Chapter five

So then this is what happened on Christmas. First of all, there was screaming; laughing; giggling; shouting. Charlie Rose got out of bed early. Photographers covered the event. We staggered out of our room and found McGill amidst a flurry of women. Then the whole pile of us tumbled into the living room. There was some sort of family tradition about having eggs and toast before opening the presents. This we trampled into the dust. Susannah was cooking the eggs and shouting “Wait for me” and running into the living room to yell at us, and then back to the eggs while we tore into our packages. We were animals. I blush to describe the greed.

I gave Charlie an autographed picture of Richard Nixon, which I’d gotten by writing to the guy. He (Charlie, not Nixon) gave me a lighter and a pack of cigarettes, his brand. Susannah came in and I gave her her scarf and I looked in her eyes and I thought about being inside her. She seemed to like it, the scarf. I wish I could’ve thought of something better.

Then we ate. Then we drank. Then we ate some more. We sat and talked. McGill told stories and everybody laughed. I looked at Susannah and thought about being inside her. Then we ate some more and drank some more and watched the movie A Christmas Carol with Alastair Sim on TV and afterward Charlie held forth at great length about why it was better than the Reginald Owen version and the George C. Scott version and possibly the Dickens version and possibly sex and french toast, all of which seemed to be true at the time. We drank and ate and I could have stared at her until I went blind. She had such a goofy smile.

It got dark. I began to think about her leaving tomorrow. Then I didn’t think about it. I thought about tonight, when everyone would be asleep except for her and me. It got darker. Charlie built a fire. I watched the fire grow and the orange flames rising. After a while I fell asleep in my chair. We had gone to bed at four A.M., and I was tired. I woke up and Susannah was asleep in her chair and I sat and watched her sleeping. She woke up and she looked at me. It was getting late. They couldn’t stay awake forever.

The first one to go was McGill. I was in the kitchen, pouring myself a mug of coffee when he came in to say good night.

“Merry Christmas, buddy,” he said.

I nodded. “Thanks for inviting me.”

He paused in the doorway. I watched him. I wondered if he knew. He said: “There hasn’t been any time to talk.”

“Yeah. Christmas,” I said.

“Right, right,” he muttered. “No time. I had some things …” His voice trailed off.

I raised the mug to my lips, touched my lips to the hot coffee, thought of Susannah. “You don’t go till February,” I said.

For a moment he didn’t answer me. He stood in the doorway, his wiry frame bent, his sharp features pointed downward, the kitchen light gleaming in the last gray strands of his hair. Then he looked up quickly, smiled. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

I wandered back into the living room, hoping the others would soon follow McGill’s lead. But they were pretty well planted where they were. They sat motionless, black and orange shadows around the fire. No one was even talking anymore. Conversation was dead. No one wanted Christmas day to be over.

I settled into an easy chair again, felt the heat of the fire run up my side, inhaled the steam from my coffee. Looked at Susannah.

“I know!” said Kate suddenly. “We could tell ghost stories. You know: Christmas and the fire and everything.”

I didn’t groan. It was Charlie.

“Oh hey,” he said. “Let’s not, okay?”

Kate pouted. “Come on. Why not?”

Charlie puffed up his cheeks and sighed. His sleepy, childlike face glowed in the firelight, looking the soul of mockery.

Angela turned up a corner of her mouth. “Oh, come on, Rose, it might be fun,” she said. I knew the battle was lost.

“Oh, man,” said Charlie. “I don’t know any ghost stories. The only one I know is ‘The Golden Arm.’”

“Ooh, that sounds good, what’s that?” said Kate and Kelly and Susannah all at once.

That clinched it. Faced suddenly with the prospect of telling “The Golden Arm” to three attractive girls who’d never heard it before, Charlie was unstoppable. He perked up at once. He rubbed his palms together and chuckled maniacally. I cursed under my breath. Then Charlie launched into it, and I have to hand it to him: Rose rose to the occasion. He told the story as if he’d just made it up. He stood and acted out the husband digging up the wife’s body. He crept back to his chair with her golden arm, peering back over his shoulder at the sound of the wind. The wind: he had the eerie howling of it down pat, and you could hear how the wife’s voice sort of welled up under it slowly and mingled with it: “Whoooooo stooooole my goooooolden aaaaarm?” When he finally spun on Kate and shouted “You did!” even I jumped in my chair. Splashed coffee down the front of my shirt. And Kate screamed and giggled till I thought we’d have to have her hospitalized.

Charlie sunk his chin on his chest and chuckled. Angela and Susannah laughed. Kelly hugged herself and shivered. It was quiet for a few minutes.

Then Kelly said: “Who else knows one?”

And I heard myself answer: “Okay. I do.”

Everybody turned to me. I couldn’t believe I had spoken. All I wanted was the quiet of the sleeping house again, the small white feel of her under and around me again. On top of which, Charlie had just told the only ghost story I know. But his performance had inspired me. The little shrieks of the women had gotten my blood up. And so I had spoken, and now there they were staring at me, and I had to say something, fast.

Which is how I came to invent the scarred man.

The moments passed. My mind was blank. I smiled calmly, panicking. Like Charlie, I rubbed my hands together, playing for time. I cast a slow, wicked glance at each of them: Angela with a cigarette held before her lips and her thumbnail pressed to her teeth; Kate and Kelly sitting shoulder to shoulder, two glowing pairs of expectant eyes; Susannah absently rolling the brandy in her snifter around and around; and even Charlie, perched on the edge of his seat with his arms dangling between his knees—all of them: waiting.

I took a deep breath.

“Okay,” I said softly. “Listen.”

And I began.

Actually, this story is true [I said] so I don’t know if it fits the bill. But it’s eerie enough in its way. I heard it from a man named Robert Sinclair, who was once a popular newspaper columnist in Chicago. I met him at a party in SoHo in New York. His heyday was before my time, but I’d heard his name in another connection. Eventually the conversation turned to the old days and his work. Sinclair’s primary interest had been crime: He had a lot of good stories to tell and he told them with relish—so much so, in fact, that I eventually asked him why he’d left off doing what he obviously loved. We’d had a few drinks by that time and he seemed ready to tell me, though he gave me a good once-over before he started.

“Are you sure you want to know?” he asked.

I said I was.

“Then I’ll tell you,” he said. “I’ll tell you about the last story I ever covered.”

This happened, as I say, before my time, twenty years ago or more, but Sinclair remembered it vividly. At the time it took place, he was deeply engrossed in covering the famous Chicago Strangler killings. He was doing the usual profiles of the seven dead women, the police-are-baffled pieces and so on. And what always struck him was that while he was working in the limelight, the story that was to end his newspaper career was beginning in complete obscurity.

In obscurity, it seems, there lived a man named Honeywell. John Honeywell. In fact, he kept a house in a suburb of the city, but he was obscure enough; a drab sort: quiet, meek, gray. He worked as a bookkeeper for a Chicago firm and commuted into the city every day by train. Into the city and out again, that was his life. No wife, no kids, no friends to mention. Like the old song says: nobody knew he was there.

Now, one day, Honeywell was riding the train into work—sitting alone, reading his paper—when a man sat down next to him. Honeywell paid no attention to him at first, but after a few moments he became aware of a peculiar smell: a wet, thick, and bitter smell, thoroughly unpleasant. He couldn’t help it: he glanced up at the man beside him. There was nothing strange about the fellow at all. A medium-sized man in a black suit, white shirt, a thin black tie. Pale face, a thin sharp nose, and close-set blue eyes. Thin blond hair in a widow’s peak. As Honeywell glanced at him, the smell grew stronger—and Honeywell, without knowing why, became afraid. And just then the man looked up—looked back at Honeywell—looked him right in the eye. And he smiled. Honeywell wanted to turn away but he couldn’t for a moment. For that moment, he was mesmerized by the sight of a deep, white, jagged scar that ran from the man’s right eye, over his cheek, to the corner of his mouth. The scar seemed to transform the man’s whole face—transform it from a nondescript, even pleasant, face, into something horrible. The man’s smile seemed almost wicked, and suddenly an odd thought flashed into Honeywell’s mind: he thought he knew what that smell was—that smell coming from the scarred man. It was corruption, he thought. It was the smell of evil.

Now, if this were a story, Honeywell would’ve gotten up and run away or screamed or something. But in real life, you know how it is: he was afraid of being rude, more than anything. He turned away and buried his face in his newspaper—though for the rest of the trip he felt sure the man was still staring at him, still grinning at him—and the smell: he thought the smell would choke him if that ride didn’t end soon.

After what seemed a lifetime, the train pulled into the station. Honeywell got off and hurried away through the crowd, leaving the scarred man behind him. He went to work and buried himself in his books and figures. He didn’t mention the incident to anyone. There had been no incident. And anyway, he had no one to tell. By lunchtime the whole thing seemed to him to have been the product of an over-active imagination.

As the day drew to a close, Honeywell found himself feeling nervous again. He was thinking about the ride home. He stayed longer in the office than usual. In fact, he stayed so long that, when he looked up from his work, he noticed that the building was empty. He sat at his desk, staring out the door of his cubicle on a small section of deserted hallway. Deserted—and silent. So silent that when he heard hollow, echoing footsteps approaching, he gasped. He sat rigid. The footsteps drew closer. And finally, a cleaning woman wandered past. Honeywell seized his briefcase, stood from his desk, and walked swiftly out of the building and into the street.

When he reached the train station, he saw that the rush-hour crowds had thinned out almost to nothing. Honeywell scanned the faces of the remaining commuters carefully as he walked to his train. When he boarded, he made a point of sitting next to another man, though there were still some seats left empty.

All of these precautions, at any rate, were unnecessary. There was no sign of the scarred man.

Honeywell’s house was in a pleasantly wooded part of town about ten miles from where the train let him off. He always left his car nearby, so when he arrived in his home station, he went to the car at once and headed off. It was full dark by then, and his drive took him along a curving, unlighted road. He was still a little nervy, and he was in a hurry to get home.

He was about halfway there when it came to him again: that smell, that man’s smell. It filled the car, growing stronger and stronger. Honeywell was terrified. He turned his eyes to the rearview mirror, fully expecting the scarred face to appear there like something in a horror movie. He even cast a glance into the backseat. But it was empty. There was only the smell, filling the car, nauseating.

Honeywell rolled down the window. He stepped on the gas. His tires screamed as they took the curves on the road home. By the time his own driveway appeared before him, he was panting, breathing through his mouth, that is, so he wouldn’t smell anymore. He came to the driveway. He spun the wheel. The car turned and his headlights swept the darkened drive.

And for one instant, he saw a figure, a silhouette, captured in the beams.

And then the beams passed on and he could see nothing there but the darkness.

Honeywell backed the car up, swept the lights over the spot again. Nothing. But the figure had been there, he was sure of it. He locked all the doors of his car and sat inside, the lights on, the engine on, staring at the door of his house: judging the distance.

Anyone who had been looking on that evening would’ve then seen a rather comic sight: a mild, gray little man, clutching a briefcase, racing across his own lawn to his own door as if demons were chasing him. When Honeywell got inside, he immediately turned on all the lights. Turned on the TV for company, the radio for good measure. Up until then he had always been very regular in his habits, but tonight his bedtime came and went and he was still seated in his bedroom easy chair, staring at the television. It was past midnight before he could bring himself to go to bed. Even then, he left the TV on and fell asleep to the sound of it.

The tone of the test pattern woke him. The tone—and the smell. His eyes shot open and he sat up in bed—relieved at first to see that dawn was breaking, then sickened to notice that that odor was every where in the room. He sat there with the covers clutched to his chin, with all his senses alert. There was no one in the room, and he could hear no one moving in the house. As the light rose outside, Honeywell told himself that, somehow, that man’s smell had gotten all over him. That it was coming from him now.

He got up. And he saw the muddy print of a man’s shoe on the floor. On the floor right beside his bed, as if someone had been standing over him.

John Honeywell washed and shaved and dressed as fast as he could, and left the house immediately. It was about five-thirty in the morning when he reached the train station. The place was deserted. The ticket office was closed. Honeywell didn’t even know when the first train would arrive. He just stood on the empty platform, clutching his briefcase, staring at the tracks, feeling his heart race and thinking over and over again: What will I do? What will I do? What will I do?

Then he heard footsteps. They were coming from the covered bridge that went across the tracks. He looked up. The bridge was covered with a kind of pebbled, plastic sheeting, and Honeywell could see the dark figure of a man crossing slowly to his platform. He watched, motionless, as the figure moved to the stairs at the near end. He saw a man’s legs begin to descend the stairs. Then his body came into view. And then his face.

It was the scarred man. Coming down the stairs, quietly—inevitably. Honeywell knew there was no sense running or calling out or trying to hide. He could only stand there, as the smell grew thicker, as his heart beat faster—as the scarred man came on, down on the platform now, walking toward him, closer and closer until the smell of him was overpowering and Honeywell’s vision was filled with that mild pleasant smile of his, that smile twisted by his scar into something secret and evil. And the man leaned down to Honeywell, so that Honeywell could hardly breathe.

And in a sweet, confidential whisper, the man said: “You.”

And Honeywell killed him.

He dropped his briefcase and wrapped his hands around the man’s throat and squeezed and squeezed until the man’s feet left the ground and he dangled in Honeywell’s grip like a rag doll. Honeywell watched, fascinated, as his hands closed tighter with a strength he didn’t know he had, as the man’s twisted face turned red, then purple, then white, and his tongue fell from his mouth and dangled there as his feet were dangling.

And when the first commuters arrived, they found Honeywell, still there, laughing and laughing, over the mangled body of a woman.

Well, this is where my friend Sinclair comes into it. The police were thrilled to have the Chicago Strangler case solved, but Sinclair was disturbed by the fact that Honeywell was only charged with one of the eight murders: the last one. Sinclair followed the trial closely, of course. He saw Honeywell’s lawyers try to plead their insanity case while saddled with a client who clearly refused to testify. He saw the jury return the only verdict they could—and finally, inevitably, he saw the sentence lowered on the silent, drab little man at the defense table: Death in the electric chair.

A few years later, Sinclair managed to arrange an interview with Honeywell and met him for the first time on Death Row. That first meeting made Sinclair come back again—and again. Over a period of time, he gained the little man’s confidence and, at last, Honeywell told him the story I’ve just told you: It hadn’t come out at the trial. The story convinced Sinclair of two things: that Honeywell was, in fact, the Chicago Strangler, and that he was, in fact, insane. He began to lobby in his column for the commutation of Honeywell’s sentence, and Honeywell began to regard him as his only friend. So when Sinclair finally lost the good fight, Honeywell offered him the one gesture of friendship he had left: he invited him to witness his execution.

Sinclair was there, then, when they led Honeywell into that awful room. The little bookkeeper looked drabber than ever in his death clothes. As the guards strapped him in to the electric chair, his eyes darted everywhere as if he were trying to record every impression he could of the last of sweet, terrible life. And then they brought out the hood to put over his head. And Sinclair, looking on through a window, saw a movement behind a partition on the far end of the room. It was the executioner’s hand reaching for the switch. Honeywell saw it, too, and he turned toward the motion—saw the man hidden from Sinclair’s view—and suddenly shrieked:

“Him! There he is! It’s him! It’s him!”

The guards had to struggle to pull the hood down over his head. They backed away quickly from the thrashing figure. Then the switch came down. And Honeywell died screaming.

Now, Sinclair could have dismissed even this as madness, if he hadn’t attended Honeywell’s funeral. Because there, at the graveyard—

“Stop it!”

A glass shattered.

Susannah had leapt to her feet, the brandy snifter falling from her hand. Even in the firelight I could see that the blood had drained completely from her face. She was white. She stood there, looking around at us wildly, her hand at her mouth, her fingers dancing over her lips. Finally her eyes came to rest on me. She stared at me as if I were something risen from the grave.

“What are you doing to me?” she said. Her voice was shrill. “What are you trying to do to me?”

“Susannah!” I was on my feet too. We all were. Kate and Kelly and Angela crowded in around Susannah while Charlie and I looked at each other helplessly.

Susannah began to cry, to sob, her head against Kate’s shoulder.

“Make him stop,” she kept saying—she said it over and over. “Make him stop it.”

Angela turned to me. “Jackass, you frightened her.”

I said: “I …”

“Look at her, she’s terrified.”

“I didn’t mean … It was just …” I stepped forward—and Susannah recoiled from me into the arms of her friends.

“Stay away from me!” she said. She was sobbing hysterically now. “Keep him away from me!”

“It was only a story,” I said. “I made it up. It doesn’t even make any sense. There’s no Sinclair, no Honeywell. It’s all a story.”

Susannah eyed me, trembling. “You stay away from me,” she said.

Kate said: “Idiot!” And then showed me her back. “Come on, Sue, we’ll take you upstairs,” she said.

I looked on, helpless, stammering, as the three women led Susannah away. I could still hear her sobbing when they shut the bedroom door.