Читать книгу The C.J. Henderson MEGAPACK ® - C.J. Henderson - Страница 13

SO FREE WE SEEM

An Inspector Legrasse Story

“So free we seem, so fettered fast we are!”

—Robert Browning

It was the strangest thing the inspector had ever seen. The first thing he noticed, as had those few others who had peered into the old house out near the swamp, were the traps in the doorway. Immediately, there in the front foyer, surrounding the mail slot in the door, spread in a semi-circle, he had come across two lines of traps. Mouse traps. Rat traps.

“In here, el Grande…”

Their positioning made them appear to be set for something their owner must have felt was going to come through the mail slot. A quick inspection showed the opening to be only one inch by three, covered by a springed hinge that had to be opened with a bit of effort.

“Come in and meet the former Hector Claro, and…” the officer’s voice shifted to a supercilious tone, “let me tell you right now, Inspector…”

What, wondered former Inspector-of-Police John Raymond Legrasse, could the man have been expecting to come through such a tiny and hard-to-open aperture other than his mail?

“You’re not going to believe this.”

Legrasse hated to admit it, but his one-time lieutenant was correct. Even after all he had seen in his time, he did not believe what he found in the next room. It was too odd. Too despairing.

“This isn’t one of your pranks, is it?”

Too perplexed by the oddity of the inside of Hector Claro’s home to make one of his usual wisecracks, Lieutenant Joseph D. Galvez shook his head gravely, admitting:

“I could but wish my sense of humor were this magnifico.”

Legrasse nodded, understanding the smaller man without need for further explanation. The scene in the humble home’s main room was one snatched from nightmare. The one-time inspector of police fell into old habits at once. In less than a minute his virgin notepad was bleeding its first page and a half—

Victim found sitting in a corner diagonally positioned as far from the front door as possible.

Victim appears to have been facing front door at time of death.

Found, foyer: on arrival: various spring traps set within the doorway. Immediately, three large traps—set but not baited—spread in triangle formation before the mail slot in the door.

Further on, spread in semi-circle, two additional lines of traps. Mouse traps. Rat traps. Just in the foyer.

Inside: traps everywhere—scores? Hundreds? Set out…

Patterns?

“Can you believe this guy,” asked Galvez. The man’s voice was indecisive, unable to pick a tone, to slide into either humor or concern. Or worse. “He surrounds himself with traps. He’s scared of what? What? I dunno.”

“You want to know why he did it?” asked Legrasse, half in humor, half seriously. “I’m still working on how he did it.”

Galvez snorted, then sprang another trap with the cane in his hand, a handsome thing covered with graceful carvings which he had acquired from the umbrella stand in the foyer.

“Crazy,” the Spaniard muttered, “set all these traps, but don’t bait them. How you supposed to catch anything that way?”

It had been decided that, although they would, of course, need to leave as much of the insane landscape intact as possible to see if there was any clue as to what had happened in the old Backtown house out near the swampfronts, some would have to be sacrificed for both basic mobility as well as general safety.

“Smells wonderful,” snapped the lieutenant, rubbing another wipe of preventive gel under his nose. Don’t he?”

Legrasse merely glared in response. Galvez went silent. Though his one-time commander was now merely consulting, only a citizen, still he was Legrasse, who had lived through it all and won against the devil himself. They had been through much together, and Galvez knew his old boss well. Already he could see the old instincts taking over, could sense his boss was closing in on what had happened within his mind. He watched Legrasse’s hand moving across the page, knowing that somehow he would unravel the bizarre scenario before them.

Victim seems to have bolted all other doors behind him. All other rooms are cut off from the front room. Cracks around doors are stuffed with rags, old newspaper, slivers of cardboard cut to fit. Boards appear to have been nailed over all of this wherever possible.

Victim seems to have been afraid of something approaching him, something small enough to fit under a door, or through a mail slot, any small crack.

Victim does not seem to have been restrained in any manner. If this is the case, then the only conclusion one can have is that he remained in his corner, surrounded by his traps, until he starved to death, by choice. Dying of thirst was preferable to him rather than…

Than what?

And then Legrasse’s eye caught a detail he had previously missed. Indeed, one that everyone had missed so far. Staring at the desiccated corpse in the corner, he asked Galvez:

“Do you see that bulge in Mr. Claro’s breast pocket?”

The lieutenant indicated that he did. Legrasse asked him to fetch it if he could. Galvez stepped into the opening already made near the corpse and slid his hand gently inside the pungent cloth. His hand came out with its prize, a thin, leather-bound volume with a stub of pencil attached to it by a short length of string. The lieutenant paged through it quickly, then announced:

“It’s a diary.”

Legrasse accepted the black book and opened it to its first page. In a simple style made up of competent but uncomplicated sentences of mostly one and two syllable words, Hector Claro introduced himself and his dilemma to the inspector.

Claro told his tale from the beginning. The first date showed that it had been some four weeks back, after a particularly violent storm which had rained lightning down on the swamps for an entire night and half the next day. Legrasse remembered the storm vividly. He had been caught outside in it and had been drenched in moments. The noise and electrical power of it had sent much of the city into a panic. Normally calm, well-mannered horses had gone wild in the streets, crashing carriages and trampling citizens. It had been one of those times Legrasse was glad he was no longer a public servant, and the memory of the violent night connected him to Claro in a personal way.

The man told of finding scores of dead fish and other swamp creatures the next day, floating on their sides in the muddy, boiled water behind his home. Great trees had fallen during the night, and the swamp had gone through such convulsions that Claro even noted a fresh spring bubbling up through the crayfish encrusted mud.

At first he had been pleased by the events. The shocked fish had provided him with a much needed windfall. He had quickly set to gathering and preserving as many of the still living, but insensate fish as he considered safe for the salting. The new spring was fresh and looked as if it would be a constant rather than a fluke. All in all, the storm seemed to have been a blessing for Claro, unlike what it had proved to be for the rest of New Orleans. But then the next night came, and his opinion of things took a different turn.

Claro’s next episode told of a noise in the night, that of a rat trap being sprung. Due to his proximity to the swamp, the man had many such devices set about in the corners of his home and was not overly concerned by hearing one go off in the middle of the night. But, instead of the squeals such a sound usually brought, if they brought any noise at all, he heard instead a series of strange, unfathomable sounds, the curiousness of which forced him to leave his bed. Lighting his table lamp, he went out to examine his small home’s main room where he found the most curious scene.

Claro described finding the trap dragged across the room from where it had been set all the way to the front door. He could tell this had happened easily enough because of the wet, sticky trail left from the trap’s original position to where Claro discovered it, smashed and ruined beneath his mail slot. He could only think that he had snared quite a large rodent, one of sufficient size and strength to move the trap, although wounded unto the point where it was bleeding profusely. This line of thinking was diminished, however, when he realized that the smearing crossing his floor was not made up of blood.

Legrasse absently noted a faded line of coloration on the door, one leading from deep inside the large room into the foyer—indeed, directly up to the mail slot—which supported Claro’s story. The dead man’s words described the trail as a bluish-green, one with neither the smell nor taste of blood. He was confused by this, but with the simplicity of most swamp dwellers, soon forgot the incident, tired as he had been from the ordeal of collecting and salting down his windfall.

The next night, however, he was again visited after dark, and the night after that, and the one after that. He lay in his bed on all three occasions, the covers pulled up and over his head, frightened to the point where he questioned even the need to breathe. Every day he set out more traps, but each morning he found fewer of them sprung. On all three nights, he listened intently as something, or some things, crawled and slithered throughout his simple home. Whether they were searching for something, or simply madly dancing, he had no idea, nor much inclination to find out.

* * * *

As Legrasse read on, fascinated, Galvez waited, balancing himself in various poses, using the cane from the umbrella stand to keep from toppling into the myriad traps. On the one hand, he was impatient to find the answer to the riddle of the dead man and to close out the case. On the other, he was more than willing to wait to see what his former commander could determine. Together, the two had seen some horrific and terrible things in the bayou land outside their city. Indeed, in Galvez’s mind, the mystery of Hector Claro could scarce compare to some of their previous exploits.

“Better safe than sorry,” the lieutenant cautioned himself and continued to play with the cane, twirling it in one hand, studying its odd carvings, amusing himself in any way he could think of while he waited for Legrasse’s verdict.

* * * *

The inspector had almost forgotten Galvez, however, his full attention falling to each successive page of Claro’s diary. Legrasse had become engrossed with the man’s description of the fourth night of his home’s invasion and reread it simply to hear its words again within his head. That night, whatever had been searching about in the other rooms of his home, even under his own bed, found its way to what was on top of his bed.

Claro wrote of a weight passing over the blanket he kept tight across his face. Anything with eyes would have seen his form beneath the covers, he reckoned, but whatever this was, this probing, single length, it merely poked and prodded and rolled, intent in its search, but making no discovery. At first.

Claro’s words dropped icicles down the back of Legrasse’s shirt collar, making each vertebrae ache in turn as they uncomfortably made their way down his spine.

It were a horrible feeling, not being able to see, not being able to breathe, just scared and waiting for the damn thing to go away. Just holding my breath and waiting and praying and none of it doing no good. No good at all.

It just kept digging and scratching and tugging, like a big finger, but a stupid one. Like something that had never seen a bed or a blanket. I think how dumb it were was more frightening than anything else. Even a bear, or fox, or anything, anything that ever crawled up out of the swamp should have known what it had found. But this thing couldn’t tell it had found a man under a blanket. So it just kept poking and digging at me.

And then, it found me. The crawling bastard thing finally found its way under the blanket and it slid under my leg and up over the other in a motion so fast I couldn’t react. But, as it started to circle under my leg, like to grab it, or squeeze it, my fear left me, or it filled me, whatever, I don’t know. I only know that was all I could stand.

It was a madness that took me then. I rolled out of my bed screaming. In the darkness, I grabbed at the thing coiling around my legs, and I pulled it from me and smashed at it, beating it with my fists, beating it against the floor.

With a lightning speed, it jerked free of my hold and retreated out of the room. I followed it, my hands grabbing for something to use as a weapon. I found a chair. I wasn’t thinking, didn’t care. I grabbed up the chair and ran to follow the thing, whatever it was, to break it, to kill it. Then, I got to the next room…and I had to stop.

Legrasse read on, fascinated.

Claro had stopped, for he had found his home filled with vast lengths of roping flesh, something like the tentacles of a squid, but longer, thinner, and possessed of individual skills no cephalopod imaginable had ever displayed. He stood frozen, terror gripping his every muscle, as he watched the roaming tendrils poke and pull and slither in the moonlight. Then the one he had just eluded found him again, and Claro beat at it with his chair until the seat had become splinters.

Racing about madly, the man had smashed the tentacles, beat them with his fists, even bitten into one of them. Although the tendrils retreated in seconds in the face of his attack, still Claro was left drenched in sweat from his encounter.

He spent the next day closing down the side of his home facing the swamp. It did no good. The next night the lengths returned, and again he was forced to do battle with the sucking, grasping coils. They came over the next two nights as well, and Claro began to take note of certain things. Each night the tentacles came earlier and stayed longer. They were beginning to be able to predict where he would be, what he would do. They were beginning to not fear him. Which is when he had decided to start setting the traps.

* * * *

Legrasse gave the book over to Galvez, telling him to read some of it while he thought about things for a moment. The Spaniard nodded, handing the inspector the cane he had been toying with so that he could hold the book in two hands. While Galvez started, Legrasse thought on what he had read.

The book told of tentacles coming through the windows, slots, cracks, even his sink drain. Why the man stayed in his home, he did not explain. Nor did he explain why he did not at least leave at night, did not call the police, did not ask his neighbors for shelter or assistance.

What could it have been, wondered Legrasse. Why was it? What did it want? Why did it come? Why?

Maybe Claro was just too stubborn to admit defeat. Maybe he simply went insane, bought the traps and spread them out, relying on the only thing that had truly worked for him. The last entry he had made, sitting in his corner, disturbed Legrasse the most. Free, free at last.

The inspector studied the cane in his hand as he tried to piece the sad occurrence into a whole. Certainly the storm had unleashed whatever had found Claro. Perhaps it was some long lost horror, sealed away within the fresh spring so recently uncovered.

Legrasse stared at the corpse in the corner and wondered. Did the dead man know something that some outré thing wanted to know, something it did not want anyone else to know? Or was Claro just the poor unfortunate bastard who happened to be the only thing nearby when the storm somehow opened a random portal that some bug just happened to accidentally poke its way through?

The inspector quietly checked Galvez’s progress. The man was barely halfway through the notebook. Looking about, Legrasse then took note of a section of the dead man’s leg, where the pants were up far enough to reveal flesh above the sock line. Round red welts like sucker wounds appeared to circle the victim’s leg.

Legrasse wondered at it all, at what the searchers could have been after. What was the point, he mused, of coming night after night, but never taking anything, never actually doing anything—anything. Why?

Absently smacking his hand with the butt-end of the cane, the inspector took a closer note of the carvings etched into its length. There was nothing remarkable about them, although he did notice they seemed somewhat fresh. Still, they seemed of no great importance. Indeed, his mind left them instantly as he noticed Galvez coming to the end of the notebook. Tossing the cane back to the Spaniard, Legrasse turned in his small clear space in the traps, studying. Wondering.

“Hey, John,” called Galvez, “anything you want me to do while you stare off into space at the tax-payers’ expense?”

“It’s your investigation,” replied Legrasse absently. “Be creative.”

The lieutenant nodded, looking for a direction in which to head. Legrasse looked down at the traps, wondering about them again.

He had been puzzled about them since he had arrived. So far all he had learned had only added to his puzzlement. He still could not believe Claro had set out all the traps. Their placement was so finely meshed, so intricate. And the patterns he had noticed, swirls and star-shapes, intersecting each other over and over throughout the main room—

Why, wondered Legrasse. Why would he do it?

The traps had not been working, the inspector remembered. Yet Claro had gotten more and more of them, ultimately painting himself into the corner, so to speak, with them.

Across the room, Galvez picked the next spot where he would knock a new hole in the traps so that he could move toward the back rooms. Sealed off as they were, none of them had been investigated yet. To the lieutenant’s way of thinking, it was high time they were opened.

Ignoring Galvez’s actions, Legrasse concentrated on the traps. There was something he was not seeing, something that was passing him by. He stared down at the floor again, trying to look at everything once more from the beginning, struggling to gain a new perspective.

The traps were everywhere. In tight, sophisticated patterns. Why? How could Claro have managed it, with only two hands? It did not seem possible. And, even if it were, why had he done so?

Galvez spotted the point where he could place his next footfall without disturbing too many of the traps.

Of course, he thought, the traps aren’t so tight everywhere. Fairly sparse back by the door when you first came in. And where the patterns ran up against one another. Indeed, that was where Galvez had been making his strikes, in the freer areas between the patterns.

Convenient, whispered a voice from the back of Legrasse’s mind. He caught the tone, realizing instantly his subconscious was trying to tell him something.

The footfalls had been conveniently made, slivers of space left between each of the patterns, just right for a human of average height, spaced just so, placed directly where the average human eye would see them, would pride itself on being able to take advantage of them.

Galvez’s arm stretched out, positioning the cane for its next strike. And, as it did so, the inspector’s memory superimposed another image on the scene. He thought back to voodoo rituals he had witnessed, to the foul priest he and his men had stopped only months earlier, all of them, scratching patterns in the sand or the mud, making their magic gestures with their totem sticks—

“I’m going to take a look in the back rooms.”

The lieutenant pulled his hand back, even as Legrasse’s mind raced. What if Claro had not set the traps, or even if he had, if after his death, something else had moved them? Changed their positions, moved them into patterns…

Galvez’s hand began to descend—

Into the same patterns it carved into Claro’s cane, the cane left at the front door, where the traps were not so thickly spread, so that one could enter, and pick up the cane!

“No!”

Legrasse screamed at Galvez, even as he threw himself at the lieutenant. The lieutenant shouted as well, raising his free hand in response, trying to bring up the one wielding the cane, but it was too late. Both men went down painfully, rolling over and over in the flesh-tearing maze.

* * * *

Most of their pains had long subsided, but Galvez was still not certain of Legrasse’s reasons. Yes, he understood about the traps being laid out in the same patterns as those on the cane. He understood about the interconnected manner of most magics, and how, yes, perhaps he had been maneuvered into striking each of the patterns in turn with what could very well be thought of as a wand. And, yes again, considering the detail in which Claro had written in his journal, the fact he did not mention patterning the traps was an odd omission. Still…

“You could have just told me not to hit the traps again,” he muttered, his dignity still as sore as his flesh.

Legrasse sighed. His hands and legs and arms and face had been snapped and gouged in just as many places as had Galvez. He had lost as much blood, had pulled one of the crushing things off his nose and one off an ear. He did not answer the lieutenant, however. There was no point.

As they stood on the edge of the swamp, watching the old house burn, he did not see where it mattered. When the conflagration was finished, the officers waiting nearby would dynamite the spring Claro had written of, the one they had found with so many sinister gouges roping up through the mud surrounding it. Afterward, the entire area would be salted, then forgotten.

Holding the cane for a moment longer, Legrasse wondered if what he had seen in his mind were even possible. Could the blind lengths have carved the patterns, planted the wand, arranged the room to be discovered just so, waiting for some unsuspecting wretches to trigger the ritual?

And to what end?

“Just to take advantage of the fact that a storm somehow opened a random portal that some bug just happened to accidentally poke its way through?”

At that point, Legrasse did not care if he were right or not. Better sore ribs and a swollen ear than some foul horror flopping about loose. One poor dead bastard was enough.

But, maybe Claro was not the only one that had gotten too near the edge. The inspector wondered if, perhaps, he too might not have seen more than he could bear at this point. Maybe he was growing overly paranoid over the unspeakables he had encountered. Perhaps he was weakening, assigning them too much credit, too much ability. But then, how could one ascribe such beings with too much ability?

He might’ve been wrong, he snorted, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t possible.

Muttering a curse in Hector Claro’s honor, Legrasse threw the cane as hard as he could into the blazing cremation before him. Then he turned and walked back toward the police wagon parked well back from the swamp and the burning house. Like the snorting horses waiting there, he had grown tired of the smell.