Breathless

joining Jim for the next phase of the haunting, but when she became aware of him and turned, she proved to be a stranger. And an attractive one.

If an attractive woman came to him, rather than Henry having to go stalk and capture her, perhaps his fate wasn’t sealed, after all. Perhaps this was a sign that the Hour of Dead Jim was over, that the worst of the haunting lay behind him, that he had passed this initiation rite into the pagan reality of rural life, had won the approval of the earth spirits and fertility gods that ruled this world of farms and logging operations. If so, he could now establish his retreat and dig in to ride out the chaos that the senator and his friends were engineering.

He opened the door to her and smiled.

She frowned and said, “Jim?”

“I’ve tried to be,” he said.

“What did you say?”

“A little joke. It’s been a long day.” Evidently she knew the Carlyles, which encouraged him to step back from the threshold and say, “Nora and I were just going to start dinner. Can you join us?”

After a hesitation, she stepped inside. “I can’t, Jim. The most incredible wonderful thing has happened.”

Closing the door, he said, “I sure could use a wonderful thing. A day like this, I need a lift. Come tell me and Nora about it.”

“It’s going to be better to show than tell,” she said, following him toward the kitchen.

“Nora’s in the potato cellar. I’m supposed to go down and help her carry up some spuds.”

The door stood open. The light glowed below. He was pleased at how plausible the story sounded.

“The thing is, Jim, I really need to borrow your Mountaineer.”

“Sure. No problem. How about helping Nora bring up some baskets of potatoes, and I’ll get my car-insurance card for you just in case there might be an accident or something.”

“I don’t need the card,” she said.

“Oh, I know, I know. But the law does say you have to carry proof of insurance, and you know how I am, living by the law.”

In fact, Jim had written a poem titled “Living by the Law,” about the beauty of law, though it was about natural law, not the laws written by men.

The reference to the poem worked. The woman bought it and smiled. “All right, sure, get the insurance card. Straight-arrow Jim. I’ll help Nora.”

He watched her descend the stairs, and when she reached the bottom, he called out, “I just had a senior moment way before my time.” He hurried down after her, adding, “Forgot the insurance card is right here in my wallet.”

As Henry reached the lower room, the woman arrived at the potato-cellar door, which stood ajar. The light was on in there.

A pang of terror pierced Henry, and for a moment, he did not know why — and then he knew.

The woman opened the door and stepped inside, and on the floor lay Nora, the first woman in his planned harem.

“I was being Jim, after all,” Henry said.

In his mind’s eye, he saw himself wearing Jim’s gloves, moving Nora from the barn in the wheelbarrow. After dinner the previous night. Being Jim. Really into the role. Well, he had taken some drama classes at Harvard.

His visitor, the nameless woman, turned to stare at him from the trap of the potato cellar, her eyes wide.

As he moved to the doorway, Henry said, “And Jim. Jim’s in the chicken house. Stripped and thrown in the chicken house. I didn’t have time to feed them. Let them peck the meat off his bones. A smaller grave to dig.”

“Jim, what’s the matter with you?”

He looked at his hands, at his clean nails, remembering the grime, the filth, the gummy blood under his fingernails from wearing the gloves and being Jim.

“Henry,” came the dreaded whisper, “Henry … Henry,” and he dared not look to see what stood behind him.

The woman, who could see what stood behind him, only said, “Who is Henry?”

“Henry,” Henry said, and knew chicken-pecked Jim did not stand behind him, after all.

“Jim,” the woman said, “back away from the door, I’m coming out of here, Jim.”

He had worn the gloves to copy the poem from the book, and then had to wash his hands again.

“I’m not quite sure of my exact condition,” he told the woman in the potato cellar. “I never had the time to take as many psychology courses as I wanted to.”

She came to the doorway, but he did not back off.

He said, “Do you hear that? Do you hear iambic pentameter? The rapping, rapping, rap-rap-rapping.”

“No,” she said.

“Oh, I do. I hear it all the time. This is so sad. You would have been such an exciting woman to keep in the potato cellar. Then I could have had it all. But look what this rustic world has made of me in just one day. This isn’t who I am or want to be, and clearly there can be no going back for me in any sense.”

“Move, Jim,” she said, and tried to push him backward.

“I’ve got to go upstairs now,” he said, “and get the hand grenade from the refrigerator.”

He went to the stairs. After ascending three, he glanced back at her. “Do you want to come with me to get the hand grenade?”

“No, Jim. I’ll wait here.”

“Okay. Thank you for waiting. I’ll bring a grenade for you, and we’ll pull the pins in the potato cellar.”

He continued up the stairs. He was sorry to hear the outside cellar door open, and the rain doors over the stairs. He really didn’t want to go out alone in the potato cellar. Oh, right. Not alone. There was Nora.

Seventy

The Mountaineer coasted through the moonlight. Not daring to look back, Cammy ran around the front of it as Grady pulled to a stop. She yanked open the passenger door, clambered into the SUV, and couldn’t find her voice.

Lamar was in the backseat. In the cargo area with Merlin, Puzzle and Riddle were giggling.

Cammy had never heard them giggle before. Under the circumstances, their sweet childlike voices sounded sinister.

Her cry at last broke free of her throat: “Move, move, move!”

Grady accelerated away from the house before he asked, “What? What’s wrong?”

“Hell if I know. Jim … he … I don’t know, I think he killed Nora, she’s dead in the potato cellar.”

This announcement put the damper on whatever fun the three pals were having, and left Grady gaping.

After a moment, she turned to Lamar and said, “You predicted chaos, and you were right. Was that it? What’s ahead of us?”

“Just the future,” Puzzle said from behind Lamar. “Just where we’re meant to be.”

* * *

Henry Rouvroy, alias Jim Carlyle, descended the cellar stairs, a grenade in each hand.

Nora remained on the floor, eyes open, in the potato cellar.

He sat on the floor beside his sister-in-law, his wife.

He pulled the ring from the first grenade but kept the safety lever depressed.

For reasons he could not imagine, in his mind’s eye he saw not Jim’s naked corpse in the chicken house, among the cackling hens, but instead the senator at a press conference, waving the photo of Marcus Pipp and demanding a court-martial. Henry had advised him on that strategy, but he’d done so based on misinformation, and it had not gone well.