R. MacAvoy - Tea with the Black Dragon

But Rasmussen stood motionless, his rifle pointed at the ceiling. His head was tilted, listening.

Long heard the noise too. It came from outside the passage—from the bathroom. He identified the sound with no trouble.

Rasmussen turned, nearly losing his footing. He bulled his way through the narrow door. Long recognized this as his moment.

He recognized it, and yet he did not attack. He tapped his bottled anger, commanding it to flare up, heat his nerves, impel him with the certainty of violence—the single-souled violence of a wounded beast which fuels ferocity with pain.

There was no response from within. Merely the recognition. And the pain.

It might have been the ignominy of his condition— wet, ill from lack of sleep, dressed like a sidewalk tramp and barefoot—which blocked his response. It might have been the blood which even now filtered through the gauzy fiberglass and spread a sad pink stain through the plaster of the child’s empty bedroom below. It might have been that civilization had penetrated too deeply into him.

It might have been that he was old. Long slunk out from the passage behind Rasmussen and faded down the staircase. He heard three shots, and a high-pitched yowl cut off. He heard Rasmussen’s cry of frustration and rage. He opened the trench door quietly and stooped for his shoes, clenching his teeth around a groan.

He had known it was the cat.

The rain had slowed. A few stars burnt through the cloud. Mayland Long wove into the scrub wood across from Rasmussen’s house. He put his back to a tree and waited for Rasmussen to come out.

For nothing had been changed by this little pas de deux. Long still had to find Martha Macnamara. Rasmussen must lead him to her. With his quarry escaped, the man would have to move.

Liz was still safe, since Rasmussen didn’t know Long had found her. She would remain safe until the banks opened tomorrow. Martha must be alive. He could say no more.

Chill seeped out of the earth and air. It invaded his anatomy. Blood and water mixed beneath the tree where he sat.

Why had he failed himself? He felt he had reacted in a manner alien to his own nature, and he was very familiar with his nature; it had been with him a long time. He ought to have taken Rasmussen as soon as the man’s back was turned. Had he killed the man it would have been unfortunate, but understandable. That was proper behavior, with logic and the fire of the beast in harmony. Instead he had run away.

Tentatively, he sorted his feelings. Was he ready to confront Rasmussen again, if need be?

Where was his anger?

He was rewarded for his probing with cold, deadly pain. His vision swam with meaningless stars. His ears filled with a pounding, like surf. Mayland Long passed out under the weeping trees.

Martha had not noticed the box before. It lay hidden amid a pile of trash the small man had accumulated during the day: candy wrappers, soda cans, broken cigarettes. He pulled it out now, brushing the ash from the black plastic grill on the top of it.

She stared grimly at the cassette recorder. She knew what it was for and she had guessed events would come to this.

A magazine jacket covered with print caught her desperate eye. “Dr. Dobb’s” she chirped. “I know someone else who reads that.”

His eyes held only boredom and contempt. His fingers fiddled with the machine. He drew the microphone out of its compartment and plugged it in the back of the box.

“Now, lady. It’s time for you to talk to your daughter.”

She regarded him with birdlike intensity, her blue eyes unblinking. His own face flushed, heavy and sullen.

“Just tell her you’re all right. Tell her to do what we say.” He pressed the record and play buttons.

The whirr of the moving tape was the only sound in the room. Martha Macnamara’s small mouth was pursed. With her round face and tangled braids she was the image of rebellion.

He stopped the tape. Smacked her backhanded across the face. Rewound and started again.

“Talk,” he grunted. She stared at nothing, across the room.

The man hit Martha three more times. The last time he hit her, he used his fist. “Talk!” he bellowed. His voice cracked. The tape reached its end and the machine snapped off.

Martha Macnamara abruptly began talking. “You spend a lot of money on your clothes,” she observed, through cracked lips. “But you don’t know how to put them together. With white trousers you should not wear a bright red shirt. Except in Italy, maybe…”

His finger jabbed the rewind. He stood looking down at his captive, grinding his teeth. He kicked her. Kicked her again, just below the wire-bound hands.

“Ow, owww, owww!” shrieked Martha Macnamara. “Yow Owww!” She cried out once for every kick, loudly and with great animation. He pressed record once more, and the tape filled with wordless howls and yelps.

The small man turned away, purple faced. He leaned against the wall, slicking back his hair, and stood in unconscious parody of Michelangelo’s David. He did not see Martha stagger to her feet, pluck up the recorder by the mike cord, swing it around her head, and send it crashing against the back of his neck.

He tottered and fell, but as the machine was made of light plastic, he did not lose consciousness. As Martha bent over him, scrabbling through his pockets for the keys and dikes, his arms shot up and grabbed her by the throat.

“I’ll kill you, you bitch!” he roared. The woman’s head snapped back and forth as he shook her and squeezed. Her face was mottled, under the bruises.

The green door suddenly opened and the small man looked up into small eyes set in a huge head, a head gold and spiky as an Aztec platter.

“Jesus Christ, Threve, what’d you do that for?” gritted Floyd Rasmussen.

Mayland Long woke under a cold clear sky. With an agony of effort he pulled himself to his feet. A cautious walk down the sidewalk in front of Rasmussen’s house told him the man had made his escape, for the lights were all out and the french door closed once again. Around the square where Long had removed the glass the injured wood gleamed white.

He didn’t curse himself for his body’s latest failing; he merely proceeded down the street toward his car, each step premeditated, slowly…

Long felt about as sick as a man can be, still standing. Wet cold ate into his lungs; his breath steamed. He cradled his right arm in front of him. A dull pounding in his ears had haunted him through dreams into miserable wakefulness. Its dull thunder confused him, though he knew it was his own heartbeat.

Worse than the cold, worse than the confusion, almost worse than the lancing pain in his shoulder was the thirst. If he could find water, he could bear the cold and the pain.

Oily puddles in the road tempted him. Had they been deeper he might have bent to drink from them. If he were able to bend. The car. Was there water anywhere in it? Perhaps in the washer reservoir.

But no. That water would be mixed with antifreeze. Thoughtfully he regarded the dark houses he passed. Water in the garden faucets? In the green plastic hoses coiled in the grass? His steps slowed—stopped.

He didn’t dare. If he were caught, found by some insomniac householder, staggering blood-soaked and frozen among the dahlias, or if there were a dog… He could go without water. For a little while.

The Citroen gleamed under starlight. He found his keys, but his hand was not steady and he had difficulty unlocking the door. He pulled it open and sank into the tan leather seat. Wherever he touched it, the leather darkened: brown with water, russet with blood.

In the comfort of the car he rested, until faintness rose up from his chest to his throat and threatened to drown him. Words echoed in his head. Tinny, removed, without meaning… “In order to become what you are not, it is necessary to go by a way in which you are not.”