I almost laughed and almost said, “Normal isn’t a word we like to use.” But I was pretty sure that if I tried to talk, I would throw up.
“This psychologist,” Gerard went on, “he was a great man, but as he got older, he started to study things many find ridiculous, very unusual areas of psychology. These notes of his talked of a story that made people kill once they heard eet. The story was about the revolution, about the spirit of murder. About the Law of Suspects. Once you hear eet, you will kill someone close to you before the next morning. The papers went on to say that only one person is…infected…at a time. Like a curse. Once the person murders, they are compelled to tell the story to someone else, then they kill themselves.
“A copy of this deadly story was attached, along with many notes of warning. There was no indication that he had read eet. In fact, eet seemed he had not. He had simply located the last known copy and kept eet. An academic impulse. You cannot get rid of an important document, no matter how dangerous. The notes indicated that eet was in a letter dated 1804. Eet had been lost for many, many years, but he had uncovered eet and wished he hadn’t. I did not take eet seriously. Eet is unscientific. Ridiculous. So I stopped reading and fell asleep.”
At this, he shook his head miserably.
“When I got to my cousin’s, I told her the story over a coffee. She laughed and asked to see the papers. They are not secret, so I showed her. That night I went out with friends. I stayed out very late. I came in and went right to sleep….”
It was obviously hard for Gerard to say these things. But I had no doubt that they were true. Liars are good at seeing the truth. The color had gone from his face and he was grabbing at his hair. The shock caused by the hand deepened into dread, a dread that sank into my bones and made me unable to move.
“The next morning the house was quiet. My cousin and her husband made no noise. After some time I was worried. So I opened the bedroom door. That is when I found her husband. He had been stabbed with a corkscrew, deep into the ear. My cousin was in the closet. She had hung herself with the…the tie…from around the waist of her dressing gown. This was three days ago.”
I remembered the police car and the ambulance. That must have been the house. We had gone right past it and had no idea.
“The police thought she had perhaps gone insane, gone into a jealous rage, but I knew my cousin. There was nothing wrong with her until she read that story. I do not know how this works or why. The Law of Suspects story is real, and I brought eet back by bringing those papers here. I wasn’t able to get back into the house for a day, but when I did…the papers were nowhere. I asked the police eef they had taken them, but they had not. I remembered that the psychologist claimed the story would be passed on before death. I thought my cousin had posted the papers to someone. For the last two days I have watched her friends. I saw Henri in the village this morning, picking up some post. Later I went along to his house. I saw you there. I saw him fresh from the garden, acting very strange. I went to the garden while you were inside with him. I found this….”
He gestured toward the plastic-covered hand.
“I have not seen his wife. Have you?”
“No,” I said, managing to find my voice. “He said he was looking for his dog.”
“His dog,” he said, nodding. “Yes. That makes sense. The dog was always with his wife. When he attacked her, I imagine the dog tried to stop him. The dog must also be dead.”
“So you’re saying,” I said, “that Henri is infected by some story in a letter, and he killed his wife.”
“I do not want to believe eet myself. But my cousin and her husband are dead. And Henri has just buried a body in his garden. And he has told you a story exactly as I described. The next steps are clear. Henri will die, and either you or your sister will be infected. It can only be one. Before the night is over, one will kill the other, and then commit suicide.”
This was not possible. None of it was possible. But there was a hand. And I remembered how I felt after Henri spoke to me. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t normal. Something had happened.
“According to his notes,” he said, “there is a way. There have been cases where people have been spared because they went to safety, or were alone. You must both put yourself in a place where you cannot hurt anyone.”
A silence fell between us. From far away, I heard Marylou calling for me. This brought me back to the reality of being in the woods with Gerard and the hand.
“Please, Charlie,” he begged, getting up. “Do not go back. Look. I have…I have water and food. Here. Enough for one night.”
More things were produced from the bag. A bottle of water. Some candy bars. A small flashlight. He set the food on the ground and pressed the flashlight into my hand.
“Henri knows what he has done. He has passed the story on. His time is ending. Eef you go now, eef you can get through until morning, then you will be fine. You simply need to be isolated. Take these things and spend the night out here, as far from the house as you can get. As far from the village. You get lost.”
“Oh,” I said, laughing now. “I see. I get lost in the woods for the night. Sounds great, Gerard. Sounds like a plan. And why did you have to tell this to me out here?”
“Your sister would not believe me,” he said simply. “But I felt you would. I hope you do.”
The sky had gotten darker and the air soupier. The storm Henri had promised earlier was sitting on top of us, waiting to erupt. I stared at the water and the candy. Food that had been in a bag with a severed hand.
“You’re right about one thing,” I said. “We need to get out of here.”
I turned and started walking back. I heard Gerard calling to me, pleading. But I kept going. He did not follow me.
As I pushed back through the branches, following the sound of Marylou’s voice to the house, I assessed my situation. That it was a real hand, I was sure. That was the big thing here. Someone was dead. And Henri’s bare bathroom, stripped of anything that might…soak up blood. Towels and paper. If I was going to cut up a body, I’d do it in a tub. Then I’d wash the tub and bleach it. Then I’d get rid of everything else. Yes, that made sense. So Gerard had had a trauma and thought this was all based on some story. Grief and guilt had confused him. But there was still a danger here, and that danger was Henri. Henri knew where we lived. He knew our phones didn’t work. He knew we were alone. Which meant that I had to convince Marylou that we needed to get out right now.
Everything looked blurry and odd. I started to run, paying no attention to the tiny frogs that might be under my feet, feeling like I was bouncing high with each step. The slowly darkening sky looked like one of the landscapes that Van Gogh used to paint here: swirly clouds against a bright palette of sunset colors. The view of the house throbbed in time with my pulse. Marylou was waiting for me at the open door, looking furious, still holding her trusty DSM-IV.
“There you are!” she said. “I left for two minutes and you were gone! What the hell is going on?”
I pushed her inside and bolted the door behind me.
“What’s wrong?” she asked as I slumped on one of the kitchen benches. “Charlie, you look sick. You’re so pale.”
She was not going to believe the hand. Not, not, not going to believe it. It would take something else, something more plausible. It would take a lie. A megaton of a lie.
I had one in a second.
“Gerard,” I said. “That guy. He’s nuts. He stole my phone, and he ran out. I chased him, and he tried to attack me. I just barely got away. He’s still out there. We have to get out of here.”
“What?” she said, coming to sit by me and putting an arm around my shoulders. “Charlie…did he hurt you?”
“I’m fine. I hit him. With this.” I held up the flashlight. “I don’t know what he was going to do with it, but I got it off of him and I hit him with it. I whacked him in the head, hard, and he kind of ran off. Now we have to get out, get to the village, and get help. This is not a lie. Look at me.”
I could see Marylou testing out the plausibility of my story in her head. I have to say, I gave a magnificent performance. What I was saying wasn’t exactly true, but the sentiment behind it certainly was. My fear was real. And I had his flashlight. And she had probably seen him running. There was a lot to back up my story.
Marylou got up and paced the kitchen while she weighed the facts. I saw acceptance flash over her face.
“How old do you think he was?” she asked. “Eighteen? Nineteen? It’s common for people that age to experience a minor psychotic break.”
“That’s reassuring,” I said, swallowing hard.
“If he’s out there, we need to stay in here. We need to lock everything.”
“No,” I countered quickly. “He said he’d come back. He said he’d get in. This is our only shot. If we go right now, we could get to town before he catches up with us.”
Marylou stepped back from the bench and put her hands on her hips, looking worriedly around the room.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay. Here.”
She went to the hooks at the back of the kitchen and pulled down two of the heavy green rain slickers that were hanging there.
“Put that on,” she said, dropping one of the slickers on the table. “It’s going to rain.”
She rattled around in one of the kitchen drawers and produced a heavy carving knife, which she passed to me.
“Put this in something,” she said.
“What’s this for?”
“Protection. I’m going to close the rest of the shutters upstairs. You do the ones down here.”
Up the stairs she went. I went into the other two rooms and shut the shutters against nothing, then put on my slicker.
“I found this too,” she said, running back down the stairs. It was a piece of heavy pipe, about a foot long, that looked like a section of something much larger. “If he comes near us, this will knock him out.”