Nelson wept. Someone with strong hands, someone smelling of witch hazel, helped him to his feet and led him over to the bed, where he sat with his legs outstretched, his arms still tied behind his back, resting his sore shoulders against the walnut headboard.
The blindfold was removed. Nelson opened his eyes and was blinded by a fierce white light; as he looked away, he caught a silhouetted glimpse of a hooded figure seated on the edge of the bed, training the beam from a six-volt lantern directly into his eyes.
Courage, Nelson resolved; for once in your life, courage. “Simon? Is that you?”
“Yes and no.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” As Nelson’s eyes grew accustomed to the penumbra effect, he realized that Simon had borrowed one of his sweatshirts and pulled the hood up, covering his head and throwing his face into shadow.
“All part of the game, Nellie, all part of the game.”
“I’m not playing your goddamn game,” said Nelson, too loudly, sounding more doubtful than defiant even to his own ears; he could feel his courage, or at least his resolve to be courageous, draining away.
“Aren’t you?” said a harsh new voice, both familiar and unfamiliar, more nasal than Simon’s normal speaking voice, with a hint of a quaver in it. Nelson recognized it immediately, though he hadn’t heard it since he was a boy.
And as the figure let fall the hood and slowly turned the lantern that had been shining into Nelson’s eyes upon himself, Nelson felt as if he were passing through a sort of prism-the kind where beams of light converge and condense themselves into a single point before emerging on the other side with their spectrums all reversed.
No, he whispered, trying to close his eyes again, trying to unsee what he told himself he couldn’t possibly have seen, but it was too late. Nelson had already crossed over to the other side of the prism, where he found himself staring into the lashless, browless, reptilian eyes of the bald old man whom he’d last seen over thirty-five years ago, lying in a pool of blood on the floor of a smoke-filled bathroom, with his throat cut from ear to ear, and a straight razor still clutched in his lifeless hand.