"That's bullshit," Ryerson said. "And it's not even good bullshit."
"Quite," the woman said, and stopped smiling abruptly. "I am not a kind or generous person, Mr. Biergarten. You of all people should have sensed that."
"I did."
"And yet you have come here—"
"There are people who know I'm here."
She waved this announcement away. "Oh, Mr. Biergarten, do you think that that is of any significance to me? It isn't. I'm not going to be staying here for long. A half hour, at most. Then I'm gone, and I assure you that no one is going to be able to find me. Money can accomplish miracles, Mr. Biergarten." She paused. Her smile reappeared, but it was grim. "You, however, are going to be staying here, in this house, just as your friend Mr. Goodlow has."
TWENTY-EIGHT
Ryerson sensed someone behind him. He turned his head, looked. The big man who had been tending the gate stood ten feet away. The man nodded and said, "I did warn you, Mr. Biergarten."
"So you did," Ryerson said.
He thought that he could run. He'd done a fair amount of running in college, and had been jogging for ten years. He was in good shape and certainly could outsprint the man behind him, who was clearly built more for strength than speed.
The man withdrew a revolver from his jacket pocket and leveled it at Ryerson's head.
Ryerson attempted a smile and said to the woman, "Perhaps you could tell me why you had Sam Goodlow killed."
The woman did not smile back. She grimaced, as if in annoyance. "Oh, my dear Mr. Biergarten, do you think this is some made-for-TV movie, and all the answers are going to be given to you before the villain does you in?" She shook her head. "It doesn't work that way. I'm sorry. Even if I did answer your question, it wouldn't do you, or me, or my man there any good whatever."
Ryerson shrugged. "I simply thought—"
"Photographs," the woman cut in smilingly. "A damning pair of photographs of me and the woman I have since become. Your friend, Mr. Goodlow, had possession of these photographs, and now I do. He became something of a complication, which is why he was killed." Her smile faded. "And I'm afraid, sir, that that is all I'm going to say." She nodded at the big man, then stood, and stepped away.
Ryerson knew why she had stepped away—she was getting out of the big man's line of fire.
Ryerson rolled forward, off the rococo couch, heard the clap of the revolver going off, and felt a millisecond of intense pain at the back of his head.
~ * ~
Rats are true omnivores. They will eat whatever is available, and their digestive systems are fully capable of handling anything they can chew and swallow.
They are scavengers as well as predators and will attack creatures many times their size. They are as fearless as badgers, as stealthy as cats, nearly as intelligent as dogs, as adaptive and resilient as human beings themselves, and they are found in virtually every country on earth.
Several families of rats lived a contented existence in the three attics in the house that had belonged to the late Violet McCartle. The place they had claimed as their own was warm, relatively dry—except in the largest attic space—and food was plentiful. Squirrels often made the mistake of coming into the attic spaces from one of the large oak and willow trees that crowded the house, and when a squirrel did show up, a half dozen of the rats—which had grown large and fat from their carefree lifestyle—cornered the hapless creature and tore it apart.
The body that was dressed in a gray suit lay on its back.
The suit was wet because the roof leaked badly and rain in the last seven days had been nearly continuous.
The body was only a pale shadow of what it had been barely two weeks earlier. The rats had gone first for its substantial gut, then the eyes and the genitals, and were now working their way contentedly and noisily through what remained.
Ryerson Biergarten lay on his stomach beside the body. Several rats were already tentatively sniffing around Ryerson's feet and hands, and they liked what they smelled.
~ * ~
Sam Goodlow thought he recognized the body in the gray suit. It was certainly not much of a body, he thought. It lacked . . . definition. Mass. Stature. It looked like a chunky inflatable doll that had lost air in strange places.
He bent over, reached out, and touched the body at the shoulder. He felt nothing for a moment.
Then his arm tingled and he realized that it had not tingled that way—had not felt alive—for quite some time, and he thought it was proof of what he had been telling Ryerson Biergarten this past week. He wasn't dead! How could he be dead and have a tingling arm?
His arm stopped tingling.
The big attic space vanished.
Another space took its place.
It was a large, white space, harshly lit, and it had lots of reflective surfaces. He smelled antiseptic and blood.
And there was a face. A mask covered the mouth. Big, horn-rimmed glasses. These words came from the mouth beneath the mask: "That's good, Mrs. Goodlow, there he is—"
Sam lurched back from the body. The big, dimly lit attic space returned at once.
And he thought, I recognize the body in the gray suit.
He grew afraid. He had never before in his life been so very afraid.
~ * ~
Stevie Lutz was afraid, too.
This man standing so close by was the same man who had caught hold of her and had tried to pull her from this place, and he was going to try and do that again. She knew it. He had that look about him. That look of resolve and tenacity.
That pity.
Damn him! She had no need of his pity.
"Go away!" she screamed.
He held his hand out to her.
"No. I don't want to go back!" she screamed.
"But you have a life to live," he told her.
She laughed. "A life to live? You've got to be kidding. My life is a joke."
"And what do you have here?"
She looked him in the eye. "Life here is what I make of it." She smiled as if to say she knew something he didn't, and added, "Literally."
"And how is that so terribly different from the other life you have?"
She stared at him a moment, then said, "I am controlled there. He controls me"—meaning Jack Lutz—"our circumstances control me, my expectations control me."
"And nothing controls you here?"
"Nothing at all."
"Except them."
"Them? Who?"
"Them." He nodded.
Stevie turned, looked behind her, and screamed.
~ * ~
Sam Goodlow touched the body in the gray suit at the feet. His arm tingled, and the big, dimly lit attic space vanished. He was in bed.
Rebecca Meechum was with him, and she was grinning. He had never before seen such a grin from her. It was sad and evil at the same time, as if she were trying to share a pain that she adored.
Sam stepped back from the body in the gray suit. Rebecca Meechum vanished.
The big, dimly lit attic space reappeared.
The body of the man in the gray suit reappeared.
The other body reappeared.
Sam looked at it. He saw the blood at the temple, and he reached out to touch the body. His finger went into it. He recoiled.
This was Ryerson Biergarten.
~ * ~
Only faces can show real hunger, fear, pain, loneliness. Eyes become hollow, dark, and ironically large and lifeless at the same time. Mouths hang open. Skin tightens over the bone. There is no movement in such faces. They are as motionless as stone. But they are unlike stone because clearly there is a skull beneath, and a brain inside the skull, and a scream inside the brain. That scream is silent and deafening and endless.
It's what Stevie Lutz heard from the faces she looked at.
"They control you! They use you!" the man with her shouted.
And she went forward at once, took the man's hand. And when she touched him, he vanished.
The
world she inhabited vanished.
She found herself once again inside the hunter's cabin.
She left the cabin quickly and started for home.
She would deal with Jack. She was in control now!
~ * ~
Sam Goodlow thought, looking at the body which lay on its stomach next to his body, This is my friend.
Because friends shared the truth.
And the truth, he realized at last, was undeniable. The body in the gray suit was him. Had been him.
Now it was rat food.
And it was time for him—the real Sam Goodlow—to move on to better things.
To other things, anyway.
Different things.
He felt confused. What sort of things was he supposed to move on to? He had no idea. He felt stuck. He realized that he had felt stuck ever since. . . He stared at the body in the gray suit. Ever since this.
He sighed. "Where," he whispered, "do I go from here?"
He heard, from just behind him, "Let me show you."
He looked. Ryerson Biergarten stood close by. Sam jumped back, surprised.
"It's all right," Ryerson said.
Sam shook his head. "No, it isn't. You're not dead, Rye."
"Sure I am." He nodded at his body lying on its stomach next to the body in the gray suit. "See there. It's obvious, Sam. You're still in a kind of strange denial—"
"Oh, shit, Rye, I ought to know what dead is. And you're not dead."
Ryerson looked suddenly baffled, and a little sad. "But, Sam… there I am." He indicated the body on the floor.
Sam looked at the body for a couple of moments. He sighed. "What do I know, Rye. Maybe I'm just being a jerk. Maybe you really are dead."
Ryerson smiled oddly. "And if I am—well, it's obvious that I am, isn't it?—then it's not a bad thing. Look at what I've been all my life, Sam—I've been someone who pokes his nose around in the paranormal. Hell, now I am the paranormal. Now I can poke my nose around in earnest—" His cheek twitched.
Sam said, "You've got a little tic there."
"I noticed," Ryerson said.
Sam put himself in a velvet Queen Anne chair near his body. He slouched in the chair, his big hands flat on the arms, and his legs out straight, so they were near the top of what had once been his head. He said, "It's good knowing just who you are, Rye. And exactly what you are."
"That's very profound, Sam."
"I can't help but be profound in the state I'm in."
"I imagine not." His cheek twitched again and he tried to ignore it.
He sat cross-legged on the floor near his own body. A rat was sniffing around his body's neck and he said, nodding at it, "Look there, Sam, a rat's sniffing around my neck." He was trying to sound casual and offhanded.
"That's disgusting," Sam said.
"No, no," Ryerson protested. "It isn't disgusting. It's life. Really. We all survive off death, in one way or another. Sweep out the old, sweep in the new—" He smiled. His cheek twitched again. "I mean, Sam, look at what the rats have done to you there. There's hardly anything left; is that disgusting?"
Sam thought about this a moment, then shook his head. "No. I suppose I see what you mean."
"Of course you do. It's the soul of good sense. Why should what's natural and ... beautiful for you be disgusting for me? That's kind of inequitable, wouldn't you say?" Another rat appeared and sniffed around Ryerson's knee. His stomach felt queasy, and he thought this was odd. Why should his stomach feel queasy when he really didn't have a stomach anymore? "Now look there," he said, and attempted to smile again, but it worked badly, "another one. Soon, all the… physicalness that was me will be gone, and that will be a good thing—"
"You're being an asshole," Sam said.
Ryerson gave him a surprised look.
A shot rang out from below.
Both men snapped their gaze in the direction of the floor. Another shot rang out.
"I know what's happening," Sam said.
"Yes," Ryerson said.
"She's killing him."
"Yes. It's clear."
"The goon. She's killing him. I knew she'd do it. She's not a kind person, Rye. She does terrible things."
Another shot.
"He takes a lot of killing, I guess," Ryerson said.
"A big man," Sam said. "Not a terribly evil man, either. But evil enough. She's wise, I suppose, to kill him. He would simply have done it to her before long."
"You're talking very clearly," Ryerson said.
"I'm clear on a lot of things now, Rye. I want to thank you for that."
Another shot. And another.
"She's making sure," Sam said.
"Thank me for what?" Ryerson asked.
"For making things clear. For bringing me to this place. To him." He nodded to indicate the body in the gray suit.
They heard a strange whumping noise from below.
"Shot?" Ryerson asked.
"I don't know," Sam said. "I don't think so. It didn't sound like a shot. It sounded like someone being hit in the head. I think it was someone being hit in the head."
"Him?" Ryerson asked.
Sam nodded. "Of course. Who else? It was him."
"How do you know?"
"I know a lot. Things are very clear now."
"For instance?"
Sam sat forward in the Queen Anne chair, so his legs were bent and his elbows were on his knees. He conjured up a thoughtful look. "For instance, like the fact that we heard her fire the last shot. It was six shots, so it was the last shot."
Ryerson shook his head. "Some automatics fire more than six shots, Sam. Some of them fire . . . a lot more. Twelve, I think. I'm surprised you don't know that." His cheek twitched once, then, very quickly, again.
"You have a little twitch there, Rye."
"I noticed."
"And like the fact that that woman is on her way up here now to check us out."
"You're kidding."
Sam grinned. "I wouldn't kid you, Rye. Not now." They both heard the sound of a door opening from below.
"That's her," Sam said.
They heard a moan.
"What was that?" Ryerson said, surprised.
"You," Sam said.
"I didn't moan. It wasn't me."
Sam nodded at the body lying at Ryerson's feet. "It was him. It was you."
"It couldn't have been him. He's dead. And I'm going to go on an odyssey of discovery in the great . . ." He faltered.
"Beyond?" Sam offered.
"Yes. The Great Beyond."
"Asshole!"
Ryerson looked offended. "Why do you call me an asshole? That hardly seems kind."
Sam shrugged. "I stopped being kind, simply for the sake of it, three weeks ago."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning, what you did for the other asshole's wife you can sure as hell do for yourself."
"I don't understand."
"Of course you do. You're being thickheaded because you think you're dead and so it's time to have some fun. Well, you aren't dead, Rye, and if you were, I'm here to tell you that it simply isn't a lot of fun."
Another moan.
Then the sound of footsteps from the farthest of the three attics.
Sam said, "You know what she's going to do. She's going to put a bullet in your head, just to be sure."
"I thought she was out of bullets."
"Idiot! She reloaded. And she's really looking forward to pumping your head up and splattering your brains all over the place. She'll even overlook her fear of rats, and the smell of that!"—he nodded to indicate the body in the gray suit. "She's on a roll, Ryerson. She's really full of herself, and she's aiming to leave this place without any messy loose ends."
"Which," Ryerson offered, "is what you were, I think. A loose end. And that's why she had you killed."
Sam nodded ruefully. "A loose end. Yes. It does wonders for the ego."
"And I don't know why you think," Ryerson went on, "that the idea of her shootin
g that . . . thing"—he nodded at the body at his feet—"should bother me, Sam. If I really were alive—"
"This isn't macho time in the great hereafter, Rye. My God, talk about denial. For the past week, you've been trying to convince me that I was dead. Well, thank you, you've done it. Now it's my turn." He leaned way forward in the chair, impossibly forward in the chair, so his back was yards longer than it should have been, and his head became as big as a pumpkin, and he screamed, "Ryerson Biergarten, you're alive! Alive! You're still breathing, still sweating, still digesting, still able to make love, still able to dream, and pee, and eat ice cream, still able to go for Sunday drives, and have your heart broken, and your kneecaps busted, and your hair cut, and your contracts renewed. Alive, my friend! So do yourself a favor and act like you're alive before she turns you into rat chow."
Ryerson stared at the huge face that was so close to his and his cheek twitched again.
TWENTY-NINE
The woman who called herself Violet McCartle felt pumped. She felt strong, powerful, invincible. She felt that she could unload the .38 she carried into her own brain and it would do her no harm whatever.
Even the idea of coming up here, into the midst of this corruption and decay, was undaunting. A powerful, invincible person simply did what was necessary, even if it was distasteful.
She could see past the triangular entryways through the first and second attic spaces, and into the largest attic, the third, though not clearly. She could see that a light was on in the third attic, and it dimly illuminated the two centuries worth of collectibles stored there.
She could also hear the raucous and joyful squeals of the rats.
And she could smell the dead man. She thought, in fact, that she could smell him too well, as if her sense of smell had suddenly increased ten-thousand-fold.
But she knew that she was smiling through it all because the bottom line was simple—she was a superior human being. She had bested Violet McCartle, who had assumed, so stupidly, that because they looked so much alike, their psyches and their souls were identical, too. Then she had gone on to eliminate all those who could stand in her way, and now could count herself as one of the very wealthy. And wealth equaled power. And power equaled control.
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