“What’s the best way to get under this?”
“Dynamite, jack-hammers, picks...”
“Any quiet way?”
“I suppose you could sink an offset shaft angling down under it, but it would be tough digging through that hardpan clay. Why do you want to go down in that particular spot?”
“If you’ve got a small broom I can show you.”
I walked back to the car and got my whisk-broom. When I came back Ann was busy pulling aside the tangled remnants of furniture and bed springs in the center of the mess. At her direction, I swept off the ashes and saw an oblong patch of clean concrete about seven feet long and three feet wide.
Ann stood looking down at it, her blackened hands at her sides, a smudge of soot alongside her nose. She was frowning and chewing her lip. After a minute she looked at me.
“It’s like a patch of skin that won’t take sunburn. Just stays white all summer.”
I glanced at the square of blackened bedsprings she’d dragged off the slab. “That’s where the bed was. Robert George was lying in it when I saw him.”
She knelt down and flicked her gold lighter. The flame flared blue in the sunlight. She sighed, stood up, and dropped the lighter back in her pocket. “No use to dig. The power’s not here anymore.”
“Maybe Robert carried it with him.”
“Yes, or it could be carrying Mr. George. Let’s go see him.” We walked back to my car, a Ford sedan, conservative except in color, which is engine red. I pulled some tissues from the dispenser under the dash, and she cleaned her hands and face while I drove.
The narrow blacktop twisted through low hills covered with scrub oak, hickory and sassafras. We passed an occasional farmhouse, but these were deserted, their windows broken out, the roofs covered with sheet iron and filled with baled hay Several gray pyramids rose out of the surrounding forest; at their base grew clumps of tarpaper shacks surrounded by rusting hulks of autos.
“What are those heaps of gravel sticking up?”
“Chat dumps. What’s left after the ore is separated from the rock.”
“What kind of ore?” Ann asked.
“Gold. Silver. It played out years ago. All the miners moved south.”
“But not you, obviously. Why did you stay?”
“My dad left me a law practice, so I decided to get some experience before I went out into the world.”
“I see.” She didn’t sound interested, so I didn’t say any more. The road wound around the base of a knob-like mountain that rose a thousand feet above the rolling plain. On top of it stood a fire observation tower, like a grand-daddy long-legs standing on tiptoe.
“Gubb’s Knob,” I said. “Our famous landmark.”
Ann glanced up and stifled a yawn. “How has Mr. George’s health been since his death?”
She said it deadpan, so I didn’t realize how funny it sounded until I’d started answering.
“He’s got no appetite. And he feels cold all the time. Eunice, his wife, you recall, left him three weeks ago.”
“Oh? Why?”
“She’s a hardshell Baptist and whatever she doesn’t like is the work of Satan. That included Robert, finally. Eunice went to live with her sister in Florida. I’m processing their divorce. Robert gave her their house, but she didn’t want it. He won’t live there either.”
“Where’s he living?”
“At the river cabin. It belongs to a little hunting and fishing club we organized about five years ago.”
I turned off the road and stopped at a gate made of steel pipe with chain-link fencing stretched between the bars. I got out of the car and pulled a ring of keys from my topcoat pocket.
Opening the padlock, I slipped out the chain and pushed open the gate. I beckoned Ann Valery to drive the car through. She slid behind the wheel and drove through, then scooted back over when I closed the gate. I drove down the slope, following a double track of crushed grass. The trail ended in a grove of tall sycamores.
I hurried around to open the door for Ann, but she was already standing beside the car with a faint smile on her lips. Together we walked toward a log cabin which squatted on a rise of ground. It seemed to have grown there, amid fallen, rotting trunks, hanging vines, and sinuous creepers which snaked along its eaves.
A set of deer antlers had been nailed to a board above the door. Beneath it was lettered: Gubb’s Knob Hunting Drinking and Fishing Society. NO WOMEN ALLOWED — except by appointment. Ann lifted her pale eyebrows, and I coughed and knocked on the door. Somewhere upriver a kingfisher loosed its harsh rattle.
I lifted my hand to knock again. Ann caught my wrist and pointed to the fuse box nailed under the eaves, just beside the stone chimney. The lever had been pulled down, cutting off the juice to the cabin.
“What does that mean?” I whispered.
“Spirits operate in the electro-magnetic field. They don’t like electricity. It gives them the astral itch.”
This was the first outside support for my theory that Robert George was involved in something supernatural. It should have relieved me, but instead it gave me a cold prickling sensation,
I took hold of the knob, turned it slowly, then pushed open the door. The cabin was uninsulated, unpaneled, with rafters and wall studs extending into its single room. In one corner stood a refrigerator with its door hanging open. It contained only an olive jar one-quarter full of yellowish juice.
In the center of the room stood a cast-iron heating stove with a greasy black skillet sitting on top of it. Nearby stood a table which held a pack of dirty playing cards, an overflowing ashtray, and several dominoes stacked in the form of a derrick. The room stank of stale smoke, bacon grease, and dirty socks.
Three folded army cots stood in one corner like stacked rifles. A fourth cot sagged under the burden of Robert George, who sprawled on his back with his legs spread out. His nose, which was pointed at the ceiling, gave forth the sound of deep snoring.
As the door clicked shut, he jerked upright, snorting, looking around him with his eyes wide with terror. He saw me and relaxed slightly, then saw Ann and rose to his feet, He stood blinking, looking vague and bewildered.
He was a big man, six feet three and broad-shouldered, but his large frame seemed loosely put together. A dark beard covered his jaws and chin. His eyes were squinty and red-rimmed; they widened as Ann walked toward him.
His nostrils flared, and he turned slightly as if about to run away. Then Ann lifted her hands, palms toward him. George bowed his head and accepted her touch with the dumb docility of a sheep. For a minute the two stood like that, Ann with her eyes closed, her face calm and composed, George staring from me to her, blinking and twitching the muscles around his mouth.
She dropped her hands and said: “You’ll be all right, Mr. George.”
Then she turned and walked out. George sank onto the cot breathing heavily, wiping his face with the sleeve of his plaid flannel shirt.
“Who’s she, Fred?”
“Ann Valery. The psychic research society sent her down to look at you.”
“Oh, hell! Just because you thought you saw me in the fire...”
“It didn’t hurt you to have her look, did it?”
“Does she know what she’s doing?”
“I get the impression she does. But I’m in no position to judge. How about you? How do you feel?”
The big man’s shoulders sagged. “I feel like I belong in a grave. Really, Fred, I’m not kidding. I’m stone cold inside. I could eat a whole handful of Mexican chili peppers and not turn a hair.”
“You feel like something’s trying to take you over?”