Chain Letter (12 page)

Alison heard the curtain rise and the opening antics of her stage mother but her mind
was back in the stadium with the shocked crowd. When Tony had lapsed into his drugged
stride, clawing at the air as if for invisible strings that could hold him up, she
had cried. And she had not cried since last summer.
Maybe the Caretaker had done what he had for that very reason, to keep afresh their
memories.

The meet officials and coaches had prevented anyone from getting near while he lay
unconscious on the track. When the paramedics had arrived and loaded him in the ambulance
without even a brief examination, she had thought he was dead. If Neil had not taken
her by the arm, she might have wandered around the stadium until the sun had gone
down.

The hospital had been jammed. Anyone else, and a dozen kids might have come by. But
for Tony, half the student body showed up, and there was no horsing around. “He is
alive and recovering nicely,” the doctors had announced to a loud ovation not long
after their arrival. Most had left then, but she had hung around with the rest of
their unlucky group, and eventually they had learned of the diagnosis from Tony’s
parents.

Someone had spiked something Tony had either eaten or drunk with codeine, a powerful
painkiller. Neil mentioned a suspicious-tasting lemonade, but when he went to search
the ice chest back at school, he found it empty. The police made inquiries, but no
one (i.e., none of them) who could have presented a motive spoke up.

Crete High had won the track meet by two points.

With his stomach still recovering from a thorough pumping, Tony had left the hospital
the next morning.

“ ‘God is the State; the State is God,’ ” Alison heard in disbelief. Had she been
woolgathering a whole ten minutes? Someone
must have slipped her codeine, her entrance was in a few seconds! Quick . . . Where
was the script? What was her first line? What was her character’s name? What was she
doing here?

Love it
, Alison thought, laughing to herself. The last-second anxiety attack was an old friend;
she didn’t feel comfortable without it. Stepping confidently to the side of the front
door, she heard the sound effects of a real door opening and closing. She paused momentarily
on the threshold, took a deep breath, and then swept into the lights.

“ ‘And so the beautiful princess came into the palace,’ ” she said, allowing her tension
to flow into her character, who was supposed to be a shade nervous. She kissed Alice’s
mother, father, and grandfather, saying, “ ‘And kissed her mother, and her father,
and her grandfather.’ ”

The magic started. She was not a deliberate actress. She was at her best when she
let herself go. This style always contained its element of doubt: What if she cut
free and whoever took over had decided to take the night off? Fortunately, tonight,
that was not the case, for Alice—a lovely fresh young girl—had dropped by for a visit.

This did not mean that she went into a careless void. Her spontaneity needed to consciously
avoid certain dark paths and steep ditches while frolicking on stage. One wrong turn
for her was to look at the audience. It was fine to
see
them, but thinking who they were and what they thought of her was never wise. This
was particularly difficult not to do tonight, knowing
Tony was watching. When she was not speaking, she found her mind turning his way.
This drifting was partly brought on by the fact that Alice’s love in the play was
named Tony. He was a poor imitation of the real thing.

Her first stint on stage, when she told her wacky family about her new love and her
plans to go out with him that evening, went over without a hitch—at least as far as
her part was concerned. Brenda’s stand-in for Essie forgot two lines, one being a
question she was supposed to ask Alice. Immediately recognizing the vacant panic in
the girl’s eyes, she had covered for her by asking herself the question and then answering
it. “ ‘And I bet you wanted to know if he is good looking? Well . . . yes, in a word . . . ’ ”
Waiting for her next line, Alison distinctly heard a chuckle coming from the rear
rows. It was Brenda, wallowing in her poor replacement’s misery.

Alice went to get dressed and Alison went up a flight of stairs that started down
after the fifth step. She stood in the dark to the side of the front door, off stage.
She had to call, “Is that Mr. Kirby, Mother?” a couple of times, but otherwise she
had a few minutes break. She felt high as the kite Tony and she had flown on their
date. He had confessed wanting to impress her with his athletic ability, and she was
no different when it came to her acting. He would
have
to love her. She was hot.

“How did you like the way I arranged the tiny paintings above the fireplace?” Fran
whispered, popping out of the shadows.

“The whole time I was out there, I couldn’t keep my eyes
off of them. What kind of question is that? Had you hung a
Playgirl
centerfold over the fireplace, I wouldn’t have noticed.”

Fran’s patience with temperamental actresses apparently had its limits. She was insulted.
“Brenda’s right; all you care about is being the star.” She whirled and stalked off.

Sorry!
Alison thought, afraid to say it aloud lest the audience hear. Is that how her friends
saw her, as an egomaniac? It was a depressing possibility. But she couldn’t worry
about it now.

Collecting her boyfriend from the clutches of her eccentric relatives also went smoothly.
But coming up was her big love scene. The young man who played Tony was named Carl
Beet. He was a nice enough looking guy—dark, strong, about her height—but his every
move on stage was exaggerated, and he had a tendency to mumble. Also, there was absolutely
no chemistry between them. Mr. Hoglan knew all this; he had simply cast Carl out of
desperation for anybody else. Carl was essentially a humble young man but, it was
funny, when it came to his acting, he thought he was blessed; the disease must be
contagious. Alison wondered what the real Tony would think when she kissed Carl. The
intimacy always grossed her out. Carl had bad breath.

Yet once again in the spotlight, she slipped comfortably into Alice’s mind, and for
a few minutes, actually found Carl desirable. “ ‘I let myself be swept away because
I loved you so.’ ” The lines were a bit mushy in places, but what the hell, it had
only cost a couple of bucks at the door.

They decided to get married. It was inevitable—it was in the script. She walked Carl
to the door, kissed him good night, and floated back into the living room. Still under
love’s spell, she softly leaned against the wall in the same spot she had leaned against
during yesterday’s rehearsal. Granted, the set was canvas and, under the best of conditions,
could not withstand much pressure. Still, she only put a portion of her body weight
against it. There should have been no problem.

The wall fell down. Alison fell with it.

The disorientation was similar to being sound asleep and then suddenly being awakened
by a bucket of ice water. Alice was a dream character falling into a nightmare. She
did not know what was happening, only that she was hitting the floor hard. Pain flared
through her ribcage as she rolled on her back, hearing a loud ripping of canvas and
a muffled gasp from the audience. The part of the living room wall that was still
upright sagged away from the top of her head. Her vision seemed to telescope on a
glint of metal where the ceiling would have joined the wall, had the room been real.
It was a chain, hooking the lights to Fran’s set, a stainless steel loop that refused
to give under the pressure. Since it wouldn’t give, the thin cable that suspended
the row of stage lights did, snapping cleanly. The heavily wired metal bar and its
accompanying electric bulb fell directly toward her face.

There was no time to get out of the way. Instinctively, she threw up her arms, her
hands catching a wide, yellow light,
the glass cracking around her knuckles, the splinters raining about her closed eyes.
Her back arched with a sudden spasm. Her fingers were entangled with exposed wires,
the hot current vibrating up her nerves to her spinal cord. Letting out a cry of disgust
as well as pain, she pushed the bar aside, cutting herself twice over. Blood dripped
from her mangled hands onto her costume.

Tony was the first to reach her side. Grabbing the light support, he angrily pulled
it away from her. “I did this,” he said, helping her up, his face ashen, the crowd
gathering at his back.

She would probably cry in a minute, but right now she couldn’t help laughing. In a
perverse way, the same way all the Caretaker’s tricks had seemed to her, it was funny.
“Looks like I flubbed my lines, after all,” she said.

T
he cycle was complete. As the Caretaker had said nothing about restarting it, Alison
did not try to second guess him by mailing the original letter to Fran. Instead she
did what Brenda had wanted to do at the beginning. She tore it into tiny pieces. The
gesture was a weak one and she knew it. Standing at a comfortable distance, humiliating
them all, their foe had easily moved each of their names to Column II.

The Monday after the fiasco at the play, Fran received a pale green letter in a purple
envelope. It had been mailed locally and had been postmarked the previous Friday afternoon—the
bastard sure had been confident the lights would fall on cue.

My Dearest Friends
,

No longer can I say you do not know me. In these last few weeks, I feel we have come
to know each other intimately. The closeness both stimulates and disgusts me. While
I can now more readily share your zest for the performances of the tasks that will
be set before you, I must also wallow lower and lower in your evil. But this is to
be a temporary situation. The hourglass runs low.

At the bottom of this letter is a list of your names. The directions and conditions
will be as before, only now your names are to find their way from Column II to Column
III. Due to the delicate nature of your tasks, they will appear in the paper in a
secret code befitting a secret society such as ours. Starting with the first letter,
every third letter will help make clear your duty.

Some of you have sought to defy me. From experience, you have learned how uncomfortable
that can be. As your tasks will now be more exciting, your punishment, should you
choose to be stubborn, will be equally exhilarating. Remember, you have been told.

It has come to my attention that you suspect I am one of you. Let this be made painfully
clear: I am not.

Love
,

Your Caretaker

The ad, as it appeared in the
Times
the same day the letter arrived, read:

Fran: syrtlorryeunahokltnieaesknaesedrl

supcoehycomoaidollpulonitcwohig

Deciphered with the code, it said: Streak naked school lunch.

· · ·

Alison sat alone with Fran in Fran’s kitchen. The purple envelope and pale green letter
lay on the table beside the paper. Alison had just finished telling Tony over the
phone the details of the Caretaker’s latest exercise. Within the hour, probably within
ten minutes, the rest of the gang would know what was happening. Fran was crying.

“Tony is going to the
Times
offices this afternoon to see if he can’t trace who’s placing the ads,” Alison said,
taking a drink
of her sugar-saturated Pepsi. She’d given up on diet colas. Why worry about a few
miserable calories when a madman would probably be executing her before school got
out? “He’ll call if he learns anything.”

Hot air breezed through the open front door. The rest of the house was empty. Somewhere
upstairs, a clock chimed two o’clock, causing Fran to lift her tear-streaked face
off her damp arms. “I can’t do it,” she whispered.

“What if you were to wear a mask,” Alison said, not trying to be funny. Since reading
the task, she had been turning over in her mind whether she would have what it takes
to run naked through school at lunch. Given a choice between doing it and dying, she
still couldn’t decide. All she knew for sure was that she was glad she wasn’t Fran.

“Everyone would know it was me. No one has hair like mine.”

You mean, no one has a body like yours.

“You could pin it up, or cut it even. I think a mask would be permissible. The Caretaker
has not struck me as inflexible.”

Fran groaned, her hands gesturing helplessly. “But I would still have to do it! And
I would get stopped before I could get away. I can’t run very fast. One of those gorillas
on the football team would grab me and rip my mask off.”

“You’re probably right, there,” Alison agreed. Out of habit, she went to drum her
knuckles on the table, as she often did when she was thinking hard. The bandages across
her fingers
stopped her.
Alice
had performed Saturday night wearing gloves. Friday’s performance, of course, had
never reached Act II. The same doctor who had treated Tony had taken care of her.
They would probably be seeing more of the guy. “You know, Fran, you don’t have a bad
figure. Would it be so terrible if everyone saw . . . ”