"We don't have a digging iron," Sam said, pulling a red handkerchief from his hip pocket and wiping his face.
"We do at home."
"Doesn't do us much good here, does it?" said Sam, with as much sarcasm as he was ever likely to muster.
"I could go get it. Only take half an hour."
Sam exhaled strongly and leaned on the shovel. His face was red. "You know where it is?"
"The garage. Right inside the door."
Sam nodded. "Okay, go. I can't keep pulling these stones out of here piecemeal. It'd be a lot easier to break them up." He tossed her the car keys, and she brushed the dirt off them. "I'll just start digging on the surface right around here. I can't go any deeper without the iron."
She waved good-bye and started up the trail to where they had parked the car. Sam, left alone, sat on the stump where Esther had stationed herself, and brushed the dirt from his hands. There had been so little rain that the earth was dry, and he blew his nose to clear the dust from it. He pressed his shoulders back to try and ease the tightness in his chest, then stood up again, grabbed his shovel, and went back to the hole he had begun. He looked at it with exhaustion, then stepped a few feet nearer to the massive pine, and started to dig in its shadow.
A few inches down, he heard the subtle scrape of the blade hitting something that he knew was not stone. He tapped tentatively for a moment, then fell to his hands and knees and dug in the dirt like a badger until his fingers contacted something roughly textured but regular in shape.
Sam pulled it from the ground, and groaned as he saw that it was only a small spike, about five inches long and as thick as a finger. The point, though rusted, was still sharp. He wondered if antique spikes were worth anything, and loosely placed it into a knot in the pine so that he could find it later.
He continued to dig shallow holes all around the trunk of the pine tree, scraping away the topsoil and digging down until his shovel hit stone, then moving on. As he dug, he thought he heard the wind gather strength in the treetops, and hoped that it meant rain. It would mean that he would have to come back another day, but he was tired of digging and growing discouraged as well.
But when he paused and looked around him, he saw that the limbs of the trees were not shaking in a breeze, and the leaves did not tremble. He felt no wind at all. So why, he wondered, was he still hearing that soft rustling sound, like pine boughs in a gentle wind?
Then he looked up at the pine tree beneath which he stood, and his breath caught like ice in his throat.
The limbs were moving, but not with the motion of the wind or the swaying of the tree. They were moving independently of one another, like thick, brown serpents or long, dark arms reaching for him, for Sam Hershey, and he could not move, could not run away from them.
The last rational thought he had was that this was not real, this was impossible, this was a dream. But then the pain began, began and would not end, and the pain convinced him of its reality. Pain was real. No matter how much else was nightmare, the pain was real.
And the pain was endless. The pain was black and white mad red and cold and hot. The pain was the texture of the pine bark against his flesh, the sharp needles grasping him, the spike . . .
The spike.
The pain was being driven, being made to run, and as he ran, feeling himself grow heavier with every step but somehow growing lighter as well, becoming less every time he made a circle around the tree . . .
Becoming less.
And himself, what he was, flowing away from him, and he lost himself, until something stopped him, pushed him into the tree, and now the pain was the worst of all, the pain growing so big and black and red that the pain was the world, the world where he would live forever after, and he slid down now, slid down the tree, but the tree was no longer rough and brown, no, now the tree was pale and pink and streaked with red, the tree was soft and wet and slippery, and he knew that the pain was the tree, and he was the pain, and he was the tree forever.
Esther returned fifty minutes after she had left. The digging iron was not behind the garage door where she had thought it was, and she had to spend some time looking for it. She finally found it in the rafters of the garage, and had to climb up on a wooden box to reach it. It was heavier than she had remembered, and when it tipped downward, she was unable to hold on to it. The sharp end of the iron struck the garage floor and put a large crack in the cement. Sam would surely be annoyed about that, she thought, and hoped that he would have found something by the time she returned to the grove so that he would be in good spirits when she told him of the mishap.
She was humming when she entered the grove, but stopped when she saw Sam laying on the ground twenty yards away, his back to her. At first she thought the exertion had given him a heart attack, but then she noticed that the trunk of the tree beside which he lay seemed coated with something strange. No, not coated, but wrapped, wound around like a thick, wet, grayish-pink ribbon. A ribbon. Attached to Sam. And the other end, was it attached to that nail in the tree, that big nail?
Numb, she walked closer. Even a few feet away, she could not determine what it was that encircled the tree. She had never seen anything like it before. Even when she stepped around Sam's body and saw the red, gaping crater of his abdomen, even when she started to scream, she still did not know what it was. Even when the hikers heard her and found her and got help, when she was taken away in the ambulance, still screaming with no voice left to scream, she still did not know. She had never before seen her husband's, or anyone's, viscera.
He jested, that he might not weep.
—Alexander Smith, Dreamthorp
Tom Brewer sat on his front porch and swung back and forth in the old metal glider. His mother was cleaning out the pantry, his father was sitting in the living room reading every word of the latest issue of History, and his son was watching, or was pretending to watch, Star Trek in his bedroom. The evening was hot and dry, the beer tasted flat, and Tom was bored and edgy. Every time he heard a car, he looked down the street to see if it was Laura Stark's, but it never was. God, he thought, what a workaholic she must be. Even if he did see her car coming, he didn't know what he would do—go down and talk to her? He felt the need to talk to somebody other than his parents, other than his uncommunicative son.
As if in answer to his prayer, he saw Charlie Lewis walking down Emerson, coming the opposite way from his house. Tom waved, and when Charlie reached Tom's stairs, he came up them and sat on the glider. "Things are getting worse," Tom said.
"They are. That's why I'm here."
"Huh?"
"Collecting money for the Save the Old Farts Foundation." His words were as dry as the air.
"What are you talking about?"
"Donations for security cops," Charlie said. "It seems that Pancho and Cisco over in Chalmers can't keep the homicidal maniacs off our backs, so we're taking the law into our own gnarled and wrinkled hands. There's an agency in Harrisburg where we can get guys for fifteen dollars an hour."
"Just at night or around the clock?"
"Well, since Sam Hershey was killed in broad daylight, I hardly think just a midnight patrol would do much good."
"They can't patrol the woods, though," Tom said.
"You think anybody will be in the woods after this?"
"Good point." Tom cleared his throat. "What the hell happened anyway?"
Charlie leaned back and looked up at the porch roof. "Bret Walters told me all about it. I think he wanted to share the horror so that if he spread it around it might not be so strong in himself. It must have been terrible."
Tom glanced at the screen door to make sure no one else was listening. "Go on. The news didn't say much about what happened. They did say 'mutilated,' though."
"That doesn't begin to touch it." Charlie turned and looked at Tom. "Bret said that Sam Hershey's small intestine was wound around that big old pine tree."
"What? You've got to be kidding or Bret was kidding you."
"
God's truth. I've never seen Bret pale before, but this did it."
"Jesus, how the hell—"
"You want to hear this?"
"Yes, I want to hear it."
"You want to get an old man a drink first? For his heart?"
Tom went into the kitchen and came out with two Jack Daniel's on the rocks. Charlie drank half of his in one swallow. "His navel—and the skin around his navel—had been torn out, and nailed to the tree—"
"Charlie—"
"Nailed to the tree with an old spike. His intestine was wound around it for its whole length. Three times around, Bret said. And that's a thick tree." Charlie's voice was beginning to rasp, and he took another swallow. "And the other end was still attached to Sam Hershey."
Tom feverishly tried to comprehend the physical logistics, as if imagining the logic of the act itself could help him deal with the madness behind its motivation. "But how could anyone . . . do that?"
"I don't know. But Sam did."
"Sam did? What do you mean?"
"I mean that Sam Hershey walked around that tree himself. After he was nailed to it. His footprints were in the blood."
"You can't mean that it was suicide."
"No. Bret said the medical examiner thought that he was driven around the tree. His body was bruised and lacerated. And there was blood and bits of . . . of flesh on some of the branches, like someone bent them down and was hitting Sam Hershey with them." Charlie shook his head. "I've never heard of anything so . . . ungodly."
"Sweet Jesus . . ." Tom muttered. "Who else knows about this?"
"Well, Bret told me, with very little urging. Like I said, though, I suspect that he had to tell somebody about it just to help get it out of his system. And I've told you, because I knew you could take it, after what happened with Martha Sipling. But the details are going to be kept secret. It's been reported as murder, sure enough, but unless the National Enquirer gets hold of it, that's all most people are going to know."
Tom smiled grimly. "So much for bucolic rusticity."
"Bet your damn life on it," Charlie said. "So, aside from living in a sylvan village where a homicidal maniac who makes Jack the Ripper look like the Tidy-Bowl Man is terrorizing the populace, how's life been treating you?"
Tom couldn't laugh. He shrugged instead. "Going though changes."
"Woman changes?"
"That's part of it." He tried to keep his mind on the conversation but could not drive the image of Sam Hershey out of his mind.
"You seeing my neighbor? I heard you two were spotted sharing an ice cream together."
"We had a talk."
"Better be careful. Here in Dreamthorp, lesser things have led to shotgun weddings. Does this mean it's off between you and your coed cutie?"
Tom was slightly amused, slightly annoyed. "Do you know you can be a pretty nosy old man?"
"One of the perks of the elderly, being nosy. It's in the Constitution." Charlie spun his ice around in his glass, tipped back, and sucked on a cube. "How's Josh these days?" he asked out of the side of his mouth.
"Josh is . . . Josh. Not much change."
"I'd have thought that your . . . separation from your young female friend would have buoyed him considerably."
"Not especially."
"Give him time, Tom."
"He's a good worker. At the Mobil. Ted told me. He said he's real pleased with Josh."
"He's a nice kid. A little confused now, that's all. He's got to put his life back together. That's a hard job for a youngster."
"It ain't that easy for us old guys either," Tom said.
Nor was it easy for a woman, particularly when she felt that she had never had her life together to begin with.
Laura arrived home at 8:30, just before dark. Darkness always came earlier under the trees of Dreamthorp, and she had to poke her key at the lock several times before it slipped in. She entered the house, turned on the lights, checked the rooms to make sure that she was alone, poured herself a drink, and began to worry.
She worried about the lunatic who had killed Sam Hershey and, probably, Mrs. Sipling; she worried about the new account the company had landed—a chain of Philadelphia-based auto supply shops; and she worried about herself, the way she thought, the things she did and didn't do. Finally she threw a Lean Cuisine in the microwave and turned on the TV. A Clint Eastwood movie was on, and she ate while she watched the Man with No Name clean up the vermin of Italy's version of the old west. At ten o'clock, when the movie was over, she went upstairs, took a shower, and walked naked into her bedroom.
The bedroom shade was up only two inches to let in a little fresh air, but Laura crossed the room in the dark and lowered it. As her fingers fumbled for the light switch, she heard a scuffling sound outside. She froze, then knelt by the window, and pulled back the shade, just far enough to see out.
Someone was there. In what she called her backyard, a piece of earth so steeply pitched that one could not easily stand on it, a dark figure moved against the deeper darkness of the ground. It moved slowly, going up the hill toward the back of her lot, pausing, then moving again, now slipping catching itself, moving higher up. Now it was almost on the level of her bedroom window, though thirty feet away.
She did not turn on the light. Instead she found the back of her bedroom door, took her bathrobe from the hook, and slipped it on. Then she went into the guest room across the hall and took a .22 semiautomatic target pistol from the case that sat on top of the dresser. She loaded it with a filled clip, and went back into her bedroom, but when she looked out into the darkness she no longer saw the figure.
Laura waited, but nothing moved. She listened, but heard nothing.
Gilbert? Are you still alive?
It was absurd. Of course he wasn't. He was dead, and nothing was going to change that. That there was a madman in Dreamthorp was a given, but there were, regrettably, a multitude of madmen in the world. The beast called Gilbert Rodman had no corner on the market.
Laura looked and waited, but nothing changed. She reached behind the blind, lowered and locked the window, and turned on the light. The telephone sat on the bedside table, her lifeline to the world, and she picked it up and dialed Tom Brewer's number. After the fourth ring, she heard the handset lift and Tom's voice say hello.
"Tom, this is Laura. Laura Stark."
He sounded happy to hear from her. "Yeah, how are you?"
"Well, a little spooked just now. There was somebody prowling outside my place."
His voice became edged with steel. "Front or back?"
"Back, but—"
"I'll be right over."
"No, they're gone now, whoever it was. There's no need."
"They may still be around."
"Really, Tom, it's all right. I've got a gun." She chuckled. "Several guns."
"This is nothing to fool with, Laura. There's somebody very nasty on the loose around here."
"I know. But really, I didn't want you to come and rescue me."
"What do you want then?" His voice was mild, inquisitive, not at all accusatory.
"I just . . . wanted to talk to you."
They talked. They talked for well over an hour about food and theatre and films and places they had both been; they talked about San Francisco and New Orleans and Manhattan; they talked about Seattle and Baltimore and Philadelphia.
They talked about Chicago.
Unsuspected, this idea of death lurks in the sweetness of music . . .
—Alexander Smith, Dreamthorp
And just as Tom Brewer and Laura Stark were talking about Chicago, a plumbing supplies salesman pulled to the side of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Parkway and let Gilbert Rodman out of his car. Within a few minutes, Gilbert was on West Van Buren, walking east toward the Loop. He found a cheap hotel and ate his meals at the counter of a nearby diner. It took him two days to gather the courage to look up the name in the phone book.
It was there. Daniel H. Vernon. The address was listed as well. He put a coin int
o the slot and dialed. A woman answered.
"Danny there?" Gilbert asked. He made no attempt to disguise his voice. No one would recognize it.
"Danny's playing tonight." She sounded tired and grouchy.
"Playing where?"
"The Blue Light, Christ, where he always plays. Who the hell is this?" Gilbert hung up. He found an address for the Blue Light, then hailed a cab.
The Blue Light, true to its name, had a blue light hanging outside the door. It helped disguise some of the dirt on the sidewalk. The name of the club was also spelled out in blue neon in the front window, along with Budweiser in red. A worn-looking card sat on an easel in the window. It read, The Al Joss Quartet—Appearing Nightly.
It cost Gilbert two dollars to get in, and he sat at the bar and ordered a beer. Only after he drank half of it did he look toward the tiny stage, where the Al Joss Quartet was playing. They were halfway through an up-tempo version of Dexter Gordon's "Bikini," and sounded cool and together. The drummer, a middle-aged black man with several days' growth of gray whiskers, was setting a firm, steady rhythm, while the pianist, a white-haired white man, was doing wonders in the upper half of the keyboard. The bass man, black as night, was slapping the strings like a baby's bottom, and the alto sax man, not playing, had his back to the audience. The light hit his hair, a blue-eyed soul "do," and shone on it like a nimbus.
When he finally turned and began to play, the notes starting down as low as dirt and just as rough, Gilbert recognized his father immediately. He hadn't seen him for fifteen years, but there was no mistaking the trademark fright wig of hair, now slathered generously with gray or the bump in the nose from where it had been broken by a Storyville beer bottle when Gilbert was four.
And even if the man had looked totally different, there was no mistaking the sound of his sax. It wailed like a woman, Gilbert thought, like a woman getting what she wanted, what all women wanted. It screamed in pain and ecstasy, shouting its fulfillment, its destiny, to the world. Ever since he'd been small, the sound of his daddy's saxophone had always made him feel funny down there. Even now, with nothing there at all, he still had the feeling.
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