Ride the Nightmare (3 page)

Helen ran at him but his left shoe, kicking out, glanced off her shoulder stunningly and she reeled back against the stove, gasping as her side rammed against one of the control knobs.

In her bedroom, Connie called, “Mommy?” in a frightened voice. Helen turned instinctively toward her, then back again.

The man was forcing down the grip that Chris still had on his wrist. He had the advantage of gravity, his right leg pinning Chris against the booth, the weight of his body adding to his strength. As Helen pushed away from the stove, she saw Chris throw a pleading look across the man’s shoulder.

She rushed at the man again, catching at his suit, but he twisted way from her. The pistol was only inches from Chris’s forehead now. Desperately, he tried to free himself, his body lurching spasmodically, but the man’s leg held him pinned. Again, Helen grabbed the man’s arm, again his left foot shot out, almost knocking her legs from under her. She staggered backward with a gasp.

“Helen, the knife!”

She stiffened, looking blankly at Chris’s straining face.

Her eyes fled down across the floor and picked out the white-handled carving knife he’d held before. Mechanically, she started for it, hardly aware of the glass splinter that gouged into the sole of her bare foot.

“No, you don’t!” cried the man.

Whirling, Helen was just in time to see his body flung backward from the booth as Chris, one knee raised, shoved him away. The man went flailing across the floor. He crashed against the toppled dishwasher and fell across it, the revolver flying from his fingers and sliding underneath the stove. Helen shrank against the wall as Chris came running at the man.

The man shot out his hand and grabbed the carving knife. Lunging upward, he tried to drive it into Chris’s chest. Chris flung up his arm and deflected the stab. The man drew back his arm again and
Chris jumped forward, grabbing at his wrist with both hands. For a few seconds, the two of them stood immobile, trembling. Then, abruptly, the man’s arm seemed to crumple, the knife was arcing downward, the blade tip turning in, and all sound had disappeared in the man’s choking gasp.

For a moment he looked at Chris in dumb astonishment. Then he lowered his eyes and gaped down at his own hand still clutching the handle of the knife that was buried in his chest.

“You goddam—” he started in a dull, flat voice.

Then he twisted around and his white face came falling toward Helen. She felt his bony fingers clutching at her breasts, her stomach, sliding down her legs. She heard his chin thud on the floor, his forehead pressing on the hem of her robe.

She couldn’t move. She stared down at the motionless figure, her mouth open, watching the scarlet thread that was beginning to extend itself across the floor.

Chris fell on his knees beside the man, rolling him onto his side so that one pale blue eye stared upward. His hand slid under the man’s coat and held a moment. Then his face was raised to Helen, his voice faint against the crying of their child.

“
Dead
,” he whispered.

The sound of his voice seemed to release her. Gagging, she stumbled toward the sink, almost falling as the weight of the man’s head held back the bottom of her robe. She jerked herself free and heard the man’s head thump on the door.

She lost her supper then. Chris came over and put his hand against her forehead but she twisted away. He stood beside her helplessly.

When it was over, Helen leaned against the sink panting weakly. Her hand reached automatically for the faucet and the rush of water began to clean the sink.

In the bedroom, Connie was screaming. Chris said, “I’ll go to her,” and turned away.

“
No
.” Pulling down a dish towel, Helen dried herself, not even looking at him as she started for the door. Her stomach muscles tensed again as she saw the man’s blood running across the linoleum. She walked past the body quickly, drying her eyes with the towel. She tried not to think. Her baby was crying, that was all that mattered.

Connie was sitting up in bed.

“What’s the matter, darling?” Helen asked, hardly recognizing her voice.

“Mommy!”

As she sank down on the bed, Helen realized how exhausted she felt. She put her arms around Connie and kissed her cheek.

“It’s all right, baby” she murmured. She smoothed back the hair from Connie’s forehead. “It’s all right. Mommy’s here.”

“Mommy—Mommy…”

“Yes, sweetheart.”

She held her child in the darkness and whispered comfort to her even though she knew that she was living in a comfortless world.

When Connie had gone back to sleep, Helen went into the bathroom to wash. The face she saw in the mirror was not a pleasant one.

As she was drying herself, she became conscious of her bare foot and remembered the sliver of glass she’d stepped on. Sitting down on the edge of the bathtub, she looked at the bottom of her foot.

The sliver was a small one. She had to get a pair of tweezers from the medicine cabinet before she could remove it. Pressing out the blood, she cleaned the tiny gash with alcohol. She didn’t bother to bandage it.

She sat there with her eyes shut, knowing that she’d have to go back to the kitchen. All she wanted to do was get into bed and stay there. She’d never felt so tired in her life.

She tried to visualize performing as a wife and mother the next day but it was impossible. The continuity of her life seemed to have ceased in that moment when she realized that, for more than seven years, she’d loved only part of a man.

Helen stood and left the bathroom. In the living room, she found her slipper and eased her foot into it. She noticed that the kitchen light was out and wondered if Chris had gone. As she did, he came in by the front door, shut it behind himself and locked it.

“No one seems to have heard anything,” he said. “It’s lucky Grace and Jack are gone.” Grace and Jack were their neighbors on the left.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s lucky.”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” he said.

Helen let herself down onto the sofa and leaned back heavily. It was so quiet in the house she could hear the humming of the electric clock in the kitchen. Chris stayed by the door, watching her.

“Well…?” she finally asked.

His shoulders slumped. “It’s up to you,” he said.

“Why me?”

He made no reply.

“No, it isn’t up to me,” she said. “I don’t fit in anywhere.”

“Helen, that isn’t so!”

“Isn’t it?”

“Do you think I enjoyed keeping it from you all these years?”

“I’m sure it doesn’t matter.”

“But it does!” he cried. “It made me miserable to—!”

“You’ll wake up Connie.”

Chris stopped.

“If it made you so miserable,” she said, “why did you do it”?

He sank down on one of the arm chairs. He put a hand across his eyes. “I was afraid to tell you,” he said. “Afraid I might lose you. Afraid I might—”

“—have to go to prison?”

“Thank you,” he murmured.

“Well, what do you expect?” Helen turned her head and looked away from him. Suddenly, it occurred to her that she’d never been married. To the world, she was Mrs. Helen Martin; but there was no such person. There was no Christopher Martin and no Connie Martin either. All of them were illusions.

“I thought I’d never have to tell you,” Chris said. “I never thought he’d find me. Then that—picture had to be taken. It’s fantastic,” he went on. “A secret I’ve kept for almost fifteen years. Ended in a second because some kids won a baseball game!” His laugh was closer to a sob. “It’s practically hilarious,” he said.

Helen closed her eyes. Now it was as if the other end of the balance—his end—were being weighted. He had risked his life for Connie. He had planned to intercept the man. Wasn’t it possible that he’d been less motivated by a desire to hide his secret than by a wish to protect his wife and child? That Chris loved them was beyond denial.

No!
Helen sat back stiffly. That he was suffering was his own doing, not hers. He had lied to her. All these years, he had trusted her so little that, rather than speak a simple truth, he had constructed a world of falsehoods around himself. A world which was now at an end.

Chris got up and headed for the hall.

“Where are you going?” she asked, suddenly frightened.

He turned in the hall doorway. “To call the police,” he said.

She stared at him.

“And
then
?” she asked.

“I’ll be arrested.”

She couldn’t stop the cold knotting in her throat and upper chest.

His hands closed slowly into fists.

“I’ll go to prison, Helen,” he said.

“
No, Chris!
” She didn’t realize how anguished her expression had become.

He stood motionless for a few seconds. Then he walked over to the sofa and sat down beside her. “Do you mean that?” he asked.

“What?”

“That you don’t want me to go to prison?”

“I—”

“That you’re willing to—to consider doing something else besides call the police?”

Abruptly she was thrust back into nightmare again. Now it was a penny thriller, absurd and ghastly. A murdered man sprawled in the kitchen, her husband sitting beside her, asking her if she was willing to consider— “I don’t know,” she said, unable to keep her voice from breaking. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Listen to me,” he said. “If the body isn’t found, there’ll be no way for anyone to know what happened.”

Helen stared at him blankly. She didn’t understand.

Christ looked down at his clenching hands.

“I could take him into the hills,” he said in a voice that sounded hideously calm to her. “I could bury him. No one would ever find out.”

He looked at her.

“It’s either that,” he said, “or call the police.”

She couldn’t answer him.

“Well?”

“Chris, I—”

“Do you want me to go to prison, Helen?” he asked. “I’ve lived a decent life ever since it happened. You know that. I’ve done everything I could to atone for my past. Is that all to end because of—
him
?”

“
No
.” She grasped his hand impulsively.

“Helen.” His fingers tightened in hers. “Thank you.”

“Don’t.”

“What?”

“I mean—” She shuddered fitfully. “Oh, God, let’s get it over with,” she said.

***

The folded newspaper page fell from the man’s pocket as Chris was lifting him. Helen picked it up and was about to throw it in the wastebasket when she noticed the story outlined in pencil.

Helen looked up, shocked. “
Murder?
”

When Chris saw the expression on her face, he put the body down. Helen handed him the paper and he looked at it.

“Helen, I had nothing to do with it,” he said.

She stared at him.

“I had nothing to do with it.”

She lowered her gaze from his. “All right, Chris.”

“Helen, if you don’t believe me—”

“All
right
, Chris.”

He stood quietly for a moment, then put down the paper and went back to the body. Helen heard the man’s heels scraping slightly on the linoleum, then the door bumping against him as Chris opened it.

She listened to the sound of the body being dragged down the alley and into the garage through the side door. When the door was closed, she lifted the dishwasher again and reloaded it. Then, turning to the sink, she opened one of the doors beneath it. Taking out the pail, she poured in a mound of soap powder, then ran hot water over it, watching it billow into cloud-like suds.

When Chris came back, she was running the mop back and forth across the puddle of blood on the linoleum, her lips pressed together, her eyes looking straight ahead.

“Here, I’ll do it,” Chris took the mop from her.

“What about—?”

“What, Helen?”

She cleared her throat. “The—knife,” she said.

“I left it in him.”

“Oh.”

She heard Chris wringing out the mop and found herself imagining how the water in the pail looked. Teeth on edge, she moved past Chris and walked into the living room. She sat until she heard the pail being emptied and rinsed out.

She stood as Chris came in.

“I’ll be back as soon as possible,” he said.

“I’m going with you,” she said.

“What about Connie?”

“We can take her.”

“I’d rather you stayed,” he said. “It’s not going to be pretty.”

“What about the other two?” she asked.

“Cliff couldn’t have shown them that photograph,” he said. “If he had they wouldn’t have let him come. They’re hunted men. They haven’t got the time for vendettas.”

She didn’t look convinced.

“What if Connie woke up and saw him,” he asked.

Helen shuddered. “All right,” she said, “but what do I do?”

“Lock up, turn the lights out. I won’t be long.”

“All right,” she said.

She watched him walk across the kitchen and move out onto the back porch. He turned to close the door.

Then, with a lunge, he regained the house and shut the door behind him as quickly as he could without slamming it.

Someone was ringing the front door bell.

Helen’s instinct was to scream in fury at this monstrous piling of shock on shock. Then in an instant new terror had wiped her mind clean.

She glanced into the kitchen. Chris couldn’t seem to get away from the door. He leaned against it heavily, looking trapped and dazed. The bell rang again with a coarse buzzing noise.

Now Chris moved away from the door and she heard him pull a drawer open. The bell rang again, a jarring burst of sound.

“
Chris
,” she said.

He appeared holding the revolver.

“Answer the door,” he said. “If it’s them, tell them I’m in the—the bedroom. Then go in Connie’s room and lock the door.”

She couldn’t take her eyes off the revolver. “But you can’t—” she started.