The Bad Box Page 6

  “Now, we all know that Professor Bellman is famous for his dramatic lectures, but by all accounts this one quite out-Heroded all his others. Almost in the nature, I gather, of one of those Elizabethan melodramas, Titus Andronicus let us say. Perfectly incomprehensible, at least to the bewildered undergraduates, but replete with menacing phrases and ominous declarations, all delivered in the most thunderous voice, a terrible volcanic rumble as if Vulcan himself were standing before them. And as the great man orated, he seemed to become transfixed by one particular young lady who sat in the front row, a mere innocent child, possibly even an unsullied virgin.”

  Howard let out a thin, deliberate stream of smoke, contemplating this unlikely possibility with obvious pleasure. Finney began to chortle again.

  “As I say, Peter seemed to address his every sulfurous word to this young lady, drawing closer and closer to her as he spoke, until he was just inches in front of her—his gaping fly not a foot from her tender face. Holding her eyes with his, he reached out and stroked the side of her face, no doubt seeking to draw her attention more closely to his words. And then . . . and then his hand, perhaps desiring even more astute attention, slid down her slender neck, and from thence to her prim young bosom, slipping inside of her shirt and even, I am told, inside of her brassiere to kindle the ardent flames of scholarship there. The wholesome maiden was for a moment too mortified to move. But then her Christian instincts took over, and she leaped from her seat and delivered a swift knee to his crotch. His agony, I am told, was quite pathetic to behold.”

  As Howard had neared the end of his story, the gleeful expression had gradually faded from his face. Now he sat and smoked with the same brooding expression that Sarah wore.

  “I suppose it’s really not so very amusing,” he admitted.

  “Every Friday she hunts for a man,” Paul Finney said. “I wonder . . . do you think she has such a drastic effect on all of them as she had on Bellman?”

  “Perhaps she’s discovered a lost chapter of the Kama Sutra,” Howard suggested.

  Sarah shot him an impatient look. “I’m not so sure it’s a laughing matter.” She told them what Darnell and Esther had said.

  “Muffled cries,” Howard repeated. “Dragging sounds. And now Peter behaving like a madman. God, I would love to know what went on up there.”

  Finney stared at his empty glass. “So would I,” he said. “And this Friday, I believe I shall endeavor to find out.”

  ***

  Peter Bellman stared into his refrigerator. Not much there: he hadn’t been to the grocery store since his Awakening. Such details as grocery stores and gas bills were hard to focus on, once the big truths were before you.

  Still, eating was important, he mused, and he was going to have to learn to attend to the mundane necessities. After the Pentecost had scorched them with tongues of flame, the disciples still must have needed to bother with their purses, their larders, the condition of their sandals. Revelation unfortunately didn’t do your laundry for you.

  He found some cheese, salami, an onion, and a few pieces of bread. He sat at the kitchen table and began to eat, not bothering to make a sandwich. He would bite a hunk from the cheese, stick a piece of salami in his mouth, then a piece of bread, and chew. The salami had become slimy and the bread had green spots, but this didn’t bother him. The most complex and interesting flavors derived from aging and fermentation. Only fools would pay a premium for Stilton but throw away their moldy Swiss.

  He wore nothing but a pair of dark glasses. He had hung blankets over the windows and the sliding glass doors to make the place as dark as possible. His eyes still hadn’t readjusted to light. Fine with him. Now he knew light for what it was—a distraction from the truths that danced and walked through the dark for those with eyes to see.

  The truths of night were all that mattered, Peter reflected, his mouth stuffed with rancid meat and bread. But the mundane details were part of the scheme, and they mustn’t be ignored. He had been careless with details all week, clumsy like a weight lifter not yet used to his new strength.

  It didn’t bother him that he had been excused from his teaching duties for the remainder of the term. Good—he had more important work to do. But he had been foolish to evangelize to his class—as if those callow children would have ears to hear. One girl had given the appearance of understanding, but of course it had been a pretense, pretending to be all ears just to get a good grade, no doubt. She might keep up that pretense her whole life, but to what purpose? In the end, in her box, she would be alone with her F.

  Peter washed down his food with a mouthful of scotch, drinking straight from the bottle. Next to last bottle—tomorrow he needed to go to the liquor store. That was one detail he wouldn’t neglect.

  When the sun went down he carried the bottle with him to the backyard and climbed into the hot tub. He sat in the tepid water in the deepening twilight with his sunglasses on and drank his scotch and meditated on the profound secrets of the shadows.

  He thought of the Solitary One who hid in shadows. The Solitary One was a motionless dance of dark enigmas, a sleeping scripture of whispered riddles, the living dead who ruled the living, an inky blot of black fury locked away in a secret place, his anger crackling like midnight lightning in a frenzy to be free. Soon he would be, and then woe to all those who were not his friends!

  Something floating on the water brushed up against him. Peter had to reach around and touch it before he remembered. Pocahontas had gotten on his nerves for the last time. He recalled with pleasure holding the cat beneath the water and watching its legs kick. Now it was as stiff as a board. He scratched the wet fur beneath the cat’s chin and felt himself getting an erection.

  “What’s the matter, widdle puddy cat?” he murmured. “Do you miss Sarah? Don’t worry, we’ll go see her soon.”

  Chapter Ten

  Even after his limbs went numb, Professor Paul Finney still believed it was a game. He was used to strange games.

  He knew he was no longer an attractive man, his face having gone to seed and his body to fat. The promises of his younger days—a brilliant reputation as a scholar, a loving marriage—had proven to be lies, and the only redemption for his disappointments he had found not in the chalice but in the bottle. Part of his paycheck went automatically to his ex-wife, now living in Oregon with his three children and a slender, dapper man whom Paul had once trusted as a brother. The other part went to the bartender.

  Men with his unimpressive assets sometimes had to play strange games or else go home alone. Finney had played them all, BDSM complete with leather and cuffs, dress-up games with the woman done up like Bo Peep sans panties, or with him squeezing his girth into a servant’s livery many sizes too small. He had applied the lash to pink rumps that during the workweek sat in secretary’s chairs; he had pretended to sneak like the midnight rambler through the bedroom window of a bored housewife who pretended to be atwitter with fear; he had even, God help him, donned the collar of a priest to hear the randy confessions of a fifty-year-old frump who had all the while tested the good father’s chastity in various inventive ways.

  He had developed a tolerance for kinkiness, but little taste for it. What Finney most ardently craved in the privacy of his mind was the most extraordinary kink of them all: a devoted, loving, monogamous, ordinary relationship with one lifelong mate. But for some reason it pleased the fates to deny him this extraordinary kink and to make him instead a pudgy jester in the monotonous house of games.

  Earlier tonight he had parked beside Sarah Temple’s apartment building and watched for her upstairs neighbor to come down. He had waited an hour or more, feeling foolish and wanting a drink, but determined not to back out of his plan. He was doing it because he had drunkenly boasted to Howard and Sarah that he would. And because he was hoping the evening would provide a good story. A good story would ensure that for a week or two people would want to sit at his table and drink with him. And most of all, he was doing it because he wanted to get la
id.

  The woman had come down at last, and even from his car he could see that she was a looker. She got on a bus, and Finney followed it until the woman got out and entered a bar. He found a parking place, followed her in, and offered to buy her a drink before any of the other men had a chance. There was an odd cast to her face that made her even more beautiful, something childish and mysterious in her smile that teased a deep nerve in Finney’s desire.

  One drink did it; Angel was obviously out to find a man and apparently wasn’t too particular. They had gone back to her apartment, a starkly bare place with a bad smell. She gave him a drink and before long she cajoled him into pulling off his clothes, even though revealing his flabby body was always an embarrassment for him. Angel sat on the sofa fully dressed, teasing him and making him turn in silly circles so that she could see every ounce of his fat.

  And then Finney’s legs had gone numb, and he had fallen weakly to the floor.

  At first it seemed to be just another game, and he lay there barely able to move in a heap on the living room floor, feeling absurd, wishing in his heart that he were instead lying in the arms of a faithful wife, in a bed that required no games to make it exciting.

  He saw Angel leaning over him, smiling.

  “A nice strong sedative to calm you down,” she said. “You’ll stay awake but your muscles will feel like wet noodles for a while. You may find breathing a bit difficult for the next few hours, especially with all the booze in your system, but if you concentrate you should be able to manage it.”

  She was right: breathing was becoming a chore. He tried to yell for help but was able to squeeze out no more than a sickly moan.

  She left the room and returned with chains and a set of handcuffs. She bound his arms behind his back with the cuffs, wrapped his legs with a chain, and sat him up with his back against the sofa so she could wrap another chain around his chest and abdomen. She locked the chains with padlocks.

  She dragged him out of the living room, down the short hallway, and into the dark bedroom. Except it wasn’t really a bedroom because there was no bed or dresser, just some unlit black candles stuck in wooden candle holders that surrounded the one and only furnishing, waiting there in the center of the floor for him with its lid wide open.

  A casket.

  Angel dragged him up next to it until his head leaned against the side. The wood was weathered and rough, as if the thing had been buried in the ground at one time. Then she grabbed him under the armpits and lifted. He was heavy, and it took some doing to get him inside.

  For a while his shoulders lay over the top, his head dangling partway in, and he saw that the cloth lining was torn and filthy. It stank horribly of piss, vomit, shit, and decayed flesh. Then he was inside, flat on his back, and he could see three steel hasps bolted to the lid, heavy enough to lock the casket like a safe.

  His panic was larger than he was; he hadn’t enough room inside to hold all of it, but there was no way to let it out. He struggled to scream, but his throat was paralyzed like his limbs, and only a ghastly groan emerged.

  He saw her looking down at him.

  “You’ll be able to scream after the drug wears off,” she said. “The coffin lining will muffle the sound, so feel free to indulge yourself. But be careful not to use up all your air. There are only six small air holes, down there by your feet, so choose your screams carefully. Don’t waste them calling out to God. God shuns the darkness. He’s no help when you’re locked in the bad box.”

  Angel leaned forward and kissed him tenderly on the lips.

  “But there is a friend in there,” she said.

  She pushed her long blond hair out of her face and gazed at him for several minutes, an oddly gentle expression on her face, curious, probing, as if trying to read the message of horror written in his eyes.

  “Befriend the one who can help you,” she said. “Remember, in the box black always wins.”

  The lid closed and he heard the three steel hasps snapping shut. After a long while Finney’s limbs and vocal cords regained their vigor, and he screamed and thrashed like a terrified child calling for his mother.

  And then eventually the darkness responded.

  Chapter Eleven

  Sunday afternoon Howard Goldwin called Sarah. “Sare, have you heard anything from Paul Finney?”

  “No. Why should I?”

  “No one has. He promised me he would call Saturday with all the lurid details. I mean about his cockamamie plan to debauch your mysterious neighbor.”

  “I saw him staggering up there Friday night,” she said. “Stupid. Very dumb.”

  “Is he still up there?”

  “Probably. You know what Esther said. They come down Sunday night . . . if they come down.”

  “You don’t really think that . . . that . . .”

  “Dunno what I think. You know what his car looks like?”

  “Yes. A pile of blue dents with four wheels. Let’s see, I believe it used to be a Buick.”

  “Just a minute.” Sarah stepped into the sunroom and looked at the parked cars. “Think maybe I see it,” she said.

  Howard sighed. “There’s not a woman on this planet who could keep Paul out of a bar so long, unless she owns a still. Please call me if you see him leave, my love.”

  Sarah had been feeling ashamed of herself all weekend. Thursday at the bar she had made the motions of trying to talk Finney out of his plan, but not very hard. In fact she had been more interested in learning what went on up there than in talking a foolish drunk out of a bad idea. Friday night she had watched from her window like a voyeur while Finney climbed the fire escape. Now she was disgusted with herself and worried.

  After dinner, she decided to visit Darnell. Maybe he had heard something from across the hall. Maybe his monkish serenity would take the edge off her nervousness. She climbed to the hot upstairs landing and knocked. Darnell opened his door a few inches and gazed out with a wary look and no greeting.

  “Hi,” she said. “Like some company?”

  He let her in without a word, staring for a moment at the door across the landing before shutting and barring his door. This time he didn’t offer her coffee. He sat silently in his wooden armchair and stared at his hands folded in front of him. They were squirming slowly.

  “How’ve you been?” she asked.

  “Not well.”

  “I’m sorry. Are you sick?”

  “Just not well.”

  “Maybe I should leave you alone?”

  “No. Stay.”

  “Something I didn’t tell you,” she said. “The guy who was visiting your neighbor last weekend—I know him.”

  Darnell’s hands stopped squirming. “You know him?”

  “I used to live with him. Guess I was sort of eavesdropping when you saw me. That’s not all—I also know the guy who’s there right now.”

  She told him about Paul Finney. Darnell stared at her with astonishment. Tonight his blue eyes looked glacial, arctic.

  “You sent a friend to her?” he asked. “To that . . . gorgon? I find this hard to believe. You have no idea what you’re dealing with, no idea. You think she’s just a woman like any other.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t know her.”

  He shot her an icy look. “There are ways of knowing other than seeing with your eyes,” he said. “Materialists are idiots. They squint through their peepholes and imagine that the little bit they see is all there is.”

  At first Sarah thought he was castigating her for spying, but as Darnell ranted on she wasn’t so sure.

  “Eyes are just peepholes. So are ears. The brain’s a wonderful device, but mostly it just processes information from the peepholes. Materialists imagine that without our bodies, there’d be no sounds or sights or thoughts. But we all possess a force more powerful than the peeping Toms can imagine.”

  “I don’t see what this has to do with—” Sarah began, but Darnell cut her off.

  “Some people, I tell you, have traveled
outside of their bodies. As we all do when we die. As your brother did. And these people see with stronger eyes, not with peepholes. And they realize that the only reason they ever needed those peepholes was because they were trapped inside their bodies.”

  Darnell placed his hands on his temples and seemed to look at something that wasn’t in the room. This was too much like raving, and Sarah wanted to change the subject. She noticed the chessboard on the coffee table, its neatly placed pieces suspended in the midst of a bloody battle.

  “Do you play often?” she asked.

  “I go to the chess club some evenings,” he answered impatiently. “Usually I just play alone.”

  “That must get monotonous.”

  “On the contrary. It’s very challenging. No matter how well I play, I always lose.”

  Sarah smiled. “But you must also always win, if you’re playing by yourself.”

  He glared at her as if she were impossibly dense. “I always lose,” he said. “I play white. Black always wins.”

  Jeez, she thought. So much for serenity. She stood and said, “I need to get back to work.”

  “Wait.”

  She sat back down, but Darnell didn’t say anything for a while. He studied the chessboard, his hands struggling with each other in a slow, grim contest.

  “One move from checkmate,” he muttered.

  “Really, I have to be going.”

  “She’s getting stronger,” he said quietly. “I live next door to her, and I tell you I can feel her power like poisonous radiation seeping through the walls. It always happens suddenly—one day all of a sudden she’s stronger. It happened again last week.”