Chain Letter (22 page)

“How was it different in your dreams?” And surely her soul would be forever cursed,
for as she asked, she leaned forward, gesturing that he should whisper his answer
in her ear, stopping at nothing to get next to the hard black handle. Neil was
too much of a child to succeed as a murderer. He did exactly what she wanted.

“I was never sick in my dreams,” he began. “We were . . . ”

I’m listening.

She grabbed the pistol. Next to the shotgun, it was a cinch to handle, and she had
her finger on the trigger and the barrel point between his eyes before he could even
blink. “Sorry,” she whispered.

He absorbed the deception silently, sitting back, his sore leg jerking once then going
as still as the rest of him. Before, he had been ashamed and had had trouble looking
her in the eye. Now the roles were reversed. He said nothing, waiting.

“I want the key to these handcuffs,” she said. “That’s all I want.”

“That’s all you want,” he echoed.

“Don’t shoot him!” Fran cried.

“Neil,” she said firmly, “I’ve shot at you twice tonight. I won’t miss a third time.”
She shook the gun. “Give me the key!”

“No.”

“Don’t be a fool!”

He raised the needle. He was not afraid of her. In her rush to get the gun, she had
never stopped to consider that she might have to use it. He squeezed out what bubbles
may have been in the syringe, a couple of drops of the drug dribbling onto the floor.
“I don’t have it,” he said.

“Get it!”

“The man has the key.”

“Listen to me, you’re going to be as bad off as the man if you don’t get it!”

Neil nodded. “That’s what all this has been about.” He unscrewed the cap of the alcohol
jar and dabbed one of the cotton balls.

“Kipp?” she moaned.

“Don’t give him the gun, whatever you do,” Kipp said in his most helpful manner. Unreality
rolled forth unchecked. Using the moistened white ball, Neil sterilized a spot on
her calf. He was asking to be killed, she told herself. She could close her eyes,
pull the trigger and never see the mess.

He’s going to die, anyway. It would be quick.

“Neil?” she pleaded, trembling.

He shook his head. “I’m not listening. Everything you say is a lie. You don’t care
about me.” Like a nurse administering an injection, he pinched her flesh.

“I swear!” she cried. “I’ll kill you!”

“I know you will,” he said sadly, pausing one last time to look her in the face. “You’re
like Tony, just like him. Since last summer, he’s been killing me.”

She cocked the hammer. He had terminal cancer. His mother had already buried him.
Tears had been cried and respects had been paid. She would just be doing what was
already practically done.

You were his love.

But staring into his eyes, it seemed impossible that she could snuff out what dim
light remained there. She had brought herself to this terrible decision as surely
as he had.

“Hello, Alison, this is Neil. Would you like to go to a movie with me this Friday?”
“How sweet! I would but I’m busy Friday.” “Would Saturday be better?” “It would be
better but not good enough. Sorry, Neil.” “That’s OK.”

“I’ll give you the gun,” she whispered, the narcotic inches from her bloodstream:
“If that will prove to you that I do care.”

“Nooo!!!” Kipp, Brenda, and Joan howled.

Neil considered for a moment. He nodded.

She gave him the gun. He took it and set it down behind him. “Thank you, Alison,”
he said, and taking the needle, he stabbed it in her leg.

· · ·

The rain had begun to ease and the freeway was empty and fast. Tony remembered the
night of the accident when he’d been driving and had thought that, although he didn’t
know where he was going, he was making good time. He was beginning to feel that way
now. The proper one to see at this point was Neil’s mother, it was the obvious thing
to do, and yet, with each passing mile, his doubts grew. Telling Mrs. Hurly her son
was still alive would also mean she would have to be told about the Caretaker’s mad
plot. How could he possibly make up a story to cover the facts? On the other hand,
how could she possibly accept the truth? The only part she probably
would believe, or that would at least give her cause to wonder, was that her son was
somewhere in hiding, still hurting. Neil would die on her twice and whatever followed
could only tarnish her memories of her son.

Should I do the right thing for the wrong reasons or should I do the wrong thing for
no clear reason at all?

About the same time his indecision was reaching a climax, he was closing on a fork
in the freeway. Alison’s house was over twenty miles out of his way, but just the
thought of her got him thinking of all the times Neil had talked about how beautiful
she was. Neil had once said he could stare at her all day and not get tired.

“That would be my idea of heaven, Tony.”

Where does a guy go after his own funeral if not to heaven?

Tony swerved onto the north running interstate, picking up speed. He hadn’t spoken
to Alison all day.

A half-hour later he was cruising up Alison’s submerged street; this new tract still
had a lesson or two to learn about flood control. He noticed lights on in a house
a couple of hundred yards before Alison’s, but only in passing. He assumed another
family had finally moved in.

Her place was dark as he parked across the street. Her parents were out of town, he
knew, but it was close to midnight, and if he went knocking on her door, he would
scare her to death. Then again, it might not be a bad idea to wake her and take her
to Brenda’s or even to his own house. His folks were
gone, too, but that didn’t mean his motivation was in any way remotely connected with
sex. They could sleep together in the same room for protection, maybe even in the
same bed, and not actually . . .

Oh, Neil, no.

The front door was lying wide open. He was out of his car in a moment, running to
the porch. The glass panel next to the door was cracked. Dark stains tipped the jagged
glass—blood. Steeling himself as best he could, he went inside. For now, he would
do what was necessary. Later, he told himself, he would feel what he had to feel.

None of the lights would go on. He did not need them to know the house was empty.
It was not the absence of noise that told him, it was the feel of the place—like its
life had been yanked out of it. He went to the back door, in spite of his resolve,
his heart was breaking at the splintered shambles that he found. Forcing himself forward,
he stepped outside to the circuit breakers, finding each one snapped down. He restored
the power and returned inside, heading upstairs to Alison’s bedroom. There wasn’t
a step that wasn’t smeared with blood.

His nerve almost deserted him when he saw the hole blasted in her door. The fact that
the shot had been fired from the inside out, and that the hall was not soaked with
blood, was all that kept him together. He turned on her nightstand lamp and sat on
her bed, seeing a picture of himself on her desk. He felt as if he was back in the
man’s grave, only now all
his friends were with him, and they were unable to get out of the hole, and they were
asking him again and again why he had brought them to such a terrible place.

Minutes, like those ticked off by watches with dead batteries, dragged by. Somewhere
amid his grief he took out his phone. He was going to call the police. He would tell
them everything. Then he would lie down on her bed and try to pretend she was there
beside him.

But his phone was dead, and suddenly, it didn’t matter. He was remembering the night
in his car with Alison not fifty yards from where he now sat. He had kissed her and
he had wanted to continue kissing her. But then he had thought of Neil and had felt
guilty. Only he just hadn’t started to think of him, he had actually felt as if Neil
was in his head, like that crazy way he had occasionally felt on the field during
a game when he had just
known
that there was this one fat slob in the audience who was praying to God and Moses
that that hotshot Tony Hunt would suddenly get an acute attack of arthritis and maybe
have his right arm fall off. It had been like Neil had been near at hand, watching
him defile his goddess.

Tony slipped the phone back into his pocket and went to the window.
That
house with the light on,
that
was the house that had drawn his attention the night of their date. He had driven
by the place and not even slowed down.
Fool!

He ran down the stairs and out the door, but not so fast did he go that he missed
the soggy sock lying in the road halfway
between the two houses. It was blue, Alison’s favorite color, and the evidence was
piling up quickly. There was a shotgun resting in the grass near the house porch.
He cracked it open, sniffed the chamber. Both barrels had recently been fired.

He did not knock. The front door was unlocked. Except for a few lamps, he found the
living room and den empty, but rounding into the kitchen, he stumbled across a makeshift
bed: a thin piece of foam rubber, a tattered blanket, and a slipless pillow covered
with long brown hairs. Beside the bed were Neil’s phone and a ring of miniature keys,
which he pocketed. There were also a bottle of cough medicine and two prescription
pill containers. The latter reminded him of many things, not the least of which was
that, of all the people he had ever known, he had loved Neil the most.

His next move was to go upstairs, and he did so cautiously, hearing voices before
he reached the top step. They were faint, muffled by a closed door, but he recognized
one as belonging to Alison, and his relief broke over him like a warm sweet wave.
Almost, he rushed to be with her; the sound of Neil’s voice stopped him cold. He tiptoed
to the door and peered through the crack. The whole group was assembled. Fran appeared
well if a bit skinny and Kipp’s big nose had never looked so good. Only Alison had
been banged up—her left arm looked like it had been put through a meat grinder—but
she was alive and that was what mattered. Neil was not a murderer after all and Tony
was thankful. Yet Neil had a gun in his belt—a revolver
Tony had more than a nodding acquaintance with—and it might be a mistake to trust
Neil while overlooking the Caretaker. Who were these two people? How were they connected?

“I wasn’t,” Neil told Alison. “Only the man cared for me.”

“The man? Neil, the man was a stranger.”

“He was somebody. And he was wronged, and he never complained. How could he? He was
never given the chance. He would have been my friend.”

“I am your friend. We are all your friends. Hurting us will not bring back the man.”

Listening, watching, two things struck Tony. First, Alison was as much intent on reaching
the gun as she was on reaching Neil. The movement of her eyes betrayed her. Second,
in spite of her itchy fingers, she was doing a master psychologist’s job of forcing
Neil to confront the truth, and she was doing it quickly. As the conversation progressed,
Neil answered less and less with incoherent remarks. In fact, he started to get painfully
clear.

“Tony! Tony knew how I felt about you!”

He took and took and he gave nothing back.

Tony could not have defended himself. It was all true. He had always been nice to
Neil. Yet, at the same time, in a very quiet way, he had taken advantage of him. Neil
had not always acted like a saint. He could get angry like anybody. But no matter
what the situation, whether he was laughing or yelling, he had always been more concerned
about how he was affecting Tony Hunt than he had been worried about how he might
be hurting Neil Hurly. While Tony Hunt had usually been pleased as pie to congratulate
himself on how neat a guy he must be to bring out this devotion in Neil Hurly. His
friend’s affection had just been another
thing
to boost his self-image. Nevertheless, he felt there was something else that was
necessary to explain the craziness, something that Neil was not saying. Neil obviously
blamed him for the death of the man and for stealing Alison, but these were effects,
not causes. He was sure of this for the simple reason that Neil had never blamed him
for anything before.

“. . . I wanted to know if I was that important to you that you would have dreamed
about me.”

“I dreamed about a lot of things. You were one of them. But I can’t see that mattering
to you.”

Alison was so blatantly baiting him that Tony had trouble believing Neil wasn’t aware
of the deception. Could it be that he wanted her to kill him? Or was it that the gun
was not what it appeared?

“You don’t think it would scare the Caretaker empty?”

“Not if he knew it was empty.”

“. . . But then . . . I saw I couldn’t wait forever, not even until the summer when
you would have had more time . . . I saw I was going to end up like the man.”

“How was it different in your dreams?”

“I was never sick in my dreams. We were . . . ”

Oh, God, she had the gun. That Alison sure had nerve. Now
all he had to do was fling open the door and play the big hero. He stayed where he
was. If he interrupted this fine edge Alison had led Neil to, this place where Neil
wandered lost between pain and sanity, truth and insanity, he might never be able
to take Neil back there, and Neil might never open up again, and he might die misunderstood.
Tony knew it was ludicrous to risk what was at stake—he was banking on an unloaded
gun—for an insight that might never be found. Nevertheless, he did not interfere.

A moment later, he was given Neil’s
why.
It cost him.

“Give me the key!”

“No.”

“Don’t be a fool!”

You can’t threaten him, Ali; he has nothing to lose.

Tony dropped to his knees, digging holes in his palms with his clenched fingers. The
cold draft from the open front door felt like Death’s breath on the back of his neck.