As it turned out, he couldn't. Gilbert was not looking his best. The jaunt across Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania had not been an easy one. He had not wanted to kill and had not done so. But since killing his victims was the only way that Gilbert felt secure enough to rob them, he had stolen nothing and had eaten little on the way, conserving his money, and slept either while he was riding or by the side of the road, far enough off the shoulder so that he would not be spotted by the police.
But here he was at last—the Holy City to which his pilgrimage had finally brought him—Lancaster. The dwelling of the one he had thought of as the Lesser Bitch but who now had assumed all the qualities of the Great Bitch herself, so that in Gilbert's mind she had begun to exist as simply the Bitch.
The Bitch and be damned.
Gilbert had no plans beyond Laura Stark's death. It was the only thing he had lived for, and now, for the first time, he looked beyond it.
What would he do when she was gone? What would he live for? If they caught him or if he died with her, that would be all right. But now on this late summer evening, walking along the highway, cars darting past, their radios blaring, Gilbert felt for the first time that there was life after death, for what he had suffered at Laura's hands was death, sure enough. But he had overcome it. Death was swallowed up in victory, or at least would be once he got his hands on her and into her.
And then? He had learned that there was more to killing than the physical, and he supposed there always had been. But he had never noticed it before, because the physical response had always been so overwhelming, so deliriously delicious.
Things were different now. Now, when he killed, he felt the power of his mind, not his cock, and that power seemed so great in comparison that he was grateful to Laura for opening the door, letting him see the light. Now when he killed, he could feel the power inside him, feel it surging out of him, across the sky, into the universe, as bright as lightning, loud as thunder. He could feel the great, hot length of it as it crossed the miles, even spanned the years.
Oh yes, Master of Space and Time, that was him all right. And he had arrived. He was there.
Hello, Laura.
But where the hell was she? Lancaster, even though a small city, was big enough that he couldn't go door to door asking for her. He stopped at a phone booth and looked in the directory. God, he thought happily, you're on my side after all. There it was as big as life—STARK LAURA 1367 Barevl Pk.
The number followed, but he didn't need the number. He wasn't going to call her to let her know he was coming. No, t would be much nicer, and a lot more fun, to surprise her.
Boo, Laura.
Gilbert made his way to downtown Lancaster and bought a map of the city at a small newsstand that seemed to specialize in lottery tickets. He sat outside on the wheelchair ramp, and in the fading light of dusk found that Bareville Pike was back in the direction he had come. The fact did not make him angry, for he wanted it to be fully dark by the time he went to the place Laura lived. To help kill the time, he went into a little diner next to the newsstand and had a sandwich, soup, and coffee.
While he ate, he took out his list, the list he had kept for Laura, and amused himself by thinking back to each one of them, finding new memories, recalling screams for mercy, the sound of flesh parting, moans, whimpers, screams. He did not realize that he was chuckling until the man sitting two stools away from him mumbled something to himself and shook his head.
Gilbert looked at the man, a short, wizened black man with gray-white hair, and grinned. The man didn't grin back but kept mumbling to himself, and Gilbert thought that maybe something was wrong with the old man's mind. Jesus, what a shame, Gilbert thought. It must be awful to be crazy.
When he went back outside, it was fully dark, the street illuminated only by the hot, bright lamps and the headlights of passing cars. Gilbert started walking toward the perimeter of the city again, and in forty-five minutes reached the apartment complex that was 1367 Bareville Pike.
There were three red brick buildings arranged around a central court. They were each two stories, and white pillars fronted them. From the layout, Gilbert assumed that there were eight apartments in each building. As he walked closer, he could see that the ground floor apartments had their own individual entrances, while those on the second floor were accessible by a common stairs in the building's center.
He took the building on the left first. Two of the ground floor apartments had Big Wheels and bicycles in front of them, so he dismissed them immediately. He walked up to the mailboxes that hung outside the others, and read the names. Neither was Laura's.
Then he went inside the door to the stairway and read the names on the four mailboxes, but Laura's was not among them. He did the same with the other buildings, but Laura's name was not there.
"Where are you, Laura?" he asked the night as he stepped out of the last stairway. A noise made him jerk his head around, and he saw a dog, no longer young enough to be called a puppy but not yet fully grown. It was of no identifiable breed. Its hair was a long tangle of brown and white, its ears were as floppy as a spaniel's, its eyes sparkled with the excitement of youth, and its tail wagged fiercely at Gilbert.
Gilbert looked around but saw no one. He and the dog stood alone in a pool of darkness. "Hello, boy," he said gently, not wanting to scare the dog away. "How are ya, huh?"
He knelt and held out a hand. The dog came closer, sniffing at Gilbert as though he were an old friend.
"Attaboy. C'mon . . ."
The dog advanced, and Gilbert reached out and grabbed its collar, drawing it to him. He waited for a moment, but the dog kept wagging its tail, panting, looking at Gilbert with friendly, trusting eyes.
Gilbert held the collar with one hand, patted the dog's head with the other, and then put his face against the dog's furry head. It felt soft and warm, and Gilbert released the collar, put his arms around the young dog, and wept.
When he was finished, he wiped his eyes on his sleeve, and scratched the dog between its ears. "I wish I had something for you, fella. A treat or something."
He stood up, leaned over to pat the dog again, then walked away. He would go back downtown and find a cheap hotel where he could finally get a good night's sleep in a bed that didn't have dirt under it.
He awoke the next morning in his bed in the James Street Hotel, a little hole in the wall that had taken cash in advance and no questions asked when he signed the register John Smith. After checking out, he went to a phone booth, called directory assistance, and asked for the number of Laura Stark.
"I'm sorry, sir," the operator's voice droned. "There is no listing for a Laura Stark in the Lancaster exchange."
So what did she do? Change it to unlisted? Had he simply gotten an old phone directory the evening before? He checked the directory in the booth, found Laura's number again at the Bareville Pike address, and dialed it. It rang one time, and he heard a recorded message that stated that the number he had dialed was no longer in service. Ignoring the admonition to recheck the number or dial again, he hung up the phone and kicked the door, causing the booth to shudder.
He thought savagely for a moment, and then remembered. The girl he had loved before Laura woke up . . . Kitty Soames, that was it. It was a long shot, but it might work. Of course, the risk was that the Soames survivors might decide there was something fishy going on and call Laura. So he had to be sincere.
He could do that, he thought. He was very good at being sincere.
There was only one Soames listed in the Lancaster exchange—SOAMES JOHN J. Gilbert looked at the wristwatch he had taken from Robert Marczak several hundred miles and what seemed like a hundred years ago, and saw that it was 9:47. That was good. It meant that Soames, John J., would probably be at work in his office somewhere and Mrs. Soames, John J., would be home alone. Women were far less suspicious about some things.
She answered on the third ring. Just her hello told Gilbert that she was a rich bitch country club twat who could
count the last time she'd been laid in decades.
"Hello, Mrs. Soames?" Gilbert said, shyly and a bit tentatively.
"Yes?"
"Are you the Mrs. Soames who was, uh, Kitty's mother?"
A pause there. He had hit the right one. "Yes." Very quietly she said it.
"Mrs. Soames, my name is Bob Andrews." Bob. There was something bluff and honest about Bob. And Andrews had WASP written all over it. Just like Archie. Red hair, freckles, bow tie, wouldn't hurt a fly. "I'm a friend of Laura Stark's, but I've been out of the country on government business for a while." The government—that was a good touch. The woman had to be Republican. "Laura wrote to me shortly after that . . . terrible thing that happened to your daughter. But I wasn't able to communicate with her after that, and I've come back to the area to visit my folks and thought I'd try to see her, but I find she's moved, and gee, I really don't know how to get in touch with her. You were the only other person I thought might know where she would be."
The woman didn't say anything. Oh shit, Gilbert thought. What is it? Did I say something wrong? Was the gee just a little too fucking sweet to be believed?
Then he heard her voice but was unable to understand what she had said. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Soames, but I think we have a bad connection. Could you repeat that?"
"Laura moved away from Lancaster." The voice was louder now, but it shook, as if unpleasant memories were being unearthed.
"Oh, I see," Gilbert said with sympathy. He had no idea why he should sound sympathetic, but the woman's tone of voice seemed to call for it. "Do you have her current address? Or her phone number?"
"I don't have her number, no, but she moved to Dreamthorp."
"Dreamthorp, oh sure," Gilbert said, although he had no idea whatsoever of where or what Dreamthorp was. "Well, I'll find her somehow. Thank you very much, Mrs. Soames. And I'm terribly sorry about your daughter."
"Thank you," Mrs. Soames said.
"Good-bye."
"Good-bye."
Gilbert hung up the phone, then looked in the phone book, but found that the Dreamthorp listings were not in the Lancaster directory. He called information and asked for Laura's number in Dreamthorp but received a message that informed him that the number was unlisted.
"Bitch," he muttered, at both the computerized voice and at Laura herself. Then he got out his map of Lancaster, and on the back found a larger scale map of the surrounding area. There in the northwest corner he found a little village named Dreamthorp.
"Nice," he muttered to himself. Dreamthorp. It sounded quiet and peaceful. He smiled, thinking that quiet, peaceful Dreamthorp would have a big surprise coming when they found his dear, sweet Laura. Nothing like that had ever happened in Dreamthorp before. He was sure of it.
The evening came at last which had been looked forward to for a couple of months or more.
—Alexander Smith, Dreamthorp
Although Gilbert Rodman was wrong in one respect, he was right in another. Unknown to him, terrible things had happened in Dreamthorp, but the village was indeed quiet and peaceful, due in large part to the small percentage of the population that still remained in their cottages. The woods were silent too. No drops of rainfall pattered upon the leaves, and fewer insects sang day or night. The area directly around the town looked like a blighted heath, its yellow leaves and dry branches like something out of Poe's literary landscapes. Even the pines seemed crisp and brittle.
Rain had fallen in surrounding areas. The usual summer storms had raged and tossed rainwater in bucketfuls upon the earth, everywhere except upon the and soil and withered leaves of Dreamthorp, as though the town were granted—or cursed even more, some said—with a special dispensation of dryness.
The passing of Labor Day had given the few tenacious summer people the reason to leave, and of those who lived there year-round, less than a half dozen households remained, the older ones with nowhere else to go or with the desire to go nowhere else. The ineffectual security men were gone too, the victims of indifference and increased financial burdens on those who remained. Charlie Lewis had dismissed them just before Labor Day, and they left gladly, having in all those weeks never accosted a single suspicious character.
None to accost, Tom Brewer thought, looking out at the trees that used to be green. How do you catch spirits? Lure them into a sack and throw them into the river? He remembered hearing a story like that when he was a kid. But it hadn't worked, had it? Hadn't they turned themselves into wind and blown through the weave of the cloth? Something like that.
He looked at the kitchen clock and saw that it would be another two hours before Laura came home from work. He was looking forward to the start of the fall semester next Tuesday. He had spent too much time idle, too much time thinking and brooding. The carving of Rodman was completed, but he had been unable to begin work on anything else. It was as though he had accomplished in wood what he had been striving all his life to do, and now that it was finished, he felt lost.
Tom finished the milk he had been drinking and put the glass into the sink. Then he picked up the bill from the home in which his mother was now living and looked it over again. It was high, but fortunately his parents had always been inveterate savers. The size of their bank accounts had amazed him. Had this been what they had been saving all their lives for, he wondered sadly. To preserve the survivor of the pair in what was really little more than an elegant madhouse? Was such the end of life and love? For they had loved each other, Tom well knew. They were always happiest when they were alone with each other.
He thought of Laura then, and of how happy he was with her. He had not seen her since the previous Sunday when he had taken her home from the rod and gun club. He had come into her living room and watched as she put the weapons away, all except the .38, which she pushed deep down behind a sofa cushion.
"You always do that?" he had asked her.
"Since the killings started. Now it's habit."
He couldn't blame her, a woman living alone. But he hoped she wouldn't be living alone much longer. He had acceded to her request not to see her for a few days, to take time to think about what she had told him. He had done so and found that she was right, that it was not as easy to dismiss as he had hoped it would be.
But it was not easy to dismiss any thoughts that came between him and the woman he loved. For years after he had married Susan he had been bothered by the fact that she had had lovers before him. It was not sexist as much as it was selfish. He had irrationally wanted all her love, even that which she had given before he knew her. It was absurd and adolescent, to be sure, but it was nonetheless real.
He had dealt with it, however, and with the years, as he became convinced beyond the slightest doubt of his wife's love for him, it had dissipated, and he was sure his discomfort over Laura's admission would do the same. Besides, what did it matter? He was older now, and could understand. She had needed love and had taken it when it was offered. That was no sin, nothing to even be ashamed of. Her life had made her what she was, so he should be thankful for it.
But try as he might, he could not be thankful for Gilbert Rodman and what Gilbert Rodman had done.
He went down into the cellar then to look at what he had done with Laura's fear, to examine his artistic embodiment of it. It was he, he thought, who should be asking for forgiveness. Had he used her? he wondered, then decided, hoped, that you could never use someone you loved.
The carving stood in the corner where he had left it, and he yanked off the tarpaulin, bringing it from darkness to light.
It had not changed. It was as he had carved it, filled with bundled strength, huge with repressed hate. Jesus, but it was ugly and beautiful at once. It frightened him as he looked at it, and he considered again whether it had been he who created it, or if it had been there all the time and he had simply freed it.
Tom raised his hand to touch the wood, but paused, and found that he did not want to. Instead, he suddenly wanted to be with someone, someone alive and friendly, some
one whose eyes were not shadowy wells of darkness.
He picked up the tarpaulin and drew his arms back to throw the heavy cloth over the figure, but found that he could not. It was as though the carving itself was telling him to leave it uncovered, let it breathe.
Let it live.
Tom shivered, dropped the cloth, and let it lie where it had fallen. With an effort, he turned his back on the thing and ascended the stairs, turning out the light and securing the door firmly behind hint. If it had had a lock he would have locked it.
It was with mingled dismay and delight that he considered the effect the carving had upon him. This was nothing but wood, something he had made with his own hands and his own imagination, and if it was capable of frightening its creator, how much greater would be the effect on a gallery full of patrons? "It's just a carving," he whispered to himself in the same way that, years ago, he whispered "it's just a story" to Josh when the little boy had trouble going to sleep after watching a scary television show. "Just a carving."
And although he knew it was, he decided to go over and visit Charlie Lewis just the same.
Charlie was sitting on his porch reading a copy of Smithsonian, listening to jazz, as always. "Don't tell me," Tom said. "Bird?"
"You're pretty good, kid. Who's on trumpet?"
Tom listened for a moment. "Miles?"
"I take it back, you're not that good. Dizzy. Massey Hall. Come set a spell." Tom slipped thankfully into a wicker chair. "You look peaked," Charlie said.
"You look a bit jittery yourself. Do you always jiggle magazines when you read them?"
Charlie looked down at his left leg, the one the magazine was resting on. It was shaking as if with St. Vitus's Dance. Charlie slapped his hand on it and it stopped. He removed the hand and the trembling started again, while Charlie did a slow burn. Tom laughed. "I suppose I am feeling a mite apprehensive," Charlie said, tossing the magazine aside and crossing his legs. "The longer we wait the more nervous I get. Sort of like the girl who did it for the first time, waiting to see if she's pregnant."
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