Ash Wednesday (53 page)

Thornton coughed up bile, spat it away. "You'll let me go?"

"I'll let you go. Now show me. Show me, lover.”

“I . . . I can't."

"Get on board, little children. Now."

His body racked with sobs, Clyde Thornton staggered to the couch, put one hand on its back, the other on its seat, and held himself suspended over Christine Grimes's glowing ghost. His eyes were pressed shut, but the tears ran from them.

"Closer. Get closer," said Brad, pushing Thornton's buttocks inward with his foot. Thornton grunted in pain as Brad moved to the side of the couch.

"Let me go. You said you'd let me go."

"Open your eyes. Look at her."

Thornton did, and his sobs turned into a convulsive gagging.

"
Keep
them open." Brad walked behind Thornton again, put the gun barrel an inch from the base of his skull, and pulled the trigger. The gun shrieked, Thornton's flesh parted, teeth and red debris spattered the couch. The corpse fell as though struck with a sledgehammer, yet remained where it had been, a naked man with an eternally exploding head, locked in passionless embrace with a strangled lover.

"I let you go," said Brad. "I let you go."

He wondered about the screaming until he remembered the girl. Kim was standing against the wall, her face turned away, her hands over her ears. He stuck the pistol into his belt, grasped her shoulders gently. "Hey, hey . . ."

Out of her screams came a frenzied, "
Nooo
. . ."

"Stop, stop, it's all right, I won't hurt you, I won't. . . . Between him and me, that's all. Be quiet, please."

Fear of him stilled her, but she kept crying. He turned her around, and she looked straight at him so that she would not have to see what he'd done.

"I'm sorry you saw that," he said. "Not sorry I did it, but that you saw."

Looking at him, she wondered how his face could be so suddenly sad, so tragically tender, like an avenging angel who, despite its destructiveness, is always and ever holy. In that second she felt safe, thinking how absurd it was to feel safe in the hands of a maniac.

"Hey! In there!" Frank
Kaylor's
urgent voice, amplified by the bullhorn, found them in the cellar. "Talk damn fast or we're coming in! What happened in there?"

"Come on, fast!" Brad said, drawing his gun with his right hand, taking Kim's hand in his left, and running up the stairs, through the kitchen, into the living room, where he grasped a window sash through a handful of curtains and pushed it up. "Stay where you are!" he cried, his head sheltered by the wall. "Thornton's dead! The girl's all right!"

There was a long silence from outside. "What do you want?"

Brad called back. "I'm getting what I want."

"Jesus," said Mike Gifford. "What's he doing to that girl?"

Kaylor
held up the bullhorn. "We want to see the girl.”

“No."

"We heard the shot; we can't believe she's okay otherwise. Show us or we come in."

Brad turned to Kim, who was sitting once more on the couch. "Go to the window, pull back the curtain, and wave. Make sure they see you . . . All right. That's enough. Sit down." Leaving the window open, Brad sat next to Kim in the same position they'd held before.

Another five minutes passed before Kim gathered the courage to ask, "How much longer?"

"I'm not sure."

She paused again. "What are you waiting for?"

"I'm not sure of that either. But it'll come."

He was right. It had in fact just awakened.

"Did you hear that?" Alice Meadows pushed herself up on one elbow and looked toward Jim in the darkness.

"Yes." Although he had been sleeping, his voice was clear, alert, as though he'd been waiting to be awakened.

"What was it?" she wondered aloud.

"A gunshot. Inside a house." He got out of the bed and looked out the window. "Up the road. There are police flashers."

"At which house?" She knew.

"Meyers. I think Meyers." Jim gave a deep sigh as he turned from the window.

I'm in a play, Alice thought. A three-act, maybe four-act, tragedy. And now it ends. Now it ends. She felt relieved, grateful, frightened of what would happen as well as of her own awareness that the time was here. "You'll go up," she said.

"Yes." He didn't move.

"Are you scared?"

"Yes. Still."

"I don't think you will be."

Jim turned the bedside lamp on and they both closed their eyes for a second against the sudden light. "How can I be sure it's him? It could have been a car backfiring, an accident."

"You know it's him. He's been a bomb waiting to explode."

Jim stood naked, his eyes slowly opening from slits as he grew used to the light.

"You'll go up." Was she acting now, playing the part she felt she should? She thought perhaps she was, but if she did not, he might come back to bed, close his eyes, and sleep through the chance that would free him, and yes, free her from him, break her last link with this town of the dead. "I'll go with you."

They got dressed, she in sweater and slacks, he in dark jeans and a black turtleneck, listening to the faraway, indistinct voice on the bullhorn that had spoken to them earlier in dreams. "Do you want to take a gun?" she asked him.

He thought of the only pistol he had, a small .22 with an opalescent grip, a ladies' gun to startle muggers, to spook burglars. It was not a weapon with which to war with nightmares. Or, he thought, with yourself. "No."

"You might need it."

"No."

They left the house, leaving all the lights off, and walked up Sundale Road. She took his hand, and though it was warm with perspiration, his tread was growing more firm as they neared the flashing lights. The small group behind the parked cars tensed when they noticed Jim and Alice, then relaxed when they saw no menace in their features, only what they read as a bland curiosity.

"Get back behind here,"
Kaylor
told them, and they joined him.

"What's going on, Chief?" Jim asked. "We heard some noises, thought maybe there was an accident."

"No accident. And the best thing you can do is go back to your house, Mr. Callendar."

"Why?"

"It's Brad Meyers. Grabbed a girl, maybe killed his woman and her kid, and for sure killed Clyde Thornton."

"Brad Meyers . . . I know him."

"Doesn't matter if you do or not. I want you to go back to your house. We're just gonna sit tight until the state troopers come, and I'm not getting anyone else killed."

"Well, mightn't he escape out the back?"

"Rankin's back there. Besides, he could've escaped before. Doesn't want to."

"What
does
he want?"

"If I knew that, I'd be on my way to get it for him so I could get that girl out of there. Now go home, Mr. Callendar. Please."

"All right." Jim nodded meekly. "All right." He took Alice's hand, turned, and started walking back down the road.

"Maybe he's right," said Alice. "You'd only get killed too." But inside her chest was a feeling of deep emptiness, of chances lost.

Jim stopped and looked at her. "We're only leaving so we can go back behind the house." He moved on.

"But Bob Rankin—"

"We know Bob. Maybe he'll help us."

"What if he doesn't?"

Jim would not consider it. He and Alice walked until they reached their driveway, then crossed the road and went back the way they had come, through the silent backyards of their sleeping or departed or frightened neighbors.

They saw Bob Rankin at the edge of Brad Meyers's yard, hunkered down on the sodden, brown patch of grass and weed that was neither lawn nor field. He straightened up when he saw them and called softly, "Who's there?"

"It's Alice, Bob . . . and Jim." She brought her hand up as the flashlight's beam struck her.

"Alice . . . what are you doing here?"

"Jim . . .” She turned and looked at the man beside her. His face was grim, his expression resolute.

"I want to go in," he finished for her. "I want to stop Meyers, get the girl out."

They couldn't see Rankin's face, but there was no mistaking the disbelief in his voice. "Sure you do." He half laughed. "We
all
do, brother. But we don't want to get killed either."

"It doesn't matter to me. That's why I can do it where you can't."

"Uh-unh. No way. Even if you don't give a shit about yourself, what about the girl?"

"He won't kill the girl. He needs her. And if he's really crazy, he'll kill her anyway."

"I said no."

"What if I go in?" Jim said calmly. "What if I go in right now?"

"I'll stop you."

"Then stop me." He walked purposefully away from Rankin toward the darkness of the house. Neither he nor Alice spoke. The only sound was the sweep of leather against gunmetal as Rankin's police special left its holster, the sharp click of the hammer retracting, the ghostly whisper of cloth rubbing cloth as the gun came up.

But there was no blast of gunfire. There were only Jim's soft footfalls through the wet grass until he was lost to their sight in the blackness.

Rankin's arm came down, and he looked to where Alice stood. "I didn't see him. He sneaked past me."

Alice said nothing.

"I'm not going in after him."

"He doesn't expect you to. He doesn't want you to." She touched his shoulder. "Thank you, Bob."

"Does he have a gun?"

"No."

"Oh, shit." He shook his head. "I didn't see him. I didn't talk to you at all."

"Thank you."

"Get away from here, Alice. Just get the hell out.”

“He has to do it, Bob."

"Yeah. Sure." And as Alice left, Rankin thought, and if that girl gets killed . . . what am I going to have to do?

~*~

Within Brad Meyers's brain something clicked, as subtle yet as certain as a rheostat. There was someone outside trying to get in. "Did you hear anything?" he asked the girl.

"No."

He sat for a moment longer until he was sure. Then he stood up. "Come with me. Stay behind me and walk quietly." They moved swiftly through the dining room into the kitchen, where Brad pulled back a curtain and saw against the night a deeper darkness that was creeping stealthily toward the back door.

"Who . . . who is it?" she whispered.

"
Shh
." He tiptoed to the door, unlocked it, and slipped back across the kitchen next to the refrigerator. "Stand in there," he said, pushing her gently in the direction of the dining room, listening to her move stumblingly in the black. "There. That's it. Stay behind the wall." Then he set his left hand on the refrigerator door, and held the gun in two fingers of his right hand while he blew on his right palm to dry it. A turn of the wrist, and the pistol nestled in his hand once more. He took a deep breath, let half of it out, and kept the remainder in his lungs. It steadied him, so that when the door drifted open he did not flinch or gasp or do anything to draw the attention of whoever stood on the threshold.