Читать книгу Mr. X - Peter Straub - Страница 21

In essence, boarding schools are all the same, especially to those who are as smoke from the cannon’s mouth and wind up getting expelled from one tweedy snakepit after another. Actual military school, in my case good old Fortress, of Owlsburg, Pennsylvania, to which my father sent me in a last convulsion of disgust, suited me far better than its civilian imitations. My father had informed me that failure at this last resort would derail the gravy train – no more monthly deposits into my account, no inheritance, no trust fund, finis – thereby compelling me to work at least hard enough to pass the courses. I rather liked my uniform’s chill, fascist pomp. Because I entered in the senior, or Cavalry, year, one of my duties was to bully the students beneath me, those in Artillery, Quartermaster, and especially Infantry, which was packed like sardines with doe-eyed fourteen-year-olds in a desperate sweat to please their overlords. We were supposed to reduce these children to whimpering blobs of panic, and they had to take it without protest or complaint.

I spent one of the happiest years of my young life in that place. As soon as I understood the deal, I drove out my roommate, a prep-school expellee like myself named Squiers whose babble had exhausted my patience before the end of our first day together. Thereafter, in my palatial single I was free to do as I wished. I did not at all mind the necessity, due to my parents’ refusal to have me come home, of spending the Thanksgiving vacation and Christmas break at school.

The only sign of impending difficulty occurred early in March, when my calculus instructor and unit commander, Captain Todd Squadron, drew me aside to announce that he would be visiting my quarters at 2100 hours that evening. I found this news alarming. Captain Squadron, a by-the-book regular army type whom I had bluffed into admiration from the day of my arrival, lately had grown cooler, almost dismissive. I feared that he had seen through my performance. I hoped that he had not discussed my ‘case’ with an all-seeing dreadnought named Major Audrey Arndt, whom I had taken considerable pains to avoid. One other possibility was an even greater worry. After his arrival in my room, I discovered that both of these matters, the not so serious and the positively grave, were on his mind.

I saluted and stood at attention. Captain Squadron growled, ‘At ease,’ and gestured me to my cot. His oddly wary, knowing attitude was laced with the dismissiveness I had lately sensed in him. When I had perched on the cot, Squadron leaned against my dresser and gazed down at me for a long moment transparently intended to unnerve.

‘What is it with you, anyhow, Pledge?’

I asked what he meant.

‘You’re different, aren’t you?’

‘I hope I might take that as a compliment, sir.’

‘There’s an example of what I mean, right there. After the Infantry intake, most transfers are foul balls.’ He pulled at his uniform jacket, automatically aligning it with his trousers. ‘They got bounced out of so many schools their parents just want to keep them in line. Even though most of them aren’t too swift, they all think they’re smarter than we are. Every last one has a big, big problem with authority.’

‘Not me, sir,’ I said. ‘I respect authority.’

He gave me a sullen glare. ‘I cordially suggest that you stop jukin’ with me, Pledge.’

We were all pledges, no matter what class we were in. I considered saying ‘Sir, the pledge is not familiar with the term “jukin’ with,” sir,’ but kept my mouth shut.

‘It falls to us to straighten up these sorry-ass rebels as best we can. As a general rule, we have about a sixty-forty chance if we get them in their second year. If they come into Artillery, it’s less than fifty-fifty we can pound some sense into their heads. By Cavalry, it’s a lost cause. All we do is, we concentrate on teaching them to stand up straight and how to tell their right foot from the left one so they can manage the drills, and we push them through the course work until they graduate and get the hell out.’ He folded at the waist like a puppet, tightened his shoelaces, and snapped upright again. ‘If it was up to me, we’d refuse to transfer students into Cavalry. Eighteen is too old to adapt to our way of life.’

He turned to face the mirror over my dresser and gave the jacket another series of precise tugs. He lifted his chin and examined the effect. ‘The little clowns come in laughing, and I have to waste a hellacious amount of time convincing them with all the means at my disposal, which are many, that we are not to be sneered at.’ He caught my eyes in the mirror. ‘I believe I can claim a one hundred percent success rate at carrying out that particular mission. Maybe those feebs were a long way from being soldiers when they walked through the gate for the last time, but I guarantee you this much, they were believers.’ He was still holding my eyes.

‘I became a believer as soon as I got here,’ I said. ‘Sir.’

Squadron turned around and leaned against the dresser without bending. His wide, blunt face was distorted by a broken nose that would have made him look like a fighter had it not been the size of the nose on a shrunken head. ‘I’ll give you this much, you had me fooled.’

‘Sir?’

‘You had me thinking, this pledge is going to change your mind about admissions policy, Captain. In a couple of days, he snaps off a salute could shatter a brick. Trims his uniform like a West Point grad. In a week, memorized the Reg Book and Lore and Traditions. Respectful and well prepared in class. Okay, he had a little problem with his roommate, but these things happen. Fact is, Pledge Squiers is an unrelenting motormouth who should have been paired with a deaf-mute. This new pledge fit in from the moment his shoe leather hit Pershing Quad and is a fine asset to his class. Look at the way he braces those squirts in Infantry! He’s a goddamned natural! You know what that young man is?’ He pushed himself off the dresser, raised his arms at his sides and gazed upward. ‘That young man is officer material!’

‘I do my best,’ I said.

Captain Squadron canted backward against the dresser and pushed his hands into his pockets. In the mirror, the clean line of a fresh haircut curved above the starched collar of his tan shirt. The dark stubble on his head and his tiny, dented nose made him look like a gas station attendant. ‘You’re a real piece of work, aren’t you?’ He smiled exactly as if he had just decided to punch someone in the face.

‘I don’t follow you, sir,’ I said.

‘How many friends have you made here? Who are your pals, your asshole buddies?’

I named three or four dullards in my class.

‘When was the last time you and one or more of your buddies took the bus into town, caught a movie, had a few burgers, that kind of thing?’

The question meant that he already knew the answer. When we left the grounds we had to sign out in groups. I had taken the bus into Owlsburg once, looked around at the dreary streets, and returned immediately. ‘I tend to devote my weekends to study.’

He rocked back and smiled again. ‘I’m inclined to think that you have no friends and zero interest in making any. Didn’t go home for Thanksgiving, did we? Or over Christmas break.’

‘You know I didn’t, sir,’ I said, beginning to get irritated with the captain’s theatrics.

‘Christmas is a major, major holiday. It’s a rare pledge who doesn’t get home for Christmas.’

‘I explained that,’ I said. ‘My folks invited me to go to Barbados with them, but I wanted to spend the vacation studying for the finals.’

He grinned like a wolf. ‘Should we go down the hall and call your parents, ask them a few questions?’

Again, he already knew the truth. Squadron had checked on my story. ‘Okay,’ I said, cursing myself for having succumbed to the temptation of a colorful lie. ‘If I got along with my family, would I be here in the first place? It isn’t easy to say that your parents hate you so much they won’t even let you come for Christmas!’

‘Why would they hate their own kid like that?’

‘We had misunderstandings,’ I said.

He looked up at the ceiling. ‘I was so impressed by your conduct that I started to wonder why a young man like yourself had been asked to leave all those boarding schools. Five of them, to be exact. Didn’t mesh with what I was seeing. So I looked into your files.’ He smiled at me with his smug challenge. ‘Damned if I could find anything there but smoke.’

‘Smoke, sir?’

‘Evasions. “Bad influence on the school.” “Antagonistic behavior.” “Considered threatening.” None of these dildos was willing to get down to the nitty-gritty. You know what that told me?’

‘I’m sorry to admit it, but I probably acted like a bully,’ I said.

He pretended not to have heard. ‘Two things. Put on record, your infractions would bar you from admission anywhere except the state pen. But they couldn’t pin anything on you, so they took the easy way out and passed you along.’

‘I don’t think –’

He held up a hand like a stop sign. ‘So far this year, six pledges in Infantry have washed out voluntarily. Normally, it’d be two at most. Over at the infirmary? A rash of broken bones. Once or twice in a normal year, a pledge breaks an arm. Now, they’re coming in once a week with broken fingers, broken wrists, broken arms. Concussion. One boy turned out to have internal bleeding from a ruptured spleen. How’d he get it? “I twisted my ankle and fell down the stairs.” And then there’s the case of Artillery Pledge Fletcher. You knew him, didn’t you?’

‘After a fashion,’ I said, meaning that I had known Artillery Pledge Fletcher in a most specific fashion. This was the serious matter I had hoped Captain Squadron would not bring up. An unassuming, scholarly-looking boy with round, horn-rimmed glasses and a rosebud face, Fletcher had forever enriched my life through an ultimately fatal act of courtesy.

On the Thursday of the week given over to the examinations before the Christmas break, I had seen him immersed in a book at a long table in the library. The pledges on both sides were also reading books from stacks piled in front of them, and it was not until the second time I looked at them that I noticed what was different about Fletcher. The others were taking notes on the contents of volumes of military history, but Fletcher was perusing, apparently for his own entertainment, a brightly jacketed work of fiction. Moved by an instinct I did not as yet comprehend, I walked past the table and saw that the title of the book was The Dunwich Horror. The combination of the title and the lurid cover illustration instantly struck me with a lesser version of that force which had first drawn me into Johnson’s Woods. I had to have that book. That book was mine. For an hour, I twitched in my seat, taking desultory notes and keeping an eye on Fletcher.

When he stood up, I collected my things and rushed alongside him. Yes, he said, he would be happy to loan me the book after he had finished reading it. He surrendered it for inspection with the comment that it was ‘really spooky.’ Fletcher had no idea of the accuracy of his description. Emitting a series of pulsations, the little tract shivered in my hands. It was like gripping a hummingbird.

During the following day, roughly half the pledges, those finished with exams, left campus in wave upon wave of family cars. Fletcher’s last final, chemistry, took place on Saturday at the same hour as mine, military philosophy. However, Fletcher assumed that I had already left school, and at five-thirty on Friday afternoon, while on his way to Mess Hall, entered my room without pausing to knock. He found me in, so to speak.

Until my delivery into Fortress Military Academy, the struggles to continue my real education had been largely unrewarded. I needed privacy, and even when I managed to secure a safely uninterrupted hour or two, my efforts had advanced me little beyond what I had already attained. Now I see that weary lull largely as a matter of physical maturation. A developmental spurt had added two inches and twenty pounds to my frame before my admission to the world of close-order drills, and by the time Pledge Fletcher charged in with the sacred book, I was making my first baby steps toward Moveless Movement, whatever it’s called, disappearing from one place and turning up in another.

As ever, a paradox is involved, namely that until it becomes second nature the muscular capacity demanded by this stunt gets in the way of doing it. By Christmas break of that year I had succeeded in shifting myself across the four feet from the edge of my cot to my desk chair by means of a sweaty interlude during which I was neither in one place nor the other but in both, imperfectly. Whatever that looked like while it was happening is what Fletcher saw when he barged into my room. I can’t even guess. My bowels churned, and someone was driving a railroad spike into my head. What I was able to see in the midst of the clamor increased my distress. Two uniformed pledges charged in through two different doors. A swarm of glittering light and my considerable physical distress rendered the invader or invaders visible only in silhouette form as he or they abruptly ceased to move.

From the the cot, I saw one of them freeze in front of the open door. From the slightly clearer, closer perspective of the chair, I saw a uniformed torso and waist come to rest beside the door’s dark green panel. From both positions I observed the bright dust jacket of the book in my visitor’s hand, and both the me on the cot and the me in the chair experienced a surge of demand. Our attempt at an order commanding the pledge to stay put produced the sibilant hiss of a needle striking the grooves of a 78-rpm record. The pledge couldn’t have moved if he had wanted to – the kid was glued to the floor.

An endless second later, I was seated beside the immobilized Artillery Pledge Fletcher as glowing sparks fell and died in the air, especially around the end of the cot. I was stark naked and, despite the red-hot agony in my head and the tumult in my guts, brandished the sort of obdurate erection known at Fortress as ‘blue steel.’ Artillery Pledge Fletcher’s mouth hung open, and his eyes were glazed. He stared at me, then at the place where I had been. A smell like that of burning circuitry hung in the room. I bent forward and closed the door with my fingertips.

Artillery Pledge Fletcher moved his vacant gaze to me, to the cot, then back to me. ‘Uhhh …’ He recalled why he had come to my room. His trembling hand proffered the book. ‘I thought … I wanted to …’ Pledge Fletcher’s eyes landed on my erection.

I slid the book from his fingers. My groin expanded into what from the standpoint of envious old age I must call remarkable dimensions.

Fletcher kept his eyes on the prize. ‘Well, I don’t … That is, I didn’t …’ His gaze snapped up to meet mine. ‘Aaah, when I came in I couldn’t really see what was going on. Probably I got dizzy. It’s sort of hot in here.’ He looked down again. ‘Hey, keep the book. I have to get to mess.’

‘No, you don’t,’ I said.

He backed toward the door. I put the book on my desk, stood up, grasped his upper arms, and moved him sideways.

‘Oh, Christ,’ he said. ‘Look, I’ll get a late-for-mess tick, but if you want a Mary, I’ll give you one.’

A ‘tick’ was a demerit, and ‘Mary’ meant a ‘five-finger Mary,’ school slang for masturbation. He was trying to bargain his way down from whatever else I might have had in mind. I had no idea of what I intended to do, apart from ensuring that he never leave the room alive. My frenum slid up the coarse fabric of his tunic, leaving a transparent glister like the track of a snail.

‘Don’t cream all over my uniform.’ He stepped to one side, settled his hand midshaft, and, not untenderly, moved it up and down as if he were milking a cow. I clamped my left arm around his waist, my right hand on his shoulder.

‘What was that with the sparks?’

‘I’ll explain later,’ I said.

‘Nuts to the tick. Do me afterwards.’

‘Anything you want,’ I said. Oh, the lies told by randy boys! Oh, the foolish young things who believe them!

My knees locked and my spine straightened. Ivory gouts flew across ten feet of floor and splatted against the window. Artillery Pledge Fletcher hooted, playfully aimed me at the ceiling and pumped on. A ribbon of melted ice cream hurtled up and struck the plaster. In almost scientific curiosity, he watched gruel stream over his knuckles and plop to the floor. ‘Amazing.’

I released my grip on him, he his on me. A flush mottled his face. He fumbled with his zipper and groped into his trousers.

‘Thanks for the book,’ I said, knowing for the first time since my experiments in the ruined house that I could freeze a human heart, and sent an icicle into his. Hand in his fly, Fletcher tumbled dead to the floor.

Whatever I decided to do with his body would have to wait until after curfew. I shoved him under the bed and dressed in my uniform, then used a towel to wipe the mess off the floor and the window. I stood on a chair and swabbed the ceiling. Then I settled down to read.

I might as well say: to experience an ecstasy more profound than sexual release. To witness the most hidden aspects of what I knew to be true about the world and myself laid bare in lines of type running across the receptive page. More than that, to learn that this sage, this prophet (a resident of Providence, Rhode Island, according to the infuriatingly cursory paragraph on the flap) had penetrated the Mystery far more deeply than I. Certain allowances had to be made due to the sage’s decision to present his knowledge in fictional form, but he confirmed the origins of my Mission and the nature of my Ancestors. He uttered their mighty names: Nyarlathotep, Yog-Sothoth, Shub-Niggurath, great Cthulhu.

The Dunwich Horror became my Genesis, my Gospels, my gnosis. In wonder and joy, I read through it twice, interrupted only by Artillery Pledge Fletcher’s roommates, pop-eyed future Rotarians named Woodlett and Bartland who burst in without bothering to knock and burst out again ten seconds later to go baying around the courtyard. Before beginning to devour the book a third time, I looked up and noticed the darkness beyond the window. The time was 3:00 A.M. I reluctantly closed the book, dragged the corpse from beneath my cot, transported it to a colonnade overlooking the dormitory courtyard, and dumped it over the side. It was a four-story drop onto the concrete, good enough, I thought. In my haste, I neglected to remove Fletcher’s hand from his fly.

This was the matter I had hoped the captain would leave unmentioned.

‘After a fashion,’ Squadron said. ‘He wasn’t a friend of yours.’

‘I don’t have friends, remember?’

‘You and he never passed the time of day, chewed the fat, anything like that.’

‘Not that I recall,’ I said.

‘Artillery Pledge Fletcher brought us a great deal of unwelcome attention.’

The apparent suicide of a Fortress pledge had attracted national attention, and, although what appeared to be its autoerotic aspect was never officially announced, that Fletcher’s right hand had been in the ‘Mary’ position at the time of death had spread rapidly through the school and its surrounding community, arousing a mixture of shock, distaste, and ribaldry. He had jumped to his death doing that?

The autopsy deepened the mystery. Fletcher had died as the result of a massive heart attack, not the fractures sustained by his fall from the colonnade. Not only had he been dead before his body struck the ground, the death had taken place between six and twelve hours before one or more people had dropped him onto the courtyard. Once again, police and reporters invaded the school. Everyone who had been present on the Friday evening before Christmas break, myself included, was questioned and requestioned in an attempt to determine where Fletcher had been at the time of his death, where his body had been hidden during the missing hours, and who had pitched it into the courtyard. A trace of semen belatedly discovered on his tunic led to the widely reported theory that the cadet had died in the midst of a ‘sex party,’ and that his guilty partners had secreted the body until it could be disposed of in a manner they hoped to be taken for suicide.

The Fortress administration thundered that sexual misconduct was specifically forbidden by the Reg Book’s honor code. The administration’s final attempt at dampening the scandal was to announce that a depraved outsider had accosted Artillery Pledge Fletcher on the way to mess hall and had forced him into a remote area of the campus, where the fiend’s immoral advances had induced a heart attack, whereupon the fiend had lain in wait until he could so deal with the body as to place suspicion on the innocent. Artillery Pledge Fletcher had submitted to death rather than dishonor, and the school would inaugurate a Valor Cup in his name to be presented at each year’s awards convocation to the Artillery Pledge Who Most Typifies the Values Expressed in the Honor Code. I found it hardly unwelcome when this bilge carried the day. The story had long ago dropped out of the papers, and we had not seen a cop or reporter for at least a month. The only significant result of the investigations had been the expulsion of a notorious, much-missed Cavalry femme who, as if measuring fish he had caught, separated his hands by varying distances when other cadets’ names were mentioned.

‘It’s interesting that you might have been the last person to see the pledge before he died,’ Squadron said.

I shook my head in a display of wondering disbelief.

‘The pledge tells his roommates he’s going to mess, and oh, on the way he might as well go up to your room to drop off this book you wanted to borrow, otherwise he might forget, he’ll see them at dinner, goodbye. He waltzes into your room, finds out you’re still here, and gives you the book. Right?’

‘It was thoughtful of him,’ I said. ‘He wanted to be sure I’d have it when I got back.’ I smoothed my blanket with the palm of my hand.

‘You couldn’t get this book from the library?’

All the times I had been questioned, no one had ever thought to ask about the book. The notion of showing it to Captain Squadron seemed filled with danger. ‘We don’t have it in the library. It was a collection of stories.’

‘Like short stories?’

I smoothed another nonexistent wrinkle.

‘What kind of stories?’

‘I don’t know what you’d call them.’

‘Let me have a look at it.’

I went to my desk and opened the top drawer. The hideous image of Squadron’s fingerprints contaminating the sacred text filled my mind. I held it up and gave him a look at the cover. He narrowed his eyes. ‘I never heard of the guy.’

‘Me neither.’ I put the book on my desk, relief at escaping what seemed like both pollution and danger making my heart thump. When I looked back at Squadron, he was frowning and holding out his hand.

‘I thought you wanted …’

He waggled his fingers.

I surrendered the treasure to his waiting paw.

‘You kids think these stupid tricks bamboozle everybody, but we’ve seen it all before.’ He opened the book and flipped forward. When he failed to find pictures of naked women, he riffled the pages with his thumb. He folded back the cover and looked at the front binding. ‘You’re too jumpy. Something’s funny here.’ Holding both covers, he upended the book and shook it. Nothing fell out of the pages.

Squadron tossed the book onto the dresser and leaned back again. ‘You didn’t go to the mess that night.’

‘I wasn’t hungry.’

‘Kids your age are hungry all the time, but let that pass. What do you think happened to Artillery Pledge Fletcher?’

‘The commandant hit the nail on the head, sir. Some outsider jumped him between here and mess hall, and the pledge got so scared he dropped dead. I wish I’d gone with Pledge Fletcher. He wouldn’t have attacked the two of us.’ I made the mistake of glancing at the treasure. Squadron saw my eyes move. Grinning, he slid the book to the edge of the dresser.

‘No outsider has ever, and I mean ever, managed to sneak in here without being seen. It’s almost impossible to get in or out without passing a guard station. Breaking into the dorms, you have to set that up in advance, don’t you? Get a buddy to crack a window for you, talk him into hanging around a fire door?’

Once or twice a month, a reckless cadet who had escaped into town regained entry to the dorms by precisely those means. ‘I don’t know anything about that.’

He folded his arms over his chest and tilted his head to one side, still smirking at me. ‘But since this is between you and I, we both know the commandant’s story is horse puckey, don’t we?’

I did my best to look puzzled. ‘Sir, I don’t understand.’

‘I probably don’t, either. But here’s what I know.’ He unfolded his arms and used the index finger of his left hand to tick off points on the fingers of his right, as he did in our calculus class. ‘Point one. Only two other cadets with fourth-floor rooms were still around on the night in question. Cavalry Pledges Holbrook and Joys reported to the mess by 1800 hours and returned to their quarters before 1900 hours to study for the same final in military philosophy you had to take. They observed lights-out at 2330 hours.

‘Two. Artillery Pledge Fletcher’s roommates, Artillery Pledges Woodlett and Bartland, witness to his intention of dropping off in your quarters a book you wanted to borrow, thereafter to proceed to the evening meal in time to arrive approximately when they would do so, then report back to the third floor and prepare for his chem final until lights-out.

‘Three. When their roommate failed to appear at mess, Artillery Pledges Woodlett and Bartland assumed that he had chosen to forgo dinner in favor of study in the library. Shortly before lights-out, they went downstairs into the courtyard for the purpose of greeting the pledge on his return from his solitary labors. He did not return, guess why, the poor kid was already dead. Artillery Pledges Woodlett and Bartland remained down there until 2330 hours, at which time a single window on the north side of the fourth floor remained alight. That was the window of your room, Pledge.’

‘I apologize for the infraction, sir,’ I said.

He focused on the wall above my cot. ‘They came up here, thinking that the pledge might have been in your room all that time. During their short conversation with you, they were informed that he had loaned you the book and gone on his merry way. They returned to quarters in the hopes that the pledge would appear before the night was out. Unfortunately, the pledge did not. Instead, a deal of trouble was visited upon us, and the name of this fine institution was dragged through the mud.’

He fixed me with a blunt stare. ‘At which time, and I think we have come to point number four, you came into my mind. I suppose you had been in my mind all along. I was already starting to wonder if you had put all those pledges into the infirmary.’

‘Sir,’ I said, ‘accidents happen. Did any of them blame me for their injuries?’

‘Right. Point five. Accidents happen. After careful consideration, I have surprised myself by concluding that you are one of those accidents.’ He was staring directly into my eyes. ‘I think you’re something new. I don’t even know what to call it. You spooked those kids so bad they’re afraid to open their mouths. Know what I think? I think our setup here was exactly what you were looking for.’

‘Sir, excuse me, but this is incredible,’ I said. ‘A bunch of kids fall down and break some bones, and you blame it on me.’

‘Point six.’ Captain Squadron was still holding my eyes. ‘Let’s get back to that light in your window. Artillery Pledges Woodlett and Bartland were surprised to see that it was turned on. There were a number of reasons why that could be. You might have forgotten to turn it off before leaving. Or Artillery Pledge Fletcher forgot to turn it off. Or, what they were hoping, he hadn’t switched off your light because he was still in the room. So up they come and, surprise, surprise, you’re here after all.’

He gave me an odd, twisted smile and tilted his head against his raised fist in a charged, deliberate pause. I was surprised to feel a chill of fear in my stomach, and I hated him for causing it. ‘Did they knock before they came in?’

‘I think they did,’ I said. He was getting too close. ‘Everybody does. Section three, paragraph six of chapter two in the Reg Book, “Pledge Deportment.”’

He looked as if he was figuring out how to get a nasty stain off the wall. ‘But you don’t knock on the door of an empty room. The pledges, whose memories seem to be better than yours, say they just barged in.’

‘It’s possible,’ I said.

Squadron held his pose for another beat. He lowered his hand and gave me a slow, subzero smile. ‘Artillery Pledge Fletcher did the same thing, didn’t he?’

Humiliating fear sparkled in my viscera. ‘I believe he followed regs and knocked first.’

‘I believe he did not.’ Squadron gazed around the room for a moment, then shot me a speculative glance. ‘Where are we, point eight?’

‘Seven,’ I said. ‘Sir.’

‘Okay, seven. Point seven. After a tremendous amount of thought, I have come to believe that Artillery Pledge Fletcher came across something he shouldn’t have seen. He surprised you. All of a sudden he was a threat. Boy, I really wonder what that kid stumbled into. And I wonder how you managed to scare him so bad his heart actually stopped, but I don’t suppose you’ll tell me. You did it, though. And you knew what you were doing.’

‘That’s crazy,’ I said. I felt as if a truck had run into me. ‘You can’t actually be telling me that you think I killed Fletcher.’

‘I’m not saying you planned on doing it, and I’m not even saying that you did it directly. Otherwise, Pledge, that’s an affirmative. I think he put you in a position where you had to get rid of him, and somehow you managed to do that. Hell, I don’t think you killed him, I know you did. That kid walked in here and never walked out.’

I stared at him with what I hoped looked like rubber-faced shock. ‘Sir,’ I said, ‘on my honor as a pledge, he came in, gave me the book, and left. That’s all.’

Squadron moved to the door and slouched against it. His demeanor had changed from hard-edged aggression to a weary certainty shot through with sadness. That this uncomplicated ramrod of a man had risen to something like emotional subtlety heightened my fear.

‘I suppose you hid the body under your cot until you could move it without being seen.’

‘How can you say these things? Because I’m new? Because you decided you didn’t like me?’ My anger floated dangerously close to the surface. ‘I should have gone out for football. Then I’d still be your fair-haired boy, and you wouldn’t be blaming me every time one of your prize dumbbells gets a broken bone.’ Before I went any further over the line, I managed to get myself under control. ‘Excuse me, please, sir, that remark was uncalled for. I apologize. But I repeat, I swear on my honor as a pledge –’

‘Halt,’ he said. ‘Stop right there.’

‘But sir, I –’

‘Halt, I said.’ His eyes had darkened with disgust. ‘I have only one more thing to say to you, and I don’t want you fouling the air before I do.’ Captain Squadron gave his jacket a yank and then gripped the flaps of his pockets and yanked again, savagely, as if he were trying to rip them off. ‘I don’t want to hear any more bullshit about your honor as a pledge, because as ridiculous as it must seem to you, I happen to take our code very, very seriously. It takes some transfers a little while to figure out that the code isn’t just empty words, but most of them get it in the end. You never will. You’re like a species of one. You’re a disease.’

I stopped pretending to be shocked and sat on the edge of my cot, watching and listening. The inside of my body, everything from the back of my throat down to below my waist, had become a block of ice.

‘Are we done now, sir?’

‘Affirmative. This conversation is concluded.’ He locked my eyes with his. ‘I’ll be watching you, Pledge. If I catch you stepping an inch out of line, I’ll come down on you like a ton of bricks, and you’ll be out of uniform before you know what happened. Is that understood?’

‘Affirmative,’ I said. ‘Sir.’

‘I wish to God your parents had put you into some other military school.’ He gave me a withering glare. ‘I’ll take Artillery Pledge Fletcher’s book with me. I want to see what’s so god-awful important in those stories.’

My heart nearly stopped, like Fletcher’s. ‘Please don’t, sir. I haven’t read it yet.’

He tucked the book under his elbow. ‘Report to my office one week from today, and I’ll give it back. Unless Mr and Mrs Fletcher want it returned to them. That will be all.’

I watched him strut to the door of my room.

What happened next can only be explained by the combination of loathing, terror, and desperation blasting through me. If I had any thoughts, they had to do with the necessity of reclaiming the sacred book, but it would be more truthful to say that I was incapable of anything like thought. Without having moved, I was standing next to Captain Squadron, who was beginning to register the first traces of alarm. I seemed to be twice my actual size, though I believe this to have been an illusion produced by the condition that enables mothers to lift up the fronts of cars posing threats to their infants.

I had no idea of what I was going to do. I certainly had no idea of what I was going to do to Captain Squadron. In fact, I still don’t really know how I did it, since duplication of the feat has resisted me ever since. I don’t suppose any of those mothers ever picked up a car a second time, either. I touched the book and, as if I had done this kind of thing a hundred times before, felt myself flow into his mind and voicelessly command its surrender. With the book safely returned to my hands, I used the same instinctive power to impel him toward the center of the room. The interior of Squadron’s mind reported a sensation akin to that of being blown backward by a great wind.

Captain Squadron remained incapable of speech as I withdrew from his mind. An enormous battery deep within me thrummed into life. At that moment, a certain crucial revelation that was to shape all the rest of my life came to me. I say ‘came to me,’ meaning that it entered me like a clear, silver stream and gave momentary form to the uproar. Once again I had heard the voice from Johnson’s Woods.

Captain Squadron stood in the center of my room, perhaps two yards away from me. I glided toward him as if across an icy pond on a pair of figure skates. I don’t think I touched him. I recall that almost impersonal sensation of emptying that accompanies evacuation. My joints suffered the bone-deep ache associated with arthritis. My head seemed to have been split by an axe. Maybe the mommies who hoist those automobiles off their babies feel the same way, I don’t know. What I do know is that Captain Squadron had vanished from the room. A greenish puddle about four inches in diameter lay on the floor, and a wet, deathly stink hung in the air.

I overcame my agonies long enough to wipe up the captain’s remains with a towel, washed it off in the sink, and fell on the cot to dwell on my revelation.

This was what I had been told a fraction of a second before I reduced Captain Todd Squadron to a half-pint of bile: one day, a day long distant, there would appear in the earthly realm an enemy more serious, more consequential, than Captain Squadron. My enemy would be like a shadow-self or a hidden double self, for when grown to adulthood he would possess the power to inhibit the coming of the Last Days, as certain protagonists in the tales of the Providence Master had frustrated the designs of my true ancestors. This Anti-Christ would be most vulnerable when still a child, yet evil forces would conspire to protect him from destruction at my hands. As my enemy grew to adulthood, he would partake of a portion of my own talents, thereby increasing the difficulty of my task, and for this damnable complication there was an excellent reason. My enemy was also the smoke from the cannon’s mouth – he was going to be a member of the family. In fact, he was going to be my son.