Strangers (2 page)

The younger man did. He took out the skinning knife, the handle wrapped with black tape, the five-inch blade double-edged and
needle-pointed
. “Very nice,” he said.

“You hold onto it,” the driver said. “You seem in need of this sort of activity to lessen your present boredom.”

“Yes.” The word hissed, mingling with the invasion of night sounds, the hushings and tickings and tiny whistles from the surrounding woods that came when the older man opened the door. He said, “Let’s see what we can do to help a stranded traveler on the road of life.”

Fred Harley considered himself a lucky guy. Okay, the Ford decided to pull a no-go, but here he was, stuck for no more than three minutes and someone was stopping. A lonely road, this hour, yeah, it was a lucky break. He wouldn’t have to go tromping off, trying to find a telephone or to flag down a passing car. No, you could tell the mosquitoes to forget it; Fred Harley would keep all his blood tonight.

He watched the two men get out of the Buick. Simultaneously, he noted that they were white and well dressed. Fred didn’t think he was what you’d call a prejudiced person, but the US of A wasn’t exactly a paradise of racial harmony. Had the two men been black, Fred would have been uneasy.

And had Fred Harley been a man with a particular psychic gift, he would have been more than uneasy. He would have been dry mouthed, adrenalin-quaking, clammy-necked terrified.

A clairvoyant with the ability to see auras—see in a way that is only marginally related to the perceptive powers of the human eye— and who understood what those auras signified might have bolted and gone frantically running into the forest, praying to get away, to hide, to find safety.

There was a fire-red nimbus about the head of each man, a halo invisible to those who did not possess psychic sight. The aura was a scarlet pulsing, expanding, contracting as though it breathed, like a specimen seen under a microscope in high school biology, its scientific name forgotten but its image remembered forever in nightmares. The auras of the younger man and the older man marked them for what they were and who they were, identified them to those who could see and understand.

They were Strangers.

But the only light that Fred Harley saw came from Mallory heavy-duty batteries. The beam that linked him to the two men lessened in length.

The Strangers drew closer.

Just as Fred Harley was saying, “Thanks, guys,” the flashlight blinded him. Blinking, he saw only the after-image, an oozing, yellow circle.

The barrel of the heavy flashlight smashed into his face. He heard the dry snap and wet rush. The sound came from inside
his own
skull and he knew he’d lost teeth, that his nose was broken.

Reeling, he tried to say something that came out, “Gwuff!” and then he was struck again, a blow to the side of the head that dropped him to his hands and knees.

He thought,
Hey
, this doesn’t make sense!

The younger man straddled Fred Harley’s shoulders, squatting like a child mounting for piggyback. He entwined his fingers in Fred’s hair and yanked his head up and back.

Fred Harley thought,
They
are killing me and there’s no reason, no reason…

At that moment of complete understanding, the younger man cut Fred Harley’s throat.

— | — | —

ONE

“WHAT SAY to a cold brew?” Brad Zeller shouted over the roar of a lawnmower.

It was late afternoon, Sunday. Michael Louden was on the final strip of lawn near the house. He nodded, signaled thumb-up. “Be with you in a couple of minutes,” he called to his neighbor on the other side of the four-foot high redwood fence.

Finishing up,
Michael was chafed by the perspiration-clammy waistband of his khaki shorts
; his T shirt was sopping. Flecks of grass were sweat-stuck to his forearms and calves, annoying little itches.

He switched off the engine, wiped his brow with the back of his hand, and pushed the mower toward the garage. With summer nearing an end, the five-year-old lawnmower was still holding up, though it was one nasty bastard to start. He hoped it would make it through the season and he wouldn’t have to buy another until next year. More sensible to get a new one, though, than to try to repair something really on its way out and—uh-huh!
he
was a sensible guy.

Or maybe he wouldn’t be concerned about the lawn at all next year. Michael Louden permitted himself a small smile at the thought.

In the garden that lay alongside the garage, Beth was on her hands and knees. She’d long ago triumphed in the war against weeds and insects and animal pests, but she remained vigilant, guarding against a guerilla invasion by so much as a bold dandelion. She loved her zinnias and marigolds, her phlox and white campion,
her
flowers. The garden was special to her. It made her not merely a housewife and mother but a gardener.

At the comer of the flower plot, Michael stood with the heels of his hands pressed to the steel of the mower’s handle. He watched the small woman in the cut-off jeans ‘and yellow terrycloth halter. He could see it happen:
One strong yank on the rope and this time the cranky sonofabitch kicks right over. Beth’s
arm-waving
panic—the sheer unbelief—the knife-sharp cry of “No!” The flowers destroyed, a rushing spray of multicolored confetti…

“That looks real good,” Michael said approvingly.

“Thanks,” Beth said. “Next year, I’ll have irises right up against the garage. You have to be careful, they can take over the place, but they’re so hardy nothing can kill them.”

Michael laughed teasingly. “Oh, you thought I was talking about the flowers. Sure, they look fine, but I meant that cute little butt you’ve got stuck up in the air.”

Over her shoulder, Beth grinned at him. Curled tendrils of brown hair, cut short at the start of summer, had escaped from the blue kerchief tied Aunt Jemima style on her head. There was a Charlie Chaplin dirt smudge mustache beneath her sparingly freckled nose. “You are silly!” she said.

“Yuh-yuh-yup,” he stammered
;
his Porky-Pig-Happy-Happy- Imbecile impersonation. He stepped away from the mower and held out his arms. “I’m a wild and crazy guy. I can’t come trekking in there without trampling your daffydillies, so get over and kiss me, kiddo!”

“I’m all dirty!”

“I’m dirtier, so get over here before I get mad and don’t let you.”

He thought there was something of both happiness and desperation in her rush to him; she might have been a toddler welcoming Daddy home after a week’s business trip. He swooped her up, kissed her solidly, and pinched a handful of her rump. As he so often did, he complimented himself on choosing her, this miniature he had decided on for “wife” in the collection of people and things he’d acquired to disguise
himself
. Beth Louden,
nee
Wynkoop, 102 pounds distributed pleasingly over a shade less than five feet of height, the ultra-compact version of the standard model that one selects as wife and mother. Beth was perfect for his needs. And she’d given him two perfect children, completing the image of the middle class, nose-to-the-grindstone, more-or-less contented suburban husband he had to appear to be.

Beth’s words came as though a plea for understanding. “I
do
love you.”

“Jeez, that works out! I love you, too!”

She pushed away from him, tiny hands on his chest. He wondered if she thought those hands could hold him back, if there were any way on earth or in hell she figured she could do that if he decided he would
not
be held back, not any longer.

“Michael, I…” Beth’s brown eyes, so round they made Michael think of paintings of waifs in the alleged “Art” sections of department stores, were troubled. “I’ve wanted… For
awhile
, I’ve really needed to talk with you. Sometimes it’s not easy to talk, I guess.”

“What is it?” he said, resting his hands on her bare shoulders. “This is me, remember? You can say anything at all.”

Beth looked down. She licked her lips. “Michael, I’m worried about us.”

“Us?” he said. Then he let amazement drift out of his tone to be replaced by a note of concern. “I’m not following, honey…

Beth shrugged and he put his arms at his sides. He shaped his face—eyebrows, drawn-in upper lip—into a silent message that read:
I do want to understand.

Beth said, “There’s a distance, Michael, a distance between us. It’s there, I feel it, and it worries me.”

“I…” He praised himself for the pause. He considered tossing in a bit of
head-scratching
and rejected it—too hayseed. Robert DeNiro an actor? Shit, he could sign up for lessons from Michael Louden!

Michael said seriously, “I guess I do know what you mean. I’ve felt that, too, in the times I slow down enough to realize what the heck is going on.” He made his shoulders sag. “A lot of it’s probably me, you know. Ever since Vern gave me the promotion, I’ve had nothing but business on my mind. That’s yanked me out of the real world, the world we’ve made together.”

Beth said, “I know there are pressures on you.”

Pressures? He thought. What the hell could she know about the daily pressures of a Stranger? He said, “I guess, but I’m sorry I’ve been so out of it, so far away from you. I don’t mean to be, okay?”

“Sure,” Beth said, with “not-so-sure” tentativeness.

“Honest to God, Beth,” he went on, “you’re the one person in my life I always want to feel close to.”

He tried a hopeful, mischievous smile. “I have an idea about how we can maybe bridge that distance between us. With Marcy and Kim not coming home from camp until tomorrow, we’ve got the house empty all tonight yet, just you and me. We can…get close anywhere we please. The kitchen even, or the rec room or”—he made the smile grow— “right on the living room carpet. We’ll be romantic! I’ll build a fire…”

He had her laughing now. No problem, no Problem at all, he thought.

“A fire? You goof! It’s so hot…”

“So we’ll have the fire and turn the air conditioning all the way up!”

Beth’s laughter ended abruptly. She said softly, “Oh, I do want to be with you, Michael, really
with
you.”

“And that’s what tonight is all about,” he said. “Now, I’ll tell you, I’ve promised Zeller I’d come over for a beer…”

“He does get lonely,” Beth said, implying that Zeller wasn’t the only one who did.

“…And as soon as I get back,” Michael continued, “I’ll bicycle over to Kentucky Fried. We’ll gobble up chicken, then we can take a shower—you and me.” He leered. “How ‘bout it, kiddo? You soap mine and I’ll soap yours, huh? Then we’ve got the whole night ahead, and…”

“All right,” Beth said. She smiled. “Yes, that sounds fine.”

“Then that’s what we do.”

Okay, he thought, as he wheeled the lawnmower to the garage, she was mollified for the time being. He knew, though, it wouldn’t last. He understood the humdrum rhythms and monotonous cadences, the mundane dialogues and typical scenes of his all-too-usual marriage. Tonight, he would give her a royal screwing—maybe a couple—and she’d interpret sex as a re-establishing of temporarily lost intimacy. And that would make her want to talk—a “serious discussion” about “where we are and where we’re going” as individuals, as a man and wife, as a family. And she’d probably belabor him with her typically indecisive jibber-jabber about whether she ought to go back to college. Maybe he’d be able to hold her off, though, if he really gave her a pounding tonight, wore her down and out so that sleeping was all she had on her excuse for a mind.