Stairway to Forever (6 page)

The biggest of the ponies he had seen to date was about fifteen hands at the withers, but most of them ran much smaller. They all were about the same color—a solid, strawberry roan, with manes, tails and a single broad stripe down the spine of a chocolate-brown. They all were heavy-barrelled, big-headed and -eared, with short, thick legs, but for all their rough, ungainly appearance, they could move very fast when the occasion so demanded.

The stern cabins of the wrecked warship Fitz had gradually cleaned up and converted into a base camp for his ever-wider-ranging explorations. The doors to both the larger and the smaller side cabins he had removed, repaired, planed, varnished, then rehung, weatherstripped and fitted with new, rust-resistant hardware and padlocks. Moreover, in the course of the interior cleaning, he had discovered that the two cabins were connected by yet a third, much larger

cabin which might be entered from either and which ran from beam to beam of the stern.

This newest-discovered cabin, in addition to showing clear signs of having served as sleeping quarters for a number of men, also had housed three long, brazen tubes. Each of them was five or six inches in diameter, some six feet long and open at both slightly flared ends. The tubes were securely mounted upon small, wheeled carriages and positioned before shuttered openings let into the stern which looked like nothing so much as gun ports. But the metal of the tubes was simply far too thin for any real resemblance to cannon, nor had Fitz ever read or heard tell of any ancient cannon that was open at both ends.

Immediately after his first overnight visit to the sand world, he had bought and brought down the materials and tools to fashion screens for the three "gun ports" and screen doors for the outer portals, for the sand world, he had discovered to his pain and sorrow, harbored a full complement of huge and voracious mosquitoes, and these had been but the vanguard of a plethora of annoying flying insects, all drawn irresistibly to the white brilliance of his gasoline lanterns.

Despite the fact that he had come to simply accept the sand world, seldom thinking about the many very odd (to say the least!) facets of his discovery of and repeated entries into it, there were some things that he could not ignore. One of these was the peculiar time difference between the world into which he had been born and in which he had lived most of his life and the sand world. He had quickly found that a mere day or so in the sand world meant that he would be gone from the other world for several days and nights.

One result of this anomaly had been that he hardly ever saw his friend Bartlett anymore, since he had felt obliged to arrange with the postmaster to not any longer trouble the carrier with trying to make route delivery of his mail, but rather to drive to the post office, when and as he "got back from his frequent trips" and pick up the mail.

As the aft cabin of the wrecked bireme was wider, longer and higher than either of the other two, Fitz had there established his sand world pied-a-terre. With a folding canvas cot, air mattress, light sleeping bag, a chemical toilet and camp stove, in addition to the gas lanterns and the table, chair and stools dragged in from the next-largest cabin, he made it quite a comfortable home away from home.

In the largest of the two side cabins he stored his bike, along with necessary tools and parts, lubricants and gasoline for it and for the stove and lanterns. In the smaller, he stored hardware, weapons and ammunition, canned and freeze-dried foodstuffs, liquor and water. He had as yet to come across any save salty sea water in his extensive explorations of the sand world, though he felt certain that there must be some somewhere, for the ponies and birds must surely drink.

Although he often felt a bit silly lugging carbine, revolver and weighty ammo in this empty country, still a nagging, frequent sensation that he was being watched, observed by some unseen sentience led him to strap on his weapons whenever he set out on any exploratory trip.

He could not tag time or place to the first time he had felt the invisible presence, save that he was sure that it had been at some time after he had begun to actually live, off and on, in the sand world. Not that it was really a new feeling for Fitz to experience; he,

along with his siblings and both his parents had all their lives had the ability—often a singularly unpleasant ability—to feel, to sense the presence of noncorporeal entities and influences in buildings and places; therefore, he knew that his sensory awareness of this something as yet unseen was of more merit than merely an active, Celtic imagination playing upon his mind in the loneliness and mystery of the sand world.

No, he knew\ He knew that some thing—or things? —were out there trailing him, if not somehow pacing him in his journeyings, watching and observing, though careful to remain unseen, never seen, by him. While out in the vast reaches of sand on the bike, he could sometimes almost—but not quite— see a presence atop the next dune—or the one closest to left or to right ... or on the one just behind him.

True, he could not sense anything threatening or malicious about the presence, this watcher in lonely places, even when he was become terrifyingly aware of occasional nights that the . . . whatever had somehow passed soundlessly through barred doors or bolted gun ports to share with him his very cabin. Nonetheless, he always felt a bit better for the pull of the canvas-webbing sling on his shoulder, the sagging weight of the big-bore revolver at his belt.

Earlier on this Friday evening, shortly after his arrival on his regular weekly business-and-social visit, Gus had at long last pinned Fitz down on the exact origin of the hoard of golden coins, asking such shrewd, probing questions that Fitz had at last given up prevarication and subterfuge, feeling compelled to level with his friend and finally reveal the source of their wealth.

Out the back door and down the brick steps, he had led the way, a way by now well-lit by floodlights mounted on the eaves and along the high fence. They had crossed the manicured ten yards of lawn, then up the new, short flight of brick steps to the top of the low mound and so into the green canvas wall-tent.

Inside the tent, he had lit the two gas lanterns, hung one from a hook screwed into the ridgepole immediately above the rectangular slab of greyish granite, and then, from out his pocket, taken a key ring and selected the two keys that fitted the two big padlocks that secured a wide, thick strip of mild steel across the slab. After he had raised that slab and cautioned Gus to be very careful of his footing on the steep and shallow treads, he had led the way down to the crypt.

In the stone-walled chamber, Fitz had first set down the lantern and then, with a cheery, "J us t follow me, Gus," he had with all the relaxed naturalness that reflected his own long, intimate experience, half-bent at his waist and passed through the portal and into the bright, sunlit and untenanted sand world.

He had stood on the marked driftwood log waiting for Gus, but Gus had never emerged from the unseen doorway that somehow existed in the empty air there. So Fitz had at last stepped back through,

i

into the chamber and had, for a quarter hour or more, tried to persuade his stunned friend to, if not immediately pass through the section of wall, at least thrust an arm or a leg through the seemingly nonexistent opening in the stonework. Once he knew it was really there, Gus would surely follow him through it.

Tolliver, however, had stoutly and most profanely, finally, refused to even attempt the—to his mind— impossible and, when it became more than obvious to Fitz that the balding man's self-control was fast slipping away, that indeed he was teetering upon the edge of real hysteria, he had ushered his friend back up the stone stairs, through the tent and the yard, and so on back into the bungalow to his chair and his beer.

Himself ensconced in a matching chair, facing his guest across the width of a leather-topped, cherrywood table, Fitz had been still trying ever since their return aboveground to convince his shaken pal that the sudden disappearance and equally sudden reappearance had been no sleight-of-hand exercise of stage magic, that it had not been a strange hallucinatory experience, but had really happened. His efforts had been all in vain. He was become convinced that, no matter what he said or did, Tolliver would not, could not, would never allow himself to believe what he had seen that night.

Gus went through his liter in silence and was well into a second one before he again spoke. "Fitz, boy, I . . . I'm sorry. But . . . but I just can't handle things like down there in that place; nothing that weird. You know? Maybe . . . maybe if I's to think on it for a week or a month or so . . . ? But look, let's us talk about something else tonight, huh?"

"You had any more prowlers or break-ins here that you knows of, Fitz?"

Fitz took a pull at his stein, wiped the flecks of amber foam from his upper lip with the back of his thumb, and shook his head. "No, Gus, not since I had the place fenced and the house hardened up and put in the lights and alarms and all, I haven't. I guess all that high-priced gadgetry and locks and chain link and barbed wire finally just discouraged the little bastards."

"You stillVe of the opinion it was just neighborhood kids, huh?" asked Gus.

Fitz shrugged. "Hell, Gus, I'm no detective, you know. Sheriff Vaughan seems to think it was those two hell-raising hillbilly boys from a couple of blocks up the road. He knows crime and his county a hell of a lot better than I do, so who am I to question his reasoned-out suspicions, huh?"

Fitz's blue eyes took on a hard, cold expression. "Besides, it'd really do my soul good to be able to drag that pair of little bastards into a court of law. I'm dead certain it was them who shot my cat Tom last year. Gut-shot him, Gus, and then just left the poor old thing to die of pain and shock and blood loss. So, yeah, I like Sheriff Vaughan's ideas in that regard; I like them a lot."

Gus nodded. "Yeah, I can unnerstand, Fitz. But I tell you, it sure as hell won't no kids what broke into my shop last night, though."

Fitz sat up straight, on hearing that. "Oh, hell, no, Gus! How much did they get?"

Gus just shook his near-bald head slowly, in unre-pressed wonderment at what he was about to relate. "Damn it all, Fitz, that's the funny part of it . . . and I ain't the only one thinks so, neither. It was two, three thousand dollars worth of silver—cartwheels,

halfs, quarters, dimes, half-dimes, World War II nickels and three-cent pieces, plus a couple dozen Mexican pesos—five peso and ten peso pieces—not to even mention the nickels and the pennies and all in the display cases. Fitz, boy, them cases won't even touched, none of them—the cash register, neither. Now, ain't that something?"

"How about your safe, Gus?" probed Fitz, while mentally picturing the tall, wide, massive ton or more of Victorian steel-laminate, with its once-colorful, now much-faded curlicues of pseudo-baroque decorations, wide, steel wheels and multiplicity of thick doors, set behind set.

"Now that had been opened." Gus grinned, slyly. "The bastards tried hard to make it look like it hadn't been . . . but it had. I knowed that right after come in to open up, this morning—knowed it first thing. But . . . but Fitz, they opened it and then didn't take one damn thing out of it. And there was gold in it, too, Fitz."

Fitz felt a cold chill course the length of his spine. "My gold?" he demanded.

Gus chuckled once. "Aw, naw, Fitz, boy, my mamma didn't raise up no stupid chilluns. The safe had a half a dozen Canadian Centennial sets, them an' some low-grade U.S. gold pieces and a few new-minted bullion coins, too. I keeps just enough in it so your average, run-of-the-mill burglar ain't gonna be inclined to take the time to look no further, see.

"Your stuff and all the other really valuable pieces is either in the real safe or elst stowed in my box in the bank vault, 'round the corner, on Ash Street."

With a sigh of relief, Fitz cracked a wide smile. "I never knew, never even suspected that you had more than the one safe in the shop, Gus."

"Heh, heh, heh," chuckled Tolliver. "Damn few

as does know, Fitz. Like I done said, I been around for a while. But they knowed it, boy, the bastards as broke into my shop last night, they knowed it, and that's for damn sure! They cut and tore up the holy living hell out of the carpets, all over the damn shop, front and back, trying to find a floor safe . . . which they didn't. Then the fuckers even chopped loose and tore down the wood panelling in my private office, looking for a wall safe, I guess. But they looked in all the wrong places and come up empty, damn motherfuckers. I checked, and the real safe hadn't been touched, much less opened."

'What do the cops have to say about it all, Gus?" inquired Fitz.

Tolliver shrugged, took a short pull at his beer, and answered, 'They say it was a perfessional job, of course. But, hell, Fitz, I could of told them that much. Hadn't of been for them sliced-up rugs and tore down panelling and all, the average man wouldn't even of knowed anybody'd been in there. They won't no prints, nowhere, and they still is in the dark—and me, with them, too—about just how the damn cocksuckers got in. It won't no particle of damage to neither one of the doors or the locks on them, the bars is still set in place over the washroom window and the office window's got that big old bulky air-conditioner, you remember, mounted permanent, and not enough room for nobody to get over it, even was they to break out the reinforced glass . . . which they didn't.

"The detective, name of Hurz—and he's a pretty good old boy, I come to find out, too; he pulled him eight years in the Air Police—he don't think it was no locals broke in, he thinks they was prob'ly down from New York or New Jersey or Deetroit or Boston

or like that. He was thinking and talking about maybe Mafiosos done it"

Fitz nodded. "Well, honey does attract flies . . . and other vermin. And God knows, if we've managed to attract the full attention of most of the serious coin collectors in the world, as we seen to have done, it just stands to reason we might've attracted the attention of some greedy mobster, too. God forbid! But if we have, you can bet on it that you'll be getting more nocturnal visitors of a similar stripe . . . and possibly diurnal, as well. You could well be in some danger, there in that shop alone, Gus."