I shook my head clear. “What makes you think I was there?”
“Martin saw you at the gas station. He even said hello. You talked to him.”
“I wasn’t there,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been here, home, all the time.”
“John, Martin spoke to you. You spoke to him. Not very nicely, he said, but it was you. And you said you were going up to the cemetery.”
“Ann,” I said after a moment, “I’m telling the truth. I wasn’t there.”
She said nothing.
“Did Martin see who I was with?” I asked.
“Well, no, I guess not. No one else.”
“Alone?”
“Well, he saw you get into a car and go off alone.”
“Ann, I don’t drive. I don’t have a license.”
There was a long silence. “I guess he made a mistake,” she said. “Didn’t mean to be so sore. But you did say you’d call, and I guess I was upset when I thought you didn’t want to see me. Is everything all right?”
“I think so,” I answered carefully. My mind was racing. “How are things there?” I asked automatically.
“School’s out,” she said. “Only a lot of funny things have been happening around here. Stuff being ripped off. The sheriff’s office is calling it a crime wave. That’s one theory. The other is that it’s just one thief. Not that anyone has ever seen the person. There’s talk about a teenage curfew.”
“Too bad,” I mumbled, feeling a renewed sense of panic as I remembered my wanderings through malls, shopping centers, my urge to steal the compass. All I could think of was John Proud.
“You’re not going to tell me what happened, are you?” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“You know.”
I took a breath, wanting so much to talk to her, to tell it all, to say that it was probably John Proud who had talked to Martin, that he was the “crime wave.” But I was the one who had brought him back, wasn’t I? So it was my fault. How could I tell her that?
“Are you going to talk to me?” I heard her say.
“I can’t now,” I said. “My dad is standing right here. But I promise . . . I’ll call.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
I hung up, knowing I had no intention of calling at all, ever. I wanted to get away from the whole thing, all of it. As far away as possible. And that included Ann.
I lay down on my bed and listened to the empty house. Then I buried my face in my pillow, just holding on. I had one thought: If only I had some money, real money, I would go someplace where no one could find me. No one.
20
The last week of school I tried to keep my mind on what I had to do, on taking final exams. It wasn’t easy. Once, in fact, I had a real scare.
I was walking down the street near where I lived, not thinking about anything in particular. All of a sudden I looked up and saw this person walking right toward me. I kept walking. The person kept walking. Increasingly, he seemed familiar, as though I knew him, knew him well. But I couldn’t place him. Then, with a shock, I realized it was someone who looked exactly like me. Stopping short, I felt my heart leap. Was it him? The next second I realized that it was only a mirror, a mirror that someone had left outside, leaning against a box.
I stood there on the sidewalk and for the first time—then and there—I tried to truly confront the facts.
I had come face to face with a spirit, a demon, something that wasn’t of the world. That something had taken my shape, borrowed it so to speak. It had begun to act on me in ways I didn’t fully understand. Worse, it had entered my thoughts, making me think horrible things, and then it acted them out, made them happen as if they were my doing. But they weren’t.
The night before my last exam, I was trying hard to study when the phone rang. My mother called that it was for me. I went to the phone.
“John?”
“Yes.”
“Ann.”
“Oh, hi. How are you?”
“How you been?” she asked. I caught the tension in her voice. Something was very wrong.
“I’m fine,” I said. “My last exam is tomorrow. Spanish. What’s up?”
She paused for just a moment as if getting the strength to leap to something. Sure enough, it came out in a burst. “Have you been around here lately?”
“Me?”
“Just tell me honestly,” she said. “It’s important. I have to know.”
“No. Of course not. I’ve been in school. Here. Why should I be out there? I would have told you.”
“Remember when I said Martin met you?”
“I wasn’t there either.”
“That’s what you said.”
“I wasn’t, Ann!”
“John,” she said, “remember I told you there had been a whole series of things . . . you know, things being stolen . . . all that?”
“Yeah.”
“The other day, right here in town, someone tried to break into the Agway store. Where I work. He broke in at night. Only the manager came back for something, so he almost caught the guy. He was trying to steal money from the vault.”
The moment she said that, I remembered my thoughts about wishing I had money. “Did they . . . catch him?”
“No. But he got a good look at him. And he described him to the police. I was working there when the police interviewed him. Well, the description . . .” She didn’t finish.
I spoke what was in my head. “The description fit me.”
“How did you know?”
“I guessed,” I said, quickly sorry I had said anything.
“John, it . . . wasn’t you . . . was it?”
“No.” My heart was really racing.
“John, who is it? What’s happening? You must tell me.”
I took a breath. “Why?”
“Because I care about you!” she burst out. “Something has happened to you and I want to help. John, you’re in trouble. You came here to see us and we talked, talked a lot. It made me feel good. We seemed . . . close. I care about you a lot. Let me help.”
I closed my eyes and let her words sweep over me. I needed help. And she was offering. “John Proud,” I said.
“I don’t understand. That’s you.”
“No, Ann. The first one. The dead one.”
Silence.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about . . .”
“I mean it.”
“That’s . . . crazy.”
“I saw him, Ann. Spoke to him.”
Silence.
“That time at the cemetery. That’s what happened. That’s what I didn’t know how to tell you.” Then, “Ann, you still there?”
“I heard you.” Her voice sounded hard.
“I’m sure it was him who got to Uncle Dave. He made Uncle Dave bring me to the cemetery.”
“Why?”
“I’m not altogether sure,” I said, my courage faltering. “But . . . he killed Uncle Dave.”
“And you’re serious?” There was something of awe in her voice.
“Yes.”
For a moment I felt a flush of pride in the thought that I was in the middle of the whole affair, the center.
“That’s terrible,” she said. “What are you going to do about it?”
My moment of pride collapsed. In panic, I said, “I don’t know,” and hung up the phone.
I waited there, wanting her to call back. I wanted her to. She didn’t, and I didn’t have the nerve to pick up the phone myself. She had said I had to do something and she was right. It wasn’t enough to just face the fact that John Proud was not going to let me go. I had to do something, quickly, before it got worse.
21
People act all kinds of ways when they are frightened. My way was to hide it.
With school out, the easiest thing for me to do was keep to myself. At first I got calls, frie
nds trying to get together, asking where I was, what I was doing. I found excuses. Three mornings a week I went to a hardware store—the woman who ran it was a friend of my mother’s. I did odd jobs, sweeping, inventory. It put some money in my pocket.
Besides that I watched TV a lot, read, stayed in my room, and slept. I felt tired all the time. After a while my friends didn’t bother to call.
I kept wishing that Ann would call.
Another two weeks went by. It was July and hot with a humidity that had most people gasping, sticking close to their air conditioners.
I was home that Saturday night alone. My folks had gone out. There was no one I wanted to see. No one had called me for a couple of weeks.
Bored with TV, I went out to sit on our front steps and watched the play of heat lightning up in the sky. It made me remember sitting with Ann in front of her house in Lickdale, feeling good about myself, about her. I knew I wanted to be with her, talk to her, be close. I really missed her.
Next morning she called.
“John?”
“How you doing?” I said. My voice shook.
“Not so good.”
“What’s the matter?”
Instead of an answer there was a long pause. For a moment I thought she’d hung up.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I’m upset,” she said. I could sense then how shaken she was, almost as if she had been crying.
“Why?”
“You have to come here. You have to.”
“What happened?”
“All this stuff . . .” She had been crying. And she was on the edge of it again.
“Please tell me what happened.”
“I told you before, or wanted to . . . only you hung up on me.”
“I’m sorry. I was upset.”
“I’m trying to help you!” she cried out.
“Just tell me what it is.”
“Remember,” she said, “how there were all these things happening, and how someone . . . someone saw a person who looked like you breaking into the Agway store . . .”
“It wasn’t me, Ann . . .”
“And I believed you,” she said. “But last night, late, I was coming home from a party. Driving. Alone. It wasn’t that late. Anyway, I saw someone on the road, hitchhiking. Just standing on the road, you know, thumbs up, under a road lamp. I wasn’t going to pick him up. I wouldn’t. I kept going. But as I passed him, I looked. You know the way you do? Only it was you, John. It was. I saw him.”
Right away I remembered my thoughts of her the night before, how I wanted to be with her. “What did you do?” I asked.
“I wasn’t going to do anything, right? But when I saw that it was . . . you . . . I had this automatic reaction. I put on my brakes. I mean, if you had seen me on the road in the middle of the night, wouldn’t you have stopped?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I did. And I turned to look around at him. I had gone past him a ways. You know the way hitchhikers run up to the car that’s stopped. Well, I watched him come. He didn’t run. He just walked, easy, as if he had all the time in the world, as if what he wanted most was for me to just see him. But when I did—my parking lights are red—he came into view with this . . . this red cast about him, looking like a . . . devil. I knew it was only my car lights . . . but all the same . . . Anyway, it was you. Exactly like you. No way anyone else. He kept walking toward me, smiling, that same kind of nice, easy smile you have . . .
“I was thinking, what’s John doing out here like this? But you know, I was really glad, excited it was you. I leaned over my seat to throw the door open when I suddenly realized what I was doing, and who you might be.
“I got going fast. Very fast. He just stood there looking after me.
“When I got home, I thought I should tell someone, but . . . I couldn’t. So I went to bed and just lay there thinking and thinking and thinking until I decided I’d call.
“John,” she said, taking a big breath. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“So many things . . . I know what you told me. I believe it. Except I don’t understand.” She was crying. I didn’t know what to say.
“John,” she said, “you have to come here.”
“Why?” I said.
“Because this is about you. It has to be you who does something. Will you come?”
“I’ll try,” I said, not sure whether I meant it or not.
“John,” she said after a moment.
“What?”
“We like each other, don’t we?”
“Yes.”
“Why won’t you talk straight to me?”
“I’m having enough trouble talking straight to myself,” I said evasively.
“I’m going to trust you,” she said.
“Thank you,” I managed. But in my head I knew I wasn’t trusting her enough. “I hope you can,” I said.
“Why do you say that?”
“Ann,” I cried in exasperation, “when I spoke to John Proud, he said I got him to come back. That he was me!”
“Do you believe that?”
“Ann, I don’t know.”
For a moment she said nothing. “I don’t,” she said. “But I still think it’s you who has to do something.”
I knew more than ever that what she had said was right. I had to get out there and face John Proud.
I had to know who was doing all these things. Was it him . . . or me?
PART THREE
22
It was about six o’clock on a Thursday evening when I got to Lebanon. I was tired, feeling dirty and hungry. When I stepped from the bus there was Ann, waiting. She had dressed up a bit, slacks and all, though she was wearing her running shoes. She looked good.
I was so glad to see her, I just dropped my bag and we hugged each other hard. I was with the one person who knew some of what was locked up in my head. Secrets, I had learned, have weight.
“Want to stop for some coffee or something before we go back?” she asked. “Mom said she’d have dinner waiting.”
“I’d like to talk.”
“There’s a McDonald’s on the way.”
“Fine.”
When we got there, we ordered a couple of shakes, then slipped into one of those back booths with the hard, orange seats.
We looked at each other. “I was worried you might not come,” she said.
I took a deep breath. “So was I. I’m glad to see you,” I said. She smiled. “How much do your parents know?” I asked.
“Nothing, really.”
I felt a trickle of worry. “Martin have any idea?”
“I doubt it. Anyway, he’s going to Scout camp tomorrow.”
“Can you get your parents to go too?”
She grinned, shook her head.
“Why do they think I’ve come?”
“Hot-and-heavy romance.”
“My folks too. Fact they think all the stuff I’ve been doing—sticking around home, not seeing people, stuff like that—is because of you.”
Then we just sat back and looked at each other, feeling good, a deep and easing warmth. Across the table we held hands.
“Have you got any answers yet?” she asked. I shook my head. “Just questions.”
“Like what?”
I hesitated.
“You going to trust me or not?” she asked, giving my hand a squeeze.
“I’m trying. . . .”
“Tell me. . . .”
I looked right at her. Her trust seemed to clear my mind, make it easier to speak. I took another deep breath. “I think . . . John Proud . . . is somehow . . . getting to be part of me. Not really me,” I hastened to say. “But all the same, something in me.”
Ann was watching me closely.
“It’s like . . . he is me, but all the same, he’s not. Doesn’t make much sense, does it? It’s as if he does things, things I might only think of doing. But I don’t know if I’m the one who is thinking them.??
?
“Who else?”
“Him. Putting thoughts into my head.”
“Breaking things? Stealing?”
I nodded, adding, “Killing Uncle Dave.”
She grimaced, gripping my hand harder.
“A lot of the things that you said were happening around here—well, I thought of them, first. They were in my head, Ann, they were.”
“That’s not you,” she said almost angrily.
“I don’t know anymore. I’m all confused about it.”
She took her hand from mine.
“Tell me,” she again urged. “I’m not going to think badly of you. I won’t. I promise.”
“I wanted Uncle Dave to disappear, Ann. I did. Maybe worse. I thought about stealing things. Thought about getting a lot of money. Or, that night you saw him, I wanted to see you a lot. More than usual, though I tried not thinking about you.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “You’re a part of this whole thing. The point is, I don’t always know which are my thoughts, and which are his.
“Maybe he comes to exist through me, you know, a thought of mine . . . then he takes over. I don’t do anything. I think things. He does them. Or maybe it’s more: Maybe he puts those thoughts into my head, then does them to make me believe I’m the one to blame when it’s really him all along.
“I don’t know anymore. I used to know myself. Or I thought I did. Not anymore. I’ve never been this way before.”
“What do you think you’ll do about him?” she said.
“I’m not sure there either. All I can think of is that I have to catch him. Get rid of him. I don’t know how. But there has to be a way. He hinted there was a way.”
“Do you want to kill him?”
I nodded. “Except he’s already dead, isn’t he?” She wrinkled her nose, and in spite of myself I started to laugh. “It’s so crazy,” I said, shaking my head.
“Maybe we’re the crazy ones,” she said. That wasn’t funny either, but it set us off again.
“Can you imagine,” she said, giggling, “telling my girl friend that I like this guy but there are two of them and I can’t tell which one is which sometimes?”