Chain Letter (31 page)

His words pierced her like a sword. She shook her head slightly and stared at him
some more, but now there were more tears to cloud her vision. He didn’t care, he told
himself. He couldn’t believe that his welfare wasn’t a prime consideration of hers.

“Tony probably would go to jail if we went to the police,”
Kipp said. “He was the one who was driving when we hit the man.”

“But it was Joan who punched out the car lights on him,” Brenda broke in. “If it weren’t
for her, Tony wouldn’t have hit anybody.”

“If it weren’t for your beer, I wouldn’t have been so drunk that I wanted to punch
out the lights!” Joan yelled.

“Stop it!” Kipp raised his hand. “We’re all involved in this. All of us helped bury
the man. None of us reported what happened to the police. We could all go to jail.
I was just pointing out that Tony is in the most vulnerable position.”

“Yeah,” Joan said to Alison. “You don’t care what happens to your boyfriend. You’re
just interested in saving your own skin.”

Alison closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Tears trickled over her cheeks. As
angry as he was, Tony had to restrain himself from getting up and wiping her tears
away. He hated to see Alison cry. Of course he cared. And maybe she was right. Maybe
it was time to go to the police. But it was a suggestion he was not going to second.
There had to be a better way out of this madness. They just had to find it. Alison
reopened her eyes and scanned everyone.

“I’ll go along with what the group decides,” she said. “I’m not trying to hurt anybody,
least of all Tony. But I want Kipp to go away for the next few days. I want him to
disappear to a place none of us have heard of.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” Brenda said, nodding in the
direction of her boyfriend. “You’re getting out of here, Kipp.”

“I can’t go now,” Kipp said. “I’m leaving for MIT soon. I have things to do.”

Brenda got up. She walked over and slapped Kipp on the head. “You’re not going to
argue with me!” she shouted. “You’re going to leave today because you’re not going
to die.”

“All right, I’ll go,” Kipp said, trying to protect himself from another blow with
a raised arm.

“When my turn comes, I’ll split,” Joan said. “It’ll be better than running off and
crying to the police.”

Tony got up and wiped the sand off his butt. “Are we done? Have we decided to do nothing?
If that’s it, I’ve got to go.”

Alison also stood. “Do you have any other suggestions about what we should do, Tony?”
she asked.

He eyed her across the distance between them. It wasn’t far—maybe fifteen feet. But
she could have been on the far side of the moon as far as he was concerned. He felt
no contact, no connection, between them. It made him more sad than angry. They were
under attack, and from the outside. A common enemy usually brought people together,
but that wasn’t the case here. Maybe they’d been too quick to dismiss the possibility
that the Caretaker was one of them. Tony’s heart was aching so badly, it was as if
the attack were coming from within.

“I have nothing else to say,” Tony replied. He turned and walked away.

I
t was good to come home to the old school. It was only across the street from the
park, and Tony walked there without going back for his car. He climbed the fence that
enclosed the football stadium and track. Ah, the stadium—the site of his adolescent
glory. It was good to see it, but at the same time it filled him with revulsion. All
the things he had done in high school to construct an invincible self-image. Of what
use was that image to him now? He was tired and his back ached and he had an unseen
monster on his tail. He wished his name were at the top of the list instead of Kipp’s.
It would be good to see what his task was and get it over. It might be even better
to refuse the task and meet the monster head-on. Sometimes he imagined he saw the
new Caretaker when he looked in the mirror.

Tony walked out onto the field, marveling at the silence.
He couldn’t remember a time when he had played football or run track with the stands
completely empty. What a shallow jerk he’d been. He’d always needed an audience in
order to perform.

A sudden desire to run came to him right then. He had shorts and running shoes on.
Even though his spine hurt, his doctor had said light jogging shouldn’t aggravate
his condition. He’d been a good runner once—a great one, in fact. He’d won league
championships in the quarter mile and the half mile. Some of that old endurance must
still be with him.

Tony walked back out to the track and began to run around the cinder oval. His pace
was slow at first, but it wasn’t long before he found his rhythm and began to pick
up speed. Soon he had his stride stretched almost to full. He was breathing hard,
but it didn’t feel hard. It was a release for him—driving his body forward, around
and around the track. The exercise was like a penance—for all the real and imagined
crimes he had committed. He ran a mile, then two, three. He ran over four miles, and
by the time he stopped, every muscle in his body was limp. He staggered into the center
of the field and plopped down flat on his back in the grass beneath the warm, clear
sky. He didn’t remember closing his eyes. His last conscious thought was of wanting
to float up into the heavens, to leave the world behind.

Then he was asleep.

In his dream he was floating in an alien sky.

The space was not blue, but red and purple, filled with heavy pounding sounds and
thick smoke that stank of sulfur. In this
abyss of unpleasantness he floated like a drifting balloon, fearful of passing too
close to a hidden flame. It wasn’t as though the place was hot. It was simply that
the threat of painful fire existed, just as the place existed. But perhaps it was
the faint cries he heard in the distance that invoked his fear. They didn’t sound
like human cries, or rather, they sounded like cries of creatures that might have
once been human but had now become twisted and evil. He didn’t know how this sense
came to him. It was just there, as he was there, without explanation. The consciousness
brought no relief. It only deepened his horror.

His drifting continued. Yet he began to feel that there was a destination to his course.
He sensed rather than saw the great wall that lay before him. He knew it was a wall
to separate him from where he was and where he could end up—if he made the wrong choice.
But as horrible as the space was in which he was floating, he knew that beyond the
wall there existed true despair. For it was from there that the cries emanated. The
cries that prayed only for a death that would lead to nonexistence.

Yes, there was definitely a wall ahead. He could see it now. It was dark, but not
so thick that he couldn’t catch a sense of what was on the far side. . . .

· · ·

Tony awoke to find a sky the color of twilight above him. At first he couldn’t believe
he’d slept away the entire day. But then he sat up and looked around and the evidence
of his eyes couldn’t be denied. It was no wonder, actually. It had been so long since
he’d rested.

Tony got up and walked to the fence that enclosed the stadium. He had trouble scaling
the wire mesh—his limbs felt oddly disconnected from his torso. It took him half an
hour to walk back to his car on the far side of the park, although the car was less
than a mile from where he had slept. By the time he got behind his steering wheel,
his legs were cold and he had a headache. He had been getting so many headaches lately
that he kept a bottle of Tylenol on his dashboard. He took out a couple of tablets
and chewed them slowly without water. They left a bitter taste in his mouth. He remembered
then that he’d had a nightmare while lying in the center of the football field. But
no details of it came to him.

Tony was putting the bottle of Tylenol back onto the dashboard when he noticed the
scrap of paper sitting there. He picked it up and studied it in the stark halogen
light from a nearby street lamp. It was Sasha’s phone number. He smiled at the memory
of her, and the smile felt like a welcome stranger on his face. She had told him to
call him some night when he needed a massage. What was wrong with right then? He checked
his watch. It was only seven o’clock. He needed someone to talk to, other than the
people in the group. Certainly he didn’t feel like talking to Alison. He couldn’t
get over how she had wanted to hand him over to the police, even before they were
certain Fran’s death was anything more than an accident. Alison had a thing or two
to learn about devotion.

Tony took out his phone and dialed Sasha’s number. He
didn’t really expect to catch her in. It was, after all, Saturday night. She was an
attractive young lady, and she probably had a line of men waiting outside her door.

She answered on the third ring.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Sasha? This is Tony. I met you at the mall the other day. Do you remember me?”

She took a moment, then said, “Tony, yeah, sure I remember you. How are you doing?”

“I’m all right. How are you?”

Her voice was warm and easy. “Fine. A little bored. What are you up to?”

“Nothing. Actually, I was wondering if you were doing anything?”

“No. Why? Did you want to stop by?”

“Not if it would be inconvenient.”

“It’s no problem. Come over. Maybe we can go out and have a drink together.”

“That sounds like fun.” Tony worried if he’d be able to get into a bar. He’d never
been in one before. “Where do you live?”

Sasha gave him her address. It wasn’t far from where he was. He said goodbye and hung
up. He found himself smiling again. The thought of Alison tried to enter his mind,
but he pushed it away.

· · ·

Sasha lived in a new apartment complex not far from the mall where they had met. She
greeted him at her door wearing black
pants and a white blouse. Her maroon hair hung long down her back. Her green eyes
shone as she looked at him, and her lips were a wonderful red around a friendly smile.
Sasha invited him in.

“Forgive the mess,” she said as she strode from the living room into the kitchen.
The apartment was small but neat. The only mess was a couple of paperbacks and a half-filled
mug sitting on a coffee table. The furniture seemed to be of high quality. Tony briefly
wondered if her family lived in the area, and if they helped her out. He wasn’t entirely
sure what her job at the hospital was. She seemed a tad young to be a nurse.

The apartment had a faint medicinal smell to it—not alcohol, something else. He asked
her about it as he sat at her kitchen table. She had made coffee and wanted him to
have a cup before they went out. The question seemed to embarrass her.

“Is it noticeable?” she asked.

He wished he hadn’t asked. “It’s not bad.”

She forced a laugh. “To tell you the truth, I think it’s me. The smell of the clinic
gets on my clothes and in my hair. I can’t get it out. The only time I don’t smell
is right after I’ve taken a shower.” She glanced over at him. “When I’m naked.”

Tony grinned. “I guess I caught you at a bad time, then.”

Sasha brought him a mug of steaming coffee. “It’s a good time. Do you take it black
or with cream?”

“I like a little milk and sugar in it, thank you.”

Sasha turned back to the refrigerator. “I like it scalding hot and black. I like to
feel it burn my insides as it goes down.
Pretty weird, huh? All the girls at work drink it the same way.”

“What exactly do you do at the hospital?” Tony asked.

“As little as possible.” She brought him milk and sugar. “I’m thinking of quitting
my job and leaving the area.”

“Oh, that’s too bad.”

She sat across from him and regarded him with her big green eyes. “Why?” she asked
seriously.

He shrugged. “I just met you is all. You seem like an interesting person.”

She liked that answer. “How did you like the way I asked you out at the mall?”

“Did you ask me out?”

“I did and you know it.” She regarded him closely, in an oddly penetrating way that
made him nervous. “But I could tell you liked me. I knew you’d call.”

Tony blushed. “Does this mean I don’t get a massage?”

Sasha blushed as well and was even more beautiful. For the blood gave color to her
face, which was quite pale.

“You can have a massage and then some, Tony,” she said.

· · ·

They didn’t go to a bar but to a nightclub that played music at several decibels above
the comfort level. The lighting was a trip—brilliant strobes that were sequenced with
the guitars and vocals. Tony had never been to such a place before and found it exciting.
Sasha could really dance—he could hardly keep up with her. Her endurance was extraordinary.
They danced fifteen
songs in a row before taking a break. She ordered drinks for them while he ran off
to the bathroom, and she paid for them. Maybe she did know he was under twenty-one
and didn’t want to embarrass him by asking. They each had a margarita and a screwdriver—heavy
on the lethal fluids. Sasha downed her drinks and ordered another couple while he
nursed his first one. He paid for this round, and no one asked any questions. Sasha
lit up a cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke in his face. He was surprised a nurse
would smoke.

“Are you having fun?” she asked. It was hard to hear her over the music.

“I’m having a great time,” he called back.

She continued to peer at him, holding the fire of the cigarette close to her hair.
“Something’s on your mind,” she said.

“No,” he said. “I’m fine. I’m glad I’m here with you.”

She nodded. “I want you to tell me about it later.”

Tony didn’t reply, not directly to her remark, and soon they were back out on the
dance floor, and it was all he could do to hold himself upright. He had run too far
that morning. He had run too fast. He felt as if he’d been on a treadmill for the
last three months, and he wondered if this was his first chance to get off. He really
liked Sasha. The whole time he was with her, he hardly thought of Alison, and that
was a big relief. He could handle the new Caretaker, he thought, if he could just
get his heart free of the pain he’d been feeling.