Chain Letter (2 page)

At the bottom of this communication is a list of names. Your name is at the top. What
is required of you—at present—is a small token of obedience. After you have performed
this small service, you will remove your name from the top of Column I and place it
at the bottom of Column II. Then you will make a copy of this communication and mail
it to the individual now at the top of Column I. The specifics of the small service
you are to perform will be listed in the classified ads of the
Times
under personals. The individual following you on the list must receive their letter
within five days of today.

Feel free to discuss this communication with the others on the list. Like myself,
they are your friends and are privy to your sins. Do not discuss this communication
with anyone outside this group. If you do, that one very sinful night will be revealed
to all.

If you do not perform the small service listed in the paper or if you break the chain
of this communication, you will be hurt.

Sincerely
,

Your Caretaker

For a full minute, none of them spoke or moved. Then Brenda reached to tear the letter
in two. Alison stopped her.

“But that’s insane!” Brenda protested. She was angry. Fran was shaking. Alison was
confused. In a way, they all felt the same.

“Let’s think a minute before we do anything rash,” she said. “If we destroy this letter,
what advantage does that give us over the person who sent it?” Alison drummed her
knuckles on the table top. “Give me that envelope.” Fran did so. Alison studied the
postmark, frowned. “It was mailed locally.”

“Maybe it’s a joke,” Brenda said hopefully. “One of the guys at school, maybe?”

“How could they know about
that
night?” Fran asked, her voice cracking.

With the mere reference to the incident, the room changed horribly. An invisible choking
cloud of fear could have poured through the windows. Brenda bowed her head. Fran closed
her eyes. Alison had to fight to fill her lungs. Whenever she remembered back to last
summer, she couldn’t breathe. Were this letter and her recent nightmares connected
or coincidental? Seven of them had been there that night. The same seven were listed
at the bottom of the letter. She had felt the empty windows of the neighboring houses
staring at her. Did this
Caretaker
wait behind one of them?

Alison shook herself. This was not a nightmare. She was awake. She was in control.
The hollow, bloodshot eyes and the lifeless, grinning mouth were only memories. They
couldn’t reach her here in the present.

“We should have gone to the police.” Fran wept. “I wanted to, and so did Neil.”

“No, you didn’t,” Brenda said. “You didn’t say anything about going to the police.”

“I wanted to, but you guys wouldn’t let me. We killed him. We should have . . . ”

“We didn’t kill anybody!” Brenda exploded. “Don’t you ever say that again. Are you
listening to me, Fran? What happened was an accident. For all we know, he was already
dead.”

“He wasn’t,” Fran sobbed. “I saw him move. I saw . . . ”

“Shut up!”

“He was making gurgling sounds. That meant . . . ”

“Stop it!”

“Quiet down, both of you,” Alison said, knowing she had to take charge. “Arguing won’t
help us. We had this same argument
a hundred times last summer. The fact is, none of us knows whether he’s dead or alive. . . . ”
She froze, aghast at her slip, at the idea that must have formed deep in her mind
the moment she had read the letter. Fran and Brenda were staring at her, waiting for
an explanation. She had meant to say: The fact is, none of us knows whether he
was
dead or alive. Of course, he must be dead now. They had buried him.

“What do you mean?” Fran asked, shredding her palms with her clenched fingernails.

“Nothing,” Alison said.

“You mean that
he
wrote this letter,” Fran said, nodding to herself. “That’s what you mean, I know.
He’s coming back for revenge. He’s going to . . . ”

“Stop it!” Brenda shouted again. “Listen to yourself; you’re babbling like a child.
There are no ghosts. There are no vampires. This is nothing but a joke, a sick, sick
joke.”

“Then why are
you
so upset?” Fran snapped back.

“If I am, you made me this way. It’s your fault. And that’s all I’m going to say about
this. Alison, give me that letter. I’m throwing it away, and then I’m going home.”

Alison rested her head in her hands, massaging her temples. A few minutes ago, they
had been happily gossiping and stuffing their faces. Now they were at each other’s
throats and had the dead haunting them. “Would you two do me a favor?” she asked.
“Would you both please stop shouting and allow us to discuss this calmly?” She rubbed
her eyes. “Boy, have I got a headache.”

“What is there to discuss?” Brenda asked, picking at a Twinkie with nervous fingers.
“One of the others, either Joan, Tony or Neil sent this letter as a joke.”

“You didn’t mention Kipp,” Fran said. Kipp was Brenda’s boyfriend. He was also, without
question, the smartest person in the school.

Brenda was defensive. “Kipp would never have written something this perverse.”

“Would Neil or Tony have?” Alison asked. Tony was the school quarterback, all-around
Mr. Nice Guy, and a fox to boot. She was crazy about him. He hardly knew she was alive.
Kipp and Neil were two of his best friends. “Brenda, you know them best.”

“Neil wouldn’t have, that’s for sure,” Fran cut in. She shared Alison’s problem. Fran
was crazy about Neil and he hardly knew she was alive. It was a mixed-up world.

Alison had to agree with Fran. Though she had spoken to him only a few times, Neil
had impressed her as an extremely thoughtful person. Besides Fran, he had been the
only one who had wanted to go to the police last summer.

“Yeah,” Brenda agreed. “Neil doesn’t have this kind of imagination.”

“How about Tony?” Alison asked reluctantly. It would be a shame to learn her latest
heartthrob was crazy.

Brenda shook her head. “That guy’s straighter than Steve Garvey. Joan must have sent
it. She’s such a jerk.”

As Kipp was the Brain and Tony was the Fox, Joan was the Jerk. Unfortunately, Joan
was also the unrivaled school beauty, and she was
extremely
interested in Tony. And Joan knew that Alison also liked Tony. The two of them hadn’t
been getting along lately. Nevertheless, it was Alison’s turn to shake her head.

“Joan’s a cool one, but she’s not stupid,” she said. “She knows full well what would
happen if that night became public knowledge. She wouldn’t hint at it aloud, never
mind have put it in print.” She drummed her knuckles again. “The only possibility
left is that one of the seven of us intentionally or unintentionally leaked some or
all of what happened that night to someone else. And that someone else is out to use
us.”

“That makes sense,” Brenda admitted. She glared at Fran. “A lot more sense than a
vengeful corpse.”

“I didn’t say that!”

“Yes, you did!”

“Shh,” Alison said, her nerves raw. “Do you have a copy of today’s
Times
, Fran?”

Fran was anxious. “You don’t think they would have what they want me to do in the
paper already?”

“I would just as soon look and see than have to think about it,” Alison said. “Do
you have the paper?”

“We get it delivered each morning,” Fran stuttered, getting up slowly. “I’ll check
in the living room.”

Fran found the paper and Alison found the proper section
and a minute later the three of them were staring at a very strange personal ad.

Fran. Replace the mascot’s head on the school gym with a goat’s head. Use black and
red paint.

“Who would want to ruin Teddy?” Brenda asked. They had a koala bear for a school mascot,
first painted on the basketball gym by Fran, her single claim to fame. Yet, perhaps
not surprisingly, she appeared more than willing to sacrifice Teddy to avoid the letter’s
promised hurt.

“I’ll have to do it at night,” Fran muttered. “I’ll need a ladder and a strong light.
Ali, do you know when the janitors go home?”

“You’re not serious?” Brenda asked. She addressed the ceiling. “She’s serious; the
girl’s nuts.”

“But Kipp has to get his letter within five days,” Fran moaned. “That means I have
to paint the goat head and move my name and everything by Thursday.” Fran grabbed
her hand. “Will you help me, Ali?”

“What kind of nut could have written these things?” Alison wondered aloud. The tone
was of a psychotic with delusions of godhood. A genuine madman could be dangerous.
Now was the time to go to the police . . . If only that wasn’t out of the question.
“What did you say, Fran? Oh, yeah, sure I’ll help you. But not to paint the goat’s
head. We need to tell
the others. Then we’ll decide what to do. Who knows, one of the others might burst
out laughing and admit that it was just a joke after all.”

“I can see it now.” Brenda nodded confidently, pouring another glass of milk and ripping
into a packet of Ding Dongs.

“I hope so,” Fran said, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue and blowing her nose.

“So do I,” Alison whispered, picking up the off-purple envelope and the pale green
letter. The line: “What is required of you—at present—is a small token of obedience,”
bothered her. Painting a goat’s head on their school mascot was no major demand. Some
people might even consider it humorous. Perhaps all the demands would be similar.
However, when they were all in Column II, the chain would be complete. Then maybe
it would start over again, and the “small token of obedience” might no longer be so
small.

E
verything looks the same, Kipp,” Tony Hunt said, standing at the window of his second
story bedroom, looking west into the late sun. Some kids were playing a game of touch
football in the street; their younger brothers and sisters sat on the sideline sidewalks
on skateboards and tricycles, cheering for whoever had the ball—a typical tranquil
scene in a typical Los Angeles suburb. Yet for Tony it was as though he were looking
over a town waiting for the bomb to drop. The houses, trees and kids were the same
as before, only seen through dirty glasses. He’d felt this way before, last summer
in fact, felt this overwhelming desire to go back in time, to yesterday even, when
life had been much simpler. Chances were the chain letter was a joke; nevertheless,
it was a joke he’d never laugh over.

“We won’t have such a nice view out the bars of our cell, that’s for sure,” Kipp Coughlan
said, sitting on the bed.

“I’m telling my lawyer I won’t settle for a penitentiary without balconies,” Tony
said.

“A while back, they used to hang convicts from courthouse balconies.”

Tony turned around, taking in with a glance the plain but tidy room; he was not big
on frills, except for his poster of a
Sports Illustrated
swimsuit model, which hung on the wall at the foot of his bed and which greeted him
each morning with an erotic smile. “You know, we’re not being very funny,” he said.

“Really. Has Alison gotten hold of Joan?”

“Not yet. Joan’s away with her parents at Tahoe. She wasn’t at school today. But she
should be home soon.”

“She’ll freak when she hears about the letter,” Kipp said.

Tony thought of Joan, her angel face and her vampish temperament, and said, “That’s
an understatement.”

“Will Neil be here soon?”

Tony nodded, stepping to a chair opposite his bed, sitting down and resting his bare
feet on a walnut case where he stowed his athletic medals and trophies. It drove his
mom nuts that he kept the awards locked up where no one could see them; he liked to
think it was beneath his dignity to show off. Of course if that were true, why did
he collect them at all? When he was honest with himself, he had to admit a good chunk
of his self-image was built on his athletic successes. Grant High had won
the league title in football last fall, and it had been his passing arm that had been
hugely to thank, a fact that was often mentioned but never debated at school. At present,
running in the quarter mile and half mile, he was leading the track team to a similar
championship. What made him slightly ashamed of his accomplishments, he supposed,
was his being a hero in a group he couldn’t relate to. He was a jock but he really
didn’t give a damn what NFL team acquired who in the draft. He could never carry on
a conversation with his teammates, and he despised their condescending attitude toward
nonathletic students. That was one of the reasons he felt comfortable with Kipp and
Neil. Neither of them could hike a football, much less score a touchdown.

“Neil called just before you arrived,” Tony said. “He should be here any minute.”

“Does he know that he now has a
Caretaker
?”

“Yeah. Alison gave him the gist of the letter over the phone.”

Kipp grinned, which was always a curious affair on him. He had a buffoon’s nose and
a rabbit’s ears, plus fair hair that had an unfortunate tendency to stick up, all
of which at first glance made him look like a clown. But his intense black eyes belied
the comparison. Even when he laughed, which was often, he looked like he was thinking.
Kipp may not have been a genius, but he was close enough to make no difference. He
had a 4.0 average and was going to M.I.T. come fall to study aeronautical
engineering. He and Tony hadn’t been friends for long; they had gotten beyond the
superficial “Hey, what’s happening?” level only after the incident last summer—nothing
like a shared trauma to bring people together. He had the rare wit that could ridicule
himself as comfortably as it did others. He loved to talk and, being a prodigious
reader, usually knew what he was talking about. Tony was hoping he could shed some
light on their dilemma.