The Hellfire Club

by Peter Straub

  She said nothing.

  “If you go by this article, the only criminal in Westerholm is me, and can you guess what they say I am? Go on, take a stab at it.”

  “A murderer?”

  “A serial killer! Are they so brain-dead they can’t tell the difference between me and some psycho who goes around killing people at random?” Indignation brought a flush to the side of his face he had not made up. “They’re insulting me in print!”

  “I don’t really—”

  Dart pointed the makeup applicator at her like a knife. “Serial killers are scum. Even Ted Bundy was a nothing from a completely insignificant family of nowhere Seattle nobodies.”

  He was breathing hard.

  “I see,” Nora said.

  “What’s the point of doing anything if they’re going to twist it around? What about credit where credit is due?”

  She nodded.

  “Here’s another lie. They say I’m an accused serial killer. Excuse me, but when did that happen? I was brought into the station because of the allegations of a drunken whore, I spent about twelve hours with Leo Morris, but when during all that time was I accused? This is libel.”

  She kept her eyes on his.

  “Work like mad, put yourself in constant danger, accomplish things the ordinary jerk couldn’t even dream of, and they go out and peddle these lies about you. It makes me so mad!”

  “Do they have any idea of where we are? What about the car?”

  “For what it’s worth, it says here that the fugitive and his hostage—hostage, that’s a good one—fled in the hostage’s car, which was later discovered in the parking lot of a restaurant stop on I-95. Probably they do know about that old asshole’s Lincoln. I was going to get a new car tonight anyhow.” He picked up the makeup bottle and threw the newspaper at her. “Serial killer.”

  She sat back on her haunches. “What are you going to do?”

  He dipped the applicator back into the jar of makeup, positioned the mirror in front of him, and started working on the right side of his face. “We’re going to change into new clothes and pack up. Early tomorrow, we’re going to await the arrival of a weary traveler, kill him, and steal his car. Move to another motel. Sometime before noon tomorrow, we’ll locate Dr. Foil. After that, we’ll journey on to Northampton and pay a call on Everett Tidy, son of poor Bill.”

  He replaced the cap on the bottle and offered his face for inspection. “What do you think?”

  From the neck up, he was a different, younger man who might have been a doctor. Nurses would have flirted with him, gossiped about him. “Remarkable,” she said.

  He reached across the table for the rope and the duct tape.

  51

  NORA RETURNED TO her body. Perhaps her body returned to her. The process was unclear. From an indefinite realm, she had fallen into a damp bed already occupied by a large male body sweating alcoholic fumes. Her body was sweating, too. She raised a tingling hand to wipe her forehead, and the hand jerked to a halt before it reached her face, restrained by a tight pressure encircling her wrist. On examination this proved to be a rope. The rope extended beneath the inert body of the man, whom Nora could remember linking them wrist to wrist as she passed through the interior of cloud after cloud. She was back with Dick Dart, and she was having the second hot flash of her life. A nice mixture of demons in high good humor squatted around the bed, sniggering and muttering in their rat-tat-tat voices.

  A man half visible in the darkness crossed his legs ankle to knee in a chair near the window. She looked more closely at the man and saw that her father had found a way to join her in this netherworld.

  Daddy, she said.

  This is a pretty pickle you’re in, said her father. Seems to me you could use a little good advice from your old man right about now.

  Don’t wake him up. You’re talking too loud.

  Hey, this clown can’t hear me. He drank most of that bottle of vodka, remember? That guy’s out cold. But even stone-cold sober, he wouldn’t be able to hear either one of us.

  I miss you.

  That’s why I’m here.

  Nora began to cry. I need you.

  Honey, the person you need is Nora. You got lost, and now you have to find yourself again.

  I don’t even have a self anymore. I’m dead.

  Listen to me, sweetie. That pile of horse manure did the worst thing to you he could think of because he wants to break you down, but it didn’t work, not all the way. Forget this dead business. If you were dead, you wouldn’t be talking to me.

  Why not? You’re dead, too.

  You’re not as easy to kill as Dick Dart thinks you are. You’re going to get through it, but to do that you have to go through it. It’s hard, and I wish it didn’t have to be this way, but sometimes you have to take an awful bitter pill.

  The form facing her in the chair, one ankle on the opposite knee, had been gradually coming clearer in the darkness, and now she could make out his plaid shirt open over the flash of a white T-shirt, the vertical red stripes of his suspenders, his work boots. His close-cropped white hair glimmered. She fastened on his beloved, familiar face, the clear eyes fanned with deep wrinkles and the heavily lined forehead. Here was Matt Curlew, her strong capable steady father, looking back at her with a mixture of tenderness and authority which pierced her heart.

  It’s too much, she said.

  You can come through. You have to.

  I can’t.

  He folded his hands together on top of his raised leg and leaned forward.

  Okay, maybe I can. But I don’t want to.

  Of course not. Nobody wants to go all the way through. Some people, they’re never even asked to do it. You might say those are pretty lucky people, but the truth is, they never had the chance to stop being ignorant. You know what a soul is, Nora? A real soul? A real soul is something you make by walking through fire. By keeping on walking, and by remembering how it felt.

  I’m not strong enough.

  This time, you get to do it right. Last time you got hurt as bad as this, you closed your eyes and pretended it didn’t happen. Inside you, there are a lot of doors you shut a long time ago. What you have to do is open those doors.

  I don’t understand.

  Just let yourself remember. Start with this. Remember one summer when you were nine or ten and I taught you all those knots? Remember doing the half hitch? The slipknot?

  Tying knots when she was ten years old? The present Nora had never been ten years old.

  You were sitting on that stump in the backyard, the one from the oak that fell down during that hellacious storm.

  Then she did remember: the smooth white surface of the stump, her tomboy self fooling with a length of rope she had unearthed in the garage, her father wandering up to ask if she wanted to learn some fancy knots. Then the pleasure of discovering how a random-seeming series of loops magically resolved into a pattern. She had badgered him for weeks, showed off at the kitchen table, impressed various boys, absorbed by one of those childish fascinations which last a season and then disappear for good.

  I remember.

  What was the best one? You used it to tie up Lobo.

  The witch’s curse?

  The guy who taught it to me called it the witch’s headache. Probably has a dozen names. If you tie it right, nobody who doesn’t know the trick can ever undo it. From what I can see, your friend Dick Dart tried to put a witch’s headache on your wrist, but he doesn’t know as much about knots as he does about cosmetics.

  Nora looked down at the complication on her wrist, as solid as a bracelet and intricate as a maze. Something about the pattern was misshapen.

  You can get out of that contraption in a couple of seconds. You see how?

  Nora tugged here and there with her free hand, gently loosening the web, then slowly drew the end of the rope from under a strand, unwound it from around her wrist, and passed it beneath another strand. The knot sagged into a series of loops from which she could e
asily slide her hand.

  Now tie it all back up again with that stupid mistake where he missed the choke.

  But I can get away!

  You’re not done yet, honey. You have to stick with this animal for a while, then you’ll be able to go through with what you have to do.

  I don’t know what you’re talking about!

  I wish I could guarantee you it’ll all turn out the way it should, but can anybody ever promise that? Don’t worry about the knot—it’ll tie itself, and miss the choke, too.

  I suppose you think this is easy.

  Nothing about this is easy. Go all the way through it, honey. This time go all the way through.

  Nora watched the rope slither twice around her wrist, create a loop, wind around, slip beneath a strand and through the loop, miss the essential hitch, and tuck itself into the web. When she looked up, her father said, I love you, Sunshine. You’re one hell of a girl.

  Help me, she said, but the chair was empty.

  52

  FAINT GRAY LIGHT touched the edge of the curtains. The last time she had looked at them, she had seen darkness, so she had slept. Dart had planned a busy day, and she was supposed to stop him. She could not stop Dick Dart. A thick membrane made of transparent rubber surrounded her, stealing her will, robbing her of the power to act. Within the membrane, she could do no more than follow orders and utter occasional remarks. Matt Curlew had come to her in a dream and shown her that Dart couldn’t tie the witch’s headache, but he knew nothing about the membrane.

  Dart lay on his side, turned away from her. Experimentally, she put her hand on his shoulder. He rolled over to face her, his bloodshot eyes gleaming. “Need an early start today. Get any sleep?” His breath smelled like burning tires.

  “A little, I guess.”

  He sat up and pulled her wrist onto his broad thigh. “Don’t suppose you made any little efforts to untie that knot while I was out.”

  “I touched it, that’s all.”

  “Ooh, Nora, you excite me.” He giggled. “This knot, you try to get out of it, it tightens up on you. Called the devil’s conundrum. Watch this.” He tugged at a strand, passed it beneath another, and the knot dissolved. “Need two hands to make it work. If you try it, you’ll cut off most of the circulation to your hand.”

  If you tied it right, that is, she thought. Inside the bubble, she made a ghostly smile.

  He looked at his watch. “The first thing I want you to do is pack everything in your suitcase, leaving out one of the new T-shirts and jeans. I have to fix your face and hair. Then we’re going to keep our eyes on the parking lot.” He patted her face. “If I say so myself, I improved your looks about a thousand percent. Don’t you agree? Don’t you have to admit that your rescuer from Durance Vile is a genius?”

  “You’re a genius,” Nora said.

  Dart jumped out of bed and spun around. “I’m a genius, I was born a genius, I always will be a genius, and I have never done anything wrong! Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for a man who can truly be said to be one of a kind, the great one, the maestro, Mr. RIIICH-ARD DART!”

  He flapped a hand at Nora, and she clapped twice.

  “Hustle your fine little buns into the bathroom and brush your teeth. Void your bowels. Enjoy a lengthy urination. While I do the same, get your shit packed. Time’s a-wasting.”

  Nora had folded all the new clothes into the suitcase, slid the unopened packets of soap and bath cream down the sides, jammed in the mouthwash, and begun placing all the makeup and beauty-care equipment on top of the pile. After packing his own clothes twice as well as she in half the time, Dart stopped admiring himself in the mirror to check her progress. “Didn’t your mother teach you anything? You can’t put that stuff in your suitcase, for God’s sake.”

  “Where do you want me to put it?”

  He winked at her. “Little surprise.” He opened the closet door, took from the shelf a black leather handbag with a golden snap, and danced toward her. “Gucci, you will observe. Testimonial to your invaluable assistance.”

  “I didn’t see you buy this.”

  “Took advantage of the trusting inattention of the salesladies at our second stop. Fit neatly into the bag from the first emporium.”

  Nora scooped the bottles, cases, and containers into the bag and snapped it shut.

  “Let’s find our victim,” Dart said.

  53

  “A LOT OF people think traveling salesmen died out with Willy Loman, but the world is full of guys with their backseats full of sample cases and catalogs. Travel these huge territories, two or three states, the whole Northeast. Drive high-end Detroit iron and pull into joints like this too tired to fight.”

  Standing on the balcony a few feet from Dart, Nora rubbed her bare arms. Condensation shone on the empty cars beneath them, and the windows of Home Cooking were dark. The headlights of a dark green sedan on the side of the lot shone on a cement planter in which geraniums wilted in a carpet of cigarette butts.

  “Idiot’s battery is going to die before he gets his ass out of bed,” Dart said. “Some people shouldn’t be allowed to drive.”

  “You’re sure someone’s going to come in?”

  “Dick Dart’s word is his bond,” he said in a booming voice. “If Dick Dart tells you something, you can take that motherfucker to the motherfucking bank.”

  A car veered into the exit. “What did I tell you?” Dart pulled her into the room and looked back at the car, which drove past the entrance to the lot. “Cheapskate’s looking for a place costs five bucks less a night.” He dropped Nora’s arm and stepped back out onto the balcony. “Let’s see some action here, people. Haven’t got all day.”

  He shoved his hands in his pockets and rose onto the balls of his feet. He patted the top of the balcony rail with his fingertips. “Still can’t get over that serial killer thing.” For a minute or two, he paced up and down on the narrow balcony. “Let’s take our bags downstairs.”

  Nora carried her suitcase in one hand, and with her other arm clutched to her chest the bags from the hardware store and liquor store. Draped over these was Dart’s bulging suit bag.

  They carried their things past an empty desk. “No conception of service left in this country. We’re turning into Nigeria.” He crammed himself into the revolving door, swore, swung it around, and disappeared from view, leaving Nora to solve the problem of the revolving door by herself. She had to struggle around twice to move everything outside. Once, she would have fled through the hotel and escaped, but the person she was now could not do that” she had been punished too much, and the transparent membrane protected her from further punishment.

  Dart was standing beneath the marquee. “Get over here in case one of those morons actually deigns to work the desk.” He pulled keys from his jacket pocket and displayed them on his palm. “These things cost something, but hey, they just work here, it’s not their money.” He tossed them into the cement planter. “That thing is supposed to add some beauty to the place, and what do people do? Turn it into an ashtray. First of all, they smoke, as if nobody ever told them they’re begging for lung cancer, and then they throw their butts into a planter. Anybody can stop smoking. Used to smoke four packs a day, and I stopped. What happened to self-control? Fuck self-control—what happened to simple consideration for others?”

  Nora watched dark outlines speed down the highway against the brightening sky.

  “Isn’t there any work ethic left in this country?”

  Nora looked at the car with its lights burning and made out a shape behind the wheel.

  “Come on, Nora. Can’t do everything by myself. Wind it up, cross your fingers, turn the key, do whatever the hell you do.”

  “I don’t do anything.”

  “Do you . . .” He stopped talking and looked at her, blinking rapidly. “If that dodo left his lights on, maybe he left his keys in his car.”

  He walked out from under the canopy, bent to look into the car, and ran towar
d it, pulling the revolver from his jacket pocket.

  Nora pressed the heavy suit bag to her eyes and waited for the explosion. Dart’s shoes thudded on the asphalt and came to a stop. She heard his dirty bow-wow-wow laugh.

  She lowered the bags. Dart was blowing her a kiss from beside the open car door. “Goddamn it, Nora, you deserve a bonus.”

  She moved toward him.

  “Ta da!” Dart stepped aside to reveal an obese male body slumped behind the wheel. A yellow tie had been yanked sideways, and the first four buttons of the shirt had been torn off.

  “Heart attack, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Looks that way,” Nora said.

  “Butterball here’s about fifty pounds overweight, and the inside of his car reeks of cigarettes.” He touched the corpse’s flabby cheek. “This bag of shit drove in about a minute before we went out onto the balcony, turned off his car, and dropped dead before he could switch off his lights. He’s been here all along! Put down that stuff and give me a hand.”

  Dart kneeled on the passenger seat, wrapped his arms around the dead man’s chest, and yanked him sideways. Nora bent down and pushed. Her hands sank into the soft body.

  “Jesus, Nora, you’ve handled dead bodies before. You can’t wimp out on me now.”

  Nora put her shoulder into the dead man’s side. “Push!”

  The body tumbled into the passenger seat.

  Dart tossed the keys over the top of the car. “Put the bags in the trunk.”

  Obedient Nora opened the trunk and laid the suit bag across cartons and boxes. Then she got in the backseat and Dart accelerated backwards, braked, and shot toward the front of the hotel. The dead man’s head rolled sideways. They jammed the rest of the bags into the trunk and backseat. The knives between his feet, Dart rolled chuckling toward the exit. Then he braked and leaned toward the corpse.