Time Out of Mind (79 page)
Authors: John R. Maxim
Tags: #Horror, #General, #Psychological, #Suspense, #Memory, #Thrillers, #Fiction, #Time Travel
The part where he thought he was dead came when he
saw this batty old lady put a big long spike against his
temple and then pound it with a mallet until the spike went
through and nailed him to the rug. That's what it felt like,
too. His body could still move—he could feel it being
jerked and tugged—but not his head. Hands were going
through his coat pockets and patting down his belt and his
legs all the way to his ankles. Then someone kicked him.
Lesko wasn't sure who because there were so many people
floating around all of a sudden.
Is he dead?
He heard a woman's voice.
I don't think so. Not yet, anyway.
Asshole. That's the guy Burke. Shows how much you
know. The old dame had a good question because one of f
aces floating around looked like Corbin until·Leskò
noticed he was dressed like the guy in the hotel picture. He
was drifting in real close and looking worried, then he looks
up at the old lady and he shows his teeth—he got good
teeth too—then he looks back down and reaches for
Lesko's head like he's trying to fix it. But right there behind him is Lesko's ex-partner, Dave Katz, speaking of holes in
the head, and he was saying to the Tilden guy how he
shouldn't worry because Polacks got heads like truck tires
and they're just as empty inside. Yeah. Right. But that's
better than being full of dog shit like yours is, you stupid
Hebe. You could have talked to me. You should have
trusted your partner. I would have helped you fix it then
instead of later. I did fix it, you know. Did you know that? Two less fucking Bolivians. You run into them there where
you are, give 'em another kick in the balls for good mea
sure.
Ohhh, Jesus. His head. They picked it up and stuck
something cold and slippery under it. A magazine. She's
worried about her rug. Sorry, lady. I'd have made it to your
bathroom if I could. At least I'd be closer to a drink of
water.
There was more talk but Lesko could only get pieces of it from far away. His fifteen thousand. He could kiss that
off. Then something about his notes, and something else
about the old dame's brother and a gun. A while later,
Lesko wasn't sure how long, it struck him again that he
might be dead because now it was him who was floating.
He was flying. He was flapping his arms and he was hovering right in front of Dancer, who was grunting and gasping like he was trying to move a couch up a flight of stairs. Wait. They were moving him outside. It must be because
Lesko felt cold and snow was hitting him in the face. He opened his mouth to get some of it on his tongue, but they
twisted him away and threw him into a thing that smelled
like oil and rust and old rubber—a trunk. Mr. Makowski's
trunk. It had to be. Who else's car would
stink like this.
Lesko knew for sure when he heard the ignition and felt
the whole car quiver with effort until a blast from its exhaust exploded under his head like a firecracker in a metal
drum. He felt his body press forward as the car hissed down
the long driveway, and he banged his head once more as it
braked at the gate before turning left onto Round Hill Road.
It was so cold. He heard voices through the ringing in his
ears. Arguing voices. Dancer. Lesko groped in the dark
ness, feeling for something he could use, a jack handle
maybe, if his fingers were still working when they opened
up the trunk again.
The drive back toward Greenwich from Lyndhurst was ag
onizingly slow, but Jonathan Corbin would never remember
it. He would not remember the two accident scenes he'd
come upon, or the spin-out of another car, which he'd
caused in avoiding it, or the state policeman who'd tried to
flag him down and had to leap for his life across a guardrail.
The storm through which he was burrowing was nothing
compared to the one inside his head. Both Tilden's emo
tions and his own whipped and twisted in a maelstrom of
visions. On Tilden's part, though it was hard to separate
them fully, Corbin felt the same sting of torn knuckles, the
burning face and ribs, the numbness of forearms and kidneys that he'd felt that day in the garage under the Drake
Hotel. He understood that Tilden was with him then as well, but he did not know why nor did he dwell on it.
extended both his arms he could feel cold brick walls on
three sides and a door of steel and planking on the fourth.
He knew it was a jail cell because his ankle was attached
to an iron bed by a length of chain just long enough to let
him reach the wooden bowl of some kind of stew and the
small pail of water that were shoved through a trap door
once each day. How many bowls had there been? Ten, at
least. Perhaps twice that number. The scabs on his cuts had
fallen off, their healing work done, but his voice was gone
from the screaming and raging he had done at the sound
of other distant voices and at the opening and slamming of
other doors. Gould had done this to him. There had been
no trial, no judge, probably no charges, either. Gould had called some friendly constable or deputy and had him buried alive.
Margaret. What could she be thinking? She, and perhaps
Laura as well, afraid to go abroad in Greenwich and just
as afraid to remain unseen by that idiot with his camera.
What fears must be working upon her mind? That I am
dead as well as buried? That I have abandoned her? Go to
her, Jonathan. Tell her I am safe and well. Tell her that I
will come home again.
Corbin tried to shake away this pleading voice. The
memories were one thing, the voice another. He could ac
cept that since his birth he'd carried visions of the things Tilden Beckwith had seen and felt, but the soul he carried was his own, not Tilden's, and the voice must therefore be
the invention of his mind. He was having his own visions,
and they troubled him more than Tilden's ancient memo
ries. The frightened woman he was seeing was Gwen Leamas, not Margaret Barrie, except that she wore a dress that
made her look like Margaret but for the color of her hair.
She was standing in the doorway of his house, of Laura
Hemmings's house, and she was peering into the night at
two men who stood in the driveway—Harry Sturdevant and
the one from yesterday, the one in black who seemed to
keep appearing everywhere they walked; he was back again
and he had a rifle in his hands and he was staring back at
her with a terror that only the face of death should have
caused. Get to her, Jonathan. Get there quickly.
Corbin cleared his eyes and focused once more on the
road, but then other faces drifted up into his field of vision. One man, rough-looking, like the one called Bigelow. And just like Bigelow in Corbin’s last memory of him, this one
was lying with his face against the floor and he had crooked
little streams of blood running across it. Corbin bent closer.
He knew that face. He'd seen it yesterday, Saturday. When
he and Gwen had just left her apartment building and a
corner cigar store changed into a saloon called O'Neill's
and this man was watching them through its window. Then
he'd seen him again this morning, he thought.
No. He`d f
elt him. When he and Gwen left her apartment the second
time after picking up her things and he felt that this face
was still watching them, but Corbin shrugged it off because h
e seemed to know that this man was not a threat. Maybe it was Tilden who knew that.
But he knew differently about these other faces. There was another Bigelow type. This one had gray hair worn in
a crew cut and a face that was both cruel and stupid. And
there was a little miniature of a man who was perspiring sort of awkwardly, as if sweat was a new experience for him, and he had a bloodstain on his trouser leg. And a
woman. An old woman. Corbin blinked and looked closer.
If he didn't know better, if he took away fifty years of lines
and wrinkles and put her on a New York street in a snow
storm a hundred years ago ... Never mind. It couldn't be
the same woman.
Except there was Tilden, not in his cell anymore, standing in the middle of the room next to the man on the floor
and looking straight at her, his eyes very cold, and she was
acting as if she could feel him there. She'd stare back, not
directly at Tilden but around him, as if she were search
ing the room for him. Then her eyes dropped to the knob
of the cane she was holding and she touched the blood
on it. The blood must have belonged to the man on the
floor, but she seemed confused about that. She looked up again at the space that Tilden occupied and her eyes grew
wider. She could not see him, Corbin was sure, but she
seemed to feel that he was there. And now Tilden, too, was
bleeding from the head. Her eyes opened wider still. She
remained standing this way long after the other faces were
gone from the room.
To New England, the road sign said.
curved down onto the Connecticut Turnpike. A part of him
wished that his mind could bring summer again so the road
would be faster. He quickly shook off the thought. If the
wish made it happen, he'd find himself with neither the
road nor the Datsun under him. Just keep moving. Just get
back to Gwen. He realized, with a faraway sadness, that it was too late for Margaret. Margaret was gone. She'd been
gone two full days before Teddy Roosevelt knocked on her
door.
”
I cannot just leave,” Margaret answered Laura Hem
mings, “not knowing whether Tilden is dead or alive.”
“
You cannot stay,” Laura insisted. “Look at you.
You're becoming a wreck and you stand a very good
chance of giving yourself away in your condition. All I am
proposing is a vacation far enough that no one could pos
sibly know you, where your fears can mend, and most of
all where your mind will be kept busy.”
“
But Chicago is so far.”
“
Minutes away by telegraph. I will wire you the moment
there is news of him.” The suggestion Laura made, which
she'd couched as a needed favor, was that Margaret and
the child, Jonathan, make a pilgrimage in her stead to the
national headquarters of the Women's Christian Temperance Union at Evanston, a village just north of Chicago.
Laura had been scheduled to go there as a delegate to a
committee that was advocating legislation by Congress pro
hibiting the on-the-job consumption of spirits by railroad
employees. It was an important mission, she argued, but
one that cut dreadfully into her preparations for the opening
of her school that coming fall. Further, Margaret would be
the more suitable delegate. Had she not, after all, lost a
husband in a train wreck caused by drunkenness? Who
could think it amiss if she departed from Greenwich for
such a purpose?
Lucy Stone, the housekeeper, lent her own voice to the argument that the change would do Margaret good. And
Peggy Gannon shared Laura's view that Margaret should
have been elected their delegate in the first place. Margaret
hesitated two more days, even as Laura began packing for
her. Her depression steadily deepened. Nearly a fortnight
had passed without word from Tilden, and Anthony Cornstock was now railing on street corners about the hidden
pustules that still marred the shining face of Greenwich.
Margaret, in turning to avoid him the day before, had nearly collided with Inspector Williams and his wife, who were
walking up Main Street. She felt a burning
on her neck, as
if he had turned and was staring after her. By the day that followed, Margaret had not so much agreed to make the
journey as she'd allowed herself and young Jonathan to be put
aboard the train. Laura gave the conductor a half dollar,
asking him to take care of the poor woman and keep a
special eye on the boy if she dozed. Margaret would do
more than doze, Laura knew. She made her swallow two
full ounces of Dr. King's New Discovery for Pain. By the
time the train reached Albany before turning west, Margaret
could probably have had a tooth extracted without com
plaint.