Sins of the Flesh (24 page)

A bell rang, a warning system he had devised; Walter put the gun in his cupboard, the bullets after it, closed the door and locked it. Casually, as if weary of it, he picked up the sculpture.

“You do the most beautiful work, Walter,” Ari Melos said as he breathed down Walter’s neck. “Gorgeous!”

“Remarkable,” said Rose, not knowing what else to say.

“Thanks,” said Walter, unlocking the lathe clamps and holding the steel up to the light. “It’s not done with yet—see those?” He indicated a section where the silky steel was marred by tangled scratches. “That happened early, before I got the hang of it. I was going to smooth them out, but now I have a better idea. I’m going to work them into a pattern, transform them. Chased, like.”

“I see what you mean,” Melos said. “When it is finished, are you giving it to Dr. Jess?”

Walter shrugged. “Nah, wasn’t going to give it to anyone.”

“I’ll give you a hundred dollars for it,” Melos said quickly.

“Okay,” said Walter, surprised, “but only after it’s finished.”

Turning, the pair went out. “I’ve known for a long while that he has talent,” said Melos, his voice floating back. “Some lunatics are incredibly gifted, and I think Walter is one of them.”

Fuck being incredibly gifted, Walter thought. Your eyes will give me your soul when I throttle you, and you won’t be any different. I
should
rig it to make it look as if you strangled Rose, then hung yourself, but it’s too much fun to strangle. Let the cops think an outsider did them both.

There were no memories to return, Jess had ablated every last one, but the I-Walter who was emerging from the old manic shell was a thinking being, and the I-Walter was acutely aware that he was starting to enjoy the act of killing. It had been there faintly when he had killed Marty Fane, but it had a reflexive flavor to it, as though when the knife went in, there was only one direction for it to go: onward and upward and clear down to the bone, very bloodless and very fast. No real thrill at all.

Ah, but when his hands had closed around Sister Mary Therese’s neck! The first factor he encountered was her eyes, rolling in terror, and from that moment until finally he had climbed off her lifeless body, he had looked into her eyes. Sitting on top of her was simple asphyxiation, his weight preventing her straining lungs from pulling in enough air, even had there not been any merciless fingers on her trachea. A crude parody of the sex act, which he had never experienced in all his life; the first prisoner to try it died very bloodily; or so they had told him. It was one of those vanished memories.

To look into Sister Mary Therese’s eyes was the ultimate bliss: Walter was sure of it. Most important, the I-Walter was sure of it. The expressions in her eyes! To witness those expressions change as she ran the gamut of those genuinely terminal emotions! He had to see them again and again …. Even now, merely thinking about it, back came the wrenching vividness; he saw panic, terror, horror, despair. And then the look turned to submission. While he, who inflicted all of it upon his suffering victims—yes, he, the I-Walter—soared through the act of watching the eyes into full-blown ecstasy.

All the Walters, even the most pathetic of the Jess-Walters, understood now what the purpose of his existence was—
ecstasy!
He threw the sculpture at the wall, hungering to hurt someone—no, strangle somebody!

Schemes and plots and plans crowded in on him, but he couldn’t make sense of them; one part of himself knew that he had to seem the ordinary Jess-Walter, whereas most of him roared and screamed to do nothing but produce the look in eyes—anyone’s eyes, everyone’s eyes, from panic and terror to submission ….

“Oh, Walter!” came Jess’s aggrieved voice. “Have you honestly forgotten we’re eating in the senior staff dining room?”

The quiet soldier looked contrite—so many kinds of looks in the world, most of them designed to conceal or mislead.

“I’m so sorry, Jess, and I was looking forward to it too.”

She laughed, linked her arm through his. “My dearest of all helpers, it doesn’t matter! I knew you’d forget, so I came searching in plenty of time.”

The menu in the senior staff dining room, patronized by eight or nine persons, was superior, and had two waiters. To dine in it if you were not senior staff was rare.

Jess chose a shrimp cocktail and pork spare ribs, but Walter went more French, with a country terrine and a beef burgundy.

“Are you feeling any better?” Walter asked her.

“If you mean, about Ivy, I’m recovering from the shock. But that’s not significant. What is, is that I’ve neglected you quite disgracefully. But be of good cheer! Very soon now I’m going to sit down with you and go through these new pathways you’re opening up at such a rate. It’s quite wonderful.”

“I can feel it myself, Jess.”

“Do some things make you feel particularly good?”

What would she say if he told her, yes, strangling people?

The good soldier answered instead. “I sold my sculpture to Dr. Melos for a hundred bucks. It made me feel really good.”

“Walter, I’m delighted for you! Coming from Ari Melos, it’s a rare compliment. If he didn’t think you had true talent, he’d never part with his precious money.”

“That’s nice to know,” he said, looking satisfied.

“Can you describe niceness?” Jess asked.

Frowning, he digested this. “I’m not sure …. Happy, I guess. Like seeing a really beautiful butterfly?”

“Then what you felt was more than nice. You were thrilled.”

“That’s it!” he exclaimed. “Thrilled.” He ate beef. “Are there better words than thrilled, Jess?”

Astonished, she laughed. “Heavens, you are fixated! Better than thrilled …. Uplifted. Ecstatic. Inspired. It depends what you’re discussing, Walter,” she labored. “The right word is the one that fits the situation or state of mind.”

“Would I be uplifted if my Rube Goldberg worked?”

“Probably not.”

“What if I sculpted something crash-hot?”

“You’d either be uplifted or unduly critical.”

“Unduly critical?”

“Artists are rarely happy with their work, Walter.”

At the end of the meal, just as Jess was settling down to a real talk with him, Walter began to blink and look uncomfortable, shifting in his chair. “Jess, please excuse me.”

“What’s the matter?” she asked, alarmed.

“I’m starting a migraine aura.”

“Describe it,” she said tersely.

“A big boomerang shaped thing high up on my left side. It’s made up of glittering purple and yellow darts, and it’s creeping down.”

“Oh, God! It is a migraine aura, Walter. The headache will be left-sided, and start any time, but if it’s usual, you’ve got about twenty minutes. Get off to bed immediately.”

“I know, I’ve had them before. I’m going to lock myself in.”

“I’ll make sure you’re left in peace,” Jess said. “Nothing is worse than having people peering at you in the dark and disturbing you just as you have the headache under control.”

His face gladdened. “Oh, Jess, thanks! You understand.”

“You’re right, I understand. I have migraines too.”

H
e had pulled the migraine stunt shortly after nine, which meant Walter had two and a half hours to fill in before he needed to move; the best way to do this was to lie on his bed in a completely darkened room, neither writhing nor moaning. Any kind of movement, even that caused by a moan, is agony to the migraine sufferer, who lies as immobile as possible and tries to sleep. For Walter, whose brain had been invaded, there could be no shot of morphine. For him, it was sleep or agony.

He used those two and a half hours in trying to remember what he had told Jess was happening to him, and what he had kept a secret from her. Like his doors, his hollow wall, its contents, his expeditions into the outside world and what he had done during them, what he had done in the HI workshop, and, most secret of all, the utter fascination of watching life die out of a pair of eyes. They were all things that belonged to the I-Walter, who was a separate entity from the confused mish-mash of Walters he suddenly recognized, in that darkened room, as the Jess-Walter. The I-Walter hadn’t appeared at Jess’s bidding—in fact, he would appall her. How he knew that, he didn’t know, just that he did. So which Walter was the right Walter? The I-Walter, always the I-Walter.
Secrets!
How he loved secrets! Then, lying flat on his back on his bed, a tiny stabbing pain behind his eyes, he threshed up and down, back and forth on the pillows—WALTER, YOU HAVE BEEN HERE A HUNDRED TIMES BEFORE! You know all this, you have already reasoned it out! You’re the oxen on the tow-path, feet worn down to nothing.

Ari and Rose Melos. Delia Carstairs. Yes, they would be the first three. But only after I have treated myself to a binge.
I deserve a binge!

I am the I-Walter, but Jess doesn’t know about the I-Walter. Even in despite of that, she thinks I am the center of her universe. Poor, deluded Jess! Psychiatrists are so easy to fool; they talk themselves into the right answers.

Inside his wall by half after eleven, clad in black leather and a conical helmet he intended to equip with wings later on, Walter Jenkins consulted his map by the light of a new pressure lantern—there! Out beyond South Rock, surrounded by State forest, two miles from the nearest main road …. Perfect!

The Harley-Davidson’s panniers and pillion box were stacked with gasoline containers; he didn’t dare go near a gas station tonight, no matter what, and that included unexpected detours.

He opened the external door and wheeled the bike out along a new track; the earlier ones had all vanished, and this one wouldn’t be used again for months to come. Oh, pray it was a green winter this year! Snow would imprison him completely.

Though the leaves wouldn’t begin to turn for three more weeks and some of the days would be quite hot, there was a slight nip in the air, an initial harbinger of Fall. The sun was growing tired of rolling northward; in less than twenty days it would grind to a halt, exhausted, and start rolling down-globe on its southward plod, while behind it everything shivered.

Walter Jenkins shivered too, but not from the chill wind as his bike roared westward; his was an anticipatory shiver. Some miles away he turned southward, but didn’t take the tunnel through South Rock. Instead he veered west again to circumnavigate the basaltic pile, then picked up a very minor road through country devoted mostly to apple orchards. Spying trees loaded with big Opalescents, he stopped the bike, raided the nearest tree and wolfed down two apples, eyes closed in simple pleasure.
So sweet!
Then on again, the lingering taste of ideally ripe fruit in his mouth, an unexpected bonus.

And there it was, a single-storey sprawl in white clapboard, surrounded by well-kept gardens in which stood groups of chairs and tables, and adorned with a verandah that spread right across its front, where no doubt in good weather the folks could sit or lie about. The Harley-Davidson was up by an open gateway impeded by a deep pit across which steel bars had been laid to keep out horses or cattle or sheep.

Avoiding the verandah, Walter stole around the back, found the kitchen and the night staff clustered around its table, about to have hot drinks and food. He had timed his arrival perfectly, and entirely by accident. The article in the
Post
had been fair and correct, he soon discovered; the inmates each had a private room and bathroom, and judging by the number seated around the kitchen table, the nursing staff was indeed ample.

It seemed to Walter that he physically entered inside a dream of such formlessness that it had no name, no finite being; it enfolded him in one pair of eyes after another, a twinned pathway of vital sparks fading away into nothing, and he was the cause of it, his the hands that administered it, his the brain that drank it in like a starving dog a puddle of blood.

From room to room to room Walter went.

The screams began to erupt from the nursing home ten minutes after Walter kicked the bike into life and tore away, heading now for Millstone Beach. It had taken him fifteen minutes to strangle three bed-bound patients, the youngest seventy-one, the oldest two days short of ninety.

Delia woke confused and fighting, but not to die. The I-Walter was temporarily sated, and the Jess-Walter had plans for her. A piece of duct tape was already across her mouth, her hands were being bound behind her back ruthlessly tight, and before she had a chance to focus her eyes, they too were covered by duct tape. Her nightgown was decent but feminine, made of artificial silk with lace around the arms and neck, but whoever it was—the Mystery Man, she was sure—bundled her across his shoulders with no additional clothing to protect her from the cold. Yes, a motorcycle! He mounted it and draped her across the front of his legs, then drove off at a pace well below the speed limit, for Delia, in next-to-nothing, a freezing ride.

By now the shock had worn off and she was wide awake, her mind trying desperately to make sense out of this senseless kidnapping—why her, why a sergeant of police? How far was she being taken? Whereabouts? No shoes—she couldn’t flee. Did he care for her welfare? She wasn’t a child, she wasn’t wealthy, she wasn’t political. Despite her calling, she hadn’t done anything to anyone. A cold and uncomfortable ride, but not a long one, she assessed; ten minutes saw the bike stopped, and her on her feet. Under them she felt a forest floor.

She could feel him touching her right arm where it was pressed against her back and on top of her left arm near the wrist; a cord bit into it above the elbow, and she knew he was raising a vein. Something pricked and hurt a little; her head swam, her knees buckled, and the lights went out.

Disorientated and groggy, she woke in an almost intense darkness to the sound of soft sobbing. Remembering herself bound, gagged and blindfolded, she found herself now freed, though her face and mouth hurt from the gag and duct tape. Wherever she was stank of decay, but faintly. And the soft sobbing went annoyingly on ….

“Who—is it?” she croaked, suddenly aware she was thirsty.

The sobbing stopped. The voice that answered belonged to a man—not the weeper, someone else. “We’re Ari and Rose Melos.”

“Delia Carstairs.”

“The cop with the hideous dresses?” squawked a female voice.

“Where are we? Who took us?”

“I have no idea,” said Aristede Melos. “We were at home, fast asleep. The next thing we knew, we were bound and gagged. Such a shock! He took Rose here first—I was demented! Then he took me, it was a little better. But it’s so mortifying!”

Delia discarded them to assess the situation. One ankle wore a fetter, to which a chain about three feet long was attached; if she moved in a circle at one point she could touch a wall of some kind, and in the opposite direction she could see a black outline of the Meloses, Rose still sobbing softly.

“Oh, for pity’s sake, woman, cease your grizzling!” Delia shouted, at the end of her weepy-woman tether.

“How dare you!” Melos snarled. “My wife is in a state of shock!”

“Codswallop!” snapped Delia. “Your wife is doing the petrified little wife act! She’d do better to shut her bloody mouth and let me think how to get us out of the situation.”

She was chained to a stone embedded in the floor, not to the wall, and presumed that the same was true of the Meloses; there must be a reason why, perhaps lying in the risk of being heard?

Rose was at it again, an eternal spring that gushed on and on.

“
Shut up!
” Delia growled.

Silence. How blessed quiet could be! She could think. And, thinking, realized she had to examine the fetter. Pulling her nightie under her rump, she sank down and discovered that a band of steel went around her ankle. Where its ends met were two flanges that kissed each other and were punctured by a hole; through the hole was a steel rod bent like a U—a padlock! Whoever had made the fetters was limited in his tools or facilities, so all he could manage was to curve his steel to fit the ankle and then give it a sharp, right-angled bend. That meant a hole and a padlock. But why, her mind went on, have we been abducted? A member of the police I can understand, but two psychiatrists? It has something to do with HI, that glares like a searchlight, but
what?
Her thoughts leaped to Walter Jenkins, who didn’t make sense either; he was, besides, a prisoner, unable to get out. No, leave him be for the moment. More important was how to escape.

Behind the Meloses was a stone wall that didn’t belong to her: an opposing one, perhaps? She could see them distinctly. “We’re getting plenty of air—don’t you dare start grizzling again, woman!” she yelled at Rose, whose preparatory sniffles stopped at once. “Rose, you’re a senior member of your profession, and you’re as tough as old army boots! This weak and trembling female business is an act to impress your new husband, nothing else, and if he doesn’t see through it, I do! Put what passes for your brain to how to get out of here. What are you wearing?”

“Nothing,” Ari Melos whispered. “Absolutely nothing.”

“Hair curlers,” said Rose on an audible swallow.

“Can you see me at all?” Delia asked.

“Yes,” Rose answered, apparently having decided to abandon the weak woman persona. “You’re a black blob against the opposite wall.”

“So there is an opposite wall? Do you know where we are?”

“We’re inside the Asylum walls,” said Ari.

“Ah! Is there any way out?”

“Until this, I wasn’t aware there was a way in,” Ari said.

“Hmm. That makes it harder,” said Delia. She thought for a moment. “Rose, can you throw me a curler?”

There was a scrabbling sound, a pause, then a plop as a curler hit Delia’s foot. A minute later, it was in her hand, a plastic cage of cylindrical shape, with a clip-fastened plastic bar down one side to hold the hair in place. Delia sighed. “I don’t suppose you have anything like a bobby pin?” she asked.

In reply, she found herself showered with around a dozen hefty bobby pins, three of which actually landed in the slight sag her nightgown made across her thighs. Seizing one eagerly, Delia bit in nibbles at the plastic-cushioned tips. Once they were bare metal, she used them to key the padlock. It was a long and tormenting struggle, but eventually the thing lurched open. With a squeak of triumph, Delia forced the U clear of the hole, then managed in a savage burst of strength to bend the thin cuff apart enough to free her leg. She was at liberty!

Gasping, she stood at full height. “I’m free, chaps!”

“Now free us,” Ari Melos commanded.

“Bugger that! You’d slow me down, and that frightful woman would sniffle and screech. I’ll come back for you.”

“You fucking bitch!” Rose blubbered.

“Ditto, brother smut.”

Feeling steadier by the moment, Delia debated.

From her left emanated that stench of an old decay; no, it wasn’t the way out, it led to further horrors. She spoke aloud: “He’s like a spider, storing his prey for later,” she said to the Meloses, struck dumb by her refusal to free them. “Truly, you’d slow me down too much, all three of us would be recaptured. He won’t return in a hurry, but I will. There must be a way out! He wants you for some purpose connected to the Asylum, otherwise you’d be dead already. If he does return, use your wits.”

Rose was sobbing again, but Ari Melos had listened.

“I still believe we’re inside the Asylum walls,” he said, “so you may have a long walk.”

The darkness had lessened, so her eyes were still adjusting. Delia could see the outline of the Meloses quite distinctly now, and judged that they were being held inside a roundel. The dim light came from her right, and within several yards the space had narrowed to a passage about two yards wide. Using one hand on the wall as a prop, she inched along, the noise of Rose’s sobbing diminishing—thank God for that!

“Shut up, you silly cow!” she yelled. “The more racket you make, the quicker he’ll come back to cut your throat.”

Silence again. With any luck, Ari Melos had strangled Rose.

Delia traveled with painful slowness, the light insufficient to tell her what lay on the floor; that, she had to find out by using her feet as exploratory instruments, sometimes encountering what at first seemed deep ditches and other perils that turned out one pace farther to be illusory. The main constituent was gravel, but there were knotted roots, dead leaves, insect carapaces and rat skeletons. In one place the floor was strewn with slivers and splinters of glass; aware that her feet were now cut and bleeding, she kept on going regardless, and lost the glass two paces on.

Her face was on fire, her heart pounding; all the chill had quit Delia’s body during this inexorable and frantic effort. What drove her on was the nameless horror of running into her captor coming the other way to check on his store of prizes.

And then she emerged into a rounded cavern that was lit from above, where several stones had been removed and a sunny day poured in. A Harley-Davidson motorcycle rested on its stand, a collection of objects were stacked on shelves, and, beyond the round cave, a door sat in either wall.

Which door led out, and which in? Eyes hurting from the light, Delia looked at the wall with the stones removed, and decided that was the outside wall. Its door led to freedom.