As I Die Lying (38 page)

My hands went cold in hers.

“
Are you happy?” she asked.
Her shoulders were hunched in a shrug. The dusty, patchouli-choked
air in the apartment made my head reel.

Was I happy? Would my face break if it showed
my true feelings? What were my true feelings?

Whatever I make you feel, Richard.

“
We’ll have to change our
plans,” Beth said. “And I guess I’ll have to drop out of school
after next semester, but that’s okay, I can always go back and
finish up later.”

She spoke hurriedly, as if the words were
rushing out in a race against the future, as if hoping that if she
said them fast enough, it would hasten the happy ending.

But sometimes, there were only the words “The
End.”

“
And we’ll have to get
married,” she continued. “I told you how my parents are. And we’ll
have to save money, it will be hard but I know we’ll get by. We’ll
have lots of love, and that’s all anybody really needs, right,
honey?”

The temperature in the room had dropped ten
degrees.

“
Honey?”

My face was debating who would wear it.

“
Are you happy about
it?”

The Insider won. We smiled, deep and wide,
with lots of teeth.

“
Yes, we’re happy,” I said,
and the smile felt rigid on my face, like a death mask. Then it
fell away.

“
No, not happy,” Bookworm
said.

Beth’s eyebrows veed in confusion.

“
Do you love us?” I
said.

“
Us? You mean you and the
baby? Of course.”

I let go of her hands and
gripped her by the shoulders. I shook her and her head flopped so
hard that her toboggan fell off. “Tell me the truth.
Do you love us?
”

The rose blush faded from her cheeks as her
eyes widened. “Richard, you’re scaring me.”

God, she was beautiful. How could I have ever
hoped someone like this could love me? How could I have fooled
myself so completely? My voice fell, defeated. “Do you love us?” I
croaked.

“
Of course I love you.
What’s the matter?”

I slumped and put a hand in my pocket. The
knife pulsed and throbbed in my sweating palm, almost as if the
Insider had vested it with a life of its own.

I’ll bet you’re dying to see little Junior,
aren’t you? A do-it-yourself ultrasound? Well, you might not find
anything, he’s a little small yet, but we’ll have so much fun
LOOKING.

“
But do you really love me?”
I whispered. “I need to know.”

“
Of course,” she said. She
put a hand on my cheek. “I love you a thousand times a thousand
bunches.”

“
No matter what?”

“
No matter what.
Forever.”

“
Even after I tell you my
secret?”

“
Nothing can make me love
you less. Nothing can be so bad that we can’t get through it
together. That’s what people do when they love each other, they get
through things.”

Where had I heard that before?

“
The carnation,” I said, and
the word hung in the air like a threat, the sword of Damocles, the
Reaper’s scythe, other types of sharp similes.

“
Carnation? What about...oh,
you mean the flower?”

“
The flower. Remember where
you found it?”

“
Yeah. On Monique’s floor,
that morning she…don’t make me remember that, Richard, please don’t
make me remember that.”

“
Where did I go the night of
the Halloween party?”

“
You were with me...and
then...later...I don’t know, you left early.”

“
And Monique left the party
early, too.”

“
She was a peach,” Loverboy
said. “Stone fruit juicy. But Little Hitler had to come along and
fuzz it up.”

“
What are you talking
about?”

“
How come you didn’t tell
the police about the carnation?” Bookworm asked.

“
I don’t see—”

“
Exactly. You don’t see.
Love really is blind.”

“
But, what does that have to
do with Monique’s murder? Or us, for that matter?”

“
You’re going to have to
trust me, Beth.” The knife was hot and hard in my hand.

Look into her eyes, Richard. See the light.
See the love shining so stupidly. All this can be yours, my gift to
a faithful servant. Let me into your heart forever and ever amen
and you can have all of this and nothing.

“
Can you trust me?” I
whispered.

She swallowed hard and nodded.

“
Then come with me for a
ride,” I said.

She squinted. “What about my things? We need
to get them moved to your place.”

“
There will be time for that
later.” I think it was my first lie to her. But damned if I’m going
to read back through the entire book just to make sure.

Questions squirmed in her eyes. In that
frozen slice of Now, I saw into the bright warm soul that the
Insider wanted to consume. Her essence burned like fire, a
conflagration that could melt glaciers and torch treetops and singe
clouds and roast the gods in their lukewarm heavens like so many
scratch biscuits.

Her eyes were windows and doors, opening onto
the rooms of her life. Here a terror, there a wish, upstairs some
faith. A little girl tucked away in the basement. Closets full of
old dreams. A mansion of memories that made her a human being.

While all I had was a bare Bone House.

In that instant, I saw a vision of a possible
future. Us under starry skies, our laughter filling a soft forest
as we danced on a carpet of leaves. Two souls melting and melding,
fused by the white heat of love, lit by the love that was poison to
that which propagated darkness. An alliance more binding than those
formed by headmates and inner voices, a union more powerful than
the grip of an invading psychic overlord. A house built of hope
instead of bone.

Perhaps, in some unwritten romance novel,
that true and abiding love did flourish. But we were trapped in my
ghostwritten autobiography, Poor Richard’s Almanack, where pain and
fear were constants, where awareness brought nothing but madness,
where all were strangers and none could know another. A story where
the only eternal life was found in the miserable heart of the
soul-eating Insider, where the believers in mercy and goodness
cowered before the boots of dark gods. A fabulist’s construct where
love meant having to say you were sorry.

The Insider had taken everything. I couldn’t
love, because love was made of tomorrows, not painful yesterdays.
Love was laid on a foundation of hope, and hope was only a
snowflake on the palm, a pretty bit of flash that was gone before
the hand could close around it. Love was fueled by faith, and faith
was as flimsy as a gossamer umbrella before a black avalanche.

I had lost.

I stood looking into the eyes of another
person who I would never be allowed to know or love.

I had lost. I was lost.

But maybe Beth could be saved.

I opened the door.

“
Good things are worth
waiting for,” said the Insider. “But bad things want it right
now.”

CHAPTER FORTY

“
Where are we going?” Beth
asked after we got in the Subaru.

I started the car. I could feel them
fighting, rising, breaking free inside my head. The walls were
caving in, the Bone House shaking on its foundation.

And leading them all was the Insider, calling
them out like the Pied Piper lulling rats from filthy dark
nests.

“
Going?” I echoed. “I
thought we’d just drive around in the snow for awhile. Maybe go
hiking in the woods.”

“
It must be about fifteen
degrees outside. Are you crazy?”

“
Crazy? No. I don’t think
I’ve ever been so sane,” the Insider said to her. It gave her a
look, and I could feel my lips turning up into a crooked sneer. I
could feel my eyes heating up, as if they were glaring lethal rays.
I could feel the warmth of the Insider’s hate flaming my
chest.

I struggled, winced, and tried to beat the
Insider down, to flush it back into the darkness.

“
You can’t win, Richard. You
still don’t know what you’re dealing with, do you?”

“
Richard?” Beth’s eyes were
as round as silver dollars and she pressed against the
passenger-side door. She must have seen the Insider lurking in my
pupils.

“
It’s time, Richard. You
think I didn’t know about Bookworm, plotting and scheming all this
time while he pretended to be asleep? You think I don’t
know
what the Little
People are up to?”

“
The little people?” Beth
echoed, shaking her lovely hair. I wished I could reach and stroke
it, to reassure her. But I didn’t think the Insider would ever give
my arm back.

I flickered in and out as fire and ice
pierced my lungs, needles probed my brain, and broken glass passed
through my intestines.

The Insider chuckled. He was a lousy driver.
He could guide a meat missile to the heart of a target, but he
couldn’t operate a motor vehicle worth a damn. “And just to make
things interesting, guess who’s coming around the corner in twenty
seconds?”

“
Who?” Beth said. “Why are
you yelling?”

“
Detective Randolph Frye.
You see, love and justice are both blind. Until I decide
otherwise.”

“
That detective? The one who
questioned me about Monique’s murder?” Beth asked. She had a hand
on the door handle, and I was trying to nod at her to run, run, run
and never look back, run until she found a corner of the Earth that
was beyond the reach of the Insider. But my head was a Styrofoam
block fit for nothing but a wig.

“
We don’t mind getting
caught,” Bookworm said.

“
Richard, your voice
changed,” Beth said. “And your eyes... what’s going on? Are you on
drugs or something?”

She laid a hand on my arm, their arm, its
arm. I felt the distant tingle of her touch, but I was too far gone
to return the touch. Why didn’t she run?

“
Richard doesn’t need drugs,
Angel Baby. He’s got
me
, the best drug you’ve never seen. And look, here comes our
old friend now.”

An aqua Crown Victoria cut around the corner
at the end of the block, sliding sideways in the six inches of snow
that had fallen.

“
Let him come,” Bookworm
said. “If we’re caught, that means you’ll be locked up for a while,
that’s all.”

Locked up? I’m the gatekeeper, Bookworm. I
decide which doors are open and which are closed. I make the rules
here. But you don’t want me to be arrested. All that will do is
force me to leave. Who will get the pleasure of being my new host?
Will it be Richard’s mother, or...

It ran my fingers down Beth’s soft cheek.
Then it gripped her chin hard enough to leave red marks. The
Insider twisted her head to face me, measuring the light of her
love, the juiciness of her fear, the depth of her guilt.

Oh, yes, and baby makes three.

Maybe I’ll just go straight for the little
guy, saddle him up for a good long piggyback ride, make him just
like his father.

After all, it would be a shame if the
Coldiron Curse died now that there’s potential for a sequel?

That was when they rose, when they all poured
out, swarming like pissants over a black beetle. The Little People
came out of their rooms, but this time, instead of fighting to see
who got to wear the Richard-puppet, they were fighting to suffocate
the Insider.

Extreme home makeover with a wrecking
ball.

“
Rock and roll in a doughnut
hole,” Little Hitler said, throwing out his battle cry. I was a
satellite orbiting the collapsed star of my own psyche.

Too many things were
happening, too much sensory input flooded my brain, too many
people
were happening. I
felt them all, Bookworm, Little Hitler, Loverboy, and Mister
Milktoast, wrapping their energy around the Insider, enveloping it
in a pocket of confused mist. An ensemble cast upstaging the
prima dona
and stealing
the show.

I was dimly aware of Beth pulling on the door
handle and beating on the window. The Insider wouldn’t let her
escape, not when the party was just getting started.

I concentrated and tried to throw off the
jagged shackles and razor chains and frozen ropes with which the
Insider had bound me. I broke free and fluttered to the surface of
my own mind, Houdini in a rabbit’s hat. I threw the Subaru in gear,
popped the clutch, and the wheels spun on the ice. The car caught
traction just as the Crown Victoria pulled alongside.

I glanced over and saw Frye’s thin startled
face, the lit tip of a cigarette jabbed between his clenched teeth.
Recognition flashed across the beads of his eyes, as if he had
suddenly realized what he was doing in that part of town. As if he
had connected the dots between Shelley Birdsong and Monique Rivers
and formed a picture of Richard Coldiron. His mouth opened in
surprise and the cigarette tumbled down his necktie.

Then I was gone, heading down the snowy
street in four-wheel drive. The Insider was busy fighting off the
Little People, but it had a little extra for me. It turned
corkscrews in my brain, shaved pieces of my arteries away, peeled
the hot copper wires of my nerves. It raped me with its brass
talons. But the pain was welcome. The pain was good. It meant that
I was still alive.