Bedbugs (4 page)

With each halting step forward, the agonizing sensation in my hands grew steadily worse until it became intolerable.

I had no idea what to do with my hands, whether to shove them deep into my jacket pockets so no one could see them, clasp them behind my back, shake them wildly above my head, or claw at them and start screaming.

That’s what I wanted to do—scream.

The thought crossed my mind that if I fell completely apart, everyone in the room would think it was simply an outpouring of my grief over the loss of my brother. They would all react respectfully, with sympathy and understanding.

But my throat was closing off. My chest and lungs were so constricted I could hardly breathe, much less scream. I was suddenly afraid that, if I opened my mouth and tried to say a few words—something about my dear, departed brother—deathly cold hands would clasp around my throat and begin to choke me.

I had jotted down a few notes of what I wanted to say, only because I was afraid of what I might say if I started rambling. The problem was, the sheet of paper with my notes on it was in the breast pocket of my jacket, and I didn’t dare reach for it. I was suddenly fearful that I would no longer be able to control my hands. The skin—Derrick’s skin—had long since dissolved into my own hands, fusing with my hands.

It had become me.

I glanced down at my hands and was suddenly quite convinced that I didn’t even recognize them.

They were someone else’s hands!

They really were Derrick’s hands!

I
know it isn’t possible. You’re not the first person to tell me it was all in my mind; but even if it was, it was nonetheless true!

The silence in the room continued to pulsate. When someone toward the back of the room cleared his throat, it sounded like distant cannon shot. Somehow, though, I made it to the podium. Leaning forward and gripping the edge of the podium with both hands, I forced a smile, but I could tell by the way the skin stretched around my mouth that it was more of a grimace. As if moving by its own volition, my right hand reached up and inside my jacket, and clasped the sheet of paper in my pocket. The heat inside my jacket was intolerable, as if I had just reached into a blazing furnace. I almost cried out. Bone-deep tremors shook my body as I unfolded my notes and, without looking at them, spread the page on the podium.

Glancing to my left, I once again saw the pitcher of water. I wanted more than anything to plunge my hands into that icy water to soothe the pain, but I stood there, immobile.

I could tell that the audience was getting restless. It was awkward for them to see me so obviously distraught, but it was just as obvious—to me, at least—that they didn’t see the real reason why I was so upset.

I nearly fainted when I lowered my gaze and looked down at my hands, holding the sheet of paper in place. The backs of my hands were discolored a sickly yellow. They were wrinkled like an old man’s hands. For a dizzying instant, I felt as though I was looking at my hands through a huge magnifying glass. Every hair, every pore and blemish, every vein and tendon stood out in stark relief. The feeling that these were not my own hands—that they were Derrick’s—grew terrifyingly stronger. I thought that—somehow—maybe Derrick was still alive and standing behind me, reaching around and manipulating things for me.

I tried to push these thoughts away, cleared my throat. With great effort, I began to speak.

“I want to . . . thank you all for . . . being here today,” I said, forcing my grimacing smile to widen.

I locked eyes with Alice, sitting there with her children in the front row. Her expression as she looked at me was soft and sympathetic. I could see that she was on the verge of crying, but she nodded to me, offering her silent support.

The choking sensation in my throat was growing steadily stronger. When I reached up to loosen my collar, I was suddenly fearful that my hands—Derrick’s hands—were going to clasp me by the throat and start to squeeze until they choked the life out of me.

I lowered my eyes and shook my head, taking a moment to compose myself. I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand, but it was like striking a match against a sunbaked sidewalk. A line of flames seemed to erupt across my brow.

It was intolerable, I tell you!

I wanted to say something—anything—just a few words about how much I mourned my brother, what a tragic loss his death was to me and his family and friends, but I couldn’t focus on the few notes in front of me. All I could think about was the burning pain that was flaming inside my hands and spreading up my arms.

I looked again at the pitcher of water and knew what I had to do. You see, I knew then—or if I had known it before, I finally admitted it to myself then—that these really weren’t my hands.

They truly were Derrick’s!

His dry, desiccated skin may have rotted away, but some part of my dead brother had fused with me, and this small part of him—the one small part I thought I could possess and control—was
not
under my control.

Maybe I would have been better off if I had killed myself, had strangled myself right there in front of that crowd.

It would have ended it all, and maybe the people there would have thought that I had been unable to contain my grief and had finally snapped.

But that’s not what happened.

I didn’t plunge my hands into that pitcher of ice water, either.

I had tried that before, and I knew that it wouldn’t work.

No, what I did—well, you probably read about it in the papers, but what I did was take the water pitcher and smash it against the side of the podium. I don’t remember hearing the sound of breaking glass or feeling the cold dash of water. I sensed some reaction from the crowd, but not much. I was lost inside a cocoon of silence where there was just the raging roar of my breathing and the unbearable burning knowledge that my hands were not my own.

Holding the handle of the shattered pitcher, I turned the jagged edge around and began slashing and sawing at the back of my hands.

“These aren’t my hands! These aren’t my hands!”

I remember screaming that or something like it, but I was lost in a blind frenzy of panic as I tried to cut and scrape the flesh from the back of my hands. Suddenly, I had the unnerving sensation that I was somehow outside of myself—that I was floating above it all and watching what I was doing as if this were all a movie or a play.

I felt no pain—none whatsoever—but I could see the ragged strips of flesh I was removing from the back of my hands. There was blood everywhere, but no matter how much I tore at the skin on my hands, it didn’t stop the burning sensation.

Oh, no.

It continued to spiral up higher and higher until it was all I knew. The mere physical pain of tearing the flesh from my hands was nothing . . . literally, nothing.

From my vantage point, hovering above it all, I watched as I continued to rake the broken glass across the back of my hands, first the left one, then the right. My sheet of notes was splattered with bright red smears, like ruby teardrops. I almost started laughing when I realized that one splotch of blood—the biggest—looked exactly like the splash of blood on Derrick’s kitchen wall, the night I killed him.

Every other sound in the room was muffled, but I sensed a rush of motion as someone—I have no idea who . . . probably Andrew—ran up to me to help . . . to try to stop me.

Then I heard a sizzling, crackling sound, and everything went black.

I
woke up sometime later, here in the hospital. I realize now that I must have grabbed onto the microphone and, because I was standing in the puddle of water I had spilled, had gotten one hell of an electric shock.

Not enough to kill me, mind you, and—well, the emergency room doctor said that, thankfully, I hadn’t severed any arteries, so I didn’t bleed to death.

The most horrible thing about it all, though, was that I didn’t get rid of Derrick’s skin. It’s still here, on the back of my hands.

See?

It’s still growing. Maybe you can’t see it, but it’s inside me now, still growing . . . and look at this. It’s spreading out, moving like a fungus up my arm. Pretty soon it’s going to cover my whole body!

I swear, it’s true.

Look at my hands.

Can’t you see?

I still can’t control them, either. Even with these bandages on, I’ve been trying to do a little bit of drawing while I’ve been here, and you can see that I’m not drawing anything very good . . . certainly not what I want to draw.

Look at these sketches. Every single one of them depicts something from the night I killed my brother.

See here?

This is him lying on the floor, leaning up against the wall. Remember how I said he looked like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

Well, doesn’t he?

That’s
exactly
what he looked like!

And check this one out.

This is the design the splash of blood made on the wall behind him, after I’d shot him. You’ll have to take my word for it, but it’s
exactly
like the bloody smear on my sheet of notes.

And look at this one.

See?

It’s a close up of Derrick’s face, once he was good and dead. He looks really relaxed, doesn’t he? It’s amazing how much he looks like me. I also did a couple of sketches of what his arms looked like after I’d hacked off his hands, but I had to throw them away. I didn’t like the way they were coming out even though I always was pretty good at drawing anatomy, especially hands.

The problem is, you see, I’m not the one who’s doing these drawings.

Derrick is.

He’s using my eyes and memory to record what happened to him.

His
hands are doing all of this!

They betrayed me!

The police never would have even found out that I had killed my brother if his hands hadn’t started drawing these pictures.

That’s how they finally got me to confess.

They wore me down by telling me that no one except the murderer could have done these sketches, not with such exact detail. They even showed me a couple of photographs taken at the murder scene. I don’t know if that was before or after I drew these pictures. They gave me drugs and have got me pretty confused here.

And yes, the backs of my hands still hurt like hell. I don’t even like looking at them anymore. Sure, they’re healing up just fine, but the burning sensation just keeps getting worse, day after day. I tell you, it’s driving me insane! Even when the nurse gives me a shot of something, it doesn’t really stop the pain. And I know, once these bandages come off, it won’t get any better.

Oh, no.

That’s why I asked you to come up and see me again today, doctor. I know we talked about all this before, but I’m positive I want you to do it.

Why do you keep saying you won’t?

I know you can! You have the equipment here, don’t you?

You have to cut
Derrick’s
hands off before they do something even more horrible!

A
s soon as he saw the old Pingree School schoolhouse again, Pete Garvey knew that what had been bothering him all along had something to do with it.

No.

It had everything to do with it.

He’d come back home to Hilton, Maine, because his mother was in the hospital, following a major heart attack. Fearful that she might die soon (and at eighty-one years old, that fear seemed entirely reasonable), she had asked her son, Pete, to come home and settle her affairs before she passed on.

Pete had been living in San Diego for the past fifteen years. He made every effort not to come back to Maine more than once every two or three years. For the first time since he had moved away, he finally dared to direct his afternoon walk down Story Street, past the Pingree School—his old grammar school.

Ever since he could remember, he hadn’t felt comfortable even going near the old building. Today, he realized he probably should face it and try to figure out why, throughout his entire adult life, he had been bothered by recurring nightmares about the place.

The two-story brick building looked innocuous enough. It sat atop a low crested rise with a thick screen of oak and pine trees behind it, like a stage backdrop. Beside the school, at the far end of the wide playing field, was an abandoned playground with a rusted swing set, jungle gym, and weed-choked sandbox. Deep divots beneath each swing and at the bottom of the slide marked the passing of uncountable scuffing feet.

Ever since the town had built the new consolidated grammar school on Tarr’s Lane, at the other end of town, the doors to the old Pingree School had been locked. The brick walls were bleached pink by the high summer sun. The pale yellow paint on the windowsills and door frames was cracked and powdery, like crumbling chalk. Several of the second story windows had fist-sized holes in them, where someone had thrown rocks; but even where they weren’t broken, the windows seemed somehow spent—lifeless and dull, as though the glass no longer had the ability to reflect daylight. The only bright spots on the building were down around ground-level, where local kids had spray-painted their initials, various obscenities, and the logos of their favorite rock bands.