He started toward the bathroom but stopped suddenly when fire leaped up
in a corner of the room. Not real flames but shadowfire. Blood-red
tongues with silver edges. Crackling hungrily, consuming the shadows
from which they erupted yet in no way reducing that darkness.
Squinting his light-stung eyes, Eric found that, as before, he was
compelled to peer into the flames, and within them he thought he saw
strange forms writhing and.
and beckoning to him…
Though he was unaccountably terrified of these shadowfires, a part of
him, perverse beyond his understanding, longed to go within the flames,
pass through them as one might pass through a door, and learn what lay
beyond.
No!
As he felt that longing grow into an acute need, he desperately turned
away from the fire and stood swaying in fear and bewilderment, two
feelings that, in his current fragile state, quickly metamorphosed into
anger, the anger into rage. Everything seemed to lead to rage, as if it
were the ultimate and inevitable distillate of all other emotions.
A brass.and-pewter floor lamp with a frosted crystal shade stood beside
an easy chair, within his reach. He seized it with both hands, lifted
it high above his head, and threw it across the room. The shade
shattered against the wall, and gleaming shards of frosted crystal fell
like cracking ice. The metal base and pole hit the edge of the
whitelacquered dresser and rebounded with a clang, clattered to the
floor.
The thrill of destruction that shivered through him was of a dark
intensity akin to a sadistic sexual urge, and its power was nearly as
great as orgasm. Before his death, he had been an obsessive achiever, a
builder of empires, a compulsive acquirer of wealth, but following his
death he had become an engine of destruction, as fully compelled to
smash property as he had once been compelled to acquire it.
The cabin was decorated in ultramodern with accents of art declike the
ruined floor lampnot a style particularly well suited to a five-room
mountain cabin but one which satisfied Eric’s need for a sense of
newness and modernity in all things. In a frenzy, he began to reduce
the trendy decor to piles of bright rubble. He picked up the armchair
as if it weighed only a pound or two and heaved it at the three-panel
mirror on the wall behind the bed. The tripartite mirror exploded, and
the armchair fell onto the bed in a rain of silvered glass.
Breathing hard, Eric seized the damaged floor lamp, held it by the pole,
swung it at a piece of bronze sculpture that stood on the dresser, using
the heavy base of the lamp as a huge hammer-bang!-knocking the sculpture
to the floor, swung the lamp-hammer twice at the dresser mirror-bang,
bang!-smashing, smashing, swung it at a painting hanging on the wall
near the door to the bathroom, brought the picture down, hammered the
artwork where it lay on the floor. He felt good, so good, never better,
alive. As he gave himself entirely and joyfully to his berserker rage,
he snarled with animal ferocity or shrieked wordlessly, though he was
able to form one special word with unmistakable clarity, “Rachael,”
spoke it with unadulterated hatred, spittle spraying, “Rachael,
Rachael.” He pounded the makeshift hammer into a white-lacquered
occasional table that had stood beside the armchair, pounded and pounded
until the table was reduced to splinters-“Rachael, Rachael”-struck the
smaller lamp on the nightstand and knocked it to the floor. Bang!
Arteries pounding furiously in his neck and temples, blood singing in
his ears, he hammered the nightstand itself until he had broken the
handles off the drawers, hammered the wall, “Rachael,” hammered until
the pole lamp was too bent to be of any further use, angrily tossed it
aside, grabbed the drapes and ripped them from their rods, tore another
painting from the wall and put his foot through the canvas, “Rachael,
Rachael, Rachael.” He staggered wildly now and flailed at the air with
his big arms and turned in circles, a crazed bull, and he abruptly found
it hard to breathe, felt the insane strength drain out of him, felt the
mad destructive urge flowing away, away, and he dropped to the floor,