For Love of Audrey Rose

by Frank De Felitta

  The rounded torso, the long, slender arms, small but firm breasts, the jutting pelvis, the black, completely black hair that flowed nearly to the shoulders, that had a fragrance of its own. In the gloomy interior her face was barely decipherable. An amalgam of shadows and deeper shadows. By her side, Hoover’s hand stirred familiarly in sleep.

  Bill jerked away. In agony he ground tears away with balled fists. He shook all over with a cold he had never experienced before. Long red marks covered his face where his hands dug in. Violently he spun around, found nothing but the frigid night, and pressed his eyes to the window a third time.

  The edge of the bed was crumpled with sheets, soft red blankets, a side of a white bedcover. Janice’s ankles were soft, ivory white in the pale glow of a distant streetlamp.

  “Ekajata!” he whispered fervently. “Za, Damchen Doje! Help me!”

  Had the deities ridden away? Was Pittsburgh the center of a curse? Weeping, Bill backed away, found a door on the landing, and slipped inside the building.

  The tears fell hotly down his cheeks.

  “Hare Krishna!” he murmured desperately.

  But the Lord of Destruction and Creation had flown beyond all hearing. The clinic was polluted, profaned.

  A small blue light nestled in the lower hall. It gave the only light, a glow that extended in an oval over the carpet. He crept to the light and looked in the room.

  Jennie stirred. The soft cheek tinged with blue against the sheets. Bill nestled her in his arms, cradled her, and felt the living warmth against his cheek.

  “My daughter,” he whispered. “My own.”

  No, the deities had not ridden away. They were with him still, and their power was evident, their design clear. They had taken him beyond the crass and mundane realm of earthly deception into the heart of his true and single destiny. Love was no longer Janice. Love moved in his arms, small-limbed, smelling of sleep.

  Bill covered her in blankets, listened. There were no movements in the clinic. Holding Jennie close, he edged sideways through the door, onto the fire escape. For a second, the window to Hoover’s bedroom transfixed him. He smiled, then clutched his child tighter and bounded down the slippery steps.

  28

  Elliot Hoover had a dream.

  He crouched in a cave on the slopes of Mount Everest. Outside, a storm battered the rocks, driving sleet into the cave. He was naked. Suddenly, from the dark interior of the cave came a deity riding a goat. Strings of human skulls bounced against his chest. The goat’s eyes glowed red. Smoke issued upward from the long hair.

  For several seconds Hoover did not realize the telephone rang. Then he stirred, shook his head, and went to his desk by the window.

  “Yes?” he mumbled thickly. “When? No. No sign. Really? To Pittsburgh? I see. Yes, Dr. Geddes. Thank you.”

  He hung up. Mystified, he rubbed his chin. Janice propped herself up on her elbows and saw his nude form, outlined in the gray of the early dawn.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Bill’s escaped.”

  “What?”

  “He went to the apartment.”

  “When?”

  “A few hours ago. The elevator man told him you were here. They think Bill’s on his way.”

  Janice sat up, looked around for her clothes, grabbed them, and without shame, dressed in front of him.

  “Look,” Hoover said. “The roads are blocked in with snow. He’ll never make it.”

  “He’s going to kill us, Elliot.”

  “Now don’t be such an alarmist. He just wants Jennie.”

  Suddenly Janice’s hand went to her mouth. She looked white in the first light of day.

  “Jennie!” she gasped.

  Janice rushed into Jennie’s room. She screamed. Hoover ran in. The bed was empty.

  “He’s got her!” she yelled.

  Hoover ran his hands through the sheets. “Still warm. Look, there’s water on the carpet.”

  They pulled open the door, saw the churned snow all over the fire escape landing. Hoover stared in dismay at the disturbance in front of his own bedroom window.

  Janice backed slowly away from him.

  “Elliot,” she whispered, “He’s seen us!”

  Hoover blanched. “He can’t be far.”

  Hoover dashed into his bedroom, threw on trousers and a sweater, socks and shoes, then ran into Mr. Radimanath’s room. There were feverish whispers, a sleepy man’s grunt. Lights went on in a corridor. Then he ran back to the landing, grabbed Janice’s arm, and they went down the fire escape.

  They saw a clear tangle of footprints leading away from the fire escape to the dining room window, then there was another disturbance of snow at the fence.

  “He climbed the fence!” Hoover exclaimed, quickly unlocking the gate. They ran out into the snow of Tanner Street. Hoover pointed. A long double line of tracks led back to Colman Street.

  At a gritty rectangle in the ground, where the snow was shallow, tread marks of tires had ground deep ruts down to the asphalt.

  “He’s got a car?” Hoover said in disbelief.

  At the side of the road the telephone pole leaned slightly. A streak of white had been gouged into its splintered side, about three feet off the ground.

  “A white car,” Janice added.

  The dug-up snow was an icon of hideous violence. Bits of black rubber melded into the white, blackened by a manic attempt at escape. It was an icon of Bill, of them all, their spiritual nature mutually defiled.

  “We’d better follow him,” he said hesitantly. “Shouldn’t be hard. There are tire tracks, and no traffic yet.”

  But he didn’t move. He stood rooted to the spot, gazing at the tracks of the car, converging in the fresh daylight, narrowing in the distance, toward Colman Street. They hypnotized him. They taunted him, beckoned him, waited for him like a hideous destiny.

  “The snow’s falling again,” he said at last. “The tracks are filling in.”

  He took Janice’s arm and they hurried up Tanner Street, unlocked his Ford, and got in. Mr. Radimanath came, shivering in his robe, to the edge of the road.

  “He has a car,” Hoover shouted, rolling down the window. “It may be white. We’re following. Tell the police when they come.”

  The Ford sputtered into life, the wipers cast off heavy coats of snow, and Hoover slid into Tanner Street. The tires skidded, caught, and skidded again. In the rearview mirror, he saw Mr. Radimanath put his palms together, with a small bow in his direction.

  Hoover turned carefully onto Colman Street.

  “He drove down this way,” he said. “See? He’s following his own tracks out of here.”

  Janice shivered. She tried to coax the heater, but it would not work.

  The shops were still closed. Heavy rills of snow hung down from black roofs, half iced, glittering over brick and tarpaper. At times snow broke, falling in disintegrating clumps on the sidewalks. It was a wonderworld, like the first day of creation. But God had withheld his blessing.

  “Where do you think he’s going?” she asked, warming her fingers in her sweater.

  “Probably just following the plowed roads.”

  “You don’t think he’s going back to New York?”

  “I doubt he knows which direction that is anymore.”

  “Don’t underestimate him, Elliot.”

  He looked at her sharply, surprised at the bitter tone of her voice. Grimly he cleared a circle in the fogging windshield. The car tracks led on, still fresh, tinged with black where the asphalt showed through.

  The snow became softer and fatter, almost a rain.

  “He’ll be going back to the airport,” she said, “if he’s just following his old tracks.”

  “Depends on what happens at Ninety-fifth.”

  The tracks ahead wallowed uncertainly, dug up the snow into a foul mixture of brown-black granite grit, then smoothed out onto Ninety-fifth.

  “That’s where he’s going, all right,” Hoover muttered.


  At Fitzwilliam Street the tires swerved clear across the road. An immense arc had been scraped up over the curb. The snow now was very soft, slushy, and the tracks were melting into shallow undulations up the street. The windshield was spattered by fat drops of rain.

  As they drove up Fitzwilliam Street, a barrier of police cars protected an overturned Volkswagen van. It was blue. The entire front hood was buckled in, the contents spread unevenly up the embankment of the highway. The barriers were being erected, sawhorses hung with red flashing lights, and beyond, the highway was completely clear of snow. A few cars already traveled on the glistening, rain-soaked road, headlights poking into the gloom.

  “Damn!” Hoover exclaimed, trying to see through the fogged windshield.

  Janice leaned forward. “Elliot, there’s a white car!”

  “Where?”

  “Up on the highway. Getting on. It has lights on.”

  “Let’s take a look.”

  But the policeman at the barrier waved his arm vigorously, directing them back down Fitzwilliam Street. Hoover backed the car, then rammed it up onto the steep slope that supported the on-ramp. A suitcase from the van crunched underneath, ground into the mud, and the Ford careened, spitting muddy water and snow over the police cars.

  Suddenly they were on the highway.

  “It’s Bill!”

  Far ahead of them a shining white Dodge, with its side slightly buckled, changed lanes erratically. It seemed to follow no lanes, gliding along rapidly through the downpour, fishtailing, and a mist of cold water flew from the rear wheels.

  The Ford crept closer, now exceeding sixty miles an hour. Glistening lakes of water roared up into the fenders. Hoover peered ahead. Only a single head—Bill’s—was visible at the driver’s wheel.

  Hoover flicked his lights on and off, then tried the high beam. The Dodge cruised serenely on. They saw the head turn to stare at them. The face was lost in the indistinct, murky shadows within the Dodge, but it looked back a long, long time. At the last minute, it turned back and the Dodge jumped away from the restraining barrier at the dividing strip.

  “Where is he going?” Janice cried.

  Slowly, very slowly, Hoover’s hand stopped wiping the sweat from his forehead. His eyes softened, dilated, his whole face radiated an unearthly revelation.

  “I know where he’s going.”

  Hoover swallowed. The Dodge took a sudden off-ramp. The Ford missed the ramp, skidded, spun around on the edge strip; panicked drivers slammed on brakes all over the lanes.

  Hoover glimpsed the Dodge as it plunged into a muddy pool, then shot into an industrial zone, weaving insanely through parking lots, loading zones, and out of culde-sacs.

  “He’s heading for the turnpike. I’m going to cut him off.”

  Hoover drove down a frontage road, past corrugated sheds, then up a long ramp. Down below, the white Dodge careened away from them, past factories and heavy equipment, throwing a violent spray behind.

  Hoover wheeled the Ford onto an overpass, cut past a truck filled with new cars, and heard the mighty horn blast near his ear. A landscape of snow, cut by gashes of brown-red mud, spread into the rural rain. Factories spewed black smoke to the clouds. The whole earth extended in a vista of crude mud, grit, and wet winds.

  Entering the turnpike, the signs diverged, some to Harrisburg, some to Pittsburgh.

  A cold chill invaded Janice’s body.

  “Elliot, isn’t this where Sylvia and Audrey Rose were—”

  “Yes! Here!”

  Hoover peered forward, furiously wiping the windshield. He lowered the side window, a wet chill blew onto them. There was the full sound of wheels slapping against the hard, drenched cement below.

  The rain came now in torrential squalls. Most of the snow was gone. Wisps of cloud rolled through the valleys, disintegrating, reforming, reaching fingers over the icy roadway.

  The white Dodge ploughed through eddies of molten ice on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and Bill smiled.

  “Nobody will bother us ever again,” he exclaimed.

  In the front seat, Jennie shivered, chills shaking her slender shoulders. Bill tucked the blankets around her.

  “Poor darling,” he said. “Daddy is taking you home.”

  Bill glanced into the rearview mirror at a world of gray pools of dirty water, smoke above rows of factory walls, and grimy snow. He was exhausted. He had been without sleep so long that his fingers trembled.

  Instinct had brought him here. But now instinct was confused. Instead, there was a horrifying buzzing in his head.

  “Four-five-nine-no—”

  Bill turned. The sweat poured down his face. His hand calmed Jennie.

  “It’s all right, darling. Daddy’s here.”

  “No-no-no-no—”

  “Yes, yes, it’s Daddy.”

  The Dodge careened along the slick surface at ever-increasing speeds.

  “No-no-no—”

  Frustrated, Bill alternated between looking at the road and at Jennie. Veils of spray roared at the Dodge from traffic. Horns honked as he fought to maintain control.

  “Don’t be frightened, Ivy. I love you.”

  But Jennie squirmed. The chills were disappearing as fast as a fever began to rise. Her cheek quivered. Then the small limbs began to convulse.

  “Ivy, what’s wrong?”

  A smothered gurgle stopped in Jennie’s throat. Panicked, Bill felt her face. It burned with an unnatural heat. He desperately looked around, but heavy freight trucks hemmed him in. Rain blasted at the windshield.

  “D-D-D—” Jennie gasped.

  “Yes, yes, Daddy’s here!”

  A blast of horns, and Bill grabbed the steering wheel. He was driving much too fast, the wheels losing their grip on the curves. But his cold hands, like his feet, felt disconnected from his body.

  He thought he saw the old Ford approaching behind him.

  “D-D-D—”

  “Yes, Daddy’s here, darling! You’ll be all right!”

  But a sudden crimp of muscles arched Jennie’s back. She shook from side to side. Her glazed eyes stared out at the rain. Her throat worked convulsively. Inarticulate syllables lodged there, and when she breathed it sounded like strange words. Bill’s head was dizzy, light, and her voice mingled with the whispers from the fissures of his own fears.

  “Da—Da—Da—”

  “Going home, Ivy. Try to sleep.”

  “No-no-no—”

  Jennie began to twist and turn. The embankment dropped beside the lane. Jennie’s screams merged with the squeal of brakes behind him. Bill fought to keep her down, to keep the blankets around her, but the slender arms pummeled his face and chest.

  “Ivy! You’re burning up! Oh God, Ivy!”

  A cacophony of truck horns, squealing brakes, and automobile horns blasted through the rain. The Dodge hit the center divider.

  Through the windshield he saw the old Ford hard behind as the Dodge tumbled slowly, ever so slowly, it seemed, down the embankment, spitting mud in great arcs over itself, throwing off huge segments of metal and glass. As in a dream, through the mist, he saw the Ford skid to a stop above him, as his own car lifted into the air, rolling over and over, a twirling mass of white iron and steel. The blast blew glass through the upholstery of the front seat. Blackness, a hideous stench of near death, swallowed Bill, and the explosion deafened him.

  Hoover crawled to the lip of the embankment and peered in horror at the smoldering wreckage below.

  A figure, blackened and ragged, crawled frantically over the mud below, clawing at the wreckage.

  “Bill!” Janice screamed, holding Hoover.

  “He’s alive!”

  Furiously the silhouette beat his fists against the twisted body of the white Dodge.

  “It’s on fire!” Hoover cried, catapulting himself down the steep embankment. Rain plastered his hair. He peered into the flaming cauldron below, and the brilliance of the reflections hurt his eyes. Slipping, sliding, his ankle collapse
d and he fell. He hobbled, crawled, and rolled down over the slippery mud.

  A strong hand grabbed him.

  “Keep back!” said a deep voice. “She’s gonna blow!”

  A police officer held his arm. Now Hoover saw a trio of policemen with fire extinguishers, racing away from the Dodge. He shook off the hand, slipped under the officer’s reaching arm, ducked under low, rolling clouds of black smoke and flung himself toward the burning car. At the rear door of the Dodge, where the metal was jammed immovable into the earth, Bill was weeping furiously, beating his hands against the window.

  A muffled scream emerged from the Dodge, under the crackling of burning fabric.

  Hoover stumbled closer. The black smoke seared his lungs. He kept low to the wet earth. There was a rush of hot air, and flames licked upward from the engine block. In the rear window, black hair torn into streamers, Jennie beat against the glass.

  “daddydaddyhothothot!”

  The scream barely came through the roar of the flames.

  “Ivy!” shouted Bill.

  “daddydaddyhothothot!”

  Hoover knelt forward. The heat sucked at his eyes. Flames shot up over the roof. Smoke twined lazily from the upholstery inside. Jennie began to choke.

  “IVY!!!” Bill bellowed.

  “daddydaddyhothothot!”

  “Dear God! No!” Hoover wailed in anguish. “Not this time!”

  But Bill’s hands flailed uselessly at the thick glass. Jennie was on the rear seat choking, and the black smoke rolled quickly through the car.

  Bill reached to the ground, picked a heavy piece of cast steel from the engine block, and raised it over his head. With a roar of anger, fear, and sheer exertion, Bill heaved the cast steel into the plate glass and it blew apart, fragments shining, scattering over Jennie’s crumpled form.

  “GET WAY FROM IT, MISTER!” called a bullhorn.

  “IVY!!” Bill shouted.

  The door would not budge. Smoke roared out through the shattered window, fumes of hot, acid smells. Bill leaned in through the window, and gathered Jennie’s body to his chest. He coughed furiously, and slowly the white Dodge, gathering momentum, began to slip back on top of him.

  “Bill!” cried Hoover.

  Bill turned. His face was haggard, blackened, deep gouges of blood gashed through his forehead and chin. Hoover tried to come forward, but the heat pressed his clothes against his own body.