The Fear Artist pr-5

by Timothy Hallinan

Up, he thinks, and he slogs through the water to the nearest tree, but the trunk is smooth, the bark almost slick to the touch. He checks the branches anyway. No platform, no tree house, no fort. Squinting against the rain, he surveys the other two trees, but no straight lines, no paler shapes, reveal a structure in either of them.

  He feels time passing. His anxiety level, the terror he deferred while Murphy had his gun on them, has been rising for the past minute or two, and he wills it down, breathing against the tightness in his chest and working his way back along the edge of the house. The wall here is vertical iron bars, and he can see the light from Murphy’s train room shining in the water. Impossible for Treasure to have slipped between the bars.

  Water-covered lawn, three trees, hedge. No Treasure. No place for Treasure. He realizes he’s been expecting a structure of some kind, a place she can shut others out of. Someplace where she can be whatever she really is, when her father’s not nearby.

  But it’s not here.

  So it has to be in the hedge.

  He splashes across the yard to the bushes and bends down; she’s much shorter than he is. About halfway across the yard, almost straight back from the dining-room doors, he spots it: an opening in the bushes, perhaps three feet high. In front of it, he drops to his knees in the water and sees that it’s a tunnel, neatly clipped into the foliage. It’s very dark, but it seems to go in a couple of feet and then curve right.

  Putting one hand on the lawn below the water, he reaches in and waves his other hand around, hoping to avoid coming face-to-belly with one of the extravagant spiders of the tropics. He’s never lost the fear of spiders that made Frank call him a sissy thirty or so years ago, and he performs this check instinctively even though he’s certain she’s just crawled through here and there won’t be any webs. There won’t be any webs, he says to himself, and he crawls in.

  Eighteen or twenty inches in, the tunnel turns sharply to the right. Following it, scraping his back and shoulders on the sheared-off twigs, he puts his hand on something hard, and his fingers turn into a bright orange, barbed-wire jolt of pain. When he yanks his hand up, it brings weight with it. It’s clamped into a mousetrap. He pries the trap off and drops it, then crawls farther in, sweeping the dirt from side to side and finding four more traps, which he pushes out of his way. Suddenly he feels the space expand and rise above him. He stops and looks straight down at the black water, willing his pupils to open wider. He hears the rain pattering on something, but he’s not being rained on.

  He puts a hand up and finds smooth, heavy plastic, feeling the sticks and leaves of the hedge on the other side. He tries not to focus on anything, knowing that the peripheral vision is more sensitive, and out of the darkness a shape emerges, a bit farther in and to his right, rectangular and relatively light-colored. It’s wood, his fingers tell him, finished wood with a smooth surface, and he finds the top and immediately knocks something over, small, light, and slick to the touch, and he knows what it is.

  A plastic disposable lighter.

  He’s certain he’s alone in here, but he doesn’t know how far back the hollow goes. He picks up the lighter and flicks the wheel. And feels the blood leave his face.

  Treasure has used pieces of plywood to create irregular walls, not so much walls as a gallery space. Color pictures from books and magazines cover every inch, overlapping here and there. There must be a hundred of them.

  Ballerinas. Princesses. Girls in frilly, pale dresses. Girls holding hands with other girls, laughing with other girls. Girls at parties, giving one another presents. One wall is devoted entirely to a single large picture, twenty or thirty copies of it: a young girl in a loose white dress, her hair alive with sunlight, walking a dappled path in green, hospitable woods. The picture has been trimmed to the girl’s left side, and the forest on the right has been left uncropped and the pictures placed seamlessly beside each other so she perpetually emerges from the green of the forest to the safety of her path. Again and again and again. A girl, floating through a world of green light. On a path.

  Rafferty wipes his eyes fiercely and wishes Murphy could die twice.

  On top of the table are rounded stones and dried thistles and another mud-smoothed bird’s nest. A loose handful of wild grass splays gracefully from the top of what Rafferty recognizes as a cough-medicine bottle. Another medicine bottle holds a single, half-burned candle.

  He takes a last look around, replaces the lighter on the table, and crawls out again, back into Treasure’s other world.

  33

  Spirit House

  As he stands up, his eyes go to it immediately, the brightest thing in his field of sight. It’s a small window, high up, and it’s lit, and the light flickers and then intensifies, and he realizes two things simultaneously: that it’s the window in Treasure’s bathroom and that it’s on fire.

  He starts to run, splashing toward the doors that lead into the dining room, but he slows at the sight of a small cabinet, about three feet high and four feet wide, built against the rear of the house. It’s rough plywood, and its door lolls open. There, stacked neatly, are six one-gallon gasoline cans.

  There is room for three more.

  His feet nearly slip out from under him on the wet dining-room floor, and he sees that the living room carpet is on fire, flames inching up the sides of the couches. There’s a foot of gray smoke trapped beneath the ceiling, and the smell of splashed gasoline is overpowering.

  Almost thick enough, he thinks, to trigger an explosion. He goes farther in, to the stairs, to see how advanced the fire is.

  The carpeting on the stairway is burning, too, but it’s been burning longer than the living room and the flames are five and six feet high, licking at the banister and being drawn upward by the ravenous inhalation of the fire that’s already raging upstairs.

  He envisions it all in a second: beginning in her own bathroom and bedroom, pouring the gasoline on cloth and wood, tossing a match and running, spewing gasoline behind her, the flames following obediently along on the wet trail, the gasoline splashing from the can until the can is empty-there’s an empty can at the entrance to the hallway that leads to Neeni’s room-and grabbing another can and then another.

  The L-shaped hallway is on fire, its carpet saturated. Neeni’s room is dark and cool-looking beyond the flames. It’s been spared.

  He wipes his stinging eyes and coughs out a lungful of smoke, and then he knows where she is, if she’s still in the house. He wheels around and runs back over the tile of the entry area and the bare wood of the dining room and the tiled kitchen floors and into the train room.

  The train table is engulfed in flame. Murphy is still on his back below the window, below the green drapes that Treasure had hoped would protect her. The carpet near the hallway that leads from Neeni’s room is blooming ripples of blue flame, not yet hot enough to turn yellow. Treasure, her back to him, backs away from the open, wet closet, drops the gasoline can, and pitches into the closet a chunk of bright metal-a heavy military-style Zippo, its little wick emitting a bright yellow light.

  He shouts “NO!” and rushes at Treasure from behind, getting his arms around her waist as she turns and fights him with pure animal rage, tearing at his hair and clawing for his eyes and kicking at his chest and stomach, and he throws her over his shoulder, her head hanging down behind him, and runs for his life.

  As he clears the kitchen, Ming Li runs in through the front door to meet him, and he waves her out and charges ahead, practically banging into Murphy’s car, pulled up to the front porch, not stopping until he’s halfway across the front yard, and he shouts to Ming Li to give him one of the briefcases. She pulls one out of the trunk of the Toyota, and he snatches it with his free hand, the story he will eventually tell taking shape in his mind. He tightens his hold on the kicking, screaming Treasure and runs back to Murphy’s car, pulls the driver’s door open, and tosses the briefcase into the backseat. Then he yanks the remote for the gate from the sun visor above the steering wheel. Mov
ing away from the car, he’s almost pulled off his feet by Treasure, who’s clamped her fingers over the window of the open car door. He pries her loose, pushes the button to open the gate, and calls to Ming Li, “Start the car!”

  Backing away as fast as he can from the flaming house, he hears breaking glass, and Treasure suddenly goes so limp he thinks she might have passed out. He bounces on the balls of his feet once or twice to jostle her and says, “Treasure? Treasure?” but she’s dead weight.

  He backs farther away, curling his other arm around her and taking her off his shoulder so he can look down at her face. Cradled in his arms, her fists clenched together at the center of her chest, she’s looking at the right side of the house, her mouth half open and her eyes as luminous as those of a nocturnal animal.

  And her mouth closes, and she begins to hum again, that same broken, disjointed “Mmmmmm mmmmm mmmmmm,” tracing a melody as random as someone throwing stones at a keyboard. He looks away from her to follow her gaze, and something whines past him, and he hears the shot.

  Bent half over, but holding the arm with the gun in it raised high, Murphy lumbers around the side of the house, firing twice more as he comes, but Rafferty can’t hear the shots over the scream that’s coming from Treasure, who shrills a single, glass-shattering note and somehow jerks herself upright, a convulsion seemingly involving every muscle in her body, and slips through Rafferty’s arms, running for the wall behind him. She stops a few feet from it, staring at the barrier, and her arms go straight into the air, fingers spread wide. Then she wheels around and splashes toward the still-opening gate.

  Murphy fires again, but Rafferty is barely paying attention. At the edge of the driveway, Treasure stops, shoulders heaving, looking out at the world beyond the walls. Rafferty hears a ragged, almost-imploring shout from Murphy, and Treasure stiffens, turns, and emits that piercing unbroken scream again, and as she runs, it trails away behind her like a wake. At the last moment, Rafferty sees where she’s going and starts to follow, but Ming Li is suddenly there, with a foot hooked behind his, bringing him down into the mud. He watches, up on his elbows in the water, as Treasure runs directly toward the front door and through it, into the burning house.

  Murphy stops his agonized shuffle, his mouth wide, the gun hand dangling down, and then he bellows “Treasure!” and breaks into a run. Seconds later he’s a dark silhouette against the flames in the hallway, and then Rafferty, up on his feet, feels a drop in air pressure as though the planet has taken a breath, and the flames increase in brilliance for a blink’s worth of time, and the house shudders and blows, sending pieces of burning wood and broken glass twenty and thirty feet into the air, deafening Rafferty and stunning him motionless as bits of fire arc lazily down through the limbs of the trees, and he sees the entire structure reflected upside down, the spirit house of the water gods afire on the surface of a lake.

  34

  No Wonder You’ve Been Sleeping in Hotels

  For the first few miles, Neeni’s sobs supply the soundtrack. Every now and then, she says, “Baby baby baby baby.” She never says, Treasure.

  Then the crying softens and gradually dies away, and Rafferty looks in his rearview mirror to see her lying on the backseat, her knees drawn up and her head in the maid’s-Hwa’s-lap. Hwa’s eyes are on his in the mirror.

  Ming Li is sitting as close as she can get to the passenger door, hugging her knees. Her eyes are partly closed, and she seems to be memorizing the dashboard.

  The rain has let up again, but water is inches deep in the streets, masking the potholes, and he has to go slowly to avoid mishap. He doesn’t think he could endure a mechanical breakdown right now; he has an image of himself disappearing screaming into the night, leaving all of them behind.

  A tiny snore comes from the backseat. He looks in the mirror again and meets Hwa’s eyes.

  “You like her,” he says. “At least you said you did.”

  “She’s never hurt anybody.”

  “She’s in for a rough time. Do you want to help her?”

  No answer. Hwa turns and looks out the window. She says, “Help how?”

  “Say yes and I’ll give you two thousand U.S. tonight, when we get where we’re going. Just for agreeing to try.”

  “Help how?” Hwa says again.

  “She needs to get over this, and she needs to get well. Tomorrow I’ll give you six thousand dollars, and you go out and find a nice two-bedroom apartment in the Silom area and rent it. Furnished, so you don’t have to waste a day shopping for furniture.”

  “I like shopping for furniture.”

  “Then you can look for it after you move in, replace things if you want, but you need to find something you can move into right away, because I don’t have room for you, and I think she needs to be someplace that will eventually feel like home. I’ll pay the rent and expenses and give you two thousand U.S. every month. And I’ll get you a doctor, a good doctor who’s a friend of mine, to help with her. She needs to get off the codeine. I’ll keep this up as long as he says she’s making progress and as long as I think she’s being taken care of. And the day the doctor tells me Neeni is over it, that she can live without it, I’ll give you fifty thousand dollars.”

  Hwa strokes Neeni’s hair. Without looking up, she says, “You must be rich.”

  “I’ve come into some money,” Rafferty says.

  “Fifty thousand is a lot,” Hwa says. “Why don’t we see what happens first?”

  “You’ll do it?”

  “Why not?” Hwa says. “Poor thing. He took everything away from her. He took her out of her village, he took her away from her family, he took her daughter. Yes, I’ll help her.”

  Rafferty says, “Thank you.”

  For a few slow, waterlogged miles, he drives to the sound of Neeni’s snoring. He says, “She’s going to want a drink when she wakes up.”

  “She’s going to want a drink every moment of the day for months,” Hwa says.

  Rafferty makes the turn onto Silom, feeling the nearness of the apartment ease the tightness in his chest. To Ming Li he says, “What is it? What are you thinking about?”

  “Vladimir,” she says.

  Some of the strain immediately comes back. “Yeah. Me, too.”

  “At first I thought he was just waiting for a chance to sell you out, but then he … he changed somehow, and I thought, well, maybe I was wrong.”

  “He likes you,” Rafferty says. “He’s got an eye for talent. And it doesn’t hurt that you’re beautiful.”

  “Whatever it was. I thought he was with us. But somebody told Murphy we were at his house, and I don’t know who else-”

  “Oh,” Hwa says. “That was me. I did it.”

  Ming Li turns to her. “How?”

  “I was worried about Neeni,” she says. “I didn’t know what you really wanted.”

  “The phone button,” Rafferty says.

  “And I lied about it.” Hwa looks again at Rafferty in the rearview mirror. “I’m sorry.”

  “No problem,” he says. “Keep taking care of her that well and everything will be fine.”

  Ming Li pushes past him and stops, surveying the room. “God. No wonder you’ve been sleeping in hotels.”

  “Oh, no,” Rafferty says, exhausted at the sight of the place. “I’d forgotten how bad it was. At least it doesn’t still stink of paint.” Feeling like he weighs a thousand pounds, he steps aside and lets Hwa in, leading a blinking, confused-looking Neeni by the hand. “Take her to the couch,” he says. His voice sounds ragged, and his throat is raw. “It’s the one thing you can get to. Beer?” he says to Ming Li without thinking, and then says, “Of course not.”

  “Of course yes,” she says. “I’ve got it coming, after tonight.”

  “As long as we’re breaking rules,” Rafferty says to Hwa, “do you think a drink would help her? We’ve got some Crown Royal someone gave us a few years ago, but I don’t think it spoils. And would you like something?”

  “Bring h
er the whiskey, a good big glass of it. When she’s lying down-Is there a bed somewhere?”

  “There will be in a minute.”

  Neeni’s eyes have come up at the mention of the word “whiskey,” and she’s looking from Rafferty to Hwa and back again.

  “When she’s lying down,” Hwa says, “I’ll make some tea.”

  “Fine.” He looks around the familiar space, and all he wants to do is curl up and sleep. You want to help me, Ming Li?”

  In the kitchen he pulls out his last two big bottles of Singha as Ming Li takes a drinking glass from the cupboard. She stands there, looking at the other cupboards, which are closed. “Whiskey?”

  “To the left. Behind some cans of stuff, in a blue sort-of-velvet bag.” He opens the drawer, takes out the bottle opener, flips it into the air, closes his eyes, and puts out his hand. The moment his eyes close, the floor dips beneath him, and as he opens them, the bottle opener lands with a flat, reassuring smack, dead center in his palm. To Ming Li, who is staring at him with one eyebrow raised, he says, “My luck is back.”

  Twenty minutes later Neeni and Hwa are set up in Poke and Rose’s room, and he and Ming Li, whose face is turning stop-sign red from the beer, have put new sheets on Miaow’s bed and moved things around to create a path to the door. “Bathroom’s on the left,” he says as she follows him into the living room. He hears Hwa clanking the teapot in the kitchen and takes a quick peek into his bedroom, where Neeni is sitting on the far side of the bed, her back to the door, drinking.

  “I’m not going to sleep in Miaow’s room,” Ming Li says. “You are.”

  “Wrong. I’m sleeping here.”

  She gives the couch a disapproving look and drains the rest of her beer. “It looks too short.”

  “I’ve slept on it before.”

  Ming Li yawns enormously. “It’s not too short for me.”

  Hwa comes out of the kitchen with the mug Rose always uses, steaming away like a witch’s kettle. She says, “Do you have some socks I could wear?”