1
 
 
1963: South Dakota
three-quarters moon, waxing
 
This is not the book I set out to write.
This is not the book I dreamed of as I crossed the snow in my battered Impala. I was young then. I chased after sensations. I wanted the frisson of coming face-to-face with a mass murderer whom the world had long forgotten. I was going to write the ultimate exposé I saw the book—a fat hardcover, of course—gleaming on the racks of the neighborhood bookstore. I imagined the Carltons next door shunning me and retreating into their split-level ranch-style mansion, muttering darkly about how girls shouldn’t go to college, look how weird they get when they come home. She’ll never find a husband now. I laughed and pondered the book I was going to write. As I glided along the empty road between endless snowbanks, looking out over snow and snow and more snow, the book I dreamed of became clearer and clearer to me. I could almost heft it in my hands and read the gold-leaf lettering on the spine:
 
A KILLER’S LIFE
by Carrie Dupré
 
The snow was steady, hypnotic. I turned up the heat. I luxuriated in it. It was making me drowsy. It was four in the afternoon. I realized that I wouldn’t have much daylight left this far north, in the dead of winter. Well, I had to be somewhere near my destination. It must have been an hour since Wyoming. Maybe I’d overshot. Many of the road signs were smothered in snow. Maybe I’d missed the turn somewhere. I decided to pull off the road and look at a map.
The car clunked and wheezed as I stopped. I looked up at the mirror and teased my bouffant into shape. I left the car running so that the flakes wouldn’t pile up on the windshield and so I could keep the heat on. Then I opened up the map I’d bought back in Laramie and struggled to make head or tail of it. All I knew for sure was that the Black Hills were to the north; I could see them at the horizon across the expanse of white. The sky was gray. There was no sun. I was alone. Sunny suburbia was more than a week into the past. I was determined not to be afraid. It had been my decision to be a writer, my decision to pick the kind of sensationalist subject that women weren’t supposed to write about…if I didn’t go through with it now, the Carltons were going to laugh at me.
Maybe I just need to get up and walk around, I thought.
I squirmed into my shaggy coat and started to get out. It was windy and I had to push to get the car door open. When I was all the way out, the door slammed shut behind me. I hardly had time to feel the cold when I realized that I had already pushed in the lock, and that my keys were in the ignition with the motor running. I was too stunned to panic. All I kept thinking was, They’re going to say, “Just like a woman,” and laugh the whole misadventure off. Light snow tickled my face. I stared through the window at the warm interior of the car.
Soon it was going to be sunset.
The wind whined. I started to feel numb. I rubbed my hands up and down the inside of my coat. I looked for something, a branch or a rock, to break the window with. There was nothing. Maybe beneath the snow. I began shovelling at the snowdift with my bare hands, wincing at the cold. I could feel the joints getting stiff. I was getting angry. Could the Carltons be right about me? The wind was roaring now. I plunged my arms into the snow all the way. My fingers met something hard. I grasped and tugged, cursing in frustration.
“Need some help?”
I screamed.
Then, feeling stupid, I looked at the man who had come up beside me. “I’m…I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to—” He lifted a finger to his lips. He wore a black leather jacket. Dark, shoulder-length hair, frosted with snowflakes, held back by a blood-colored headband. “Where did you come from?” I said. “I didn’t hear anything.…”
“The rushing wind hides many sounds,” the stranger said. Behind him, across the road, I could see a motorbike leaning against the embankment. I could have cried with relief. Instead, I straightened my coat and nervously tried to shield my hair from the wind. He said, “And what’s a woman doing all alone on the reservation in the middle of nowhere?”
I flinched a bit at the question, although I guess I should have expected it. “I must have missed a turn somewhere, I guess…reservation? You mean I’m not in Fall River County anymore?”
“No ma’am. This is Shannon. You’re on the Pine Ridge Reservation. We’re about two miles from Wounded Knee. That was the White River you crossed back yonder.”
“River?” I hadn’t even noticed.
“I guess I’d best get you and your car together again first.” He walked over to his motorcycle, rummaged around, pulled out a coat hanger, came back. “Always keep one of these on me case I run into one of them damsels in distress.” He began methodically to unwind the hanger, then slid it down the side of the window. In a second he had popped the lock.
“You must really be handy at this stuff,” I said, earnestly trying to make conversation.
“Condescending white bitch,” he said.
“I’m sure I didn’t mean—”
“Yeah, right, you’re sure.”
We didn’t talk for several moments. He kept staring at me, as though expecting me to say something. In the twilight his shadow stretched all the way across the road, and his eyes gleamed. “Well, ma’am, I suppose you’ll be wanting an escort to Winter Eyes.”
I started. “How did you know where I was going?” I looked around me in panic. The wind was screeching, my hair was flying into my eyes. He didn’t move.
“I know a lot about you, Carrie Dupré,” he said.
“My name.…” Slowly I backed away, feeling for the car door. My fingers fumbled at the icy handle. “Get away from me! Are you some kind of psycho?”
“You got mass murderers on the brain, don’t you?” He didn’t smile. His eyes glittered in the dark through the mass of hair that fluttered across his face. “You got some cowboy movie ideas about Injuns too, I bet. You think I’m gonna rape you and scalp you or something. Shit, you’d probably even enjoy it. Don’t you even recognize me? Shit, you even condescended to screw me once! But it was dark in the drive-in. And you were smashed out of your mind. And anyways we all look alike. You were the snottiest girl in Berkeley, Carrie, and you ain’t changed one damn bit.”
“Jesus,” I said, “you’re—”
“Preston Bluefeather Grumiaux,” he said softly. “I work part-time for the tribal police force.”
“Dr. Murphy’s Indian Studies class,” I said. “You used to sit in the back and make fun of everything. Whenever Murphy tried to get serious you’d start saying ‘how’ and ‘ugh.’ It can’t be you. You rejected all this Indian heritage stuff. What are you doing back here?”
He said, “I was wrong.”
We were silent for a long time. It was all so unlikely that I couldn’t quite accept that it was happening. I remembered Preston Grumiaux clearly now. He hadn’t looked anything like this. In those days he had a crew cut and did everything he could to look like a Xerox copy of Wally Cleaver. It was pathetic in a way.
We had gone out once. I couldn’t remember having sex with him, but I could have been stoned. “Even if you are Preston,” I said at last, “that still doesn’t explain why you know where I’m going.”
“I’m a part-time tribal policeman,” he said. “My other job is at the institute. I guess I got a natural affinity for fruitcakes. Dr. La Loge sent me to look for you, stupid. You’re a day late and they were getting worried. Didn’t think a city girl like you could make it through the storm.”
“I waited out the blizzard in Laramie,” I said, self-consciously rearranging my blond hair. “I’m not that dumb.”
“Reckon you ain’t,” he said.
“Christ,” I said, “since when did you start saying ‘ain’t’?”
“I got fed up with your kind and your highfalutin sixty-four-dollar words, I guess. I learned something after all. I ain’t one of you. I don’t like hamburgers, and if I ever see another jar of mayonnaise I’ll puke. I burned my fraternity blazer. They only took me on as a token anyway, the sons of bitches. Show how fucking liberal they were. I ain’t one of you. Lamakota! You know what that means? I am Sioux!”
I managed to get the car door open. I couldn’t look at him, couldn’t deal with his raw emotion. I felt a blast of heat in my face. He held the door open. “Look,” I said, “can we talk this over some other time? It’s getting dark. Let’s just get on the road.”
“Certainly, Miss Dupré,” he said. “But first, tell me why you, of all people, are coming to interview the Laramie Ripper?”
“I’m doing a book about him,” I said. “A couple of publishers are interested. And…well, I was doing my family tree, and…there was a woman mentioned in the hearings, an old woman who used to take care of him, who died just before all the killings started. Her name was Hope Martin. There’s a good chance this woman was my great-grandmother.”
“So you’re exploiting a family connection, huh?”
“It seemed like a way to break in.”
“Don’t you think you oughta leave the old man alone? All that stuff happened thirty, forty years ago. He’s a dying, sick man. You’re gonna do this big scandalous book full of gore and sordid details. I bet you have a title for it already…‘I Was a Crazy Sex Killer…as told by Carrie Dupré’! I see it all. In lights. Maybe a movie, too. Hitchcock’ll do it.”
“Come on.”
“You’re shaking,” he said. “I bet you’re scared shitless.”
“It’s just the wind. And the snow.” The wind had not let up. It was dark, so dark. Snow was gusting in through the car door. “Can we start now?”
“Don’t bullshit me. You’re terrified.”
“No.”
“Terrified! But there ain’t nothing out here. Only the bleakness. The desolation. Nothing’s gonna jump at you and tear you apart. Not right now. You got three days yet.”
“Three days?”
“Until the full moon.”
“The full moon…don’t be ridiculous.”
He started to cackle like a banshee as he crossed the powdery pavement. The growl of his bike was drowned in the roar of the wind. I slammed the car door and skidded onto the road. He was right. I was shaking. But it was only because of meeting him so unexpectedly, and because I loathed him yet felt so helpless without him. That was all. Full moon indeed. I couldn’t understand why Preston was trying to freak me out.
I had come to interview a psychotic, not a werewolf.
* * *
I had no impression, of the town of Winter Eyes at all the first time. I was too intent on following Preston Grumiaux, a sooty whirlwind streaking through the snow. Later I would come to know the town all too well. At first I would be disappointed. I had come from the city thinking that all remote towns were invested with a romantic magic. The reality of Winter Eyes was otherwise. In the end I would find another magic here, malevolent and seductively beautiful. It would always be astonishing to me that the first time I passed through Winter Eyes I had noticed nothing at all. Of course, all that I saw was the squalid, modern town and not the ghost town hidden behind it.
We seemed to be going uphill. The town itself was behind us now. The road was narrow and wound through fields of snow. Preston didn’t slow down.
We turned at a crossroads. The snow was falling thick now. All I could see was the cloud of smoke that was Preston Bluefeather Grumiaux. Now I remembered making love to him. He was right. I had done it to show how much more liberal I was than the others. I felt bitterly shamed. I drove on. Through the veil of snow I could make out the twisted outline of some rock formation. Perhaps it was a mountain. There was no perspective in this ocean of cold and gray. The light was almost gone.
Abruptly we turned again. I remember spiked wrought-iron railings in the mist. We slowed down. The snow was bloody in the sunset. We stopped. The snow ended in concrete steps, and Preston was already striding up, two steps at a time, his hair and his leather jacket flailing behind him. I got out and followed, I couldn’t keep up. The cold was unendurable, and I could hardly see through the curtain of snow. The doors were of oak. Preston rapped on the brass knocker. Steadily I climbed up, treading in his bootprints to avoid the seeping slush. Above the doorway, in letters of iron, were the words:
 
The Szymanowski Institute
 
I knew, as my tongue struggled with the unfamiliar name, that this was the place I had been driving toward for the past weeks. Dread touched me once again. But when I stepped inside the door I felt a blast of heat and I stood in a well-lit hallway and was being warmly greeted by a receptionist, and I left my fear outside in the snow.
* * *
“Dr. La Loge will be with you in a—” the woman at the desk began. Before she could finish he had already stepped into the room. He was tall, blond, bearded, not at all the mad-scientist type.
“Ms. Dupré, I presume?” he said, extending a hand. “We were quite worried about you.” He turned to Preston. “Thanks for going after her.”
“Oh, it was nothing, Doc,” he said. He looked at me with an emotion I couldn’t quite understand…anger or longing maybe. Then he turned—as though tearing himself away—and walked over to the elevators. I let the receptionist take my coat.
I had a speech all prepared, and began: “I’m so thrilled to be in the presence of—”
“The notorious Sterling La Loge, mind-prober extraordinaire!” He started to laugh. “Come on. You must be starving to death. We’ll have to eat in the commissary, I’m afraid. The town is completely shut down, because of the weather. I was hoping to lodge you at the Red Cloud Motel, twenty miles down the road—it’s the only one anywhere near here—but they’re snowed in and their phone lines are down.” He started to steer me down the hallway, then paused. “Luggage? Give Greta the car keys. She’s a local, she’s used to freezing.” I dug them out. The receptionist didn’t seem fazed at the prospect of going out in the snow, and I was too weary to be polite.
I followed La Loge meekly as he led me down a corridor, its walls steel-gray, its wooden floor polished to gleaming. The air held a mélange of medicinal odors. Now and then I heard someone screaming in the distance, but that was only natural in an insane asylum. Certainly it wasn’t the oppressive, Dickensian hell that I had half expected.
The dining room was something of a surprise. I had expected something rather like a high school cafeteria; instead we entered an expansive lounge with bay windows that looked out onto a grand snowscape at whose horizon loomed the contorted hillock I had seen on the way over. “Impressive, isn’t it?” said Sterling La Loge. “It’s called Weeping Wolf Rock.”
“What an. unusual name,” I said, making small talk. I was starting to realize how famished I was; frankly I wasn’t in the least bit interested in the colorful chunk of local history that I was sure Dr. La Loge was going to disgorge. Luckily, he didn’t. Instead, he pointed to a table beside the window and I sat down. A few others were eating at another table. They all wore lab coats. This was clearly not the patients’ dining room.
Going to an intercom by the door, La Loge paged Preston Grumiaux. “Perhaps a familiar face at dinner will help you get acclimated to this desolate place,” he said, sitting down. We waited in uncomfortable silence.
I sat staring at the landscape. Weeping Wolf Rock was all that breached the flat monotonous white. The moon, not quite full, had risen. Though it was warm in the room I shivered. I wondered what gave the rock its name. It didn’t look like a wolf.
“A hundred years ago it was all forest,” said a voice behind me in a Hollywood British accent. I jumped and turned to see an old man carrying a tray…a waiter. I looked at him. After a while it occurred to me that Dr. La Loge was studying me intently.
“That’s James Karney,” said La Loge, “an inmate here. Quite harmless, I assure you. But alas, he has no family, and the institution is all he has left. Pour some wine for the lady, James.”
He did so with a shaking hand. In doing so, his hand brushed mine. I felt an odd tickling sensation, and I retracted my hand hastily. The waiter stood stiffly to attention, but I could not help noticing that his hand was trembling still, and that the back of it had a silvery sheen, almost as though it were covered with fur. It must, I decided, be the moonlight.
“Ms. Dupré…?” Suppressing a shudder, I turned away from the waiter. “Or should I call you Carrie? In these parts we’re not much given to formality, I’m afraid.”
“Of course you can…Sterling.” He lifted his wineglass. We toasted each other. I drank deeply, more deeply than I should have. James refilled the glass and brought us each a bowl of clear soup, bland but warm. Preston joined us. Again he looked at me with that look of indignation and desire. And I was beginning to remember more and more of that one night stand in Berkeley. It had been after one of Professor Murphy’s soirées.…
“The Laramie Ripper,” Dr. La Loge said abruptly. “I suppose you’ll want to meet him soon?”
“Yes, please. As soon as possible.”
“Good. But what do you expect to gain from all this? He’s just a sad old man. It was all so long ago.”
“Well, you might say there’s something of a family connection,” I said, “or at least I think there might be. But mostly it’s…well, the romance and the sensationalism. I mean…I small-town America during the Depression…a series of wild, bizarre killings in which the victims seem to have been viciously torn apart by a wild animal…Jonas Kay, a madman, brought to trial…but there’s no trial…and then the coverup. The Laramie Ripper is spirited away across the South Dakota state line into an obscure mental institution…and the whole story simply dissipates.”
“And this is where Carrie Dupré, girl reporter, moves in for the kill?” Preston said, sneering.
I had been expecting this. “I happen to be a liberated woman,” I said, trying not to come on too strong. “I’m hardly the Lois Lane type. As far as I’m concerned, Superman can stay on Krypton.”
Dr. La Loge laughed. “Considering the chip on your shoulder, Preston, I hardly think you should be making snide remarks about the one on Carrie’s.”
Preston dug into his soup bowl, sulking.
“Chicken or fish?” said James in sepulchral tones.
“Ignore his little act,” La Loge said, his eyes twinkling. “I think it’s rather therapeutic, don’t you? This little playacting, I mean, this English butler shtick.”
“Chicken,” I said nervously.
The hand placed a steaming platter in front of me. It retreated before I could look at it more closely. Since La Loge seemed ready to talk, I pulled my notebook from my purse and opened it.
“What I want to know,” I said, “is why the Szymanowski Institute—”
“You might as well learn to pronounce it,” La Loge said. “Shimanoffski. There. No relation, by the way, to the famous Polish composer who wrote the opera King Roger.”
I’d never heard of anyone by that name and I didn’t know whether he was putting me on. I decided to ignore this piece of trivia, but I did correct my pronunciation, which had been distressingly off. “Why did the Szymanowski Institute go to such lengths to get hold of Jonas Kay? Didn’t the institute cough up funds to get him some kind of fancy lawyer? Isn’t that why it never came to trial?”
“Jonas Kay was a very sick man, Carrie. As you will find out. And we at the institute are particularly interested in…cases such as his.”
“Such as his?” I said.
“Well, the Laramie Ripper wasn’t…isn’t your average psychotic killer. In fact, he doesn’t suffer from any kind of psychosis at all.”
“Are you trying to tell me he’s perfectly sane?”
“Not exactly. He is what we call a multiple personality.”
“Right,” I said, “a schizo.”
“Let’s get one thing straight before I let you meet our friend, Carrie. He is not a schizophrenic. Multiple personality is classified as a neurosis, not a psychosis. Most of the subject’s personae are perfectly charming people. Some are artistically talented. One of them is a brilliant pianist. Some are socially maladroit, but hardly the sort of thing you’d have a person committed for. One of them is a woman. Unfortunately, one of them…well, one of them isn’t quite as…sane as the others.”
“The one who killed all those people.” I thought of the newspaper clippings in my suitcase. They were subdued, of I course, except for a few “true stories” from the sleazier crime I pulps. They talked of victims torn in two…their heads found miles away from their torsos…the flesh savagely ripped open with a serrated device…livers half eaten, shredded hearts. “Jonas Kay.”
“Jonas hasn’t come forward in years, Carrie. You see, we’re in the process of trying to reunite our poor friend’s fractured mind. And one of the personalities has emerged as a kind of core, drawing in the fragmented selves one by one…we call this process ‘fusion,’ and when it is done our friend will be Johnny Kindred and no one else.”
“What’s Johnny Kindred like?” I said.
“He’s an eight-year-old boy. Oh, the body doesn’t change. But Johnny Kindred is eight years old, just as James Karney is…however old he is. You’ll love Johnny. He’s charming, bright, full of joy. You’ll meet him soon. This evening, maybe. Would you like that?”
“Very much,” I said.
The waiter whisked our plates away and poured coffee. All three of them were staring at me: the waiter, standing stiffly, out of the corner of his eye; Dr. La Loge with a detached curiosity; and Preston Grumiaux with the kind of intensity that always seems to presage a sexual overture.
It was Preston who broke the silence first. “Come on, Sterling. A joke’s a joke, but the suspense is killing me. Tell her.”
“Tell me what?” I said in alarm. I spilled my coffee on the table. The waiter moved in with a napkin. “I’m sorry to be so jumpy,” I said. “But the long drive and.…”
I saw the waiter swabbing at the tabletop with brisk, mechanical strokes. I stared at his hands. I laughed at myself for thinking they were covered with fur. He was just abnormally hirsute, that was all. Hanks of silvery hair protruded from his sleeves.
“Oh, all right,” Sterling La Loge said. I waited for some dramatic revelation, but he simply said, “You can ask all the questions you like, but I must insist on one condition.…”
“Oh, utter confidentiality, naturally,” I said, trying to sound smoothly professional.
“Oh, no, I don’t mean that. I mean…”
I waited.
“I mean,” he said sheepishly, “do you think you could get me some kind of cameo role in the movie?” He started to giggle uncontrollably. Before I could answer, he asked me, “And what about one for James, too?”
I studied the waiter, who stood to attention now. He had a craggy face; at a pinch it might have done for a geriatric Byron. He had a wild mane of white hair that pointed every which way. “He’s certainly a colorful character,” I said. The waiter surveyed me with his nose in the air.
“Yes…I see it now,” La Loge said. “Hitchcock, I think, don’t you? Co-starring Sterling La Loge and James Karney. What do you say, James?”
The three of them—the waiter standing behind the two seated others—gazed expectantly at me. I got the impression they were laughing at me, although their faces revealed nothing. I looked from one to the other, my puzzlement increasing. They think I’m just a dumb broad, I thought, fuming. Screw this! I was about to cry out with frustration when Preston couldn’t control himself any longer and began to laugh out loud. “Don’t you get it?” he cackled. “James Karney? J.K.…J.K.…”
I looked straight into the waiter’s eyes and saw—
“No,” I whispered. “No!” James Karney…Johnny Kindred…Jonas Kay…it couldn’t be.
“You seem overexcited, Ms. Dupré,” the waiter said, unruffled. “Perhaps I should show madam to her room?”
“What? Me alone with the…” I got up from the table.
“Alone with the Laramie Ripper?” said the waiter. His eyes brimmed with an exquisite sadness. “Ah no, madam…that was another person…and another time, so long ago. Such terrible crimes! To think some people think that I…I am just a foolish, harmless old man, Ms. Dupré.” He came to me and put his hand on my shoulder. “I wouldn’t hurt a soul.” His hand was cold as the snow outside.
“Preston, you’d better escort her as well,” La Loge said.
He came to me. I stood between them. Between Scylla and Charybdis. The two glared at each other. There was an old animosity between them. I felt like an intruder.
“Come on, Carrie,” Preston said. Briefly he touched my other shoulder. His hand was as warm as James’s had been icy. It made me tingle. I remembered more of our lovemaking than I cared to. He’d been angry that night. I left with him just to annoy Wilbur Hart. I remembered a drive-in. And him thrusting and thrusting like a machine. “Bitch,” he’d called me, “white fucking Anglo-Saxon fucking bitch.” I’d been turned on, in a way, but afterward I felt abused and I ached inside.
I twisted myself free of both of them. “I can walk myself,” I said. “I’m not entirely helpless, you know.”
“I forgot,” Preston said softly, “you being, like, liberated and all.”
“I shall lead the way, madam,” James said. “If Mr. Grumiaux would care to take up the rear?”
Sterling La Loge was chuckling over his coffee as we left. I’m not going to let them make me feel this stupid again, I swore to myself as I started down the corridor, trying to keep pace with the clockwork footsteps of the Laramie Ripper.
* * *
We took an elevator to the fourth floor. We took passageway after passageway. We turned into another wing of the institute, the floor heavily carpeted, the walls intricately carved old wood. Although no madmen screamed and no chains clanked, the air seemed heavier here. Maybe it was the smell of the oily, polished wood. At least I was beginning to feel the brooding oppression I had expected. Clearly this part of the institute had been around since Victorian times. We said nothing, but I caught Preston and James glaring strangely at each other more than once.
“I’ll never be able to find my way back,” I said. My tone was light, but my unease was real.
“Don’t worry,” Preston said. “If you need help, there’s an intercom in your room.…”
We turned a corner. James opened a door; I stepped inside.
“…and anyhow, I’ll be nearby. This week anyway. Next week it’s back to my other job on the reservation.”
A cozy room…peeling wallpaper, a design of primroses and carnations…a view of the snow. My luggage was waiting for me. I couldn’t wait to unpack and settle in.
There was a mirror on the nightstand. As I looked into it, I saw that the old man was studying me. I only half believed that he was the Laramie Ripper. His face was a mass of wrinkles. His eyes seemed soulless.
But as I watched his face it seemed to shift.…
I started to scream but nothing came. I watched. The furrows in I his brow smoothened. His cheeks stopped sagging. He seemed to be weeping. I turned around. His features were already freezing back into a mask of old age. But in the few seconds before the butler’s persona took over, I heard the voice of a small child. It could not have come from the old man, but it had. It was a voice all innocence and longing, and it whispered, “Speranza.”
I started to answer, almost as though he had called me by name. I stopped myself. The child had gone completely; James Karney was standing stiffly, with his nose in the air.
“Happens all the time,” Preston said ruefully. “Looks like magic, but it’s just this incredible control of the facial muscles. He is all those people. You should see it in slow motion. Reckon you will. Film in the archives. Just like magic.”
James Karney glared at him.
“You can’t talk like that!” I said. “It’s not like he wasn’t there. He’s a human being, too, even though—”
“He’s a fucking murderer. Guys like him, they shouldn’t be put away, they should be shot, man.”
 The old man stood at the door. “Sir,” he said quietly, “Jonas Kay was shot. He’s dead. We lulled him, together, Johnny and James and Jeffrey and Jonathan…and Dr. La Loge. Why do you go on speaking of such terrible things?” And the little boy in him said, “Speranza,” and disappeared once more.
I was alone with Preston.
I didn’t look at him. I went straight to the window and looked out at the snow, hoping he would go away.
“You can’t stare at the snow forever,” Preston said softly.
He came up to me. Stood behind me. I could feel his breath and smell him, axle grease and sweat and mud and musk and leather. “Don’t touch me,” I said, “don’t, don’t…not yet.” I knew that it would happen, knew that I couldn’t escape him. I was remembering more and more of that night. It was beginning to mean more and more to me. “I’m afraid.”
“Bitch,” he said. But not angrily.
I let him touch me. Very lightly. His lips brushed the nape of my neck. His lips were chill. I shuddered. He held me more tightly while I looked out at the moonlit snowscape. He crushed me against him, his stubble rasping my cheeks. Stonily I watched the snow.
Suddenly I saw—
Eyes. Red eyes, burning against the white—
I screamed. Twisted away from him. He shouted after me, “What’s the matter? I ain’t good enough for you anymore?” and I just pointed dumbly at the window—
“Fuckin’ psychopath,” he said. He turned toward the door. The door slammed shut. I heard footsteps. “Oughta chain him up tonight, he’s restless. Oughta tie him down and pump him full of Thorazine.”
“Was it him?” I said. He tried to touch me again, but the desire I had felt was gone, gone completely. “I’m not saying no,” I said, “but—”
“You’re saying no.”
“Well, for now—” There was something disarming about him. “But I want to know if it was him. I mean—”
“The Laramie Ripper?” Preston laughed, a dry, comfortless laugh. “Dr. La Loge is right…he really is harmless now. But if you want, I’ll arrange to have him locked in for the night. In case he decides to stake out the shower.”
“That’s not funny. Those eyes…they were bright red! They seemed to be on fire! They weren’t…they weren’t human. Am I being too melodramatic? For God’s sake, I’ve been on the road for so long, I’m tired…you and the doctor have been screwing with my mind all evening.”
“Carrie, this book you’re wanting to write is gonna give you nightmares.”
“I’m strong enough to face them,” I said. I was young then.
He left me alone at last.
I ran to the door and bolted it shut. I didn’t turn out the light. I didn’t undress. I just lay down on the bed, afraid to close my eyes. But in the end I did. And I didn’t dream of mad slashers. I dreamed of surfing.
Surfing.…
Red eyes, submerged, glowing like watery gemstones.
And once, behind the shatter of the waves, a child’s cry penetrated my dream. It was a plaintive, despairing voice…the voice of a child who has witnessed something too terrible to describe, too brutal to comprehend…a voice that whispered, over and over, the word “Speranza.”
In the dream the oceans turned to ice and my surfboard became a weather-beaten Impala careening through snow without end.
 
Copyright © 1989 by Somtow Sucharitkul