Part 18 (1/2)
”Lovely,” he repeats.
Ariel doesn't blink. She is capable of staring fixedly without blinking for surprisingly long periods. Now and then Mr. Vess worries that she will damage her striking blue eyes; corneas require frequent lubrication. Of course, if she goes too long without blinking and her eyes become dangerously dry, the irritation will cause tears to spring up involuntarily.
”This is a second photograph of Sarah, after I was finished with her,” Mr. Vess says, and he also places this picture on the chair. ”As you can see if you choose to look, the word lovely lovely doesn't apply any more. Beauty never lasts. Things change.” doesn't apply any more. Beauty never lasts. Things change.”
From the shoe box he takes two more photographs.
”This is Sarah's daughter, Laura. Before. And after. You can see she was beautiful. Like a b.u.t.terfly. But there's a worm in every b.u.t.terfly, you know.”
He places these snapshots on the chair and reaches into the box again.
”This was Laura's father. Oh, and here's her brother...and the brother's wife. They were incidental.”
Finally he brings out the three Polaroids of the young Asian gentleman and the Slim Jim with the bite missing.
”His name is Fuji. Like the mountain in j.a.pan.”
Vess puts two of the three photos on the chair.
”I'll keep one for myself. To eat. And then I'll be Fuji, with the power of the East and the power of the mountain, and when the time comes for me to do you, you'll feel both the boy and the mountain in me, and so many other people, all their power. It'll be very exciting for you, Ariel, so exciting that when it's over, you won't even care that you're dead.”
This is a long speech for Mr. Vess. He is for the most part not a garrulous man. The girl's beauty, however, moves him now and then to speeches.
He holds up the Slim Jim.
”The missing bite was taken by Fuji just before I killed him. His saliva will have dried on the meat. You can taste a little of his quiet power, his inscrutable nature.”
He puts the wrapped sausage on the chair.
”I'll be back after midnight,” Mr. Vess promises. ”We'll go out to the motor home, so you can see Laura, the real Laura, not just the picture of her. I brought her back so you could see what becomes of all pretty things. And there's a young man too, a hitchhiker that I picked up along the way. I showed him a photograph of you, and I just didn't like the way he looked at it. He wasn't respectful. He leered. I didn't like something he said about you, so I sewed his mouth shut, and I sewed his eyes shut because of the way he looked at your picture. You'll be excited to see what I did to him. You can touch him...and Laura.”
Vess watches her closely for any tic, shudder, flinch, or subtle change in the eyes that will indicate that she hears him. He knows knows that she hears, but she is clever at maintaining a solemn face and a pretense of catatonic detachment. that she hears, but she is clever at maintaining a solemn face and a pretense of catatonic detachment.
If he can force one faint flinch from her, one tic, then he will soon shatter her completely and have her howling like a goggle-eyed patient in the deepest wards of Bedlam. That collapse into ranting insanity is always fascinating to watch.
But she is tough, this girl, with surprising inner resources. Good. The challenge thrills him.
”And from the motor home we'll go out to the meadow with the dogs, Ariel, and you can watch while I bury Laura and the hitchhiker. Maybe the sky will clear by that time, and maybe there'll be stars or even moonlight.”
Ariel huddles on the chair with her book, eyes distant, lips slightly parted, a deeply still girl.
”Hey, you know, I bought another doll for you. An interesting little shop in Napa, California, a place that sells the work of local craftsmen. It's a clever rag doll. You'll like it. I'll give it to you later.”
Mr. Vess gets up from the footstool and takes a casual inventory of the contents of the refrigerator and the cabinet that serves as the girl's pantry. She has enough supplies to carry her three more days, and he will restock her shelves tomorrow.
”You're not eating quite as much as you should,” he admonishes. ”That's ungrateful of you. I've given you a refrigerator, a microwave, hot and cold running water. You've got everything you need to take care of yourself. You should eat.”
The dolls are no less responsive than the girl.
”You've lost two or three pounds. It hasn't affected your looks yet, but you can't lose any more.”
She gazes into thin air, as if waiting for her voice-box string to be pulled before she recites recorded messages.
”Don't think you can starve yourself until you're haggard and unattractive. You can't escape me that way, Ariel. I'll strap you down and force-feed you if I have to. I'll make you swallow a rubber tube and pump baby food into your stomach. In fact, I'd enjoy it. Do you like pureed peas? Carrots? Applesauce? I guess it doesn't matter, since you won't taste them-unless you regurgitate.”
He gazes at her silken hair, which is red blond in the filtered light. This sight translates through all five of Vess's extraordinary senses, and he is bathed in the sensory splendor of her hair, in all the sounds and smells and textures that the look of it conveys to him. One stimulus has so many a.s.sociations for him that he could lose himself for hours in the contemplation of a single hair or one drop of rain, if he chose, because that item would become an entire world of sensation to him.
He moves to the armchair and stands over the girl.
She doesn't acknowledge him, and although he has entered her line of sight, her gaze has somehow s.h.i.+fted above and to one side of him without his being aware of the moment when it happened.
She is magically evasive.
”Maybe I could get a word or two out of you if I set you on fire. What do you think? Hmmm? A little lighter fluid on that golden hair-and whoos.h.!.+ whoos.h.!.+”
She does not blink.
”Or I'll give you to the dogs, see if that unties your tongue.”
No flinch, no tic, no shudder. What a girl.
Mr. Vess stoops, lowering his face toward Ariel's, until they are nose-to-nose.
Her eyes are now directly aligned with his-yet she is still not looking at him. She seems to peer through through him, as if he is not a man of flesh and blood but a haunting spirit that she can't quite detect. This isn't merely the old trick of letting her eyes swim out of focus; it's a ruse infinitely more clever than that, which he can't understand at all. him, as if he is not a man of flesh and blood but a haunting spirit that she can't quite detect. This isn't merely the old trick of letting her eyes swim out of focus; it's a ruse infinitely more clever than that, which he can't understand at all.
Nose-to-nose with her, Vess whispers, ”We'll go to the meadow after midnight. I'll bury Laura and the hitchhiker. Maybe I'll put you into the ground with them and cover you up, three in one grave. Them dead and you alive. Would you speak then, Ariel? Would you say please? please?”
No answer.
He waits.
Her breathing is low and even. He is so close to her that her exhalations are warm and steady against his lips, like promises of kisses to come.
She must feel his breath too.
She may be frightened of him and even repulsed by him, but she also finds him alluring. He has no doubt about this. Everyone is fascinated by bad boys.
He says, ”Maybe there'll be stars.”
Such a blueness in her eyes, such sparkling depths.
”Or even moonlight,” he whispers.
The steel cuffs on Chyna's ankles were linked by a st.u.r.dy chain. A second and far longer chain, connected by a carabiner to the first, wound around the thick legs of the chair and around the stretcher bars between the legs, returned between her feet, encircled the big barrel that supported the round table, and connected again to the carabiner. The chains didn't contain enough play to allow her to stand. Even if she'd been able to stand, she would have had to carry the chair on her back, and the restricting shape and the weight of it would have forced her to bend forward like a hunchbacked troll. And once standing, she could not have moved from the table to which she was tethered.
Her hands were cuffed in front of her. A chain was hooked into the shackle that encircled her right wrist. From there it led around her, wound between the back rails of the chair behind the tie-on pad, then to the shackle on her left wrist. This chain contained enough slack to allow her to rest her arms on the table if she wished.
She sat with her hands folded, leaning forward, staring at the red and swollen index finger on her right hand, waiting.
Her finger throbbed, and she had a headache, but her neck pain had subsided. She knew that it would return worse than ever in another twenty-four hours, like the delayed agony of severe whiplash.