief exchange of kitchen utensils and other not-nailed-down objects, the two sweethearts slapped each other good-bye and went their separate ways.

Now, sipping coffee in the Research Station’s receiving office and licking
his lips over this month’s “lesbian” pictorial in
Penthouse,
Tyson Riddle was reminded of the long-lost Lady Meatless by a coincidental birthmark, and felt a certain warmth from the knowledge that at this very institution, animals were tortured daily in the name of science, many of them quite unnecessarily.

He leaned back and put his feet up on a desk, kicking a stack of battered paperbacks. On top was a dog-eared edition of
Old Yeller
(fully illustrated); beneath that, and more to the point, a copy of the helpful AMA booklet,
Save the Head: A Guide to Handling Rabid Animals.
Riddle was in charge of the Station’s dog kennels. He hated dogs.

A truck had parked out front of receiving and a deliverer named Abby Rasmussen was unloading stock from Boston Surgical Supply. Riddle put down the lesbians for a moment and watched her through the window. Rasmussen did not remind him at all of the vegetarian—she had long blond hair, for one thing, while Meatless had been a coal-hole brunette—and despite a lack of major cleavage, Riddle thought she was pretty damn sexy. When she came in to have him sign for the shipment, he told her as much.

“So how about it, Rasmussen?” he said. “You ever get lonely, out on the road all day?”

Rasmussen, who had spent a summer doing recruitment for the C.I.A. and found Riddle about as attractive as a Sandinista with an anal fixation, sucked reflectively on a Tootsie Pop.

“Well I’ll tell you,” she replied. “The way I see it, there’s three states of being: there’s lonely, there’s desperate, and there’s the point where you might as well save your self-respect and become a nun. Catch my drift, Tyson?”

After she had driven away, Riddle sat back down and got his stiletto out of the bottom drawer of the desk. The weapon sported an eight-inch blade and had come ready to assemble from a mail order company down South. Riddle clicked it open and used the point to doodle on the Penthouse pictorials. He stopped himself after five minutes, though; he was only a lukewarm misogynist.

He was brewing a fresh cup of coffee and considering whether he should notify someone about the delivery—or even get back to work himself—when the phone rang.

“Receiving. What do you want?”

The voice on the other end of the line sounded vaguely foreign.

“There’s a dog loose in the kennels,” it said.

“Huh? Who is this?”

“You’ve been sleeping on the job, Mr. Riddle. The door to one of the dog pens is standing wide open. I’m Looking at it right now.
Big
dog, too . . .”

“You can’t be looking at it,” responded Riddle, who had no patience for pranks. “There’s no phone over there. Now who the fuck is this?”

“Ah, such sweet language. But do have a sunny day, Mr. Riddle.”

The caller hung up. Riddle slammed the phone down, then went to the
window and looked out. The shed housing the kennels was at the far end of the Station complex. It was a small building, relatively; Adams’ main volume was in rabbits and smaller rodents.

“Shit . . .” Well, he had to go out there anyway and clean some of the pens. Foregoing the second cup of coffee, Riddle grabbed his jacket, slipped the stiletto absentmindedly into his back pocket, and started across the compound. He dragged a personal dark cloud of ill temper along with him, and did not care or find it strange when he met not so much as a single coworker on the way to the kennels. On another day, he might have noticed that the Station had suddenly taken on the deserted air of a ghost town.

The kennels weren’t deserted, that was for sure. As he stepped into the shed, Riddle was greeted by a chorus of barks and yaps and the just-trying-to-be-friendly smell of dogshit. He flicked on the lights and yelled at his charges to shut the fuck up, which did very little good.

The shed was long and narrow, divided into two aisles, both lined with pens on either side. Looking down the first aisle Riddle saw nothing out of the ordinary, no dogs wandering around loose. The open pen was in the second aisle, on the left at the far end. The door was indeed standing wide, but still there was no sign of the occupant.

“Well, well,” Riddle muttered. “Guess I owe you one, whoever you are.”

Of course he wasn’t in a good mood to begin with, yet of all the pens that could have been open there was no other that would have displeased him more. Unless his memory was on vacation—and in this instance it wasn’t—the resident of that pen was a fully grown male Irish Wolfhound, acquired just recently from a shelter in Eastern New York State and not yet slated for any experiments. In other words, not injected with anything or operated upon in any way that might slow it down if it decided to go for him. And the Wolfhound was a mean motherfucker, Riddle knew that well enough from having to feed it twice a day.

He went into the maintenance closet and unscrewed a mop handle. Holding it like a spear, Riddle advanced on the Wolfhound’s pen. He was halfway down the aisle when the lights went out.

There was no dying flicker, no flash of a bulb burning out; the light simply shut off. The only remaining illumination came from a high-set window near the peak of the roof that let in a few feeble rays of sunlight. Riddle froze for a good half a minute, and then, ignoring the basic lesson that every horror film tries to teach us, he continued down the aisle.

That the Wolfhound was still in its pen there could be no doubt—the shed had been locked, and dogs have a notoriously hard time with dead-bolts—and Riddle could simply have used the mop handle to shut the open door. Because the Wolfhound’s pen was silent, however, and because all the other dogs persisted in making a racket, Riddle
did
doubt. Standing directly in front of the pen, he half-crouched, still holding the mop handle at the
ready. He saw no movement in the dark interior of the pen. Laying the mop handle aside, he bent down all the way to have a closer look. Somewhere near, the shade of Alfred Hitchcock shook his head in despair.

Riddle was on his hands and knees with his head inside the pen when the growling started. The animal handler’s eyes finally decided to adjust to the dark, and a huge white shape materialized before him as if by magic. The Wolfhound was poised to spring.

“Oh whore,” Riddle said. He remembered the knife in his back pocket and went for it.

Didn’t make it.

“Very nice,” Mr. Sunshine said. “Very
graphic.
”

FINAL PREPARATIONS: FEBRUARY TO MARCH

I.

February became March, and The Hill entered a period of waiting.

Rasferret the Grub had suffered more than a little over the loss of the Messenger. Not only did it deny him a flying pair of eyes, but his occasional trips to The Boneyard to create more troops had become much more difficult and dangerous without a handy pair of wings. To further keep him in his place Mr. Sunshine put a blind spot in the Grub’s magic Sense, to make sure he wouldn’t go looking for George until he was damn well supposed to. Paranoia did the rest; unable to tell where his human opponent was, he became too cautious to make further moves against the sprites, even when his Rat Army grew large enough to have a fair chance warring openly.

Hamlet and Puck, who might also have triggered the War prematurely, kept finding new reasons to play dead. Every time they were on the verge of deciding to come in and warn their fellows, Mr. Sunshine fed them second thoughts. Hobart, meanwhile, slept on in coma, uttering no more prophecies.

Waiting for the Ides to arrive, Mr. Sunshine concentrated his attention in the final week on George, Aurora, Ragnarok, and the brothers of Rho Alpha Tau.

II.

On Monday, the eleventh of March, Aurora Smith woke to the sound of exploding glassware. She rushed out to George’s kitchen and found the storyteller sweeping up the remnants of a McDonaldland drinking glass; bits and pieces of the Hamburglar were everywhere, and fresh coffee puddled on the linoleum.

“My Uncle Erasmus told me never to put hot liquids in anything but a mug,” George commented as she came in. “Now I remember why.”

Two plates of pancakes and plumped Ball Park franks sat unobstrusively on the stove. Aurora raised an eyebrow.

“George,” she admonished him. “You aren’t supposed to cook breakfast.”

“Oh no? What century were you raised in?”

“The Twentieth—the one where people are supposed to take turns. You made breakfast yesterday morning, and the day before. . . .”

“So I’m selfish.” He dumped the glass shards into the kitchen waste-basket and mopped at the spilled coffee with a dishrag. “I like watching you sleep. You’re a beautiful sleeper, you know that? Watched you for half an hour after I woke up, was going to watch you some more if the smell of pancakes didn’t get you.”

George looked up and she was blushing, holding a terrycloth bathrobe closed around her throat with one slender hand. After over two months they were still new enough to each other that Aurora could be shy at times, and her shyness never failed to move him.

“You make me feel safe,” he told her, standing up and tossing the dishrag into the sink. “It’s like writing a long novel, you know? Most people figure the really satisfying part is finishing the novel, getting a good piece of work done, but starting it can be just as fine, even better. When you start, you have an idea what the future’s going to be like, what you’re going to be doing; and you know it’s what you were meant to do. . . .”

She blushed a shade darker, and he touched her cheek, and she touched his, and she opened her mouth, no doubt to say something equally romantic in turn, and the romantic thing that came out was: “Hot dogs for breakfast, though? Do you want to vomit?”

“Why vomit? Hot dogs are God.”

“For breakfast?”

“Why not for breakfast?”

“You generally have bacon with pancakes. Or eggs. Or both.”

“Well, what’s bacon except meat? Hot dogs arc meat too, so you’re talking about the same concept, basically. And if you want to get picky they’ve got chicken franks now, too, which of course are disgusting, but if you want to talk technicalities instead of taste, what’s chicken except an egg that got left alone long enough? So there you are, same concept twice over.”

“You’re sick, George.”

“Naturally I’m sick. Why do you think your father gave us his blessing?”

The fruit basket was on the kitchen table, patient as a snake. Aurora first noticed it after George had kissed her and picked up the dishrag again; there was some coffee staining the side of the stove that he hadn’t gotten yet.

“And what’s this?” Aurora asked, giving the basket a closer look. Wicker, with a ribbon and card attached to the carry-handle.

“Found it on the porch when I got up. You don’t happen to know anyone who works on a cruise ship, do you?”

“‘Bon voyage,’” she read from the card. “‘From the Ferryman.’ Is this some kind of prank?”

“Search me, Lady. You understand, I’ve more or less given up trying to figure out mysterious packages; it’s not worth the effort. Have an apple.”

The
apple, he might have said; there was only one. Nestled atop a cradle of spotty bananas and sour-looking grapes, its own skin polished, flawless, and red, it was by far the most appetizing piece of fruit of the lot. Aurora picked it up, felt it cold against her palm, and a dozen old fairy tales sprang to mind. She smiled.

“Of course it’s probably poisoned,” George warned her.

“Like the wine in the barn?”

“Yes, just like that.”

“Mmm . . . I could stand to be poisoned a second time that way.”

“Bite in, then,” George suggested. He discarded the dishrag once again and returned to the pancakes and franks. What happened next did not feel terribly dramatic, though perhaps it was supposed to.

George heard a crunch as Aurora took a bit of the apple; a moment later, a thud, as the fruit dropped from her hand.

“Oh my,” she said.

“Aurora?” George turned and found her tottering.

“Oh my,” Aurora repeated. For of course it
was
a Poisoned Apple. Yet it was also an Apple of Knowledge, and on the brink of collapse, Aurora’s eyes were filled with that knowing. “The Sleeping Princess.
He
just loves the Brothers Grimm.”

George caught her halfway to the floor.

III.

Two days later, the thirteenth, Ragnarok and Jinsei begged off from their morning classes and walked into Collegetown for a pair of sundaes at Cravings Ice Cream Shoppe. Since their race with the truck they had spent more time in each other’s company than out. Ragnarok had never been close friends with a woman before, and once might not have thought it possible; yet here were all the symptoms of intimate friendship, while his dwindling love interest, like a true Southern gent, seemed to be politely bowing out. It would be wrong to say that Jinsei had replaced Preacher for him—no one, man or woman, could have done that—but she certainly had come to occupy a similar place in his heart. Many nights they stayed up talking for long hours, helping each other, as good friends will, to grapple with old tragedies and more recent ones. They surely had a lot to talk about.

That Monday morning, Jinsei helped avert another tragedy by stopping a fight before it could begin.

“Well now, look who we have here!” Jack Baron, still reigning President of the ever-popular Rho Alpha Tau, stepped around his Porsche to confront Ragnarok and Jinsei as they left the ice cream shop. He was not alone: Bobby Shelton and Bill Chaney piled out of the passenger side of the car. “How’s life in Bohemia?” Jack asked cheerfully. “And the Orient?”

“Don’t,” said Jinsei, grabbing Ragnarok’s arm automatically. Two parking spaces down, lthacop Samuel Doubleday rested his not inconsiderable weight against the side of his cruiser; Nattie Hollister had ducked across the street for bagels and coffee. If Jinsei thought that Jack Baron hadn’t noticed the policeman, she was wrong. If she thought the policeman’s presence would act as a restraint to the Rat Brothers, she was wrong again.

“Seriously.” When Ragnarok made no reply, only glowered, Baron pressed right on. “Seriously, how have things been with you?” His lips curled up in a smile: “How’s old Preacher?”

“Oh, Jack!” Bobby Shelton’s expression collapsed in a perfect parody of shock. “Jack, you shouldn’t have asked that. Haven’t you heard the news?”

“Why no, Bobby.” Jack looked properly mystified. “What news?”

“About our old friend Preacher,” Bill Chaney put in. “The man succumbed.”

“Succumbed to what? Academic pressure?”

“Gravity,” Chaney answered, and then it was only by interposing her whole body that Jinsei was able to hold Ragnarok back. “NO!” she shouted at him, the same way one might shout at an attack dog, as he clenched both fists and tried to swing.

“That’s right,” Baron egged him on, not making a move to defend himself. “That’s right, belt me right in front of that cop, I swear to God I’ll have you crucified for assault. Come on!”

He almost did; Jinsei alone prevented him, more through force of will than physical strength. At last Ragnarok calmed down sufficiently that she did not have to hold him.

“That’s right,” Baron repeated, still needling. “You just take it easy, Bohemian. You just—”

Jinsei whirled on him.

“
Fuck
you,” she said. An ancient and far-too-often-used expression, but coming out of her mouth it stung like new Jack Baron was stunned into silence. Shelton, the football player, stepped in to retrieve the ball.

“Why don’t you watch your mouth?” he threatened. In height and weight he had her hopelessly overmatched, yet Jinsei was unintimidated. Once Shelton had frightened her, but that had been before the Rubbermaid.

“No,” she countered. “You watch it. One more insult, one more word and I’ll go for you myself. And if you have to have me arrested for assault, I’m telling the cops you threatened to rape me.”

“Rape you? Give me a break, who’s going to believe we tried to rape you in broad day—”

“Go ahead and take the chance if you want to,” Jinsei cut him off. “I know about your House; we’ll see who believes what about rape. But one thing’s sure, the best lawyer money can buy isn’t going to get the scars off your face.”

She hooked her fingers like claws: her nails were long, long enough, anyway. Shelton readied a snappy retort, but faltered, seeing something unexpected and dangerous in her expression. He stepped back.

“Don’t bother us again,” Jinsei warned them all. When it seemed even Baron took her seriously, she reached behind her for Ragnarok. Her hand closing around his was as gentle as she had been hard toward the Brothers. “Let’s go, Charlie.”

Ragnarok, every bit as stunned as the Rho Alphas, allowed himself to be led. The Brothers gave them room, but Bill Chaney was a bit slow about it; Jinsei shoved past him with such force that he lost his balance and went ass-down into the gutter.

“Hey!” Bobby Shelton shouted in Doubleday’s direction. “Hey, did you see that?”

The patrolman, who was badly in need of a handkerchief, hurriedly took his finger out of his nose and glanced around in embarrassment. “Huh?” he sputtered.

“Never mind,” Jack Baron said. He watched the Grey Lady and Bohemian disappear down the street, hand in hand. “This isn’t over yet.”

IV.

The final mechanical test before the assembly of the Green Dragon took place late that night, in secret. The main workroom in the Foundry, a shed-like structure on the edge of Fall Creek Gorge opposite Risley Hall, had been cleared of flammable objects. Lookouts had been posted along the road outside, on the chance that Public Safety might happen by and decide that laws were being broken; within, a cadre of six Architects stood ready with fire extinguishers. Two of the six were Modine and Curlowski, the designers of the beast.

Larretta Stodges, the Mastermind, crouched beside the disembodied head of the Dragon (the rest of it was in ready-to-assemble sections across the street at Sibley Hall). The head was over a yard high and some five feet from the tip of the nose to the back of the neck. The lower jaw was hinged, the teeth sharp and menacing; cradled within was a properly diabolical device of tanks and jet hoses to which Larretta was even now making last adjustments. The whole head was fireproof, or so they hoped.

“All set,” Larretta told the others, wiping her palms. “Take your positions, and make sure you’re not anywhere near the line of fire.” She unhooked a second, not-quite-diabolical-but-still-ominous device from her belt—once it might have been a walkie-talkie, but it had been redesigned, painted bright green except for a single red (naturally) button on its side. “This is history in the making, gentlemen. Does anyone have a good quote?”

“Krakatoa or bust,” Curlowski suggested.

“Sydney or the bush!” cried Modine.

Grimacing, Larretta pressed the button.

The Dragon’s lower jaw dropped open.

Fire shot from the mouth in an eight-foot stream, blistering the far wall and nearly torching Modine, who of course had chosen the wrong place to stand despite the warning. He retaliated with his fire extinguisher, spraying CO
²
everywhere. Larretta released the button and the fire-stream cut off, the Dragon’s jaw snapping shut again.

“Gentlemen,” she announced, as Modine’s extinguisher continued to spout, “I think we’re ready to roll.”