She opened her arms and he moved toward her, drawn by a terrible force far stronger than he was. Her arms went around him, soft and insubstantial, like arms made of gauze. She pulled him close.
Her lips pressed against his. They were warm and moist. He resisted for a moment, then gave himself to the kiss. The soft sensual mouth opened on his. His mouth answered to receive …
Worms!
Dozens … hundreds or squirming, wriggling worms spewed from the other mouth into Alec’s, bulging his cheeks, sliding back down his throat.
Frantically Alec fought to pull away, but the gauzy arms held him like bands of steel. The obscene wormy kiss went on and on. The pressure increased on the spot at the base of his skull until he screamed in pain and horror. Then abruptly it stopped.
The figure of his mother shrank back away from him and collapsed into dusty nothingness as he watched. He gagged and spat, but his mouth was dry. There were no worms. No woman.
Alec tried to turn back toward the cottage, but he couldn’t move. He no longer commanded his body. The other was inside his head now.
I’ve got you.
Alec tried to retreat to merciful darkness, but the other would not let him.
Oh, no, Alec. I want you here, sharing your body with me. I want you to know everything I am going to do to you. I want you to see it. I want you to feel it. It’s payback time.
A prisoner in his own mind, Alec felt his body jerked one way and another. Before his bulging eyes his right hand was raised in front of his face. He watched in helpless revulsion as the little finger stiffened, then started to bend back toward the wrist. He screamed, silently, as the tendons strained and tore. He tried to will himself unconscious as the bone popped loose at the knuckle, but something held him awake.
One by one the other fingers bent backward to be dislocated with a nasty pop, each bringing a fresh burst of pain.
Do you think that hurts, Alec? That’s nothing compared to what I still have for you. Watch. Feel.
Alec obeyed. He watched his uninjured left hand clumsily unzip his jacket, then open the buttons of the shirt underneath. The hand that he no longer controlled grasped the neck of his T-shirt, and with more strength than Alec could have summoned, ripped it open down the front, baring his narrow chest and the small pale bulge of his stomach.
Now … watch … closely.
It began just below his breastbone. A pressure. Something poking him. From inside.
He saw it then, a lump growing on the flesh at the bottom of his chest. As he watched, it protruded, as though a finger were jabbing outward from inside his body. The pain increased as the skin stretched and stretched. No pain Alec had ever experienced was quite like that when the skin finally split and a gout of blood spurted out and down the front of his pants.
Before he could fully grasp the horror of what had happened to him, something crunched inside his chest cavity. Above the burst bit of flesh, and off to one side, the jagged pink end of a rib stabbed outward through the skin.
Alec’s mind, clamped in a state of agonized helplessness, recoiled but could not retreat from the reality that he was being killed, bit by bit, from the inside.
Then the thing that was in him started to work on an eyeball.
Lightning ripped across the tops of the trees, revealing for a moment the black boiling lake. Thunder exploded.
And at last the rain came.
CHAPTER 31
When the rain finally came it hit the rickety cabin with the force of a freight train. Water sprayed in from a hundred chinks and cracks in the walls and the roof, instantly dousing half the candles.
Startled, Lindy jumped to her feet and ran to the doorway. She had heard nothing for several minutes from Alec; not since he went outside, where she could hear him talking to himself.
She pushed the broken door open and looked out into the downpour. No living thing was in sight, just the sagging wreck of the rental car.
“Alec!” she called. “Alec, are you out there?”
No answer, except the rain.
Maybe he had wondered off in search of firewood, she thought, and took shelter somewhere from the rain.
You don’t believe that for a minute, Lindy told herself. Something has happened to Alec. Something bad.
There was no use going out to look for him. She couldn’t see more than a few feet in the rain, and in her heart maybe she didn’t really want to know.
Lindy backed into the cabin and with difficulty pulled the broken door shut. She looked around, trying to find a fairly dry spot to sit. She was alone now. More alone than she had ever been in her life. All her pleading that the three of them stay together had been wasted breath.
She picked out a corner of the cabin where the floor-boards were reasonably dry. A wadded-up blanket lay over against one wall. Lindy picked up the blanket and shook it out, wrinkling her nose at the rank odor. She pulled it around her shoulders like a shawl and sat down huddled in the corner while the rain lashed the cabin and the three remaining candles guttered in the gloom.
She waited.
Other nights spent alone flickered in and out of her memory. The empty time after her mother died when for one reason or another Daddy could not be there. The icy darkness when she was pregnant with Nicole and fearful that the labor pains would start early and no one would be with her. The many later nights spent at her typewriter, and later her word processor, trying to force out the stories that lived within her. Lonely nights all, but nothing like this.
The storm crashed and boomed outside like a war. A tree fell past one of the cabin windows, making Lindy cringe back against the wall.
As she sat wrapped in the foul blanket, listening to the chaos all around her, she gradually became aware of another sensation. One even more unpleasant than the cold and the wet and the loneliness.
Something was in there with her.
Watching her.
The feeling of being watched grew stronger. Lindy’s eyes burned into the darkness that was scarcely relieved by the pitiful candle flames. She knew … knew something was there, but there was nothing to be seen, nothing but shadows.
The probing began then in the back of her head, just at the little indention where the skull joined the neck. A subtle, insinuating poke … poke … poke.
The pressure increased. It began to hurt. Lindy remembered Alec before he had gone out into the storm, rubbing the back of his head. Something … is giving me a headache.
“No!” she cried. She jumped to her feet, letting the blanket fall. “Get away from me!”
The pain grew more intense. Lindy held her head with both hands as though to keep it from bursting.
“Get away! Get out of my head!”
She reeled around the room clutching at her head, crying with the pain. She swore, she sobbed.
She fought back.
I will not let you in! Never!
And at last the pressure eased. Blessed relief from the terrible pain washed over her like a warm bath. She looked down at her hands. She felt herself. She closed her eyes and thought about things — about home and her work and her daughter and her man.
She was all right. Lindy laughed aloud with relief. Her mind still belonged to her. She had won this round.
Then quickly she sobered.
It had not taken her mind, but it was not gone. The battle was not over.
Shivering now, Lindy picked up the fallen blanket and wrapped it around herself. She sat back down in the corner and thought of games to keep her mind functioning and alert. To keep out whatever was trying to get in.
Run through the alphabet with movie names. American Graffiti, Bridge on the River Kwai, Charlie Chan at the Circus, Dog Day Afternoon …
It went quickly until she got to X. When she couldn’t come up with one, Lindy let herself get by with Madame X. Why not? She was making the rules. With Yankee Doodle Dandy and Zorba the Greek, the game was quickly over. Lindy was still dissatisfied with Madame X, and she promised herself she w
ould look it up when she got home.
When? Better make that If.
Lindy shuddered and returned to her surroundings. The rain had let up a little. Or else she was getting used to the steady pounding outside and the dripping inside.
At least she had repelled whatever was trying to get into her head, Lindy reminded herself. But she knew the battle was not over.
A footstep outside on the wooden porch startled her like a gunshot. Pulling the blanket more tightly around her, Lindy tried to disappear into the wall.
The crooked cabin door pushed open. Lindy peered up from the folds of her blanket at the figure standing in the doorway.
“Hey, anybody here?”
A flashlight beam hit her in the eyes.
Roman had returned.
Lindy stumbled to her feet, casting off the blanket.
“What are you doing back here? Never mind. I don’t know when I’ve ever been so glad to see a human being.”
“If I’d known I was going to get a welcome like this, I’d have come back a lot sooner.”
He set the flashlight on a table so the beam was directed upward, giving an overall muted light to the cabin’s interior.
“Alec’s gone,” Lindy said.
“Where?”
“I don’t know, but I think he’s in trouble.”
“Let’s not worry about him,” Roman said. “Alec always knew how to take care of himself.”
She looked at him oddly for a moment. A dark, troubling thought nibbled at her mind. She shook it away. “Seriously, what happened? Why did you come back?”
“Trying to walk out by myself in the storm was a bad idea. You were right. We should have stayed together. Anyway, there’s still the two of us.” He brandished the ax. “And I’ve got this to discourage anybody or anything that tries to get in.”
“Do your really think an ax is any good to us now?” Lindy said.
“Maybe not, but I’d a whole lot rather have it than not have it.”
The rain had definitely slackened now to a gentle patter. The wind had died, and the night was almost peaceful. For a little while Lindy allowed herself to think that maybe, just maybe, they were going to come out of this all right.
Roman leaned the ax against a wall and came toward her. For the first time she noticed something strange about the way he walked.
“Did you hurt yourself?”
“I fell down a couple of times. It’s tough going through the woods at night.”
His voice seemed odd too. Different. Strained.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” she said.
“Fine. Don’t worry about me.”
Lindy was standing with her back against the wall, and Roman kept coming until their bodies were almost touching. The flashlight was on the table behind him, leaving his face in deep shadow.
“Roman, you’re crowding me,” she said.
“Is that nice? I come all the way back here to see you, and you tell me I’m getting too close?” In a sudden movement his hands shot out and grasped both of her wrists.
“What are you doing?”
“As long as we’re stuck here together, just you and I, we might as well have some fun.”
The voice lost all resemblance to Roman’s. It became a harsh growl, chillingly like the voice that had come from Nicole back in Los Angeles a month ago when all this started.
Lindy tried to pull free. “You’re hurting me,” she said.
He threw back his head and laughed. An inhuman, unearthly laugh that was more like the bark of an animal.
“You think that hurts? You have a lot to learn about pain. An awful lot to learn.”
He was strong. Inhumanly strong. Lindy was no weakling; she worked out regularly at the North Hollywood Health Club and prided herself on keeping in shape, but she could no more free herself from the hands that held her than she could have burst a set of chains.
“No, you can’t get away,” said the voice that no longer pretended to be Roman’s. “Not now. You were strong enough to keep me out of your mind this time, but there are other ways to hurt you.”
“This time?” Lindy said.
“Oh, yes, I’ve been in your head. Why do you think you saw what you did your last night in Los Angeles? When you were naked in bed with your boyfriend?” He spat out the last sentence with the venom of a hellfire evangelist.
Lindy fought against the panic she felt rising within her.
“I know who you are,” she said.
“Aha, you know that I am not the fabled Roman Dixon. The high school football hero who became a drunken, womanizing storekeeper. Well, you’re right. And it’s a relief not having to pretend. I’m just using his body for a little while. Roman is still in here, but way, way in the back. If he were alert now, he would thank me for keeping him senseless.”
“What do you mean?”
He let go of one of her wrists, but seized it immediately with his other hand, holding as immobile as before.
“Your friend Roman lost something a while back,” he said. “Something that was very dear to him. Maybe you will recognize it.”
He plunged his hand into a pocket of the jacket he wore and brought it out again, clenched into a fist. He held the fist up in front of Lindy’s face and slowly opened the fingers.
In his palm lay what looked like a limp, pale sausage, raggedly torn on one end. He rolled it back and forth, and Lindy gasped, recognizing the lump of flesh for what it was. Roman’s hand and the thing it held blurred and swam before her. She drew in a deep breath and did not faint.
Without wanting to, she looked down at Roman’s lower body. Mixed with the water and mud and dirt from the forest floor, a wide, dark stain fouled the front of his pants.
“That’s right,” said the voice that came from Roman’s mouth. “He lost what was most dear to him. You should have heard him scream. At first it was simple shock and pain. Then came the realization of what had been done to him. I let him appreciate that for a while before I deadened his pain sense. When I’m through with his body, I’ll let him hurt some more before he dies.”
“Why are you doing this to us?” Lindy’s voice was little more than a whisper.
“You know.”
“You’re … Frazier?”
“I am what is left of Frazier Nunley. A phantom, a will-o’-the-wisp, an energy field … a floater. Whatever you call it, I am not much. Nothing I could ever do to any of you would equal the years, no, decades, of agony that you gave me.”
“We … we never meant to hurt you.”
The laugh came then. Rasping and unrestrained it tore at Roman’s vocal cords. The laughter went on and on, and Lindy knew whatever she was trapped with in this crumbling cabin, it was utterly and irretrievably mad.
As suddenly as it had started, the laughter stopped. Roman’s features twisted into the mask of hatred Lindy had seen so fleetingly on her own daughter.
“You … never … meant … to!” the voice mocked, spacing the words viciously. “Do you think that means anything to me now? Do you think that makes everything all right and now I will let you walk away free and unhurt? Think again.”
“Alec?” she said, not wanting to hear the answer.
“Oh, yes, Alec had been dealt with. Alec the clever, cowardly hanger-on. I don’t think you would recognize him now.”
With a wicked sidearm pitch he flung Roman Dixon’s penis across the cabin. It splatted against the far wall and thumped to the floor like a small dead animal.
“Now, Lindy, it’s your turn. Your mind is tougher than your friends’. Oh, I could get in there all right in time, but I want to finish this tonight. Since our friend Roman has been kind enough to lend me his body, or most of it, I will make use of it.”
Lindy tried to pull away, but could not dislodge the grip of steel.
“Do you remember how you tied me up that October night before leaving me to drift alone on the lake?”
“I wasn’t there,” Lindy protested. “I didn’t kn
ow.”
“Ah, but you were a part of it. In fact, you were the reason for all of it. Your guilt is no less than the others. I’m going to give you a sample now of how it feels to be tied hand and foot, and helpless. It doesn’t feel good, Lindy Grant, as you shall see.”
Moving with powerful efficiency, he tightly bound her wrists and ankles with what looked like electrical wires ripped from the rented car outside. Lindy watched the mad gray eyes that no longer reflected anything of Roman Dixon. She did not scream, she did not struggle. It would have been useless and would cost her energy she might still need.
Lindy fought to construct in her mind some sort of barrier against the horrors to come. She tried to recall the class she had once taken in transcendental meditation. No good. She hadn’t been able to do it then; she would never manage it now.
He slid both arms under her body and picked her up as though she weighed nothing. He carried her over to the table where he had left the flashlight and stretched her out there on her back.
“Now let’s have a look at you. A real look.”
Working swiftly and with purpose, he tore away her cardigan sweater, then the plaid shirt she wore underneath. He lingered there for a moment, searching her eyes for a reaction. Lindy forced herself to meet the mad gaze.
With a swipe of his hand he ripped away her brassiere, feeling her breasts. They rose and fell rapidly with her breathing, the nipples shrunken and small.
He said, “This is how everything started, you know. A boy looking at a girl. An accidental look, at that. An innocent young boy looking through a window at a pretty naked girl playing with herself. Isn’t it ironic how many lives had to be destroyed over such a small thing.”
Lindy rolled her head from side to side, but said nothing. There was nothing to say.
He grasped the waistband of her jeans with both hands and easily ripped them down the front.
“You still like blue underwear, I see. Oh, yes, I remember. I remember every tiny detail about that day. Just as I remember everything about the day I died. Or the day my body died. You cannot know how often I have wished that my mind had stayed in that poor body when it went under for the last time and the lungs filled with water and burst. But the mind did not go down. The mind floated, buoyed for all these years by one thought. Revenge.”
Floater Page 25
