‘Norman, you look so silly in that mask . . . I’m not afraid of you anymore, Norman You’re going to discover that’s a passing fad, you bitch, he thought.
‘Norman, you idiot!’
All right, maybe she wasn’t in the building; she might already have gone through it to the other side. It didn’t matter. If she thought she could outrun him on a level playing-field, she was going to get the surprise of her life. The last surprise of her life.
‘You’re such a fool . . . did you really think you could catch me? Silly old bull!’
He moved to his right a little, trying to be quiet now, reminding himself that it wouldn’t help to behave like, ha-ha, a bull in a china shop. He stopped near the foot of the cracked
steps leading up to the temple (that was what it was, he saw that now, a temple like in one of those Greek fairy-tales that guys used to make up back then when they weren’t too busy butt-punching each other) and surveyed it. The building was clearly abandoned and falling into ruin, but this place didn’t feel spooky; it felt weirdly like home.
‘Norrr-munnnn . . . don’t you want to taaalllk to me?’
‘Oh, I’ll talk to you,’ he said. I’ll talk to you right up close, you cunt.’ He caught sight of something in the high, tangled grass to the right of the steps: a big stone face in the weeds, staring raptly into the sky. Five paces took Norman to it, and he stared fixedly down at it for ten seconds or more, wanting to make sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing. He was. The huge tumbled head bore the face of his father, and his empty eyes snarled with idiot moonlight.
‘Boo, you old sonofabitch,’ he said softly. ‘What you doing here?’
The stone father made no reply, but his wife did.
‘Norrrr-munnnn . . . you’re so fucking SLOWWW, Norrr-munnnn!’
Nice language they taught her to use, too, the bull remarked, only now it was making its remarks from inside Norman’s head. These are great people she’s got in with, no doubt about that — they’ve changed her whole life.
‘Bitch,’ he said in a thick, trembling voice. ‘Oh you bitch.’
He wheeled away from the stone face in the grass, resisting an urge to go back and spit on it the way he had on the jacket . . . or to unzip his jeans and take a piss on it. No time for games now. He hurried up the cracked steps toward the black entrance to the temple. Each time his foot came down, it sent agonizing pain up his leg, up Ms back, into his violated lower jaw. It felt like only the mask was holding his jaw in place now, and it hurt like a mad bastard. He wished he’d brought the Charlie-David cops’ aspirin with him.
How could she do that, Normie? the voice came whispering up from deep inside. It still sounded like his father’s voice, but Norman couldn’t remember ever hearing his father sound so unsure of himself, so worried. How could she dare do that? What’s happened to her?
He stopped with his foot on the top step, face aching, his lower jaw feeling as loose as a tire with the lug-nuts working free. I don’t know and I don’t care, he told the ghost-voice. But I’ll tell you one thing, Daddy — if that’s who you are — when I find her, I’m going to unhappen it in a helluva hurry. That you can take to the bank.
Are you sure you want to try that? the voice asked, and Norman, in the act of starting forward, stopped again, listening, head cocked.
You know what might be wiser? it asked. It might be wiser to just call it a draw. I know how that sounds, but I’m giving you the benefit of my thinking just the same, Normie. If I was the one with my hands on the controls, I’d turn around and go back the way I came.
Because nothing’s right here. It’s all hinky as hell, in fact. I don’t know what it is, but I know what it feels like — a trap. And if you walk into it you may have a lot more to worry about than a wiggly jaw or a mask that doesn’t want to come off. Why don’t you turn around and go back the way you came? See if you can’t find your way back into her rented room and maybe wait for her there?
Because they’ll come, Daddy, Norman told the voice. He was shaken by this ghost’s insistence and surety, but would not admit it. The cops will come and they will take me down. They’ll take me down before I so much as smell her perfume. And because she said fuck to me. Because she’s turned into a whore. I can tell it just by the way she talks now.
Never mind how she talks, you idiot! If she’s gone rotten, leave her to spoil on the ground with her friends! Maybe it isn’t too late to shut this thing down before it explodes in your face.
He actually considered it. . . and then raised his eyes to the temple and read the words chiselled over the door. SHE WHO STEALS HER HUSBAND’S BANK CARD SHALL NOT BE SUFFERED TO
LIVE, they read.
Doubt fled. He would listen to his craven, crotchgrabbing father no more. He passed through the yawning doorway and into the damp darkness beyond. Dark . . . but not too dark to see. Powdery shafts of moonlight fell steeply in through the narrow windows, illuminating a ruin that looked spookily like the church where Rose and her folks had worshipped back in Aubreyville. He walked through drifts of fallen leaves, and when a flock of whirling, squealing bats descended through the moonbeams to flutter about his face, he only flapped his arms, waving them away. ‘Get out, you sons of whores,’ he muttered.
As he emerged onto a small stone stoop through the door to the right of the altar, he saw a fluff of something hanging from a bush. He leaned over, pulled it free, held it up in front of his eyes. It was hard to be sure in this light, but he thought it was red or pink. Had she been wearing clothes of such a color? He thought she’d had jeans on, but everything was mixed up in his mind. Even if it had been jeans, she’d taken off the jacket the cocksucker had loaned her, and maybe underneath —
There was a soft sound behind him, like a pennant rippling in a breeze. Norman turned and a brown bat flew into his face, snapping at him with its whiskery mouth as its wings battered against his cheeks.
His hand had dropped to the butt of the gun. Now he let go of it and seized the bat, crumpling the bones in its wings back against its body like a lunatic concertina player. He twisted it against itself and tore it in two with such force that its rudimentary guts fell out on his shoes. ‘Shoulda stayed out of my face, asshole,’ Norman told it, and then flung the pieces back into the temple’s shadows.
‘You’re great at killing bats, Norman.’
Jesus Christ, that was close — that was right behind him! He spun around so fast this time that he almost lost his balance and tumbled off the stone stoop.
The ground behind the temple sloped toward a stream, and standing there halfway down, in what looked like the world’s deadest garden, . was his sweet little rambling Rose — just standing there in the moonlight, looking up at him. Three things struck him in rapid succession. The first was that she was no longer wearing jeans, if she ever had been; she was wearing a minidress that looked like it belonged at a frathouse toga-party. The second was that she had changed her hair. It was blonde and pulled back from her face.
The third thing was that she was beautiful.
‘Bats and women,’ she said coldly. ‘That’s about it for you, isn’t it? I almost feel sorry for you, Norman. You’re a miserable excuse for a man. You’re not a man, not really. And that stupid mask you’re wearing will never make you into one.’
‘I’LL KILL YOU, YOU BITCH!’ Norman jumped from the stoop and sprinted down the hill toward where she stood, his horned shadow trailing along beside him over the dead grass in the bony moonlight.
3
For a moment she stood where she was, frozen in place, every muscle in her body seemingly locked down as he rushed forward, screaming inside the hideous mask he was wearing. What got her moving was a sudden gruesome image — sent by Practical-Sensible, she had an idea