Mr. X (15 page)

Once or twice a month, a reckless cadet who had escaped into town regained entry to the dorms by precisely those means. “I don’t know anything about that.”

He folded his arms over his chest and tilted his head to one side, still smirking at me. “But since this is between you and I, we both know the commandant’s story is horse puckey, don’t we?”

I did my best to look puzzled. “Sir, I don’t understand.”

“I probably don’t, either. But here’s what I know.” He unfolded his arms and used the index finger of his left hand to tick off points on the fingers of his right, as he did in our calculus class. “Point one. Only two other cadets with fourth-floor rooms were still around on the night in question. Cavalry Pledges Holbrook and Joys reported to the mess by 1800 hours and returned to their quarters before 1900 hours to study for the same final in military philosophy you had to take. They observed lights-out at 2330 hours.

“Two. Artillery Pledge Fletcher’s roommates, Artillery Pledges Woodlett and Bartland, witness to his intention of dropping off in your quarters a book you wanted to borrow, thereafter to proceed to the evening meal in time to arrive approximately when they would do so, then report back to the third floor and prepare for his chem final until lights-out.

“Three. When their roommate failed to appear at mess, Artillery
Pledges Woodlett and Bartland assumed that he had chosen to forgo dinner in favor of study in the library. Shortly before lights-out, they went downstairs into the courtyard for the purpose of greeting the pledge on his return from his solitary labors. He did not return, guess why, the poor kid was already dead. Artillery Pledges Woodlett and Bartland remained down there until 2330 hours, at which time a single window on the north side of the fourth floor remained alight. That was the window of your room, Pledge.”

“I apologize for the infraction, sir,” I said.

He focused on the wall above my cot. “They came up here, thinking that the pledge might have been in your room all that time. During their short conversation with you, they were informed that he had loaned you the book and gone on his merry way. They returned to quarters in the hopes that the pledge would appear before the night was out. Unfortunately, the pledge did not. Instead, a deal of trouble was visited upon us, and the name of this fine institution was dragged through the mud.”

He fixed me with a blunt stare. “At which time, and I think we have come to point number four, you came into my mind. I suppose you had been in my mind all along. I was already starting to wonder if you had put all those pledges into the infirmary.”

“Sir,” I said, “accidents happen. Did any of them blame me for their injuries?”

“Right. Point five. Accidents happen. After careful consideration, I have surprised myself by concluding that you are one of those accidents.” He was staring directly into my eyes. “I think you’re something new. I don’t even know what to call it. You spooked those kids so bad they’re afraid to open their mouths. Know what I think? I think our setup here was exactly what you were looking for.”

“Sir, excuse me, but this is incredible,” I said. “A bunch of kids fall down and break some bones, and you blame it on me.”

“Point six.” Captain Squadron was still holding my eyes. “Let’s get back to that light in your window. Artillery Pledges Woodlett and Bartland were surprised to see that it was turned on. There were a number of reasons why that could be. You might have forgotten to turn it off before leaving. Or Artillery Pledge Fletcher forgot to turn it off. Or, what they were hoping, he hadn’t switched off your light because he was still in the
room. So up they come and, surprise, surprise, you’re here after all.”

He gave me an odd, twisted smile and tilted his head against his raised fist in a charged, deliberate pause. I was surprised to feel a chill of fear in my stomach, and I hated him for causing it. “Did they knock before they came in?”

“I think they did,” I said. He was getting too close. “Everybody does. Section three, paragraph six of chapter two in the Reg Book, ‘Pledge Deportment.’ ”

He looked as if he was figuring out how to get a nasty stain off the wall. “But you don’t knock on the door of an empty room. The pledges, whose memories seem to be better than yours, say they just barged in.”

“It’s possible,” I said.

Squadron held his pose for another beat. He lowered his hand and gave me a slow, subzero smile. “Artillery Pledge Fletcher did the same thing, didn’t he?”

Humiliating fear sparkled in my viscera. “I believe he followed regs and knocked first.”

“I believe he did not.” Squadron gazed around the room for a moment, then shot me a speculative glance. “Where are we, point eight?”

“Seven,” I said. “Sir.”

“Okay, seven. Point seven. After a
tremendous
amount of thought, I have come to believe that Artillery Pledge Fletcher came across something he shouldn’t have seen. He surprised you. All of a sudden he was a threat. Boy, I really wonder what that kid stumbled into. And I wonder how you managed to scare him so bad his heart actually stopped, but I don’t suppose you’ll tell me. You did it, though. And you knew what you were doing.”

“That’s crazy,” I said. I felt as if a truck had run into me. “You can’t actually be telling me that you think I killed Fletcher.”

“I’m not saying you planned on doing it, and I’m not even saying that you did it directly. Otherwise, Pledge, that’s an affirmative. I think he put you in a position where you had to get rid of him, and somehow you managed to do that. Hell, I don’t think you killed him, I know you did. That kid walked in here and never walked out.”

I stared at him with what I hoped looked like rubber-faced shock. “Sir,” I said, “on my honor as a pledge, he came in, gave me the book, and left. That’s all.”

Squadron moved to the door and slouched against it. His demeanor had changed from hard-edged aggression to a weary certainty shot through with sadness. That this uncomplicated ramrod of a man had risen to something like emotional subtlety heightened my fear.

“I suppose you hid the body under your cot until you could move it without being seen.”

“How can you say these things? Because I’m new? Because you decided you didn’t like me?” My anger floated dangerously close to the surface. “I should have gone out for football. Then I’d still be your fair-haired boy, and you wouldn’t be blaming me every time one of your prize dumbbells gets a broken bone.” Before I went any further over the line, I managed to get myself under control. “Excuse me, please, sir, that remark was uncalled for. I apologize. But I repeat, I swear on my honor as a pledge—”

“Halt,” he said. “Stop right there.”

“But sir, I—”

“Halt, I said.” His eyes had darkened with disgust. “I have only one more thing to say to you, and I don’t want you fouling the air before I do.” Captain Squadron gave his jacket a yank and then gripped the flaps of his pockets and yanked again, savagely, as if he were trying to rip them off. “I don’t want to hear any more bullshit about your honor as a pledge, because as ridiculous as it must seem to you, I happen to take our code very, very seriously. It takes some transfers a little while to figure out that the code isn’t just empty words, but most of them get it in the end. You never will. You’re like a species of one. You’re a disease.”

I stopped pretending to be shocked and sat on the edge of my cot, watching and listening. The inside of my body, everything from the back of my throat down to below my waist, had become a block of ice.

“Are we done now, sir?”

“Affirmative. This conversation is concluded.” He locked my eyes with his. “I’ll be watching you, Pledge. If I catch you stepping an inch out of line, I’ll come down on you like a ton of bricks, and you’ll be out of uniform before you know what happened. Is that understood?”

“Affirmative,” I said. “Sir.”

“I wish to God your parents had put you into some other military school.” He gave me a withering glare. “I’ll take Artillery
Pledge Fletcher’s book with me. I want to see what’s so god-awful important in those stories.”

My heart nearly stopped, like Fletcher’s. “Please don’t, sir. I haven’t read it yet.”

He tucked the book under his elbow. “Report to my office one week from today, and I’ll give it back. Unless Mr. and Mrs. Fletcher want it returned to them. That will be all.”

I watched him strut to the door of my room.

What happened next can only be explained by the combination of loathing, terror, and desperation blasting through me. If I had any thoughts, they had to do with the necessity of reclaiming the sacred book, but it would be more truthful to say that I was incapable of anything like thought. Without having moved, I was standing next to Captain Squadron, who was beginning to register the first traces of alarm. I seemed to be twice my actual size, though I believe this to have been an illusion produced by the condition that enables mothers to lift up the fronts of cars posing threats to their infants.

I had no idea of what I was going to do. I certainly had no idea of what I was going to do to Captain Squadron. In fact, I still don’t really know how I did it, since duplication of the feat has resisted me ever since. I don’t suppose any of those mothers ever picked up a car a second time, either. I touched the book and, as if I had done this kind of thing a hundred times before, felt myself flow into his mind and voicelessly command its surrender. With the book safely returned to my hands, I used the same instinctive power to impel him toward the center of the room. The interior of Squadron’s mind reported a sensation akin to that of being blown backward by a great wind.

Captain Squadron remained incapable of speech as I withdrew from his mind. An enormous battery deep within me thrummed into life. At that moment, a certain crucial revelation that was to shape all the rest of my life came to me. I say “came to me,” meaning that it entered me like a clear, silver stream and gave momentary form to the uproar. Once again I had heard the voice from Johnson’s Woods.

Captain Squadron stood in the center of my room, perhaps two yards away from me. I glided toward him as if across an icy pond on a pair of figure skates. I don’t think I touched him. I recall that almost impersonal sensation of
emptying
that accompanies
evacuation. My joints suffered the bone-deep ache associated with arthritis. My head seemed to have been split by an axe. Maybe the mommies who hoist those automobiles off their babies feel the same way, I don’t know. What I do know is that Captain Squadron had vanished from the room. A greenish puddle about four inches in diameter lay on the floor, and a wet, deathly stink hung in the air.

I overcame my agonies long enough to wipe up the captain’s remains with a towel, washed it off in the sink, and fell on the cot to dwell on my revelation.

This was what I had been told a fraction of a second before I reduced Captain Todd Squadron to a half-pint of bile: one day, a day long distant, there would appear in the earthly realm an enemy more serious, more consequential, than Captain Squadron. My enemy would be like a shadow-self or a hidden double self, for when grown to adulthood he would possess the power to inhibit the coming of the Last Days, as certain protagonists in the tales of the Providence Master had frustrated the designs of my true ancestors. This Anti-Christ would be most vulnerable when still a child, yet evil forces would conspire to protect him from destruction at my hands. As my enemy grew to adulthood, he would partake of a portion of my own talents, thereby increasing the difficulty of my task, and for this damnable complication there was an excellent reason. My enemy was also the smoke from the cannon’s mouth—he was going to be a member of the family. In fact, he was going to be my son.

15
Mr.X

Only a little remains to be told before I lay down my pen for the night. The disappearance of Captain Squadron from the academy excited a brief flurry of renewed attention centered upon the possibility of a connection between the captain’s flight and the death of Artillery Pledge Fletcher. When a rigorous check of his background revealed that the captain had retired from the regular army under suspicion of having molested a
small boy in the town of Lawton, Oklahoma, the possibility hardened into a certainty. The subsequent manhunt went on, I believe, for several years, with no more result than the temporary detention of a surprising number of fellows bearing a resemblance to its target. I kept an amused eye on the proceedings throughout the remainder of my career as a pledge and was rewarded for my good behavior by the gift of a summer abroad.