kill them. He turned, went out onto the stoop, and pulled the vestibule door shut behind him. He tried it and found it locked. He supposed he’d picked his way in-the lock certainly didn’t look like much of a challenge-but it was mildly disquieting not to know for sure. And the lights. Why had he gone to the trouble of killing them, when she would most likely come in alone? For that matter, how did he know she wasn’t in already? This second was easy-he knew she wasn’t in because the bull had told him she wasn’t, and he believed it. As to the first question, she might not be alone. Gertie might be with her, or… well, ze bool had said something about a boyfriend. Norman found that frankly impossible to believe, but… “she likes the way he kisses her,” Ferd had said. Stupid, she’d never dare… but it never hurt to be safe. He started down the steps, meaning to go back to the cop car, meaning to slide behind the wheel and start waiting for her to show up, and that was when the last flip happened, and it was a flip this time, a flip and not a skip, he went up like a coin flipped from the thumbnail of a referee in a pregame ritual, who to kick, who to receive, and when he came back down he was slamming the vestibule door behind him, lunging into the darkness, and locking his hands around the neck of Rose’s boyfriend. He didn’t know how he knew the man was her boyfriend and not just some plainclothes cop who had been charged with seeing her home safe, but who cared? He did know, and that was enough. His whole head was vibrating with outrage and fury. Had he seen this guy (she likes the way he kisses her)
swapping spit with her before going in, maybe with his hands sliding down from her waist to cup her ass? He couldn’t remember, didn’t want to remember, didn’t need to remember.
“I told you!” the bull said; even in its fury its voice was perfectly lucid.
“I told you, didn’t I? That’s what her friends have taught her! Nice! Very nice!” Tm going to kill you, motherfucker,” he whispered into the unseen face of the man who was Rosie’s boyfriend, and forced him back against the vestibule wall.
“And oh boy, if I can, if God lets me, I’m gonna kill you twice.” He clamped his hands around Bill Steiner’s throat and began to squeeze.
“Norman!” Rosie screamed in the darkness.
“Norman, let him go!” Bill’s hand, which had lightly been touching the back of her arm ever since she had pulled her key out of the door, was suddenly gone. She heard stumbling footfalls-foot- thuds-in the darkness. Then there was a heavier bump as someone drove someone else into the vestibule wall. Tm going to kill you, motherfucker,” came whispering out of the dark.
“And oh boy, if I can, if God lets me-” I’m gonna kill you twice, she finished in her head before he could finish out loud; it was one of Norman’s favorite threats, often yelled at the TV screen when an umpire made a call that went against Norman’s beloved Yankees, or when someone cut him off in traffic. If God lets me, I’m gonna kill you twice. And now she heard a choking, gargly sound, and of course that was Bill. That was Bill in the process of having the life choked out of him by Norman’s large and powerful hands. Instead of the terror Norman had always roused in her, she felt a return of the rage she’d experienced in Male’s car and then at the police station. This time it seemed almost to engulf her.
“Let him alone, Norman!” she screamed.
“Get your fucking hands off him!” “shut up, you whore!” came out of the darkness, but she could hear surprise as well as anger in Norman’s voice. Until now she’d never given him a single command-not in the entire course of their marriage-or spoken to him in such a tone. And something else-there was a band of dull heat above the place where Bill had been touching her. It was the armlet. The gold armlet the woman in the chiton had given her. And in her mind, Rosie heard her snarl Stop your stupid sheep’s whining! at her.
“Quit it, I’m warning you!” she screamed at Norman, and then started toward the place from which the choking sounds and the effortful grunts were coming. She went with her hands held out before her like the hands of a blind woman, her lips drawn back from her teeth. You’re not going to choke him, she thought. You’re not, I won’t let you. You should have gone away, Norman. You should have gone away and left us alone while you still could. Feet, drumming helplessly against the wall just ahead of her, and she could imagine Norman holding Bill up against it, lips drawn back in his biting smile, and suddenly she was a glass woman filled with a pale red liquid, and that liquid was pure and untinctured fury.
“You shit, didn’t you hear me? PUT HIM DOWN, I SAID!” She reached out with her left hand, which now felt as strong as an eagle’s talon. The armlet was burning fiercely-she felt she should almost be able to see it, even through her sweater and the jacket Bill had loaned her, glowing like a dull ember. But there was no pain, only a kind of dangerous exhilaration. She grabbed the shoulder of the man who had beaten her for fourteen years and dragged him backward. It was astoundingly easy. She squeezed his arm through the slippery waterproof fabric of his coat, then whipped her own arm out and slung him off into the darkness. She heard the rapid rattle of his stumbling feet, then a thud, then an explosion of breaking glass. Cal Coolidge, or whoever it was in the picture over there, had taken a dive. She could hear Bill coughing and gagging. She groped for him with splayed fingers, found his shoulders, and settled her hands upon them. He was hunched over, tearing for each breath and immediately coughing it back out. This didn’t surprise her. She knew how strong Norman was. She slipped her right hand down his left arm and grasped him above the elbow. She was afraid to use her left hand, afraid she might hurt him with it. She could feel power humming in it, throbbing through it. Perhaps the most terrifying thing about the sensation was how much she liked it.
“Bill,” she whispered.
“Come on. Come with me.” She had to get him upstairs. She didn’t know exactly why, not yet, but she did not doubt at all that when she needed to know, the knowing would come. But he didn’t move. He only leaned on his hands, coughing and making those gagging noises.
“Come on, goddamit!” she whispered in a harsh peremptory voice… and she had come so close to saying you, as in Come on, goddam you! And she knew who she sounded like, oh yes indeed, even in these desperate circumstances, she knew very well. He got moving, though, and for now that was all that mattered. Rosie led him across the vestibule with the confidence of a seeing-eye dog. He was still coughing and half-retching, but he was able to walk.
“Halt!” Norman shouted from his part of the darkness. He sounded both official and desperate.
“Halt, or I’ll shoot!” No you won’t, that would spoil all your fun, she thought, but he did shoot, the dead cop’s.45 slanted up at the ceiling, the sound terrific in the enclosed space of the vestibule, the smell of burnt cordite sharp enough to make the eyes water. There was also a momentary shutterflash of reddish-yellow light, so bright it printed afterimages on her eyes like tattoos, and she supposed that was why he’d done it: to get a look at the landscape, and a look at where she and Bill were in that landscape. At the foot of the stairs, in fact. Bill made a choked vomiting sound and staggered against her, sending her into the wall of the staircase. As she struggled to keep from going to her knees, she heard a rush of footsteps in the dark as Norman came for them.
She lunged up the first two steps, hauling Bill with her. He paddled with his feet, trying to help; perhaps he even did, a little. As Rosie gained the second step, she flung her left hand out behind her and swept the coat-tree across the foot of the stairs like a roadblock. As Norman crashed into it and began cursing, she let go of Bill, who slumped but did not fall. He was still gagging and she sensed him bending over again, trying to get his breath back, trying to get his windpipe to work again.
“Hang in,” she murmured.
“Just hang in there, Bill.” She went up two stairs, then came back down on the other side of him, so she could use her left arm. If she was going to get him to the top of the stairs, she’d need all the power the gold armlet was putting out. She slipped her arm around his waist, and suddenly it was easy. She started to go up with him, breathing hard and canted over to the right, like a woman counterbalancing a heavy weight, but not gasping or buckling in the knees. She had an idea she could have hauled him up a high ladder like this, if that had been required. Every now and then he’d put a foot down and push, trying to help, but mostly his toes just dragged up the risers and across the carpeted stair-levels. Then, as they reached the tenth step-the halfway point, by her count-he started to help a little more. That was good, because there was a splintering sound from behind and below them as the coat-tree snapped beneath Norman’s two hundred and twenty pounds. Now she could hear him coming again, not on his feet-at least it didn’t sound that way-but crawling on his hands and knees.
“You don’t want to play with me, Rose,” he panted. How far behind? She couldn’t tell. And while the coat-tree had slowed him down, Norman wasn’t dragging a man who was hurt and only three-quarters conscious. “stop right where you are. Quit trying to run. I only want to talk to y-” “stay away!” Sixteen… seventeen… eighteen. The light was off up here, too, and with no windows it was as dark as a mineshaft. Then she was staggering forward, the foot that had been searching for the nineteenth step finding only more level going. Apparently there were only eighteen stairs in the flight, not twenty. How marvellous. They had made it to the top ahead of him; at least they had managed to do that much. “stay away from me, Nor-” A thought struck her then, one so terrible that it froze her where she was. She sucked the last syllable of her husband’s name back into herself like someone who has been punched in the stomach. Where were her keys? Had she left them dangling from the lock in the outside door? She let go of Bill so she could feel in the lefthand pocket of the leather jacket he had loaned her, and as she did, Norman’s hand closed softly and persuasively around her calf, like the coil of a snake which squeezes its prey rather than poisoning it with venom. Without thinking, she kicked powerfully backward with her other foot. The sole of her sneaker connected squarely with Norman’s already battered nose, and he gave voice to a sick howl of pain. This changed to a yell of surprise as he grabbed for the bannister, missed it, and toppled backward into the darkened stairwell. Rosie heard a double crash as he somersaulted twice, heels over head. Break your neck! she screamed silently at him as her hand closed on the comforting round shape of the keyring in her jacket pocket-she had stuck it in there after all, thank Christ, thank God, thank all the angels in the Kingdom of Heaven. Break your neck, let it end right here in the dark, break your stinking neck, die and leave me alone! But no. She could already hear him stirring and moving around down there, and then he was cursing her, and then there was the unmistakable marching thud of his knees as he started crawling up the stairs again, calling her all his names-cunt and dyke and whore and bitch-as he came.
“I can walk,” Bill said suddenly. His voice was pinched and small, but she was grateful to hear it just the same.
“I can walk, Rosie, let’s get to your room. The crazy bastard is coming again.” Bill started coughing. Below them-but not much below-Norman laughed.
“That’s right, Sunny Jim, the crazy bastard is coming again. The crazy bastard is going to poke your eyeballs right out of your fucking head and then make you eat them. I wonder how they’ll taste?” “sTAY AWAY, NORMAN!” Rosie shrieked, and began to guide Bill down the pitch-black hall. Her left arm was still wrapped around his midsection; with her right hand she felt the wall, trailing her fingers along it, hunting for her door. Her left hand was a fist against Bill’s side with the only three keys she had so far accumulated in this new life-front door key, mailbox key, and room key- clutched in it. “sTAY AWAY, I’M WARNING YOU!” And from the dark behind her-still on the stairs but now very close to the top of them again-the ultimate absurdity came floating: “don’t you DARE warn me, you BITCH!” The wall notched in to a door that had to be hers. She let go of Bill, picked out the key that opened this one-unlike the one to the front door, her room key had a square head-and then jabbed it at the lock in the dark. She could no longer hear Norman. Was he on the stairs? In the hall? Right behind them, and reaching toward the sounds of Bill’s choked breathing? She found the lock, pressed her right index finger over the vertical slot of the keyway as a. guide, then brought the key to it. It wouldn’t go in. She could feel the tip of it pressing into the slot, but it refused to budge beyond that point. She felt panic starting to rip at her mind with busy little rat-teeth.
“It won’t go in!” she panted at Bill.
“It’s the right key but it won’t go in!”
“Turn it over. You’re probably trying it upside-down.” “say, what’s going on down there?” This was a new voice, farther down the hall and above them. Probably on the third-floor landing. It was followed by the fruitless dick-dick-dick of a light switch.
“And why’re the lights out?” “stay-” Bill shouted, and immediately started coughing again. He made a terrific grinding sound in his throat, trying to clear his voice. “stay where you are! Don’t come down here! Call the p-”
“I am the police, fuckstick,” a soft, strangely muffled voice said from the darkness right beside them. There was a low, thick grunt, a sound that was both eager and satisfied. Bill was jerked away from her just as she finally managed to run her room key into its slot.
“No!” she screamed, flailing in the dark with her left hand. On her upper arm, the circlet was hotter than ever.
“No, leave him alone! LEA VE HIM ALONE!” She grasped smooth leather-Bill’s jacket-and then it slipped away. The horrible choking sounds, the sounds of someone whose throat is being packed tight with fine sand, began again. Norman laughed. This sound was also muffled. Rosie stepped toward it, arms in front of her, hands splayed and questing. She touched the shoulder of Bill’s jacket, reached over it, and touched something gruesome-it felt like dead flesh that was also somehow alive. It was lumpy… rubbery… Rubbery. He’s wearing a mask, Rosie thought. Some kind of mask. Then her left hand was seized and pulled into a humid dampness that she had just time to recognize as his mouth before his teeth clamped down on her fingers and she was bitten all the way to the
