As I Die Lying (32 page)

Bookworm wept in his upstairs room of the
Bone House. He alone could describe what was happening, but he
stuck to penning illegible entries in his diary, leaving me alone
to stare at the typewriter.

Little Hitler was jubilant. This was his
deepest perversion brought to full, red, screaming life. This was
nightmare made reality, murder made holy, hellhounds unchained. He
savored the giblets of memory, and the best was yet to come.

Mister Milktoast was wary but content. As the
protector, he thought his job accomplished because I was safely
tucked away in the Bone House. He spent his time preening around in
Beth’s brown hat and Shelley’s stockings.

Loverboy had no complaints.
He was banging Beth almost every night, inventing new sex
manuals,
kama sutra
as postmodern surrealism or maybe one of those endless fantasy
fiction series where the author’s publisher keeps squirting sour
milk from the cash cow long after the author is dead. Except sex is
better.

Beth had moved back into her apartment,
though she refused to rent out Monique’s room and had to stretch
her budget to cover the bills by herself. She dropped Ted and her
other satellite lovers, her native nymphomania having met its
match.

On one horribly memorable night, Loverboy
coaxed her into Monique’s room. Monique’s parents had cleared out
her paintings and clothes and books, the only pieces left of their
daughter now that the other pieces had been laid into the ground.
The room was bare except for the desk, the chipped bedside table,
and the unmade bed.

There was a large brown stain on the mattress
even though it had been turned over after the investigation. The
stain was like a Rorschach test where crazy people are supposed to
see a splatter pattern of spilled blood but normal people see
Schroedinger’s profile or New Zealand or the coffee splotch on the
manuscript they are revising.

Little Hitler sat with Beth on the bed and
made her talk about Monique, how lovely she was, how vivacious, how
much she meant to Beth. Then he steered the conversation back to my
past, or at least the new spin on the story of Father’s death.
History is always written by the winners in the blood of the
losers.

The Insider twisted its trident in my guts as
Beth tried to comfort Little Hitler. Of course, it ended with
Loverboy between her legs on the same mattress where her roommate
had been mutilated. The Insider howled with glee. Loverboy simply
howled, not caring whether she was faking or not.

I went through the motions at the Paper
Paradise. We were busy because of the coming Christmas season, and
Bookworm stayed dutifully occupied with stocking and reorders. Miss
Billingsly commented on my absentmindedness. I wanted to tell her
that my mind wasn’t absent, it was painfully present, sharper than
ever, sharper than Mister Milktoast’s wit and the Insider’s knives.
But Bookworm only nodded and smiled at her, mumbled something about
the hectic schedule, and got back to work. Arlie spun his
conspiracy theories and Little Hitler egged him on. Brittany teased
me about Beth, and Loverboy cornered her in the storeroom once in a
while to flirt with her, even while Beth’s feminine scent bathed
his chin.

Beth drew closer and closer, quick to share
herself now that she thought I had opened up to her. Alpha male
psychos got all the pussy but sensitive guys got to do the laundry
and wash dishes. We settled into a routine. Waking in each other’s
arms, then off to work and school, meeting for lunch at my house,
evenings at Beth’s apartment, Loverboy’s bakery cooking around the
clock. Weekend afternoons at the park, bundled in our coats because
the grass was crisp and we could see our breath. Sometimes stopping
by a gallery or driving out of town for a show or hiking the muddy
mountain trails.

It was all so easy, so natural, almost too
natural. I didn’t think people could change, but Beth had. She was
relaxed around me, telling me she loved me, always planning mutual
activities. We swapped spare door keys. She spent most of the days
at my place, even when I wasn’t there, but she never rang the
doorbell of the Bone House.

I came to know Beth better than I knew
myself. Our relationship was everything I had ever wanted back in
my old, human life. She was becoming part of me, but that was the
most frightening thing of all. I already had too many parts.

I saw Alexandria downtown once, and she told
me she’d never seen Beth so happy. She said she was unsure of me at
first, but I had earned her “stamp of approval.” Maybe Alexandria
was Beth’s version of Mister Milktoast, a distant protector who saw
only what she chose to see. Or what she was allowed to see.

Beth kept busy with her schoolwork, focusing
on the future instead of the past. Bit by bit, Little Hitler
unfolded a false biography of my life. He told her about Virginia,
how she had broken my heart after saying she loved me. He told her
Father was a sweet, loving man who occasionally lost his temper but
would have moved the moon if I had asked. In my new life history,
he became the saint and Mother the sinner. According to Little
Hitler, Father wore Hush Puppies.

On the day of the first light snow, in late
November, Beth whispered that she had something to give me. We were
sitting on the couch at her apartment, watching a rerun of “The
X-Files.” I looked out the window as she slipped into her room. It
was one of those merciful moments when the Insider was letting me
out, letting me live so that I could fully appreciate what it was
taking away. Just an ordinary day in the life of a possessed serial
killer. An early darkness had fallen with the snow, crept down a
flake at a time until the world outside was black and white.

Beth returned to the living room with one
hand behind her back. She snuggled into my shoulder and I put my
face into her hair that always smelled of April or Dawn, one of
those time names for women, or maybe Virginia or Dakota, one of
those place names, or maybe Hope Hill, a character invented for
this book who was actually a real girl I’d sat behind in the sixth
grade and secretly loved. I nuzzled Beth’s neck, but stopped when I
felt Loverboy stirring. Those damned inconvenient erections, always
popping up when least expected.

“
What’s the big surprise?” I
asked.

“
I’ve got lots of
surprises,” she said. “This is only the latest one.”

“
As long as it’s not about
babymakers,” Mister Milktoast said.

“
What?”

“
Inside joke,” I
said.

She tapped my temple softly. “You’re supposed
to let me in there.”

Oh, you’ll get your chance. You’re going to
be in there soon. Soon and forever, right, Richard?

“
Hey, honey, what about your
big secret? Don’t keep me waiting.”

“
Good things are worth
waiting for.” She’d worn the line down to a nub, like the eraser on
a dyslexic’s pencil. Or licnep.

“
How do I know it’s a good
thing?”

She rubbed her chest against mine. “Isn’t it
always a good thing?”

“
You’ve got me
there.”

Her lips found mine, quickly, surely, with
the ease of experience. She tilted her head back and looked at me
through those mysterious half-closed eyes. Her green irises
sparkled between dark lashes.

“
I have to ask you something
first,” she said.

“
Uh-oh. That can’t be
good.”

“
It’s nothing bad. And you
can always say ‘no.’”

“
Uh-oh reprise.”

“
Promise you won’t get
mad?”

“
I bet if I say no, I won’t
get the surprise.”

“
I didn’t say
that.”

“
I can read you like a
book.”

Better than a book. I can turn the pages. I
can rewrite the story. I can change the ending.

“
Okay, Richard. I’m just
going to come out and say it. I’m going to visit my parents for
Thanksgiving. I haven’t seen them since...”

Since Monique.

“
...since forever and a
day,” she finished.

“
That’s wonderful. But I
have a feeling that’s not the big surprise.”

“
When I come back, I’m going
to move in with you.”

My limbs tensed, my heart alternately
throbbed and halted, my Little People fluttered like a disturbed
murder of ravens. “That doesn’t sound like a question.”

Beth closed her eyes. She bent her neck like
a praying nun. Little Hitler let her suffer for a moment as David
Duchovny made some slacker cosmic observation on the television
screen.

“
Hey, Angel Baby,” I said,
the Insider moving my lips like sausage puppets. “That wasn’t a
‘no.’ I would like that better than anything in the world. But are
you sure that’s what you want?”

She looked up and her eyes were moist, but
she was smiling. “I want to start over,” she said, making no move
to wipe away her tears. “To get out of this place and forget
about...about her. I want it to be just us from now on, without
Monique’s ghost sitting in between us all the time.”

I hugged her with both arms. One was
Loverboy’s, the other Bookworm’s.

“
Just you and me,” I said.
“I promise.”

“
I love you,
Richard.”

“
That L word sounds so
lovely on your lips.”

“
I don’t say it often, but
when I say it, I don’t lie.”

“
I love you, too,
Beth.”

At that moment, I meant it. Darkness won each
day’s battle, but there was always hope of dawn, always a thread of
light in the fabric of despair. Love was hope. Love was light. Love
was possible salvation.

I would have gotten down on my knees and
thanked the Insider. But the Insider already had me on my
knees.

Love was a word thrown in a book to get the
character laid and then arc to a tragic ending.

“
Now that that’s settled,
what’s the big surprise?” I asked.

Beth reached behind her back for the thing
she had dropped. She found it and pressed it into my hand.

It was the white carnation, dried but still
intact. It smelled of meadows and funerals where the petals crushed
against my sweating palms.

“
I wanted you to have it,”
she whispered.

She’d already given it to me once. It was the
gift that kept on giving. We locked our limbs in a passionate
tangle. Loverboy even let me watch as they skin-wrestled on the
sofa. He was just that kind of a guy, a generous housemate, always
willing to share as long as he went first.

And so I was lost in this brave and horrible
new love, built on the sickest of lies. Perhaps it was Loverboy’s
game, little toys pulled out of his bag of tricks that kept her
amused. Maybe the attachment was solely because of the Insider’s
psychic glue. But I believed some small secret part of me could
still harbor hope and love and compassion and all the human things
that I thought I had lost. Surely not all the closets had been
swept clean and some cabinets were left unmolested, even if these
emotions were only hiding under my dusty bed in the Bone House.

I didn’t know if I would stop her from loving
me even if I were able. Because the Insider had taught me one
lesson well. It smothered from the inside, it isolated and crushed
out any flickering light of love, stomped on the campfires of the
heart.

I wished I could warn her. I wished I could
warn all of them. Because I didn’t know when the Insider might
strike again. It stayed a riddle, but I could feel its ratwalk in
the crawlspace.

Shady Valley dressed in its pumpkin colors
and dry cornstalks were stacked like the bones of a gone harvest.
Paper turkeys stuck to school windows and dangled from strings in
the grocery stores. Tiny radios whined the first measures of
yuletide carols. Church signs reminded everyone of the reason for
the season even though the Julian calendar had moved Jesus Christ’s
birthday around to accommodate the money changers. The town emptied
as the Westridge students went on Thanksgiving vacation. The locals
stooped under the weight of their fears and suspicions and went
about their holiday shopping.

Beth refused my offer to drive her to
Philadelphia. She said she wasn’t ready for me to meet her parents.
She boarded a Trailways bus and waved from the window as it pulled
away. I felt a rare moment’s joy because I knew she’d be safe for a
few days.

Safe from me. Or the Insider. I no longer
knew which was the lesser of two evils.

I sat in the bus depot for an hour, watching
faces. I didn’t believe the Insider was hunting. It was meditating,
lulled by the human stream that flowed by on both sides. It was
making me wait, but for what I didn’t know. A meat puppet on a
sleepy hand.

The bus pulled up and
aroused a tingle in the pit of my chest. It was some sixth sense,
some electrical charge,
déjà vu
through past-life regression. The Insider came
alive, peeling back my eyelids and twisting my neck until I was
staring at the bus doors wheezing open.

Mother stepped out, complete with
baggage.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

“
I got your letter,” Mother
said.

She stood at the entrance to the depot like a
resurrected martyr, an ash effigy of Joan of Arc, her bony frame
swallowed by a pink pastel ski jacket. The fur around the hood
shadowed her face, her eyes shining like a cornered animal’s
peering out of a cave. She swayed a little, as if the breeze of the
passengers boarding the bus might push her over.