A Time of Torment Read Online Free PDF Page B

up.’
    Ormsby rose from the chair and joined Parker at the window. He saw a man standing on the back lawn, smoking a cigarette, but that wasn’t what drew Ormsby’s immediate attention, or caused him to sway on his feet. It was a woman, as close to the glass on the outside of the house as Ormsby was to the pane inside. She wore a tattered red dress, soiled with blood and dirt. Her skull was entirely hairless, and the sockets of her eyes were empty. Her skin was gray, and wrinkled around the mouth like the surface of an apple long past its best. She opened her lips, and Ormsby saw the exposed roots of her teeth where her gums had receded. She reached out her left hand and the glass squeaked as she drew her fingers down the pane, leaving behind flakes of tissue like the residue of dead moths.
    Behind her, more figures appeared, male and female, crowding around the man who smoked his cigarette and regarded Ormsby calmly and coldly.
    ‘I won’t give you to the police,’ said Parker. ‘I’ll give you to the ones that you’re seeing.’
    Ormsby stepped back from the glass, from the dreadful longing of the woman beyond it. Somehow, he found his tongue.
    ‘What are they?’
    ‘They’re hollow, and without mercy, and that’s all you need to know, for now. When they take you, you’ll discover the rest.’
    ‘And the one with them?’
    ‘Summary justice: the instrument that will send you to join them.’
    Ormsby felt as though he had wandered into a dream trap.
    ‘It’s not possible.’
    ‘You can tell him that yourself. I’m sure he’ll be fascinated to listen to your theory.’
    And it seemed that the one on the lawn heard him, for from the folds of his coat he produced a knife that shone in the moonlight.
    ‘You’ll just let him kill me?’
    ‘If I have to, but that’s only where your troubles will begin. There is no oblivion. The punishment goes on, and in time you’ll find yourself on the other side of a glass, staring at someone just like you.’
    Even in this moment of abject fear, and confronted with the reality of his own damnation, Ormsby tried to bargain.
    ‘Why should I give you what you want, if this is what waits for me?’
    ‘Because now you know. Now you have time.’
    ‘For what?’
    ‘For repentance. To make amends. But the moment I hand you over to the one with the blade, that chance will be gone.’
    Ormsby retreated from the window, and sat back down in his chair. He was the Gray Man, and the Gray Man was him, and both sides feared what waited beyond the glass.
    ‘I agree,’ he said, for what choice did he have?
    ‘You’ll confess all to the police?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘If you renege, he’ll come for you,’ Parker warned.
    ‘I won’t renege.’
    ‘I believe you.’ Parker gave his attention to Louis. ‘Call Ross. Tell him we have another one.’
    Parker turned back to the window of Ormsby’s house. The Collector was alone in the garden now, still smoking his cigarette. Parker shook his head, and the Collector threw the cigarette on the ground in disgust before stalking off into the dusk.

II
    Oh! how many torments lie in the small circle of a wedding-ring!
    Colley Cibber (1671–1757), The Double Gallant

7
    T he one who stood in the fall sunshine, disoriented by his first moments of freedom, was already damaged when he entered Maine State Prison, and the years inside had not served to repair the fractures to his mind and soul. Instead they had added physical injury and emotional turmoil to his list of burdens, and a desire simply to fade away.
    Nobody was waiting to greet him as he stood outside the prison gates. His lawyer had offered to send someone to collect him, but there had been confusion about the time of his release – an error with the paperwork, it seemed – and he was now among those rarest of prisoners, the ones who found themselves released early through bureaucratic incompetence, if only, in his case, by a few hours.
    He was many things: a convicted felon, a