"...explain to our viewers just what it is that makes Gilroy Connors so dangerous, Dr. Kline."
"He's a sociopath."
"And just what is that?"
"Simply put, it is a personality disorder in which the individual has no sense of 'mine' and 'not-mine,' no sense of right or wrong in the traditional sense."
"No conscience, so to speak."
"Exactly."
"Are they all murderers like Connors?"
"No. History's most notorious criminals and serial killers are sociopaths, but violence isn't a necessary facet of their make-up. The confidence men who rip off the pensions of widows or steal from a handicapped person are just as sociopathic as the Charles Mansons of the world. The key element in the sociopathic character is his or her complete lack of guilt. They will do whatever is necessary to get what they want and will feel no remorse over anyone they have to harm along the way."
"Gilroy Connors was convicted in the Dorothy Akers murder. Do you think he'll kill again?"
"He has to be considered dangerous. He's a sociopathic personality with a particularly low frustration threshhold. But he is also a very glib liar. Since the truth means nothing to him, he can take any side of a question, any moral stance, and speak on it with utter conviction."
A voice – George recognized it as belonging to one of the anchormen – called from off-camera: "Sounds like he'd make a great politician!"
Everyone had a good laugh, and then the Oriental woman said, "But all kidding aside, what should our viewers do if one of them should spot him?"
Dr. Kline's expression was suddenly grim. "Lock the doors and call the police immediately."
The camera closed in on the Asian girl. "There you have it. We've been speaking to Dr. Edward Kline, a Long Island psychiatrist who examined Gilroy Connors and testified for the state at the Dorothy Akers murder trial.
"In case you've been asleep or out of the country during the last twenty-four hours, all of Long Island is being combed for Gilroy Connors, convicted killer of nineteen year old college coed Dorothy Akers. Connors escaped custody last night when, due to an error in paperwork, he was accidentally transferred to the Monroe Neuropsychiatric Institute instead of a maximum security facility as ordered by the court. The victim's father, publisher Jeffrey Akers, is offering a fifty thousand dollar reward for information leading to his recapture."
Fifty thousand! George thought. What I could do with that!
"You've heard Dr. Kline," she continued. "If you see this man, call the police immediately."
A blow-up of a mug shot appeared on the screen. George gasped. He knew that man! Even with his rotten vision, he could see that the face on the TV belonged to the man now sleeping in his bed! He turned around to look toward the bedroom and saw his house guest standing behind him, a knife in his hand.
"Don't even think about that reward, old man," Connors said in a chillingly soft voice. "Don't even dream about it."
*
"You're hurtin' my hands!" the old fart whined as Gil knotted the cord around his wrists.
"I'm putting you down for the night, old man, and you're staying down!"
He pulled the rope tighter and the old man yelped.
Gil said, "There – that ought to hold you."
George rolled over onto his back and stared up at him. "What are you going to do with me?"
"Haven't figured that out yet."
"You're gonna kill me, aren't you?" There was more concern than fear in his eyes.
"Maybe. Maybe not. Depends on how you behave."
Truthfully, he didn't know what to do. It would be less of a hassle to kill him now and get it over with, but there was the problem of the mailman. If George wasn't waiting curbside at the box tomorrow morning, the USPS might come knocking on the door. So Gil had to figure out a way to pressure George into acting as if everything was nice and normal tomorrow. Maybe he'd have George stand at the door and wave to the mailman. That might work. He'd have to spend some time figuring this out.
"All that stuff you said about dodging the tax man was just lies, wasn't it?"
Gil smiled at the memory. "Yeah. Pretty good, wasn't it? I mean, I made that up right off the top of my head. Sucked you in like smoke, didn't I?"
"Nothing to be proud of."
"Why not?"
"You heard what they called you on the TV: a 'socialpath'. Means you're crazy."
"You watch your mouth, old man!" Gil could feel the rage surging up in him like a giant wave. He hated that word. "I'm not crazy! And I don't ever want to hear that word out of your mouth again!"
"Doesn't matter anyway," George said. "Soon as you're out of here, my tenants will untie me."
Gil laughed. "Now who's crazy!"
"It's true. They'll free me."
"That's enough of that," Gil said. It wasn't funny any more. He didn't like being called crazy any more than he liked being near crazy people. And this old man was talking crazy now. "No more of that kind of talk out of you!"
"You'll see. I'm their protector. Soon as you're–"
"Stop that!" Gil yanked George off the bed by his shirt front. He was losing it – he could feel it going. "God damn that makes me mad!"
He shoved the old man back against the wall with force enough to rattle the whole house. George's eyes rolled up as he slumped back onto the bed. A small red trickle crawled along his scalp and mixed with the gray of his hair at the back of his head.
"Sleep tight, Pops," Gils said.
He left George on the bed and returned to the other room. He turned the antique TV back on. After what seemed like an inordinately long warm-up time, the picture came in, flipped a few times, then held steady. He hoped there wasn't another psychiatrist on talking about him.
He hated psychiatrists. Hated them! Since he'd been picked up for killing that college chick, he'd seen enough of their kind to last a couple of lifetimes. Why'd she have to go and die? It wasn't fair. He hadn't meant to kill her. If only she'd been a little more cooperative. But no – she'd had to go and laugh in his face. He'd just got mad, that was all. He wasn't crazy. He just had a bad temper.
Psychiatrists! What'd they know about him? Labeling him, pigeonholing him, saying he had no conscience and never felt sorry for anything he did. What'd they know? Did they know how he'd cried after Mom had burnt up in that fire in Dad's car? He'd cried for days. Mom wasn't supposed to be anywhere near that car when it caught fire. Only Dad.
He had loads of feelings, and nobody had better tell him any different!
He watched the tube for awhile, caught a couple of news broadcasts, but there was only passing mention of his escape and the reward the girl's old man had posted for him. Then came a report that he had been sighted on Staten Island and the search was being concentrated there.
He smiled. They were getting further and further away from where he really was.
He shut off the set at eleven-thirty. Time for some more sleep. Before he made himself comfortable on the couch, he checked out the old man's room. He was there, snoring comfortably under the covers. Gil turned away and then spun back again.
How'd he get under the covers?
Two strides took him to the bedside. His foot kicked against something that skittered across the floor. He found what it was: the old guy's shoes. They'd been on his feet when he'd tied him up! He yanked back the covers and stared in open-mouthed shock at the old man.
George's hands and feet were free. The cords were nowhere in sight.
Just then he thought he caught a blur of movement by the doorway. He swung around but there was nothing there. He turned back to George.
"Hey, you old fart!" He shook George's shoulder roughly until his eyes opened. "Wake up!"
George's eyes slowly came into focus. "Wha–?"
"How'd you do it?"
"Go 'way!"
George rolled onto his other side and Gil saw a patch of white gauze where he had been bleeding earlier. He flipped him onto his back again.
&nbs
p; "How'd you untie yourself, goddammit?"
"Didn't. My tenants–"
"You stop talking that shit to me, old man!" Gil said, cocking his right arm.
Goerge flinched away but kept his mouth shut. Maybe he was finally learning.
"You stay right there!"
Gil tore through the drawers and piles of junk in the other room until he found some more cord. During the course of the search he came across a check book and some uncashed checks. He returned to the bedroom and began tying up George again.
"Don't know how you did it the first time, but you ain't doing it again!"
He spread-eagled George on the sheet and tied each skinny limb to a separate corner of the bed, looping the cord down and around on the legs of the frame. Each knot was triple-tied.
"There! See if you can get out of that!"
As George opened his mouth to speak, Gil glared at him and the old man shut it with an almost audible snap.
"That's the spirit," Gil said softly.
He pulled the knife out of his shirt and held its six inch blade up before George. The old man's eyes widened.
"Nice, isn't it? I snatched it from the kitchen of that wimpy Monroe Neuropsychiatric Institute. Would've preferred getting myself a gun, but none of the guards there were armed. Still, I can do a whole lot of damage with something like this and still not kill you. Understand what I'm saying to you, old man?"
George nodded vigorously.
"Good. Now what we're going to have here tonight is a nice quiet little house. No noise, no talk. Just a good night's sleep for both of us. Then we'll see what tomorrow brings."
He gave George one last hard look straight in the eye, then turned and headed back to the couch.
*
Before sacking out for the night, Gil went through George's check book. Not a whole lot of money in it. Most of the checks went out to cash or to the township for quarterly taxes. He noticed one good-sized regular monthly deposit that was probably his Social Security check, and lots of smaller sporadic additions.
He looked through the three undeposited checks. They were all made out to George Haskins, each from a different greeting card company. The attached invoices indicated they were in payment for varing numbers of verses.
Verses?
You mean old George back thre tied up to the bed was a poet? He wrote greeting card verse?
Gil looked around the room. Where? There was no desk in the shack. Hell, he hadn't seen a piece of paper since he got here! Where did George write this stuff?
He went back to the bedroom. He did his best not to show the relief he felt when he saw that old George was still tied up nice and tight.
"Hey, old man," he said, waving the checks in the air. "How come you never told me you were a poet?"
George glared at him. "Those checks are mine! I need them to pay my taxes!"
"Yeah? Well, right now I need them a lot more than you do. I think tomorrow morning we'll make a little trip down to the bank so you can cash these." He checked the balance in the account. "And I think you just might make a cash withdrawal, too."
"I'll lose my land if I don't pay those taxes on time!"
"Well then, I guess you'll just have to come up with some more romantic 'verses' for these card companies. Like, 'George is a poet / And nobody know it.' See? It's easy!"
Gil laughed as he thought of all the broads who get those flowery, syrupy birthday and anniversary cards and sit mooning over the romantic poems inside, never knowing they were written by this dirty old man in a falling down shack on Long Island!
"I love it!" he said, heading back to the couch. "I just love it!"
He turned out all the lights, shoved the knife between two of the cushions, and bedded down on the dusty old couch for the night. As he drifted off to sleep, he thought he heard rustling movements from under the floorboards. George's 'tenants', no doubt. He shuddered at the thought. The sooner he was out of here, the better.
*
What time is it?
Gil was rubbing the sleep from his eyes and peering around in the mineshaft blackness that surrounded him. Something had awakened him. But what? He sat perfectly still and listened.
A few crickets, maybe a frog – the noises seemed to come from outside instead of from the crawlspace – but nothing more than that.
Still, his senses were tingling with the feeling that something was wrong. He stood up and stepped over toward the light switch. As he moved, his foot caught on something and he fell forward. On the way down his ribs slammed against something else, something hard, like a chair. He hit the floor with his left shoulder. Groaning, he got to his knees and crawled until his fingers found the wall. He fumbled around for the light switch and flipped it.
When his eyes had adjusted to the glare, he glanced at the clock over the kitchen sink – going on 4:00 a.m. He thought he saw something move by the sink but when he squinted for a better look, it was just some junk George had left there. Then he turned back toward the couch to see what had tripped him up.
It was the little hassock that had been over by the rocking chair when he had turned the lights out. At least he was pretty sure it had been there. He knew it hadn't been next to the couch where it was now. And the chair he had hit on his way down – that had been over against the wall.
In fact, as he looked around he noticed that not a single piece of furniture in the whole room was where it had been when he had turned out the lights and gone to sleep three or four hours ago. It had all been moved closer to the couch.
Someone was playing games. And Gil only knew of one possible someone.
Retrieving his knife from the couch, he hurried to the bedroom and stopped dead at the door. George was tied hand and foot to the corners of the bed, snoring loudly.
A chill rippled over Gil's skin.
"How the hell...?"
He went back to the main room and checked the door and windows – all were locked from the inside. He looked again at the furniture, clustered around the couch as if the pieces had crept up and watched him as he slept.
Gil didn't believe in ghosts but he was beginning to believe this little shack was haunted.
And he wanted out.
He had seen the keys to the old Torino in one of the drawers. He found them again and hurried outside to the car. He hoped the damn thing started. He wasn't happy about hitting the road so soon, but he preferred taking his chances with the cops out in the open to being cooped up with whatever was haunting that shack.
As he slipped behind the wheel, he noticed a sliver of light shining out from inside the shack's foundation. That was weird. Really weird. Nobody kept a light on in a crawlspace. He was about to turn the ignition key but held up. He knew it was going to drive him nuts if he left without seeing what was down there.
Cursing himself for a jerk, he turned on the Ford's headlamps and got out for a closer look.
The light was leaking around a piece of plywood fitted into an opening in the foundation cinder blocks. It was hinged at the bottom and held closed by a short length of one-by-two shoved through the handle at the top. He pulled out the one-by-two and hesitated.
Connors, you are an asshole, he told himself, but he had to see what was in there. If it was snakes and snapping turtles, fine. That would be bad enough. But if it was something worse, he had to know.
Gripping the knife tightly in one hand, he yanked the board toward him with the other and quickly peered in, readying himself to slam it shut in an instant. But what he saw within so shocked him he almost dropped the knife.
There was a furnished apartment inside.
The floor of the crawlspace was carpeted. It was worn, industrial grade carpet, but it was carpet. There were chairs, tables, bunk beds, the works. A fully furnished apartment...with a ceiling two feet high.
Everything was doll size except the typewriter. That was a portable electric model that looked huge in contrast to everything else.
Maybe George wasn't really crazy after all.
One thing was certain: The old fart had been lying to him. There were no snakes and snapping turtles living down here in his crawlspace.
But just what the hell was living down here?
Gil headed back inside to ask the only man who really knew.
As he strode through the big room, his foot caught on something and he went down again, landing square on his belly. It took him a moment to catch his breath, then he rolled over and looked to see what had tripped him.
It wasn't the hassock this time. A length of slim cord was stretched between the leg of the couch and an eye-hook that had been screwed into the wall.
"Son of a bitch!"
He got up and continued on his way – carefully now, scanning the path for more trip ropes. There were none. He made it to the bedroom without falling again–
–and found George sitting on the edge of the bed, massaging his wrists.
Dammit! Every time he turned around it was something else! He could feel the anger and frustration begin to bubble up toward the overflow levels.
"Who the hell untied you?"
"I ain't talking to you."
Gil pointed the knife at him. "You'll talk, old man, or I'll skin you alive!"
"Leave him alone and leave our home!"
It was a little voice, high-pitched without being squeaky, and it came from directly behind him. Gil whirled and saw a fully dressed little man – or something squat, hairy, and bullnecked that came pretty close to looking like a little man – no more than a foot and a half high, standing outside the bedroom door. By the time Gil realized what he was looking at, the creature had started to run.
Gil's first thought was, I'm going crazy! But suddenly he had an explanation for that two-foot high furnished apartment in the crawlspace, and for the moving furniture and trip cords.
He bolted after it. Here was what had been tormenting him tonight! He'd get the little sucker and–
He tripped again. A cord that hadn't been there a moment ago was stretched across the narrow hall. Gil went down on one knee and bounded up again. He'd been half ready for that one. They weren't going to–