Ash Wednesday (47 page)

Fred
Hibbs
stood watching in horror as the box came farther and farther from the floor, knowing that there was something dead beneath, and slowly beginning to understand who, impossible as it seemed. Finally the nails; with a scream of release, left the floorboards completely, and the box fell over, revealing the form of the raped and murdered woman that Brad Meyers had uncovered a month before. Fred bit the inside of his mouth.

Eddie Karl knelt beside her, his shoulders slumping, his head down, the furies departed. "It
is
you," he said, looking at the face, then at the rest of the body. "What did they do? What did they do to you?"

Fred was unable to come closer. "Is it . . . is it her? Who you told me about?"

Eddie nodded. "It's her." He lifted a hand and held it to the woman's face, and for a second Fred
Hibbs
could have sworn that he saw a contact, a slight yielding of the flesh where Eddie's hand met it. "All these years. So long, and she's still beautiful. But my God, look what they did to you."

"But . . ." Fred
Hibbs
felt as though he stood gazing into the face of an awesome tragedy, dwarfed by the magnitude of the old man's grief. Unable to deal with the emotion of it, he sought instead for logic. "But you seen 'em before, Eddie . . . you said you seen 'em all before. You been here, been here
lots
. But you never seen her?
Never?
"

The old man gave a sigh like corn husks brushing together. "I never seen nobody," he whispered, never taking his eyes from the woman's face. "I seen what I wanted to see, that's all. I'm a liar, Fred. Some folk's killers,
some's
liars. I'd rather be a liar. I'd rather be a liar than the ones that did this. How could they? Just look at her. Look at her and tell me how they could."

"Eddie . . ." Fred's voice was pinched, too tight to be audible. He cleared his throat. "Eddie, come on . . . We
gotta
go." Fred
Hibbs's
soul was filled with terror. He wanted to run out, but he could not bear to be alone, not in a town that was full of such things, full of ghosts and death and thick, choking fear. "Eddie . . ." he pleaded.

Eddie stood up and shuffled over to where Fred stood shivering. He put an arm around the younger man and smiled guilelessly. "We can't go yet. Not till I introduce you."

"Eddie,
goddanunit
, now don't—"

"You can see, see for yourself how beautiful she was," and he tugged at Fred
Hibbs
, drawing him closer to the beloved obscenity. Fred tried to pull away, but Eddie's voracious strength had returned, and Fred felt himself drifting helplessly toward the woman on the floor, feeling awe at how strong Eddie had become.

The strength of madness.

"Come on, come on, you
gotta
meet her. . ." The humor was starting to creep into Eddie's voice again, but now it was a cackling humor, the humor of a man whose sanity has been shocked away. And Fred
Hibbs
felt something like madness stir in him also, so that the next time he pulled back he made Eddie stagger along with him. "No, no," Eddie admonished, his thin fingers digging more deeply into the flesh of Fred's upper arm. "You
gotta
meet her. . . . If you don't, you won't believe me. . . . I
gotta
show you, show you I'm not loony."

It was then that Fred
Hibbs
struck Eddie Karl, pulling back his free right arm and driving his fist full into the old man's face. Eddie neither flinched nor blinked. Indeed, he seemed to not even see the thick-knuckled hand moving toward him. It met his nose and mouth with a loud crack that shattered bone, and he fell, a dead weight, to the floor.

It took a moment for Fred
Hibbs
to realize that he was free, for his arm still ached as though Eddie's claw retained its grasp. Even then, he could not immediately move. Instead, he stood rooted, gazing down at Eddie Karl, hearing his bubbling breathing, watching the blood trickle out of his nose and mouth, half expecting to see Eddie turn, change into something naked and blue and gleaming.

But there was no change, and slowly Fred felt his muscles begin to respond, so that he was able to turn his body, to walk sluggishly through the semidarkness toward the door. But instead of the blackness he had expected to see through the upright panel, there was a red light, blinking off and on, off and on, and in that light he could see a dark, framed shape crouching, holding something metallic out in front of itself.

"Hold it," the shape said in a pinched tenor. "Police." The voice shook, as if the speaker were even more frightened than Fred
Hibbs
.

"Jus'
lemme
come out," Fred said weakly. "Outside . . ."

"Come on, then, but no quick moves." Fred recognized the voice now. Mike Gifford, the youngest of
Merridale's
police force. Gifford backed up, never moving his revolver from Fred's direction, while Fred slowly shuffled after him. Finally Fred was through the doorway, into the stinging coldness of night, the red flasher of the patrol car illuminating his pale face at regular intervals. "Fred
Hibbs
," said Gifford with a trace of surprise. "Is that you?" Fred nodded blankly. "Who's . . . who's in there with you?"

"Eddie Karl." Fred had to say it twice before Gifford heard.

"He okay?"

"He's . . . hurt. I hit him."

"Okay, Mr.
Hibbs
," Gifford said, his voice trembling more than before. He opened the back door of his car. "Just climb in
there
real slow, okay?"

Fred did as he asked and Gifford closed the door behind him, then opened the front door and fiddled with something on the dash. There was a loud click, and Fred
Hibbs
knew he was locked in. The wire mesh between him and the front seat reminded him of a taxicab he'd ridden in once in New York City, long, long ago. Or had that been him at all? Had he ever been to New York City? He tried, but he couldn't remember.

~*~

An ambulance came a short time later, and took Eddie Karl to the Northern County Health Center. Eddie was just starting to regain consciousness when they lifted him onto the stretcher. His face felt numb, like no face at all, but a mask made from ice, pressed over and stuck to his own features. He thought about the pain, about the woman, and about Fred
Hibbs
hitting him. "Serves me right," he muttered.

The orderly with him heard only a wet whisper. "Just take it easy there. Don't try to talk."

'Serves me right for
makin
' friends with a dummy," Eddie went on, but the orderly could not understand. Stick to old friends, Eddie thought. That's the ticket.

He saw several at the Health Center. The Center was an emergency drop for a large number of patients—those not banged up enough to warrant a trip to Lansford General, or those too damaged to survive the additional fifteen miles. Eddie was one of those in-
betweeners
, serious enough for a hospital check-in, but needing immediate attention and minimal movement because of his age and fragility. They carried him in and took him to the tiny ward. There were eight beds, and every one of them had been filled. Had been, that is, until the doctors had ordered them moved, shifted a few feet one way or the other so that the blue forms no longer lay directly on them, but instead floated at the spots where they had died. Several occupied the same space, like some protoplasmic jumble of flesh.

"Sorry about the view, old-timer," said an orderly, settling Eddie on one of the beds. "Can't cover 'em up, we've
gotta
get around," and so saying, he walked through one of the ghostly assortment.

Eddie painfully swiveled his dripping head to look around. The first blue, slack-jawed face he saw was one he recognized. It had belonged to a man with whom Eddie had played poker years before. "Sam," he said. "
Howya
doin
', Sam?"

Eddie Karl closed his eyes, the pain fading. He was thinking how good it was to be around old friends. When the darkness took him again, he was happy.

~*~

Fred
Hibbs
minded the spraying worst of all. What did they think he was? One of those niggers or PR's from the ward? Hell, he didn't have any goddamn lice, and he'd told them so. But that cop had just grinned at him and said, "We just like to make sure. Strip."

He wished he could've stayed in the holding cell at the Merridale Police Station. They wouldn't have sprayed him there. But the only things that would've kept him there were minor infractions, and assault and battery wasn't minor, and neither was breaking and entering. So the
staters
had come and taken him to Lansford, where he'd stripped, been sprayed, showered, and dressed in a drab, gray uniform that looked like a hundred other guys had worn it first. Now, finally, they had taken him to a cell with a bed and a sink and a toilet in it, and there he sat, scared as hell of what they were going to do to him next. Oh, Christ, he hoped Eddie Karl didn't die, that he wasn't hurt bad. He hoped they'd believe him when he told them that
Eddie'd
driven him to it, had made him bust open the door, had
made
him lay him out. But what if he was dead? Oh, shit, what then?

Fred sat on the edge of the bed, unable to sleep, so that he was awake when the guard came back to tell him that Eddie Karl was still alive. He'd blacked out a few times, but kept coming back. They wouldn't know for sure until they ran the brain scans, but for now, the prognosis was good.

Thank God, Fred thought. Thank God. Now I won't burn. Now they can't kill me. But the relief left quickly as the grim reality of his situation returned to him. Jail. Maybe for a long time. Years and years.

And then it hit him. Even though he still felt afraid, it was a different kind of fear, a natural, more sensible fear. Something else, that
other
fear, was gone. He listened with all his senses, and after a moment's meditation he knew he was safe. Oh, maybe not from other convicts, but why would they bother him? He was big and friendly and pretty strong, and too damn old and ugly for anyone to want to rape.

What he was safe from was the ghosts.

There weren't any here. Not a one. No blue forms to haunt his sleep, to creep into his mind even without his seeing them. They were all back there in Merridale. They could not touch him now.

Suddenly jail felt safe and warm and comfortable, and the next day when they told him his bail had been set at $10,000, a sum that he could have easily raised by mortgaging his parents' house, he told them he wasn't interested. Out of his parents' house, out of Eddie Karl's, Fred
Hibbs
had found a home.

They would never go away.

They would be here forever, would outlive him by centuries. Even worse, he would become one of them, become what had killed him.

Tom Markley,
Merridale's
mayor, looked in the bathroom mirror at his own pale face, held his fingers to his neck. He could feel the artery pulsing with his blood. Sweat wetted his skin as he tried to feel a regular rhythm, tried to beat out
bump-bump-bump-bump-bump
. But although he heard the strict, solid, disciplined drumbeat in his head, he did not feel it with his fingers.

Bump
.

Then a pause.

Bump-bump
.

Then another, so long that he wondered if he would die then and there. But no.

Bump
.

(So light, how can that keep me alive?)

BUMP-bump
.

A hiccup, he thought. His heart had the hiccups, that was all. Maybe if he cut himself open and put a bag over it, or if he yelled boo to his chest in the mirror, maybe it would stop.

And maybe what had started it hiccupping would go away. Sure. Sure.

He'd noticed it a week or so ago, a slight irregularity somewhere within him. He'd sensed it as he lay awake in bed in the black hours before dawn, that bad time when he was most alone with his thoughts, when it was just him and Merridale and
Mim
, and Clyde Thornton and the
ghoulies
taking it all away. At first he thought it was his stomach growling, but quickly discovered that it was not. Something inside. Something inside.