Chase: Roman

the girl. They would do the same to him, worse if they knew he'd been contacted. The walls seemed to sway, alternately closing in like the jaws of an immense vice and swinging out like flat grey gates. The floor rose and fell like waves. Instability swelled around him, the very thing that had landed him in the hospital and had eventually led to his seventy-five-percent disability pension. He could not let it take hold again, and he knew the best way to fight it was to constrict the perimeters of his world, gain solace from solitude. He went to get another drink.
        
        The telephone woke him from his nap just as the dead men, standing in a ring around him, reached for him with soft, white, corrupted hands. He sat straight up in bed and cried out, his arms held before him to ward off their cold touch. When he saw where he was and that he was alone, he sank back, exhausted, and listened to the ringing. Insistently, the thing sounded again and again until, after thirty harsh explosions, he had no choice but to pick it up.
        ‘Yes.’
        ‘I was about to come check on you,’ Mrs Fiedling said. ‘Are you all right?’
        ‘I'm okay’ he said.
        ‘It took you so long to answer.’
        ‘I was asleep.’
        She hesitated, as if framing what she was about to say. ‘I'm having Swiss steak, mushrooms, baked corn and mashed potatoes for supper. Would you like to come down; there's more than I can use.’
        ‘I don't think -’
        ‘A strapping boy like you needs his regular meals,’ she said.
        ‘I've already eaten.’
        She was silent for a long while, then said, ‘All right. But I wish you'd waited, ‘cause I got all this food.’
        ‘I'm sorry, but I'm stuffed,’ he said.
        ‘Tomorrow night, maybe.’
        ‘Maybe,’ he said. He rang off before she could suggest a late-night snack together.
        The ice melted in his glass, diluting what whiskey he had not drunk. He emptied the sadly coloured result into the bathroom sink, got new ice and a new shot of liquor. It tasted as bitter as a bite of lemon rind. He drank it anyway. There was nothing else in the cupboard or refrigerator but a bag of Winesap apples, and they would be infinitely worse.
        He turned on the small black-and-white television set again and rotated the dial slowly through all the local channels, found nothing but the news and a single cartoon programme. He watched the cartoons.
        None of them were funny.
        After that was over, he found an old movie and let the dial set on it.
        The stack of glasses on the cupboard left no room for him to place his present glass when he was finished with it. He carried them into the bathroom and washed them in the sink with hot water and Ivory soap, dried them with a clean towel and returned them to the cupboard.
        Except for the phone call, he had the whole evening ahead of him.
        At six o'clock on the nose, the telephone rang.
        ‘Hello?’
        ‘Good evening, Chase,’ the killer said. His voice was still awful.
        Chase sat down on the bed.
        ‘How are you tonight?’
        ‘Okay,’ Chase said.
        ‘You know what I've been up to all day?’
        ‘Research.’
        ‘That's right.’
        ‘Tell me what you found,’ Chase said, as if all of it would be news to him even though he was the subject. And maybe it would be.
        ‘First of all, you were born here a little over twenty-four years ago on June 11, 1947, in Mercy Hospital. Your parents died in an automobile accident when you were eighteen. You went to school at State and graduated in a three-year accelerated programme, having majored in business administration. You did well in all subjects except a few required courses, chiefly Basic Physical Sciences, Biology I and II, Chemistry I and Basic Composition.’ The killer whispered on for three more long minutes, listing impersonal facts that Chase had thought ended with himself. But courthouse records, college files, newspaper morgues and half a dozen other sources had provided far more information about his life than the killer could have gleaned from the recent articles in the Press-Dispatch.
        ‘I think I've been on the line about five minutes,’ the killer said. ‘It's time I went to another booth. Is your phone tapped, Chase?’
        ‘No,’ Chase said.
        ‘Just the same, I'll hang up now and call you back in a few minutes.’