Jokers Club (24 page)

I spun around.

Mary stood behind me.

My head had become an engine, with a driving, locomotive beat. I shook it to clear it, with no avail.

“I don’t get it,” I said, confused.

“None of them did,” she said. “Until I told them. Torr is my married name. I kept it, even after my divorce.” She smiled. “My maiden name is Mary Nightingale.”

I saw a little girl’s face as she held her mother’s hand at Jason’s funeral, looking at me with eyes sad and cold.

“I made sure they all knew,” she said. “Before I killed them.”

I looked down at her hand and saw the hunting knife it held. The blade was much longer than Oliver’s.

“I saw you,” I said, still in shock. “At Acorn Estates.”

She smiled. “That’s where I met Woody. It was quite a coincidence, us both ending up there. He had no idea who I was, but I remembered. I befriended him. And after we both got out, we dated. He never had a clue.” Her grin was widening. “He confessed to me. Told me about what you all did to my brother. I pretended to sympathize with him. I even got him to arrange this whole reunion. He had no idea what I was planning till it was too late.”

“Where is he now?” I asked, afraid of the answer.

“Buried, deep in a forest.”

I shuddered.

“He seemed willing to accept it,” she continued. “As if it was inevitable.”

I felt dizzy.

“The others were more reluctant,” she said. “Their eyes begged forgiveness when I finished them off.”

I swayed a bit, my balance weakening. I wanted to tell her it wasn’t our fault, but I knew I couldn’t be convincing. Not even to myself.

She took a step forward. “It had all been going so well,” she said, “until you spoiled it. I wanted Oliver the most. Then you went and killed him on me.”

I remembered her wild anger at his death.

“I wished you hadn’t done that,” she said. “That made me very unhappy.”

My body wanted to turn and run, but my limbs wouldn’t cooperate. My legs were anchored in place. My head was spinning and black dots were bursting before my eyes. I was having another spell and it couldn’t have been a more inappropriate moment. I tried to speak, tried to buy myself some time, but that had recently become my enemy.

“Jason wouldn’t tell you to do this,” I said.

“Jason can’t breathe,” she answered, still coming forward. “Jason called me a few days after he disappeared. He told me he couldn’t breathe. He asked me to help him.”

Her voice became rapid, high-pitched.

“I wanted to help him,” she continued. “But he forgot to tell me where he was. I could have saved him if he only told me where he was!”

My legs gave way, and I fell to my knees. She came closer and stood before me. Maybe it was better this way, I thought. I might not be around much longer anyway. Maybe it was justice that things end this way.

My body had no will to struggle. My mind was willing to accept it.

She moved forward.

“Now,” she said. “This is the only way I can help him.”

I saw the blade move before me.

It glistened.

I closed my eyes.

Just like a paper cut, I thought.

There was a loud thunk, and my eyes popped open.

Mary stood before me, and her eyes rolled up in her head. She pitched forward and fell to the ground in front of me.

Behind her was the ancient figure of Emeric Rust.

He stood there, rail thin, clutching the long-handled spade shovel that he had just clubbed her with. His hair like snow, his face a mass of wrinkles, his eyes bugging out. He took a step closer and peered down at me.

“KEEP OUT OF MY YARD!” he yelled.

Chief Hooper had meant what he said about keeping an eye out for me. His men must have seen me heading toward the old neighborhood, and he went out after me. But he had arrived just a bit too late. If Emeric Rust hadn’t stopped Mary, I would have been dead. It had been scary coming so close to the end.

But death might be coming soon enough. I was still standing a little too near it.

Mary was unconscious when they strapped her onto a stretcher and hauled her away. I had no doubt she would soon be heading back to Acorn Estates. I explained everything to the chief but still did not say anything about what had really happened to Jason Nightingale. I kept our oath. I was the last one left and the secret would die with me.

The chief talked with Emeric Rust and then had me come down to the station to file a statement for his report. Afterwards, I was once again told to leave town and it was suggested I not return. I didn’t think I would. There was nothing left for me here.

I was the last of the Jokers Club.

I sat in my car outside the station, toying with my keys, hesitating before inserting them into the ignition. I glanced out of the car window at the steeple on the town hall and saw that the clocks were finally working. It was almost eleven o’clock in the morning.

I drove to the inn to retrieve my stuff and then headed down to the used office supply store to return the typewriter. The jingling sound as I opened the door startled me, and I whipped my head around, expecting the Joker to be there. I realized it was only the bell on the door, and I breathed a sigh of relief. The old man came out from a back room, adjusting his glasses. I set the typewriter case on the counter.

“All set?” the old man said, opening the case and examining its contents.

“I think I’ve done all I can with this,” I replied.

He nodded several times, still looking over the machine. He glanced up at me. “Work out okay for you?”

“It worked very well indeed.” Yes, it worked just fine. I guess you could say I was quite pleased with it. “Thank you very much.”

I paid him the remainder of my bill and turned to go. I heard the bell jingle and looked to see who might be coming in the door. But the door was closed.

I looked to the right side of the store and saw the Joker sitting behind an oak desk with a pile of papers in front of him. My insides felt hollow. No, I thought. I had had enough of this and didn’t want to deal with it anymore. I approached and sat down in a chair across from him.

 “It’s all over,” I said. “I thought you’d be gone.”

“I’ll always be here,” he said, lips spread in that stupid grin of his. “Just like I always have been.”

“Always?” I questioned, confused.

He nodded. “From the beginning.”

“From when I first conjured you up?” I asked, thinking about the little attic room in my mind where I imagined all the horrors that became the seeds for my stories and ideas. That dark room of evil thoughts and death whose only tenant besides the creepy things that lurked there was the Joker. The Joker who whispered those sick tales to my mind.

“Oh, from even well before that,” he said. “From the very beginning.”

I was confused. “How could that be? I created you back then. You couldn’t have existed before then.”

“You only created this image you see before you. Where do you think the wellspring of horror in your mind came from?”

“I created it,” I cried. “I imagined all those things, those stories. Because I chose to.”

The Joker shook his head, bells jingling. “You didn’t have any choice. You never did.”

The muscles in my face went slack as my jaw opened. I looked at his beady little eyes.

“I know what you are,” I said. I thought of all the sick things and horrors that seeped out of my head onto the pages of paper. I never stopped to think why. Never cared where they came from. “Don’t you realize what you’re doing to me?”

“It’s not my fault,” the Joker said. “I just want us to be together, just like always.”

“But why did you show yourself now, after all this time?”

“I got tired of festering alone.”

“What will happen to my imagination when you’re gone?” The idea scared me.

He looked up from his reading. He looked serious. “You really don’t want to find out.”

He glanced back down at the papers in front of him on the desk.

 “What are you reading?”

“The ending to the story.”

“Where did you get that manuscript?”

“Why, you gave it to me, of course.” His lips moved as he read the last page in his hands, and then looked up at me. “So the woman at the inn turns out to be Jason Nightingale’s sister. A little contrived isn’t it?”

“I told you before, my stories aren’t contrived.” I felt the need to defend myself.

He looked puzzled. “When did you finish this?”

“At the inn, when I first went back to get my stuff.”

“Are you sure? That was before you went to the Tin Man’s house.”

I was now puzzled. “I’m not sure. I think so.”

“How did you know how it was going to end?”

“I’m a writer. I’m supposed to know the ending.”

“Even before it happens.”

I looked into his quizzical eyes. “Maybe I’m a better writer than I thought I was.”

 I reached to take the manuscript away from him, not wanting to think any more about the story right now. Afraid of what I might learn from it.

A hand came down and stopped me. I looked at it and noticed the Joker’s hand was no longer gloved and the sleeve was white instead of the black and white striped pattern.

“Why did you change the story, Geoffrey?”

“What do you mean?” I was afraid to look up at his face. “I didn’t change anything. This is the way it all happened.”

“I see a couple of very big changes,” he said.

I pushed away from the desk and stood up, turning away from him, but before I looked away, I could see that he did not have make-up on and wasn’t wearing the jester costume. Instead he wore a white doctor’s coat. His face was different. It wasn’t the Joker sitting behind the oak desk.

There was a full-length mirror on the wall in front of me and I could see my reflection.

“You changed the story for a reason, Geoffrey.”

“No. That’s the story.” The image staring back at me in the mirror was long and thin, skin drawn tight on the cheek and jawbones like dried leather. There were dark bags beneath bloodshot eyes swallowed up in their sockets.

“You changed the story,” the doctor continued, “because you wanted to deny the fact that you killed your friends …”

“No.”

“… and that you were the one who opened the refrigerator door that night.”

“I can tell the story anyway I want,” I said, staring into my emaciated reflection. “I’m a writer.”

THE END