SEVENTEEN

In his wooden cabin, Jeff Scott raged and flailed, weeping and beating at the walls. Frankenstein's monster, he thought, in the pit of fire. His body was both hot and cold, one side burning flesh, the other side cold, hard bone. He jammed his hands, one skeletal, the other flesh, to his ears, but could not block out the screaming outside the trailer. Jeff Scott was two men now, melded at an invisible line down his middle. And as his body was divided, so was his mind—one part cool, rational and cynical, the other shrieking in red, growing rage. Ash had laughed at him because he knew the truth. Jeff had been a fool all along; he had spent all these long years avoiding the truth, burying it so deep inside that it took this moment to make him face it squarely.

Did I really hate that much? he asked himself.

He knew that he had, because the hate, screwed so deep into him, had finally, fully, wormed its way to the surface and burst. He felt it again as he had at that moment when the rope went taut around his neck, when the knot at the back tightened like the grip of a hand, in an instant cutting the life from his body. It all came back to him, and though he fought it, he knew it was winning. He was turning into a raging animal, wanting life, wanting revenge.

You'll all die! his mind had screamed. I'll kill all of you.

The moment of Poundridge's death had brought it back. When the sad, thin, pleading man had dropped through the floor of the gallows—his feet kicking in bursts at the emptiness around him, looking for a place to set down but finding none: his arms, tied behind, slapping viciously against his back; his body desperate to break free and find his lungs the air they needed—at that instant it had all rushed back at him. The face then had been that other Poundridge's face, grinning up at him, fat, confident—and here was this same man, with his hands against his will on the lever, pulling it and hanging his own great-great-great grandson.

Jeff Scott had wanted to cry at that moment, to throw himself on the ground and beg whoever there might be for forgiveness, to forgive him for wanting this, but that hadn't happened. Instead, the hate, the red raw hate, had roiled up, and to his horror, he had started to laugh. Poundridge was still thrashing on the end of the cord, gagging and wetting himself, his face red and wild and, through all the choking and kicking, still pleading, and Jeff Scott had laughed. He had turned to see Ash regarding him in the artificial light; Ash's mouth was spread like a sickle, his dull, dark eyes crinkled at the corners. Then Ash suddenly turned toward Poundridge, and at that moment, as Poundridge stopped struggling, when his body went tight and then loosened, there was an audible "Ah" from Ash that was more ghastly than anything Jeff Scott had yet heard. Ash's frame went taut and then relaxed in an almost sexual release. He began to laugh, wracking with it, great hoarse cries coming from that slit of a mouth, and then Jeff Scott was able to fall to the ground, beating his fists upon it, his fist of flesh and his fist of bone, trying to stop himself from laughing, turning his laughter into sobs.

At last he rose and stumbled away. He heard Ash's voice behind him, calling him back, but he walked on. Ash's hand fell on his shoulder, a hand that seemed to melt right through his bones, gripping the marrow within them.

"It's started,” Ash crooned, barely suppressing his excitement.

Jeff Scott tried to walk on.

Ash's grip stopped him, forced him to the ground. His voice was a snake's hiss.

"Don't even think about anything else; this is yours, and you'll have it." He softened his tone. "Look at me." His hand was turning Jeff toward him, and Jeff closed his eyes.

"Let me go.”

He felt his body turning, felt the rustle of Ash's short coat and smelled his sour, smoky breath near his face. He did not open his eyes. There was a whisper of cool air, and he felt the cloak enfold him like a butterfly's wings. The world turned icy and then hot. His hate crawled from the depths to scream into his head, and as Ash's body pressed closer to his, as the white face dropped nearer to his face, the red lips to his lips, Jeff Scott felt the rest he so desired coming on him.

There was hate, and then there would be rest. "Kiss me," Ash breathed. His lips, iced metal, brushed across Jeff Scott's own, and Ash's hands tightened around him in a lover's embrace, his mouth beginning to feed

Jeff Scott screamed and pushed Ash away. He caught him off balance and broke free. There was a last pinch of Ash's claw-like hand on his shoulder, and then he was running blindly.

"There's nowhere for you to go," Ash said evenly. Jeff Scott nearly ran into a light pole. He pushed himself off it and stumbled on. He passed into sudden light, found himself on the midway. A few rides moved laconically: everywhere he turned, there were small clusters of people. Always with these groups there was one stiff, slow figure, man, woman or child, eyes flat and glassy, limbs without energy, bearing the limp smiles of the dead

You'll all die, he thought, looking at the quiet, happy faces that surrounded these ghouls, the joy of unexpected reunion in their eyes. Sorrow and then great hatred welled up in him. "You'll see me soon enough!" he screamed at them, and they turned toward him, and then quickly looked away. He sobbed and ran on, holding his hands out before him, trying to push the welling, bloated hatred away from him before it consumed him whole.

You'll all die.

He passed others who were going into some of the attractions. He wanted to shout at them to get away, to run, not to go in, but he could not. There was too much of him that wanted them where they were. Ahead of him loomed the mouth of the Tunnel of Fun. A somber, pale porter was just pulling aside the tasseled rope at the head of the line, and passengers were boarding the small, tracked cars that would wheel them inside. Like cattle. Pale specters accompanied each of them, and the riders chattered happily to these silent spooks, occasionally touching or patting them. Kill you all, Jeff's mind shouted, but he squeezed his eyes shut, and the words did not reach his lips. The ride attendant looked up at him, eyes silent and white, like stones. The pupils were too small, with too little life in them.

Release me, those eyes begged him.

Jeff ran on.

There were people everywhere now. He passed under the Ferris wheel, each car full. The lights ringing its perimeter blinked gaily. The carousel was nearly filled, each enameled horse carrying a rider strapped tightly by a leather thong. Pallid attendants were in evidence everywhere, the dead of Montvale, helping passengers and handing out tickets and running the food stands and game tents. The steam organ sent bouncy, tinkly music into every corner of the amusement park. The lights grew brighter. There were clowns and jugglers too, milling among the crowd and showing off their somber skills; the balls the jugglers handled seemed hypnotic, brightly painted. The clowns' eyes were waxy and bloodless, and they all turned the same look on Jeff Scott as he passed:

Release me.

Jeff Scott found the door to his trailer and staggered through it.

How could I do this? he agonized, and immediately another thought overtook the first: I'll kill you all.

He started to tear up the room, pulling over the Spartan bed, ripping the lone shelf from the wall. The few books, the volumes of Hawthorne and Mark Twain, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and the Bible, tumbled to the floor. He picked up the Bible, holding it out before him, and then, with a wail, he threw it against the wall. He felt a sudden urge to rip every page out and burn them, to burn the ashes and then beat the pile left with his fists. He tore out the pages of the other books and then pulled the drawers from the dresser, smashing the wood against the walls and picking the pieces up and breaking them further with his hands. He threw himself at the wall and looked up to see his face in the mirror.

He howled like an animal. I'm not Frankenstein, he thought; and then: I'm not anything at all. A burning, bottomless pain seared through him; it was like being on a roller coaster and having the first drop take your stomach from you, only now it was his being that dropped out of him. I'm nothing. He stared at the fleshy side of his face, and at the bone side. He grinned, and wanted to moan at the horror of his grinning: the smile he had always known, had studied in the mirror when he was young to see whether the young ladies would like it, on one side; and then, beginning at the center of his face, the white, smooth, tooth-pierced grin of a Halloween skeleton.

I'll kill them all. Yes.

He thought of the sick, almost wet, sound of his neck snapping, the futile, desperate kick of his body against the rope. A thrill ran through him from his head to his legs. He thought of Ash, of the erotic twinge that had bolted through him when Poundridge had died.

No!

Yes, I'll kill them all.

He pushed away from the mirror and dropped to the floor. He brought one hand slowly up to the good side of his face, feeling the soft, cool line that ran along his nose and down to his chin. He forced his shaking hand through his hair, feeling the familiar wave of it, the part, the partial cowlick at the back. This was his hair, his nose and mouth, his face.

You're still you.

He began to breathe easier. He brought himself into a sitting position. A ripped-out portion of a book lay open in front of him. He picked it up. It was a section of Huckleberry Finn, including the front page. On it was Twain's warning that anyone looking for a moral in the book would be shot. He nearly smiled, remembering the first time he had read the book, in a library in another town about a month after he had found himself on that road by the churchyard, standing beside his open grave-hole. The book had been written in the 1880s, almost twenty years after his death, but it brought back memories. It was the kind of book his father and brother would have liked. He had wandered into the library out of the rain. The book had been open on a return cart, the title page showing stately typeface, and across from it there was a picture of a boy and a black man on a raft, the boy with a corncob pipe in his mouth. Jeff had been drawn to it because he had made a corncob pipe for himself every once in a while when his father wasn't looking; he had liked to sneak a smoke with one of his friends or with Petey Graham, who always had tobacco.

He had taken the volume quietly from the cart and settled himself in one of the deep chairs in the periodical room at the back of the library. He had soon become lost in it.

Before he knew it, someone was leaning over him, breaking him out of his reverie and telling him that the library was closing. "You can take the book out if you like," she had said, smiling at his obvious fascination.

He had mumbled about not having a library card, and her face had clouded.

"That's too bad," she had said, then, “Wait here a minute."

He had watched her disappear into one of the other rooms. The lights had gone off, row on row, leaving only his area still lit. He had thought for a moment that she was going to lock him in the library over-night, which would have been fine with him, but she reappeared a moment later.

"You can have this one,” she had said, handing him a tattered copy of the same book he had been reading. "It was in the storeroom. Normally we'd end up throwing it out because it's falling apart."

He had thanked her, noticing that she was young and pretty. She had smiled; she seemed to want him to say more. With a shock, he realized that she was interested in him, maybe even wanted to start something with him. There was a look in her eyes—not flirtatious, but open, curious.

Embarrassed, he had thanked her again and awkwardly left.

And here was that same copy, torn to pieces at his feet, the symbol of his impotence and his end. But the fact was that he had read and loved this book, had reread it four or five times, and he knew there must be something to him, something real and solid, because it was a book written twenty years after he had died.

Within him, the hate was diminishing. He felt it shrink to a small, hard stone. He got to his feet and went to the crooked mirror; he stood close to it and looked hard at the reflection it sent back. Half-man, half-bone, but suddenly it made no difference. He smiled at the reflection, and this time he felt only himself smile back.

I'm still Jeff Scott. Maybe he would be free of Ash.

He heard someone flip the pages of a book behind him, and when he turned around, Ash was standing there, filling the doorway.

"There's an interesting passage in this Twain book," Ash said. "Perhaps I could read it to you." He held up a torn page in mock lecture. " ‘He chased me round and round the place with a clasp-knife, calling me the Angel of Death, and saying he would kill me, and then I couldn't come for him no more. I begged, and told him I was only Huck; but he laughed such a screechy laugh, and roared and cussed, and kept on chasing me up. Once when I turned short and dodged under his arm he made a grab and got me by the jacket between my shoulders, and I thought I was gone; but I slid out of the jacket quick as lightning, and saved myself. Pretty soon he was all tired out, and dropped down with his back against the door, and said he would rest a minute and then kill me. He put his knife under him, and said he would sleep and get strong, and then he would see who was who.' "

Ash looked up, letting the page spin to the floor like a dropping leaf. He took a long time to light one of his black cigarettes. Drawing on it, he regarded Jeff Scott evenly, as an entomologist might regard a bug that had escaped him, with determination to catch it again. He pulled on his cigarette two or three more times, holding the smoke in before leisurely pushing it out.

"I guess we'll see who was who."

"I'm leaving, Ash."

Ash seemed unsurprised. "And where will you go?"

"Anywhere. Away from the hate."

Ash lit another cigarette, even more deliberately than the first. For a chilling moment it occurred to Jeff Scott that Ash was trying to drag the moment out, to savor it.

"I think," Ash said, again drawing deeply on his cigarette, and pausing before completing his sentence, "that Mr. Jeff Scott has made a discovery. He has discovered that he no longer holds within him that great and constant hatred that he believes has made all of this glorious enterprise possible. He thinks that through an act of his own will, the will of a dead man, he has banished this hatred from himself. Am I right?"

"I won't help you anymore. There's nothing left in me for you to feed on."

Ash shook his head and stepped forward. An unaccountable coldness came into Jeff Scott, a coldness he had never known even when he had been in the ground, covered with cold earth. He dropped to his knees, holding his middle.

"Get up," Ash said casually. He touched Jeff under the chin, bringing him painfully to his feet. Jeff felt himself propelled backward and down into the single wooden chair left whole in the room. He bent over double again, trying to warm himself with hands as cold as ice.

"Oh . . . " he moaned.

"How wrong we can be," Ash said in that same nonchalant tone. "Even in death, human egos continue to prosper. Do I look unwell to you'? Do I?" He pulled Jeff Scott's chin up, forcing him to look into his full, white face. "Don't I look as well as always, or better, even though your precious power has been taken from me? How is it that I look so fit if the only thing that kept me in existence was your puny hatred? Tell me!"

"Oh . . ." Jeff moaned.

Ash released Jeff and paced the room. In the doorway behind him, Jeff saw two other figures. Through his haze of cold pain he could not make them out. "How foolish you have been. Your hatred kept only you going. But me? Let me assure you, there's plenty of hate to go around, enough to continue the work here and elsewhere."

The pain in Jeff's gut slackened. He distinguished the figures in the doorway: a tall, sallow woman with short-cropped hair and glazed eyes, and a slightly overweight boy of thirteen or fourteen with the look about him of a sly animal. The boy was especially alert, his small pebble eyes following Ash's every movement.

"I . . . still say . . . you're . . . afraid of something . . ." Jeff said.

The pain grew again, and the figures receded into a teary mist. Only Ash's face was there before him now, in sharp outline.

"Are you quite sure," Ash's face asked, "that your hate is gone?"

Jeff found nothing but cold inside him. "Yes," he got out painfully.

The thin lips parted, moving down on him.

With his cold hands, Jeff Scott tried to push Ash away. His hands melted into Ash's coat. There was nothing inside—no body or bones, nothing. When Jeff tried to remove his hands, they would not come out, but only sank farther in. Ash's face moved closer, the razor-red lips dusting his cheek, his chin, then finding his mouth. A scream formed deep down in the coldness, but Jeff Scott could not bring it to life.

Ash's mouth opened wide. Then it opened wider, became all, and Ash demanded of him, using the two words Jeff Scott had so long feared and hoped to hear.