As I Die Lying Read online

  I know I have. Every single time.

  We only see what we want to see, only hear what we want to hear. And though this is my autobiography, you maintained the illusion that somehow you were part of the story, that without you this was merely some words on paper. That my life had no meaning until you made your interpretation.

  You know something? I think you’re right.

  So let’s finish it.

  Downtown was desolate. Half of Shady Valley’s shops had closed early because of the weather. Christmas lights spasmed in pulses of green and red from the storefronts, vomiting color onto the snow-covered sidewalks. Decorations sagged from telephone poles, silver-tinseled bells tangled with loose red ribbons. Cars lined the streetsides, cowering under the weight of the storm like mastodons caught by a sudden ice age.

  The roads were completely blanketed, except for twin sets of black stripes made by the few cars that were out. I peered through the windshield, driving mostly by memory as the wipers beat like frozen drumsticks. The surrounding mountains were white, silent, elegant temples, all granite and ice and bare trees. The sun cowered behind the clouds, throwing the sky into early twilight.

  Nearly four inches of snow were on the ground by the time I reached Beth’s apartment. Her building was empty. Most of the people who lived in this section of town were students who had left for the holiday. The whole street seemed dead, but the peace was tense, like those hours just before Christmas morning when the world is ready to explode with song and laughter. Or like a battlefield where armies are waiting for the smoke to clear so they can clash again.

  I let myself in with the key Beth had given me. I flipped the switch, but she must have already had the power turned off. The living room was so cold that I could see my breath, even in the weak light. Cardboard boxes were stacked in one corner near the door. I walked past them to Monique’s old room.

  The emptiness of it taunted me. A shiver crawled across the loops of my intestines. It had to have been a dream. That couldn’t have been us.

  Never us. Only you.

  “No.”

  “She didn’t love us,” Bookworm said. “It was the Insider, making her pretend. Making you pretend, Richard.”

  “You’re right, Bookworm. She could never love us. That was all a trick. Hear that, Insider? We’re not playing your damn game anymore. Take your ball and go home.”

  Richard, my loving, loyal host. My dear faithful servant. My brother. My father. My SON.

  You will do as I say, when I say, no matter what I say.

  “No. You can make me murder. You can make me feel guilty. You can make me hate you. But you can’t make me not love.”

  The Insider was rising fast, poking its orange spears of pain through my flesh. My brain was a cauldron of simmering tar. My Little People were in pain, too. There would be no more hiding under beds and in closets. It was time to clean house.

  Through a crack in the curtains, I saw a pumpkin-colored Volvo wagon pull up to the curb. After a moment, the passenger door opened and an ugly mukluk touched the ground and tapped as if testing for thin ice. Then she stood, her golden-brown hair spilling from the rim of her red toboggan and over the collar of her trench coat. Plumes of mist came out between her pink lips. A dandruff of snow collected on her shoulders as she said something to the driver, who looked a lot like Ted. I would know those horse teeth anywhere.

  The Volvo pulled away and Beth stood looking at my tracks heading up the sidewalk. Her hands were in the pockets of her trench coat. She smiled. She was dreamy beautiful, as if she were being filmed with a soft-focus lens, like Lauren Bacall in “Casablanca,” Vivian Leigh in “Gone With The Wind,” Linda Blair in “The Exorcist.”

  She loves you, Richard. You know what happens to the people who love you.

  I left Monique’s bedroom to its ghosts and cobwebs and met Beth at the door.

  “Hi, handsome.” She threw herself into Loverboy’s arms. “I missed you so much.”

  “Yeah, me, too. I missed you so much I almost died.”

  She kissed my neck and both cheeks and then my lips and I smelled her hair. Hope Hill and Sally Bakken and just-baked freshness. I held her at arm’s length and looked into those swimmingly sea-green eyes.

  “We’re going to be so happy together.” She kissed me again and I didn’t fight it. Finally, she came up for air.

  “Tell me about the secret,” I said.

  “Good things are worth waiting for.”

  “The waiting’s over, Angel Baby.”

  “It’s cold in here.”

  “Maybe things will heat up.” Loverboy. His idea of foreplay was to skip the first three numbers.

  She looked at the room, at the darker squares on the walls where posters had been taken down. She looked at the sofa, at the crusts of snow on the carpet, at the windowsill, everywhere but at my face. This was the place where she had lost a roommate and gained a soul mate. “I hope you’re as happy about it as I am,” she finally said.

  I held both her hands in mine. How could these hands ever hurt anyone?

  “I’ve got a secret of my own,” I whispered, pulling her close. Loverboy tingled. The Insider tingled. The knife tingled.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  “Ladies first.” Little Hitler hissed. Bookworm hissed. The knife hissed.

  She looked down again and I kissed her forehead. I was going to miss her face. But maybe I’d hang on to it for a while.

  “Richard. . .you remember the first night we made love?”

  “How could I forget? That was the best night of my life. That was the first time I really felt…like a man.”

  “You’re sweet. It was wonderful for me, too. In a way, I think I knew even then.”

  “What? That you’d end up falling in love with me?”

  “Well, that and the secret.”

  She must have forgotten everything. She had forgotten Ted, Monique, the “I have to be sures.” The Insider had great power. If only he could bottle it and sell it on the drugstore shelves, or maybe in churches, we’d all be rich and the Bone House could get a new paint job. Better yet, why not a bestseller that told you how to make money through artificial self-confidence? Bookworm could burn it along with his pile of rejection slips.

  “Then tell me the secret.”

  “Promise you won’t get mad?”

  “Have I ever been mad at you?”

  “Cross your heart and hope to die?”

  “Maybe we’d better sit down.” I squeezed her hands a little and looked into those green eyes, into the dark pools of her pupils. What monsters might rise from them as the Insider fed?

  Her eyelashes fluttered. “We’re pregnant, Richard.”

  Silence.

  More silence.

  A long eternity of silences.

  The sound of snowflakes falling.

  How much candy could you buy for a dollar these days?

  Tension hung in the room like thunderstorm static, like an anvil over a cartoon character, like a drunken Mel Gibson at a bar mitzvah.

  Beth flinched, awaiting…what?

  So, Richard. What do you think of this little development? Isn’t it absolutely to-die-for perfect? I saw this one coming five chapters ago. You should have read the outline.

  I felt as if I had been kicked in the stomach, as if a black hole had stolen the oxygen out of the air, as if my head was a bright yawning canyon of sunbursts.

  Pregnant.

  So the Coldiron Curse would live on. What a perfectly beautiful ending to the Insider’s visit. A guilt feast, a banquet of bitterness, a host’s holiday.

  The eternity stopped. The silence died as it had lived, without a squeak of protest.

  “Are you sure?” I said, gasping like a trout in a saucepan. She nodded and her pretty hair shimmered in the half-light.

  “Are you sure...it’s mine?”

  “That was the only time I forgot.”

  She hadn’t forgotten. The Insider had simply prohibited her fr
om remembering. The Insider had planted that seed as surely as if it had ridden down Loverboy’s spermatic duct itself.

  No. It must have been the first time, before Loverboy took over.

  You got it, Richard. Do you think I’d let anybody else have that honor?

  “Prophylactic prophecies,” Mister Milktoast said. I sent him to his room without dinner.

  “I missed my period,” Beth said. “And then I got one of those little test kits at the drug store. And the rest...well, that’s the big secret.”

  My hands went cold in hers.

  “Are you happy?” she asked. Her shoulders were hunched in a shrug. The dusty, patchouli-choked air in the apartment made my head reel.

  Was I happy? Would my face break if it showed my true feelings? What were my true feelings?

  Whatever I make you feel, Richard.

  “We’ll have to change our plans,” Beth said. “And I guess I’ll have to drop out of school after next semester, but that’s okay, I can always go back and finish up later.”

  She spoke hurriedly, as if the words were rushing out in a race against the future, as if hoping that if she said them fast enough, it would hasten the happy ending.

  But sometimes, there were only the words “The End.”

  “And we’ll have to get married,” she continued. “I told you how my parents are. And we’ll have to save money, it will be hard but I know we’ll get by. We’ll have lots of love, and that’s all anybody really needs, right, honey?”

  The temperature in the room had dropped ten degrees.

  “Honey?”

  My face was debating who would wear it.

  “Are you happy about it?”

  The Insider won. We smiled, deep and wide, with lots of teeth.

  “Yes, we’re happy,” I said, and the smile felt rigid on my face, like a death mask. Then it fell away.

  “No, not happy,” Bookworm said.

  Beth’s eyebrows veed in confusion.

  “Do you love us?” I said.

  “Us? You mean you and the baby? Of course.”

  I let go of her hands and gripped her by the shoulders. I shook her and her head flopped so hard that her toboggan fell off. “Tell me the truth. Do you love us?”

  The rose blush faded from her cheeks as her eyes widened. “Richard, you’re scaring me.”

  God, she was beautiful. How could I have ever hoped someone like this could love me? How could I have fooled myself so completely? My voice fell, defeated. “Do you love us?” I croaked.

  “Of course I love you. What’s the matter?”

  I slumped and put a hand in my pocket. The knife pulsed and throbbed in my sweating palm, almost as if the Insider had vested it with a life of its own.

  I’ll bet you’re dying to see little Junior, aren’t you? A do-it-yourself ultrasound? Well, you might not find anything, he’s a little small yet, but we’ll have so much fun LOOKING.

  “But do you really love me?” I whispered. “I need to know.”

  “Of course,” she said. She put a hand on my cheek. “I love you a thousand times a thousand bunches.”

  “No matter what?”

  “No matter what. Forever.”

  “Even after I tell you my secret?”

  “Nothing can make me love you less. Nothing can be so bad that we can’t get through it together. That’s what people do when they love each other, they get through things.”

  Where had I heard that before?

  “The carnation,” I said, and the word hung in the air like a threat, the sword of Damocles, the Reaper’s scythe, other types of sharp similes.

  “Carnation? What about...oh, you mean the flower?”

  “The flower. Remember where you found it?”

  “Yeah. On Monique’s floor, that morning she…don’t make me remember that, Richard, please don’t make me remember that.”

  “Where did I go the night of the Halloween party?”

  “You were with me...and then...later...I don’t know, you left early.”

  “And Monique left the party early, too.”

  “She was a peach,” Loverboy said. “Stone fruit juicy. But Little Hitler had to come along and fuzz it up.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “How come you didn’t tell the police about the carnation?” Bookworm asked.

  “I don’t see—”

  “Exactly. You don’t see. Love really is blind.”

  “But, what does that have to do with Monique’s murder? Or us, for that matter?”

  “You’re going to have to trust me, Beth.” The knife was hot and hard in my hand.

  Look into her eyes, Richard. See the light. See the love shining so stupidly. All this can be yours, my gift to a faithful servant. Let me into your heart forever and ever amen and you can have all of this and nothing.

  “Can you trust me?” I whispered.

  She swallowed hard and nodded.

  “Then come with me for a ride,” I said.

  She squinted. “What about my things? We need to get them moved to your place.”

  “There will be time for that later.” I think it was my first lie to her. But damned if I’m going to read back through the entire book just to make sure.

  Questions squirmed in her eyes. In that frozen slice of Now, I saw into the bright warm soul that the Insider wanted to consume. Her essence burned like fire, a conflagration that could melt glaciers and torch treetops and singe clouds and roast the gods in their lukewarm heavens like so many scratch biscuits.

  Her eyes were windows and doors, opening onto the rooms of her life. Here a terror, there a wish, upstairs some faith. A little girl tucked away in the basement. Closets full of old dreams. A mansion of memories that made her a human being.

  While all I had was a bare Bone House.

  In that instant, I saw a vision of a possible future. Us under starry skies, our laughter filling a soft forest as we danced on a carpet of leaves. Two souls melting and melding, fused by the white heat of love, lit by the love that was poison to that which propagated darkness. An alliance more binding than those formed by headmates and inner voices, a union more powerful than the grip of an invading psychic overlord. A house built of hope instead of bone.

  Perhaps, in some unwritten romance novel, that true and abiding love did flourish. But we were trapped in my ghostwritten autobiography, Poor Richard’s Almanack, where pain and fear were constants, where awareness brought nothing but madness, where all were strangers and none could know another. A story where the only eternal life was found in the miserable heart of the soul-eating Insider, where the believers in mercy and goodness cowered before the boots of dark gods. A fabulist’s construct where love meant having to say you were sorry.

  The Insider had taken everything. I couldn’t love, because love was made of tomorrows, not painful yesterdays. Love was laid on a foundation of hope, and hope was only a snowflake on the palm, a pretty bit of flash that was gone before the hand could close around it. Love was fueled by faith, and faith was as flimsy as a gossamer umbrella before a black avalanche.

  I had lost.

  I stood looking into the eyes of another person who I would never be allowed to know or love.

  I had lost. I was lost.

  But maybe Beth could be saved.

  I opened the door.

  “Good things are worth waiting for,” said the Insider. “But bad things want it right now.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  “Where are we going?” Beth asked after we got in the Subaru.

  I started the car. I could feel them fighting, rising, breaking free inside my head. The walls were caving in, the Bone House shaking on its foundation.

  And leading them all was the Insider, calling them out like the Pied Piper lulling rats from filthy dark nests.

  “Going?” I echoed. “I thought we’d just drive around in the snow for awhile. Maybe go hiking in the woods.”

  “It must be about fifteen degrees outside. Are you cra
zy?”

  “Crazy? No. I don’t think I’ve ever been so sane,” the Insider said to her. It gave her a look, and I could feel my lips turning up into a crooked sneer. I could feel my eyes heating up, as if they were glaring lethal rays. I could feel the warmth of the Insider’s hate flaming my chest.

  I struggled, winced, and tried to beat the Insider down, to flush it back into the darkness.

  “You can’t win, Richard. You still don’t know what you’re dealing with, do you?”

  “Richard?” Beth’s eyes were as round as silver dollars and she pressed against the passenger-side door. She must have seen the Insider lurking in my pupils.

  “It’s time, Richard. You think I didn’t know about Bookworm, plotting and scheming all this time while he pretended to be asleep? You think I don’t know what the Little People are up to?”

  “The little people?” Beth echoed, shaking her lovely hair. I wished I could reach and stroke it, to reassure her. But I didn’t think the Insider would ever give my arm back.

  I flickered in and out as fire and ice pierced my lungs, needles probed my brain, and broken glass passed through my intestines.

  The Insider chuckled. He was a lousy driver. He could guide a meat missile to the heart of a target, but he couldn’t operate a motor vehicle worth a damn. “And just to make things interesting, guess who’s coming around the corner in twenty seconds?”

  “Who?” Beth said. “Why are you yelling?”

  “Detective Randolph Frye. You see, love and justice are both blind. Until I decide otherwise.”

  “That detective? The one who questioned me about Monique’s murder?” Beth asked. She had a hand on the door handle, and I was trying to nod at her to run, run, run and never look back, run until she found a corner of the Earth that was beyond the reach of the Insider. But my head was a Styrofoam block fit for nothing but a wig.

  “We don’t mind getting caught,” Bookworm said.