37
Nine.
Waking in darkness, Susan Jagger thought she heard someone speak that number. Then she surprised herself by saying, “Ten.”
Tense, listening for movement, she wondered if she had spoken both numbers or whether her ten had been a reply.
A minute passed, another, with no sound but her low breathing, and then, when she held her breath, no sound at all. She was alone.
According to the glowing numbers on the digital clock, it was shortly after three in the morning. Apparently she had been asleep more than two hours.
Finally she sat up in bed and switched on the lamp.
The half-finished glass of wine. The book tumbled among the rumpled bedclothes. The blind-covered windows, the furniture—all as it should be. The ming tree.
She raised her hands to her face and smelled them. She sniffed her right forearm, as well, and then her left.
His scent. Unmistakable. Partly sweat, partly the lingering fragrance of his preferred soap. Perhaps he used a scented hand lotion, as well.
If she could trust her memory, this was not how Eric smelled. Yet she remained convinced that he, and no other, was her too-real incubus.
Even without the residual scent, she would have known that he had paid her a visit while she slept. A soreness here, a tenderness there. The faint ammonia odor of his semen.
When she threw back the covers and got out of bed, she felt his viscid essence continuing to seep from her, and she shuddered.
At the Biedermeier pedestal, she parted the concealing runners of ivy to reveal the camcorder under the ming tree. At most, the cassette could contain a few remaining feet of unused tape, but the camera was still recording.
She switched it off and extracted it from the pot.
Her curiosity and eagerness for justice were suddenly outweighed by her disgust. She put the camcorder on the nightstand and hurried into the bathroom.
Often, upon awakening to the discovery that she had been used, Susan’s disgust settled into nausea, and she purged herself, as if by emptying her stomach she could turn back the clock to just prior to dinner and, therefore, to a time hours before she had been violated. Now, however, the nausea passed when she reached the bathroom.
She wanted to take a long and extremely hot shower with lots of fragrant soap and shampoo, scrubbing herself vigorously with a loofah sponge. She was tempted, in fact, to shower first and watch the video later, because she felt dirtier than ever before, intolerably filthy, as though she were smeared with a vile grime she couldn’t see, acrawl with hordes of microscopic parasites.
The videotape first. The truth. Then the cleansing.
Although she was able to delay her shower, repulsion drove her to strip out of her clothes and wash her privates. She scrubbed her face, too, and then her hands, and she gargled with a mint-flavored mouthwash.
She tossed the T-shirt into the clothes hamper. The panties, with his odious ooze, she placed atop the closed lid of the hamper, because she didn’t intend to launder them.
If she had captured the intruder on videotape, she probably had all the evidence she needed to file rape charges. Preserving a semen sample for DNA testing was nonetheless wise.
Her condition and demeanor on the tape would no doubt convince the authorities that she had been drugged—not a willing participant, but a victim. Yet when she called the police, she would ask them to take a blood sample from her as soon as possible, while traces of the drug remained in her system.
Once she knew the camcorder had worked, that the image was good, and that she had irrefutable proof against Eric, she would be tempted to phone him before ringing the cops. Not to accuse him. To ask why. Why this viciousness? Why this secretive scheming? Why would he jeopardize her life and sanity with some devil’s brew of narcotics? Why such hatred?
She wouldn’t make that call, however, because alerting him might be dangerous. It was forbidden.
Forbidden. What an odd thought.
She realized that she had used the same word with Martie. Maybe it was the right word, because what Eric had done to her was worse than abuse, seemed to be beyond mere unlawful behavior, felt almost like an act of sacrilege. Marriage vows are sacred, after all, or ought to be; therefore, these assaults were arguably profane, forbidden.
In the bedroom again, she dressed in a clean T-shirt and fresh panties. The thought of being naked while watching the hateful video was intolerable.
She sat on the edge of the bed and picked up the camera from the nightstand. She rewound the cassette.
The preview window on the camcorder provided a three-inch-square image. She saw herself returning to the bed after starting the tape, which she’d done a few minutes past midnight.
The single bedside lamp provided adequate—though not ideal—light for videotaping. Consequently, the clarity of the image on the small preview window was not good.
She ejected the cassette from the camcorder, put it in the VCR, and turned on the television. Holding the remote control in both hands, she sat on the foot of the bed and watched with fascination and apprehension.
She saw herself as she had been at midnight, returning to the bed after resetting the tape in the camcorder, saw herself get into bed and switch off the TV.
For a moment, she sits in bed, listening intently to the silent apartment. Then as she reaches for the book, the telephone rings.
Susan frowned. She had no recollection of having received a phone call.
She picks up the handset. “Hello?”
At best the videotape could provide her with only one side of the telephone conversation. Her distance from the camcorder ensured that some of her words were fuzzy, but what she heard made even less sense than she had expected.
Hurrying, she hangs up the phone, gets out of bed, and leaves the room.
From the moment she had taken the call, there had been subtle changes in her face and body language that she perceived but could not easily define. Subtle as those changes were, however, as she watched herself leaving this bedroom, she seemed to be watching a stranger.
She waited half a minute, and then fast-forwarded through the tape until she saw movement.
Shadowy forms in the hallway beyond the open bedroom door. Then she herself, returning. Behind her, a man moves out of the dark hall, across the threshold. Dr. Ahriman.
Astonishment left Susan breathless. Stiller than stone, colder, too, she was suddenly deaf to the audio portion of the tape, deaf to her own heartbeat, as well. She sat like a marble maiden sculpted for the focal point of a boxwood-hedge parterre in a formal garden, and here misplaced.
After a moment, astonishment spawned disbelief, and she inhaled sharply. She pressed the pause button on the remote control.
In the frozen image, she sat on the edge of the bed, rather as she was sitting now. Ahriman stood over her.
She pressed rewind, reversing herself and the doctor out of the room. Then she touched play and watched the shadows in the hallway resolve into people once more, half convinced that this time Eric would follow her across the threshold. Because Dr. Ahriman—his being here was impossible. He was ethical. Widely admired. So professional. Compassionate. Concerned. Simply impossible: here, like this. She would have been no more disbelieving if she had seen her own father on the tape, and less shocked if what followed her into the room had been a demonic incubus with horns sprouting from its forehead, eyes as yellow and radiant as those of a cat. Tall, self-assured, and hornless, here came Ahriman once more, puncturing disbelief.
Handsome as ever, handsome in an actorly way, the doctor’s face was the stage for an expression she had never before seen on it. Not entirely raw lust, as might have been expected, although lust was a component. Not a mask of madness, though his chiseled features were ever so slightly misaligned, as if they were being distorted by some inner pressure that had only just begun to build. Studying his face, Susan at last recognized the attitude: smugness.
This wasn’t the prim-mouth, pinch
ed-eye, cocked-head smugness of a moralizing preacher or of a temperance-sotted prude announcing his disdain for all those who drank, who smoked, and who ate a high-cholesterol diet. Here, instead, was the smirking superiority of an adolescent. Once he passed through the bedroom doorway, Ahriman had the lazy posture, the loose-limbed movements, and the cockiness of a schoolboy who believed that all adults were morons—and a shiny, hot-eyed stare of squirmy pubescent need.
This criminal and the psychiatrist whose office she attended twice each week were physically identical. The difference between them was entirely one of attitude. And yet the difference was so alarming that her heart rapped hard and fast.
Her disbelief gave way to anger and to a sense of betrayal so intense that she spat out a series of expletives, in a bitter voice unlike her own, as if she suffered from Tourette’s syndrome.
On the tape, the doctor moved out of frame to the armchair.
He orders her to crawl to him, and crawl she does.
Watching this record of her humiliation was almost more than Susan could bear, but she did not press stop, because watching fed her anger, and that was good right now. Anger gave her strength, empowered her after sixteen months of feeling powerless.
She fast-forwarded until she and the doctor returned to the frame. They were naked now.
Grim-faced, using the fast-forward button several times, she watched a series of depravities interspersed with periods of ordinary sex that seemed, by comparison, as innocent as teenagers necking.
How he could effect this control of her, how he could erase such shocking events from her mind—these mysteries seemed as deep as the origins of the universe and the meaning of life. She was overcome by a feeling of unreality, as though nothing in the world was what it appeared to be, all of it just an elaborate stage setting and the people merely players.
This trash on the TV was real, however, as real as the stains in the underwear that she had left on the hamper lid in the bathroom.
Leaving the tape running, she turned away from the television and went to the phone. She keyed in two digits—9, 1—but not the second 1.
If she called the police, she would have to open the door to let them into the apartment. They might want her to go with them somewhere, to make a full statement, or to a hospital emergency room to be examined for indications of rape that later would be useful evidence in court.
Although strong with anger, she was not nearly strong enough to overcome her agoraphobia. The mere thought of going outside was enough to bring the familiar panic back into her heart.
She would do what was necessary, go where they wanted, as often as they wanted. She would do anything she was required to do if it would put the sick son of a bitch Ahriman behind bars for a long, long time.
The prospect of going outside with strangers, however, was too distressing to contemplate, even if those strangers were policemen. She needed the support of a friend, someone she trusted with her life, because going outside felt as close to death as anything but dying itself.
She called Martie and got the answering machine. She knew their phone didn’t ring through to their bedroom at night, but one of them might be awakened by the ringing down the hall, might go to Martie’s office out of curiosity, to see who was phoning at this ungodly hour.
After the beep, Susan said, “Martie, it’s me. Martie, are you there?” She paused. “Listen, if you’re there, for God’s sake, pick up.” Nothing. “It isn’t Eric, Martie. It’s Ahriman. It’s Ahriman. I’ve got the bastard on videotape. The bastard—after the good deal he got on his house. Martie, please, please, call me. I need help.”
Suddenly sick to her stomach again, she hung up.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, Susan clenched her teeth and put one cold hand on the nape of her neck, the other on her abdomen. The spasm of nausea passed.
She glanced at the television—and looked at once away.
Staring at the phone, willing it to ring, she said, “Martie, please. Call me. Now, now.”
The half glass of wine had been sitting untouched for hours. She drained it.
She pulled open the top drawer in her nightstand and withdrew the pistol that she kept for protection.
As far as she knew, Ahriman never visited her twice in one night. As far as she knew.
She suddenly realized the absurdity of something she had said to Martie’s answering machine: The bastard—after the good deal he got on his house. She had sold Mark Ahriman his current residence eighteen months ago, two months before the onset of her agoraphobia. She represented the seller, and the doctor walked in during an open house, and he asked her to represent him as well. She’d done a damn good job looking after the interests of buyer and seller, but it was admittedly a stretch to expect that if her client was a seriously demented sociopathic rapist, he would cut her a little slack because she had been an ethical Realtor.
She started to laugh, choked on the laugh, sought refuge in the wine, realized none was left, and put down the empty glass in favor of the handgun. “Martie, please. Call, call.”
The telephone rang.
She set the gun aside and snatched up the phone.
“Yeah,” she said.
Before she could say more, a man said, “Ben Marco.”
“I’m listening.”
38
Having rebuilt the dream in his memory, Dusty walked through it as though touring a museum, leisurely contemplating each Gothic image. Heron at the window, heron in the room. Silent strikes of lambent lightning in a thunderless, rainless storm. Brass tree with glucose fruit. Martie meditating.
Studying the nightmare, Dusty was increasingly convinced that a monstrous truth was concealed in it, like a scorpion waiting in the smallest container in a stack of Chinese boxes. This particular stack contained a lot of boxes, however, many of them tricky to open, and the truth remained hidden, poised to sting.
Eventually, frustrated, he got out of bed and went to the bathroom. Martie was sleeping so soundly, was cuffed and hobbled so securely by Dusty’s neckties, that she was unlikely either to wake up or to leave the room while he was away from her side.
A few minutes later, as he was washing his hands at the bathroom sink, Dusty was visited by a revelation. It was not a sudden insight into the meaning of the dream, but an answer to a question over which he’d been puzzling earlier, before Martie had awakened and demanded to be tied hand and foot.
Missions.
Skeet’s haiku.
Clear cascades. Into the waves scatter. Blue pine needles.
The pine needles were missions, Skeet had said.
Trying to make sense of this, Dusty had made a mental list of synonyms for mission, but nothing he’d come up with had furthered his understanding. Task. Work. Chore. Job. Calling. Vocation. Career. Church.
Now, as he held his hands under the hot water, rinsing the soap from them, another series of words poured into his mind. Errand. Charge. Assignment. Instructions.
Dusty stood at this sink almost as Skeet had stood with his hands under the near-scalding water in the bathroom at New Life, brooding about the word instructions.
The fine hairs on the back of his neck suddenly felt as stiff as tightly stretched piano wires, and a reverberant chill like a silent glissando shivered down the keys of his spine.
The name Dr. Yen Lo, when spoken to Skeet, had elicited a formal reply: I’m listening. Thereafter, he’d answered questions only with questions.
Skeet, do you know where you are?
Where am I?
So you don’t know?
Do I?
Can’t you look around?
Can I?
Is this an Abbott and Costello routine?
Is it?
Skeet had answered questions only with questions of his own, as if seeking to be told what he should think or do, but he had responded to statements as though they were commands, and to actual commands as though they came directly from the lips of God. When, in frustration, Dusty had said, Ah
, give me a break and go to sleep, his brother had fallen instantly unconscious.
Skeet had referred to the haiku as “the rules,” and Dusty later had thought of the poem as a mechanism of some kind, a simple device with a powerful effect, the verbal equivalent of a nail gun, though he had not been quite sure what he meant by that.
Now, as he continued to explore the ramifications of the word instructions, he realized that the haiku might better be defined not as a mechanism, not as a device, but as a computer operating system, the software that allows the instructions to be received, understood, and followed.
And what the hell was the logical deduction to be drawn from the haiku-as-software hypothesis? That Skeet was…programmed?
As Dusty shut off the water, he thought he heard the faint ringing of a phone.
Dripping hands raised as though he were a surgeon fresh from a scrub sink, he stepped out of the bathroom, into the bedroom, and listened. The house was silent.
If a call had come in, it would have been picked up after the second ring by the answering machine in Martie’s office.
Most likely, he had imagined the ringing. No one ever called them at this hour. Nevertheless, he ought to check it out before he returned to bed.
In the bathroom once more, drying his hands on a towel, he turned the word programmed over and over in his mind, considering all the ramifications of it.
Staring into the mirror, Dusty saw not his reflection but a replay of the strange events in Skeet’s room at New Life Clinic.
Then his memory wound time backward to the previous morning, to the roof of the Sorensons’ house.
Skeet claimed to have seen the Other Side. An angel of death had shown him what waited beyond this world, and the kid had liked what he’d seen. Then the angel had instructed him to jump. Skeet’s very word: Instructed.
That icy glissando again, along Dusty’s spine. Another of the Chinese boxes had been opened, though yet another box lay inside it. Each box smaller than the last. Perhaps not many layers of the puzzle were left to be resolved. He could almost hear the scorpion scuttle: the sound of a nasty truth waiting to sting when the last lid was lifted.
39
The soft shush of surf, conspiratorial fog cover his return.
Dew on the gray steps. Snail on the second wet tread. Crushed hard underfoot.
Ascending, the doctor whispered into his cell phone: “The winter storm—”
Susan Jagger said, “The storm is you.”
“—hid in the bamboo grove—”
“The grove is me.”
“—and quieted away.”
“In the quiet, I will learn what is wanted.”
Arriving at the landing outside her door, he said, “Let me in.”
“Yes.”
“Quickly,” he said, and then terminated the call and pocketed the phone.
He glanced worriedly toward the deserted boardwalk.
Hanging in the fog, cascades of dead-still palm fronds, like cold dark fireworks.
With a rattle and scrape, the bracing chair was removed from under the doorknob in the kitchen. The first dead bolt. The second. The clatter of the security chain being disengaged.
When Susan greeted him demurely, without a word but with an obedient half bow, as though she were a geisha, Ahriman stepped inside. He waited while she closed the door again and engaged one of the locks, and then he instructed her to lead him to her bedroom.