by Brian Hodge
The rest of the torso fell over.
Finally, thought Jebidiah, the accumulated bullets, the shavings, have done their duty.
The great, cold shadow rose out of the ground and filled the street. Jebidiah stood. The shadow rose thick and to the height of his neck, then the shadow fled, and with its passing came a cool wind, and when the wind was gone, there was nothing in the street, not even the shadow which was melting into the tree line at the far end of the town.
The King Wolf was gone. There was only a twist of fur flying by. It clung to his cheek for a moment, then was blown away.
Out of the hotel came the white wraiths that had hidden there, among them the more solid Dol. All of the spirits rose up toward the sky, toward the stars, gathered into a fluffy, white formation that fled upward to join the Milky Way. In a moment they were all gone and the stars in the sky winked out like snuffed candles. The sun rose as if out of the ground and took a position at high noon immediately. The sky turned blue. White clouds boiled across it quickly, and then stopped, looking like mounds of mashed potatoes on a shiny blue, china plate.
Jebidiah turned his head toward a sound.
Birds chirping in a tree on the edge of the north end of the street. Brightly colored birds so thick that at first Jebidiah thought they were fall leaves gone red and yellow and blue and golden. The birds made a sudden burst to the sky, as if confetti had been tossed, and the sunlight behind them made them look strange and otherworldly.
In the hotel room Jebidiah found Mary. She lay on the floor. She had the rifle under her chin. She had managed to pull the trigger, shooting herself. He could see why. She had been bit all over. Maybe she had been in time. He decided to make sure.
He took her body out to the street, then brought the mattress out. He broke up chairs from the hotel and made a bon fire and got it started and put the mattress on that, put Mary’s body on top of the mattress. He leaned against the stagecoach and watched her burn. When there was nothing left, he went up the hill to the trees where Dol had said the graveyard was. He saw it and walked among it, went up the hill and into the deeper trees where he found gutted graves. The wolves’ graves. He used his pocket knife to shave off pieces of oak, and he made crosses from them, tying them together with strips of cloth from his shirt. One cross for each grave. Just in case. He tore pages out of his Bible and put those in the graves with them. Another just in case.
He went back to the hotel and got his saddle and saddlebags off of his dead horse, threw it over his shoulder, went out into the street and started walking south.
A crow followed, flying just above him, casting a shadow.
TRYPTYCH
By Jack Ketchum
CONTENTS
Author's Introduction to KILL
KILL
Author's Introduction to DRIVE-IN MOVIE
DRIVE-IN MOVIE
Author's Introduction to OLIVIA: A MONLOGUE
OLIVIA: A MONOLOGUE
Note: Thanks to Kaddy Feast and Theo Levine.
Author's Introduction to KILL
KILL was the final stage play I ever wrote. Other than OLIVIA: A MONOLOGUE, and unless you count a handful of unfinished fragments, it was the last time I wrote for the theatre. It was written in December of l972 with the New York Theatre Ensemble at 2 East 2nd Street in mind, an off-off-Broadway black-box theatre group who had previously produced my one-acts THE PROGERIAN the year before and DRIVE-IN MOVIE that October.
Four years before that I'd seen THE BOSTON STRANGLER – appropriately enough, in a theatre in Boston – with Henry Fonda, George Kennedy, Sally Kellerman, and Tony Curtis as mass-murderer Albert DeSalvo, in easily his best performance since THE SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS. You didn't see many movies based on true crimes back then and this one was pretty good and thought provoking. “What can you expect from a society that spends 44% of its tax dollars on killing?” It moved me to seek out the book of the same name by Gerold Frank.
Frank had peppered his book with long sections of the recorded confessions between DeSalvo and Detective John S. Bottomly, much of which made fascinating reading. Confessions are in the public domain, so it occurred to me that I wouldn't be ripping off Mr. Frank if I sliced and diced them and pitted these two guys against one another on a stage.
I changed the names to make it seem more…universal. A kind of Everyman mass-murderer and an Everyman detective. With only a proposed note at the bottom of the program to let you know it was based on the real thing. At least that was the idea at the time.
NYTE accepted it but before we even started casting, the theatre folded.
A German producer recently asked me if I had anything in my trunk I'd like to have translated and staged. I dusted this off and tinkered a little.
We'll see.
KILL
A confession for the stage *
Characters:
JOSEPH
ATTERLEY
A CHORUS OF THREE MEN
Time:
The present
Place:
A room
* KILL is based on the “Boston Strangler,” Albert DeSalvo - John Bottomley confessions. The names have been changed. All dialogue, though edited, is as transcribed.
A room. Bare, stark walls. Center stage, a long wooden table, a chair at either end, and upon the table a houseplan, pad, pencils, pens, cigarette pack and ashtray.
Lights dim to black.
ENTER JOSEPH and ATTERLEY, seating themselves at the table.
Lights up on JOSEPH, a small man powerfully built, dressed in white shirt and faded pants, both now in disarray.
JOS
I told Hildegard, I said I was going fishing. That was my excuse for getting out of the house. I had a fishing net, it was weighted down with three lead pipes.
PAUSE
And a fishing rod in the back of the car.
Lights up on ATTERLEY, tall and thin, his once careful grooming hours behind him now.
PAUSE
JOS
To the left would be a kitchen, then the bathroom about ten feet on. The light would be on. I see a sewing machine, brown, a window with very pretty drapes, light tan, a couch, and a tan record player with darker color, you know, cocoa-color knobs.
Lights up to full on both men and all surrounding areas. A sensation of intense heat throughout.
PAUSE
JOS
I told her, I'm going to do some work on the apartment, and she said, this is the first I've heard about it, and I said I'm supposed to check all the windows for leaks and I'm going to do some interior painting. Well, it's about time, she said.
He reaches for the pack of cigarettes, takes one, searches for a match, looks at ATTERLEY. ATTERLEY finds a pack of matches in his in his shirt pocket, slides the pack to him across the table. JOSEPH lights up. Then:
JOS
I grabbed my right hand behind her neck. She was a heavy-set, big-breasted woman…
ATT
Did you have to bend over? To grab her?
JOS
No…
(beat)
We were standing near the bed. She went down right away. She fainted, passed right out.
ATT
You hardly touched her, and she fainted?
JOS
(nods)
I noticed she was wearing glasses, and plus I grabbed her and held her very tightly, right? I noticed a little trickle of blood come out of her nose, so I took off her glasses with one hand and laid them down, I didn't want to break them, I put them on the floor. She just slumped, went down on her knees halfway against the bed. And just a trickle of blood coming down her nose…
PAUSE
JOSEPH is more animated now, as though annoyed.
JOS
Here's what I'm trying to say to you, sir…I do remember biting her on the bust, possibly other parts of her body too. Her stomach maybe, right? I'm trying to see if I had intercourse with her…
(beat)
It's possible.
&nbs
p; (beat)
I think I put a bra around her neck, if I'm not mistaken. A nylon stocking too. I got it out of the drawer, right here.
He points to the house plan on the table. ATTERLY follows him, notes the place.
JOS
I went to the bathroom, wiped the sweat off my face…
(beat)
That stocking bothers me. Maybe it came from the bathroom. I'm not sure. There no use guessing here, I just want to tell you the facts.
BLACKOUT
A LONG PAUSE, then:
JOS
I was just riding around, like in the middle of the world.
PAUSE
Lights slowly rise to full.
JOS
I pressed the bells. First button was number thirty-something, on the third floor. Nothing happens. I ring the other one. Then the buzzer sounds…
(beat)
On the way up I saw two crazy sisters, I guess on the second floor. I knocked on their door. When I hit their floor the door was open. I met the first sister, she was batty as all hell.
ATT
Batty as all hell?
JOS
Oh, she was talking real ragtime. I could see right away I wasn't making any sense to her. Behind her I saw the other sister, I guess it was her sister, back further in the apartment.
(beat)
So I kept on going up the stairs and I heard, “who is it?” I was high up, I saw when I looked out the window. I bore to the right. She was standing at the door wearing a housecoat, something pinkish. She was wearing glasses. There was something funny about what she had on her feet…like tennis shoes. I felt funny. I didn't want to go in there in the first place. I just didn't want it to happen. But I went in and I proceeded from one room to another. When I got to the bedroom I looked out the windows. She said, what's wrong? I said, I don't want to wrinkle your curtains, will you check that window? She was turned away, and that's when it happened. Because I grabbed her and she fell back with me on the bed, on top of me, my feet around the bottom of her legs.
ATT
You had her pinned, then?
JOS
I don't like to talk about this.
ATT
You've got to talk about it.
PAUSE
JOS
I'd almost swear that it was here she took her fingernails and dug into the back of my hand. It didn't bleed, she pulled the skin and then she stopped. You must have found skin under her fingernails.
JOSEPH looks to ATTERLEY, who will confirm nothing.
JOS
She kept doing it until she…went.
(beat)
I don't know. For what reason I don't know, I stuck the bottle in her.
(beat)
These things, I'm ashamed of what I done. I know I inserted the bottle, but…I don't want to talk about it.
ATT
Because you don't understand it?
JOS
(nods) And because it's so unbelievable to me that it was really done by me. Why I done it I don't really understand, but I know at this moment that to do it…
(beat)
…well, I wouldn't.
PAUSE
ATT
You do understand why you searched these places and mixed things up.
JOSEPH nods assent.
ATT (cont'd)
Do you remember ransacking the apartment, as you remember grabbing her?
JOS
No, I remember going through things but as to how I did it I don't recall. I know I done it.
ATT
Joseph, tell me what happened to you when you grabbed Anna Michaels. What was going through your mind.
JOS
You mean the feeling I had? Well…as her back was turned to me and I saw the back of her head, and…I was all hot, just like you're going to blow your head off…like pressure right on you…right away…I…
ATT
You had to do something?
JOS
I…to explain it or express it, as soon as I saw the back of her head, right? Not her face, seeing nothing but the back of her head, right? Everything built up inside me. Before you knew it I had put my arm around her and that was it. And from whatever happened through that time, I can remember doing these things. As for the reason why I did them, I can at this time give you no answer.
ATT
Did you draw blood?
JOS
Oh, no. Nothing like that.
LIGHTS SLAM TO BLACK
A LONG PAUSE, then:
Lights up to full.
JOS
“But I don't know who you are,” she said. She spoke in a kind of accent, Jewish type. She was heavyset, about a hundred and sixty pounds, white-haired with streaks of black hair in it. We talked, and I said if you don't want it done, I'll just tell them that you don't want it done, and I started to walk away. She says, well, never mind, come in, and I walked in on her. We went into the bedroom to check the windows and when she turned around I did it. My right arm around her neck.
(beat)
She went down. She passed out fast. I saw purplish-dark blood, it came out of her right ear…just enough for me to see. I saw it more clearly when I put the pillowcase around her neck, but I strangled her first with my arm, then the pillowcase. I think I had intercourse. I would say, yes.
ATT
You don't seem very positive.
JOS
It's…to me…to me it's sickening to talk about this…that blood coming out of her ear…
BLACKOUT
A PAUSE, then:
JOS
I did it fast. She was in the midst of moving in.
Lights slowly rise to full.
JOS:
I saw these cartons…things weren't set up. Now, she's looking into a closet to find something, that's where it happened. I'm behind her…
ATT:
How did you get her to open the closet to show you something? What were you talking about? What kind of line did you give her?
JOS
As soon as I saw her, I had a quick look at the room, I knew what I was there for. Whatever it came to, that was it. I said, have you got straightened out yet? I thought I'd drop in because I've got other places to do…
(beat)
I went through the place, seeing how things were. I looked into the parlor. Boy, they didn't do a good job here! I said. Then she looked into that closet. I was behind her…
(beat)
We both fell back on the floor. She struggled and struggled, she was so big there was nothing to grip hold of…I put a scissors grip…
(beat)
She was an older woman, about fifty-five to sixty.
ATT
Why put her in the tub?
JOS
The tub was filled with water. Maybe she was getting ready to take a bath. Why did I do it? Just like why did I leave a broom and a bottle. I don't understand it.
LIGHTS SLAM TO BLACK
A LONG PAUSE
Lights up. It's hours later. Both men are very tired.
JOS
A negro girl, really beautiful, with beautiful hair. Her eyes were dark brown, she looked like a Hawaiian girl. She was so tall. Taller than me. At least a hundred and forty pounds. She was built solid. She had on a sexy whitish-type robe. I remember it was very appealing, the way she was dressed.
(beat)
She didn't want to let me in because her roommates weren't there, but they would be home shortly. She said they were taking a course across the street at the YMCA and she was waiting for them. I gave her fast talk. I told her I'd set her up in modeling. I'd give her from twenty to thirty dollars an hour. “Turn around, let me see how you're built…” That was it. I grabbed her 'round the neck with my right arm.
(beat)
She was very tall. She fell on top of me on the settee, my legs went around her legs.
(beat)
To keep her from screaming, I grabbed two nylons out of a drawer. She was the one I had to tie reall
y tight. She started to fight. I made it so tight I couldn't see it. I ripped her clothes off her, ripped off her slip and put it around her neck, then the stockings…too deep…so tight…
ATT
When was this?
JOS
My anniversary, my wedding anniversary. December fifth.
(beat)
I remember it very clearly. Because I'm right there now. If I sit back calm, I can go way back and remember everything. I'm right there…
ATT