'Well, he's got classical taste, I'll say that for him,' said Jane. 'As I recall, ten years ago he quoted Hawthorne and Jefferson; now it's Thoreau and Shakespeare.'
'He's already told some hair-raising tales,' Vail said.
He suddenly remembered the tapes of Molly Arrington's interviews with Aaron/Roy. He was a storyteller, all right, in either persona. He remembered the angelic Aaron, describing an early experience in his peculiar Kentucky accent.
'When I was - like maybe seven r'eight? - we had this preacher, Josiah Shackles. Big, tall man, skinny as a pole with this long black beard down't'his chest and angry eyes - like the picture y'see in history books, y'know, of John Brown when they had him cornered at Harper's Ferry? Have you seen that picture, his eyes just piercin' through you? Reverend Shackles were like that. Fire in his eyes. He didn't believe in redemption. You did one thing wrong, one thing! You told one simple lie, and you were hell bound. He'ud stare down at me. 'Look at me, boy,' he'd say, and his voice were like thunder, and I'd look up at him, was like lookin' up at a mountain, and he'ud slam his finger down hard towards th'ground and say, 'Yer goin''t'hell, boy!' And I believed't at th'time, I sure did. Reverend Shackles put that fear in me. Thair was no redemptionr'forgiveness in Reverend Shackles' Bible.'
Then Vail remembered something else, the images slowly seeping from his memory. It was the first time Roy had appeared during a taped interview with Molly Arrington. Aaron was off-camera and Molly was checking her notes. Suddenly she looked up. He remembered her telling him later that it had been as if all the air had been sucked out of the room. She gasped for breath. And then a shadow appeared on the wall behind her and a hand reached out and covered hers and a strange voice, a sibilant whisper, a hiss with an edge to it, an inch or two from her ear, said, 'He'll lie to you.' He was leaning forward, only a few inches from her face. But this was not Aaron. He had changed. He looked five years older. His features had become obdurate, arrogant, rigid; his eyes intense, almost feral, lighter in colour, and glistening with desire; his lips seemed thicker and were curled back in a licentious smile. 'Surprise,' he whispered, and suddenly his hand swept down and grabbed her by the throat and squeezed, his fingers digging deeply into her flesh. 'You can't scream, so don't even try.' He smiled. 'See this hand? I could twist this hand and break your neck. Pop! Just like that.'
More chilling moments came back in a rush to Vail: Roy, finishing the Shackles story, no longer speaking in Aaron's curious west Kentucky patois, but in the flat, Chicago street accent of Roy, Aaron's psychopathic alter ego, although both were compelling storytellers.
'We were up at a place called East Gorge See. Highest place around there. It's this rock that sticks out over the ridge and it's straight down, maybe four hundred, five hundred feet, into East Gorge. You can see forever up there. Shackles used to go up there and he'd stand on the edge of the See, and he'd deliver sermons. Top of his fucking lungs, screaming about hellfire and damnation, and it would echo out and back, out and back. Over and over. He'd take Aaron up there all the time. That was the first time I ever came out. Up there. I had enough. He drags Aaron along, points down over the edge, tells him that's what it's gonna be like when he goes to hell, like falling off that cliff, and Aaron's petrified and then he grabs Aaron and shoves him down on his knees and starts going at him, like he was warming up before he started sermonizing. And when he started it was all that hate and hellfire and damnation, and all of it was aimed right at Aaron. So we ran off and hid in the woods watching him strutting around, talking to himself. Then he turns and walks back out to the cliff and he starts in again, yelling about how Aaron is hell-bound, and how rotten he is. I sneaked down on him. Hell, it was easy. He was yelling so loud he didn't even hear me. I picked up this piece of busted tree limb and I walked up behind him, jammed it in the middle of his back, and shoved. He went right over. Wheee. I couldn't tell when he stopped sermonizing and started screaming, but I watched him hit on the incline at the bottom. I didn't want to miss that. He rolled down to the bottom and all this shale poured down on top of him - what was left of him. It was wild. All that shale buried him on the spot.'
Vail should have known then, listening to that story. He should have known…
And certainly later, when Roy had described the night Archbishop Richard Rushman was slaughtered.
'Aaron was by the door to the bedroom and then whoosh, it's like the hand of God reaches down inside him and gives a giant tug and he turns inside out, and bingo, there I am. I had to take over at that point, he would have really screwed it up. I was thinking to myself, maybe this time he'll go through with it, but forget that. Not a chance. I hustled down the hall to the kitchen and checked the kitchen door. It was unlocked. I went outside on the landing and checked around and the place was deserted. I went back inside, took off my sneakers, and then got a Yoo-Hoo out of the refrigerator and drank it. My heart was beatin' so hard I thought it was going to break one of my ribs and the drink calmed me down. I
