Chapter 10
The road to the Kelp stronghold was too narrow and too rough for a car, so Mark abandoned the Thunderbird some three miles from his destination and began walking.
The country was no different from that surrounding Peace Haven: thick forest along the road with occassional breaks that revealed the beauty of the valley.
As he trudged along, Mark felt both a sense of isolation and a feeling that he was being watched. Several times he turned quickly to look behind him, but never caught sight of another person.
The feeling persisted until the road widened and he approached a fence that was nothing more than logs piled on pegs long-since broken down. There had once been a gate, but it lay in pieces beside the entrance.
Mark approached. As he went through the gate, all hell broke loose. He thought for a moment, he'd unknowingly entered a jungle. But the sound clarified into the snarling, barking, and yelping of dogs.
His knees shook as he saw them charging down upon him-over a dozen, mangy, vicious looking brutes of various sizes and breeds. It was too late to run. Somewhere he'd heard that if you're doubtful about a dog, you should stand perfectly still.
This wasn't difficult because his legs seemed frozen. The animals thundred in and he became the center of a revolving circle. The dogs slavered and snarled and seemed to be begging him to make a move, to do something that would justify his annihilation.
He refused to accommodate them, and gradually human beings appeared. He discovered that he'd been watched from the colony, or whatever it was called, as he aproached. Now there were at least twenty-five people in view. Men, women, and children, they regarded him with a common, silent hostility.
The women and the children stayed where they were. A few of the men came forward slowly. Their approach was so leisurely that Mark, fairly certain he wasn't going to be torn to pieces by the dogs unless the men ordered them to do so, had a chance to look the place over.
It was as different from Peace Haven as filth is from sanitation. There was a cluster of cabins on the perimeter of a yard made up of packed earth. A few washtubs sat in front of doors. Bones and refuse and garbage was the decorative motif of the area.
Some of the children were naked, some wore shirts. They could have been cousins of those he'd seen in the village. And the women could have been sisters to the slobbish females he'd found outside the slovenly cabins there.
The only man he recognized was Fred Kelp. The lean, cold-eyed leader of the clan was cutting a slice off a plug of tobacco as he approached, his manner insolent, his attitude hostile.
"Good morning," Mark said, hoping his voice sounded pleasant. But at the same time he couldn't help thinking that these people hadn't changed much from the days when Huckleberry Finn road down the Mississippi on a raft.
Fred Kelp did not answer. He thrust the tobacco slice into his mouth and ground yellow teeth down on it. Then he asked, "What're you doing here?"
"Why, I just walked over-a neighborly gesture."
Kelp spat viciously, "If that's why you came, walk out again. You ain't no neighbor of ours."
"All right, then I came to talk. Is that possible."
"What you got to say?"
Various other male Kelps were standing about enjoying Mark's discomfort. There were grins and sneers in abundance. Mark looked helplessly at the wheel of dogs. "Can't we at least act as though it were a little more friendly? This is hardly-"
Kelp picked up a rock and threw it savagely against the ribs of the nearest dog. There was a yelp of agony and the beast went loping off. The others followed, looking back in terror for signs of another rock.
"You can set on that log if you're a mind," Kelp said with complete ungraciousness.
"Thank you."
Mark sat down and let his eyes circle the line of cabins. "Not good enough for you?"
Mark didn't answer. Instead, he asked a point-blank question. "Mr. Kelp, why do you hate the people at Peace Haven so much?"
"Cause they're a bunch of hypocrites-like you."
"What makes you think I'm a hypocrite?"
"You came to town all hell for leather about what happened to one of the Peace Haven girls. Now I hear you've thrown in with them."
"Who told you that?"
"We got ways of hearing things."
"You say I came to town looking for justice in the case of Patience White. You were there. Did I get help?"
Kelp's face darkened. "Who the hell are you to question me?"
"If we can't talk on reasonably equal terms, what's the point? I may as well go."
"Then get the hell up and do it."
Anger rose in Mark. "I understand it was three of your men who raped Patience White."
If he expected anger in return, he didn't get it. "Maybe so. Sluts like that are fair game. Good way to make them know they ain't wanted around here."
"Did you know that the girls at Peace Haven don't come there of their own accord?"
"Oh, sure, we heard all about that. They're jailbirds."
"Then you don't go on the theory that people in trouble are entitled to help?"
"You figure to come here and tell me how to run my life, mister?"
"I came here to see if we couldn't work out some method of living peaceably together."
"Then you admit you've thrown in with that devil Welch and whoever they call The Prophet?" Fred Kelp spat in violent contempt of the last word. "Prophet! It's blasphemy, that's what it is."
"Are you a religious man, Mr. Kelp?"
"You're walking on dangerous ground, mister."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry, mister. Just get on your way. There ain't no ground you and me can get together on."
Mark got to his feet. "I'm sorry to hear that."
Kelp grinned slyly. "By the way, I hear you people are having a big shindig in a week or so."
"Do you mean Purity Day?"
The retort brought snickers and new leers from the observing Kelps.
"That's the name of the thing, I guess. We thought maybe you might like to have some visitors."
Up to that moment Mark had had respect for Kelp in that he thought him to be an astute man. Now he changed his mind. If Kelp planned to attack the haven, this warning was foolish. "Yes," Mark said coldly. "As a matter-of-fact, we are. And you might be interested in watching the new event we're planning to
"What event's that?"
"Target practice. As you know, some of our girls have led pretty rough lives before coming to Peace Haven. They don't take kindly to men abusing them. Some may well be there because they resented such treatment and did something about it. We're going to let them take their frustrations out on targets. We have a feeling that with a little instruction they'll do all right with rifles and maybe some small side arms.
"He's bluffing!" This explosive declaration came from one of the observers. Fred Kelp turned on him savagely and barked. "Keep your damned mouth shut, Marty!"
He turned back to Mark. "Maybe the law'll have something to say about women carrying guns. It can be dangerous."
He was a coward. Mark paid silent tribute to Carol's perception. He also breathed a sigh of relief. Up to this moment he hadn't been sure of getting away without physical violence. Now he knew that his threat alone had been enough. No one would attack him.
He said, "Good day, mister Kelp. Drop around to the haven any time you wish," and moved back down the road along which he'd come.
For a few moments his skin prickled in anticipation of the dog pack thundering after him. But there was silence among the Kelps and their animals, and even their women and children. But he could feel the contempt and the hatred that followed him. The hatred was a little bewildering, but he understood the contempt. He'd thrown in with people these mountaineers looked down on whatever their own morals and methods. That made them see him in the same light they saw Welch. Actually Mark himself felt the same way about Welch. In that respect he was an ally of the Kelps.
As he turned his car around it occurred to him that the Kelps knew nothing of Carol Rice. Obviously they saw Peace Haven as being run by Welch and a man called The Prophet who was only a name to them.
He hadn't asked Carol about Bansford's present status but it wasn't difficult to judge with the information he had. Carol, in her rage for vengeance, had used the man she hated and now, with no further need of him, she was keeping him a virtual prisoner.
There was going to be an explosion of some kind at Peace Haven, he told himself. The place would fall now, even without him because Carol Rice's madness was destroying her. Therefore what she'd built would also be destroyed.
He was tempted to accept this as a certainty and not stop at Peace Haven. Why stay around if what he'd been working for would come about anyhow?
The temptation came and passed as he thought of Linda. Sick and beaten, he could not leave her there alone. With Carol as unpredictable as a weather vane, who could tell what she might do to the girl she hated?
Also, there was Dr. Sanders. What had become of him? Was he lying beaten or dead in some dungeon room of the main building? He was certainly going to use some of his new-found authority to institute a thorough search. And if Linda started any complications whatever, he would take her out of Peace Haven to a hospital....
Mark spent the rest of that day wandering the confines of Peace Haven. He went openly to Linda's cabin and found her sleeping. The girl in charge, a pretty brunette with legs of breathtaking proportions, smiled at him with what seemed more than mere friendliness and assured him Linda would be all right.
They didn't go into the matter of the beating or the other incidents involved. And this seemed weird to Mark. A girl lying in a serious condition from a beating by a madwoman; and her nurse, a nymph in an odd Grecian gown regarded her as though she'd merely come down with a bad cold.
"My name is Martha," the girl offered.
"I'm Mark Hanes," he replied, annoyed with himself that he hadn't bothered with introductions during the previous visit. One should certainly have time for the amenities.
"If you like, I'll come later and tell you how Linda is," the girl said. "If everything is all right it will save you a trip."
"That's very nice of you. Don't bother, though, if things remain okay. Just call me if she needs help."
"I'll watch carefully. Is-is she a special friend of yours?"
Mark searched for words. "Yes, in a way she is."
He left the cabin and retired early that night without seeing Carol anywhere around. He debated going to the main building in search of Sanders, but decided to try a night trip again. If he was discovered and Carol got angry, he could fall back on an excuse that he thought he had the right to go wherever he pleased.
He set his mind to awaken around two o'clock, a knack he'd practiced and learned to depend on. But he was awakened quicker by a soft hand on his cheek.
"Mr. Hanes."
He recognized the whisper as that of Martha, Linda's nurse. He tried to sit up but she pressed him back. "It's all right. Everything's all right. I just came to tell you."
"Nice of you," he mumbled, "but it wasn't necessary. I said that if she-"
Martha's face was close to his. Her breath touched his skin, its quickness, its fragrance, sweeping the last cobwebs of sleep from his brain.
"I wanted to come," she whispered. "I wanted to see you. I-oh, please understand, We're women here. We're trapped. Can't you see?"
She took his hand and laid it on her smooth young breast. The nipple had already arisen, bold and supple, to plead with him also.
"I want you-I want you. Please be kind to me!"
Mark, prone to analyze under all circumstances, considered the situation ridiculous. First Linda, now a young beauty called Martha, had come to him to plead for sex. Why, even Candy hadn't begged!
Then the percentages dawned on him. There were several hundred trapped females in Peace Haven. Out of the lot, many had not even glanced his way. Others had and many probably longed for male companionship from afar.
But only two in this whole frustrated place had come and openly begged him. So perhaps it wasn't so strange after all.
Her hands were running shamelessly down his body and he would have been inhuman not to respond. Now she moved onto the bed, slipping her body sensuously over his until they lay face to face, their bodies pressing hard together. Her mouth sought his and found open invitation. With a little wordless cry, she allowed her tongue to slip over his teeth in search of hidden ecstasy. His hands went down her firm, curved back and he felt the flesh quiver.
"Oh, my darling." Her tongue touched his. "Love me, love me, my only love!"
The eloquent, meaningful, meaningless words of love. With a kind of love of his own, Mark drew her hard against him. His hands found her thighs and pressed them apart, began exploring the treasures she offered so freely.
His flesh was quivering too, and he turned until they lay side by side, holding each other. But only for a moment. As he pressed her down on her back, she took his head in her hands and put it shamelessly on her tight belly.
"Oh, yes-yes-yes," she breathed.
Mark felt that old headiness return. The feeling Candy so often generated in him. And it was strange, because even at the height of this heady passion, his thoughts were on Candy. Where was she now? What had become of her?
Martha's hot mouth on his body chased away all thoughts except those of the moment. Almost savagely, he turned and pulled her into the position he desired. She whimpered and tried to cling to him with her mouth, but he twisted her body away.
"Oh, yes! Now! Now!" Her voice rose to a pitch above a whisper and as he glued his body to hers there was a cry of ecstatic pain.
"Rip me! Hurt me! Oh, love me!"
As they approached the unbearable climax together, she screamed and he put his hand over her mouth to muffle it. Her teeth sank into his fingers but the pain was good and he hardly felt it, shadowed as it was by the greater ecstatic pain in his loins.
"Oh, thank you, thank you," she moaned.
And he took her tenderly in his arms while she cried like a lonesome child....
Retribution came swiftly. As Mark walked out of his cabin the next morning-he had not gone to the main building to hunt for Dr. Sanders-two acolytes stepped to either side of him.
"The Disciple wants to see you."
"Then tell him to come here," Mark said coldly.
"He wants you in the main building. It's an order. You can come on your own feet or we'll carry you."
"I guess I haven't much choice then, have I?"
Mark kept his mind open, refusing to speculate, as they crossed the lawns. The acolytes took him into the main building and down a familiar passageway. It was the one that led, among other places, to Welch's office.
They pushed him through the doorway, closed the door after him and remained outside.
Welch was seated behind his desk. He eyed Mark sourly, but there was something else in his face. He was not quite as hostile now, and he wore an openly calculating look.
"What do you want?" Mark asked coldly.
He waited for a moment before answering. "She wants to see you."
"Then why didn't they take me to her."
"Against policy. They think I run the show. Everything goes through me."
"All right. Where is she?"
"Down the hall. But first I'd like a few words with you."
"You've got the floor."
"I'm pulling out. I'd advise you to do the same." Another trap? Mark kept his mouth shut and waited. "You and Sanders found the stuff, didn't you?' ' "Where is Sanders?"
Welch didn't answer the question. "I could move it of course, but I'm not going to. I'm pulling out as of now. Come on with me. We can settle our differences later."
"You're talking in riddles."
"I'm telling you the game's up. She's gone off her rocker."
Mark was almost inclined to believe in Welch's sincerity after that positive statement. He could see Carol putting him to a test, but using her sanity as the gimmick just didn't fit. Still, what would Welch's purpose be?
"You're throwing this at me quite suddenly," Mark said. "I'll need a little time."
"There isn't any as far as I'm concerned. And looking for motives on my part is a waste of time. It's just that you're a pretty decent guy-or at least I thought so when we first met. I'm trying to be decent too. If you don't want to pull out that's your business. But I'll give you a friendly tip: don't get into this business. The money isn't worth it. Pretty soon you'll look down and see your guts all rotten and you won't be able to pad them with greenbacks."
"You said the deal was collapsing."
"Oh, for cripes sake! Stop analyzing me. Get off my back. Go see her." Then Welch looked up quickly and a kind of impersonal compassion swept his face. "It won't be pretty, so grit your teeth-and good luck."
"Where do I go?"
"The acolytes will take you."
Welch began going through the drawers of his desk, and Mark turned toward the door. As he grasped the knob he turned and said, "Thanks anyway. I appreciate it."
Welch did not reply. His mind was locked, he'd forgotten Mark existed....
The acolytes were waiting and silently escorted him to a room far down the hall. They opened a door. He paused momentarily, then walked on into the darkened room. The door closed behind him, and as the lock clicked there came a thin, high scream, as from far away, that chilled Mark.
He saw now that there was a window in one wall, too small to let in much light but giving evidence that the next room was lighted. He walked to the window.
The girl named Martha hung from a beam as Linda had hung. She was naked. Her face was a mask of terror. And the demented witch Mark knew as Carol Rice, naked also, stood beside Martha with a whip in her hand. She flicked it expertly, then stepped back and slashed its length across the bare shoulders of her victim.
Mark heard a roar of protest and realized it came from his own throat. He slammed his fist against the glass in the small window and was unaware of the pain that shot up his arm. The glass held, impervious to rage. The window was impersonal. The window was contemptuous of Mark and his futility. The window was on the side of might. The hell with right.
Wild thoughts kited through Mark's mind and he hurled himself against the door. It too was on the side of might. It too, sneered at him. Martha shrieked again. Mark returned to the window and heard the voice again
-the voice that was his own.
"You rotten, crazy bitch! Stop it! You're mad! You're a pile of filthy, rotten insanity! Stop it! Stop it. Gor God's sake! Find a little humanity somewhere in that filthy skin of yours and have pity on the poor girl."
He knew of course the reason for Martha's punishment. Somehow, in some diabolical manner, Carol Rice's eyes and ears were everywhere. A girl could not even creep in the dead of night into the arms of a man without the act being seen and recorded.
In the reasoning area behind his own temporary insanity, Mark realized the answer, and cursed his own stupidity. Peace Haven was bugged. Every building, every place human contact was possible, had been wired to some central taping room where Carol could review the events of each day and night as fully as though she'd been present.
"It's not her fault," Mark yelled. "Can't you understand that? It's a man she needed! Not me, any man! He could have been a two-headed circus freak if he was able to give her what she needed. Realize that and have some mercy!"
The whip had been singing its terrible song. The horror streaming back to Mark through the window heightened into a scene out of hell. As he tried to pull his eyes away, something inside him fought to hold them glued there, some masochistic devil deep inside that said Look and suffer, look and suffer!
The punishment ended on an even more terrible note. As Mark stared and bellowed hate and obsecenity at Carol, her arm went limp and the whip dropped to the floor. A strange look of evil pleasure glowing in her eyes, she sank to the floor, her body twitching, her legs jerking. She began to writhe, snake-like, and run frenzied hands over her inner thighs and belly. Her eyes opened, her mouth was a red maw, her hips heaved upward as though seeking relief from something or someone on the ceiling.
Then, in one obscene upward fling of her body, the climax came. She screamed and it was as though the scream released her, emptied her, left her limp and finished....
Later Mark always recalled with shame his own final reaction to the scene. He fainted. He was not aware of this of course until consciousness returned. He came back slowly, as out of a nightmare. Pain, distress and discomfort became clearer and clearer until he suddenly realized that the pain was real, not fantasy.
He was hanging from a beam as Linda and Martha had hung, as he himself had hung before the reprieve. But now, he knew, there would be no reprieve. He had passed the point of no return so far as Carol Rice was concerned.
He knew beyond all doubt that she had heard him revile her during the beating of Martha. He knew that he would be her next victim. It was only a matter of time. How soon would she need another dose of violence to feed the madness inside her? An hour? A day? A week?
The thongs cut into his wrists, but that pain seemed secondary. It was only a background for the agony in his mind, the true agony.
He thought of Candy, and poured out his love for her because in the Strang tortured alchemy of mental and the emotional stress true values were emerging.
He thought: She was sweet and wonderful and good, and I turned away from her. I left because I wasn't big enough to stand by and help her. I failed her and ran away. I came here and failed, but I can't run away. Now I'll pay for my own weakness.
Candy-I'm sorry-I love you....
Again he fainted. But differently this time: more slowly, grotesquely, because it surprised him to realize that the pain of hanging as he had been hung was too great for his physical being to bear in his weakened state....
Mark came to on a bed. His ankles and wrists were chained. He lay for a long time in a half-awake condition. There was a ceiling above him, a bed below him, and that was his world.
Except for his thought:
I am not a man. I have failed from not being a man. All the things I have done since I fled New York have proved me not to be a man, though I think myself one and behave as if I were one.
I try to deny this to myself, but the payoff is the proof. Here I am, chained to a bed by a woman because I am not a man. I fear physical violence. I could have saved Patience White but I rationalized and told myself I couldn't have gotten there in time. Because I would not admit that I was afraid to face three men.
The door opend and Carol Rice entered. Mark turned his head and looked at her.
She was in a passive state, that's about the only way it could be described. Listless, apathetic, but still moving and acting and talking like a human being.
This strange new world of unreal reality. Mark considered it with a listlessness of his own. Like after a great crime, the two criminals in their cell, washed out, finished, face to face with the sure swift justice that would come.
Yes. But not quite like that. Here were two people who no longer hated each other but who knew the drama had to be played to the end. Referring to what would come, the violence and madness and hate that would well up again as an inevitable thing-like sunrise and sunset. Waiting and talking like friends, speaking of their own emptiness.
"Hello, Mark."
"Hello, Carol."
She looked at the chains and seemed pained by them. But that thought of taking them off did not enter either of their minds.
"I hope you aren't too uncomfortable."
"It isn't so bad."
"Welch left. He ran away."
"He told me he was going to."
"He took his things with him."
"You mean what you had on him? Blackmail?"
"Yes."
"He left the rest?"
"All of it."
The drama playing out its foreordained end. Nothing they said or did mattered now because they would do what they had to do. So it didn't matter when Mark told her, "Sanders got his and tried to slip away that night you beat Linda. Did he make it?"
"He made it. I didn't know his was gone, though. Why didn't he take the rest?"
"We decided that so long as we knew where it was it could be gotten later."
She nodded at the logic of this.
"Are you going to move the stuff?"
"No. I'll leave it there." She looked at him with a spark of interest. "Have they fed you well?"
"Yes."
"I'm glad."
He wanted to ask her: When will the time come? When will you have to whip me to death? But he did not. It seemed unimportant. He would be killed in due course. When the continuity of the drama demanded it.
Such, he thought vaguely, is the stuff of madness.
He was naked, with a sheet over him; she removed the sheet as though she were removing a cloth from a table and looked down at him. He lay motionless, looking up at her, and saw the thing behind her eyes and knew what would now be done. If he had the power to struggle out of his mental inertia, he would have smiled.
He did have a thought: Now this will be it. This will be the final indignity. If I am not a man, then I am a woman. And now I am going to be raped as a woman is raped. I am now going to lie helpless while a true woman takes sexual pleasure from my body.
This too, is part of the drama....
Still staring down at him, Carol unbuttoned the single garment she was wearing. It dropped to the floor, and she was naked. She ran her hands over his body. Then, her breath coming a little faster, she expertly manipulated his body until it responded and was ready for the thing she wanted it to do for her.
She mounted him. Legs spread, braced on her knees, she forced him into herself while she looked down into his face. Then she turned her eyes toward the ceiling as though he did not exist, as though he were nothing but a mechanical phallus. Her eyes closed, her teeth tightened, the muscles of her neck taut her hips began moving ryhthmically. A kind of empty pleasure arose in him, but he refused to help in any way. This was a thing of puckish humor to him and he almost smiled.
When I get raped, the woman has to do all the work. That I insist.
Her hips increased the tempo of their movement. Her eyes rolled back in her head. Her breath came in short gasps, she moaned. Then a sound-a cacaphony of sounds-penetrated the main building and entered the room.
Carol's movement stopped. She looked down at Mark in mild wonder. He returned the look of understanding because they both knew. It was a part of the preordained drama.
"They didn't wait for Purity Day," Carol said.
"No. I guess that's my fault."
"Why?"
"I told them we would defend ourselves. I said we'd give the girls guns. They're just beating us to the punch."
Carol considered this while the discordant sounds increased in volume. Now the screams of women were added.
Then, because drama cannot be played out without action; because life must be injected into the players when the curtain goes up, Carol reverted to her other violent self. She sprang off the bed, the love symbol having been completed, and her face became a mask of hatred.
"You son-of-a-bitch! You were with them all the time. You never came with me."
"I guess maybe I didn't."
As Carol slapped him viciously across the mouth, Mark felt a touch of satisfaction, almost elation. Maybe he hadn't violated the last ethics of decency. Perhaps he had remained sincerely interested in destroying Peace Haven. He struggled with his bonds as Carol ran toward the door.
"Damn it!" he raged. "God damn it to hell! Let me out of here!"
He was raving like a madman when the door opened again and an acolyte appeared. The man was the perfect picture of a craven. He approached the bed and whined, "Look, I didn't have anything to do with all this. They made me come. I'm not one of them-not like the others. I need a break. If I let you loose will you see to it I get a break?"
"Sure!" Mark bellowed. "You're a fine guy. Get me out of these chains, you bastard...!"