Totentanz (26 page)

Did I really hate that
much?
he asked himself.

He knew that he had, because the hate,
screwed so deep into him, had finally, fully, wormed its way to the
surface and burst. He felt it again as he had at that moment when
the rope went taut around his neck, when the knot at the back
tightened like the grip of a hand, in an instant cutting the life
from his body. It all came back to him, and though he fought it, he
knew it was winning. He was turning into a raging animal, wanting
life, wanting revenge.

You'll all die!
his mind had screamed.
I'll kill all of you.

The moment of Poundridge's death had brought
it back. When the sad, thin, pleading man had dropped through the
floor of the gallows—his feet kicking in bursts at the emptiness
around him, looking for a place to set down but finding none: his
arms, tied behind, slapping viciously against his back; his body
desperate to break free and find his lungs the air they needed—at
that instant it had all rushed back at him. The face then had been
that other Poundridge's face, grinning up at him, fat,
confident—and here was this same man, with his hands against his
will on the lever, pulling it and hanging his own
great-great-great grandson.

Jeff Scott had wanted to
cry at that moment, to throw himself on the ground and beg whoever
there might be for forgiveness, to forgive him for wanting this,
but that hadn't happened. Instead, the hate, the red raw hate, had
roiled up, and to his horror, he had started to laugh. Poundridge
was still thrashing on the end of the cord, gagging and wetting
himself, his face red and wild and, through all the choking and
kicking, still
pleading
, and Jeff Scott had
laughed
. He had turned to see Ash
regarding him in the artificial light; Ash's mouth was spread like
a sickle, his dull, dark eyes crinkled at the corners. Then Ash
suddenly turned toward Poundridge, and at that moment, as
Poundridge stopped struggling, when his body went tight and then
loosened, there was an audible "Ah" from Ash that was more ghastly
than anything Jeff Scott had yet heard. Ash's frame went taut and
then relaxed in an almost sexual release. He began to laugh,
wracking with it, great hoarse cries coming from that slit of a
mouth, and then Jeff Scott was able to fall to the ground, beating
his fists upon it, his fist of flesh and his fist of bone, trying
to stop himself from laughing, turning his laughter into
sobs.

At last he rose and stumbled away. He heard
Ash's voice behind him, calling him back, but he walked on. Ash's
hand fell on his shoulder, a hand that seemed to melt right through
his bones, gripping the marrow within them.

"It's started,” Ash crooned, barely
suppressing his excitement.

Jeff Scott tried to walk on.

Ash's grip stopped him, forced him to the
ground. His voice was a snake's hiss.

"Don't even
think
about anything
else; this is yours, and you'll have it." He softened his tone.
"Look at me." His hand was turning Jeff toward him, and Jeff closed
his eyes.

"Let me go.”

He felt his body turning, felt the rustle of
Ash's short coat and smelled his sour, smoky breath near his face.
He did not open his eyes. There was a whisper of cool air, and he
felt the cloak enfold him like a butterfly's wings. The world
turned icy and then hot. His hate crawled from the depths to scream
into his head, and as Ash's body pressed closer to his, as the
white face dropped nearer to his face, the red lips to his lips,
Jeff Scott felt the rest he so desired coming on him.

There was hate, and then there would be rest.
"Kiss me," Ash breathed. His lips, iced metal, brushed across Jeff
Scott's own, and Ash's hands tightened around him in a lover's
embrace, his mouth beginning to feed

Jeff Scott screamed and pushed Ash away. He
caught him off balance and broke free. There was a last pinch of
Ash's claw-like hand on his shoulder, and then he was running
blindly.

"There's nowhere for you to go," Ash said
evenly. Jeff Scott nearly ran into a light pole. He pushed himself
off it and stumbled on. He passed into sudden light, found himself
on the midway. A few rides moved laconically: everywhere he turned,
there were small clusters of people. Always with these groups there
was one stiff, slow figure, man, woman or child, eyes flat and
glassy, limbs without energy, bearing the limp smiles of the
dead

You'll all die,
he thought, looking at the quiet, happy faces
that surrounded these ghouls, the joy of unexpected reunion in
their eyes. Sorrow and then great hatred welled up in him. "You'll
see me soon enough!" he screamed at them, and they turned toward
him, and then quickly looked away. He sobbed and ran on, holding
his hands out before him, trying to push the welling, bloated
hatred away from him before it consumed him whole.

You'll all die.

He passed others who were
going into some of the attractions. He wanted to shout at them to
get away, to run, not to go in, but he could not. There was too
much of him that wanted them where they were. Ahead of him loomed
the mouth of the Tunnel of Fun. A somber, pale porter was just
pulling aside the tasseled rope at the head of the line, and
passengers were boarding the small, tracked cars that would wheel
them inside.
Like cattle.
Pale specters accompanied each of them, and the
riders chattered happily to these silent spooks, occasionally
touching or patting them. Kill you all, Jeff's mind shouted, but he
squeezed his eyes shut, and the words did not reach his lips. The
ride attendant looked up at him, eyes silent and white, like
stones. The pupils were too small, with too little life in
them.

Release me,
those eyes begged him.

Jeff ran on.

There were people everywhere now. He passed
under the Ferris wheel, each car full. The lights ringing its
perimeter blinked gaily. The carousel was nearly filled, each
enameled horse carrying a rider strapped tightly by a leather
thong. Pallid attendants were in evidence everywhere, the dead of
Montvale, helping passengers and handing out tickets and running
the food stands and game tents. The steam organ sent bouncy, tinkly
music into every corner of the amusement park. The lights grew
brighter. There were clowns and jugglers too, milling among the
crowd and showing off their somber skills; the balls the jugglers
handled seemed hypnotic, brightly painted. The clowns' eyes were
waxy and bloodless, and they all turned the same look on Jeff Scott
as he passed:

Release me.

Jeff Scott found the door to his trailer and
staggered through it.

How could I do this?
he agonized, and immediately another thought
overtook the first:
I'll kill you
all.

He started to tear up the
room, pulling over the Spartan bed, ripping the lone shelf from the
wall. The few books, the volumes of Hawthorne and Mark Twain, Mary
Shelley's
Frankenstein
, and the Bible, tumbled to the floor. He picked up the
Bible, holding it out before him, and then, with a wail, he threw
it against the wall. He felt a sudden urge to rip every page out
and burn them, to burn the ashes and then beat the pile left with
his fists. He tore out the pages of the other books and then pulled
the drawers from the dresser, smashing the wood against the walls
and picking the pieces up and breaking them further with his hands.
He threw himself at the wall and looked up to see his face in the
mirror.

He howled like an
animal.
I'm not Frankenstein,
he thought; and then:
I'm not anything at all.
A burning,
bottomless pain seared through him; it was like being on a roller
coaster and having the first drop take your stomach from you, only
now it was his being that dropped out of him.
I'm nothing.
He stared at the fleshy
side of his face, and at the bone side. He grinned, and wanted to
moan at the horror of his grinning: the smile he had always known,
had studied in the mirror when he was young to see whether the
young ladies would like it, on one side; and then, beginning at the
center of his face, the white, smooth, tooth-pierced grin of a
Halloween skeleton.

I'll kill them all. Yes.

He thought of the sick, almost wet, sound of
his neck snapping, the futile, desperate kick of his body against
the rope. A thrill ran through him from his head to his legs. He
thought of Ash, of the erotic twinge that had bolted through him
when Poundridge had died.

No!

Yes, I'll kill them all.

He pushed away from the mirror and dropped to
the floor. He brought one hand slowly up to the good side of his
face, feeling the soft, cool line that ran along his nose and down
to his chin. He forced his shaking hand through his hair, feeling
the familiar wave of it, the part, the partial cowlick at the back.
This was his hair, his nose and mouth, his face.

You're still you.

He began to breathe easier.
He brought himself into a sitting position. A ripped-out portion of
a book lay open in front of him. He picked it up. It was a section
of
Huckleberry Finn
, including the front page. On it was Twain's warning that
anyone looking for a moral in the book would be shot. He nearly
smiled, remembering the first time he had read the book, in a
library in another town about a month after he had found himself on
that road by the churchyard, standing beside his open grave-hole.
The book had been written in the 1880s, almost twenty years after
his death, but it brought back memories. It was the kind of book
his father and brother would have liked. He had wandered into the
library out of the rain. The book had been open on a return cart,
the title page showing stately typeface, and across from it there
was a picture of a boy and a black man on a raft, the boy with a
corncob pipe in his mouth. Jeff had been drawn to it because he had
made a corncob pipe for himself every once in a while when his
father wasn't looking; he had liked to sneak a smoke with one of
his friends or with Petey Graham, who always had
tobacco.

He had taken the volume quietly from the cart
and settled himself in one of the deep chairs in the periodical
room at the back of the library. He had soon become lost in it.

Before he knew it, someone was leaning over
him, breaking him out of his reverie and telling him that the
library was closing. "You can take the book out if you like," she
had said, smiling at his obvious fascination.

He had mumbled about not having a library
card, and her face had clouded.

"That's too bad," she had said, then, “Wait
here a minute."

He had watched her disappear into one of the
other rooms. The lights had gone off, row on row, leaving only his
area still lit. He had thought for a moment that she was going to
lock him in the library over-night, which would have been fine with
him, but she reappeared a moment later.

"You can have this one,” she had said,
handing him a tattered copy of the same book he had been reading.
"It was in the storeroom. Normally we'd end up throwing it out
because it's falling apart."

He had thanked her, noticing that she was
young and pretty. She had smiled; she seemed to want him to say
more. With a shock, he realized that she was interested in him,
maybe even wanted to start something with him. There was a look in
her eyes—not flirtatious, but open, curious.

Embarrassed, he had thanked her again and
awkwardly left.

And here was that same copy, torn to pieces
at his feet, the symbol of his impotence and his end. But the fact
was that he had read and loved this book, had reread it four or
five times, and he knew there must be something to him, something
real and solid, because it was a book written twenty years after he
had died.

Within him, the hate was diminishing. He felt
it shrink to a small, hard stone. He got to his feet and went to
the crooked mirror; he stood close to it and looked hard at the
reflection it sent back. Half-man, half-bone, but suddenly it made
no difference. He smiled at the reflection, and this time he felt
only himself smile back.

I'm still Jeff Scott. Maybe he would be free
of Ash.

He heard someone flip the pages of a book
behind him, and when he turned around, Ash was standing there,
filling the doorway.

"There's an interesting
passage in this Twain book," Ash said. "Perhaps I could read it to
you." He held up a torn page in mock lecture. " ‘He chased me round
and round the place with a clasp-knife, calling me the Angel of
Death, and saying he would kill me, and then I couldn't come for
him no more. I begged, and told him I was only Huck; but he
laughed
such
a
screechy laugh, and roared and cussed, and kept on chasing me up.
Once when I turned short and dodged under his arm he made a grab
and got me by the jacket between my shoulders, and I thought I was
gone; but I slid out of the jacket quick as lightning, and saved
myself. Pretty soon he was all tired out, and dropped down with his
back against the door, and said he would rest a minute and then
kill me. He put his knife under him, and said he would sleep and
get strong, and then he would see who was who.' "

Ash looked up, letting the page spin to the
floor like a dropping leaf. He took a long time to light one of his
black cigarettes. Drawing on it, he regarded Jeff Scott evenly, as
an entomologist might regard a bug that had escaped him, with
determination to catch it again. He pulled on his cigarette two or
three more times, holding the smoke in before leisurely pushing it
out.