Strange Prey

by Chesbro, George C. ;

  “You wanted to see us, Mrs. Terrault?”

  “Yes,” Emily said, then hesitated. She had intended putting on an act, but now discovered that the fear she felt was not at all feigned. She suddenly pushed back her chair and stood. “I have decided to do nothing about Kathy’s grades. Now, do you still intend to kill me?”

  Heath and Kathy Eaton glanced at each other. They seemed confused.

  “We don’t know what you mean, Mrs. Terrault,” Heath said quietly.

  The girl reached out and touched Emily’s arm. “Do you feel all right, Mrs. Terrault?”

  “Maybe you didn’t hear me, Kathy,” Emily said, backing away. “I am not going to help you by raising your grades, no matter how much you threaten me. As I told you the other day, in my class you will get exactly what you earn.”

  “I don’t know what you mean by ‘threatening you,’ Mrs. Terrault. As for my grades, I know how fair you are and I know I’m getting exactly what I deserve. I’m just going to have to work harder from now on. I know that. Isn’t that right, Heath?”

  “That’s right, Kathy.”

  “Kathy,” Emily whispered, “just the other day you and your brother threatened to kill me. You know you did.”

  Emily watched in amazement as tears began to roll down Kathy Eaton’s cheeks. Heath stepped in front of his sister.

  “Why are you trying to frighten us?” the boy said. “You made my sister cry.”

  Emily glanced helplessly back and forth between the faces of the two children. They were so good at what they were doing. Even Heath’s tone had changed to that of a frightened boy; it was not at all the voice she had heard several days before, or the voice she would hear many hours later.

  The insistent ringing tore through the early morning silence. Trembling, Emily picked up the receiver and held it to her ear.

  “Mrs. Terrault? This is Heath.”

  “I know who it is.”

  “I just wanted you to know that we’re not stupid. We’ll never talk to you in school again, and this is the last time I’ll phone. That’s just in case you have a tape recorder and know how to use it.”

  “Heath! Listen to me, Heath! You’re sick! Kathy’s sick! Both of you need help Let me help you!”

  “Look, Emily, we’re not the ones who just got out of a nut house, so you’d better just shut up and listen. The only help we want from you is for you to change Kathy’s Social Studies grades like we asked you to. You haven’t so far because you don’t believe we’ll do what we say we will. That’s a mistake.”

  “Where are you, Heath?”

  “I’m in a phone booth across the street from my cottage. By the time you hang up and call St. Catherine’s I’ll be back through the window I came out of, in bed. So don’t bother. In the meantime you’d better check out your car.”

  “My car?”

  “It’s shot. The tires and upholstery are slashed, and all the wiring ripped out. There’s also ten pounds of sugar in your gas tank and carburetor. My opinion is that it’ll be cheaper to buy a new car than to try and have that one fixed. No charge for the advice.”

  “Why, Heath? Why?”

  “Because you’re so stupid, Mrs. Terrault! Emily” The boy’s voice was shrill now, almost hysterical. “All of you, you have such little minds! And you think that you have the right to control people like Kathy and me!”

  “Heath, you’re mad!”

  “Tomorrow, Mrs. Terrault.” The voice was calm again.

  “Heath-!”

  “No! No more talk! Tomorrow! That’s the last day. After that we’ll do the same to you as I did to your car. Then we’ll go cry on that moron psychologist’s shoulder about how shocked we are by your death, and how we loved you even if you did always mark Kathy unfairly. Think about it, Mrs. Terrault, and sleep well.”

  “Over a grade?!”

  “It’s not just a grade, Em,” Sykes said, leaning back in his leather chair that always squeaked, and propping his feet up on the desk. “After all, you must admit that their logic is impeccable. In four years, this quarter grade could make a difference of, say, a tenth of a point, possibly enough to alter their class ranking. After all, they want to go to Harvard, and they’re too smart to underestimate their competition.”

  “But to kill”

  “From what you’ve described to me, the Eaton children both have sociopathic personalities. To compound the difficulties, they’re both extremely intelligent. You see, they’ve mapped out their whole lives, their goals, like a chess problem, and they’re the only major pieces on the board. Everyone—everything—else is a pawn. A sociopath does not feel as you and I feel. It is quite conceivable that, given enough provocation, those children would kill you with no more thought than you might give to kicking a stone out of your path.”

  Emily shook her head. “I still don’t understand. They’re only children.”

  “There is a definite pattern to physical and psychological growth, Em. The pattern of physical growth we can see, while we can only feel the effects of psychological growth. An infant is a raging bundle of need, pure id, the center of the universe. Gradually, the pattern grows as the ego—the “I”—develops, and the ego is perceived in terms of others. In other words, a child knows that he exists as a human being because he sees other human beings. But this does not make him civilized. The child will not be truly civilized until he can empathize, to a degree, with other people’s pain and wants. Contrary to the public image, a small child is a veritable savage who would gladly kill another in a moment of rage if that other child somehow stood in the way of something the first child wanted very badly. Of course, he doesn’t have the strength, and his goals—and his rage—are very short-lived. This allows time for the child to develop a superego, a conscience, if you will, which will modify his behavior toward other people. In a sociopathic personality, the pattern has been broken. How, we can only guess. In this case, the ‘how and why’ isn’t important. If what you say is true, you’re probably in a great deal of danger. You may have become a special challenge to them.”

  Emily closed her eyes, and then slowly spoke the words, as if exorcising the demons that had plagued her the past week. “Do you think I’ve imagined all this?”

  “I don’t know, Em,” Sykes said easily. “What are your thoughts on the subject?”

  Emily reached into her pocketbook, took out a neatly folded piece of paper and handed it to the psychiatrist. Sykes opened it, studied it, and then glanced up quickly. “This is-?”

  “Mrs. Elizabeth Eaton. Heath and Kathy’s mother.”

  “You’ve seen her?”

  “Yesterday. I took a day off from work, rented a car and drove upstate to see her. I got her address from records at the home. I told them I was calling on school business. She’s a strange woman, broken, living alone. She was very happy to have someone to talk to. We talked all day.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Her children.” Emily paused, trying to think of some easy way to phrase what she had to say next. There was none. “Mrs. Eaton thinks that Heath and Kathy killed her husband; their father.”

  Sykes rose, walked to a window and drew back a curtain. “Did she say so?”

  “Not in so many words,” Emily said, rushing now, once again feeling panic whispering in her ear. “But I knew that was what she was telling me, in her own way. What woman in her right mind would accuse two children—young children—of hacking their father to death?”

  “Exactly.”

  The word was spoken softly, but it came at her like a cannon shot. Emily whimpered and put her hand to her mouth, but she would not be denied. She knew what she had heard. “There’s my car! It’s still sitting in the parking lot.”

  “Along with three others wrecked in the same way, if I remember your story correctly. If Heath did do it, he went to the trouble of making it look like a random act.”

  Emily slumped in her chair, exhausted, beaten.

  “What do I do, Doctor?”
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br />   “Change the mark, of course.”

  Emily looked up. Sykes had turned from the window and was gazing steadily at her. “I didn’t say I didn’t believe you, Em. It really doesn’t make any difference, at least not at this point. Maybe we’ll find out more about that in therapy. For the time being, we must assume that one of two things is true: either you are imagining this business with the Eatons, or you are not. If you are imagining it, then no harm will come in any case from changing Kathy’s grade. If you’re not imagining it, well …”

  Sykes left the sentence unfinished.

  “What then?” Emily whispered.

  “Then I suggest that you take a leave of absence for the rest of the year, until Heath and Kathy Eaton are transferred to the high school.”

  Emily was astonished to find herself shaking her head. “I can’t. They killed a little girl. Maybe they’ve killed more. Maybe they’ll kill again.”

  “If so, there’s nothing you can do about it, Em. They not only won’t believe you, they’ll destroy you.”

  “You’re talking about other people.”

  “Yes, Em. I would have thought that two years of therapy would have taught you that evil doesn’t wear a sign around its neck. Just because you see evil doesn’t mean that others will; sometimes they can’t, sometimes they choose not to. In this case I’d say it’s a lot of both.”

  “I can’t just leave them free to kill again.”

  “I’m sorry, Em, but I can’t think of any other option. Can you?”

  The snow was gone, chased by spring’s laughter. Outside the window, down on the athletic field, a lone runner bobbed along the border of trees, nimbly skirting the puddles. Emily turned from the open window. The twins were waiting beside her desk.

  “Thank you for coming in after school to see me,” Emily said. “Heath, I know you have track practice. I won’t keep you long.” She smiled. “First, I’d like to compliment both of you on your work the past two quarters. You’re by far the best of my students.”

  It was true. Since Emily had changed Kathy’s disastrous first-quarter grades, both children had been model students, earning straight A’s. Since then, aside from the stiff formality that was a part of the uneasy truce of silence they maintained, it was as if the incidents earlier in the year had never happened. Emily decided to probe.

  “Kathy, you never did tell me why you were so upset at the beginning of the year.”

  “That’s right, Mrs. Terrault, I didn’t.” The girl was making an effort to sound unruffled, but there was an edge to her voice. There had been no warning that she would be forced to play the role of belligerent, and she was having trouble shifting emotional gears.

  “Was it Margie Whitehead, Kathy? Was it because you might have felt just a little bit of guilt at killing another human being?”

  The girl started to whimper, but her eyes remained dry.

  Heath was more convincing. “Why are you trying to scare us, Mrs. Terrault? You’re starting to say funny things again.”

  “It doesn’t really matter, you know,” Emily said matter-of-factly. She went to her desk and sat down behind it, folding her hands in front of her.

  “Mrs. Terrault,” Heath said, “I have to go to track practice, and Kathy has to be home early. May we go, please?”

  “Did I ever tell you why I was confined to a mental institution?” Emily said softly. The two children stared back at her, and she smiled again. The Hunter and the Hunted, with the roles continually shifting. But the children did not move. Emily had known they wouldn’t, for a new factor had been added to an equation they had thought solved, and they would need time to evaluate it to their complete satisfaction.

  “I could not tolerate evil,” Emily continued quietly. “More precisely, I could not tolerate the idea that there was so little I could do about the evil I saw. I was really quite pathetic. When I read of a starving child, I could not eat my meals. If I heard a news report of families without heat in their homes, I couldn’t face my own blankets. I won’t dwell on my past, because I’m not proud of it. I was a very sick woman. Eventually it got to the point where I couldn’t function at all. When I wasn’t crying, I was breaking things in a blind rage. I lost my husband because of my sickness, and eventually I was hospitalized, as you know. Finally I learned—accepted would be a better term—that the best most people like myself can do is to function themselves as good men and women.”

  “Why are you telling us all this, Mrs. Terrault?”

  “I’d like to show you two something,” Emily said, opening her purse. She took out a packet of photographs and spread them across the desk. “These are some pictures of the institution where I stayed. Look at them.”

  The children remained where they were. Kathy had begun to cast anxious glances at her brother, who continued to stare at Emily. A smile tugged at the edges of his lips but never quite materialized.

  “You should look at them,” Emily said. “You’ll see that it’s really quite a nice place. Then you’ll understand why I won’t mind going back there. You see, Heath and Kathy, I’m going to have to kill you.”

  “Boy, Emily,” Heath said, “you really have flipped out.”

  “Yes, Heath, I’m sure that’s what everyone will think. I’m counting on it.” Emily opened her drawer, took out the pistol and pointed it at them. She needed both thumbs to pull back the hammer, but the hand holding the gun was steady. “You have no idea how much trouble I had getting this thing,” she said casually. “But then, practicing was fun.” She raised the gun. “I hope it won’t hurt. I truly do.”

  Heath seemed frozen, his mouth half open. His hands trembled. The tears in Kathy’s eyes were real.

  “They’ll kill you if you do this, Mrs. Terrault. You know they will.” Heath’s voice cracked and he too began to cry. “No woman in her right mind …”

  “Precisely, Heath. No woman in her right mind would kill two children. But I’m not in my right mind, am I? Certainly that ‘moron psychologist’ friend of yours doesn’t think so. No, only you and I will know how sane an act this really is, killing the two of you. It’s simply something that must be done, precisely because there is no alternative. I would gladly die, if need be, but even that isn’t necessary, not with my background. I’ll be committed. I have a good psychiatrist, and with a little luck I might even be sent back to the same place. Of course, I won’t have as much freedom, and it may take me longer to be ‘cured’ this time, but at least I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that for once in my life I was able to do something about a particular evil.”

  Heath opened his mouth to yell.

  “Don’t bother,” Emily said easily. “Everyone’s gone to the middle school for a faculty meeting, and the janitor’s half deaf.”

  “Mrs. Terrault?” The girl’s voice was barely audible. Emily swung the gun around until it was pointed at the small, white forehead. “Please, Mrs. Terrault, I don’t want to die.”

  “Neither did Margie Whitehead, Kathy. Neither will God knows how many other victims, people the two of you will kill or maim unless I kill you first. You see, Kathy, your tears mean nothing to me … because I have seen your true face. Besides, even if I decided not to kill you, you’d find a way to kill me.”

  “No, Mrs. Terrault.” Heath had come forward and placed both hands on her desk. Emily swung the gun around and he backed away. “We wouldn’t, Mrs. Terrault. I promise we wouldn’t. We’d confess, and they could send us to a hospital.”

  Emily laughed. “Who would believe you, Heath?”

  “We’ll make them believe us! I’ll tell them about your car! I’ll tell them about how we planned it so that Margie’s death would look like an accident! I’ll—”

  “Be quiet, Heath,” the girl said suddenly. “She doesn’t believe you. She knows better.” Emily let the girl come closer. “I know you’re not going to believe me, either, Mrs. Terrault, but … I’m … I think I’m sorry we killed Margie. And I’m sorry we … killed … our father.”

/>   “Did you kill your father, Kathy?”

  “Yes,” the girl said after a long pause, “but he wasn’t our real father. I know he wasn’t—and he hated us. When we killed him it was like … playing a game.”

  Emily pointed the gun squarely between the girl’s eyes. Kathy’s face was completely drained of blood, something carved from marble. Heath sat down hard and retched.

  Emily laid down the gun, which was unloaded, reached into her drawer and turned off the tape recorder. She was filled suddenly with a dissonant harmony of laughter and tears. But hysteria was an old friend, and she knew it would pass.

  She rose and walked to the window. Outside, a light rain was falling, washing down the afternoon. “I don’t know how successful your therapy is going to be,” she said, “but I hope this experience will get you off to a good start. Terror isn’t a nice feeling, but it’s better than nothing.”

  She heard the door close softly, and then the easy click of a large man’s footsteps. Emily smiled. Suddenly the room was filled with a warm, comforting presence. The terrible tension had almost made her forget that she wasn’t alone, and had not been.

  “I think Dr. Sykes will want to talk to you now,” she said softly.

  THE SNAKE IN THE TOWER

  The glass door opened hard and Burt Abele shivered as he passed into the steamy heat that kept at bay the winter cold on 8th Avenue, The sudden warmth flushed his face and stirred the alcohol in his stomach. There was a heavy odor of cooking hamburger and onion.

  It was always the same, day after night after day. Go to work on that cursed elevator; up down, up down. Leave work, drink, eat, go home and sleep, wake up furry-mouthed, go to work; MOVE DIRECTLY TO JAIL DO NOT PASS GO; up, down, up, down.

  Only the weekends were different. Then Burt would drink all the time to kill the feeling, slow the hours leading relentlessly forward to Monday when the mechanical jaws of the elevator would fold him back into his own personal hell.