Fade (33 page)

Oh, old man, Ozzie thought, sadly. It was possible, just possible, that he might have spared him, after all. Just might. Even now, standing across the street, watching the old man struggling as he tried to walk, as if seeking to balance himself on a high wire nobody else could see and was in danger of falling off, he almost pitied him. But he could not afford pity. Old man Pinder was a traitor and he had to die.

He killed him quickly, did not linger at the job the way he did when he killed the old fraud who was not his Pa. He struck him once with a rock to end his miserable drunken life. Funny thing, he felt sad at the end. The old man surprised him by being so tough. He did not think the old man could have survived the first blow, the whole right side of his face collapsing as he struck.

Then as he raised the stone again, the old man opened his eyes, terrible bloodshot eyes filled with tears that spilled on his cheeks and he looked right at Ozzie.

“You made me do this, old man,” Ozzie said, looking down at him.

He struck him again, but this time, this time, holding back a bit with the blow, sorry as he hit the old man.

Now the stranger. He's up in his room. Knock at the door. And when he opens the door, do it.

He didn't want to kill the stranger. The stranger might be his Pa, his real Pa. Maybe the stranger really wanted to help him.

Kill him.

He did not answer the voice.

What are you waiting for? This is the night to get rid of them all.

He lingered at the entrance to the alley, nobody on the street, all the windows dark. The windows of the Glenwood were dark too.

Okay, kill the nun, then.

He drifted back into the alley, stalling, needing time to think, had to stay one step ahead of the voice.

The nun will betray you. To the cops. You can never trust the nun.

All right. He was tired of the voice, tired of arguing with the voice.

Do it, then. At the convent. Now.

Yes, yes, I'll do it. I'll kill the nun.

Nice, nice.

rembling with the cold, in the fade, I heard a fugitive nighttime noise that beckoned me from my thoughts of Ro-sanna. Often, when the fade overcame me, as it did now in that forlorn hotel room in Ramsey, Maine, my thoughts turned to her and the old anguish came back.

Years had passed and I hadn't seen her or heard from her and didn't expect to anymore. She had faded from my life just as I had faded from the lives of others. The fade had not only made me invisible but had caused me to retreat from other people, even my family, in another kind of fading.

But then, isn't all of life a kind of fading? Love diminishes, memory dims, desire pales.
Why don
V
you get married, Uncle Paul?
my nieces (who are more romantic than my nephews) ask, teasingly. I always shrug and make jokes.
Vm saving myself for one of you girls.
For years I had tricked myself into believing that I was being faithful to that lovely ghost, Ro-sanna, but knew in my heart that the fade kept me solitary and remote. Or had I always used the fade as a crutch, an excuse to keep me separate from people, free to devote myself to my writing? In that hotel bed, I tried to outrun my thoughts, my guilts, realizing that life does not provide answers, only questions.

That small animal-like noise, a scratching at the dark, reached me again and I sat up in bed. At the same time, the pause, the breathlessness, announced the departure of the fade and I braced myself as the pain scalded my bones and flesh and the cold evaporated.

That sound again, which I now identified as a scratching at the door.

Slipping out of bed, I padded tentatively across the floor in the darkness, guided by instinct. Placing my ear against the door, I heard a quavering voice:

“Please … open up …”

I slowly swung the door open and saw old Mr. Pinder on the floor, bruised and battered, grotesquely perched on one elbow. One eye stared balefully at me, the other had disappeared in a tangle of flesh and blood. His mouth worked fishlike, opening and closing, but no sound came forth.

Kneeling down, I reached out to touch him but he shook his head in small desperate movements. “No …” he gasped. “Hurts … too … much …”

One side of his head was crushed, the way a melon would be crushed if dropped to the ground from a height.

“Who did this?” I asked. But did not require an answer. “We've got to get you to a hospital, a doctor …”

He shook his head, blood on his lips, that one eye piercing me with its intensity, while his hand clawed at the air, beckoning me to come closer. I lowered my head, placed my ear within an inch or two of his mouth.

His voice was like a whisper in a cave, echoing and hoarse and raspy, filled with a terrible urgency. “The boy … said … the nun … is next. …” His body quivered and his foul breath assailed me, the stench of death coming out of him.

His arms convulsed as he tried to grasp me. “Go,” the old man commanded, blood spilling out of his mouth, as if he had brought the word up from the dark, bloody cellar of his soul.

He went limp, collapsing in my arms, slipping from my grasp, his head coming to rest gently against his elbow, the eye still open and staring but the rest of him closed, all pain and urgency over and done with.

I felt for a pulse, found none, cradled him for a moment in my arms, then closed that terrible eye.

The convent loomed in the night like a dinosaur at rest, silhouetted against a sky bright with summer moonlight. I stood in the courtyard hugging the shadows of the brick wall, blinking into the moonlight, as bright as noon in contrast to the shadows. Searching the convent for signs of light, I saw only a flickering in one of the tall, narrow windows near the center of the building: the chapel, no doubt, where nuns prayed incessantly, day and night.

I pondered my next move, whether I should ring the bell and sound the alarm, wondering also whether I might be too late. Had I done the wrong thing coming here, like this? I had telephoned the police department without identifying myself, and told them of the body in the hallway of the Glen-wood. Then made my way here along the highway, keeping out of sight when occasional cars passed, knowing that I was taking a desperate, foolish chance coming alone. Yet, I felt a need to deal with the boy myself. Who else could understand him, who else could cope with the fade?

“You!”

I leapt with surprise as the voice reached me out of the darkness.

“Where are you?” I asked, looking frantically around.

“Are you my father?” The lilt still in his voice and a trembling, too.

“No, Fm not your father. Tell me where you are.”

“Here,” he said, his voice coming from another direction. “Who are you, if you're not my father?”

“Your uncle. Your mother is my sister. You're my nephew. …”

He stepped into view then, caught in the moonlight, not in the fade but visible, his figure slight, a lock of dark hair tumbling over his forehead. He drew his hand across his nose and sniffled. His eyes darted here and there and everywhere. He dropped his hand to his side and I saw his nose. Hideous and swollen, out of context with the rest of his face. I searched him for signs of Rose or Adelard or even myself. But found no resemblance and thought for one wild moment that it was all a mistake: I did not belong here, this was none of my business and I should go my way, return to Monument, turn my back on this nightmare. He moved slightly, and the light caught him differently now and, yes, I saw an echo of the Moreauxs in his stance, the slightness of his body like my cousin Jules and an expression in his eyes—soft, melting eyes like Rose's—that could not be denied.

“I have to kill you,
” he said.

The voice was his voice and yet it wasn't. It was higher-pitched and distorted, ugly, distant, as if coming from crevices deep inside him.

“You don't have to kill me,” I said. “You don't have to do anything you don't want to do.”

“I know … I know …” His voice was his own again. He was a lost, bewildered boy and I saw the fragile chin trembling.

His nose began to run. He wiped it with the back of his hand.

“But Vm going to kill you all the same,
” he said in that other voice, sharp, piercing.
“Then the nun
…”

“And then what?” I asked, masking my relief at the knowledge that the nun was safe. But what about that other voice? “Are you going to kill everybody in the world?”

“I don't want to kill anybody,” he said, the boy speaking again. “All right, I killed the old fraud and I don't regret that. I'd do it again and again for what he did to me.” He touched his nose. “And what he did to my Ma, who never hurt a soul in her life. I'd do it all over again …”

“What about the old man?” I asked, cautious, but drawing nearer to him. If only I could reach him, touch him, embrace him, show that I was not an enemy but blood of his blood, a member of his family.

“The old man led you to us.
” The ugly voice again.
“He had to die. Had to have his face bashed in. The nun is next.”

I saw now the dangerous contest we were engaged in, that two adversaries confronted me, not only the boy himself but another presence altogether, a presence residing within him, as if the fade itself had assumed a personality, perverse and deadly.

“What has the nun got to do with it?” I asked. “Why should you hurt her?” Was it possible to stay in touch with the boy through this other personality?

“She knows,
” the voice crackled.
“She pretends. She makes believe she's good, but she's not. She spies on us
… ”

“Shut up,” I cried. “I'm not talking to you. I don't want to have anything to do with you. I'm talking to the boy, Ozzie Slater. Not you …”

The boy looked directly at me and I realized he had kept his eyes away from mine from the beginning of our encounter, looking distantly over my shoulder. Now our eyes met.

“Are you really my uncle?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “My sister Rose is your mother. You'd love her, Ozzie, if you knew her. She loves you …”

“She gave him away,
” The other voice, harsh, accusing.

“She had to give you away,” I said, gently, reasonably, trying to ignore that voice, trying to keep the conversation between me and the boy. “She had no choice. She was young and had no control over her life at that time. She was desperate …”

“What kind of mother gives her baby away?”

“She wanted you to have life,” I said. “She wanted her baby to live. She could have had an abortion, killed you in the womb. Instead, she went through the pain of labor, the pain and the blood. And she gave you to the nuns, to find a good home for you. Does that sound like she didn't care?”

“What's she like? Is she pretty?”

“She's beautiful. And she loves you deeply. She's the one who told me about Ramsey. I knew that one of my nephews with the power of the fade was somewhere in the world. She sent me to you. Told me about you. How she had to give you up and how sad she's been ever since. And I tracked you down. Because of her …”

“What do you want with me?” he asked, sounding genuinely curious.

“To help you, like I said. I know the power you have. And how that power can be a terrible thing. I have that power too. My uncle had the power before me. He came looking for me to help me the way I've come looking for you. It's handed down from uncles to nephews through the years.”

“You're bluffing.
” The harsh accusatory voice.
“All this stuff
about power. We've got the power. It's something you want from us. To use it for yourself. That's why you're here.”

“I don't want anything,” I said. “Not for myself. But for you. I want to help you …”

“How can you … help me?” And now it was another voice altogether, a child's small voice not only lost and bewildered but confused. A child who might have been me a generation ago.

“First, you must stop what you're doing,” I said. “That nun. Nothing must happen to her. You must leave her alone. Come with me …”

“To the police?”

“No, not the police. I'll arrange for you to see a doctor first. We'll leave Ramsey. I'll take you to a hospital in Boston that specializes in cases like yours. And then, yes, the police. But not in the way you think. There are ways to handle these things. You are not at fault, Ozzie, for what you've done. You are a victim …”

Was I making sense to him? Was I reaching him?

“You're a liar,” he cried, his hand moving toward his belt in a swift and sudden movement. Then a knife appeared in his hand, the blade glinting in the moonlight.

Instinctively, I leapt forward and knocked it to the ground. As I raised my eyes, I saw the boy start to dissolve, like smoke dissipating in the air, so quickly that it was difficult to believe he had stood in front of me a moment or two before.

Stepping backward, I felt the wall behind me, knew that that particular avenue of escape was not possible. Simultaneously, I saw the knife rise from the ground, held by those invisible hands.