Part 35 (1/2)
f.u.c.k you!
He tore the axe from the wall, knocking aside cans of paint as he did so. They rattled onto the concrete floor. From the house came barking as Sam reacted to the noise.
”d.a.m.n you!” he snarled, directing his hatred at the letter writer- whoever, whatever it was. ”d.a.m.n you!”
He attacked the briefcase with the axe. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d lock wasn't going to keep him out any more. The big axe blade bit deep into the leather, opening great wounds in its sides. Another axe blow struck the lock a glancing blow, sparks spat across the benchtop. Another blow crushed the handle. Burning with rage, cursing, grunting, he rained down axe blows. The name KELLY exploded below the furious strikes.
The bag slid off the bench onto the floor where John struck it with all the fury of a warrior beheading monsters.
At last the bag burst open, bleeding papers onto the floor. He stood, glaring down, panting, and sweating so hard droplets fell onto the paper, loosening the ink into a series of Rorschach patterns. The inkblots looked like naked skulls with gouged sockets.
s.h.i.+t. He'd never felt anger like this. He wanted to find the old Kelly woman, grab her by her thin shoulders, shake her. Yell in her face: Why didn't you tell me! Why didn't you tell me!
”John, what the h.e.l.l's going on?”
He looked up to see Val through sweat-blurred eyes. Still gripping the axe, he dragged his forearm across his face to wipe away the perspiration.
”What's going on,” she said again. ”Have you gone insane or what?”
”I needed to open the bag.”
”At this time? It's nearly midnight for heavensakes.”
Once more he found himself on the verge of telling Val everything. But as if Kelly's secretive nature had leaked into his own soul as he slept in the schoolteacher's old bedroom he knew he couldn't.
”I needed to get this bag open.” He spoke woodenly- and admit it, he told himself sourly, not altogether rationally.
”Couldn't it wait until morning?”
”I've wasted enough time. I need to start work on the book.”
She stared at him. He saw the searching look in her eyes, as if she was hunting for some early symptom of insanity.
”John, it's nearly midnight.”
He attempted a smile. It felt like a crazed leer twitching across his face. ”Well, hona that's writers for you. We're a wild breed. Tearing up the rule books, acting on impulse, kicking out the nine to five.”
”John,” she laughed, but it was brim full of unease. ”Stop doing this. I don't like it. And put the axe downa I don't want you chopping off my head or anything as impulsive as that.”
He realized he held the axe like a weapon. He laid it down.
”Sorry,” he said. ”Not being able to open the bag was really p.i.s.sing me off.” He brushed back his perspiration-soaked fringe. ”Maybe it's the heat.”
”Come to bed, John. You can work on the book in the morning.”
”OK.” To his ears his voice sounded calm now. He attempted another smile. It came easier this time. ”You go on up. I'll just tidy up here.”
With another nervous laugh she nodded at the axe. ”But leave your friend behind, won't you?”
”Sure. Now you get off to bed. It's late.”
Looking a little more rea.s.sured, she smiled then walked across the patio to the house that rose darkly against a starry sky. He saw Paul's light still burned. His son wrestled with his own torments tonight as well.
When Val had closed the door he picked up the butchered remains of Kelly's case and put them on the bench. Then he scooped up the papers that had fallen out onto the floor. Wiping the sweat from his eyes, he pulled up a stool and sat down to read.
He saw straightaway these were carbon copies of typewritten doc.u.ments. They'd been carefully bound into files backed with stiff card covers. One file was t.i.tled The Skelbrooke Mystery, another simply Five Letters. A third bore the word Cuttings. All the t.i.tles were in the neat hand, John surmised, of Herbert Kelly himself.
John glanced out through the open door. Moths danced like snow-flakes in the shed's hard white light. The house now lay in darkness. Val must have persuaded Paul to go to sleep. Maybe she, too, now lay on the bed, too hot to lie beneath the covers. He imagined her gazing up into the dark, puzzled by her husband's suddenly weird behavior. Maybe she even wondered if he would climb the stairs with the axe in his hands.
More moths swarmed over the window, drawn by some insectile pa.s.sion to reach the light. Did the letter writer operate on that same instinctive level as the moths? Or was there intelligence there? Was the letter writer exquisitely conscious of the alarm and dread instilled into those men and women who were on the receiving end of the demands? Mouth dry, veins pulsing in his head, he pulled the file marked Five Letters toward him. He glanced at the letter he'd taken from Elizabeth's Miss Lenny box. He read it again. Once more he winced at the line that seemed to launch itself from the page right into his heart: Therefore, I will take little Elizabeth Newt'n away with me as a friend.
Dear G.o.d. His stomach muscles knotted. The meaning was all too clear. The letter writer expected John to deliver his daughter to the cemetery. Then to walk away, leaving her there.
He'd already gone through dozens of scenarios centering on the idea (even the hope!) that the letters were a hoax. But gut instinct yelled loudly that they were not. A few days ago he'd made a pact with himself to simply do what the letters demanded. To hand over the beer or chocolate or whatever as the other villagers had done. But that was all before this letter arrived. This piece of poison changed everything.
This letter demanded his daughter. No way would he do that.
He broke away from staring at the window that now seethed with a hundred or more moths. He shook his head. What was it with this village? The place became more otherworldly by the minute. Stars shone bright with witchfire in the night sky, brighter than he'd ever seen them before. A plague of moths had descended on his home. Bats whirled soundlessly round the shed, faster, faster, faster. Frogs croaked in the stream. An owl hooted three times. A meteor slashed through the constellation of Cancer.
These were omens of death. He found himself battening onto the notion with a strange and terrible ferocity. As if the truth had been dangled in front of him for days, only he'd been too blind to see.
Across the patio crawled three hedgehogs. Three bristling lumps in the darkness.
Another meteor flashed across Cancer like a knife cut, opening up a rent in heaven through which the G.o.d of all dark places, all bottomless pits, all poison wells, all open graves could look down on one John Newton. Sweating there in the same shed where the long dead Herbert Kelly sweated, too. Whatever bulbous eye stared down at John from the darkness of outer s.p.a.ce must have seen Kelly reading the letters, gnawing his knuckles, wondering what to doa John sat on the stool, hardly breathing the hot night air, feeling himself coc.o.o.ned in the aura of his own bleak fear. A fear that seemed to leak from his skin like perspiration. He knew he was following in Kelly's footsteps-history repeating itself.
He thought back. Dianne Kelly had described her father weeping against a tree in the orchard. The letters had eaten into him, too. He'd gotten unpredictable. Even to the point of packing his bags and slipping away with his daughter at the dead of night.
Now John sat up, the blood buzzing in his ears. Wait a minute, wait one d.a.m.n minutea Kelly's sudden personality change, leading to the normally loving husband and father to suddenly skip the country with his daughter had puzzled him.
Quickly, John put his hand on the file in front of him. His heart b.u.mped hard against his chest, his fingers tingled. When he opened this file would he see those sinister letters written in the same hand on the same waxy antique paper?
Moments ago he couldn't bring himself to open the files; now he couldn't move fast enough.
He snapped back the cover.
h.e.l.la He'd not antic.i.p.ated this. Not one bit. Instead of letters written in a weird, spiky hand, he saw sheets of flimsy paper bearing a few blurry words. They weren't the original letters. They were carbon copies.
Overcoming the pang of disappointment. John quickly began to read.
Dear Messr. Kelly, I should wish yew put me a pound of chock latt on the grief stowne of Jess Bowen by the Sabbath night. Yew will be sory if yew do not.
Yes, same style. Same archaic spellings. Same demand.