A Night in the Lonesome October Part 23

"I don't know. I'm not sure they did, though. I didn't see them."

"Maybe I ought to sniff around a bit," I said.

"Might be a good idea."

We headed off in that direction.

It was odd, coming on the place without a storm raging overhead. The house was blackened and still smoky, its roof and three walls fallen, the ground dark with ashes, debris, and the singeing effects of the heat, about it. Off to the west -- to our right, as we approached -- the barn stood unscathed. The ground everywhere near us was wet to the point of squis.h.i.+ness from the deluge that had descended upon it in past weeks.

We circled the burnt place slowly, peering into it. Past charred beams and fragmented walls, I could make out banks of broken equipment far below. The smell from the fire and the dampness of the earth made it impossible for me to detect any useful scents in the vicinity. I told Graymalk this, and she said, "Then you can't tell whether the Good Doctor and his a.s.sistants escaped or perished?"

"Afraid not," I answered.

We went off to take a look at the barn. As we departed the ravaged area and neared that structure, I did pick up a fresh scent. Very fresh. Just ahead, in fact. I broke into a run.

"What is it?" Graymalk asked.

There was no time to respond to her. I'd glimpsed him rounding the corner of the building, and I raced that way. He saw me coming, realized that I could move a lot faster than he could, and dashed inside one of a number of wooden crates strewn there. I approached the crate and stuck my head inside, fangs bared.

Bubo crouched in its farthest recess.

"Remember what they say about cornered rats," he said. "We can be nasty."

"I'm sure," I replied. "But what'd be the point? No one wants to hurt you."

"You were chasing me."

"I wanted to talk to you."

"So you brought along a cat."

"I can let you talk to her if you don't want to talk to me."

I started to withdraw.

"No! Wait! I'd rather talk to you!"

"All right," I said. "I just wanted to know what happened here."

"There was a fire."

"I can see that. How'd it get started?"

"The experiment man got mad at the Good Doctor and started wrecking the lab. Sparks from some of the equipment set the place burning."

"'The experiment man'?"

"You know. The big fellow the Good Doctor put together from all the parts his a.s.sistant dug up for him."

I recalled the smell of death and I began to understand.

"What happened then?" I asked.

"The experiment man ran out and hid in the barn here, as he always did after an argument. I got out, too. The place burned down."

"Did the Good Doctor and his a.s.sistant get out in time?"

"I don't know. When I went back and looked later there was no way I could tell."

"What about the experiment man? Is he still in the barn?"

"No. He ran away later. I don't know where he is."

I backed up. "I'm sorry," I said, and I withdrew my head from the crate.

Graymalk immediately moved near and asked, "Was the Good Doctor an opener or a closer?"

"Please," he said, "let me be. I'm just a simple pack rat. Snuff! Don't let her have me!"

"I've already eaten," she said. "Besides, I owe you courtesy as a fellow player."

"No you don't," he said. "It's over. Over."

"Just because your master is dead doesn't mean I should treat you as anything other than a player."

"But you know. You must know. You're toying with me. Cats are that way. I'm not a player. I never was. Have you really eaten recently?"

"Yes."

"That's worse then. You'll toy more."

"Shut up a minute!" she said.

"See? There goes the courtesy."

"Be still. I am starting to get angry. What do you mean you were never a player?"

"Just that. I saw a good thing and I decided to jump aboard."

"You'd better explain."

"I told you I was just a pack rat. I used to hear all you folks talking -- Nightwind, Quicklime, Cheeter, you and Snuff -- as I lurked about my business. I got the idea pretty quick that there was some sort of strange Game going on, and you were all players. You all had it pretty good and you all left each other alone, even helped each other sometimes. So I decided to learn as much about your Game as I could and figure out how I could pa.s.s for one of you. I realized pretty quickly that you all had pretty weird masters and mistresses. Then I knew that I could do it. After all, I'd been hanging around the Good Doctor's place already, for the leftovers from his work. So I let on that he was in the Game and that I worked for him. Sure enough, I got respect and decent treatment from the rest of you. It made life a lot easier. What a tragedy -- the fire. It'll be rough spending winter in the barn. But rats are adaptable. We -- "

"Be still," she said again, and he obeyed. "Snuff, do you realize what this means?"

"Yes," I said. "There was no secret player. What it was, was that I had one player too many in my calculations. The Good Doctor must just have come here seeking a little privacy for his work."

". . . And that explains why the divinations concerning him were always ambiguous."

"Of course. I'll have to do some new figuring, soon. Thank you, Bubo. You've just helped me quite a bit."

Graymalk moved away from the crate and Bubo peered out.

"You mean I can go?" he said.

I was feeling generous, happy even, at the final piece for my puzzle. And he looked kind of pathetic.

"Or you can come with us, if you like," I said. "You don't have to live in the barn. You can stay at my place. It's warm and there's plenty to eat."

"You really mean that?"

"Sure. You've been a help."

"Of course you do live near a cat. . . ."

Graymalk made her laughing sound.

"You gave us professional help," she said. "I'll leave you on my professional courtesy list."

"All right, I'll do it," he told me.

He emerged and we headed back.

October 28.

I knew, but of course I had to check it out by laying it on the terrain. I strolled by most of the places I had visited yesterday, wondering who else might have figured it out yet. I saw the vicar and he saw me, from a distance, after Tekela'd brought her notice of me to his attention, in pa.s.sing. He was just carrying a carton into the vicarage from a wagon, and he stopped to glare. He was still wearing the bandage on his ear. The Great Detective Mrs. Enderby happened to be in a tree in her yard with a pair of binoculars when I pa.s.sed, and called out to me.

"Snuff, please come here!"

I kept going.

The sun was s.h.i.+ning intermittently through ma.s.ses of clouds. Yet more leaves, fallen and falling, were scudding in the breezes. I headed south.

Bubo had set up housekeeping in our bas.e.m.e.nt, though he wandered the house with our leave and ate with me in the kitchen.

"What became of the Things in the Mirror? Or to the mirror, for that matter?" he'd asked.

So I told him the story of the attack, following our trip to town. Which led into the story of our trip to town.

"Wouldn't put it past the vicar," he said. "He's taken many a shot at me with that crossbow of his, and I never did anything to him, except hunt through his dustbin on occasion. Is that cause to put an arrow in a fellow? I hope he fudges the final business and you fellows blow him to oblivion."

"Just how much do you know about the Game, anyway?" I asked.

"I've heard a lot. I've seen a lot. Everybody talked freely because they a.s.sumed I was a part of it. After a time, I almost got to feeling I was," he reflected. "I know so much about it."

And he proceeded to tell me the story of how a number of the proper people are attracted to the proper place in the proper year on a night in the lonesome October when the moon s.h.i.+nes full on Halloween and the way may be opened for the return of the Elder G.o.ds to Earth, and of how some of these people would a.s.sist in the opening of the way for them while others would strive to keep the way closed. For ages, the closers have won -- often just barely -- and there were stories of a shadowy man, half-mad, a killer, a wanderer, and his dog, who always showed up to attempt the closing. Some said that he was Cain himself, doomed to walk the Earth, marked; others said he'd a pact with one of the Elders who secretly wished to thwart the others; none really knew. And the people would acquire certain tools and other objects of power, meet together at the designated spot and attempt to work their wills. The winners walked away, the losers suffered for their presumption by a reaction from the cosmic principles involved in the attempt. Then he named the players and their tools, adding an awareness of the calculation, of divinations, of magical attacks and defenses.

"Bubo," I said, "you have impressed me as few have impressed me -- learning all that without giving yourself away."

"Rats have strong survival instincts," he said. "I needed to know it to stay safe in this area."

"No, you didn't," I said. "You could have remained out of it and gone about your business. The deception itself was a lot more dangerous."

"All right. I got curious about all these cryptic comments I kept hearing. Probably too curious for my own good. What it was, I think, is that I enjoyed pretending I was playing, too. I'd never done anything important before, and it felt good."

"Come on," I told him. "Get up on my back, and I'll take you to see the Gipsies. Good music and all."

We stayed late at the camp. I don't have that many friends, and it was a good evening.

As I made my way to Dog's Nest I came across another set of the huge, misshapen footprints at the hill's base. There were some up on top, too. I wondered where the experiment man would go, now his home was destroyed.

I made a circuit of the hilltop, drawing my lines again, laying them out upon the land, excluding the ruined farmhouse to the southwest now, which moved things considerably northward, taking into account the two satellite graves, trying it both with and without Larry's place in the formulation. With it, it came to another nothing wilderness spot. Without it, however, came a place already touched by the High Powers. I was standing upon it. It was here, Dog's Nest, amid its broken circle of stone, where the final act would take place. Larry was just a friend of the court. I threw back my head and howled. The design was complete.

On the rock where our earlier adventure had begun the inscription flared briefly, as if in endors.e.m.e.nt.

I departed quickly, skipping upon the hill.

Midnight.

"I've found it, Jack!" I said, and I told him Bubo's story.

". . . And subtracting the Good Doctor leaves us atop my hill," I concluded.

"Of course the others will divine it within the next few days."

". . . And the word will be pa.s.sed. True. I can only recall one time when no one figured it properly."

"My, that was long ago. . . ."

"Yes, and we all sat down to dinner together, made a joke of it, and went our ways."

"Such things are rare."

"Indeed."

"I think this will be a close one, Snuff."

"So do I. And it's been a strange one from the start. This quality may carry through."

"Oh?"