Castle: A Novel (12 page)

“Gentlemen, would you excuse me a moment?”

Randall and Heph replied with grim nods as I rose, then walked, then walked faster, to the men’s room. I pushed open the door of a stall just in time to expel my dinner into a filthy, waste-encrusted toilet. A few moments later I was washing my face with scalding hot water from the chipped and stained porcelain sink, and shivering uncontrollably. My stomach, though empty, turned over, and I returned to the stall for another round of painful release.

When I emerged at last into the bar, Heph and Randall looked up at me expectantly. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I seem to have come down with something.”

“You look like you just saw a ghost in there,” Randall remarked.

“It was the ghost of my dinner,” I managed to quip, and their laughter went some way toward smoothing over the discomfort of the moment. I thanked them again for inviting me out, and walked unsteadily to my car.

Twice on the way back to the house I was forced to pull over and endure a series of dry heaves. The shivering intensified, and it was only through the sheer force of will that I was able to keep my hands steady on the steering wheel. I staggered into the house, up the stairs, and into bed, where I began what was to be several days’ discomfort and delirium.

I remember little of those days. Sometimes it was light outside, sometimes it was dark. At times I slept as though dead; at other times I rolled in my reeking, sweat-stained sheets, in an agony of nausea and pain. My head throbbed, my throat burned, and my belly ached from its exertions. At first I imagined that I had contracted some foodborne illness, but my body barely seemed to notice that the food was gone. Clearly, then, it had to be some kind of severe flu. Light exploded behind my closed eyes; I buried my head beneath my pillow, in fear of the sun. I must have managed to take some aspirin, because the almost-new bottle was half-empty by the time I came out of it; twice I woke from cramped sleep laid out on the bathroom floor. I also tried to bathe—I would wake up one night trembling in a tub full of freezing water, which I had no memory of having drawn.

When at last I came out of it, it was late afternoon, and a wind thrashed my bedroom window. I was surprised to find myself climbing out of bed to look out: the eastern sky was dark with roiling clouds, and the gusts carried a light rain that clattered against the pane like thrown gravel. I mustered enough strength to open the window an inch. The wind shouldered in, spattering the sill, and my hands upon it, with rain. Warm rain—a warm wind blowing warm rain. Relief spread through me. I was well again, and warm weather had arrived. Outside, the roof of the forest roiled like a sea, and the sunlight streaming from behind the house cast its long, strange shadow against the trees.

I shut the window and drew deep breaths there in the small, empty room. I could smell it now, my bed, my body: the sickness was gone, but its sourness, its stale spoor, was left behind. Shivering with hunger and weakness, I gathered up my filthy sheets and took them downstairs to wash; then I returned to the bathroom and bathed, scrubbing the past few days away. I dressed, went to the kitchen, and prepared myself a piece of buttered toast with trembling hands.

The toast was perhaps the most delicious food I had ever eaten in my life. The bread, thick and chewy, was flawlessly browned and crisped; the crust had been roasted nearly to burning, and it flaked off onto my tongue, releasing a full, rich, smoky roundness. The butter was sweet and half-melted, and I could feel its oily essence penetrating me, lubricating long-rusted synapses, opening up my mind and my senses after so many days of disuse. The toast was gone in seconds, and I made another piece, and a third, and a fourth, devouring them with robotic efficiency as I leaned against the kitchen counter.

Soon I was sated. But I felt no particular motivation to move. The washing machine churned and knocked in the laundry nook, working away at my bedclothes, and the afternoon sun blasted through the tiny window above it, bathing the kitchen in diffuse, blinding light. I was alone, and free to do as I pleased—and yet a strange emotion had begun to steal over me, a familiar one, that of being trapped, tested, manipulated. Scraped clean by my brief illness, I could hold up this emotion and examine it as though against a plain, uncluttered ground: in isolation, objectively. And I was given to wonder, had there ever been a time in my life when I had not been a pawn of those more powerful than I? My father, my teachers, my commanding officers? Indeed, was it even possible to live otherwise? I say this not to relieve myself of responsibility for my failings, for it was clear that, if I had always lived under the sway of the powerful, I had done so voluntarily, even eagerly. There is no comfort like the comfort of following orders. There is no relief like being relieved of agency.

In the midst of my drama of the year before, I was repeatedly counseled by my JAG attorney on the subject of what I should say during the hearings, which information I should volunteer, which I should keep to myself. I was coached at great length on how to tell my story so as to cast myself and my superiors in the best possible light, and at the time I regarded this advice as invaluable, and followed it to the letter. Indeed, the advice was correct, insofar as I was merely reprimanded and put on indefinite leave, and I ought to have felt gratitude and relief, and been proud to have made the best of a bad situation.

But then, as now, I felt this strange emptiness, this negation of self, as though there were some other course of action possible, one that might have produced a more satisfying outcome; and this possibility hounded me through my days of waiting and worry. Unfortunately, however carefully I considered and reconsidered my circumstances, I could not think of what this other course of action might be. Every day I was assured, both by my lawyer and by my commanding officer, that everything would work out fine, and the tacit assumption, which no one seemed to question, was that everything working out fine was what we all wanted. For what defendant, facing the accusations I faced, would not desire such an outcome? To be exonerated and set free in the world, to live at last in peace and quiet.

Today, in my newly renovated house, on the remote swath of forest that was mine and mine alone, I could not think of any better outcome. And yet I felt this uncertainty. That I might have assumed control of my destiny. That I might have defied my betters. That I might have saved my parents, or remained close to my sister, or averted the unfortunate circumstances that led to this drastic change in my relationship to the army.

The washing machine stopped, and I transferred my sheets to the dryer. I drank a glass of water, and stared out the living room window at the now-setting sun. When the dryer was finished, I tried to replace the sheets and blankets on my bed, and somehow, the act of stretching the fitted sheet over the mattress—tucking the fabric under each corner and smoothing down the wrinkles and folds—managed to drain every last bit of energy from my body. I fell onto the mattress and did my best to haul the bedclothes over myself, but it didn’t matter. Despite the early hour, I was asleep within minutes.

I awoke in darkness. The glowing digits of my bedside clock were missing, though I could barely discern its outline looming there beside my head; I must have unplugged it by mistake while I was making the bed. And clouds must have moved in to cover the moon, because its light was missing from the sky, save for the faintest glow emanating from the mist.

What had roused me? I was entirely awake and alert. I closed my eyes and strained to hear.

There—the scrape of metal, faint and muffled, as though from some distant part of the house.

I stood up, gulped a breath, and held it. My blood rushed in my ears.

I heard it again, and this time I recognized it—the rusty steel doors that led to the backyard from the cellar. Something was trying to get in.

I considered racing down the stairs, in an effort to intercept this intruder. But something led me to the window instead, the one that faced north, the same side the cellar door was on. I parted the curtains and thumbed open the lock, and as I reached down to pull up the sash, I heard the clatter of the open door against the stone abutment that supported it.

It was, as I have said, very dark. But in the faint light of the cloud-covered moon, I could make out a figure, climbing up the cement stairs and into the yard. It was not an animal, but a human figure, and before I could discern any of its features, it vanished into the shadows of the trees. I could make out some motion in the murk—the figure was headed for the forest edge.

Without hesitation, I spun from the window, dashed down the stairs, and threw open the door. In moments, I had arrived at the treeline, in the general area where I believed the figure to have disappeared. I remembered very clearly the impassible and quite hazardous deadfall that lay all over the forest floor, and my own struggle to penetrate more than thirty yards into the trees around my house. The night was cold, and I wore no shoes—to forge ahead would be foolish. Instead, I leaned in, my hand braced against a maple, and called out, “Who’s there!” I could see nothing—the darkness in the woods was total.

There was no reply. But I heard the rustle of branches. Against my better judgment, and with careful, halting steps, I moved past the tree into the blackness.

“Hello! Who are you!”

The forest was anechoic, and swallowed up my voice as neatly as a black hole. Nevertheless, I could still hear the intruder somewhere up ahead, the humus crunching under his feet.

His
feet—for who else could it be?

“Doctor Stiles!”

Now the silence was deeper, longer, and pregnant with meaning. I waited one, two long minutes. And then, at last, I was rewarded with the sound of a footstep. Just one, and perhaps I was deceiving myself, but I believed it to be a step toward me. He could not have been far away, twenty feet at the most. Alarmed, I backed up, pressing myself against a tree—surely he was better equipped than I, this night, for a fight.

But his next step was fainter, and the next after that was fainter still. And soon it was clear that he had chosen not to return. I listened as the intruder retreated farther and farther into the trees. How he navigated the treacherous ground, I could not begin to imagine; but, like a creature of the forest, he moved quickly, and soon I couldn’t hear him at all.

Nevertheless, I stood there several minutes more, perfectly still; and I might have lingered even later, had I not felt, quite suddenly, the horrible totality of the blackness around me. I may as well have been in the cellar, or some dungeon or cave, for all I could tell; and when I turned to leave I realized that I could not see out of the woods any better than I could see into them, and for a moment I believed I was lost.

But no. I mastered myself, and moved forward, back the way I came, my hands out in front of me, groping for obstacles. And a minute later I found myself in the yard once again, standing over the grave of the white deer; and a minute after that I was back in my moonlit kitchen, panting from the effort of the chase.

It was then I noticed that the rock I used as a doorstop had been shoved aside, and the door to the cellar hung open. The stairs led crookedly down into the darkness. Unnerved, I quickly shut the door and replaced the rock. The intruder, I understood—and it was he, Doctor Avery Stiles, I was certain—had come into the house. I cast my eyes about, trying to discern why he had come, and it was not long before I found the answer. It lay on its side in the center of the kitchen table, an object the size and shape of a box of large wooden matches. I reached out, picked it up, and held it in my hand.

It was cool to the touch, heavy for its size. Its cast metal surface was black, the paint chipped and scratched by years of careless handling. The sight of it, its weight, seemed familiar, infecting me with a vague, gnawing unease. It was, in fact, a toy—a miniature locomotive.

TWELVE

Whatever the true meaning of this cryptic object, its general intent was clear. It was a taunt—perhaps even a threat. “Look what I was able to do,” the intruder was saying. “If I’d wanted to kill you, I could have.” I suppose I ought to have been grateful that I wasn’t murdered in my sleep. But instead, I became angry. Stiles might still have owned his little square of land behind the rock, but the rest of it, the rock itself, and this house were all mine now—fully, and as dictated by the law. If he felt that I was trespassing, somehow, on property he still thought of as his own, well then, perhaps he oughtn’t to have sold it to the state. In any event, these disturbing games would not intimidate me. Indeed, I did not intend to sit still, idly waiting for his next sortie against my home, my land, and my hard-earned sense of personal well-being. If he wanted to taunt and threaten, then I could play the same game. I could deliver a threat of my own.

Thus resolved, I was tempted to gather my supplies and leave for the woods at first light, but I knew better than to undertake a difficult task while under the influence of strong emotion. Instead, I sat down at the kitchen table and made a detailed list, based upon my previous expedition, of what I might need in order to ferret out and neutralize this threat. When I was through, I lay in bed until daylight in a futile effort to sleep; in any event, I was able to get a bit of uneasy rest. By 7:00 a.m. I was showered and behind the wheel of my car.

Spring was certainly in the air on this clear, breezy day. Though the temperature was barely above freezing when I left the hill, the sun had driven the thermometer to forty-five by the time I reached Milan, and as I walked into the grocery store I felt a balmy gust sweep in from the southwest. Without a doubt, today’s journey into the forest would be different—I knew the way in now, and I knew where to seek my quarry.

It was 8:00 a.m. by the time I had gathered what provisions I needed, and a quarter past when I reached the sporting goods store. The store didn’t open until 8:30, so I parked about a dozen spaces away from the entrance and waited.

A few minutes later, a dented Ford Taurus spotted with primer pulled up a few spaces closer to the store. The door opened and the sandy-haired gun counter clerk stepped out. She went to the entrance of the store, pulled a key ring from her pocket, and let herself in. A few minutes later, the other employees arrived as well, and a few minutes after that, one of them appeared at the door and unlocked it. A sliding panel in the plastic business-hours chart slid aside, revealing the word
OPEN
. I got out of my car and went in.

I walked slowly through the store, passing down almost every aisle, to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything. In the clothing section, I chose a cap, shirt, jacket, and pants in forest camouflage. Then I approached the gun counter. In the glass case underneath it, I could see the Browning P-35 that I had chosen the week before. The clerk looked up with an expression of guarded friendliness, which dissolved into worry and discomfort as she recognized me.

“You remember me,” I said.

“Mr. Loesch, hello.”

“I’m surprised that I haven’t yet heard from you.”

She turned, pulled open a file drawer behind her, and removed a folder. “No, sorry,” she said, “I was going to call you today.” She placed the folder on the counter and opened it. “I’m afraid that you failed your background check.”

“That’s not possible,” I said.

“Well, that’s how it came back. I can’t sell you a firearm, sorry.” To her credit, she appeared frustrated and disappointed by the entire process, as though my rejection were a personal affront to her. Though this frustration seemed genuine, she was nevertheless still nervous in my presence. Perhaps she believed that I was a criminal.

“May I ask why?”

She shook her head. “I wish I could tell you. It just came back rejected, that’s all. We usually get some explanation, but not this time.”

“I have never been convicted of any violent crime or other felony.”

“I believe you. But the government says no, and we gotta listen to what the government says.”

The irony of hearing this from a private citizen was not lost on me, and I gave up the fight. “All right then,” I said. I took one last look at the Browning underneath the glass counter and walked away.

I did not, however, leave the store. Instead I went to the hunting section and began to examine the archery supplies. It was still early, and few customers had yet come in, so it was not long before a salesclerk approached me.

“Can I help you?”

It was, unfortunately, the arrogant young man whom I had lectured on climbing safety some weeks before Luckily, his self-absorption appeared to prevent him from recognizing me. I told him that I was in the market for a bow and some arrows, that I intended to use them to hunt large game.

Immediately the young man directed my attention to the crossbows and compound bows, with their complicated pulleys and cams. I quickly interrupted.

“I am looking for something compact and lightweight.”

He frowned. “Like, a shortbow?”

“Yes,” I replied, though I didn’t know the term.

“Hard to get close enough to a deer to kill it with a shortbow,” he said.

“I’d like to see some.”

With a sigh, he led me to a rack of compact, thin bows that appeared to be made of a composite of wood and fiberglass. They were precisely what I wanted.

“These, though,” the clerk said, “you wanna get any velocity out of them, you’re practically gonna give yourself a heart attack drawing them tight enough.”

“That’s none of your concern,” I said, hefting and stretching each bow. I settled upon the one that felt most supple without seeming to sacrifice tension. I held it up. “This one,” I said.

“Your funeral,” the clerk said.

I chose to ignore him. “Arrows,” I said. “I would like the arrows that would be the most lethal at low velocity.”

This comment appeared to satisfy him, at least temporarily. He nodded. “You want something that’ll take a broadhead and fly straight,” he said. He showed me a package of four arrows tipped by a quartet of razor-sharp blades, and accompanied by a collapsible nylon quiver with a shoulder strap and reinforced floor. “You’ll get a nice, clean kill from these, if you can get close enough.” He pointed to the opposite end of the arrows. “Helix fletching, turkey feathers. They’ll fly straight and true. Aluminum shaft, nice and lightweight, and pretty easy to bend back in shape, if they get bent.”

“Fine. I’ll take them.”

“Great. Let me show you some sights for that thing, it’ll help you a lot. Also you’ll want some targets to practice with, and—”

“No, thank you,” I said, and walked away.

I was back at the house by half past nine. The sun was full and bright now, and the temperature well into the fifties. I expected that it would be over sixty by noon, and though the woods would surely be colder, I was confident that my vigorous physical activity would keep me warm.

I was eager to embark on my mission, but first it was necessary to test my new weapon. I gathered up the bow and arrows and carried them into the yard, where I stood twenty yards back from the mound of earth where the deer was buried. The disturbed, clayey soil would be unlikely to dull the razor tips or deform the shafts. I first practiced drawing the bow and arrows from my quiver, which I had strapped over my right shoulder; next I nocked an arrow, raised and drew, then relaxed my fingers.

The arrow flew laser-straight, driving itself into the grass in front of the doe’s grave. The next was high, and disappeared in the weeds at the treeline. But the next two struck home, burying themselves eight inches into the soil, and I knew that this new weapon would be at least as effective, for my purposes, as any firearm. Indeed, the bow felt so good in my hands—light and strong and perfectly balanced—that I retrieved the arrows and shot them all again. This time, three hit home, and one fell a few inches short. The accuracy of the equipment was impressive, and while I would never win an archery competition, I was certainly capable of defending myself against an enemy. I was surprised to discover that I was glad to have failed the background check, for, as effective and useful a weapon as a handgun was, it could not compare to the tactile immediacy and visceral satisfaction of the bow. I was, to put it mildly, a convert. With the muscles of my fingers and upper arm pleasurably stinging, I gathered up my arrows once again and went inside to suit up for my mission.

Fifteen minutes later, I was walking along the shoulder of Lyssa Road, my pack full and tight against my back, and my quiver nestled alongside it. A light, warm breeze swept dead leaves across the empty road; the shadows of the trees swayed in sharp relief on the pavement. I reached the corner of Minerva Road and turned left, and soon I stood at the once-invisible arch of silver maples that marked the track to the rock.

It was not without excitement that I peered now into the near-dark of the forest. For the first time since I scaled the rock, I had a challenge before me, a plan with a clear objective, and my hands and feet fairly tingled with anticipation. I could feel the years falling away from me, and my senses growing more acute, reaching far out in every direction. I felt, as I once had, like the lord of my kingdom.

I must confess, however, that my certainty was curbed somewhat by the sickness and confusion of the past week, the unexpected obstacles I had confronted, and the despair I had felt in the face of them. Was it simply that there had been a time in my life when I was able to overcome obstacles, and that time was now over? Or were these experiences merely aberrations, unexpected turns in the path to success?

In any event, now was not the time to dwell upon such things. Whatever doubts I might harbor about my purpose in life, the goal of the moment was clear—to hunt down the man who lived in the castle, discover what he wanted from me, and force him to cease his incursions into my territory.

I hitched my pack higher onto my shoulders and stepped once again into the woods.

Now that I knew the way, I had no difficulty making progress toward the castle and the rock. My hiking shoes were quiet on the mossy track, and I stepped with ease over any branches blocking my path. Within ten minutes I sensed that I was growing near, and I paused to get my bearings.

My eyes, by now, had adjusted fully to the gloom, and it was possible to detect, up ahead in the distance, the sun-drenched glow of the rock face. A roughness at its base must have been the castle. I closed my eyes and listened carefully, making sure that I was not being tracked. Hearing nothing, I turned 360 degrees, studying everything within my view. But all that could be seen was the dense foliage, and the only motion was my own. Convinced now that I had not been followed, I turned to step off the path, so that I might continue my journey under cover.

It was there that I very nearly put a premature end to the mission, and possibly to my life. For my foot had come to rest less than two inches from the paddle of an old-fashioned iron bear trap.

At first, I thought I must be mistaken about the object’s identity. Such things were, as far as I knew, illegal, and at any rate were no longer in regular use. But closer examination revealed that, in fact, my foot had actually fallen directly into one of the stretched-open jaws. I backed up a step and found a stout branch, which I then used to lift off the twigs and leaves that had been concealing the device. A cursory look revealed that it had not merely been lying here for years, forgotten. The iron was clean and oiled, and the ground underneath it smoothed out, to make a flat surface.

The trap had the look of a shark’s mouth, with the jaws forming a circle in the center, and two wings of folded steel, which served as springs. The springs ended in a ring which the jaws passed through; had I pressed the center paddle with my foot, the springs would have lost their grip on the base and unfolded, forcing the jaws shut. The base, a cross of iron, was attached to a chain, which had been staked into the ground with a stout peg.

It would not do to have this lying here, unsprung. I found a thicker branch and, after taking a moment to brace my feet, drove its end into the paddle.

The trap jumped off the ground, scattering leaves and dirt in all directions, and the jaws slammed shut, snapping my branch in two. I was quite startled, and may have cried out. I stood there for a few long seconds, gazing at this inert pile of metal, its lethality spent, and imagining what I might have done had it broken my leg as it had the branch. Nothing, I suppose. I might have been able to pull the stake from the ground and drag myself back to the road, where I supposed I would have waited for a passing vehicle. But by then, the trapper would likely have emerged from hiding to get a look at his quarry.

Of course this gave me an idea. I stepped back into the darkness of the trees, about twenty feet from the track, and about twenty feet east of where the trap had been set. I found a spot at the base of a tree, where a very narrow sight line allowed me to peer between two other tree trunks. It was through this gap that I could watch for the trapper.

I waited. I am experienced in remaining perfectly still for long periods of time, so this was not a problem. After half an hour, though, I decided that no one would come after all, and I stood up in order to continue on my way.

It was then that I saw him.

He did not, as I had hoped, expose himself on the overgrown track. Instead, he appeared to have been doing exactly what I had been doing—sitting twenty feet back from the other side, and waiting. I could see little of him through the trees, and what I could make out seemed little more than a pale blur against the forest gloom, a suggestion of movement, a specter. I believed I could make out a narrow frame, and long arms, as he moved out of the shadows. But then he entered a shaft of sun that had wandered down through the canopy, and in an instant he was gone, subsumed by the light.

I blinked, but my eyes had not deceived me. He was there, and now he had disappeared.