Late that same night Fred had lain awake in his bed, listening to Eddie's voice droning in his own bedroom. The words were soft, and Fred was unsuccessful at interpreting any complete sentences. But the few words he was able to understand told him that Eddie Karl was talking to a woman, telling her how lovely she was as he ran his hand over her body, or the memory of her body.
Fred got out of bed, pulled his flannel bathrobe tightly around his pajama-clad body, and stepped quietly into the short, upstairs hall. Keeping against the wall so the floorboards would creak as little as possible, he shuffled the few steps to Eddie's door, from under which poured a puddle of dim, yellow light. What Fred wanted to do was to throw the door open and shout, "Shut up, shut up, you crazy old fart," but there was something about the singsong voice, an intensity, an edge, that prevented him.
In truth, Fred Hibbs was afraid of what he would see if he opened that door. At the least it would repulse him; at the worst, horrify him. Turning and walking away would leave him with the idea (illusion?) that he was the guest of only a harmless old coot with cobwebs where some of his brains used to be, and not a truly fucked-up, whacked-out pervert weirdo madman who really had seen the dead people before anybody else. So he turned slowly, hesitating for a moment as he noticed the keyhole and thought about how easy it would be to peek through it.
But the fear drew him away, back to his own room, where he lay listening, and Where comfort finally conquered fear so that he thought, pullin' his pud . . . pullin' his old wrinkled pud to Playboy or somethin', that's all, and he rolled over and made himself sleep as the words in the next room grew softer and more infrequent, passing at length into silence.
But there were no grounds for Fred Hibbs's suspicions. Eddie Karl had not masturbated, nor had he been able to, for eight years. He only lay on his bed naked, keeping his eyes from his own withered body, watching instead how the warm glow of the Bakelite reading lamp illuminated the soft, rosy flesh of a young woman who had lain there beside him forty years before, letting his shaking hand trail down the length of her body as she lay on her side facing him, from the hillock of her hip down the slope of her waist and up again to where her breast met her side, and then down to touch that smooth breast, and Eddie always telling her, telling her how absolutely beautiful she was, how he'd never seen a woman more beautiful, no not even in the movies or in the magazines, and now she was reaching for him again, and when she did, the memory faded, because he could not remember what had happened next. Always, when it came to that, he just could not remember.
He was tired now, too tired to bring her back again, so he switched off the lamp, whispered good night to the darkness, and went to sleep, his arm over the place where she would be when he wanted to see her again.
The next morning over breakfast Fred Hibbs had looked at him oddly. "You talk in your sleep?"
"Why?" Eddie asked. "You hear me?"
"I heard you talkin'."
"I had comp'ny. Couldn't be rude, could I?"
"What kinda company?"
"I wanted you to know, I'd tell ya."
"You're not goin' screwy on me, are you?"
"I had comp'ny , Fred."
"Somebody dead, wasn't it?"
Eddie looked down at his dirty plate, stood up, and put it into the sink. "No," he said softly. "She ain't dead. She'll never be dead."
"Who?"
Eddie sighed. "A woman. A woman I knew once."
Fred Hibbs frowned, confused. "There ain't no ghosts in this house, so how can you be talkin' to someone here?"
'"I can talk to her everywhere," Eddie replied with a crooked smile, "until I find her somewhere."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"The love of my life, my boy. Everybody oughta have a love of his life."
"But who was she?"
"Her name wouldn't mean nothin' to you. I was mighty young, so you woulda been just a little boy at the time. But Jesus Christ she was beautiful, and how I did love her." He sat back down at the table with a third cup of coffee. "She was married, but her husband was an asshole. He didn't know what he had." Eddie's face wrinkled in bitter memory. "Or maybe he did at that. Anyways, he made it pretty miserable for her. So she started to drink. That's how I met her—over a drink." He looked up at Fred Hibbs. "Am I borin' you?"
Fred shook his head shortly. "No."
"Well, let me know if I do. We old guys do go on, y'know." He slipped back into his story as though he had never stopped. "She kept on drinkin'. I couldn't get her to stop that. But I did get her to stop fuckin' around with guys that were no good for her. Got her to fuck around with me instead." He chuckled, but his face immediately softened, the lines vanishing as if by magic. "Oh, God, but she was so beautiful. We had good times together, good times. Right in this house, with all the shades drawn down. And she loved me too, I know she did. Women can fake lotsa stuff, but she didn't fake that. Time and again I told her to leave that sonuvabitch and come live with me, marry me, but it scared her, the thought of divorcin' him, and him gettin' mad, and well, not too many people got divorced back then, 'specially in a place like Merridale. And 'cause she was scared, she drank more, and I finally scared her away for good." Eddie stopped talking and shook his head.
"Whatcha mean, 'for good'?"
"She left me. Left her husband. Left town. I never heard from her again. Just scared off, I guess. If I hadn't pushed her, we mighta been able to go on like we had. But I loved her too much." Eddie Karl shook his head, then looked up.
"Now ain't that a sad story though? Don't it just tug at your heartstrings and make you barf?"
"And you never found out what happened to her?"
"Nope. Probably wound up tumin' tricks in Philly. But I been carryin' the torch for her ever since. Now you tell me about your biggest heartbreak."
"Never had one. Never had much time for women."
"I never had much time for nothin' else." Eddie's eyes narrowed. "You ain't queer, are ya, Fred?"
"Shit!" Fred spat out. "You are loony."
"Not that I mind if you are," Eddie went on, "but I'll just have to remember to lock my bedroom door at night."
~*~
Goddamn, thought Fred Hibbs, half remembering, half watching the news. He didn't know if he could handle it much longer, not if Eddie kept acting so crazy. But at least his mother and father weren't there. There was that at least. The movies. With Harriet Viner. Jumpin' Jesus, what's next? He wouldn't have been too surprised if Eddie started digging up the cemetery to actually see his old friends and lovers once again. As long as he don't bring them home.
At eight o'clock, Francis Joins the Navy was on a Philadelphia UHF station, and he watched that for a while, but Eddie's antenna was weak, diluting the antics of Donald O'Connor and the talking mule with snow to a point where it became not only unfunny, but unwatchable. Too weary to get up and change channels, Fred Hibbs closed his eyes for a quick nap. When he woke up it was long after midnight, and his back hurt. Damn couch. He turned off the TV and went upstairs, where he brushed his teeth and went to bed.
Sometime after two o'clock he awoke, wondering what was shaking him so. When it reached his sleep-dulled mind that something was indeed acting on his body, and that it was not a dream, he gasped, stiffened, and blinked in fear at the sudden light.
"Wake up," called a cracked voice that he knew to be Eddie's. But something was different in it, changed. There was none of the playfulness that had always been there, even when he had told Fred about that woman long ago. "Wake up, Fred. Wake up, dammit."
"Whazzit," Fred grunted. "Whassamatter?"
"Get up, get dressed," Eddie barked. "You gotta come with me."
"Come where?"
"Just get dressed!" Eddie whirled around and left the room.
Fred Hibbs, confused, frantic, obedient, pulled on his pants, drew on his shirt, thinking, What the hell, what the hell? But his mind was too befuddled to protest, and Eddie had never asked him to do anything that wasn't important.
He might've been loony, but he'd never taken Fred on a fool's errand. Fire? he thought as he laced his shoes. Accident? He clattered down the steps and found Eddie waiting for him at the front door.
"Come on," Eddie said, opening it.
"Where?"
"Just come, goddammit, I need your help!" He was out on the front sidewalk already, and Fred ran to catch up, slamming the door behind him.
"Eddie, if this is some fuckin' half-assed idea of yours, I'm really gonna be pissed!"
"No. No, boy, nothin' loony this time. This is real, boy, real." They kept walking north up Market, through the square and beyond, where the houses thinned out and the streetlights ended.
Fred grabbed Eddie's arm to slow him. The older man's energy seemed to come from some bottomless well of determination, and though Fred was panting, Eddie looked as fresh as if he had just left his house. His eyes burned in frustrated rage as he turned to Fred. "No farther," Fred said, wheezing, "not till . . . you tell me . . . where—"
"The Anchor," Eddie snarled, and tore his arm away, moving purposefully into the night.
"The Anchor?" cried Fred, scuttling to keep up. "The Anchor's closed! It's after two—they're closed. There's nothing there." He didn't hear Eddie reply, just saw his craggy head shake in disagreement as he walked on, wielding his cane like a swagger stick. "Aw, shit," mumbled Fred, stopping and looking back toward town. "Aw, shit," he said again, running to keep up with Eddie.
When they arrived a short time later at the Anchor, Eddie went right up to the front door and rattled the knob. It was a makeshift door of hollow pine. The Jerney brothers had not yet received the steel one they'd ordered to replace the old glass-paned panel that the unidentified vandal had ruined. Eddie shook it again, then looked at Fred. "It's shit," he said. "Hollow. Bust it in."
"Bust it . . . what?"
"That's what you're here for, why I wanted you to come. I'm not strong enough; you are. Well, don't just stand there gawkin' at me, bust it in!"
"Christ, Eddie, you're talkin' about . . . uh . . . breaking and entering!"
"There's worse things than that, boy. Now you either bust that door in for me, or you go home to your own house tonight. I mean it."
"But why?"
"You'll see why! Now come on!" Eddie threw himself against the door, which tossed him back as though it were made of rubber. The resulting thud was loud.
"Quiet!" hissed Fred Hibbs. "You'll wake up the whole damn town!"
"Then help me."
"All right, all right, oh Jesus we're gonna get in a shitload of trouble for this, damn you, Eddie . . .”
Fred stepped up to the door, lifted his foot, and kicked with all his strength at the spot next to the gold-painted knob. Something crunched, but the door did not open. He kicked again. The casing splintered, and the door swung in with a bang that made Fred's heart pound even more quickly.
Pushing Fred aside, Eddie strode into the bar, his cane carried loosely at his side as though his determination alone gave strength to his thin legs. He walked directly to the heavy wooden box nailed to the floor of the room, knelt beside it, and started to rock it back and forth so that the nails loosened protestingly, filling the room with harsh screeching.
"I looked," Eddie grunted as he worked. "I closed the fucking place tonight, just me and Leo tending the bar. . . He was talkin' about the break-in, how they busted up everything, and I was . . . sittin' next to this box, and I said how about the box, and he got this funny look and said no, not the box. . . . I knew he was lyin', and when he went to take a leak I got down and I got my knife in and pried back a slat and I looked. . . . Didn't see much, no not much, but enough. . . . Just her hair, and that was enough. . . . I didn't forget."
Fred Hibbs stood watching in horror as the box came farther and farther from the floor, knowing that there was something dead beneath, and slowly beginning to understand who, impossible as it seemed. Finally the nails; with a scream of release, left the floorboards completely, and the box fell over, revealing the form of the raped and murdered woman that Brad Meyers had uncovered a month before. Fred bit the inside of his mouth.
Eddie Karl knelt beside her, his shoulders slumping, his head down, the furies departed. "It is you," he said, looking at the face, then at the rest of the body. "What did they do? What did they do to you?"
Fred was unable to come closer. "Is it . . . is it her? Who you told me about?"
Eddie nodded. "It's her." He lifted a hand and held it to the woman's face, and for a second Fred Hibbs could have sworn that he saw a contact, a slight yielding of the flesh where Eddie's hand met it. "All these years. So long, and she's still beautiful. But my God, look what they did to you."
"But . . ." Fred Hibbs felt as though he stood gazing into the face of an awesome tragedy, dwarfed by the magnitude of the old man's grief. Unable to deal with the emotion of it, he sought instead for logic. "But you seen 'em before, Eddie . . . you said you seen 'em all before. You been here, been here lots. But you never seen her? Never?"
The old man gave a sigh like corn husks brushing together. "I never seen nobody," he whispered, never taking his eyes from the woman's face. "I seen what I wanted to see, that's all. I'm a liar, Fred. Some folk's killers, some's liars. I'd rather be a liar. I'd rather be a liar than the ones that did this. How could they? Just look at her. Look at her and tell me how they could."
"Eddie . . ." Fred's voice was pinched, too tight to be audible. He cleared his throat. "Eddie, come on . . . We gotta go." Fred Hibbs's soul was filled with terror. He wanted to run out, but he could not bear to be alone, not in a town that was full of such things, full of ghosts and death and thick, choking fear. "Eddie . . ." he pleaded.
Eddie stood up and shuffled over to where Fred stood shivering. He put an arm around the younger man and smiled guilelessly. "We can't go yet. Not till I introduce you."
"Eddie, goddanunit, now don't—"
"You can see, see for yourself how beautiful she was," and he tugged at Fred Hibbs, drawing him closer to the beloved obscenity. Fred tried to pull away, but Eddie's voracious strength had returned, and Fred felt himself drifting helplessly toward the woman on the floor, feeling awe at how strong Eddie had become.
The strength of madness.
"Come on, come on, you gotta meet her. . ." The humor was starting to creep into Eddie's voice again, but now it was a cackling humor, the humor of a man whose sanity has been shocked away. And Fred Hibbs felt something like madness stir in him also, so that the next time he pulled back he made Eddie stagger along with him. "No, no," Eddie admonished, his thin fingers digging more deeply into the flesh of Fred's upper arm. "You gotta meet her. . . . If you don't, you won't believe me. . . . I gotta show you, show you I'm not loony."
It was then that Fred Hibbs struck Eddie Karl, pulling back his free right arm and driving his fist full into the old man's face. Eddie neither flinched nor blinked. Indeed, he seemed to not even see the thick-knuckled hand moving toward him. It met his nose and mouth with a loud crack that shattered bone, and he fell, a dead weight, to the floor.
It took a moment for Fred Hibbs to realize that he was free, for his arm still ached as though Eddie's claw retained its grasp. Even then, he could not immediately move. Instead, he stood rooted, gazing down at Eddie Karl, hearing his bubbling breathing, watching the blood trickle out of his nose and mouth, half expecting to see Eddie turn, change into something naked and blue and gleaming.
But there was no change, and slowly Fred felt his muscles begin to respond, so that he was able to turn his body, to walk sluggishly through the semidarkness toward the door. But instead of the blackness he had expected to see through the upright panel, there was a red light, blinking off and on, off and on, and in that light he could see a dark, framed shape crouching, holding something metallic out in front of itself.
"Hold it," the shape said in a pinched tenor. "Police." The voice shook, as if the speaker were even more frightened than Fred Hibbs.
"Jus' lemme come out
," Fred said weakly. "Outside . . ."
"Come on, then, but no quick moves." Fred recognized the voice now. Mike Gifford, the youngest of Merridale's police force. Gifford backed up, never moving his revolver from Fred's direction, while Fred slowly shuffled after him. Finally Fred was through the doorway, into the stinging coldness of night, the red flasher of the patrol car illuminating his pale face at regular intervals. "Fred Hibbs," said Gifford with a trace of surprise. "Is that you?" Fred nodded blankly. "Who's . . . who's in there with you?"
"Eddie Karl." Fred had to say it twice before Gifford heard.
"He okay?"
"He's . . . hurt. I hit him."
"Okay, Mr. Hibbs," Gifford said, his voice trembling more than before. He opened the back door of his car. "Just climb in there real slow, okay?"
Fred did as he asked and Gifford closed the door behind him, then opened the front door and fiddled with something on the dash. There was a loud click, and Fred Hibbs knew he was locked in. The wire mesh between him and the front seat reminded him of a taxicab he'd ridden in once in New York City, long, long ago. Or had that been him at all? Had he ever been to New York City? He tried, but he couldn't remember.
~*~
An ambulance came a short time later, and took Eddie Karl to the Northern County Health Center. Eddie was just starting to regain consciousness when they lifted him onto the stretcher. His face felt numb, like no face at all, but a mask made from ice, pressed over and stuck to his own features. He thought about the pain, about the woman, and about Fred Hibbs hitting him. "Serves me right," he muttered.
The orderly with him heard only a wet whisper. "Just take it easy there. Don't try to talk."
'Serves me right for makin' friends with a dummy," Eddie went on, but the orderly could not understand. Stick to old friends, Eddie thought. That's the ticket.
He saw several at the Health Center. The Center was an emergency drop for a large number of patients—those not banged up enough to warrant a trip to Lansford General, or those too damaged to survive the additional fifteen miles. Eddie was one of those in-betweeners, serious enough for a hospital check-in, but needing immediate attention and minimal movement because of his age and fragility. They carried him in and took him to the tiny ward. There were eight beds, and every one of them had been filled. Had been, that is, until the doctors had ordered them moved, shifted a few feet one way or the other so that the blue forms no longer lay directly on them, but instead floated at the spots where they had died. Several occupied the same space, like some protoplasmic jumble of flesh.
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