Sleepwalker (15 page)

Or, thought Davis, cause a man to die of fright.

18

This was a strong one, bigger than all the others, and Peter had watched him for several nights.

It was dark and there was a cold wind. Spits of wind struck his face as he carried the box along the Ouse, avoiding the quaking puddles of rainwater. There were stars, but they came and went as clouds sliced the sky. A lash of rain made him blink.

He had his special gloves with him, the stout leather gloves he had bought at the gardening and home repair store near Fishergate. If only the chorus of sounds in his head would be quiet for a moment. If only he could stop and consider.

But he could not stop. It was pleasure, wasn't it? And it rid the world of these nasty beasts, didn't it? Because they were nasty, there was no question about that.

Only this time he found himself weeping as he laughed. It was wrenching, this confusion. He knew he was doing the right thing, and he knew he would not stop.

But there was something wrong with him. It was just like all those years before. There had been something wrong then, too. He hated himself for his weakness. Why was he trembling so tonight?

He was disgusted with himself. He had a right to pleasure, just like any other man. Besides, this cat had a chance, not like the others, who had been weak. This cat was a fighter, much heavier than the others, a brawny male who was in excellent condition, a great gray stud of a cat.

This would be a battle. He relished this, and to be far, where no one would be able to hear, and to forestall what he knew would be sweetest pleasure, he carried the box to Clifton Ing, the vast black meadow.

It was wet here, and sometimes his feet sank into the turf. The cat was wheeling within the box, clawing, hissing. And howling—great savage howls that meant that the world would suffer for what was happening.

A battle. This would be sweet.

Then the cat was out. Peter had been nearly ready to stop, but it surprised him, and he grabbed for the cat, and missed. His left hand snatched and caught a hind leg, but this hand was not wearing a glove.

Fortunately, the cat did not think of fighting yet, only of escape. It clawed the air, and clawed the darkened grass, hissing and spitting, and screaming like a woman.

Then it thought of fighting.

It was on Peter's arm, and up his arm, to his face. Peter thrust the leather glove to protect his eyes, and the savage rear feet clawed the glove, tearing even that tough hide.

Peter ducked, but the beast was much heavier, and much stronger, than Peter had foreseen. The brute spat, lashing with its paws, and one claw tangled itself in Peter's hair. Peter cried out. He lifted the beast high into the air with his gloved hand, and could barely keep it there. The animal twisted, and jackknifed.

The cat was nearly off, vanished into the dark.

Only the many nights of cat hunting allowed Peter to react by reflex, without a chance to realize what he was doing. He had the cat's tail, before he knew what he had done, and the cat didn't understand what was happening, either. Otherwise the beast would not have wasted its time raking the wet grass, and the demon would have doubled up and buried its fangs into Peter. He tried too late, snapping and tearing at the air.

Peter swung the beast around and around by its tail. The animal screamed, and fought, and tried to double back to the fist that held it, but Peter swung hard. Twice the cat succeeded in seizing the hand, but Peter slammed the savage thing to the turf, and the cat lost its grip.

Peter's blood was streaming. It tickled as it ran down his wheeling arm. He had his gloved hand ready, and caught the cat's skull in the best grip he had ever used on a cat, and the cat wasted its effort on the air, and on the thick coat sleeve. The powerful hind legs tore the coat, but could not find his flesh. Peter was ready, approaching the keenest pleasure.

And past it, panting.

The cat kicked convulsively. He flung it aside, and it did not move again. He fell to his knees, and gazed at the black around him. It began to rain again, hurried, lancing drops.

He knelt, empty inside. Retching, and trembling.

19

“These people are the lowest of the low, aren't they?” The policeman was tall, and wore a black radio clipped to the lapel of his overcoat. “Thieves of one sort or another, the smart ones, the daft ones, all of them. The lowest of the low.”

Davis hardly felt like arguing with a policeman. He reflected, looking out the window at the trenches, that archaeology usually did not involve much contact with the police. Davis did not know how “low” most thieves were. Perhaps some were not so low. Davis had very little experience with thieves.

“Although,” said the policeman, “it looks as though you've got a clever one in this case. Someone low and clever, a real snake, whoever this one is.”

“You have no leads as to where the—I hate to call him simply a body—where the Skeldergate Man might be?”

The policeman made a kind smile. “It's entirely too early for anything so concrete as that.”

Davis reflected. “Sometimes when a bog man is found, people come forth and try to confess to its murder. I can think of several instances in which men came forth claiming that an ancient body was the wife they had killed years before. Sometimes two or three men come forth to claim the murder of a given body. Some murders have been solved in that way.”

“The conscience does eat at a killer,” said the policeman, perhaps not quite following what Davis was beginning to suggest.

“Is it possible that someone believes this is someone they killed? Maybe they stole the body to destroy it. Burn the evidence, in a way.”

“This is an intelligent sort of a theory,” said the policeman, plainly not willing to trade theories with a scientist. “We'll see what we can see.”

When the policeman was gone, Davis got up and found himself a helmet. He was sick of things he could not understand. The policeman had told him something very disturbing, and he wanted to dig for a while. Since the Man had vanished, it was a waste of time to spend his days in the lab, especially now. He had been spending more and more time here at the dig. He badly missed working with Irene, but he felt his presence here was, somehow, good for morale. He found a square-bladed Bulldog spade in the jumble of tools in the shed.

It was true, he nearly laughed. Ridiculous. Nothing stayed where you put it here at the dig. If there was a poltergeist, perhaps it had a sense of humor.

A yellow Nally backhoe clawed earth, clearing a new trench. Peter scraped earth at the bottom of Trench Five, the pit that had nearly taken lives. No one else would climb into it. The work in all the trenches had slowed, with men working and then stopping to talk. Every worker was thoughtful, measuring, chipping away at the soil, but not seeming to make any progress. Davis sensed that the team counted on him, now, to make sense of everything. Peter had become thin and pale, and Mr. Langton seemed to spend most of his time sitting in his office, beside a telephone he hoped would not ring.

Dr. Higg continued to lie in what was essentially a coma, although Dr. Hall likened it to a trance. Dr. Hall had become slightly more friendly over the last several days. Perhaps he had seen Davis visiting his unconscious mentor so many times that he felt a degree of compassion. “It's a deep sleep, basically, from which he seems unable to awaken,” Dr. Hall had volunteered one afternoon. “He's as close to dying as you can be without actually slipping over the threshold.”

The wage-earning workers, like Skip and Oliver, had long ago decided that the site was haunted, and were accustomed to it. They worked more slowly now, Skip with his pneumatic drill blasting like warfare at one edge of the dig, Oliver plying his mattock in one trench. They moved cautiously, as though nothing could be trusted.

Unable to awaken
. Davis stabbed the spade into a wall of earth. He did not not like that phrase, and it repeated itself tirelessly in his mind.

He emptied earth into a black bucket. Irene was working steadily on the finds trays in the lab. Davis was working steadily at keeping up appearances. This was hardly a group of archaeologists anymore. It was a group of frightened people. Even Mandy had become quiet, screening the piles of earth for the odd bit of antler or teeth.

“What did the police have to say?” It was Jane, blond hair cascading from under her helmet.

“Nothing at all conclusive,” said Davis.

“You can tell me, Davis. I won't spread any secrets.”

Jane, who had begun by being so flirtatious, had quickly seemed aloof. Davis leaned on his spade. He had seen daffodils, as yet unflowering, on the embankments of the city walls. A mild winter, Davis thought, and he knew that he was stalling in the crudest way, wanting to discuss the weather before he discussed what the police had said.

“The police know nothing,” he said.

“They spoke to you for twenty-five minutes and had nothing to say?”

“Being police, they spent more time asking questions than answering them.”

“You are, quite obviously, keeping some sort of secret.”

Davis attempted a reassuring smile. “What I know makes no sense. I'm confused by what the police told me. Why should you be confused, too?”

“They've discovered something.”

“Nothing very helpful.” He would, in truth, be happy to share what he had heard.

“I believe I will stay here beside you until you tell me what it is.”

She said it as though lightly, but Davis did not take Jane lightly. She was a determined woman.

“It's my fault,” Davis began. “The police took prints in the room. Sprinkled powder, and used those little brushes. It took me days to clean up some of the smudges they left. Those powders can be very sticky.” He took a scoop of syrupy mud, and dumped it into a bucket. “They got a pretty good palm print off the door handle. Ran it through their computer, or whatever they do. Didn't come up with anything. They were a little surprised. Usually they get a few possible matches, at least. This one wasn't even close.”

“Certainly that wasn't their news.”

Davis leaned on his spade again. He could not meet her bright, critical eyes. “Being a complete fool, I suggested that they try to match the palm print with someone we all know and love.”

Jane did not speak.

“The Man himself, Mr. Skeldergate. We had prints made of his hands and feet about the time we did the body cavity blood test. And it came back a winner. The print belongs to a man who died one thousand two hundred years ago.”

Davis shoveled mud for a moment. Then he stopped, and turned to Jane. “It could mean that the bog man got up and walked away. I believe it means that someone wants to make us think that he did, as a sort of joke.”

Jane still did not speak.

“It is funny, I suppose,” Davis mused, “in a cruel, ugly, putrid sort of way.”

“I have been doing a good deal of thinking, Davis. Regarding my career. I haven't had the opportunity to really get to know you,” she said briskly, “and this is something I will have to consider a misfortune. I believe that it would be better for me to resign from the Skeldergate dig. I understand that there is an exciting dig about to begin in London. Bits of the Roman wall, even an interval tower. It would really be so much better for my career to be associated with that—”

“Instead of this chain of lurid mishaps.”

“Not the way I would put it. But, yes, actually.”

When he was alone again, Davis squared off the corner of the trench. Alf grinned down at him, his arms writhing with tattoos. “Getting our hands dirty again today, are we? Can get to be a habit, that.” He winched up the buckets one by one and trundled off with the wheelbarrow.

Davis heard the explosion after it knocked him down.

A flash, and a great slam, like a gigantic pane of glass blown in an instant. He had no memory of falling. He was sprawling, and then he was up again, pulling himself up the ladder.

The site was a photograph. No one moved. Pale faces were turned in one direction, toward a place behind one of the Portakabins. Davis himself felt unable to drag his body over the top of the ladder. The air was heavy, like wet sand.

Then, the scream.

Peter and Davis arrived at the back of the building at the same time, but both men staggered, half falling as another, smaller explosion flung a belt through the air. Engine parts hummed through the air past Davis's ear, and he crouched to make himself a smaller target.

The generator had blown up. It lay sideways on the ground, only half of it left, the rest of it demolished, littering the ground like bits of black gravel. Blue smoke welled upward from twisting red flames. Peter vanished for a moment, and then shielded his eyes and wrestled with a fire extinguisher.

Smoke swelled. It was blacker, now, and heavy, with a foul, metallic taste. Then Davis saw it.

It can't be true, he thought.

But the screams would not stop. He saw, and he could not pretend otherwise, although his mind cringed as Davis dived into the smoke and dragged Alf from the surging smoke.

Alf's words were impossible to make out, but Davis did not have to understand what he was saying. Alf gripped the stump of his handless arm. Scarlet spouts of red arced through the air.

They were a team again. Skip and Oliver arrived with bright red fire extinguishers, and Jane whipped a tourniquet around Alf's arm. The man was bellowing, and Davis was not certain it was pain, yet, so much as horror.

Smoke choked on the streams from the fire extinguishers. At times the smoke flashed away completely, only to fight back again from the charred, scattered machine.

There on the metal-strewn earth was a white star. Davis held his breath against the smoke, and dashed to the pale, flung treasure. It was still warm, and strangely bloodless in appearance. He carried it like a fragile treasure.

“His hand,” Davis said unnecessarily. Everyone glanced away, and went sweaty pale. The cut had been clean, straight, surgeon-perfect. The hand had, now that he carried it well away from the smoke, a surprising amount of weight to it, real heft, as though a body were still attached to it, pressing downward.