Uncollected Stories 2003 (13 page)

"I've killed Wilma," he said in the same calm voice. "Ding-dong, the
wicked bitch is dead." Dex tried to speak and could not. That central
axle was trying to tear loose again. The abyss of utter insanity was
below. "I've killed my wife, and now I've put myself into your hands."
Now Dex did find his voice. It had a sound that was rusty yet shrill.
"The crate," he said. "What have you done with the crate?"
"That's the beauty of it," Henry said. "You put the final piece in the
jigsaw yourself. The crate is at the bottom of Ryder's Quarry."
Dex groped at that while he looked into Henry's eyes. The eyes of his
friend. Sniper's eyes.
You can't knock off your own queen, that's not in
anyone's rules of chess
, he thought, and restrained an urge to roar out
gales of rancid laughter. The quarry, he had said. Ryder's Quarry. It was
over four hundred feet deep, some said. It was perhaps twelve miles east
of the university. Over the thirty years that Dex had been here, a dozen
people had drowned there, and three years ago the town had posted the
place.
"I put you to bed," Henry said. "Had to carry you into your room. You
were out like a light. Scotch, sleeping powder, shock. But you were
breathing normally and well. Strong heart action. I checked those things.
Whatever else you believe, never think I had any intention of hurting
you, Dex.
"It was fifteen minutes before Wilma's last class ended, and it would
take her another fifteen minutes to drive home and another fifteen
minutes to get over to Amberson Hall. That gave me forty-five minutes.
I got over to Amberson in ten. It was unlocked. That was enough to
settle any doubts I had left."
"What do you mean?"
"The key ring on the janitor's belt. It went with the janitor."
Dex shuddered.
"If the door had been locked – forgive me, Dex, but if you're going to
play for keeps, you ought to cover every base – there was still time
enough to get back home ahead of Wilma and burn that note.
"I went downstairs – and I kept as close to the wall going down those
stairs as I could, believe me..."
Henry stepped into the lab and glanced around. It was just as Dex had
left it.
He slicked his tongue over his dry lips and then wiped his face with
his hand.
His heart was thudding in his chest.
Get hold of yourself, man. One
thing at a time. Don't look ahead.
The boards the janitor had pried off the crate were still stacked on the
lab table. One table over was the scatter of Charlie Gereson's lab notes,
never to be completed now. Henry took it all in, and then pulled his own
flashlight – the one he always kept in the glovebox of his car for
emergencies – from his back pocket. If this didn't qualify as an
emergency, nothing did.
He snapped it on and crossed the lab and went out the door. The light
bobbed uneasily in the dark for a moment, and then he trained it on the
floor. He didn't want to step on anything he shouldn't. Moving slowly
and cautiously, Henry moved around to the side of the stairs and shone
the light underneath. His breath paused, and then resumed again, more
slowly. Suddenly the tension and fear were gone, and he only felt cold.
The crate was under there, just as Dex had said it was. And the janitor's
ballpoint pen. And his shoes. And Charlie Gereson's glasses.
Henry moved the light from one of these artifacts to the next slowly,
spotlighting each. Then he glanced at his watch, snapped the flashlight
off and jammed it back in his pocket. He had half an hour. There was no
time to waste.
In the janitor's closet upstairs he found buckets, heavy-duty cleaner,
rags...and gloves. No prints. He went back downstairs like the sorcerer's
apprentice, a heavy plastic bucket full of hot water and foaming cleaner
in each hand, rags draped over his shoulder. His footfalls clacked
hollowly in the stillness. He thought of Dex saying,
It sits squat and
mute
. And still he was cold.
He began to clean up.
"She came," Henry said. "Oh yes, she came. And she was...excited
and happy."
"What?" Dex said.
"Excited," he repeated. "She was whining and carping the way she
always did in that high, unpleasant voice, but that was just habit, I think.
All those years, Dex, the only part of me she wasn't able to completely
control, the only part she could never get completely under her thumb,
was my friendship with you. Our two drinks while she was at class. Our
chess. Our...companionship."
Dex nodded. Yes, companionship was the right word. A little light in
the darkness of loneliness. It hadn't just been the chess or the drinks; it
had been Henry's face over the board, Henry's voice recounting how
things were in his department, a bit of harmless gossip, a laugh over
something.
"So she was whining and bitching in her best 'just call me Billie' style,
but I think it was just habit. She was excited and happy, Dex. Because
she was finally going to be able to get control over the last...little…bit."
He looked at Dex calmly. "I knew she'd come, you see. I knew she'd
want to see what kind of mess you gotten yourself into, Dex."
"They're downstairs," Henry told Wilma. Wilma was wearing a bright
yellow sleeveless blouse and green pants that were too tight for her.
"Right downstairs." And he uttered a sudden, loud laugh.
Wilma's head whipped around and her narrow face darkened with
suspicion. "What are you laughing about?" She asked in her loud,
buzzing voice. "Your best friend gets in a scrape with a girl and you're
laughing?"
No, he shouldn't be laughing. But he couldn't help it. It was sitting
under the stairs, sitting there squat and mute, just try telling that thing in
the crate to call you Billie, Wilma – and another loud laugh escaped him
and went rolling down the dim first-floor hall like a depth charge.
"Well, there is a funny side to it," he said, hardly aware of what he
was saying. "Wait'Il you see. You'll think – "
Her eyes, always questing, never still, dropped to his front pocket,
where he had stuffed the rubber gloves.
"What are those? Are those gloves?"
Henry began to spew words. At the same time he put his arm around
Wilma's bony shoulders and led her toward the stairs. "Well, he's passed
out, you know. He smells like a distillery. Can't guess how much he
drank. Threw up all over everything. I've been cleaning up. Hell of an
awful mess, Billie. I persuaded the girl to stay a bit. You'll help me,
won't you? This is Dex, after all."
"I don't know," she said, as they began to descend the stairs to the
basement lab. Her eyes snapped with dark glee. "I'll have to see what
the situation is. You don't know anything, that's obvious. You're
hysterical. Exactly what I would have expected."
"That's right," Henry said. They had reached the bottom of the stairs.
"Right around here. Just step right around here."
"But the lab's that way – "
"Yes...but the girl..." And he began to laugh again in great, loonlike
bursts.
"Henry, what is wrong with you?" And now that acidic contempt was
mixed with something else – something that might have been fear.
That made Henry laugh harder. His laughter echoed and rebounded,
filling the dark basement with a sound like laughing banshees or
demons approving a particularly good jest. "The girl, Billie," Henry said
between bursts of helpless laughter. "That's what's so funny, the girl, the
girl has crawled under the stairs and won't come out, that what's so
funny, ah-heh-heh-hahahahaa – "
And now the dark kerosene of joy lit in her eyes; her lips curled up
like charring paper in what the denizens of hell might call a smile. And
Wilma whispered, "What did he do to her?"
"You can get her out," Henry babbled, leading her to the dark.
triangular, gaping maw. "I'm sure you can get her out, no trouble, no
problem." He suddenly grabbed Wilma at the nape of the neck and the
waist, forcing her down even as he pushed her into the space under the
stairs.
"What are you
doing
?" she screamed querulously. "What are you
doing, Henry?"
"What I should have done a long time ago," Henry said, laughing.
"Get under there, Wilma. Just tell it to call you Billie, you bitch."
She tried to turn, tried to fight him. One hand clawed for his wrist –
he saw her spade-shaped nails slice down, but they clawed only air.
"Stop it, Henry!" She cried. "Stop it right now! Stop this foolishness! I –
I'll scream!"
"Scream all you want!" he bellowed, still laughing. He raised one foot,
planted it in the center of her narrow and joyless backside, and pushed.
"I'll help you, Wilma! Come on out! Wake up, whatever you are! Wake
up! Here's your dinner! Poison meat! Wake up! Wake up!"
Wilma screamed piercingly, an inarticulate sound that was still more
rage than fear.
And then Henry heard it.
First a low whistle, the sound a man might make while working alone
without even being aware of it. Then it rose in pitch, sliding up the scale
to an earsplitting whine that was barely audible. Then it suddenly
descended again and became a growl...and then a hoarse yammering. It
was an utterly savage sound.
All his married life Henry Northrup had gone in fear of his wife, but
the thing in the crate made Wilma sound like a child doing a
kindergarten tantrum. Henry had time to think:
Holy God, maybe it
really is a Tasmanian devil...it's some kind of devil, anyway
.
Wilma began to scream again, but this time it was a sweeter tune--at
least to the ear of Henry Northrup. It was a sound of utter terror. Her
yellow blouse flashed in the dark under the stairs, a vague beacon. She
lunged at the opening and Henry pushed her back, using all his strength.
"
Henry!
" She howled. "
Henreeeee!
"
She came again, head first this time, like a charging bull. Henry
caught her head in both hands, feeling the tight, wiry cap of her curls
squash under his palms. He pushed. And then, over Wilma's shoulder,
he saw something that might have been the gold-glinting eyes of a small
owl. Eyes that were infinitely cold and hateful. The yammering became
louder, reaching a crescendo. And when it struck at Wilma, the
vibration running through her body was enough to knock him
backwards.
He caught one glimpse of her face, her bulging eyes, and then she was
dragged back into the darkness. She screamed once more. Only once.
"Just tell it to call you Billie," he whispered.
Henry Northrup drew a great, shuddering breath.
"It went on...for quite a while," he said. After a long time, maybe
twenty minutes, the growling and the...the sounds of its feeding...that
stopped, too. And it started to whistle. Just like you said, Dex. As if it
were a happy teakettle or something. It whistled for maybe five minutes,
and then it stopped. I shone my light underneath again. The crate had
been pulled out a little way. There was...fresh blood. And Wilma's purse
had spilled everywhere. But it got both of her shoes. That was
something, wasn't it?"
Dex didn't answer. The room basked in sunshine. Outside, a bird sang.
"I finished cleaning the lab," Henry resumed at last. "It took me
another forty minutes, and I almost missed a drop of blood that was on
the light globe...saw it just as I was going out. But when I was done, the
place was as neat as a pin. Then I went out to my car and drove across
campus to the English department. It was getting late, but I didn't feel a
bit tired. In fact, Dex, I don't think I ever felt more clear-headed in my
life. There was a crate in the basement of the English department. I
flashed on that very early in your story. Associating one monster with
another, I suppose."
"What do you mean?"
"Last year when Badlinger was in England – you remember
Badlinger, don't you?"
Dex nodded. Badlinger was the man who had beaten Henry out for the
English department chair... partly because Badlinger's wife was bright,
vivacious and sociable, while Henry's wife was a shrew. Had been a
shrew.
"He was in England on sabbatical," Henry said. "Had all their things
crated and shipped back. One of them was a giant stuffed animal.
Nessie, they call it. For his kids. That bastard bought it for his kids. I
always wanted children, you know. Wilma didn't. She said kids get in
the way.
"Anyway, it came back in this gigantic wooden crate, and Badlinger
dragged it down to the English department basement because there was
no room in the garage at home, he said, but he didn't want to throw it
out because it might come in handy someday. Meantime, our janitors
were using it as a gigantic sort of wastebasket. When it was full of trash,
they'd dump it into the back of the truck on trash day and then fill it up
again.
"I think it was the crate Badlinger's damned stuffed monster came
back from England in that put the idea in my head. I began to see how
your Tasmanian devil could be gotten rid of. And that started me
thinking about something else I wanted to be rid of. That I wanted so
badly to be rid of.
"I had my keys, of course. I let myself in and went downstairs. The
crate was there. It was a big, unwieldy thing, but the janitors' dolly was
down there as well. I dumped out the little bit of trash that was in it and
got the crate onto the dolly by standing it on end. I pulled it upstairs and
wheeled it straight across the mall and back to Amberson."
"You didn't take your car?"
"No, I left my car in my space in the English department parking lot. I
couldn't have gotten the crate in there, anyway."
For Dex, new light began to break. Henry would have been driving his
MG, of course – an elderly sportscar that Wilma had always called
Henry's toy. And if Henry had the MG, then Wilma would have had the
Scout – a jeep with a fold-down back seat. Plenty of storage space, as
the ads said.
"I didn't meet anyone," Henry said. "At this time of year – and at no
othe – the campus is quite deserted. The whole thing was almost
hellishly perfect. I didn't see so much as a pair of headlights. I got back
to Amberson Hall and took Badlinger's crate downstairs. I left it sitting
on the dolly with the open end facing under the stairs. Then I went back
upstairs to the janitors' closet and got that long pole they use to open and
close the windows. They only have those poles in the old buildings now.
I went back down and got ready to hook the crate – your Paella crate –
out from under the stairs. Then I had a bad moment. I realized the top of
Badlinger's crate was gone, you see. I'd noticed it before, but now I
realized it. In my guts."