MCMURDO SOUND Page 2

  Brian wrenched free and pushed me back. "Get out of my room. I want to be alone. You never were my friend, you prick."

  I gave up in defeat. I'd have to go to the C.O. myself, explain how this came about. I wouldn't tell them the story about Folcum, but I'd plead for Brian's relocation before his obsession spread any further. Sometimes a superstition or an idea that gets loose in such close confines has a way of spreading like a contagion in the air. It can infect everyone.

  #

  Brian's first victim was an office clerk sent by the C.O. to summon Brian for an interview. From somewhere Brian had found a length of lead pipe and after he invited the private to enter his room, he cold-cocked him right in the head. They say the man was dead before he dropped, his skull cracking right down the front over his forehead.

  When the body was discovered, Brian was gone and not to be found. A massive search was put on, the entire base under emergency alert. We had an escaped killer on our hands. We had a man driven by the searing cold, the isolation, and old bad memories who was on a rampage. It wasn't as if it hadn't happened before, but this time it was my friend, it was someone I thought I'd known well. I knew he had to be stopped for our sakes and for his own. I just didn't want him to suffer any more than he had to and I didn't want anyone to have to hurt him.

  They say in regions like the Antarctic a man comes to know his real self. Mannerisms are exaggerated over the passage of time, habits grow into obsessive behavior, and a man's mettle is tested in myriad ways. I came to understand I didn't know as much about the human heart as I had once thought. I didn't really know human nature or where the limits were. I only knew Brian had been my best friend and he was haunted now by a man with a mechanical arm. Folcum was as real and present to him as any of the rest of us who shared the base compound--maybe Folcum was more real.

  Last night they found one of the radar techs who had worked with Brian bludgeoned to death in his bed. This morning the FBI arrives and the search intensifies. Where could Brian be hiding? What nightmare is he living through now?

  #

  I had just sat down on my bunk and opened the Poe to where I'd saved my place. All day long the special FBI force team questioned me about Brian. I was bone weary and the wind rattling around the small wooden window frame unnerved me. It often did sound like someone was out there. I scooted my back against the wall and lifted my legs onto the blanket. That's the moment Brian chose to speak.

  "Hello, traitor," he said quietly.

  He was under my bed! I leaped up and leaned down to see him. He pushed from beneath the bunk. I didn't like the grim grin that rode his lips. I didn't like the cant of his shoulders or the dark gleam in his eyes. He looked like a man having a bullet removed, grinning and bearing it. "Brian! They're looking for you."

  "I know. I'll let them find me soon. But first I have work to finish."

  "What work?" I didn't mean to let the trembling reach my hands that hung at my sides. I gripped them together behind my back so he wouldn't see. Brian was no longer the game-player and storyteller. He was insane as a drunk camel and he was dangerous.

  "What work? Why, your disposal, of course," he said. "You turned me in. You went to the C.O. You've wanted to get me out of here for months now. It's so petty, you know? I beat you at games, I tell better stories, and you can't forgive me for that, can you?"

  "Look, you know that's not it. You know you're my friend and I care about you..."

  "You've done other things, too, haven't you?" he asked, interrupting. "Dark things, dirty dark deadly things."

  He withdrew the pipe from behind his back. He had done something to it. He had welded pieces to it. Two or three pieces of pipe, some kind of object on the end of it with two...pincers...

  "Oh my god, Brian!"

  "I need to send you to hell, my one-armed friend," he said, advancing.

  Out of pure instinct I raised both my arms in the air and waved them around. "Christ, I'm not Folcum! Look at me!"

  As he advanced, I backpedaled, then when he swung, I ducked. I was yelling, out of my head with fear. "Listen to me! I didn't do anything to Betsy Ann! I don't have a missing arm! Brian look at me, just look at me!"

  He began to laugh, a wheezing, crazy laugh that filled my room and hurt my ears. "You really believed my stories, didn't you? Don't you know that's an old story people have been telling for years? About the man with the hook? You didn't think he was real, did you? DID YOU?"

  Then he raised the pipe-arm above his head. I was pinned against the wall, the door too distant to reach. My head was filled with his questions and questions of my own. If death was impending, it was coming slow, slow enough I could puzzle this all out if I had a few more seconds of time...

  Brian's arm stayed raised and now he hesitated. His head swiveled on his neck so he was staring at the window. "Look. There, see him? He was never real until I told you about him, making up that stupid story. Now he's come to get revenge. He doesn't like his story told, not by anyone. People think it was just a legend, all made up to frighten teenagers and kids, but it must have really happened somewhere, sometime; he must have once been real because he walks now. He walks outside, dragging his arm along the walls, waiting to get inside."

  My gaze was drawn along with his to the window, the dark square with the snowstorm blowing outside. For a brief second or two I saw what Brian was seeing. A wizened face pressed to the icy glass, the eyes made and senseless with rage. And there, next to that face the mechanical hand clenched so that the two pincers were curved, gleaming, pressed together into a hook.

  Startled, I gasped. But then the apparition vanished and nothing but snowflakes gusted past the window panes.

  I turned my attention back to Brian and saw he was still mesmerized, lost in that dark dream. It was my chance to make a move. I rushed forward and grabbed the weapon in his hand and twisting, wrestled it from his grasp. I hurried to the door to call for help and heard footsteps ringing in the hall, some of the other men coming to see what the shouting was about.

  #

  Now that they've taken Brian away I wonder if the story he told was true or not. Or had he been the one who murdered Betsy Ann? Had there even been a Betsy Ann? It was maddening not to know the truth. Had he told me it was a lie, an urban legend, just to throw me off? And what had that been at the window, that madman with the hook? Had we shared a psychosis and a vision together, Brian and I?

  I'm beginning to have real trouble deciphering between the real and the unreal. I hope Brian's madness wasn't catching. I've put in for a transfer. I told them I didn't care where they sent me just as long as it was out of McMurdo Sound and out of Antarctica. They said it might take a while. Finding replacements was hell. I told them it was imperative. I'm not sure they're listening.

  As I sit here in my bunk, keeping to myself, I hear the arctic wind and it never ceases. It rattles across the corrugated walls like...like a metal arm dragging past the window searching for the next victim, waiting until the time is ripe for murder, taking all the time in the world to make the next move--like a chess player who is patient, methodical, like a player who never loses.

  The guys tell me I need to get more rest. It was a shock, what I went through when attacked by my friend, they say. They've heard the story about the winter night near the baseball diamond and the scraping sound at the car door. I had to tell them, something made me tell them the whole thing. I've broken down and told them about poor Betsy Ann who was snatched from the road and dragged into the woods. I finally even admitted I took Folcum for a little walk to the creek and held his head under the water until he drown. I can recall the chill of the flowing water, a bird singing wildly in a nearby tree, the muscles bunching in the back of Folcum's neck. I can taste revenge like it is a penny on my tongue. I can feel the man losing his battle, his body going limp to fall halfway into the water, ripples rolling over his motionless head and shoulders like he's a rock, just a centuries' old rock obstructing the water's flow.

  I t
old them what happens then, how he comes back, sometimes years later. He always comes back.

  No one believes a word I say. I just can't tell a story like Brian could. If I was a better storyteller they would probably see what I see when I look out the windows, when I go outside to check the equipment, when I glance around in the dark shadows that squat in the corners like malevolent creatures. One man, Jimmy Datsuoto, says he believes me, he thinks maybe he can see something out of the corner of his eye sometimes and it creeps him out. Jimmy's become my friend. He beats me at chess. Everyone beats me at games.

  I will have to make a weapon to defend myself the way Brian had to do. That's what I tell Jimmy and he agrees. He said he needed to make one too.

  We need protection from the demon who stalks McMurdo Sound.

  I don't know about Jimmy, he's on his own and I told him so, but I'm not going to let Folcum take me alive.

  It's been two months since Brian was taken away and I miss him. Jimmy's sitting across the table from me in the radar room and it's his move. I'm about to block his queen from taking my bishop, if he doesn't move it.

  "DID YOU HEAR THAT? WAS IT THE WIND?" Jimmy's shouting. I tell him to shut the hell up.

  I reach for the welded pipes and Jimmy reaches for his.

  We're ready. We know exactly what to do.

  THE END

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