The Hole (6 page)

The woman, however, was fast. Elliot wasn’t a runner, had never gone out for track in high school, hated treadmills, and didn’t exercise nearly enough once the landscaping business went bust and he moved on to an inside, behind a computer job. He couldn’t keep this speed up for any distance but that woman-she looked like a goddamn marathon runner.

So he did the best he could. He pumped his legs, glancing down occasionally at his feet to make sure he wasn’t going to trip, and ran. He forgot about the girl he’d been chasing, about finding Evajean, about the dog and the overturned truck. He didn’t think about the shotgun or the fact that he’d be mighty thirsty by the time he finally slowed. All he could manage to keep in his mind was the image of that woman in a red dress.

And so he fell. Had he been paying more attention, putting effort into doing more than stealing glances at the ground, he might have seen the grey branch with a line of dirty white mushrooms. He might have lifted his foot over it and kept going-and maybe even outpaced the woman in red, with adrenaline doing what his skills couldn’t.

Elliot felt his toe catch and had a moment to think about this before the ground was at his face and the gun was tumbling from his hand. He tried to roll over but his shoe was twisted in the branch. He swore and scrambled, pulling at his foot, but panic of the situation got the best of him and he eventually froze, watching without breathing as the woman in red slowed and stopped next to him. She was still talking, words he didn’t understand but in a language that sounded like he could if only he had someone to teach him. Her tongue kept popping out from between her teeth, but she’d pull it back in just before biting it in her mad gibbering.

She held out her hand to him.

“Get away from me,” he said, and turned his head away to look for the gun.

When he looked back-after seeing the shotgun within stretching reach-she had crouched down next to him and was sliding her hand along the ground toward his leg. He kicked and she pulled back, stopping her babbling long enough to glare. “The hell do you want?” he asked her, pushing out with his feet, trying to force his body closer to the gun.

She gave him a look, one he thought might have been genuine interest, maybe puzzlement, and then she started talking. This was calm, slow, like she was speaking to a child or a retarded person, and Elliot almost laughed at how
considerate
she was. Behind her now, like bodyguards flanking some diva, he could see the two suited crazies, walking casually and chattering at the forest. They stopped when they were a couple of feet from Elliot and continued to talk, not looking at him or the woman.

She leaned in close, putting both hands on his calves, and dropped her voice to a whisper. He didn’t recognize any of it, not even the emphatic “More!” of the Wal-mart crazy, but she was extraordinarily intent on trying to make him grasp whatever her message was. She didn’t want to scare him-though she’d certainly done that-and now her goal was to get him to understand.

“I don’t know what you’re saying,” he said to her, trying to keep his voice calm. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

She stopped talking then and turned around to look at her colleagues. The three had a short and low conversation, the shorter suit upset by the decision reached at its end. He shook his head, pointed at Elliot, and said something harsh to the woman. She responded tersely, then put her head close to his and whispered something into his ear.

Elliot took this all as an opportunity to reach again for the gun. Stretching backward, trying not to make any big movements, he inched out with his fingers until they tapped at the fat end of the stock. He was unsure at this point if he even needed it, because he was getting the strong sense that they weren’t a threat. They wanted to talk, that’s all. But having the gun, ready to swing it in defense if needed, was a whole lot better than just laying on the ground, waiting for that woman to finish whatever it was she’d planned with his legs.

She turned back to him and got down very close to his face. She had a strange smell, like lightning, and her lips were cracked. Three words she said to him now, slow and enunciated, and while he didn’t know what any of them meant, each of the three sounded bad and condemning.

When she finished, she stood up and walked away from him, between the two men in suits, who now bent down and crouched where she had been. Each took hold of one of Elliot’s ankles, the shorter guy working his foot out of the branch, and then they pulled, trying to drag him. Elliot twisted and grabbed the gun, grasping it against his chest. He wrapped his hand tight around the barrel and raised the weapon up.

Elliot was ready to swing it at the leg of the taller one-try to knock him down long enough to pull away from the short crazy and get away-when the woman turned around and saw him. She shouted something, a warning to the other two, and they dropped Elliot’s legs.

He quickly rolled over and pushed himself up off the damp ground. He could hear them talking, faster now, back to the more crazy form of the babbling he was used to. Standing up, he waved the gun in front of himself, and the two men backed away, hands held out and guarding. Elliot backed away, too, cautiously, trying to project a stern look that said he was ready to bash in the head of anyone who got too close.

The crazies held their ground as he increased the distance between them. The woman looked angry, frustrated, while the two men mostly looked disappointed and maybe confused. Elliot couldn’t be sure but it was like they just didn’t expect him to do this, were wondering why anyone in his right mind would behave the way Elliot was, and if they could only get him to understand their motives, whatever important thing they all had to do could get properly done.

He wasn’t going to give them the chance. When that distance had stretched to a good fifteen feet, Elliot turned and started sprinting. He heard the woman in red call out, but then the sounds of his own flight masked any pursuit. This time he made a point of glancing at the ground more than periodically, trying to be certain he wouldn’t trip again, fall again, and end up back in the hands of those three.

The woods blurred and he ran without direction, just wanting to get away-he’d figure out where Evajean was or how to get back to the truck later. The road was north, he thought briefly, and so he could follow the sun’s compass until he found it. But now… Now the only goal was speed.

When he saw the ground open into a clearing of flat grass, he risked taking a look back. The crazies were nowhere, gone from view, and so he slowed his pace, giving himself a chance to breath. The cool forest air felt amazing and invigorating and Elliot stopped long enough to lean against the weathered trunk of a huge tree, set the gun down, and close his eyes. What the hell was happening? How’d he get from the peace of the drive-with Evajean’s increasingly pleasant company-to being lost in the Appalachian forest with at least three psychos out to do…
something
to him. What would Clarine have thought of this “adventure?” She’d have pegged him as crazy, just like the three whack jobs out to get him.

Nahom, he thought. I need to find it. If there are more of those people out there, more than just the three, then safety in numbers is the only kind of safety there is. A village, even if it were only “140 or so,” would be a great deal better than alone with only a locked shotgun.

So he began walking again, this time at a careful pace, paying special attention for any signs of civilization.

It was twenty minutes later when he finally saw one. He’d been following a deer path for no other reason than that it gave him an easy method to backtrack if he found nothing. He’d lost the crazies, he was positive of that, and so it was in a relatively calm state that he saw the first marking.

On a tree to his left, at chest height, was a circle carved in the thin bark. When he got closer he could see that it wasn’t merely a circle but more of a round border around a soup of symbols, strange glyphs and wiggles of varying sizes, all incomprehensible but with a look of deliberateness. The wood they exposed had darkened and weathered but not so much to indicate great age. These weren’t fresh, but Elliot was sure they weren’t more than a few weeks old, either.

He began looking for more on other nearby trees and was rewarded with half a dozen circles, all like the first, though with slightly different assortments of symbols. Every last one looked to be the same age, however, and Elliot found himself hoping this was just the kind of thing stupid kids had done, bored in the woods and looking to leave their mark. The alternative, that the circles were carved by someone who’d placed significance in the work, made him think of the many stories he’d heard about the weird people who lived out in Appalachians, cut off from the modern world not only by geography but also by a backwardness of culture and an education founded more in the superstitions of the old ways than in good liberal science.

Careful, Elliot, he thought. You don’t want to end up cannibalized or sodomized or just shot because you’re one of them outsiders. And then he chastised himself for being so silly. How the hell did he know these people, the residents of Nahom-if they were out here-were backwoods nuts? Better to be optimistic. Evajean would be.

And so he made himself take the circles as merely a sign that he was on the right track and continued walking, following the deer path as it eventually widened into a footpath and then into what could be be described as a narrow dirt road. This latter had deep tracks in it, four inches wide and pressed three inches into the hard soil, like it’d seen the passage of years of wheeled carts.

Like the trees, these markings seemed fresh, the edges newly crumbled in spots, the dirt at the bottom pressed but powdery, as if it had only recently settled after being kicked up by the passage of wheels.

This was something to follow, Elliot thought. People had been through here-it was a well used road-and that got him back to the safety in numbers thing. Leaning the gun against his shoulder like a soldier on the march, Elliot picked up his pace, excited to have the random wandering at an end.

The track continued for a good half mile or more without any increased sign of the town. He wasn’t frustrated though-this road had to lead somewhere and anywhere was better than back to the damaged truck or up to the highway, which he figured was probably swarming with crazies.

The sun had gone almost entirely down by this point, the forest defined more by shadow than light, and the resulting chill in the air felt good. He was thirsty, though, and hunger wasn’t far off. He’d walk until he couldn’t see any more and then try to grab some sleep for the night. If he were lucky he’d come across a stream he could take some nice, long gulps from and wash the dirt from his scuffle with the crazies out of his hair and off his face.

Some time later-his sense of the passing minutes had blurred and his only clock was the one in the radio of the truck-Elliot glimpsed light coming through the trees to his left. The road had maintained its size for a good distance now, and the tracks still looked the same, but the woods had thinned and what trees there were had a younger appearance, just past the sapling stage. If they’d been larger, like the ones back up by the road, he might have missed it because the light was very faint. But he saw it, flickering, back far enough from the track that he couldn’t make out its source.

He left the dirt road behind and started carefully through the trees toward the light. The ground beyond the track was soft, damp, and mossy, and this made moving quietly easy. He didn’t want to call out because the potentially silly concerns about back woods hillbillies and their undesirable ways still carried enough weight in his mind to make him think it might be a good idea to see what the people might be up to before announcing his presence and giving them the whole story of who he was and what he was up to.

And when he finally was it through the trees and close enough to see the source of the light, Elliot was glad he’d made that decision. A group of five people, all in blue and grey robes without hoods, stood in a circle. He could tell it was a circle-and not a pentagram or a misshapen box-because they’d drawn the shape in powdered white chalk in a thick line. This sparkled in light pouring from a smaller ring of torches sticking up from the ground, one in front of each of the circle’s members.

They all faced inwards, toward a small table made of fat pieces of old wood, on which sat a metal box. The lid was up but Elliot couldn’t see what was inside.

As he hunkered down behind a tree, still far enough away that they wouldn’t immediately see him, the robed people started singing. It reminded him of the readings of the Torah he’d heard or the Muslim calls to worship. The words were lost in the melody but at the same time the melody seemed wholly subservient to the words. None of it made any sense to him, regardless, and he was just glad that whatever they were chanting wasn’t the same as the babbling of the crazies.

They kept this up for ten minutes by Elliot’s guess, all standing perfectly still, singing at the box. Then, while the others continued their song, one stepped forward and lifted from the box a large, green stone. This he held above his head briefly and then walked back to his place in the circle. By his feet was a leather satchel, which he now opened and pulled out what Elliot was surprised to see was an honest to God top hat. Holding this out in front of him, he dropped in the stone and then sat down in the dirt. The man brought the hat up near his face and bent over it, pressing the opening against his head until his face disappeared inside. And he stayed there.

For half an hour they guy in a blue and grey robe stared into the hat with the stone while the other for members of the circle chanted. None of them looked like hillbillies to Elliot. In fact, they were extraordinarily clean cut, their hair carefully trimmed and combed. It was like watching a corporate boardroom-except for the sheer oddity of the activity they were engaged in.

This what you were hoping for? Elliot thought. At least they don’t act like the crazies.