Ash Wednesday (54 page)

The intruder entered, feet pressing gingerly on the floorboards, hesitant to put his full weight on them for fear of a betraying squeal of joists. The indistinct sounds of night grew louder in Brad's ears, then died away as the door closed. Whoever it was had come inside. Now. Before he was lost in darkness. Now was the time.

Brad swung the refrigerator door open. As bottles and jars rattled against the metal and plastic of the racks, a cold light rushed out of the machine, bathing the doorway and the man who stood there in a white radiance. The gun came up, the girl inhaled sharply, the stranger's eyes widened in surprise, then hardened in expectation of the bullet.

"
You
," Brad said,
sighting
down the short barrel directly into Jim
Callendar's
face. "
You
," he repeated, his voice shaking. "Oh, no, no, this isn't right. I haven't been waiting for
you
. It was
over
between us. Finished."

"Not yet." Jim's voice trembled too, but not from fear. "What do you want?"

"The same thing you do. You said once that we were bound. I thought that maybe you were right. But I didn't know for sure."

"And now?"

"Now I know."

"You're wrong.
I
was wrong. Not you. Not tonight.”

“It's not night." Jim smiled. "It's morning."

Brad's head was throbbing. A helmet of steel sat there, tightening, pressing his skull inward. "I'll kill you. That ends it."

"It doesn't matter if you do."

"Why? Why not?" He squinted against the pain.

"Because of how I feel. How I feel right now.”

“How
do
you feel?"

"Free. Killing me won't end it."

"It will," Brad said through gritted teeth.

"No. Don't deny me. You can't deny your face in the mirror."

Brad breathed again, exhaled, held, steadied. "I can
break
the mirror," he whispered as he pointed the gun at Jim
Callendar's
face, a face that looked exactly like his own, and pulled the 'trigger.

The hammer struck the cartridge, and Brad Meyers saw the flame burst from the end of the barrel, saw the bullet spin through the air, saw it strike the hollow just beneath the nose, saw the face spring apart, leap into shreds of Jim
Callendar's
fair skin, Bradley Meyers's brittle bone, Bradley
Callendar's
blood raining in homey kitchen, James Meyers's brains mingling gray snow with red rain.

Bradley Meyers William Wilson James Callendar and in killing me see how thou hast killed thyself
. . .

The rain and snow stopped falling.

The body lay limp on the floor.

The blue spirit hovered erect.

Moved.

Bore clothes. Hair. Flesh. And blueness departed.

Bradley Meyers James Callendar returned from the dead.

No.

James Callendar.

"Jim . . .”

Though he had seen all, he had not heard the shot.

He had not heard the shot
.

He stood stupidly, holding the gun in front of him. Empty, was his first thought. Had he been less distraught, less affected by Jim
Callendar’s
appearance in his kitchen and by his calm, sure, apostolic manner, he would have remembered that he had only fired one shot. But he did not,
could
not remember.

“You see?” Jim Callendar said. “You see?”

Empty.

The gun was already up, pointing at Jim
Callendar’s
face.

It took Brad only a second to turn, place the gun on top of the refrigerator, and with the same hand grab one of the long kitchen knives that hung in the wall rack. Knife extended, he rushed at Jim.

And the pistol on the refrigerator fired.

The recoil threw the
unheld
gun backward, where it struck the wall and clattered down the cooling coils. But the bullet itself flew laser-straight into Brad Meyers’s right temple, adding to his momentum so that it was with even greater force that he plunged the knife into Jim
Callendar’s
abdomen.

The two men fell as one against the kitchen door. Jim scarcely felt Brad’s weight atop him, or the pressure that weight put on the knife that pierced him. He did not hear Kim Bailey run screaming to the front door or the heavy booted footsteps only seconds afterward. All he was aware of was the bearded cheek touching his face, and the hand on his chest, a hand whose fingers twitched lightly, like thin branches in a gentle breeze. He held the hand in his own until the movement finally ceased, then closed his eyes, feeling tired, cold, happy to rest, eager to be warm again.

Mike Gifford, Bob Rankin, and Chief
Kaylor
sat together in the Merridale police station drinking coffee and waiting for dawn. The other men, called from their beds, had returned to them. Gifford shook his head. “Hate to be the real estate agent that’s got to sell
that
house.”
Kaylor
chuckled grimly. Bob Rankin forced a weak smile.

“Goddamn slaughterhouse, that’s for sure,” agreed
Kaylor
. “You believe what that trooper said though? About hang fire?” Gifford’s young face was lined with doubt.

“From what the girl said happened, I don’t know what else it could’ve been,”
Kaylor
answered. “The gun behind the refrigerator supports it.”

Gifford took another sip from his Penn State mug. “Never heard of that. Oh, I mean I’ve
heard
of it, but just never heard of it actually happening before.”

“I saw it once,” said Rankin quietly. “At the academy. We were slow-firing .38’s on the range, and the guy on the line next to me—his gun didn’t fire. So right away he starts to open the chamber and a sergeant yells at him, ‘Put that gun up!’ loud as he can. The kid does, and bam. The bullet the firing pin had struck six, seven seconds earlier finally goes off. ‘That’s called hang fire, asshole,’ the sergeant says, ‘and it happens one time in ten thousand, but that time it could’ve blown your fucking foot off.’ Well, it made an impression on me. I’ve had a lot of misfires over the years, but I just hold that bitch out and count to fifteen, just like that sergeant said.”

“Sure as shit what Meyers should’ve done,” Gifford said, then paused. “On second thought, maybe not. He got what he deserved. Couldn’t believe his face. Like a fucking maniac. How’d you like to have
that
where you cook your dinner? And down in the cellar? Thornton and that Grimes woman? Jesus, he was a psycho all right. Thank God he didn’t get the chance to do anything to the girl. In a way it’s kind of lucky that Callendar got in.”

“I should’ve seen him,” Rankin said. “He shouldn’t have gotten past me.”

“No,”
Kaylor
agreed, peering at Rankin over the edge of his cup. “He shouldn’t have.”

“What the hell, it worked out.” Gifford smiled. “The girl’s safe, and it looks like
Callendar’ll
pull through. And Meyers is dead. That alone has got to cheer you up some.”

Kaylor
stood quickly. “Get this shit cleaned up. And get your feet off the desk. If anyone wants me, I’ll be at home.”

“Holy shit, Bob,” Gifford said when
Kaylor
had gone. “What’s with him?”

“I don’t think he liked what you said. About Meyers.”

“Well, Jesus H. Christ, I’m sorry, but anybody who did what that son of a bitch did doesn’t deserve to live.”

“Maybe not. But you don’t want to get callous about it. Or worse, happy about it.”

“I was only joking.”

Rankin moved to the window. “Some joke, Frank,” he said, staring at the blueness starting to fade at the approach of dawn. “Just look at it. It’s all really some joke.”

Fred
Hibbs
awoke just before dawn, and he didn’t know why.

He knew it was early from his watch, not from any brightening of sky through a window, for his cell had no window. He usually slept soundly until 7:00, when the bells would ring twenty minutes before breakfast, and he would rise, scratching and moaning, eventually splash some water in his face, use the toilet, throw on his drab gray clothes, and wait for them to unlock his cell, so he could march down to the mess hall for breakfast.

He lay there in the darkness wondering what they’d have today. Eggs, he hoped. Not that the eggs were all that great—they were those powdered things, and they used too much water to cook them. But along with the eggs they always had bacon, thick, greasy slices of it that crisped and hardened at the edges, so juicy it was more like ham. Fred thought maybe they got a good price on the stuff from a local farmer.

Then it struck him that there was something special about today, and he immediately wondered if there would be any improvement in the mess hall cuisine as a result. But when he remembered he sighed. It was Ash Wednesday, that was all. Back in Merridale he probably wouldn’t even have realized it. But here, with all the PR’s and dagos, it was impossible to ignore. All they were talking about in the
rec
hall the day before was which priest would show up to put the ashes on the foreheads. Father Bill from St. Peter’s was the favorite at 5-2.

Fred smiled. If he’d known what prison in Lansford had been like, he’d have beaten up Eddie Karl a long time ago. Those prison movies were just bullshit. Oh, sure, maybe if you were a good-looking nineteen-year-old you were in for some trouble, but Fred had made buddies, stayed out of the mean guys’ way, and got along with the guards, who were really pretty nice if you didn’t hassle them. The bed was soft enough, the food was edible and plentiful, and there were magazines to look at, TV to watch from 7:00 to lights out.

And best of all, thought Fred
Hibbs
, there were no ghosts. On the tail of that thought he rolled over, deciding to go back to sleep.

But at that moment, a light began to reach through the thin membrane of his eyelids, making him wonder, Guard? Guard with a flashlight? Why?

He opened his eyes and saw the shape taking form in the opposite corner of his cell, directly under the water pipe that cut through each cubicle in the cellblock. It grew slowly into existence, a foot from the floor, a steadily gleaming wraith hanging naked from an unseen rope, shedding a pale light over the staring Fred
Hibbs
.

The light was blue.

Fred screamed, but the vision remained, its eyes opened wide, as in watching. Fred screamed again, and again, and again.

And soon, all the others were screaming as well.

~*~

It spread over the world like ink on tissue, slowly, inexorably, from the center outward until no whiteness remains. Its focal point was Merridale, and it began at dawn. Lansford was the first city of any size that it reached, Gettysburg the first site of utter horror. Few tourists were up at that hour, so the battlefield roads were nearly empty. But the early risers — truck drivers, people on their way to six A.M. shifts, anyone awake and about at the time who used the smooth two-lanes that passed the Wheatfield, Devil’s Den, the site of Pickett’s Charge — all were plunged into a scene worthy of the imagination of a Dante, a de Sade, a Hitler. Thousands of men stood, fell, lay dead in time, as the ball had struck them, as the shell had burst, as the bayonet tore away their lives. They littered the roadways, still warring to occupy the same space in the crisp March air, but warring without motion. Cars and trucks bounced off roads into low ditches and against stone walls. There were new deaths from injuries and heart attacks. When the rest of the town woke and realized, there were several suicides. By the time the first ambulances went out for the injured, the Wheatfield was an unbroken plain of blue.