by David Martin
“Wanted an autograph,” he mutters as he heads toward the state highway that leads to the county road up through those mountains to the cabin. He’s going to pack up his stuff and get the hell out of West Virginia.
And the farther he goes, the faster he drives, eager now to put an end to all this craziness, driving those eighteen miles into the mountains at such a high rate of speed that he keeps skidding around corners and twice jams the brakes to stop the car just before it goes over the edge. He watches carefully for the trees painted red but apparently misses one, getting lost, retracing his route, finding the tree, stopping to pee, driving on, the idiot light in the left corner of the instrument panel blinking to inform him the car is overheating, Lyon refusing to slow down, recognizing now the final mile of road leading to the cabin, racing into the clearing and bringing the car to a sliding, sideways halt with all four wheels locked.
He gets out of the car. This tucked-away hollow is all hushed up with twilight, where did the day go? Lyon feels as if he has been returned to a high-sided nest where time runs differently than it does in the outside world. Walking up to the porch he flashes on the idea that the crate will be back in the kitchen. Of course. That’s how they — Quinndell or whoever it is — plan on driving him insane: allowing Lyon to make these weird discoveries whenever he’s by himself but then removing the evidence before he can confirm it with a third party.
He walks to the porch, steps to the door, hesitates a moment, then enters, turning to his right and looking into the kitchen. No crate. The room looks exactly as it did when Lyon was here with Sheriff Stone.
Nothing out of place in the living room either. Lyon walks toward the bedroom, thinking, she’s going to be lying in bed just as I left her this morning.
Then he decides, no, she’s gone and won’t be back. Whatever happened last night was a onetime phenomenon.
He stops at the bedroom doorway. She’s going to be waiting for me, lying in that bed, I know she is.
He steps into the room.
She’s not there.
And Lyon can’t figure out if he’s disappointed or relieved.
He returns to the kitchen, turning on all the lights as he goes, thankful for electricity. Lyon is hungry and ready to fall asleep on his feet. He won’t get very far driving in this condition, better have something to eat and take a nap, still got a couple hours of light, plenty of time to …
Lyon killing time, waiting for her to show up again.
Operating on automatic pilot, he looks through his box of supplies, opens a can of soup and puts it in a pan on the stove, moving orange juice and lunch meats into the refrigerator, wondering how much of his food has spoiled.
When he opens a tap over the kitchen sink, the water spits out red and then brown, finally running clear enough for Lyon to wash his hands and face. He eats the hot soup right out of the pan, pours a glass of Scotch and carries it into the bedroom with him. He takes a cool shower and then opens the tiny bathroom’s door, expecting to see her in bed waiting for him, but of course she’s not there, his bed is empty.
With only a towel around his waist, Lyon walks back through the cabin making sure all the windows are down and locked. The place is stifling but he’s not taking any chances on what’s-his-name, Randolph Welby, crawling in some opened window, Lyon not wanting to wake up from his nap to see the little hermit standing there by his bed, idiot-grinning at him.
Looking through kitchen drawers, he finds an impressive butcher knife and brings it with him to the bedroom. Lyon removes the towel to sit naked on the bed. When he finally lies back, he notices for the first time that directly above the bed is a small skylight — and in that skylight there’s already a promise of night.
Although bone weary, he doesn’t fall asleep. Thinking too much. Lyon begins reading through the folder of information Dr. Quinndell gave him, his heart sinking with each report on Claire Cept being fired from another nursing job, Claire Cept accusing another doctor of being a vampire, Claire Cept testifying to strange baby-murdering plots, Claire Cept forcibly removed from one hearing for bringing voodoo paraphernalia in with her. Wonder why Quinndell didn’t mention the voodoo.
Depressed, Lyon puts the folder on the floor, sets his travel alarm for an hour, takes one last sip of Scotch, and falls rocklike into sleep.
He awakens in a room lighted only by the moon in the skylight directly above him. What happened to his alarm? And didn’t he leave all the lights on? Lyon turns his head toward the bedside table; the clock is facing away from him. He keeps blinking. He is awake, isn’t he?
He senses what’s wrong as soon as he moves, intending to reach over and check the time, making only a half turn before he feels it: something in bed with him.
CHAPTER 21
She’s lying on her back, the white sheet pulled to just below her breasts, her long black arms outside the sheet and resting along the sides of her body, eyes closed — either still in a coma or still faking it or dead now for real.
Lyon’s surprised but not terrified. This is what he’s been waiting for, this is why he came back to the cabin and then went to bed instead of leaving before it got dark: hoping she’d be returned to him.
Carefully he moves toward her, staring at those breasts round and high on her chest, topped with those fleshy purple nipples, remembering touching her right breast, recalling how it felt — fall — in his hand. Does she remember?
He reaches over and finds the inside of her right wrist, the woman’s pulse strong and steady.
She came to bed on her own. No one is hauling this woman here and then carting her away again, she’s doing it all on her own.
He wonders what the hell he did with the butcher knife, finally clearing his throat and preparing to speak to her, realizing he hasn’t done that yet. He’s stared at her, fantasized about her, fondled her, carried her in his arms, worried over her — but he hasn’t said anything to the woman.
“I locked everything, how’d you get in?”
No response.
“You’ve been faking it all along, haven’t you? You weren’t dead, you weren’t in a coma, and now you walked right in here and got in bed with me. Why?”
No answer.
He rests his head on his hand, elbow up on the pillow, close to the woman but not touching her. “What’s the point, what’re you trying to prove?”
Nothing.
“You’re awake now, you’re just pretending. You were awake when I touched you before too, when you were in that crate. Now you’re lying here waiting for me to start it all over again, aren’t you?”
He feels stupid talking to her like this, thinking maybe he should take her by the shoulders and shake her until he gets a response. He pulls the sheet down a little. Lyon has a hard-on.
He scoots close enough under that sheet for his erection to touch her. He smells soap and perspiration — hers and his both — as he moves his face against her long neck, kissing her there.
“Why are you pretending to be asleep?” he asks, whispering into her ear.
He leans back from the woman and pulls the sheet completely away, exposing her naked body, seeing the butcher knife lying across the top of her thighs, right over her sex.
He mutters a curse. Then tells her, “That’s supposed to be a message?”
Tired of this shit, being jerked around by everyone. “I know you’re awake!” he hollers into her placid face.
Lyon throws the knife onto the floor, climbs on top of the woman, reaches down to pull her legs apart, and positions himself until his penis is against her.
“Okay, now tell me to stop.”
But she tells him nothing. Going by her face, she could indeed be sleeping or in a coma — or dead.
“Damn you.”
Pressuring his cock hard against her, breathing heavily, intrigued by it all, he lowers himself until his face is against hers, his lips fall on the woman’s, feeling weirdly erotic to be kissing a mouth that does not respond, using his tongue to part tho
se lips and then play across her teeth, the tip of his tongue working those teeth until a space is opened, and then his tongue is in her mouth, her mouth as wet and warm as she has become between her legs.
Suspending all good judgment — rape — and in fact no longer caring, Lyon realizes now that it’s going to happen, unless she comes suddenly awake and demands that he stop, screaming at him and beating upon him with her hands … or maybe it’s gone too far now to stop even if she awakens and tries to resist, Lyon reaching down between them to move his cock, trying to help it find entry.
Feeling how wet she is down there excites him, Lyon pushing against her, then withdrawing and feeling her wetness cool upon the head of his cock, pushing again, his hands up around her slender shoulders to hold her so he can push harder, farther in this time, farther.
He pauses, knowing this is his absolute last opportunity to stop, that if he pushes against her one more time that’ll be it, no stopping him then.
“Yes or no — tell me!”
But she says nothing, she’s like a doll in his arms, and Lyon knows he can’t put the decision off on her anyway, he knows this is wrong, knows he should roll off of her and …
… fuck it, Lyon crushing his mouth upon hers, moving his left hand to cover her right breast, pinching that fat nipple, wanting to say something really crude, You like that, huh, you like that, don’t you, bitch!
When she parts her teeth and slips her tongue into his mouth, Lyon thrills, her chest pushing upward to press that breast all the harder into his hand, the woman’s legs spreading so that he drops lower between them, both Lyon and the woman pressing and pushing now, nothing spoken as she snakes a hand down to where they are joined, arranging something there and then withdrawing her hand, Lyon raising up to see her face, the eyes closed but her mouth wide, as open to him as her legs.
They’re fucking each other, holding on, not speaking, just grunting and fucking, Lyon feeling like a goddamn freight train, that’s what he feels like, hot and hard and on tracks, the woman squeezing her ass muscles and raising it up off the bed, placing a hand under her ass so she can grasp his cock from below, encircling it with thumb and forefinger, tightening that ring so he has to push even harder to enter her, pushing himself through that finger-thumb circle for burial deep into a vagina that has become soft, wet, lush, then immediately pulling out of her vagina, back out through that hard, tight ring made by her thumb and finger, then back through it again and into her easy flesh, like screwing the tightest of virgins and the most willing of whores rolled into one, back and forth, hard ring and plush cunt, his blood pressure testing artery walls for weaknesses, holding his breath, grinding his teeth, fucking and animal-grunting, investing this act of intercourse with every frustration and embarrassment of the last eight days, every ruinous event, all of his humiliation getting fucked away inside this silent, pliable woman.
And when she detects its impending arrival she grabs his cock with her entire hand, squeezing it hard … then releases him and moves her hand away, making John Lyon feel as if he’s been dropped from a height, both falling and spilling, the woman breaking her silence by laughing, not a ridiculing laughter but a laughter so happy that Lyon joins in, laughing and climaxing simultaneously, hugging her and holding on, still grinding against her, still pumping into her, putting his head down and digging his toes into the sheet, still laughing, still coming.
“Are you going to talk to me now?” he asks after they have uncoupled, both of them on their backs, both of them bright with sweat, Lyon and the woman both looking straight up at a skylight filled with stars.
“Yes,” she says.
“Who are you?”
“Claire. My name is Claire Cept.”
CHAPTER 22
On toward dawn of that Tuesday, July 3, Randolph Welby walks out of his shack, down a hill, and to the edge of a thirty-foot cliff. The multiflora rosebushes and the berry briars that are growing on the face of the cliff have already begun to straighten, to repair the damage that’s been done to them. And at the foot of the cliff, where the patrol car ended up, it’s such a jungle of brush down there that you can barely see the car’s roof. To keep the smell in, Randolph made sure all the windows were up. The car’s interior will reach one-twenty in this July heat. Randolph too easily imagines how the sheriff’s body will look — what’s left of his body — in a few days. It’ll swell up and burst and splatter all over the insides of that car. Even if you could winch the car back up the cliff and repair the damage to its engine and frame, you couldn’t drive it — never be able to get the smell out. Don’t think about such things, he tells himself. In ten days’ time the roses and briars will obliterate the patrol car from sight, which is how it will remain until come autumn.
Not that Randolph thinks he’s gotten away with anything. Oh, he knows they’ll be coming for him. Whole bunch of ’em, Carl too. Fat Carl.
Got to go see that TV man now, even if he does do nasty things to a black woman he keeps in a box. There’s too much in the outside world that Randolph doesn’t understand, can’t explain, and now it’s going to have to be up to the TV man to explain everything.
Randolph returns to his shack and prepares for the hike.
CHAPTER 23
Mason Quinndell is only vaguely aware that somewhere outside a child is crying. The doctor is sitting at his desk this Tuesday morning, his mind’s eye roaming over the office, seeing-remembering in exact detail. He hasn’t permitted anything to be changed since he departed for the hospital five years ago, returning here to his house ten days later, blinded. Quinndell always thinks of it that way, not that he lost his sight or became blind but that he was blinded.
Impeccably dressed as always in suit, tie, and crisp white shirt, Dr. Quinndell sits tapping his long clean fingers on the desk.
He can see his office the way a master chess player sees the board while playing a game in his mind, Quinndell sitting there silently listing the titles of the books on the top shelf in that glassed-front oak bookcase on the north wall. Was that all of them? He does it again, counting this time. Twenty-three. He smiles.
Nothing touches him. If I get struck deaf next, Quinndell thinks, and then struck mute after that, I’ll simply find a place to reside more deeply and more vividly within my mind, taking every insult in stride, howling for more.
He sits there tapping, thinking. But then stops tapping, that child’s incessant crying having finally intruded upon the doctor’s thoughts. It’s the kid from across the street, an eighteen-month-old boy regularly left in the care of a teenage sister. Quinndell has twice sent Mary to warn the family about the sister yakking on the telephone while the little boy is left alone out in the yard, getting stung by bees or playing with dog turds. Unforgivable, Quinndell thinks. The way some people treat their children.
Then Quinndell puts the child out of his mind and considers what should be done about John Lyon. There’s always the possibility that he’s not quite as crazy as he’s acting. Maybe that story he told the sheriff — finding a black woman in a coffin — was carefully constructed to unhinge me. Then Lyon comes here pretending he hasn’t done any research into Claire’s charges, feigning incompetence, carrying a concrete frog (Mary confirmed that), laughing at me. Perhaps trying to spook me into doing something rash. Like coming after him with Mr. Spoon when he broke into that hyena laughter. Yes, that was rash. I wonder if he saw me. More to the point, I wonder what I would’ve done had I reached him before he got out of the office.
Quinndell clears his throat and raises his chin as he takes a linen handkerchief from his pocket and dabs at the moisture collecting around the beautiful blue eyes he commissioned from an old-world craftsman in Oslo, Norway.
He recalls making that decisive telephone call to Claire, “confessing” to her that not only did he murder those infants but he butchered them as well, Quinndell convinced now that it was that telephone call which nudged Claire over the edge and prompted her suicide — but apparently not before she inf
ected Lyon.
I know what I could do, I could introduce Mr. Lyon to Mr. Gigli. I could … but once again Quinndell’s thoughts are derailed by the child’s crying. He angrily presses the buzzer that quickly brings Mary to his office.
“Yes, doctor?”
“Can you hear a child crying?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
She doesn’t know what he means. “It’s that little boy from across the street, his sister —”
“I know the story. What I want is for that child to be silenced.”
“I’ll go over and get his sister off the phone.”
But the doctor abruptly smiles his yellow smile. “No, I have a better idea. Bring him here.”
“What?”
“Bring me that crying child.”
“You mean —”
“I mean walk across the street and yank the little bastard out of his yard and bring him here. I’m sure his sluttish sister won’t miss him, she’s undoubtedly on the telephone arranging to have sexual intercourse with a squad of football players, a team sport with which you’re familiar, I’m sure.”
She doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know if he is serious.
“Mary, if you defy me one more time before your year is up —”
“All right.”
Five minutes later Mary is back in the doctor’s office holding a plump toddler in her arms. “He was on the porch trying to get the door open but he couldn’t reach the handle.”
“Did his sister see you take him?”
“No, I don’t think so. But —”
“Bring him here.”
Mary carries the boy, dirty-faced and wide-eyed, to Quinndell’s desk.
“I’m surprised he came with you,” the doctor says, reaching out to touch the child’s face.
