Chain Letter Read online

  “I swear!” she cried. “I’ll kill you!”

  “I know you will,” he said sadly, pausing one last time to look her in the face. “You’re like Tony, just like him. Since last summer, he’s been killing me.”

  She cocked the hammer. He had terminal cancer. His mother had already buried him. Tears had been cried and respects had been paid. She would just be doing what was already practically done.

  You were his love.

  But staring into his eyes, it seemed impossible that she could snuff out what dim light remained there. She had brought herself to this terrible decision as surely as he had.

  “Hello, Alison, this is Neil. Would you like to go to a movie with me this Friday?” “How sweet! I would but I’m busy Friday.” “Would Saturday be better?” “It would be better but not good enough. Sorry, Neil.” “That’s OK.”

  “I’ll give you the gun,” she whispered, the narcotic inches from her bloodstream: “If that will prove to you that I do care.”

  “Nooo!!!” Kipp, Brenda, and Joan howled.

  Neil considered for a moment. He nodded.

  She gave him the gun. He took it and set it down behind him. “Thank you, Alison,” he said, and taking the needle, he stabbed it in her leg.

  · · ·

  The rain had begun to ease and the freeway was empty and fast. Tony remembered the night of the accident when he’d been driving and had thought that, although he didn’t know where he was going, he was making good time. He was beginning to feel that way now. The proper one to see at this point was Neil’s mother, it was the obvious thing to do, and yet, with each passing mile, his doubts grew. Telling Mrs. Hurly her son was still alive would also mean she would have to be told about the Caretaker’s mad plot. How could he possibly make up a story to cover the facts? On the other hand, how could she possibly accept the truth? The only part she probably would believe, or that would at least give her cause to wonder, was that her son was somewhere in hiding, still hurting. Neil would die on her twice and whatever followed could only tarnish her memories of her son.

  Should I do the right thing for the wrong reasons or should I do the wrong thing for no clear reason at all?

  About the same time his indecision was reaching a climax, he was closing on a fork in the freeway. Alison’s house was over twenty miles out of his way, but just the thought of her got him thinking of all the times Neil had talked about how beautiful she was. Neil had once said he could stare at her all day and not get tired.

  “That would be my idea of heaven, Tony.”

  Where does a guy go after his own funeral if not to heaven?

  Tony swerved onto the north running interstate, picking up speed. He hadn’t spoken to Alison all day.

  A half-hour later he was cruising up Alison’s submerged street; this new tract still had a lesson or two to learn about flood control. He noticed lights on in a house a couple of hundred yards before Alison’s, but only in passing. He assumed another family had finally moved in.

  Her place was dark as he parked across the street. Her parents were out of town, he knew, but it was close to midnight, and if he went knocking on her door, he would scare her to death. Then again, it might not be a bad idea to wake her and take her to Brenda’s or even to his own house. His folks were gone, too, but that didn’t mean his motivation was in any way remotely connected with sex. They could sleep together in the same room for protection, maybe even in the same bed, and not actually . . .

  Oh, Neil, no.

  The front door was lying wide open. He was out of his car in a moment, running to the porch. The glass panel next to the door was cracked. Dark stains tipped the jagged glass—blood. Steeling himself as best he could, he went inside. For now, he would do what was necessary. Later, he told himself, he would feel what he had to feel.

  None of the lights would go on. He did not need them to know the house was empty. It was not the absence of noise that told him, it was the feel of the place—like its life had been yanked out of it. He went to the back door, in spite of his resolve, his heart was breaking at the splintered shambles that he found. Forcing himself forward, he stepped outside to the circuit breakers, finding each one snapped down. He restored the power and returned inside, heading upstairs to Alison’s bedroom. There wasn’t a step that wasn’t smeared with blood.

  His nerve almost deserted him when he saw the hole blasted in her door. The fact that the shot had been fired from the inside out, and that the hall was not soaked with blood, was all that kept him together. He turned on her nightstand lamp and sat on her bed, seeing a picture of himself on her desk. He felt as if he was back in the man’s grave, only now all his friends were with him, and they were unable to get out of the hole, and they were asking him again and again why he had brought them to such a terrible place.

  Minutes, like those ticked off by watches with dead batteries, dragged by. Somewhere amid his grief he took out his phone. He was going to call the police. He would tell them everything. Then he would lie down on her bed and try to pretend she was there beside him.

  But his phone was dead, and suddenly, it didn’t matter. He was remembering the night in his car with Alison not fifty yards from where he now sat. He had kissed her and he had wanted to continue kissing her. But then he had thought of Neil and had felt guilty. Only he just hadn’t started to think of him, he had actually felt as if Neil was in his head, like that crazy way he had occasionally felt on the field during a game when he had just known that there was this one fat slob in the audience who was praying to God and Moses that that hotshot Tony Hunt would suddenly get an acute attack of arthritis and maybe have his right arm fall off. It had been like Neil had been near at hand, watching him defile his goddess.

  Tony slipped the phone back into his pocket and went to the window. That house with the light on, that was the house that had drawn his attention the night of their date. He had driven by the place and not even slowed down. Fool!

  He ran down the stairs and out the door, but not so fast did he go that he missed the soggy sock lying in the road halfway between the two houses. It was blue, Alison’s favorite color, and the evidence was piling up quickly. There was a shotgun resting in the grass near the house porch. He cracked it open, sniffed the chamber. Both barrels had recently been fired.

  He did not knock. The front door was unlocked. Except for a few lamps, he found the living room and den empty, but rounding into the kitchen, he stumbled across a makeshift bed: a thin piece of foam rubber, a tattered blanket, and a slipless pillow covered with long brown hairs. Beside the bed were Neil’s phone and a ring of miniature keys, which he pocketed. There were also a bottle of cough medicine and two prescription pill containers. The latter reminded him of many things, not the least of which was that, of all the people he had ever known, he had loved Neil the most.

  His next move was to go upstairs, and he did so cautiously, hearing voices before he reached the top step. They were faint, muffled by a closed door, but he recognized one as belonging to Alison, and his relief broke over him like a warm sweet wave. Almost, he rushed to be with her; the sound of Neil’s voice stopped him cold. He tiptoed to the door and peered through the crack. The whole group was assembled. Fran appeared well if a bit skinny and Kipp’s big nose had never looked so good. Only Alison had been banged up—her left arm looked like it had been put through a meat grinder—but she was alive and that was what mattered. Neil was not a murderer after all and Tony was thankful. Yet Neil had a gun in his belt—a revolver Tony had more than a nodding acquaintance with—and it might be a mistake to trust Neil while overlooking the Caretaker. Who were these two people? How were they connected?

  “I wasn’t,” Neil told Alison. “Only the man cared for me.”

  “The man? Neil, the man was a stranger.”

  “He was somebody. And he was wronged, and he never complained. How could he? He was never given the chance. He would have been my friend.”

  “I am your friend. We are all your friends. Hur
ting us will not bring back the man.”

  Listening, watching, two things struck Tony. First, Alison was as much intent on reaching the gun as she was on reaching Neil. The movement of her eyes betrayed her. Second, in spite of her itchy fingers, she was doing a master psychologist’s job of forcing Neil to confront the truth, and she was doing it quickly. As the conversation progressed, Neil answered less and less with incoherent remarks. In fact, he started to get painfully clear.

  “Tony! Tony knew how I felt about you!”

  He took and took and he gave nothing back.

  Tony could not have defended himself. It was all true. He had always been nice to Neil. Yet, at the same time, in a very quiet way, he had taken advantage of him. Neil had not always acted like a saint. He could get angry like anybody. But no matter what the situation, whether he was laughing or yelling, he had always been more concerned about how he was affecting Tony Hunt than he had been worried about how he might be hurting Neil Hurly. While Tony Hunt had usually been pleased as pie to congratulate himself on how neat a guy he must be to bring out this devotion in Neil Hurly. His friend’s affection had just been another thing to boost his self-image. Nevertheless, he felt there was something else that was necessary to explain the craziness, something that Neil was not saying. Neil obviously blamed him for the death of the man and for stealing Alison, but these were effects, not causes. He was sure of this for the simple reason that Neil had never blamed him for anything before.

  “. . . I wanted to know if I was that important to you that you would have dreamed about me.”

  “I dreamed about a lot of things. You were one of them. But I can’t see that mattering to you.”

  Alison was so blatantly baiting him that Tony had trouble believing Neil wasn’t aware of the deception. Could it be that he wanted her to kill him? Or was it that the gun was not what it appeared?

  “You don’t think it would scare the Caretaker empty?”

  “Not if he knew it was empty.”

  “. . . But then . . . I saw I couldn’t wait forever, not even until the summer when you would have had more time . . . I saw I was going to end up like the man.”

  “How was it different in your dreams?”

  “I was never sick in my dreams. We were . . . ”

  Oh, God, she had the gun. That Alison sure had nerve. Now all he had to do was fling open the door and play the big hero. He stayed where he was. If he interrupted this fine edge Alison had led Neil to, this place where Neil wandered lost between pain and sanity, truth and insanity, he might never be able to take Neil back there, and Neil might never open up again, and he might die misunderstood. Tony knew it was ludicrous to risk what was at stake—he was banking on an unloaded gun—for an insight that might never be found. Nevertheless, he did not interfere.

  A moment later, he was given Neil’s why. It cost him.

  “Give me the key!”

  “No.”

  “Don’t be a fool!”

  You can’t threaten him, Ali; he has nothing to lose.

  Tony dropped to his knees, digging holes in his palms with his clenched fingers. The cold draft from the open front door felt like Death’s breath on the back of his neck.

  “I’m not listening. Everything you say is a lie. You don’t care about me.”

  “I swear! I’ll kill you!”

  “I know you will. You’re like Tony, just like him. Since last summer, he’s been killing me.”

  Divine vengeance . . . all along, he’s been telling me.

  At last, he thought he understood. He did not fool himself that he was a psychiatrist, but he could see a pattern. Neil had sympathized with and related to the man to an unheard of extent. Much of the Caretaker’s strange language in the chain letter probably came from that unnatural identification. Plus Alison’s rejection of him in favor of the person who had killed the man couldn’t have helped matters. Yet it appeared that the main cause of the whole mess was very simple. Neil thought that he had become sick because he had done a serious wrong, that the cancer was his just punishment. As the disease had progressed and the pain had intensified, he had probably begun to believe that if they confessed, particularly his best friend who had after all been the main instigator of the crime, he would be healed. Of course the confession would have to be to the police instead of to a priest, and it would have to be sincere. That is why the Caretaker hadn’t just told them to turn themselves in. Repeatedly, Neil had warned them that the chain letter’s only hold on them was their guilty conscience. Maybe the accident had caused the disease. Who knew how much deep guilt could contribute to an illness?

  So caught up was Tony in his analysis that he did not immediately respond to Alison’s surrender. But when Neil set aside the gun and reached for the hypodermic, he decided enough was enough. He was a bit late with the decision. He kicked open the door just as the needle plunged into Alison’s calf.

  Neil did not react like a sick man. One glance at his unexpected company and he was on his feet, backing into the corner, dragging Alison by the throat. With her two sets of handcuffs still in place, her arms stretched halfway to her feet, she was a clumsy burden. The syringe swung haphazardly out of her leg, the majority of its dosage unadministered. The gun lay forgotten on the floor. Neil had no need for it. Tony was surprised at the switchblade that suddenly materialized in Neil’s hand. There was no question that the razor tip was sharp.

  “Hello, Neil,” he said, keeping his distance. Neil had the knife pressed against Alison’s neck. Her eyes were wide, but she was keeping very still.

  “Hello,” Neil answered, uncertain.

  “How ya doin’, Tony?” Kipp said. “I bet you’re glad to see me.”

  Tony ventured a step forward, two steps. Neil poked Alison slightly and she stifled a cry. He halted. “I read your secret message in the paper,” he said. “Can we talk about it?”

  “We have talked,” Neil said. “You love to talk.”

  The room was claustrophobic, the walls seeming to press in from all sides. The tension was so thick it was like a mountainous weight, smothering all external sounds. He could hear his heartbeat, the anxious breathing of his friends, nothing else. The rest of the world could have ceased to exist. “I’m willing to go to the police,” he said honestly. “Let Alison go.”

  “It’s too late for that.”

  “It’s not too late. We’re still friends. No matter how you feel, you’re still one of us.”

  “I am not one of you!” Neil shouted, his knife hand trembling. A pinprick of red appeared under Alison’s chin, a thin streak of blood staining the collar of her sweater. She remained silent. “I would never have done what you did. The man . . . ”

  “Forget the man,” Tony interrupted, afraid Neil would slip into the Caretaker’s prattle. He noticed Kipp’s fingers creeping toward the plug that juiced the room’s only lamp and stopped him with a slashing hand signal. He took another step forward. “Let’s talk about you, Neil, and about me. This is between us. You don’t want to hurt Alison.”

  “I want to hurt you all!” Neil cried. “You hurt me! All of you with your M.I.T. scholarships, your great paintings, your star performances, your big trophies! I wanted all of those things! And I would have gotten them for myself! But none of you would give me the chance!” His eyes flashed on Alison, who had her own eyes half closed. “You had to kill me!”

  The condemnation hit Tony like scalding steam. The switchblade was sharp, and an ounce of pressure could spill Alison’s life over the floor. Nothing was more important than to insure her safety. All the things Neil was talking about were already lost. Still, Tony strove inside for the perfect response that would address both the past and the present. It never came; instead, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Fran. Pale and frantic, she looked an unlikely hero, but the last couple of months had taught him well how deceptive appearances could be. He turned away from Neil and Alison and came and knelt by her side, pulling out the key chain he had taken from beside Neil’
s mattress downstairs. The first key he tried worked and Fran’s cuffs snapped open.

  “Go get Ali,” he said gently, giving her the keys. “Don’t be afraid.”

  “He’s . . . he’s sick?” she asked, unsure.

  He nodded. “He’s been hurt. He’s been used. But never by you. He won’t hurt you.”

  He helped her up—she was stiff from her captivity—and she composed herself admirably and crept toward Neil and Alison. Neil’s anger changed to confusion.

  “Stay back!” he said.

  “She just wants Alison,” Tony called.

  Neil shook his head desperately. “I won’t let go! I can’t let go!”

  “Then hold me instead,” Fran said in her usual meek voice. Kipp went to laugh but wisely cut it off. The offer was not funny; it was genuine, and it touched Neil like nothing else they had said. Neil could hear things most people couldn’t; he was practically a mind reader. Fran had always cared for him. She was not trying to manipulate him. He could see that. And he seemed to see something else. A glazed film lifted from his eyes. Fran held out her hand. As if in a trance, he took it and squeezed her fingers around Alison’s hand, nodding in resignation. He lowered the knife and, using the keys, Fran released Alison’s cuffs. But then neither of the girls moved, waiting for Neil to decide. He did so a moment later, when he pushed them aside and leaned alone against the wall, barely able to remain upright, the knife still in his hand.

  His madness departed like a foul spirit, leaving an aching void. Another evil took its place.

  Suicide.

  “Leave,” he whispered.

  Tony moved closer. “I’m staying with you.”

  “For how long?” he asked, unbearable torment twisting his mouth. “Till the end?” Tears gushed over his wasted cheeks, his bloodshot eyes falling on the knife as it slowly bent toward his heart. “This is the end.”

  “But you did nothing wrong last summer,” Tony pleaded, approaching to within an arm’s reach, feeling his own heart being cut in two. “And you haven’t actually hurt any of the girls, or Kipp, or me. How can you punish yourself for a crime you didn’t commit?”