David Wiltse - Prayer for the Dead

What held Tee in the air he could not tell, nor could he be sure what Dyce was doing to his arm.

Tee tried to speak but couldn’t, but felt no surprise. He had known somehow on waking that he could not speak and could not move. It didn’t bother him too much; he was more curious than frightened.

Lightning flashed again and Tee could see Dyce massaging his upper arm with his thumb, although he could feel nothing. A dark liquid dripped from a needle in Tee’s arm into an empty spring water bottle.

“We have to speed things up with you,” Dyce said, as if sensing Tee’s curiosity. “I’m sorry to rush things, but we probably don’t have much time. We’ll both just have to do the best we can in the situation.”

Tee realized then that it was Tee’s own blood that Dyce was massaging from Tee’s arm and into the water bottle. The bottle was nearly full and Tee had no idea if it was the first. He felt his heart lurch violently in his chest and for the first time felt the panic of fear.

Dyce kept droning on in his soft, patient voice.

“You’re not really right, of course. I mean, you just don’t really look right. That’s not your fault, of course. It’s nobody’s fault. You’re here-and I can’t tell you how hard it was to get you up the ladder-I nearly gave up, but I couldn’t leave you in the cornfield, you can understand that. And you’re here now, that’s the important thing, and I can’t very well get anyone else under the circumstances, but that young Nordholm was perfect, just perfect. Your friends took him away from me. You can blame them for that.”

Dyce scuttled back across the rafter with surprising agility and put the full bottle of blood on the island. He returned with a fresh, empty bottle and began to massage Tee’s arm once more, pressing his thumb into the vein and sliding it down to the needle.

Tee’s heart lurched again and his eyes widened; he was certain it was about to give out. Dyce stopped and placed his ear on Tee’s chest. His hair bushed against Tee’s chin.

“You’ll be all right, I think,” Dyce said. “That happens sometimes when it goes too fast; that’s why I like to take it slowly. We’ll just stop right here. Now listen to me. Are you listening to me?”

Tee stared at Dyce. His features had become clearer as Tee’s eyes adjusted to the darkness. Dyce put his hand lightly over Tee’s nose.

“If you’re listening, just hold your breath for a count of six… Good, all right, you can breathe normally now. Now listen very carefully. I would normally give you another shot now to keep you quiet, but considering your heart and everything, I think I’d better not, so you’ll just have to cooperate. All right? What you must do is lie very, very still. Even if you feel some sensation coming back to your arms and legs, you must not move a muscle. If you do, first of all you’ll fall and hurt yourself-it’s a very long way down-but also you’ll destroy the illusion and then we’ll just have to start over. Do you understand? Hold your breath if you understand… Good. Keep your breathing as light as you possibly can. I don’t want to see your chest heaving up and down; that makes everything silly. And your eyes have to stay closed the whole time. All right? Now that you’re conscious you’ll be tempted to want to see, but you must avoid that, all right? Hold your breath if you understand… Very good.”

Lightning flashed and thunder followed it so quickly from so nearby that the house seemed to shake. Tee saw the ladder tucked into the space where the roof met the walls. If I could move at all, he thought desperately, if I could nudge the ladder with my foot so it would fall, do something, anything. But he felt so weak and tired, horribly tired.

“It will take me a minute or two to get ready,” Dyce said, propelling himself across the rafter with his hands. “You can keep your eyes open until I tell you.”

Straining his eyes to the side, Tee could see Dyce on his midair island begin to undress.

Becker turned off his headlights before he was halfway up to the crest of the county road. He drove in darkness, his eyes fixed not on the road invisible in front of him, but on the silhouette of the farmhouse that stood against the dark sky.

Coasting with his foot off the gas, he counted seconds from the moment the car started downhill. It had taken a count of twelve when he did it in the daylight. At eleven he geared down into second, using his handbrake to slow the car so that the flash of red brake lights would not betray him. His right front tire slipped over the edge of the roadside ditch, and Becker compensated accordingly with the wheel, pulling the car onto the access road. He was moving beneath the shelter of the corn now and was hidden from the view of the house, but still he drove with his lights out. If he turned them on, they would splash off the corn and into the air like a warning beacon for Dyce. If Dyce was there.

Becker waited for a flash of lightning, fixed the path in his mind, and drove straight ahead until the image faded from his retina. Then he stopped and waited for the next flash. When he was within a few yards of the entrance to the farmyard, he stopped. Timing his move with a clash of thunder, Becker opened the car door and stepped into the corn.

Gold’s voice had been running through his mind like a tape since he got into the car and started toward the farm.

“It’s a function of will,” Gold had said. “We all have fantasies. It’s whether we act on them that matters. Most of us don’t. You don’t, Becker.”

“Don’t I?” thought Becker.

“What you do, what you have done-the experience with Bahoud in New York, the incident in Washington, the other times-they cause the fantasies. It is not the fantasies that cause the incidents.”

“Incidents. You mean the killings.”

“All right, the killings,” Gold said.

Becker bent between the corn rows and rubbed dirt on his forehead and under his eyes. The turtleneck rolled up to just under his mouth. Lightning flashed and thunder roared so close it seemed to be over the cornfield itself Becker could smell the electricity in the air. Strangely, there was still no rain.

The wind was beating against the corn stalks so fiercely they sounded like acres of crackling cellophane. The earth itself was so noisy there was no need for caution, but Becker moved silently, anyway, from long habit.

Cutting diagonally through the field, Becker came to the edge of the cultivated ground where the corn stopped and the farmyard began. Kneeling, he studied the house and the barn.

His heart seemed to have ascended in his chest and was beating rapidly just beneath his collarbone. Becker recognized the excitement for what it was-an eagerness for action and a tingling of anticipation. There was no fear involved in it. Caution, prudence, but no fear.

“They were all justified,” Gold said. “You were in danger every time. You did what you had to do to save yourself”

“Justified?”

“Justified. Absolutely.”

“But were they necessary?”

Becker approached the barn from the rear where there was nothing but blank wall to watch him. He did not expect to find anything in it, but this was not the time to go on assumptions alone. That was Hatcher’s way, not Becker’s.

“Why are you so sure he’s at the farm?” Hatcher had asked.

Becker said, “I’m not sure of anything,” but he was. He could not say that he was sure because he had come to understand Dyce on a level that Hatcher could not begin to comprehend. The man’s life had fallen apart on him and he had fled to the place where it had all begun, the cruel, twisted injury that had made him what he was. He could not tell Hatcher that he understood the man’s thoughts and needs and darkly contorted emotions just as he had understood Bahoud’s and all of those since then.