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Then, like the wolves in Woodman, my old friend and his study went away and for an instant the slate of my mind was clean and I rejoiced at it, but almost immediately I was ru
"You ought to try to go to sleep," said Kathy. "You need the sleep. Do you want an aspirin?"
"No aspirin," I mumbled at her. "I haven't got a headache."
What I had, I knew, was far worse than a headache. It was no dream, for I was half awake. I knew all the time that these other things were ru
I was back on the plain again and I saw now that it was featureless, a lonely and eternal place, that its flatness was not marred by any hill or ridge or tree, that it ran on forever in its utter sameness and that the sky, like the plain, also was featureless, without a cloud or sun or star and it was hard to tell whether it might be day or night—it was too light for night and too dark for day. It was a deep dusk and I wondered whether it might be always like this, a place where it was never anything but dusk, reaching toward the night, but never getting there. As I stood there on the plain, I heard the baying coming from far away, a sound that was unmistakable, the very sound that I had heard when I had stepped out for a breath of air and had heard the pack go crying down the notch of Lonesome Hollow. Frightened by the sound, I turned slowly, trying to determine from what direction it might come, and in my slow turning I caught sight of a thing that stumbled its way along the far horizon, its blackness dimly outlined against the grayness of the sky. Dim, but not to be mistaken, not that long sinuous neck which terminated in the ugly, darting, seeking head, not that serrated backbone.
I ran, although there was no place to run, certainly no place that one could hide. And as I ran I knew what sort of place it was, a place that had existed forever and would exist forever, where nothing had ever happened or was about to happen. Now there was another sound, a steady, oncoming sound that could be heard in the silences which lay between the baying of the wolves—a flapping, plopping sound that had an undertone of rustling and at times a harsh, hard buzzing. I spun about and searched the surface of the plain and in a little time I saw them, a squadron of humping, wriggling rattlesnakes bearing down upon me. I turned and ran, the air pumping in my lungs, and as I ran I knew there was no use of ru
But suddenly I became aware that something had gone wrong. There was no motor hum, no hiss of rubber on the pavement, no sense of motion. There was, instead, the sound of a quiet wind blowing and the scent of many blossoms.
"Wake up, Horton," Kathy's startled voice said. "Something happened, very, very strange."
I opened my eyes and struggled upward. I lifted both my fists and scrubbed at sleep-smudged eyes.
The car had stopped and we were no longer on the highway. We were on no road at all, but on a rutted cart track that went wandering down a hill, dodging boulders and trees and brightly flowering shrubs. Grass grew between the deep wheelmarks and a wildness and a silence hung over everything.
We seemed to be on top of a high ridge or a mountain. The lower slope was heavily forested, but here, on top, the trees were scattered, although their size made up for the fewness of them—most of them great oaks, their mighty branches scarred and twisted, their boles spotted with heavy coats of lichens.
"I was just driving along," said Kathy, shaken, "not going too fast, not as fast as the highway limit—fifty more than likely. And then I was off the road and the car was rolling to a stop, its engine killed. And that's impossible. It couldn't happen that way."
I still was half asleep. I rubbed my eyes again, not so much to get the sleep out of them as because there was something wrong about the place.
"There was no sense of deceleration," Kathy said. "No jolt. And how could one get off the highway? There's no way to leave the highway."
I'd seen those oaks somewhere before and I was trying to remember where I might have seen them—not the selfsame trees, of course, but others that were like them.
"Kathy," I asked, "where are we?"
"We must be on top of South Mountain. I'd just passed through Chambersburg."
"Yes," I said, remembering, "just short of Gettysburg." Although when I had asked the question, that had not been exactly what I'd meant.
"You don't realize what happened, Horton. We might have both been killed."
I shook my head. "Not killed. Not here."
"What do you mean?" she asked, irritated at me.
"Those oaks," I said. "Where have you seen those oaks before?"
"I've never seen.. **
"Yes, you have," I said. "You must have. When you were a kid. In a book about King Arthur, or maybe Robin Hood."
She gasped and reached her hand out to my arm. "Those old romantic, pastoral drawings..»