The cab pulled up to the curb and the driver turned to open the door.
"Here we are," he said. "You want that I should wait?"
"If you please," said Chapman. "I'll be right out."
He climbed the steps haltingly, for it seemed to take a lot of effort. His legs seemed to drag and he was panting when he reached the top.
He crossed the lobby and found the box he'd rented weeks ago. The envelope, he saw, still was there—just one envelope.
B to F and back to A. He turned the knob slowly and carefully and it did not work. He spun the dial and did it once again and this time it opened. Reaching in, he took out the envelope and closed the box.
As he turned with the letter clutched in his hand, the pain struck at him once again—massive, brutal, terrible. Thundering blackness closed in upon him and he fell, not feeling the impact when his body hit the floor.
Moving in the hushed and glowing light of a brand-new dawn, the mind and consciousness of Franklin Chapman entered into the place called Death.
32
The storm burst minutes after he had started out and, carrying the man cradled in his arms, Frost struggled through a land filled with the blinding slash of lightning, bursting with the clap and roll of thunder that reverberated back and forth among the hills, while rain sluiced down in torrents and the very ground beneath his feet seemed to crawl with the sliding movement of the runoff water gushing down the slope. Above him the trees thrashed like giant creatures in the agonies of death and high in the great cliffs that crowned the hills the wind moaned and howled in the silences between the crashing of the thunder.
The man he carried was no lightweight—a big and husky man—and there were many times that Frost had to stop to rest, lowering the man so that his weight rested on the ground while he still kept him cradled in his arms. In between the rests he fought his way, step by careful step, in the frightful steepness of the bluffside, the underfooting made soft and treacherous by the downpour. Below him he heard the vicious growling of the flood waters, funneled into the hollow off the hillsides and boiling down the steep, notched valley. By now, more than likely, the camp where he'd found the man he carried was under a foot or more of racing water.
A deep dusk had fallen with the coming of the storm and he could see only a few yards ahead of him. He had not dared to allow himself to think of the distance yet ahead. He thought no farther than the next step and then, when that had been taken, yet another step. Time ceased to have a meaning and the world became a few feet square and he moved forward in a fog of gray eternity.
Now, without any sign of coming to an end, the woods came to an end. One moment they were there, then he stepped out of them and before him stretched what once had been a hayfield, with the knee-high grasses slanting all one way before the fury of the wind, the white shine of their stems ghostly in the twilight, the spume of driven wind a solid mist above them.
Upon the hill above the field sat a house, a rock against the storm, surrounded by wind-lashed trees, and just above the near horizon a hump of darkness that must be the barn.
He trudged heavily out into the field and here the ground was not as steep and the nearness of the house put a spring into his step that he would have sworn was impossible.
He crossed the field and now, for the first time since he had started on the climb, he became aware of the warmth in the body that he carried. Climbing the hill it had been a burden only, a weight he had to support, that he had to carry. But now, once again, the weight became a man.
He went underneath the trees that stood around the house, while the lightning snarled through the skies and the surging wind beat at him with its freight of rain.
As he rounded the porch, the house took on its old familiar look. Even in the rain he could imagine the two rocking chairs close together on the porch and the two old people sitting in them of a summer evening, looking out across the river valley.
He reached the steps and they were rickety when he stepped on them, but they held his weight and he mounted to the porch.
And now the door, he thought. It had not occurred to him before, but now he wondered if it might be locked. But locked or not, he would get in—break in the door or break out a window. For the man he carried must be gotten under shelter.
He moved across the boards of the porch toward the door and as he neared it, the door came open and a voice said, "Put him over here."
The dark human figure moved ahead of him and he saw, against one wall, what appeared to be a cot.
Stooping, he laid the man on the cot and then stood erect. His arms were stiff and sore and it seemed that he could feel each muscle in them and for a moment the room swayed slightly, then was still.
The other person, the one who had opened the door, was at a table on the other side of the room. A tiny tongue of light flickered, then grew bright and steady, and Frost saw that it was a candle. And the last time he had seen a candle had been that night (how long ago?) when Ann Harrison had sat across the table from him.
The other person turned and she was a woman-a plain, but forceful face, sixty maybe, perhaps more than that, an old face and yet in many ways an ageless face, calm and confident. She wore her hair skinned back into a bun that rode low on her neck and she wore a ragged sweater that had an elbow hole.
"What is wrong with him?" she asked.
"Snakebit. I found him, alone, in a camp down on the river road."
She picked up the candle and'came across the room to hand it to him.
"You hold this," she said, "so I have some light to work by."
She bent above the man on the cot.
"It's his leg," said Frost.
"I can see," she said.
She reached out her hands and laid hold of the tattered bottoms of the trouser leg. Her hands jerked apart and the fabric ripped with a screeching sound. She took hold of the edges of the torn cloth and jerked them again and the cloth fell away, leaving the leg exposed.
"Hold the light lower," she told him.
"Yes, ma'am," said Frost.
The flesh of the leg was splotched, black with angry red spots here and there. The skin, stretched tight by the swelling, glistened in the candlelight. A few open sores seeped pus. "How long has he been like this?" "I don't know. I found him this afternoon." "You packed him up the hill? In this storm?" "There was no way out of it," he said. "I had to." "There's not much I can do," she said. "We can get him cleaned up. Some hot soup into him. Keep him comfortable."
"There's no medical aid available, of course." "There's a rescue and monitor station about ten miles from here," she said, "and I have a car. We can take him there when the storm stops. But the road is too bad to try it while it still is storming. There's too much danger of washouts and there are apt to be some bad mud-holes. If we can get him there, they'll fly him into Chicago with a helicopter."
She turned about and started for the kitchen. "I'll poke up the fire," she said, "and heat some water. You can try to get him cleaned up a bit while I cook some soup. We'll try to get some down him."
"He talked to me a bit," said Frost. "Not much. Something crazy about a lot of jade. It was like carrying a dead man. I think he was out cold most of the time I carried him. But I knew he was still alive because of the body heat."
"It would be a bad time," she said, "for a man to die. And a bad place. Even more so down there in the valley. In a storm like this, the rescue unit would never get to him in time." "I thought of that," said Frost.
"You came straight here. You knew there was a house?" "Many years ago," he said, "I knew about the house. I did not expect to find it occupied."