They embraced for what felt like a long time. Suddenly, Sarah’s mind turned back to Aldous. He was dead – he had to be dead. She had cut his throat, and that killed him. He had stumbled off, but he couldn’t have made it far.
She stared at the door. It stood open, revealing a short hallway. There was a trail of blood down the hall, but there was no collapsed form of Aldous. Could he be alive? Was he too evil to die?
Sarah pointed down the hall. Jeremy looked, and nodded. He looked around the room for a weapon, but other than the knife Sarah had retrieved from the table, there was nothing. He picked up the table. It was a short table, maybe two feet tall, and a foot and a half long on top. He tried holding it by a leg, swinging it like a club, but found that awkward. He tried holding it by the top, with the legs pointing away from himself. He tried to imagine how Jackie Chan would use such a weapon. He poked it out, punching with the legs. He turned it like a steering wheel, blocking an imaginary punch. He quickly decided he wasn’t Jackie Chan and put the table down. The stool was worse, too heavy and tall to be used as anything but a shield. Besides, he could breathe a lot better when he held his cheek open.
Jeremy hobbled to the door and cautiously peered down the hall. There was a trail of blood, but no sign of Aldous. Sarah pressed the knife into Jeremy’s hand. They followed the blood. It led into a bathroom, where the wide trail stopped. There was blood on the sink, and a bloody hand print next to the towel rack. The towel rack was empty. Sarah pantomimed removing a towel and tying it around her neck. Jeremy nodded. Aldous had somehow survived having his throat cut.
Jeremy opened the medicine cabinet, hoping to find nail polish remover to unseal his mouth and nose, but the cabinet was empty.
They stepped back into the hall. Though the wide trail of blood had ended in the bathroom, the trail continued in smaller drips and partial footprints. The trail led out through an empty room with a picture window and through the front door. A few drips of blood continued across a dilapidated porch, and down the front steps. There was a short concrete sidewalk, leading to a gravel driveway where the trail ended. There was no sign of a car. Aldous had fled in the GTO. Jeremy took a quick survey around the house.
They were in the country. The house had obviously once been a farmhouse. There was the rusted hulk of an abandoned car beside the house. There was a small porch on the back of the house, and a tiny concrete patio. A line of trees a hundred yards behind the house marked the beginning of swampland.
They wandered back into the house. It was empty. Jeremy tried turning on the light switch by the front door. Nothing happened, at least as far as he could tell.
Though there was no immediately obvious effect, the switch was the trigger for a trap. Flipping it lit a long fuse in the attic. The fuse would burn for several minutes and then light the pattern of thermite which snaked through the attic. Thermite is a compound used in welding; it burns incredibly hot, converting itself into molten iron in the process. There was a lot of it in the attic. There were also a lot of five gallon cans of gasoline in the crawlspace under the house.
In just a few minutes there wouldn’t be much left of the house at all.
When the light switch turned on no lights, Jeremy flicked it a couple of times without thinking, like somehow it might work on the second flick. Groping forward into the darkness, he followed the wall to the next door, and groped around for another switch. He found the switch. It also did nothing, except make a hollow click.
So Jeremy led Sarah outside. The only rooms with light were down the hall to the killing room, and he didn’t feel like sitting around in there, waiting for Aldous to come back.
They looked around some more outside. Seeing the rusted-out car for the second time, Jeremy recognized it as a Pontiac GTO. There wasn’t much to it. The car had no wheels, no hood, no engine, no glass in its windows, and so much rust that Jeremy doubted he would have been able to guess its color in daylight.
The back porch was empty and the patio was barely big enough to hold a reclining folding lawn chair and a propane-fired turkey fryer. The turkey fryer was the only thing outside the house that looked less than thirty years old. The big pot gleamed in the traces of moonlight. Sarah made the mistake of looking into it. The dim light made it hard resolve the contents, but she could make out two roundish objects. Her first thought was bowling balls, but after a moment her brain processed what she was seeing: two charred human skulls. Sarah started screaming.
It was about that time that the fuse in the attic reached the beginning of the thermite. It made a sound that started with a hiss, and quickly became a whoosh, and filled the house with light as it burned through the ceiling. The heat was enough that the roof immediately caught fire.
Jeremy was facing the house as this happened, and through the glass of the back door, saw a blinding white glob pour down from the ceiling in the kitchen. He had no idea what he was seeing but knew it was bad. He grabbed Sarah, still screaming at the turkey fryer, and pulled her away from the building.
With Jeremy tightly grasping her wrist, Sarah had little choice but to follow him. They ran through the field away from the house. Within seconds some of the molten iron from the thermite in the attic had found some of the gasoline in the crawlspace and the house was replaced with a fireball climbing into the sky. Moments after that, the turkey fryer’s propane tank exploded, a tiny afterthought to the devastation. Stumbling through the darkness, and barely able to breathe through his cheek, it wasn’t long before Jeremy stumbled and fell.
Sarah finally stopped screaming as she dropped with him and held him. Within moments she was sobbing, and her crying broke it loose in him too. He started to sob, but the first gasp caused his cheek to vibrate like a whoopee cushion. It was intensely painful, and choked him on a froth of blood.
As he coughed, part of his brain kicked in and told him that was what he got for trying to cry; he was a man, dammit. That thought struck him as amusing enough that he teetered on the brink of hysteria for a few moments, and then settled down. Tears rolled down his cheeks, but he kept the sobs under control. They sat in the grass crying and watching the gasoline mushroom cloud rise into the sky.
The fire burned very hot and very fast. Within minutes there was nothing left of the house but a pile of coals. It didn’t look like a burned-out house. Burned-out houses usually have some parts left standing, a post or two, a sink still standing on its pipes – something to give testimony that there had once been a structure there. This looked like the remains of a small bonfire, but one that had been raked out to a roughly house-sized area. The heat had been enough to burn though parts of the rusted-out GTO, and much of the remains of the car glowed a dull orange.
Seemingly without cue, Sarah and Jeremy rose simultaneously. They started walking. It was obvious to each of them that there was only one way to go, out the driveway and down whatever road it took them to. They would remember very little else about that journey; it was a series of steps and each step was much the same. Each step balanced Jeremy’s struggle to breathe and their fear that Aldous might return against the drive to go forward. Later, each would remember that the other had led them.
By the time they reached something resembling a main road, it was starting to get light. It wasn’t long before a car approached. The couple tensed, not sure if they were saved by a Samaritan, or about to be damned by the return of their captor. Some of their fear subsided when they realized it wasn’t a ‘69 GTO, it was an ‘89 POS with two different colored doors on the driver’s side, no hubcaps and mismatched wheels. The car slowed to a stop.
A smiling round face emerged from the driver’s window. The face was fringed in short cropped white hair, which was of uniform length and fine enough that it was nearly invisible when viewed head-on. The hair was only apparent around the edges of his head, where it was viewed at an angle. Overall this gave the impression of a halo that had fallen over the man’s face. The man said, “I figure two mo
stly naked kids covered in blood and barefoot at six in the morning ten miles from anywhere are either having the time of their lives or are in some pretty bad trouble, and I’m betting on the trouble. You two want a ride?”
Wordlessly, they climbed into the back seat.
“I’ll guess I’ll take that as a yes. So where it’ll be? You need a hospital, or just to get away from here?”
Sarah found her voice. “Yes, please, a hospital, or maybe the police.”
The round-faced man started driving. “I don’t really like the police, but you won’t have too much trouble finding them at the hospital. You can call me Harper. What’re your names?”
Sarah said, “I’m Sarah, and this is Jeremy. Thank you for your kindness.”
“Kindness? I just treat people the way I want them to treat me. Well, most of the time anyway.” Harper was a burglar, and he certainly didn’t want people stealing from him. On the other hand, he always tried to be nice about it. He never stole from anyone who couldn’t afford it and tried not to steal more than anyone could afford to lose. But other than on the issue of the boundaries of the definitions of personal property, he did follow the golden rule.
Sarah said, “There aren’t many people that do that.”
“I figure it’s got to start somewhere. I figure if I am nice to you, maybe the next time you’re driving down the road at dawn and see a couple of beat-up kids you’ll stop to help them. Well, you probably would’ve done that anyway, but you know what I mean.”
Sarah didn’t say anything. Jeremy remained focused on finding a balance between breathing and the pain from pulling his cheek open. The cut on his tongue was also starting to bother him, as the adrenaline of the evening wore off.
After the brief conversation, Harper just drove. He wanted to know what had happened, but he figured if it was him walking bloody down the road, he might have a few secrets he wouldn’t want to tell, so he didn’t ask.
It wasn’t long before they got to a hospital. Harper pulled up to the emergency room entrance and said, “You need any help getting in?”
Jeremy shook his head and Sarah said, “No, but thank you. I’m sorry we got blood in your car.”
Harper said, “Don’t worry about it, it’s not my car,” and pulled away from the door. He drove around for a minute, pretending he was trying to find the parking lot for the ER, but really looking for cops. He knew that cops would be really curious if someone just dropped a couple of bloody kids off at the door and left – probably curious enough to pull the car over as it was leaving. If there were cops he was going to park and go in and find some other way to get lost later. When he didn’t see any cop cars, he drove off into the morning.
Sunday February 16th
8:00 a.m.
Aldous was naked except for the blood-soaked towel tied around his neck. He had a .44 Magnum handgun in his lap. He was driving the midnight blue GTO. He was aware of none of this … he was not really aware of anything. The moment his throat had been cut some reptilian part of his brain had made a choice between fight and flight and had chosen flight, and that part of his brain was compelling him to go fast. That flight instinct was the closest thing to thought that Aldous had. Without conscious thought to get in the way, reflex and muscle memory were doing an expert job of controlling the car on the rural highway.
One hundred miles an hour was not as fast as the car could go, but it was apparently fast enough to satisfy his fleeing instinct. It was also fast enough to get the attention of a tired state trooper who had been traveling toward his breakfast, which lay the other way down the rural highway.
The trooper, a thirty-two-year-old named Jack Kenner, regretted every second it took him to turn his car around. The road was narrow and the shoulders were bad, so the turn involved some maneuvering. He knew that each moment gave the guy in the GTO more of a head start, more chance to turn off on a side road and get lost. Jack did not want that to happen, but by the time he had radioed for backup, turned the car and begun the pursuit in earnest, Aldous was almost a mile away.
For the next few minutes Jack’s life could have been a seventh-grade math word problem: if a criminal is driving a hundred miles an hour, and has a one-mile head start, how long does it take the lawman, who is driving one hundred and twenty miles per hour, to catch him? The answer was not long, at least not for an objective observer; it seemed long enough to Jack.
The sight of the flashing lights in the rear-view mirror brought a level of consciousness back to Aldous. He slowed and pulled over, his hands in plain sight on the wheel. Or at least as plain a sight as the car’s tinted windows allowed. He waited. He waited while the cop did his little cop things, calling in the license number, getting himself psyched up to deal with the moron speeder.
Two minutes after the vehicles stopped, Jack got out of his car and cautiously started to approach the GTO. He had released the thumb break on his gun’s holster but his hand wasn’t on the gun – not that it would have done him any good. As soon as Aldous felt the trooper was close enough he dropped his hand to his lap and started firing the .44 through the car door. It wasn’t all that tricky a shot; Jack was only about six feet away, even if he was slightly behind and to the side of Aldous.
A car is a remarkably effective silencer. Most of the concussion of the discharge of the .44 was contained inside the car, and passing through the metal of the door slowed the slugs enough to be subsonic. What Jack heard as he approached the car sounded remarkably like a leather-bound dictionary being slammed shut several times. Inside the car, however, was a remarkably different situation. Inside the car the sound of the .44 was intensified. In an open field a .44 is loud enough to leave a lingering ringing in the ears. In the car the sound became a physical blow, a shock to the whole body. By the second shot all Aldous could hear was the ringing in his ears.
Passing through the car’s door caused the slugs to start to expand before they reached Jack’s legs. The first shot missed, but the second tore a chunk of meat out of the outside of Jack’s right thigh, the third shattered his right femur and the femoral artery. The fourth shot put another huge hole in Jack’s left thigh. The fifth and sixth found only air, but by that time Jack had no leg to stand on.
When anything, such as a bullet, strikes the human body a shock wave travels through the fluids of the body: the harder the strike, the bigger the wave. The series of .44 caliber slugs striking Jack’s legs sent a series of shock waves through the rest of his body – even without the blood loss, even without the removal of a good section of thigh bone, the shots to Jack’s legs might well have stunned him. Everything combined pushed jack into a state of semi-consciousness as he fell. That state did not last long.
Aldous fell on Jack, and to both men it seemed a graceful swoop. Aldous’ hand found Jack’s gun and slid it up Jack’s side to his armpit, where his bulletproof vest offered no protection.
Aldous whispered, “You have something I need,” and slipped his mouth over Jack’s mouth and nose.
Three shots later, Aldous was sucking in Jack’s soul.
Aldous was invigorated. His mind seemed to be back from its hiatus. Within moments he had a plan.
After grabbing a couple of things from the GTO, he wrapped a bit of rope around the cop’s side handle baton, and wedged the baton against the GTO’s brake pedal. He slipped the car into gear and pulled a small knob on the dashboard. The knob was a throttle lock – sort of a poor man’s cruise control. The idea was you could set the throttle lock and take your foot off the gas, and keep going at about the same speed, a little faster downhill, a little slower uphill. It was the sort of thing Dexter would think was a good idea.
Dexter loved the GTO, but was not a gearhead in his heart of hearts. Dexter had used the throttle lock exactly once before he realized that, while it might be a good idea in some cars, the GTO was simply too powerful to use with such a toy.
The engine and bra
kes began to argue about who was stronger. The engine was winning when Aldous pulled on the rope and removed the baton from the brake. The car accelerated down the road. It was a cheesy idea, at best worthy of late night television, but it was also more effective than Aldous could have reasonably hoped. The GTO left the road a quarter of a mile away at high speed, flew over an embankment and disappeared into the swamp.
Aldous knew that before long the police would be looking on this stretch of road for that GTO and the police car. He knew they would eventually find both of them. His goal was to make that take as long as possible. Even a few minutes could make the difference between getting away and rotting in prison.
He crammed the cop’s lifeless body into the back seat of the cruiser, and started driving. He was tempted to get on the radio and try to confuse the situation, but for the time being he felt silence was the best policy, especially since he wouldn’t have been able to hear the other side of the conversation. He drove quickly; he had a destination in mind.
Aldous always tried to have plans for any contingency, and when he had moved to Louisiana he had made plans for getting rid of a car on short notice. There was a place, not far from Boaz Pendleton’s address, where a driveway off a side road passed by a pool in the swamp that was deep enough to swallow a car. Aldous had poled the depth of the pool to make sure he could drive a car in and let it sink.
In all likelihood a fisherman would eventually find any car sunk in that pool, but the water would hide the car long enough for Aldous to be living elsewhere, with a different name and no ties back to the swamp.
The car’s radio squawked, and Aldous felt the trooper’s soul stir inside him. Sometimes new souls would try to assert themselves. sometimes they would complain, other times they would try to take control, but they were weak and he was strong. The fight never lasted long.
He shot the radio with the trooper’s gun. Then he realized that he had heard the radio squawk, which meant his hearing had been coming back, but the shot had driven it away again.
The Whisper Garden Page 14