Scare Tactics (13 page)

Cheezit the Pommie was barking monotonously when he should have settled down for the night in his fancy basket-bed in the laundry room. Stone didn’t have much affection for the dog, who was frequently underfoot and easy to step on. He’d always owned stalwart hunters or shepherds like Beau. But Edie had fallen in love, cuddling that little bit of fluff at the pet store; and he’d promised her any dog she wanted.

Anything,
he would give her anything as long as she stayed with him!

Now that Taryn was close to being in her grave, her satanic grip on him released, he would soon be restored to his full dignity. And then he and Edie—

Why wouldn't that yapping dog shut up?

Stone went back into the house. The Pomeranian was at the bottom of the steps in the foyer, staring into the darkened parlor, his eyes bugged and froth on his lips. “Stop that! Hell is the matter with you?”

“Uncle John?” Edie called from the top of the stairs. “He can’t come up, I’m fixing to take my bath now.”

“Well, I’m going to shut him in the laundry room so we can have some peace.”

Stone gathered up the squirming dog with one hand and carried him back to the kitchen. Cheezit calmed down when the kitchen door swung shut behind them, though he was still uneasy. In the laundry room Stone put the dog in his basket. Cheezit looked at him with liquid, alarmed eyes, quivering and whimpering. Damn dog was nothing but a bundle of nerves, Stone thought. Edie spoiled him rotten. But then, Edie spoiled everybody—it was her nature to please. A lovelorn pang turned into a cramp and the bleakness of his soul appalled him.
Rejoice,
he thought,
why can’t you be joyful now that it’s done?
He took a stuffed Odie from the laundry room shelf and put it in the basket, company for the dog. He dialed fifteen minutes’ worth of time and turned the dryer on. Damn foolish waste of electricity—but the sound of the dryer always lulled Cheezit to sleep. He left the light on too, and closed the door.

As Stone crossed the kitchen to drop his uneaten sandwich into the garbage disposal, he glanced casually at the cutting board and the carving knife he’d left there, slathered with mayonnaise. But it wasn’t mayonnaise he saw. The knife was dripping blood.

He went rigid from shock, and his heart seemed to detonate icily in his chest. He was a moment away from screaming when he also noticed the catsup bottle Edie had taken off the shelf to fix her own favorite before-bed snack—a catsup, piccalilli, and white bread sandwich.

The scream was choked off. He stood there gasping, face lurid with blood, thinking:
Why did she leave the knife like that, for me to see?

Because Edie suspected—everyone did—that he had killed Taryn ... come across her lonely on the road on the way to his favorite fishing spot—and let it happen,
just let it happen!
Now every living soul he’d known in his life had congregated, they were all around his house but invisible as deathwatch beetles, and they were waiting for his scream of guilt; when they heard it they’d scuttle in like a horde of nightmare scavengers, drag him naked into the street and devour him.

How badly he needed to scream, to get the sickness out of his gut, this new horror off his mind! The effort not to scream and give himself away was the most excruciating labor of his life. It was worse than the night he’d dragged himself for three miles in subzero weather after breaking his right leg and hip falling off a cliff in Korea. Time seemed to pass almost as slowly for Stone now, until he could get to the light switch and throw the kitchen into darkness.

He was better in the dark, although the pressure in his chest, so rigid a cannonball would have bounced off it, made breathing an ordeal. Gradually his heartbeat subsided, regulated by the ticking of the wall clock.

The darkness discouraged them; but they wouldn't leave now.

They would continue to observe him, hoping for self betrayal.

No, I’m too strong for you,
Stone thought, nevertheless resisting the impulse to look around defiantly at those he had called friends, now there to mock and despise him.
None of you know what she did to me! But the bitch-child is dead, and you can die too, for all I care! All of you!

But not Edie. No, no, never Edie! If he could only hold her now, just for a few seconds, and explain why he’d had to kill Taryn, she would understand, and forgive him with kisses ...

She was taking her bath now. Just the sight of Edie would be reassuring; it was
necessary.
For a few moments he enjoyed his greed, his voluptuous sorrow. If he could get through the night, despite the lurkers all around him, and tomorrow, then the next day—

Taryn would be buried. Placed in earth for a silent Eternity. And in the ritual of her passing he would enjoy rebirth.

Stone left the kitchen quietly as the dryer stopped. Cheezit whimpered but it was a dream-complaint, the dog had gone to sleep. Stone went up the stairs to the second floor and paused by the bathroom. He heard water running slowly, not much more than a trickle, and Edie humming to herself. He put a hand on the doorknob. There was a punishing fire in his groin, but no hint of an erection. He had cold sweat on the back of his neck. No, it was the wrong time, no matter how desperately he needed the child’s forgiveness, her lovely sympathy, her sweetly chaste embrace. He pictured her looking at him as he came in, her expression not glad but startled, perhaps frightened. He was afraid too, but deeply excited. What if she screamed? What would he do then? He felt confused, and angry at being confused.

He took his hand from the doorknob. His hand trembled.

That made him angrier, so he struck himself sharply in the face, closing his right eye. He did it again. Still the fire burned in his testicles, there was no relief. Stone went down the hall and opened the door to the third floor, which consisted of unfinished attic space. Two bare bulbs hung from the rafters furnished light. He went cautiously across the floorboards to the mattress he’d placed there years ago, when Taryn had come into the house. He kneeled, then stretched out facedown and took up a loose floor board.

Light from the bathroom below, passing through thick squares of opaque glass block, illuminated his face. He removed the bit of tape that covered the peephole he’d installed. It was a common wide-angle type frequently found in apartment houses and hotel room doors, concealed in a mortared corner of the glass block ceiling. The bathtub, with Evie in it, was directly below. She was sitting in the waist-deep water with her pale hair bound up, water running over a bare foot she held under the tap.

He had not spied on her for a while. He was shocked to see the size of her breasts, the caterpillar-like fuzz on her pudendum.
Child no longer.
Men would want her now. He was grieved and distraught. He squirmed on the mattress, maddened by the fire that smouldered in his groin and testicles, while his penis remained soft.

Edie cocked a foot on the side of the deep old tub and dreamily stroked the underside of her thigh with the soapy washcloth. She had used a touch of bubblebath, and the bubbles gleamed on her upstart breasts. Her nipples were not petite, as he had imagined them. They were surrounded by very large aureolae. Now the cloth was between her legs, and,
God, what was she doing?
Stroking herself with an insolent forefinger, eyes half closed as she gazed almost directly up at him, a mesmerized smile on her face.

Stone sat up clumsily, pain spearing through his head. He was salivating uncontrollably, like a sick animal. Grief and confusion racked him. Ah, not Edie! How could she torment him this way? She’d been so slender only a few months ago—so chastely made. Now look at her, whorishly involved with her own body.

The scream was building; he heard it in his head even as he clutched his throat, forcing it back, so that Edie and the lurkers wouldn’t be alerted. He sat panting on the mattress he had long ago stained with his sap in a different thrall, thinking,
They are all whores and they all laugh at me.
Only Roberta had been faithful all these years, despite his barrenness.

He left the mattress and went haltingly down the stairs, right eye tearing badly, wiping away the saliva from his lips. When he opened the door Edie, barefoot but wearing her terry robe, was emerging from the bathroom. Her face was flushed, her hands were full of brushes and lotions for her body.

“Uncle John.” Edie smiled. “What were you doing up there?”

“Looking for—tax records.” Her face blurred, but not before he saw her swift look of concern.

“What’s the matter with your eye?”

He could smell her, so sweet from her bath. He longed for the touch of her moist skin. He cried harder. “It’s the dust,” he said. “The attic dust always bothers me.” He smiled then, knowing it wag a bad smile, a dreadful smile like some strange fleshy thing suddenly growing in the middle of his face.

“Oh—well, good night, Uncle John.”

“Good night, Edie.”
Won't you come and kiss me, kiss me, bitch-child? (As soon as one is dead, there’s another.)

Edie came halfway down the hall toward Stone, but she hadn’t come to kiss him. She had, in her innocence, misread what was torturing him.

“Uncle John, you’ve had such a terrible day! Why don’t you try to get some rest? In the morning I want you to come to church with me. We’ll pray together for her soul.”

He couldn’t answer; he was afraid of the sounds he would make, bearing no resemblance to human speech. Or else she would hear the vilest profanity, and run away in terror. He nodded, surreptitiously wiping his wet lips and chin, hiding his face from Edie, hiding the evil he knew burned in his eyes.

“I’ll just look in on Aunt Roberta before I go to bed,”

Edie told him, and she was off down the hall, stopping at the door of what had been the master bedroom in happier times. Now the room was Roberta’s, night and day, and she no longer left her bed. She had taken her last steps nearly three years ago. Stiff as a board, probably weighing no more than eighty pounds, she lingered on, while Stone slept in a small bedroom next to the attic stairs.

He went into his room now, closing the door. He didn’t want a light. He sat on the edge of the bed, still salivating. Wipe it away, and it would start again. He gasped and panted. His painful eye was only a slit, and watering too. It felt as if the eye were growing bigger and bigger in his face, bright as a supernova. An all-seeing eye, scanning many things that had previously been beyond his ken.

The door to the room opened slowly. He stared at it, distracted, tantalized, wondering which of the lurkers was about to put in an appearance. But he wasn’t prepared for what happened next.

It was Roberta. She stood in the doorway in her flannel nightgown, all skin and bone and pressed-down gray hair on her yellowed skull, eyes fiercely bright as she pointed accusingly at him. He scrambled up on the bed and crouched there on all fours, shaking his head at her: no, no—

No,
lovey, it’s Taryn’s fault!

But how could he say that when Roberta had found him nakedly astride the ten-year-old girl, a hand on the back of her head, pushing her face into the pillow to keep her from shrieking while he—

“But it
was
Taryn,” he protested to the form of his wife. “From the moment she came into this house, she tempted me!”

Roberta wasn’t buying it; she never had. Her face burned coldly, like the moon on a winter’s night. Her pointing finger did not waver.

Stone covered his face with a pillow, unable to bear the sight. He shook with sobs and then, at last, he screamed. The sounds were muffled by the pillow. He screamed until the bones of his chest were tender, his lungs exhausted of air, his stomach muscles in an iron cramp. And fell weightlessly off the bed.

The spectre of Roberta had vanished, his door was closed. He lay clear-headed on the floor, emotionless but in agony.

He became convinced that he was not yet alone. One of the lurkers he had anticipated was in the room.

Stone looked up. Light from the street painted shadows on one wall. The window was open, the night warm. He was wringing wet in his clothes. He got up clutching his stomach, his throat so raw he couldn’t swallow. At least the horrid salivating had stopped.

He knew the spasm would pass; he had made it through his crisis, he would endure. He took a couple of steps toward the door, needing to go to the bathroom. Then he stopped, unnerved, fascinated. He had glimpses of a reflection in the mirror over the dresser, but the angle was wrong and it was not himself he was seeing.

He saw, instead, the bearded face of Hieronymus Flynn.

Stone lunged at the dresser and drove a fist into the mirror, shattering it. He turned quickly but saw no one in the small bedroom with him, only an odd, unexpected blue light that flickered for a moment by the open window.

He had no further capacity for surprise; there was no fear in him. Only a dull resolve.

You can’t tell on me. I’ll kill you first.

Dr. Dove

H
ero was catching up on his sleep when the Sheriff came to visit him, at six-thirty Sunday morning.

A Negro deputy, as tall as Stone but a yard wider, let Stone into the cell and stood by. He was an albino, ugly as an oyster, with rusty red hair and eyes that looked like little pink bullets. He wore a hearing aid.