distracted: Susan was lying like a broken toy against the wall. I stood, and I stared, and I began to tremble.
She must have woken up and seen what was going on, and, in all ignorance, attacked Kellem from behind. Uselessly, in the sense that Susan could not hurt her, yet it had been exactly what I needed. How much had she known? How much had she understood? It doesn’t matter.
Was she breathing? Yes, but there was also blood flowing from a wound in her throat, and she couldn’t afford to lose blood. I looked back at Laura, and her hands were stained, blood dripping to the floor from her long, sharp nails.
I shook my head in denial, which turned to rage. But the ritual was not yet over, and I knew, then, how to change the program. I said, “You want to get to me, Laura? I’ll help.” I took up the circle, walking widdershins, very quickly, and I said, “The oceans have washed you from me, Laura; the four winds have swept you from my life; my mother, the Earth, has sheltered me; the fire is in my hand, and now-” I picked up the kitchen knife, and suddenly yanked the rest of the thread away. “And now may you burn in Hell.”
She leapt at me, I suspect too full of hate to even notice that I was armed. I raised the knife, and struck, and she impaled herself on the weapon. Even as the shock traveled up my arm, I drove it into her so that it was buried almost to the hilt in her heart, and, looking into her eyes, I turned the handle a half turn, adjusting my grip, then held the knife in place, her body almost touching mine, my elbow against her sternum, blood washing over my wrist.
For a moment she held perfectly still, her eyes wide, then a scream issued from her lips that probably woke up old Bill across the street, and alerted every cop in the neighborhood, not that I gave a tinker’s dam.
I let go of her and she stumbled away, blood erupting as if growing from the pale blue of her dress, visible beneath her open wool coat.
She found the door and staggered outside; I stayed with her to see that she did not remove the knife; she fell on her side and stained the snow, twitching. I stood there staring at her body, and I might be there still if I hadn’t suddenly seen figures racing from across the street, and a few in the yard inside the fence. Some of them were holding pistols, and there were one or two rifles or shotguns.
I don’t like shotguns.
Spotlights blasted their way to me as I stood by the door, and to Kellem, stretched out on the melting snow and mud of the lawn.
I slammed the door and shot the bolt, where I stood for just a moment, then I heard, distorted by distance, wood, and some sort of amplifier, “You in there. This is the police. The house is surrounded. Come out slowly with your hands empty.”
Crap.
I yelled back. “The first cop through this door gets his head blown off,” then I tried not to laugh. You’ll never take me alive, coppers. Just call me Jimmy Cagney.
Jim said, “Why did you say that?”
“They think I’m armed and dangerous,” I said. “Let them assume I have a gun.”
“Why?”
“So they’ll keep their distance while I figure out what to do.”
I remembered then that I did, in fact, have a gun. Where was it? In the attic, next to the signboard with the red “R” on it. I could use the sign, too.
They called a few more ultimatums at me, but I was no longer listening. I turned to Susan, and yes, she was still breathing, and she was looking at me. Blood flowed from a wound in her throat, as if it had been ripped open by some sort of claw. Her left arm lay across her body at an unusual angle, and there seemed to be something wrong with the left side of her face. As I watched, she held out her right hand.
I took it, kissed her palm, and saw that she was dying. I think she knew it, too. She tried to speak, failed. I said, “It’s all right, my love; I won’t let them win. We will laugh at them all.”
She tried to say something else, but didn’t manage. She was going fast. I knew what I was going to have to do, and there was no point in waiting. I kissed her forehead, then her lips, then her eyes; and then I held her close and did what was necessary.
As I laid her down on the floor, Jim was standing there. “What now?” he said.
“Now? I don’t know.”
“You’d better get out of here,” he said. “The police-”
“If they find Susan, they’ll have her embalmed.”
“So? Oh. I understand. Do you think she’d want-” He broke off, seeing my face, then he looked away.
I studied her still form. “I do not want her to die,” I said.
“What will you do?”
“Hide her, the same place I’ve been hiding.”
“If they search-”
“Why should they? They don’t know she’s here.”
“But they know you’re in here.”
“I won’t be,” I said.
“You’re leaving?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “It might work,” he said slowly. “You’ll have to let them see you leave.”
“I know.”
“You should hurry. The sun-”
“I know.”
He frowned. “What bothers me,” he said, “is that, if they haven’t caught you, if they know you’re at large, they’re likely to search the house anyway.”
“I know,” I said. “I have a plan.”
“What-?”
“Just let me think, all right?”
I dashed up to the attic and found the sign with the “R,” and the pistol. I set the sign in front of the one nonboarded-up window. That, I hoped, would discourage tear gas; tear gas would annoy me.
The loudspeaker was still going outside, and it still is, as I put these words on paper. They want me to surrender. It is annoying, but that is all.
I took Susan to the vault, and laid her down comfortably, to rest until the time comes for her to rise. A day, two days, a week, a month; it doesn’t matter. They won’t find her, because they won’t search, because there will be nothing to search for-nothing they know about, at any rate.
It has taken me longer to set this all down on paper than most of it took to happen; it is late now, and I am beginning to feel tired. As I look back on these words, it appears that I wrote this in one continuous stream; actually I have gotten up several times and walked around. The last time was when Jim came in. He said, “What are you going to do, Jack?”
I said, “Insure Susan’s safety.”
“How?”
I shrugged and went downstairs to look at Susan again. I cleaned up the wound in her throat; she looks pale and very beautiful. While I was down there I found my good coat; there is no longer any reason not to wear it, so I can go back to looking like my old natty self.
I can sense the false dawn in the east. The police are, no doubt, waiting for sunrise before they come in after me. I will save them the trouble.
No doubt the “Tac Group” is waiting for me, maybe expecting me to charge out at them, gun blazing. Who am I to disappoint them? They’ll probably perform an autopsy. I wish I could stick around to find out what that will reveal. I wonder how they’ll explain it, or if they’ll bother trying. I wonder if they will even care.
I will leave this pile of papers, and my pendant, next to Susan, where she lies, even now, awaiting her birth into a new life.
I will step out into the dawn, and let them do as they will. I can think of nothing more to say, and I am feeling too weary to type in any case. The sun has risen. I feel the breeze through the boarded-up window; it is warm and fine, and I think there are no more clouds. Spring has come at last.
