Spellbinder by Collin Wilcox Read Free Book Online Page B

he’d go into the administration building and pick up his clothing: the checked sports coat and the gray trousers and the white shirt that he’d worn during his trial. He’d put on the clothes, and take the twenty-five dollars in cash, and wait for them to drive him to the bus station, where they’d buy him a ticket. Three hours later, he’d be in Darlington. Home.
    Home …
    What did it mean, that word? For him, what would it mean? Did it mean his mother’s dark, dank little house with mice in the walls and rats underneath and roaches mashed on the kitchen floor? Did it mean a rooming house on Prince Street, behind the bus station? In Darlington, everyone knew him. They all knew, and they wouldn’t forget. Everywhere, eyes would follow him. Just as eyes followed his mother, wherever she went.
    Now, at that moment, muttering and gesturing, she was watching Austin Holloway. For her, Austin Holloway was God come down to earth, talking just to her, privately, every Sunday. When Holloway told her to do it, she dropped to her knees, placed her hand on the TV set and prayed. When she prayed, she cried. And when she cried her face became a wet, paint-streaked mask: a madwoman’s mask, from Halloween. Because every Sunday morning before she turned on the Austin Holloway Hour, she went into the bathroom, and locked the door, and painted her face with lipstick and mascara and bright red rouge. So when she cried for God, on Holloway’s command, all the paint dissolved. After The Hour was finished, she staggered into her bedroom, sobbing, and locked the door. Her sheets and pillow cases were always filthy, stained black and red from the makeup.
    His eyes wandered back to Holloway, speaking directly into the camera now. In Darlington, on her knees beside the TV, his mother raised her grotesque face up to heaven.
    Maybe.
    Or maybe not.
    He hadn’t heard from her for more than six months. Why? And why were they paroling him to his Uncle Julian, not to his mother? Uncle Julian had arranged for the job that all parolees must have. Why? During the last six months, only Uncle Julian had written him. Not his mother. Why? For him, beyond the prison’s walls, it was as if only one person existed.
    Why?
    On the TV, Holloway was finishing his spiel. Massingale was getting to his feet, changing channels. Oral Roberts was next. Turning the magazine’s pages faster now, Carson had come to the back section of Argosy, filled with small ads arranged in catalogue style. Some of the ads promised more money, others more muscle. Courses in TV repair and burglar-alarm installation were offered, along with pamphlets on raising earthworms, and mushrooms, and chinchillas for profit.
    When he’d been a boy, twelve years old, he’d wanted to send away for a book that promised to make him stronger. The book had cost five dollars. When he asked his mother for the money, she refused. Her check hadn’t come, she’d said. The check was late. But he’d known she was lying. Always, by the fifth of every month, the check came. When he was still very small, five or six years old, he’d learned to recognize the envelope: plain white, with an Arizona postmark and no return address. For him, the envelope was magic. Because when it came, it made his mother a different person. Sometimes, when the check came, his mother would smile—actually smile. Her eyes would clear, and seem to really see him. And that was magic.
    When he’d asked her for the five dollars, it had been the middle of the month—the twelfth, or the fifteenth. He’d known she’d gotten the check, and had already taken it to the bank, and cashed it. She’d had the check, but hadn’t admitted it. She’d lied to him. So, a dollar at a time, patiently, he’d taken the money from her purse. That was magic, too. Because, after that, he always had money.
    When he slipped that first dollar from his mother’s purse, he’d been aware of a small, intense tremor of fear, followed by a rush of