eBookDigital Original (Digital Original)
Related collections and offers
Overview
Mr. Rogers is the ideal guide for a few neighbors looking to survey a large, wooded piece of property: He remembers every tree, stream, and bush; when there’s a fork in the road, he knows which way to go. But the surveying trip goes horribly wrong when Rogers suffers a debilitating heart attack and the group is left wandering lost through the woods, with Rogers a murmuring shadow of his former self.
Almost immediately, tensions that have existed among the friends since childhood begin to flare up. The forest grows darker and more threatening. Leadership claims are staked and rescinded. Fears start to overwhelm rational decision-making. Then Rogers starts spouting instructions in what sounds like a mystic cipher.
The Eighth Square is a rollicking psychological thriller that deftly demonstrates how thin the barrier between man and animal truly is.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781480432635 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Open Road Media |
| Publication date: | 07/30/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 246 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
The author of Crawlspace, City of the Dead, The Climate of Hell, and several other acclaimed novels, Herbert Lieberman is a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship and a winner of France’s coveted Grand Prix de Littérature Policière. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife.
Read an Excerpt
The Eighth Square
By Herbert Lieberman
OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 1973 Herbert LiebermanAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4804-3263-5
CHAPTER 1
"South 6 degrees. West-northwest 2 chains and 16 links."
The points sputtered out, briskly splitting the air like rifle fire. A second voice, at considerable remove from the first, followed in rapid succession. "South 6. West-northwest 2 and 16."
There was a pause. Then again the first voice.
"Easterly 18 chains 44 links to a walnut tree and stones on a ledge."
That was followed by the chirruping of crickets and birds, then twigs and branches crunching, and the rattle of dead leaves through which innumerable feet were trudging. A moment later the second voice rose once more in dutiful repetition.
"Easterly 18 chains 44 links to a walnut tree and stones on a ledge."
"North 9 degrees east to the southwest corner of the Widow Stuart's dower land," came the first voice. It was a deep, resonant boom of a voice, that first one. A kettledrum of a voice. It might have been somebody bellowing into a hollow keg. "Thence south 28 chains to the first mentioned bounds."
There was a pause. Then came the second voice, higher and more youthful. There was a slight lisp to it.
"Was that south and 28, Mr. Rogers?"
The forest appeared to hold its breath. The crickets and birds suddenly halted, as if awaiting some final confirmation.
"28 is what I said, Mr. Putney."
"Right you are, Mr. Rogers. 28 it is then."
There was a palpable sigh of relief and as if at a signal the vast, swarming, unseen life of the forest resumed—bees, crickets, cicadas, peepers—all coalescing into a single teeming voice. The churning and grinding of dead vegetation on the forest floor commenced anew, followed by the sound of a large black crow smashing upward through the low foliage.
"North 88 3/4 degrees 7 chains and 19 links to a white oak with a pile of stones to that and marked." The numbers arched high, soaring above the canopy of trees, then glided back downward like an arrow through a soft green diffusion of light.
"North 88 and 3/4. 7 and 19 to a white oak," came the second voice. "I don't see any white oak with a pile of stones," came a third, as of yet unheard, voice. "Do you?"
"I see a whole goddamned wall of the stuff," came yet a fourth from some distance far to the rear of the lead voice. "Where the hell is everyone?"
A high, giddy burst of laughter rose upward through the trees, followed by the sound of furious thrashing through the underbrush as if someone were running at full speed.
"Up here," came the booming reply. Suddenly a huge man breasted the hill and paused there, consulting a compass. Periodically he scanned the sky in the direction of the sun. He might have been in his seventies, with a mane of white hair and eyes deeply set in cavernous sockets which he now focused like searchlight beams on an object some thirty yards ahead. He locked his gaze on it like an eagle sighting its prey. "There she is. Lying just out there. See her?"
A young man of about twenty came scrambling and winded up beside him. A spool of steel measuring tape clattered at his hip and in his fist he cupped an immense ball of vibrantly colored scarlet ribbon, the end of which trailed up the hill behind him like a thin, clear stream of blood.
"North-northeast about 23 paces," said the surveyor, his arm thrust assertively like a signpost in that direction. "Just to the left of the shagbark hickory. See her out there?"
"'Fraid I don't," said the assistant, Tom Putney, in his high, sweet girlish voice. He seemed apologetic. Even crestfallen.
The surveyor, Mr. Rogers, toweled the sweat from his forehead with a slow, graceful sideward motion of his sleeve. "Oh come. Look, boy. You've got eyes. Use 'em."
Just then a short, squat figure coming at a run broke through the cover of the trees and started up the hill. He came in a dark blur of motion with the irresistible momentum of a juggernaut. Ploughing, churning, gouging out great clumps of earth, he took the hill vengefully, as if it were under siege. Great puffs of dirt, like gunshot, followed in his wake.
At the top of the hill the surveyor and his young assistant watched the charge with a curious impassivity. They might have been watching a bus roar by on a busy turnpike.
When the short, squat figure surged over the top of the hill, he barely halted; then commenced a kind of peacocking about, strutting here and there, checking vistas with a pair of immense binoculars. From time to time he'd snort, then veer abruptly one way, then the next—the short, brutal motions of a bull in stocks too small for him.
When at last he noticed the surveyor and the boy standing there watching him, he gave a start.
"Am I the first?" he asked.
The surveyor sighed with an air of weary resignation. "Yes, you are, Leo," he said, then turned back to consult his maps.
Leo Garvix was a short man, powerfully built. Short legs on a short, thick torso and an unnaturally large head that gave him the impression of being an aberration—a funny, mildly grotesque homunculus, but one which, if you were wise, you'd do well not to laugh at. For although he was short, there was something in his carriage to suggest that he wasn't—some conscious effort of will that told him every day that he was tall. And exerting that will for so many days, so many years had made him, in his own eyes, very tall indeed.
When the tall short man walked he did so with a kind of brutal grace, like a Roman senator in a tinselly film epic depicting the age of the Caesars. It was a thoroughly bogus grace, of course, but it had a look nevertheless.
He strode about now on top of the hill in a proprietal manner. "That's all mine out that way, isn't it?" he asked and flung his arms a full 180 degrees at a wall of forest lying before him.
Rogers gazed at him a little sadly. "Yes, it is, Leo."
The peacocking resumed anew. Suddenly he came to a halt and, cupping two raw, pudgy hands to his mouth, he bellowed back down the hill in the direction from which he had first come, "Come on. Come on. Get the lead out. It's nearly two, and we're not halfway through."
Three strollers slowly ascended the hill. Their approach was preceded by the high, lilting laughter of a woman and the deep, somewhat more earnest growl of two gentlemen conversing. The sense of urgency Mr. Garvix wished to convey appeared to be totally lost on them. The laughter and conversation never ceased and their pace never for a moment quickened. Indeed, their movement uphill was so leisurely they might have been strollers in a zoological park in Antwerp at the turn of the century or promenaders in a Seurat canvas in some timeless Parisian afternoon.
At last, when they reached the top where the short truculent figure of Mr. Garvix waited, fists clenched on hips and smoldering like an ingot, the woman, a certain Sybil Jamison, swept right past him as if he weren't there. She had that quality of movement that tall women have, loping and effortless, and when she passed Garvix and left him in her wake, it was as if she had negated not only him but all of the space he occupied.
The two men followed quickly behind her and in the next instant the threesome all converged on the surveyor.
Mrs. Jamison thrust a small, delicate wild flower under his nose. "Bloodroot or star-of-Bethlehem?"
Rogers lifted a pair of battered spectacles from his nose and perched them on his forehead. Then he brought the small, wispy blossoms to within an inch of his eye and peered myopically at them.
"Star-of-Bethlehem," he said instantly.
Mrs. Jamison gave a short little cry of delight and beamed at the gentleman on her right. "Of course it is—Ornithogalum umbellatum."
"Touché, Mrs. Jamison," said the gentleman.
"I'm surprised you'd be taken in, Doctor," she went on, full of her victory. "Six petals and a single leaf—wrap around the flower stalk for bloodroot. As you can very well see, star-of-Bethlehem has a multiple leaf—wrap."
"Any fool would've known that, Doctor," mocked the other gentleman, a tall, slightly seedy Englishman with the pockish ruin of a handsome face and disastrously long yellow teeth.
Mrs. Jamison was not quite finished savoring her victory. "Never tangle with me on the subject of flowers, Doctor Gage. I'm an old hand. I've been trained by probably the greatest botanist of the twentieth century."
"The amazing Lobkowitz," said the seedy Englishman in his faintly mocking manner.
"Freddy sneers," said Mrs. Jamison. "But the fact is Professor Lobkowitz was an Olympian figure. Do you know his work?"
"I'm afraid not," Gage murmured apologetically. "But I've seen his name mentioned in reference works and journals."
This seemed to mitigate the enormity of his sins. Mrs. Jamison was placated. She went on. "He came within a hairsbreadth of a Nobel Prize for his work on plant histology. I knew him at Heidelberg. He had a seminal effect on my life."
"Seminal," Leo Garvix giggled lewdly at the word. "I'll bet."
"None of your nasty lip, Leo," said Freddy Jamison, "or I swear—"
"Shut up," Garvix said, and turned his back abruptly on the Englishman. Jamison flushed a violent red.
Sybil Jamison turned back to the doctor. She was smiling. "Pay no attention to them. It's their way of playing."
Freddy continued to glower in the direction of Garvix, who was once again sweeping the vistas with his immense binoculars.
Doctor Gage watched this curious little scene until Tom Putney, standing at the edge of the crest, cried out, "Here come the others!"
Rogers and Garvix crossed quickly to where Putney stood and, together, hands on hips, they watched three more stragglers toiling up the hill. After a moment Rogers reached down with his long arm in a deep dipping motion. A hand and then an arm appeared. They locked with his and suddenly the head of a young-looking woman bobbed up just above the floor of the crest. With barely a grunt, Rogers hoisted her bodily up the last few feet.
"Come aboard, Ollie," he said. The momentum of his tug brought her running and skipping like a wood nymph over the top. The exhilaration of the climb had flushed her face and made her giddy. Laughing, she swirled all round the others, pausing every now and then to gulp large mouthfuls of air and to stare out at the horizons.
"Oh, it's beautiful. Isn't it beautiful?" she turned to ask the others.
Doctor Gage agreed that it was. The others had meanwhile followed Rogers to the edge of the crest where he was just then fishing up the next climber.
It was another woman. She came squirming and wriggling up at the end of Rogers' wrist. This was not as graceful a performance as the one that had just preceded it. For one thing this woman had not come headfirst as had the woman before her, but legs first. In the act of climbing, the legs, bare and tan and exceedingly well shaped, came thrashing up over the ledge, skirts hiked high, pink undergarments flashing, and the soft shadowy undercurve of a buttock visible for tantalizing seconds as the struggling torso heaved upward over the dirt parapets.
Not only Rogers but Jamison, Garvix, and even Doctor Gage all rushed to the woman's assistance. With a final thrust of superb thigh she was at last righted. Garvix, standing directly opposite Gage, couldn't fail to notice how the man's eyes had lingered on that scene.
"You like my Gladdy, Doctor?" he asked with a shrewd, pitiless smile. "Isn't she something?"
Gage, for all his forty or so years, blushed red to the tips of his ears. Sybil Jamison scowled. "Leave it to Gladys to make an entrance."
Gladys Garvix didn't hear that. She was beating dust from her skirt and pulling nettles from her blouse, a succession of low epithets and mutterings streaming from her all the while.
Ollie Gelston had started twirling again. She was more ecstatic than ever. Suddenly she seized Gladys Garvix by the hand and tugged her back toward the edge of the crest.
"Just look at it, Gladdy," she said, flinging her arms out expansively at a low line of bluish mountains in the distance. "Just look at it. Isn't it beautiful?"
Mrs. Garvix paused for a moment to gaze out over the landscape below. "Just grand," she said seethingly, and went back to flailing dust and nettles from her body. "When are we starting back?"
When at last it appeared they were all there. On top together. Stalking back and forth across the flat crest, chatting, laughing, and drinking from canteens of tepid water.
Just then Rogers looked up from his maps and charts and said in that booming gonglike voice of his: "Where's John?"
Suddenly they were silent. Movement halted and all eyes turned to the surveyor.
"Has anyone seen John?" he asked again.
"Right here," said a new voice. They all turned in time to see a tall, dour-looking man, slightly stooped and prematurely gray, take the final steps which brought him up over the ledge and onto the high butte along with the others.
"Wouldn't you know who'd be last?" said Leo Garvix.
"I've been enjoying the day," said John Bayles, turning his boyish, oddly cupid-like face toward Garvix. "Which is more than I can say for you." He strolled past the squat, angry presence to the far side of the crest, turned his back on the others, and stood assertively alone.
"I still don't see that white oak," said Doctor Gage to the surveyor who was setting his compass and periodically glancing up at the sun.
"Neither do I," said Ollie Gelston. Her bright, scrubbed, chaste features went suddenly forlorn. "Where are the signs? I don't see any of the old signs."
Rogers wound his watch. At first it seemed he hadn't heard the little flutterings of doubt. But then he said: "They're there. The forest keeps changing but the signs remain the same." His voice was quiet now, almost expressionless. "Here. Don't you see the white oak out there?"
Gage was not certain he knew a white oak from any other kind of oak. Rogers went on: "Right out there at 12 o'clock. And you see the heap of stone right to the left of it?"
"I don't see a bloody thing," said Gladys Garvix. "And I couldn't care less."
"Can't you see it, Doctor?" Rogers persisted.
Gage craned his neck, hoisted his sunglasses atop his salt and pepper hair, and squinted off into the direction of the sun. "I'm afraid I don't," he said.
Rogers smiled broadly. He was more amused than annoyed by everyone's failure to see what he could see so clearly. "It's right out there."
"I don't doubt it," Gage said, "but I still can't see it."
"Never distrust this man, Doctor." Leo Garvix laughed. "It's a cardinal error."
"I don't distrust anyone. But the marker is in my title and I would like to see it."
Dr. Gage felt peeved. He hated to be put in such a position—that of a suspicious and distrustful stranger in the midst of what appeared to be a conspiracy of old friends.
"Perfectly right," said Rogers. "It defines your boundary and you shall see it." He turned his head sideward to Putney while keeping his eyes fixed on the doctor.
"Tom, count off twenty-two paces north-northeast. Just where my finger points."
The boy was up in an instant like a joyful retriever. He stepped off the ledge as if he were stepping out into space. Then, plunging downward, he started counting off numbers, "1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9," the numbers wafting upward until his head submerged beneath the ledge. At the sound of "9" his body merged into foliage and then vanished. But the high, boyish timbre of his voice still rang clearly up from the direction in which the surveyor's long, withered finger continued to point. "10-11-12-13-14."
"Oh, my God!" Gladys Garvix moaned. Bored, impatient, and pestered by flies, she sank wearily onto a rock.
"15-16-17-18-19-20-21-22."
Suddenly Rogers' hand went down. "Stop right there, Tom. Now turn to your left."
The others had all come to the ledge, peering out in the direction in which Tom Putney had vanished. An air of quiet expectancy hovered over them. Suddenly the answer came from out of the thick foliage.
"It's right here, Mr. Rogers. A white oak with a heap of stones at the base."
There was silence for a moment. Then Sybil Jamison cried: "Bravo, Albert!"
"Good show!" said Freddy Jamison. He began to applaud and the others followed, laughing and chatting delightedly.
Albert Rogers appeared to be unmoved by all the adulation. Gage on the other hand was beaming. "Well, I am impressed. Congratulations, Mr. Rogers."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Eighth Square by Herbert Lieberman. Copyright © 1973 Herbert Lieberman. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.