999_ Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense - Al Sarrantonio [58]
The degree of a smile … the vista of sharpened teeth widening slightly … the tilt and squint of the eyes … all pretty subjective stuff. A person could be mistaken about things like that, and of 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 four-thirty 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, Uttered picnic and dog-walking 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