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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
Breathing hard, not quite panting, Kinnell hurried back into the entryway. The picture was still there, but it had changed once more. Now it showed two glaring white circles—headlights—with the dark shape of the car hulking behind them.
He’s on the move again, Kinnell thought, and Aunt Trudy was on top of his mind now—sweet Aunt Trudy, who always knew who had been naughty and who had been nice. Aunt Trudy, who lived in Wells, no more than forty miles from Rosewood.
“God, please God, please send him by the coast road,” Kinnell said, reaching for the picture. Was it his imagination or were the headlights farther apart now, as if the car were actually moving before his eyes . . . but stealthily, the way the minute hand moved on a pocket watch? “Send him by the coast road, please.”
He tore the picture off the wall and ran back into the living room with it. The screen was in place before the fireplace, of course; it would be at least two months before a fire was wanted in here. Kinnell batted it aside and threw the painting in, breaking the glass fronting—which he had already broken once, at the Gray service area—against the firedogs. Then he pelted1 for the kitchen, wondering what he would do if this didn’t work either.
It has to, he thought. It will because it has to, and that’s all there is to it.
He opened the kitchen cabinets and pawed through them, spilling the oatmeal, spilling a canister of salt, spilling the vinegar. The bottle broke open on the counter and assaulted his nose and eyes with the high stink2.
Not there. What he wanted wasn’t there.
He raced into the pantry, looked behind the door—nothing but a plastic bucket and an O Cedar—and then on the shelf by the dryer3. There it was, next to the briquets.
He grabbed it and ran back, glancing at the telephone on the kitchen wall as he hurried by. He wanted to stop, wanted to call Aunt Trudy. Credibility wasn’t an issue with her; if her favorite nephew called and told her to get out of the house, to get out right now, she would do it . . . but what if the blond kid followed her? Chased her?
And he would. Kinnell knew he would.
He hurried across the living room and stopped in front of the fireplace.
“Jesus,” he whispered. “Jesus, no.”
The picture beneath the splintered glass no longer showed oncoming headlights. Now it showed the Grand Am on a sharply curving piece of road that could only be an exit ramp5. Moonlight shone like liquid satin on the car’s dark flank. In the background was a water tower, and the words on it were easily readable in the moonlight. KEEP MAINE GREEN, they said. BRING MONEY.
Kinnell didn’t hit the picture with the first squeeze of lighter fluid; his hands were shaking badly and the aromatic6 liquid simply ran down the unbroken part of the glass, blurring7 the Road Virus’s back deck. He took a deep breath, aimed, then squeezed again. This time the lighter fluid squirted in through the jagged hole made by one of the firedogs and ran down the picture, cutting through the paint, making it run, turning a Goodyear Wide Oval into a sooty teardrop.
Kinnell took one of the ornamental8 matches from the jar on the mantel, struck it on the hearth9, and poked10 it in through the hole in the glass. The painting caught at once, fire billowing up and down across the Grand Am and the water tower. The remaining glass in the frame turned black, then broke outward in a shower of flaming pieces. Kinnell crunched11 them under his sneakers, putting them out before they could set the rug on fire.
* * *
He went to the phone and punched in Aunt Trudy’s number, unaware12 that he was crying. On the third ring, his aunt’s answering machine picked up. “Hello,” Aunt Trudy said, “I know it encourages the burglars to say things like this, but I’ve gone up to Kennebunk to watch the new Harrison Ford13 movie. If you intend to break in, please don’t take my china pigs. If you want to leave a message, do so at the beep.”
Kinnell waited, then, keeping his voice as steady as possible, he said: “It’s Richie, Aunt Trudy. Call me when you get back, okay? No matter how late.”
He hung up, looked at the TV, then dialed Newswire again, this time punching in the Maine area code. While the computers on the other end processed his order, he went back and used a poker14 to jab at the blackened, twisted thing in the fireplace. The stench was ghastly—it made the spilled vinegar smell like a flowerpatch in comparison—but Kinnell found he didn’t mind. The picture was entirely15 gone, reduced to ash, and that made it worthwhile.
What if it comes back again?
“It won’t,” he said, putting the poker back and returning to the TV. “I’m sure it won’t.”
* * *
But every time the news scroll16 started to recycle, he got up to check. The picture was just ashes on the hearth . . . and there was no word of elderly women being murdered in the Wells-Saco-Kennebunk area of the state. Kinnell kept watching, almost expecting to see A GRAND AM MOVING AT HIGH SPEED CRASHED INTO A KENNEBUNK MOVIE THEATER TONIGHT, KILLING17 AT LEAST TEN, but nothing of the sort showed up.
At a quarter of eleven the telephone rang. Kinnell snatched it up. “Hello?”
“It’s Trudy, dear. Are you all right?”
“Yes, fine.”
“You don’t sound fine,” she said. “Your voice sounds trembly and . . . funny. What’s wrong? What is it?” And then, chilling him but not really surprising him: “It’s that picture you were so pleased with, isn’t it? That goddamned picture!”
It calmed him somehow, that she should guess so much . . . and, of course, there was the relief of knowing she was safe.
“Well, maybe,” he said. “I had the heebie-jeebies all the way back here, so I burned it. In the fireplace.”
She’s going to find out about Judy Diment, you know, a voice inside warned. She doesn’t have a twenty-thousand-dollar satellite hookup, but she does subscribe18 to the Union Leader and this’ll be on the front page. She’ll put two and two together. She’s far from stupid.
Yes, that was undoubtedly19 true, but further explanations could wait until the morning, when he might be a little less freaked . . . when he might’ve found a way to think about the Road Virus without losing his mind . . . and when he’d begun to be sure it was really over.
“Good!” she said emphatically. “You ought to scatter20 the ashes, too!” She paused, and when she spoke21 again, her voice was lower. “You were worried about me, weren’t you? Because you showed it to me.”
“A little, yes.”
“But you feel better now?”
He leaned back and closed his eyes. It was true, he did. “Uh-huh. How was the movie?”
“Good. Harrison Ford looks wonderful in a uniform. Now, if he’d just get rid of that little bump on his chin . . .”
“Good night, Aunt Trudy. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“Will we?”
“Yes,” he said. “I think so.”
He hung up, went over to the fireplace again, and stirred the ashes with the poker. He could see a scrap22 of fender and a ragged23 little flap of road, but that was it. Fire was what it had needed all along, apparently24. Wasn’t that how you usually killed supernatural emissaries of evil? Of course it was. He’d used it a few times himself, most notably25 in The Departing, his haunted train station novel.
“Yes, indeed,” he said. “Burn, baby, burn.”
He thought about getting the drink he’d promised himself, then remembered the spilled bottle of vinegar (which by now would probably be soaking into the spilled oatmeal—what a thought). He decided26 he would simply go on upstairs instead. In a book—one by Richard Kinnell, for instance—sleep would be out of the question after the sort of thing which had just happened to him.
In real life, he thought he might sleep just fine.
* * *
He actually dozed27 off in the shower, leaning against the back wall with his hair full of shampoo and the water beating on his chest. He was at the yard sale again, and the TV standing28 on the paper ashtrays29 was broadcasting Judy Diment. Her head was back on, but Kinnell could see the medical examiner’s primitive30 industrial stitch-work; it circled her throat like a grisly necklace. “Now this New England Newswire update,” she said, and Kinnell, who had always been a vivid dreamer, could actually see the stitches on her neck stretch and relax as she spoke. “Bobby Hastings took all his paintings and burned them, including yours, Mr. Kinnell . . . and it is yours, as I’m sure you know. All sales are final, you saw the sign. Why, you just ought to be glad I took your check.”
Burned all his paintings, yes, of course he did, Kinnell thought in his watery31 dream. He couldn’t stand what was happening to him, that’s what the note said, and when you get to that point in the festivities, you don’t pause to see if you want to except one special piece of work from the bonfire. It’s just that you got something special into The Road Virus Heads North, didn’t you, Bobby? And probably completely by accident. You were talented, I could see that right away, but talent has nothing to do with what’s going on in that picture.
“Some things are just good at survival,” Judy Diment said on the TV. “They keep coming back no matter how hard you try to get rid of them. They keep coming back like viruses.”
Kinnell reached out and changed the channel, but apparently there was nothing on all the way around the dial except for The Judy Diment Show.
“You might say he opened a hole into the basement of the universe,” she was saying now. “Bobby Hastings, I mean. And this is what drove out. Nice, isn’t it?”
Kinnell’s feet slid then, not enough to go out from under him completely, but enough to snap him to.
He opened his eyes, winced32 at the immediate33 sting of the soap (Prell had run down his face in thick white rivulets34 while he had been dozing), and cupped his hands under the shower-spray to splash it away. He did this once and was reaching out to do it again when he heard something. A ragged rumbling35 sound.
Don’t be stupid, he told himself. All you hear is the shower. The rest is only imagination. Your stupid, overtrained imagination.
Except it wasn’t.
Kinnell reached out and turned off the water.
The rumbling sound continued. Low and powerful. Coming from outside.
He got out of the shower and walked, dripping, across his bedroom on the second floor. There was still enough shampoo in his hair to make him look as if it had turned white while he was dozing—as if his dream of Judy Diment had turned it white.
Why did I ever stop at that yard sale? he asked himself, but for this he had no answer. He supposed no one ever did.
The rumbling sound grew louder as he approached the window overlooking the driveway—the driveway that glimmered36 in the summer moonlight like something out of an Alfred Noyes poem.
As he brushed aside the curtain and looked out, he found himself thinking of his ex-wife, Sally, whom he had met at the World Fantasy Convention in 1978. Sally, who now published two newsletters out of her trailer home, one called Survivors38, one called Visitors. Looking down at the driveway, these two titles came together in Kinnell’s mind like a double image in a stereopticon.
The Grand Am idled in front of the house, the white haze39 from its twin chromed tailpipes rising in the still night air. The Old English letters on the back deck were perfectly40 readable. The driver’s-side door stood open, and that wasn’t all; the light spilling down the porch steps suggested that Kinnell’s front door was also open.
Forgot to lock it, Kinnell thought, wiping soap off his forehead with a hand he could no longer feel. Forgot to reset41 the burglar alarm, too. . . not that it would have made much difference to this guy.
Well, he might have caused it to detour42 around Aunt Trudy, and that was something, but just now the thought brought him no comfort.
Survivors.
The soft rumble43 of the big engine, probably at least a 442 with a four-barrel carb, reground valves, fuel injection.
He turned slowly on legs that had lost all feeling, a naked man with a headful of soap, and saw the picture over his bed, just as he’d known he would. In it, the Grand Am stood in his driveway with the driver’s door open and two plumes44 of exhaust rising from the chromed tailpipes. From this angle he could also see his own front door, standing open, and a long man-shaped shadow stretching down the hall.
Survivors.
Survivors and visitors.
Now he could hear feet ascending45 the stairs. It was a heavy tread, and he knew without having to see that the blond kid was wearing motorcycle boots. People with DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR tattooed46 on their arms always wore motorcycle boots, just as they always smoked unfiltered Camels. These things were like a national law.
And the knife. He would be carrying a long, sharp knife—more of a machete, actually, the sort of knife that could strike off a person’s head in a single stroke.
And he would be grinning, showing those filed cannibal teeth.
Kinnell knew these things. He was an imaginative guy, after all.
He didn’t need anyone to draw him a picture.
“No,” he whispered, suddenly conscious of his global nakedness, suddenly freezing all the way around his skin. “No, please, go away.” But the footfalls kept coming, of course they did. You couldn’t tell a guy like this to go away. It didn’t work; it wasn’t the way the story was supposed to end.
Kinnell could hear him nearing the top of the stairs. Outside, the Grand Am went on rumbling in the moonlight.
The feet coming down the hall now, worn bootheels rapping on polished hardwood.
A terrible paralysis47 had gripped Kinnell. He threw it off with an effort and bolted toward the bedroom door, wanting to lock it before the thing could get in here, but he slipped in a puddle48 of soapy water and this time he did go down, flat on his back on the oak planks49, and what he saw as the door clicked open and the motorcycle boots crossed the room toward where he lay, naked and with his hair full of Prell, was the picture hanging on the wall over his bed, the picture of the Road Virus idling in front of his house with the driver’s-side door open.
The driver’s-side bucket seat, he saw, was full of blood. I’m going outside, I think, Kinnell thought, and closed his eyes.
点击
收听单词发音
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1
pelted
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| （连续地）投掷( pelt的过去式和过去分词 )； 连续抨击； 攻击； 剥去…的皮 | |
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stink
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| vi.发出恶臭；糟透，招人厌恶；n.恶臭 | |
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dryer
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| n.干衣机，干燥剂 | |
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4
lighter
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| n.打火机，点火器；驳船；v.用驳船运送；light的比较级 | |
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ramp
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| n.暴怒，斜坡，坡道；vi.作恐吓姿势，暴怒，加速；vt.加速 | |
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aromatic
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| adj.芳香的，有香味的 | |
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blurring
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| n.模糊，斑点甚多，（图像的）混乱v.（使）变模糊( blur的现在分词 )；（使）难以区分 | |
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8
ornamental
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| adj.装饰的；作装饰用的；n.装饰品；观赏植物 | |
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hearth
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| n.壁炉炉床，壁炉地面 | |
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poked
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| v.伸出( poke的过去式和过去分词 )；戳出；拨弄；与（某人）性交 | |
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crunched
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| v.嘎吱嘎吱地咬嚼( crunch的过去式和过去分词 )；嘎吱作响；（快速大量地）处理信息；数字捣弄 | |
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12
unaware
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| a.不知道的，未意识到的 | |
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Ford
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| n.浅滩，水浅可涉处；v.涉水，涉过 | |
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14
poker
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| n.扑克；vt.烙制 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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16
scroll
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| n.卷轴，纸卷；(石刻上的)漩涡 | |
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killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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subscribe
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| vi.(to)订阅，订购；同意；vt.捐助，赞助 | |
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undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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20
scatter
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| vt.撒，驱散，散开；散布/播；vi.分散，消散 | |
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21
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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22
scrap
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| n.碎片；废料；v.废弃，报废 | |
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23
ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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24
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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notably
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| adv.值得注意地，显著地，尤其地，特别地 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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dozed
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| v.打盹儿，打瞌睡( doze的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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ashtrays
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| 烟灰缸( ashtray的名词复数 ) | |
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30
primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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31
watery
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| adj.有水的，水汪汪的；湿的，湿润的 | |
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32
winced
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| 赶紧避开，畏缩( wince的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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34
rivulets
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| n.小河，小溪( rivulet的名词复数 ) | |
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35
rumbling
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| n. 隆隆声, 辘辘声 adj. 隆隆响的 动词rumble的现在分词 | |
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36
glimmered
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| v.发闪光，发微光( glimmer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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37
survivor
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| n.生存者，残存者，幸存者 | |
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38
survivors
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| 幸存者，残存者，生还者( survivor的名词复数 ) | |
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39
haze
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| n.霾，烟雾；懵懂，迷糊；vi.(over)变模糊 | |
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40
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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41
reset
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| v.重新安排，复位；n.重新放置；重放之物 | |
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42
detour
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| n.绕行的路，迂回路；v.迂回，绕道 | |
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43
rumble
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| n.隆隆声；吵嚷；v.隆隆响；低沉地说 | |
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44
plumes
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| 羽毛( plume的名词复数 )； 羽毛饰； 羽毛状物； 升上空中的羽状物 | |
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45
ascending
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| adj.上升的，向上的 | |
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46
tattooed
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| v.刺青，文身( tattoo的过去式和过去分词 )；连续有节奏地敲击；作连续有节奏的敲击 | |
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47
paralysis
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| n.麻痹(症)；瘫痪(症) | |
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48
puddle
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| n.(雨)水坑，泥潭 | |
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49
planks
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| （厚）木板( plank的名词复数 )； 政纲条目，政策要点 | |
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