3. I recall a great deal about you.
4. I can prove I know your secrets by writing down and sealing in the enclosed envelope the next number that will enter your mind.
The tone struck him as creepily playful, and the reference to knowing Mellery’s “secrets” could be read as a threat-reinforced by the request for money in the smaller envelope.
In addition to the inexplicable number prediction, the smaller note reiterated the claim of close personal knowledge and specified $289.87 as a cost incurred in locating Mellery (although the first half of the message made it sound like a chance encounter) and as a precondition to the writer’s revealing his identity; it offered a choice of paying the amount by check or cash; it gave the name for the check as “X. Arybdis,” offered an explanation of why Mellery would not recognize the name, and provided a Wycherly P.O. box address to send the money to. Gurney jotted all these facts down on his yellow pad, finding it helpful in organizing his thoughts.
Those thoughts centered on four questions: How could the number prediction be explained without hypothesizing some sort of
Next he laid out the three poems in the sequence of their envelope postmarks.
The first thing that struck him was the change in attitude. The toying tone of the two prose messages had become prosecutorial in the first poem, overtly menacing in the second, and vengeful in the third. Putting aside the question of how seriously it should be taken, the message itself was clear: The writer (X. Arybdis?) was saying that he intended to get even with (kill?) Mellery for a drinking-related misdeed in his past. As Gurney wrote the word
Now he knew exactly what the words meant, and the meaning was chillingly simple.
He wasn’t sure whether the frisson he felt convinced him he was right or if knowing he was right created the frisson, but either way he had no doubt about it. This did not, however, answer his other questions. It only made them more urgent, and it gave rise to new ones.
Was the threat of murder just a threat, designed only to inflict the pain of apprehension-or was it a declaration of practical intent? To what was the writer referring when he said
Maybe it was the mood created by the flashes of light beyond the blackening foothills, or the eerie persistence of the low thunder, or his own exhaustion, but the personality behind the messages was emerging from the shadows. The detachment of the voice in those poems, bloody purpose and careful syntax, hatred and calculation- he had seen those qualities combined before to horrible effect. As he stared out the den window, surrounded by the unsettled atmosphere of the approaching storms, he could sense in those messages the iciness of a psychopath. A psychopath who called himself X. Arybdis.
Of course, it was possible that he was off base. It wouldn’t be the first time that a certain mood, particularly in the evening, particularly when he was alone, had generated in him convictions unsupported by the facts.
Still… what was it about that name? In what dusty box of memories was it faintly stirring?
He went to bed early that night, long before Madeleine returned home from her concert, determined that tomorrow he would return the letters to Mellery and insist that he go to the police. The stakes were too high, the danger too palpable. In bed, though, he found it impossible to lay the day to rest. His mind was a racecourse with no exits and no finish line. It was an experience he was familiar with-a price he paid (he’d come to believe) for the intense attention he devoted to certain kinds of challenges. Once his obsessed mind, instead of falling asleep, fell into this circular rut, there were only two options. He could let the process run its course, which could take three or four hours, or he could force himself out of bed and into his clothes.
Minutes later, dressed in jeans and a comfortable old cotton sweater, he was standing outside on the patio. A full moon behind the overcast sky created a faint illumination, making the barn visible. It was in that direction, along the rutted road through the pasture, that he decided to walk.
Past the barn was the pond. Halfway there he stopped and listened to the sound of a car coming up the road from the direction of the village. He estimated it to be about half a mile away. In that quiet corner of the Catskills, where the sporadic howling of coyotes was the loudest nighttime sound, a vehicle could be heard at a great distance.
Soon the headlights of Madeleine’s car swept over the tangle of dying goldenrod that bordered the pasture. She turned toward the barn, stopped on the crunchy gravel, and switched off the headlights. She got out and walked toward him-cautiously, her eyes adjusting to the semidarkness.
“What are you doing?” Her question sounded soft, friendly.
“Couldn’t sleep. Mind racing. Thought I’d take a walk around the pond.”
“Feels like rain.” A rumble in the sky punctuated her observation.
He nodded.
She stood next to him on the path and inhaled deeply.
“Wonderful smell. Come on, let’s walk,” she said, taking his arm.
