The Cartoonist (12 page)

Scott took the pencil and examined it with a certain awe. But it was only a pencil—HB, with an eraser on one end and
Castell
inscribed in blue script along one hexagonal edge. He reached next for the clipboard—and this time the old man twitched, but that was all. He picked it up and took a hasty step back.

The artist had tucked his most recent illustrations beneath a stack of blank pages. Scott removed these, then replaced the clipboard and pencil where he’d found them. He took the drawings into the hallway, where he began a careful inspection of each frame. At first, in the stuttering glare of the overhead fluorescents, the sketches seemed connected to nothing real...

Until the last few frames. Then, as it had at the bottom of the lake, the hand of terror rose from its bath of ice and gripped Scott’s heart.

* * *

The entire sequence was set at night.

The first frame was an overview of a tree-studded graveyard. The second showed a distinctive-looking tombstone, two truncated tiers supporting a pyramidal shaft crested by a crucifix. The crucifix was damaged, missing an arm and a small wedge of headpiece. The inscription, indecipherable save for three or four letters, appeared on the lower of the two marble tiers. In the foreground, hideous in the moonlight, a rotted, shaggy hand poked up like a claw through the cartoon earth. In the third frame, a decaying, cyclopic corpse shouldered its way up from the confines of the grave. It was a classic horror-comic scene, yet so chillingly rendered that for a moment Scott imagined he could almost smell the black earth and moldering decay.

In the next frame Scott was presented with the following: the tombstone leaning in the foreground; the corpse, shambling toward a low flagstone fence and the roadway beyond; a gnarled, leafless tree on a hilltop, silhouetted against an oversized moon; and at the extreme left of the frame, some distance away on the winding roadway, the twinkling eyes of a car.

The fifth illustration showed the corpse in the middle of the moonlit roadway, arms extended like the Frankenstein monster; and the car, just cresting the rise before the cemetery, only the halo-glow of its headlights visible. In the following frame the point of view was from the back seat. Shown were the backs of two heads—the driver’s, a woman with curly hair; and a passenger’s, a child, probably female. The driver had one arm angled across her face and, just beyond the windshield, stark in the glare of the high beams, the corpse stood weaving in the instant before impact.

The next and most dramatic scene was portrayed from just beside the driver, the angle of view including the passenger seat and the inner aspect of the windshield. In it the zombie burst through the safety glass, its jaw ripped partially away, its single dead eye dangling against a worm-ridden cheek. The child, now unmistakably a girl, cried out in perfect terror, her mouth wide open in a silent scream, her face just inches from the dead thing that came through the windshield in a blizzard of glittering shards.

The last frame, the one that tore into Scott like shrapnel, showed the car in the foreground, crumpled nose-first against the flagstone fence; and the corpse, one arm unhinged and dangling at an impossible angle, dragging itself back into the depths of the boneyard. The interior of the car was pitch, neither of its occupants visible. Steam hissed almost audibly from beneath the hood.

The car was a Volvo.

Jesus, no, not them. Please, not my girls...

Scott braced himself against the wall as Bateman’s words came reverberating back to him:
You have only to look past the gilding of the horror comic to find that simple message....

* * *

“Wake up! Wake up, damn you!”

Scott was back in the artist’s room, prodding him, shaking him, trying desperately to awaken him. But the old man remained slack and unresponsive. Were it not for that scarcely audible wheeze of breath, Scott would have believed him dead.

“Come on,” he pleaded, his voice escalating from a controlled whisper to a hysterical shout. “Open your
eyes
.”

He shook the man harder, deliberately digging stiff fingers into his bony shoulders in an effort to rouse him. But the Cartoonist’s head only lolled round and round, as if his neck had been broken.

“Talk to me,” Scott bellowed. “What does this shit mean? Is this my wife? My daughter? What is going to happen?”

A nurse raced into the room, her complexion flushed with surprise. “Dr. Bowman,” she said. “What are you doing?”

Scott ignored her, shaking the old man so hard now his remaining teeth clacked brittlely together.

The nurse grabbed Scott’s arm.
“Dr. Bowman,”
She wasn’t shouting now. She was screaming.

Scott released the mute artist and staggered back—and it dawned on him then, in a wave of lightheadedness, that he might have killed the old man.

Behind him, Gramps moaned in his sleep. The nurse withdrew her hand from Scott’s arm and the two of them stood there in stricken silence, staring down at the Cartoonist. His bald, peeling head hung limply forward. Drool strung like a rope from the corner of his mouth, creating a dark spot where it pooled on the leg of his pajama bottoms.

The drawings balled in his fist, Scott turned and fled the room. He could still hear Grampa’s lonesome moan as he pushed his way through the exit doors, heading for his office on the second floor.

THE PHONE WAS ON ITS sixth ring when Krista’s sister Klara picked it up.

“Klara, it’s Scott.”

“Hi, Sco—”

“Listen, have Krista and Kath left yet?” He knew they had, but prayed that for some unforeseen reason they hadn’t. The digital timepiece on his desk read 7:12 p.m.

“Yes, early this morning. Your wife was in her usual snarky mood, too. Little miss know-it-all...is anything wrong? You sound pretty strung out.”

“I’m sorry, Klara, I can’t talk now.”

He thumbed the cut-off button and dialed Caroline’s number in Boston. Caroline answered on the first ring.

“Scott? Hi.”

“Are they there yet?” Scott said, blurting the words. “Krista and Kath?”

“No,” Caroline said, responding to the urgency in Scott’s voice. “Not yet...what’s—?”

"Damn.”

“Scott, what’s wrong? Is everything okay?”

Scott remained silent for a moment, breathing rapidly, struggling to get a grip on himself. He couldn’t tell Caroline about all of this—not yet, anyway. There was no sense in alarming her further. The whole thing might be totally unrelated to his girls. He might simply be overreacting. His wasn’t the only Volvo in the country, not by a long shot.

But he was spooked. The old man’s drawings had become hard to ignore. After those underwater scenes, the cartoon Volvo struck yards too close to be dismissed as coincidence. The trouble was, there was no way of knowing without getting through to the Cartoonist... and so far that had proved impossible.

“I’m sorry, Caroline,” he said. “Yes, everything’s fine. I’m just a bit edgy, is all. I wanted to talk to Krista. We had a spat before she left,” he lied. “Just wanted to apologize.”

“Are you worried about them on the highway?”

“Yes...a little.” This, too, was a lie. He was petrified.

“Well, don’t be. Krista’s a good driver. They probably spent the afternoon haunting all those New England antique shops. Busting your billfold. Anyway, it’s too early to expect them even if they’d driven right through. I’m sure they’ll be here soon enough.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Caroline’s words sounded soothing and good and he wanted to believe them...but he couldn’t. “Thanks,” he said. “Have her call me as soon as she gets in, will you? I’ll be at home.”

“I will,” Caroline said. “And how are you? The way I hear it, you gave your gals quite a scare the other morning.”

“Myself, too,” Scott said. “I’m all right now, though... Good-bye, Caroline.” Knowing it was rude but beyond caring, he hung up.

His gaze returned to the drawings; to the woman and child in the car and the exaggerated mask of horror that was the little girl’s face; to the rotting ghoul bursting through the windshield; to the crippled car and its secretive interior. He thought of the icy channel at the bottom of the lake, and the weeds entangling him like the cerements of Atlantis....

Then he grabbed the phone and dialed information in Massachusetts. The operator was male, his voice clipped and nasal.

“Information. For what city, please?”

“Boston. The police department.”

“Emergency?”

“Yes.”

A brief electrical hum. Then a recorded voice, this one female, recited the number, repeating it as Scott broke the connection.

He had the digits partially dialed when he jammed his thumb on the cut-off button and thought: What in hell do I tell these guys?

He felt suddenly giddy.

Excuse me, Officer, but I’m a shrink up here in Canada, and I have it on good authority that my wife and daughter are in mortal danger. What authority? Well, actually, a thousand-year-old cartoonist drew these pictures, see, and, well...trust me, okay? They’re driving a midnight-black Turbo Volvo—nice car, you’ll like it (please find it), and they’re somewhere in New England.

Scott took a deep breath and tried to think rationally. Whatever he told the police, it had to sound convincing. It had to be something urgent enough to make them look for the car. He could tell them the car was stolen...but then how would he know where the thieves were headed? He could say that the woman driving it was a psychotic who’d escaped from the hospital, abducted a child, and was headed off to murder a rich aunt in Boston....

God, it was so hard to think. The crystal image of crumpled bodies and twisted metal was overloading the circuits, precluding all rational thought.

He flipped the drawings face down, closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. Then he was reaching for the phone again.

“Gerry,” he said aloud in the after-hours quiet of his office.

He dialed the number for the Ottawa Police Department. It rang twice.

“Ottawa police. Sergeant Gennings.”

“This is Doctor Bowman,” Scott said, his voice breaking. “Can you tell me if Gerry St. Georges is working tonight?”

“One moment, please.”

Hope flooded him. Gerry was a friend, a good friend. If there was any way to engage the assistance of the police in the States, Gerry would know about it—and he wouldn’t ask too many questions. At this point Scott didn’t feel up to explaining his reasons to anyone, not even Gerry.

Gerry’s voice was big and booming. “St. Georges.”

“Gerry, it’s Scott.”

“Scott, you old bag-biter. Where’ve you been? I—”

“Gerry, listen. I need your help.”

As Caroline had done earlier, Gerry responded to the urgency in Scott’s tone. “Sure, man. What’s up?”

”Krista and Kath are in New England someplace, in the Volvo. It’s very important that I get in touch with them. I think they’re in danger, Gerry...serious danger. I’m not sure exactly where they are, but they’re headed for Boston, so by now they should be in Maine at the very least. Is there any way you can get the police down there to find the car and detain them?”

”Wow. That’s a tall order, chum. What sort of danger are they in?”

”Please, Gerry. Don’t ask. Just trust me, okay?”

After a pause Gerry said: ”All right...all right, I’ll see what I can do. I know a few of the lads down there. Still, I’ll have to come up with something pretty outrageous. Any ideas which route they might follow?”

”I’ve been down there with Krista only once this year. We took Route three-oh-two over to Interstate ninety-five and followed that into Boston.”

“Well, if she sticks to the major routes, it should be easy enough to find her. She a creature of habit?”

“No,” Scott said without hesitation.

“Call you at home?” Gerry said.

“Yeah, I’m heading there now.” There was nothing else he could do.

THE CHEVETTE HITCHED AND SPUTTERED along the final stretch of road before the house. Scott had driven it hard, burying the tachometer needle into the red with every shift, and now the temperature indicator glowed an angry crimson.

Before leaving the hospital he’d gone by the old man’s room again, but the artist was still sound asleep—a sleep that was more like unconsciousness—in his wheelchair by the window. As Scott left the ward, the nurses regarded him as they might a walking contagion, and Scott guessed they’d already heard about his encounter with the old man. News traveled fast through the hospital grapevine.

He ground the car to a halt in front of the house and jumped out, slamming the door behind him. His injured leg complained at the strenuous activity, but Scott barely noticed. He started directly inside...but before the mocking eyes of the house he hesitated, feeling cold and unmanned. Without his family in it, the house was simply a collection of bricks and boards, a cold and creaking tenement haunted with echoes...and suddenly, he couldn’t bear the thought of going in there alone.

He paused on the path, tucked his hands into his armpits and looked up at the turbulent sky. The clouds were alive up there, sailing in great warring fleets on a squalling ocean of wind. The moon was nearly full and it seemed to flounder against the tide. The breeze against Scott’s face was damp with the promise of rain...and although he couldn’t see it from where he stood, the lake was alive, too. He could hear it down there, deep and black and creeping....

Shivering, Scott hurried inside.

But in the dark of the foyer he hesitated again, trying to shrug off the alien feeling the house was giving him. The hallway ahead opened onto the hunched and fuzzy shadows of the living room, which in the dark seemed to have been subtly rearranged, and Scott got the abrupt and frightening feeling that he was not alone.

He noticed it then, a small black shape, darker than its surroundings, leaning against the near wall, and it was all he could do to stop himself from bolting back outside. He groped for the light switch and snapped it up, flooding the foyer in the 100-watt glare of the bulb—

And the shape against the wall became Jinnie, Kath’s Cabbage Patch doll. Scott laughed, a little hysterically. To him Kath’s doll—with its stubby hands and wattled moon face—looked like a deformed Lilliputian in the death throes of radiation poisoning. What attracted people to these dolls escaped him...yet for the past several years they’d been selling like hotcakes. Kath loved hers, pretended it was her own little child, even took it to bed with her. Scott guessed she’d leaned it here on Sunday morning and then forgotten it, though he couldn’t remember having seen it here before now. He wondered if Kath was missing it.