Serpent's Kiss (26 page)

    The fire escape was empty.

    She'd only been imagining him there.

    She laughed out loud at herself again.

    "You scared me."

    At the words, Marie spun around, terrified, holding the gun out from her as if ready to fire.

    Her mother stood ten feet away, stunned that her daughter would be pointing the gun at her.

    "Honey, please put that down. It scares me."

    Marie glanced from the gun to her mother. "I'm sorry," she said.

    She walked across to the couch and set the gun next to her pillow.

    Her mother came over and embraced her. "Are you all right?"

    "I just couldn't sleep," Marie said. She mussed her mother's hair and then let her go. "I couldn't sleep. I kept waking up and having nightmares about the-the man at the store. But look."

    She walked with her mother over to the window.

    Marie pulled back the curtain as if she were displaying a gift and said, "There's a police car right out there."

    Kathleen squeezed Marie's hand. "That should make you feel safer."

    "It does."

    Marie saw her mother in profile as Kathleen stared down at the police car. There were times when she realised that her mother was getting old, times when she realised-had no choice but to realise-that her mother wouldn't live forever. Now, as always when she had this thought, a heavy sorrow burdened Marie and she wanted to grab her mother and hold her and tell her a million things that, unfortunately, humans had no way of telling each other. 'I love you' had to suffice yet 'I love you' was nothing more than code for a thousand feelings, and nuances of feeling, that could never be expressed.

    Her mother turned to Marie and looked startled by the girl's expression. "You okay, hon?"

    "I'm fine."

    "You look so sad."

    Marie lied quickly. "I was just thinking about Dad. You know how I get."

    Kathleen gave Marie another hug. "Well, you know he's here with us, don't you, honey?"

    "I sure do." Marie smiled. "I talked to him tonight."

    "Would you like a sandwich?"

    "No, thanks, Mom."

    "Glass of milk, then?"

    "No, thanks." Marie yawned and stretched. "I'm pretty tired. Those pills I took make me feel weak. I just wish I could sleep."

    "Glass of warm milk and a good book always puts me to sleep."

    Marie smiled. "For a fragile little woman, you've got a will of iron. Has anybody ever told you that?"

    "Everybody I've ever known over two days. I think it's their way of telling me I'm pushy."

    Marie smiled. "Will of iron sounds better than pushy."

    Kathleen laughed. "I think you're right. Will of iron sounds much better, in fact." She took Marie's elbow and pointed her in the direction of the couch. "Now why don't you go over there and pick up your book and I'll bring you in a glass of warm milk."

    Marie knew that about all she could do at this point was comply.

    The moment she slid beneath the covers, exhaustion began creeping up her legs, spreading into her arms and shoulders.

    In the kitchen her mother sounded happily busy. There seemed to be no time that Kathleen was happier than when she was being Marie's mother-domestic, fretful, tirelessly energetic. The woman obviously regarded motherhood as some kind of religious calling.

    Marie reached up, clipped on the table lamp, and picked up her book. Her mother was right. Warm milk, a few pages of the Irwin Shaw paperback she'd been working on for a week, and she'd be asleep for sure. And hopefully, this time she'd stay asleep.

    Her mother came into the room like a maiden in a parade, bearing the glass of warm milk on a saucer with an air of great ceremony.

    "Would you like some toast?"

    "No, Mother. And you don't need to fix me a three-course meal. Why don't you set the milk down, kiss me good night, and go in and get some sleep. You look exhausted."

    Her mother seemed surprised. "But, honey, mothers are supposed to look exhausted."

    "I suppose it says that in the Mother's Handbook."

    Kathleen picked up the joke. "Yes, it does. Right on page sixty-three."

    Kathleen leaned down, kissed Marie tenderly on the forehead, and then said good night.

    "You can always come in and sleep with me," Kathleen said from the top of the hallway. She gathered her robe about her and nodded good night.

    "I think I'm a bit old for that, Mother. Anyway, I found out that the boogeyman doesn't actually exist."

    But after her mother had gone to bed, after the lonely wind began rattling the windows again, Marie thought of what she'd said about the boogeyman not existing.

    But she'd been wrong, of course.

    He did exist after all.

    And Marie had seen him earlier tonight in the bookstore.

    

    

    FOR A LONG and terrible moment, Emily Lindstrom felt that she was losing her sight. After pushing past the partition covering the tower's downstairs window, she had climbed up over the sill and dropped down into the shifting dusty darkness of the ground floor.

    Everything was fine, then. She could hear Dobyns on the steps somewhere above her. All these years of searching, of investigating, and now the time was drawing near…

    But then she had started climbing the steps and it was then she became-for the first time in her years of trying to find the truth for the sake of her brother and her family-afraid.

    She wasn't even sure why she so suddenly felt her chest gripped with terror and why her legs felt so wobbly and why her body was sheathed in an invisible sticky body bag of sweat…

    But she continued higher, higher.

    Every seventh step in the darkness, her shoes grating against the sandy surface of the steps, the staircase wound tightly around just like a... snake.

    There was no light whatsoever at this point. The staircase was narrow and confining as a coffin.

    Higher, higher.

    The words of the incantation began to fill her mind and silently touch her lips.

    What if, when she confronted him, she got scared and forgot the incantation?

    What then?

    Higher, higher.

    At one point she stumbled and reached out a quick hand to save her from striking her face against the edge of a step.

    The grainy surface of the concrete cut deeply into her hand and she grimaced, the pain playing into her and making her feel even more vulnerable now that she was frightened.

    But she continued to climb.

    Nothing could deter her now; nothing.

    

    

    Dobyns stood in the tower's lone room, waiting.

    The floor was littered with bones of various kinds, both human and animal. There had been many sacrifices up here over the years, especially back in the days when a few members of the original cult were still alive.

    Dobyns could feel the snake within him pressing against the curve of his belly.

    The snake, too, was excited. Waiting.

    

    

    By the time she reached the final step, she was completely out of breath. She put a hand against the rough stone wall and simply held on, letting her breath rip through her lungs and chest in deep, shuddering spasms.

    Before her was the dark shape of a small door. Inside, she knew, Dobyns waited for her.

    In just a minute or so-

    She put her hand out to the door-

    -reached the knob and turned it-

    -and pushed the door inward and-

    There was just enough light to see Dobyns standing in the centre of the tiny, circular room.

    His eyes appeared to be closed. His hands were at his side. Faintly, she could hear him breathing, as if the dust and dampness of this place had disturbed his lungs.

    She stepped into the room.

    And saw his eyes fly open.

    The pupils were a glowing amber colour.

    He spoke in a voice that could not possibly be his own, low and raspy and guttural. "Have you come to give me your pussy, Miss Lindstrom?"

    
My God, he-

    "Or perhaps you want to suck my cock"

    There in the darkness, the glow of his eyes held with a terrible power she could not break

    She walked closer to him. "I came to help you."

    And he laughed, the sound of it as obscene as his words. She put out a tentative hand, wanting to touch him and see if the rest of him was as inhuman as his eyes.

    And then she saw the struggle taking place in his stomach and chest.

    The serpent was beginning to work its way up inside his chest. So violent was this shifting, this climbing, that Dobyns began to sway with its rhythms.

    "I can help you," she said.

    "The same way you helped your brother?"

    "No, please, you've got to believe me. I know words that can-"

    And just then the snake inside him threw Dobyns back against the wall and for a moment the man's voice was his own. "Help me, Miss Lindstrom! Please! Help me!"

    As Dobyns stood writhing against the wall, his entire body shaking and shimmying as the snake struggled upward inside him, she walked closer-

    -and then closer still-

    -and began to speak the incantation she'd found in the old diary kept by one of the cult members who'd tried to free herself of the snake's domain.

    And so Emily Lindstrom began. "In the name of the Divine Saviour, I command that the evil beast within you-"

    And then it burst free, the serpent inside Dobyns.

    Dobyns's eyes went dark, as if he had been suddenly blinded, the amber glowing eyes belonging to the head of the huge snake that now burst free of Dobyns's mouth.

    Emily continued the incantation. She knew it was the only way.

    The snake, about two feet of its body uncoiling from the man's mouth, snapped its head wildly back and forth like a heat sensing device seeking a target.

    "I command that the evil beast within you-" Emily Lindstrom went on.

    And then the great uncoiling snake, eyes glowing an even deeper amber now, struck with a ferocity Emily could not believe.

    It struck her face, more specifically her mouth, sinking its two angled teeth deep into the flesh of her tongue.

    And then it began to snap its head back and forth again, ripping her tongue out from its roots as it did so.

    She screamed as she saw her own tongue torn free from her mouth, the snake holding it bloody in its teeth, and finally flinging it across the room against the wall.

    Emily fell to the floor, uselessly covering her mouth with her long, lovely hands. She was trying to stop the blood that poured from her mouth now. But of course it was no use.

    The snake began to go back inside Dobyns. And eventually the dead dark eyes of the man filled once more with the shining amber light and the snake coiled again around his intestines.

    He left the sobbing, hysterical woman on the floor and quickly ran down the steps deeper, deeper into the darkness of the tower.

    He had one more thing to do tonight.

    His mind was filled with Marie Fane's melancholy, pretty face.

    

    

    O'Sullivan said, taking her hard by the wrist, "You've got to tell them, Holland. And right now."

    "But her brother. She's-"

    "To hell with her brother. Dobyns is a very dangerous man. If you really think he's up there-"

    "Shit," Chris said. "You're right. As usual."

    They were standing in the middle of it, all the craziness, the big emergency vehicles that looked like giant electronic bugs.

    The cop people and the Hastings House people and the press people and the just-plain-gawkers people running back and forth between various buildings of the institution and the driveway that was packed with official cars.

    After Emily Lindstrom had walked over to the tower, Chris had found O'Sullivan and asked him about his interview with the retired janitor. O'Sullivan had rolled his nice blue Irish eyes and told her about the pet rat the guy carried around on his shoulder and the way he shared his Oreos with the rat and how Oreos made him fart.

    "Oreos make him fart?" she'd said.

    "That's what I'm telling ya, Holland. The guy's a fucking fruitcake."

    "So you didn't believe his story about the cult and all that?"

    And he'd looked at her directly-accusingly, actually-with those nice Irish blue eyes and said, "You mean to tell me you do believe him? The Lindstrom woman is one thing but this guy-"

    "Well," she'd said, "Not exactly believe him but then not exactly not believe him, either, if you know what I mean."

    So now, standing beside her with red and blue lights lashing across the brick buildings, and a fine cold mist starting to come down, and the people moving in every direction-all this going on, O'Sullivan said, "You've got to find the cops and tell them."

    "I'm sorry, O'Sullivan. I wasn't thinking very straight, was I?"

    "No, you weren't. Now go find the fucking cops."

    "The fucking cops," she said. "I'll go find them."

    And that's just what she did.

    "Hi," she said to Detective Staley, a chunky guy who still wore Wildroot (she wanted to point out to him sometime that he'd shown great wisdom in keeping his hair greasy right through the sixties and seventies and eighties, seeming to know instinctively that the look would be back in the nineties).