Chain Letter (40 page)

“Why?”

Alison looked up at the full moon. She was confident she would be able to find the
place. And they would have plenty of light to work by. “For the same reason Jane Clemens’s
body disappeared,” she said.

T
ony dreamed of the inside of the box. But it was only a metaphor—his unconscious wrestling
with the impossibility of it. Because the box was unimaginable to mortals. No one
who went in it returned to tell of the tale. Or so they said.

They.
The Caretakers.

Tony was inside a metal box that was approximately the size of his own room. This
made sense because his physical body was actually lying asleep in his bedroom. But
his soul was sweating. He was locked in a seamless metal jail that was suspended in
a caldron of flames.

There seemed no way out.

But that was a lie. Everything that happened in the box was a lie.

He was so hot. He paced from featureless wall to featureless
wall, and as the temperature steadily increased, he began to scream for help. It was
then that Brenda suddenly appeared in one corner of the metal room. He had no idea
where she’d come from. She carried a long silver knife.

“Brenda!” he cried. “What are you doing here? Do you know how to get out of here?”

She handed him the knife and stared at him with whiteless eyes—twin black marbles
in a flat face. “Oh, Tony,” she said. “We just have to open our hearts. That’s what
they all say, you know.”

“Then we can leave here?” he asked.

She flashed a fake grin. He wished her eyes would return to normal. He didn’t know
what the hell was wrong with them. “Sure. Then we can leave together,” she said.

“Who are they?” he asked, although he believed he knew the answer to that question.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, wiping away a bead of sweat that actually looked more
like a drop of blood. He noticed for the first time that her hands were bleeding and
that she was missing several of her fingers.

“What happened to your hands?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Let’s just get out of here. We can talk about it later.
It’s hot!”

He turned the knife over in his hand. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Open our hearts, Tony baby.” She ripped open her blouse. He could see her bra. It
was a mess. She had splattered blood
on it from her severed fingers. She pointed to the center of her chest “Just stick
it right here, and I can forget this place,” she said.

“You mean, you want me to kill you?” he asked, horrified.

“It’s not that way, Tony. You just have to open my heart. It’s a simple operation.
Go ahead, I don’t mind.” She reached for his hand with the knife in it. “Please hurry.”

“No,” Tony said, aghast. He pulled his hand away. “There must be another way.”

Brenda’s face suddenly became ugly. The change was dramatic. Her flesh actually took
on lines and wrinkles that made it look like a witch’s mask. Her voice came out high
and cruel.

“You cut out my heart, or I’ll cut out yours, little boy,” she snapped. Magically
another knife appeared in her hand, one longer than his. She stabbed at him, and Tony
dodged to the side. Instinctively he slashed back with the knife she had given him.
His aim proved true. He caught her in the center of her rib cage. The blade sunk in
all the way to the hilt, and he felt warm fluid gush over his hand. Brenda’s face
relaxed, turning to normal. But a mess of blood bubbled out of her mouth as she sank
to her knees in front of him.

“That hurts,” she gasped in surprise as she died.

Tony looked down at the bloody knife in his hand.

He couldn’t believe he had just killed someone. A friend at that.

He couldn’t understand why it felt so good.

Then he was outside the metal box. He was floating in the abyss of red and purple
lights, loud throbbing, and choking fumes. As before, he was closing on the vast dark
wall. A huge black portal grew larger before him, and he felt himself being sucked
inside. The lights vanished and all was silent. Once more he saw a slice of a bedroom,
held up against a starless void. He moved steadily into the scene, and soon the room
was all that existed. Yet the memory of where he had just come from stayed with him,
and it was enough to terrify him.

He was in Neil’s bedroom, and Neil was trying to screw up the courage to call Alison
and ask her out. Tony watched as Neil dialed the number twice and then immediately
hung up. Finally, on the third try, Neil was able to stay on the line long enough
to have Alison pick up.

“Hello,” Neil said. “Alison? This is Neil Hurly. How are you doing? That’s great.
I’m doing fine, thanks. The reason I called—I was wondering if you would like to go
to a movie with me this Friday? Oh, you’re busy. That’s OK. How about Saturday? You’re
busy then, too? That’s OK. How about next weekend? Oh, I see. Yeah, I know how that
is. Well, I just thought I’d give you a call. Goodbye, Alison.”

“Wait a second!” Tony yelled as Neil started to put down the phone. He strode across
the room and snapped the receiver out of Neil’s hand. “Let me talk to her.” Tony raised
the phone to his ear and mouth. “Hello, Alison? This is Tony. Would you
like to go out to the movies this Friday? You would? That’s great. When should I pick
you up?” Alison gave him a time, and he hung up. He turned back to Neil. “See, that’s
the way to do it, buddy. You just be me, and everything goes perfectly.”

But Neil wasn’t listening. He’d already stood and begun to walk out the door. But
he turned at the last moment and sadly shook his head at Tony. Tony wasn’t sure what
he had done wrong, other than steal his best friend’s girl.

Then Tony was back in the metal room—in the box.

Alison was standing before him. She had a silver knife in her hand.

It was murderously hot inside the box.

“Tony,” Alison said sweetly. “You’ve really opened my heart to what love is all about.”
Then she raised the knife and tried to stab him in the chest. But he was ready for
her tricks. Brenda’s witch had taught him well. He dodged to the side and managed
to trip Alison. She fell forward and landed on her own knife. She rolled over on her
back, and he saw that the blade stuck straight up out of the center of her chest.
There was blood everywhere, especially in her hair. It gave her black curls a special
maroon color. She smiled up at him, and blood gurgled out the sides of her mouth.

“Fooled you, didn’t I?” she said, and her voice was different from Alison’s. He realized
it was Sasha who was lying on the floor in front of him. He watched in amazement as
she yanked the knife out of her chest and tossed it aside. She reached up,
and he helped her to her feet. She brushed her hands off on her black pants, but the
blood didn’t go away.

“I thought you were Alison,” he said, confused.

“They always think that,” Sasha said. She took his hand again. “Come. It’s time. We
have to go.”

He took her hand reluctantly. This last murder had not felt so good as the first.
He could have sworn it had been Alison in the room with him.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

She smiled. “They always ask that.”

“Who are they?” he asked.

She laughed. “You are they. We are they. It makes no difference where we’re going.”
She leaned over and whispered in his ear. “Soon you’ll be in the box.”

“But I thought this was the box,” he said. It felt hot enough to be the box.

She giggled. She couldn’t stop giggling. The sound of it began to make him feel sick.
“Oh, no,” she said finally. “This place is only to warm you up. You have no idea what
the box is like.”

Then she took his hand and led him away—to the other side of the wall. And soon the
screams he heard were his own, and they never stopped.

· · ·

Tony awoke and stared at his own ceiling. He turned over in bed and saw Sasha curled
up in a ball beside him. She slept like
a cat, he thought. He swung his legs off the side of the bed and sat up. His mouth
was dry, and he had a headache. He must be getting sick. His entire body was soaked
with sweat.

He stood and walked to the window and looked out at the deserted nighttime street.
It looked like an alien planet. He didn’t even feel he belonged in his own body. He
hurt all over. He had gone to bed early only to awake at midnight and find Sasha standing
over him. Before he could speak she had pressed her finger to his lips and whispered
in his ear that she wanted his love. She had slipped into the bed beside him, and
they had done the nasty deed, and it
had
been nasty. He had never experienced such passion with Alison, but it had taken its
toll. He had passed out almost immediately afterward. Once more Sasha had refused
to undress completely. She had kept her black blouse on. Indeed, she still had it
on. It was the only thing.

Studying her sound asleep on his bed, Tony felt a sudden digestive spasm. The contents
of his stomach welled up in his throat. He barely made it to his bathroom. He vomited
up everything he had eaten for dinner and then some. He was catching his breath when
Sasha came and knelt by his side. She leaned over and kissed him hard on the lips,
vomit breath and all. She patted him on the back.

“Is my darling not feeling well?” she asked.

“I had a nightmare,” he mumbled. It was just coming back to him. “I think it made
me sick.”

“What was it about?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

She grinned. Even in the unlit bathroom her green eyes glittered. He was reminded
of the dead man in the desert. Of course, his green eyes had been flat as the ground
he had been lying on.

“But I want you to talk about it,” she said. “You will talk about it.”

He smiled with her, although he felt far from smiling. “I have no choice in the matter?”
he asked.

She continued to stare at him. Another wave of nausea swept through his body. “No,”
she said.

It was one little word.
No.
He had heard it a million times in his lifetime. But he had never heard it spoken
the way she had just said it. There was a power in her voice that pushed a button
deep inside him, one he didn’t know he’d had. Maybe he hadn’t had it until she’d come
over that night. Their lovemaking had been passionate, but he couldn’t say he’d enjoyed
it. One of the reasons he felt sore was that she had scratched his back so badly in
the throes of love.

Like a cat.

Her green eyes, green even in the dark, continued to hold him.

He told her about his nightmare. He remembered it all.

When he was done, she seemed happy. She patted him on the back again. Then she said
something that shocked him to the core.

“Did I tell you I met Neil?” she said.

“What? No. When?”

“I met him in the desert where you buried the man. He had brought flowers to put on
the man’s grave. It was two months after you killed the man with your car, Tony.”

“It wasn’t my car,” Tony said.

Sasha smiled. “But you were driving. You were responsible. Neil told me the whole
story. I made him. He sounded so sad. I wanted to do something for him.” She leaned
closer. “Do you know what I did for him?”

Tony could not imagine. Everything she said blew his mind, which was already pretty
well blown. “No,” he said.

She moistened her lips with her tongue. Once more he smelled her smell. It wasn’t
really a hospital odor at all. He had just thought that because she had told him it
was. But he was beginning to understand she didn’t always tell him the truth. For
some reason he was reminded of biology class in high school.

“I kissed him,” she said.

His stomach rumbled. “Why?”

“I kissed him to make him feel better. I kissed his head. I kissed his knee. Do you
remember he had a sore knee?”

“Yeah. He had a bone tumor in his leg. He ended up with a brain tumor. That’s what
killed him.” Of course, Neil had not had these tumors two months after the incident
in the desert. He had only developed them later.

“He was in a lot of pain,” Sasha said sympathetically. “I made him feel better. He
needed a friend. He felt awful about what you had done to the man. I talked to him
regularly about
it.” She chuckled. “I talked to him even when he didn’t know I was talking to him.”

“But this thing got in my head, and I couldn’t get rid of it. I don’t know where it
came from. It was like a voice. . . . ”

“Did you know about the chain letters?” Tony asked, shocked.

“I know many secrets.” Sasha sat back on her heels. “I kissed Neil, and now I’ve kissed
you. But I’ve done more for you than give you a kiss, and now you’ll do more for me
than even Neil did.” She cocked her head to the side. “I believe we have a visitor.”

He could hear nothing. “What are you talking about? What did Neil do?”

“Shh,” she said. “Listen. There it is. Someone’s here.”

She was right. Someone was knocking softly on the front door. He stood and grabbed
his robe and hurried downstairs. Sasha didn’t follow him. He opened the door, half
expecting to find Alison. But it was Joan. She carried a brown paper sack in her right
hand.

“Hi,” she said flatly. “I have something for you.” She thrust out the bag. “Take it.
Do what you want with it. I’m sorry I’m late with it. I had to—go somewhere first
before I could bring it over.”

He took the bag reluctantly. “What’s going on here?”

Joan spoke like a robot. “Brenda brought me her chain letter. She did what she was
told to do. I’m doing what I was told to do.”

“Who told you?” Tony asked.

“There was a note in my mailbox. One for me, one for you. Yours is in the bag, with
the gun.”

“What gun? What do I need a gun for?”

“It’s my father’s. Read the Caretaker’s note. You’re going to need everything I gave
you.”

Sasha suddenly appeared at Tony’s side. Joan’s eyes widened when she saw her, and
she took a step back. Sasha grinned a mouth full of teeth.