Cage of Night

by Ed Gorman

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  My mom and dad went to Franklin back in the days when school officials around here still tried to ban Elvis records from being played at dances.

  Mom always talks about how girls wore saddle-shoes and petticoats and ponytails. Dad always talks about how boys wore black leather jackets and engineering boots and rode around in hot rods.

  To be honest, it's kind of hard to imagine either one of my parents as "cool" kids. I keep trying to imagine them as "cool" kids but I can never quite finish painting the picture. And the photos they've shown me from time to time make them look as nerdy as I was in high school. Maybe that's the difference. I always knew I was a nerd. Maybe Mom and Dad were blissfully ignorant. Or maybe the entire class was nerdy and so Mom and Dad fit in just fine.

  In the moonlight, Franklin school stood dark and solemn and gutted, the char black and char gray of the fire that destroyed it still clinging to the two brick walls left standing.

  Against the snow, the building had a kind of ugly beauty.

  I parked my car a block away and took the alley so that nobody would see me pull up.

  I crunched across the snow leading to the school. Overhead, above the clouds, I heard a jet roar across the prairie sky, leaving a plume of glowing white exhaust that angled across the full moon.

  A collie came around the corner of the building, sniffing the ground for buried treasure. When he saw me, he swung away, heading across the open field behind the school.

  No sign of Cindy.

  I walked around the entire building, then carefully picked my way through the tumbledown inside. As children, we'd always been warned against playing in here. A small boy had fallen into a shallow hole soon after the fire, and had had his arm amputated as a result.

  Cindy must have fallen down a hole. Still no sign of her.

  I stood in the windless night staring at the brick building, trying to imagine the sounds of early Elvis records pouring from the open windows on a soft spring afternoon. And somewhere inside would be my parents, dancing in their petticoats and duck's-ass haircut.

  "I'm sorry I'm late."

  When I turned, I saw her walking toward me from the alley. She'd taken the same route I had.

  She wore a red parka and jeans. The parka hood framed her face and made her more beautiful than ever.

  I couldn't help it. At that moment I didn't care about anything except being with her.

  I walked over to her.

  Neither of us said anything, just slid our arms around each other and came together in a kiss. "We'd better hide," she said, after a time.

  Inside the burned out building, we found a niche of clean brick where we could sit down next to each other. It was cold there but I didn't care.

  She said, "I told him."

  "About what?"

  "About us. Tonight. Meeting."

  "What?" I looked at her as I would at a small child who'd just admitted doing something horrible. "Why would you do that?"

  "He made me."

  "God, Cindy."

  "He stopped over at the house. Right after dinner. I didn't expect him. He got me alone in my room and—and he knew that I was holding something back from him."

  "So you told him about us?"

  "Don't you understand, Spence, I didn't have any choice? He'd already figured it out for himself anyway. He's a very jealous guy—he's still jealous of David and David's dead. So you can imagine how he is about you."

  I was angry enough to forget romance momentarily. I said, "You were with him when he killed Mae Swenson the other night."

  She slipped her parka hood off. In the moonlight through the broken school window, I could see the fine lines of her face and the nervous beauty of her eyes.

  "I tried to tell you before, Spence. But you wouldn't listen."

  "Tell me what?"

  "About the well."

  "Dammit, Cindy, that's just a game you invented. There's nothing down that well."

  She looked shocked, then hurt, then angry. "You think you know so much. You admit you heard something the night we were out there."

  "The power of suggestion, Cindy. That's all it was."

  "Well, David heard something. And so did Garrett."

  "The same thing. Suggestion."

  I couldn't stand the way she glared at me now, hating me.

  I took her hand. At first, she tried to tug it away but finally she let its slender, tender warmth rest in my hand.

  "Cindy, I talked to a shrink the other day."

  "About what?'

  "About the well."

  "Oh. I'm sure he said I was crazy. Especially since I've already been in the hospital and everything."

  "That isn't what he said at all."

  We were silent for a time.

  She said, "What did he say?"

  "He called it Shared Psychotic Disorder."

  "What does that mean?"

  "Just that when one person imagines something and he shares it with somebody else, then that person imagines the same thing. And then they both begin believing it's true, even when it's not."

  "I hate shrinks."

  "He's a pretty nice guy."

  "When I was in the mental hospital, one of them was always feeling me up."

  "You should've reported him."

  "They would've said I was crazy is all, and imagining things. Like this Psychotic Disorder you're talking about."

  As gently as I could, I said, "That's what's happening with the well, Cindy. You imagine things, but you imagine it so vividly that you get other people imagining things too."

  "David did what the thing in the well told him to do. He killed that clerk at the convenience store."

  I sighed, said nothing.

  "And Garrett did just what the alien told him to do, too. He killed Mrs. Swenson."

  "You didn't have anything to do with killing either one of them."

  "It wouldn't have happened if I hadn't brought them to the well," she said.

  "If tke alien makes people kill, then why haven't you killed anybody?"

  "That isn't what he wants me to do."

  I see.

  Angry: "Don't fucking talk to me like that! That's how everybody talked to me when I got out of the mental hospital. 'Now, now dear, don't get yourself excited."'

  Her voice was loud and harsh on the prairie night.

  The collie heard her and swung back for another look. He stood at where the entrance of the school had been and watched us for a long minute or two.

  "I'm sorry."

  "All right. Apology accepted."

  Then: "All it wants me to do is bring boys to the well. That's my only part in it."

  "But you went along with Garrett to Swenson's."

  "He made me. He said he'd kill me if I didn't."

  "You took me to the well. I didn't kill anybody."

  "I think it has to do with innocence."

  "I'm not exactly innocent."

  "But you don't hate—you're not angry."

  "And David and Garrett—"

  "Rage. Most of the time, anyway. I think the alien can use that. It makes it easier for it to take control of them."

  This was all insane but I had to be very careful not to let her think that that was what I was thinking.

  "Did you see Garrett kill the woman?"

  "Yes."

  "So you could testify against him in court?'

  "Yes." Pause. "But I'm just as guilty as he is, don't you see that? He wouldn't have done it if I hadn't brought him to the well."

  I took her shoulder and turned her face full to mine.

  "I want you to understand one thing, Cindy. These murders have got you so upset that you're blaming yourself. You didn't have anything to do with them."

  "So you don't believe that there's an alien in that well?"

  "I'm saying the alien doesn't matter."

  "Then what matters?'

  "That Myles and Garrett each chose to kill somebody."

  "But t
hey wouldn't have without me."

  "Did you tell David to shoot the clerk?"

  "Well, no."

  "Did you tell Garrett to stab Mae Swenson?"

  "No."

  "Then you're not guilty of anything, Cindy."

  Long pause. "You don't believe me about the well."

  "I guess I haven't made my mind up yet."

  "It's down there."

  "Say I believe you. For the sake of argument. It's not going to make any difference in a court of law, is it?"

  She looked confused.

  "David killed the clerk and Garrett killed Mae Swenson, right?"

  "Right."

  "Well, that's all the court is going to care about."

  "But I should testify about the well."

  "You know how people talked to you when you got out of the mental hospital?"

  "Real patronizing and all?"

  "Exactly. Well, if you sat in the witness stand and tried to tell the court about the well, that's how people would treat you again."

  "You think they'd send me back to the mental hospital?"

  "Possibly."

  "I'd rather die than go back to that hospital. That doctor really did feel me up all the time. And one time I woke up after he gave me a lot of drugs and my vagina was really sore. I think he raped me."

  "That's why you don't want to tell anybody else about the well—and you sure as hell wouldn't want to tell the court. You see?"

  "I don't want to go back to the mental hospital."

  "Then let me handle it."

  She stared at me. "What're you going to do?"

  "I'm not sure yet. But don't tell anybody about the well. Or that you were out at Swenson's that night."

  It was going to work out. I would ask the Chief to investigate Garrett, and then, after the trial was over and Garrett found guilty, Cindy and I would be free to be together.

  "Cindy, I love you," I said.

  "I love you, too, Spence."

  When we were kissing there in the burned-out shell of the building, the winter night wondrously golden in the moonlight, a distant freight train lonely on the darkness, I felt exhilarated about what lay ahead for me.

  Cindy lay ahead for me.

  Cindy my girlfriend, Cindy my wife.

  Richard Mitchell, KNAX-TV:

  "Even in the rain, the anti-capital punishment group continues to march in protest in front of the prison gates. A man beats a drum that makes a lonely, chilling sound in the darkness tonight. You have to wonder if the condemned prisoner can hear that drum in the death chamber. There are only a few minutes to go now, a few more minutes before a human life is snuffed in retribution for a horrible crime. Listen to that terrible lonely drum sound in the night, just listen to it."

  Tape 40-D, December 2. Interview between Attorney Risa Wiggins and her client in the Clark County Jail.

  A: That was the night you set fire to the well?

  C: Yeah. I figured if I dumped enough gasoline down there and set a fire, maybe that would get rid of the alien.

  A: Did it?

  C: I thought it did. For a few days, anyway. But then the chanting in my head started again. (Pause) I don't think anything can kill that alien. I think it's indestructible. You know, just like in the Sci-Fi movies. I mean, they could drop a nuclear bomb on it and it wouldn't make any difference.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I took Cindy home in a circuitous way through alleys so that Garrett wouldn't have a chance to see us.

  "I'm afraid of going back to the mental hospital, Spence."

  "You're not going back to the mental hospital."

  "Garrett'll say I made him do it."

  I looked over at her and smiled. "Nobody'll believe that, Cindy."

  "But the well."

  "Remember the Shared Psychotic Disorder?"

  "Then you don't believe there's an alien in the well?"

  "There isn't one, Cindy."

  "Then you're saying I'm crazy?"

  "I'm saying that you have a great imagination. So do I."

  "I really hear stuff down that well."

  "I heard stuff that one night myself," I said.

  "But you still think it was just your imagination?"

  "Absolutely."

  "I'm still worried about prison."

  I reached across and took her hand. "I'm going to the Chief and tell him everything, Cindy. He'll believe me and then he'll arrest Garrett."

  "You really think it can be that easy?"

  We had just reached her garage. Moonlight painted her back yard a glowing gold color.

  "I love you, Cindy."

  She leaned over and kissed me.

  "Thanks for believing me, that I didn't have anything to do with the murders I mean."

  "I'll talk to you tomorrow."

  When I got home, I spent a few minutes talking to my folks and then I went upstairs to my room.

  I was just reaching for the light switch when I noticed a flash in the back yard where I'd parked my car next to the alley.

  Somebody was down there with a flashlight.

  I went to my bureau and got my binoculars.

  I expected to see Garrett down there.

  At first, I couldn't see anything, just darkness, a dark human form leaning into the back seat of my car.

  No police vehicle was any place in sight.

  Then I let my eyes adjust to the binoculars and to the darkness.

  The figure finally finished in the back seat and stood erect outside my car again.

  It was the Chief.

  He was holding something almost delicately in his hand. He took some kind of plastic bag from the pocket of his parka and lovingly, carefully slid the object inside there.

  I couldn't see what the object was.

  But I knew what the plastic carrier was: an evidence bag. They get tagged with a letter and a number and are used in court when the prosecutor is trying to nail the defendant to the wall.

  All I could think of was how my car door had been slightly ajar when I'd gone out tonight.

  All I could think of was that somebody had seen my car out at the Swenson place.

  A knock came behind me.

  I turned around and saw Josh silhouetted in the doorway.

  "You got a minute?" he said. Then, nodding to the binoculars, "What's going on?"

  "Chief's down at my car."

  "Oh."

  His reaction was odd. I'd expected him to he excited or upset when I told him about the Chief.

  He said, "That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

  "Oh?"

  "Mind if I turn the light on and close the door? I don't want Mom and Dad to hear this."

  "To hear what?"

  But he didn't answer my question. He clipped on the light, shut the door, and came over and sat down on my desk chair. I sat on the edge of the bed.

  "One of the guys on the team has a cousin who works at the police station," Josh said.

  "So?" His mysteriousness was beginning to irritate me.

  "So, he told me that the Chief got this anonymous note this afternoon."

  That was the first time I felt fear. You know how it is—suddenly your bowels turn queasy, and your hands begin to twitch, and you sense that terrible trouble lies just ahead?

  "What did the note say?" I tried to act as if I was holding up just fine but I think Josh could see that I was scared.

  "Said you killed Mae Swenson."

  "Oh, shit," I said.

  "Yeah. That's what I say."

  "I didn't kill her, Josh. I swear I didn't. And Cindy can testify to that." I told him what Cindy had said about Garrett.

  He got up abruptly, clipped off the light and walked to the window again. He picked up my binoculars and put them to his eyes.

  "The Chief's gone," he said. "I wonder what the hell he was looking for."

  "He found something," I said. "In the back seat. He put it in one of those evidence bags."

  Josh shook his head and set down
the binoculars. He went back and sat at the desk chair. He didn't bother to turn on the lights.

  "Maybe you should talk to Mom and Dad."

  "What would I say?"

  "Say what you said to me."

  "Everything?"

  "Yeah, everything."

  "They won't know how to handle it, Josh."

  "They're stronger people than you think, Spence. They really are. You probably need an attorney right now. Dad knows a couple of good ones in town here."

  I got up and started pacing, gaping out the window every few seconds, half-expecting to see the Chief down there again.

  "Should I tell them about the well?"

  "I guess," he said. "But I sure wouldn't say you believe there's something down there."

  "I talked to a shrink about that."

  "Yeah?"

  I told him about Shared Psychotic Disorder.

  "I'm glad you had that talk. I was starting to worry about you."

  I paced some more.

  He just watched me.

  I kept thinking that the Chief could never actually suspect me. I wasn't the killer type. I was this harmless kid who read a lot of Sci-Fi paperbacks and served in the Army and then came back home to settle into adulthood. I guess most of us think that way—that most people see each of us as innocents who couldn't do anything that was terribly wrong, that they see that overall we're good, decent people just like they are. But for the first time, I wondered if that was true. Maybe that wasn't how people perceived me at all. Maybe they saw me as sinister in some way, maybe they wouldn't have any trouble at all seeing me as a murderer.

  But I kept seeing him bent into the back seat there, retrieving something. And putting it into an evidence bag.

  "This is gonna be hard, Josh. Telling Mom and Dad."

  "You better do it before the Chief does."

  "I guess that's a good point."

  "She's got to tell the truth."

  "She?"

  "Cindy Brasher."

  "Oh."

  "She's got to go to the Chief and tell him exactly what happened."

  "She's afraid of being sent back to the mental hospital."

  "Tough shit, Spence. This is your life we're talking about here."

  I went to the window, looked out again. The snow was blue now that the moon had disappeared behind the clouds, that winter night blue that is the wan color of an alien landscape.