"Not as clean as slicing somebody's neck, but you get the idea, don't you, Obie?" Ray asked, chuckling.
"Messy," Obie said, hiding his queasiness. What a terrible day. And a guillotine demolishing a cabbage to top it all. "Now," Ray said, with a flourish, bowing toward the guillotine, assuming the role of Bannister the Great. "Be my guest."
"You're kidding," Obie said.
"Don't you trust me?"
Trust? Obie thought of Archie and Bunting and the attack at the Chasm and now Laurie unapproachable. "I don't trust anybody," Obie said.
"Hey, it's only a trick, an illusion," Ray said, frowning. Frankly, he was a bit nervous about this first demonstration. Knew it was foolproof, nothing to worry about, but edgy. He had been edgy ever since Obie had approached him, plunging him into the strange world of Trinity. "Look, I'll offer myself as the victim." Keeping his voice light. "I'll lay my neck on the line. Literally. And you press the button."
Obie eyed the deadly blade and the remnants of the demolished vegetable. The smell of raw cabbage filled the air. "I'd rather not," Obie said. Then, also trying to keep it light so that Ray Bannister wouldn't think he was chicken, "I can see the headlines if anything goes wrong: 'Student Loses Head Over Trick.' "
"Come on," Ray said, stepping smartly to the guillotine. He knelt down and bent over, placing his neck in the groove, facing the floor now. "All you have to do, Obie, is hit the button."
"Not me," Obie protested.
Ray craned his neck to look up at him. "There's no risk. Do you think I'd be crazy enough to take a chance like that?"
Obie wondered whether he was being ridiculous and paranoid.
"Let's go," Ray commanded, adjusting himself once more, wriggling his body a bit. "This isn't the most comfortable position in the world."
"Are you sure it's foolproof?" Obie asked.
"Is anything really sure in this world?" Ray asked. Then quickly: "Just fooling, Obie. Come on, push the damn button."
Obie sighed, accepting his fate, realizing that this was a day in which nothing could go right, and if the trick didn't work, then the hell with it. The hell with everything.
"Well, it's your neck, not mine," Obie said, stepping up to the guillotine. "And I'm not kidding." Glancing down at Ray, he said: "Ready?"
"Ready." A bit muffled. Was that a quiver in his voice?
Obie pressed the button.
Nothing happened. For an agonizing moment, the blade remained still, poised dangerously, of course, but unmoving. And then a sudden swish, so startling and unexpected, catching Obie as he drew breath, that he leaped back in surprise. The blade fell so quickly that his eyes could barely follow its descent. The most startling thing of all was the way the blade penetrated Ray's neck — or seemed to penetrate it — and yet did not. Ray's neck was undisturbed, no terrible rending, no blood. The blade now rested below the curved groove as if it had passed through Ray's flesh.
"Jesus," Obie said, awed.
Ray leaped from the kneeling position, smiling triumphantly, smirking really, immensely pleased with himself. "Voilа," he pronounced, waving toward the guillotine and then bowing sweepingly, his arm moving as if doffing a hat.
Obie shook his head in wonder. "How the hell does that work?" Actually, he was shuddering inside, realizing that for a stunning moment he had wanted the blade to slice through human flesh, imagining that the neck on the block was the neck of whoever had assaulted Laurie, had touched her.
"A magician never tells his secrets," Ray Bannister said, a little breathless.
Obie narrowed his eyes as he regarded him. Had Ray somehow doubted, just a little bit, the effectiveness of the trick? Had there been a chance it might not have worked?
He'd never know, of course, because it was an impossible question to ask. Anyway, Ray Bannister was now basking in his triumph, running his hands across the walnut-stained wood and the gleaming blade.
Remembering the original purpose of his visit, Obie said: "Listen, Ray, that assignment I told you about? The Bishop's visit?"
Ray nodded, remembering, his features twisted into a look of distaste.
"Well, it's canceled, called off. The Bishop can't make it that day. You're off the hook."
Ray gave a whoop of relief. "Great! I really didn't want to get mixed up in that Vigils business you told me about."
Obie didn't reply, feeling a small stab of pity for Bannister. He knew that Archie never forgot and that Bannister was doomed to become involved sooner or later.
Ray Bannister turned his attention to the guillotine again, eyes full of affection. Obie squinted, studying the apparatus, then turned his eyes to the remains of the cabbage strewn across the floor. He shivered for some reason.
When he arrived home a half hour later, he found a note from his mother.
At hairdresser's. Laurie's mother called. She and Laurie off to visit relatives in Springfield for a few days.
Obie's thoughts were insects chasing each other bewilderingly. Why hadn't Laurie herself called? Why her mother? And where in Springfield were they visiting? He crumpled the note and threw it into the wastebasket. A moment later he retrieved it, smoothed the paper out, read the words again. He sensed doom in the message.
His dreams were wild that night. Were they really dreams? Or simply thoughts and emotions racing just below the surface of his mind as he lay uncomfortably in bed, restless, heaving himself from one side of the mattress to the other? Images flooded his mind. Laurie, of course, beautiful, full lips, a teardrop of ketchup at the corner of her lips, in the car. The guillotine swishing down and splitting the cabbage, suddenly not the cabbage but a human neck, blood spattering around the room instead of cabbage leaves. The smell of blood in his nostrils. Did blood have a smell? He was helpless as the images continued, the slash of light in the car's interior, Laurie gasping, then screaming, the rough hands forcing him to the ground, holding him prisoner, the slashed loafer with the dangling buckle.
Loafer?
He saw the loafer distinctly. Scuffed brown, ripped or torn as if someone had slashed the instep with a knife.
And the dangling buckle, hanging by a thread, dull brass, never polished.
He burst awake as if flying into the air from the upper part of a seesaw while the lower part banged the earth violently. He sat up in bed, head aching, squinted at the digital alarm clock. 2:31. Throwing the blanket aside, he rubbed his forehead as if he could erase the ache like figures from a blackboard. Had he been dreaming? But the loafer did not seem like an image from a dream, receding as you come awake. The loafer had been real, not a manifestation of his weariness and frustration and disappointment, but a reality exploding out of memory.
This memory:
As the unknown assailant had held him prisoner on the ground, while somebody else had assaulted Laurie in the car, he had peered into the awful thing his life had suddenly become and had seen, a mere few inches from his eyes, the torn loafer worn by the bastard who held him captive.
Staring now into the night, eyes wide as if toothpicks held his lids open — something he had seen in a kung fu movie — he was wild with the knowledge of what his subconscious mind had uncovered.
A clue.
More than a clue.
A piece of evidence that could identify without any doubt one of the attackers at the Chasm that night. He saw himself unmasking the bastard, forcing a confession out of him, getting information about the others who had been involved, all of this while Laurie watched, her eyes shining with admiration and love.