The Girl in the Attic

by Ed Gorman

  Carleton burst out laughing.

  "My God, talk about your unexpected turn of events," he said. He sounded delighted.

  She didn't have to wonder what he would do next. Not after she saw him take the ax from Ron's grasp and walk over to where she still knelt.

  "Now, little lady," he said in his prim voice, "now I want you to taste the stuff on the floor. I want you to get it all over your fingers and then lick it off."

  In shadow, she saw him raise the ax. "Please," she said.

  "Good girls get rewards. Bad girls get punished."

  "My God," she said, "my God."

  Then she had no choice but to put her fingers down in the puddles of blood and bring them back to her mouth.

  She had just had her first tart taste of the stuff when he killed her.

  3

  The road was rough enough that Gonzalez had to keep both hands on the wheel to keep from being bumped into a ditch.

  When they reached a steep hill, he jerked the wheel to the right and they shot down an even worse gravel road that was little more than a path.

  Headlights splashed across fir trees and steep clay hills. Water from deep puddles sluiced across the windshield.

  "You sure you're not lost?"

  Gonzalez shrugged. "There's a good fishing place near the cabin. I'm used to this area. But the thing is—are you?"

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "It means, my friend, we've got a walk ahead of us. Right here is where we stop the truck."

  The road ended abruptly. A hill covered with pine formed a wall past which they could not go. Gonzalez killed the lights. "Let's go, city boy," he laughed.

  Dim moonlight showed them a trail that curved up the hill and across a table of grassland that was now, after the rain, sucking at their feet.

  "Enjoying yourself?" Gonzalez said.

  "Maybe this'll all be worth it," Hanratty said. He was several feet behind the doctor. He had to jerk his feet up as if out of quicksand to keep walking.

  "I hope so," Gonzalez said. "She's a very nice little girl." He laughed. "And I'm sure you wouldn't mind getting to know her mother a little better, either."

  The muck grew worse. They kept quiet, walking through reeds and weeds up to their hips. Hanratty had visions of snakes curling around his ankles. He tried to keep his mind from such creatures by thinking of Sally Baines' face—how, in the shadows of her hospital room, it had a gentle, heartbreaking quality that had the same impact on him as an old photograph of a beautiful, mysterious woman. He sensed the possibility of a new sort of life with her—the first stirrings of real affection for another human being since before the days when cocaine took him and held him.

  "Look!" Gonzalez called.

  On the crest of a hill ahead of them, standing near a copse of elm trees, stood a chunky figure in a t-shirt and jeans. He gave the impression of an animal baying at the moon, for he was perfectly silhouetted in the yellow disc. His flailing arms had a spastic quality, and his voice was hoarse from screaming the same word over and over again. "Jamie! Jamie!"

  "It's that strange kid—Bobby," Gonzalez said. "He seems to know something about Jamie."

  "If we can move out of this shit, maybe we can catch him."

  So they pushed forward even faster, running with sweat and breathless now.

  Hanratty found an angle of ground that was not quite as deep with mud. He started ahead of Gonzalez, but then tripped and went down hands first into the muck. Gonzalez, panting, came up from behind him and said, "That's what you get for trying to pass me."

  "Right."

  "Here." Gonzalez helped him up. "You know something I just realized?"

  "What?"

  He lifted a muddy hand to his face. "We smell like shit."

  They went on.

  Just when they started their ascent from the valley to the hill, they saw Bobby, seemingly more disturbed than before, start running in broken circles, as if he were playing a game of hide-and-seek, looking desperately for somebody hiding from him.

  "Jamie! Jamie!"

  Gonzalez got out first.

  He fell on the grass hill, using a shrub to pull himself all the way out.

  He sat, exhausted, watching Hanratty pull himself out.

  Hanratty flopped down beside him. "Remind me to find another way back," he said.

  "No shit."

  "He's gone, you know."

  "I know."

  "Where do you think he went?"

  Gonzalez shrugged.

  "I thought you knew this area so well."

  Gonzalez smiled. "Not that well."

  Then they heard him again. His voice burst on the night like an explosion.

  "Poor fucker," Hanratty said. "He sounds as if he's really losing it."

  "C'mon. The cabin's just over the hill."

  They ran again. The grass here was slick, but not especially muddy. When they crested the hill they saw the cabin below. In the moonlight it gleamed white, almost idyllic in the romantic setting.

  Then they descended the hill through thick trees that extended all the way to the clearing in front of the cabin.

  Shrubbery and branches tore at Hanratty, but he kept moving. Bobby's howling sounded as if the boy had gone completely insane.

  Hanratty reached the clearing first and then he saw what Bobby was doing: pounding his fists into a tree hard enough that you could hear bones breaking and see the blood leaking from his knuckles.

  Hanratty yelled, "Stop!"

  But Bobby didn't even seem to hear.

  He stood downwind of the cabin and beat his fists against the oak tree as if it were a man who had slain his child.

  He didn't even seem to sob—his frenzy put him into a kind of dervish rage.

  "Stop!" Hanratty called again, but it did no good.

  Bobby kept beating his fists until Hanratty had no choice but to get a running leap and tackle him, knocking him to the side of the tree.

  Bobby screamed, confusion and pain thick in his throat.

  Hanratty was sitting on the youth when Gonzalez came up.

  "What's wrong?"

  "Look at his hands."

  Gonzalez peered down through moonlight shattered by thick leaves.

  "My God."

  "Beating them against a tree."

  "Why?"

  "I don't know."

  Both of them looked down at Bobby as if he were a slightly alien presence, which in a real sense he was.

  "Bobby?"

  Bobby's eyes met Hanratty's, but he said nothing.

  "Bobby?"

  The boy began to whimper, as if he were just now realizing how badly he had hurt his hands. "Have you seen Jamie, Bobby?"

  Through pained lips, Bobby said, "No."

  "You're not telling me the truth." Hanratty sensed he would have to go easy with the kid.

  Hanratty looked at Gonzalez, then back to

  Bobby. "Where is she?"

  Bobby stared at him and then he started crying.

  Hanratty felt like hell. The kid was in misery.

  "What happened?"

  "Anne called her."

  "Anne Edmonds?"

  Bobby nodded, blubbering.

  "She took the ax," he said after a time.

  "Do you know where she went?"

  "Probably to find Carleton."

  "Why would she want Carleton?"

  Bobby stared at him again. "You know. The diary."

  "What diary."

  "The diary One Eye took from me. That's why he gave One Eye money."

  "Bobby, I don't know what the hell you're talking about."

  Bobby's face was tightening now with the terrible pain of his hands.

  "We'd better get him inside, try to take care of those hands."

  "He can help us find Jamie." Hanratty, knowing he was close to finding out where Jamie was, sounded almost hysterical.

  "Easy . . . we'll find her," Gonzalez said. He nodded to Bobby. "He's a human being, too, and he's not in
good shape."

  Hanratty sighed. "You're right. I'm sorry."

  "You want to find the girl. That's understandable."

  "Here, Bobby, let's get up."

  Hanratty helped Bobby up. The kid was really crying now. Hanratty threw Bobby's arm around his shoulder and virtually carried the boy inside.

  Gonzalez took over from there. The first thing he did was wash the tree bark from the cuts in Bobby's hands. Then he started examining the cuts as best he could.

  Hanratty watched for a time and then said, "You must have liked her."

  Bobby nodded.

  "She's a nice girl, isn't she?"

  Bobby half-smiled. "Yes."

  "Then you need to tell us about that diary."

  Gonzalez kept on with his doctoring. The shadow of elm trees played across the living room floor, mice chittered beneath the cabin's foundation, a strong headwind pushed silvery clouds down the skies, and Bobby, barely in a whisper, said, "All right. All right, I'll tell you."

  Within five minutes, while Gonzalez waited behind with Bobby, Hanratty was thrashing through the woods and toward the van.

  Now he knew where he'd find Jamie and he suspected he'd find Sally there, too.

  He said something very much resembling a prayer that they were still alive, that the tortured monster who was Carleton Edmonds hadn't used his ax on them.

  4

  When she reached Haversham, Jamie found a series of alleys that led to the hotel. Inside her mind, Anne warned her that many people, including the police, were looking for her and that she needed to be careful.

  The alleys smelled of the aged wood of garages. Puddles glistened silver. Occasionally she passed a yard where a dog barked at her.

  Haversham's business district glowed with mercury vapor lights. She came to the mouth of an alley, looked both ways, and ran across the street and down the block. The ax was heavy in her hand.

  When she reached the Royal Hotel, she went directly inside. The lobby was empty. The potted palms drooped; the air smelled of cigar smoke; behind the registration desk a bulb in a floor lamp was burned out. She saw the mess that had been made on the floor by the elevator. She had no doubt what it was.

  She went up the wide stairs leading to the second floor, and that was when her mind flashed on the image of her mother: her mother on the floor—Carleton Edmonds over her with an ax, bringing the ax down.

  Mother!

  She climbed the stairs even faster now, fearing that her mother had been killed.

  She reached the second floor and ran along the dark corridor to the room where she and her mother had stayed.

  The door was unlocked. She flung it open. Nothing.

  Except for a few clothes scattered on the bed, except for the TV playing mindlessly on, there was no evidence that anybody had stayed here.

  Then she saw one of her mother's favorite blouses—a starchy white cotton one and she could not resist the impulse to go over and pick it up and hold it.

  She pressed it to her face, letting tears of hope and fear stream down her cheeks.

  And then Anne said: He must be destroyed for what he has done. You have the ax, Jamie. You must destroy him.

  Slowly, Jamie let the blouse slip from her fingers, memories of her mother sweet in her mind.

  Then she felt the cold grip of the ax handle in her fingers again.

  Anne was right, of course.

  For everything he'd done killing those four men and his own wife; blaming his daughter; killing her mother—Carleton had to be destroyed.

  And Jamie was going to destroy him.

  She stood in front of the door leading to the attic. The dust affected her sinuses and she sneezed, her eyes watering. Great, she thought, that's what I need right now—an allergy attack.

  She put her hand on the door. It came open easily.

  Moonlight gave the ascending stairs and the narrow walls the aspect of a silver tunnel.

  A rat, red eyes gleaming, squatted on one of the middle steps, its belly plump, its pointed tail twitching.

  She took her first step. At this point rats held no terror for her.

  She started up the stairs.

  After knocking her out, Edmonds had thrown Sally into a corner of the attic, bound and gagged her, and then proceeded to take her clothes off with a solemn look that horrified her. She saw that he enjoyed this kind of sex much more than the kind they had shared last night.

  Then somebody had called for him in the hallway downstairs, and suddenly he stopped and began to sweat and shake in the dusty moonlight of the attic.

  Obviously his mind was wandering—one moment he was completely focused on feeling her, and the next he was remembering the people he'd killed tonight and fearing he would be caught.

  He'd been forced to leave. Sally had fantasies that maybe Chief Stevens had shown up—or the reporter Hanratty who, she saw now, had truly only been trying to help.

  Maybe Hanratty had figured out what was going on and had come over here and. . .

  She heard footsteps on the stairs again.

  She twisted around in her ropes and tried to scream out from the tape he'd put across her mouth.

  If somebody heard her . . .

  But then another image filled her mind. Carleton.

  Bloody ax dangling from his hand.

  Dripping.

  Jamie came up the steps slowly. The moon glow seemed to deepen, to draw her forward the way light was said to draw the soul forward between life and death.

  And then Carleton appeared.

  Even in silhouette, he was unmistakably Carleton.

  His hair was wild, and in the light it looked gold. His white shirt, what she could see of it, was soaked with blood. So were his chinos.

  Neither of them said anything.

  Both were frozen in their response to the other.

  Only once did Jamie move, and that was to look behind her, at the gaping, dark hole of the doorway that led to the hall.

  She wanted to run but knew that Carleton would have no trouble reaching her.

  Carleton took a single step downward.

  From here he appeared to be a giant. "You've come to see your mother, haven't you?"

  "My mother?" Jamie asked, confused.

  "You mean you didn't know?" Carleton laughed, sounding curiously neutral. "Why, she's waiting up there for you."

  Destroy him.

  Anne's words were so sharp in her mind she was literally flung against the wall.

  Breathless, sweating, Jamie said, "She's going to make me kill you and I don't want to unless you make me."

  Carleton laughed again. "Who's going to make you kill me?"

  "Your daughter—Anne."

  "Oh, my God, don't tell me you believed all those stories." He took another step down the stairs. She could see now that he was starting to bring something out from behind his back. "All those things were made up—she only imagined they happened because I made her believe they happened." His tone was mocking now. "The voice from the grave on the phone. The glow in the window." Another step. "And now you believe them, too, Jamie? I thought you were brighter than that. Much brighter."

  She scarcely had time to move before an ax bigger than she'd ever seen before came flying from his hands. It angled through the air, glinting in the moonlight. It stuck in the wall, less than an inch from her head.

  Destroy him.

  Before she realized what she was doing, she flung her own, much smaller ax.

  She threw it with her eyes closed and a silent prayer on her lips. She was surprised to be rewarded with a cry of pain: Carleton's cry.

  When she opened her eyes, she saw that the ax had homed in right to the center of his chest.

  He was sprawled across the stairs, blood pumping from around his wound. His fingers were gnarled and rigid; his eyes bulged blindly in what she assumed was death.

  Slowly, carefully, she worked her way up the steps. She climbed over one of his long legs and then over another. She was close
enough to see the silver beads of sweat on his forehead. He remained unmoving. She kept climbing over more of him until she stood on a step above him.

  Then she moved very quickly.

  She went the rest of the way to the attic. She sneezed; the dust here was terrible. Only now was she beginning to realize how badly she was shaking. Her teeth literally chattered and she felt faint. All that she could think of was that she'd just taken a life. The power and responsibility of the act overwhelmed her.

  The attic was composed of stacks of boxes that formed a maze of right angles. Around one such angle peered moonlight; around another, the red eyes of another rat. She sneezed again. "Mom!" she called. "Mom!"

  Had Carleton only been toying with her? Was her mother even here?

  Frantically, she started looking around the right angles, getting herself lost between the walls of boxes. Once she thought she heard something like a whimper, but when she looked in the shadows, she found nothing.

  The northeast corner of the attic had been built into a kind of closet made out of insulated board. She opened the door and probed inside for the feel of a light socket. There was none. How would she know what was inside if she had no light? Then she remembered that Carleton had been a smoker. Would have matches or a lighter in his pockets.

  Following her path back through the towering boxes, she found the landing and then the steps.

  Carleton was where she left him, flung wide on the steps, the ax sticking up out of his chest.

  He had visitors now, rats. Two of them. Supping on the soaked area around the wound itself.

  Gulping, she started her descent down the steps. If her mother lay bleeding somewhere in this attic and she didn't find her in time . . .

  She kicked out at the rats. They surprised her by not moving away. They stayed, the blood so good they hated to leave it.

  Then she kicked one of them hard in the head. It responded with a woofy sound, like human pain muted through a faulty speaker. Finally, both rats left their feast.

  She tried his shirt pocket first. She found a package of Winston Lights but no matches.

  She knew what lay next. She had to put her hand inside his pocket.

  Inside a man's pocket was bad enough—she might, after all, brush up against his thing.

  But inside a dead man's pocket, possibly feeling a dead man's thing—God!