In Chapter 2, Dusty came to a paragraph that began with the name
Shock triggered a reflex action that nearly sent the book flying out of his hands. He held on to it, hut lost his place.
Flipping through the text in search of his page. he was sure that his eves had tricked him. Some phrase containing four syllables similar to those in that Asian name must have made the connection for him, causing him to misread.
Dusty located the second chapter, the page. the paragraph, and there indisputably was the name in clear black type, spelled just as Skeet had spelled it over and over again on the pages of the notepad:
The name had caused the kid to drop instantly into that strange dissociate state, as though he were hypnotized, and now it gave Dusty a case of the whim — whams that left the nape of his neck more corrugated than corduroy. Even the singularly calming influence of the waiting-room decor could not raise any warmth along his spine, which was as cold as a thermometer in a meat locker.
Using one finger as a bookmark, he got to his feet and paced the small room, trying to work off sufficient nervous energy to be able to hold the book still enough to read.
Why was Skeet so tormented and so affected by a name that was nothing more than that of a character in a work of fiction?
Considering the kid’s taste in literature, the groaning shelves of fantasy novels in his apartment, he probably hadn’t even read this thriller. There was nary a dragon in it, neither elf nor wizard.
After several circuits of the room, beginning to understand the frustration of a zoo-kept panther, Dusty returned to his chair, even though he still felt as if all the fluid in his spine had collected, like chilled mercury, in the small of his back.
He continued reading.
Sloppy work, this decapitation, obviously performed with the wrong cutting tool.
“The victim’s eyes are a point of interest here, Martie. How wide they appear. The upper lids crimped back so far by shock that they almost look as though they were cut off. Such mystery in his gaze, such an otherworldly quality, as though in the moment of death, he had been granted a glimpse of what awaited him beyond.”
She looked into the pitiable eyes in the photograph. Blinked. Blinked.
Paging to the next pink Post-it, the doctor said, “This one is of special importance, Martie. Study it well.”
She lowered her head slightly toward the page.
“You and Dusty will eventually be required to mutilate a woman in a similar manner to this, and you will arrange the various body parts in a tableau as clever as this one. The victim here is a girl, just fourteen years old, but the two of you will be dealing with a somewhat older person.”
The doctor’s interest was so gripped by the photograph that he didn’t see the first two tears until they had tracked most of the way down Martie’s face. Looking up, catching sight of those twin pearls, he was astonished.
“Martie, you are supposed to be in that deepest of deep places in your mind, far down in the chapel. Tell me whether or not that is where you are.”
“Yes. Here. The chapel.”
With her personality this deeply repressed, she should not have been able to respond emotionally either to anything that she witnessed or to anything that was done to her. As with Susan, the doctor should have had to bring her out from the chapel and up a flight or two of stairs, figuratively speaking, to a higher level of consciousness, before she would be capable of any reaction as savory as this.
“Tell me what’s wrong, Martie.”
Her voice was barely louder than a breath: “Such pain.”
“You’re in pain?”
“Her.”
“Tell me who.”
As more tears welled and shimmered in her eyes, she pointed to the rearranged young girl in the photograph.
Puzzled, Ahriman said, “It’s just a photograph.”
“Of a real person,” she murmured.
“She’s been dead a long time.”
“She was alive once.”
Martie’s lacrimal glands were evidently fine specimens. Her lacrimal sacs emptied into the lacrimal lakes, which reached flood stage, and two more droplets sluiced a little misery out of her eyes.
Ahriman was reminded of Susan’s final tear, squeezed out in the last minute of her life. Dying, of course, must be a stressful experience, even when one perishes quietly in a state of extreme personality submersion. Martie was not dying. Yet, these tears.
“You didn’t know this girl,” the doctor persisted.
Barely a whisper: “No.”
“She might have deserved this.”
“No.”
“She might have been a teenage prostitute.” Softly, bleakly: “Doesn’t matter.”
