Clive Barker - Books Of Blood Vol 4

He put down his Bible and went down on his knees in the narrow space between the bath and the towel rack and began to pray. He tried to find some benign words, a gentle prayer to ask for the strength to finish his task, and to bring Virginia back to her senses. But mildness had deserted him. It was the vocabulary of Revelations that came back to his lips, unbidden. He Jet the words spill out, even though the fever in him burned brighter with every syllable he spoke.

"WHAT do you think?" Laura May had asked Earl as she escorted him into her bedroom. Earl was too startled by what was in front of him to offer any coherent reply. The bedroom was a mausoleum, founded, it seemed, in the name of Trivia. Laid out on the shelves, hung on the walls and covering much of the floor were items that might have been picked out of any garbage can: empty Coke cans, collections of ticket stubs, coverless and defaced magazines, vandalized toys, shattered mirrors, postcards never sent, letters never read-a limping parade of the forgotten and the forsaken. His eye passed back arid forth over the elaborate display and found not one item of worth among the junk and bric-a-brac. Yet all this inconsequential had been arranged with meticulous care so that no one piece masked another. And-now that he looked more closely-he saw that every item was numbered, as if each had its place in some system of junk. The thought that this was all Laura May's doing shrank Earl's stomach. The woman was clearly verging on lunacy.

"This is my collection," she told him.

"So I see," he replied.

"I've been collecting since I was six." She crossed the room to the dressing table, where most women Earl had known would have arranged their toiletries. But here were arrayed more of the same inane exhibits. "Everybody leaves something behind, you know," Laura May said to Earl, picking up some piece of dreck with all the care others might bestow on a precious stone and examining it before placing it back in its elected position.

"Is that so?" Earl said.

"Oh yeah. Everyone. Even if it's only a dead match or a tissue with lipstick on it. We used to have a Mexican girl, Ophelia, who cleaned the rooms when I was a child. It started as a game with her, really. She'd always bring me something belonging to the guests who'd left. When she died I took over collecting stuff for myself, always keeping something. As a memento."

Earl began to grasp the absurd poetry of the museum. In Laura May's neat body was all the ambition of a great curator. Not for her mere art. She was collecting keepsakes of a more intimate nature, forgotten signs of people who'd passed this way, and who, most likely, she would never see again.

"You've got it all marked," he observed.

"Oh yes," she replied, "it wouldn't be much use if I didn't know who it all belonged to, would it?"

Earl supposed not. "Incredible," he murmured quite genuinely. She smiled at him. He suspected she didn't show her collection to many people. He felt oddly honored to be viewing it.

"I've got some really prize things," she said, opening the middle drawer of the dressing table, "stuff I don't put on display."

"Oh?" he said.

The drawer she'd opened was lined with tissue paper, which rustled as she brought forth a selection of special acquisitions. A soiled tissue found beneath the bed of a Hollywood star who had tragically died six weeks after staying at the motel. A heroin needle carelessly left by X; an empty book of matches, which she had traced to a homosexual bar in Amarillo, discarded by Y The names she mentioned meant little or nothing to Earl, but he played the game as he felt she wanted it played, mingling exclamations of disbelief with gentle laughter. Her pleasure, fed by his, grew. She took him through all the exhibits in the dressing-table drawer, offering some anecdote or biographical insight with every one.

When she had finished, she said: "I wasn't quite telling you the truth before, when I said it began as a game with Ophelia. That really came later."

"So what started you off?" he asked.

She went down on her haunches and unlocked the bottom drawer of the dressing table with a key on a chain around her neck. There was only one artifact in this drawer. This she lifted out almost reverentially and stood up to show him.

"What's this?"

"You asked me what started the collection," she said. "This is it. I found it, and I never gave it back. You can look if you want."

She extended the prize toward him, and he unfolded the pressed white cloth the object had been wrapped up in. It was a gun. A Smith and Wesson .38, in pristine condition. It took him only a moment to realize which motel guest this piece of history had once belonged to.

"The gun that Sadie Durning used..." he said, picking it up. "Am I right?"

She beamed. "I found it in the scrub behind the motel, before the police got to searching for it. There was such a commotion, you know, nobody looked twice at me. And of course they didn't try and look for it in the light."

"Why was that?"

"The '55 tornado hit, just the day after. Took the motel roof right off; blew the school away. People were killed that year. We had funerals for weeks."

"They didn't question you at all?"

"I was a good liar," she replied, with no small satisfaction.

"And you never owned up to having it? All these years?"

She looked faintly contemptuous of the suggestion. "They might have taken it off me," she said.

"But it's evidence."

"They executed her anyway, didn't they?" she replied. "Sadie admitted to it all, right from the beginning. It wouldn't have made any difference if they'd found the murder weapon or not."

Earl turned the gun over in his hand. There was encrusted dirt on it.

"That's blood," Laura May informed him. "It was still wet when I found it. She must have touched Buck's body to make sure he was dead. Only used two bullets. The rest are still in there."

Earl had never much liked weapons since his brother-in-law had blown off three of his toes in an accident. The thought that the .38 was still loaded made him yet more apprehensive. He put it back in its wrapping and folded the cloth over it.

"I've never seen anything like this place," he said as Laura May kneeled to return the gun to the drawer. "You're quite a woman, you know that?"

She looked up at him. Her hand slowly slid up the front of his trousers.

"I'm glad you like what you see," she said.

"SADIE...? Are you coming to bed or not?"

"I just want to finish fixing my hair."

"You're not playing fair. Forget your hair and come over here."

"In a minute."

"Shit!"

"You're in no hurry, are you, Buck? I mean, you're not going anywhere?"

She caught his reflection in the mirror. He gave her a sour glance.

"You think it's funny, don't you?" he said.

"Think what's funny?"

"What happened. Me getting shot. You getting the chair. It gives you some perverse satisfaction."

She thought about this for a few moments. It was the first time Buck had shown any real desire to talk seriously. She wanted to answer with the truth.

"Yes," she said, when she was certain that was the answer. "Yes, I suppose it did please me, in an odd sort of way."

"1 knew it," said Buck.

"Keep your voice down," Sadie snapped, "she'll hear us."

"She's gone outside. I heard her. And don't change the subject." He rolled over and sat on the edge of the bed. The wound did look painful, Sadie thought.

"Did it hurt much?" she asked, turning to him.

"Are you kidding?" he said, displaying the hole for her. "What does it fucking look like?"

"I thought it would be quick. l never wanted you to suffer."

"Is that right?" Buck said.

"Of course. I loved you once, Buck. I really did. You know what the headline was the day after?"