The Headsman

by James Neal Harvey

  She was barely able to make out the gloomy old place in the darkness and the driving snow. From the road it was only a vaguely outlined shape off among the trees. She parked the Subaru in front of it, got out and took with her the tire iron she intended to use to force the door. She also dug a small flashlight out of the pocket of her trenchcoat, picking her way with the narrow yellow beam.

  The distance from the road to the museum was perhaps thirty yards. The drifts were deeper than her boot tops, and slogging through them was difficult. Cold moisture trickled down her ankles and soaked her feet. She kept her head down and tried to lean into the wind, but snowflakes were stinging her eyelids and her cheeks. When she reached the front step she felt as if she’d walked a mile.

  Despite the gloves she wore, her fingers were already cold and stiff. She pointed the flashlight beam at the front entrance, noting that the door looked very solid, with its heavy hinges and knob and knocker all made of brass. How was she ever going to force it? She’d never done anything like this, and wasn’t even sure where to start. She grabbed the doorknob and twisted it, and the door swung open.

  She was so surprised that for a moment she simply stood gawking. Obviously no one was here; the building was in pitch darkness. So maybe her assumption had been wrong and the place wasn’t kept locked. That didn’t make sense, but she was too cold and too anxious to find shelter to give it further thought. She stepped into the hall and shut the door behind her. The air in here was icy, but at least she was in out of the storm.

  The old house wasn’t entirely quiet. Standing in the gloom, she was aware of the sound of the wind moaning around the windows and the roof, and of the structure’s ancient joints creaking. It seemed almost to have a life of its own.

  She’d been here a few times before, finding the building merely odd and quaint, but that had been in the daytime, and there had been other people around. Although the interior had been dim and shadowy then, it hadn’t seemed threatening. At night, with the place dark and a storm raging outside, it took on an entirely different character. Especially now that she was alone.

  Despite the cold there was a musty smell in here, the odor of dank decay, of ancient dust. It was as if every aspect of the old building were repelling her, telling her she was not welcome.

  Cut it out, she told herself. Don’t let the haunted-house crap get to you. If you can find what you’re looking for, you’ll have a terrific new slant on the story. And with nobody here to disturb you, you’ve got the place to yourself to snoop around in. So get going.

  According to what she’d found in the book she’d seen in Maxwell’s office, the dungeon was underneath the hallway. She’d have to find a stairway somewhere to get down there. Following the small beam of her flashlight, she stepped along the hallway. The kitchen, she knew, was at the south end, which was to her left. It seemed logical that she’d find stairs there; old houses used cellars for food storage.

  The interior was a labyrinth of narrow, twisting passages. She made a couple of mistakes as she followed them, each time doubling back until she thought she’d regained her bearings. The cold had gone all the way into her bones; her fingers had lost feeling and her toes ached. Her breath hung in front of her in tiny faint clouds.

  But she found the kitchen.

  It was a large room, low-ceilinged and with a great fireplace that looked like a huge, open mouth. There were a number of doors in here and she tried one after another, finding herself peering into closets and two pantries and a wood storage room. And then she opened another door and saw a flight of steep, winding stairs leading downward.

  She took a deep breath. She was pleased at having found the steps, but at the same time a sense of foreboding gripped her. Again she told herself to get it together, not to let fright get the better of her.

  She was about to take a tentative step onto the first tread when she heard a sound. It was different from the noise made by the howling wind, different from the rattling of the shutters and the creak of old boards and timbers.

  It was the sound of a man breathing.

  Fright became terror. She spun around, but as she did the flashlight was struck from her hand and went tumbling down the yawning stairway. In the blackness she could see nothing, but she was aware of a presence. Someone—or something—was very near her.

  She opened her mouth to scream, but before she could make a sound a hand gripped her face, the fingers snapping onto her jaw like a steel trap. The hand lifted her off her feet, and then there was an explosion in the top of her head and she felt nothing.

  4

  Billy Swanson closed the door of his bedroom and turned on the radio, rolling the dial until he hit WBDK–FM, the local station. As he tuned in, a news announcer was winding up a report on the discovery of Buddy Harper’s head, breathlessly recounting how the thing had been sent in a package to the chief of police, and how the authorities were baffled by this latest development in the case. The citizens of Braddock, the guy said, were shocked by the horrifying turn of events. This was the second ax murder in recent times, and tales of the dreaded headsman were on everyone’s lips.

  Billy himself had been stunned by the news when he’d heard it earlier in the day, feeling an icy chill when he learned that Buddy was dead. Especially because of how he’d died. After all his jeering about the headsman, Billy was no longer quite so smug a non-believer. Like Marcy’s, Buddy’s head had been chopped off. And that was a bitch.

  But tonight Billy had other things to think about. He had a load of homework: a problem in physics, two chapters of American History to read, a paper to write for English. And in a way that was good; it would prevent him from dwelling on the news about Buddy. He got out his books and laid them on his desk, and then turned up the volume on his radio. In the evening WBDK broadcast Top Forty records one after the other, with a few older hits thrown in. At the moment they were playing a new one by the Miami Sound Machine. Outside his window the snow was falling heavily.

  It took him a half hour to work out the physics problem, a dumb-ass thing involving energy loss through friction in a machine that made bowling balls, for Christ’s sake. What a waste of time so much of this shit was. After that he skipped through the history assignment, two chapters describing Theodore Roosevelt’s role in the Spanish-American War. According to what he could glean, the Spaniards had been willing to concede to the United States’ demands to give up territory in the Philippines, but the U.S. declared war anyway, largely at the urging of the Hearst press. And also because Roosevelt wanted to be a hero. So what else was new? Sounded like the same kind of crap that went on today.

  That left the paper in English, which brought to mind Mr. Hathaway. Now there was one weird dude. When the news hit school that Buddy’s head had turned up, everybody had flipped out. Girls had wept, guys went around looking as if they’d just lost their best friend. A lot of people had gone to the counselor, hoping to get some help for the emotional pain. And yet Hathaway hadn’t so much as mentioned it, even though both Buddy and Marcy had been in his class. He’d just gone on being his usual sour self, talking down to everybody except a couple of the girls.

  Which was another thing about the English teacher that was strange. He was stuck in that damn wheelchair, paralyzed from the waist down. And yet you’d have to be blind not to notice the way he always had little games going with any of the girls who came on to him. They’d bat their eyes and cross their legs and wiggle around, and Hathaway would eat it up. Every time he looked at Betty Melcher lately, she practically did a dance for him. Could something actually be going on there? Billy had heard rumors for a long time that the teacher sometimes fooled around with the females in his class, but he didn’t know if it was true.

  The question was, what could he do with them, if it came down to it? Paralyzed meant paralyzed, didn’t it? If Hathaway’s legs didn’t work, nothing else did either, including his dick. Wasn’t that the way it was? So even if a chick was willing to play, what could he do? Maybe he was a
muffdiver.

  But whatever he did or didn’t do was Hathaway’s problem, not Billy’s. He had his own appetites to think about. And think about them he did. He could imagine being with Alice Boggs right this minute, holding her body tight against his own, feeling her pushing it up to him, while her mouth opened in one of her patented sloppy kisses and he practically licked her tonsils.

  Goddamn, but that was something to dream about. Seeing the mental picture and imagining how it would feel gave him a throbbing erection. Wouldn’t it be great to be with her right now, instead of doing this lousy fucking homework?

  Nevertheless, he tried to settle down and write the paper. It was to be on Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage.

  But how was he going to write a paper on it if he hadn’t read the book?

  He opened his notebook, hoping he’d jotted down something he could pull from. Nothing. The page contained only a scribbled note on the assignment and some doodles in the shape of a girl’s tit.

  Which made him think of Alice again. He fiddled with his ballpoint while the radio blasted more rock—Springsteen this time—out of the stereo speakers. Finally he put the pen down and picked up the telephone. He had his own line, which his father had ordered installed after his parents had all but gone nuts with the frustration of having the phone tied up for hours at a time. He touched the buttons and waited to hear her voice.

  Alice had her own phone as well, for the same reason Billy did. She answered in the low tone she was affecting lately, probably because she thought it made her sound sexy. She was right; it did.

  He said, “It’s snowing out. You know what they call a quickie in the snow?”

  “No, what?”

  “A coolie.”

  “Very funny.”

  “You’d have to be there.”

  “I wish I was.”

  “Me too. So why don’t we get together?”

  “Fat chance. The weather report on TV says it’s a blizzard.”

  “It’s all in your mind. Just a snow shower.”

  “You’re so brave, why don’t you come over?”

  His dander always came up when she dared him to do anything. It was as if he was being tested. “Maybe I will.”

  “You serious?”

  “Sure, why not? A few snowflakes wouldn’t stop me. Where are your folks?”

  “Oh, they’re here, down in the living room. I’m doing my homework. But hey, you’re kidding, right?”

  “Who is?”

  “Come on, Billy—you’d never make it.”

  “You don’t think so? I got the Bronco, don’t forget. Wouldn’t be any problem at all.”

  “You sound like one of my father’s salesmen.”

  “Well, it’s true.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Yeah? I’ll be there inside of twenty minutes.”

  “You really are serious, aren’t you?”

  “Sure. Can you get out?”

  Excitement crept into her voice. “No, but I’ve got a better idea. I’ll leave the side door unlocked, okay? You come up the back stairs to my room, and they’ll never know you’re here.”

  He laughed. “Sounds great.”

  “Doesn’t it? You think you could make it?”

  “Just watch me. And don’t forget to unlock the damn door.” He hung up and laughed again. This could be a hell of a lot of fun. For more reasons than one.

  He left his desk and looked out the window. Tonight he’d need something more weather-resistant than his varsity sweater. He put it on anyway, but pulled a nylon parka over it.

  There was a strict rule laid down by his father that there was no going out on a school night. Which had never hindered Billy in the least. Unlike Alice’s house, the Swansons’ had no back stairs. So for years he’d been sneaking out via the same route: through the window of his bedroom onto the back roof, down the drainpipe onto the terrace. Nothing to it. With the radio blaring in his bedroom his parents never suspected he wasn’t there. When he came home later on they were in bed, sound asleep. He just breezed in through the garage door into the kitchen, got something to eat, then marched up to his room with no concern. It had never failed him.

  He slipped through the window and within moments reached the driveway. Once outside, he found the snow even deeper than he’d thought. The Bronco was sitting in the turnaround, where he’d left it when he came home for dinner, and it was already covered with a thick coat of white. He opened the door and got out the scraper, clearing off the windows and the hood. The noise of starting the engine was no problem; the snow muffled it. He rolled down the driveway and turned onto the road before switching on his headlights.

  The trip took longer than he’d expected. With the Bronco in four-wheel drive he could get through the snow okay, even though there were drifts now in many places. But it was slow going. He saw several abandoned vehicles on the way and passed only two moving cars, both of them with chains clanking.

  Alice was right—this was a fullblown blizzard. From the time he was a little kid he’d always been thrilled when one hit. He loved the way it turned the world into a silent, frozen place. Everything would be shut down as houses, barns, buildings and cars were all buried under the ghostly cover.

  If the storm was heavy enough there would also be a power failure, which meant you had to use candles and kerosene lamps for light and fireplaces for heat. Cooking would be done on propane stoves. There was no TV, but you could still get music from battery-powered radios, which picked up stations in distant places if WBDK went off. It was exciting—kind of like camping out. Only better, because you could sleep in the comfort of your own bed. His mother would put on extra blankets and he’d wear socks and a wool stocking cap and be as snug as he could ever hope to be.

  And best of all, a big storm meant no school. When he was little he could hardly wait to get outside after the snowfall so he could drag his sled over to Beacon Hill and spend the day sliding down the slopes. He’d had a Flexible Flyer, of course, with the eagle painted on the center slat, the fastest sled ever made. And the most prestigious, the one every kid wanted.

  But that was then. Nowadays no school meant he could sleep in. It also meant he’d wasted an hour doing that dopey homework. But what the hell, if there was no school tomorrow, which was a sure bet, he’d have to turn it in the next day anyway. So it wasn’t a total loss.

  The lights were on everywhere in the Boggs house. He decided to leave the Bronco on the road. No sense taking chances by trying to sneak it into the driveway; Alice’s parents might spot it there. He turned off his headlights and came to a stop, then shut off his engine and climbed out of the vehicle.

  5

  The headsman stood in the lee of the Boggs garage. Protected by the overhang from the driving snow, he watched the girl through the window of her second floor room.

  Even the storm was helpful to him, cutting off the house from the rest of the world. His shoulders and legs were wet; the ancient black cloth of his garments had soaked through to his skin. But he paid no attention to the dampness and the cold, concentrating only on the figure of the girl as she moved about the room.

  She was a pretty thing, with long sandy hair and a ripe body. As he watched, she lifted the telephone and smiled seductively as she spoke into it. She appeared to giggle, and then threw her head back, and from her expression it was easy to guess that she was talking to a young man. She spoke into the phone for some minutes, and when she hung up she clapped her hands once, as if she’d heard good news. Then she abruptly left the room.

  He watched and waited.

  A moment later she surprised him by opening the side door of the house and peering out into the night. She hadn’t turned on the light, and for a moment he wasn’t sure who had opened the door. But then he saw her clearly enough, even though visibility was further reduced by the swirling snowflakes. She closed the door and was again lost from his sight, and seconds after that she reappeared in her room.

  Ah—he had it then.
She was expecting someone to come through that door at the corner of the house. Undoubtedly the same someone she’d spoken to on the telephone.

  And now she was preparing herself—getting ready for her visitor, he was sure of it. She pulled off her sweater and tossed it aside, then removed her bra. Her naked breasts were firm and full and tipped with wide pink nipples. He could see her gazing into a wall mirror, turning one way and then another, looking critically at her image. She picked up a vial of what he surmised was perfume and dabbed a little between her breasts.

  The girl moved away, and seconds later returned to his view, again looking into the mirror as she drew on a clingy, ivory-colored blouse. She brushed her hair, and then applied lipstick to her mouth. When she finished she went on studying her reflection until, satisfied at last, she moved away from the window.

  The headsman gripped the hickory haft in both his gloved hands and swung the mighty double-bladed ax up onto his shoulder. His gaze left the lighted window of the girl’s room and swept down to the side porch. He waited.

  Some time later, perhaps a half hour, he heard the sound of an engine. He poked his head around the corner just far enough to see headlights approaching from down the road, their beams shining weakly into the falling snow.

  As he watched, the headlights went out and the vehicle came to a stop a short distance from the Boggs house. The figure that climbed out of the driver’s seat was Billy Swanson.

  The boy paused for a few seconds, evidently looking things over, and then made his way up the driveway, lumbering through the deep snow. He climbed the steps onto the side porch and slipped through the door, closing it after him. A few moments later the headsman caught a glimpse of the boy and the girl together as they passed the window in her room. Their arms were draped around each other and they were laughing.

  There was no rush; he knew exactly what they’d be doing a few minutes from now. He wanted to give them time to begin.

  Sixteen

  A DEADLY SURPRISE