Again, he looked at the rearview mirror, jolting as he saw that the truck had topped the ridge and was on its way down. He felt his lips begin to shake and crimped them together. His gaze jumped fitfully between the steam-obscured highway and the mirror. The truck was accelerating rapidly. Keller doubtless had the gas pedal floored. It wouldn’t be long before the truck caught up to him. Mann’s right hand twitched unconsciously toward the gearshift. Noticing, he jerked it back, grimacing, glanced at the speedometer. The car’s velocity had just passed 60. Not enough! He had to use the motor now! He reached out desperately.
His right hand froze in mid-air as the motor stalled; then, shooting out the hand, he twisted the ignition key. The motor made a grinding noise but wouldn’t start. Mann glanced up, saw that he was almost on the shoulder, jerked the steering wheel around. Again, he turned the key, but there was no response. He looked up at the rearview mirror. The truck was gaining on him swiftly. He glanced at the speedometer. The car’s speed was fixed at 62. Mann felt himself crushed in a vise of panic. He stared ahead with haunted eyes.
Then he saw it, several hundred yards ahead: an escape route for trucks with burned-out brakes. There was no alternative now. Either he took the turnout or his car would be rammed from behind. The truck was frighteningly close. He heard the high-pitched wailing of its motor. Unconsciously, he started easing to the right, then jerked the wheel back suddenly. He mustn’t give the move away! He had to wait until the last possible moment. Otherwise, Keller would follow him in.
Just before he reached the escape route, Mann wrenched the steering wheel around. The car rear started breaking to the left, tires shrieking on the pavement. Mann steered with the skid, braking just enough to keep from losing all control. The rear tires grabbed and, at 60 miles an hour, the car shot up the dirt trail, tires slinging up a cloud of dust. Mann began to hit the brakes. The rear wheels sideslipped and the car slammed hard against the dirt bank to the right. Mann gasped as the car bounced off and started to fishtail with violent whipping motions, angling toward the trail edge. He drove his foot down on the brake pedal with all his might. The car rear skidded to the right and slammed against the bank again. Mann heard a grinding rend of metal and felt himself heaved downward suddenly, his neck snapped, as the car plowed to a violent halt.
As in a dream, Mann turned to see the truck and trailer swerving off the highway. Paralyzed, he watched the massive vehicle hurtle toward him, staring at it with a blank detachment, knowing he was going to die but so stupefied by the sight of the looming truck that he couldn’t react. The gargantuan shape roared closer, blotting out the sky. Mann felt a strange sensation in his throat, unaware that he was screaming.
Suddenly, the truck began to tilt. Mann stared at it in choked-off silence as it started tipping over like some ponderous beast toppling in slow motion. Before it reached his car, it vanished from his rear window.
Hands palsied, Mann undid the safety belt and opened the door. Struggling from the car, he stumbled to the trail edge, staring downward. He was just in time to see the truck capsize like a foundering ship. The tanker followed, huge wheels spinning as it overturned.
The storage tank on the truck exploded first, the violence of its detonation causing Mann to stagger back and sit down clumsily on the dirt. A second explosion roared below, its shock wave buffeting across him hotly, making his ears hurt. His glazed eyes saw a fiery column shoot up toward the sky in front of him, then another.
Mann crawled slowly to the trail edge and peered down at the canyon. Enormous gouts of flame were towering upward, topped by thick, black, oily smoke. He couldn’t see the truck or trailer, only flames. He gaped at them in shock, all feeling drained from him.
Then, unexpectedly, emotion came. Not dread, at first, and not regret; not the nausea that followed soon. It was a primeval tumult in his mind: the cry of some ancestral beast above the body of its vanquished foe.
DAY OF RECKONING
Dear Pa:
I am sending you this note under Rex’s collar because I got to stay here. I hope this note gets to you all right.
I couldn’t deliver the tax letter you sent me with because the Widow Blackwell is killed. She is upstairs. I put her on her bed. She looks awful. I wish you would get the sheriff and the coroner Wilks.
Little Jim Blackwell, I don’t know where he is right now. He is so scared he goes running around the house and hiding from me. He must have got awful scared by whoever killed his ma. He don’t say a word. He just runs around like a scared rat. I see his eyes sometimes in the dark and then they are gone. They got no electric power here you know.
I came out toward sundown bringing that note. I rung the bell but there was no answer so I pushed open the front door and looked in.
All the shades was down. And I heard someone running light in the front room and then feet running upstairs. I called around for the Widow but she didn’t answer me.
I started upstairs and saw Jim looking down through the banister posts. When he saw me looking at him, he run down the hall and I ain’t seen him since.
I looked around the upstairs rooms. Finally, I went in the Widow Blackwell’s room and there she was dead on the floor in a puddle of blood. Her throat was cut and her eyes was wide open and looking up at me. It was an awful sight.
I shut her eyes and searched around some and I found the razor. The Widow has all her clothes on so I figure it were only robbery that the killer meant.
Well, Pa, please come out quick with the sheriff and the coroner Wilks. I will stay here and watch to see that Jim don’t go running out of the house and maybe get lost in the woods. But come as fast as you can because I don’t like sitting here with her up there like that and Jim sneaking around in the dark house.
LUKE
Dear George:
We just got back from your sister’s house. We haven’t told the papers yet so I’ll have to be the one to let you know.
I sent Luke out there with a property tax note and he found your sister murdered. I don’t like to be the one to tell you but somebody has to. The sheriff and his boys are scouring the countryside for the killer. They figure it was a tramp or something. She wasn’t raped though and, far as we can tell, nothing was stolen.
What I mean more to tell you about is little Jim.
That boy is fixing to die soon from starvation and just plain scaredness. He won’t eat nothing. Sometimes, he gulps down a piece of bread or a piece of candy but as soon as he starts to chewing, his face gets all twisted and he gets violent sick and throws up. I don’t understand it at all.
Luke found your sister in her room with her throat cut ear to ear. Coroner Wilks says it was a strong, steady hand that done it because the cut is deep and sure. I am terribly sorry to be the one to tell you all this but I think it is better you know. The funeral will be in a week.
Luke and I had a long time rounding up the boy. He was like lightning. He ran around in the dark and squealed like a rat. He showed his teeth at us when we’d corner him with a lantern. His skin is all white and the way he rolls his eyes back and foams at his mouth is something awful to see.
We finally caught him. He bit us and squirmed around like an eel. Then he got all stiff and it was like carrying a two-by-four, Luke said.
We took him into the kitchen and tried to give him something to eat. He wouldn’t take a bite. He gulped down some milk like he felt guilty about it. Then, in a second, his face twists and he draws back his lips and the milk comes out.
He kept trying to run away from us. Never a single word out of him. He just squeaks and mutters like a monkey talking to itself.
We finally carried him upstairs to put him to bed. He froze soon as we touched him and I thought his eyes would fall out he opened them so wide. His jaw fell slack and he stared at us like we was boogie men or trying to slice open his throat like his ma’s.
He wouldn’t go into his room. He s
creamed and twisted in our hands like a fish. He braced his feet against the wall and tugged and pulled and scratched. We had to slap his face and then his eyes got big and he got like a board again and we carried him in his room.
When I took off his clothes, I got a shock like I haven’t had in years, George. That boy is all scars and bruises on his back and chest like someone has strung him up and tortured him with pliers or hot irons or God knows what all. I got a downright chill seeing that. I know they said the widow wasn’t the same in her head after her husband died, but I can’t believe she done this. It is the work of a crazy person.
Jim was sleepy but he wouldn’t shut his eyes. He kept looking around the ceiling and the window and his lips kept moving like he was trying to talk. He was moaning kind of low and shaky when Luke and I went out in the hall.
No sooner did we leave him than he’s screaming at the top of his voice and thrashing in his bed like someone was strangling him. We rushed in and I held the lantern high but we couldn’t see anything. I thought the boy was sick with fear and seeing things.
Then, as if it was meant to happen, the lantern ran out of oil and all of a sudden we saw white faces staring at us from the walls and ceiling and the window.
It was a shaky minute there, George, with the kid screaming out his lungs and twisting on his bed but never getting up. And Luke trying to find the door and me feeling for a match but trying to look at those horrible faces at the same time.
Finally, I found a match and I got it lit and we couldn’t see the faces any more, just part of one on the window.
I sent Luke down to the car for some oil and when he come back we lit the lantern again and looked at the window and saw that the face was painted on it so’s to light up in the dark. Same thing for the faces on the walls and the ceiling. It was enough to scare a man half out of his wits to think of anybody doing that inside a little boy’s room.
We took him to another room and put him down to bed. When we left him he was squirming in his sleep and muttering words we couldn’t understand. I left Luke in the hall outside the room to watch. I went and looked around the house some more.
In the Widow’s room I found a whole shelf of psychology books. They was all marked in different places. I looked in one place and it told about a thing how they can make rats go crazy by making them think there is food in a place when there isn’t. And another one about how they can make a dog lose its appetite and starve to death by hitting big pieces of pipe together at the same time when the dog is trying to eat.
I guess you know what I think. But it is so terrible I can hardly believe it. I mean that Jim might have got so crazy that he cut her. He is so small I don’t see how he could.
You are her only living kin, George, and I think you should do something about the boy. We don’t want to put him in an orphan home. He is in no shape for it. That is why I am telling you all about him so you can judge.
There was another thing. I played a record on a phonograph in the boy’s room. It sounded like wild animals all making terrible noises and even louder than them was a terrible high laughing.
That is about all, George. We will let you know if the sheriff finds the one who killed your sister because no one really believes that Jim could have done it. I wish you would take the boy and try to fix him up.
Until I hear,
SAM DAVIS
Dear Sam:
I got your letter and am more upset than I can say.
I knew for a long time that my sister was mentally unbalanced after her husband’s death, but I had no idea in the world she was gone so far.
You see, when she was a girl she fell in love with Phil. There was never anyone else in her life. The sun rose and descended on her love for him. She was so jealous that, once, because he had taken another girl to a party, she crashed her hands through a window and nearly bled to death.
Finally, Phil married her. There was never a happier couple, it seemed. She did anything and everything for him. He was her whole life.
When Jim was born I went to see her at the hospital. She told me she wished it had been born dead because she knew that the boy meant so much to Phil and she hated to have Phil want anything but her.
She never was good to Jim. She always resented him. And, that day, three years ago, when Phil drowned saving Jim’s life, she went out of her mind. I was with her when she heard about it. She ran into the kitchen and got a carving knife and took it running through the streets, trying to find Jim so she could kill him. She finally fainted in the road and we took her home.
She wouldn’t even look at Jim for a month. Then she packed up and took him to that house in the woods. Since then I never saw her.
You saw yourself, the boy is terrified of everyone and everything. Except one person. My sister planned that. Step by step she planned it—God help me for never realizing it before. In a whole, monstrous world of horrors she built around that boy she left him trust and need for only one person—her. She was Jim’s only shield against those horrors. She knew that, when she died, Jim would go completely mad because there wouldn’t be anyone in the world he could turn to for comfort.
I think you see now why I say there isn’t any murderer.
Just bury her quick and send the boy to me. I’m not coming to the funeral.
GEORGE BARNES
THE PRISONER
When he woke up he was lying on his right side. He felt a prickly wool blanket against his cheek. He saw a steel wall in front of his eyes.
He listened. Dead silence. His ears strained for a sound. There was nothing.
He became frightened. Lines sprang into his forehead.
He pushed up on one elbow and looked over his shoulder. The skin grew taut and pale on his lean face. He twisted around and dropped his legs heavily over the side of the bunk.
There was a stool with a tray on it; a tray of half-eaten food. He saw untouched roast chicken, fork scrapes in a mound of cold mashed potatoes, biscuit scraps in a puddle of greasy butter, an empty cup. The smell of cold food filled his nostrils.
His head snapped around. He gaped at the barred window, at the thick-barred door. He made frightened noises in his throat.
His shoes scraped on the hard floor. He was up, staggering. He fell against the wall and grabbed at the window bars above him. He couldn’t see out of the window.
His body shook as he stumbled back and slid the tray of food onto the bunk. He dragged the stool to the wall. He clambered up on it awkwardly.
He looked out.
Gray skies, walls, barred windows, lumpy black spotlights, a courtyard far below. Drizzle hung like a shifting veil in the air.
His tongue moved. His eyes were round with shock.
“Uh?” he muttered thinly.
He slipped off the edge of the stool as it toppled over. His right knee crashed against the floor, his cheek scraped against the cold metal wall. He cried out in fear and pain.
He struggled up and fell against the bunk. He heard footsteps. He heard someone shout.
“Shut up!”
A fat man came up to the door. He was wearing a blue uniform. He had an angry look on his face. He looked through the bars at the prisoner.
“What’s the matter with you?” he snarled.
The prisoner stared back. His mouth fell open. Saliva ran across his chin and dripped onto the floor.
“Well, well, well,” said the man, with an ugly smile, “So it got to you at last, haah?”
He threw back his thick head and laughed. He laughed at the prisoner.
“Hey, Mac,” he called. “Come ’ere. This you gotta see.”
More footsteps. The prisoner pushed up. He ran to the door.
“What am I doing here?” he asked, “Why am I here?”
The man laughed louder.
“Ha!” he cried, “Boy, did you crack.”
“Shut up, will ya?” growled a voice down the corridor.
“Knock it off!” the guard yelled back.
Mac came up to the cell. He was an older man with graying hair. He looked in curiously. He saw the white-faced prisoner clutching the bars and staring out. He saw how white the prisoner’s knuckles were.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Big boy has cracked,” said Charlie, “Big boy has cracked wide open.”
“What are you talking about?” asked the prisoner, his eyes flitting from one guard’s face to the other. “Where am I? For God’s sake, where am I?”
Charlie roared with laughter. Mac didn’t laugh. He looked closely at the prisoner. His eyes narrowed.
“You know where you are, son,” he said quietly, “Stop laughing, Charlie.”
Charlie sputtered down.
“Man I can’t help it. This bastard was so sure he wouldn’t crack. Not me boy,” he mimicked, “I’ll sit in that goddamn chair with a smile on my face.”
The prisoner’s grayish lips parted.
“What?” he muttered. “What did you say?”
Charlie turned away. He stretched and grimaced, pushed a hand into his paunch.
“Woke me up,” he said.
“What chair?” cried the prisoner, “What are you talking about?”
Charlie’s stomach shook with laughter again.
“Oh, Christ, this is rich,” he chuckled, “Richer than a Christmas cake.”
Mac went up to the bars. He looked into the prisoner’s face. He said, “Don’t try to fool us, John Riley.”
“Fool you?”
The prisoner’s voice was incredulous. “What are you talking about? My name isn’t John Riley.”