Footsteps going away.
“What am I doing here?” The question shrill at the end.
The answer came from far behind him. “Atoning, Mr. Lounds.”
Lounds heard footsteps mounting stairs. He heard a shower running. His head was clearer now. He remembered leaving the office and driving, but he couldn’t remember after that. The side of his head throbbed and the smell of chloroform made him gag. Held rigidly erect, he was afraid he would vomit and drown. He opened his mouth wide and breathed deep. He could hear his heart.
Lounds hoped he was asleep. He tried to raise his arm from the armrest, increasing the pull deliberately until the pain in his palm and arm was enough to wake him from any dream. He was not asleep. His mind gathered speed.
By straining he could turn his eyes enough to see his arm for seconds at a time. He saw how he was fastened. This was no device to
protect broken backs. This was no hospital. Someone had him.
Lounds thought he heard footsteps on the floor above, but they might have been his heartbeats.
He tried to think. Strained to think. Keep cool and think, he whispered. Cool and think.
The stairs creaked as Dolarhyde came down.
Lounds felt the weight of him in every step. A presence behind him now.
Lounds spoke several words before he could adjust the volume of his voice.
“I haven’t seen your face. I couldn’t identify you. I don’t know what you look like. The Tattler, I work for The National Tattler, would pay a reward . . . a big reward for me. Half a million, a million maybe. A million dollars.”
Silence behind him. Then a squeak of couch springs. He was sitting down, then.
“What do you think, Mr. Lounds?”
Put the pain and fear away and think. Now. For all time. To have some time. To have years. He hasn’t decided to kill me. He hasn’t let me see his face.
“What do you think, Mr. Lounds?”
“I don’t know what’s happened to me.”
“Do you know Who I Am, Mr. Lounds?”
“No. I don’t want to know, believe me.”
“According to you, I’m a vicious, perverted sexual failure. An animal, you said. Probably turned loose from an asylum by a do-good judge.” Ordinarily, Dolarhyde would have avoided the sibilant /s/ in “sexual.” In the presence of this audience, very far from laughter, he was freed. “You know now, don’t you?”
Don’t lie. Think fast. “Yes.”
“Why do you write lies, Mr. Lounds? Why do you say I’m crazy? Answer now.”
“When a person . . . when a person does things that most people can’t understand, they call him . . .”
“Crazy.”
“They called, like . . . the Wright brothers. All through history—”
“History. Do you understand what I’m doing, Mr. Lounds?”
Understand. There it was. A chance. Swing hard. “No, but I think I’ve got an opportunity to understand, and then all my readers could understand too.”
“Do you feel privileged?”
“It’s a privilege. But I have to tell you, man to man, that I’m scared. It’s hard to concentrate when you’re scared. If you have a great idea, you wouldn’t have to scare me for me to really be impressed.”