Ariel

by Lawrence Block

  Everything changes.

  I am the Pied Piper of Hamelin. I am still me but different. My golden hair is gone. Instead my hair is black and short and cut like Joan of Arc. And I am dressed like Robin Hood and I have leather slippers with pointed turned-up toes. And I am carrying a huge apple pie in one hand. I know that’s not what Pied Piper means but when I first heard the story years ago I imagined him carrying a pie and that’s how it is in the dream.

  I am carrying a pie in one hand and I have my flute in my other hand and I am playing one-handed, playing fast scrambly music that keeps curving in on itself. And I am going out through the rathole door and all the little children are following me. Thousands of children.

  And all of them following me. I can see from high up, I can look back over all of us, and the parade of little children goes on forever. We are going through a long tunnel that goes on and on.

  The tunnel is a sewer. There is water in the tunnel and the little children are crying because they are getting wet. And I play my flute faster and faster. The pie is gone. I don’t know what happened to the pie, but I am holding the flute with both hands and playing as fast as I can, faster and faster and faster, and I am dancing around in a wild little circle and my slippers have hooves on them like a goat, and I play and I dance, and the children are crying.

  And then they are not crying but squealing, and I turn and look, and all of the little children have turned into mice and rats. I turned them into mice and rats with my playing. And the water is too deep for them and they are drowning.

  All of the little children are rats and they are drowning.

  And I almost wake up.

  In fact I think maybe I did wake up then but slipped back into the dream. I can’t be sure.

  Again she stopped and capped the pen. She scanned the last paragraphs, started to close the notebook, then sighed heavily and began writing again.

  I might as well write the rest of it. I’m scared but I’ll write it anyway. I can always tear it up later.

  Just as the children were drowning and I almost woke up, suddenly I was back in the dream but I was also back in Caleb’s room. I had my own hair this time and I was me.

  Ariel.

  I didn’t have the flute anymore. I don’t know what happened to it.

  Caleb was sleeping in his bed. And he just looked so beautiful.

  Sound asleep.

  And I was Ariel and Caleb both at the same time. I was him sleeping in the crib and me looking into it.

  And I can’t explain this.

  And my hands went in between the bars of the crib. Each hand went between a different pair of bars. And the part of me that was Caleb saw the hands even though my eyes were closed but just went on lying there.

  And one of my Ariel-hands went over my Caleb-mouth.

  And the other Ariel-hand went over the Caleb-nose.

  And Caleb couldn’t breathe and tried to struggle and tried to move and couldn’t move because Ariel’s hands pinched his nose shut and covered his mouth.

  And it just went on forever.

  And then Caleb couldn’t move anymore. The Caleb part of me just winked out like a lightbulb and there was just the Ariel part of me plus the part looking down from the ceiling and watching.

  It was a dream!

  It never happened. Nothing like this ever happened. I don’t know where the dream came from. I don’t know where dreams come from. They don’t mean anything. Everybody has dreams and all dreams are crazy and they do not mean anything.

  I had to write this down. I don’t ever want to read it but I had to write it down.

  I can’t tell anybody about this. I couldn’t tell Erskine even.

  I don’t know what to do. I’m scared.

  No that’s silly it’s all right it’s just a dream.

  She sat there for several minutes trying to think of something else to write. But there was nothing else to write. She capped her pen and closed her notebook and returned both of them to her schoolbag.

  She got into bed, pulled the covers up. She reached to extinguish the lamp, then changed her mind and left it burning. She stretched out and closed her eyes but they wouldn’t stay shut. They kept opening.

  EIGHT

  The announcer on ORU, the Belgian overseas station, was commenting at length on the outcome of a recent OPEC meeting in Brussels. Erskine switched off the radio and yawned theatrically. “Boring,” he said, giving the word a singsong inflection. “Bow. Ring.”

  “Maybe I should go home.”

  “Maybe you should take off all your clothes, Jardell.”

  She looked at him, shook her head. “You just have to be gross every once in a while to prove you’re alive, don’t you?”

  “It’s not grossness, Ariel. It’s the heat of passion.”

  “If I did take my clothes off you wouldn’t know what to do.”

  “I’d think of something.”

  “Your little old rheumatic heart would conk out and I’d have to explain it to your mother.”

  “I told you I was willing to risk it. You could just tell my mother I ran up the stairs again.”

  “She’d say, ’I just knew it was a mistake to let him live in the attic.’ ”

  “That’s what she’d say. Want to give it a try?”

  She sighed. “You don’t even want to.”

  “Then why do I keep asking you?”

  “Habit, probably. You started off trying to gross me out and now you’re stuck in a rut. You don’t really want to, do you? With me, I mean.”

  He started to reply, then took a moment to think. She watched his eyes through the thick lenses. “I guess not,” he said at length.

  “Because we’re friends?”

  “Right. We’re friends, and we sort of know each other, and all that. I know who I’d like to screw.”

  “Who? Wait, let me guess. Carol Bahnsen.”

  “Ugh.”

  “Oh, I know. Veronica, right?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “Veronica Doughty. I just knew it.”

  “How?”

  “Woman’s intuition. Suppose you got to be friends with her first?”

  “I wouldn’t get to be friends with her. (A) she doesn’t like me and (B) she’s stupid. But you’re right, I’d like to do it to her.”

  “I knew she was the one.”

  “And afterward I’d have to kill her.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, because she’s so stupid, Ariel. And because she’s stuck up and a snot.”

  She’s a snot, all right.”

  “And to keep her from telling anybody. I’m just talking. I wouldn’t really kill her.”

  “But you’d like to.”

  “Sure.”

  “Does it bother you?”

  “What?”

  “Thinking about killing people.”

  He shook his head. “I wouldn’t really kill anybody. But there are a lot that I’d like to kill. Sometimes it’s fun to think about it.”

  “Who would you like to kill?”

  “Well, Veronica.”

  “Who else?”

  “Maybe Mrs. Tashman.”

  “Tashman? Why her?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes she’s like my mother. The way she talks. You know, so sincere that you know she’s not really sincere.”

  “I think she’s nice. She came to Caleb’s funeral.”

  “Okay, then we’ll let her live. I’ll tell you who I’d like to kill. Graham Littlefield.”

  “Why Graham?”

  “Because he’s tall and strong and athletic and popular and stupid. He’s really stupid.”

  “He’s not that stupid.”

  “I think he’s stupid.”

  “You’re jealous.”

  “I don’t get jealous of stupid people, Jardell.”

  “Veronica likes him.”

  “So I’ll kill both of them. This is a stupid conversation, speaking of stupidity. Who do you want to kill?”

/>   “Oh, nobody,” she said airily. “I love the whole world.”

  “Come on, play the game.”

  “Roberta.”

  “Your mother? Why?”

  “Because she’s not my mother. Because she hates me. Because she thinks—”

  “Thinks what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What were you going to say, Ariel?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “This is a stupid conversation, anyway. I’m sick of it.”

  “Well, let’s talk about something else, then. Sex and killing are out. How about the OPEC conference in Brussels? There’s a thrilling topic.”

  “Do you ever have dreams?”

  “Dreams? Why?”

  “I was just wondering.”

  “I sometimes dream that I’m naked and people are looking at me. It’s not the same dream each time. The people’ll be different from one dream to the next, and the scenes, but I don’t have any clothes on and they’re staring at me. It’s stupid.”

  “Do you ever have dreams that you’re afraid of?”

  “It’s not much fun, dreaming you’re naked and people are staring and pointing. I don’t have the dream too often.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  He took off his glasses and squinted at her. “Something’s bothering you,” he said.

  “No.”

  “You had a bad dream, right?”

  She shrugged.

  “Last night?”

  “A few nights ago.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “I don’t remember it,” she said. “It was just frightening, that’s all. I don’t remember any of what happened in it.”

  “Maybe you’ll dream it again.”

  She gave him a sharp look, then shrugged again. “Maybe,” she said. “Anyway, it’s no big deal. It’s just a dream.”

  There was a strong wind blowing when she left Erskine’s house. She zipped her jacket all the way up and turned up the collar, then walked along briskly with her hands plunged into her jacket pockets. She thought of how she and Erskine had killed people in their conversation. And about her dream.

  She wasn’t sure how much she could tell him, how much she wanted to tell him. He was weird, and had crazy thoughts of his own, and maybe this would make him capable of accepting the kind of thoughts she found herself having. And they were friends, and that certainly made a difference.

  But at the same time she wasn’t a hundred percent sure of him. They were friends, true, but sometimes she had the feeling that all the people in the world, herself included, were interesting specimens as far as Erskine was concerned. He was a scientist, cool and detached, watching them all through a microscope.

  Maybe it was the thick glasses that did it, she thought. They kept him remote and a ways apart. When he took them off he looked vulnerable.

  She turned the corner, felt the full force of the wind, drew her shoulders together in defense. Maybe there was nothing to tell him to begin with. Maybe what she’d said at the end was true enough, maybe dreams really didn’t mean anything.

  And what could the dream mean, anyway?

  That she had wanted to kill Caleb? That was crazy, because she loved Caleb. Of course it was possible that a part of her mind had hated him or been jealous of him or something like that. It was common for kids to resent younger brothers and sisters out of jealousy. She knew that. And it was possible to have that kind of thought buried inside you and not even know it was there. She knew that, too.

  So? If nothing had happened to Caleb, the thought wouldn’t have been worth rooting out and thinking about. But Caleb was dead, and that made her worry about the thought, and feel guilty about it, as if the thought had killed him. But thoughts didn’t have magic powers. Thinking never killed anybody. If she had wanted Caleb to die, in some hidden secret chamber of her mind, the desire hadn’t had anything to do with his actual death.

  She thought of the game she and Erskine had played. He could talk about killing Veronica, or Graham Littlefield, and it didn’t mean anything. It was just talk. If one of them died tomorrow, hit by a car or struck by lightning or perishing mysteriously of that rare ailment, Bed Death, it still didn’t mean it was Erskine’s fault or that he should blame himself for what he’d said.

  And as far as Caleb was concerned, she hadn’t said anything, or even had a conscious thought on the subject. All she’d had was a dream, and nobody really knew what dreams meant in the first place.

  So why was she upset?

  Because she was afraid of what the dream meant. Because maybe it didn’t just have to do with secret thoughts. Because maybe, just maybe, it had to do with secret acts—oh, stop it.

  She shivered, and blamed the chill that went through her on the wind.

  She was just turning the corner onto her own street when she saw a car pull up in front of her house. The door on the passenger side opened and Roberta got out. Instinctively, Ariel drew back into the cover of a clump of barberry bushes. She watched as Roberta turned to say something to the driver, straightened up, swung the car door shut. The car remained stationary until Roberta had gone up the steps and opened the front door of the house. Then it continued down the block toward where Ariel was waiting.

  It was a Buick with a maroon body and a black vinyl landau roof. The driver was a man, and there was something familiar about him but the car was past her and out of sight before she could fix his features firmly in her mind. Who was he and where had she seen him before? She couldn’t remember.

  DWE-628. That was the license number. South Carolina license, and the number was DWE-628.

  DWE-628. She didn’t have Erskine’s memory for numbers. He seemed to remember them effortlessly—telephone numbers, license plates, the frequencies of radio stations. She was good at math but remembering numbers was something else again.

  DWE-628. She repeated it to herself, concentrating firmly on it, and when she got to her house she went directly to her room, not pausing for a word with Roberta, not wanting to chance forgetting the number. DWE-628. She got to her room, opened her diary, uncapped her pen, and wrote it down.

  DWE-628.

  NINE

  JEFF opened his eyes. He was lying on his back on a king-size bed in a Days Inn motel just off I-26. The air was cool on his bare skin. He raised his head from the pillow and watched Roberta, who was sitting a few yards away in a teak-and-vinyl armchair reading a book. Smoke rose from the cigarette she held in her right hand. One leg was bent sharply, its foot propped on the cushion of the chair, and one shoulder was also held at a sharp angle; he was reminded of a couple of pictures from Picasso’s blue period—the guitar player, the woman ironing. Her body displayed that attitude.

  He continued to watch her, enjoying the moment, until she evidently felt his eyes on her nude body and turned to meet them. “Look who’s awake,” she said.

  “I guess I was sleeping."”

  “No kidding.”

  “What time is it? Was I sleeping long?”

  “It’s past two. I already had my shower.”

  “I never even heard the water running.”

  “Well, you wouldn’t have heard World War Three,” she said. “You were really out. I’ll never understand why sex wakes women up and puts men to sleep. Whoever worked out the natural order of things seems to have screwed up there, wouldn’t you say?”

  “It’s handy for men who work a night shift. They go home, make love, and the little wifey gets up and starts in on the housework.”

  “Trust you to see the bright side. The silver lining. Incidentally, who cares if every cloud has a silver lining? You still can’t get a peek at the goddamned sun through it.”

  “I keep forgetting what a literal-minded sort you are. What are you reading?”

  “The Bible. What else do you do in a motel room? Just commit adultery and read the Bible.”

  “Do you think of this as adultery?”

  She turned toward him, crossed one l
eg over the other. “Well, what else would you call it? I don’t think of it as a sin, if that’s what you mean.”

  “That’s what I meant.”

  “Well, I don’t. This book would tend to disagree with me, however. The Living Bible. That’s what it seems to call itself. Evidently the good old King James version is the Dead Bible.”

  “What is it, modern English?”

  “Modern and not terribly grammatical.” She closed the book, put it down on the lamp table. “If you’re going to read a Bible it ought to be full of thees and thous and begats. When it starts to sound like the host of a morning television talk show it loses me completely. The mystery is gone, and then what’s left?”

  “Like when they took the Latin out of the Mass.”

  “That’s right, you’re Catholic. I tend to forget that.”

  “Lapsed Catholic. And I can’t blame it on Vatican Two, either. I was gone before they changed the Mass. We’d better get going, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose so. You want to take a shower, don’t you? Or do you want to carry my spoor back to Elaine?”

  “Your spoor. Like some jungle beast.”

  “That’s the idea.”

  He showered thoroughly but quickly, toweled dry, and emerged to find her already dressed. “And now the gentleman puts on his clothes,” she intoned, “and the charming couple will be on their way. The gentleman will return to his office—you are going back to your office?”

  “Yes.”

  “—while the lady goes back to her haunted house. God.”

  “It bothers you, doesn’t it?”

  “More than ever. I’m lving in a hostile environment. Getting away from it just makes me aware of how unpleasant it is. I spend a couple of hours with you in this room or one like it and it’s neutral, it’s uncomplicated and safe. Then I walk through that door and there’s a presence in that house that hits me like a two-by-four between the eyes. Haven’t you felt it yourself?”

  He shook his head. “But I don’t have to live with it,” he said. “And I haven’t really been inside your house except for the first time.”

  “And you don’t have to live with her.”

  “You mean Ariel.”

  “Obviously. Who else?”

  In the car, heading back into town, he said, “You hardly ever call her by name, have you noticed that? It’s always she or her or the child.” “I’m aware of it.”