The Snow Garden

by Christopher Rice

  “A fire?” Eric asked.

  She nodded. He had seen Randall’s scars long before she had. “A train wreck. I’m not sure, but Ran . . . Ben might have caused it. It destroyed the trailer park where he lived ..

  But even as she filled in the other half, where Randall came from, more questions arose than answers. How had he made it from Texas to New York, and how on earth did he come into contact with Michael Price? She returned her attention to Eric. He was at least present, concrete. “Are you saying that Michael Price sent Randall here?”

  “Randall’s application to this school was a mess. But with Michael Price listed as his legal guardian—well, I’m sure some oversights on his part were also overlooked by the admissions committee.”

  “Why though?”

  Eric shrugged. “Maybe so Randall could do exactly what he’s done.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Ask him,” Eric said, gesturing to the magazine spread open on the coffee table in front of her.

  Realization tightened a fist of anger inside her chest. Eric had lured her to his house only to make a simple demand of her. “That’s the only reason you told me any of this? So I can ... what? Go rescue him?”

  “He doesn’t have the first clue what his legal guardian is capable of.”

  Kathryn stood up. “It sounds like they were made for each other.”

  “Randall is not a murderer. But Michael created him, and now he’s served his purpose."

  “If Michael sent Randall here to destroy your career, he can’t go and harm the person making the accusations!”

  “They’ve already been made, Kathryn. And do you honestly think that a man of Michael’s stature, a man with his career, is going to allow a paper trail of scandal to lead back to him?”

  “He’s listed as Randall’s legal guardian—”

  “On an application so filled with holes that the vice president of public affairs for the university told me that if it was ever made public the university might not recover from the scandal. There’s a reason Michael didn’t put Randall here with the perfect application. With an obvious forgery, it’s Michael’s way out!”

  Eric stood, eye to eye with her, almost pleading. “Maybe we don’t know who he really was, Kathryn. But the young man I knew was too arrogant and too selfish to obey the wishes of a man like Michael. All your friend has to do now is make one mistake, and Randall Stone will cease to exist as quickly as he came to be.”

  One mistake, Kathryn repeated to herself.

  Did Jesse Lowry qualify?

  Her eyes fell to the magazine, the ostentatious chandelier with its ceramic tentacles. The cold white walls and marble floors. The place that had engendered the young man she may or may not have known. Desperate curiosity fought with her wounded pride. “After all the lies he’s told, I’m supposed to rescue Randall?”

  “No. You’re supposed to decide whether Michael Price should be the one to punish him.”

  “Why not you?” she snapped.

  Eric went silent, as if ashamed of his own fear. “I wouldn’t have asked you here if I didn’t believe that you are the one Randall wants to see. That you could get him away from Michael before anyone else could.”

  “What about the police?”

  “What would we tell them? The twenty-year-old story of a man now suspected of killing his wife. They would want to know why I waited so long. And I don’t even know the answer to that.”

  Kathryn tucked the magazine under one arm and turned, giving Eric the illusion that she had come to a decision. Truly she hadn’t. In the doorway, she stopped and turned and saw that Eric was watching her departure intently.

  “If I go to 231 Slope Street right now, what will I find?” she asked.

  Eric drained the last of his wine. “Good-bye, Kathryn.”

  As she descended the front steps, Eric’s words echoed in her. One mistake and Randall Stone will cease to exist. She thought of Jesse’s empty side of the room.

  Lauren Raines had thrown herself against the front door of 231 Slope Street and was pounding it with both fists. Kathryn pushed the front gate open and rushed up the walk. As she approached, Lauren whirled around, her eyes wild and tear-stained. She lunged at Kathryn and swung. The sharp punch caught her under the jaw and sent her toppling into the icy hedge beside the front steps.

  “They locked me out!” Lauren screamed. Kathryn tried to scramble out of the bushes and shield herself from another blow. “Maria heard us! She heard everything we said, and they locked me out of the fucking house. You stupid — ”

  Lauren hurled herself at her and Kathryn caught both of her clenched fists. Lauren bent at the knees, bucking and twisting to get free of Kathryn’s grip. “We need to get inside!” she hissed at Lauren.

  “We can’t!” Lauren wailed. “They lock the whole house down during a-”

  “Purging. I know.”

  She released Lauren’s wrists with a shove that sent her stumbling backward until she tripped over the first step and landed ass first on the third, her breath going out of her in a pained grunt.

  Kathryn ran down the driveway.

  Oddly, the back door stood open, and without thinking she raced inside.

  The only light in the living room came from the six candles on the mantel, mounted in the silver candelabra. In the foyer, she hit the switch and the chandelier flooded the staircase with light.

  The giant harp and mandolin were missing from the upstairs landing. The bedroom door stood open and a girl, not much older than herself, lay facedown in the hallway as if she had been struck dead in the middle of a sidestroke into the hallway. Her matted red hair fanned out on the carpet around her downturned head; her emaciated, naked back rose and fell with labored breaths, her spine visible with each inhalation.

  In the bedroom, Kathryn saw that the six single beds had been pushed together into one. Candlelight danced across the still, naked flesh and twisted, sweat-soaked sheets. The bodies were strewn in various positions of thrall. Whatever drug Eric had slipped them had acted slowly, not taking effect until they had thrown themselves into their orgy. And once it became clear that they had been drugged beyond what they had done before, only one of them had managed to try to escape the bedroom. The giant harp leaned against the left wall, its bottom resting against the edge of the mattresses. Her eyes swept to the other wall. Maria had been lassoed to the giant mandolin, her wrists secured above her head. Her head rolled forward and the sounds of vomit and air rasped in her throat.

  Kathryn crawled across the beds, ignoring the weak groans of protest as her knees dug into a stomach, an arm, or a breast, She pried at the hemp rope securing Maria’s wrists until it came free, and caught the girl around the waist before she could crumple onto the other bodies. She managed to turn her over, and Maria opened hooded eyes to try to focus on her, her mouth a half grimace.

  She saw Lauren standing in the doorway.

  “Call 911!”

  Lauren just lifted one arm. She was holding a kitchen knife with a trembling wrist. Candlelight danced off the blade.

  “Lauren!” Kathryn roared. “Call 911!”

  Lauren violently shook her head no, and Kathryn slid out from under Maria’s weight, crawling through the tangle of limbs. Her feet hit the floor and she approached Lauren without fear, even as Lauren raised the knife in front of her. Agony was stitched across her face. Her resolve was gone. Instead, her jaw trembled and her eyes were smarting with tears.

  Kathryn gripped Lauren’s wrist and squeezed. Lauren dropped the knife to the floor. Her knees buckled. Kathryn could hear the desperation in Lauren’s sobs, the frustration of someone who had looked endlessly for an opiate to her pain, only to have the cure end up being worse than the disease. She looked like a little girl, desperate not to accept a crushingly inevitable conclusion.

  When Kathryn sank down next to Lauren and enfolded her in her arms, the girl didn’t protest, but fell weakly against Kathryn’s chest and sobbed into her jack
et. Kathryn couldn’t manage any words of sympathy or pity. Still, Eric’s justice seemed like pure cruelty.

  Maria had managed to bring one forearm to her forehead. Breaths whistled down her throat. Kathryn focused, seeing two other bodies— male or female, she couldn’t tell—lying facedown, pressed to the mattress by Maria’s weight. The young girl who had been lying across the doorway had managed to crawl to the top of the stairs. One arm weakly clawed the top step.

  Five. Including Lauren.

  Kathryn’s eyes shot to the giant harp. Frayed tassels of hemp rope dangled from the top of its spine.

  She shot to her feet when she remembered the open back door to the kitchen.

  “Where’s Mitchell?”

  Maria answered with a racked breath and another sob. She had rolled onto one side. It took all the strength she had to lift her head.

  “Where's Mitchell?”

  Maria lifted her arm limply from her side and for a second Kathryn thought she was reaching out for help. Kathryn almost took her hand before Maria managed to extend her middle finger.

  Eric stared down at the bottle of Vicodin in his hand.

  Half a bottle remained.

  But who exactly was he doing this for? For Pamela and Lisa, casualties of his lies? For Michael, who had finally punished him to his own satisfaction? For himself, a man who could no longer live with the reality that while he had never murdered anyone, he had engendered more than his fair share of death?

  He had already taken five, and would down the rest, pill by pill, once those made him good and numb.

  In the living room, he turned out all the other lights, but let the gas fire glow. He refilled his wineglass and sat down in his reading chair, waiting for the pills to sand the edges off the memories he assumed would loom inside him before death settled in.

  Outside, the wind knocked branches. But another sound, clearer and closer, distracted him. A metallic creak with a slow, swinging rhythm to it.

  Pain thundered against his skull, sending his body forward as the sound of shattering glass filled both his ears. He hit the floor knees first, his vision spinning. Glass sprayed against the hardwood all around him. He lifted his head. The back door was swinging in the wind.

  He fought to stay conscious, more out of curiosity than a desire to live. The pills seemed to cushion the pain. He rolled over onto his back.

  Mitchell rounded his reading chair, gripping the stem of the wine bottle he had just shattered over the back of his head. His overcoat slid off one shoulder, flaps parting, revealing bare chest beneath. His lower jaw hung open as if the bone had been torn free from the socket. His eyes were wide with the exertion to keep them open, and his pupils danced on Eric like flickering flames.

  “You . . . punish . . . us?” Mitchell rasped.

  Eric didn’t move as Mitchell stared down at him.

  “You fuck . . . your little boy . . . and you punish . . . us?”

  “You murdered Lisa. I don’t think I could ever punish you enough,” Eric whispered.

  Mitchell groaned and lifted his arm, swinging the shattered wine bottle over his head. Eric crumbled to protect his head, then felt needles of pain stab the back of his neck. Mitchell retracted the shattered bottle with drugged slowness, and Eric’s face smacked against the floor. Blood, pleasantly warm, rushed down his back.

  Mitchell gripped the collar of Eric’s shirt, tugging and dragging him until he was on all fours. Searing pain spread Out across his upper back.

  “Tr-trai'tor!” Mitchell howled.

  Jerking like a puppet in Mitchell’s grip, Eric pawed at the floor beneath him, but when he managed to look up the gas fireplace filled his vision. Mitchell crouched down next to him, still gripping the collar of his shirt, the other hand pulling on the waistband of his pants, sliding him across the hardwood floor toward the flames.

  “Chapter Five ... Errric . .. What h-happens to th-those . . . who can never escape their .. .own b-bodies...”

  Heat flushed Eric’s cheeks and he flailed at Mitchell with one arm. He felt his fingers land on the hot metal grating, then slide free. Mitchell would not punish him. He would punish them both. His hand gripped the gas lever before Mitchell seized his wrist and pulled, but Eric held on. When he whipped his other arm out to grab at the edge of the fireplace, his weight shifted and he hit the floor face first. His other hand gave one final, desperate tug.

  The lever broke free, and gas hissed from the new opening. In a second, Mitchell had pinned his clenched fist to the small of his back, his other hand grasping Eric’s neck as he lifted him toward the fire.

  “Those souls. . . who never escape ... are doomed to spend eternity in a lake of fire!”

  Eric opened his eyes. The flames were only inches from his nose, and in the hand Mitchell held to his back he gripped the metal lever. Could Mitchell smell it? The fumes suddenly outmatched the heat in intensity.

  “Hey!”

  It was another man’s voice.

  Mitchell didn’t release his dual grip.

  “Let him go! Now!” shouted the strange voice.

  Mitchell’s mouth was at his ear. “Your wife would have k-killed her. .. self... anyway. But I couldn’t resist having your little whore t-try . . . to pin it on you!”

  “I said let him go, asshole!”

  Eric screwed his eyes shut. He saw water and ice, Pamela and Lisa. He made their fates his.

  When she heard the gunshot, Kathryn didn’t stop running.

  A second later the front windows of the Eberman house exploded outward with enough force to split the porch rail down the center.

  Kathryn hit the sidewalk on her knees, her head tucked to her chest, arms raised above her head. The thunder echoed shatteringly among the houses, followed by the squeal of car alarms down Victoria Street.

  When she lowered her arms, she saw twin tongues of fire curling up the front of the house from the shattered cavities of the front windows. In the middle of the street, half of the porch rail sat upended on a bed of blackened glass. The other half dangled from the front porch for several seconds before its thin tether of splintered wood gave way and it fell to the seared lawn with a thud.

  She got to her feet and saw she was standing next to the unmarked police car. Its windshield was a spider web. The driver’s seat was empty.

  She made it to the foot of the steps of the house and stopped. The front door was still shut on its hinges but the bottom half had been blown halfway down the steps. Through the splintered hole she could see a curtain of fire filling the foyer.

  With one hand on the rail, she closed her eyes and tried to force breath back into her lungs. Then she heard the plaintive mourning of sirens carrying across the hill.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  TWENTY-FIVE STORIES OVER SECOND AVENUE, THE BOWERY TOWER sent a halo of weak, golden light into the low, fast-moving cloud cover. Frosted green plate-glass windows, held together with exposed metal cladding, punched squares of light through the snowy fog. The taxi pulled away slowly from the curb, the driver carefully navigating through fast-accumulating drifts of snow spilling from the gutters. Randall crossed the street, bound for the massive stainless steel canopy that arched over the building’s entrance.

  His heart had stopped racing, and he moved down the sidewalks with a numbness that a stranger could have mistaken for determination. This visit to the birthplace of his new self would be his last, that was the thought he clung to as he visualized Jesse’s cell phone number, wedged in his wallet. But at some point, just not now, Randall would have to face the reality that Jesse might have either discarded the cell phone by now, or that it was too late for Randall to take Jesse up on an invitation he had already refused. For all he knew, Jesse was already in Cozumel by now, bound for the side of the island that had been destroyed by a hurricane years ago, where the telephone lines vanished midway across the island, leaving the poles empty.

  It didn’t matter, Randall told himself, he would find Jesse. He had no one else to run to.


  Mahogany-framed panels of frosted glass formed the lobby’s walls. Pin lights from the ceiling outlined a path on the marble floor, leading to the bank of elevators with their gold-plated doors. Behind his convex stainless-steel desk, the doorman lifted his head from a copy of the New York Post.

  “Welcome back, Mr. Stone.”

  Randall managed a strained smile. “Merry Christmas.”

  The doorman nodded and returned his attention to the paper. He was one of the four building employees who knew that Michael Price didn’t live alone.

  In the elevator, Randall inserted his key above the button marked PH, turned it once, for what he hoped was the last time, and removed it. The button illuminated under his fingertip. As the elevator rose, he fished a copy of the Atherton Journal out of his Prada satchel. By the eighteenth floor, Randall’s heart was a steady hammer in his chest.

  He had weathered Michael’s volcanic mood swings for two years before leaving for Atherton. Had the past three months left him so out of practice that the sweat lacing his back was a sign of fear? The doors slid, open, revealing a sweep of white marble and plate-glass windows lit by the flickering light of a television. He muffled fear with anger, cursing himself for hesitating to take the first step out of the elevator.

  Randall announced his presence only with the echo of his footsteps on the marble floor. Above the fireplace separating the great room from the master bedroom, the flat-screen television displayed a silent barrage of flaring police lights and fire trucks to the empty assemblage of living-room furniture: a white leather sofa, a glass coffee table with a metal frame so spare that the table top seemed to float above the zebra-skin rug, and three empty chairs with steel frames and cow-skin upholstery intended to be beautiful and painful to occupy.

  Randall dropped the newspaper on the dining table. Looking beyond the fireplace, he could see Michael’s bed was made, the room dark. Beside him, the double doors to Michael’s studio were drawn shut, a sliver of light in the middle. Michael was not to be disturbed when he was working, but maybe tonight was an exception. Randall had done what he promised, even if he did have to force Michael into admitting it—that Eric’s downfall was what he secretly wanted before he’d even considered placing Randall at Atherton.