Chain Letter (24 page)

“Hey, yeah, it is. Why ya ask?”

“Just wondering.” She tugged on Tony, who was hardly listening. “Catch you later,
Kathy.”

“Nice meeting you! You, too, Tony. Great to see you.”

Tony nodded silently.

They strolled up the middle of the street, hand in hand, not speaking, the brown fertilized
plots on either side of them spread with bright green blades, sparrows skipping between
the young grass, searching for unsprouted seeds. The sun was hotter out here on the
asphalt, and she would have preferred short sleeves to complement her short pants.
But her parents didn’t know about the stitches and bandages on her left arm and she
was still working on a good excuse. Fortunately, Kipp had helped her replace the back
door, her bedroom door, the hall closet door and the glass panels next to the front
door. The new back door was a distinctly lighter shade of brown than the old one,
but neither her mom or dad had so far noticed.

She had spoken to Harvey Heck the day after all the excitement. He had been on duty
solid for the last week, he had told her, but he had looked hungover and she hadn’t
bothered asking why he had failed to answer his phone at a certain crucial moment.

“I’ll have to tell you about Fran’s and Kipp’s explanations to the police,” she said
finally. “They were pretty funny. Fran told them that she got kidnapped by a deaf
and dumb old man who took her to his house in the desert and forced her to draw obscene
pictures of him all day long. Of course they wanted to know where he lived and what
he looked like but she just told them she couldn’t remember. She told them she escaped
when he wasn’t listening. Want to hear Kipp’s?”

Tony brightened. “This should be good.”

She laughed. “Not one, but
three
beautiful girls were responsible for his kidnapping. He told the police he put up
a good fight, that’s how he lost all that blood in his bedroom, but they wrestled
him down and tied him up and dumped him in their plushly carpeted and heavily perfumed
van. They didn’t take him to any one spot, just drove him all over the place.”

“For two weeks?”

“Yeah! And whichever two weren’t driving would amuse themselves by doing all sorts
of atrocious things to his naked body. There was an amazon blonde, a large-chested
redhead, and a tireless brunette. And here’s the weird part—the police swallowed the
whole story! It seems they have several adolescent male kidnappings on record that
fit the same pattern.”

“I don’t believe any of this.”

“I’m not so sure I do, but this is what Kipp has been telling everyone, that is, in
between asking them if they aren’t real glad that he’s still alive.”

Tony let out a hearty laugh, and she was happy to hear it. They reached her house
a moment later and then decided that, since it was such a nice day, they would circle
the tract on foot. Before continuing, however, she reached into the back seat of her
car and pulled out two green vinyl folders. “I’m sure you hadn’t forgotten, but graduation
was a couple of days ago. I accepted your diploma for you.” She handed him the two
certificates, adding, “Fran accepted Neil’s.”

He glanced at both briefly, his expression unreadable,
before setting them on the car roof. “I’ll get them on the way back.” He took her
hand and they resumed their walk. “How was the ceremony?” he asked casually.

She shrugged. “Boring, for the most part. They held it in the stadium, and had us
sitting on fold-outs in the center of the football field. But there were a couple
of neat things. One was that they had Brenda sing a song. To do that, they had to
lift her suspension, but you know, she’s the only one in the whole stupid school that
can sing. I guess they figured they didn’t have much choice. You’ll never believe
what material she chose! Alice Cooper’s ‘School’s Out for Summer’! And it was Mr.
Hoglan who accompanied her on piano!”

He smiled. “Did Kipp give the valedictorian’s speech?”

A huge silver-collared German shepherd with a dinosaur’s bone in his mouth leisurely
crossed their path, regarding them suspiciously out of the corner of his eye. Another
family besides the Hagues must have arrived. “He did,” she said carefully.

“What did he talk about?”

“Neil. A recording was made of it, if you want to hear it later.”

“You tell me.”

“Just like Kipp, he tried to keep it light, but he said some real neat stuff. In fact,
right in the middle, he lost his voice for a couple of minutes. He said afterward
it was because his throat got dry, but everyone could tell there had been another
reason.”
She bent low as they passed a beginning planter, plucking a white daisy. Simply remembering
had brought a lump to her throat. She continued, “He started off with the obvious
stuff, how Neil had helped out at the football games and the track meets, what his
favorite subjects had been, how he would have graduated on the honor roll. But then
he just . . . started to talk about Neil.” She sniffed. “He quoted you, sort of, saying
that of all those at school, he had always seen Neil as the best example of what a
person should be. He finished by telling this story of how you three guys were out
hiking in the desert one day when suddenly he slipped and fell and twisted his ankle
and wasn’t able to walk anymore. He said that while you went searching for help, Neil
stayed and took care of him. But then you were gone so long, and it was so hot, that
Neil decided he had to try to carry him back to the car. He went on about how Neil
wasn’t very strong, but how he tried anyway, giving it everything he had, and how
it almost . . . killed him.” Her eyes burned with unshed tears and she had to take
a couple of deep breaths to keep from crying. “I know it sounds mushy and I know Kipp
probably made up the story, but when he told it at the graduation, it was just . . .
perfect.”

“I like the story,” Tony said, hugging her as they walked.

She hesitated. “Can you tell me how it was?”

He did not answer right away and for a moment she was afraid she had trod where she
shouldn’t have. He was listening, however, to a train far off, miles it must have
been, its fast and
heavy passage rolling toward them like the thunder of a distant but approaching storm.
Perhaps it reminded him, as it did her, of that terrible night. But of course no rain
followed in its wake and soon it had vanished all together.

“We went to the mountains,” he said finally. “It was a pretty place, next to a lake.
Neil liked it. I used my parents’ credit card and rented a cabin. I called my mom
and dad and told them that I needed to be alone for a while and, what with all that
had been going on, they thought that was fine. We stayed there the whole week, had
great weather. In the morning, these deer would come right up to the door and we would
feed them. At least Neil would—they always ran when they saw me.” He shook his head,
squeezing her arm. “Hey, this shouldn’t sound so soapy. Neil was happy this last week.
He was in a lot of pain, he refused to take any drugs, and he got so he couldn’t walk,
but he was his old peaceful self. The Caretaker, the man, all that garbage was gone.
We didn’t even talk about it. We just talked about old times: movies we’d seen, music
we liked, places we’d gone. And we talked about you.”

“What did he say?” she asked, smiling, wiping her eyes.

“Nice things. You would have been pleased.” He let go of her and stretched his arms
and spine backward, drinking up the sun like a man who had spent too long in a dark
place. “Mainly, though, we just sat by the lake and skimmed rocks and that was good.
I fixed him up this old cushiony chair next to the water and he was comfortable enough.”
A shadow,
neither long nor deep, brushed over his face. “He was sitting in it yesterday morning
when he died.”

Their walk was taking them into a dead end and she pointed to a break in the wall
that enclosed the tract, and they passed through it out into the tall dry grass and
the low gnarled bushes, the field stretching practically unchecked to the mountains.
Insects buzzed at their feet—none appeared bloodthirsty—and a large orange butterfly
circled above their heads. Far to the right atop a low bluff, a clan of rabbits gave
them a cursory glance before continuing with more important business. She felt her
eyes drying and noticed that Tony’s smile had returned.

“There was one thing he did that sort of reminded me of the Caretaker,” he said. “It
was quite clever. Before his
first
funeral, he asked me to do him two favors. One was to give you the ring, the other—I
hope this doesn’t
disturb
you—was to bury him next to the man in the event the Caretaker killed him.”

“I’m fine now, really, go on.”

He burst out laughing; it certainly seemed an unusual time to do so. “Well, before
he died yesterday, he made me swear that I would bury him
in
the man’s grave!” He paused, waiting for her reaction, which surely must have been
inadequate—she didn’t know what to say. “Don’t you see, Ali, he knew I’d be feeling
so guilty that I’d turn myself in when he was gone. And he was right, I was going
to do that. But now how was I supposed
to turn myself in without evidence? He’d disposed of the man’s body in the fire—which,
by the way, actually helped his mother out financially, what with the insurance money
and all—and now he’d rigged it so I couldn’t even take the police to the man’s grave.”
He added wistfully, “When it suited him, Neil could be funnier than Kipp.”

Their big orange butterfly escort landed on top of a huge yellow boulder. Alison stopped
and rested her open palm near it and was delighted when it skipped into her hand.
“That hasn’t happened since I was a kid,” she whispered.

“You must have gotten your innocence back.”

“Do you think so?” she asked seriously.

He shrugged. “I was just mumbling.”

She raised her hand and blew gently and the butterfly flew away. The last couple of
months had been the most intense time of her life, and it seemed wrong that she could
have learned nothing from the experience. She leaned against the boulder and looked
up at the blue sky and thought for a moment, before saying, “I don’t know about my
innocence, but I know I’m not such a stuck-up bitch anymore.”

He squeezed her shoulder. “I never saw you that way.”

“A lot of people did.”

“Neil wasn’t one of them.”

“But he was the one who made me aware of it. I’ll never again brush someone off the
way I did him. The next time someone cares about me, I’m going to know about it.”
She
took his hand from her shoulder and kissed it lightly. She was feeling sad again,
but it was a sweet sadness, and she was glad for it. “You’ve lost your best friend,
and I’ve lost my greatest admirer. I can’t take Neil’s place, but can you take his?”

He stared at her for a moment, his eyes the same rich blue as the sky, then shook
his head. “No,” he said, and pulled her into his arms. “But I’ll still do the best
I can.”

For Neil

T
he chain letter came as it had before. First to Fran Darey—in a purple envelope with
no return address. It came totally out of the blue, and like the original letter,
it carried with it a threat of danger. And like before, at first no one listened.

Until it was too late.

Fran Darey was just returning home from a morning of hard work when she collected
the mail. Summer was almost over and so was her job at the local mall. She worked
at the McDonald’s, and although it would be fair to say she did not hate her job,
it would also have been fair to say she was never going to work in a fast-food joint
again. The job didn’t allow her to use her full physical and mental potential. Heck,
she was going to college in a few weeks. She was going to get straight A’s and graduate
in four years and make the world a better place.
She was never going to have to worry how many more fries there were in a big scoop
versus a medium scoop—a question she had been asked three times that day by smart-mouthed
junior high kids.

But too soon Fran would have wished to have such mundane problems.

A strange thing happened as Fran reached to remove the mail from her parents’ mailbox.
Even before she touched or saw the purple envelope, she thought of Neil Hurly. She
had of course thought of Neil many times over the course of the summer, since he had
died of a horrible cancer. But no thought had ever come to her so strong. A cold sweat
rose on the back of her neck, and a tear formed in the corner of one eye. She had
loved Neil, she thought, and she had never told him. She couldn’t imagine what could
be worse in life. Never once, in the weeks following the incident with the chain letter,
had she blamed him for what had happened. He had been sick, after all. He had not
been evil.

“Miss you,” Fran whispered under her breath. She almost turned and glanced over her
shoulder right then, his presence was so strong. He could have been standing right
behind her.

It was a pity he wasn’t. He might have stopped her hand.

Fran reached inside the box and took out the mail.

She noticed the purple envelope immediately.

No, Jesus, no
, she thought.

Her heart almost stopped. But her hands did not. Dropping
all the other letters and bills and assorted junk mail, her fingers tore into the
purple envelope and pulled out the letter inside. She began to read.

My Dearest
,

You thought you knew me, but you did not. You thought I was your friend, but I am
not. I am the real Caretaker, and I am going to take care of you. Listen closely. . . .

Standing alone outside her house, Fran screamed. Her throat was tight; the sound came
out pitifully thin and high. It was doubtful her nearest neighbor could have heard.
But the sound of her scream was to echo over the next few days, until it became a
full-fledged wail. Her scream was the beginning, if the chain of the letters could
be said to have a beginning—or an end.