He stared at the grades, unbelieving. He had known it was going to be bad, but this was disaster.
Maybe that’s best, an inner voice spoke up suddenly. Maybe you even did it on purpose, because a part of you wants it to end. Needs for it to end. Before something bad happens.
He shoved the thought roughly aside. Nothing bad was going to happen. Dussander was under his thumb. Totally under his thumb. The old man thought one of Todd’s friends had a letter, but he didn’t know which friend. If anything happened to Todd — anything — that letter would go to the police. Once he supposed Dussander might have tried it anyway. Now he was too old to run, even with a head start.
‘He’s under control, dammit,’ Todd whispered, and then pounded his thigh hard enough to make the muscle knot. Talking to yourself was bad shit — crazy people talked to themselves. He had picked up the habit over the last six weeks or so, and didn’t seem to be able to break it. He’d caught several people looking at him strangely because of it. A couple of them had been teachers. And that asshole Bernie Everson had come right out and asked him if he was going fruitcrackers. Todd had come very, very close to punching the little pansy in the mouth, and that sort of stuff — brawls, scuffles, punch-outs — was no good. That sort of stuff got you noticed in all the wrong ways. Talking to yourself was bad, right, okay, but ‘The dreams are bad, too,’ he whispered. He didn’t catch himself that time.
Just lately the dreams had been very bad. In the dreams he was always in uniform and he was standing in line with hundreds of gaunt men; the smell of burning was in the air and he could hear the choppy roar of bulldozer engines. Then Dussander would come up the line, pointing out this one or that one. They were left. The others were marched away towards the crematoriums. Some of them kicked and struggled, but most were too undernourished, too exhausted. Then Dussander was standing in front of Todd. Their eyes met for a long, paralyzing moment, and then Dussander levelled a faded umbrella at Todd.
‘Take this one to the laboratories,’ Dussander said in the dream. His lip curled back to reveal his false teeth. ‘Take this American boy’
In another dream he wore an SS uniform. His jackboots were shined to a mirror-reflecting surface. The death’s head insignia and the lightning bolts glittered. But he was standing in the middle of Santa Donate Boulevard and everyone was looking at him. They began to point. Some of them began to laugh. Others looked shocked, angry, or revolted. In this dream an old car came to a squealing, creaky halt and Dussander peered out at him, a Dussander who looked two hundred years old and nearly mummified, his skin a yellowed scroll.
‘I know you!’ The dream-Dussander proclaimed shrilly. He looked around at the spectators and then back to Todd. ‘You were in charge at Patin! Look, everybody! This is the Blood-Fiend of Patin! Himmler’s “Efficiency Expert”! I denounce you, murderer! I denounce you, butcher! I denounce you, killer of infants! I denounce you!’
In yet another dream, he wore a striped convict’s uniform and was being led down a stone-walled corridor by two guards who looked like his parents. Both wore conspicuous yellow armbands with the Star of David on them. Walking behind them was a minister, reading from the Book of Deuteronomy. Todd looked back over his shoulder and saw that the minister was Dussander, and he was wearing the black cloak of an SS officer.
At the end of the stone corridor, double doors opened on an octagonal room with glass walls. There was a scaffold in the centre of it. Behind the glass walls stood ranks of emaciated men and women, all naked, all watching with the same dark, flat expression. On each arm was a blue number.
‘It’s all right,’ Todd whispered to himself. ‘It’s okay, really, everything’s under control.’
The couple that had been making out glanced over at him. Todd stared at them fiercely, daring them to say anything. At last they looked back the other way. Had the boy been grinning?