Charlie's Key (14 page)
“Let me get a coat,” says Clare, and a second later the door shuts and I hear them all go down the steps. They’re gone maybe a minute, and then they’re tramping back up. The front door creaks open again and I hear footsteps, heavy and fast, heading up the stairs to the second floor. I’ve got my eye to the crack trying to peek out when another eye pops into the opening, about an inch from mine. It’s Clare. She pulls the door open and stands there looking pale and like she’s gonna scream, except she holds up her finger to her lips. Her whole hand’s shaking, and so is what’s she’s got in it—a pill bottle that’s rattling as it jolts up and down.
“He’s here,” she says in a crazy whisper. “Nick. He found Frankie sitting out on the boulevard. Came out here with him in a cab. He knows you’re here, Charlie, but I told him you were upstairs. He’s there now, looking, so you gotta go. Now. Straight out back. There’s a fence, but there’s a hole underneath it—where the neighbor’s dog gets in. Go. Now. Go.”
She hands me my jacket and gives me a push through the back door. Mist wets my face soon as I step onto the deck—it’s thick, swirling around orange in the streetlights. I step toward the fence, and one of those motion-detector spotlights clicks on behind me. Looking back at the house, I see a face looking down at me from a window—Nick, who, soon as he sees me, disappears.
I race for that hole in the fence and squeeze under, the smell of worms and wet in my nose. I’ll never fit—it’s got to be a small dog—but I got to keep trying ’cause the screen door just slammed shut and there’s footsteps flying my way. I pull again and the skin on my back peels down along with my jacket. It clumps into a ball that holds me until a board breaks and I’m through and running on the other side.
“Charlie,” Nick shouts through the fence, but I don’t look back. I just keep running up a hill that turns from grass to rocks and roots as I go higher. It looks like I’ll be at the top of the hill soon, but all of a sudden I see it’s not the top of the hill, it’s fog—thick as a cloud, cold and gray and soaking as soon as I step inside it. I run another sec, then stop and turn to look back down at Clare’s house, but all I see is a big orange ball where the streetlight is. No house, no fence, no road, nothing except this gray that I feel on my face and my hands, making little drops on my eyelashes and my lips. I take a sec to slow down my breathing, because I know if I can’t see Nick, he can’t see me.
I wait to hear a scream or a gun or something from down below, but there’s nothing until the screen door on Clare’s deck gives a screech that ends in a bang. I wait another good while, but it stays quiet. There’s not even a car, which means Gerald and Nick and Frankie and Clare are all still down there. Somewhere far off a fog horn starts blowing, and that starts a dog barking—maybe the one who lives next door to Clare.
That bark sounds pretty clear, even though the fog is getting thicker. And now the dog’s howling in between barks. Maybe it knows the moon’s there, even if it can’t see it through the fog.
I start moving up the hill, slow so I’m quiet, but not quiet enough.
“Charlie,” Nick calls. He’s below me, off toward Clare’s house, I guess, but I can’t really tell. There’s no left or right up here, just a center, where I am, with everything swirling around.
“Charlie,” he calls again. “I hear ya out there. It’s no good tryin’ to get away, ya know. The little girl’s neighbor down there, he gave me lend of his beagle. He’s a huntin’ dog, Charlie, knows these hills better’n the rabbits do. I give him a sniff of your T-shirt, Charlie, b’y—the one you left in your pack, down to the girl’s. She’s a cute one, Charlie. Maybe you fancies her a bit—I can see why, sure. So come on down to my voice, and we’ll hike back to her place. What do ya say, b’y?”
I stay quiet.
“C’mon, Charlie. I don’t mean ya no harm. Fact, I’m trying to do ya a good turn here—it’s dangerous up on these hills at night, in fog. You’re on solid ground one minute and down off a cliff the next. So whaddaya say, Charlie? C’mon back down and we’ll have a chat at the little girl’s place.”
All the while he’s saying this, I’m moving slow up the hill, away from his voice. It’s getting steeper and I’m on all fours some of the time, feeling the rock in front of me. Parts are too steep to climb, so I have to feel my way around them, till there’s a bit I can get up. Whenever I stop, I hear the dog howling behind me. Finally I reach a rock wall, pretty much straight up, as far as I can feel. I go down each way along it a good piece, but there’s no way around it—I’ll have to go up.
It’s easy at first, with those little trees growing outta the cliff—they must be able to grow just about anywheres. But they run out soon enough, and now I’ve got to reach up, feeling around for a crack to grab while I pull myself up. Twice my feet slip and I think I’m headed for the bottom before they touch on something that holds me. Each time I fall far enough to rip my jeans; the second time I start to bleed— I feel blood, warm on my leg, which is about the only warm thing on me. My feet are freezing and my hands are worse, paining each time I shove them into some handhold. I try to blow some hot air onto them when I get a foothold, but each time I stop, I hear that dog getting closer, till it seems he’s right down underneath me, though how far that is, I don’t know. It seems I been on this cliff for an hour, but for all I know Nick could just reach up here and grab my foot, or my sneaker—the one with the key inside.
I’m just thinking that when I hear his voice down below, louder than ever.
“Charlie, b’y, you up there?”
I hear him moving around, his jacket scraping against the granite as he feels for a branch to grab.
“Charlie,” he calls up. “Stay where you’re to. I’ll come up and give ya a hand getting down outta here.”
There’s no way I’m going down. I pull my right hand out of a crack and feel for another one. It’s bleeding now too. I pull myself up again, ten centimeters, fifteen. And all of a sudden it’s like I just stuck my head out from under the blankets on my bed—the fog’s gone, the air is clear, the moon is bright. I look down and it’s still gray, but my head’s in the clear, sitting on top of the fog bank like the top of a pin poking through a cotton ball. The top of the cliff is just above me, with a tree at the edge, close enough to grab. One more heave and I roll onto solid ground, my chest moving up and down, my legs shaking.
“Sing out, Charlie, so I know where you’re to,” Nick calls from below.
That’s enough to get me up again, and I look for the best place to run. It’s empty up here, nothing but rocks and grass and tiny trees. In the moonlight I can see little paths running everywhere, but they don’t seem to go anywhere in particular—just off in every direction, wide enough for a rabbit but not much else. There is something, though, off to the left— that Cabot Tower Frankie talked about, dark against the sky. There’s streetlights around it, and a parking lot. Maybe people, too, even though I don’t see anybody. I might not be able to see anything for long, though, because there’s more fog over that way, drifting in from the ocean toward the tower. In another couple a minutes it’ll disappear, so I take off running for it.
It’s hard to run with all these roots going everywhere. Plus there’s boggy mud puddles, and it’s not long before my feet are soaked, then my pants, all the way to my knees. I bend down to tie up my sneakers good and tight—some of the mud puddles are deep enough to pull my sneaker right off—and that’s when I see Nick standing up at the cliff edge, maybe a hundred meters behind me. I’m crouched down so he doesn’t see me yet, but he’s looking—turning left and right, trying to spot me.
“Charlie,” he calls. “Charlie, b’y. Are ya up here? Charlie?” He turns round to call back over the cliff. “Are ya all right?”
He doesn’t know if I made it to the top—he’s thinking I might have fallen right past him in the fog, and that I could be laying down below, with my neck broke. If I just stay put, down in these roots…But then there’s that barking and howling again, and up comes the neighbor’s dog, racing along the cliff edge to Nick. Nick pulls something from his shirt and shoves it in the dog’s nose, and the dog starts running, right toward me, with Nick just behind. So I’m up again. Nick’s getting closer. He’ll be on me before I get to the tower, so I shift to the right and run straight toward the fog bank—maybe I can hide in there somehow. Can I run that far? My legs are paining, my lungs too—like I been punched in my chest.
Then I trip and fall face-first, right into a bog, so now I’m soaked all over, and spitting out bits of twigs and probably rabbit poop and who knows what else is sitting in a pond up on top of Signal Hill. I wipe the goop from my eyes and look back, and it seems like Nick must be right on top of me, with that yowling beagle just in front of him. I can’t get up—my legs are like noodles, but the fog’s only a few meters away so I get on my knees and then on my feet and let myself fall forward, hoping my feet will move in time to keep me from falling flat again. They do, and a sec later I’m in the fog, thicker than ever, the world gone white. If it weren’t for that dog, I could stay put and catch my breath, but I know he’ll be right behind me, so I keep moving.
Nick, though, seems to have stopped, because the next time he calls out, his voice is farther away.
“Charlie,” I hear. “Stop, b’y—stop where you’re to. I means it. Don’t move.”
Whatever he says after that I don’t hear because my next step sends me down into another bog hole. A deep one, I think, waiting for my foot to hit the muck. Except it keeps going, and now the rest of my body is following it down, down, down, not into a muck hole but over a steep bank, a cliff. Then my whole body’s over the edge, sliding down, impossible to stop, until…I don’t know. I don’t know what happened, or what I hit, or where I am. I just know my head hurts, my back hurts, and everywhere else is cold, cold, cold. That’s all I know for a minute, that I’m feeling bad and cold. Then I feel sick, like I gotta throw up, and all at once that fish and chips comes roaring back up through my throat and mouth and nose, with me flopping onto my side to keep it off my chest.
I lay there a minute with my eyes closed. I breathe in and out, cool now, but in a good way, like you feel after you throw up, so much better it’s almost a good feeling. I open my eyes, expecting to see big pile of puke beside my head, but there’s nothing. And I mean nothing—just air. I put my arm out to feel round through the fog and it flops straight down, like it’s falling over the edge of a table. I’m just starting to figure out where I am when a gust of wind comes up and the fog lifts off me, my head out from under that blanket again, and I see the world clear in the moonlight.
Straight out from me, where I’m laying on my side, there’s only night and stars and the ocean. I roll onto my back, and up above there’s a black wall of rock that goes straight up, maybe twenty meters. I’m on a ledge sticking out from the cliff, and if I’m twenty meters from the top, it’s got to be another hundred down to the ocean. I can hear the waves banging into the rocks. I try and sit up to get a better look, and that’s when I feel a stab go through my ankle, hurting so bad that I give a little cry out. I’m thinking it must be broken when I hear Nick calling to me.
“Jesus Mother Mary,” he says, his head sticking out over the cliff.
“Christ, Charlie. You okay?”
“I think my leg’s broke.”
“It don’t look great, that’s sure,” says Nick. “Can you move at all?”
“Not my leg. But I can move my hands and stuff.”
I show him.
“Well, don’t Jesus move anything,” he says. “You’re on a wee bit of a ledge, and it’s a long way down, so ya gotta stay still—right still. Okay?”
“’Kay.”
“Now, listen. I gotta go for help.”
“Can you hurry? My leg’s starting to hurt.”
“I’ll hurry,” he says.
He disappears, then comes back a second later.
“Charlie, b’y,” he says. “Listen—I gotta know something. And I means it, now. I wants ya to tell me the truth about that key—will ya do that? It’s like, you do me a good turn and tell where that key is to, an’ I does ya one and gets the fire boys.”
I want to say something to that—about how I figure calling for the fire department when someone could fall off a cliff into the ocean is not really a favor. But it’s not much of a time to make an argument like that, stuck up a cliff with a broken leg and your pants and jacket all wet and no way up or down. So I don’t say anything except decide that it’s okay to lie a bit when somebody’s being unfair in an emergency.
So I say, “I don’t have it.”
“But you knows what I’m talking about.”
“I guess so.”
“A key. Small, brass. Got a number on it.”
“I guess so.”
“Well, that’s meant for me,” says Nick. “Yer old man was bringing that to me. Understand?”
I don’t say anything.
“It’s not valuable or nothing,” he says, “but I needs it. You hear me, Charlie?”
“Yep.”
“So, listen. I needs ya to do something. I needs ya to promise me that once I gets you outta this mess, you’ll get that key to me, all right? Promise me that, Charlie, b’y. Do you hear?”
“I promise.”
“Swear it on your father’s soul,” says Nick. “C’mon. Swear it.”
“I swear.”
“On what?”
“On my father’s soul.”
“Good man. Now you just holds on a bit—I’ll have them fire guys up here pronto.”
Then he’s gone, and it’s just me and the wind and a hundred meters of nothing.
I don’t remember much about the rescue, which is sad, because it’s the sorta thing I’d usually run out to see. You know, I hear a siren and I run to see if it’s a fire truck, a cop car, an ambulance. Every time, like I can’t help it.
“Pavlov’s dog,” my dad called me after I jumped up one time from supper three times in about a minute. Pavlov was this Russian guy back in the
1890
s who figured out dogs start drooling when they think about food—like if you always rang a bell before you fed them, they’d start drooling when they heard the bell even if there wasn’t any food there. Anyways, my dad was right to say sirens are like a bell to me. Not everyone’s like that. My dad, for instance. He’d hear a siren and he’d just sit there, didn’t look out the window, just sit.