Louisprinting company, Dolarhyde knew it should be his.
Now, bathed and in his kimono, he unlocked the closet and rolled it out. When the book was centered beneath the painting of the Great Red Dragon, he settled himself in a chair and opened it. The smell of foxed paper rose to his face.
Across the first page, in large letters he had illuminated himself,werethe words from Revelation: "And There Came a Great RedDragon Also . .
The first item in the book was the only one not neatly mounted. Loose between the pages was a yellowed photograph of Dolarhyde as a small child with his grandmother on the steps of the big house. He is holding to Grandmother's skirt. Her arms are folded and her backis straight.
Dolarhyde tumed past it. He ignored it as though it had been left there by mistake.
There were many clippings in the ledger, the earliest ones about the disappearances of elderly women inSt. LouisandToledo. Pages between the clippings were covered with Dolarhyde's writing-black ink in a fine copperplate script not unlike William Blake's ownhandwriting.
Fastened in the margins, ragged bits of scalp trailed their tails of hair like comets pressed in God's scrapbook.
The Jacobi clippings fromBirminghamwere there, along with filmcartridges and slides set in pockets glued to the pages.
So were stories on the Leedses, with film beside them.
The term "Tooth Fairy" had not appeared in the press untilAtlanta. The name was marked out in all theLeedsstories.
Now Dolarhyde did the same with his Tattler clipping, obliterating "Tooth Fairy" with angry slashes of a red marker pen.
He turned to a new, blank page in his ledger and trimmed the Tattler clipping to fit. Should Graham's picture go in? The words "Criminally Insane" carved in the stone above Graham offended Dolarhyde. He hated the sight of any place of confinement. Graham's face was closed to him. He set it aside for the time being.
But Lecter... Lecter. This was not a good picture of the doctor. Dolarhyde had a better one, which he fetched from a box in his closet. It was published upon Lecter's committal and showed the fine eyes. Still, it was not satisfactory. In Dolarhyde's mind, Lecter's likeness should be the dark portrait of a Renaissance prince. For Lecter, alone among all men, might have the sensitivity and experience to understand the glory, the majesty of Dolarhyde's Becoming.
Dolarhyde felt that Lecter knew the unreality of the people whodie to help you in these things - understood that they are not flesh,but light and air and color and quick sounds quickly ended when you change them. Like balloons of color bursting. That they are more important for the changing, more important than the lives they scrabble after, pleading.
Dolarhyde bore screams as a sculptor bears dust from the beaten stone.
Lecter was capable of understanding that blood and breath were only elements undergoing change to fuel his Radiance. Just as the source of light is burning.
He would like to meet Lecter, talk and share with him, rejoice with him in their shared vision, be recognized by him as John the Baptist recognized the One who came after, sit on him as the Dragon sat on 666 in Blake's Revelation series, and film his death as, dying, he melded with the strength of the Dragon.
Dolarhyde pulled on a new pair of rubber gloves and went to his desk. He unrolled and discarded the outer layer of the toilet paper he had bought. Then he unrolled a strip of seven sheets and tore it off.
Printing carefully on the tissue with his left hand, he wrote a letter to Lecter.
Speech is never a reliable indicator of how a person writes; you never know. Dolarhyde's speech was bent and pruned by disabilities real and imagined, and the difference between his speech and his writing was startling. Still, he found he could not say the most important things he felt.
He wanted to hear from Lecter. He needed a personal response before he could tell Dr. Lecter the important things.
How could he manage that? He rummaged through his box of Lecter clippings, read them all again.
Finally a simple way occurred to him and he wrote again.
The letter seemed too diffident and shy when he read it over. He had signed it "Avid Fan."
He brooded over the signature for several minutes.
"Avid Fan" indeed. His chin rose an imperious fraction.
He put his gloved thumb in his mouth, removed his dentures, and placed them on the blotter.
The upper plate was unusual. The teeth were normal, straight and white, but the pink acrylic