Susan left quickly, slamming the door.
Indecision kept Bellows immobile and silent as he watched the door. He was silent because he knew that she was right in a lot of ways. He was immobile because he really wanted to be rid of the whole mess. “Carbon monoxide, holy shit.” He walked back into his bedroom and got into bed once more. Looking at the clock, he realized morning was going to arrive very, very quickly.
D’Ambrosio began to panic. He had never liked confined spaces and the walls of the freezer began to move in on him. He began to breathe faster, gulping for air, and then he thought he might be going to suffocate. And the cold. The deathly cold wormed its way through his heavy Chicago overcoat, and despite constant motion, his feet and hands had gone numb.
But by far the most disturbing aspect of the whole miserable affair was the bodies and the acrid odor of formaldehyde. D’Ambrosio had seen a lot of grisly scenes in his life and had been through some gruesome experiences, but nothing could compare with being in the freezer with the stiffs. At first he had tried not to look at them, but involuntarily and out of mounting fear, his eyes had been drawn to the faces. After some time it had begun to look as if they were all smiling. Then they were laughing and even moving when he didn’t watch them carefully. He emptied the clip in his pistol by blasting away at one particularly sneering corpse whom he imagined he recognized.
Finally D’Ambrosio retreated to the corner so he could keep the whole group in view. Slowly he sank into a sitting position. He couldn’t feel his knees any longer.
Thursday, February 26, 10:41 A.M.
The path dipped down to the left, through a thicket of gnarled oak trees standing in a bed of twisted briars. The branches of the trees arched over the pathway, enclosing it like a tunnel and precluding a view for more than a few feet. Susan was running and she dared not look behind her. Safety was ahead; she could make it. But the pathway narrowed and the branches clutched at her, hindering her. The briars caught in her clothing. She desperately tried to force her way through. She could see some lights ahead. Safety. But the harder she pulled, the more entangled she got, as if she were in a giant spider web. With her hands, she tried to free her feet But then her arms became hopelessly entangled. There were only minutes left. She had to get free. Then she heard a car horn and one arm came free. The born repeated itself and she opened her arms. She was in room 731 at the Boston Motor Lodge.
Susan sat up in the bed, looking around the room. It had been a dream, a recurrent dream which she hadn’t had in years. With wakefulness came relief, and she sank back, pulling the covers up around herself. The auto horn which had awakened her sounded for the third time. There were some muffled shouts, then silence.
Susan looked around the room. Tasteless American. Two large beds with a neutral flower-print spread. The rug was a heavy shag, a shade of spring green. The near wall was papered with a repeating floral design in green. The far wall was a pale yellow. There was a picture over the bed, a tawdry reproduction, portraying an idyllic barnyard scene with a few ducks and sheep. The furniture too was cheap, but there was an impressive, twenty-eight-inch color TV set—the indispensable solace of motel life. Aesthetics had low priority at the Boston Motor Lodge.
But the place was safe. After leaving Bellows’s apartment in the wee hours of the morning, Susan had wanted only to find someplace where she could sleep in peace. She had noticed the gaudy motel sign from Cambridge Street on a number of occasions. The sign was awful, certainly not something to beckon the weary. Nonetheless, the room had provided the haven she needed. She had checked in as Laurie Simpson and had waited in the lobby for a good quarter of an hour before going up to the room. When the man at the desk looked at her strangely, she gave him an extra five dollars and told him to call her if anybody inquired about her. She said she was worried about a jealous lover. The desk clerk had winked at her, grateful both for the five dollars and the confidence she extended to him. Susan knew that he accepted the story without question; it was part of the male vanity.