The man stopped
moving. He turned toward the noise in the street, and I saw the shape
of his head, the set of his shoulders.
At that point, though I was unaware of it, my father came out of the
Idle Hour. Several other men came with him, but Dad was the first one
through the door.
A car horn blasted in my ear, and I turned my head. The grille of an
automobile was coming toward me with what seemed terrific slowness. I
was absolutely unable to move. I knew that the car was going to hit me.
This certainty existed entirely apart from my terror. It was like
knowing the answer to the most important question on a test. The car
was going to hit me, and I was going to die.
Writing about this in the third person, in Mystery , was easier.
My vision of things ceases with the car coming toward me with
terrific unstoppable slowness, frame by frame, as a car would advance
through a series of photographs. Dad and his friends saw the car hit
me; they saw me adhere to the grille, then slip down to be caught on a
bumper ornament and dragged thirty feet before the car jolted to a halt
and threw me off.
At that moment I died—the boy named Timothy Underhill, the
seven-year-old me, died of shock and injury. He had a fractured skull,
his pelvis and his right leg were shattered, and he died. Such a moment
is not visible from a sidewalk. I have the memory of sensation, of
being torn from my body by a giant, irresistible force and being
accelerated into another, utterly different dimension. Of blazing
light. What remains is the sense of leaving the self behind, all
personality and character, everything merely personal. All of that was
gone, and something else was left. I want to think that I was aware of
April far ahead of me, sailing like a leaf through some vast dark
cloudgate. There was an enormous, annihilating light, a bliss, an
ecstasy you have to die to earn. Unreasoning terror surrounds and
engulfs this memory, if that's what it is. I dream about it two or
three times a week, a little more frequently than I dream about the man
I killed face-to-face. The experience was entirely nonverbal and, in
some basic way, profoundly inhuman .
One of my clearest and strongest impressions is that living people are not supposed to know .
I woke up encased in plaster, a rag, a scrap, in a hospital room.
There followed a year of wretchedness, of wheelchairs and useless
anger—all this is in Mystery. Not in that book is my parents' endless
and tongue-tied misery. My own problems were eclipsed, put utterly into
shadow by April's death. And because I see her benevolent ghost from
time to time, particularly on airplanes, I guess that I have never
really recovered either.
On October fifteenth, while I was still in the hospital, the first
of the Blue Rose murders took place on almost exactly the same place
where April died. The victim was a prostitute named Arlette Monaghan,
street name Fancy. She was twenty-six. Above her body on the brick wall
of the St. Alwyn, the murderer had written the words BLUE ROSE .
Early in the morning of October twentieth, James Treadwell's corpse
was found in bed in room 218 of the St. Alwyn. He too had been murdered
by someone who had written the words BLUE ROSE on the
wall above the
body.
On the twenty-fifth of October, another young man, Monty Leland, was
murdered late at night on the corner of South Sixth and Livermore, the
act sheltered from the sparse traffic down Livermore at that hour by
the corner of the Idle Hour. The usual words, left behind by the
tavern's front door, were painted over as soon as the police allowed by
the Idle Hour's owner, Roman Majestyk.
On November third, a young doctor named Charles "Buzz" Laing managed
to survive wounds given him by an unseen assailant who had left him for
dead in his house on Millhaven's east side. His throat had been slashed
from behind, and his attacker had written BLUE ROSE on his bedroom wall.
The final Blue Rose murder, or what seemed for forty-one years to be
the
moving. He turned toward the noise in the street, and I saw the shape
of his head, the set of his shoulders.
At that point, though I was unaware of it, my father came out of the
Idle Hour. Several other men came with him, but Dad was the first one
through the door.
A car horn blasted in my ear, and I turned my head. The grille of an
automobile was coming toward me with what seemed terrific slowness. I
was absolutely unable to move. I knew that the car was going to hit me.
This certainty existed entirely apart from my terror. It was like
knowing the answer to the most important question on a test. The car
was going to hit me, and I was going to die.
Writing about this in the third person, in Mystery , was easier.
My vision of things ceases with the car coming toward me with
terrific unstoppable slowness, frame by frame, as a car would advance
through a series of photographs. Dad and his friends saw the car hit
me; they saw me adhere to the grille, then slip down to be caught on a
bumper ornament and dragged thirty feet before the car jolted to a halt
and threw me off.
At that moment I died—the boy named Timothy Underhill, the
seven-year-old me, died of shock and injury. He had a fractured skull,
his pelvis and his right leg were shattered, and he died. Such a moment
is not visible from a sidewalk. I have the memory of sensation, of
being torn from my body by a giant, irresistible force and being
accelerated into another, utterly different dimension. Of blazing
light. What remains is the sense of leaving the self behind, all
personality and character, everything merely personal. All of that was
gone, and something else was left. I want to think that I was aware of
April far ahead of me, sailing like a leaf through some vast dark
cloudgate. There was an enormous, annihilating light, a bliss, an
ecstasy you have to die to earn. Unreasoning terror surrounds and
engulfs this memory, if that's what it is. I dream about it two or
three times a week, a little more frequently than I dream about the man
I killed face-to-face. The experience was entirely nonverbal and, in
some basic way, profoundly inhuman .
One of my clearest and strongest impressions is that living people are not supposed to know .
I woke up encased in plaster, a rag, a scrap, in a hospital room.
There followed a year of wretchedness, of wheelchairs and useless
anger—all this is in Mystery. Not in that book is my parents' endless
and tongue-tied misery. My own problems were eclipsed, put utterly into
shadow by April's death. And because I see her benevolent ghost from
time to time, particularly on airplanes, I guess that I have never
really recovered either.
On October fifteenth, while I was still in the hospital, the first
of the Blue Rose murders took place on almost exactly the same place
where April died. The victim was a prostitute named Arlette Monaghan,
street name Fancy. She was twenty-six. Above her body on the brick wall
of the St. Alwyn, the murderer had written the words BLUE ROSE .
Early in the morning of October twentieth, James Treadwell's corpse
was found in bed in room 218 of the St. Alwyn. He too had been murdered
by someone who had written the words BLUE ROSE on the
wall above the
body.
On the twenty-fifth of October, another young man, Monty Leland, was
murdered late at night on the corner of South Sixth and Livermore, the
act sheltered from the sparse traffic down Livermore at that hour by
the corner of the Idle Hour. The usual words, left behind by the
tavern's front door, were painted over as soon as the police allowed by
the Idle Hour's owner, Roman Majestyk.
On November third, a young doctor named Charles "Buzz" Laing managed
to survive wounds given him by an unseen assailant who had left him for
dead in his house on Millhaven's east side. His throat had been slashed
from behind, and his attacker had written BLUE ROSE on his bedroom wall.
The final Blue Rose murder, or what seemed for forty-one years to be
the
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