CRIME THRILLERS-A Box Set (52 page)

She kept glancing over her shoulder, then she would meet his eyes to warn him off with a determined glare.

"You're a..."

He tuned out the names, the variations of names, the names heaped upon names. He whiffed fury and courage on the rebound, and he carefully maneuvered her back step by slow step until the shade of the overhang wrapped her in shadow, and still he plodded onward the way he had taken the mountain when it seemed it could not be done, one determined step at a time.

CHAPTER 2

Wrestling Carla into submission so that he could bind her hands and feet took every remaining ounce of Lansing's strength. Afterward he slept so deeply that nightmares did not haunt him. He woke in the afternoon, blinking, culling matter from his good eye so that he could see in the flickering candle and lantern light. Carla might have slept, too, but now she lay on her side staring at him.

"This is a mausoleum." She watched him steadily.

Lansing thought Carla meant to further insult him. "What is that?" he asked, willing to argue with her if need be. This was his special place, and it would be better if she understood it from the beginning.

"It's a...tomb. Look what you've done."

He drew up his knees and studied his home with a stranger's eyes, trying to see what it was she must see. "I've made it comfortable," he said.

Carla's laugh was a splutter of breath. She gave him a cynical look. "You're worse than I ever imagined."

Again, he surveyed the cave. Within holes and indentations in the rock walls he had placed white candles to give off light. This to him made his place look holy and church-like besides providing light. A heavy battery lantern stood upended on the rough, uneven-legged table in the cave's center, the steady beam striking the cave's ceiling and illuminating a wide circle of gray and tan rock formations.

In wooden crates placed one atop the other were his supplies. Canned goods, candles, extra batteries, ropes, cooking utensils, a portable battery-powered radio, stacked blankets, chipped and faded plastic dishes, changes of clothes. It had taken him weeks and strenuous effort to get it all up the mountain and into the cave.

Where he slept his bed consisted of a carefully arranged rectangle of dead leaves covered with a blanket. This too had taken him many trips with the duffel bag to get enough leaves to cushion an area for sleeping.

In all these things he could not fathom why she called it a tomb. Except, of course, for the old witch. Maybe that was what she meant, her lip curling slightly to the side in honest disgust.

"Do you mean the skeleton? Oh, that's nothing but bones."

"Just bones? Jesus, you're sick. Who was it?"

He trembled with a sudden chill and drew the top blanket from the bed around his shoulders. Although he felt stronger now that he'd rested, the sickness was on him. He knew in minutes he would be hot and sweating and would have to peel off his shirt to cool his fevered body. Beyond the cave opening he could see the day was on the wane, the sunlight splintered and shifting like something sentient. Waiting. Malignant.

"It was the old witch," he answered finally, getting to his feet to find a can of chicken soup in the stacked crates.

"Old witch? Who on earth...?"

"You have too many questions, Carla. She doesn't concern you. She's been dead nearly fifteen years."

"Fifteen years! Why is she here?"

While he lifted cans to read the labels in the candlelight, he thought about how much he was willing to tell Carla, decided spontaneity could not hurt anyone. Certainly not him. "She's here because she was my first. And... I like to keep an eye on her. She can be...slippery."

"First? The first person you ever killed, is that it, Lansing?"

"Yes."

He found a can of Campbell's Chicken and Stars, reached for the can opener, and moved lethargically to the table.

"Fifteen years ago. Unbelievable. Who was she, Lansing?"

"Why do you care?" He had the can open and poured the congealed contents into a battered, soot-streaked pot. He added water, sprinkled in pepper, struck a match, and lit a Coleman propane camping stove. The flames leaping to life caused him to draw back. It was all this talk about the old witch. She had no power to harm him now. He must take control of himself, disallow the sickness that weakened him and recalled ghosts to life.

"Just humor me," Carla was saying. "Tell me who she was."

"She was the last one to hurt me," he said softly, placing the pot of soup on the lit burner. The blue, gold, and orange flames mesmerized him with a magical display of shifting colors. His palms began to itch. It felt tike slugs crawled just beneath the flesh. He believed he had conquered this. He believed he had defeated that old pain years ago. She had hurt him, he was sure of it.

"She harmed you? Was she your mother?"

"No, she was just a fat, crazy, hateful old witch." Now it would spill out of him, urged to the forefront of his memory by Carla's persistent questions. He felt the wave of hatred rise within him like mercury in a thermometer. It reached his mouth and his tongue moved, his lips parted, all the unreleased venom poured forth hot and bitter from a buried receptacle where he kept it locked. "She took me when I was ten. She took boys for the welfare money, that's all she wanted. She was a widow and childless, a disgusting woman with hairy arms and legs who loved watching little boys burn."

No, that wasn't right, he had not meant to say
burn
. He had meant to say "squirm," and it came out wrong. Never mind. He was sure it was she who had placed his palms over the flame. She was the only one who could have.

"I hid away in the palace window most of the time, and she couldn't find me, she couldn't hurt me. She tried, but she kept missing me. When I came back she'd show me my bandaged hands and it meant nothing to me. I would stay home from school until they healed, and she told the school I had been sick with the flu or measles or whatever she thought would throw off their suspicions. She even took me to psychologists the welfare provided, but I told them I did it. I told them I was the one who ran to the stove and held my hands over the fire. They believed me and told the old witch they didn't know how to stop me. They said I'd always been sick, and if she didn't think she could stand it, it was okay, they'd take me back." He laughed at the recollection.

"Then one day after two years with her I found my knife." His hand went to his pants pocket; his fingers manipulated the cold black handle. "It was on the street where someone had dropped it. It was my knife. I took it home and I knew I had to use it before she found it and took it away. That night I did. When I left there I took her with me. I've had her with me ever since."

"Why?" came a whisper.

"Because I have to watch her. She's a witch. She can come back if I'm not watching." Wasn't it obvious?

The soup boiled up the sides of the pot to recapture Lansing's attention. He had lost himself in the flames, had forgotten the empty, hungry feeling in the pit of his belly. Now he turned off the Coleman stove and moved away to the crates for bowls and spoons.

"Well, fuck a duck..."

"What?" Lansing swiveled from the waist, dishes in hand, to look at her. "What's wrong? Aren't you hungry?"

She averted her face, refused to answer.

He waited patiently for a reply. He had enough soup for them both. He never meant to starve her.

"Carla? You're starting to look sick. Do you need something to throw up in? Did you want something else to eat? I have all kinds of things. Do you want some macaroni and cheese? It's Kraft. Huh? Carla...?"

An acrid, overpowering smell filled the cave as Carla hunched over on the packed earth and vomited, harsh wet sounds accompanying each violent constriction of her body.

"Carla, Carla." He set down the pot of soup on the table and went for a towel and water. He couldn't imagine why she was sick when it was he who suffered the chills and fever, the racking cough, the chest pains. He would have to minister to them both. He needed to replace the bandage over his empty eye socket, he knew, and he needed nourishment and aspirin to lower the fever. Maybe Carla had caught what he had, the tuberculosis. Maybe they would both succumb together before he could kill the enemy he'd rightly perceived in Carla Cohen. And while they died, the old witch would laugh from the corner of the cave, her wispy-haired skull watching over him with silent glee. He could not let that happen.

She would do it.
Laugh at him.
She had always done it. Even when she used to ask him to stop...no, that, too, was wrong. It was her fault, no matter what memories gushed up to refute it. She had burned his hands. He had not done it. He wouldn't do that to himself just to get to the palace window when it receded and he couldn't climb the walls to the peaceful seclusion. It was the old witch's fault.

He stooped over Carla, wiping her face with the damp towel dipped in water. "Don't worry about her," he advised. "She can't hurt you."

"But
you
can, Lansing." Carla's voice was an odd croak. "You don't even know what you're doing."

"I do, too." He gave her his most unjustly criticized look.

"Lansing...untie me. Let me go. I won't do anything to you, I promise. I'll climb down the ledge on the rope and I'll go away."

He threw back his head to consult the ceiling. "You're insane," he said finally. "It's you who's gone crazy, Carla. If you hadn't given up the last time I cut you, if you hadn't ruined it---we wouldn't have to do it all again."

"How did I ruin it before?" She cringed from the touch of his fingers on her face.

"Can't tell you, can I? You might do it again. Quit trying to trick me."

He returned to the heated soup and poured it into two bowls. He allowed a coughing spasm to pass before offering to untie Carla's hands so she could eat. He was not surprised she refused to cooperate.

He slurped the liquid. "They won't find you. You're never leaving here."

"Lansing, I want..."

"Shut up. I'm tired of your talking. Close your eyes. Go to sleep. I don't want to talk anymore."

When she did not obey, he turned himself on the pallet of leaves until his back was to her. He ate all the soup, drank a can of pineapple juice, relieved himself against the back wall, and curled beneath the blanket once again. He was too cold, too tired to change the bandage. He tinkered with fantasies until he had them the way he wanted in his mind, and then he drifted off to sleep.

He did not hear Carla's uncharacteristic sniffling in the growing evening dark. He did not hear her faintly whispered imprecations against the evil that had seized hold of her destiny.

CHAPTER 3

In the nighttime he had to be careful. He woke with his heart racing, afraid. He sat upright. Despite how high and protected the cave was, someone might see light from inside drifting outside to the dark and discover him there.

He permitted one candle and huddled in its small, projected circle of illumination. Carla lay off in the shadows where he could not see. She was a voice coming out of nowhere.

"Your eye's infected." Her words lacked any real concern.

He unwrapped the bandage round and round the left side of his head. He didn't have to talk. It was
his place
.
His mausoleum
, as she called it.

The soiled wrapping fell to the cave floor, and he reached up to touch the packed cotton. His image in the small pocket mirror he used wavered whenever a draft of air blew the candle flame and sent his face spinning off into crooked shadows. He could see the reddish black cotton soaked through and the swelling that lifted his eyebrow strangely, contorting the upper part of his cheek, ballooning his temple. "It'll be fine." He gritted his teeth.

"It's going to kill you," she persisted. "The blood poisoning is so close to your brain, you'll die quick. And hard. Not a pretty ending to think about, is it Lansing?"

"Bullshit." He struggled against the pain brought on by movement and the stinging caress of night breezes. He picked at the cotton stuffed into the empty socket. He removed the gummy saturated material bit by bit, wincing as he did so, relegating the throbbing horror of it off into an icy cold wasteland where it couldn't touch him.

"Doesn't that hurt?" Her disembodied voice floated over him. "How can you stand to touch it?"

He ignored her and methodically removed what he could of the cotton. He had to pick at it to get the bloody wisps stuck to his raw flesh. He had a clear view of the damage now in the yellow flickering mirror face. Droplets of blood and clear liquid oozed from different points in the distended flesh. At the center it was black and pitted like the bottom of a rusted barrel. It looked as if there was a black olive where his eye had been.

He gently lowered his head to find the box of cotton balls and the iodine bottle, cocking his head to be able to see with the one good eye. He had already soaked a large handful of cotton balls. He reached for the orange-red conglomeration, missed it, tried again. He knew what was wrong. His brain was trying to see it with both eyes, with the old wide-angle two-eyed range of vision, and his depth perception was off. He finally walked his fingers over the square of waxed paper until he managed to get hold of the iodine-soaked cotton and, looking in the mirror again, saw his hand move slowly to fill in the hole in his face.

Carla's grunt made him jerk and his short, blunt fingernails sliced into the wound. He cried out, holding both sides of his head with his hands.
Go away!
he mentally commanded.
Leave me alone!
Oh God, leave me alone!

Control was slow in coming. Hot pulsating vibrations washed over his head from the back to the front and returned, front to back. He waited. Imagined distances of white featureless frozen plains. Saw himself walking there alone in the icy silence, in the wasteland where other men could not venture.

He steadied, brought up the medicated cotton again. Before he neared his eye, however, he admonished Carla. "Don't do that again. Don't make a sound. Don't look if you're going to make noises."