thought that maybe it would jolt some sense into him.
‘Oh,’ he said lightly, ‘she’s always hunting for me. She thinks I ain’t
big enough to look out for myself.’
As if he’d never been away. As if ten years hadn’t passed. As if he’d
stepped out of his mother’s house no more than an hour ago. As if time had
no meaning for him – and perhaps it hadn’t.
‘Put on the clothes,’ I told him. ‘I’ll be right back.’
I went out into the living-room and picked up the phone. I dialled Doc
Fabian’s number. The busy signal blurped at me.
I put the receiver back and tried to think of someone else to call. I
could call Hiram Martin. Perhaps he was the one to call. But I hesitated.
Doc was the man to handle this; be knew how to handle people. All that Hiram
knew was how to push them around.
I dialled Doc once more and still got the busy signal. I slammed down
the receiver and hurried toward the bedroom. I couldn’t leave Tupper alone
too long. God knows what he might do.
But I already had waited too long. I never should have left. The
bedroom was empty. The window was open and the screen was broken out and
there was no Tupper.
I rushed across the room and leaned out of the window and there was no
sign of him.
Blind panic hit me straight between the eyes. I don’t know why it did.
Certainly, at that moment, Tupper’s escaping from the bedroom was not all
that important. But it seemed to be important and I knew, without knowing
why, that I must run him down and bring him back, that I must not let him
out of my sight again.
Without thinking, I stepped back from the window and took a running
jump, diving through the opening. I landed on one shoulder and rolled, then
jumped up to my feet.
Tupper was not in sight, but now I saw where he had gone.
His dewy tracks led across the grass, back around the house and down to
the old greenhouse. He had waded out into the patch of purple flowers that
covered the old abandoned area where once my father and, later, I myself had
tended rows of flowers and other plants. He had waded out some twenty feet
or so into the mass of flowers. His trail was clearly shown, for the plants
had been brushed over and had not had time to straighten yet, and they were
a darker hue where the dew had been knocked off them.
The trail went twenty feet and stopped. All about it and ahead of it
the purple flowers stood straight, silvered by the tiny dewdrops.
There was no other trail. Tupper had not backed out along the trail and
then gone another way. There was just the single trail that headed straight
into the patch of purple flowers and ended. As if the man might have taken
wing and flown away, or dropped straight into the ground.
But no matter where he was, I thought, no matter what kind of tricks he
played, he couldn’t leave the village. For the village was closed in by some
sort of barrier that ran all the way around it.
A wailing sound exploded and filled the universe, a shrieking, terrible
sound that reverberated and beat against itself. It came so suddenly that it
made me jump and stiffen. The sound seemed to fill the world and to dog the
sky and it didn’t stop, but kept on and on.
Almost at once I knew what it was, but my body still stayed tense for
long seconds and my mind was curdled with a nameless fear. For there had
been too much happening in too short a time and this metallic yammering had
been the trigger that had slammed it all together and made the world almost
unendurable.
Gradually I relaxed and started for the house.
And still the sound kept on, the frantic, full-throated wailing of the
siren down at the village hall.
8
By the time I got up to the house there were people running in the
street – a wild-eyed, frantic running with a sense of panic in it, all of
them heading toward that screeching maelstrom of sound, as if the siren were
the monstrous tootling of a latter-day Pied Piper and they were the rats
which must not be left behind.
There was old Pappy Andrews, hobbling along, cracking his cane on the
surface of the street with unaccustomed vigour and the wind blowing his long
chin whiskers up into his face. There was Grandma Jones, who had her
sunbonnet socked upon her head, but had forgotten to tie the strings, which
floated and bobbed across her shoulders as she stumped along with grim
determination. She was the only woman in all of Millville (perhaps in all
the world) who still owned a sunbonnet and she took a malicious pride in
wearing it, as if the very fact of appearing with it upon her head was a
somehow commendable flaunting of her fuddy-duddyness. And after her came
Pastor Silas Middleton, with a prissy look of distaste fastened on his face,
but going just the same. An old jalopy clattered past with that crazy
Johnson kid crouched behind the wheel and a bunch of his hoodlum pals
yelling, and cat-calling, glad of any kind of excitement and willing to
contribute to it. And a lot of others, including a slew of kids and dogs.
I opened the gate and stepped into the street. But I didn’t run like
all the rest of them, for I knew what it was all about and I was all weighed
down with a lot of things that no one knew as yet. Especially about Tupper
Tyler and what Tupper might have had to do with what was happening. For
insane as it might sound, I had a sneaky sort of hunch that Tupper had
somehow had a hand in it and had made a mess of things.
I tried to think, but the things I wanted to think about were too big
to get into mind and there were no mental handholds on them for my mind to
grab a hold of. So I didn’t hear the car when it came sneaking up beside me.
The first thing I heard was the click of the door as it was coming open.
I swung around and Nancy Sherwood was there behind the wheel.
‘Come on, Brad,’ she yelled, to make herself heard above the siren
noise.
I jumped in and closed the door and the car slid up the street. It was
a big and powerful thing. The top was down and if felt funny to be riding in
a car that didn’t have a top.
The siren stopped. One moment the world had been filled to bursting
with its brazen howling and then the howling stopped and for a little moment
there was the feeble keening as the siren died. Then the silence came, and
in the weight and mass of silence a little blot of howling still stayed
within one’s mind, as if the howling had not gone, but had merely moved
away.
One felt naked in the coldness of the silence and there was the absurd
feeling that in the noise there had been purpose and direction. And that
now, with the howling gone, there was no purpose or direction.
‘This is a nice car you have,’ I said, not knowing what to say, but
knowing that I should say something.
‘Father gave it to me,’ she said, ‘on my last birthday.’
It moved along and you couldn’t hear the motor. All you could hear was
the faint rumble of the wheels turning on the roadbed.
‘Brad,’ she asked, ‘what’s going on? Someone told me that your car was
wrecked and there was no sign of you. What has your car to do with the siren
blowing? And there were a lot of cars down on the road…’
I told her. ‘There’s a fence of some sort built around the town.’
‘Who would build a fence?’
‘It’s not that kind of fence. You can’t see this fence.’
We had gotten close to Main Street and there were more people. They
were walking on the sidewalk and walking on the lawns and walking in the
road. Nancy slowed the car to crawling.
‘You said there was a fence.’
‘There is a fence. An empty car can get through it, but it will stop a
man. I have a hunch it will stop all life. It’s the kind of fence you’d
expect in fairyland.’
‘Brad,’ she said, ‘you know there is no fairyland.’
‘An hour ago I knew,’ I said. ‘I don’t know any more.’
We came out on Main Street and a big crowd was standing out in front of
the village hall and more coming all the time. George Walker, the butcher at