course he hadn't really studied the painting before buying it. Also,
there had been the distraction of Mrs. Diment, who could probably
talk the cock off a brass monkey.
But there was also punch number two, and that wasn't subjective.
In the darkness of the Audi's trunk, the blond young man had
turned his left arm, the one cocked on the door, so that Kinnell
could now see a tattoo which had been hidden before. It was a
vine-wrapped dagger with a bloody tip. Below it were words.
Kinnell could make Out DEATH BEFORE, and he supposed you
didn't have to be a big best-selling novelist to figure out the word
that was still hidden. DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR was, after
all, just the sort of a thing a hoodoo traveling man like this was apt
to have on his arm. And an ace of spades or a pot plant on the other
one, Kinnell thought.
"You hate it, don't you, Auntie?" he asked.
"Yes," she said, and now he saw an even more amazing thing: she
had turned away from him, pretending to look out at the street
(which was dozing and deserted in the hot afternoon sunlight), so
she wouldn't have to look at the picture. "In fact, Auntie loathes it.
Now put it away and come on into the house. I'll bet you need to
use the bathroom."
Aunt Trudy recovered her savoir faire almost as soon as the
watercolor was back in the trunk. They talked about Kinnell's
mother (Pasadena), his sister (Baton Rouge), and his ex-wife, Sally
(Nashua). Sally was a space-case who ran an animal shelter out of
a double-wide trailer and published two newsletters each month.
Survivors was filled with astral info and supposedly true tales of
the spirit world; Visitors contained the reports of people who'd had
close encounters with space aliens. Kinnell no longer went to fan
conventions which specialized in fantasy and horror. One Sally in
a lifetime, he sometimes told people, was enough.
When Aunt Trudy walked him back out to the car, it was fourthirty
and he'd turned down the obligatory dinner invitation. "I can get
most of the way back to Derry in daylight, if I leave now."
"Okay," she said. "And I'm sorry I was so mean about your picture.
Of course you like it, you've always liked your ... your oddities. It
just hit me the wrong way. That awful face. " She shuddered. "As
if we were looking at him . . . and he was looking right back."
Kinnell grinned and kissed the tip of her nose. "You've got quite an
imagination yourself, sweetheart."
"Of course, it runs in the family. Are you sure you don't want to
use the facility again before you go?"
He shook his head. "That's not why I stop, anyway, not really."
"Oh? Why do you?"
He grinned. "Because you know who's being naughty and who's
being nice. And you're not afraid to share what you know."
"Go on, get going," she said, pushing at his shoulder but clearly
pleased. "If I were you, I'd want to get home quick. I wouldn't want
that nasty guy riding along behind me in the dark, even in the
trunk. I mean, did you see his teeth? Ag!"
He got on the turnpike, trading scenery for speed, and made it as
far as the Gray service area before deciding to have another look at
the picture. Some of his aunt's unease had transmitted itself to him
like a germ, but he didn't think that was really the problem. The.
problem was his perception that the picture had changed.
The service area featured the usual gourmet chow - burgers by Roy
Rogers, cones by TCBY - and had a small, littered picnic and
dogwalking area at the rear. Kinnell parked next to a van with
Missouri plates, drew in a deep breath, let it out. He'd driven to
Boston in order to kill some plot gremlins in the new book, which
was pretty ironic. He'd spent the ride down working out what he'd
say on the panel if certain tough questions were tossed at him, but
none had been-once they'd found out he didn't know where he got
his ideas, and yes, he did sometimes scare himself, they'd only
wanted to know how you got an agent.
And now, heading back, he couldn't think of anything but the
damned picture.
Had it changed? If it had, if the blond kid's arm had moved enough
so he, Kinnell, could read a tattoo which had been partly hidden
before, then he could write a column for one of Sally's magazines.
Hell, a fourpart series. If, on the other hand, it wasn't changing,
then ... what? He was suffering a hallucination? Having a
breakdown? That was crap. His life was pretty much in order, and
he felt good. Had, anyway, until his fascination with the picture
had begun to waver into something else, something darker.
"Ah, fuck, you just saw it wrong the first time," he said out loud as
he got out of the car. Well, maybe. Maybe. It wouldn't be the first
time his head had screwed with his perceptions. That was also a
part of what he did. Sometimes his imagination got a little ...well ...
"Feisty," Kinnell said, and opened the trunk. He took the picture
out of the trunk and looked at it, and it was during the space of the
ten seconds when he looked at it without remembering to breathe
that he became authentically afraid of the thing, afraid the way you
were afraid of a sudden dry rattle in the bushes, afraid the way you
were when you saw an insect that would probably sting if you
provoked it.
The blond driver was grinning insanely at him now-yes, at him,
Kinnell was sure of it-with those filed cannibal-teeth exposed all
the way to the gumlines. His eyes simultaneously glared and
laughed. And the Tobin Bridge was gone. So was the Boston
skyline. So was the sunset. It was almost dark in the painting now,
the car and its wild rider illuminated by a single streetlamp that ran
a buttery glow across the road and the car's chrome. It looked to
Kinnell as if the car (he was pretty sure it was a Grand Am) was on
the edge of a small town on Route 1, and he was pretty sure he
knew what town it was-he had driven through it himself only a few
hours ago.
"Rosewood," he muttered. "That's Rosewood. I'm pretty sure."
The Road Virus was heading north, all right, coming up Route 1
just as he had. The blond's left arm was still cocked out the
window, but it had rotated enough back toward its original position
so that Kinnell could no longer see the tattoo. But he knew it was
there, didn't he? Yes, you bet.
The blond kid looked like a Metallica fan who had escaped from a
mental asylum for the criminally insane.
"Jesus," Kinnell whispered, and the word seemed to come from
someplace else, not from him. The strength suddenly ran out of his
body, ran out like water from a bucket with a hole in the bottom,
and he sat down heavily on the curb separating the parking lot
from the dog-walking zone. He suddenly understood that this was
the truth he'd missed in all his fiction, this was how people really
reacted when they came face-to-face with something which made
no rational sense. You felt as if you were bleeding to death, only
inside your head.
"No wonder the guy who painted it killed himself," he croaked,
still staring at the picture, at the ferocious grin, at the eyes that
were both shrewd and stupid.
There was a note pinned to his shirt, Mrs. Diment had said. "I can't
stand what's happening to me. " Isn't that awful, Mr. Kinnell?
Yes, it was awful, all right.
Really awful.
He got up, gripping the picture by its top, then strode across the
dog-walking area. He kept his eyes trained strictly in front of him,
looking for canine land mines. He did not look down at the picture.