The map didn’t say by whom. Neither did the letter.
The map did say that someone would come later to pick up the car. The phone could be used to arrange for transportation back again, should he decide later to return. A telephone number was provided.
A twinge of doubt tugged suddenly at him. He was a long way out in the middle of nowhere, and no one but Meeks knew exactly where he was. If he were simply to drop from sight, Meeks might suddenly be a million dollars richer— supposing for the sake of argument that this was all an elaborate hoax. Stranger things had happened and for much less.
He thought about it for a moment and then shook his head. It didn’t make sense. Meeks was an agent for Rosen’s, and a man in his position would have been thoroughly checked. Besides, there were too many ways that Meeks could be caught in such a thing. Miles knew of Ben’s contact with the store and the reason for that contact. The funds he had cabled could be traced. Copies of the confirmation letter from Meeks were with his safe papers. And the ad for Landover’s sale was public knowledge.
He forced the doubts from his mind and concentrated on the drive ahead. His anticipation of what lay ahead had been working on him for weeks. He was so keyed up that he could barely contain himself. He had slept poorly last night. He had been awake before sunrise. He was susceptible to all sorts of half-baked ideas.
He reached the entrance to Skyline Drive in a little more than thirty minutes and turned south onto it. The two lane highway wound steadily upward into the Blue Ridge, weaving through the tangle of forest and mountain rock, rising into the late November sunlight. Panoramic views spread away to either side, the sweep of the national forestlands and parkways slipping past in breathtaking still life. Traffic was light. He encountered three cars traveling in the opposite direction, families with camping gear and luggage, one pulling a fold-up trailer. He came across no one driving south.
Twenty minutes later, he caught sight of the turn-around with its green sign stenciled with the number 13 in black. Easing off the gas pedal, he pulled the New Yorker off the parkway onto the gravel wayside and came to a stop before the courtesy phone and weather shelter. He climbed out of the car and looked about. To his right, the wayside ran several dozen feet to a chain and post guard rail and a promontory that overlooked miles of forestland and mountain ridges comprising a small part of the national park. To his left, across the deserted roadway, the mountainside lifted into the morning sunlight, a maze of trees and rocks wrapped in thin trailers of mist. He stared upward toward the mountain’s summit, watching the mist swirl and stir like ribbons drawn through the air. The day was still and empty, and even the passing of the wind made no sound.
He turned, reached into the car and took out his overnight case. It was really little more than a glorified duffel bag filled with a few odd possessions he had thought to bring—a bottle of his beloved Glenlivet to be saved for a special occasion, toiletries, paper and pens, several books, a couple sets of boxing gloves, recent copies of magazines he was still reading, tape, antiseptic, an old sweatsuit, and running shoes. He hadn’t bothered with much in the way of clothing. He knew that he would probably be better off wearing whatever they wore in Landover.
He closed the car and locked it, the keys inside. He slipped his billfold into his duffel, glanced about once again, and crossed the roadway. He was dressed in a light sweatsuit of navy blue with red and white piping and navy blue Nikes. He had brought the Nikes and the running shoes because he couldn’t decide what better to wear on a journey such as this and because he doubted that there would be anything more comfortable in shoes once he got where he was going. It was odd, he reflected, that Meeks hadn’t bothered with any instructions about clothing or personals.
He stopped at the far side of the roadway and scanned the forested slope before him. A small stream ran down off the rocks through a series of rapids that flashed silver in the dappled sunlight. A pathway crisscrossed the stream’s banks and disappeared into the trees. Ben hitched the duffel over one shoulder and started up.
The pathway wound in a series of twists and turns along the stream, leveling off at intervals in small clearings where wooden benches provided a resting place for the weary hiker. The stream gurgled and lapped against the earthen banks and over rock falls, the only sound in the late November morning. The parkway and the car disappeared behind him as he climbed, and soon there was only the forest to be seen. The climb grew less steep, but the forest closed about on either side, and the pathway became more difficult to discern. Eventually, the stream branched away into a cliff side that dropped from a great height, and the pathway ran on alone.
Slowly a mist began to settle in about him.
He stopped then and again looked about. There was nothing to see. He listened. There was nothing to hear. Nevertheless, he had the unpleasant sensation of being followed. Momentary doubt tugged at his resolve; perhaps this whole business was one big, fat mistake. But he shoved the doubt aside quickly and started again along the trail. He had made the commitment weeks ago. He was determined to see it through.
The forest deepened and the mist grew thicker. Trees loomed tightly all about him, dark, skeletal sentries with their dying leaves and evergreen boughs, their trailers of vine and scrub and swatches of saw grass. He was having to push his way past the pine and spruce to keep on the trail, and the mist lent a hazy cast to a morning that had begun with sunshine. Pine needles and fallen leaves crunched underfoot; from beyond where he could see, small animals darted through the carpet.
At least he wasn’t entirely alone, he thought.
He was growing extremely thirsty, but he hadn’t thought to pack a water container. He could go back and try the stream water, but he was reluctant to lose time doing so. He turned his thoughts momentarily to Miles to take his mind off his thirst. He tried to picture Miles out here in the woods with him, trudging through the forest and the mist, huffing and grunting. He smiled. Miles hated all forms of exercise that did not involve beer cans and tableware. He thought Ben was crazy for continuing his boxing workouts so many years after he had ceased to box competitively. He thought athletes were basically little boys who had never grown up.
Ben shook his head. Miles thought a lot of things that didn’t make much sense.
He slowed as the pathway ahead petered out into tall grass. A deep cluster of pine barred his passage forward. He pushed his way through and stopped.
“Uh-oh,” he whispered.
A wall of towering, rugged oak rose before him, shrouded in layers of shadow. A tunnel had been cut through its center, hollowed out as if by giant’s hands. The tunnel was dark and empty, a black hole with no end, a burrow that ran on into trailers of mist, stirred by invisible hands. Sounds drifted from out of the black, distant and unidentifiable.
Ben stood at the tunnel’s entrance and stared into the mist and the dark. The tunnel was two dozen feet across and twice as high. He had never seen anything like it. He knew at once that nothing in his world had made it. He knew as well exactly where it led. Nevertheless, he hesitated. There was something about the tunnel that made him uneasy—something beyond the fact that it was an unnatural creation. There was a look and feel to it that bothered him.
He peered about warily. There was nothing to be seen. He might have been the only living thing in the forest— except that he could hear the sounds from somewhere ahead, like voices, only …
He experienced a sudden, violent urge to turn about and go straight back the way he had come. It was so powerful that he actually took a step backward before he could catch himself. The air from the tunnel seemed to reach out to him in a velvet touch that trailed moisture against his skin. He tightened his arm about the duffel and straightened, bracing himself against what he was feeling. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Did he go on or did he turn back? Which choice for intrepid adventurer, Doc Holiday?
“Well,” he said softly.
He started forward. The tunnel seemed to open before him, the darkness
drawing back at precisely the rate at which he advanced. The mist caressed him, a lover’s hands tender and eager in their touch. He walked steadily, purposefully, letting his eyes sweep briefly right and left, seeing nothing. The sounds continued to stray from out of the invisible distance, still unrecognizable. The forest earth had a soft, spongey feel to it, giving with the weight of his body as he trod upon it. Dark trunks and limbs wrapped about, walls and ceiling that locked away all but the faintest light, a web of damp bark and drying leaves.
Ben risked a quick glance back. The forest from which he had come was gone. The tunnel entrance was gone. It was the same distance back as forward, the same look either way.
“Special effects are pretty good.” He forced a quick smile, thinking of Miles, thinking of how ridiculous it was to feel what he was feeling, thinking that he was liking this whole business less and less …
Then he heard the scream.
It lifted from out of the dark and the mist from somewhere behind him. He glanced back once more, still walking. There was movement in the tunnel dark. Figures darted from the trees—human in appearance, but so slight and willowy as to be almost ethereal. Faces appeared, thin and angular with sharp eyes that peered from beneath thatches of moss-hair and corn-silk brows.
The scream sounded again. He blinked. A monstrous, black apparition hung upon the misted air, a thing of scales and leathered wings, of claws and spines. The scream had come from it.
Ben quit walking altogether and stared. The special effects were getting better and better. This one looked almost real. He dropped his duffel on the trail, put his hands on his hips and watched it assume three-dimensional proportions. It was an ugly thing, as big as a house and as frightening as the worst of his dreams. Still, he could tell illusion from reality. Meeks would have to do better than this if he expected Ben to …
He terminated the thought abruptly. The apparition was coming directly for him—and it didn’t look quite so fake any longer. It was beginning to look decidedly real. He picked up the duffel and backed away. The thing screamed. Even the scream sounded real now.
Ben swallowed hard. Maybe that was because the thing was real.
He quit being rational and started to run. The apparition came on, the scream sounding once more. It was close to him now, a nightmare that could not be shaken out of sleep. It settled down upon the tunnel floor and ran upon four legs, the wings pulled back against it, the body compacted and steaming as if heated by an inner fire. And there was something on its back—a figure as dark as it, armored and misshapen, clawed hands grasping reins to guide the thing it rode.
Ben ran faster, his breathing labored and sounding of fear. He was in good condition, but the fear was eroding his strength quickly, and he could make no headway on the creature trailing. All about him he watched the strange faces materialize and then vanish, spirits wandered from the mists, lost in the trees—spectators to the chase taking place within the tunnel. He thought momentarily to break from the pathway and force his way into the forest with the gathering of faces. Perhaps the thing chasing him could not follow. It was so big that, even if he tried, the trees would at least slow its pursuit. But then he would be lost in the dark and the mist and might never find his way back. He stayed on the trail.
The apparition chasing him screamed again, and he could feel the tunnel floor shake with its approach.
“Meeks, damn you!” he cried desperately.
He could feel the medallion rub against his chest within the confines of his running suit. He clutched at it instinctively, the talisman he had been given to bring him safely into and—if need be—safely out of Landover. Maybe the medallion could dispell this thing …
Then a rider appeared suddenly at the edge of the darkness ahead, a ragged, hazy form. It was a knight, his armor battered and chipped, lance lowered until it almost rested upon the ground before it. Both rider and horse were soiled and unkempt, apparitions as unfriendly in their appearance as the thing that thundered toward Ben from behind. The rider’s head lifted at his approach, and the lance came up. Behind it, there was a sudden trace of daylight.
Ben ran faster still. The tunnel was ending. He had to get clear of it; he had to escape.
The monster that pursued screamed, the sound dying into a frightening hiss. “Stay away from me, damn you!” Ben cried frantically.
Then the horse and rider loomed suddenly before him, grown huge and strangely awesome beneath their covering of dirt. An exclamation of surprise broke from Ben’s lips. He had seen this knight before. He had seen his image engraved upon the medallion that he wore!
The breath of the black thing burned against the back of his neck, fetid and raw. Terror streaked through him, and there was the cold touch of something inhuman in his chest. The knight spurred his horse from the blaze of sunlight that marked the tunnel’s end, and the faces in the forest whirled as if disembodied ghosts. Ben screamed. Black thing and knight closed at him from either direction, bearing down on him as if he were not there.
The knight reached him first, racing past at a full gallop, the flanks of the charging horse knocking him sprawling from the pathway. He tumbled headlong into the shadows, and his eyes closed tightly against a sudden explosion of light.
Blackness engulfed him, and everything spun wildly. The breath had been knocked from his body, and he was having trouble catching it again. He lay face downward against the earth, the feel of grass and leaves damp against his cheek. He kept his eyes tightly shut and waited for the spinning sensation to cease.
When at last it did, he opened his eyes cautiously. He was in a clearing. The forest rose up all about him, misted and dark, but he could still glimpse traces of daylight beyond its screen. He started to his feet.
It was then that he saw the dragon.
He froze in disbelief. The dragon lay sleeping several dozen yards to his left, curled in a ball against a row of dark trunks. It was a monstrous thing, all scales, spikes, claws, and spines, its wings folded against its body, its snout tucked down into its forelegs. Steam puffed in ragged geysers from its nostrils as it snored contentedly. The raw, white bones of something recently eaten were scattered all about.
Ben sucked in his breath slowly, certain for an instant that this was the black thing that had chased him through the tunnel. But, no, the black thing had been something different altogether …
He quit worrying about what it was and started worrying about how to get away from it. He wished he knew if any of this was real, but there was no time to debate the matter now.
Cautiously, he began to slip through the trees, edging his way past the sleeping dragon in the direction of the light. He had his duffel looped over one shoulder and clamped tightly against his side. The dragon appeared to be sleeping soundly. It would only take a few moments to get clear of it. Ben held his breath and continued to place one foot silently in front of the other. He was almost clear of the beast when one lidded eye suddenly slipped open.
Ben froze a second time. The dragon regarded him bale-fully, the single eye fixed on him as he stood there amid the trees. Ben held his ground a moment longer, then slowly began to back away.
The dragon’s horn-crusted head swung quickly about, lowering against the forest earth. Ben back-pedalled faster, seeing the forest trees thin about him, sensing the light grow brighter behind. The dragon’s lip curled back almost disdainfully to reveal row upon row of blackened teeth.
Then the dragon blew at him as a sleeping man might blow at a bothersome fly. The odorous breath picked Ben up and flung him like a rag doll through the forest mist. He closed his eyes, tucked into a ball, and braced himself. He struck the earth roughly, bounced a few times, and rolled to a stop.
When he opened his eyes again, he sat alone in a clover meadow.
Sunshine seeped down through rifts in a clouded sky, bathing the meadow with bits and pieces of its warmth. Ben blinked and squinted through its brightness. The misted forest with its shadowed tunnel was gone. The apparitions we
re gone as well—that black thing, the battered knight, even the dragon.
Ben straightened. What in the hell had happened to them? He brushed at the sheen of sweat on his forehead. Hadn’t they been real after all?
He swallowed hard. No, of course they weren’t real! they couldn’t have been! They were just some sort of mirage!
He glanced about quickly. The meadow in which he sat spread away before him in a carpet of muted greens, blues and pinks, a mix of colors he had never seen in grasses. The clover was white, but touched with crimson spots. The meadow dropped downward into a sprawling valley which rose again miles distant in a wall of mountains that formed a dark barrier against the skyline. Behind him, the trees of a forest loomed blackly against a mountain slope. Trailers of mist hung over everything.
The apparitions had been somewhere in the trees behind him, he thought suddenly. Where had they disappeared to?
And where was he?
He took a moment to collect his thoughts. He was still shaken from his ordeal in the forest tunnel, frightened by the dark things that had come at him, bewildered that he was sitting here in this meadow. He took several deep breaths to steady himself. Whatever it was that had seemed to threaten him in that forest, he was all right now. He was back in the Blue Ridge. He was in Virginia, some twenty miles or so below Waynesboro, a few miles in from the parkway that ran through the George Washington National Forest.
Except that…
He glanced about once again, more carefully this time. Something wasn’t quite right. The weather was wrong, for one thing. It was too warm for late November in the Virginia mountains. He was sweating beneath his running suit and he shouldn’t have been doing that, even with the scare he had just experienced. The air had been cooler than this by at least thirty degrees before he had entered that tunnel in the forest.