by Trevor Hoyle
Meacham opened a further door, which had a porthole of thick glass set in it. Kersh looked through into the chamber. Floor, walls and ceiling lined with cork. The chair, stoutly constructed of wood, was fastened to the floor with metal plates. Rubber seat cushion and backrest. Rubber mat behind the chair, another one in front, for the prisoner’s feet. Leather-covered clamps on pivots were fixed to the arms of the chair and there were two further clamps at ankle height.
The warden put on his glasses and took a document from his inside pocket. He glanced up at the clock. 11:43.
They stood in a silent group for two minutes. The doctor stared at his shoes. The priest stood with eyes closed, hands clasped together on his chest. When the finger jerked to 11:45 the warden unfolded the document, pushed his glasses firmly on to his nose, and cleared his throat.
‘I now charge that you, Frank Rudolph Kersh, having been tried and found guilty of murder in the first degree, shall suffer the due penalty as prescribed by the Penal Code of the State of Louisiana, namely death by electrocution. I, Jesse D Taverner, warden of the State Penitentiary, am hereby empowered by the office vested in me to authorise the prosecution of the law to the person above named.’
He put the document away and took off his glasses.
‘Have you any last request, Frank, before sentence is carried out?’
Kersh brushed back his thinning hair. Something felt wrong. He realised it was his shaven temples. ‘Cheeseburger and fries to go. Pile on the onions, easy on the relish.’
The warden made a small weary gesture and turned away. Two guards held Kersh by the elbows, guiding him through. Meacham waited by the chair, his arms folded. For a moment Kersh stood there, feeling foolish, not sure what was expected of him. He became aware of the priest standing by his side.
‘Would you like us to pray together, my son?’
Kersh looked up at the tall, gaunt figure. He tried a shrug. ‘Sure. Go ahead if it’ll make you feel any better.’
He didn’t make the connection right off. Then he did. Sure – all that mumbo jumbo May-Beth had fed him about the Messengers. This guy was one of them, maybe even the head honcho. Was this what they were offering, their Big Deal, just saying a few lousy prayers to spin out his final minutes? His daddy had done nothing but pray, and look where it had got him. Kersh blinked hard. Damned if he was going to start praying now, whatever he’d told May-Beth. Whatever he’d promised her in return for getting his rocks oft
Yeah, that’s what they’d like to see all right.
Frank Kersh on his knees, sobbing his heart out, shit scared, begging their two-bit forgiveness.
But he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. He’d go like a real man, like Sly or Bruce or Arnie. Afterward they’d say, with awed respect, ‘Never batted an eyelid. Nerves of steel, that guy. Terrific guts.’
‘Is your soul at peace, my son?’
Kersh looked up into the priest’s lined face. His milky eye flickered. He drew breath and held it. He’d been about to say, ‘My soul is my business,’ but the words wouldn’t come. Because he’d been expecting to see bleeding-heart compassion, a glow of gentle forgiveness; and instead he was chilled to the marrow of his bones.
‘You believe in life eternal. You do believe.’
The eyes of the priest, set deep beneath bony brows, bored into him. Flat, grey, cold. The face austere, masklike.
Kersh started to shake. He mumbled, ‘If I pray, Father, will I be saved?’
‘Of course, my son.’ The priest gripped his shoulders. ‘Even those who pray in the very last moment will be saved. And in your heart you know it.’
Eyes boring into him, hands holding him in a grip of iron.
That’s true, Kersh thought. One second can be a very long time. Longer than a human lifetime. Infinite. The words floated through his mind; they seemed utterly convincing, and he believed them.
Meacham shifted his weight. ‘Father, excuse me. But we have to get on with this. The utility company schedule the surge for two minutes past midnight. If you don’t mind…’
The priest’s hands pressing down on his shoulders, Kersh knelt before him. He felt strong bony fingers gripping his head, digging into the flesh of his scalp until it was pulled taut.
Kersh bowed his head. And prayed.
When the priest and the warden had left the chamber, Meacham and the guards secured Kersh in the chair, pivoting the clamps and tightening the leather straps over his forearms and shins. The doctor then applied a film of K-Y jelly to Kersh’s temples and lower calves and fitted the electrodes.
The doctor stood up, wiping his hands on a tissue. He hoped to God the electrodes wouldn’t fall off or burn out. That had happened before. He’d seen flames erupt from a man’s head. Sparks blasting out of every orifice. Taken three tries and fifteen minutes to do the job. People wouldn’t believe you could pump 2,000 volts through a person and still find a heartbeat. The hell you couldn’t.
Meacham was the last to leave. He pulled the heavy door against the rubber seals and pressed the handle home. He went into the observation booth and stood with the others, looking into the chamber through the one-way panel. The lights dimmed to red. Kersh was sideways on to them, head hanging forward slightly. Eyes open.
At one minute to midnight the countdown started.
In the chair, inside the dark-red chamber, Frank Kersh was listening to the only sound he could hear: the thud of his heart. The heavy, thick liquid pumping, pumping. It should have been speeding up, as the ultimate moment approached, but instead each beat was getting slower… and still slower.
Something buzzed near his head. A fly hovered and settled on his left hand. Kersh stared at it. If he was going to die, he reasoned, so was the fly. Fried fly. But what if the fly lived?
Thud, went his heart, like a slow, muffled drumbeat.
Kersh watched the fly intently. Shiny metallic blue-black body. Legs splayed out. Feelers rubbing together, like someone fastidiously washing their hands.
Thud. And slower still.
Kersh watched the fly.
At two minutes past midnight the switch was thrown.
Thud.
Cursing his stupid clumsiness, Cawdor knelt down and started to gather up the larger fragments. He frowned, squinting painfully, as myriad dazzling lights seared his eyes, reflected from…
Where?
There was only one source of illumination, a single fluorescent strip above the bathroom cabinet. His heart suddenly constricted, as if squeezed in a fist, and his breath seized up in his chest. The fragments in his hands seemed to come alive. They were blazing with an iridescent rainbow of light and colour and movement.
Cawdor let the pieces fall, or rather they just dropped from his weak, trembling fingers. He shivered, his bare chest chilled with cold sweat. He felt dizzy and faint.
A scimitar-shaped fragment caught his eye, a swirl of images shimmering across its surface, dissolving one into the other and then separating, like several movie films projected simultaneously on to the same screen. He stared, dry-mouthed, and a thought from nowhere flitted through his mind, like a blown scrap of paper down a dark windy street. Behold in this mirror –
Within the scimitar-shaped fragment he saw a sailing ship, moonlight gilding the sails with silver. A man and a boy on deck, the man carrying something heavy and lumpy. A faint splash in the darkness, and then silence –
The image shimmered and dissolved into an exploding flash of white light tinged with crimson. The sheared metal of a gaping hole. An arm in a blue sleeve waving frantically in the searing blast –
And now a face, white, ravaged, leaning back exhausted against some timber planking, the sea rushing and thudding outside. A thin dark figure came down a ladder and stepped into a congealing pool of stinking, scummy water –
The scene dissolved and became a tower block 2,000 storeys high, poking up out of a toxic swamp of industrial waste. At its apex, a glass-roofed penthouse ablaze with light. From the railed balcony a ma
n with thinning fair hair looked down, grinning –
Hunched over, Cawdor gazed numbly at the profusion of images. Each fragment, he now saw – not just the scimitar-shaped one – contained the same fleeting images. Each fragment contained the whole.
Unsteadily, he got to his feet. Swaying, he caught hold of the washbasin and held on grimly, clenching his teeth. The broken images glittered and shifted on the tiled floor, and it was as if the floor itself was moving, and with it the house, the entire world cast adrift from reality. What was happening to him? Had he gone out of his mind? He squeezed his eyes shut tight, hot breath shuddering in his throat. The mirror breaking – he remembered now – it came back to him in a flash what Doctor Khuman had said. Was this what the warning was all about? Had Doctor Khuman known that something like this was about to happen?
Whatever it was, it scared him witless. He daren’t even open his eyes in case the floor was pulsating with light and colour and movement. Give it a minute. Get a grip. It’s a migraine attack, he told himself: the flashing lights were a classic symptom. He took slow, deep breaths, supporting himself against the washbasin, the cold porcelain comforting and solid under his hand.
‘Jeff, what happened? Are you all right?’
Sarah stood in the doorway, her eyes large and worried, one fist curled to her chest. Cawdor allowed his gaze to drift slowly downward to the tiled floor at his feet, to where the shards of glass lay scattered, reflecting the strip of light above the cabinet.
‘It’s OK,’ Cawdor said, breathing deep. ‘No panic. I just broke a mirror, that’s all.’
Nothing.
Staring at himself in the bathroom mirror, Kersh presses his hand to his chest. No heartbeat. He’s somewhere, sometime between heartbeats. Incredibly – he can’t believe his luck – it has all come true, just as the Messengers promised.
And he hasn’t even had to sell his soul to the devil.
What is required of him, and for what purpose, he neither knows nor cares. Somehow he’s beaten the rap. Better still, he’s beaten the chair. So where is he now exactly – alive or dead? His last conscious thought had been of that fly on his hand. Thinking, Poor little bastard, you’re about to fry. That was it. Fried fly.
He can’t see it around anywhere. Must have escaped. That makes two of us, Kersh thinks exultantly.
He comes out of the bathroom, wearing just a black silk bathrobe, his bare feet sinking into the deep pile carpet. Windows surround him on all sides. Above, the glass-domed roof gives a view of the stars. He thinks it would be great to lie back and see a shooting star… and, the instant he thinks of it, a bright object arcs across the night sky.
Jesus, he couldn’t have wished for a better apartment. It’s like a dream come true. Carpeted steps leading down to a central well, with curved bench sofas in white fur. Low tables made of steel, embossed white leather and smoked-blue glass. A central TV, video and hi-fi console that comes up out of the floor when you point the infrared remote at it. On the upper level, a bar with red leather bucket seats on chromium stalks, bottles and glasses and silver shakers glittering under concealed spotlights, reflected in the mirror backdrop.
This is some swell pad. A place like this costs zillions. Only the high-rollers can afford it. And he’s finally made it. Frank Kersh, all the way from that bug-infested tenement in Brown Harbor, Biloxi, where you can cut the stink with a shovel.
For this, he reckons, they can have his soul. And welcome.
Smiling, Kersh strolls across to take in the view. No need for drapes this high up, because there’s nothing higher. The window slides silently back and he steps out on to the terrazzo-floored balcony, warm beneath his feet.
The city is spread out below him, a million lights sparkling like diamonds on blue velvet. It’s stupendous. It’s dizzying. It’s the most breathtaking sight he’s ever seen in his entire 38 years. The stars above and the lights below fill his universe, horizon to horizon, with dazzling splendour.
Kersh drinks it in. King of all he surveys. He knows, deep down in his heart, that this is everything he ever wanted, and everything he truly deserves. Even before it happened, he knew, positively knew in his bones, that one day it would be his. All that pimping and hustling and scratching around for nickels and dimes was just jerking off. He always knew there was something phoney about it. It just wasn’t him. Frank Kersh was destined – that was it, fated – to live this kind of life. It was just a matter of time before it happened. A matter of…
Time.
Why should that niggle him, like an itch you can’t scratch? He looks at his watch, but he isn’t wearing one. Those bastards in the pen took it away from him. There isn’t a clock to be seen anywhere. The apartment has everything, Kersh thinks, everything but time. What the hell. Maybe he doesn’t need it any more. When you’ve got all this, who’s counting seconds?
He takes a peek over the rail. Down. A long way down. The perspective narrows to an infinite point, deep in the dark canyons of concrete. Too far to see movement, even traffic. But down there, he knows, people are sweating and toiling and scurrying around like ants. Trying to make a buck. Trying to make something work for them. Lifting their snouts now and then to sniff the stratosphere, eyes gleaming with dreams of what it must be like to make it out of the heap, the herd, crawl to the peak of the dunghill… and live high up there in a glass penthouse on top of a granite tower.
Many are called, Kersh thinks with gloating satisfaction, but few are chosen. Tough crud, assholes. It isn’t that you had it and blew it. You just never had it. And it’s terrific. Never know what you missed. Because you ain’t gonna get it. Not a sniff. All for me. I’ve been chosen, so suck on that.
Time.
He can’t shake off that niggle. It bothers him. It chafes at him. Like something crucially important you’ve forgotten to do and can’t for the life of you remember what it is.
He could use a woman right now. A sweet, warm, accommodating woman.
And there she is (Kersh can hardly believe it), swaying towards him along the balcony. A pale vision swathed in chiffon. Large tearful eyes and quivering lower lip. She’s about to ask him something, this drifting vision, and then doesn’t. The question hangs on her moist trembling lips. But it never comes. Her eyes are huge, deep, dark, asking the unspoken question.
Kersh leans an elbow on the rail and strokes his chin. He slightly closes his milky eye, both to hide it and as a seductive signal.
‘Hi, Sue Ellen.’
‘Hello, Frank.’
‘You’re looking good.’
‘Oh, Frank!’ she says, clutching her thin white throat.
Kersh straightens up, squaring his shoulders. ‘Anything wrong?’ he asks with a frown. ‘Hey. Come on now.’ He draws in his stomach. ‘What is all this?’
She gives a convulsive sob.
‘What is it, honey? You can tell me.’
‘You’ve always been good to me, Frank. You’re the only person I can trust.’
‘Sure,’ says Kersh easily, grinning.
She comes closer, biting her moist lower lip. She spreads her arms wide, fingers splayed.
‘Hold me.’
Kersh pulls her to him, a little roughly, because he knows that’s the way classy dames like to be treated. Tough and tender. He breathes in her perfume, a fragrant cloud which makes him desire her, this instant. Right here and now.
But she presses her scarlet-tipped hands to his chest and arches away from him. What’s the matter with the broad?
‘You a tease or what?’ he asks her.
‘Oh no, Frank.’
‘Come on then. Let’s see a little action.’
Maybe this is the wrong thing to say. Maybe he’s overstepped himself, because he feels her stiffen. But her resistance only sharpens his eagerness. He’s ready to take her. More than ready.
Kersh rotates his pelvis, watching her face. He loves how these stuck-up types pretend not to know what’s going on, yet all the time, underneath that cool, fragile e
xterior, they’re hot as bear-cats, really can’t wait to get rutting. It’s just that they’ve got to pretend. They want to be taken by force, overpowered, as if they’re bewildered and a little shocked by what’s happening. He knows that. He’s been around the block a couple of times.
So let her play her little game. He’s happy to oblige, knowing the pleasure is going to taste all the sweeter.
‘Like something to drink, honey?’
‘Uh-huh.’ Sue Ellen gazes at him from underneath her lashes. ‘Can we go inside, Frank? We’re so high up, I get giddy.’ She flutters in his arms, glancing down at the million sparkling lights. ‘But I’m glad I’m here. I feel safe with you.’ She nuzzles her head to his chest. Her whisper is like a sigh. Take care of me, Frank. Please.’
Please. Begging for it now.
Kersh intends to take care of her, damn sure.
Arm in arm, they step inside. Sue Ellen drifts down to lie on a couch, reclining like a pale-petalled flower with a frail stem, while Kersh goes to the bar. He’s so horny it’s almost embarrassing, with only the sheer silk robe for concealment. Not to mention a mite uncomfortable.
He mixes the drinks, knowing exactly what she’ll like, and takes them down, ice cubes clinking in the tall glasses. They toast each other silently and drink, looking deep into each other’s eyes. Expansive and relaxed, Kersh cradles Sue Ellen while he reaches out and thumbs the remote, raising the central TV console, and switches on.
Trumpets ring out. A sombre voice intones, ‘Welcome to our satellite and cable subscribers everywhere. May the blessings of the Messengers be upon each and every one of you!’
Oh no. No thanks. Not more of that religious crap. Kersh can’t stomach it. He hates to be preached at. These guys just want to take all the fun out of life.
What he’d really like to see, Kersh decides, is a live Elvis special. Beamed in direct from, say, London. Elvis never visited England, but, there again, he oughtn’t to have died when he did – and, as Kersh is calling the shots, he didn’t.
Kersh switches channels just in time to catch the opening sequence. A spotlight stabs through the darkness and picks out a slim, lithe, young-looking Elvis dressed all in black leather loping on stage. The King curls his lip and flashes his famous leer at the camera. Kersh settles back. With Sue Ellen cuddling close, he dips his hand into the popcorn bowl, curls his lip and leers back at him.