Glimpses: The Best Short Stories of Rick Hautala (38 page)

Glancing to my left, I once again saw the pitcher of water. I wanted more than anything to plunge my hands into that icy water to soothe the pain, but I was immobile.

I could tell that the audience was getting restless. It was awkward for them to see me so distraught, almost out of control, but it was just as obvious—to me, at least—that they didn't know the real reason why I was so upset.

I nearly fainted when I lowered my gaze and looked down at my hands, holding the sheet of paper in place. The backs of my hands were discolored. They’d turned a sickly yellow and were wrinkled like an old man's hands. For a dizzying instant, I felt as though I was looking at my hands through a huge magnifying glass. Every hair, every pore and blemish, every vein and tendon stood out in stark relief. The feeling that these were not
my
hands—that they were
Derrick's
—grew terrifyingly strong. I thought that—somehow—maybe Derrick was still alive and standing behind me, reaching around me and manipulating things for me.

I tried to push such thoughts from my mind. I cleared my throat and, with great effort, began.

"I want to ... thank you all for ... being here today."

I forced my grimace of a smile to widen. I locked eyes with
Alice, sitting there with her children in the front row. Her expression as she looked at me was kind and sympathetic. I could see that she was on the verge of crying, too, but she nodded to me, offering her silent encouragement.

The choking sensation in my throat grew steadily stronger. When I reached up to loosen my collar, I was suddenly fearful that my hands—Derrick's hands—were going to clasp me by the throat and start to squeeze until they choked the life out of me.

I lowered my gaze and shook my head, taking a few moments to compose myself. I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand, but it was like striking a match against a sun-baked sidewalk. A hot flashing line of flames erupted across my brow.

It was intolerable, I tell you. Intolerable!

I wanted to say something—anything—just a few words about how much I missed my brother … what a tragic loss his death was to me and his family and friends … but I couldn't focus on the few notes right in front of me. All I could think about was the burning pain flaming inside my hands and spreading up my arms.

I looked again at the pitcher of water and finally understood what I had to do. You see, I knew then—or if I had known it before, I finally admitted it to myself then—that these really weren't my hands.

They truly were Derrick's!

His dry, desiccated skin may have rotted away, but some part of my dead brother had fused with me, and this small part of him—the one small part I thought I could possess and control—was
not
under my control.

Maybe I would have been better off if I had killed myself, had strangled myself right there in front of that crowd.

It would have ended it all, and maybe … just maybe the people in attendance would think I had been unable to contain my grief and had finally snapped.

But that's not what happened.

I didn't plunge my hands into that pitcher of ice water, either.

I had tried that many times before, and it had never worked.

No, what I did—well, you probably read about it in the newspapers, but what I did was take the water pitcher and smash it against the side of the podium. I don't remember hearing the sound of breaking glass or feeling the cold dash of water splashing over me. I sensed some muted and surprised reactions from the crowd, but not much. I was lost inside a cocoon of whistling silence where there was just the raging roar of my breathing and the unbearable burning knowledge that my hands were not my own.

Holding the handle of the shattered pitcher, I turned the jagged edge around and began slashing and sawing at the back of my hands.

"These aren't my hands! These aren't my hands!"

I remember screaming that or something like it, but I was lost in a blind frenzy of panic as I tried to cut and scrape the flesh from the back of my hands. Suddenly, I had the unnerving sensation that I was somehow outside of myself—that I was floating above it all and watching what I was doing … as if this were all a movie or a play.

I felt no pain—none whatsoever—but I could see the ragged strips of flesh I was flaying from the back of my hands. There was blood everywhere, but no matter how much I tore at the skin on my hands, the burning sensation didn't stop.

Oh, no.

It continued to spiral up, getting stronger and stronger until it was all I knew. The mere physical pain of tearing the flesh from my hands was nothing ... literally, nothing.

From my vantage point, hovering above it all, I watched as I continued to rake the broken glass across the back of my hands, first the left one, then the right. Cutting. Slashing. Gashing. My sheet of notes was splattered by red smears, like ruby teardrops. I started laughing softly when I realized that one splotch of blood—the biggest—looked exactly like the splash of blood on Derrick's kitchen wall, the night I had killed him.

Every other sound in the room was muffled, but I sensed a rush of motion as someone—I have no idea who ... probably Andrews—ran up to me to help ... to try to stop me.

Then I heard a sizzling, crackling sound, and everything went black.

* * *

I woke up sometime later, here in the hospital. I realize now that I must have grabbed onto the microphone and, because I was standing in the puddle of water I had spilled, had gotten one hell of an electric shock.

Not enough to kill me, mind you, and—well, the emergency room doctor said that, thankfully, I hadn't severed any arteries, so I didn't bleed to death, either.

Lucky … Yeah …

The most horrible thing about it all was that I didn't get rid of Derrick's skin. It's still here, on the back of my hands.

See?

It's still growing. Maybe you can't see it, but it's all the way inside me now, still growing ... and look at this. It's spreading out, moving like black fungus up my arms. Pretty soon it's going to cover my whole body!

I swear, it's true.

Look at my hands!

Can't you see?

I still can't control them, either. Even with these bandages on, I've been trying to do a little bit of drawing while I've been here, and you can see that I'm not drawing anything very good ... certainly not what I
want
to draw.

Look at these sketches. Every single one of them depicts something from the night I killed my brother.

See here?

This is him lying on the floor, leaning up against the wall. Remember how I said he looked like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

Well, doesn't he?

That's
exactly
what he looked like!

And check out this one.

This is the design the splash of blood made on the wall behind him, after I shot him. You'll have to take my word for it, but it's
exactly
like the bloody smear on my sheet of notes.

And look at this one.

See?

It's a closeup of Derrick's face, once he was good and dead. He looks really relaxed now, doesn't he? Like all the pressure’s off. It's amazing how much he looks like me, but we are, after all, twins. I also did a couple of sketches of what his arms looked like after I'd hacked off his hands, but I had to throw them away. I didn't like the way they were coming out even though I always was pretty good at drawing anatomy, especially hands.

The problem is, you see, I'm not the one who's doing these drawings.

Derrick is.

He's using my eyes and memory to record what happened to him.

His
hands are doing all of this!

His hands have betrayed me!

The police never would have even found out that I had killed him if his hands hadn't started drawing these pictures. They found them in my apartment.

That's how they finally got me to confess.

They wore me down by telling me that no one except the murderer could have done these sketches, not with such exact detail. They even showed me a couple of photographs taken at the murder scene. I don't know if that was before or after I drew these pictures. They give me drugs here and I’m plenty confused.

And yes, the backs of my hands still hurt like hell. I don't even like looking at them anymore. Sure, the cuts are healing up just fine, but the burning sensation keeps getting worse, day after day. I tell you, it's going to drive me insane! Even when the nurse gives me a shot of something, it doesn't
really
stop the pain. And I know, once these bandages come off, it won't be any better.

Oh, no.

That's why I asked you to come up and see me again today, doctor. I know we talked about all this before, and you said no to the idea, but I'm positive I want you to do it.

Stop it!

Why do you keep saying you won't do it?

I know you can! You have all the equipment right here, don't you?

You have to do it. You have to cut off
Derrick's
hands before they do something really horrible!

“Maybe we should set up camp here before it gets too dark,” Jack Harper said. He paused in the middle of the trail and waited for his friend, Ryan Gould, who was several steps ahead of him, to realize he was no longer walking along behind him. “It’s gonna be dark soon,” Jack added, raising his voice.

“Yeah? So?” Ryan said over his shoulder but—finally—he had drawn to a stop and turned to look back at Jack.

“It’s just that ... well, I know you know these woods a lot better than I do,” Jack said. He shrugged to relieve the pressure of the backpack’s straps on his shoulders. “But I was thinking we should maybe set up camp before it gets all the way dark, is all.”

Off to his left, through the trees, the glimmer of the setting sun reflected off the wide, bending curve of the Missouri River. A cool breeze laden with the dense scent of pine resin blew through the scrub pines with a high, hissing sound. The land dropped off sharply to the river and, to the east, craggy hills rose up against the deepening blue sky.

Ryan followed Jack’s gaze out over the water to the setting sun. He sighed and shook his head. His voice was low, all but lost beneath the sound of the wind in the trees when he said, “All right then. Let’s find a flat spot to set up. I’ll pitch the tent while you gather some firewood.”

“How come I always get to do the squaw’s work?” Jack asked. He was trying to crack a joke to lighten the mood, but he couldn’t repress the slight shiver that teased up his back as he looked around him. For as much hiking as he did, he was always surprised—and a little irritated—at how he felt a tad uncomfortable around this time of day ...
Twilight Time
... just as the sun was setting, and the shadows were deepening black pools under the trees. Once it was fully dark, he had no problem, especially if there was a campfire blazing away. But as evening fell, the forest always made him feel ... not afraid, really, just … uncomfortable.

Ryan leaned forward and rested his chin on the tip of his hiking stick as he surveyed the area. Suddenly his face lit up. “Hold on a second. Do you know where we are?”

Jack frowned and shrugged. “Yeah,” he said, “about twenty miles from the nearest town on the Saddleback Trail in—.”

“No. No,” Ryan said. He pointed with the tip of his walking stick down the slope that led to the river. “You see those rocks down there? The ones overlooking the river?”

“Yeah.”

“ I’m pretty sure that’s Outlaw’s Cave.”

“Outlaw’s Cave?” Jack shook his head. “The name rings a bell. Should it?” He suddenly took a quick step back and shook his head more vigorously. “Hold on. I ain’t sleeping in any cave.”

Ryan snorted laughter and shook his head. “We don’t have to if you’re too scared. We can pitch the tent in the clearing down there. It’s a really nice spot. Once we get set up, I’ll tell you the story about it.”

“Maybe I don’t want to hear the story about it,” Jack said.

As his gaze shifted out over the stretch of the river, he suddenly wished he could fly far away from this place.

“Trust me. You’ll want to,” Ryan said as he shifted his pack into a more comfortable position on his back and started down the steep slope. “It’s a terrific spot. Nice view of the river, too.”

Not entirely convinced, Jack followed several paces behind Ryan.

The trail wasn’t clearly marked, at least not that Jack could see in the gathering dusk, and the footing was lousy, so they slid as much as walked down the first hundred feet or so. Rocks and other debris slid downhill in their wake. Eventually, the ground leveled out on a wide bluff that overlooked the river.

“Yup ... This is the place, aw’right,” Ryan said.

The sun had already dropped below the trees on the opposite shore, turning the river into a wide stretch of dull, beaten silver that was rapidly fading to charcoal gray. Off in the distance, a solitary crow called out, its raucous voice echoing from the cliffs that lined the riverbank.