Masters of the Maze (10 page)

But, did he
see?

Once, before he had perfected his infallible sub-literary formula, Nate had written an article for an occult magazine on the subject of “eyeless sight,” that singular but often-attested phenomenon “whereby the faculty of vision is situated elsewhere than in the retina of the eye.” It did not come to him, therefore, as a complete surprise — merely as surprise enough to raise his short hairs and, seemingly, liquefy his heart — for him to realize he “saw” nothing while his eyes were open and that the moment he closed them he “saw” with what was apparently the entire epidermal surface of his face …

• • •

What
he “saw” in that astonishing millisecond of a blink was too infinitely unfamiliar to register upon his unprepared mind. Shock. Blink. Shock. Blink. He screwed his eyes tight shut and turned his head, blazing with strange new vision, from side to side. And it was then he saw something immediately recognizable, but in its own way equally frightening: the stranger of only a moment ago, “staring” at
him
with the man’s own eyes tight shut, and a short and ugly rifle in his hands. The weapon came up and out, Nate’s mind said, quicker, probably, than it had ever said anything,
He can’t sight that, so he’ll fire from hand level
; and the thought was not complete when Nate saw again in his old sight the outer surface of the wall — and fell over backward from the sudden motion with which he had pulled in his head.

Aware, in some separate compartment of his confused mind that no bullet had followed him, wondering — in that same little mind-niche — if this was because nothing could pass through from
there
to
here
or if the rifle had not been fired after all, Nate righted himself and came forward on his hands and knees as if prepared to butt at the false wall (
all an illusion
, someone assured him, calmly, in another mind-niche;
not even a trick mirror, over-oxygenized or -nitro-genized, rapture of the depths from breathing too much plus the shock of breathing into a dead man’s lungs: you’ll come to in a minute
) and thrust his head into and through it and saw —

— saw the figure of his sudden and unknown enemy, vanishing backward as though falling down a vertical well, spinning and dwindling and (here the well simile ceasing) darting off at angles and then — oh, small end of the telescope indeed! — though shrunken, but still well within the range of “vision,” he seemingly turned to the right and ran upside down at an angle of about eighteen degrees and vanished.

Nate stared a long while but there was no reappearance. He withdrew his head. Whatever was there (wherever
there
was!) was going to have to wait. Death, try at resuscitation, something very close to attempted murder, and then … That. A place which defied or ignored the laws of solids, optics, gravity, and who knew what else. It was too much. Too much for now. So Nate stayed on his knees a while, and, while he was there, said a short prayer of little cohesion but great intensity. Then he got up and pulled down the shell of wooden wall which fitted the “wall” which was not. The fit seemed as close as oil on water.

Back in the adjoining room again, he looked at the body of Joseph Bellamy. Surely, any further attempts at mouth-breathing would be more in the line of necrophilia than life-saving. Suddenly Nate felt very sick and cold. He sat down quickly in the deep, leathery chair and lowered his head. It didn’t make him feel very much better, but by and by he felt well enough to try the telephone again. He had completed dialing before he realized that it was Peggy Stone’s number … and that it wasn’t ringing. There was nothing in his ear but the steady drone of an open — a supposedly open — telephone line.

So, once again he tried to get the operator. This time he timed it by the old Seth Thomas clock on the wall: fifteen minutes. No response. Then, methodically, he dialed every number he could think of, including some from years back which he knew were no longer occupied by those who once had held them. If he could just reach somebody, anybody, he could ask that body to call his/her local police with the message. The … ah … message?
Mr. Joseph Bellamy of Darkglen House was killed by an intruder who vanished into a wall, and to prove it I’ll show you the wall he vanished into or rather through …

No. No, that wouldn’t do. For one thing, he, Nate, didn’t know, didn’t know at all that the man he saw had killed Joseph Bellamy. It might be a good idea to see if there were any — Oh God! — life imitating cheap fiction again! — any signs of violence on the body. On the other hand, it might be a good idea to do nothing of the sort. Don’t touch anything until the police arrive. Poor old lonely man there on the rug — already and for some time past, now: a thing. Very possible, though, he had just, well, died. Certainly he had looked unwell, unhealthy; certainly he had taken pills … well, tablets; capsules … Nate saw him. In fact, there were some right there, there on the table.

And still no reply from the buzzing telephone. Try to walk? To Nokomas? Twenty miles? In this weather? It might start snowing or storming before he even reached whatsitsname Corners. He didn’t know and Ozzie hadn’t said if anyone lived there now. No, no. Nothing to do but sit up with the dead until dawn, or whatever time the hired help arrived. He put the phone back on the table. From time to time he’d try it again. Meanwhile … He deliberated, rubbed his chin. He’d go and look for something to cover the body. And for something, Christ yes! something to drink.

• • •

“I was swept up by events,” he said to himself later. And, “Oh, Gordon, you’re a magnificent stylist and a great coiner of phrases as well.”

Things seemed to arrange themselves around him, was what had happened. Keziah hadn’t exactly screamed on seeing the covered form on the floor when Nate, awakened by her knock, opened the door. She had given a loud gasp and put her red hands to her red face and then she began to talk and talk and
talk —

“Oh. my Lord. Oh, my
Lord!
He’s dead, it’s happened, I knew it, I
knew
it. I knew it the minute I walked in the door this morning, I just felt it, ‘Something ain’t right,’ I said to myself —
Glory! Ozzie!
Oh, were you here, were you
here?
Mr. Jordan? When it happened?
Ozzie! Ozzie! Glory!
Oh, what a shock it give me, here, let me sit down. Not that it’s a surprise. Poor
man!
I’m going to start crying in a minute, thirty-five years I worked here for him, and before that, too, his uncle — Oh, it’s no surprise. Here they come, I better go out and tell Glory, her nerves ain’t — ”

Her nerves weren’t. It was quite a while before Ozzie and Keziah — and, for that matter, Nate — could compose her sufficiently for Ozzie to drive the both of them off. The phone still would not respond and Glory refused, with signs of renewed hysteria, to remain behind. “I can’t help it, I can’t
help
it!” she declared, loudly, her nondescript face working. “You know that, Oz. Ever since George was taken that time. You leave me off at home, Emma’ll have to quit work and stay home with me today, I don’t say it’s right, he was a good man, a good boss, but I can’t help it I’ll ask Sadie Snyder can she come up and help you, Kezzy, but —
I
— can —
not.
”

So the old car started off, and not without difficulty. Keziah from somewhere had produced a second glass. She seemed as calm as Glory Smith had not “Oh, there’s so much to do. I would hardly know where to begin. You said a prayer, didn’t you, Mr. Jordan? That’s a good thing. Well, another one won’t hurt … Yes, she was right, he
was
a good man and a good boss. He knew it was coming. We all knew it was coming. First of all, we had
eyes
, didn’t we? And then besides he did tell us. ‘Don’t be frightened,’ he said. ‘Comes to all of us,’ he said. Said something I guess he read in a book, not the Bible, though, but it was a kind of a nice thing anyway. Said — ‘Joining the great company of the dead, for they increase around us as we grow older.’ I don’t feel it just yet, you know. Oh, I’ll
feel
it by and by. Don’t you worry. It’s too bad this had to happen to you, won’t be much of a vacation for you. Won’t be for
me
, either, can tell you. Remember when
old
Mr. Bellamy, oh dear, we were busy for
months —
”

She broke off abruptly, finished the drop of brandy, got up and padded over to the desk. “Here it is,” she said, taking a sheet of paper from the drawer. “Just where he showed me. ‘Phone these people,’ he said. ‘See that they are informed at once.’ And — Mm-hm. Name with a line around it,” she had proceeded to dial a number while Nate sat watching, too numb and tired to remind her that the phone was out of order.

Only, it seemed, it wasn’t.

“Mr. Ralph Wiedemyer, please,” she said, reading. “Speaking? Over in Roman Hill, New York? Well, now, I’ve got a sad duty to perform, Mr., and maybe you better sit down. You knew Mr. Joseph Bellamy over in — Oh. Well,
yes.
Not a surprise to you, either, I guess he — Well, we don’t
know
yet, Mr. Wiedemyer. But he had this bad heart in addition to everything else and oh about eleven last night he rang this buzzer in his room that connects with the guest cottage here and Mr. Jordan, young man from — Jordan. That’s right — from New York, he was staying there and he come right over but by the time he got here our poor dear Mr. Bellamy, he had passed away …? Why, he had a
list
, that’s how. Your name was on it, you was to be called first. I guess I better hang up now and call these other names. Yes. Yes. Well, I’ll give it to his lawyer and I guess
he
will call you again when the arrangements have been all made. Not at all. Good-bye….”

So Nate just rode or coasted along with the story. He just kept quiet about its nightmare elements, not being any too sure about them, anyway. Not on this clear winter day with the dull sun beginning its short climb up the bitter sky. Keziah made the phone calls to attorney, bank, undertaker, minister, and masonic lodge. “I’m going to go down and make about five big pots of coffee and start some food going,” she said, rising. “We’ll need all of it. You, first, though. All night long, poor Mr. Jordan, you’ll get the first cup and the very first plate. Only — ” She paused at the door. “Maybe you better turn off the electric heater. Don’t know how soon the undertaker can get here. Or how late.”

Nate did. He heard her feet going down the hall. He blinked sore-edged eyes. For the hundredth or the five-hundredth time, he looked at the blanket-covered body on the floor. For the five-hundredth or perhaps only the hundredth time he observed the rounded shape of one hip thrusting its outline up. But this time the nagging thought surfaced:
The way he’s lying there he must be uncomfortable
… Ridiculous thought, but not ignoble. But now he understood it, he had to act upon it, don’t-touch-till-the-police-come or not. He knelt on one knee, drew back the blanket from the lower part of the body, winced a bit at sight of the thick white ankle revealed as trouser leg rode up past sock, and tried to make the minor adjustment. But the body did not adjust. He rummaged and groped, found something … something smooth and hard … pulled it out. The body settled slightly and, covered again, no longer seemed to reproach him.

He stared at what he saw.

The nightmare stirred again.

Keziah called.

Walking and holding it very carefully, Nate went over and opened the door a bit, “Yes?” he asked.

“Mr. Jordan, I can’t come up and be with you,” she called. “I’ve just got too much to
do.
I’m making a ham and a leg of lamb and, oh, whatever I can find. I remember that when
old
Mr. Bellamy died there were just
dozens
of people here, even
before
the funeral, and they all got to be fed, it’s not like the city here, you know, and,
well
, Mr. Jordan, but even if I can’t stay up there
with
you — ” She hesitated, then her voice plunged on, a bit quickly, “ — you could come be down
here
… I suppose … If you like …”

He waited just a moment and then said, “Thank you, but I’ll be okay up here.” Her relieved tone told him that he had made the correct response, that Keziah, in thinking of him and his own possible feelings, had been thinking at least as much of that deeply felt and ancient customary law,
Thou shalt not leave the unburied dead to be alone.

Closing the door again, Nate looked at what he held. A sort of pyramid of stone, though what kind of stone it was he could say or guess only that it appeared crystalline — using the term in its vaguest possible sense of color for which he had not quite a name, a tinge of pink, a touch of purple: it seemed to be changing shades in a subtle fashion while he was staring at it. But within the object, and running through it were lines and lines of glowing light. Sometimes they seemed to form a pattern, but this shifted and appeared to fracture with the faint pulse tremors of his hands. The lines were straight, they were curved, they moved at angles, they overlay one another, they were often infinitely close but indistinctly separate. And all this changed, changed, changed, yet did not ever entirely change; and always his eyes, attempting to follow, found themselves deceived.

Nate found himself certain of several things. For one, this thing was somehow connected to what lay behind that non-wall in the windowless room. For another, he was not going to tell anyone,
anyone,
about either one of them. Not now, at any rate. He felt an absolute conviction that it would be an act of idiocy, and of dangerous idiocy, to do so.

The form under the blanket had not of course grown smaller in the hours of lying there. Somehow, though, it seemed to have. Nate wrapped the stone and the bottle in his scarf and knotted them. He said, “Good-bye, Mr. Bellamy.” He went into the adjoining room, slid up the wooden panel, walked backward through the wall, and slid down the panel. Then he closed his eyes.

The place he had come through appeared as a dark rectangle in a golden, glowing orifice of irregular shape at the end of a corridor. That was where the corridor went; clearly, then, it had to come from somewhere. Desiring to see how the exit appeared from a different prospectus, he walked backward and to the side, meanwhile turning his head a few inches. He was not particularly surprised to see the dark rectangle change in color, size, proportions, location — it was no stranger than the effect of this new vision, so different in kind and quality from ocular vision, so increased in area. He compared the way the exit into Darkglen seemed to hop and spin and move from side to side with everything else he was seeing it do — he compared this with his memory of watching the dark young man who had shot at him vanish. Evidently it was the same phenomenon, viewed from two different directions. He was moving … or the “door” was moving … or both were moving … or else, in some way, neither was: but something else was happening.