Стивен Кинг - If It Bleeds

“No, he’s still alive,” the man says. He smiles, showing two rows of teeth that are orthodontic perfection. “I’d know if he was dead, believe me. But I can make him dead. Scream, try to get away—annoy me, in other words—and I’ll hit him until his brains spurt like Old Faithful. Are you going to scream?”

Barbara shakes her head.

The man’s smile widens into a grin. “That’s a good girlfriend, girlfriend. You’re afraid, aren’t you? I like that.” He breathes deeply, as if inhaling her terror. “You should be afraid. You don’t belong here, but on the whole I’m glad you came.”

He leans closer. She can smell his cologne and feel the meat of his lips as he whispers in her ear.

“You’re tasty.”

Holly reaches for her phone with her eyes fixed on the computer. The elevator’s floor menu is still on the screen, but below the diagram of the shaft there’s now a choice box offering EXECUTE or CANCEL. She only wishes she could be completely sure that selecting EXECUTE will cause something to happen. And that it will be the right something.

She picks up the phone, ready to text Ondowsky the code for the side door, and freezes. It’s not ONDOWSKY in the window of her phone, and it’s not UNKNOWN CALLER. It’s the smiling face of her young friend Barbara Robinson.

Oh dear God no, Holly thinks. Please God no.

“Barbara?”

“There’s a man, Holly!” Barbara is crying, barely understandable. “He hit Jerome with something and knocked him out, I think it was a brick and he’s bleeding so bad —”

Then she’s gone, and the thing masquerading as Ondowsky is there, speaking to Holly in his trained TV voice. “Hi, Holly, Chet here.”

Holly freezes. Not for long in the outside world, probably less than five seconds, but inside her head it feels much longer. This is her fault. She tried to keep her friends away, but they came anyway. They came because they were worried about her, and that makes it her fault.

“Holly? Are you still there?” There’s a smile in his voice. Because things have broken his way, and he’s enjoying himself. “This changes things, wouldn’t you say?”

Can’t panic, Holly thinks. I can and will give up my life if it will save theirs, but I can’t panic. If I do that we’re all going to die.

“Have they?” she says. “I still have what you want. Hurt that girl, do anything more to her brother, and I’ll blow up your life. I won’t stop.”

“Have you also got a gun?” He doesn’t give her a chance to answer. “Of course you do. I don’t, but I did bring a ceramic knife. Very sharp. Remember I’ll have the girl when I come to our little tête-à-tête . I won’t kill her if I see you with a gun in your hand, that would be the waste of a good hostage, but I’ll disfigure her while you watch.”

“There won’t be a gun.”

“I think I’ll trust you on that.” Still amused. Relaxed and confident. “But I don’t think we’ll be exchanging money for the flash drive, after all. Instead of money, you can have my little girlfriend. How does that sound?”

Like a lie, Holly thinks.

“It sounds like a deal. Let me talk to Barbara again.”

“No.”

“Then I won’t give you the code.”

He actually laughs. “She knows it, she was getting ready to tap it in when her brother accosted her. I was watching from behind the Dumpster. I’m sure I could persuade her to tell me. Do you want me to persuade her? Like this?”

Barbara screams, a sound that makes Holly cover her mouth. Her fault, her fault, all her fault.

“Stop. Stop hurting her. I just want to know if Jerome is still alive.”

“For the time being. He’s making weird little snuffling sounds. May have a brain injury. I hit him hard, felt I had to. He’s a big one.”

He’s trying to freak me out. He doesn’t want me thinking, just reacting.

“He’s bleeding quite a bit,” Ondowsky continues. “Head-wounds, you know. But it’s pretty cold, and I’m sure that will aid the clotting. Speaking of cold, let’s stop fucking around. Give me the code unless you want me to twist her arm again, and this time I’ll dislocate it.”

“Four-seven-five-three,” Holly says. What choice?

The man does indeed have a knife: black handle, long white blade. Holding Barbara by one arm—the one he hurt—he points the tip of the knife at the lock pad. “Do the honors, girlfriend.”

Barbara pushes the numbers, waits for the green light, then opens the door. “Can we put Jerome inside? I can drag him.”

“I’m sure you could,” the man says, “but no. He looks like a chill dude. We’ll just let him chill a little more.”

“He’ll freeze to death!”

“Girlfriend, you’ll bleed to death if you don’t get a move on.”

No, you won’t kill me, Barbara thinks. At least not until you get what you want.

But he could hurt her. Put out one of her eyes. Flay her cheek open. Cut off an ear. His knife looks very sharp.

She goes in.

Holly stands in the open door of the Finders Keepers office, looking down the hall. Her muscles thrum with adrenaline; her mouth is as dry as a desert stone. She holds her position when she hears the elevator start down. She can’t hit execute on the program she has running until it comes back up.

I have to save Barbara, she thinks. Jerome too, unless he’s beyond help.

She hears the elevator stop on the ground floor. Then, after an eternity, it starts up again. Holly steps backward, her eyes not leaving the closed elevator doors at the end of the hall. Her phone is lying beside the computer’s mousepad. She slips it into the left front pocket of her pants, then looks down just long enough to position the cursor over EXECUTE.

She hears a scream. It’s muffled by the rising elevator car, but it’s a girl’s scream. It’s Barbara.

My fault.

All my fault.

The man who hurt Jerome takes Barbara by the arm, like a guy escorting his best girl into the ballroom where the big dance is going on. He hasn’t relieved her of her purse (or ignored it, more likely), and the metal detector gives a feeble beep when they pass through, probably from her phone. Her captor ignores it. They pass the stairwell that until lately was used every day by the Frederick Building’s resentful residents, then enter the lobby. Outside the door, in another world, Christmas shoppers are passing to and fro with their bags and packages.

I was out there, Barbara marvels. Just five minutes ago, when things were still all right. When I still foolishly believed I had a life ahead of me.

The man pushes the elevator button. They hear the sound of the descending car.

“How much money were you supposed to pay her?” Barbara asks. Beneath her fear, she feels a dull disappointment that Holly would deal with this man at all.

“Doesn’t matter now,” he says, “because I’ve got you. Girlfriend.”

The elevator stops. The doors open. The robo-voice welcomes them to the Frederick Building. “Going up,” it says. The doors shut. The car begins to rise.

The man lets go of Barbara, takes off his furry Russian hat, drops it between his shoes, and lifts his hands in a magician’s flourish. “Watch this. I think you’ll like it, and our Ms. Gibney certainly deserves to see it, since it’s what made all this trouble in the first place.”

What happens next is horrible beyond Barbara’s previous understanding of the word. In a movie it could be dismissed as no more than a cool special effect, but this is real life. A ripple runs up the round middle-aged face. It starts at the chin and rises not past the mouth but through it. The nose wavers, the cheeks stretch, the eyes shimmer, the forehead contracts. Then, suddenly, the whole head turns to semi-transparent jelly. It quivers and shimmies and sags and pulses. Inside it are confused tangles of writhing red stuff. Not blood; that red stuff is full of flocking black specks. Barbara shrieks and falls back against the wall of the elevator. Her legs fail her. Her purse slips off her shoulder and thumps to the floor. She slides down the wall of the elevator with her eyes bulging from their sockets. Her bowels and bladder let go.