An Old Friend of the Family

ELEVEN

“Your hour’s almost up,” Joe commented. Almost an hour after leaving Lockwood Cemetery, they had at last penetrated the western belt of suburbs and were entering real countryside. The two-lane highway, coated in salted slush, ran northwest. On the left were cornfields, snowy stubble now, and on the right at the moment was a new apartment development, decorated barracks that seemed to have been extruded against the road’s shoulder by the congestion to the east.

“Keep going,” Judy urged. Again, as happened every time Joe so much as hinted at giving up, there was an underlevel of panic in her reply. “Joe, he’s so badly hurt. We’ve got to get to him right away. There’s a man in the house with Johnny, but he’s not helping Johnny at all. I can feel how close it is. We’re almost there.”

“Six more minutes,” said Joe firmly. “Then we’re going to find a phone and call your home and tell ‘em you’re all right. I agreed to spend an hour at this, and we will, and then you’re going home. Right, Doctor?”

No answer came from Corday, who had his hands in his coat pockets, and was gazing fixedly ahead, as if he were lost in his own thoughts.

Joe did not repeat the question. There had been moments during the ride when mentally he swore at himself for being taken in by Judy’s hysterics and Corday’s strange act, and came very close to turning the car around at once. These moments were followed by others in which he nursed the feeling, hardly suitable for a cop but inextinguishable anyway, that weird things in the field of ESP did sometimes happen. His own mother and father had testified to mutual experiences. And the rational part of his mind suggested that the best way to cure Judy of this dream-idea might be to let her see that there was nothing in it. And, again, to get a kidnapping victim back, any effort at all was worth a try.

They were approaching a highway intersection. “What do I do here?” he asked his guide.

“Turn left,” Judy ordered. Give her credit, she was always decisive in giving directions. “We’re very close now. Another mile should do it.”

“Left it is,” Joe agreed. He could just picture himself talking to the sheriff’s office on the phone: Yessir, we know where the boy is now. His teenage sister saw it in a dream, and sure enough . . .

The new highway ran ahead of him almost straight, and almost empty. The sun, after almost breaking through the clouds a little earlier, had been smothered again in thick gray masses from which it did not seem likely to emerge again today. Although theoretically it was still daylight, Joe had already flicked his headlights on.

The last housing developments had now fallen behind. To right and left the road was bordered by snowy farm fields, brown hedgerows, patches of woods, wire farm fences. A narrow highway bridge came leaping up to bear the Volkswagen over a still narrower stream, a country creek that twisted its way in a frozen course to right and left. For just a moment the engine stuttered—

“Here!” The word burst out of Judy in a shriek. Joe looked wildly around for some impending accident. He braked, avoiding a skid in the freezing slush by fancy footwork on the pedals.

Judy’s fingers were biting like claws at his shoulder. “That next drive on our left,” she agonized. “Take that, he’s in a house back there.”

Joe had brought the small car to a complete stop on the shoulder of the highway. Now he eased it forward. Looking ahead on the left, he could now see that there was a driveway, a small unpaved road, a something, and he turned into it, between patches of hedgerow. A rural mailbox planted beside the highway was capped with snow, making any name that it might bear invisible.

Trackless snow also covered the narrow lane or drive. But the surface beneath was evidently solid and level, for going was not difficult. Almost at the start the drive turned, taking them out of sight of the highway among wintry thickets and small trees. It ran straight for fifty yards or so, then turned again, at the same time topping a small rise of ground.

Just before reaching this second turn, Joe eased the Rabbit to a stop. Directly ahead there had just come into his view the upper portion of one end of what he would later learn was a sprawling, white brick, ranch-style house. Now, squinting into the dusk, he thought he could make out cedar roof-shingles under a partial covering of snow.

Oddly, Joe felt almost cheated. He looked at the calm, unreadable face beside him for several seconds before he spoke. “I don’t know what this game is, mister.”

Corday’s thin lips parted, this time not in a smile. “It is a very serious game indeed. And I assure you that you and I are playing it on the same side.” Peering toward the house, the old man added, as if to himself: “The sun has not yet set.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

Judy said in a tight voice: “Do something, please, Joe. You’re a policeman. My brother is in there.”

Joe looked at them both. Then he put the car in reverse and backed it up a few yards, getting it completely out of sight of the house. He turned the ignition off. He looked at them both again, and shook his head. “Judy, you know I’ve got no authority, outside the city. I’ll do this much: walk up to the front door and see who’s home, if anyone. You two stay here, just sit tight.”

Judy started to demand that he do more than that, but Corday reached back to touch her wrist and she fell silent. Joe got out of the car and, with a last look at Corday, took the keys with him. “Be back in a minute or so.”

Readying a story about car trouble and needing to use a phone, he trudged the last yards toward the house, following the curve of the drive through completely untracked snow. It was all crazy, of course. Somehow Judy must have glimpsed from the highway a white house and shingle roof . . .

The only sign of life that Joe could see ahead was the subtle wavering of heated air above a chimney. Not a great brick one that would have a fireplace at its base, but the small metal tube that would vent the house’s furnace to the air. The furnace was turned on, then. But the garage door and the front door under its shingled overhang were both sealed along their bases with unbroken snow. No light showed in any window. There were no Christmas decorations, either, if that meant anything, which it probably did not.

When he reached the front door he alternately pushed the bell button and knocked, police style, keeping up a steady barrage in a way that almost always got results, making whoever was inside think that there was some real emergency. The doorbell worked, for he could faintly hear the chime. It wasn’t answered, though.

A full minute of such thorough treatment got no results. Joe tried to peer into a large window on the porch beside the door, but the drapes were too tightly shut inside. Not quite ready to give up yet, he started around the house, looking for tracks or other signs of occupancy, and finding nothing that seemed consequential. A couple of imperfectly draped windows let him peek into a couple of rooms, which were empty of furniture. He did see some new-looking paint and shiny floors, as if some remodeling or refinishing project might recently have been completed; but it was too dark inside to be sure of even that much. It might be that the owners had moved out during the remodeling, but had left the heat turned on to protect the water pipes and the new plaster.

His circuit of the house completed, Joe approached the front step again, thinking: one more knock, so I can say I really tried. When we get back to the highway, I’ll check the name on that mailbox—just to be thorough.

* * *

Fiercely Judy hissed the words, almost in the ear of the old man who sat in the seat ahead: “He is in that house!”

“I do not doubt that, Judy.” Lean fingers on the door handle beside him, the old man was staring ahead with serpent-like intensity. “But neither do I think that Joe is going to discover him. He is an honorable policeman, who will not dream of exceeding his authority on grounds no stronger than those which we have given him.”

“We can’t go away and leave Johnny in there!”

“We certainly cannot. Especially since this visit must alarm his captor. You say you see only one man with him, now?”

“Yes.”

“I think you are right.” And with the movement of a lithe twenty-year-old, Corday was suddenly out of the car. He held the door open, his tall form bending beside it, looking in at her. “I am going to take action. And you . . . but no.”

“What is it?” She had never seen eyes like his . . . they were so dark. And they were old no longer.

He said, eyes glittering: “I was about to order you to stay here in safety. But this is not the world for safety, is it? Nor are you and I the people who prize it above all. So, will you enter battle with me? In all the world are very few whom I would sooner ask.”

The man who spoke to her seemed to have been transformed, to have grown larger than life. And it seemed to Judy that she was transformed too. The young woman who stepped out of the car was a fit companion for heroic deeds. Yet she was still herself, perhaps more truly herself than ever before.

“What must I do?” she calmly asked.

“Come this way at once. Joe is returning.” Her companion’s voice had altered too, and there were hints of drums and trumpets even in its softness.

She followed him as quickly as she could, along the edge of the drive back in the direction of the highway.

“Now jump this way,” he ordered. “Leave no tracks.” The best sprint of her young legs took her sideways from the drive, to an area of matted leaves and brown grass that had been blown free of snow. From one snowless patch to the next she followed her companion, who moved ahead now like an acrobat, reaching back a hand from time to time to steady her. He led her through grass and brush and briefly along the top rail of a split-log fence, in a curving path that brought them into some bushes from which they could just see the car.

Crouching there motionless, with Corday’s hand upon her arm, Judy could see the alarm in Joe’s face as he came trotting the last yards to the vehicle, shocked by the realization that they were gone. “Corday?” he called out, almost threateningly. Then, louder: “Judy!”

In a moment he had spotted their footprints in the snow, leading back along the drive. Swearing, he started after them on foot, and promptly lost the trail where the snow gave way in spots to leaves and grass. Red-faced and muttering, Joe jumped into the car. Spinning wheels in snow, he got the Volks turned round and headed back to the highway. The sound of it died away.

“Now, my girl.” Corday—this youthful stranger she had known as Corday—stood up straight, raising her by both arms to stand beside him. “Before I can enter any house, I must be called, invited, by someone inside. Do not ask me to explain just now, but it is so. So you must get into this house, somehow, and then call to me. If no one answers the door for you, break in a window.”

“I will.” Around Judy the woods were growing minute by minute dimmer, darkness oozing up into them from the ground. But for the moment she was not at all afraid.

“Only call me, and I shall come. But you must call.”

Life sang in Judy’s blood, life of an intensity that nothing in her memory could match. It forced her to a knowledge that she had earlier refused. She breathed: “I called you once before. Didn’t I?”

The man before her nodded quickly, his timeless eyes joyful that she understood. “But ask no questions now,” he said. With a light pressure of his hand he sent her on her way.

Fear did not begin until she was out of the woods and well along the drive toward the house, where all the windows were utterly dark in the swiftly gathering twilight. The snow under Judy’s booted feet was marked now with Joe’s tracks, going and returning. And now she could see where someone, probably Joe also, had circled the house.

On the raised step under the protective overhang of roof that sheltered the front door, the snow was not as deep as in the open yard. It was much trampled by Joe’s feet, but an unbroken white grommet remaining between door and threshold showed that the door had not been opened for him. Judy rang the doorbell at once, heard the faint chime, and only then wondered what she would say if someone came. Her car had broken down, that would be it.

But no one answered.

A quick glance to her rear showed only the darkening gloom of woods and lawn and fields, but she knew Corday was there. Before her, she could still feel the habitation of the house. But there was no sound or light to give corroboration to the feeling.

She knocked, then rang again. Inside, she felt—she knew—that Johnny heard the bell. Johnny, locked up in fear and pain and darkness, unable or afraid to even cry out.

The window beside the front door, Judy soon discovered, could not be opened from the outside. Not by her pulling or pushing at it, at least. She balled a fist inside her mitten, then paused long enough to take off her scarf and warp it round her hand.

Judy’s first blow at the glass was not wholehearted enough to break it in, and she gave a little cry of frustration before she punched again. This time there was a satisfactory crash, followed by a tinkle on the floor inside.

As if the crash had been a signal prearranged, the front door was suddenly thrown wide. A young man, thick-necked and muscular but rather small, stood there wearing faded jeans and an old army shirt. One hand was out of sight on each side of the door frame. His neatly trimmed hair was somehow incongruous. His eyes were partially hidden behind the distortion of thick glasses; his mouth, twisted in rage or fear or both, was open on uneven teeth.

“What’re you doing?” The man’s voice was breathless, almost unintelligible with apparent strain.

Its urgent menace for the moment made Judy forget everything else and she took an involuntary step backward. “I—I need help with my car.”

“For that you break the window? Who was that guy who was just here?”

“I . . .” From some inward source, invention came. “I asked a man to help me. Now I don’t knew where he’s gone.”

“No help here. There’s a gas station down the highway, east, about half a mile.” The man’s extreme excitement had perhaps eased just a little. He had not changed his position in the doorway yet.

“I don’t think I can walk that far,” Judy pleaded. “Please, let me use your phone.”

“Get outta here,” he muttered, almost as if his thoughts were already on something else. He kept darting glances past her into the snowy dusk.

Judy was mastering her fright. Her nerves still vibrated in sympathy with her brother’s unceasing pain. “I won’t go away,” she said, regaining her lost step toward the door. “I can’t.”

The young man looked at her with very ugly eyes.

She faced his look. “I’m just going to stand here and scream until you let me in.”

Her desperation, though not the reason for it, evidently impressed itself upon him. Several things, most of them frightening, passed through the young man’s face in quick succession. Finally caution in some form prevailed.

“All right, I’ll come take a look at your goddamned car,” he muttered. “Breaking the goddamned window—” He turned away as if meaning to grab a coat from somewhere close at hand. As he retreated he pushed the door from inside, shutting it almost completely.

Not giving herself time to think, Judy sprang forward, throwing her body against the closing door. It burst open before her rush. “Johnny!” she screamed.

A ceiling light just inside the entry had now been switched on. The rest of the house, as far as she could tell, was all in darkness. The floor of the large entryway was tiled, and on the opposite side of it the young man stood before an open closet door. Not the closet that she wanted, no. He was in the act of pulling on a bulky sheepskin jacket, and in his free hand there dangled a long-barreled, very real-looking revolver. His face was just now turning toward Judy in fresh astonishment.

To Judy’s left, a great living room, devoid of furniture but thickly carpeted, stretched to a distant red-brick fireplace wall. Somewhere in that direction, a little farther off, Johnny was cowering in his prison, chained and gagged by fear, radiating pain like heat from glowing metal. Judy’s screaming of his name still rang like a distant alarm in his dazed brain, and from there back to her own mind again.

“Johnny!” she cried again. “I’m here!” And she moved toward the living room, to place herself between her helpless brother and this armed maniac.

The young man in the sheepskin stepped across the entry and slammed the front door closed again. His face was evilly contorted now. Without a word he moved toward Judy, the weapon in his hand rising with what seemed like endless slowness.

At last remembering what she was supposed to do, Judy cried out: “Come in, Dr. Corday, help me!” As she cried she ducked away from her attacker, to find herself falling softly down the single step from entryway to sunken living room. Her arms were raised to protect her head from blows or bullets. Her last glimpse of the young man as she turned away showed him reaching toward her with his left hand.

Even as the house spun with her spinning fall, she heard the front door fly open with a violent crash. There was a roaring of cold air in the room, an incomprehensible sudden wind that had blasted open the closed door. The hand that had just brushed Judy’s arm fell away. Then the door slammed shut again with a thunderous bang.

The wind gave one last, trailing howl, and disappeared.

The house was quiet.

Judy raised her face from the thick carpet and sat up. Corday was in the act of crouching down beside her, one hand outstretched. His fingers touched her hair. “Judy, it is all right now. You are not hurt?”

She jumped to her feet. “Find Johnny.”

Her companion was already in motion, his long strides carrying him off into the darkness engulfing the rear portion of the house.

Before following, Judy looked around. The front door was tightly closed once more, though now a portion of its lock hung in at an angle among splinters of newly broken wood. On the other side of the living room, near the great fireplace, the young man’s sheepskin coat lay in a bulky mound, and near it the long-barreled revolver. He must have run outside. . . .

“Judy?” Corday’s penetrating voice reached her from some distant room. “He is in here.”

She ran down a dark hallway, past dim, unfurnished bedrooms, and a bathroom where she could make out a dirty towel hung on a rack, soap in a grimy puddle on a lavatory top. Light shone out of another bedroom, where Corday was waiting for her. A small lamp burned on an upended crate that served as bedside table for an unmade cot. Odds and ends of men’s clothes were strewn about, along with girly magazines, weightlifting journals, bits of food and garbage, tin cans, paper cups, plates, a small transistor radio.

Corday stood beside the open door of the huge closet, gesturing for Judy to go in ahead of him. “He looks bad,” he said with his usual calm. “But I believe he will recover.”

No clothes were hanging in the closet. Inside, Judy dropped to her knees beside the horrible, pale figure contracted into one dim corner. The figure stirred, raising a head matted with long, dirt-colored hair. Against its naked chest were folded two mummified Egyptian hands, covered with dried brownish stains, their fingers clenched and twisted.

Startlingly pale eyes appeared, in a face that might once have been her brother’s. “Judy,” a stranger’s voice croaked at her. “They caught you, too.”

“No, oh no. Oh, Johnny, your poor hands.”

Corday was in and out of the closet now, moving with impersonal gentleness and quite improbable speed. He helped Johnny stand, looked at his throat closely for some reason, then wrapped him in two blankets from the cot. Somehow he found Johnny’s own boots and helped Judy get them on his feet. There seemed, for some reason, to be a tremendous hurry.

“You are to drive him directly home, Judy, stopping for nothing, except to avoid a collision.”

“The car—”

“There is a car in the garage, and unless I am mistaken these are its keys.” He handed her a jingling ring. “Hurry ahead and get the engine started—down the hall to your right. I shall bring John.”

In grabbing for the keys Judy accidentally bumped her brother’s arm and he cried out in pain. Then she flew down the hall in the direction Corday indicated. She caught a last glimpse of the living room in passing; the bundle of sheepskin coat had legs, she saw from this angle, and it was stirring now, raising a face.

A light was on already in the garage, and its door had been rolled up. She was already behind the wheel of the Cadillac, engine started and headlights on, as Corday arrived to stow her brother in beside her.

“Shouldn’t we telephone someone first—”

“Joe will be calling for help. Drive straight home now, stop for nothing. Leave all else to me.”

“Judy?” The voice coming from the pale face beside her did sound a little like her brother’s now, though terribly weak. “Take me home now?”

Corday had already slammed the Cadillac’s door shut and vanished back into the house. Even as Judy gunned the engine and pulled out of the garage, two muffled banging noises from in there reached her ears. She had driven miles toward home before it occurred to her excited mind that they might possibly have been shots.