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the air, twitching and turning, as if they were gifted with the sense not only
of touch, but of sight and sound as well.
And then the voice came, like iron filings falling on paper.
 Parker, it said.  You ve come.
Slowly, I walked toward the cell and saw the moisture on the walls. The
droplets glittered in the artificial light, gleaming like thousands of small
silver eyes. A smell of damp arose from the cell and from the man who stood
before me.
He was smaller than I remembered him, and his long white hair had been cut
back close to his skull, but the eyes still burned with that same strange
intensity. He remained horribly thin: he had not put on weight, as some
inmates do when they switch to a diet of prison food. It took me a moment to
realize why.
Despite the cold in the cell, Faulkner was giving off waves of heat. He should
have been burning up, his face feverish, his body wracked with tremors, but
instead there was no trace of sweat on his face, and no sign of discomfort.
His skin was dry as paper, so that it seemed he was on the verge of igniting
from within, and the flames that emerged would consume him and leave him as
burned ash.
 Come closer, he said.
Beside me, the guard shook his head.
 I m good, I replied.
 Are you afraid of me, sinner?
 Not unless you can pass through steel. My words brought back that image of
the hand seemingly materializing in the air and I heard myself swallow hard.
 No, said the old man.  I have no need of parlor tricks. I ll be out of here,
soon enough.
 You think?
He leaned forward and pressed his face against the cold bars.
 I know.
He smiled and his pale tongue emerged from his mouth and licked at his dry
lips.
 What do you want?
 To talk.
 About what?
 Life. Death. Life after death; or, if you prefer, the death after life. Do
they still come to you, Parker? The lost ones, the dead, do you still see
them? I do. They come to me. He smiled and drew in a long breath that seemed
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to catch in his throat, as if he were in the early stages of sexual
excitement.  So many of them. They ask after you, the ones whom you have
dispatched. They want to know when you re going to join them. They have plans
for you. I tell them: soon. He ll be with you real soon.
I didn t respond to the taunts. Instead, I asked him why he had cut himself.
He held his scarred arms up before me and looked at them, almost in surprise.
 Perhaps I wanted to cheat them of their vengeance, he replied.
 You didn t do a very good job.
 That s a matter of opinion. I m no longer in that place, that modern hell. I
have contact with others. His eyes shone brightly.  I may even be able to
save some lost souls.
 You have anyone in mind?
Faulkner laughed softly.  Not you, sinner, that is a certainty. You are beyond
salvation.
 Yet you asked to see me.
The smile faded, then died.
 I have an offer for you.
 You ve got nothing to bargain with.
 I have your woman, came that low, parched voice.  I can bargain with her.
I made no move toward him, yet he stepped back suddenly from the bars, as if
the force of my stare had forced him to do so, like a shove to the chest.
 What did you say?
 I m offering you the safety of your woman, and your unborn child. I m
offering you a life untroubled by fear of retribution.
 Old man, your fight now is with the state. You d better save your bargains
for the court. And if you mention those close to me again, I ll 
 You ll what? he mocked.  Kill me? You had your chance, and it won t come
again. And my fight is not only with the state. Don t you remember: you killed
my children, my family, you and your deviant colleague. What did you do to the
man who killed your child, Parker? Didn t you hunt him down? Didn t you kill
him like a mad dog? Why should you expect me to respond any differently to the
death of my chidren? Or is there one rule for you, and another for the rest of
humanity? He sighed theatrically.  But I am not like you. I am not a killer.
 What do you want, old man?
 I want you to withdraw from the trial.
I waited a heartbeat.
 And if I don t?
He shrugged.  Then I can t be held responsible for the actions that may be
taken against you, or them. Not by me, of course: despite my natural animosity
toward you, I have no intention of inflicting harm upon you or those close to
you. I have never hurt anybody in my life and have no intention of starting
now. But there may be others who would take up my cause, unless it was made
clear to them that I wished no such thing.
I turned to the guard.  You hearing this?
He nodded, but Faulkner merely turned his gaze impassively upon the guard.  I
am merely offering to plead for no retaliation against you, but in any case
Mr. Anson here is hardly in a position to be of assistance. He s fucking a
little whore behind his wife s back. Worse, behind her parents back. What is
she, Mr. Anson, fifteen? The law frowns upon rapists, statutory or otherwise.
 You fuck! Anson surged toward the bars, but I caught his arm. He spun at me,
and I thought for a moment he was about to strike me, but he restrained
himself and shook my hand off. I looked to my right and saw Anson s colleagues
approaching. He raised his hand to let them know that he was okay, and they
stopped in their tracks.
 I thought you didn t go in for parlor tricks, I said.
 Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? he whispered.  The Shadow
knows! He laughed softly.  Let me go, sinner. Walk away, and I will do
likewise. I am innocent of the accusations leveled against me.
 This meeting is over.
 No, it has only just begun. Do you remember what our mutual friend said
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before he died, sinner? Do you remember the words that the Traveling Man
spoke?
I didn t reply. There was much about Faulkner that I despised, and much that I
did not understand, but his knowledge of events about which he could not [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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