Relentless (9 page)

   Out of the darkness, something thrust against the nape of my neck—two metal pegs, positive and negative poles. Before I could flinch away, hot needles stitched the length of my spine and then sewed through every branch of my peripheral nervous system to toes, to fingertips, to scalp.

My eyes rolled back in my skull, dazzled by an inner vision of gold and crimson fireworks, and I dropped out of my crouch. Facedown on the carpet, I twitched as a puppeteer jerked on the threads that the needles had sewn through me.

The words that came from me were none that I intended, slurred and meaningless.

Although coherent speech eluded me, I clearly heard Penny, who had been awakened by my cry.

“Cubby?” The click-click of her lamp switch. “What’s happening?”

I resisted the twitching, but spasmed all the more for my resistance.

Yet I marshalled the clarity of mind and tongue to tell her what seemed most important: “He can see in the dark.”

The bronze hardware on her nightstand rattled as Penny jerked open drawers in search of the flashlight that Waxx had confiscated.

She let out a thin shriek, like the plaint a bird in flight might issue if pierced by an arrow. The hard knock of her fall suggested that she might have struck her head on furniture.

The physical effects of the shock faded quickly. The twitching diminished to a nervous trembling, which was not a consequence of extreme voltage but an expression of my terror at Penny’s suffering.

From full collapse, I rose onto all fours, then to my knees, my mind a jigsaw-puzzle box full of fragmented thoughts from which I could not fit together a defensive tactic.

The word
Taser
sizzled into my mind. And Waxx Tasered me again.

I fell from my knees onto my right side. My skull rapped the floor. I bit my tongue, tasted blood.

For a moment, I thought Waxx was tearing at my pajama shirt, but the clawing hands were mine. I tried to close them into fists.

Stuttering Penny’s name, infuriated by my inability to protect her, I tried to jackknife off my side, onto my knees. The post-shock spasms facilitated this change of position. Probing the darkness, I found an armchair, used it for support, got to my feet.

I cursed myself that I was not prepared for this—not for Waxx in particular, but for someone lethal in the night. I knew well the capacity for cruelty in the human heart.

A groan of convulsive misery came from Penny as she was Tasered a second time.

A homicidal rage, of which I would never have imagined myself capable, focused me. Murderous
fury
more than terror cracked the dam of adrenaline, flooding me with sudden strength, animal determination.

I moved unsteadily toward where I thought Penny might be.

As invisible as the wind—and like the wind revealed only by his effects—Waxx came in from my left side, stinging me in the neck. The shocks were no longer hot but as cold as driven sleet.

Although I struck him, it seemed to be a glancing blow. My legs buckled, and I knew I would not get another chance to hit him.

As I struggled to stay on my hands and knees, he bent down and Tasered me a fourth time, again on the nape of the neck.

I lay prone and shaking, a coiled snake of nausea flexing in my gut. My mouth flooded with saliva, and I thought I would vomit.

He Tasered me again before the previous shock had begun to wear off. I wondered if the effects were cumulative, if enough of them could fry the nerves, induce a stroke, cause death.

He spoke only one more word to me: “Scribbler.”

For a while, I seemed to be floating in the blackness of deep space, the floor under me no longer a floor but a spiral galaxy slowly turning.

My sense of time had been temporarily short-circuited. When I discovered that I had the capacity to crawl, and in fact to rise to my feet, I did not know whether one minute or ten had passed since my last Tasering.

I was surprised to be alive. If, like a cat, I had nine lives, I had used up eight of them one night a long time ago.

The taste of blood remained from my bitten tongue, yet when I called Penny’s name, my voice broke as if my mouth and throat were not only dry but desiccated.

She did not answer.

   Waxx must have taken Penny with him, to what purpose I could imagine, to what end I refused to consider.

One moment more of blindness was intolerable. Faint moonglow at the edges of the blackout draperies led me to the windows. I found the cord, revealed the glass, the night, the looming lunar face.

“Cubby?”

Either she had been unconscious when I called to her or she had not heard me because my voice was even weaker than I thought.

After the unrelieved gloom, the merest moonlight was sunshine to my eyes, and I saw her pulling herself to her feet at the dresser.

I went to her, speechless with gratitude. Her breath against my throat, the graceful curve of her back under my right hand, and the sweet smell of her hair were poetry that words could never equal.

She said the only thing worth saying: “Thank God.”

On the nightstands, the digital clocks came back to life and began flashing to indicate that they needed to be reset.

The alarm keypad brightened. A yellow indicator light announced a functioning system, and a red bulb confirmed that it was armed.

The recorded voice that reported on status changes remained silent, as though the alarm had never been disabled.

Neither Penny nor I said “Milo,” but we hurried to his room, switching on lights as we went.

As my hand closed on the knob, a growl rose from the far side of the door. Lassie greeted us with raised hackles and bared teeth. As if we were not the real Penny and Cubby but evil replicants, she continued to threaten violence if we crossed the threshold.

Dogs have a sense of shame, in fact stronger than most people do these days. Penny played to it, disappointment in her voice: “Growling at me but not one bark to warn us about that lunatic?”

Lassie stopped growling but continued to bare her teeth.

“Not one bark for the lunatic?” Penny repeated.

The dog’s flews quivered with what seemed to be embarrassment and relaxed to cover her teeth. Her tail wagged tentatively.

I came to Lassie’s defense: “She was ready to protect Milo. Good girl.”

The boy lay in bed, snoring softly. He didn’t wake when Lassie sprang onto the mattress and curled beside him.

“Stay here,” I whispered. “I’ll search the house.”

Voice hushed but adamant, Penny said, “Not alone. Call the cops.”

“It’s all right. He’s gone. I’m just making sure.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Call the cops.”

“And tell them what? Did you see Waxx?”

“No. But—”

“I didn’t see him, either.”

Her eyes narrowed. “He said something, a word.”

“Three words.
Doom. Hack. Scribbler.”

She bristled. “He called you a hack?”

“Yeah.”

“He should die hard. Point is—you heard him speak at the restaurant.”

“Only one word. I hardly know his voice.”

“But you
know
this was him.”

“Evidence, Penny. Isn’t any.”

She pointed to a pair of red marks on her left forearm, like two spider bites. “The Taser.”

“That’s not enough. That’s nothing. How often did he sting you?”

“Twice. You?”

“Five, maybe six times.”

“I’d like to castrate him.”

“That doesn’t sound like the creator of the Purple Bunny books.”

“Call the cops,” she insisted.

“He’ll say we made it up, to get back at him for his review.”

“He didn’t review me. Why am I going to lie about him?”

“For me. That’s what they’ll say. You know the media—if you give them a stick, they love to knock you down.”

I couldn’t say there was an event in my past about which I never told her. If I made accusations about Waxx that he denied, tabloid TV would start digging. They probably wouldn’t be able to learn who I had been, as a child, but I didn’t want to test their skills.

I said, “Besides, I have a feeling like … he
wants
us to call the cops.”

“Why would he want that?”

“Either he wants us to call them or he doesn’t care if we do. This is so screwy. I haven’t done anything to him. There’s something about this we don’t understand.”

“I don’t understand
any
of it,” she declared.

“Exactly. Trust me on this. No cops just yet.”

Leaving her with Milo and the dog, I searched the house, found no one. Nothing had been damaged. Everything seemed to be in order.

All the doors were locked, and the security chains were engaged. The window latches were secure. No panes had been broken.

Christmas was little more than six weeks away; but Waxx had not come down a chimney and had not departed through one. All the dampers were closed tight.

In the master bathroom, I stripped off my pajamas and quickly dressed. I retrieved my wristwatch from the vanity, where I had left it before retiring for the night. The time was 4:54 A.M.

Catching sight of myself in a mirror, I didn’t like what I saw. Face pale and damp with sweat, skin gray and grainy around the eyes, lips bloodless, mouth tight and grim.

My eyes were especially disturbing. I didn’t see myself in them. I saw someone I had once been.

When I returned to Milo’s room, he still slept.

Lassie had gotten over her shame. From the bed, she stared at us imperiously and issued a long-suffering sigh, as though we were keeping her awake.

Penny said, “I’m gonna scream if I don’t have a cookie.”

   This time: oatmeal-raisin with macadamia nuts. Penny was too agitated to sit at the table. She paced the kitchen as she nibbled the cookie. “You want milk?” I asked. “No. I want to blow up something.”

“I’m having Scotch. Blow up what?”

“Not just a tree stump, that’s for sure.”

“We don’t have any stumps. Just trees.”

“Like a hotel. Something at least twenty stories.”

“Is that satisfying—blowing up a hotel?”

“You’re so
relaxed
afterward,” she said. “Then let’s do it.”

“We blew up a church once. That was just sad.”

“I’m angry and scared. I don’t need sad on top of that.” I sat on a stool, my back to the breakfast bar, and watched her pace
as I sipped the Scotch. The whiskey was just a prop; what calmed and fortified me was watching Penny.

“Blowing things up,” she said, “relieves stress better than cookies.”

“Plus it’s less fattening,” I noted, “and doesn’t lead to diabetes.”

“I’m thinking maybe we’ve made a mistake not involving Milo in all that.”

“I’m sure he’d enjoy blowing up buildings. What kid wouldn’t? But what about the effect on his personality development?”

“I turned out okay, didn’t I?” she asked.

“So far, you’re the nicest abnormal person I know. But if the cookies stop working for you …”

Grimbald, her father, was a demolitions expert. In Las Vegas alone, he had brought down four old hotels to clear the land for bigger and glitzier enterprises. From the time Penny—then Brunhild—was five years old until she married me, he had taken her with him to watch his controlled blasts implode enormous structures.

On a DVD that her folks produced for us, we have TV-news footage of young Penny at numerous events, clapping her hands in delight, giggling, and mugging for the camera as, behind her, huge hotels and office buildings and apartment towers and sports stadiums collapsed into ruins. She looked adorable.

Grimbald and Clotilda titled the DVD
Memories
, and for the soundtrack they used Streisand singing “The Way We Were” as well as an old Perry Como tune, “Magic Moments.” They got teary-eyed when they played it every Christmas.

“I’ve learned something about myself tonight,” Penny said.

“Oh, good. Then it’s all been worthwhile.”

“I didn’t know I could get this pissed off.”

Penny dropped her half-eaten cookie in the kitchen sink.

“Uh-oh,” I said.

With a spatula, she shoved the cookie into the drain. She turned on the cold water, and then she thumbed the garbage-disposal button.