Serpent's Kiss (16 page)

    "I never have guests. I didn't even think about Charlie being on my shoulder."

    "Charlie, huh?"

    "When he's been bad I call him Charles."

    For some reason that struck O'Sullivan as funny and he laughed out loud. Laughter sounded real weird in this dusty pauper's grave.

    "Well, in seventh grade I had a milk snake named Raymond," O'Sullivan said. "He wasn't real popular around my house, either. So I guess I should understand about Charlie."

    And as if to prove his master's point, red eyed Charlie climbed down from Telfair's shoulder and landed in his lap and then wriggled his head into the Oreo bag.

    There was something obscene about it, the way the rat burrowed his head into the sack.

    O'Sullivan could hear the munching all the way across the room where he had parked his butt on the edge of a lumpy couch with a hideous flowered slipcover over it.

    "Good boy, Charlie," Telfair said, knobbly hand stroking the relentless rat. "Just remember to save a few for me."

    Then, sated apparently, the rat withdrew, shaking its head as if shaking away Oreo crumbs, and then hopped back up on Telfair's shoulder.

    Telfair said, "You've been talking to the Lindstrom woman, haven't you?"

    "One of my reporters has."

    "And she told you about the old tower."

    "Yes. But I have to confess, I don't understand much about it."

    Telfair chuckled with a certain satisfaction. "Nobody but me does, Mr. O'Sullivan. Nobody but me does. And an old, insane patient named Gus."

    Then he reached into the Oreo bag, seized another brown cookie, and popped it into his mouth.

    He also, at the same time, raised his right leg off the seat of the armchair and cut a sharp, quick world record fart. "The Oreos have the darndest effect on me, Mr. O'Sullivan. They make me flatulent."

    "Ah," O'Sullivan said. He was definitely planning to kill Holland when he saw her again.

    As his teeth ground the Oreos to a fine powdery brown dust, Telfair said, "Have you ever heard of the Cloisters, Mr. O'Sullivan?"

    "I guess not."

    "They were a splinter religious sect that roamed this state back in the 1800s. They'd been Roman Catholics until the bishop found out that they were practising black magic and then he kicked them out."

    "I see." He wondered when Telfair was going to get to the UFO abductions and the out-of-body experiences.

    "They also killed children. Usually runaways."

    "Runaways?"

    "Believe it or not, there was a teenage underground bigger than today's back in the late 1800s. And there weren't nearly as many shelters for them, either."

    "Oh."

    "Guess where the Cloisters put up for five years?"

    "I'm afraid I don't know."

    "Right where Hastings House is."

    O'Sullivan could see this coming.

    "Where the old tower was built was right on the burial ground."

    "The authorities know about this?"

    Telfair rattled his hand inside the Oreo package and snorted. His rat made a tiny chittering noise. "Authorities? They were suspicious of the Cloisters, of course, the way authorities are suspicious of any strange group, but they never really believed that the Cloisters were killing children in sacrifice."

    "They never dug in the earth there?"

    "Never."

    "How do you know that there was a burial ground there, then?"

    "I found the book."

    "The book?"

    "A sort of diary that one of the cult members kept."

    "You found it?"

    "Yes. Up in the tower when I was rummaging around up there." He sighed, his windpipe rattling there in the gloom. "You see, they never did use the tower, just the main building and then the other buildings they added on later. The tower was always structurally unsound. It swayed whenever there was a wind and even the smallest rain flooded the place."

    "Why didn't they just tear it down?"

    Telfair shrugged. "It's a nice piece of architecture. I suppose they felt that as long as nobody was in there, it wasn't hurting anything."

    "So what did the diary say?"

    "It told about the serpent."

    "The serpent."

    "Uh-huh. The huge snake that came up out of the ground one night after a certain incantation."

    Now it was O'Sullivan's turn to sigh.

    "You're starting to squirm, Mr. O'Sullivan."

    "I guess I am."

    "The Cloisters sacrificed the children. That's why the serpent came. It had waited centuries for a host."

    "A host?"

    "Yes. The snake works its way into a human body-it shrinks down, of course-and then it takes over the intelligence and the will of that person. It makes the person go out and seek other sacrifices-children or adults, it doesn't really matter."

    "I see."

    Telfair laughed. "I wish you could hear yourself, Mr. O'Sullivan."

    "Oh?"

    "You sound as if you'd like to dive out that window."

    "You have to admit this is a pretty unlikely story."

    " 'Unlikely' is a very polite word, Mr. O'Sullivan. I appreciate it."

    And with that O'Sullivan got up.

    He walked carefully to the window-carefully because the dusty floor was a mine trap of debris-and then he looked down to the street.

    He was still wondering where that teenager had gone to, the one who used to masquerade as himself. He could see the street rods again with the flames painted on the sides and the bikers all doing their self conscious Brando impressions as they wheeled their Harleys and big mother Indians to the kerb. A great sorrow overcame him then as he mourned the loss of the boy he'd been. He wanted it all to be ahead of him and it was all largely behind him and he wore neckties and had to worry about annual health check-ups and loneliness.

    Yellow Vietnamese words drifted up from the street and brought him back to the present. The boy he'd been faded like a ghost.

    "Over the years since Hastings House was built, Mr. O'Sullivan," Telfair said, "six patients have escaped and killed people. Did you know that?"

    "No, I guess I didn't."

    "A man named Dobyns escaped just the other night."

    "I know."

    "The snake is inside him."

    "How did it get there?"

    "It contacted Dobyns telepathically. Dobyns started sneaking out of his room at night, going over to the tower. One night the snake appeared and got inside him."

    O'Sullivan turned away from the window and came back to sit on the arm of the couch again.

    "Have you talked with Dobyns?"

    "No, but I don't need to. I talked to two of the other patients who escaped back in the fifties."

    "And they told you about the snake."

    "Yes. I felt the snake. They asked me to. They were afraid they were crazy."

    "Did you tell the administration at Hastings House?"

    "I tried." Telfair laughed again. "But why would they believe me? I was just some janitor. I was lucky they didn't commit me."

    "How did you meet Emily Lindstrom?"

    "After her brother killed those women," Telfair said, "I called her and told her everything. I even loaned her the diary."

    "Obviously she listened."

    Telfair stuffed his hand in the Oreo bag. This time he brought out two cookies. One he popped into his mouth. The other he held up for his pet rat to nibble on. "She listened. She didn't necessarily believe. But finally-well, finally she started looking into all this herself and then she gradually started to see that I wasn't crazy."

    "My associate mentioned this apartment where all the escapees go. What's that about?"

    Telfair coughed harshly, pounded himself on the chest, and said, "Shit. I quit smoking about five years ago but maybe it was already too late." As he coughed, the rat's red eyes jostled up and down on Telfair's shoulder.

    Once he was composed again, Telfair said, "The first man who escaped was named Michaels. He built a small altar to the snake in one of the closets there. He killed a four-year-old girl and stripped her bones clean and put the bones in the closet. So when the snake's inside them, it always guides them there even though when they leave the hospital they usually suffer from amnesia. The third man who escaped came back to the hospital and told me all this-before he hung himself that is, the poor bastard. His name was Allard."

    "You wouldn't happen to know where Dobyns is, would you?"

    "Hunting."

    "Hunting?"

    "For a victim. You can bet on that."

    "You're sure of that?"

    "Absolutely. The longer the snake's in them, the more psychotic they get. Allard told me that."

    "You've been to the police?"

    "Several times, Mr. O'Sullivan. They've got a file on me, I'm sure." He chuckled. "Filed it under 'C' for Crazy Old Bastard." He sighed. "Oh, yes, they've heard my strange tales many times."

    O'Sullivan stood up. "I appreciate all this, Mr. Telfair."

    "Appreciate it but don't believe a word of it."

    "I guess I'll have to think about it."

    "At least you're polite. A lot of people who hear my story get pretty abusive." His hand snapped up another Oreo. "You know, ever since I retired early-about the time I was pronounced legally blind because of this retina disease-I've been telling this story to anybody who'd listen. And about the only audience I could find was this old guy who's a patient at Hastings. A guy named Gus. He actually sneaks up into the tower. He's seen the serpent. But who's going to believe him? Old bastard they keep doped up all the time-he's hardly the best witness. You see what I mean?"

    Telfair got to his feet and walked over to O'Sullivan. "You want to see something cute?"

    "What's that?"

    "Watch." Telfair reached out and touched his pet rat on the head. "Say goodbye to the nice gentleman, Charlie."

    And with that, the rat got right up on his haunches, right there on Telfair's shoulder, and started chittering crazily.

    "And people say you can't train rats," Telfair said. "But what the hell do people know anyway?"

    O'Sullivan took one more look at the old man's Milk of Magnesia eyes and got out of there.

    

    

    While two customers were in the back in the science fiction section, Richie told Marie his secret.

    Two years ago Richie and his family had lived in the state capital, where his father was a bank president. As the son of a wealthy and prominent community leader, Richie's life had been enviably simple and full. Then came the sudden bank audit and his father's even more sudden pleading of guilty to an embezzlement charge. For the previous five years, it was revealed, Richie's father had been a secret addictive gambler, first going through the family's entire small fortune, then beginning to use bank funds. Richie's entire life changed. He went from being one of his school's most popular boys to somebody people whispered about, and pointed to and smirked at. His father was sentenced to ten years in prison and the family had been forced to move here to an apartment on a side of town that was barely respectable. His mother worked as a secretary in her brother's law office. How Richie and his two sisters would ever get through college was unknown at this point.

    As Richie told Marie all this, she saw him suffer through embarrassment and pain. By the time he finished his story, his voice rasped with a very real agony. He was afraid for his father in prison-afraid that one of the inmates would stab him-and he was equally afraid for his mother. She was not in the best of health. The scandal had made her even weaker. And her stressful forty-hour-a-week job couldn't be doing her any good, either. Richie had taken a job at a local department store. Three nights a week and Saturdays he sold sports gear even though his interest in sports was minimal at best.

    So there it was.

    The secret hurt that was in his eyes but that he'd never talked about. The secret hurt that forced him to sit at the same table with the 'geeks.' She almost called him a geek-affectionately, of course-but she thought he might take it the wrong way. At least until he knew her better.

    When he finished, he took a cigarette from his shirt pocket and said, "You mind?" He sounded as if he'd just finished making a long confession to a priest. He looked relieved, too.

    She pointed to a sign above the door: NO SMOKING. "Brewster'd be awful mad."

    "Maybe I'll step outside."

    "Maybe you shouldn't smoke."

    He grinned. "I figured you were the den mother type."

    She grinned back. "Is that what I am?"

    "No," he said, looking at her slyly, self-confidence coming back to his tone and face again. "What you are is cute. Very cute."

    She felt exultant. Cute. Very cute. Maybe this first date was going to turn out just like her fantasy after all.

    They were sitting on stools behind the counter with the cash register.

    "Tell you what," he said.

    "What?"

    "Why don't I go out and have a cigarette and then go get us some Blizzards?"

    "Only if you'll let me pay for my own."

    "I really wish you'd let me pay for both of them." He smiled again and made a muscle with his bicep. He wasn't particularly muscular so that made his self-deprecating gesture all the sweeter to her. "That way I'd feel more macho."

    "Well, if you'd feel more macho, maybe I'd better let you pay."