Serpent's Kiss

by Ed Gorman

  Well, given what he'd done in the past twenty-four hours, now he was the ultimate outsider-

  He tried to keep images of the teenage boy from his mind.

  My God, he'd-

  His breath still came in spasms.

  Leaning back against the rough concrete wall, he felt his chest and belly heave as breath ripped upward through his lungs.

  And then he felt the thing inside him shift.

  Not a major shift, just a small one as if adjusting position.

  He put his hand to his stomach.

  And felt it.

  Moving now; twisting.

  He put his head back against the concrete wall again and closed his eyes. A shadow cut his face perfectly in two. He'd gone unshaven and his beard was a stubbly black. His dark hair was wildly messed up. And now a single silver tear slid down the curve of his cheek. It rolled to his dry lips and settled there feeling hot and tasting salty. He did not open his eyes or move his head for long minutes.

  Our Father who art in heaven-

  And then he heard the voices.

  Man and woman.

  Young, probably about his age.

  Coming toward him.

  His eyes came open. He looked momentarily as if he were coming out of a very deep trance. The dark eyes flicked left, right-

  Coming toward him.

  "Come on, admit it. You thought she was cute."

  "Well-"

  "It's all right, David. I won't get jealous. She's a movie star, not somebody you can call up for a date."

  The man chuckled. "Right, you won't get jealous. Remember the night I told you I thought Demi Moore was so good looking?"

  Now the woman laughed. "You just happened to catch me on an off night."

  "Sure," the man said. "An off night."

  They walked a few steps in silence then, and there was no doubt where they were heading. The Lincoln with Dobyns hiding on the other side.

  If he waited till they came around to his side, they would be at an advantage, standing over him-

  He had to move now-

  He sprang up off the concrete floor to his feet, running around the rear end of the Lincoln right toward them. The door leading downstairs was perhaps thirty yards behind them.

  This was the only thing he could do.

  When they saw him appear, like some berserk jack-in-the-box abruptly popping up, they both screamed.

  The man was brave. He pulled the woman to him protectively.

  Dobyns ran right past them, his footsteps echoing flap-flap-flap in the empty parking garage, all the way to the door, then faster flap-flap-flap as he took the stairs down to the ground floor two at a time.

  ***

  Three blocks away, in an area that was mostly shadowy warehouses long left deserted, he found a phone booth glowing in the blackness.

  He fed change into the phone and then dialled a certain number with trembling fingers.

  "Hello."

  Right away, she said, "Please, Richard. Please just turn yourself over."

  "I take it the phone is tapped."

  "Richard, please, the police have assured me that-"

  He laughed. "I'll bet they've assured you of a lot of things, haven't they?"

  "Richard, I-"

  "I'm sorry, honey. I can't turn myself over. I can't. There's no other way to explain it."

  "But-"

  "I need you to do me a favour."

  "Richard, there's a detective standing-"

  "I know there's a detective there. I just need to talk to Cindy a minute. Just put her on the phone. Please do that for me."

  There was a long pause on the other end. Then a little girl's voice, more sombre than he'd ever heard it, said, "Hi, Daddy."

  "Hi, pumpkin."

  "There are policemen here."

  "I know, honey."

  "They want you to talk to them. They promised Mommy that they won't hurt you."

  "I know, sweetie. But it's you I want to talk to. I-" But how could he explain to anybody-even to himself-the terrible darkness that overcame him when the thing inside wanted him to kill? "Do you know how much I love you?"

  "Yes, Daddy. And I love you."

  "That's what you've got to remember, pumpkin. How much we love each other. Okay, sweetheart?"

  "All right, Daddy."

  "Now I've got to go. I'm sorry but I do."

  Cindy started crying. "I love you, Daddy. I love you, Daddy." He could hear the terror in her voice and hated himself for putting it there.

  His wife took the phone. "Richard-"

  "Take care of Cindy, honey. You'll both make it through this somehow, darling, I know you will."

  And then he hung up and faced black night again.

  It was time to return to the tower.

  ***

  Once they got rolling in the car again, Emily Lindstrom spoke. She'd been quiet for nearly twenty minutes.

  "It's always different from on TV, isn't it?"

  "What is?"

  "Oh, just the reality of it," Emily Lindstrom said. "Even when you see the body bags, you don't smell the blood and the faeces and you don't see the eyes of the youngsters standing around and gawking."

  "No, you don't."

  Emily sighed, put her head back. "Tonight brought everything back. The way it was with Rob, I mean."

  "I'm sorry."

  "You shouldn't be sorry. You're the best friend I've had since this whole thing started years ago." She looked over at Chris and smiled. "Even if you don't believe it."

  Chris braked for a red light. Full night was here now. You could tell how raw the wind was by the way the young spring trees bent and swayed, and the way storm windows rattled on the aged houses of this neighbourhood. "Who said I didn't believe you?"

  "Then you do?"

  "Well," Chris said.

  Emily smiled again. "I don't blame you. A cult buries the bones of murdered children somewhere and a hundred years later a serpent-"

  "By the way, what's the difference between 'snake' and 'serpent'?"

  "Technically, none," Emily said, "but you're changing the subject."

  "I am, aren't I?" Chris said, and pulled away from the stoplight.

  They drove another five minutes in silence. The homes got bigger, cleaner. The electric lights in the gloom looked inviting. Chris wanted to be inside one of those places, feet tucked under her on the couch, a good movie on HBO and a bowl of popcorn on her lap.

  "There's even an incantation."

  "Oh?" Chris said.

  "Yes. If you say the words at the right time, you can force the serpent to leave the person's body"

  Chris shuddered. "I don't think I'd want to be around to see that. Would you?"

  Emily stared out the window at the blowing darkness. "Have a chance to destroy the thing that destroyed my brother's life? Oh, I'd want to be around, Chris, believe me."

  They now reached a long strip of fast-food places. The night sky was aglow with neon red and yellow and green and purple. Teenagers in shiny cars drove up and down the strip, followed occasionally by a police squad car.

  "I was right, wasn't I?"

  "About me believing you?"

  "Yes," Emily said.

  "May I reserve judgement?"

  "Sure. You may do anything you please."

  "I like you."

  "And I like you."

  "And I want to believe you."

  "And I want you to believe me, too."

  "But I need time to see how things go. Can you blame me?"

  "No," Emily said, and looked out the dark window again. "No, I can't blame you."

  "We'll be there in a little bit," Chris said, changing the subject again.

  "At Marie's?"

  "Yes. I just hope her mother will let us see her."

  Emily said, "So do I. And I hope Marie saw that Dobyns was under some kind of trance when he killed that boy." She bit her lip. "The police wouldn't even listen to me when I tried to tell them about Rob."

  Ch
ris could see how the stress was getting to Emily now. Emily looked older suddenly in the dashboard light, and no longer so poised or self confident.

  "Do you think we could stop at Denny's for a cup of coffee?" Emily said.

  "Sure."

  "I guess I need some coffee right now."

  There was a Denny's two blocks ahead.

  ***

  Her first impression was, This is not my daughter. This is someone else's daughter. There has been a mistake. A terrible mistake.

  Kathleen Fane watched as two uniformed policemen led the Marie impostor up the carpeted steps to the second-floor landing of the apartment house. They moved the girl very carefully, very slowly, as if she were a piece of extraordinarily precious sculpture that might break at any moment.

  Even from several feet away, Kathleen could see the blood that was splattered all over her daughter. She had seen people involved in car accidents who hadn't looked so bloody. The scene at the bookstore must have been horrible beyond description.

  Marie's eyes were the worst part. 'Shock' was the clinical word. But it came nowhere near describing the deadness of the once beautiful blue gaze. Mother and daughter alike had regarded Marie's eyes as her most attractive feature but now they were terrifying.

  As Kathleen walked out in the hall toward her daughter and the policemen, she hoped to see at least some faint flicker of recognition in Marie's eyes. But nothing; nothing. The girl didn't even look up when Kathleen reached out and took her arm.

  Kathleen tried not to cry-she knew this was a difficult time for the police officers as well as for Marie and herself-but she could not hold back completely, silver tears formed in the corners of her eyes.

  "Good evening, ma'am," the stouter of the two officers said.

  "Thank you so much. Thank you so much," Kathleen said, taking Marie from them. The girl's limp was still decidedly pronounced. In fact, her mother wondered if it wasn't worse now. Then, "When I asked about the boy they said they weren't positive that he was- Is he-?" She tried twice to say the word 'dead.' Neither time would her tongue and lips quite form the word.

  The taller of the two officers-the slender one-nodded. It was easy to see the grief in his eyes. Obviously police officers were no more exempt from urban horrors than anyone else. The officer told Kathleen about taking Marie to the hospital, about the doctor's examination of the cut on her neck, and of her state in general.

  Kathleen took in a breath sharply, thinking of the poor boy's mother. It made so little sense. You send your kids off for what's supposed to be a night of light work and lots of fun and a few hours later, one of them is dead and the other has totally withdrawn from reality.

  "Shouldn't she be at the hospital?" Kathleen said, just before taking Marie inside.

  "The doctor said she'll be all right tonight but that you should call your family doctor in the morning. He gave her some medication." The officer handed Kathleen a small brown plastic bottle.

  "Thank you, officers," Kathleen said.

  She took her daughter inside. There were three locks-a dead bolt and two chain locks-but ordinarily she only used one of them. She used to laugh about how paranoid the previous occupant of this apartment must have been. But tonight, without any hesitation, she used all three locks. And she knew that she would for the rest of her life.

  The couch made into a comfortable double bed. Kathleen plumped it up even further with two layers of blankets and a nice clean peppermint-striped sheet with matching pillowcases. She then put two heavy comforters on the bed. Then she helped her daughter lie down.

  Earlier, Kathleen had given Marie a long, hot shower. She'd even washed Marie's hair and blow-dried it. As a final touch, trying for anything that would get the girl to speak, she sprayed on some of the expensive perfume Marie had given her for Christmas. In her best sheer white nightgown, in her best dark blue robe and matching corduroy slippers, Marie looked very pretty.

  Once her daughter was on the couch with the covers pulled up over her, Kathleen went to the kitchen and fixed them a snack, leftover slices of white turkey meat with light daubs of yellow mustard on rye bread, a big dill pickle each, a scattering of chips and two glasses of skim milk turned into the pauper's malted milk with the help of Kraft Chocolate Malt.

  She set the two plates on the coffee table in front of the couch and then sat down. "Now you eat what you want, hon. Or nothing at all. It's up to you."

  Everything was fine now except for Marie's eyes. They hadn't changed. They still stared off at some horrible private vision.

  Kathleen picked up her sandwich. Maybe if she ate, Marie would do likewise. She took a bite from the sandwich, swallowed it, and raised a chip to her mouth. She smiled at her daughter. "I know I'm supposed to be on a diet, hon. No need to remind me."

  Marie said nothing. Still stared down at the bed in which she sat.

  After two more bites, Kathleen said, "Know what I think I'm going to do? Call Dr. Mason. Tell him everything that's going on and see what he's got to say." She smiled and leaned over and kissed her lovely daughter on the cheek. Marie sat there statue still. If she was aware of her mother's presence, she gave no hint at all.

  Kathleen got up and went over to the alcove between living room and dining room. There, in the corner, was a leather chair and light for reading, and next to it on a small table filled with books was a phone.

  She found Dr. Mason's number with her other emergency numbers in the back of the telephone book. She didn't get Dr. Mason, of course, she got a somewhat crabby sounding young woman who seemed displeased that anybody would call Dr. Mason at this time of night. Reluctantly, the young woman took the message and said that she'd have Dr. Mason call back. Kathleen wanted to say something catty-she always curbed her tongue when people insulted her; simply accepted their unkindnesses-but she decided this would be the worst time of all to be self-assertive. What if Marie heard her? An atmosphere of tension and argument would be all the girl would need at a time like this.

  Kathleen went back and finished her sandwich. Marie said nothing. Stared.

  Once, Marie made a noise. Kathleen almost leapt out of her chair. Was Marie about to talk? No. Marie settled down again, this time even closing her eyes, as if she were drifting off to sleep.

  When the phone rang, Kathleen jumped from her chair and strode across the room with only a few steps.

  She caught the receiver on the third ring. "Hello."

  No sound. A presence-you could tell somebody was on the other end of the line-breathing. Listening. But not talking.

  "Hello," Kathleen said.

  The breathing again. The listening.

  "Who is this please?"

  She almost laughed at her politeness. Here it was the worst night of her life-her daughter could easily have become the victim of a senseless slaughter-and she was saying please and thank you.

  "If you don't say something, I'm going to hang up."

  "Not. Done."

  A male voice said these two words.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Not. Done."

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "Marie."

  "Yes? What about Marie?" She could hear the panic in her voice.

  "Not. Done."

  Then the male caller hung up.

  It was clear enough what he'd been getting at.

  His work with Marie was not done yet. The work that had started back in the bookstore.

  Now Kathleen hung up.

  She immediately dialled 911 for the police.

  ***

  After he hung up, Dobyns leaned forward in the phone booth and pressed his forehead against the glass.

  He could see his reflection.

  He stared at it the way he would the face of a stranger who, for some reason, looked familiar.

  He would not hurt the girl anymore. He would go back to Hastings House and sneak into the tower and rid himself of the being that rode inside his stomach. He would let nobody stop him; nobody.

&
nbsp; He stumbled from the phone booth, alternately cold and hot, alternately euphoric and depressed. He was sorry he had called the Fane woman. The thing inside him had taken control again-

  He still remembered Marie Fane's eyes in the bookstore.

  She could have been his own daughter a few years later-

  He staggered through the shadows.

  Back to Hastings House and the tower.

  Somehow he would rid himself of-

  But just then nausea worked its way up from his stomach into his throat and he knew the thing was moving again, demonstrating its dominance.

  He kept stumbling forward-

  ***

  O'Sullivan had started out as a newspaperman back in the glorious days of Watergate. That era had been one of the few in American history when journalists were esteemed and exalted by their fellow citizens, even if they had worn flowered ties and wide lapels and sideburns that reached to their jawlines.

  O'Sullivan had been glad to take advantage of all this glory, even if he was little more than a glorified copy boy. Night after night he'd stood drinking white wine in the fashionable singles bars of those days declaiming on the subject of the journalist's responsibility to the democracy Anybody who had even an inkling of what he was talking about thought he sounded pretty silly and full of himself, but-to miniskirted insurance company secretaries (bored with guys who hit on them with little more than a few gags lifted from The Mary Tyler Moore Show), O'Sullivan sounded pretty good, especially after the young women had had more than their share of drinks.

  A few years later, going nowhere as a reporter on the paper, O'Sullivan had some drinks with Channel 3's then news director and decided what the hell, to try it as a TV guy. Understand now, O'Sullivan had been thirty pounds lighter in those days, and most of his Irish dark hair was intact, and he still had a warm feeling for most people that came across as a kind of ingenuous charm. In other words, he worked pretty well on the tube. He was appealing if not downright handsome, he had a nice 'gonadic' voice (as one of the more eloquent news consultants once described it), and he found that he sort of liked the limitations of the form-cramming everything you could into a minute or a minute-and-a-half report. On the paper you might have two or three thousand words to tell your story; on the tube you had a max of three hundred.