She knew why she had killed him. Of course she did. The boy had seen Mary Terror without her mask. That was reason enough for execution.
She couldn’t make it on the run all the way back to her truck. She walked the last three hundred yards, her lungs rasping and her sweatsuit soaked. She leaned the rifle against the seat and put the handgun on the floorboard beneath her legs. There were the marks of other tires in the dirt, so she didn’t have to worry about brushing out the tracks. The pigs might get a footprint or two, but so what? They’d think it was a man’s footprints. She started the engine, backed off the logging road to the paved highway where a sign said NO DUMPING and litter was everywhere. Then Mary drove home, knowing she had a lot of training to do but confident that she had not lost her touch.
2
A Friend’s Message
LAURA SLID THE TOP drawer of doug’s dresser open, lifted up his sweaters, and looked at the gun.
It was an ugly thing. A Charter Arms .32 automatic, black metal with a black grip. Doug had shown her how it worked: the little metal thingamajig that held the seven bullets—the magazine clip, Doug had said—fit up into the grip, and you had to push the safety hickey with your thumb to engage the firing dololley. There was a box of extra clips, with the words Fast Loading and Rugged Construction on it. The gun was unloaded at the moment; a clip of bullets lay next to it. Laura touched the automatic’s grainy grip. The gun smelled faintly of oil, and she worried that the oil would leak onto Doug’s sweaters. She ran her fingers over the cool metal. It was a dangerous, evil-looking beast, and Laura saw how men could become fascinated by guns: there was power in it, waiting to be released.
She put her hand around the grip and picked the gun up. It wasn’t as heavy as it looked, but it was still a handful. She held it at arm’s length, her wrist already beginning to tremble, and she sighted along the gun at the wall. Her index finger found the trigger’s seductive curve. She moved her arm to the right, and sighted at the framed wedding picture of her and Doug atop the dresser. She aimed at Doug’s smiling face, and she said, “Bang.”
The little murder done, Laura put the automatic back under Doug’s sweaters and slid the drawer shut. She left the bedroom, going to the den, where her typewriter was set up on a desk in a sunny spot. Her review of Burn This Book was about half finished. She switched on the TV, turned it to the Cable News Network, and sat down to work, the swell of her belly against the desk’s edge. She’d written a few more sentences when she heard the words “…was found in a wooded area outside Atlanta on Sunday night…” and she turned around to watch.
It had been on the news all day, about the boy found shot to death in the woods near Mableton last night. Laura had seen the segment several times before: the sheet-covered corpse being put into the back of an ambulance, the blue lights flashing, a police captain named Ottinger talking about how the boy’s father and neighbors had found the body around seven o’clock. There was a scene of reporters surging forward around a distraught-looking man in overalls and a Red Man cap, and a frail woman with curly hair and shocked, dark-hollowed eyes. The man—Lewis Peterson, the boy’s father—waved the reporters away, and he and his wife went into their white frame house, the screen door banging shut behind them.
“… senseless killing,” Ottinger was saying. “Right now we have no suspects and no motive, but we’re going to do everything in our power to find this young boy’s killer.”
Laura turned away from the television and went back to work. In the light of all the crime in the Atlanta area, having a gun made good sense. She would never have believed she could think that way, because she hated guns, but crime in the city was out of control. Well, it was out of control across the country, wasn’t it? Across the world, for that matter. Things had turned savage, and there were beasts on the prowl. Take the example of that boy, for instance. A senseless killing, the police captain had said. The boy lived near those woods, had probably been down in there a thousand times. But on that particular day he’d met someone who had put a bullet through his head for no reason. A beast on the prowl, hunting for bloody meat. On Sunday, the paths of the boy and the beast had crossed, and the beast had won.
She focused on her review again. Mark Treggs and the echoes of the sixties. Writing sloppy in places, keen in others. The death of J.F.K. as a foreshadowing of dark disease in America. Free love was now AIDS, acid tripping was now crack. Haight-Ashbury, Patty Hearst, Timothy Leary, Abbie Hoffman, the Weather Underground, Days of Rage, the Storm Front, Woodstock and Altamont as the heaven and hell of the peace movement. Laura finished the review, judging Burn This Book as interesting but not necessarily incendiary, typed “30” at the end of it, and rolled the paper out of the Royal.
The telephone rang. After two rings, her own voice answered: “Hello, you’ve reached the residence of Douglas and Laura Clayborne. Please leave a message at the tone, and thank you for calling.”
Beep. Click.
So much for that. Laura rolled another sheet of paper in, preparatory to doing her review of The Address. She paused to listen to the weather report: more clouds rolling in, and colder temperatures. Then she began on the first line of the review, and the telephone rang again. She kept working as her voice invited the caller to leave a message.
Beep. “Laura? It’s a friend.”
Laura stopped typing. The voice was muffled. Disguised, she thought it must be.
“Ask Doug who lives in Number 5-E at the Hillandale Apartments.” Click.
And that was all.
Laura sat there for a moment, stunned. She got up, went to the answering machine, and played the message back. A woman’s voice? Someone speaking with a handkerchief pressed against the receiver, maybe. She hit the playback button again. Yes, a woman’s voice, but she couldn’t tell whose it was. Her hands were trembling and her knees felt weak. When she played the message back a third time, she wrote down 5-E, Hillandale Apts on a piece of paper. Then she opened the telephone book and looked up the address of the apartment complex. It was across town to the east. Very close to the Canterbury Six theaters, she realized. Well.
Laura erased the message from the answering machine. A friend, indeed. Someone who worked with Doug? How many people knew about this? She felt her heartbeat getting out of control, and David suddenly kicked in her belly. She forced herself to breathe slowly and deeply, one hand pressed to David’s bulge. A moment of indecision: should she go to the bathroom to throw up, or would the nausea pass? She waited, her eyes closed and cold sweat on her cheeks, and the sickness did pass. Then she opened her eyes again, and she stared at the address on the piece of paper in her hand. Her vision seemed to blur in and out, her temples squeezed by what felt like an iron vise, and she had to go sit down before she fell down.
She hadn’t said anything to Doug about the ticket stubs, though she’d left them out in full view. He hadn’t said anything, either. The next night, Doug had taken her to the Grotto, an Italian restaurant that she particularly enjoyed, but he’d seen a client at a nearby table there and ended up talking to the man for fifteen minutes while Laura ate cold minestrone. He’d made an effort at being attentive, but his eyes wandered and he was obviously uncomfortable. He knows I know, Laura thought. She had hoped beyond hope that none of it was true, that he would explain away the tickets and tell her that Eric had somehow jetted back from Charleston for the day. She might have accepted the least little attempt at explanation. But Doug fumbled with his silverware and avoided eye contact, and she knew he was having an affair.
Anger and sadness warred within her as she sat in the den with the sunlight streaming through the Levolors. Maybe she would feel better if she got up and broke something, but she doubted it. Her mother and father were coming to Atlanta as soon as the baby was born, and that would start out fine at first but eventually she and her mother would wear on each other and the sparks would start to fly. Her mother would be of no help in this situation, and her father would want to baby her. She tried to stand up f
rom the chair, but she felt very tired and David’s weight hobbled her; she stayed where she was, one hand gripping the apartment number and the other clenched hard on the armrest. Tears suddenly welled up in her eyes, burning them, and Laura gritted her teeth and said, “No, damn it. No. No. No.” She couldn’t will herself not to cry, though, and the tears streaked down her cheeks one after the other.
The inevitable questions came like hammerblows: Where did I fail? What did I do wrong? What is he getting from a stranger than I can’t give him?
No answers, only more questions. “The bastard,” Laura said quietly when her crying was done. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. “Oh, the bastard.” She lifted her hand and watched the sunlight glint off the two-carat diamond in her engagement ring, and her gold wedding band. They were worthless, she thought, because they meant nothing. They were empty symbols, like this house and the lives she and Doug had constructed. She could imagine the joke Carol would make about this: “So ol’ Dougie went out and found a chick who doesn’t have a cake baking in the oven, huh? See, like I told you: you can’t trust men! They’re from a different planet!” That might be so, but Doug was still part of her world, and he would be part of David’s world, too. The real question was: where to go from here?
She knew the first step.
Laura stood up. She switched off the television and got her car keys. She found a map of the city, then judged the fastest way to get to the Hillandale Apartments.
The apartment complex, about twenty minutes from Laura’s house, had a tennis court and a pool draped with a black cover. Laura drove around, searching for the E building. She found it after a circuitous route, and she parked the BMW and got out to check the names on the mailboxes.
The box for 5-E had C. Jannsen written on the little name tag in Flair pen. It was a feminine signature full of curves and squiggles, and it ended with a flourish.
It was a young signature, Laura thought. Her heart felt squeezed in a brutal grip. She stood in front of the door that had 5-E on it in brown plastic, and she thought of Doug crossing the threshold. In the center of the door was a little peephole, where the canary could peer out at the cat. She glanced at the door buzzer, put her finger on it and…
…did nothing.
On the drive back, Laura reasoned that C. Jannsen probably wouldn’t have been home, anyway. Not at three o’clock on a Monday afternoon. C. Jannsen must work somewhere, unless—a horrible thought—Doug was keeping her. Laura racked her brain, trying to think of a C. Jannsen she might know from Doug’s office, but she knew no one with that name. Someone did know about the girl, though; someone who had taken pity on Laura and called with the information. The more Laura thought about it, the more she decided the voice could have belonged to Marcy Parker. She had to figure out what to do now: to hit Doug with what she knew, or wait until after the baby was born. Unpleasant scenes were not to her liking, and her level of stress was already up in the stratosphere; a confrontation would shoot her blood pressure up and possibly hurt David in some way, and Laura couldn’t chance it.
After David was born, she would ask Doug who C. Jannsen was. Then they would go on from there to whatever destination lay ahead. It would be a rocky and dangerous path, she knew. There would be tears and angry words, a clash of egos that might destroy the fictioned fabric of their lives, but one thought was paramount in Laura’s mind: Doug has someone to hold, and soon I’ll have mine.
Her knuckles were white around the steering wheel. Halfway home, she had to pull into a gas station, and in the bathroom the tears burst from her eyes and she threw up until there was nothing in her mouth but bitter.
3
The Darker Heart
MARY TERROR AWAKENED IN the dark, after the dream had passed. In it, she had walked toward a two-storied wooden house painted sky-blue, with gables and chimneys and a widow’s walk. She knew that house, and where it stood: at the beginning. She had walked up the steps and across the porch into the house as the rays of white sunlight burned through the windows upon the pinewood floor. She had found him, in the room with bay windows that looked toward the sea. Lord Jack was wrapped in snowy robes, his blond hair down around his shoulders and his eyes keen and thoughtful as he watched her approach. She stopped just short of him, and in his presence she trembled.
“I called you,” he told her. “I wanted you to come, because I need you.”
“I heard you call,” she said, her voice soft and whispery. It echoed in the large room, and she could smell the salt air in the walls. “I need you, too.”
“We’re going to do it again, Mary. All of it, again. We’re going to raise the dead ones and bring the lost into the fold, and we’re going to make sure that this time we win.”
“This time we win,” she repeated, and she reached out for his hand.
“Where’s my child?” Lord Jack asked.
Mary’s hand stopped in midair.
“My son,” he said. “Where’s my son?”
“I…I don’t…know…”
“You were carrying my son,” he said. “Where is he?”
For a moment Mary couldn’t speak. She heard the crash of surf against rocks, and she pressed her hands against her stomach. “I…got hurt,” she told him. “You know I got hurt. The baby…I lost the baby.”
Lord Jack closed his eyes. “I want a son.” His head rocked back, and she could see the tears creeping down his cheeks. “You know I want a son, to carry my seed. Where’s my son, Mary? Where’s my son?”
The two words were the hardest she’d ever spoken: “He’s dead.”
Lord Jack’s eyes opened, and looking into them was like peering into the center of the universe. Stars and constellations roamed in Jack’s head, all the signs and symbols of the Age of Aquarius. “My son has to be alive,” he said, his voice silken and pained. “Has to be. My seed has to go on. Don’t you understand that? I gave you a great gift, Mary. And you lost that gift. You killed it, didn’t you?”
“No! I didn’t! The baby died! I got hurt, and the baby died!”
He lifted a thin finger and placed it against his lips. “When I called you, I wanted you to bring my son to me. That’s part of all this. A very important part, if we’re going to raise the dead and bring the lost ones back. Oh, Mary; you’ve hurt me so much.”
“No!” Her voice cracked, and she heard dark laughter in the walls. “We can make another baby! Right now! Right now, okay? We can make another baby, just as good as the last one!”
He looked at her with his universe-filled eyes. Through her, into another dimension. “I want you to bring my son to me, Mary. The baby you and I made. If you can’t bring me my son, you can’t stay here.”
As he said it, the walls began to fade. Lord Jack began to fade, too, like a dimming light. She tried to grasp his hand, but it whirled away from her like mist. “I don’t…I don’t…” Her throat was closing up with fear. “I don’t have anywhere else to go!”
“You can’t stay here,” he repeated, a ghost in white. “Come to me with my son, or don’t come at all.”
The house went away. Lord Jack vanished. She was left with the smell of the sea and the noise of surf on rugged rocks, and that was when she awakened.
The baby was crying, a high, thin sound that drilled into her brain. Sweat glistened on her face, and she could hear the thunder of trucks on the highway. “Stop crying,” she said listlessly. “Stop it right now.” But Jackie wouldn’t stop, and Mary Terror got out of bed and went to the cardboard-box crib where the baby lay. She touched the infant’s skin. It was cold and rubbery, and the feel of it made the rage begin to beat within her like a second, darker heart. Babies were killers of dreams, she thought. They promised the future, and then they died.
Mary grasped the baby’s hand and put her finger in it. Jackie wouldn’t grip her finger like the baby in the shopping cart had done. “Hold me,” she said. “Hold me.” Her voice was getting louder, swelling with anger. “Hold me, I said!” The baby was still crying, a
desperate sound, but he wouldn’t grip her finger. His skin was cold, so very cold. Something was wrong with this baby, she realized. This was not Lord Jack’s son. This was a crying, cold mass of flesh that was not of her loins. “Stop it!” she shouted, and she picked the baby up and shook him. “I mean it!”
The baby gurgled and choked, then came back to the high-pitched shriek. Mary’s head was killing her, and the infant’s crying was driving her crazy. She shook the baby harder, and saw his head loll in the darkness. “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!”
Jackie wouldn’t mind her. Mary felt the blood rush into her face. This baby was broken, something was wrong with him. His skin was cold, he wouldn’t hold her finger, and his crying was strangled. None of the babies ever minded her, and that loss of control was what drove her into a frenzy. She gave them birth and love, fed them even when they didn’t want to be fed, and she wiped the food from their mouths and changed their diapers, and still the babies were untrue. It was clear to her why that was, in the aftermath of the dream: none of them was Lord Jack’s son, and none of them deserved to live. “Stop crying, goddamn it!” Mary shouted, but this infant wailed and thrashed in her hands, his rubbery body inching toward destruction. Jack wouldn’t accept this child, she thought. No, no; he wouldn’t let her stay with him if she brought this baby to him. This baby was wrong. Terribly wrong. Cold, rubbery, and in need of death. The crying made her temples pound. A scream batted around in her mouth. She reached her breaking point, and with an animalish moan she held Jackie by the heels and swung him against the wall. The crying stuttered, came back again full force. “SHUT UP!” she roared, and bashed his head against the wall once more. “SHUT UP!” Against the wall. “SHUT UP!” The wall again, and this time she heard something break. The crying ceased. Mary swung the cold baby against the wall a last time, could feel the little body twitching and quivering in her hands. A banging. A banging. Someone’s fist whamming the wall. “Shut up, you crazy bitch! I’m gonna call the cops!” The old man next door. Shecklett. Mary dropped the cold infant to the floor, and despair went through her like a floodtide. In a second it hissed and steamed and roared into rage as Shecklett kept hammering on the wall. “You’re crazy, you hear me? Crazy!” He stopped, and Mary crossed the room to the dresser, opened the bottom drawer, and took out the .38 with which she’d executed Cory Peterson. There was only one bullet in the cylinder, and Mary fumbled with a box of shells and fed them into their chambers. She clicked the cylinder shut, and she walked to the wall between her apartment and Shecklett’s and put her ear to the cheap paneling. She could hear Shecklett moving around the room. A door slammed. Water running. In the bathroom? Mary pressed the .38’s muzzle against the wall, aimed toward where she thought the sound of running water was. Her heartbeat was slow and steady, her nerves calm, but she had had her fill of the old man’s taunts and threats. She had killed another baby tonight; his body lay just a few feet away, his skull broken. Lord Jack would not let her come if she didn’t bring a baby—his son—but none of the babies would let her love them. “Come on out,” Mary whispered, waiting for the noise of the door opening. The water stopped. She heard Shecklett cough several times and spit, and a moment later the toilet flushed. Mary eased back the Colt’s hammer. She was going to empty the cylinder through the wall, and then she was going to reload and empty another cylinder except for a single bullet. If she couldn’t go to Lord Jack, she had nowhere else to go. She had no home, no country, no identity; she was no one, a walking blank, and she was ready to end the charade.
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