Velocity

sea. What it is that it keeps on saying.
    He was asleep before the clock counted the half hour.
    In his dream, he lay in a coma, unable to move or to speak, but nonetheless aware of the world around him. Doctors in white lab coats and black ski masks loomed, working on his flesh with steel scalpels, carving clusters of bloody acanthus leaves.
    Resurgent pain, dull but persistent, woke him at 8:40 Wednesday morning.
    At first, he could not remember which of his recent nightmarish experiences had been dreamed, which real. Then he could.
    He wanted another Vicodin. Instead, in the bathroom, he shook two aspirin from a bottle.
    Intending to take the aspirins with orange juice, he went into the kitchen. He had neglected to put the baking pan, crusted with the residue of lasagna, in the dishwasher. The empty bottle of Elephant beer stood on Dr. Ferrier’s stationery.
    Morning light flooded the room. The blinds had been raised. The windows had been covered when he’d gone to bed.
    Taped to the refrigerator was a folded sheet of paper, the fourth message from the killer.
     
     
     

Chapter 18
     
    He knew beyond doubt that he had engaged the deadbolt in the back door when he had returned from the garage with the needle-nose pliers. Now it was unlocked. Stepping onto the porch, he surveyed the western woods. A few elms in the foreground, pines beyond. The morning sun bent all tree shadows in upon the grove and probed those dusky reaches without much illuminating them. As his gaze traveled the Greenwood, seeking the telltale flare of sunlight off the lenses of binoculars, he saw movement. Mysterious forms whidded among the trees, as fluid as the shadows of birds in flight, flickering palely when sunlight dappled them. A sense of the uncanny overcame Billy. Then the forms broke from the trees, and they were only deer: a buck, two does, a fawn. He thought that something must have spooked them in the woods, but they gamboled only a few yards onto the lawn before coming to a halt. As serene as deer in Eden, they grazed upon the tender grass. Returning to the house, leaving the deer to their breakfast, Billy locked the back door even though he gained no safety from the deadbolt. If the killer didn’t possess a key, then he owned lock picks and was experienced in their use.
    Leaving the note undisturbed, Billy opened the fridge. He took out a quart of orange juice.
    As he drank juice from the carton, washing down the aspirins, he stared at the note taped to the refrigerator. He did not touch it.
    He put two English muffins in the toaster. When they were crisp, he spread peanut butter on them and ate at the kitchen table.
    If he never read the note, if he burned it in the sink and washed the ashes down the drain, he would be removing himself from the game.
    The first problem with that idea was the same that had pricked his conscience before: Inaction counted as a choice.
    The second problem was that he himself had become a victim of assault. And he had been promised more. Are you prepared for your first wound?
    The freak had not underlined or italicized first, but Billy understood where the emphasis belonged. Although he had his faults, self-delusion wasn’t one of them.
    If he didn’t read the note, if he tried to opt out, he would be even less able to imagine what might be coming than he was now. When the ax fell on him, he would not even hear the blade cutting the air above his head.
    Besides, this was in no way a game to the killer, which Billy had realized the previous night. Denied a playmate, the freak would not simply pick up his ball and go home. He would see this through to whatever end he had in mind.
    Billy would have liked to carve acanthus leaves.
    He wanted to work a crossword puzzle. He was good at them.
    Laundry, yard work, cleaning out the rain gutters, painting the mailbox: He could lose himself in the mundane chores of daily life, and take solace in them.
    He wanted to work at the tavern and let the hours pass in a blur of repetitive tasks and inane conversations.
    All the mystery he needed—and all the drama—was to be found in his visits to Whispering Pines, in the puzzling words that Barbara sometimes spoke and in his persistent belief that there was hope for her. He needed nothing more. He had nothing more.
    He had nothing more until this, which he didn’t need and didn’t want—but could not escape.
    Finished with the muffins, he took the plate and knife to the sink. He washed them, dried them,