Touchy and Feely

by Graham Masterton

  Thomas had been secretly praying that it would snow hard enough for him to have to use it. If it hadn’t, he would have felt that God was censuring him for betraying Lizzie’s trust.

  He threw off the sacking, climbed aboard the mini-tractor, and started the engine. He waited for a few minutes while it warmed up, and then he eased it out of the barn and into the snow. Behind him, the plow blade scraped noisily along the concrete floor, and then made a sharp chuffing sound as it bit into the snow.

  Thomas sat in the tractor saddle, twisted around sideways so that he could watch the blades clearing a path twenty feet wide behind him. Ted had been right. These new rear-fitted snowplows cleared the snow real effective, and because they were being pulled, instead of pushed, they were much less of a strain on the tractor’s transmission.

  He reached the roadway, and turned the tractor around in a wide circle. A flock of crows flapped up from the trees on the opposite side of the track, and circled around him, croaking in irritation. Crows, he hated their very souls. They had perched all along the razor-wire fence when Margaret was taken away to the nursing home, ten or eleven of them, enjoying his sorrow and preening their feathers like the tar-black devils they were.

  Sitting sideways, of course, he presented a much wider target, and he was less than a third of the way back to the barn when a .308 bullet penetrated his back about three-and-a-half inches to the left of his spine, and blew a substantial part of his heart out. Blood sprayed across the freshly cleared driveway, as bright as Lizzie’s tomato soup.

  Thomas lurched sideways in the saddle, but he didn’t fall off. The tractor continued to chug toward the barn, with the snowplow clanking behind it. It trundled right into the open doors, and only stopped when it hit the larger tractor that was parked at the very back. Its engine raced, and then it cut out.

  Silence. But then the crows started to caw, as if they realized that they had finally gotten the better of him.

  After a while the farmhouse door opened and Lizzie looked out. ‘Dad?’ she called. ‘Dad, where are you?’

  Feely Triumphant

  Feely turned around to Robert and his eyes were wide with excitement.

  ‘Did you see that, man? Did you see that?’

  Robert had been kneeling behind him, watching through the Chevrolet’s rear window. ‘Great shot, Feely. Truly great shot.’

  Feely pummeled his fists on the floor-cushions. ‘He kept on going, man, even when he was dead! He kept on going! I mean unbelievable! “Got to finish clearing this snow, folks, even with this giant-sized hole in me!”’

  ‘You got him, Feely, no doubt about it. There’s one less happy man in the state of Connecticut this morning, and it’s all down to you.’

  Feely struggled out of the trunk-space. ‘What an exponential experience, man! Did you see the way he kept on going! He drove right into that barn!’

  Robert opened the door. ‘Time for us to be going, too.’

  ‘He just drove right into that barn . . . put-put-put, like nothing had happened! And the guy was dead!’

  ‘Come on, Feely. We need to put the seats back and get the hell out of here.’

  Feely climbed out of the car. ‘Are you OK, man? Didn’t you think that was funny?’

  ‘Hilarious. Now give me a hand with this seat.’

  They lifted the rear seats and forced them back into position. Feely said, ‘You’re not upset, are you, because you didn’t do it?’

  ‘Why should I be upset?’

  Feely pulled on his flap-eared cap. ‘It’s just that I never understood what a blast it was. Like, expunging a person. You can’t describe a blast like that in words. There’s nothing in the dictionary that gets you even halfway prepared for it. Not the thesaurus, neither.’

  He was panting, and flapping his arms up and down like a penguin. ‘Father Arcimboldo . . . all that stuff he told me about words. “A drop of ink makes a million think.” Well, granted, that’s conceivably true, but the difference is you don’t personally see it when somebody reads what you’ve written, do you? Like it might give them a cardiac arrest or something, but you’re not there to experience it, are you? But this, man . . . wow!’

  ‘Get in the car,’ said Robert.

  ‘I mean you tried to explain it to me, didn’t you, but—’

  ‘Feely,’ Robert repeated, and this time he pointed a finger at him like a pistol, with his thumb cocked. ‘Get in the car.’

  Feely walked around the front of the Chevrolet and climbed in.

  ‘You’re upset,’ he said, as Robert started the engine.

  ‘Do I look upset?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Maybe I’m beginning to realize that you were right and I was wrong.’

  ‘I don’t get it.’

  It was snowing so thickly now that Robert could hardly see where he was going. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he told Feely. ‘It’s too late now, anyhow. Especially for that poor bastard, whoever he was.’

  ‘You think he was happy?’ asked Feely. ‘Wooo! I bet he was happy. He was so happy that he didn’t want to stop going, even when he was dead!’

  Trevor Confesses

  The clock in the reception area was creeping up to quarter of twelve, and still Detective Wintergreen hadn’t come down to see them. Outside, the day had grown so gloomy that the sky was almost dark green, and the snow was falling so densely that Sissy could hardly see to the other side of the parking lot. Inside, the light was bright and flat, and the entrance hall smelled of Johnson’s floor-wax and warm computers.

  Trevor flicked through a copy of Connecticut Realty magazine and then reread it, more attentively. ‘Look at the price of this saltbox. Seven hundred and fifty thousand and change. That’s . . . legalized robbery!’

  He kept glancing up at the clock and then checking it against his watch. After twenty-five minutes, he said, ‘How much longer do you think he’s going to keep us waiting?’

  ‘It doesn’t really matter,’ said Sissy. ‘So long as he believes us.’

  ‘That card reading you did for him—what was that all about? That wasn’t exactly guaranteed to get him on our side, was it?’

  ‘I said it as I read it. If it was true, then he’ll know that we’re serious.’

  Trevor checked his watch again. ‘Jean’s going to be wondering what’s happened to me.’

  ‘Then call her.’

  ‘No, it’s OK. It’s just that we’re supposed to be meeting Freddie and Susan at two. They’re buying a new leather couch and they want some objective input.’

  Sissy sat back in her chair and stared at him with creased-up eyes. ‘You’ve been lying to me, haven’t you?’ she said.

  ‘Lying to you? Of course not! Why should I lie to you? What about?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Trevor! I may be batty but I’m not stupid! Look at the way you keep twitching and shuffling and looking at the clock! You didn’t feel anything pulling you last night, did you, and you don’t feel it now! If you did, you wouldn’t be able to think about anything else, except where you’re being pulled to! This is life and death, Trevor! This is destiny! “Freddie and Susan are buying a new leather couch and they want some objective input.” Give me a break!’

  Trevor tossed the magazine onto the table. ‘All right, Momma, I admit it. I didn’t feel anything. I wasn’t pulled.’

  ‘So why did you tell me that you were? What was the point?’

  ‘Your friend Sam phoned me last night. He said he’d spent the whole afternoon with you, up in Canaan, and that you had some hare-brain idea that you’d tracked down some murderers. He said he was worried about you, and that maybe I could help.’

  ‘Oh, well, so much for friends.’

  ‘He is your friend, Momma! He really cares about you! I told him we’d invited you to come down to Florida, but that you’d dug your heels in. So he suggested that I went along with this pulling thing, and humor you, so that you’d get it out of your system.’

  Sissy suddenly felt very weary, as if
she were three hundred years old.

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘you were humoring me.’ She opened up her purse and took out her cigarettes. The trooper behind the reception desk immediately lifted his head, like a sniffer dog. He didn’t say anything but the expression on his face was enough. She dropped the cigarettes back in her purse, and made a loud click closing the clasp.

  Trevor said, ‘I’m sorry, Momma, but we were all trying to do what was best.’

  ‘You think that’s best, making a mockery of me?’

  ‘Momma . . . we believe that you believe in all of this fortune-telling stuff.’

  ‘I see. But you don’t believe it yourselves? You think that my brains are turning into soft-scrambled eggs.’

  ‘We think you need looking after, that’s all. You should be relaxing in the sun, not chasing around Connecticut in the middle of a snowstorm, looking for imaginary murderers.’

  ‘Do you know something, Trevor?’ said Sissy. ‘The only time I’m going to let you look after me is when I die. When that happens, you can tuck me up in my casket, and tell me a bedtime story, and put a lily in my hands. But just remember that I’m your mother, and until that day comes, I do the looking after. OK?’

  Trevor lowered his head. But just as he did so, the elevator doors opened on the other side of the reception area, and Steve Wintergreen appeared, with Doreen and two troopers. Steve was zipping up his black windbreaker and it was obvious that he was in a hurry.

  ‘Ms Sawyer?’ he said. ‘I’m sorry that I kept you waiting so long.’

  ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

  ‘We’ve just had a 911 call from a small place near Winsted. A man’s been shot dead, apparently by a sniper.’

  ‘That’s terrible.’

  ‘He was shot through the heart, Ms Sawyer. He was shot through the heart while riding a tractor and after he was shot the tractor kept on going.’

  ‘Oh my God. Le Cocher Sans Coeur.’

  Steve hunkered down beside her chair. He kept his voice low, so that the others couldn’t hear him. ‘I don’t know if your card really predicted this shooting, Ms Sawyer. More than likely, it’s a coincidence. Or maybe you hired a shooter to do it, to prove how good you are at foreseeing the future.’

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ Sissy protested. ‘Do I look like the kind of person who goes around hiring hit-persons?’

  ‘Don’t ask me, Ms Sawyer. I’ve seen serial killers who look like altar boys. But you read my cards earlier, and I have to admit that you were uncomfortably close to the truth.’

  ‘So you believe in me,’ said Sissy, turning toward Trevor. ‘Even if there are some who don’t?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter if I believe you or not, but I can’t sensibly afford to ignore what you told me. So right now I’m going to ask you this: do you still have this “pulling” feeling? Do you still think that somehow you’re being drawn toward these people?’ He paused, and then he said, ‘What I want to know is, do you think you can locate them for me?’

  Sissy hesitated for a moment and then she nodded. She knew she could. She could feel them in her blood, and her muscles, and her bones. She could almost smell them.

  ‘North,’ she said. ‘Almost due north. And not too far away, either.’

  ‘We’re going to Winsted now,’ said Steve. ‘Do you mind coming along with us?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll come. As a matter of fact, I don’t think I have much choice.’

  ‘Momma, you can’t do this,’ said Trevor. ‘Look, Detective, I’m really sorry about this, but my mother is an elderly person, not a state trooper, and you can’t expect her to help you hunt down dangerous criminals.’

  ‘Trevor,’ Sissy interrupted him, ‘remember what I said. Now—don’t you have an appointment with a new leather couch?’

  Showdown At Big Bear

  Robert drove north-west, back toward Norfolk, right into the face of the blizzard. He hardly spoke, but he took repeated pulls from the Jim Beam bottle that he had borrowed from Serenity’s father’s cocktail trolley.

  Feely on the other hand couldn’t stop jabbering. He felt as if he had suddenly come alive. The meaning of his existence had become sparkling clear, and he could even see colors brighter. The snow-covered fir trees on either side of Route 44 looked like glittering choirs of angels, and he felt that they were singing for him.

  ‘Father Arcimboldo, he wasn’t trying to deceive me. He was trying to protect me, is all. He didn’t want me to get involved with any kind of bellicosity because he knew I wasn’t mature enough to comprehend its implications. But now I comprehend. Now I really, really comprehend.’

  They were less than eight miles shy of Norfolk when Robert leaned forward and squinted hard through the windshield ahead of them.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Feely.

  ‘Police. And it looks like they’ve set up a roadblock.’

  Feely looked, and Robert was right. About a mile up ahead of them, red and blue lights were flickering through the snow.

  ‘Maybe they’re not looking for us.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Robert. ‘And maybe the sun’s shining.’

  ‘They won’t suspect that we did it, will they? How will they know?’

  ‘They’ll stop the car and they’ll take one look at a drunk white male with his hand wrapped up in bloody bandages and a Cuban kid in a stupid hat who won’t shut up, and what do you think they’ll do?’

  ‘OK,’ said Feely. He could see the logic in that. ‘So what do we do now?’

  Robert thought for a while, and then said, ‘We hide.’

  ‘We hide? Where? There’s noplace to go.’

  ‘Oh yes there is.’ Robert pointed to the huge illuminated brown bear that was grinning on top of the Big Bear Supermart. ‘All we have to do is park in the parking lot, and how are they going to find us then? There must be six hundred cars in there.’

  They reached the entrance to the Big Bear Supermart and Robert turned into it. The parking lot surrounded the supermarket building on three sides, its bays radiating like the spokes of a wheel. They drove slowly up and down the salt-gritted asphalt, looking for a free space, their windshield wipers flapping wildly from side to side.

  ‘What if we can’t find anyplace to park?’ said Feely. He was beginning to feel panicky now. Maybe this was how the conspiracy worked. Maybe they made you feel dazzled, as if you had discovered the answer to everything that had ever gone wrong in your life, but all the time you were walking blindly into a trap. He twisted around in his seat and he could see that the red and blue police lights were flashing right across the highway, and that they were stopping everybody—cars, SUVs, and trucks.

  ‘Here we go,’ said Robert.

  A huge Toyota full of fat, pale-faced people backed out of a space in front of them. Robert waited while the driver wrestled to straighten his vehicle up.

  ‘Look at them,’ he said, taking another swig from his bottle. ‘The lardasses shall inherit the earth.’

  He pulled into the space and switched off the Chevrolet’s engine. ‘OK, Feely. Now we get into the trunk and we stay there until the heat’s off. You don’t need another leak, do you?’

  ‘I can hold it.’

  ‘Very good. Very professional.’

  They opened the rear doors and pulled down the back seats. Then they climbed into the trunk space, hunching up their knees so that Robert could pull the seats back up behind them. He switched on a small green plastic flashlight, and shone it into Feely’s face.

  ‘Pretty cozy in here, huh?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Feely, although he was feeling claustrophobic already.

  ‘We have water, we have Gatorade, we have chocolate chip cookies. We can hold out for as long as we need to.’

  ‘What if they search every car?’

  ‘Relax. How are they going to do that? Six hundred cars and everybody coming and going like ants. And it won’t occur to them that we pulled in here, will it? They’ll be thinking that we wanted to put the maximum distan
ce between us and Mad Falls, won’t they? They’re transparent. I can see the way their minds work. Everything’s transparent.’

  By the time Steve reached the roadblock, the traffic was backing up three or four miles, and he had to drive in the middle of the road with his lights flashing and occasional yips of his siren.

  ‘Do you still feel them?’ Steve asked Sissy, who was sitting in the front passenger seat next to him.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Sissy told him. ‘They’re very, very close.’

  Doreen, in the back, said, ‘Who needs bloodhounds?’

  Sissy turned around and smiled at her. ‘I really don’t blame you for being skeptical, my dear. I find it very difficult to believe it myself. But it’s far too strong a feeling for me to ignore. It’s like wanting a cigarette, to the nth power.’

  ‘I don’t smoke,’ said Doreen.

  ‘You eat chocolate, don’t you?’

  Doreen didn’t answer that. Instead, she leaned forward to Steve and said, ‘What if they’re not here?’

  ‘Then we’ll have to look someplace else, won’t we?’

  ‘I’m glad I don’t have to explain this to Lieutenant-colonel Lynch.’

  They reached the roadblock and Steve pulled the Tahoe into the side of the road. A trooper with a heavy gray mustache came forward and peered inside. ‘Morning, folks. Nice day for a manhunt.’

  ‘How’s it going, Trooper?’

  ‘Not much so far. Couple of kids with no insurance. A woman with a coat on and nothing else.’

  Sissy looked across the highway toward the huge brown bear. The pull was even stronger now. It made her heart beat slower, and much more heavily, so that she could hear her blood throbbing through her inner ears, squelch-squelch-squelch, like two people walking in the snow.

  ‘Detective Wintergreen, they’re here.’