"We never stop asking that. Do you realize that, Doctor?" Garret asked her.
"When we're very little, we're always coming at our parents with why this, why that? Why, why, why? Some parents get to hate it. Some think it's cute for a while and then get tired of it and before we know it, we have to go elsewhere for the answers, but to the day we die, that is the primary question on our lips. Why?"
"I want to go back," Darlene said simply, so simply in fact it sounded like the most obvious thing to do.
"We all want to go back. Life is a journey home. Maybe that was what he meant when he told that to Paula Gilbert, eh, Doctor?"
"Please," she said. "I've helped you. You're frightening Darlene, and you're frightening me, I might add."
"And what would we be without fear, Doctor? Fear protects us. It's our ability to foresee bad things happening to us that keeps us cautious, careful. Animals have it instinctively. We did, but we've lost the edge, I'm afraid as we evolved and became civilized." He stopped smiling. "Get out," he ordered again, but more sternly. "Now," he screamed at Darlene, pointing the gun at her as well. She jumped, turned, and opened the door.
He got out on his side and turned to Terri, who hesitated, asking herself, what had she done?
Seeing she had little choice, she opened her door and stepped out of the car.
"What are you doing?" she asked him in the tone of voice to make him think about it.
"Let's go look at that old house. I'm interested in historical sites," he said.
"I told Dr. Templeman I was going with you. I told him who you were," she said, relying on her powers of convincing people to have hope where there was very little. Was she as good a bluffer as she thought she was?
"I doubt that, but even if you did, Doctor, you're with a mad schizophrenic. That's all anyone would think."
"Why are you doing this?" she asked, changing her tone now to one of pleading.
"It's only going to add to the mess, to the questions and to further investigations."
"The house," he said. He pointed the pistol at Darlene who gasped. Terri put her arm around her.
"Walk to the house. Don't panic. Just do whatever I tell you to do." Darlene couldn't speak. Don't panic? she thought. Easily said. Her throat was closed with panic. Her body felt numb, cold. It was as if she had already been killed and she was in the process of leaving it behind.
"Open the door," Garret ordered when they stepped on the porch. The floorboards creaked so loudly, Terri thought they might just crack beneath them. She tried the door. Amazingly, despite the broken windows, the crumbling wood siding and shutters, the door was locked. She tried the handle and then turned to Garret.
"Out of the way," he ordered and kicked the door with the style and effectiveness of a karate expert. It splintered around the lock and swung open, revealing a dark, dank room that Terri thought must have once served as a lobby or living room area for the seasonal guests. With twilight falling quickly now, there was not very much illumination.
A body left in this place will probably not be discovered for some time, she thought. Darlene, trembling helplessly now, was also whimpering and gasping for breath. She could simply faint any moment, Terri thought.
"Well, isn't this cozy," Garret said. "Must have been a very nice place once. Move," he told Darlene who stopped and now looked incapable of taking another step. She didn't, so he poked her in the ribs with the barrel of the pistol. It had the effect of a gunshot. She took two steps forward with him still holding the pistol barrel against her, but then her eyes went back and she folded so quickly at his feet, it was as if all of her bones had turned to jelly. Garret was moving forward aggressively at that moment. Caught by surprise, he tripped over her and struggled to maintain his balance. Terri spun and with desperation and a gathering of all her physical strength, pushed him while he was still off-balance, and he fell forward, losing the grip on his pistol. It flew a few feet ahead of him as he went to break his fall with his palms out. Terri considered her options in an instant. She was obviously no match for the man in any physical struggle. Her only hope was to get away, but that meant leaving Darlene behind. The now-unconscious woman was sprawled awkwardly on her right side. Terri turned and shot forward, through the dark corridor, choosing not to go up the stairs, but instead continue toward the back, through what was once the kitchen. The dwindling daylight spilling through the broken windows gave her just enough illumination so as not to bump into things. She heard Garret scrambling behind her, cursing and calling after her, warning her that she was making a big mistake. The rear door of the old house was locked, but it was a rusted tumbler. She pulled it open and jerked at the door, which resisted at first. She didn't know from what source she drew the surge of strength, but it was sufficient for her to get the old, heavy door opened enough so she could squeeze through. She pulled it shut behind her, hoping to cause Garret any delay she could.
Once outside, she stood on the back porch and considered the woods. There was a distance of at least five hundred yards to cross before she entered the forest. It was darker, but she knew she would never make it before he would be out and taking aim. Knowing she had to do something fast, she hurried down the four steps and then turned, now in a desperate panic herself.
Under the porch she saw a basement window that was completely blown out. She knelt and reached the window just as Garret opened the back door of the old building. As quietly as she could, she slipped through the window, falling and crawling her way down the old fieldstone foundation until she hit the cement floor. She swallowed her grunts and cries of pain and moved like some sort of rodent deeper into the darkness. There, she pressed herself against the wall and waited, watching the window and listening.
Garret came down the stairs slowly and stood there. He had to consider that she had run around the building, and his first thought was she was heading back to the car. She had left the keys in the ignition. Alarmed by that thought, he hurried to the corner and looked back toward the vehicle. Seeing she wasn't there, he relaxed, took a deep breath and then slowly made his way to the car to take the keys out of the ignition to prevent her from using the vehicle should she somehow get past him. That done he turned and headed back to the rear porch. He considered the woods but as he looked around, he saw the open window and smiled to himself.
Below, Terri realized she was still quite vulnerable. There was barely any light pouring through the open window, but she was growing accustomed to the thick shadows and was able to see some old piping. Grasping a length of pipe she could handle, she crawled closer to the window and waited.
Garret was now convinced she was down there. He approached the window slowly, a cold, confident smile on his face.
"Doctor," he called through it, "you're not behaving like an intelligent, educated person. Come on out and we'll talk and figure out a way to make everyone happy. I'm not interested in seeing anyone else hurt. You know that," he said. She held her breath and pressed her back against the fieldstone wall. The jagged edges of some of those stones were painful, but she ignored that and remained as still and as poised with the pipe as she could be.
"Okay, Doctor, I'm coming in and when I see you, I'm not going to be very pleasant," he warned, waited another few seconds, and leaned into the window.
"You're a damn fool," he shouted, his rage rising. He couldn't see her, and he was unhappy about having to go in, but that was what he had to do. He turned and lowered his legs slowly into the old basement. When he was almost completely in, he held onto the windowsill to gradually find his footing below. He turned his head to look down and that was when Terri swung the pipe and caught him squarely in the forehead. The blow snapped his head back sharply. He lost his grip on the sill and fell to the basement floor. His cellular phone dropped out of his pocket and bounced once, but he held the gun in his hand.
He groaned and she struck the gun hand, sending the weapon into the darkness where it bounced against the side wall. Garret moaned, fighting for conscious
ness. Terri threw the pipe down, scooped up his cellular phone, and leaped for the window, pulling herself up with all the strength she could muster. Below, Garret groaned again. Pure terror lifted Terri out the window. She fell to the ground under the porch, caught her breath, and scampered around and up the back steps.
Once inside the old tourist house, she ran through the kitchen, down the corridor to the lobby, where Darlene was sitting up, dazed.
"Quick!" Terri screamed at her. She reached down for her arm and helped Darlene to her feet.
"Whaaa..."
"Just run with me. Run!" she shouted and pulled her along, through the front door, down the stairs, and toward the car. She lunged for the door on the driver's side and then stopped dead with disappointment when she saw the keys were not in the ignition.
Behind them, she could hear Garret bellow, his voice echoing in the old house.
"C'mon," she urged Darlene and pulled her toward the now dimly lit woods. Some early starlight and a quarter moon was enough to light up the way. They ran past the first set of birch and maple. Without leaves, the forest wasn't all that protective, but with darkness thickening, Terri was hopeful. She tugged and urged Darlene along until they were deeper and deeper into the woods, finding even more protection provided by a group of pine trees.
"I can't run anymore!" Darlene cried.
"You've got to keep moving. If we stop, he'll catch up. Move," she ordered. Darlene gasped and followed. They went through the area of pine trees and then down an embankment where there was a stream of water bubbling over rocks. She saw a heavy overgrown area across the way and directed Darlene to it. Once there, she paused and indicated they should crouch so she could listen. Their heavy breathing almost made it impossible to hear anything. Then, there was the sound of branches cracking. After a long moment, that sound stopped and then they heard the most primeval, horrendous scream of frustration.
Darlene gasped and whimpered.
"Oh Jesus," she said.
Terri didn't move a muscle.
"Quiet," she told her.
They waited. The sounds grew more distant until finally, they heard the distinct roar of a car engine.
Terri released a hot breath of relief.
"He's going," she told Darlene.
"Who is he?" she asked.
"A modern-day Frankenstein," Terri replied. "Let's get some help," she added and held up the cellular phone she had been grasping tightly during the whole flight. Before she could flip it open to punch out a 911 call, it rang. For a moment it was as if she was holding a hand grenade that had just been triggered. It was truly like a small explosion. She nearly dropped the phone. Then, she flipped it open and brought it to her ear slowly. She didn't say hello. She held it there.
"Garret?" she heard. "Doctor Stanley? Are you there?" That voice.
She couldn't mistake it.
It was Will Dennis.
"I now know how he knew you had spoken to Paula Gilbert," she muttered as she closed the phone.
"I don't understand," Darlene said.
Terri shook her head and looked at the cell phone. She truly felt as if the legs had been cut out from under her and sat back stunned.
She looked at the phone.
It had been a hand grenade after all.
NINETEEN
Anxious and impatient, he decided to wait for the Samuelses in their room. Surprise was always his best friend in situations like this, he thought. There would be no need to manufacture some reason to be there. No reason to tax his brain. He found the master key for all the rooms and just sauntered down as if he was carrying out some mediocre, simple responsibility. When he entered the room, he saw they had left a lamp on next to the bed and a light on in the bathroom.
"Sure, what do you care about my electric expenses," he muttered. He liked playing a role, enjoyed slipping into identities, assuming someone else's life, even that ugly man decomposing in his living room. At least, he had a life of some sort.
When you're desperate for an identity, you take what you find, he told whatever part of him even suggested criticism. Survival takes precedent over everything and anything else. And what great difference did it make anyway? Very soon he would drop this identity and leave it behind like an old suit of clothes. In a sense he resembled a snake, shedding its skin. He didn't mind the analogy really. How clever it was to be able to take off your skin and replace it with a brand-new covering?
Curious about these people now, he passed the time by going through their bags. He held up Mrs. Samuels's undergarments, deciding she was quite conservative and obviously very wide in the hips. Charles Samuels had very uninteresting clothing, too. His suit and two sports jackets were bland, simple, and not very expensive.
He found some personal papers, business cards that told him Charles Samuels was a loan officer in a bank. There was a letter from some cousin in Kingston describing her new home and inviting the Samuelses to visit. The directions to the house were in the letter. He thought about it a moment and wondered if this was a sign. Should he be heading there? Nothing dramatic happened, no ringing in his head, but still, he thought he should give it consideration, so he folded it up and put it into his pants pocket.
It was time to plan. What would he do exactly when the Samuelses arrived? He had thought of something, he realized. Before he had ambled down here, he had made something of a plan. What was it? Damn this memory thing. He had to restore whatever it was in him that was bringing about these lapses. That was for sure.
He looked at the bed and saw the long, serrated bread knife he had brought along.
"Oh yeah," he said aloud. "The best way to say hello." Remembering restored his confidence in himself. He sat comfortably now and waited. They couldn't be much longer. People who didn't know an area wouldn't spend much time out there at night. They would find the restaurant they wanted, eat, and come right back. He checked his watch. It occurred to him that he wasn't sure exactly when they had left. Time was becoming very obscure again, liquefying and freezing into a piece of ice. He couldn't hold on to it at all. Had ten minutes passed or an hour? When did he walk in here? All these little confusions were mounting.
He felt a buzzing inside his head and soon he couldn't sit still. He rose and paced and went to the window to check the parking lot and then paced and began to talk to himself, reciting words, names, events in no special order or logic, babbling as if he was some sort of cauldron of memories, overflowing.
"I'm literally losing my mind!" he cried. "Damn you," he raged, waving his fist at the ceiling.
Who? He thought he heard called back.
Damn who?
He didn't know and it was stupid to behave like this anyway. He paused and then seized a grip on himself and sat again. When he looked at his watch, he thought only a minute or so had gone by. How could that be?
His lips were drying.
His eyes burned.
His very skin felt as if it were writhing on his bones and inside himself his organs were turning and twisting, tugging on his bones.
I am not a well man, he thought, and then he thought, I am not a man. What am I?
On his wrist, time, like a persistent termite, continued to bore a hole in his wooden heart.
Finally, he heard the distinct sound of a car entering the motel lot. Excited, he rose quickly and peered through the curtains. It was the Samuelses all right. About time. He backed up and pressed his back against the wall so when they entered, they would not see him there until they had closed the door behind them.
He heard the key being inserted and braced himself. The door opened, but only part way.
"All right," he heard Charles Samuels say in an irritated voice, "I'll just get everything myself. Stay in the car."
Stay in the car? That wouldn't work, he thought.
The door opened farther. Charles entered, but didn't look in his direction. Instead, Samuels started for the open suitcase.
He pushed the door so it shut and Samuels turned around.
"What?" he asked as if he had said something to him. Samuel's face collapsed in fear. "What is this?"
"You left the lights on," he said. "You went out to eat and you left the lights on."
"Huh?"
"That's inconsiderate," he told him stepping closer. Samuels had yet to see the knife he was holding just behind his back. "And when people are inconsiderate of others, they should be punished," he continued.
Samuels looked at the closed door, considered his options, and started to back away.
He smiled, raised his left hand abruptly, which caught Samuels's attention, and then drove the knife into and just to the left of Samuels's sternum. With the accuracy of a heart surgeon, he sliced the pulmonary artery. Samuels gasped, raised his hands as if to surrender, and then coughed, brought his hands down surprisingly hard onto his shoulders, and held himself there for a moment, gazing into his face, his own eyes full of wonder as though he had a preliminary view of where he was now going before collapsing at his feet.
"Turn off the lights when you leave next time," he muttered down at Samuels. All was quiet. He turned to the door and listened. Mrs. Samuels had not gotten out of the vehicle yet. He waited and suddenly, he heard the car horn. He went to the window and saw her leaning over to press it. She did it again and then, frustrated and angry, she opened the car door and came toward the unit. Once again, he backed away from the door. When she opened it, she was in midsentence.
"What's taking you so damn long, Charles? We've got to get out of here before..."
She stared at her husband's folded body on the floor. It took the breath out of her and all she could do was gasp and bring her hands to the base of her throat. Quietly, calmly, he closed the door behind her and she turned. He smiled.
"Now if you don't put up a struggle, you might live," he said. He knew there was no chance of that, but when someone was in a state of pure desperation, even empty promises bobbed about like lifesavers. He raised the bloodied knife so she would see it.
"Go to the bed and start to take off your clothing," he ordered. And then he said something that put even more terror into her, not that she thought that was possible.
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