Майкл Смит - The Lonely Dead

'Yes,' I admitted. 'It does.'

'Then they'll bury the remainder, returning it to the earth, or they distribute it — and dismemberment was a common feature of sacrifice too, breaking the body down to parts. They will be dormant for a while then, until the cycle starts again — until the music of the spheres tells them it's time for another sacrifice.'

'But serial killers are not priests.'

'No. They're fucking lunatics, and so there will come a point at which the cycle starts to speed up. Most killers know they are wrong, deep down. They understand they're at the beck and call of a neurotic dysfunction they try to rationalize but can't understand. They speed up in the end because they give up giving up. But the Straw Men do believe that this is acceptable. That's the difference. They believe what they're doing is more than okay, that it's essential, that it's what put our species where it is. They believe that if you kill the right thing at the right time, everything will be well. It's the original magic act. They've stuck with an ancient belief system that says killing is right.'

He stopped talking. His jaw was thrust forward belligerently, and his whole body vibrated with an unwillingness to see the world any other way. I looked back at him, not knowing what to say. I didn't know how to tell him that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, or that not everything he had read on the internet was true, or that the willingness to fit any piece of information into a predetermined plan was a sign of mania. I didn't know how to tell him that if he believed everything he'd told me, he'd lost his mind. You don't want to use any of those words, when you've been tied to a chair by a man with a gun.

'Did you get all that from Dravecky?'

'Some of the history. He also confirmed that the view amongst some of the 'tribe' — he used that actual word — was that the Upright Man had become a liability, and he told me what he's doing here. A sacrifice that hasn't been made in a long, long time.'

'Does Paul think the Straw Men will take him back if he pulls it off?'

'I doubt he cares. He's off on his own thing. This is a guy who thinks even the Straw Men are going soft.'

'Where's Dravecky now?'

'In the Columbia River.'

'Great. You're the man. Tell me, John: did you kill the women or not?'

'No.'

The word was said immediately and simply. I still didn't know what to think. 'So what is Paul doing up here?'

John shook his head. 'You don't believe what I've told you,' he said. 'And I don't care.' He stood and took something from his pocket. It was a thick piece of cloth, about two feet long.

'Don't put that—'

But with one quick movement the gag was on. He yanked it tight. Then he came round and squatted in front of me, looked deep into my eyes. I hadn't even noticed that, while he'd been talking, the drapes had started to lighten. Dawn was on the way. In the murky light I could make out the sharp blue of his irises, the dark circle in the centre. Beyond that, I couldn't go.

'Stay out of my way, Ward,' he said. 'Him being dead is a lot more important to me than you being alive.'

He checked the knots, straightened and then laughed. 'You want to know the kicker? Forty years ago they believed the country was going to liberal ruin. That called for the ultimate. The sacrifice of the king. November 22nd, 1963.'

I just looked at him. He winked. 'They killed JFK.'

Then he went to the door, stepped out into dark blue-black, and was gone.

26

During the night the man with the guns sat bolt upright in a chair in front of the door. The other man, Kozelek, tried to talk to him on two occasions, and got nowhere, after which he seemed to give up. He sat slumped in another chair, staring into space for a while. Then he poked around in the kitchen until he found a bottle of wine. He drank it in twenty minutes flat, and fell asleep. His dreams did not look good. He said a woman's name twice.

Patrice meanwhile lay on her side on the couch. With her hands tied behind her back, there wasn't much else she could do. For a while she had kept her eyes open. When she realized this would do little to prevent any harm befalling her, she let them close. She didn't sleep, however. Sleep didn't come anywhere near.

They set off at first light. The man with the guns, Henrickson, made her walk in the front. Kozelek staggered along behind her. Partly it looked like hangover, partly a problem with one ankle. Mainly it seemed like he had given up in general.

Henrickson walked in the back. Every now and then she glanced that way to check where he was. Though the night had finally brought new snow underfoot, after the rain and sleet, he seemed to be able to move with very little sound.

She led them up around the north shore of the lake. There seemed little point in not doing so, little point in not taking him where he thought he wanted to go. It was much further than he realized, it wouldn't get him what he wanted — and might have other advantages.

As they passed the second cabin she glanced up, and saw her reflection in the dusty window. She smiled, just in case something of Bill still lingered there, and in case she didn't come back.

— «» — «» — «»—

'I hope you're not screwing me around,' Henrickson said.

Tom stopped, glad for an excuse to rest. Two straight hours' walking, all of it uphill, had taken him to the brink. The sky, at first a pale and searing blue up between the trees, had gradually turned dark and mottled, clouds arriving like clumps of dropped clay. His head felt bad, and — wretched though he felt — he couldn't help appreciating the parallel with the first time he'd returned to the place they were headed for, brain cracked wide. Of course he hadn't planned it this way. He'd just wanted to be asleep, and getting drunk had done that. He wanted to be asleep now, too. Asleep, or far away. His absurd belief that somehow he was going to be able to get away with everything, that his find was going to heal his life, had disappeared.

Henrickson stood right in front of the old woman. 'You told the cops this place was an hour's walk from the edge of your land. Unless you own a State Park, that's beginning to look far-fetched.'

'I lied,' she said, simply.

'How much further is it?'

'Quite a ways.'

'You can try to get us lost,' Henrickson said. 'I could see that might look like a good plan. But I can out-walk the two of you put together, and will be going long after you both collapse. Sure, you'll have stopped me finding the place today. But I know it's here to be found now, and so I'll stay. I'll find it sooner or later, and I'll find them, and all that will have happened is that the two of you will have died and I'll have lost a little time.'

'What's the difference?' Tom said. 'If you're just going to shoot it, kill this amazing thing, who cares whether it's today or next week?'

'What exactly do you think is out there?' Patrice asked, looking at him curiously.

'You know,' Tom said.

She shrugged. 'All I know about is bears. Just some animals been living out here a long, long time, and deserve to be left alone.'

Tom looked at Henrickson.

He didn't say anything, just nodded ahead.

So they walked some more. After a time Tom began walking level with the old woman. He started talking, and she seemed to listen. He told her about his walk in the woods, and what had brought him there, and in the end he found his mouth telling her the thing no one else knew. It came out slowly, but it wouldn't stop. He told her how he had turned to see the girl in the passenger seat of his car, how broken she was, and how hard she still fought to stay alive. He told her about the problems with the accounts of the company he had worked for, discrepancies which would almost certainly come to light sooner or later. Restaurants are expensive, as are gifts, and Rachel's tastes had not been cheap. It is hard to run an affair without financial implications, especially if it's your wife who checks the card and bank statements. Sarah would have spotted the spending even if all had come from withdrawals of cash. The company's accounts were more complex, and there was a chance it might go unnoticed. But there was a chance it would not, and Tom knew that because of what had happened his name would be on the top of any list. The really screwed-up thing, he admitted, was that the guilt he felt over this was actually more acute than at Rachel's death. Of course he should not have been having an affair with her — but she was very pretty, and once he'd started it was hard to stop. He should not have tried to get across the intersection that night — the arrival of the Porsche and its drunk driver, however, had been completely out of his hands. The theft of the money had not. He had stood there, made the decision and worked out the method. He had done the thing of his own volition, knowing it was wrong. Everyone makes mistakes, and he could categorize just about everything else that way. Very human errors. Not the stealing. He had started, deliberately, and then he couldn't stop. The chance to tell Sarah about it had come and gone in the week following the accident. Not telling her had either been a second crime or doubled the magnitude of the first, he wasn't sure which. He crossed that road. He was now trapped on the other side.