by David Martin
And with that, Quinndell suddenly jerks downward with his right hand, pulling the wire’s serrations through Lyon’s flesh, touching bone and electrifying Lyon, Quinndell with his weight heavily on the handles as he pulls down now with the other hand, the stainless steel wire making a grating, sawing sound, biting into bone, then down again with his right hand, Lyon scream-shrieking with a pain so severe that his will shatters, becoming as irretrievably lost as water poured out on the ground.
Quinndell pauses here, his glass eyes wet in sockets of red, those gaping horrors looking up in Lyon’s direction, waiting, watching him.
“Give her to me, John,” Quinndell suggests with the seductiveness of the Devil’s own whispering.
And Lyon does, eagerly.
CHAPTER 39
“Claire?”
Standing on the edge of the bathtub and holding the trapdoor open with one hand, Mary Aurora shines a flashlight around the attic space. She doesn’t want to be here, not at three in the morning, not knowing as she does what remains to be done before sunup.
The flashlight’s beam finds Claire in one of the corners, her skin so easily blending with the attic’s darkness that it seems what Mary’s flashlight has found is only that nurse’s uniform, empty but somehow animated.
“You have to come with me, Claire.”
She turns her eyes away from the light.
“John’s out in the car waiting for you.”
John’s alive? “Is he all right?”
“He’s fine. Listen, all we’re going to do is tie you and John in some shack not too far from here and leave you. By the time you get yourselves free, we’ll be long gone.”
“We? I know who you mean, ‘we.’ How can you work for that monster? Do you let him touch you?”
Mary thinks, it’s a long story, honey. “I have a gun.”
“You took him to my grandmother’s grave, I saw you.”
Mary puts the flashlight down and pulls a little silver thirty-eight pistol from the back pocket of her jeans. She holds it in front of the flashlight’s beam. “Do you see what I have here?”
“Don’t you know what he does to children? I can tell you what he did to me when I was a child.”
Mary is biting her lower lip. “Either you come down with me right now or I’ll go back outside and lead Dr. Quinndell in here and I’ll help him climb up into this attic and then he can deal with you.”
Claire hesitates only a moment before starting to make her way across the floor joists, telling Mary, “You must be so ashamed of yourself.”
Lyon doesn’t exactly remember being transferred from Quinndell’s car to the backseat of his own rental car, sitting there now with his hands tied in front of him as he runs through a casual inventory of his pain. His front teeth hurt in a vaguely fuzzy way, as if from a morning visit to the dentist, the puncture wound in his calf and the wounds from the pipe blows to his left shin are old aches too, like football injuries that act up now and then, and his scalded thigh is last week’s sunburn — with only his right shin, where the Gigli wire bit into bone, still hurting in the present tense.
He’s drugged of course. Drugged and broken, bound and tired.
Quinndell is in the front seat humming some show tune.
Whoever re-dressed Lyon in his dirty and torn clothing — he doesn’t recall that part either — didn’t put his shoes back on and it’s only now that he notices his feet are bare, wiggling toes to make sure both feet are indeed attached. He does remember Quinndell saying something to Mary about using the rental car because it has to be found at Randolph’s place, but Lyon doesn’t know or care to know what this means.
He leans over to rest his cheek against the glass of the back-door window just in time to watch Mary bringing Claire out of the cabin. Claire’s hands are tied at the wrist too, and she’s wearing a nurse’s uniform. Lyon is so unmoved seeing her that he doesn’t even raise his head away from the glass until Mary opens the door.
As soon as Claire is seated she loops her bound hands around Lyon’s neck, pulling him close while he tries to remember … yes, something he wanted to tell her, whispering “I’m sorry” into Claire’s ear.
Up in the front seat, Quinndell is whispering too. “Let’s go, Mary.”
After they’ve driven a mile into the woods, Quinndell turns around and tells Claire, “It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?”
Lyon watches her expression, trying to figure out if it is frightened or defiant.
“I take something of a proprietary interest in you,” Quinndell is whispering, “seeing as how I had the honor of deflowering you.”
No doubt about her expression now, furious. She asks Quinndell, “Did you get the coffin I sent?”
Momentarily nonplussed, Quinndell eventually manages a yellow smile. “It’s because I respect your powers that I have gone to such extraordinary lengths to acquire you this evening.”
“I’m wearing my grandmother’s uniform.”
Quinndell turns his blind eyes to Mary. “Is she?”
“Yes. Wearing it inside out.”
“Claire is still protecting me,” Claire says.
He spits out his whispered reply, “We’ll see.”
“Still out to get you!”
“We’ll see about that too.”
Lyon watches both of them, but inside he feels dead.
Claire raises her hands to touch his face. “What’s he done to you? He’s got you on drugs, doesn’t he? John, what happened?”
“Oh yes, tell her, John.”
Claire asks Quinndell, “Why are you whispering? Is it supposed to be scaring me?”
Lyon blinks several times. “Whispering because I almost choked him to death.”
“Good for you!” Claire exclaims and then, to avoid his injured mouth, she carefully kisses him on both cheeks.
From the front seat, Quinndell laughs. “Before you anoint him the hero,” he says, “you should perhaps hear the entire story. After his futile effort to attack me and once I had him subdued, your precious John begged me to exchange his life for yours. ‘I know where she’s hiding, take her, not me!’ Ask him, go ahead. Lover boy is no hero, my dear — he betrayed you most eagerly.”
Although horrified to hear this, Lyon makes no effort to correct Quinndell’s version. What’s the point? He did betray her eagerly.
They drive for another quarter of an hour before Claire breaks the silence by addressing Mary, “You could save us. Just stop the car. You can force him out, you’re the one with the gun. No matter what he’s paying you —”
Quinndell laughs and then chokes on that laughter, reaching quickly for his handkerchief and coughing into it.
Claire tells him, “I thought I would be terrified ever to see you again, to be in your presence, but now I realize you’re nothing, you’re pitiful. Banal. If you didn’t have people like Mary working for you —”
“But she does work for me,” Quinndell interrupts with a harsh whisper. “In fact, I could order her to stop the car right now and hold a gun on you so I could sample you again, for old time’s sake, and you know what, Mary would do it — wouldn’t you, Mary?”
She doesn’t reply.
“Mary?”
“Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“Yes, I would,” she says, thinking if she can only make it through until dawn, this horror show will be over once and for all.
Quinndell turns to face Claire again. “See? And your boyfriend there, he wouldn’t try to stop me either — would you, John?”
Lyon doesn’t speak but he thinks Quinndell is probably right, Lyon would do nothing to protect Claire. He’s all used up.
“John and I compared notes on you,” Quinndell says.
Lyon doesn’t have the energy to deny it.
“Men sometimes do that when they’ve shared an especially choice piece of ass, you’ll excuse my French. Not very gentlemanly of us, I realize —”
“I’d die before I ever let you touch me again.�
��
“That can be arranged too, my dear.”
“Mary!” Claire shouts. “Stop the car! Phase!”
“Oh, for godssake she’s not going to stop the car. Mary and I have forged a very intricate arrangement. In exchange for one year’s companionship and obedience —”
“Please don’t,” Mary begs.
“What’s the harm? Either we listen to Claire continue bleating about how you should help her escape or we get her to shut up by explaining your devotion.” Then he faces Claire and continues on in that strained whisper. “Mary has already received a bank transfer and tomorrow morning she’ll use it to withdraw a quarter of a million dollars from one of my accounts. But neither Mary nor I would want you to think she’s so avaricious as to sell her soul exclusively for money. No. Mary is motivated by a mother’s love.” He’s grinning. “She had a daughter out of wedlock twelve years ago and gave the precious child up for adoption.”
Mary is crying, Quinndell pointedly ignoring her.
“I used my connections in the field to find out who adopted the girl and where the family is living. I also acquired twelve photographs of the little darling — one taken on each of her birthdays. A really beautiful child. And when Mary has fulfilled her obligations to me I will turn over an envelope I keep in my safe, an envelope containing those twelve pictures and the little girl’s address. I believe Mary will be able to meet her daughter because it’s quite fashionable these days for adoptive parents to introduce children to their biological parents. The idea is to demystify them. And God knows that’s going to be the case when Mary’s daughter meets the whore who happens to be her mother.”
Mary can barely keep the car on the road, hating Quinndell and herself, crying for this daughter she has never seen, a daughter who has become an icon of justification: I’m doing this for her, Mary chants in her mind — make things right with her and then all this is somehow worth it.
“Mary is not going to jeopardize a quarter of a million dollars and the chance to meet her daughter for the likes of you,” Quinndell tells Claire.
And appreciating the truth of this, Claire sits back in her seat and takes Lyon’s bound hands in her own.
“Another thing your boyfriend told me,” Quinndell whispers. “Oh, John was quite talkative about you once I threatened him with a little pain. He said you made your appearance in a coffin. And Mary told me he had a severe bite wound on his stomach. If you two are into something really kinky, I’d love to hear about it.”
Claire keeps her eyes on Lyon’s.
“And why did you take John out to Barbara’s house? Did you know that I lived with those two women for a while after I was blinded? Did you?” He hates not being answered. “I wanted to learn something about how they managed such independent lives — and what I learned was that blindness is a handicap only in relation to other people’s sightedness. When the three of us were living there alone we weren’t handicapped, any more than you’re handicapped by not having a dog’s sense of smell or a bat’s radar. We became handicapped only when a sighted person was around. If I could blind the rest of the world I could reign again the way I did when I had my own eyes.”
Claire and Lyon say nothing.
“Are the two of you stunned into silence? John, please describe Claire for me. Last I saw her she was a scrawny girl, all arms and legs. Has she … blossomed?”
Claire shakes her head but Lyon, after looking at her for a long time, says, “Black.” His tongue is thick and disobedient. “Anthracite.” Forcing him to speak slowly, carefully. “Shiny black glass. Ob … sidian.”
“My,” Quinndell whispers mockingly.
“I wish she were even blacker.”
Claire continues shaking her head. “John, what did he do to you?”
At this Quinndell laughs aloud and turns around in the seat. Mary, still crying, is concentrating on driving as the doctor begins to hum “Some Enchanted Evening.”
With her bound hands, Claire undoes several buttons from the front of the nurse’s uniform. Because she’s wearing the uniform inside out, Claire has to reach inside to get to a pocket — where she withdraws the wax figure she fashioned in the attic and then leans forward to slip it over Quinndell’s shoulder, into his lap.
Startled by this, the doctor stiffens and shouts to Mary to tell him what it is, Mary looking back and forth from the road to Quinndell’s lap, explaining that it’s a wax doll similar to the one she found in that box on the doorstep.
Claire is chanting something as the doctor jerks around and screams obscenities at her, flinging the figure into the backseat, Claire and Quinndell livid with their mutual hatred, with the anger and the fear they possess for one another.
It is then that Lyon turns to look out the window into the darkness sweeping by, feeling totally docile. None of this has anything to do with him, he’s already completed his work for the night. Betrayal is exhausting, surely nothing more can be asked of him.
CHAPTER 40
“Dogs!”
“What?”
Having stopped the car, Mary stares at the scene illuminated by the headlights.
“Damn you, answer me!” Quinndell demands impatiently, still angry from his exchange with Claire, forcing his voice painfully above a whisper.
“Dogs. I thought they were … bodies. But they’re dogs, three of them, two lying on the ground by Carl’s patrol car, one hanging out the window. Blood everywhere.”
This description delights Quinndell, changing his mood instantly. “Goodness, I wonder what it looks like inside.”
Mary keeps both hands on the steering wheel, still staring out the windshield, waiting for orders.
Quinndell asks if she has the pistol.
“Yes.”
“Prepared to use it?”
She mumbles another yes.
“Then let’s escort our guests inside and find out what Carl’s big surprise is.”
Mary exits the car and opens a back door. Claire helps Lyon get out. The three of them stand there looking up at the lighted shack. It’s dark here in the yard, no wind tonight, the air heavy and hot, suggestive of an approaching storm front.
Quinndell is waiting by the front of the car. He asks Mary the time and she tells him it’s nearly four.
“Let’s hurry then. Wouldn’t want the sun to find us.”
Holding lightly to Quinndell’s elbow, Mary herds Lyon and Claire up the slope. Even under the influence of the painkillers Quinndell gave him, Lyon is unable to put his full weight on that left ankle. He has to lean heavily on Claire and is bewildered by being barefoot, trying to recall the last time he went barefoot outside. As a boy. Claire is staying very close to him, struggling to keep herself and Lyon upright.
A wild-eyed and red-faced Carl meets them on the porch. “I shot him, Doc! Nearly got killed by his dogs but I —” Then he looks at Claire, puzzled by the nurse’s uniform.
“Mr. Welby is dead?” Quinndell asks in a whisper. “You shot him with one of his own guns as I instructed — and he’s dead?”
Now it is Mary at whom Carl stares, as if she has the answer he needs.
“Carl?” Quinndell presses.
“The reason I called, Doc,” he says, lowering his voice in deference to Quinndell’s whispering, “is I ran into a little problem.”
But before the flustered Carl can continue, Quinndell orders everyone inside.
Across the middle of the main room are four six-by-six supports that were added some years ago to keep the sagging ceiling from falling, and to one of those uprights Randolph Welby is tied: sitting on the floor, his left leg wrapped in a bloody sheet, a rope under his arms and knotted to the back of the post. He’s still wearing the bandoliers and chaps, the cowboy hat jammed low on his head. Lyon recognizes him but says nothing; Mary and Claire can’t stop staring.
But Randolph Welby has eyes only for Dr. Mason Quinndell, the most beautiful man Randolph Welby has ever seen, though the hermit would never say this of course and, in fact,
wonders if his mother would consider it improper, Randolph thinking of a man as “beautiful.” It should be “handsome.” But as the hermit continues watching Quinndell, illuminated as the doctor is by the flattering light from the oil lamps Carl has kept burning all around the room, Randolph keeps coming back to beautiful.
The doctor showered and changed clothes after torturing Lyon. His pinstriped suit fits him perfectly, the lapels flat and no bulge in the material at the back of his neck either, his shirt so white that Randolph thinks there should be another name for it, something beyond regular white, the French cuffs glowing white at the doctor’s wrists. He is trim and perfectly postured, a strong face, his hair as black as the shirt is white, thick hair combed straight back with no part showing, curling jauntily above his ears and collar. His nose is long but without bumps, skin smooth — really, Randolph thinks, here is a man who looks how the king of England should look when he’s going around in regular clothes, that is, when he’s not wearing robes and crown, a man you’d have to call beautiful, that’s all there is to it.
“Now please tell me what happened, Carl,” Quinndell requests in a softly encouraging whisper.
“Like I said, nearly got killed by them dogs, had to fight my way up to the porch, and he was standing there waiting to ambush me, armed, so I had no choice, Doc, had to shoot him.”
“You mean you shot him with your own weapon?”
“Had to!” Carl is looking at Mary for support, for some sign of approval.
“Killed him?”
“Unh-uh.”
“Carl, please, I’m tiring of this guessing game.”
“He’s right over there against one of the pillars, all tied up so he can’t get away.” Carl glances toward the door to the back room. “But here’s the thing, Doc —”
“Introduce me to him.”
“Huh?”
“If Mr. Welby is conscious, please introduce me.”
The deputy takes Quinndell to the post. “He’s down sitting on the floor. I shot him in the leg, bleeding a lot but he ain’t dead, you can talk to him.”