Castle: A Novel (13 page)

My disappointment at the failure of my ruse was now compounded by profound unease. If this was Doctor Stiles, his expertise with these woods was even more advanced than I had imagined, and his powers in them almost supernatural. Furthermore, I had revealed myself before I even reached the castle, and thus any advantage I might have enjoyed was now lost. He would be expecting me now, and would be prepared. And what of the bear trap? There could be more—or another pit, or some other danger beyond imagining. I would have to move more carefully now, calculating the likely safety of any possible route. In addition, I had to outwit and outmaneuver a once-celebrated psychologist, beating the old man at his own game.

Well, I did have the advantage of relative youth, and while I possessed no advanced degrees, I was nevertheless adept at second-guessing an enemy. It was likely that the Doctor had not anticipated this particular series of events—my almost, but not quite, falling into his trap, then springing it intentionally and spying on him—and so had planned according to other possibilities. Most likely, he would have planted his traps along the easiest route, assuming that I would fall prey to them if I missed the first. If so, he didn’t know me as well as he liked to think. My own experience with stealth, and evasive maneuvering, was considerable.

I decided to proceed as I had been about to when I found the trap. Carefully, I continued southwest for some fifty yards, poking the ground in front of me with a branch and examining the forest floor for signs of recent activity. Several times I stopped and cleared a patch of ground, convinced I had come upon another trap or pit. But each time I was mistaken. It was better, I told myself, to be safe than sorry.

Eventually I arrived at the southeast corner of the rock—the “toe” that had given me access to the summit, some days before. I peered at it from the cover of the woods, waiting to see if the Doctor, or anyone else, would pass by. Ten minutes later, no one had. The sunshine was bright and warm—I could feel the warm air rolling off the rock and into the trees—but I resisted its call. Instead, I continued to skirt the edge of the rock from deep within the forest, never letting it entirely out of my sight, but never revealing myself to whomever might be waiting in the clearing that surrounded it. It took me a good half hour to make my way clockwise to the northeast corner, and in that time I found no traps, and saw no sign of the Doctor.

I was facing, from my vantage point just behind the treeline, the back of the rock’s “ankle.” Just to the east stood the castle’s northwest tower—one of the two lowest, and the most damaged by time and weather. The north curtain wall led farther off to the east, while the western wall hugged the nearly vertical cliff of the “ankle.”

I say “hugged,” but in fact there was a narrow gap between the rock and the wall, owing to the natural unevenness of the cliff. This gap was approximately fifteen feet away from where I now stood. It was midafternoon, however, and the sun had sunk low enough so that the shadows of the trees covered the clearing. If I were to make for that gap, I would be exposed for the two seconds it would take me to cross the ten feet between the trees and the wall. But owing to the shadows, and my camouflage clothing, I believed I could make it without being detected. And since the figure I’d spied fleeing the scene of the foiled trap had been moving in a direction that would have taken him to this very spot, it was the last place from which he might be anticipating my approach. I decided to take the risk. Slowly, quietly, I moved close to the edge of the clearing; from behind a tall pine I surveyed the tower, the high cliff edge, the curtain wall. And then I ran.

Nothing happened. I reached the gap and wedged myself into it, the quiver containing my bow and arrows chafing against my back. The gap was even wider than I had assumed it to be, and, after moving several feet into the darkness, I rested comfortably there for a moment, catching my breath.

It was cold in the gap, with a strong smell of fungus and dead leaves. The ground beneath my feet was spongy, and the rock face felt massive and comforting behind me. I looked up at the strip of sky overhead. A hawk crossed it, circling. The only sound was that of my own breaths.

My original plan had been to wait here for my quarry to reveal himself. But some impulse, fueled by instinct or memory, caused me to move further into the gap. The cliffside was as irregular as it had appeared from the clearing, but it was obvious now that a man could move all the way to the southwest tower from here without much difficulty. And now, as my eyes adjusted to the dim, I realized that, in fact, a man had, and did. The spongy ground was quite clean and even, covered by a bed of pine needles; a faint depression ran down the center of it, as though it was frequently tamped down by human feet. The castle wall was impressively straight, and tilted slightly inward; I assumed it must be thicker at the base than at the top, assuring that it could not be breached from the ground. I entertained, briefly, the notion that I might be able to scale the wall by pressing my back against the rock and “walking” up, but I could see this was impossible: the gap at the top might have been as wide as five feet.

I pressed on, toward the center of the wall. A cloudbank had rolled in, and was now covering up the gap with a uniform gray; the light dimmed. It was then that I made an interesting discovery.

I had just inched around a bulge in the rock face, and found that the gap just beyond it widened considerably, for a length of perhaps six feet. The ground here was well worn, particularly right at the foot of the wall.

The key detail, however, was the wall itself. Its impenetrable mortared stone face was interrupted, at knee height, by what appeared to be a block of wood, snugly inserted in place of a single stone. It was approximately eighteen inches high by two feet wide, was depressed about two inches into the rock face, and bore a large iron handle, right in the center, fastened to its surface by large bolts.

Of course. I immediately recognized the block as the way in. I crouched down and gripped the handle with both of my hands, bracing myself for a great deal of exertion. But when I pulled, the block slid smoothly toward me a full inch, spilling a bit of debris, crumbs of mortar and pine needles, to the ground at my feet.

At this point I paused, considering. I had acted with the utmost care so far today, in spite of which I had nearly lost my leg. There was every reason to expect that someone, Doctor Avery Stiles himself, perhaps, now stood on the opposite side of this very wall, with one of his homemade poisoned arrows aimed at the hole. Even if he was not, he doubtless lurked somewhere in the compound, and would soon know that it had been breached. I had to proceed with care. I looked up once again at the lip of the curtain wall, then both ways down the length of the gap. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, I slowly slid the block out of the wall and set it on the ground at my feet.

The block was very heavy, about eight inches thick, with a handle on the inside identical in design, but less damaged by the elements. The reason was clear: as I had predicted, the wall was very thick at its foot, sheltering the handle from harm. Indeed, I discovered, hazarding a peek inside the opening, that it was at least four feet thick—so thick that it must have been difficult to detect, from inside, whether someone had moved the block.

The hole—a tunnel, really—was smooth and even, and had obviously been part of the wall’s original design, rather than an afterthought dug out after construction. It was as neatly mortared as the exterior of the wall, and was more than wide enough to admit an adult male in good physical condition.

There was no need to wait. I removed my pack and quiver, ducked down, and climbed inside. I moved forward slowly, making as little noise as possible; the air grew cold as the wall closed in around me. I was reminded of my trip to the cellar of my house, and breathed deeply and evenly, in an effort to dispel my fear.

My head had soon reached the end, even as my ankles dangled out into the gap. I was looking out into a sheltered corner of the main courtyard that I had seen from the summit of the rock. A large piece of shrubbery grew directly before me, and I was reassured by the cover it offered. To the left was another wall, part of the large hall or dwelling I also remembered from before; the pieces of play or exercise equipment I remembered were also here, off to the right. I lay there for several minutes, looking and listening, and I detected no human presence besides my own.

Without further hesitation, I crawled out of the tunnel and onto a flagstone, where I crouched, ready to fight. I was, at last, inside the castle.

THIRTEEN

For all my anxiety at having breached my quarry’s stronghold, I must now confess that, at this moment, that anxiety was twinned with a second emotion, one less easy to identify, and more surprising. It was a feeling of belonging, if not of actual familiarity—a sense that, though I was far from safe standing here in the castle courtyard, my presence here had a rightness, that it represented the fulfillment of some previously unknown desire. It was as though something hanging crookedly in my mind had finally been righted.

For all the peculiarity of this feeling, however, I did not have time just now to stop and consider it at length. I studied my surroundings until I was confident that I had indeed gone unseen, then I reached back into the tunnel to grab hold of my pack and quiver. I dragged them through, and after a moment’s thought, wriggled in once again and took hold of the inside handle of the block. With some concerted effort, I was able to wedge it back into place from the inside. I realized that it might cause me trouble if I were to need to retreat quickly; but to leave the block lying there would signal to the Doctor, should he be outside and approach through the gap, that his fortress had been penetrated. The element of surprise was a reasonable trade for the seconds I might lose trying to escape. I did not, of course, plan to need to escape. Whatever happened, I intended to leave the castle without fear or haste.

I shouldered my belongings and slowly stood up.

The castle had appeared quite imposing from outside, but now that I had come through the wall, it seemed smaller, and less threatening. It had more of the look of a ruin, as well. Debris that had fallen from the crenellated walls was piled, seemingly untouched, around the edges of the courtyard; a few stones even lay on the roof of the building to my left. The flagstones were heaved and cracked, and weeds—even entire trees, like the shrub I now stood behind—sprung up between them. And contrary to my observations of the path outside, I could detect no clear evidence of any human presence. If the Doctor lived here, he concealed himself well. The castle looked abandoned.

I took one last visual survey of the grounds, and began to move.

From over my shoulder I drew my bow, and an arrow, which I nocked and held at the ready. I kept close to the western wall, stepping stealthily, swiftly, keeping my eyes on those obstacles in the courtyard which might conceal a man. I sidestepped along the curtain until I reached the edge of the compound; then I inched silently east. I passed underneath a small square barred window, and soon reached the corner.

The only part of the courtyard that had been invisible to me from the tunnel opening was on the other side of this corner. This would be the small area underneath the large watchtower. There was likely to be some kind of entrance into the compound, and another into the tower; if my foe lay in wait for me, it was almost certainly around this corner that I would find him. In fact, it was possible that he stood there now, his bow aimed.

After another scan of the visible courtyard, I decided upon a course of action. I unchocked my arrow, gripped it and the bow in one hand, and took a breath. There was a wooden structure up ahead, a sort of crooked, broken table around which tall weeds had sprung, and it was there that I now directed my gaze. From behind it, I would be able to peer into the hidden corner of the courtyard. I marked my decision with a quick nod, and sprinted toward the structure.

Only ten feet separated me from my goal, but my feet slipped and skidded on the crumbling flagstones, and my mad dash felt more like a labored, heavily burdened trek. In any event, I made it. I crouched down behind the wooden table and inspected my body for wounds. There were none. If an arrow had been fired, it had missed me.

I took a moment to gather myself, then peeked over the top of the table.

The hidden section of courtyard was much as I had imagined it. There were open doorways, yawning into darkness, leading into the compound and tower, and a large pile of rubble that appeared to have fallen from the tower’s southwest corner. There was also another wooden structure, a kind of cage, with chains and other metal apparatus hanging inside it. The sight of this object gave me pause—it had an aura of sinister intent about it, and impending danger. No one was visible anywhere, but I smelled smoke.

I chose to wait a few minutes, in an effort to detect movement anywhere on the castle grounds. As I waited, I examined the structure I was crouched behind. I could see now that it wasn’t a table, not precisely—rather, it was a heavy, circular wooden platform balanced upon a roughly carved inverted wooden pyramid, the two attached by a fist-sized and tightly fitted peg. Overall it had the appearance of a very large child’s top. The platform, though thick, was cracked down the center from exposure, like an old kitchen cutting board left soaking in water. The flagstones underneath it were worn down and cracked, as if from its weight and motion.

Again, I felt uneasy looking at it. It seemed to evoke some nameless anxiety or desperation, which I could not put my finger on. I began to feel as if I were being watched. I quickly shot glances up to the four towers, the walls, the roof of the rock. But there was nothing, and no one. I was still alone.

At last it was time to move on. The nearest wall was that of the watchtower, so it was there that I dashed, my footing surer this time, the journey swifter. Again I arrived unharmed. I slid along this wall, peered again into the once-hidden area of the courtyard, and slipped around to just beside the watchtower door. After a brief pause to listen, I ducked in.

It was clear that no one else was here. My eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness, and a flight of stone stairs made themselves visible before me, spiraling up into dim light. There was a strong scent of rodents, and fungus. I climbed the staircase slowly, quietly, stopping after every three steps to listen for my enemy. In this manner, I reached the top and emerged onto the broken roof.

In the minutes I spent climbing, it had begun to rain, a stinging, spitting rain accompanied by a warm wind. Gunmetal clouds were racing in from the west, promising a powerful storm. Looking down, I could make out the overgrown path to Minerva Road, and the approximate place where I had avoided the bear trap; above me loomed the barren rock. No people or animals could be seen, not to the east nor in any other direction. The wind picked up, and I felt very desolate and helpless, in spite of my commanding view of the surroundings.

A few moments later I was back in the courtyard. Again there was no one. I moved along the castle’s north wall, giving the wooden cage a wide berth, and quickly arrived at the doorway that led into the compound. As in the tower, I smelled a rats’ warren, and the chemical tang of mildew; but in addition I again detected woodsmoke—and a human scent, the stink of living. Fear enveloped my body like a sack, and I suppressed a shiver. My eyes adjusted to the light, and I could see now that I was in a large open room, with the blackened remains of a fire off to the center, underneath a small hole in the peaked roof. A flat stone sat beside the fire, and a small pile of sharpened twigs. It appeared that food had once been cooked here, though there was no indication that the fire was recent. In front of me and to the left, a rectangular hole was dug in the dirt floor and a flight of crude stairs led down into darkness.

No—not darkness, not quite. There was light, and not the gray light of the stormy sky outside; rather, it was a yellow light, flickering faintly. A fire, somewhere below. That was where the smoke had come from—not the dead fire here in front of me, but the one burning at the bottom of those stairs.

Slowly, I crept across the room and began to descend. Once again I nocked my arrow and held it before me. One step, then another, and another—I paused between each, listening, knowing that this must be the place where he waited. Fourteen steps, fifteen, and I was standing one step from the doorway on the other side of which burned the fire. Smoke stung my eyes. I leaned against the stairwell wall and inched my head closer and closer, until I could see the outlines of a room. A rough corner, walls of stone. A bundle lying on the ground—blankets, perhaps, brown in the dim. And a pair of shoes. Moccasins, by the look of them, sewn together out of deerhide.

He was here—I knew it. The moment had come. I closed my eyes, breathed in and out to clear my head, and then stepped forward, into the light.

The room was about twenty feet square and undivided, like the room above, and I realized that it had been hollowed out underneath the rock. The walls, as I have said, were of stone, not milled and fitted together as in the castle walls, but irregular and jagged, as if they had been found on the ground outside, or dug up during the room’s excavation. The wadded-up bundle I had noticed was indeed a pile of blankets—a bed, in fact, laid right in the dirt—and the wall I faced, across the fire, was lined with bookshelves—crude, crooked planks, heavily weighted with books, their spines obscured by years of smoke. The planks were supported by the books themselves, so that the bottom few rows were hopelessly squashed and bent, their bindings ruined, and only the top two shelves’ contents were even removable.

Something, however, stood in front of that wall: a small wooden table. It was old, a bit lopsided, the kind of table one might find in a child’s playhouse or a kindergarten classroom. On it lay an apparently random collection of objects. Something about them—some familiar pattern in their arrangement—made me take a step closer.

As if in keeping with the table, the objects seemed to belong to a child. There was a homemade slingshot, made from a stout branch and a thick rubber band; there was a military action figure—a G.I. Joe. These lay beside a mushroom hunting guide, a small canteen, a penknife, a cigar box full of bones.

I should clarify here that the cigar box was closed. Yet I knew that it contained bones—the tiny bones of birds and squirrels, and perhaps the husks of cicadas. The box was cardboard, with a fabric-hinged lid, and it bore the name C
ABAÑAS
above a kind of heraldic crest. The lip of the box was ragged with torn paper, which once had sealed in the cigars.

I reached out and ran my thumb along the lip, feeling the paper’s uneven edge. After a moment, I lifted the lid.

It was just as I had imagined. Several skulls, some of them beaked, and a scattering of tiny thin bones. The cicadas’ husks were in a separate compartment, an unlidded jewelry box, to keep them intact. From underneath the bones poked the corner of a thick, folded piece of paper; even as I reached for it I knew that it was a map, a hand-drawn treasure map, marking the places in and around my childhood home where I had concealed things that were valuable to me. The weightless bones clattered faintly as I drew out the map; it unfolded with a dry rustle, revealing the drawings and symbols I knew would be there, rendered in pencil, then traced over with calligraphic ink. There was the house, the shed; there stood the catalpa tree and the sugar maples. The trash pit, the gravel drive—it was all there, the diagram of my childhood, as I had drawn it thirty-five years before.

The smoke in the room was thick and choking; the flickering of the fire cast disorienting shadows across the walls, and I gazed down at my lost possessions: my slingshot, and my book, and my canteen. All of it was mine.

From behind me, over the crackle of the fire, I heard the small noise of a bare foot shifting against the dirt floor.

I stood and turned. It was him. He held a hollowed-out twig to his mouth and, with a terrible grin, blew. I felt something sting my face, and moved my hand to brush it away. But my hand merely hung at my side, immobile.

My knees buckled and I lost my balance; my arm landed in the fire. The old man acted quickly to move it, tucking it in close to my body, and as I lost consciousness I felt gratitude for his alertness and concern, and tried, but failed, to form my lips into a gesture of thanks.