Stories

by Neil Gaiman

  It was late at night and I couldn’t see clearly, but I believed, from the boy’s eyes, that he was being influenced by a neme, motivated by its own sense of survival to kill me.

  Probably not. But even if there was some truth to it, I wasn’t going to be deterred from my mission to save people at risk.

  People like Annabelle Young.

  THE DAY AFTER RUNNING into her in Starbucks, I went to the North Carolina State University library and did some research. The state licensing agencies’ databases and ever-helpful Google revealed that the woman was thirty years old and worked at Chantelle West Middle School in Wetherby County. Interestingly, she was a widow—her husband had died three years ago—and, yes, she had a nine-year-old son, probably the target of her anger on the phone. According to information about the school where she taught, Annabelle would generally teach large classes, with an average of thirty-five students per year.

  This meant that she could have a dramatic and devastating impact on the lives of many young people.

  Then too was the matter of Annabelle’s own well-being. I was pretty sure that she’d come under the influence of the neme around the time her husband died; a sudden personal loss like that makes you emotionally vulnerable and more susceptible than otherwise. (I noted too that she’d gone back to work around that time, and I wondered if her neme sensed an opportunity to incorporate within someone who could influence a large number of equally vulnerable individuals, the children in her classes.)

  Annabelle was obviously a smart woman and she might very well get into counseling at some time. But there comes a point when the neme is so deeply incorporated that people actually become accustomed or addicted to the inappropriate behaviors nemes cause. They don’t want to change. My assessment was that she was past this point. And so, since I wasn’t going to hear from her, I did the only thing I could. I went to Wetherby.

  I got there early on a Wednesday. The drive was pleasant, along one of those combined highways that traverse central North Carolina. It split somewhere outside of Raleigh and I continued on the increasingly rural branch of the two, taking me through old North Carolina. Tobacco warehouses and small industrial-parts plants—most of them closed years ago—but still squatting in weeds. Trailer parks, very unclosed. Bungalows and plenty of evidence of a love of Nascar and Republican party lines.

  Wetherby has a redeveloped downtown, but that’s just for show. I noted immediately as I cruised along the two-block stretch that nobody was buying anything in the art galleries and antiques stores, and the nearly empty restaurants, I suspected, got new awnings with new names every eight months or so. The real work in places like Wetherby got done in the malls and office parks and housing developments built around new golf courses.

  I checked into a motel, showered, and began my reconnaissance, checking out Chantelle Middle School. I parked around the time I’d learned classes were dismissed but didn’t catch a glimpse of Annabelle Young.

  Later that evening, about seven thirty, I found her house, four miles away, a modest twenty-year-old colonial in need of painting, on a cul-de-sac. There was no car in the drive. I parked under some trees and waited.

  Fifteen minutes later a car pulled into the drive. I couldn’t tell if her son was inside or not. The Toyota pulled into the garage and the door closed. A few minutes later I got out, slipped into some woods beside the house, and glanced into the kitchen. I saw her carting dishes inside. Dirty dishes from lunch or last night, I assumed. She set them in the sink and I saw her pause, staring down. Her face was turned away but her body language, even from this distance, told me that she was angry.

  Her son appeared, a skinny boy with longish brown hair. His body language suggested that he was cautious. He said something to his mother. Her head snapped toward him and he nodded quickly. Then retreated. She stayed where she was, staring at the dishes, for a moment. Without even rinsing them she stepped out of the room and swept her hand firmly along the wall, slapping the switch out. I could almost hear the angry gesture from where I was.

  I didn’t want to talk to her while her son was present, so I headed back to the motel.

  The next day I was up early and cruised back to the school before the teachers arrived. At seven fifteen I caught a glimpse of her Camry arriving and watched her climb out and stride unsmilingly into the school. Too many people around and she was too harried to have a conversation now.

  I returned at three in the afternoon and when Annabelle emerged followed her to a nearby strip mall, anchored by a Harris-Teeter grocery store. She went shopping and came out a half hour later. She dumped the plastic bags in her trunk. I was going to approach her, even though a meeting in the parking lot wasn’t the most conducive place to pitch my case, when I saw her lock the car and walk toward a nearby bar and grill.

  At three thirty she wouldn’t be eating lunch or dinner and I knew what she had in mind. People influenced by nemes often drink more than they should, to dull the anxiety and anger that come from the incorporation.

  Though I would eventually work on getting her to cut down on her alcohol consumption, her being slightly intoxicated and relaxed now could be a big help. I waited five minutes and followed. Inside the dark tavern, which smelled of Lysol and onions, I spotted her at the bar. She was having a mixed drink. Vodka or gin, it seemed, and some kind of juice. She was nearly finished with her first and she waved for a second.

  I sat down two stools away and ordered a Diet Coke. I felt her head swivel toward me, tilt slightly as she debated whether she’d seen me before, and turn back to her drink. Then the pieces fell together and she faced me again.

  Without looking up I said, “I’m a professional counselor, Ms. Young. I’m here only in that capacity. To help. I’d like to talk to you.”

  “You…you followed me here? From Raleigh?”

  I made a show of leaving money for the soda to suggest that I wasn’t going to stay longer than necessary, trying to put her at ease.

  “I did, yes. But please, you don’t need to be afraid.”

  Finally I turned to look at her. The eyes were just as I expected, narrow, cold, the eyes of somebody else entirely. The neme was even stronger than I’d thought.

  “I’m about five seconds away from calling the police.”

  “I understand. But please, listen. I want to say something to you. And if you want me to leave, I’ll head back to Raleigh right now. You can choose whatever you want.”

  “Say it and get out.” She took another drink.

  “I specialize in treating people who aren’t happy in life. I’m good at it. When I saw you the other day in Starbucks, I knew you were exactly the sort of patient who could benefit from my expertise. I would like very much to help you.”

  No mention of nemes, of course.

  “I don’t need a shrink.”

  “I’m actually not a shrink. I’m a psychologist, not a doctor.”

  “I don’t care what you are. You can’t…can’t you be reported for this, trying to drum up business?”

  “Yes, and you’re free to do that. But I thought it was worth the risk to offer you my services. I don’t care about the money. You can pay me whatever you can afford. I care about helping you. I can give you references and you can call the state licensing board about me.”

  “Do you even have a girlfriend who’s a teacher?”

  “No. I lied. Which I’ll never do again…It was that important to try to explain how I can help you.”

  And then I saw her face soften. She was nodding.

  My heart was pounding hard. It had been a risk, trying this, but she was going to come around. The therapy would be hard work. For both of us. But the stakes were too high to let her continue the way she was. I knew we could make significant progress.

  I turned away to pull a card from my wallet. “Let me tell you a—”

  As I looked back, I took the full tide of her second drink in the face. My eyes on fire from the liquor and stinging juice, I gasped in agony and grabbed
bar napkins to dry them.

  “Annie, what’s wrong?” the bartender snapped, and through my blurred vision I could just make out his grabbing her arm as she started to fling the glass at me. I raised my own arm to protect myself.

  “What’d he do?”

  “Fuck you, let go of me!” she cried to him.

  “Hey, hey, take it easy, Annie. What—?”

  Then he ducked as she launched the glass at him. It struck a row of others; half of them shattered. She was out of control. Typical.

  “Fuck you both!” Screaming. She dug a bill out of her purse and flung it onto the bar.

  “Please, Ms. Young,” I said, “I can help you.”

  “If I see you again, I’m calling the police.” She stormed out.

  “Listen, mister, what the hell d’you do?”

  I didn’t answer him. I grabbed some more napkins and, wiping my face, walked to the window. I saw her stride up to her son, who was standing nearby with a book bag. So this was the rendezvous spot. I wondered how often he’d had to wait outside for mom while she was in here getting drunk. I pictured cold January afternoons, the boy huddled and blowing breath into his hands.

  She gestured him after her. Apparently there’d been something else on the agenda for after school, and, disappointed, he lifted his arms and glanced at the nearby sports store. But the shopping was not going to happen today. She stormed up and grabbed him by the arm. He pulled away. She drew back to slap him, but he dutifully walked to the car. I could see him clicking on his seat belt and wiping his tears.

  Without a glance back at the bartender, I too left.

  I walked to the car to head back to the motel to change. What had happened was discouraging, but I’d dealt with more difficult people than Annabelle Young. There were other approaches to take. Over the years I’ve learned what works and what doesn’t; it’s all part of being a therapist.

  THE NEXT MORNING AT six I parked behind Etta’s Diner, in a deserted portion of the lot. The restaurant was directly behind Annabelle’s house. I made my way up the hill along a path that led to the sidewalk in her development. I had to take an oblique approach; if she saw me coming she’d never answer the door, and that would be that.

  The morning was cool and fragrant with the smells of pine and wet earth. Being spring, the sky was light even at this early hour and it was easy to make my way along the path. I wondered how different Annabelle’s life had been before her husband died. How soon the neme had incorporated itself into her afterward. I suspected she’d been a vivacious, caring mother and wife, completely different from the enraged out-of-control woman she now was becoming.

  I continued to the edge of the woods and waited behind the house in a stand of camellias with exploding red blossoms. At about six thirty her son pushed out the front door, carting a heavy book bag, and strolled to the end of the cul-de-sac, presumably to catch his bus.

  When he was gone, I walked to the porch and climbed the stairs.

  Was I ready? I asked myself.

  Always those moments of self-doubt, even though I’d been a professional therapist for years.

  Always, the doubts.

  But then I relaxed. My mission in life was to save people. I was good at that task. I knew what I was doing.

  Yes, I was ready.

  I rang the doorbell and stepped aside from the peephole. I heard the footsteps approach. She flung the door open and had only a moment to gasp at the sight of the black stocking mask I was wearing and the lengthy knife in my gloved hand.

  I grabbed her hair and plunged the blade into her chest three times, then sliced through her neck. Both sides and deep, so the end would be quick.

  Lord knew I didn’t want her to suffer.

  Two

  THE JOB OF MAKING sure that Martin Kobel was either put to death or sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Annabelle Young fell to Glenn Hollow, the Wetherby County prosecutor.

  And it was a job that he had embraced wholeheartedly from the moment he got the call from county-police dispatch. Forty-two years old, Hollow was the most successful prosecutor in the state of North Carolina, judging in terms of convictions won, and judging from the media since he had a preference for going after violent offenders. A mark of his success was that this was to be his last year in Wetherby. He’d be running for state attorney general in November and there wasn’t much doubt he’d win.

  But his grander plans wouldn’t detract from his enthusiastic prosecution of the murderer of Annabelle Young. In big cities the prosecutors get cases tossed onto their desks along with the police reports. With Glenn Hollow it was different. He had an honorary flashing blue light attached to his dash and, ten minutes after getting the call about the homicide, he was at Ms. Young’s house while the forensic team was still soaking up blood and taking pix.

  He was now walking into the Wetherby County Courthouse. Nothing Old South about the place. It was the sort of edifice you’d find in Duluth or Toledo or Schenectady. One story, nondescript white stone, overtaxed air-conditioning, scuffed linoleum floors, and greenish fluorescents that might engender the question, “Hey, you feeling okay?”

  Hollow was a lean man, with drawn cheeks and thick black hair close to a skullish head—defendants said he looked like a ghoul; kinder reports, that he resembled Gregory Peck in Moby Dick, minus the beard. He was somber and reserved and kept his personal life far, far away from his professional life.

  He now nodded at the secretary in the ante-office of Judge Brigham Rollins’s chambers.

  “Go on in, Glenn.”

  Inside were two big men. Rollins was midfifties and had a pitted face and the spiky gray hair of a crew cut neglected a week too long. He was in shirtsleeves, though noosed with a tie, of course. He wore plucky yellow suspenders that hoisted his significant tan pants like a concrete bucket under a crane. Gray stains radiated from under his arms. As usual the judge had doused himself with Old Spice.

  Sitting opposite was Bob Ringling—the circus jokes all but dead after these many years of being a defense lawyer in a medium-size town, and, no, there was no relation. Stocky, with blondish brown hair carefully trimmed, he resembled a forty-five-year-old retired army major—not a bad deduction, since Fayetteville wasn’t terribly far away, but, like the circus brothers, not true.

  Hollow didn’t like or dislike Ringling. He was fair, though abrasive, and he made Hollow work for every victory. Which was as it should be, the prosecutor believed. God created defense lawyers, he’d said, to make sure the system was fair and the prosecution didn’t cheat or get lazy. After all, there was that one-in-a-hundred chance that the five-foot-eight black gangbanger from Central High presently in custody wasn’t the same five-foot-eight black gangbanger from Central High who actually pulled the trigger.

  Judge Rollins closed a folder that’d he’d been perusing. He grunted. “Tell me where we are with this one, gentlemen.”

  “Yessir,” Hollow began. “The state is seeking special-circumstances murder.”

  “This’s about that teacher got her throat slit, right?”

  “Yessir. In her house. Broad daylight.”

  A distasteful grimace. Not shock. Rollins’d been a judge for years.

  The courthouse was on the crook of Route 85 and Henderson Road. Through one window you could see Galloway-belted cows grazing. They were black and white, vertically striped, precise, as if God had used a ruler. Hollow could look right over the judge’s shoulder and see eight of them, chewing. Out the other window was a T.J. Maxx, a Barnes & Noble, and a multiplex under construction. These two views pretty much defined Wetherby.

  “What’s the story behind it?”

  “This Kobel, a therapist. He was stalking her. They met at a Starbucks when she was in Raleigh at an educational conference. Got witnesses say he gave her his card but she threw it out. Next thing he tracked her down and shows up in Wetherby. Got into a fight at Red Robin, near Harris-Teeter. She threw a drink in his face. One witness saw him park at Etta’s, the d
iner, the morning she was killed—”

  “Tonight’s corned beef,” the judge said.

  “They do a good job of that,” Ringling added.

  True, they did. Hollow continued, “—and he hiked up into those woods behind her place. When she opened the door, he killed her. He waited till her boy left.”

  “There’s that, at least,” Rollins grumbled. “How’d the boys in blue get him?”

  “Unlucky for him. Busboy on a smoke break at Etta’s saw him coming out of the forest, carrying some things. The kid found some blood near where he’d parked. Called the police with the make and model. Kobel’d tossed away the knife and mask and gloves, but they found ’em. Fibers, DNA, fingerprints on the inside of the gloves. People always forget that. They watch CSI too much…Oh, and then he confessed.”

  “What?” the judge barked.

  “Yep. Advised of rights, twice. Sang like a bird.”

  “Then what the hell’re you doing here? Take a plea and let’s get some real work done.”

  The judge glanced at Ringling, but the defense lawyer in turn cast his eyes to Hollow.

  Rollins gripped his ceramic coffee mug and sipped the hot contents. “What isn’t who telling who? Don’t play games. There’s no jury to impress with your clevers.”

  Ringling said, “He’s completely insane. Nuts.”

  A skeptical wrinkle on the judge’s brow. “But you’re saying he wore a mask and gloves?”

  Most insane perps didn’t care if they were identified and didn’t care if they got away afterward. They didn’t wear ninja or hit-man outfits. They were the sort who hung around afterward and fingerpainted with the blood of their victims.

  Ringling shrugged.

  The judge asked, “Competent to stand trial?”

  “Yessir. We’re saying he was insane at the time of commission. No sense of right or wrong. No sense of reality.”

  The judge grunted.

  The insanity defense is based on one overriding concept in jurisprudence: responsibility. At what point are we responsible for acts we commit? If we cause an accident and we’re sued in civil court for damages, the law asks, would a reasonably prudent person have, say, driven his car on a slippery road at thirty-five miles per hour? If the jury says yes, then we’re not responsible for the crash.