999_ Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense - Al Sarrantonio [28]
Stephen laughed angrily. “I’m not giving in. I never will.”
If our parents had known we’d been searching for our bicycles with the idea of riding out from Cross Hill toward Lake Noir, or the town of Contracoeur, they would have forbidden us, of course; but neither knew. Unless Father was observing us from his third-floor quarters. (We were partly hidden by the carriage house, or so we believed. In fact, we weren’t altogether certain which windows on the third floor were Father’s; he might have had access to all, with a three-hundred-sixty-degree view of Cross Hill and its surrroundings.)
All of the bicycle tires were flat. Yet, surprisingly, they didn’t appear to be rotted or shredded. Stephen, in a determined mood, located the air pump, also badly rusted, but operable, and energetically pumped air into everyone’s tires; so quickly we tried our bicycles in Acacia Drive before the air leaked out again. We were laughing, excited. There was something crazed about our play. We were like children with crude, clumsy, homemade and possibly dangerous toys; toys that might explode in our faces. The twins shouted encouragement to each other, but their Schwinns were so coated in rust they were able to pedal them only a few yards before toppling over into the rutted lane. Lanky, long-limbed Graeme, who’d never been much of a bicyclist, as he’d never been at ease with his body, sat atop his bike and spun the pedals backward; tested the hand brakes (which seemed to work—or did they?); tried without success to straighten his handlebars that tilted comically to one side; and set off, grunting as he strained at the pedals, yet managing to move forward, barely. Rosalind had more success, despite the ravaged condition of her bike; though giggling with apprehension, like a drunken girl laboring to keep her balance as her bicycle wobbled, swayed, lurched and almost fell; yet moved forward. Stephen passed her, fiercely gripping the crooked handlebars of his bicycle; he too was swaying as if drunk, yet determined not to fall; just when you thought his bicycle was going to collapse, bringing him down ignominiously with it, somehow he kept it erect, and moving, by sheer strength. “I’m not going in,” Stephen cried, laughing. “Never!” We watched as our eldest brother made his way on his wreck of a bike with painstaking effort, the back of his T-shirt soaked in sweat, as if pedaling up a steep incline and not in fact descending a gradual incline, in the direction of the front gate, and the road. A flurry of Monarch butterflies, brilliantly orange and scripted in black, clustered about him like exclamation points.
Stephen was headed for the gate; we’d been forbidden to leave Cross Hill without permission.
The ornate wrought iron gate, of course, was open; permanently open; overgrown with brambles, ivy and moss.
“Hey!” Graeme called after his older brother and sister, who were pedaling away. He hoped to catch up with them but the rusted chain of his bike snapped suddenly, and he was sent sprawling into the grass. Behind him, the twins were whimpering. Ahead of him, Stephen and Rosalind were making their way, with effort, yet steadily forward, without a backward glance. Graeme, panting, his knee aching where he’d fallen, stared after them. He’d ceased smiling. The game was ended. Though the midsummer afternoon was flooded with light, almost blinding with light, he recalled suddenly that the thing-without-a-face had crossed Acacia Drive, in the moonlight, moving in the direction of the gate. Suddenly his knees were weak. There had been rumors of the mutilation-murder of a girl, or a young child, in Contracoeur; a rumor of other incidents, as far