Son of the Endless Night, page 13
23
Karyn was fed up with Rich, and didn't care who knew it. She had kept her angry mood on simmer long past the dinner hour, not talking to anyone about it, even Benny and Elise. Ordinarily when she was among friends she could persuade herself to have a good time no matter what was weighing on her mind; tonight, despite a cheerful boisterous crowd in the tavern of the Davos Chalet and a group called Sons and Lovers who played good old-fashioned ass-kicking rock, Karyn couldn't purge herself, nor keep her disaffection from her eyes.
"He'll show up," Elise said encouragingly.
Karyn was looking at Trux Landall's broad back. He was at a nearby table sitting very close to a toothy blonde whose face was so violently sunburned she looked radioactive. Karyn felt doubly abandoned. Trux had seen her and smiled but hadn't come over despite the fact that Rich wasn't there. So what was he trying to prove, were they friends or not, and never mind that little scuffle he'd had with Rich.
"Reeshard said he would be here," Benny volunteered with a smeary grin. Benny was in one of his infrequent moods where he wanted to drink himself under the table as quickly as possible.
"Said? Did you see Rich today, Benny?"
Benny nodded. "Breakfast." He tilted his glass again. Elise cautioned him with a baring of her metalized teeth.
"Better make it last. You're not going to get another one."
"Elise is being mean to me," Benny whined.
"I don't go to bed with drunks."
"Quit it, you two," Karyn said urgently. "Benny? Benny?"
"At your service."
"What did you and Rich talk about this morning? I mean, did he give you any idea— "
"Helped him pull his car out of a snowbank."
"Fine, what time was that?"
"Late morning. I forget."
"Well, did he tell you what he was going to do the rest of the day?"
"No."
"What did you talk about?"
Benny shrugged, trying to recall. "Devils."
"Devils? Be serious," Elise said, giving him an elbow where his stomach mounded over the beltline.
" 'S true. Reeshard was in a very serious frame of mind this morning."
"What about devils?" Karyn asked.
"Reeshard said he'd been reading a book on demonology, which subject he had reasonable doubts about— I believe 'bullshit' was the word he used to describe his reaction. But at the same time— something was bothering him. He wanted to know— what I thought."
"What do you think?" Elise said.
Benny got the giggles. "We're all a bunch of horny little devils, aren't we?"
Elise shot Karyn a despairing look as Benny's head nodded toward his chest.
"Benny," Karyn said insistently, "Rich must have said something about where he was going. Can't you tell me?"
"Oh . . . uh, he was just pissing around, I'm sure."
"What does that mean?"
Benny raised his head and leaned toward Karyn. He took off his misted glasses and wiped the lenses on Elise's sweater, put the glasses back on and stared at Karyn with eyes of mild turquoise.
"Said he was off to attend an exorcism. And I said, 'Matinee or evening?' " Benny chuckled and felt around on the table for his drink, which Elise pushed out of his reach with the back of one hand.
"Meant what I said, love."
Benny fetched a spiritless sigh. "Just because I— messed up last night. Can't give me a break, can you?"
"Don't tell the world all your troubles, Benjamin."
Somebody across the table said, "What happened last night, Benny?"
Benny screwed up his mouth and nodded, pondering a reply. His forehead creased heavily. He rubbed it and broke into another fit of giggles. "I came too soon," he whispered.
"Benny, shut up," Elise said, furious with him.
"Again," Benny concluded, meekly.
"Nobody's interested, Benny!"
"Welcome to the club," someone else said.
"Well, you never come at all," Benny said archly to Elise, whose face, turned to him, had a ghastly emptiness, like a vampire's hollow tooth.
"Let him have another drink," one of the girls suggested to Elise.
Benny slumped defenselessly in his chair, and the conversation dwindled as the rock band returned from a break. Karyn looked at her watch. It was a quarter after twelve. She needed to go to the john, but it was across the dance floor, which was again chockful of wriggling bodies. She looked at Trux's table and found that he had turned in his chair to look at her. He smiled and this time gave her the high sign. The blonde he'd been with was on the dance floor, hair whirling around her shockingly rosy face, her jugs bouncing almost as high as her chin.
" 'Scuse me," Karyn said to her table, and she got to her feet.
Trux met her halfway and ran interference for her across the dance floor. Karyn emerged on the far side gasping for air. Trux turned her toward the door with a hand on her elbow.
"Hi."
"Hi. There are some subjects we aren't going to discuss tonight." And she pressed two fingers gently against his lips to insist on the ban.
"Agreed. What do you want to do?"
"What else can you do in Vermont after midnight? But I don't want to do that. Has it stopped snowing?"
"I think so."
Karyn left him to visit the bathroom. When she came back she slipped a hand into his, and they walked across the lobby.
"Let's grab our coats and boots and go out," Karyn suggested. "The smoke in the tavern was awful. My eyes are still burning."
They stopped first at a room belonging to a friend of Trux's, where he had left his coat and a shaggy gray wineskin filled with burgundy. Trux uncapped the bota, expertly aimed a stream at his mouth almost at arm's length, and drank without spilling a drop on his white alpinist's sweater. Then he held the wineskin for Karyn, the nipple an inch away from her parted lips.
"I need to learn how to do that," she said, infatuated by the strong red stream of wine, a sense of primitive communion; drink and be merry.
"Simple. I'll show you. Outside."
Near the lodge they tramped through the fresh snow toward the double chair lift. Trux carried the wineskin by its strap, and his left arm was around Karyn's shoulders. There were still a few flakes of snow in the air but the storm had passed, leaving a pure and windless space, a partial sky that trembled with titanic violence so distant it barely met the eye. Karyn felt good again, good enough to laugh at some silly thing he said. It was always fun with Trux; was she making a serious mistake about Rich? His odd obsessions, his disappearances the last couple of days had her in knots. She wouldn't stand for this kind of treatment anymore. Maybe it would be better to move out, date other men for a while, put some distance between herself and Rich until she was sure of what she wanted.
She explained all of her misgivings and half-realized convictions to Trux.
"Sometimes you let yourself get tied up when it's not really what you want at all," he concluded.
"It isn't that I don't love Rich. I know I love him."
"Doesn't mean that it's good for you."
"Rich and I need to have a long talk. I've made up my mind."
"Well, if you decide to cool it with Rich for a while, I'd like for you to come up to Cambridge some weekend."
"Hey, that would be fun!"
"How about some more wine?"
"Sure. Let me hold the bota this time. I can wash this jacket."
Karyn dribbled everywhere, but most of the burgundy made it to her mouth. She licked her lips and wiped her chin with a forefinger, laughing again, breathing freely for the first time in several hours.
They walked on, staggering a little in the heavy powder, leaning on each other, alone, unobserved except by the driver of the Porsche that had come uphill to the Davos Chalet and pulled into the east parking lot.
24
To the eyes of the possessor, the world to which he had newly returned was a hated place.
It was true that this was a world soaked in blood from the slaughters of tens of centuries, a world in which, every day, men of free will condemned themselves to hell through acts of greed, treachery, sadism, enslavement, and murder, most often and conveniently in the name of a greater good, in the name of gods from El and Ishtar to Baal and Yahweh. But there could never be enough spilled blood and rotting bones to satisfy the possessor's lust, nor enough souls to fling to his darkness. He was insatiable.
Tonight his desires were modest enough: he had communicated them to the possessed, stifling every returning qualm until resistance was so faint it didn't matter anymore.
Richard.
"I see them."
The possessed saw, in fact, with an animal's flawless eyes. Toy figures in the moonlight, black against the glittering snow, crossing beneath the terminal pylon of the double chair lift. Pausing, face to face. Their hands on each other. And with an animal's heightened powers the possessed felt the electricity between the man and the woman, a sensual communication. His rutting instinct was aroused, and his hatred for the rival. He responded with the jealousy of a man, the slavering appetite of the possessor.
"But I can't— "
The resistance was quickly suppressed.
She is faithless. They were words in an ancient tongue, harsh, nearly vowelless sounds reverberating in the captive mind. Quite a little liar. But is that all she is?
"Liar. Bitch. Whore. Slut." Each word seared the tongue and lips like nodules of phosphorus, firing up his blood. The animal body twitched expectantly, the instinctive hunter was in command.
What do you want to do, Richard?
The answer was wordless, yet as powerful as an orgasm.
You might have quite a time with him. I mean, it might not go well. He's much bigger than you. And strong. We don't want anything to happen to you, to defeat our purpose.
"I know"
Think of what else you might do. It's Karyn you really want to hurt, isn't it?
Karyn and Trux, close together on the slope, almost but not quite merging with the black column of the chair lift support, motionless, faces together now. Kissing passionately. The eye of the animal was huge, unwinking. He saw how he could slip noiselessly through all the snow, and take them by surprise. He thought of Karyn's long and playful kisses, her adventuring tongue, the loins that entranced another. His hand went to the door handle of the Porsche.
No. Wait. Not yet.
Rich's hand relaxed. He closed the car door.
"When?"
You'll know.
25
Because of the wine they'd had to drink, more than she could handle ordinarily, it didn't seem cold to Karyn at all. Karyn and Trux had talked for a long time, walking slowly, never getting out of sight of the chalet. Kissing him, coming to grips without undue ardor, was sweet, and being cherished in this way was necessary at crucial turns of her self-examinations. After a while she felt astonished and mildly elated, empowered by starlight; the landscape, so absolutely composed of black and white, demanded of her a resolution: quick, bracing decisions. By the time they said good-night at the entrance to the hotel Karyn knew she was not going to live with Rich anymore— beginning now, tonight, even if he had returned while she was out walking with Trux. Odd how a relationship could turn around so drastically in just a couple of days. But it must have been on her mind for a much longer time; she hadn't wanted to face the drudgery, and the pain, of the separation. Trux had pointed out to her that it wasn't necessarily the end. Once she was freed of the often-tedious interconnections of a long-running affair, had taken months or even a year to think about what he meant to her, she might then decide to resume with Rich. In the meantime, if he was truly right for her, he would understand.
It was nearly closing time, but after leaving Trux she went briskly into the tavern, hoping to find Rich. The band had quit for the night, leaving behind their unconnected amps and tiers of soiled, played-out drums. Her friends had left; there were only two couples hanging on and a solitary boy nodding at the bar. The air was depressingly stale and she began to feel the wine she had consumed outside flaring in her blood, sending waves of mist to the brain.
The rawboned, bearded bartender was reaching up to hang clean glasses in the overhead rack. He smiled a little tiredly at her approach.
"You could manage a quick one."
"Just looking for somebody."
The boy who was nodding off roused himself and said with an attempt to be charming, "And I've been looking for you— all my life." What appeal he might have had he spoiled by farting. Karyn ignored him.
To the bartender she said, "He would have come in during the last hour or so. About this tall, blond, short hair, a little like Paul Newman in his prime. Boston accent."
"No, I don't think I saw him."
"Oh, well, okay."
"Can't fix you anything?"
"I've had enough," Karyn said.
The drunk boy slid off his barstool to his knees and leaned his head against the bar, crooning softly to himself. Karyn started to walk around him. Behind her there was a quick tapping on the glass of the terrace doors.
"Karyn!"
Rich's muffled voice, calling her.
"That him?" the bartender asked, as Karyn turned.
At first she couldn't tell. He was just a dim figure out there on the terrace, and the doors were half-glazed with ice, blocked by frozen snowdrifts, which further obscured her view.
He rapped on the glass and beckoned.
"Karyn!"
When she didn't respond he turned his head impatiently, breath a cloud made incandescent by the moon. She saw the familiar shape of his chin. It was Rich, all right.
She hurried to the doors and tried to open one. They weren't locked, but she couldn't budge them.
"Froze shut," the bearded bartender advised her. "Won't get those doors open till spring."
Rich had backed off about ten feet, where he stood awaiting her, arms folded across his chest. Why was he acting like that? Karyn gestured helplessly.
"I can't get the doors open, Rich! Come around through the lobby."
But he continued to stand there, staring. Or so she thought, because she couldn't see his face, or eyes. Was he drunk? He appeared steady on his feet. She looked at the bartender.
"Is there another way I can get outside?"
"The hallway between the bathrooms, that door's not locked."
"Rich, I'm coming out," she called to him, and left the tavern.
"Okay, people," the bartender said to the others. "Time for me to lock up." He came around from behind the bar and looked in exasperation at the boy who was kneeling and embracing his barstool, snoring raggedly. "Anybody know him?" he asked. They didn't. He reached down and shook the boy, not getting much of a response.
Donald Ray Stemmons was standing there combing his beard with his fingers and trying to figure a way to get the husky kid on his feet and out of the tavern— he would be somebody else's problem then— when he heard the first scream from the terrace.
26
"Rich," Karyn said, "what's the matter with you? Where'd you disappear to all day?"
She approached him across the open rectangular terrace, boots scuffing through the new layer of snow, beneath which the footing was rugged with ice. The management of the chalet made no attempt to keep the terrace clear in winter. The soles of her boots were ribbed but still she stumbled and went down on one knee, hurting herself. He didn't make a move to help her up, didn't speak. She flushed from anger, looking up at him.
"I hurt my knee, Rich." It sounded more plaintive than Karyn had intended, as if, perversely, she desired to be babied. Still he wouldn't move. His behavior was so strange that she got up slowly by herself, keeping most of her weight on the other leg. She hopped a couple of steps in Rich's direction. Anger was replaced by concern, and the first feathery touch of fear.
"Hey, are you all right? What happened today? Talk to me, God damn it!"
Karyn hobbled closer. His head was down, covered with that wool watch cap he liked to wear in bitter weather. He said something to her, but so softly she couldn't understand. Her irritation was freighted with guilt. Now she had forgotten her spunky resolve to end the relationship, cast him out. Her heart was frantic. She was nearly overwhelmed by a cold, dismal sense of loss that rapidly turned to dread.
Karyn jostled against and then embraced him.
"Oh, Rich, what— "
He lifted his head, just a little. Their eyes were inches apart, and Karyn realized with a shock that bonded her tongue to the roof of her mouth that it couldn't be Rich she was holding.
She screamed and had taken a long step back when he swung the notched iron bar of the jack from his car.
It caught her at the diminished end of its arc but still with enough force to cave in the cheekbone below her right eye; blood gushed instantly from her nose into her throat.
Karyn staggered and fell down into the snow, in a sitting position. She raised fingertips delicately to her misshapen face. Vision in the right eye had dimmed. She felt no pain, just a monstrous numbness, but was aware she had been grievously hurt.
And he bent over her ceremoniously with that length of iron, sizing her up for a more devastating blow.
"Zarach'," he said, and swung.
Karyn threw up both arms and one of them took the blow; her right elbow was demolished. This time pain rocketed up through the top of her head, nearly blacking out the brain. But all she could think about were his red eyes, her powerless desire to escape the condemnation she saw there.
Her throat was full of blood. She coughed up a gout of it as she got to her feet, the injured arm dangling. She screamed in his face, spotting him with her blood. He concentratedly flicked a heavy drop from his eyelashes and stepped away in the next movement of his strange, vicious dance: he took her measure and swung from the sky.
This blow shattered all the knuckles of her other hand, raised to protect her face. It dislodged an eye, which lay on her cheek like a large pip squeezed from an orange. He rested, panting; Karyn wandered away from him, then turned back, inexplicably, completing her own movement of the dance. She was pounded, high on the already broken arm, and fell. She did not think about dying; instead she was suffocated by feelings of betrayal and grief. And crazed from pain. She rose, she screamed, he battered her in silent response. With each great arc of his iron more stars fell, precious light dribbled from her downcast eye.
