I crossed the wet, dark, empty road and stood on the embankment at the opposite side. I could just make out the slope of the bank dropping away gently between a bay and an oak, the formless and unidentifiable shadows of undergrowth-but that was all. I could not see the road below; the mist was an impenetrable pocket, and as thick and clinging and grayly vibratory as gelatin.
If he’s down there, I thought, he can’t see me either. But he knows I’m here. He’d have heard the car.
I took a firmer grip on the suitcase, hefting it in my hand, and started down the embankment. The footing was none too good-the ground had a soft, spongelike consistency, strewn with wet leaves and moss, and I was forced to pick my way a half-step at a time, with my left arm flung out for balance and my right holding the case in close to my body. I had visions of getting lost, of not being able to find that flat sandstone rock, of missing the ten o’clock deadline, so that the kidnapper became frightened by the delay and panicked and ran. But that kind of thoughts were not getting me anything but uptight; I put them out of my mind and kept working my way down the slope.
Moments passed and it did not seem as if I had gone more than five or six feet, but when I turned to look upward, I could no longer see the top of the embankment. Visibility was maybe two feet in each direction. I took another step forward and down, careful, another, another- and then the rock was there, looming up out of the sodden turf like an oval picnic table, smooth and flat and shiny with mist.
I let breath out between my teeth in a soft, sibilant sigh and went carefully to the rock and put the suitcase down on top of it. As I straightened up, there was the sound of a twig cracking, a thin report, from somewhere below and to my right. I worked saliva into my mouth and turned and started up the embankment toward the road, leaning forward with my hands low to the ground in case I lost my footing.
I was almost to the roadbed again when I heard the scream.
It was a man’s voice, and the cry was filled with agony and terror, reverberating hellishly through the churning, hoary fog. I froze there on the slope, chills tumbling along my spine, a sudden vacuum in the pit of my stomach and down low in my groin, and in that moment there was a moaning, a panting, thrashing footfalls in the undergrowth, the sounds of a struggle.
I thought: Holy Christ! And then I thought: Run, get the hell out of here, you don’t want any part of what’s down there! But then I was straightening up and turning like a damned fool and moving back down the incline, to the sounds, to the flat sandstone rock and the suitcase with three hundred thousand dollars and maybe a boy’s life inside it.
My feet sluiced out from under me in my haste, and I landed flat on my back and slid a few feet before I could break my momentum and bring myself up again. I staggered upright, but I could not see anything in the wool-like density of the fog, groping my way blind, and there was another scream, same voice, short and sharp and trailing off in a kind of agonized sigh that was unmistakably the ending of a life, and then the sound of something falling heavily across brittle leafage.
The mist shredded suddenly in front of me and I could see the sandstone rock a couple of feet away on my left, and a black shadow bending over another shadow lying prone near it, and I pulled up short, turning my body toward the shadows and away from the rock, reflex only, not knowing at all what I was going to do, leaving myself unprotected. The bending figure whirled with the tails of a long coat flapping around its knees like folded black wings, and an arm came out and hit me in the stomach, a glancing blow sliding across, but Jesus! he must have had lead in his fist because the pain boils through my belly and I stumble backward and sit down hard and I can see him moving slow-motion away from me, to the rock, hefting the suitcase, moving again, blending with the fog, gone, vanished, and I try to get up but I can’t goddamn it he didn’t hit me that hard!
I put my hand there as I roll over onto my knees, and I feel wetness and warmth, how can that be, and then
I take my hand away and hold it up to my eyes and it is dripping, dripping dark fluid, and all at once I realize what has happened, I know what it is, he cut me the son of a bitch cut me he cut me with a goddamn knife!
And now the fire comes, the searing burning fire, and in my mind I see my entrails exposed to the gray-mold fog, I see my belly ripped open and my guts hanging out and the mist touching them like unwashed surgeon’s fingers, I hear a moan low and wailing but it is my voice this time and my guts oh God oh Jesus I’m going to die he cut me and I’m going to die
get up, get up and run but I can’t yes I can my vision all blurry or is that the fog or is that crying, no a man does not cry but the pain, get up
on my feet now, I don’t know how, and staggering forward with my hand holding them in and I see the shadow and he is dead with dark fluid leaking out from his belly, a stranger dead with his belly cut open
and I’m running up the embankment, feet sliding, half crazy with the pain and the fear and the fog so cold so dirty is all around me I’m dying you goddamn lousy world I’m alone and I’m dying for what, oh God what happened
the road now and the metal hood of my car like ice, clawing the door, falling inside
oh oh oh the dome light is on and I see the blood the blood oh no please no
the key find the ignition the gear stick one hand on the wheel and one to hold in my dripping guts
hurtling through grayness and blackness can’t think can’t see
sweat in my eyes and the pain you don’t know the pain and the blood I’m so frightened
light ahead help help but it’s too late I’m dying
look out look out car veering no control and going off look
* * * *
8
I remembered nothing, and I remembered everything.
Vividly brief scenes with no continuity, like film edited and spliced together by a madman. All in floating, surrealistic white and gray, except for the brilliant red color of blood. And when the reel of film ended, abruptly — only the richest and deepest of blacknesses.
I knew the pain.
Even through the blackness, I knew the pain.
It raged and seethed inside me, and then, sated on my flesh, it grew still and became little more than dull, half-realized throbbings in my stomach and my head. I lay with it, coming out of the velvet midnight, watching the dawn consume the darkness at the edges, and at first I was calm, waiting.
But then the film began again, without warning, and half comatose and half rational, I relived it all and saw the blood, and I was terrified. A voice cried out in rising decibels, and it was my voice, and my hands beat at the air with the frantic flutterings of a wounded bird. Fingers soft and gentle took my arms and stilled them and laid me down again, and something cool and moist brushed with careful strokes across my forehead.
I heard myself whimpering, a child’s whimpering, and somehow I managed to stop that. Then the voice that was not my voice, that was too high-pitched and too filled with terror to have been my voice, began crying, “He stabbed me and took the money, I’m dying oh please you have to call Martinetti, Martinetti has to be told about the money!”
The cool, moist strokes continued, and it was a woman’s caressing, a woman wearing apple-scented perfume and talking to me in words soft and gentle like her fingers. Some of the panic left me, and I could feel calm returning, and I was aware that I was coming out of it, that I was waking up. I did not want to wake up, because I was afraid of what I would learn, but the panic was no more and with the calm came the need to know. I could not stay under much longer.