Peter Straub - If You Could See Me Now

“The medical examiner phoned in his report a couple hours ago. He thinks the Michalski girl died on Thursday. Might have been as long as twenty-four hours after Paul Kant meatballed himself.”

“A day before you found her.”

“That’s right.” Now he was having difficulty concealing his anger. “We were a day late. We might not have found her at all if someone hadn’t decided to tell us that you liked to go up into those woods. Maybe Paul Kant would still be alive too if we’d been there earlier.”

“You mean maybe one of your vigilantes wouldn’t have killed him.”

“Okay.” He stood up and walked toward me, his feet making the boards squeak. “Okay, Miles. You’ve been having lots of fun. You’ve been making a lot of wild accusations. But the fun’s almost over. Why don’t you wrap it all up and give me a confession?” He smiled. “It’s my job, Miles. I’m being real nice and careful with you. I don’t want any sharp Jew lawyer from New York coming out here and saying I walked all over your rights.”

“I want you to put me in jail,” I said.

“I know you do. I told you that a long time ago. There’s only one little thing you gotta do before your conscience gets a nice rest.”

“I think—” I said, and my throat went as tight as Galen Havre’s face. “I know it sounds crazy, but I think Alison Greening killed those girls.”

His neck was swelling. “She wrote, I mean she sent, those blank letters. The one I showed you and the other one. I’ve seen her, Polar Bears. She’s back. The night she died we made a vow that we’d meet in 1975, and I came back here because of that, and… and she’s here. I’ve seen her. She wants to take me with her. She hates life. Rinn knew. She’d…”

I realized with shock that Polar Bears was enraged. In the next second, he moved with more rapidity than I would have thought possible in a man of his size, and kicked the chair out from under me. I went over sideways and rolled into the screen. He kicked out, and his shoe connected with my hip.

“You goddamned idiot,” he said. The smell of gunpowder poured over me. He kicked me in the pit of the stomach, and I jackknifed over. Splinters from the boards dug into my cheek. As on the night of Paul’s death, Polar Bears bent over me. “You think you’re gonna get out of this by playing crazy? I’ll tell you about your tramp cousin, Miles. Sure I was there, that night. We were both there. Duane and me. But Duane didn’t rape her. I did. Duane was too busy knockin’ you out.” I was struggling to breathe. “I hit her on the head just after Duane clubbed you with a rock. Then I had her. It was just what she wanted — she was only fighting because you were there.” He picked up my head by my hair and slammed it down onto the boards. “I didn’t even know she was out until it was all over. That little bitch was teasing me all summer, the little cunt. Maybe I even meant to kill her. I don’t even know any more. But I know that every time you said that little bitch’s name I could have killed you, Miles. You shouldn’t have gone messing around with what’s past, Miles.” He banged my head on the boards once again. “Shouldn’t have gone messing,” He took his hand off my head and inhaled noisily. “It’s no good your tryin’ to tell this to anybody, because nobody’ll believe you. You know that, don’t you?” I could hear his breathing. “Don’t you?” His hand came back and slammed my head down again. Then he said, “We’re moving inside. I don’t want anybody to see this.” He picked me up and dragged me inside and dropped me onto the floor. I felt a sharp, bursting pain in my nose and ears. I was still having trouble breathing.

“Arrest me,” I said, and heard my voice bubble. “She’ll kill me.” The weave of a hooked rug cushioned my cheek.

“You want things too easy, Miles.” I heard his feet moving on the floor, and tensed for another kick. Then I heard him going into the kitchen. Water splashed. I opened my eyes. He came back drinking from a glass of water.

He sat on the old couch. “I want to know something. How did it feel when you saw Paul Kant on the night he died? How did it feel, looking at that miserable little queer and knowing he was in hell because of what you did?”

“I didn’t do it,” I said. My voice was still bubbling.

Hovre emitted an enormous sigh. “You’re making me do all this the hard way. What about the blood on your clothes?”

“What blood?” I found that I could lever myself up to a sitting position.

“The blood on your clothes. I went through your closet. You got some pants with blood on em’, a pair of shoes with what could be bloodstains on the uppers.” He put the glass down on the floor. “Now I gotta take those to the lab over in Blundell and see if they come out the blood type of any of the girls. Candace Michalski and Gwen Olson were AB, Jenny Strand was type O.”

“Blood on my clothes? Oh. Yes. It happened when I cut my hand. The first day I came here. It dripped onto my shoes when I was driving here. Probably on my trousers too.”

Hovre shook his head.

“And I’m AB,” I said.

“How would you happen to know that, Miles?”

“My wife was a do-gooder. Every year we gave a pint each to the blood center in Long Island City.”

“Long Island City,” He shook his head again. “And you’re AB?” He pushed himself up from the couch, walked past me to get to the porch.

“Miles,” he called to me, “if you’re so simon-pure innocent, why are you in such a hurry to be put in jail?”

“I already told you that,” I said.

“Kee-rist.” He returned holding my clothes and shoes. I felt the pain in my head jump in anticipation as he came toward me. “Now I’m gonna tell you the facts of life,” he said. “Word is gonna get around. I’m not going to do anything to stop it. I’m not even going to have Dave Lokken sitting on his fat ass down the road. If anyone comes out here to find you, that’s all right with me. A little jungle justice wouldn’t bother me a bit. I’d almost rather have you dead than in jail, old pal. And I don’t think you’re stupid enough to think you can get away from me. Are you? You couldn’t get far in that beat-up car anyhow. Hey?” His foot came toward me, and stopped an inch short of my ribs. “Hey?”

I nodded.

“I’ll be hearing from you, Miles. I’ll be hearing from you. We’re both gonna get what we want.”

After I soaked for an hour in a hot bath, letting the pain seep away into the steam, I sat upstairs and wrote for several hours — until I saw that it had begun to get dark. I heard Duane shouting at his daughter. His voice rose and fell, monotonously, angrily, insisting on some inaudible point. Both Duane’s voice and the oncoming of dark made it impossible to work any longer. To spend another night in the farmhouse was almost impossible: I could still see her, sitting in the chair at the foot of my bed, looking blankly, even dully, at me, as if what I were seeing were only a waxen model of her face and body, a shell a millimeter thick behind which lay spinning stars and gases. I put down the pencil, grabbed a jacket from my plundered closet and went downstairs and outside.

The night was beginning. The dark shapes of clouds drifted beneath an immense sky. Above them hung a moon nearly washed of color. A single arrow of cool breeze seemed to come straight toward the house from high in the black woods. I shuddered, and climbed into the battered Volkswagen.

At first I thought of simply driving around the county roads until I was too tired to go further and then sleep the rest of the night in the car; then I thought I might go to Freebo’s and speed oblivion by purchasing it. Oblivion could scarcely cost more than ten dollars, and it was the best buy in Arden. I rattled onto 93, and turned the car toward town. But what sort of reception could I expect in Freebo’s? By this time, everybody would know about the medical examiner’s report. I would be a ghastly pariah. Or an inhuman thing to be hunted down. At that point the car went dead. I cursed Hank Speltz. I did not even begin to have the mechanical competence to fix whatever the boy had done. I pictured driving back to New York at a steady rate of thirty-five miles an hour. I’d need another mechanic, which meant that I would have to commit most of the money remaining in my account. Then I thought of the waxen face concealing stars and gases, and knew that I would be lucky ever to get back to New York.