The beam stopped on a tall draped shape, one of several in the far corner of the cellar. Cobwebs touched his face as he went to it. Dust made him sneeze when he pulled off the cloth cover.
He blinked back the tears and shone his light on the old oak wheelchair he had uncovered. It was high-backed, heavy, and strong, one of three in the basement. The county had provided them to Grandmother in the 1940’s when she ran her nursing home here.
The wheels squeaked as he rolled the chair across the floor. Despite its weight, he carried it easily up the stairs. In the kitchen he oiled the wheels. The small front wheels still squeaked, but the back ones had good bearings and spun freely at a flip of his finger.
The searing anger in him was eased by the wheels’ soothing hum. As he spun them, Dolarhyde hummed too.
Chapter 20
When Freddy Lounds left the Tattler office at noon on Tuesday he was tired and high. He had put together the Tattler story on the plane toChicagoand laid it out in the composing room in thirty minutes flat.
The rest of the time he had worked steadily on his paperback, brushing off all callers. He was a good organizer and now he had fifty thousand words of solid background.
When the Tooth Fairy was caught, he’d do a whammo lead and an account of the capture. The background material would fit in neatly. He had arranged to have three of the Tattler’s better reporters ready to go on short notice. Within hours of the capture they could be digging for details wherever the Tooth Fairy lived.
His agent talked very big numbers. Discussing the project with the agent ahead of time was, strictly speaking, a violation of his agreement with Crawford. All contracts and memos would be postdated after the capture to cover that up.
Crawford held a big stick—he had Lounds’s threat on tape. Interstate transmission of a threatening message was an indictable offense outside any protection Lounds enjoyed under the First Amendment. Lounds also knew that Crawford, with one phone call, could give him a permanent problem with the Internal Revenue Service.
There were polyps of honesty in Lounds; he had few illusions about the nature of his work. But he had developed a near-religious fervor about this project.
He was possessed with a vision of a better life on the other side of the money. Buried under all the dirt he had ever done, his old hopes still faced east. Now they stirred and strained to rise.
Satisfied that his cameras and recording equipment were ready, he drove home to sleep for three hours before the flight toWashington, where he would meet Crawford near the trap.
A damned nuisance in the underground garage. The black van, parked in the space next to his, was over the line. It crowded into the space clearly marked “Mr. Frederick Lounds.”
Lounds opened his door hard, banging the side of the van and leaving a dent and a mark. That would teach the inconsiderate bastard.
Lounds was locking his car when the van door opened behind him. He was turning, had half-turned when the flat sap thocked over his ear. He got his hands up, but his knees were going and there was tremendous pressure around his neck and the air was shut off. When his heaving chest could fill again it sucked chloroform.
* * *
Dolarhyde parked the van behind his house, climbed out and stretched. He had fought a crosswind all the way fromChicagoand his arms were tired. He studied the night sky. The Perseid meteor shower was due soon, and he must not miss it.
Revelation: And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them down to the earth…
His doing in another time. He must see it and remember.
Dolarhyde unlocked the back door and made his routine search of the house. When he came outside again he wore a stocking mask.
He opened the van and attached a ramp. Then he rolled out Freddy Lounds. Lounds wore nothing but his shorts and a gag and blindfold. Though he was only semiconscious, he did not slump. He sat up very straight, his head against the high back of the old oak wheelchair. From the back of his head to the soles of his feet he was bonded to the chair with epoxy glue.
Dolarhyde rolled him into the house and parked him in a corner of the parlor with his back to the room, as though he had misbehaved.
“Are you too cool? Would you like a blanket?”
Dolarhyde peeled off the sanitary napkins covering Lounds’s eyes and mouth. Lounds didn’t answer. The odor of chloroform hung on him.
“I’ll get you a blanket.” Dolarhyde took an afghan from the sofa and tucked it around Lounds up to the chin, then pressed an ammonia bottle under his nose.
Lounds’s eyes opened wide on a blurred joining of walls. He coughed and started talking.
“Accident? Am I hurt bad?”
The voice behind him: “No, Mr. Lounds. You’ll be just fine.”
“My back hurts. My skin. Did I get burned? I hope to God I’m not burned.”
“Burned? Burned. No. You just rest here. I’ll be with you in a little while.”
“Let me lie down. Listen, I want you to call my office. My God, I’m in a Striker frame. My back’s broken—tell me the truth!”
Footsteps going away.
“What am I doing here?” The question shrill at the end.
The answer came from far behind him. “Atoning, Mr. Lounds.”
Lounds heard footsteps mounting stairs. He heard a shower running. His head was clearer now. He remembered leaving the office and driving, but he couldn’t remember after that. The side of his head throbbed and the smell of chloroform made him gag. Held rigidly erect, he was afraid he would vomit and drown. He opened his mouth wide and breathed deep. He could hear his heart.
Lounds hoped he was asleep. He tried to raise his arm from the armrest, increasing the pull deliberately until the pain in his palm and arm was enough to wake him from any dream. He was not asleep. His mind gathered speed.
By straining he could turn his eyes enough to see his arm for seconds at a time. He saw how he was fastened. This was no device to protect broken backs. This was no hospital. Someone had him.
Lounds thought he heard footsteps on the floor above, but they might have been his heartbeats.
He tried to think. Strained to think. Keep cool and think , he whispered. Cool and think.
The stairs creaked as Dolarhyde came down.
Lounds felt the weight of him in every step. A presence behind him now.
Lounds spoke several words before he could adjust the volume of his voice.
“I haven’t seen your face. I couldn’t identify you. I don’t know what you look like. The Tattler , I work for The National Tattler , would pay a reward… a big reward for me. Half a million, a million maybe. A million dollars.”
Silence behind him. Then a squeak of couch springs. He was sitting down, then.
“What do you think, Mr. Lounds?”
Put the pain and fear away and think. Now. For all time. To have some time. To have years. He hasn’t decided to kill me. He hasn’t let me see his face.
“What do you think, Mr. Lounds?”
“I don’t know what’s happened to me.”
“Do you know Who I Am, Mr. Lounds?”
“No. I don’t want to know, believe me.”
“According to you, I’m a vicious, perverted sexual failure. An animal, you said. Probably turned loose from an asylum by a do-good judge.” Ordinarily, Dolarhyde would have avoided the sibilant /s/ in “sexual.” In the presence of this audience, very far from laughter, he was freed. “You know now, don’t you?”
Don’t lie. Think fast. “Yes.”
“Why do you write lies, Mr. Lounds? Why do you say I’m crazy? Answer now.”
“When a person… when a person does things that most pcople can’t understand, they call him…”
“Crazy.”
“They called, like… the Wright brothers. All through history-“
“History. Do you understand what I’m doing, Mr. Lounds?”
Understand. There it was. A chance. Swing hard. “No, but I think I’ve got a
n opportunity to understand, and then all my readers could understand too.”
“Do you feel privileged?”
“It’s a privilege. But I have to tell you, man to man, that I’m scared. It’s hard to concentrate when you’re scared. If you have a great idea, you wouldn’t have to scare me for me to really be impressed.”
“Man to man. Man to man. You use that expression to imply frankness, Mr. Lounds, I appreciate that. But you see, I am not a man. I began as one but by the Grace of God and my own Will, I have become Other and More than a man. You say you’re frightened. Do you believe that God is in attendance here, Mr. Lounds?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you praying to Him now?”
“Sometimes I pray. I have to tell you, I just pray mostly when I’m scared.”
“And does God help you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think about it after. I ought to.”
“You ought to. Um-hmmmm. There are so many things you ought to understand. In a little while I’ll help you understand. Will you excuse me now?”
“Certainly.”
Footsteps out of the room. The slide and rattle of a kitchen drawer. Lounds had covered many murders committed in kitchens where things are handy. Police reporting can change forever your view of kitchens. Water running now.
Lounds thought it must be night. Crawford and Graham were expecting him. Certainly he had been missed by now. A great, hollow sadness pulsed briefly with his fear.
Breathing behind him, a flash of white caught by his rolling eye. A hand, powerful and pale. It held a cup of tea with honey. Lounds sipped it through a straw.
“I’d do a big story,” he said between sips. “Anything you want to say. Describe you any way you want, or no description, no description.”
“Shhhh.” A single finger tapped the top of his head. The lights brightened. The chair began to turn.
“No.I don’t want to see you.”
“Oh, but you must, Mr. Lounds. You’re a reporter. You’re here to report. When I turn you around, open your eyes and look at me. If you won’t open them yourself, I’ll staple your eyelids to your forehead.”
A wet mouth noise, a snapping click and the chair spun. Lounds faced the room, his eyes tight shut. A finger tapped insistently on his chest. A touch on his eyelids. He looked.
To Lounds, seated, he seemed very tall standing in his kimono. A stocking mask was rolled up to his nose. He turned his back to Lounds and dropped the robe. The great back muscles flexed above the brilliant tattoo of the tail that ran down his lower back and wrapped around the leg.
The Dragon turned his head slowly, looked over his shoulder at Lounds and smiled, all jags and stains.
“Oh my dear God Jesus,” Lounds said.
Lounds now in the center of the room where he can see the screen. Dolarhyde, behind him, has put on his robe and put in the teeth that allow him to speak.
“Do you want to know What I Am?”
Lounds tried to nod; the chair jerked his scalp. “More than anything. I was afraid to ask.”
“Look.”
The first slide was Blake’s painting, the great Man-Dragon, wings flared and tail lashing, poised above the Woman Clothed with the Sun.
“Do you see now?”
“I see.”
Rapidly Dolarhyde ran through his other slides. Click. Mrs. Jacobi alive. “Do you see?” “Yes.”
Click. Mrs. Leeds alive. “Do you see?”
“Yes.”
Click. Dolarhyde, the Dragon rampant, muscles flexed and tail tattoo above the Jacobis’ bed. “Do you see?”
“Yes.”
Click. Mrs. Jacobi waiting. “Do you see?”
“Yes.”
Click. Mrs. Jacobi after. “Do you see?”
“Yes.”
Click. The Dragon rampant. “Do you see?”
“Yes.”
Click. Mrs. Leeds waiting, her husband slack beside her. “Do you see?”
“Yes.”
Click. Mrs. Leeds after, harlequined with blood. “Do you see?”
“Yes.”
Click. Freddy Lounds, a copy of a Tattler photograph. “Do you see?”
“Oh God.”
“Do you see?”
“Oh my God.” The words drawn out, as a child speaks crying.
“Do you see?”
“Please no.”
“No what?”
“Not me.”
“No what? You’re a man, Mr. Lounds. Are you a man?”
“Yes.”
“Do you imply that I’m some kind of queer?”
“God no.”
“Are you a queer, Mr. Lounds?”
“No.”
“Are you going to write more lies about me, Mr. Lounds?”
“Oh no, no.”
“Why did you write lies, Mr. Lounds?”
“The police told me. It was what they said.”
“You quote Will Graham.”
“Graham told me the lies. Graham.”
“Will you tell the truth now? About Me. My Work. My Becoming. My Art , Mr. Lounds. Is this Art?”
“Art.”
The fear in Lounds’s face freed Dolarhyde to speak and he could fly on sibilants and fricatives; plosives were his great webbed wings.
“You said that I, who see more than you, am insane. I, who pushed the world so much further than you, am insane. I have dared more than you, I have pressed my unique seal so much deeper in the earth, where it will last longer than your dust. Your life to mine is a slug track on stone. A thin silver mucus track in and out of the letters on my monument.” The words Dolarhyde had written in his journal swarmed in him now.
“I am the Dragon and you call me insane? My movements are followed and recorded as avidly as those of a mighty guest star. Do you know about the guest star in 1054? Of course not. Your readers follow you like a child follows a slug track with his finger, and in the same tired loops of reason. Back to your shallow skull and potato face as a slug follows his own slime back home.
“Before Me you are a slug in the sun. You are privy to a great Becoming and you recognize nothing. You are an ant in the afterbirth.
“It is in your nature to do one thing correctly: before Me you rightly tremble. Fear is not what you owe Me, Lounds, you and the other pismires. You owe Me awe .”
Dolarhyde stood with his head down, his thumb and forefinger against the bridge of his nose. Then he left the room.
He didn’t take off the mask, Lounds thought. He didn’t take off the mask. If he comes back with it off, I’m dead. God, I’m wet all over. He rolled his eyes toward the doorway and waited through the sounds ftom the back of the house.
When Dolarhyde returned, he still wore the mask. He carried a lunch box and two thermoses. “For your trip back home.” He held up a thermos. “Ice, we’ll need that. Before we go, we’ll tape a little while.”
He clipped a microphone to the afghan near Lounds’s face. “Repeat after me.”
They taped for half an hour. Finally, “That’s all, Mr. Lounds. You did very well.”
“You’ll let me go now?”
“I will. There’s one way, though, that I can help you better understand and remember.” Dolarhyde turned away.
“I want to understand, I want you to know I appreciate you turning me loose. I’m really going to be fair from now on, you know that.”
Dolarhyde could not answer. He had changed his teeth.
The tape recorder was running again.
He smiled at Lounds, a brown-stained smile. He placed his hand on Lounds’s heart and, leaning to him intimately as though to kiss him, he bit Lounds’s lips off and spit them on the floor.
Chapter 21
Dawn inChicago, heavy air and the gray sky low.
A security guard came out of the lobby of the Tattler building and stood at the curb smoking a cigarette and rubbing the small of his back. He was alone on the street and in the quiet he could hear the clack of the traffic light chan
ging at the top of the hill, a long block away.
Half a block north of the light, out of the guard’s sight, Francis Dolarhyde squatted beside Lounds in the back of the van. He arranged the blanket in a deep cowl that hid Lounds’s head.
Lounds was in great pain. He appeared stuporous, but his mind was racing. There were things he must remember. The blindfold was tented across his nose and he could see Dolarhyde’s fingers checking the crusted gag.
Dolarhyde put on the white jacket of a medical orderly, laid a thermos in Lounds’s lap and rolled him out of the van. When he locked the wheels of the chair and turned to put the ramp back in the van, Lounds could see the end of the van’s bumper beneath his blindfold.
Turning now, seeing the bumper guard… Yes! The license plate. Only a flash, but Lounds burned it into his mind.
Rolling now. Sidewalk seams. Around a corner and down a curb. Paper crackled under the wheels.
Dolarhyde stopped the wheelchair in a bit of littered shelter between a garbage dumpster and a parked truck. He pulled at the blindfold. Lounds closed his eyes. An ammonia bottle under his nose.
The soft voice close beside him.
“Can you hear me? You’re almost there.” The blindfold off now. “Blink if you can hear me.”
Dolarhyde opened his eye with a thumb and forefinger. Lounds was looking at Dolarhyde’s face.
“I told you one fib.” Dolarhyde tapped the thermos. “I don’t really have your lips on ice.” He whipped off the blanket and opened the thermos.
Lounds strained hard when he smelled the gasoline, separating the skin from under his forearms and making the stout chair groan. The gas was cold all over him, fumes filling his throat and they were rolling toward the center of the street
“Do you like being Graham’s pet, Freeeeedeeeee?”
Lit with a whump and shoved, sent rolling down onthe Tattler , eeek, eeek, eeekeeekeeek the wheels.
The guard looked up as a scream blew the burning gag away. He saw the fireball coming, bouncing on the potholes, trailing smoke and sparks and the flames blown back like wings, disjointed reflections leaping along the shop windows.
It veered, struck a parked car and overturned in front of the building, one wheel spinning and flames through the spokes, blazing arms rising in the fighting posture of the burned.
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