Laughing Man (29 page)

"Yes, I see that. But why?"

"I don't know."

She glanced at him, said dryly, "Rhetorical question, Jack," and hollered to the naked man, "Stay where you are! We're police detectives and we're armed." Then she started sprinting toward him.

Erthmun called after her, "Patricia, you won't catch him, you can't catch him!"

"Watch me," she hollered back.

He went after her.

W
illiamson the Loon did not like handcuffs. It wasn't simply that they were confining; he was used to confinement, had been born of the warm, liquid, and confining belly of the earth itself, so he had grown to accept confinement—the confinement of his skin, the confinement of his years (which equaled a slow but implacable disintegration), the confinement of his strength (which was considerable but not invincible), the confinement imposed by his probing but necessarily inefficient intellect, and by his unquenchable desires. But handcuffs did not simply represent confinement, they represented the cold, hard imprint of human authority, too, which Williamson could not accept or bear, because, by their very nature, humans exercised authority unfairly and without
authority—
from the earth, or from him
.

And now that the imminent end of his existence was pulling the magic from within his gut, he knew that he no longer needed to accept confinement of any kind.

The two state troopers—one male, one female—who had thrown him into handcuffs, and then into the back of their patrol car, were talking outside the car while they waited for backup. They needed backup, Williamson had decided, because the stories about him were clearly approaching the stuff of legend—stories that said he was a man of daunting power and even more daunting ferocity, especially when it came to handing out necessary pain and death to those whose continued existence would be an affront to the earth.

He could hear the troopers talking; they were very animated, and every few moments, one of them glanced warily at him, as if at a caged tiger. He loved catching their eye. Loved grinning at them as if he hadn't a care in the world. He knew that such grins were very upsetting because they spoke either of madness, an overarching self-confidence, or both, which were things that sparked fear in many humans.

Just then, the male trooper bent over, so his angular, handsome face was almost pressed against the car window, and he growled, "You wanna just look somewhere else, buddy!"

Williamson shrugged. It was the kind of shrug that was neither submissive nor acquiescing; it was the kind of shrug that said clearly that he didn't give two shits about anything the person speaking—in this case, the trooper—was saying and that the speaker could go piss in a hurricane, for all he cared.

It was a shrug that was simply too much for the trooper, who had seen one too many such shrugs in his ten years as a law enforcement professional, so he threw the door open, reached madly into the car, grabbed Williamson by the collar, pulled him close enough that Williamson was repelled by the man's breath, and growled through clenched teeth, "You know what I want, asshole! You know what I want?"

Williamson grinned.

The trooper brought him an inch closer. "I want
you
to be as quiet as a dead man! You got that!"

Williamson grinned again.

"You
got
that!"

Williamson leaned forward and bit the man's nose clean off below the nostrils. This caused the man to lurch backward, screaming, which made the back of the man's head hit the door frame very hard, which knocked the man out and sent him sprawling and bleeding into Williamson's lap. Williamson looked questioningly down at him (Williamson had already spit the man's nose out, and it lay white and red and ragged between the man's shoulder blades), then at the female trooper, who was leaning over, into the car with her .45 pointed directly at Williamson's temple. "What the fuck did you do?" she demanded. "What the fuck did you do? Get outta there, now!"

Williamson shook his head. "How can I?" he asked with a little catch of innocence and incredulity in his voice; he inclined his head toward the trooper sprawled out on his lap, and gave her a charming, boyish grin. "I'm not a miracle worker."

"Goddamn you!" the female trooper shouted, spittle flying, reached in, hauled her partner by the back of his shirt collar off Williamson's lap, and tried to set him down gently on his back outside the car, but the effort of keeping her eye on Williamson and dealing with her partner's limp body at the same time was too much for her, and she dropped her partner face-first into the asphalt. He hit with a soft
whump,
a groan, and a fart.

Williamson said, "Listen to that. He has no class. Your partner has no class, ma'am."

"Shut the fuck up!" she shouted. "Just shut the fuck up!" Her gaze fixed on something on the seat between Williamson and the door. "Oh, my God!" she breathed, and leaned over to get a better view. "Oh my heavenly God," she said, "you bit his goddamned nose off!" She straightened abruptly, deftly avoiding the door frame, and pointed her .45 stiffly at Williamson's temple again. "Don't even
think
of moving!" she commanded, and slammed the door.

"Clichés, clichés," Williamson muttered.

T
he naked man watched as Erthmun and Patricia closed on him. His hands were still clasped to his ears, his legs were spread, and he sported an incredible erection.

Patricia said to Erthmun, who was only an arm's length away, walking quickly—as she was—though not running, so they were less likely to spook the naked man, "Jesus, look at that! That's damned unnatural!"

"Is it?" Erthmun said.

She glanced at him, saw a little grin play on his mouth, sighed at the chutzpah of the male animal, and shouted to the naked man, who was no more than a hundred feet away, "I want you to get down on your stomach, and I want you to do it now! If you don't do it, then I will be forced to fire on you." She had her weapon drawn, but she was holding it so it pointed upward.

The naked man made no response.

"Maybe he can't hear us," Erthmun suggested.

"He can hear us!" Patricia said.

"But he's got his hands on his ears."

"He can hear us, Jack. Look at him."

Erthmun looked closely at the naked man. He saw a face that was as unremarkable as chewing gum, a face no more remarkable—Erthmun thought—than his own. Except for the eyes, which were strangely distant and as opaque as stone, despite the man's libidinous grin. Yes, Erthmun realized all at once, the man could indeed hear everything that was being said,
had
heard everything ever since he and Patricia had come after
him.
Because this man, Erthmun knew, was one of those his father had warned him about decades ago. One of those who had moved with such exquisite and supernatural grace through the fields that surrounded the house Erthmun had lived in as a child. One of those who'd found Erthmun's mother and had had his way with her.

In a flash, Erthmun took his .45 from his shoulder holster, aimed it at the naked man, and fired.

"My God!" Patricia shouted.

The naked man clutched his chest, looked alarmed, fearful, fell backward down the little hill, and was gone.

V
etris Gambol could not believe that Villain was dead. But there he was, in the closet in the upstairs bedroom, on his side, not breathing, mouth open, tongue lolling out. Very dead. Vetris realized that he had always believed that Villain—as odd as he was—was simply not capable of being dead. Even now he could not believe it. He believed he'd bury Villain and that sometime in the night he'd feel Villain kneading his chest, and hear Villain's furious purring, and when he opened his eyes, he'd see Villain's golden eyes staring with great hunger at him. This was not altogether an impossibility for a cat who had been possessed by all the feline predators that had lived throughout history.

Vetris bent over and gingerly touched the dead cat's rib cage, found it cold and stiff. What in the hell killed him? Vetris wondered. Old age? Not possible. Villain was barely five. Cats lived a good long time—much longer than dogs. Poison, then? But from where? Villain never went outside, and there was no poison in the house. Heart attack? A chronic illness that had masked itself all this time in Villain's fearsome and bizarre behavior? Distemper? Feline leukemia?

Shit, what did it matter? Villain was dead, and he, Vetris, certainly wasn't planning on getting another cat to take his place because, simply, no other cat
could
take Villain's place. No other cat would be as
interesting
as Villain.

Vetris realized something, then, that unnerved him. He realized that he had seen Villain—or a creature he had thought was Villain—dash between the refrigerator and cupboards not even a half hour earlier. And here was Villain lying cold and stiff, now, in the closet in the bedroom. Clearly, Villain had been dead for more than a half hour. So what had he seen below, in the kitchen? Another cat? Obviously.

He decided to bury Villain in a custom-made box. He had constructed many such boxes, of various sizes, for his dead pets through the years—starting when he was a child of seven. The last pet he'd buried had been his aged cockatiel, Omo, a year earlier, shortly before he had acquired Villain at a garage sale ("You want to pay me for him?" said Villain's owner. "Hell no. Take him. He's too damned much for us to handle.").

"W
hy in the
hell
did you do that?" Patricia shouted, and broke into a run toward the spot where the naked man had fallen.

"Because he's guilty!" Erthmun shouted, and ran after her. Patricia glanced around at Erthmun and gave him a quick, disbelieving glance.

"Because he's guilty, Patricia!" Erthmun shouted, louder; she was outdistancing him. "Because he's guilty," Erthmun shouted.

Then Patricia was at the spot where the naked man had fallen. "Jesus!" Erthmun heard her say; he was within twenty feet of her. "Jesus!" she repeated. She gestured with her left hand as if to tell him not to come any closer; but this, he thought, was foolish. He'd seen far worse in his career than she had seen in hers. She gestured again, more urgently, glanced at him. "No," she said. She looked angry. "You can't!"

"Can't what?" he said.

She looked away again, at the spot where the naked man had fallen. Erthmun came up to her, stood beside her, looked at what she was looking at. "Patricia," he said. "He's just a boy."

"Yes," Patricia said, at a low, confused whisper. "A boy."

S
ome things are not a problem for a magician. Pulling a rabbit out of a hat, a dove from a sleeve, an ace of hearts from behind someone's ear. But these are sleight of hand; they have no more to do with reality than do bubble boys or fairy dust.

Williamson was no magician.

His reality was not a trick of perception. His reality was malleable because he was malleable. His reality seemed like magic, but it wasn't. It was deadly, but it wasn't magic.

"You're amazed, aren't you?" he said to the female state trooper, because her eyes were wide, she was quivering, and as she backed away from Williamson, she stumbled a bit over the limp body of her partner, who was still groaning, and kept herself from falling by straight-arming the asphalt. "How in the fuck did you get out of your handcuffs?" she managed, and straightened.

"Or even," Williamson said, "out of the damned car. Aren't you wondering how the fuck I got out of the damned car? I mean, getting out of the handcuffs was one thing. Houdini could do that. Easily! But how in the name of all you call holy could I have gotten out of that backseat with the doors locked and the cage intact between the front seat and the back. And if you look"—he turned a little and pointed stiffly at the car; his voice rose in pitch and intensity, as if he were angry and was trying to make a point to someone who was impossibly stupid—"you'll see that the damned car door is still locked, and the cage is intact!"

The trooper glanced at the door.

Williamson backed up a step, reached for the door handle, grasped it, and pretended to try to pull the door open. "See now, see now!" he shrieked. "It won't open! It's locked! It's locked!" The trooper had her .45 leveled at him, though her body was trembling, her hand, too, and she didn't know why this man scared her so much—certainly not simply because he had gotten out of his handcuffs, then had gotten out of the locked car, or because he had bitten her partner's nose clean off. . . .

She thought that she should pull the trigger, be done with it. The man was obviously psychotic! But she had never fired her weapon at a suspect before, and had drawn it only once, though even then she had held it pointed straight up.

"I want you to do exactly as I tell you to do!" she barked.

Williamson took his hand from the car door. "Sorry?" he said, as if he hadn't heard her.

"I want you to get down on the ground with your legs spread and your hands clasped behind your head, and I want you to do it now!"

"You mean this instant?"