Dreamthorp

by Williamson, Chet

  "You know what," he said, jerking roughly at his penis.

  "No . . . no . . . I—"

  Now she had it out of the holster and remembered that the hammer was on an empty chamber. She did not dare to cock it in case he heard the click, so the trigger pull would be greater than usual. But it wouldn't matter, not this close. If she could only bring it out and fire in time, if only she did not hesitate when the moment came...

  "You know, you cunt . . ." he said, passing the knife back and forth in front of his face, his tongue flicking in and out, his eyes fixed on her own—impossible not to see the lie there, she thought, impossible.

  "You know . . ." he said, "you know . . . you want . . . cut!"

  And then she had the pistol out from under the canvas, just as he rose off his toes and came toward her, and she fired, twice, quickly, at his chest, but he was already moving, and the bullets caught him low. The first tore through his erect penis, passed though his bladder, and lodged in the peritoneum. The second round smashed into and through the scrotum and creased the right buttock.

  The crash of the shots filled the tent, along with the smell of cordite, and Gilbert Rodman's face made a huge O of surprise and shock, and he fell onto his back like a turtle, the knife falling from his fingers. His arms and legs shot out stiffly, and then his whole body became limp and unmoving, except for the blood that ran from between his legs. It looked, Laura thought, like a red snake creeping out from inside him, like evil escaping his body to lodge in someone else.

  As sharply as what happened up until then was to etch itself into her memory, what happened afterward was as dull and murky as a dream. She threw on some clothes, ran out of the tent past the motorcycle from whose speakers the music still blared, started her car, and drove back to the police station in Saddle Junction, where she found that she had been wrong about the chief being the only officer in the town. A young man named Willis listened to her story. Then he called an ambulance, bundled her into his police car, picked up the chief, and they drove back to the campsite, siren screaming. Laura stayed in the police car while Willis and the chief, their guns drawn, went into the tent.

  The music had stopped. Kitty Soames and Gilbert Rodman were still there, but only Gilbert was alive.

  We never get quit of ourselves

  —Alexander Smith, Dreamthorp

  Gilbert Rodman did not die. He did not move or open his eyes. The first medics on the scene thought that he was in a deep state of shock and did what they could to stop his bleeding, while the sheriff and Willis treated Laura with a strange ambivalence. It was as though they felt that Rodman had deserved the worst for what he had done to Kitty, but when they saw the worst, it was more than they were prepared for. Laura overheard Willis talking to someone on the radio in the police car and caught the words, ". . . shot his goddam balls off, man . . ."

  Laura spent the night in the same hospital to which Gilbert Rodman had been taken. A matron stayed with her, for which she was grateful. She did not sleep at all.

  Even after Gilbert Rodman was out of danger, he did not wake up. The doctors could find no reason for the coma, as there was no head injury except for a small bruise on the temple, hardly the type of injury, they felt, to cause such a trauma.

  A brief hearing was held, at which it was ascertained that Laura had acted in self-defense, and the evidence was such that Gilbert Rodman, if and when he awoke, would be charged with Kitty's murder. Since there was no telling when Gilbert would wake up—if ever—Laura was permitted to return east with Kitty's body. She could not go to the funeral. It was as though her sense of loss was so great that she could not bear to share it, not even with Kitty's grieving parents.

  Yet with that loss was a sense of responsibility. She felt as though Kitty's death had been her fault, that if they had traveled on instead of stopping for the night at the place that the sheriff probably told every camper about, including Gilbert Rodman, Kitty would still be alive. The idea, irrational though it was, haunted her, and when she got home in the evening from work, she walked into the living room of her small apartment and remembered Kitty there, remembered Kitty talking and smiling and hugging her when they met. She saw Kitty in the kitchen or sitting at the dinette. The apartment was filled with memories of Kitty, memories that she could not bear to be continually confronted with, for they brought into her mind that other memory, the memory of that night in the tent, of that night when they had gone to sleep in each other's arms.

  Like a delicious sin, it tormented her, moving like a succubus into her thoughts as she lay in bed at night, unable to sleep, to descend into that dark, dreamless chasm where she could be free. She would feel Kitty in her arms and remember that embrace, that sweet moment of time before Kitty went into the cold, sharp embrace of Gilbert Rodman.

  And then she would hear the ripping of the tent, the sound of that music, and far away, on the edge of her mind, Kitty's screams.

  It was so hard to believe that what she had done was not responsible for what had happened to Kitty. There was, inextricably linked in her mind, the concept of her sin and Kitty's punishment. It went far deeper than responsibility for not traveling at night. In some part of her, Laura believed that Kitty had died because of what they had done together, that Kitty was punished with death, Laura with loss.

  She considered seeing a psychiatrist, but decided against it. She could never, she knew, tell anyone about loving Kitty. That would remain a secret. Beside her, only one other person knew, the man who had found them together.

  She was glad she had shot him. The only thing she wished was that she had killed him. Laura was not cruel. She had no desire for Gilbert Rodman to suffer. If she had killed him, he would not have suffered, and she would not have borne the fear of his waking and coming back to life. Coming for her. Coming with his knowledge and with the hate he must feel for her.

  The ironic thing was that she did not even know who she had mutilated and who she feared. Gilbert Rodman was not his real name, but what it was no one had been able to find out. His wallet held no Social Security card, no credit cards, no identification at all except for an Ohio driver's license made out to one Robert J. Mendoza. When a check was run, it was found that Robert J. Mendoza had been murdered, presumably by a hitchhiker, on a barren stretch of road between Republic and West Lodi seven months before. His wallet had been stolen.

  The F.B.I. did a computer search and found that there were forty-three people named Gilbert Rodman in the United States. They were, however, all accounted for. The Gilbert Rodman who had murdered Kitty Soames, and, in all likelihood, Robert J. Mendoza, was now referred to as John Doe, and his fingerprints and dental peculiarities were recorded and checked against police files nationwide but were not identified as belonging to any living person.

  So it was a nameless man Laura Stark feared, a man without a true name or an identity, without even consciousness. At least until this past week.

  Laura received the call at work on Monday. It was a Sergeant Chambers of the Wyoming State Police. "Miss Stark," he said in a gruff voice, seasoned with a smoker's hack, "I have some unpleasant news for you concerning the man you knew as Gilbert Rodman."

  As soon as he identified himself, she had known. She spoke before he could go on. "He's escaped."

  It seemed to startle him. "You know?" he asked her.

  "No. No, I didn't. I just . . . what other reason would you have for calling me?" Her heart was pounding, and Trudy was looking at her oddly. Laura forced a smile at her partner.

  "Well, I'm sorry to say so, Miss Stark, but you guessed right. Yesterday he regained consciousness. Apparently he kept it a secret, and last night, before anyone realized he was conscious, he murdered a doctor and drove away. We've located the abandoned car, and we're following his trail on foot. We should apprehend him soon, but I felt that I should call and let you know about the situation."

  "You think he'll be coming after me?" She tried to make it sound casual and unafraid.

  "I have n
o idea, Miss Stark. I would consider it . . . a possibility, however. But in his condition and all . . . Besides, we have quite a manhunt out for him. The whole state's been alerted, as well as Nebraska and Colorado. It would be very difficult for him to get through. Still, I felt you should be warned, since you did tell him where you lived."

  "Yes, yes, thank you, sergeant. Will you let me know if anything happens?"

  "Sure, Miss Stark, we'll let you know right away. I really wouldn't worry, though."

  "No. I won't."

  "Laura," said Trudy, after Laura hung up, "is it . . . that man? The one who. . ."

  "Yes. He seems to be alive and well. And free."

  "Those assholes!" Trudy said, fumbling in her desk drawer for a cigarette, as she always did when she was upset. "How the hell could they let him get away like that?"

  "I suppose they thought there was no danger. . .that they would notice him coming around. But they didn't."

  Trudy found her cigarettes and jammed one in her mouth, then started to search for matches. "Well, are they going to catch him?"

  Laura removed a small box of wooden matches from her blouse pocket and dropped them on Trudy's desk. "You left them in my car again."

  "Thanks." She lit up. "So are they?"

  "Oh . . . well, of course, I'm sure they will. That policeman sounded very confident."

  Trudy thought for a moment, puffing nervously on her cigarette. "Why don't you come home with me tonight?"

  "No, Trudy, that's not necessary."

  "You'd probably feel better."

  "No, really. I mean, even if that . . . maniac caught a plane and flew out here, which is not too damned likely in the condition he must be in, he thinks I still live in Lancaster—if he even remembers hearing that."

  "There are phone books, you know. He could find you."

  "It's not in the phone book. I've only lived in Dreamthorp for a few months."

  "Laura. . ." Trudy whined.

  "No. I'll be all right. Really."

  Just the same, she was glad she'd moved. Driving home, she toyed with the idea of going away for a few days, maybe to Philadelphia, but by the time she drove through the overhanging bowers of trees that marked the limits of Dreamthorp, she decided against it. The sad and terrifying memories that Gilbert Rodman (for she could think of him as no one else) had caused had driven her from one home already, and she would not let the fear of him drive her from another. No nameless madman was going to chase her out of Dreamthorp.

  The previous winter, her apartment had become unlivable, and when she realized that she was doing everything within her power to avoid going home to it, she decided that the time had come to move. Since she loved going to summer concerts in Dreamthorp and was fascinated by the tiny and unique community, she called a realtor with whom she occasionally played golf and asked her to check on available properties. Most cottages in the town were kept "in the family," if not in terms of blood relationships at least in terms of acquaintance, and it was difficult, if not impossible, for an outsider to make any inroads.

  But a month later the realtor told her that a small, two-bedroom cottage would be available in March and that she had persuaded the owner, a personal friend, to give Laura first look. Laura had fallen in love with the place, and, although it was small, it was far larger than her apartment.

  There was a covered porch that ran across the front of the house, with a low, latticework railing. Inside, the porch was paralleled by a front hall, with doors that led into the living room on the right and the dining room on the left. A kitchen was in the rear. Upstairs there were two bedrooms separated by a hall, and a roomy bath. The basement was open to the elements.

  Although the lot was small, and Laura's windows looked directly into those of the cabins on either side, it felt far more private than her apartment, due in large part to the trees. White pines reached up all around the cottage, and the needles of years past had made a permanent carpet on the ground. It was impossible to grow decent grass at most of the cottages in Dreamthorp because of the shade, but the needles were just as attractive in their own sylvan way, Laura thought, and they did not have to be mowed.

  Laura moved in at the beginning of March, and found that most of her furniture was too contemporary for the rustic interior. The house had been built in 1908, and bare wood was nearly everywhere—on the lintels of the doors, on the rails of the banister, as the molding where walls met ceiling. Laura sold most of her furniture and bought more from antique dealers south of Lancaster. The pieces cost considerably less than she had thought they would, for there seemed to be little demand for the kind of old but utilitarian furniture that Laura wanted. Her sole luxury item was a four-poster bed for which she had paid over two thousand dollars. Although some of the pieces were as recent as the forties, the whole bespoke the turn of the century, an impression further aided by the period prints that replaced the contemporary graphics that had hung on Laura's white apartment walls.

  She did not make a museum out of her cottage, however. Her living room boasted a twenty-five-inch Sony monitor and a state-of-the-art VCR, as well as a sound system with very unthirtyish Bose speakers, and her kitchen was bright, cheery, and glistening with modern appliances that contrasted pleasantly with the framed fruit box labels that hung above them. The place had become her home, something that her apartment, with its monthly rental and its people on the other side of the walls, had never been.

  Laura loved her house, and she loved Dreamthorp, and she told herself again, as she opened her door and inhaled the outdoorsy aroma of decades of wood fires, that she would not be driven from it by an as-yet groundless fear.

  Still, that evening she pulled all her blinds, and when she went to bed, she locked all the windows, despite the summer heat, turned on the air conditioner in her bedroom, and put a .38 revolver on the ornate bedside stand. She felt foolish about doing it, but there was no one there to see and it made her feel secure. A gun had stopped the man once. It could do so again. Even with the gun there, however, it took her a long time to get to sleep, and when she awoke she felt scarcely rested, as if she must have had particularly violent and energetic dreams which, as usual, she could not remember.

  Sergeant Chambers called three days later with the news. Gilbert Rodman, whoever he may have been, had been found.

  "They found him, Miss Stark," Chambers said, "on a little side road near Long Pine, in Nebraska. He's dead. The head was crushed in the fall, but . . ."

  "Fall?" Laura sat at her kitchen table. "I don't understand. How . . ."

  "He took his car—not his car, really, the vehicle had been stolen—he took it up to the top of a bluff, doused the whole insides, including himself, with gasoline, let the vehicle roll, and apparently lit a match just as he hit the edge of the bluff. A little kid was walking about a half mile away saw it happen."

  "But . . . are you sure it was him?"

  "He left a note. They found it at the top of the bluff. Said he couldn't bear it anymore, what he'd become—I suppose he meant after the shooting and all."

  "Yes, but are you sure it was him? I mean, was he identified?"

  Chambers hesitated. "Well . . . we feel pretty sure it was him. The car exploded when the fire hit the gas tank, so there wasn't much left. The hands were burned, so there were no prints, and the skull was pretty well crushed, so there was no way to make a positive ID from dental records either."

  The discussion of the details caused none of the nausea that Laura might have expected. On the contrary, she felt coolheaded and rational but filled with the desire to be sure. "Then you couldn't be certain it was him."

  "From what the pathologist was able to piece together, Miss Stark, the man had the same size and weight as Rodman. He also had the same blood type—we did get samples from charred blood. So if you're asking me for proof beyond the shadow of a doubt, no, we don't have that. But if you're asking me for enough proof to let you sleep good at night and never have to worry about this man again, I can say th
at yes, we're certainly confident that we do have that."

  Laura said nothing.

  "It was Rodman, Miss Stark. Believe me."

  She sighed. "All right, sergeant."

  "Miss Stark . . ."

  "Yes?"

  "I think perhaps if you read the note . . . I think that would help you believe it."

  "I . . . could you read it to me?"

  "It might be better if I sent you a copy."

  "That'll take time, and—"

  "The language, Miss Stark, it's pretty rough."

  "Oh. Well, I don't mind."

  "No, ma'am, but . . . well, I do. If you don't mind. I can get it to you by tomorrow. Overnight mail."

  Chambers was true to his word. Laura received the note on Friday afternoon at her office. It read:

  Fuck life fuck god fuck it all. I can't do this Was going to carve that cunt who did it But never get there not so far and won't be caught again. Cant go to jail like this no goddamm DICK Burn myself up Go to HELL in a big ball of fire And the DEVIL will give me a dick again, a dick of fire, a dick thats a KNIFE and when that CUNT goes to HELL for what she did to me then ill FUCK her with my FIRE COCK fuck her for all ETERNITY for ever and ever

  TELL HER! Im going first, but youll come LAURA! Ill see you in HELL so get ready for it Think about my new COCK think about a KNIFE in there where you FUCK WOMEN!

  Ill see you LAURA I LOVE YOU

  GILBERT RODMAN

  She felt filthy after she finished reading it. The photocopy had clearly reproduced the smudges, the thick, savage pencil strokes, even the rough texture of the paper Rodman had used. It was as though even the photocopy had been imbued with the mindless rage and frustration that Gilbert Rodman had meant to convey in this sad and terrifying message. In spite of herself, she read it again, then felt something churning in her stomach, working its way into her throat, and she made it to the bathroom just in time.

  "Laura?" Trudy called from outside. "Are you okay?"

  "Yes . . . yes," she choked out after the final spasm had passed. "I just . . . got sick." She coughed up the last pungent, bitter traces of vomit and blew her nose into a wad of toilet paper. When she came out, Trudy was holding the letter. She looked up at Laura, her face pale.