The Axeman Cometh

by John Farris

  The beam traces down the papered wall, the headboard, steadies there as a sleeper shifts beneath the quilt, breaks wind obliviously. He waits, agreeably chilled by the recurrence of the leitmotiv conceived so effortlessly at the first fall of his ax downstairs. He listens intently, but there is nothing in the music he would change. Impatient to get on with what he is creating—but this is the inevitable lull before the next gorgeous, incredible gush of inspiration. As the music begins to fade from his mind (not losing it, no, it is always there even though he must sometimes shift his concentration outside himself, as if taking a short stroll away from the concert hall), he lets the light play on the wiry, unkempt head and freckled brow of Ernestine Hill. Her eyelids shiny, purplish ovals. She is lying on her stomach, breathing through slack lips. One bare arm is thrown over the side of the bed, fingers trailing on the floor near where an ashtray, matches, a packet of cigarette papers and sack of tobacco are piled on top of a seed catalogue. Very small diamond in the wedding band which in turn is deep in the flesh below an enlarged, obstructive knuckle. She is wearing some kind of corset-thing beneath her flimsy sleeveless nightgown. Maybe it's for her back. One other problem, the sheet and quilt, though folded back and covering the sleepers only to about their waists, are still in the way. He has to remove them. But first a look at Dab, face-up and snoring less than two feet apart from his wife. Undershirt and skivvies. One knee raised. He moves the light across Dab, back to Ernestine, again to Dab from tattooed arm to hairy shoulders, all the while approaching the bed. The light in his left hand. The ax in his right, at his side, the bit swinging in a short arc just off the floor. Which squeaks under his weight. Not much of a noise, but in the bed Dabney Hill breaks off in mid-snore, jerks, mumbles. Instantly the light is off.

  He waits, two or three minutes, for Dab to adjust himself on the mattress, breathe deeply, commence snoring again. The light.

  flick

  //////////////////////

  Dab is still on his back,

  nostrils high, mouth

  open, Adam's apple like

  a hut of cartilage on the

  exposed

  throat.

  flick a vacancy

  //////////////////////

  in Dab's mouth, he removed

  a partial upper bridge

  before retiring.

  flick

  again, back to the

  throat. Lingering //////////

  there, pale

  as a moonbeam. So.

  Dab

  will be the first, and headless, even as Ernestine dreams on with furrowed brow and twisted lip.

  Dearly beloved how I adore you for the blood you dedicate to me

  His devotional all but inaudible as the music thunders through his head.

  The light is out.

  In the dark he pulls down the quilt on the bed, slowly, until they both lie uncovered, unknowing.

  Exultant, the Axeman weeps.

  Awake, Shannon?

  Someone is calling her by that name again.

  Not one of the psych-techs. It has to be a newcomer on the floor, but whoever it is, he should know better. She will not respond to that name. If he doesn't know what to correctly tall her, she will go on lying there with her eyes closed, on the narrow bed. Face to the unadorned, pastel-yellow concrete block wall. Her knees drawn up, hands clasped between her thighs. The position she finds most comfortable . . . endurable is more like it. She can go on for long stretches at a time like this, ignoring the body's most basic demands. Thirst. Hunger. Meaningless. Lying in shit. Meaningless. Blood—but she has no blood. Her veins, arteries, empty, waxen. Her heart contracting, expanding rhythmically, but the chambers are scoured clean. Total emptiness. No blood.

  Now leave me alone.

  You can't get away from me that easily, Shannon.

  Oh, she'd like to teach him a lesson! But, ironclad rule, she never talks to strangers, those who have mistaken her for someone else. Is this Georgia's day off? She will not move or blink until Georgia comes around and greets her properly, warm and chuckling: "Well, how are we feelin' today, Suzylamb? Oh, oh, did we have a little accident while we was snug asleep? Don't you worry about that, sugar, have it cleaned right up." She loves Georgia. And Dr. McLarty, the whimsical Irishman with the awful pipe tobacco and plaid vests, hair too thin and lazy to comb, eyes big as a squid's behind thick glasses: she loves him, too. "I like the new strip. What a problem! That stray puppy Suzy brought home chewed a hole in mom's favorite sofa cushion." "Suzy'll patch it, and mom will never notice." "Then she'll get to keep the puppy?" "Oh, sure. A family needs a puppy." "He might get into more mischief, though. He might do something really bad." "No, he won't. See, he's sorry about the sofa cushion, and he'll never do a thing like that again. He loves. Suzy, because she gave him a home." "Tell me something—" Dr. Firmikin speaking; he wears glasses too—but with severe, dark frames. She doesn't love Dr. Firmikin. He seldom says anything, but when he asks her a question, the question frequently makes her nervous, uneasy. Then when she replies he'll rub his temple with the eraser of a pencil as if perplexed, not pleased with her answer. "Why does Suzy like dogs better than cats?" Always that kind of question: difficult. But for this one she has an answer she doesn't have to prepare. "Cats are too quiet. They prowl around at night. They have—" "Claws?" No, no, guess again. But I'm not talking. I'll never tell.

  Shannon, get up. You've made a mess. You have to clean yourself.

  Georgia, you do it for me? Please? I'm sorrryyy. I've been SO good; haven't done it in my sleep for months and months.

  I'm not Georgia. And you're a long way from the hatch in Topeka. But we've all been wondering, when are you going to finish the strip? Make a few important changes. Draw the truth, this time.

  "Where am I?"

  You're in the elevator.

  (In the elevator. And oh God, it is so dark! At the clinic the light, at her request, was always on, that first eighteen months. Between bouts of torpor, indifference, she would swing to new highs of creative activity, drawing, drawing, until her fingers ached or trembled and she could no longer hold the crayons they allowed her to have. At first, until she was accustomed to crayons, she had to draw clumsily, on a big scale. Suzy. Mom. Pop. Richie. David. The Tafts of Roseboro, Kansas. Removed in recent years to a distant asterism of the mind.

  She had almost forgotten what they looked like although—she knows—wherever they are, they still smile a lot. Mom wore pearls and good-looking blouses around the Colonial-style house, and Pop always had a tie on with his cardigan sweater. She never knew what he did for a living. There were always flowers in the Tafts' foyer. Richie delivered papers on his motor scooter and Dave went to law school at the college in town, but he often found time to play basketball with his little brother in the driveway. Suzy's bedroom had a four-poster canopy bed. A double-sized walk-in closet filled with the nice things she bought from the money she made babysitting and doing chalk portraits at the county fair. She didn't slip and mess her pants when she was terrified and lonely. Suzy Taft was never terrified and lonely. But Shannon Hill—

  (She groans as she moves on the gritty elevator floor. The floor seems unsteady to her and she is reminded, horridly, of being in suspension—just how, she doesn't know, something to do with wheels and cables—in a high rectangular shaft. How high? The elevator scarcely seemed to have started down before the lights, two ordinary dusty bulbs in wire cages on the ceiling and well out of her reach even if she stood on tiptoe, failed to a deathlike brownish-yellow and the apparatus jolted to a stop. She freezes, listening. Thinks she hears a soft tapping or dripping overhead. Water. Rain on the roof of the building that has found a way into the elevator shaft. Again she moves, a hand against the wall behind her. Almost trips over her shoulder bag and portfolio, the thick drawing pad that goes everywhere with her. A pencil rolls. She had been drawing, in the dark. But now her lower back aches, her head aches, her throat is dry. And she can smell herself.

  (Sh
annon unbuckles and lowers her pleated, men's-style trousers. Takes them off. Then the panties. It isn't too bad. She wads the panties and throws them away from her, takes tissue from her purse. When she feels clean and decent again she dresses. She can hear herself breathing. That, and a slow drip of leaking rain. The cold sound sets her to shivering, ferociously. How long has she been trapped? Her head pounds, hard to think. Should she yell again, scream, try to get someone's attention? Anyone else but him—

  (Who is, uncharacteristically, quiet now.

  (Somehow she doesn't feel abandoned. No.

  (Which means something important has happened, to alter the delicate balance of their relationship.

  (She places her hands over her face, feels the lids of her eyes, tight as rosebuds in the darkness; they will open only to the sun. It occurs to her that she may have had her eyes closed from the moment the lights went out. Seeing all that she cared to see within protectively sealed lids. Sketching in darkness by the mind's brilliant eye.

  (If she should open them now, and look around her—

  (Nothing to be afraid of. But the reassurance is almost too quick—glib, seductive. Not her thought, but his.

  (Something happened. More than her bowels slipped while she was sprawled, insensibly, on the elevator floor.

  (Look. What harm can there be in looking? The lights may have come on.

  (No. I'm blind. I want to be blind. I want my eyes, my brain, to be as empty of vision as my veins are empty of blood.

  (Do you understand? I have no blood. No sight. I'm worthless to you. Go away, forever!)

  Silence.

  . . . Music.

  No! I will be deaf, too! I will not hear your damned music!

  (Oh, too late. She has not prepared, she cannot shut out the symphonic torrent.

  (Turning, she hammers both fists against the elevator wall. The elevator shudders and she knows she has miscalculated: wheels, cables, brakes, they have no strength to resist the force of her terror, she must fall.

  (Unless, in this instant of her undoing, she can go to sleep again.

  (But where will she wake up next time?)

  In her own bed, of course.

  Saturday, June the sixth, 1964.

  It is now four minutes after five in the morning, and no longer quite dark out there. The city birds are awake and thriving: bush-dwelling prairie warblers that live in the tall lilac by the side of the garage, the tinny-sounding nuthatches, chattering wrens, genial robins.

  Shannon sighs deeply, then rolls to her right toward the center of the bed but does not, as she expects, come up against Chapman's warm, boyish body. Someone to hug and hold against her breast as she has done since he was very little. Some day, perhaps this year, she will no longer be able to sleep with him; that special innocence will be lacking and they both will know it. Just as she, with the onset of menstruation, had felt wrong about creeping into Allen Ray's bed those nights when she craved his brotherly protection.

  The lightness of her bed, the absence of Chap's raspy breath, lifts her a little above the surface of sweet oblivion, and she makes another sound in her throat, moistens her lips with her tongue. Her eyelids twitch and she tugs at the top of her pajamas, which are twisted and putting pressure on her sore breasts. Shannon thinks Chap must have gone back to his own room when the birds began to stir and forage. But her little brother is not in his room. Nor is he asleep. And she is the last one left.

  The narrow beam of a pencil flashlight touches one shoulder, her charmingly bent earlobe. Lingers there. Vanishes. Reappears on her smooth forehead. Illuminates a high, round cheekbone. Grazes, caresses.

  She is lying on her back.

  Her eyes open suddenly.

  "What?"

  "Don't be afraid," he whispers from the darkness. "It's me."

  Sitting up quickly, recognizing his voice, thrilled but knowing he shouldn't be there, in her bedroom: my God what is he doing there, or did he tell when he called yesterday that he was coming by this early? Did they make a date for breakfast, has she overslept? No, that couldn't be it, something must be wrong, he needs her. An accident, she thinks. He's had an accident, his plane—he's hurt—

  "Rob," Shannon says quietly, though her heart is stuffing blood at an unmanageable rate through her throat to her brain, "just a minute. I'll get up. Let me turn on the light."

  Perry Kennold knows he's going to be late for work, but he can't help himself. No willpower. He just can't turn the key in the ignition, put the truck in gear, drive away from Shannon's house without giving it his best shot.

  This hour I tell things in confidence,

  I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.

  He has a notebook on him, in which he sometimes jots down his thoughts, observations in poesy. What he'd like to do now is ask her for a date, but in a way that will cause her to take some notice of him, alert her to the fact that he's not just another guy with a bad complexion and no future. He has deep feelings about life. He wants the note to be amusing, clever, sensitive. So she will read it and think, This is the real Perry. I'd love to go out with you; why didn't you ask me sooner?

  He finds a clean page at the back of the pocket notebook, and a pencil stub in the dashboard compartment of the pickup. He uses his right knee for a writing desk, and has enough light from the glow of the instrument panel. The clock reading four-and-a-half minutes after five. He hears a distant rooster. A car goes by up the block, crossing West Homestead. The truck's radio is on, tuned very low, to Patsy Cline.

  Dear Shannon:

  Another minute goes by.

  His eyes begin to burn from concentrating on the paper, his face is stiff and dry. Too much Clearasil. He glances up at her windows, yearning for inspiration. A lamp goes on; his heart lights up as well. Past the leaf-pattern darkness of a tree there is an interior shadow on a window shade; he recognizes her. The shape of her head, the distinctive ducky haircut. Then another shadow, unexpected, swift, overtaking, overwhelming her; the shadows merge, the light flares as if the lampshade has been knocked off. Perry leans toward the window on the curbside trying to see better, but the lamp, apparently, is on the floor. Then it's off again, just as one of the window shades is disturbed and goes flying up. He has a blurred impression of something pale, like a bare foot, near the glass. But nothing more.

  Perry opens the door and gets out, disturbed, tingling all over. He sees somebody there in her bedroom, briefly, as the shade is lowered. Just a torso, an arm—a dark, perhaps gloved, hand.

  He goes running up the walk to the porch, boots clumping heavily on the floorboards. There has to be a doorbell, but he can't find it. The screen door isn't latched. The front door is not locked. Perry barges right in.

  "Shannon!"

  His mind is boiling, his heart lurching as if crippled by terror. His voice does not come out too strong. Almost a croak. He swallows, a foot on the first step of the stairway, calls again. Wake them all up, who cares? Something's not right here.

  "Shannon, it's Perry!"

  "Who?" A cross and sleepy voice, not Shannon's. From the top of the stairs. He can't see who's up there. "What are you doing here?"

  "I'm a friend of Shannon's. I was just driving by. I saw—somebody was in her room. Who are you?"

  "Allen Ray. Shannon's brother." His voice down to a whisper. "Shannon had a—nightmare. I put her back to bed. You'd better get out of here. I've got a gun in my room. So does my dad. You don't want to wake him up."

  Perry, suddenly not so sure of anything, takes his foot off the step. The sudden drop of blood from his overloaded brain leaves him dazed. He can't believe he's made a mistake, done something really stupid like this. But—

  "Is she awake? Could I—"

  "Keep your voice down." He's angry. "If you don't get out of here right now you're going to be in trouble. A lot of trouble."

  "All I want is to be sure—"

  A heavy sigh. "I suppose I'm not going to get rid of you that easy, am I?"

 
"I have to go to work. I'm late now." Shannon must have heard him, Perry thinks. She couldn't have gone back to sleep in the half-minute since he ran up to the house. Unless she was sleepwalking to begin with. Maybe that was it. The only thing to do is apologize, turn around and walk out—

  "You've really interfered. Now I've lost it. The entire score. I have to start over. I hope you're satisfied. Whatever your name is."

  "Perry. I'm sorry." Interfered? What score? Allen Ray sounds a little weird. Not like an ex-jock who works in a garage, races cars for a hobby. "Look, I'm going. Maybe you better not tell Shannon about this. It was just a mistake."

  "Come up and tell her yourself. She's not asleep. I'm going back to bed."

  "Come up—?"

  "I said it was okay, didn't I? I'll turn on the light for you." Perry hears the creak of flooring. "Damn. It's out. Come on anyway. I'll turn the lamp on in her room."