Castle: A Novel (11 page)

The cheeseburger sat uneasily in my gut, and I scolded myself for my indiscretion. What on earth was the matter with me?

By the time I reached the house, the sun was going down and cold had returned. I parked, climbed the front steps, and walked through the door into the darkness of the front room. I had set my bags of supplies down on the floor and was reaching for the thermostat when I experienced the same creeping unease of the night before, prompted by some faint noise from upstairs. I was convinced that someone was inside my house.

I didn’t hesitate and allow fear to take root. Instead I sprang into action, climbing the steps two at a time, flipping the light switches as I went. The hallway exploded into light, and I ran from room to room, illuminating everything and throwing open the closet doors. But, as before, there was nothing. The closets were empty of all but my possessions. Beneath my bed was only dust. I did discover that I had left my bedroom window open an inch or so—perhaps a draft had been causing the door to bang against its frame while I was out.

Frustrated and exhausted, my body throbbing from my injuries, my mind racing with the day’s uncharacteristic social interaction, I stumbled into the bath and, soon after, fell into bed. I dreamt with unusual intensity. A girl appeared in the bedroom doorway, long black hair framing a pale thin face. She was illuminated by a cold light without any clear source, and wore a thin nightgown of plain cotton. She could not be more than twelve years old, and I understood her to be Rachel, Avery Stiles’s daughter, who had been mentioned in his wife’s obituary. When she turned to leave, I followed her down the stairs and into the yard: she crossed the threshold of the woods and disappeared. Realizing that she was in danger, I gave chase. The nightgown flashed between the trees. I was quite naked; branches scratched and gouged my bare skin. I heard the girl scream, and came at last to a hole, a pit like the one I had fallen into—but it was far deeper, too deep to see into. I began to climb down, calling the girl’s name, as I groped with my toes for footholds in the crumbling dirt.

At last I fell, tumbling some great distance before striking the ground flat on my back. I looked down and saw the sharpened branches jutting up through my ruined body, slick with blood, and when my head fell back I found Rachel standing above, on the edge of the pit, gazing at me with empty eyes. I woke on the bedroom floor, my head throbbing, a scream curled in my throat.

It was still night. I lay, naked on the cold wood, until my heart and breath had slowed. I felt as though I hadn’t slept at all. With effort I hauled myself to my feet. Through the window came the glow of the moon behind the house; the landscape was edged with silver, the trees and rock etched against the starry sky. I am not deeply moved by beauty, and in fact may even be incapable of appreciating or even recognizing it. But there was a profound rightness to the scene outside, a natural order that the unseen moon seemed to emphasize with its clinical light. I could admire this, the ability of nature to create order out of chaos, and I stood in the window, coexisting with it, feeling some small part of it, for long minutes. Not a thought was in my head, and my dream was already half-forgotten.

But it came back to me with terrifying force when I looked down into the yard and noticed a white shape lying curled in the grass.

It was hard to make out, there at the edge of the woods, in the shadow of the house; but it had the appearance of a twisted white sheet. Could it be her? I wondered. Could the girl, the dream, have been real? I ran down the stairs, out the door, across the parking lot. The gravel scoured my bare feet and the cold air shocked my bare skin, and I made my way across the yard, the white blur looming closer.

Even when I was upon it, I couldn’t tell what I was looking at. I crouched down and reached forward, expecting to feel the soft cotton of the girl’s gown, her lifeless body beneath it. Instead, what I felt was bristly, coarse, like a woolen rug, and still warm, though no life was evident. In a moment, I understood. I jerked my hand away, stood, stepped back.

It was lying on its side, its legs splayed out against the grass, its head thrown back. The dead eye gleamed. It was the white deer, pierced through the heart with an arrow.

ELEVEN

At first I assumed the arrow to be a sportsman’s. But when I touched it, and felt its irregular, planed smoothness, I realized that it had been handmade, from a whittled twig and what appeared, in the moonlight, to be crow’s feathers. The shot was excellent—it had struck directly between the creature’s ribs. There was little blood, just the barest stain around the wound, far less than one might expect from an animal with its heart pierced, and I wondered if perhaps the hunter had treated the arrow with poison.

And how had the deer come to rest here, at the edge of my yard—and why? It couldn’t be chance that led it here; its presence could only have been deliberate, a signal to me. I knew now with certainty that my pack had been stolen by a human being, not some hungry animal. I stood and scanned the impenetrable treeline. Was this hunter, this thief, watching me now? My flesh rippled with fear and disgust, and I felt, for the first time, utterly exposed.

I mastered myself, however, and went back inside with slow, deliberate steps. I dressed. It was a quarter to four—sleep, it appeared, was finished with me for the night. I went out the back door, grabbing a shovel from the vestibule, and returned to the white deer’s corpse. In the few minutes I’d been away, it seemed to have deflated somehow, its one visible eye sunken, its fur lusterless. The body had cooled. With another glance at the treeline, I took a few steps back and sank the shovel into the sod.

The soil here was clayey and resisted the blade, but I had faced far greater challenges, and persisted in my work. In an hour I had made considerable progress, and when dawn arrived, the hole was dug. I went inside and drank a glass of water, then returned to the grave. I wiggled the arrow: it was stuck fast. After a moment’s thought, I went back to the kitchen, found a pair of rubber gloves, and put them on. I then removed my new knife—it had replaced the one stolen over the weekend—from my new pack, and carried it outside. I made several cuts in the deer’s flesh, radiating away from the arrow’s shaft, and in time I was able to wiggle the weapon free. I held it up before my eyes. The tip appeared to have been fashioned from scrap metal—stainless steel, it seemed, perhaps from an old kitchen knife. It was roughly cut, and uneven, but the blade itself had been carefully whetted and was clearly very sharp. I brought it inside, rinsed it off under the faucet, then left it to soak in a mixture of hot water, dish soap, and bleach. I would scrub it more carefully later, using a brush—I didn’t want to risk the same fate as my deer.

Back outside, I took two of the animal’s hooves in my hands and dragged it into the grave. I’d dug the hole three feet deep, and hoped this would be enough to discourage scavenging creatures. I shoveled the dirt back on top, tamped it down again with my feet, and replaced the sod. The mound was considerable and would likely remain so for a long time.

I completed my cleaning of the arrow, then sat down at the kitchen table to examine it. It was, to be sure, a peculiar artifact. The maker had found a remarkably straight twig, cut it to a length of thirty-six inches, stripped it of bark, and sanded down the knots, perhaps with a rough stone. He had carefully split several crow’s feathers, slotted the shaft, and inserted them with impressive straightness, apparently without glue. The same was true of the tip, which, as I had surmised, was made of a kitchen knife—the beginning of the word
JAPAN
was actually visible, engraved on one side—cut to the shape of an elongated chevron and ground to a stunning sharpness. A very small, crude hole had been bored in the shaft and through the blade, and a precise little peg had been fitted to hold the metal in place. I tugged at the tip, but it would not budge. The arrow was solid.

I set it down on the table and considered. Clearly, anyone who lived in this area would have no trouble buying as many arrows as he wished. Indeed, I had admired the bow-hunting supplies at the sporting goods store, and briefly considered buying some for myself. It was possible, of
course, that the arrow maker had little money. But surely even a poor sportsman would have access to tools? The arrow appeared to have been made entirely out of found materials, and the tiny peghole, while effective, was too rough to have been made with a drill.

There was one obvious explanation, which had first occurred to me while I lay, bruised and stunned, at the bottom of the pit: that somebody was living in the woods. I had previously assumed that, if this had ever been true, it was certainly not true now. But I could deny it no more. Someone was in the woods—in the castle, quite probably—and this person had dug the pit, stolen my pack, and killed the white deer. Furthermore, it was possible that this person was the same man who owned the land to the east of the rock—the vanished psychologist, Doctor Avery Stiles.

On the face of it, the theory seemed ridiculous. A mad doctor, hiding out for thirty years in an abandoned castle? But the facts lent themselves to this strange explanation, and I had to assume, in the absence of conflicting evidence, that it was correct. Of course, Doctor Stiles would be quite old by now—nearly eighty, in fact—and it hardly seemed reasonable to think that such an elderly man could survive alone, particularly in the harsh winter climate of the region. Nevertheless, no better explanation presented itself. A crazy old man was living in my woods, and did not appear to want me around. These were the facts, and, as such, had to be dealt with.

Randall had not indicated a time to meet him and Heph at the Amvets. I assumed that this meant they would be spending quite a long time there, so I decided not to worry about being punctual. After a bath and a long nap, I went into town for dinner. I was still disgusted with myself for having eaten the fast food cheeseburger the day before, and vowed to find more nourishing fare; after driving around Milan for a good twenty minutes, I believed I had found it in a small, tidy restaurant called Vegan Delights. It occupied an unlikely corner of a parking lot that primarily served a dilapidated shopping center, and looked more like a gas station than a health food establishment, but I found several appealing items on the menu and ordered one without significant consideration.

The place was sparsely patronized by scattered collections of hippies and loners, who thoughtfully chewed their food without saying much to one another. There had been a time in my life when I had reacted to such people with deep disdain. In those days, I viewed pacifism and activism as expressions of cowardice, and had even gone so far as to pick fights with anyone who espoused such radical ideas. Indeed, I considered such people inherently, and willfully, weak—and believed that their political views were merely a convenient means of justifying their weakness. Eventually I would learn that all human beings are inherently weak, and that our efforts to overcome that weakness are little more than pathetic sallies up the face of an impossibly high mountain. As a result, I came to a somewhat more nuanced understanding of “alternative” lifestyles. But I was still uncomfortable in the presence of such people, finding them unreasonably indulgent of their frailties. Furthermore, I could feel their judgment of me: doubtless they found my trim profile, stern bearing, and unwavering gaze discomfiting. The people here tonight, however, appeared focused on their food and on one another, and I was left in peace.

Eventually my waitress, an attractive, dreadlocked young woman with hairy underarms, brought me my falafel, and I ate it while reading the day’s paper, a used copy of which had awaited me in the booth. The paper was filled with inconsequential things—businesses opening or closing, town council meetings, births and deaths. I wondered, idly, why most people were so disconnected from world events, why they only seemed to care about those things that affected them directly, rather than those with broad consequences. But then again, I thought, I myself had lately been guilty of this same self-absorption.

I sighed, picking at the remains of my food. The waitress returned, asking if I was still working on it. I told her I was not. I paid, and left.

It was not exactly on a whim that I decided to visit the sporting goods store again; the possibility had lodged itself in the back of my mind earlier that day, I was burying the white deer. I pulled into the parking lot at a quarter past eight. The store was mostly empty save for its employees, who were obviously preparing to close for the night. Nevertheless, I walked to the gun counter and told the woman working there that I wished to buy a handgun. Her chin creased in distaste—the necessary paperwork would keep her here past closing. But she capitulated.

“What are you looking for?” she asked me. She was about forty, sandy-haired, with a flat, unfriendly affect. I felt very comfortable dealing with her.

“A Browning nine-millimeter,” I replied. There were better firearms, but it was the Browning I was used to.

She showed me what they had: a used P-35 Mark III, and a new HP-SFS, with its improved safety. The P-35 was unadulterated by its previous owner, which was good news—I preferred to customize my own weapon, and smooth operation of the Browning required certain modifications. I told her without hesitation that I would take it, and filled out the proper papers. I was finished by closing time.

“Well that was easy,” the clerk said, with obvious relief. “We’ll give you a call when the check comes through.”

“Excellent,” I replied.

I left the store feeling much more safe and secure, even though I didn’t have the Browning yet. It was the feel of it in my hand; in spite of its flaws, or perhaps because of them, it filled me with confidence. I thought of my father’s Enfield then, and wondered if it had made him feel the same way. Of course, in reality, the gun did not make him safer—on the contrary, it was the instrument of his death. But I was not my father.

The Amvets was exactly where it had always been, and appeared not to have changed since I was a child. It was a low, long structure with a peakless roof that sloped back toward the parking lot; there were no windows, save for a wall on one end made almost entirely of glass blocks. It was beside this wall that I found Randall and Heph, occupying one end of a large buffet table, along with three pint glasses and two pitchers of beer, one full, one nearly empty. They waved me over and, before I arrived, shared a hearty laugh.

“We had a bet goin’, didn’t we, Randy, on whether or not you’d show up, Mr. Loesch!” Heph smacked his dungaree’d knee.

“What side were you on, Heph?”

“Welp, I thought you would come! Randy thought not.”

Randall offered his large, dry hand to be shaken. I obliged. “Glad you decided to join us,” he said.

“Me too.” I turned to Heph. “Heph, you should call me Eric, if we’re going to be friends.”

“All right then, Eric!” The entire exchange appeared to amuse him no end. I could see that he would make a fine drinking companion.

I sat down and poured myself a glass of beer, offering to pay for my share. The offer was quickly refused. I listened to the two of them for a short while; they talked about bass fishing. Eventually the discussion turned to local matters, and I revealed that I had, in fact, grown up in the area, which they did not appear surprised to learn. This led to the subjects of childhood pursuits and shared acquaintances. I was not especially helpful with the latter, as my family had not had strong social connections here, and as I was a number of years younger than Randall and Heph. But we knew of certain names in common, and discussion was lively until, at last, it petered out.

In the silence that followed, I watched a pair of headlights rake across the glass block wall. When I looked up at my companions, they were exchanging a meaningful glance. They saw me noticing, and quickly turned away.

“Randall. Heph,” I said. “It’s clear there’s something you’d like to discuss with me. Though I’m flattered you wanted me to join you tonight, I never doubted that you had an ulterior motive. What is it?”

Heph seemed abashed by this little speech, but it appeared to give Randall some resolve. He sat up a little straighter and said, “Well, we know about all that happened to you. And we just want to let you know we’re behind you, that’s all.”

To be perfectly honest, I had imagined this would come up. I was not, however, interested in discussing it. “That’s very kind of you,” I said.

“So it was you then, was it?” Heph said suddenly. “Randy said he was reading up on the internet and all that. Seemed to me there’s gotta be other people called Eric Loesch in the army, right?”

“No,” I admitted. “That was me.”

Randall was gazing at me with a strange intensity now. I turned my beer mug around and around on the tabletop.

“You’re not drinking your beer,” he said.

“I’m not much of a drinker,” I replied.

“Ahh, on the wagon. Sorry about that.”

I said nothing, though his characterization was not entirely accurate. I did not have a drinking problem from which I was recovering. I simply did not enjoy excessive indulgence in alcoholic beverages.

Heph spoke up, to fill the lull in conversation. “Welp, anyway, it’s you then. I’ll tell you, son, I think you got a raw deal. Seems to me none of that was your fault. You were just following orders, right? You were doing what had to be done.”

“I suppose so,” I said.

“People on the outside don’t understand what it’s like,” Heph went on. “They think it’s all black and white! There’s bad and there’s good and nothing in between! But it isn’t like that, now, is it! It’s hard making decisions in a time of war, and when push comes to shove you gotta do your job and you gotta show the enemy who’s boss, don’t’cha think, Randy?”

Randall nodded slowly. He appeared to be slightly ill at ease after Heph’s little speech. For my part, I realized that I would be forced to leave. There was no way to carry on with the conversation, now that this subject had come up, and I began, in spite of myself, to shift uncomfortably in my chair.

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, an excuse for leaving would soon present itself. Only a few seconds of awkward silence had elapsed when I began to become aware of the health-food meal in my stomach, and the fact of its not having yet been digested. It had been quite some time since I ate; the meal ought to have been well on its way through my system. Instead, it was threatening to make a dramatic return.