Usher's Passing

Usher's Passing Page 8

THE SUN WAS RISING, TINTING THE SKY SCARLET. NEW THARPE HAD ceased his struggling.

Every time he'd tried to fight free during the long night, the thorny coils had clasped him tighter. They dug into his flesh in a dozen places. He'd cried a couple of times, but when he realized that crying sapped his strength - and he was going to need that strength, or he was as good as dead - he stopped sobbing as if he'd been slapped in the face.

Red light was beginning to tumble into the hollow. The wind, so violent during the night, had died to a furtive whisper. He could still see his breath, but his bones were thawing. He'd never been so cold in his life.

Twice during the night he thought he'd heard his name called, far in the distance. He'd tried to shout for help, but his voice was weak and raspy, and his head rang with pain. Then, when the moon started sinking, he'd heard something moving up at the edge of the pit. He'd looked up as high as possible, though there was a band of thorns around his throat, but seen nothing. Whatever it was, judging from the sound of crackling brush, it was very big. New had thought he'd heard rumbling breathing. The forest had fallen silent. In the next rush of wind. New had smelled the musky scent of an animal - a cat on the prowl.

Greediguts, New had thought as he kept perfectly still. Greediguts was up on the lip of the hollow. Greediguts was smelling him, and wanting him, but even the monstrous black panther itself wouldn't come down into those thorns.

After a while, the rumbling had faded away. The beast was gone, to find easier prey.

Every time he'd closed his eyes, New had seen that black figure standing up there with the limp sack under its arm. He could tell nothing about the figure - man or woman? young or old? human or not? - but he'd known who it was. His heart had stuttered, his flesh crawling. It was the thing his ma had warned him about all his life, the thing that had taken the Parnell girl the third week in September, and little Vernon Simmons last harvest season.

Sometimes he thought it was only a tale the mothers and fathers of Briartop Mountain had made up to scare their children, to keep them from getting lost in the woods.

But now he knew different. The moonlight had told him so.

Got to get out of here! New screamed inwardly. He fought again, trying to pull his left arm and right leg loose. The thorns dug into his throat, drawing pinpricks of blood. They clutched his chest like little claws.

Settle down. Easy, easy. Thorns'll choke you. Got to think your way out.

He carefully turned his head. The hunter's skeleton beside him was on fire with early light. He saw that it still wore a rotting leather powder horn. The dead man had been here for a long, long time.

His gaze followed the kudzu vines that trailed along the skeleton's broken right arm. The green finger bones were pointed like an arrow into the bleached leaves that gathered around the cadaver's legs.

New stared at the empty knife sheath.

Where was the knife?

Had it been lost in the hunter's fall? New looked again at the grasping finger bones. Then toward the mound of leaves.

He swung his left leg out, digging the toe of his boot into leaves, shoveling them aside. Black beetles scurried away. The odor of a damp grave drifted up. Barbs plunged into him as he tried to strain farther to the left. He moved his foot, tried again in a different place, and uncovered white leaves, worms, and bugs.

Hissing with pain as the thorns gouged his throat, New dug his toe down into the leaves just beneath the skeleton's hand. He shoveled his foot back and forth. A nest of brown spiders fled in all directions.

One of them scrabbled along the staghorn handle of a bowie knife, sunk to its hilt in the damp earth.

The hunter had been straining for his knife as he died.

A crow cawed from above the hollow. It sounded like cruel laughter. The knife might as well be a mile away; with only one arm and leg free, New couldn't possibly retrieve it.

"Help!" he tried to shout in desperation. His voice came out in a rattle. His mother would be looking for him by now, he knew. So would other people. They'd find him, eventually. Sure, he thought grimly. Just like somebody had found the hunter.

New caught back a sob. He stared fixedly at the knife. Have to get it, he told himself. Somehow. Or I might die right here.

You're the man of the house now, he thought. It was what his ma always told him. His pa had died in February, at the garage where he'd worked in Foxton. A freak accident, Sheriff Kemp had said. Bobby Tharpe was repairing a pickup truck's tire. It blew up in his face. Didn't feel no pain, Kemp had said. He went right on the spot.

You get yourself in trouble, his ma told him, you get yourself out of it, too.

New had loved his father very much. Bobby Tharpe had married Myra Satterwhite late, when he was in his mid-thirties; he'd been fifty-two when he died. New's father had had eyes the color of emeralds, just like New's own. He'd been a quiet, peaceful man - but sometimes New could tell that he was troubled, and New didn't know why. New's father had stayed to himself a lot.

Get the knife. Somehow.

He imagined the way it would feel in his hand. He tried to dislodge it with his boot, but only drove it deeper into the ground. In his mind, his hand curled around the cool staghorn handle, and he could feel every groove and dent. The knife's weight tugged at his grip.

The Pumpkin Man had taken his little brother. His flesh and blood. Had stood at the pit's edge, and been grinning all the time.

Anger crackled like lightning behind New's eyes. He was staring at the bowie knife.

If you want something bad enough, his father had said once, you can get it. But only if you want it with heart and soul and mind, if you want it with every pore in your skin and hair on your head, and you know it's the right thing . . .

The Pumpkin Man had been grinning. Laughing at him, laughing as he stole Nathan away into the wild depths of the forest .. .

New's heart was beating hard. Red light stung his eyes. He strained toward the knife as much as he could; the thorns tore his skin mercilessly. They were not going to let him get away.

The Pumpkin Man had taken his brother, then had laughed at him in the dark.

A surge of rage ripped through him, filling him with bitter fire. It was an anger he'd never known before, and in it was not only the Pumpkin Man but also the cheap pine box that had held his father's body, and the truck tire that had exploded with no warning, and the thorns and Briartop Mountain and the rundown cabin where his taciturn mother cooked her blackberry pies. All of it came through his pores in a yell of sweat.

I WANT IT! he shouted in his head.

The bowie knife stirred and withdrew from the earth with a quiet hiss. It hung three inches off the ground, then fell back into the leaves again.

New cried out in amazement.

For a second he'd felt, actually felt, the knife clutched in his right hand. It had been burning hot.

He watched it to see if it would move again, but it didn't. Still, it was free of the ground. He hooked his foot out and dragged it closer. Spiders crawled over his boot.

I want it . . . now, he said mentally, concentrating on feeling that knife in his hand again. On curling his fingers around the staghorn handle. On feeling its weight.

The knife jumped like a fish. Then lay still.

He was in a dream, floating. His head throbbed where he'd bumped it against a rock in the fall. There was a pressure like an iron band squeezing his temples. He'd never felt this way before, as if his mind were separating from his body, becoming disjointed, out of kilter. His heart was racing, and for a moment the pain in his head was so bad he thought he was going to pass out.

But he didn't. The knife was still on the ground at his feet. Its blade was veined with rust, but the edge gleamed in the red, raw light.

New could feel its sharpness. A pulse of power beat between him and the knife, connecting them like a charge of electricity.

And New understood what it was.

Magic.

There was magic in that knife. It had lain so long in Briartop earth that it had absorbed some of Briartop's magic. There was magic in it, and the magic was going to help New escape.

I want it, he commanded.

It didn't move.

Now. I want it now. He visualized the knife rising from the ground - slowly, slowly, coming through the air toward his open hand - felt the cool staghorn handle against his skin, closed his hand around it. Now. I want it right now.

The knife jumped, jumped.

Now. Right now. Now, damn it! Again, rage sizzled through his bones.

As if obeying his command, the knife jumped high and hung, spinning, three feet off the ground. It began to move toward his fingers, but fell to the ground again. The next time was easier, but again it fell. Now it was on the ground beneath his right hand.

Come up, New commanded. Come up and into my hand. He almost giggled: Wait'll Nathan hears about this! But the memory of Nathan came and went. He saw white moonlight on Nathan's upturned face, and mentally screamed.

The magic knife spun up from the ground, higher, higher, whirling like a top, and its handle slid into New's grasp as if he'd been born with it.

Quickly he started sawing at the thorns that held him. The coils around his chest parted with a brittle snapping sound, and leaked yellowish fluids. He cut his left arm free, and saw a bracelet of wounds around his wrist. The thorns around his neck were the hardest to cut loose, because some of them were in pretty deep, and he didn't want to slash his throat.

By the time he'd cut away enough thorns to pull free, the light that filtered through the trees was warm and golden. He fashioned footholds in the dirt wall and, climbing up by grasping bushes and roots, pulled himself slowly to the rim. At the top, with the magic knife still clutched in his fist, New turned his grimy, blood-streaked face toward the hollow and shouted, "Die, damn you!" His voice was a weak croak, but it carried his anger sufficiently.

Then he made his way back to the path, where his blackberry buckets were being picked at by crows, and started running for home.

He never saw the thorns down in the hollow begin to turn black, wither - and die.