Bethany's Sin Page 29

  “I’m fine,” he said quickly.

  “You look a little pale,” she said.

  “I felt dizzy for a minute. I’m okay now.”

  She paused, her hand still gripping his shoulder. “I hope so. I was just on my way to tell you that your wife has some more tests scheduled for this afternoon. It might be best if you and your daughter went home.” She smiled, dropped her hand. “I’m sorry because I know how much you enjoy visiting with her.”

  “Will she be able to come home on Monday?”

  “I think we can safely say that by Monday she’ll be at home on McClain Terrace,” the woman said.

  Evan looked into her eyes. Haunted. Themiscrya was haunted.

  The smile stayed in place. “We’ll be running our last tests in the morning. Mrs. Reid may be under some medication, so it may be best if you…”

  Haunted. Themiscrya. Bethany’s Sin?

  “…just plan on calling Monday morning. If anything comes up, I’ll let you know then. All right?”

  He nodded. Haunted. Both haunted. Themiscrya, then. Bethany’s Sin, now.

  “Good,” Dr. Mabry said.

  Evan ran a trembling hand across his face.

  “You look tired, Mr. Reid. I have something you could take that would help you…”

  The queen, Laurie was saying inside his skull; the real queen. She lives in a big castle…

  “…sleep,” Dr. Mabry said.

  Dr. Drago.

  “Can I prescribe some of those pills for you?” she asked him.

  He finally was able to focus on her. “No,” he said. “I’m fine. I’d better go get Laurie now, and take her home.”

  “Yes.” Shifting shadows across her face. “That might be best.”

  Evan thanked her, turned away, walked back to Kay’s room. “We’re leaving now,” he told the little girl, and took her hand.

  “Where did you go?” Kay asked him.

  “Just down the hall.” He stood framed in the doorway, Laurie beside him. “Don’t worry about me,” he said, managing a tight smile. “I’m not going off my rocker.”

  “I never said you were,” she replied nervously.

  “You didn’t have to. But I want you to know one thing, whatever happens. I love you. I always have, and I always will. You’re a strong, special person; God knows, you’re a stronger person than I’ve ever been. Just remember that I love you, all right?”

  “Evan…” Kay began, but it was too late. Her husband and child were gone.

  In the car on the drive home, Laurie sat very still on the seat next to her father. “I hope Mommy gets all better,” she said. “She’s so sick.”

  “She’ll be better,” Evan said hollowly. Home by Monday, Dr. Mabry had said. Yes. But would it truly be the Kay Reid he’d just left in that clinic room?

  “Mommy acts funny,” Laurie said softly. “Will she be okay when she gets home?”

  He reached over and pressed his daughter close to him. Tiny objects had begun to glitter behind his eyes. Silverish and yellow. Stained with bits of dirt, like Eric’s dead grin when he turns his face from the fire. Evan accelerated slightly; they’d turned onto McClain Terrace, and now he drove past their house without even glancing at it.

  “Daddy!” Laurie said. “You’re passing home!”

  “Well,” he said easily, “I thought we’d drive out. to the Westbury Mall, princess. I thought maybe you could use an ice-cream cone.”

  “Oh, yes. I could. I wish Mommy could be with us.”

  “I want to get something from the hardware store, too,” he said. And then he was quiet as they turned away from Bethany’s Sin. Because he’d already decided what had to be done. For the sake of his sanity. For the sake of knowing whether the Hand of Evil had scuttled spiderlike through Bethany’s Sin or if it had grasped his mind in a death grip and there would never, never be any escaping it again. For the sake of knowing whether either the things inhabiting Bethany’s Sin or he should die beneath God’s stern, wrathful eye.

  What the hell are human teeth doing lying around in the landfill? Neely Ames had asked him at the Cock’s Crow.

  Thank God the moon would be out tonight, Evan thought. There would be enough light to dig by.

  25

  * * *

  Mrs. Bartlett’s

  Kitchen

  “MRS. BARTLETT?” Evan asked the matronly, gray-haired woman who answered the door.

  “That’s right.” She stood half-in, half-out of the door, as if she suspected he were some kind of brush or appliance salesman.

  “I’m Evan Reid,” he said. “I’m sure you don’t know me, but I live over on McClain Terrace. Doesn’t a man named Neely Ames have a room here?”

  “Mr. Ames? Yes, he does.”

  “Is he in right now?”

  She glanced down at her wristwatch. “No, I don’t believe he is. You didn’t see his truck parked around back, did you?”

  Evan shook his head.

  “Neely doesn’t get back from work until after six o’clock; he works for the village, you know. Sometimes it’s way after seven when I hear his truck drive up. Can I give him a message for you?”

  Now it was Evan’s turn to look at his watch. Five fifteen. “I’d like to wait, if I could. it’s really very important.”

  “The sheriff might be able to tell you where Neely is.” Her eyes examined him from head to toe.

  “I’d probably have better luck catching him here,” Evan said. “May I come in?”

  Mrs. Bartlett smiled, stepped back, and opened the door wider for him. “Surely. Oh, that sun’s still ferocious out there, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is,” he said, stepping across the threshold into the boardinghouse. Instantly he was met by a musty odor, the combination of life smells and heat bound up behind the walls of this house. There was a large sitting room with a brown-and-green Oriental carpet thrown across a hardwood floor, chairs and a sofa arranged around a scorched brick fireplace, lamps on low tables, a few Sears prints hanging on the walls. Sunlight streamed whitely through curtains drawn across a high bay window. “Please sit down,” Mrs. Bartlett said, motioning toward a chair. “I was just mixing some lemonade in the kitchen. Let me get you a glass.”

  “No, thanks. I’m fine as I am.”

  She sat down across from him; her legs were varicose veined and puffing beneath grayish-looking hose. “Are you a friend of Neely’s?”

  “In a way.”

  “Oh?” She raised an eyebrow. “I don’t recall Neely saying he’d made any friends here in the village.”

  “We met one day over on McClain Terrace,” he explained. “And then we ran into each other at the Cock’s Crow.”

  Mrs. Bartlett frowned. “Oh, that’s a nasty place, that Cock’s Crow. Shame on you two decent men to be going up there. It’s got a bad reputation, I’ll tell you.”

  Evan shrugged. “It’s not all that bad.”

  “I can’t understand those places where adult men go to act like children. Seems to me like a waste of time.” She fanned her face with a Good Housekeeping magazine she’d picked up from the sofa beside her. “Goodness, it’s been hot these last few days. Unmerciful hot. Going to get hotter, too. Always does around here at the last of the summer. Gives us one more good bite and then it’s gone into autumn. Sure I can’t get you anything to drink?”

  He smiled, shook his head.

  “No telling when Neely might get home,” Mrs. Bartlett said after a few minutes. “Maybe he’s going out to the Cock’s Crow again; maybe he won’t be home until after midnight. Why don’t you just leave a message for him, or I could have him call you?”

  “I need to talk to him in person.”

  She grunted. “Must be something serious, then.” She gave him a little sly smile. “Man-talk, is it? Things us women don’t have any business knowing?”

  “No,” he said politely, “that’s not quite it.”

  “Oh, I know all about menfolk’s secrets.” She laughed and shook her head.
“Just like little boys.”

  “How long have you been running this boarding house?” Evan asked her.

  “The better part of six years now. Of course, I don’t do a whopping big business. But you’d be surprised how many traveling salesmen and insurance men come through Bethany’s Sin. There’s a Holiday Inn about ten miles north of here, on past the Cock’s Crow, but I’ll tell you they charge a lot for a room, and here I throw in meals with the rent. So I do all right.”

  “I’m sure you do. Does your husband work in the village?”

  “My husband? No, I’m afraid my husband passed away soon after we moved here.”

  “I’m sorry.” He was watching her carefully now.

  “He had a bad heart,” Mrs. Bartlett said. “Dr. Mabry told him he needed one of those pacemaker things, but he just waited too long. Thank God he died peacefully, in his bed one night.”

  Evan stood up from his chair, walked over to the window, and moved the curtain aside. Sunlight stung him. The street was deserted. Houses on the other side: neat boxes of wood and brick, neat lawns, smooth, clean carports. Evan turned away from the window, his cheeks tingling from the touch of the sun, and saw on the fire place mantel a group of photographs. The first one was a wedding photo, snapped in front of a church, showing an attractive dark-haired woman kissing a stocky man in an ill-fitting powder blue tuxedo. Everyone was smiling. In the second photograph the woman was lying in bed, holding in the folds of a blanket a newborn baby; a shadow—the man’s?—had fallen across a wall. The same woman stood holding a baby—the same one or a different one?—on the neatly trimmed lawn of a white house in the third photograph. Something about this picture disturbed Evan; he stepped forward, picked it up. The woman’s eyes were harder, sunken deeper into her head; her mouth was smiling, but those eyes mirrored a soul in which all smiles had faded. There was something else in this photograph, too: an object just on the edge of it, beside the woman. And staring at it Evan realized it was a hand clutching an armrest. There was a slice of wheel rim. A few spokes. A shadow.

  “That’s my daughter, Emily,” Mrs. Bartlett said. “Em for short. She’s a fine young woman.”

  “This is your grandchild, then?” he asked, holding up the photograph.

  “My granddaughter, Jenny. She’ll be eight months old in October. Jenny’s my second grandchild. See that other picture, the first one on the mantel?” Evan reached for it, and Mrs. Bartlett nodded. “That’s it. Her name’s Karen, and she’ll be two years old in April. Do you have any children of your own?”

  “A little girl named Laurie,” Evan said; he replaced the photographs as they’d been. “Where does your daughter live?”

  “Just a few streets over from here. She and her husband, Ray, have a beautiful little house on Warwick Lane.” She fanned herself with the magazine. “Oh, that sun’s made it so hot in this house! I’ll thank God when it’s autumn, I’ll tell you! This year I won’t mind the blizzards. Are you sure I can’t get you a good glass of lemonade with plenty of ice?”

  He checked his wristwatch again. “All right,” he said. “I’d like that.”

  “Good.” She smiled, rose from the sofa, disappeared toward the back of the house. He heard a cupboard opening, then another.

  Evan turned toward the mantel, stared for a few minutes at the photographs. How simple and normal they looked. But dear God what a terrible story they told. He could look into the eyes of the woman in that third picture and see the change that had come over her. The same change now enfolding Kay. Evan left the mantel, peered back through the corridor that connected the front of the house with the back; there was a narrow stairway leading up to a series of closed doors. The boarders’ rooms. At the end of the corridor a door stood open, and Evan could see Mrs. Bartlett moving around back there. He could see shelves, a stove, potted plants in a window, wallpaper with apples and oranges and cherries on it. Glass clinked. He moved quietly along the corridor toward the kitchen.

  An instant before Mrs. Bartlett realized he was there, Evan saw bottles and vials in an open cabinet. All unmarked, they held bluish green, brown, grayish liquids, viscous-looking. There were solid substances in a few of the vials: white powder, something that looked like wet ashes, something else that looked like shards of charcoal. Beside the glass of lemonade that Mrs. Bartlett was laboriously stirring was a vial of slightly yellowish liquid. The cap was off. Mrs. Bartlett spun around; her eyes widened. But in the next second she composed herself. Her mouth smiling tightly, she reached up ever so casually and closed the cupboard. “I hope you don’t mind artificial sweetener,” she said, standing with the vial behind her.

  “Not, not at all,” Evan said.

  “You must be thirstier than you thought. I was going to bring it out to you.” She stirred again, dropped in a couple of cubes from an ice tray, held the glass out to him. “Here we are.” When he took it she walked past him back toward the sitting room; he followed her, wondering what sort of hellish substance she’d mixed into it. He could trust none of them now, none of them. Perhaps this old, unassuming woman was the true druggist of Bethany’s Sin, mixing strange and ancient elixirs here in this house, in that kitchen with the tacky wallpaper. What would she concoct in there? Potions for strength? Sleep potions? Aphrodisiacs? Remedies passed down from the Amazonian culture, liquids distilled from night-black roots and the marrow of men’s bones? And if he drank this brew, what would it do to him? Make him physically ill? Make him sleep? Or simply pierce his brain, drawing from it the desire to defend himself against them when they finally came for him?

  In the other room she sat down on the sofa again, smiled, fanned herself, waited for him to drink. Her eyes gave no indication that she realized he’d seen. “Hot,” she said. “That’s all it is, just plain hot.”

  Evan heard the squealing of aged brakes from outside. Looking through the window again, he saw Neely Ames’s battered truck pulling up at the curb. “Well,” he said, setting the full glass of lemonade aside. “I think Mr. Ames is home.”

  “He’ll be using the rear entrance,” the woman said quietly. “There are stairs up to his room.” Her eyes glittered; she glanced from him to the glass and back again.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Bartlett,” Evan said at the front door. “I appreciate your hospitality.”

  “Surely, Mr. Reid.” The woman rose, winced at pain in her legs, and approached him. “Please come back and sit some other time, will you?”

  “I will,” he said, and then he was out the door and walking toward the pickup truck. Ames, his T-shirt soaked with sweat and his face burned raw by the sun, swung out of the cab and onto the ground. He looked up, saw Evan, and continued rubbing lawnmower oil out of his hands with a stained rag.

  “’Evening,” Neely said; there were dark hollows under his eyes, and his cheeks were gaunt. He massaged a kinked muscle in his right shoulder. “What are you doing over here?”

  “Waiting for you,” Evan said. He turned his head toward the house. The curtain at the window moved very slightly. “I have to ask your help in something.”

  “My help?” He took off his glasses, cleaned the lenses with a dry spot on his shirt. “Doing what?”

  “Why don’t we go up to your room? It might be better.” Evan motioned toward the rear of the house.

  “Excuse the mess,” Neely said when they were upstairs. “Just throw those damned clothes out of that chair and sit down. You want a beer? Sorry, but they’ll be warm.”

  “No, thanks.” Evan sat down.

  Neely shrugged, pulled the last remaining Schlitz from a carton on his night table, and popped it open. Drank, closed his eyes, sat down in a chair, and threw his legs up on the bed. “Christ. Jesus Holy Christ I burned my ass off out there today. God Almighty!” He drank again from the can.

  Evan glanced around the room. There was a guitar case propped against a wall; what looked like songs on sheets of paper lying on a desk; an open, empty suitcase on the floor.

  “So,” Neely said after a
nother moment. “What can I do for you?”

  “Is that door locked?” Evan motioned toward it.

  “Yes.” He looked at Evan quizzically. “Why?”

  Evan leaned forward, watching the man’s face. “Do you still have those teeth you showed me? The ones you found in the landfill?”

  “No. I threw them away.”

  “Did you ever tell the sheriff about them?”

  “Was going to. Decided he’d only blow hot air my way. Besides, I started figuring that maybe there’s a reasonable explanation for them. Maybe they came out of some dentist’s garbage can; hell, maybe somebody got his jaw busted and spit his teeth out. I don’t really care anymore.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Evan said. “You don’t believe that any more than I do.” He glanced over at the suitcase. “Are you planning on leaving?”

  Neely drank from the can, crushed it, tossed it into the wastebasket. “Tomorrow morning,” he said. “I’m settling with Mrs. Bartlett tonight.”

  “Does she know yet?”

  He shook his head.

  “How about Wysinger?”

  “Fuck that bastard,” Neely snarled. “That son of a bitch has given me nothing but grief since I’ve been here. Today was payday.” He patted his back pocket. “This will take me a long way from Bethany’s Sin.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “North. Into New England. Who knows? I’m going to try to find myself a nice, dark little club to play my music in. If I can still pick a guitar with these damned blisters on my hands. No. I’m through here. I’ll be heading out at daylight.”

  “Finding those teeth in the landfill didn’t have anything to do with this decision, did it?”

  “Hell, no. People throw away every kind of thing. More junk than you can imagine.” He paused, looked into Evan’s face. “Maybe it did. Maybe. Like I told you before, at the Cock’s Crow, I’ve got a bad feeling about this village. I want to get out of here. You probably can’t understand what I’m talking about, but I feel like…like something’s coming closer to me. And I don’t mind telling you that it scares the shit out of me.” He reached for a pack of cigarettes from the night table, lit one, and inhaled. “I’m not going to stay and wait for it.”