Chain Letter (20 page)

Alison took a quick three-hundred-and-sixty degree scan of the area and bolted. Tony
had run some excellent times in
his track career, but even he could not have caught her now. Her socks began to loosen,
the stretched toes slapping the pavement, and her drenched hair obscured her vision.
Twice she slipped, once taking the skin off her right knee. But none of this slowed
her down.

As she reached the driveway, she felt a tiny, wary thread tug at her expanding balloon
of joy. She was not a man dying of thirst in a desert seeing a lake. This music was
real. She could see the light pouring out the windows. This was, however, very convenient,
and coincidence often bespoke of cunning plans. Above all else, the Caretaker was
crafty.

Was this a trap?

Without forethought, she had brought the shotgun, and it comforted her as she crept
up the walkway toward the front door. But before the pulse of her terror could beat
aloud once more, it began to fade. Above the music, sweeter than any melody ever composed,
were dozens of human voices: laughing, dancing, happy. She passed under the porch
out of the rain, knocking at the door and smiling. A voice shouted, as always happened
at parties, for her to come in. Turning the doorknob, she almost burst out laughing.
How welcome would she be toting a shotgun! Leaning the weapon against the wall beneath
the mailbox, she opened the door and went inside.

The house was empty: No people and no furniture, except for three unshaded lamps sitting
on the floor, connected by one long extension cord that looped beneath her feet and
under
the back of the door. The music seemed to come out of the walls. The celebrating crowd
was all around but conversing on the astral plane. She stood there for perhaps five
seconds, not knowing which corner of the twilight zone she had stumbled in, before
turning to look behind the door. It was then the extension cord jerked under her heels,
causing her to lose her balance. The music stopped. The lights went out.

Come to me.

Darkness had fallen on her on several occasions tonight, but none compared to this,
for previously each time she had been alone.

An arm encircled her neck, locking tight.

In a flash her pendulum of despair and resolution swung to both extremes. She went
limp, giving up, letting her windpipe be closed off. A prayer started in her head
and she had all the words in the past tense. Then she thought of Tony, how kind and
beautiful he was, how much she would miss him, and how he would be the next victim.
And that, more than anything, brought her back to life.

She cut hard and sharp with both elbows, catching ribs, the Caretaker’s breath whistling
in her ear. The hold on her neck loosened slightly and she was able to refill her
lungs. “Nooo!!!” she screamed, planting her feet firmly on the floor, shoving up and
back. One bang followed the other, a head smacking the wall, her head smacking a jaw.
The arm around her neck slipped once more and she jumped forward, grasping for the
half-open door. But she was not totally free and the hands that clung to the back
of her sweater regrouped quickly, clawing into the material, catching hold of her
flesh.
So play dirty
, she thought,
and while you’re at it, take this!
Swinging through a wide arc, she caught the Caretaker squarely on the nose with her
right fist. Warm blood spurted over her stinging fingers and the shadow,
her
shadow for the last two months, let go and staggered back. Almost, she could see
who was there.

Had Alison immediately struck again and pressed her advantage, she might have gotten
away. But she lacked faith in her strength and she was anxious to end things once
and for all. Jumping out of the doorway, she grabbed the shotgun. And she had enough
time. She had the barrels up, the stock stabilized on her shoulder, her finger on
the trigger and the Caretaker in her line of sight. Then the figure stepped forward,
closer to the door, and what light the stormy night could spare caught the face.

No
, she whispered in a cold place deep in her soul.

The Caretaker was someone impossible.

Eyes stared into hers and nodded.

Goddess.

Her paralysis ended. “It makes no difference!” she screamed. Taking a step forward,
she pulled the trigger.

The Caretaker repaid her earlier favor. The door slammed in her face. Before the shot
could spray its flashing orange tunnel of death, the doorknob caught the tip of the
gun, tilting
the barrels upward, discharging the shell into the ceiling. Since the weapon was not
jammed against a relatively immovable object as it had been the first time, the recoil
was minimal. That made her downfall, after all her struggles, all the more ironic.
Turning to flee, she simply slipped and fell, and hit her head on a brick planter
wall and was knocked out.

T
ony found the spot without having to search. Even with the storm and the dark, there
were visible signs: the tracks on the soft shoulder of the road that the winter’s
worst had failed to obliterate, scraped rubber on the asphalt that would probably
be there at the turn of the century. But had there been no evidence, he still would
have recognized the place where he had lost control of the car. For him, it was a
haunted place, and his ghost, as well as the man’s, often walked there at night. He
stopped his car, grabbed his shovel and flashlight, and climbed outside.

The rain was lighter here in the desert and his waterproof coat was warm. The daylight
hours probably would have been a less morbid time to have come but he had wanted the
cover of night. Besides, grave robbers should work the graveyard
shift. Plus it had only been a little while ago that he had deciphered the Caretaker’s
hidden messages. He hadn’t known for sure until then, or so he told himself, as he
turned the flashlight on the trembling tumbleweeds; it was a poor excuse. He should
have come to this grave immediately after he had left Neil’s grave. But he had been
afraid. He was still afraid.

Slamming the car door shut, taking a firm hold of the shovel, he pressed forward,
his tennis shoes sinking in the listless mud, the damp but still sharp shrubs clawing
at his pants. A year ago, he had counted fifty paces that they had carried the man
into the field, and tonight he counted them again. When he reached the magic number,
he found himself standing in a small rectangular clearing of uneven footing. The soil
here did not look like it had been left a year to settle, and that reassured him as
much as it oppressed him. Finding out what a corpse looked like after a lengthy decay
would be about as pleasant as confirming his hunch. Either way, he was going to be
sick.

Confirm what? He gave you his name!

He set the flashlight down and thrust the shovel into the ground, throwing the earth
aside. With the rain and the sandy mixture, it should have been easy going, but each
descending inch wore on him. Soon he was sweating and had to remove his jacket, the
wind and rain pressing through his shirt. When they’d buried the man, they’d had little
to work with and hadn’t
dug deep; each stab of his shovel carried with it the fear he’d cleave into something
dead. His thoughts were a whirlwind of wordless dark images: vultures circling above
parched bones, men in tuxedos holding stakes and bibles in black and white cemeteries,
and, worst of all, scenes from his life before the man and the Caretaker—disturbing
because the scenes seemed the most unreal.

He had dug himself waist deep when he stopped to stretch his tiring muscles. Was it
possible he had the wrong spot? He had been drunk that night and the terrain here
was fairly undistinguished and what did tumbleweeds do if not tumble all over the
place? There was no way the man could be under his feet, not this far down.

Had he not a minute later found the crucifix that Neil had draped around the man’s
neck in the mud under his shoes, he might have talked himself into digging a few more
holes. But with the tiny gold cross in his hand, still bright in the flashlight beam,
he knew his trip had been in vain. The man was not here. What was left of his burned
skeleton was in a casket six feet under in Rose Memorial Lawn.

Tony rested his head in his arms at the edge of the empty grave. He was tempted to
replace that which had been taken and lie down in the hole and cover himself. He might
have wept had he not known the worst was yet to come.

He did not remember walking back to the car but a while
later found himself exhausted, soaked and muddy, sitting behind the steering wheel.
The faded yellow piece of newspaper that had brought him to this forsaken place and
that should have spared him the journey lay on the passenger seat. He had only studied
the first of the Caretaker’s column two ads, but that had been sufficient.

Fran: syrilorryeunahokijnieaesknaesedrl

supwehycoeiojlldoilpulonitcwohig

Using the given key, starting with the first letter and including every third letter,
the message told Fran to streak naked through school at lunch. As the Caretaker’s
notes had always been terse, it should have been obvious he was not one to waste words
or letters. But surprisingly, none of the group had thought to study the extra letters.
What had brought Tony to re-examine the ad had been a desperation to do anything
but
return here to where they had buried the man. That desperation had been growing all
along but it had peaked sharply during his walk back to the cemetery chapel with Alison.

“I was just afraid that she would feel uncomfortable losing a family heirloom.”

“I don’t think Neil’s mother even knew he’d had it.”

“Oh, for some reason, I assumed it had been in the family.”

He had known for a fact Neil’s mother had not known about the emerald ring because
before going to the funeral, he had asked Mrs. Hurly if it would be OK if he gave
it to Alison. Also, at Alison’s remark, he had specifically remembered that Neil had
nodded during their meeting at Fran’s house when Alison had asked if the ring had
been in his family.

“How did you know?”

“The green matches your eyes. It’s beautiful.”

Had Neil lied, or had he, in a deranged way, in a manner they were all familiar with
from the chain letter, told the truth? Standing on the cemetery road with Alison,
surrounded by rows of tombstones, he had realized that only someone who cared deeply
for the man, whose soul wept for the man,
who actually in some incomprehensible way identified with the man
, could refer to the man as family. And on the coattails of the realization he had
remembered that the man had been wearing an expensive ring, and that Neil had been
the last to touch him when he had folded the guy’s hands over his heart.

The hourglass runs low.

Neil had been dying. Neil
was
dying.

In more ways than one, Neil had warned them that the Caretaker was right in front
of them. Starting backward, using every third letter, Fran’s ad had read:

Go To Police Please Tony Or I Will Die Yours Neil Hurly

· · ·

There was pain. At first it was everywhere, heavy and unbearable, and she struggled
to return to unconsciousness. But her aching body dragged her awake, taking back its
many parts, each with its own special hurt: her head throbbing, her arm burning, her
back cramping. She opened her eyes reluctantly, feeling the sting of a grating, white
glare.

She was in a small square unfurnished room with people that looked familiar, sitting
on the floor beside an unshaded lamp that seemed to be emitting an irritating radiation.
Her hands and feet felt stuck together and, looking down, she noticed without much
comprehension that metal bands joined her ankles and wrists together. Turning her
head, a sharp pain in her neck made her cry softly. The people, also arranged on the
floor, looked her way, their forms blurring and overlapping before settling down.
The face closest to her belonged to someone she remembered as Joan.

“What are you doing here?” Alison whispered, her throat bone dry. Trying to swallow,
she began to cough, which made her head want to explode. It felt as if someone had
beaten her repeatedly with a club. Then she remembered that it had been a brick. The
rest came back in a frightful rush. She closed her eyes.

Neil, it was Neil. Of all people. He was dead.

“Keeping you company,” Joan said. “Wake up, Ali, naptime’s over.”

“Shh.” That was Brenda. “She doesn’t look so good.”

“That’s because she didn’t have a chance to put on her makeup,” Kipp remarked. Alison
ventured another peek. Except for Neil and Tony, the whole gang was present, each
bound as she was, each with two sets of interlocking handcuffs. Both Brenda and Joan
looked miserable, and Fran, looking thinner than she had ever seen her, appeared to
have been crying. Kipp, on the other hand, wearing bright green pajamas with an embroidered
four leaf clover on the shirt pocket, seemed perfectly at ease.

“My God,” Alison breathed.

Kipp smiled. “I told you she’d think that she’d died and gone to heaven.” He spoke
to her. “Do you feel well enough to start worrying again?”

“How’s your head, Ali?” Brenda asked, concerned. Alison tried to touch it to be sure
it was all in one piece, but her hands stayed stuck down by her calves. Flexing her
jaw, she felt dried blood along her right ear.

“Wonderful. How long have I been here and where is here?”

“Almost two hours,” Kipp said. “You’re in a house down the street from your own. Would
you like to hear our stories? We’re tired of telling them to each other.”

She reclosed her eyes. If she remained perfectly still, it wasn’t so bad. “The highlights,”
she said.

“You go first, Fran,” Kipp said, playing the MC.