The Collective

by The Collective [lit]

  know something, the grin said. I know something you never will.

  "Well, I guess you'd have to believe the fella who did this was high

  on drugs," she said, sounding upset - authentically upset, Kinnell

  thought. "No wonder he could kill himself and break his mamma's

  heart."

  "I've got to be heading north myself," Kinnell said, tucking the

  picture under his arm. "Thanks for-"

  " Mr. Kinnell?"

  "Yes?"

  "Can I see your driver's license?" She apparently found nothing

  ironic or even amusing in this request. "I ought to write the number

  on the back of your check."

  Kinnell put the picture down so he could dig for his wallet. "Sure.

  You bet."

  The woman who'd bought the Star Wars placemats had paused on

  her way back to her car to watch some of the soap opera playing on

  the lawn TV. Now she glanced at the picture, which Kinnell had

  propped against his shins.

  "Ag," she said. "Who'd want an ugly old thing like that? I'd think

  about it every time I turned the lights out."

  "What's wrong with that?" Kinnell asked.

  Kinnell's Aunt Trudy lived in Wells, which is about six miles north

  of the Maine - New Hampshire border. Kinnell pulled off at the

  exit which circled the bright green Wells water tower, the one with

  the comic sign on it (KEEP MAINE GREEN, BRING MONEY in

  letters four feet high), and five minutes later he was turning into

  the driveway of her neat little saltbox house. No TV sinking into

  the lawn on paper ashtrays here, only Aunt Trudy's amiable masses

  of flowers. Kinnell needed to pee and hadn't wanted to take care of

  that in a roadside rest stop when he could come here, but he also

  wanted an update on all the family gossip. Aunt Trudy retailed the

  best; she was to gossip what Zabar's is to deli. Also, of course, he

  wanted to show her his new acquisition.

  She came out to meet him, gave him a hug, and covered his face

  with her patented little birdy-kisses, the ones that had made him

  shiver all over as a kid.

  "Want to see something?" he asked her. "It'll blow your pantyhose

  off."

  "What a charming thought," Aunt Trudy said, clasping her elbows

  in her palms and looking at him with amusement.

  He opened the trunk and took out his new picture. It affected her,

  all right, but not in the way he had expected. The color fell out of

  her face in a sheet-he had never seen anything quite like it in his

  entire life. "It's horrible," she said in a tight, controlled voice. "I

  hate it. I suppose I can see what attracted you to it, Richie, but

  what you play at, it does for, real. Put it back in your trunk, like a

  good boy. And when you get to the Saco River, why don't you pull

  over into the breakdown lane and throw it in?"

  He gaped at her. Aunt Trudy's lips were pressed tightly together to

  stop them trembling, and now her long, thin hands were not just

  clasping her elbows but clutching them, as if to keep her from

  flying away. At that moment she looked not sixty-one but ninety-

  one.

  " Auntie?" Kinnell spoke tentatively, not sure what was going on

  here. "Auntie, what's wrong?"

  "That." she said, unlocking her right hand and pointing at the

  picture. "I'm surprised you don't feel it more strongly yourself, an

  imaginative guy like you."

  Well, he felt something, obviously he had, or he never would have

  unlimbered his checkbook in the first place. Aunt Trudy was

  feeling something else, though ... or something more. He turned

  the picture around so he could see it (he had been holding it out for

  her, so the side with the Dymotaped title faced him), and looked at

  it again. What he saw hit him in the chest and belly like a one-two

  punch.

  The picture had changed, that was punch number one. Not much,

  but it had dearly changed. The young blond man's smile was wider,

  revealing more of those filed cannibal-teeth. His eyes were

  squinted down more, too, giving his face a look which was more

  knowing and nastier than ever.

  The degree of a smile ... the vista of sharpened teeth widening

  slightly ... the tilt and squint of the eyes ... all pretty subjective

  stuff. A person could be mistaken about things like that, and of

  course he hadn't really studied the painting before buying it. Also,

  there had been the distraction of Mrs. Diment, who could probably

  talk the cock off a brass monkey.

  But there was also punch number two, and that wasn't subjective.

  In the darkness of the Audi's trunk, the blond young man had

  turned his left arm, the one cocked on the door, so that Kinnell

  could now see a tattoo which had been hidden before. It was a

  vine-wrapped dagger with a bloody tip. Below it were words.

  Kinnell could make Out DEATH BEFORE, and he supposed you

  didn't have to be a big best-selling novelist to figure out the word

  that was still hidden. DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR was, after

  all, just the sort of a thing a hoodoo traveling man like this was apt

  to have on his arm. And an ace of spades or a pot plant on the other

  one, Kinnell thought.

  "You hate it, don't you, Auntie?" he asked.

  "Yes," she said, and now he saw an even more amazing thing: she

  had turned away from him, pretending to look out at the street

  (which was dozing and deserted in the hot afternoon sunlight), so

  she wouldn't have to look at the picture. "In fact, Auntie loathes it.

  Now put it away and come on into the house. I'll bet you need to

  use the bathroom."

  Aunt Trudy recovered her savoir faire almost as soon as the

  watercolor was back in the trunk. They talked about Kinnell's

  mother (Pasadena), his sister (Baton Rouge), and his ex-wife, Sally

  (Nashua). Sally was a space-case who ran an animal shelter out of

  a double-wide trailer and published two newsletters each month.

  Survivors was filled with astral info and supposedly true tales of

  the spirit world; Visitors contained the reports of people who'd had

  close encounters with space aliens. Kinnell no longer went to fan

  conventions which specialized in fantasy and horror. One Sally in

  a lifetime, he sometimes told people, was enough.

  When Aunt Trudy walked him back out to the car, it was fourthirty

  and he'd turned down the obligatory dinner invitation. "I can get

  most of the way back to Derry in daylight, if I leave now."

  "Okay," she said. "And I'm sorry I was so mean about your picture.

  Of course you like it, you've always liked your ... your oddities. It

  just hit me the wrong way. That awful face. " She shuddered. "As

  if we were looking at him . . . and he was looking right back."

  Kinnell grinned and kissed the tip of her nose. "You've got quite an

  imagination yourself, sweetheart."

  "Of course, it runs in the family. Are you sure you don't want to

  use the facility again before you go?"

  He shook his head. "That's not why I stop, anyway, not really."

  "Oh? Why do you?"

  He grinned. "Because you know who's being naughty and who's

  being nice. And you're not afrai
d to share what you know."

  "Go on, get going," she said, pushing at his shoulder but clearly

  pleased. "If I were you, I'd want to get home quick. I wouldn't want

  that nasty guy riding along behind me in the dark, even in the

  trunk. I mean, did you see his teeth? Ag!"

  He got on the turnpike, trading scenery for speed, and made it as

  far as the Gray service area before deciding to have another look at

  the picture. Some of his aunt's unease had transmitted itself to him

  like a germ, but he didn't think that was really the problem. The.

  problem was his perception that the picture had changed.

  The service area featured the usual gourmet chow - burgers by Roy

  Rogers, cones by TCBY - and had a small, littered picnic and

  dogwalking area at the rear. Kinnell parked next to a van with

  Missouri plates, drew in a deep breath, let it out. He'd driven to

  Boston in order to kill some plot gremlins in the new book, which

  was pretty ironic. He'd spent the ride down working out what he'd

  say on the panel if certain tough questions were tossed at him, but

  none had been-once they'd found out he didn't know where he got

  his ideas, and yes, he did sometimes scare himself, they'd only

  wanted to know how you got an agent.

  And now, heading back, he couldn't think of anything but the

  damned picture.

  Had it changed? If it had, if the blond kid's arm had moved enough

  so he, Kinnell, could read a tattoo which had been partly hidden

  before, then he could write a column for one of Sally's magazines.

  Hell, a fourpart series. If, on the other hand, it wasn't changing,

  then ... what? He was suffering a hallucination? Having a

  breakdown? That was crap. His life was pretty much in order, and

  he felt good. Had, anyway, until his fascination with the picture

  had begun to waver into something else, something darker.

  "Ah, fuck, you just saw it wrong the first time," he said out loud as

  he got out of the car. Well, maybe. Maybe. It wouldn't be the first

  time his head had screwed with his perceptions. That was also a

  part of what he did. Sometimes his imagination got a little ...well ...

  "Feisty," Kinnell said, and opened the trunk. He took the picture

  out of the trunk and looked at it, and it was during the space of the

  ten seconds when he looked at it without remembering to breathe

  that he became authentically afraid of the thing, afraid the way you

  were afraid of a sudden dry rattle in the bushes, afraid the way you

  were when you saw an insect that would probably sting if you

  provoked it.

  The blond driver was grinning insanely at him now-yes, at him,

  Kinnell was sure of it-with those filed cannibal-teeth exposed all

  the way to the gumlines. His eyes simultaneously glared and

  laughed. And the Tobin Bridge was gone. So was the Boston

  skyline. So was the sunset. It was almost dark in the painting now,

  the car and its wild rider illuminated by a single streetlamp that ran

  a buttery glow across the road and the car's chrome. It looked to

  Kinnell as if the car (he was pretty sure it was a Grand Am) was on

  the edge of a small town on Route 1, and he was pretty sure he

  knew what town it was-he had driven through it himself only a few

  hours ago.

  "Rosewood," he muttered. "That's Rosewood. I'm pretty sure."

  The Road Virus was heading north, all right, coming up Route 1

  just as he had. The blond's left arm was still cocked out the

  window, but it had rotated enough back toward its original position

  so that Kinnell could no longer see the tattoo. But he knew it was

  there, didn't he? Yes, you bet.

  The blond kid looked like a Metallica fan who had escaped from a

  mental asylum for the criminally insane.

  "Jesus," Kinnell whispered, and the word seemed to come from

  someplace else, not from him. The strength suddenly ran out of his

  body, ran out like water from a bucket with a hole in the bottom,

  and he sat down heavily on the curb separating the parking lot

  from the dog-walking zone. He suddenly understood that this was

  the truth he'd missed in all his fiction, this was how people really

  reacted when they came face-to-face with something which made

  no rational sense. You felt as if you were bleeding to death, only

  inside your head.

  "No wonder the guy who painted it killed himself," he croaked,

  still staring at the picture, at the ferocious grin, at the eyes that

  were both shrewd and stupid.

  There was a note pinned to his shirt, Mrs. Diment had said. "I can't

  stand what's happening to me. " Isn't that awful, Mr. Kinnell?

  Yes, it was awful, all right.

  Really awful.

  He got up, gripping the picture by its top, then strode across the

  dog-walking area. He kept his eyes trained strictly in front of him,

  looking for canine land mines. He did not look down at the picture.

  His legs felt trembly and untrustworthy, but they seemed to

  support him all right. just ahead, close to the belt of trees at the rear

  of the service area, was a pretty young thing in white shorts and a

  red halter. She was walking a cocker spaniel. She began to smile at

  Kinnell, then saw something in his face that straightened her lips

  out in a hurry. She headed left, and fast. The cocker didn't want to

  go that fast so she dragged it, coughing, in her wake.

  The scrubby pines behind the service area sloped down to a boggy

  area that stank of plant and animal decomposition. The carpet of

  pine needles was a road litter fallout zone: burger wrappers, paper

  soft drink cups, TCBY napkins, beer cans, empty wine-cooler

  bottles, cigarette butts. He saw a used condom lying like a dead

  snail next to a torn pair of panties with the word TUESDAY

  stitched on them in cursive girly-girl script.

  Now that he was here, he chanced another look down at the

  picture. He steeled himself for further changes even for the

  possibility that the painting would be in motion, like a movie in a

  frame - but there was none. There didn't have to be, Kinnell

  realized; the blond kid's face was enough. That stone-crazy grin.

  Those pointed teeth. The face said, Hey, old man, guess what? I'm

  done fucking with civilization. I'm a representative of the real

  generation X, the next millennium is tight here behind the wheel of

  this fine, high-steppin' mo-sheen.

  Aunt Trudy's initial reaction to the painting had been to advise

  Kinnell that he should throw it into the Saco River. Auntie had

  been right. The Saco was now almost twenty miles behind him,

  but...

  "This'll do," he said. "I think this'll do just fine."

  He raised the picture over his head like a guy holding up some

  kind of sports trophy for the postgame photographers and then

  heaved it down the slope. It flipped over twice, the frame caching

  winks of hazy late-day sun, then struck a tree. The glass facing

  shattered. The picture fell to the ground and then slid down the dry,

  needle-carpeted slope, as if down a chute. It landed in the bog, one

  comer of the frame protruding from a thick stand of reeds.

&n
bsp; Otherwise, there was nothing visible but the strew of broken glass,

  and Kinnell thought that went very well with the rest of the litter.

  He turned and went back to his car, already picking up his mental

  trowel. He would wall this incident off in its own special niche, he

  thought ... and it occurred to him that that was probably what most

  people did when they ran into stuff like this. Liars and wannabees

  (or maybe in this case they were wannasees) wrote up their

  fantasies for publications like Survivors and called them truth;

  those who blundered into authentic occult phenomena kept their

  mouths shut and used those trowels. Because when cracks like this

  appeared in your life, you had to do something about them; if you

  didn't, they were apt to widen and sooner or later everything would

  fall in.

  Kinnell glanced up and saw the pretty young thing watching him

  apprehensively from what she probably hoped was a safe distance.

  When she saw him looking at her, she turned around and started

  toward the restaurant building, once more dragging the cocker

  spaniel behind her and trying to keep as much sway Out of her hips

  as possible.

  You think I'm crazy, don't you pretty girl? Kinnell thought. He saw

  he had left his trunk lid up. It gaped like a mouth. He slammed it

  shut. You and half the fiction-reading population of America, I

  guess. But I'm not crazy. Absolutely not. I just made a little

  mistake, that's all. Stopped at a yard sale I should have passed up.

  Anyone could have done it. You could have done it. And that

  picture

  " What picture?" Rich Kinnell asked the hot summer evening, and

  tried on a smile. "I don't see any picture."

  He slid behind the wheel of his Audi and started the engine. He

  looked at the fuel gauge and saw it had dropped under a half. He

  was going to need gas before he got home, but he thought he'd fill

  the tank a little further up the line. Right now all he wanted to do

  was to put a belt of miles - as thick a one as possible - between him

  and the discarded painting.

  Once outside the city limits of Derry, Kansas Street becomes

  Kansas Road. As it approaches the incorporated town limits (an

  area that is actually open countryside), it becomes Kansas Lane.

  Not long after,, Kansas Lane passes between two fieldstone posts.

  Tar gives way to' gravel. What is one of Derry's busiest downtown