Even in the dim light, she could see him flushing. Her smile broadened. That was one of the things she liked so much about him. He was boyish, innocent, naively modest about so many things. A refreshing change from most of the men she had dated, who probably never blushed in their entire lives and would probably have been willing to strip naked in front of a capacity crowd at the Rose Bowl if it would ensure their getting laid after dinner.
Not Payne. Of course, that didn’t preclude the possibility of his getting…no, she refused to use the phrase and instead substituted of their making love after this dinner.
“Come on in,” he said at last, starting as if he were coming out of a mild trance. “Come in,” and he reached out and took her hand, and his was warm and felt strong and masculine. Cathy wondered again at the levels of the man, sensitivity and strength, masculinity and innocence.
She smiled and let him lead her into the living room. For a second she stood there, not quite a foot from Payne, looking over his shoulder into the room. The drapes were closed and the inside lights were on, so there was an odd texture to the lighting that she found mildly unappealing. And more. Something was wrong in the room itself.
Instinctively, she glanced around. It took several seconds before she noticed it: a thin crack in the television monitor. If the light hadn’t struck the screen just so, highlighting the smooth line of the fracture, she probably would not have seen it at all.
And there was something more.
One of the chess pieces was missing. It seemed a minute thing, one piece after all. But in a room as sparse as this one, any change, no matter how small, affected the sense of balance.
“Payne,” she said, “what happened?”
He glanced at the monitor. The movement seemed studied, as if he were waiting for her to ask, as if he had rehearsed his reaction to her question. She felt a tingling along her spine.
“Oh, that,” he said, suddenly off-hand and casual. “Damnedest thing. I had this weird dream last night. Really off-beat. I don’t remember any of it now—you know how it is, especially with the strange ones. Anyway, all I remember is that I dreamed I was standing in the middle of the room, still dressed in my pajamas, and I had apparently just chucked one of the chess pieces at the monitor. Must’ve thought it was a monster from outer space or something, the Crawling Eye coming to get me out of the depths of Dreamland.” He laughed. “Anyway, when I got up this morning and came out, there it was, a crack down the face of the set. And the chess piece is missing. It must have rolled under the couch or something.”
He turned to face her and shrugged, a little-boy shrug that warmed her and drew her closer to him.
“You okay now?” she asked.
“Sure.” This time there was a shrug in the voice as well. “What’s a dream, anyway. Yeah, everything’s great.”
And for a while, she believed it.
Dinner was not as complicated as the first time she had come to his house. The food was good but simpler—steak and salad and ice cream for dessert. This time, there was no argument about her helping to clean up, and afterward they found their way easily into his bedroom and from there onto the bed, and they discovered that the bed might be narrow but it was not too narrow for two people to make love on. It was lingering and gentle and wonderfully fulfilling for her, and when she fell asleep with Payne’s head resting on her shoulder and his arm around her waist she could not imagine ever feeling as complete or as happy.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Payne woke to the shrillness of Cathy’s voice. For a moment, it sounded as if a harpy or a banshee had infiltrated his home and was intent on destroying his peace.
“Payne, damn you, how could you? How could you!” She repeated the phrase, not as a question but as an inquisition.
Payne was groggy, still half asleep. He was naked, cramped against the wall on the narrow bed, his body welded to hers. He was partially aroused and felt the tension of her flesh against his. His arm lay across her waist, not really holding her down, he decided, but holding her closer to him.
“Payne!” She threw his arm back and sat up, pulling away from him.
He rolled back toward the wall and braced up on his elbow.
“What? What’s wrong. What did I do?”
The sleepiness was passing, leaving in its place a deep confusion.
What was wrong with her?
“That!”
She pointed an accusatory arm toward the wall. He twisted around until he could see clearly. The monitor was on. It had not been on when they had made love, nor when they had drifted happily to sleep. He had not had it on all day, for all he knew there wasn’t even a disc in either machine, not since he had replaced Hold That Ghost and Forbidden Planet that morning, just after he had noticed the crack in the living room monitor and had looked around for the missing chess piece.
The screen couldn’t be live. It was that simple.
But it was.
And it was playing a film that he had never seen before, a kind of film that he had never seen, never even consciously wanted to see. Sure, there was a lot of skin in the discs the old lady had stockpiled in the Control Room, even some with pretty extended episodes of nudity. He thought fleetingly of Equus, of flashes of bodies in teen-rebellion films like All the Right Moves, with Tom Cruise and what-was-her-name tenderly discovering themselves for the first time after the crude and violent episodes of back-seat groping. He had seen a few, but he had never sat down and consciously looked for any.
He had for sure never looked for anything like this.
In the first instant, staring through sleep-bleared eyes, the only thing he saw was pink—flesh pink that moved and pulsated and writhed. It resolved into sharper focus, an inverted dome of pink that suddenly became a woman’s breast, filmed obscenely close and graphic.
“Hey. I….,” he began, and the scene changed. The camera shifted to the male, fully aroused and penetrating. Payne swallowed. It almost seemed as if the monitor were showing him what they had done the night before, he and Cathy, in the privacy of his own room, his own bed. Only there was no love here. The woman was bleeding, the man vicious in his barely restrained violence masquerading as love. He struck her brutally across the breast
The film became even more graphic, more perverted.
“How could you!” Cathy was up now, her back to the monitor. She held a corner of the sheet in front of her as if to protect her from the violation of Payne’s eyes. With a quick movement that was itself violent and angry, she twisted the sheet from the bed, leaving Payne naked, and wrapped it around her.
“But I…I...,” Payne said, even more confused. “Did you put that on?”
She stared at him, her eyes monstrous and white. “How could you think that,” she said in a voice that was frighteningly cold. “That...that filth.”
She refused even to glance over her shoulder. She knelt down and retrieved her panties and bra, struggling to put them on without dropping the shield that the sheet provided.
“But I didn’t, I couldn’t have,” Payne protested. “Hey, I was right here, asleep, the whole time. I couldn’t have gotten out of bed without you knowing it, could I?”
“I don’t know how you arranged it, but I won’t stay here and watch something like that.”
Payne allowed his eyes to focus on the monitor. It showed more of the same waves of flesh and undulating movements.
He swallowed. His body was reacting to the visual images, even as his mind warned him that he shouldn’t, that he mustn’t.
Too late.
“You like that, don’t you,” Cathy said, and again it was an accusation, not a question. “You like watching that kind of thing and you like making me watch it. Maybe you have some other ideas, maybe you want me to do that to you.”
She jerked her thumb violently over her shoulder and riveted his attention back to the screen.
“No,” he said, but the denial was an instant too late, an instant too hesitant.
She di
dn’t speak again. Suddenly she was dressed—or nearly—and rushing through the door, her shoes in one hand. She disappeared into the hallway.
“Wait! Cathy!”
Payne grabbed the sheet, still warm from her body, and threw it around his waist, feeling ridiculously like someone in a toga-party movie that had somehow gone fatally awry. Fully half the sheeting trailed behind him on the floor.
“Wait! I swear, I don’ know how that got there. I didn’t...I wouldn’t try anything like that on you.”
She was at the door. Her back was toward him, her hand on the knob.
The living room monitor showed the same scene. There was no sound except a thick static gurgling, which was just as well because the woman was obviously screaming in pain and the man was equally obviously reveling in her terror.
Cathy stopped, her shoulders stiff and her hand still touching the knob. But she didn’t turn it. She didn’t step through the door. Not yet.
He still had a chance.
“God’s truth, Cathy. I didn’t set this up. I don’t know what happened. A cross-circuit, maybe. Maybe one of the sets shorted into an adults-only channel. I’ve been having some trouble with them lately.”
He paused and watched her shoulders for some sign. They were still stiff. But she hadn’t turned the knob.
“I wouldn’t...I mean, I like...love you too much to do anything like this. Please. Please.”
The final sounds hissed through the room, mingling with the static.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Cathy said finally. “We’ll talk.”
Her shoulders dropped—fractionally, it was true, but they dropped and he breathed a deep sigh.
“Okay. Tomorrow.”
He didn’t dare say more. Maybe this was enough to salvage things.
She turned the knob and was through the door before he could move. By the time he had crossed the living room and stood on the darkened porch, she was at her car. He watched her unlock the door and swing it open.
“I didn’t do it,” he called. “I swear.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Then she was inside the car and the engine roared and the lights blinked on and she was gone. Payne stood on the porch. After a long while, his fingers loosened their grip and the sheet dropped to his feet. Then, after another long while, he noticed that he was cold and he went inside and closed the door and locked it.
The monitors were still playing, but even as he stood there, they flicked off. All at once, as if someone had thrown a switch, the living room was thrust into darkness. The bands of light beneath the doors in the hall died as well. The only light came from the bedroom.
He went down the hall, almost turning into the bedroom. At the last instant, he kept going. He opened the door to the Control Room. Everything was dark and still. The two players were off. Even the idiot lights were black.
He crossed the room and laid his hand on the machines. They were cold. They hadn’t been running since the night before. The other equipment was cool as well.
“What the hell happened, then?” he asked no one in particular. The words hung on the air. There was no answer. “What the hell is going on?”
He returned to his room. The bed was a shambles. The covers were on the floor. The top sheet was missing and the bottom one was pulled out all around the mattress and lumped in the center of the bed. Even the mattress was twisted a couple of inches off the box springs at the head of the bed. The clothing he had worn that night was scattered everywhere, as if the room had been hit by a tornado, but he didn’t remember their lovemaking as being that violent, that breathlessly rushed.
He glanced at the monitor.
Silvery blackness reflected only his shoulders and his face staring upward.
He turned out the light and threw himself onto the bed. Tomorrow he would call Tasco. He would get the guy out her to go over every inch of wiring in the damned house if necessary, but he would find out what the hell was happening and make sure it would never happen again. He would call Cathy and explain that…well, explain that he would make sure that she would never be subjected to anything like that again. That he loved her. That he wanted her to be with him.
The bed was uncomfortable and he was chilled but he did not move to rearrange the covers. He fell asleep.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
As Payne slept, a subtle light fell across his body, outlining the line of muscle in his arm where it crossed his chest, of leg where it stretched toward the bottom of the bed. At first the light was silvery and Payne’s body seemed etched in silverpoint, as if it were an anatomy study by Leonardo or Michelangelo come suddenly and gloriously to life. Then the light mutated into something else, assuming a reddish tone that made the blood rise to the surface of Payne’s flesh and suffused him with a glow that was in some unutterable fashion more pornographic than the overt activities he and Cathy had glimpsed on the monitor minutes hours…a lifetime ago.
The monitor watched Payne, watched him sleep. He lay on his side, his knees drawn partway up as it to surround and protect. One hand lay half open near his mouth. It would take little imagination to believe that he was an infant, suckling his own thumb. The monitor patiently watched Payne’s arms and legs as they moved slightly. It watched his eyelids flicker and twitch with the rhythmical movements of REM and deep sleep.
After a while, Payne rolled onto his back. His face was still averted from the light, as if even in sleep he were aware that it was shining down on him. With one movement he flung his arms away from his body, his hands fisted so tightly that his knuckles bled white. His legs stretched until he was nearly cruciform on the bed—a blood-red Christ against a shadow of blood-black shadows.
On the screen, the film flickered back into life. The man knelt there, tumid and frightening and demanding. The woman returned too, and now beneath the blood her face shifted and altered. The cheekbones dropped fractionally, the eyebrows thinned, the lips curved just that much more. The changes were subtle and gradual. Even had he been awake Payne might not have noticed them.
But the changes were there nonetheless, definite and irreversible.
Beneath the blood and the terror and the pain, Cathy Litton stared mutely at the camera, her mouth open in voiceless agony, the transformation completed at the very moment that the woman in the movie choked and screamed and choked again and died.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
A little after 8:30 the next morning, Payne made two telephone calls, both from Nick’s.
“My phone’s on the blink,” he explained tersely as he walked through the front door past Nick and entered the living room. Nick had been awake for a while; that much was obvious by the half-eaten piece of toast he had in his hand when he opened the door to Payne’s knock.
“You don’t mind if I make a couple of calls from your phone, do you,” Payne continued. “Local, of course.”
“No problem,” Nick answered just as curtly, leading the way into his bedroom-study and the only phone extension in the house.
“Help yourself.” With that, he left the room.
Payne listened to the footsteps as Nick re-entered the kitchen. When he heard the scuffing sounds of a chair being slid across the linoleum—presumably Nick resuming his interrupted breakfast—he picked up the receiver and dialed the first number.
“Cathy?”
There was a long pause.
“Look, Cathy, don’t be mad. I promise that I didn’t have anything to do with that...with what happened. The set must have crossed wires or something, picked up a film from some porn channel or something. I don’t know.” The words came out in a rush, with no pauses for her to answer. He finally stopped speaking and listened to the sound of light breathing at the other end.
“Cathy?”
He heard nothing but the faint hissing of breath.
“Cathy, are you there?”
“Yes.” This time he heard the relief in her voice as well as the words, flooding through him and felt a similar relief
“Look, what can I say? I’m sorry it ever happened. How about coming over tonight and letting me show you how sorry I really am. Dinner and....”
“Okay,” she said quickly, “but at my house.”
Payne hesitated for a second, then: “Sounds good. About seven all right?”
“Yes. And Payne,” she added after an equal moment of hesitation, “don’t wear too many layers. I might pick up a chess set in town this afternoon.”
“Sure,” he said, grinning as if she could see him through the wires. “See you tonight.”
He braced the receiver against his shoulder as he pressed his finger on the set and cut the line. He lifted his finger, waited for the tone, then dialed the second number. He did not know this one by heart, so halfway through he had to dig a card out of his shirt pocket and refresh his memory.
“Tasco’s Audio,” the voice said. It sounded like the old man himself.
“Mr. Tasco?”
“Yes, sir.”
“This is Payne Gunnison.”
“Ah, Mr. Gunnison. We’ve gone over your DVD player carefully but I’m afraid that we can’t....”
“I’m not calling about that right now. Something else happened last night, a cross-circuit between the tandem consoles and one of the satellite channels, I think.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Gunnison, but I don’t think that such a thing is possible....”
“Well, maybe not. But something happened and I want the whole setup checked out as soon as possible. Today, if you can get to it.”
After a few seconds of silence, Tasco answered. “That would be very difficult today, Mr. Gunnison. I am leaving at noon for my daughter’s wedding in San Diego, and I won’t be back until next Monday. I just came in this morning to take care of a few last minute....”
“I want it done today,” Payne said, his voice abruptly harsh and grating. “Today, Mr. Tasco. Or I’ll have to take my business to a shop I can depend on.”
“No, Mr. Gunnison, that won’t be necessary. I could send someone out...this evening perhaps? After we close at seven?”
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