It has to end, Jimmy thought. This death cycle has to end.
Like always, it was as though Anderson read his thoughts. “Fess up, Jimmy,” the chief said with a terrible grin. “You like it.” He scowled, shook his head. “Uh-uh, what am I saying? You love it. You love the power, love knowing you can snuff out a life like a votive candle.”
Jimmy’s chest began to hitch. “It’s destroying me. I can’t eat or sleep from the guilt.”
“Guilt is what you want it to be, Jimbo. What it really is, it’s the savagery in you awakening. It’s what we are. At our cores. We go on as a species by killing.”
Jimmy shook his head.
“Yes, Jimbo,” Anderson went on. “We both know it. You’re all balled up because you’ve tapped into that dark vein, and deep down, you love that gush of blood, you revel in it.”
“I’m done,” Jimmy said, and he shut his eyes in abnegation. If he didn’t look at the chief, the chief couldn’t deceive him anymore, couldn’t trick him into believing he had to kill to save himself, the way he’d done with the man on the ground. When Jimmy could stand it no longer, he opened his eyes and met the chief’s unblinking stare.
“The last step,” Anderson said.
“What is it?” Jimmy heard himself ask.
“The greatest of all.”
“I’d rather go to hell than kill again.”
Anderson grinned. “Hell’s a certainty, boy. This—” he gestured at the empty park around them, “—this is all there is. Once you take an innocent life…”
Jimmy felt his face begin to crumple.
“…and I need not remind you,” the chief went on, “of the poor innocent bastard on the ground.…”
Tears seeped from Jimmy’s eyes.
The chief’s voice was almost gentle. “Now that you’ve chosen damnation, there’s only one thrill left.”
And staring into Anderson’s eyes, the knowledge of what the chief meant crashed down on Jimmy. He began to shake his head.
But Anderson only nodded, said in that same soothing voice, “When you kill the ones you love the most, that’s freedom.”
“No.…”
“That’s liberation. That’s knowing you’re safe.”
Jimmy stared at Anderson, unbelieving. “Safe?”
“Well hell, son.” Anderson gave a breathless laugh. “Of course you’ll be safe. Don’t you know you have to kill them before they kill you?”
Chapter Eleven
Per a note from Roderick Wells, Rick went to the library at five that afternoon. He discovered Sherilyn and Will engaged in an animated discussion. He approached them, noting as he did how brightly the bookcases gleamed, how fresh the vast room smelled. The carpet underfoot seemed cleaner, springier. Even the books appeared newer.
He reached Will and Sherilyn and said, “Why don’t you two just arm wrestle?”
They stopped arguing but favored him with grim expressions.
“What?” Rick said.
“Something’s up,” Will said.
Rick tightened. “Where’s Lucy?”
They’d spent the prior evening together, Lucy initially subdued but thawing as the night wore on. They’d spread a blanket on the lawn and talked. He’d kissed her lingeringly before saying good night at her bedroom door, and didn’t realize how long they’d been together until he returned to his room and discovered it was one in the morning.
He hadn’t seen her all day.
“We don’t know,” Sherilyn said. “That’s the point.”
Rick shrugged. “Where are the others?”
“Not in their rooms.”
“I went to the lake with Bryan earlier,” Will said.
Rick frowned. “Why would you do that?”
Will rolled his eyes. “It’s not like I craved his company. He said Anna was acting weird. He was worried she might be leaving.”
“Bryan doesn’t worry about anyone but Bryan.”
“I know that. But I was worried. I still am.”
Sherilyn nodded. “When Will got back, we started talking. We found it peculiar we hadn’t seen anyone all day. So we went around knocking on doors. No one answered.”
“What about you?” Will asked.
Rick glanced at him. Was it suspicion he saw in Will’s eyes? Or just nerves?
“I went exploring,” he said. “I came to a plot impasse.”
Will arched an eyebrow. “Thought you didn’t get writer’s block.”
“Well, I do,” he lied.
A voice behind them: “You’re early.”
They turned and watched Wells approach. He looked taller and broader than Rick remembered. My God, Rick thought. Even Wells’s skin looked firmer, as though some renowned plastic surgeon had snuck into the mansion to perform a facelift in the dead of night.
What’s happening to you? Rick wanted to ask. He glanced at Will and Sherilyn and discovered the same stupefaction on their faces.
Wells nodded at the bookcase by which they stood. “I see you’ve found my Southern Gothics.”
Wells ignored their scrutiny. “May I?” Wells said. He stepped between Sherilyn and Will and selected a leatherbound edition. “Wise Blood, Flannery O’Connor.” A glance at Sherilyn. “You’ve read her?”
“Twice,” Sherilyn said, her tone distant.
“You, Mr. Forrester?” Wells asked.
“Not that one,” Rick said, “but I’ve read ‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find’.”
“Oh man, I love that one,” Will said. “So twisted.”
Sherilyn gave him a dour look. “That a good thing?”
Will shrugged. “Absolutely.”
“Hm,” she answered, gazing at Wells. “I’m starting to wonder.”
Wells replaced the book and squared up to them. To Rick, he looked like a veteran major league pitcher. Near the end of his career, perhaps, but still tough enough to win games.
“Events have accelerated,” Wells said.
Sherilyn looked alarmed. “What happened?”
“Miss Kovalchyk and Miss Holloway have left the competition.”
“Both of them?” Sherilyn asked.
Rick thought of Elaine on that first afternoon, her shell of arrogance. Last night she’d seemed more human.
“You make them leave, or they go on their own?” Rick asked.
“Come,” Wells said, “the others can join us in the keep.”
“The what?” Will asked, hurrying to keep up with the group.
“The tower,” Sherilyn explained. “I assume that’s where you’re taking us? Your inner sanctum?”
“Correct, Miss Jackson. It’s your reward for being the final five contestants.” He moved toward a door inset in a gloomy alcove. “I hadn’t planned on this rapid attrition, but alas.…” Wells opened the door, disappeared into the shadows.
Will followed. “I’m disappointed the entryway isn’t hidden. You know, pull on a book and the whole case moves?”
“That wouldn’t be practical,” Wells said, his voice echoing down a spiral stone staircase. Rick had studied the tower from outside, but now that he was here, he couldn’t escape the sensation of time travel. The rough-hewn walls reminded him of his favorite Gothic literature, novels like The Monk and The Castle of Otranto.
“Why do you call it a keep?” Sherilyn asked. “Looks like a big tower to me.”
“A tower is an architectural feature. A keep is a bastion. A structure fortified to fend off adversaries.”
The staircase was broad, the ascent gradual, so that climbing to its peak took longer than Rick anticipated. He estimated the keep was roughly seven stories tall, but the climb felt more like nine or ten. In contrast, Wells advanced steadily up the stairs with the surety and grace of a man in the prime of his life.
Rick hurried to keep up.
“Keeps were built by the nobility,” Wells explained, “to fend off uprisings and guerilla attacks.” A door came into view, outside which Wells paused and stared down at them. “Very few have entered this one. Permitting you inside represents an act of trust, one I don’t take lightly.” A pause, Wells’s dark eyes searching theirs. “I hope you won’t either.”
They stopped just inside the arched doorway.
“Sweet Jesus, Son of Mary,” Sherilyn said.
That about sums it up, Rick thought.
The walls of the keep were perfectly round, fifty feet wide at least, the conical peak soaring high into the air. Like the chapel, there were stained-glass windows beginning at floor level. Like the third-floor hallway, the keep was adorned with paintings and tapestries depicting scenes from Wells’s fiction.
But the deathly images here weren’t only from Wells’s stories. He’d read all of Wells’s novels and most of his short tales, yet a cursory scan of the tableaus revealed half a dozen things Wells had never written.
A macabre painting of a man garbed in black rags.
Creatures nine or ten feet tall with fish-white skin and glowing green eyes.
A large barroom with a balcony decorated with severed human heads.
A woman dousing herself with gasoline and flicking a lighter.
A satyr perched atop a castle, some vast body of water behind him.
And on the peripheries Rick spied unfinished paintings. He should have been surprised to see the grinning mountain of a policeman leering down at him. But he wasn’t. He could only gaze at the half-drawn cop, his prow of a forehead and his rocklike jaw fixed in triumph, the sunglasses John Anderson wore somehow magnifying his malevolence.
“The Siren,” Will murmured.
The figure Will was indicating resembled a naked, seductive woman. Supple curves, dark, flowing hair. Absent of that, the figure was pure imagination. Pupilless white eyes. Dagger-sharp teeth. Though this painting wasn’t finished either, the Siren seemed to be crawling along some shoreline.
“Effective,” Rick said.
“Yours too,” Will answered.
“I told you this is a place of magic,” Wells said, beginning to circle them. “You are joining my legacy.”
Wells smiled at Sherilyn, who was squinting uncertainly up at the ceiling. “Yours is there too, Miss Jackson, though you can’t see it clearly. Why don’t you invest in a pair of contact lenses?”
“I’m not sure I want to see it,” she answered.
“Mr. Forrester, perhaps you’ll describe Miss Jackson’s scene for her?”
The image from The Magic King was a dramatic one, the point of view behind the king as he regaled the commoners. Two details struck Rick right away. Firstly, the king’s uncanny resemblance to Wells. Secondly, the faces in the crowd. They were inchoate, only the hints of faces. But Rick thought he could make out Lucy in the crowd. Tommy. Evan.
He looked away before he could discern his own face.
“Whoa,” Will said.
Rick glanced at Wells. “The deeper we get into our stories, the closer these paintings get to completion?”
“Word count is only part of it. Imagination is paramount.”
Will grinned. “Who painted these? Wilson? Your wife?”
“Doubt is the artist’s handicap, Mr. Church. You might have noticed how clear Mr. Forrester’s villain is compared to your Siren?”
Will’s grin faded. Though Rick didn’t comment, there was a noticeable disparity.
“So when one of us wins,” Sherilyn said, “our painting gets finished, and the others will just…fade?”
Wells smiled. “I’m impressed, Miss Jackson. You might survive this contest yet.”
Sherilyn frowned. “That’s a weird way to put it.”
Rick scanned the ceiling. “There are more images up there than contestants.” He glanced at Wells. “A lot more.”
Wells didn’t answer.
“The Corrina Bowen contest,” Rick went on. “If those images faded – the ones who didn’t win – and some of these images aren’t ours…or yours – where did they come from?”
Wells didn’t answer.
Rick was about to press it further, but before he could, footsteps sounded from the landing. They turned in time to see Wilson step into the keep. Bryan followed.
Sherilyn eyed him sourly. “Thought you might have bowed out too.”
Bryan’s hair was drenched, as if he’d just showered.
Wells said to Wilson, “And Miss Still?”
“Locked in her room,” Wilson explained. “She wouldn’t answer.”
Wilson stepped closer to Rick. Uncomfortably close. He could smell the servant’s body odor. Like lightning-charged air permeating a dog kennel.
Will said, “Maybe someone should check on her.”
“Yes,” Wilson murmured at Rick’s ear. “Maybe someone should go to her while she’s still alive.”
Sherilyn said, “She could just be—”
But Rick didn’t hear the rest. He was already moving toward the door.
Chapter Twelve
Rick knocked again; again there was no answer.
“This sounds like the creepiest statement in the world, but I’ll say it anyway: I know you’re in there.” He winced. “It sounded even worse coming out. Like, serial killer stuff. I feel like I should be wearing clown makeup.”
The door swung inward. Lucy glowered at him.
She’d been crying. Her eyes were swollen and her cheeks were an exhausted shade of pink. More troublingly, her suitcase was out, several articles of clothing heaped inside.
He mulled several comments, but none of them seemed appropriate. She was grasping the doorframe with one hand and the door with the other.
“Okay,” she said, “you’ve seen me. Will you leave now?”
“I miss something?”
“My story’s gone.”
He stared at her.
“I was in the library doing research, and when I got back to my room, the laptop was sitting outside my door. Like a big fuck-you.”
“Someone deleted it?”
“The whole thing. It’s not in the recycle bin, not in the file directory. Gone.”
“What about the printed—”
“Gone too.”
“My God. I don’t know what to.… Who did it?”
“Does it matter? Anna despised me. Elaine acted like we were friends before she left, but maybe that was a ruse.…”
Rick gazed down the hall, thought of Bryan.…
“Truth is,” she said, “I don’t trust anybody. I was stupid to trust you.”
“Hey, I don’t blame you—”
“Oh, you don’t blame me! That’s big of you. Some…fucker invades my room, wipes out the best thing I’ve ever written, and then taunts me with it?”
“It’s a terrible thing, Lucy. I can’t imagine—”
“Have you ever lost work?”
He shifted uneasily. “Parts of chapters…a paper I wrote—”
“Were you able to get them back?”
He hesitated. Shook his head.
“Any other brilliant suggestions?”
“Maybe Wells can bring in a computer guy.”
“Maybe you can join me in reality. It’s gone.”
“Hey, Lucy.…”
“Imagine the best thing you ever wrote. Imagine Garden of Snakes. You doing that?”
He nodded, knowing where this was going, but hoping it would help her blow off steam.
“Now it’s gone.” She snapped her fingers. “How does that feel?”
“Terrible. Catastrophic.”
“Now think about
someone doing it intentionally. Someone violating your space, being spiteful enough to take it all away.”
“You can get it back.”
She looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “There’s no way to get the file—”
“In here,” he said, tapping the side of his head. “It’s still in here, right? You know the whole thing. You were only, what, a third of the way in?”
Her eyes shot wide. “Only a third? Well, holy shit, Rick. And here I thought it was a big deal! I’ll just mosey over to the keyboard and reproduce the whole book!”
He hung his head. “I didn’t mean to sound insensitive.”
She moved to the dresser. “I know that. I know I’ll feel guilty for barking at you.”
“You don’t have to. Anyone would be mad.”
She grabbed a couple shirts. “Probably deserve this anyway.”
“Wait a second.”
“If you’re ever in Virginia, look me up. Now let me pack.”
He was about to go when he noticed something he hadn’t previously. Her bathroom door was open, the light on. On the edge of the sink, a heap of pills. Little red ones.
His pulse beat in his temples.
“You can go now,” she said, “unless you want to see my bras. I promise they’re not that exciting.”
Stay or go, he thought. Stay and you’ll exacerbate the situation. You’ll enrage her, and she’ll guzzle those red pills and die before they get her to the hospital.
Lucy dropped a shirt into the suitcase. “Maybe you enjoy watching a woman pack. Everyone has different turn-ons. Maybe yours is white cotton panties.”
Or, he thought, the pills aren’t laid out for sinister reasons at all; she’s only transferring them from a pill organizer to the bottle.
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