Читать книгу Wolf Lake - John Verdon - Страница 20
ОглавлениеWhen his attempts to extricate the car succeeded only in getting it more deeply entrenched, Gurney decided to venture on foot up to the crest of the hill where he hoped he might be able to get either a cell signal or a sense of how much farther it was to the lodge.
He put on his ski cap, turned up his collar, and headed up the road. He’d hardly started when a sound stopped him dead—an eerie howling that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere in particular. He’d grown used to the yips and howls of coyotes in the hills around Walnut Crossing, but this was different—deeper, with a quavering pitch that produced instant gooseflesh. Then it stopped as suddenly as it began.
He considered moving the Beretta from his ankle holster to his jacket pocket, but he didn’t want to ratchet up Madeleine’s anxiety; so he just resumed his trudge up the hill.
He’d proceeded no more than a dozen yards when he was stopped again—this time by a cry from the car.
“David!”
He spun around, slipped, and fell hard on his side.
As he scrambled to his feet he caught sight of the cause of her alarm.
A looming gray figure was standing in the icy mist no more than ten feet from the car.
As Gurney moved forward cautiously, he could see more clearly that it was a tall, gaunt man in a long canvas barn coat. A hat of matted fur, seemingly stitched together from parts of animals pelts, covered his head. A sheathed hatchet hung from a rough leather strap around his waist.
With the car between them, Gurney raised his right leg and slipped the Beretta out of its ankle holster and into his jacket pocket, gripping it firmly, thumb on the safety.
There was something almost feral in the man’s amber eyes. His discolored teeth had either been broken or filed to jagged points.
“Be warnt.” His voice was harsh as a rusted hinge.
Gurney responded evenly. “About what?”
“Evil here.”
“Here at Wolf Lake?”
“Aye. Lake’s got no bottom.”
“No bottom?”
“Nay, none, never was.”
“What kind of evil is here?”
“The hawk knows.”
“The hawk?”
“The hawk knows the evil. Hawk man knows what the hawk knows. Sets the hawk loose. Into the sun, into the moon.”
“What do you do here?”
“Fix what’s broke.”
“Around the lodge?”
“Aye.”
While keeping a close eye on the hatchet, Gurney decided to proceed with the conversation as if it were perfectly normal, to see if it might start to make sense. “My name is Dave Gurney. What’s yours?”
There was a flash of something in those strange eyes, a moment of keen attention.
Gurney thought that his name had been recognized. But when the man turned his sharp gaze up the road, it became clear something else had grabbed his attention. Seconds later Gurney heard it—the sound of a vehicle approaching in low gear. He was able to make out a pair of headlights, white disks in the frozen mist, coming over the crest and down the road.
He glanced over to check his visitor’s reaction. But he was nowhere in sight.
Getting out of the car, Madeleine pointed. “He ran off into those trees.” Gurney listened for footfalls, rustling branches; but all he heard was the wind.
Madeleine looked toward the approaching vehicle. “Thank God for whoever this is.”
A vintage Land Rover, the sort in old safari films, came to a stop a little way up the incline from the Outback. The tall, lean man who emerged from it in a country-chic Barbour rain jacket and knee-high Wellington boots created the impression of an English gentleman out for a pheasant shoot on an inclement day. He pulled the jacket hood over his closely cropped gray hair. “Damn rotten weather, eh?”
Gurney agreed.
Madeleine was shivering, burying her hands in her jacket pockets. “Are you from the lodge?”
“From it, yes. But of it, no.
“Excuse me?”
“I did drive here from the lodge. But I’m not an employee of it. Merely a guest. Norris Landon’s the name.”
Instead of walking across the ice to shake the man’s hand, Gurney simply introduced himself. As he was about to introduce Madeleine, Landon spoke first.
“And this would be your lovely wife, Madeleine—am I right?”
Madeleine responded with a surprised smile. “You must be the welcoming committee.”
“I’m not exactly that. But I am a man with a winch—which I expect you’ll find more useful.”
Madeleine looked hopeful. “Do you think it’ll get us out of the ditch?”
“It’s done the trick before. Wouldn’t want to be without it up here. I was talking to Jane Hammond earlier today, and she was anxious about your arrival in this wretched weather. Lodge is short-staffed at the moment. I volunteered to put Jane’s mind at ease—check the condition of the road, make sure no trees were down, that sort of thing. Things have a way of changing fast here. Streams turning into whitewater floods, roads collapsing into ravines, rock slides, instant icing—risky on the best of days.”
Not quite British or American, his accent was Mid-Atlantic, the diction once adopted by the cultured wealthy in the Northeast and actively nurtured in the Ivy League—until those institutions began to overflow with would-be hedge funders who didn’t care how cultured they sounded as long as they got rich fast.
“Do you know where your tow hook is, and can you reach it with the undercarriage in that awkward position?”
Gurney peered under the tilted front end before answering.
“Yes, I think, to both your questions.”
“In that case, we’ll have you back on the road in no time.”
Madeleine looked worried. “Before you arrived on the scene, someone approached us out of the woods.”
Landon blinked, appeared disconcerted.
She added, “A strange man with a hatchet strapped to his waist.”
“Crazy talk and amber eyes?”
“You know him?” Gurney asked.
“Barlow Tarr. Lives in a cabin out here. Nothing but trouble, in my opinion.”
“Is he dangerous?” asked Madeleine, still shivering.
“Some say he’s harmless. I’m not so sure. I’ve seen him sharpening that hatchet of his with a damn wild look in his eye. Hunts with it, too. Saw him cut a rabbit in half at thirty feet.”
Madeleine looked appalled.
“What else do you know about him?” asked Gurney.
“Works around the lodge, sort of a handyman. His father worked here, too. Grandfather before him. All a bit unbalanced, the Tarrs, to put it gently. Mountain people here from the time of Genesis. Related to each other in odd ways, if you know what I mean.” His mouth curled in distaste. “Did he say anything intelligible?”
“Depends what you mean by intelligible.” Gurney brushed a buildup of sleet pellets off the shoulders of his jacket. “Perhaps we could hook up that winch, and talk about the Tarr family later?”
IT TOOK A QUARTER OF AN HOUR TO GET THE LAND ROVER POSITIONED at the best angle and the cable set properly on the tow hook. After that, the winch did its simple work and the trapped car was gradually freed from the drainage ditch and pulled up to a drivable position on the road, well above the point at which it had lost traction. Landon then rewound his winch cable into its housing, turned the Land Rover around, and proceeded back up the hill with Gurney following.
Once over the crest, the visibility improved considerably and some of the tension went out of Madeleine’s expression.
“Quite a character,” she said.
“The country squire or the weird handyman?”
“The country squire. He seems to know a lot.”
Madeleine’s attention was then drawn to the stark vista appearing before them.
A series of jagged peaks and ridges the color of wine dregs stretched out toward a fog-shrouded horizon. Distance created the illusion of sharp edges—as though those peaks and ridges had been hacked with tin snips out of sheet metal.
The closest peak—perhaps two miles away—was distinctive enough that Gurney recognized it from his quick Internet search of the area before setting out. It was known as Devil’s Fang, no doubt because it gave the impression of a monstrous eyetooth turned up against the heavens. Joined to it was Cemetery Ridge. Huge granite blocks arrayed upon it ages ago bore some resemblance to gravestones silhouetted against the sky.
The steep two-mile-long face of Cemetery Ridge formed the west side of Wolf Lake. At the lake’s northern extremity, in the long shadow of Devil’s Fang, stood the old Adirondack Great Camp known as Wolf Lake Lodge.
