Never Speak: A Mystery Thriller (The Murderous Arts Series)

by John Manchester

“I left a few months after you. And aside from talking to Lorraine every once in a while, I’ve stayed away from everyone. I haven’t heard a thing. Maybe because I don’t want to.”

  “We were never supposed to talk about stuff.”

  She nodded.

  “Do you still believe that?”

  She gave him a long look, her gaze working its way down into him. She closed her eyes and the silence pooled with a dark, viscous feeling. She opened her eyes, looked through him. Her voice was barely hers, just a thin reed leeched of all its charm. “What I believe …is that you came here for a reason. One you aren’t aware of.”

  “What?”

  “So that I could tell. I’ve never spoken to a soul about it. Not even to Ted. He wouldn’t understand. But you were there.”

  Her gaze focused on him from that faraway place for an instant, and something boiled out and into him. “Karl made me…made me get an abortion.”

  “Oh shit. Whose…”

  “His. He told me my…stuff wasn’t pure enough to mix with his. His seed.”

  “But you were pure enough to mix with?”

  “I guess so. As with electricity and aspirin, he didn’t believe in birth control. He demanded that I go off the pill.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “That doesn’t just happen. People do it.”

  “Did he make you?”

  “Have the abortion? Absolutely. It was that or leave the group.”

  “No, I meant did he make you…” Unspoken: Did he rape you?

  “Fuck him?” She started sobbing, got it under control. “That’s the question I’ve been asking myself ever since I left. You know how he was. Did he make us do anything? Or everything? There was certainly no saying no to him.”

  “No.”

  She wasn’t crying, but worse, trembling, the grief pouring off her in waves. “That’s not the worst of it. Something went wrong. I can never have kids.”

  Ray moved his mouth, tried to voice the sympathy aching in his chest. But there were no words for this. He leaned over and hugged her, and she hugged him back. She didn’t let go even when the saw whined from her husband’s workshop.

  She finally released him. They looked at each other. He said, “I’m so sorry. And sorry I came here.”

  “No, don’t be. But you should go.” She walked him to the door. She gave him a last look, devastating because of the kernel of hope in it. “Well, you came out the other side of it.”

  “You will too.”

  He wasn’t at all sure she would. He drove to the bridge, Crystal’s anguish a weight that pressed him into the seat. It was like her grief was his too. And buried in there was an incandescent core of anger that had him squeezing the wheel, his eyes blazing.

  He passed the middle of the bridge, glanced to the railing. Up to now he’d seen Bassman as the only truly unrefundable price for his adventure with Karl. But Crystal wasn’t getting any refund on her ovaries. And Ray…

  He pictured himself knocking on the Portal to The House, the brick in hand. The door squeaking open, and Karl with a most un-Karl-like look of surprise. Smashing that long nose, that high forehead.

  Back in Hudson, he headed for Bodine’s.

  He knew the secret of his friend’s odd museum. It was private in more than the obvious sense that it wasn’t public. Bodine collected items that had exclusively belonged to strangers, the standard of admission that an item represented loss, from the trivial to the catastrophic. Some of the loss was general—like those machines that were out of fashion. But most of it had been poignantly personal to someone, though someone Bodine had never known.

  At the same time, like anyone his age, he’d lost things, not to speak of people. Parents, their friend Bassman, countless girlfriends. Yet he never spoke of any of them, displayed no pictures of anyone from his past.

  He held his sorrow at arm’s length, projecting it onto these forgotten possessions of anonymous souls. And, being Bodine, he’d meticulously ordered them, keeping the wolf in his heart at bay.

  Ray had no need for such a device—he had the writing. And, if that failed, there were always Jo and Bodine to tell his sorrows to.

  But Crystal had set something off in him that he didn’t understand. It lay in him hot and heavy, and he didn’t know what to do with it.

  He parked in back of the theater.

  Bodine came to the door with Mingus. He poked his head out and shivered theatrically. “I thought winter was over.” He looked at Ray. “What now?”

  Ray pointed up at the office. When they got there, Bodine sat while Ray paced.

  “I have an idea for a new category in your museum. Lost Children. Baby’s booties and hospital tags from infants that didn’t make it, maybe some of those old nineteenth-century photos of dead kids.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve put some sad shit in there, but that’s just too freaking dark. Where’s this coming from?”

  He told Bodine about Crystal’s admission.

  Bodine scowled. “I can’t say I’m shocked to hear it. It was tough enough being a guy there. Can’t imagine what it was like for the women.”

  Bodine was trying for sympathy, but words couldn’t touch this feeling. “It was good to see her, even so.”

  “I’ll bet. She was a nice lady, for a sorceress.”

  “She’s married.”

  “Aw, Ray. You never catch the breaks.”

  “And she didn’t have any idea where Karl is.”

  “That’s all right. I think I know how he found out you’re writing.”

  “Yeah?”

  “The publishers wrote you a nice check, which was an investment. Books don’t sell themselves.”

  “Where are you going with this?”

  “I was on the right track with Lou and the editor talking the project up. But the publisher has pros to do that. Publicists.”

  Bodine sat at the computer and typed. He said, “Let me read you Google search result number three for Karl Maxwell. It’s from Publisher’s World. ‘Top agent Louis Goldman announced today that Random House is publishing a book by musician Ray Watts, which will answer the question still on many minds—“Whatever happened to Karl Maxwell?” This tell-all account should put those minds to rest.’”

  Ray was stunned. Acid gurgled in his gut. He looked over Bodine’s shoulder. There was his name, next to Karl’s, where anyone could see it. “Goddamn. The whole world knows I’m writing about Karl.” He walked away from the computer and went over and leaned against the organ.

  “What’d you think would happen if they published your book? Publish means ‘make public.’ This is how Karl got to you.”

  “But how would he see that article?”

  “He just had to Google himself. He was never short on vanity. Or if he was lazy, he could set up a Google alert. Any time his name came up online he’d get an email.”

  “Can you get rid of this Publisher’s World thing?”

  “Nobody can. It’s there for eternity.”

  “Fuck.”

  Ray drove home. He parked in the alley. Went up to the couch and sat. Bodine hadn’t gone for his Lost Children idea, and no wonder. It was downright morbid. But the feeling behind it, the one he got from Crystal, was still strong.

  He wasn’t smashing Karl in the face with a brick, not today. And he wasn’t going down to the bodega and getting a bottle of booze, much as he was tempted. Because even if he did, this feeling would still be with him tomorrow.

  Maybe writing would cure it. But a promise was a promise. And a dead cat was a dead cat. Except, what was to stop him from writing—who was to stop him—if he didn’t send it to Lou? He could hide it away in this computer. Bodine said they were getting his writing from his email, and he’d installed that software so they couldn’t get it off his hard drive. Jo’s was closed. It was just
as well. He’d only gone to Jo’s to write because he felt safer there.

  But where the story was headed was so private, so sensitive that he didn’t want to tell it in public. Of course, once the book was published… He shoved the thought away.

  Lou liked the acid trip? Wanted more dirt?

  He gritted his teeth and continued Susan’s story.

  In the early days, before the rule about not talking, Susan and I spoke excitedly about the group when we got home to the farmhouse. We went on about Karl and his ideas with this buzzy kind of energy. I imagined we dished about other members—Susan wasn’t entirely a saint. I felt that those conversations were strengthening the bond between us. The discussions often ended up with us in bed, so I figured they must be good.

  In the first months, a page appeared next to the task list in the Front Hall with words written in Karl’s elegant hand:

  stop all negative emotions

  One weekend morning when we’d been there about a year, a new rule joined the first:

  never speak

  The animated exchanges between Susan and I stopped. And our relationship took a strange turn. All the juice in our lives was in the group, so we were left with empty phrases, such as “Did you remember to get milk?” or “How was work?”

  It was several months before a third rule appeared on the bulletin board:

  no cigarettes

  That didn’t affect Susan or me. She’d never smoked, and I had quit a few years before. Shortly after that came:

  no drugs

  This one required a little explanation, but of course, none was forthcoming from Karl. Did he mean caffeine? Alcohol? Coffee had always been served after lunch. That day there was herbal tea. So caffeine was out.

  I had a massive headache for several days. And life seemed grimmer.

  But beer? As a musician, I’d always drunk at bar gigs. In the early days of the group, I’d gotten in the habit of having a beer when I came home from Karl’s.

  But by the time NO DRUGS showed up, drinking had become a whole other thing. I’d get home from Karl’s, every part of my body and soul in a huge knot. I’d race to the fridge and chug an entire beer, then open a second. I’d always liked my booze, but this was the only time in my life that it felt existential.

  I was convinced that, without drinking, the tension from Karl’s was going to cause me to contract a deadly disease. Susan wouldn’t join me—she’d never touched alcohol—but she didn’t hassle me about it. I think she understood why I did it.

  The day NO DRUGS appeared, I got home and sat at the kitchen table and wrestled with it a long time. I finally stepped deliberately to the fridge and gingerly removed a beer. Sipped it. I was fully aware that I was breaking the rule. It was that or something worse.

  Susan came in, saw me drinking, and went upstairs without looking at me. She didn’t say anything about it to me. Or anyone else I’m sure, except maybe Karl. Because there was another new stricture.

  no gossip

  I figured that was it for the rules, because there were no more for over a year. And then came:

  no sex

  Like the other rules, we weren’t to talk about it. But a lot of meaningful glances and nervous smiles passed between people. Karl didn’t say anything at the next meeting, but some brave fool brought it up. “Uh, this NO SEX, do you mean just in The House?”

  That elicited a rare laugh from Karl. A sound that had me cringing such that I’d rather he would have roared. He held his hand up, thumb and forefinger an inch apart. He didn’t address the guy who’d spoken, but me.

  “Ray. You remember this.”

  “The, uh, diamond of consciousness.”

  “You don’t have to say it like it’s an enema bag. This is the prize. Now, I think I’ve been clear about your chances of ever possessing it, even for a moment.”

  My chances, or all of ours?

  “Slender as it is, would you give that chance up for a little screwing? To gratify your miserable prick? I’ve explained too many times how talking wastes the precious energy we accumulate here. What do you know about sex, Ray?”

  “I, uh….”

  “You know less about sex than a pig. Allow me to explain. The sex act is one of the most sacred. Just because pigs copulate doesn’t mean they know what they’re doing. Though at least they know how. You think you’re ready for sex, when you don’t even know how to properly tie your shoes?”

  I looked down, but of course my shoes were upstairs in the Front Hall, neatly lined up. And what did I know about tying them? By that point, I’d come to doubt my ability to stand, to walk, to breathe properly.

  After a couple of weeks, Susan and I cheated on the new rule. I was relieved, but I could tell how guilty it made her. We kept cheating. Not nearly often enough for my taste. Susan seemed into it when we did it. But afterwards, she’d just shut down, totally withdrawing from me. We, of course, weren’t allowed to talk about that.

  And soon Susan and I weren’t talking at all.

  From time to time, Karl mentioned a guru back in England. A man whom he only identified as My Teacher. “He’s one of the five highest men on the planet.” I assumed he must be a god walking the earth. But I never got to meet him.

  That privilege was reserved for a select few who traveled to England each spring on a pilgrimage. The fact that I was never invited was one of the things that convinced me I would never make the grade with Karl.

  People returned from those trips with an unmistakable glow. They exchanged little smiles with each other. They avoided eye contact with us poor souls who’d stayed home. We’d spent a dreary two weeks wandering around The House, half-heartedly doing chores.

  Yet at the same time, in their absence I was relieved to be temporarily free of Karl’s presence. But when they returned, the envy burned. Left out! It was a taste of that Outer Darkness. The only thing that made me feel better was that Susan hadn’t been invited either.

  Until she was.

  It was the year Karl instigated NO SEX. I remember because Bodine had recently left the group.

  When Susan returned from the pilgrimage, it was no surprise that our teacher’s pet beamed brightest of the pilgrims. But was she avoiding my gaze?

  I told myself it was just me, that I was even more envious now that she had gone on that trip. But after a few weeks, when the others had returned to normal, Susan still seemed almost supernaturally lit up. She looked at me now, but with a smile that kept me out rather than invited me in.

  A few days after she got back, I turned to her in bed. She shook her head. There would be no more cheating.

  Up to this time, it was only men that disappeared into The Backroom. Now women started going in. When Susan went missing, I assumed it was her turn.

  She’d been gone almost a day. I’d been to town on shopping duty. I was carrying bags into The Kitchen when I glanced towards The Backroom. I knew I shouldn’t, but I snuck over to listen at the door. I was surprised to find it slightly ajar.

  I stood still. Silence. Biting my lip, I inched the door open. The room was dark and empty.

  Where was Susan?

  When she returned the next day, the glow she’d carried back from England had taken on an almost feverish cast. Hah, old straight-edge Susan had finally dropped acid! But later, I caught a glimpse of her when she wasn’t looking. She looked haunted. Maybe it was me. Because I was half-crazy by that point.

  When I got to Karl’s the next day, I was surprised to see Karl. By then, he was almost never around. But there he was. He didn’t sneak up on me as usual, but just came out of a door. He saw me, and it was almost as if I’d surprised him. He gave me a look. Not of scorn, which I expected, but a little smile. It felt like he was sticking his tongue out at me.

  That night I got drunk. I knew it in my gut. But I refused to think it. Now I turned away from Sus
an in bed, in anger.

  Karl had said, “No man touches me.” He never said anything about the women.

  It must have started on that trip to England. I started doing some serious drinking.

  Ray looked up. His eyes bugged. Writing about Susan was feeding an incandescent core of righteous rage. It was growing to the size of a sun. He wasn’t worried about the brick or a dead cat.

  Let Karl bring an army.

  And paired with the anger came a taste of something else. What?

  He sat still, and the word came.

  Freedom. He was almost to the end of the story. Is that what awaited him?

  Even so, he had an urge to delay, to savor the terrible pleasure of telling. There were also commercial considerations. Crystal’s admission had opened another dimension to the story. Ray had suffered, but so had others. And ripe as the tale of Susan’s betrayal was for him, it was far from X-rated, not quite Lou’s dirt.

  He headed back to Bodine’s. His friend had never said much about his experience at Karl’s. It was clear from his reaction when the cat came that something had happened to him that he didn’t want to talk about.

  Ray hadn’t wanted to pry. Now it was time to.

  Ray walked to Bodine’s. It was four, still cold, but sunny.

  Bodine and Mingus appeared at the door. “You couldn’t stay away.”

  “Are you busy?”

  “I’m done coding for the day.” He smiled at Mingus. “And this guy wants out. Springtime, and a dog’s heart turns to chasing squirrels.”

  “Well how about we all go for a walk down to the river? You never get out.”

  Bodine poked his head out and frowned. “It’s still cold. Bah. It won’t kill me.” He leashed up Mingus, and they headed up to Warren Street and down toward the Hudson.

  It was going to be some job getting Bodine to talk about the group. So Ray didn’t hit him with it right away. “I know I promised I wouldn’t, but I’m, uh, writing again.”

  “And I’m, uh, shocked. What’s it going to take to stop you?”

  “Nothing, apparently. But I haven’t sent anything to Lou.”