Стивен Кинг - If It Bleeds

Then the jelly head solidifies, but the face that appears is entirely different from that of the man who knocked Jerome unconscious and forcibly escorted her to the elevator. It’s narrower, and the skin is two or three shades darker. The eyes are tilted at the corners instead of round. The nose is sharper and longer than the blunt beak of the man who hauled her into the elevator. The mouth is thinner.

This man looks ten years younger than the one who grabbed her.

“Good trick, wouldn’t you say?” Even his voice is different.

What are you? Barbara tries to say this, but no words will come out of her mouth.

He bends down and gently places the strap of her purse back on her shoulder. Barbara shrinks from the touch of his fingers but can’t entirely avoid them. “Don’t want to lose your wallet and credit cards, do you? They’ll help the police to identify you, in case… well, in case.” He makes a burlesque of holding his new nose. “Dear me, did we have a little accident? Oh well, you know what they say, shit happens.” He titters.

The elevator stops. The doors slide open on the fifth-floor hall.

When the elevator stops, Holly takes one more quick glance at the screen of the computer, then clicks the mouse. She doesn’t wait to see if the floor-stops, B through 8, gray out as they were when she and Jerome did their repair-job, following the steps Jerome found at a webpage titled Erebeta Bugs and How to Fix Them . She doesn’t need to. She’ll know one way or the other.

She walks back to the office door and looks down the twenty-five yards of hallway to the elevator. Ondowsky has Barbara by the arm… only when he looks up, she sees it’s no longer him. Now it’s George, minus the mustache and the delivery man’s brown uniform.

“Come on, girlfriend,” he says. “Move those feet.”

Barbara comes stumbling out. Her eyes are huge and blank and wet with tears. Her beautiful dark skin has gone the color of clay. Spittle runs from one side of her mouth. She looks almost catatonic, and Holly knows why: she saw Ondowsky change.

This terrorized girl is her responsibility, but Holly can’t think about that now. She has to stay in the moment, has to listen, has to have Holly hope… although that has never seemed so distant.

The elevator doors slide closed. With Bill’s gun removed from the equation, any chance Holly has depends on what happens next. At first there’s nothing and her heart turns to lead. Then, instead of staying put, as Erebeta elevators are programmed to do until they are called, she hears it descending. Thank God, she hears it descending.

“Here’s my little girlfriend,” George the killer of children says. “She’s kind of a bad girlfriend. I believe she’s gone pee-pee and poo-poo in her pants. Come closer, Holly. You’ll smell it for yourself.”

Holly doesn’t move from the doorway. “I’m curious,” she says. “Did you actually bring any money?”

George grins, showing teeth that are a lot less TV-ready than those of his alter-ego. “Actually, no. There’s a cardboard box behind the Dumpster where I hid when I saw this one and her brother coming, but there’s nothing in there but catalogues. You know, the kind that come addressed to Current Resident.”

“So you never intended to pay me,” Holly says. She takes a dozen steps down the hall, stopping when they’re fifteen yards apart. If this was football, she’d be in the red zone. “Did you?”

“No more than you ever intended to give me that flash drive and let me go,” he says. “I can’t read minds, but I have a long history of reading body language. And faces. Yours is completely open, although I’m sure you think otherwise. Now pull your shirt out of your pants and lift it. Not all the way, those bumps on your chest hold no interest for me, just enough so I can make sure you’re not armed.”

Holly lifts her shirt and does a complete turn without being asked.

“Now pull up your pantslegs.”

She does this, too.

“No throwdown,” George says. “Good.” He cocks his head, looking at her the way an art critic might study a painting. “Gosh, you’re an ugly little thing, aren’t you?”

Holly makes no reply.

“Have you ever in your life had so much as a single date?”

Holly makes no reply.

“Ugly little waif, no more than thirty-five but already going gray. Not bothering to cover it up, either, and if that isn’t waving the white flag, I don’t know what is. Do you send your dildo a card on Valentine’s Day?”

Holly makes no reply.

“My guess is you compensate for your looks and insecurity with a sense of…” He breaks off and looks down at Barbara. “Jesus Christ, you’re heavy! And you stink !”

He lets go of Barbara’s arm and she collapses in front of the women’s room door with her hands spread, her bottom raised, and her forehead on the tiles. She looks like a Muslim woman about to begin Isha’a. Her sobs are low, but Holly can hear them. Oh yes, she can hear them very well.

George’s face changes. Not back to Chet Ondowsky’s, but into a feral sneer that shows Holly the real creature inside him. Ondowsky has a pig face, George has a fox face, but this is the face of a jackal. Of a hyena. Of Jerome’s gray bird. He kicks Barbara’s bluejeaned butt. She wails in pain and surprise.

“Get in there!” he shouts. “Get in there, clean yourself up, let the grownups finish their business!”

Holly wants to run those last fifteen yards, shouting at him to stop kicking her, but of course that’s what he wants. And if he really means to stash his hostage in the women’s bathroom, it may give her the chance she needs. At the very least it opens the playing field. So she holds her ground.

“Get… in there !” He kicks her again. “I’ll deal with you after I deal with this meddling bitch. You want to pray she plays straight with me.”

Sobbing, Barbara pushes the door to the women’s bathroom open with her head and crawls inside. Not, however, before George administers another kick to her backside. Then he looks at Holly. The sneer is gone. The smile is back. Holly guesses it’s supposed to look charming, and on Ondowsky’s face it might. Not on George’s.

“Well, Holly. Girlfriend’s in the shithouse and now it’s just us. I can go in and open up her guts with this…” He holds up the knife. “…or you can give me what I came for and I’ll leave her alone. I’ll leave you both alone.”

I know better, Holly thinks. Once you get what you came for, no one is walking away, including Jerome. If he isn’t dead already.

She tries to project both doubt and hope. “I don’t know if I can believe you.”

“You can. Once I have the drive, I’ll fade away. From your life and from the world of Pittsburgh broadcasting. It’s time to move along. I knew that even before this guy—” He draws the hand not holding the knife slowly down the length of his face, as if drawing down a veil. “—planted the bomb. I think maybe that’s why he planted it. So yes, Holly, you can believe me.”

“Maybe I should run back to the office and lock the door,” she says, and hopes her face shows she’s actually considering this. “Call 911.”

“And leave the girl to my tender mercies?” George points his long knife at the door to the women’s room and smiles. “I don’t think so. I saw how you looked at her. Besides, I’d have you before you took three steps. As I told you in the mall, I’m fast. Enough talk. Give me what I want and I’ll go away.”

“Do I have a choice?”

“What do you think?”

She pauses, sighs, wets her lips, finally nods. “You win. Just leave us alive.”

“I will.” As at the mall, the response is too fast. Too glib. She doesn’t believe him. He knows and doesn’t care.