
Table of Contents
Title Page
Author's Preface
DISMEMBER
Dedication
Prologue
Part I: Twenty-three Years Later
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Part II: Dismember
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Part III: Rescue
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Epilogue
FREEZE
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Author's Note
Also by Daniel Pyle
About the Author
Praise
Copyright Page
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
WHAT FOLLOWS ARE two distinct works of fiction. The first, Dismember, is a full-length novel featuring the kinds of human monsters who might live right next door to you. You could call it psychological horror. I do. The second part of this twofer, Freeze, is a long novella and a classic creature feature with monsters of the oh-my-god-what-the-hell-is-that variety. Although the books aren't directly related---the characters and storylines are very different from one to the next---they are similar enough in their settings (The Rocky Mountains) and themes (family, isolation, helplessness) that I thought they'd do well together in a compilation. A one-two punch, if you like.
I hope you agree. And even if you don't, I hope the combo provides you with a hefty helping of entertainment anyway.
For the women in my life: my mom, Sheila; my wife, Amy; and my little girls, Dakota and Katelyn. My muses (in chronological order).
ON WHAT SHOULD have been the next to last night of their vacation, Hank Abbott drove out of the mountains in a silence broken only by the sound of gravel ricocheting off the undercarriage of the station wagon and the occasional snores and bursts of rustling from his sleeping family. Lori sat slumped in the passenger's seat with her cheek flattened against the window, her lips parted, her breath frosting the glass. George and Davy lay tangled beneath a down comforter in the back seat, Davy with his head tucked into his older brother's armpit and George with one hand pressed against the side of his own face like the eye-punched victim of a schoolyard brawl. From his place up front, Hank couldn't see into the footwell beside the boys, but he knew what lay curled there: Manny, their four-year-old beagle, probably wedged between a pair of dirty sneakers or flopped across a bag of cooking utensils, no doubt looking even less comfortable than the rest of them.
The smell coming from behind the wagon's back seat was thick and unmistakable: piss, urine---what Hank and Lori had long referred to, at least in the presence of their children, as potty little.
Another in a lengthy series of switchbacks appeared in the road ahead. Hank slowed the car. These mountain roads were devilishly dark and curvier than a Parkinson's patient's question mark, but so far Hank had surprised himself by navigating them with the accuracy and sure-handedness of an action movie stunt driver. The headlights swept over a thick copse of evergreens and returned to the macadam. Hank steered into a long straightaway and took the chance to peek down at the clock on the dash. 11:58. Nearly midnight.
Three hours earlier, in the not-yet-soiled tent, Hank had buried himself in his sleeping bag and fallen asleep to the sounds of cool mountain breezes blowing through the pine boughs overhead. Now, driving his family back toward civilization in the vehicular equivalent of a construction site porta-potty, he marveled at how quickly things could go downhill.
It was the end of July and should have been hot even in the middle of the night---back home, it certainly would have been---but the mountains had a climate all their own. Hank shivered and turned up the wagon's heater.
He sneaked a glance into the rearview. Davy, their youngest, would turn seven next month. In the mirror's reflection, however, Davy looked more like a napping toddler than a soon-to-be first-grader. The boy shifted position and wrapped a twiggish arm around his brother's chest.
Hank didn't blame Davy for what had happened back at camp. How could he? An accident was an accident, and blaming Davy, whose poor little face had gone brick red when the flashlight lit up the tent and they all saw what he'd done, would have been more than unfair---it would have been cruel. Hank liked to think he was neither.
Still, he didn't guess he was wrong to be a little peeved at the sudden and unplanned end to the vacation. Especially if he directed his disappointment at the gods of fate rather than at the little boy in the back seat wearing his second pair of jammies for the night.
The original plan had been to leave the campsite the following morning, when they would have had plenty of time to get things put away and packed into the station wagon properly. After the accident, however, Hank had seen no other option than to shove their gear into the car and head for the nearest hotel. Their sleeping bags were soaked (where that much urine had come from, Hank still wasn't sure; kid's bladder had to be the size of a watermelon) and none of them could stomach the smell inside the tent. They cleaned things the best they could with the supplies they had, but not well enough, and Hank was looking forward to a hotel laundry room and plenty of soap.
The campground was now forty-five minutes and fifteen miles behind them. Hank had at least another hour of driving ahead---he'd noticed two or three hotels back in town a week earlier, before they'd ventured onto these less-traveled roads, which was to say before they'd left the real world behind---they'd surely find a vacancy in at least one of them. He knew he could stay awake for two or three more hours, but he sure as hell didn't want to.
He slowed for another switchback, dropping the station wagon's speed to just under ten miles per hour. The headlights lit the roadside trees again. Hank had never noticed the lights being especially bright, but out here, miles from any other source of illumination, beneath a starless, moonless sky of thick clouds, even the low beams seemed like twin supernovas.
Hank rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger and yawned.
From the passenger's seat, Lori murmured. Hank looked over to make sure she was all right and found her still fast asleep. After the night they'd had, Lori could use the rest, and Hank wouldn't wake her, but he definitely would have liked the company. He sighed and turned back to the road.
And that was when it happened.
The ragged pavement ahead of the station wagon disappeared behind a dark-brown blur. At first, Hank thought he'd steered them off the road and right at the trunk of one enormous mother of a tree. It took only a second for him to glimpse the single brown eye and the four hoofed legs, only the beat of a heart to realize that no tree in the history of trees had ever grown itself a pair of antlers, what George and Davy still called antennas. That moment of realization, it turned out, was one of Hank Abbott's last. The moose turned its shaggy brown head toward the oncoming disaster, and Hank jammed his foot against the station wagon's brake pedal.
The reaction didn't come soon enough, and the explosive sounds of impact---the breaking, screaming, screeching, crunching sounds of impact---broke the night's silence for good.
---:---:---:---
Davy knew he'd made a mistake. Sometimes, back home, he woke up at night and found he'd pottied little in his bed. It was a disgusting feeling, like when you put your jammies on after your bath before you dried all the way off, only warmer and stinkier. Going potty in his bed was the absolute worst thing he could think of, but he hadn't done it in such a long, long time (at least three or four weeks) that he'd thought maybe he'd never do it again.
Wrong. This time he'd done it right in the tent and gotten everybody wet and made them pack up all their things and leave the vacation early.
Stupid. He knew it was a gross thing to do, a real stupid little baby thing to do, but he didn't know how to stop it. He'd never pottied his pants while he was awake. At least, not since he could remember. Maybe when he'd been younger (way younger), but not in a long time, and that had to be worth something. It wasn't like he did it on purpose. Still, he knew his parents must be mad. They hadn't screamed at him or made mean faces, but Davy knew they must be awfully mad.
Davy had spent the entire cleanup process and most of the drive wondering what his mom and dad might do. Make him wear diapers to bed? Buy him plastic sheets? Spank him? No, probably not that last one, they'd never spanked before, but surely they wouldn't just let the mistake go unpunished.
Georgie, Mommy, and Manny had all gone to sleep almost immediately after leaving camp, but Davy only pretended. He couldn't sleep. The engine was too loud, the back seat too uncomfortable, and his tummy and legs still a little too icky feeling.
Mommy had wiped him off and gotten him a pair of clean jammies, but he could still feel the potty. Sticky. Stinky. Gross.
So he pretended to sleep and tried to pretend none of it had really happened. Davy had always been good at pretending.
He lay thinking for what seemed like a very long time. At one point, he opened his eyes and thought he might have drifted off to sleep just a little after all, but it couldn't have been for long.
One thing was certain: when the second big accident of the night happened, Davy Abbott was wide awake. Davy Abbott was sitting straight up. And Davy Abbott was screaming.
---:---:---:---
The moose had been fast asleep when the growl of a nearby predator scared him from his hiding spot. Now, although every instinct said it was the middle of the night, he looked into the oncoming light and thought he saw approaching dawn.
---:---:---:---
The station wagon's hood crumpled like the pages of an old, wet comic book. The moose, a woolly mammoth of a thing unlike any animal Davy had ever seen, crashed sideways onto what was left of the engine and then up into the windshield. Before the animal spun off the car, its antlers smashed through the glass just above the steering wheel. One of them entered Daddy's screaming face just above his nose.
The car swerved to the right. The moose slid up the windshield, and for a moment Davy thought the animal would crush the top of the car down into them. The creature fell sideways instead. One scooped section of antler pulled out of the mess that had been Daddy's head like a spoon from Mommy's mixing bowl, carrying with it a taste of what might have been chunky strawberry Jell-O.
In the back seat, both boys gaped at the carnage in front of them. Davy had chunks of his father's flesh on his face and in his hair. A fresh puddle of urine dripped over the edge of the seat between his legs. Georgie yelled, and Manny howled, but Davy's own squealing nearly drowned out the both of them. Daddy was gone, dead, and Mommy had a long, dark gash running from the corner of one eye to the tip of her chin. She was moving, so she was probably still mostly okay, but all the blood streaming down her face made Davy want to puke.
While his father's blood oozed down Davy's nose and into his open mouth, Davy turned around to watch the moose topple onto the road. For a moment, the animal simply stood there, as if it weren't hurt at all, as if this had all been a game of bumper cars. After another second, the moose slumped, its neck twisted back like a broken toy's. One hind leg gave a final twitch, and then the beast lay still. By the time the car had veered the rest of the way off the pavement, the moose was lost in the darkness and Davy had turned back to face the front.
At the boys' feet, Manny continued his yowling. The howl quickly became a whine, a sound that reminded Davy of the feedback screech from the microphone in the school auditorium. He tried to pull his feet up onto the seat beneath him so he wouldn't accidentally kick the scrambling dog.
Up front, Daddy's body slumped, and the car sped up. The station wagon rolled across the shoulder, thumped over a ditch and slid into a grove of trees.
Mommy was trying to grab the steering wheel, but her hands kept slipping in the running, red mess.
Georgie started to scream something when the wagon barely missed a twisted white trunk on the left. Maybe the word would have been Mommy or Daddy, or maybe it would have been nothing but a meaningless whoop of terror. Whatever the sound might or might not have become, Georgie never got the chance to finish it. The station wagon hit something, and they all flopped forward. Daddy's body hit the steering wheel, Mommy jerked against her seatbelt, and Davy flew face first into his mommy's headrest. Georgie, who, like his brother, had not had his seatbelt fastened but who was a bit taller and sitting directly between the two front seats, bounced up and flew through the shattered windshield.
Mommy reached for him, screaming, but she was much too late.
Georgie disappeared over the side of the hood and into the night, and although Davy tried to track him, his eyes had filled with blurring tears. And really, it was probably too dark to see anything that didn't lie directly in the path of the wagon's one remaining headlight anyway.
Davy screeched his brother's name.
Somehow, they continued moving forward. The car rolled deep into the trees before its front tire finally drove up a dark, arched trunk. Everything flipped upside down. The ground vibrated beneath Davy. He blinked his eyes and found himself lying facedown on the station wagon's roof.
Something warm and wet slid beside him. He looked over and saw the stump of gore where his father's head had been. His mother was still in her seat, strapped in by her belt, but when he tried to look up at her face, a fan of loose dirt sprayed across his eyes and forced him to turn away. The car skidded on. He reached out blindly and searched for Manny with the tips of his fingers. Clutter surrounded him: maps, a cook stove, clothes and pillows and all sorts of junk. He thought he sensed movement from his left but didn't get a chance to look because the station wagon slid hard into the trunk of another tree, and everything jolted to a stop. Davy had time for one last waking thought before things went totally dark: all of this---the blood and the death and the screaming and the agony---all of it was his fault.
---:---:---:---
Davy woke to the sound of rain.
Fat drops pelted the car's undercarriage above him. The miniature drumbeats combined with the sound of the suckling earth outside the broken windows to make a scary sound like a vampire eating. The noise only partly covered the sound of approaching footsteps.
The confusion of waking in a strange, dark place didn't last long. Once Davy remembered where he was and what had happened, his first crazy thought was that the footsteps were coming from the moose, that the monster had returned to finish what it started, that the footsteps were actually hoofsteps and that he, Davy, was a goner. His next, slightly more coherent thought was that the approaching sounds meant Georgie had survived the throw from the runaway wagon and was coming back to see if the rest of them had been as lucky.
But the sounds weren't coming from the moose or his brother.
Though both the wagon's headlights had gone out, one of the taillights still shone. The light was as dim as the Snoopy nightlight Davy sometimes used back home, but it was bright enough to reveal the pair of stained leather boots approaching the rear fender.
Davy wasn't sure how long he'd been out. Two minutes? Two hours? These boots might belong to a policeman or a fireman, someone who'd come to help them.
Davy tried to lift his head off the floor, which he remembered was actually the roof, and wondered how many of them were left to save. It was a sick thought, a very bad thought, but he knew his daddy was gone. Was his mommy dead, too? What about Manny and Georgie? Was his brother lying broken out there in the rain?
He tried to yell that he was alive, that he needed help, that his family needed help, but no sound came out. The pair of leather boots circled around the side of the station wagon, and Davy tried lifting his head again. He strained every muscle he could move, but before he got his chin more than three inches into the air, the world darkened around him again.
---:---:---:---
This time, Davy woke on his back in the rain. The rain had picked up; the water hitting Davy in the face felt like the spray from their bathroom shower. The rain ran up his nose and down his throat. He turned his head to the left and coughed. Snot dripped out of his nostrils, and he tried to flip onto his side, but an enormous hand grabbed his arm and spun him back onto his shoulders hard enough to knock his breath out.
Davy gasped. Or tried to. There seemed to be more water than oxygen in the air, and half of what slipped down into his lungs was liquid. He coughed again and retched until his stomach hurt. When he tried to turn onto his side a second time, no one stopped him. He spit out a mouthful of rainwater and vomit and shook his dripping head from side to side until he could see a little.
There was more light now. With his eyes fully open, he became aware of it almost immediately. The car's taillight still burned---the red tint to everything around him proved that---but something brighter and far more powerful had joined it. Davy could see.
At this point, he had no idea which direction was which, but he thought this new light might be coming from the road. He tried looking for the source, but before he could find it, he saw the slumped form sitting against the base of a nearby tree.
His father.
The moose's antenna hadn't completely destroyed his head. The bottom part of his face, his lips and teeth and one mostly detached ear, remained. Above these things was a jagged bowl half filled with a rising pool of rain.
He'd watched the accident from less than a foot away, but this somehow seemed worse. To see his father's body tossed to the side, collecting rain like a backyard birdbath, made him want to scream.
He heard wet smacking sounds behind him and turned. The pair of stained leather boots was backing away from the overturned station wagon.
The man above the boots hunched over, tugging at something inside the car, but even so, Davy could tell he was tall and husky. He wore his checked flannel shirt tucked into the waist of a tight pair of jeans. Davy couldn't make out his face; a mane of dark, shaggy hair covered the back of the man's head. The rain running out of this hairy jungle was brown and thick, as if the guy hadn't washed the dirt out of his hair in months.
Before Davy could think to do anything at all, he saw what was happening. One of the side windows had shattered. What first appeared to be a long, white branch growing out through the frame turned out to be a pale, limp arm. The man, holding tight to the wrist, yanked the way Davy's Daddy yanked the lawnmower's start cord. Davy continued to stare; the booted man jerked on the arm again, and Davy's mother came sliding through the window.
The man backed away from the station wagon, never letting go of the arm. Moving carefully but deliberately backward, he dragged Davy's mother through the mud toward Davy and finally let her drop to the ground. The mud splatter from her falling body hit Davy across both eyes, but not before he'd seen the blank, lifeless expression on his mother's tumbling face.
Dead. Like his father. Gone.
He wanted to deny it, to tell himself she was okay, that she'd look over at him any second and smile, but he knew better. He wouldn't let his mind play tricks on him.
Mr. Boots turned back to the car without saying a word. He came close enough to the station wagon to touch it, dropped to his knees, and poked his head in through the windowless frame.
Davy turned to his mother. She had landed with her face pointed mostly away from him, but Davy could still see the caked blood on her cheek and a single vacant eye. He flipped onto his elbows and crawled to her. Her hair floated in the mud around her head. Davy reached out and tilted her face so her glazed eyes faced the sky. The rain had already washed away most of the blood, but Davy knew it couldn't wash away the deep gash running from her cheek to her jaw to her neck. He dropped his forehead to hers and cried.
It wasn't fair. His daddy and his mommy both in one night. How could something like this happen?
He heard more noises from the car. Mr. Boots emerged from the shattered window with a furry, writhing body curled into the crook of one arm.
Manny.
Davy said the dog's name, and the sound coming out of his mouth sounded so wrong, so high-pitched and alien, that he immediately wished he could take it back.
"Not gonna make it," Mr. Boots said, his voice deep, booming. Mr. Boots dropped the beagle to the ground the same way he had dropped Davy's mother. Manny bounced once, like a half-deflated basketball, and then lay still. He moaned. Davy didn't think he'd ever be able to forget that sound. Manny didn't quiet until Mr. Boots lifted one of his own hefty legs and brought his boot down hard on the dog's throat.
Davy choked again, and this time he lost his breath altogether. He gasped and cried and tried to scream all at once.
Mr. Boots looked over at him and brought his foot down again, softer than the first time but hard enough to snap at least a few more bones in Manny's poor, unmoving body.
Davy's own worthless body continued to betray him. When Mr. Boots walked over to Davy, all the boy could do was drop to his mother's chest and cling to it like an infant.
"It's just you and me now," Mr. Boots said and reached down to pull Davy onto his knees.
Davy shook his head, trying to stifle another bout of hysterical sobs. "Nuh...hu, no. My broth...my Georgie." He couldn't believe his family was gone. His whole family. He wouldn't believe it.
Mr. Boots frowned. His face had deep wrinkles, but in other ways he didn't look any older than Davy's father. The man's frown suddenly reversed itself, and the smile revealed half a dozen toothless gaps. Mr. Boots pulled Davy to his feet and pointed over the car wreck.
He saw Georgie, his brother, pinned to a tree trunk fifteen feet away, dangling so the toes of his sneakers floated two feet above the ground, jabbed onto the sharp stub of a broken limb. Davy couldn't understand how Georgie could have flown from the car and ended up so close to the final wreck site. It wasn't possible, was it?
Davy looked up at the man in the checkered shirt, Mr. Boots, and the stranger giggled.
"You and me," he repeated. "Just the two of us." He jammed his hands beneath Davy's armpits and lifted him until their noses came within an inch of touching. "Someone up there's been listening." He looked up into the growing storm and then back into Davy's eyes. Without warning, he pulled the boy close and kissed him on the lips.
Davy tried to squirm away, but the stranger had a superhero's strength. With nothing else to do, Davy closed his eyes and cringed until the man's lips left his face.
"Don't worry," the stranger crooned. "We'll get this mess all cleaned up before anybody does so much as think about noticing." He flung Davy over his shoulder, ignored the boy's fists beating against his spine, and headed back toward the road.
ONE
THE CITY OF Foothill wasn't exactly a metropolis, but it did have the Mountain View Mall, and you could hardly call any place large enough to boast such an extravagant shopping center the boondocks.
That Friday, the mall's parking lots were full, and inside, although it was just past four in the afternoon, the food court bustled. There wasn't a single line in the place less than fifteen customers long---with the exception of the one leading to Wu's Chinese, which the local paper had recently vilified for failing a health inspection with nearly a dozen violations. The more popular eateries were just about overrun.
It took Libby and Trevor Pullman almost twenty minutes to get their tacos. By the time Libby accepted her change from the cashier and dropped her wallet into her purse, she felt like she'd been standing for a week. Trevor, peeking frequently back at his mom to be sure he hadn't lost her, carried the tray toward an empty two-seat table at the far end of the room. Libby followed behind with their shopping bags, watching the tray in Trevor's small hands, wondering if he might lose his grip and spill their long-awaited supper on the floor. She didn't ask Trevor to be careful because that would have only made him nervous. She didn't want to make a worrier out of her son; even something small like letting him carry the tray would help build his confidence, and as far as confidence went, she hoped he would someday have a gutful.
In the large open area at the end of the food court, the area where the mall would soon hold their big back-to-school extravaganza and set up Santa when Christmastime eventually rolled around, the mall overseers had, for the summer months, erected an enormous glittering carousel on a raised platform. The ride, a beautiful Victorianesque number, must have cost the mall a whole bag full of pretty pennies, and the line of people waiting to mount one of the painted animals was so long and unorganized that you probably could have called it a mob. From the speakers in the carousel's hub came not the cheap, amusement-park calliope Libby would have expected, but a nicely reproduced piece of some classical symphony that Libby recognized but couldn't name, something by Mozart or maybe Beethoven. It didn't surprise Libby that Trevor had led them to an empty table close enough to the twirling carousel that they could almost reach out and touch its platform.
Trevor eased the tray onto the table without incident. He hopped into the chair on his side with a spryness that made Libby almost wistfully envious.
She thought, Ah, to be six again, and lowered herself into her own chair feeling a like a hundred-year-old invalid.
Actually, Libby's doctor had recently assured her she was, for a twenty-eight-year-old mother, so perfectly fit that the editors of Healthy Living could have dedicated an entire issue of their magazine to her.
Libby wondered what the Healthy Living people would think about her greasy pile of tacos.
Smiling, she pushed the shopping bags beneath her seat and helped Trevor tear the corner from a packet of taco sauce.
"What's funny?" Trevor asked. He took the sauce from Libby and squirted it unevenly onto his unwrapped taco.
"Oh," Libby said, unwrapping the first of her own tacos, "nothing much. I was just thinking I might try to eat my dinner through my nose." She brushed a strand of shoulder-length hair from her forehead and tucked it behind her ear.
Trevor grinned and wrinkled his own nose. "There's boogers in there."
Libby nodded thoughtfully, feigning consideration and trying not to laugh. "I guess I'll just have to stick with my boring old mouth."
Trevor giggled and lifted his taco. Half the shell's contents spilled out during the trip from the wrapper to Trevor's mouth, and after chewing his first bite long enough to liquefy it, he spent thirty seconds hand-transferring the spilled meat and cheese back into his shell.
Libby finished her first taco and inserted a straw into their cup of Mountain Dew. She took two sips and offered the drink to Trevor. He took a long swallow politely enough but left a pair of oily handprints on the cup and two even oilier lip prints on the straw.
While Trevor munched on his one and only taco, Libby started in on her second. Although their meals often consisted of equal parts conversation and eating, tonight they dined in silence. Trevor stared intently at the revolving children and over-chewed his food. Libby's thought about Mike.
The divorce had been final for almost six months now. Mike had moved out five months before that. The whole marital breakdown was now nearly a year in the past, if you could believe that. Sometimes Libby could swear she and Mike had been together only weeks ago; other times, their marriage seemed so distant and foggy that it might have happened in another life altogether.
Today had been one of the weeks-ago days.
Libby finished her second taco and unwrapped the last. She'd been especially hungry this afternoon. Trevor had popped the final mouthful of his meal between his lips and chewed away at it with no less determination than he'd shown any of the previous bites.
"Hey, Mom," he said after swallowing the food and helping himself to another swig of Mountain Dew.
Of course, Libby knew what he was going to ask, had expected it since they'd walked into the food court and caught their first glimpse of the carousel. She kept eating.
"You think maybe I could ride the merry-go-round while we wait?"
Libby pretended to think about it for a second. "You promise not to puke?"
Trevor smiled and rolled his eyes in a way that reminded Libby almost eerily of her ex-husband. "Yeah right. I'm not a baby."
"Nope," Libby said, "that's true. How about we make a deal?"
Trevor waited.
Libby said, "You can ride it---"
Trevor's eyes sparkled.
"But first you have to throw away our trash."
Trevor nodded enthusiastically and balled up their empty wrappers. "You want the rest?" He pointed at her half-eaten third taco, and she shook her head.
"But let's save the drink," Libby suggested.
Most of the food court's self-serve soda machines offered free refills. Mike wasn't supposed to meet them for another half-hour, and with all the people milling about, the food court felt a little warm. Libby thought she'd need to make at least one more trip to the soda machine.
She used a napkin to give the tabletop a quick wipe down. The mall had people to do that, she knew, and sooner or later somebody would, but Libby hated leaving a mess. They were human beings, after all, civilized people, not pigs at a trough. Once she'd finished, Trevor piled everything but the Mountain Dew on their tray and rushed it to a nearby wastebasket. He dumped the trash and added the tray to a long-ignored pile.
He was a good kid. Libby didn't have to remind herself how lucky she was.
By the time Trevor had returned to the table, Libby was out of her seat and reaching for their bags.
"Mom?"
Libby looked up and found him glancing purposefully toward the carousel. And not, she realized, because of his interest in the ride. At least not for that reason only. He was avoiding looking at her.
"Do you think maybe I could go alone?"
She didn't have to ask for clarification. He wanted to leave her here and go wait in line by himself, be a big boy.
Her gut reaction was to refuse. With all the commotion in here, any sicko could pluck a kid from the crowd like an apple from a tree, but she was probably a little paranoid to assume there was a skulking maniac scoping out the gathered people like some hungry migrant eyeing an unguarded orchard. And even if (God forbid) said maniac did exist, half the kids in line were standing by themselves. The odds of the hypothetical kidnapper targeting Trevor had to be astronomical.
Still, Libby hesitated. Trevor was her baby.
He's not a baby.
Her little boy.
He's not so little anymore.
She thought about the way he'd avoided her eyes. It was one thing for him to feel a little nervous about waiting in line alone, but to be afraid just to ask...she didn't want him so scared of her that he couldn't pose a simple question.
"All right," she said, "but you make sure you always stand where I can see you."
"Really?" He smiled wide enough to reveal a chunk of beef stuck between two of the teeth, halfway back into his mouth.
Libby nodded. "Sure. I was sick of standing in line anyway." This was true but not exactly what she was thinking. Abandonment---that's what she was thinking---my baby is abandoning me. And although she knew Trevor would want to venture out on his own more and more in the coming years, that it would only get worse, she wouldn't let herself feel hurt. It was part of growing up, after all, and it proved she was doing her job. You didn't teach a bird to fly and then expect it to sit around the nest waiting for another half-chewed worm.
Besides, it wasn't like he was going off to war. Even at the back of the line, he'd be no more than forty feet away, and she could keep an eye on him the whole time.
"You better go ahead and hurry and get in line though," Libby said. "Dad will be here soon, and he probably won't want to wait around all night." She fished her wallet out of her purse and handed Trevor a five. She hadn't noticed a sign giving the carousel's price, but she saw a tall, flustered man at the head of the line taking money and handing out change.
"Have fun," she said. Trevor told her thanks and hurried away.
Libby dropped back into her chair and slumped against the backrest. Trevor made his way to what may or may not have been the end of the line (Libby thought they really should have set up one of those rope mazes), and she helped herself to the Mountain Dew.
So much waiting for so little reward, Libby thought, watching the carousel. Each group got about three of four minutes on the ride before it shut down and a new batch took their places. The kids obviously considered the wait worth it; the children hopping down the carousel's exit steps had some of the biggest smiles Libby had ever seen. Even the few disembarking adults looked sufficiently satisfied.
Simple joys, Libby thought. It was a pretty magnificent carousel. Libby couldn't bring herself to think of it as a merry-go-round---the term didn't seem fancy enough. At some point, the music had changed, this time to a Beethoven piece she recognized: Für Elise. She'd tuned the music out during dinner, but now she let herself listen.
A group of four ten-or eleven-year-old girls had stepped into line behind Trevor. He looked over at Libby, saw her watching, and waved. Libby waved back, smiling now, and finished off the Mountain Dew.
She slid farther into her chair, realizing she'd be sitting here for a while and that she might as well get comfortable. Her thoughts drifted back to Mike.
Libby had suggested they meet at the mall. She'd told Mike she had some shopping to do and that it would be easier for the both of them, but that had been a lie. It would be easier for Mike, for sure---the mall was a lot closer to his place than her house---but Libby had gone more than a little bit out of her way. There was nothing necessary about the new blouse and three new paperbacks she'd picked up, nor about the Dragonball Z action figure she'd bought Trevor at the toy store.
The truth was, she'd arranged for Mike to meet them at the mall because she didn't want him coming to the house.
She didn't want him to see what she'd done to the place.
That was stupid, of course---it was her house now, after all---but part of her felt unreasonably guilty all the same.
Since Mike had left, she hadn't changed much of anything. She hadn't rearranged the furniture, had kept the pictures hanging where they'd always hung; there were even some of Mike's old clothes folded on the top shelf of the closet. She hadn't been stagnant on purpose, hadn't left things the same out of some misguided sense of nostalgia. She simply hadn't had the time or the inclination to reorganize. Or so she told herself.
And did she have any reason to believe otherwise? The divorce had been a mutual thing---which sounded like something you said about a week-long high school romance rather than an eight-year marriage, but it was true---they'd both known they would do better apart. Things had gotten too hard; by the end, they been fighting almost every night. Even their love for Trevor hadn't been enough to hold them together.
So redecorating the house a little shouldn't have been a problem, and yet it had taken her all this time to do it, and now that she had, she was afraid of what Mike might think and feeling guilty.
Stupid. She hadn't really done much. Taken down a few pictures, replaced a rug in the entryway, repositioned the couch and the television, and bought another end table. Little things, mostly. Although Mike would probably notice (the couch at least, the big leather dinosaur of a thing), he wouldn't care. Surely he wouldn't be hurt. Would he?
Libby wasn't sure. They'd shared the house for a long time. Since he left, he'd come to pick up or drop off Trevor at least twice a week. She supposed that on some level it might still seem like home to him. And now she'd changed it without him.
Libby sighed and looked over at the empty cup. She'd been right about needing more to drink---she was thirsty already.
Trevor shuffled forward a few steps and rubbed absently at the tip of his nose. He still had the five-dollar bill clutched between his fingers, and Libby wondered why he hadn't stuck it in his pocket. Silly guy. She beamed.
The carousel stopped to let off its current passengers. The first thirty or forty waiters climbed onto the platform and mounted their animals, and the line behind them surged forward to fill the void. Libby watched Trevor carefully until the progression stopped and everyone resettled. When they stilled again, Trevor turned around to the girls behind him and said something that made them laugh.
That was Trevor, always quick to make friends, whether they were five years older than him or not.
Libby thought it would probably be okay for her to go grab a refill. She could watch over her shoulder and keep an eye on Trevor the whole time.
She un-slumped and pushed out of the chair. Carrying the empty cup to the taco station, she glanced back toward Trevor (fine, of course) and then at her watch. 4:45. Mike would be here soon---he was usually early. Afterward, Libby would have the rest of the weekend to herself. She'd miss her son, as always, but she would enjoy the quiet time. Stepping to the soda fountain, she thought of long, steamy baths, glasses of wine, and relaxing music.
She hadn't done any work that morning before leaving the house, had planned on getting in a few hours that night after she returned alone, but now she thought she might put it off until tomorrow. She made most of her money from website design, but she'd actually gotten a little ahead in the last couple of weeks and thought she could afford to take both the day and night off. At least this once. She'd have the rest of the weekend for any catch-up work that needed doing.
She dumped her ice, replaced it with some fresh, and held the cup under the Mountain Dew nozzle until it brimmed. Refitting her plastic lid and moving back toward the table kept her so busy that she didn't actually look up until she was almost halfway there. While she slipped the straw between her lips and took her first drink, her eyes scanned the crowd for Trevor. He wasn't where she'd seen him last, just in front of the group of young girls. She detoured to the right, around tables of couples, families and friends, trying to get a better angle.
It wasn't her angle, and it wasn't that she couldn't see him.
Trevor had vanished.
TWO
THE MAN HAD been watching the boy for a long time now, sometimes rubbing the stubble on his chin slowly and rhythmically, the way another man might pet a cat, sometimes standing still as a tree with his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes wide, studying.
The boy was brown haired and slender. Not skinny, not wimpy, but lean, like a mountain lion or a coyote. Once, a long time ago, he'd known another boy who looked almost the same. His name had been Georgie, and he had been the man's brother.
The man who had been Dave, and not Davy, for just over twenty-three years, had blood under his fingernails, but he'd managed to wash most of the splatter off his face. One splotch lay caked in the crease behind his ear, but for now the uneven locks of his poorly cut hair hid it from view.
It was his birthday. Thirty years old. A special birthday.
Still watching the boy, Dave pulled a toothpick from the breast pocket of his shirt, where he kept a small stash of them. The shirt was not flannel, nor was it checked. It was a plain blue button-up that he'd stolen off a backyard clothesline especially for today. He'd kept it hanging on the back of his door that morning until after the bloodshed and his mostly successful cleanup. He stuck the toothpick in his mouth and chomped. Then he pulled a twig from a nearby branch, put it in his pocket to replace the pick. Much better that way. Balanced.
He wore olive-green cargo pants. In the right cargo pocket, he had a hunting knife with a razor-sharp blade. In the opposite pocket: another. He reached both hands into their respective compartments and ran his fingers down the knives' rubber grips. They were identical weapons, or nearly so, and although it wasn't exactly a gun at each hip, Dave couldn't help but compare himself to an old western cowboy.
The second knife was just a backup, something he had no intention of using or needing, but Dave liked knowing it was there. He'd never been a boy scout, never had that "be prepared" jargon brainwashed into him, but he'd never been a moron either and he never did anything half-assed.
He watched and chewed.
The boy's mother had gone inside the house almost half an hour earlier, left her son to play. The kid had spent ten of those thirty minutes bouncing a ratty old tennis ball off the side of the house, and then he'd ventured across the back yard to the edge of the property (near Dave's hiding spot, this was), where a tree house sat high in the branches of a fork-trunked oak. The fort looked so weathered and cracked that it must have been older than the boy himself.
Dave had noticed it before. He'd come here many times.
Weathered or not, the wooden rungs nailed to the tree's trunk had held for the kid when he scurried up them and onto the main platform, which had itself now withstood almost twenty minutes of jumps, half-hearted karate moves, and the various repositionings of a ten-or eleven-year-old boy who didn't seem to know whether he wanted to sit, lie, or stand. The old platform hadn't so much as creaked.
Dave grinned. Over the last six months he'd visited a lot of houses, and he'd watched a lot of boys, but he always came back here. The boy's real name, he knew, was Zachary, but he never thought of him that way. Usually it was just the boy or the kid; occasionally, it was Georgie.
Now the boy moved again. Dave left the weapons in his pockets but removed his hands. He needed to focus on the kid.
From his place behind the thick tree trunk deeper in the woods, Dave watched the child back off the platform on his stomach and kick blindly for a rung nailed to the trunk about two feet down.
It wasn't just the kid's looks. Even his movements reminded Dave of Georgie. And on several occasions, Dave had noticed the double knots on the laces of the kid's sneakers. Georgie (the original Georgie) had known how to tie a pair of sneaks so well you could only get them off with a pair of scissors.
The boy descended the irregularly spaced rungs with almost superhuman agility and pushed away from the trunk still five feet shy of the ground. When he landed, his knees bent and his arms flung out to his sides in a way that made him look like an alighting bird. He straightened himself up and headed back to the house.
Dave smiled and walked around his hiding tree. Today wasn't just another day. It was time to stop watching. He moved, and the knives slapped against his thighs.
THREE
THE PICKUP MOVED around the mountain roads like a sickly horse out for one last lap around the racetrack. It leaned around the corners, shuddered more than once to an almost complete standstill, jerked, bounced, and wobbled its way forward.
Mike Pullman rode it out of the Rockies the best he could, relying heavily on the brakes, cursing himself for continuing to put his life in the hands (or wheels) of such an untrustworthy hunk of junk. He'd realized only recently that the truck was on its last metaphorical leg, and he'd soon have to trade it in for something a little more surefooted, an SUV or a jeep. But, of course, it wasn't that simple. He'd paid the truck off several years ago but hadn't yet figured out how to bend his budget around the purchase of a new (or even a reliable used) vehicle.
Still, he had to get one, one way or another. A good set of snow tires and extremely careful driving had gotten him through one winter in the mountains, but they would never get him through another, assuming the truck somehow survived to see it.
The pickup's front tires rolled onto a long stretch of flat road, and Mike eyed the interstate ahead. He let out a single short sound, a cross between a sigh of relief and a whoop of joy. The truck groaned as he accelerated, and one short-lived squeal came from a belt somewhere inside the engine compartment, but Mike was soon cruising. The mountains fell away behind him.
He'd driven the back roads in his usual silence, afraid that the distraction of the radio might make him miss a turn and slide into a ditch or, worse, off the unguardrailed edge of a cliff. But now that he'd reached relatively safe ground, he punched the power button on the dash and flipped through the radio's presets until he found an oldies station playing some classic Rolling Stones.
He merged onto I-25, beating his hand against the steering wheel in rhythm with the tune, and reminded himself of a more important reason to get rid of this old clunker: Trevor. The choice to upgrade to a better vehicle wasn't just the smart one or the practical one---it was the fatherly one. After all, any time he loaded Trevor in the truck, Mike was putting more than just his own life in danger; his son deserved better than to hurtle all around Colorado in a veritable deathtrap.
Before the breakup, Libby had sometimes hinted that they ought to get rid of the truck---leaving classifieds open on the coffee table, mentioning the great deals their friends had gotten on their used cars, that sort of thing---but back then the pickup had still been a dependable means of transportation, and she'd never gotten confrontational about it. He'd taken the truck with him when he left, and she'd kept the newer Honda. Since the divorce, she hadn't said a word about the truck, but he knew she probably dreaded Trevor climbing into its cab the same way she would have dreaded him strapping himself into an electric chair or stepping inside a smoking gas chamber. Mike guessed she stayed quiet about it now only because, as divorcés, they sometimes had to choose their battles; for whatever reason, she'd let the issue of the truck slide.
Part of him, a very petty and illogical part, wanted to drive the pickup until it disintegrated, just to spite her. Fortunately, it was also a small, easy-to-ignore part.
He eased the truck up to sixty miles an hour and punched at the radio's presets again when the Stones dissolved into a series of mind-numbing commercials.
Cars and trucks, motorcycles and eighteen-wheelers zipped by him on the left, the big rigs sometimes leaving his small truck shaking in their wake, but Mike hardly noticed. Since moving to the mountains, he'd traveled this stretch of road dozens, and possibly going on hundreds of times, and at this point he figured just about everyone in the state had passed him at least once. No big deal; he wasn't usually in a rush, and he'd never been one to indulge in road rage. Let someone else lose control and wrap his skull around a mile marker---Mike would take his sweet time. Of course, the truck maxed out at about sixty-five, which meant his choice to drive slowly wasn't really much of a choice at all.
In the back of the truck, an unsecured tool chest slid against the wheel well and made a disturbing clunking sound. Mike peeked back there to make sure the hasp hadn't come undone and returned his eyes to the road at once after verifying it was okay. Like his ex-wife, Mike worked out of his home, but unlike hers, his work had little to do with any technological mumbo jumbo. He worked with his hands, made high-quality rustic furniture that he sold mostly in town at craft festivals and in furniture stores throughout most of the surrounding counties. He did, however, still sell many items through the website Libby had set up for him early in their marriage, and even a few on auction sites like eBay. Actually, in the last few years his online transactions had become an increasingly larger percentage of his overall annual sales, though he hadn't admitted this to Libby and didn't really want to admit it to himself. No matter how much of his furniture sold online, it wasn't made there, and he was proud of that, as happy about the clunking tools in the bed of his truck as he was about the blisters on his fingers or the sawdust in his hair.
He'd tuned the radio to a station playing a contemporary song he hadn't yet heard but that seemed to have an acceptable amount of electric guitar. The band transitioned from a distortion-heavy guitar solo to the chorus, and Mike glanced down at the dashboard clock. If he kept driving at this speed, he would just barely make it to the Mountain View on time. He applied a little more pressure to the gas pedal, meaning to bring his speed that much closer to the limit, but the truck bucked and shook, and he let up. Although punctual by nature, Mike recognized that sometimes it was better to be a little late than a lot dead. Especially when the kind of death you were talking about would more likely than not involve being twisted around the axles of a Mack diesel.
He drove toward Foothill, the traffic still flowing around him like river water around a slow-floating log; he thought of his son, and the part of him that was Mike faded away. Trevor was waiting for his daddy, and Daddy was almost there.
FOUR
ONCE, MAYBE A year ago, she'd lost sight of him in the supermarket. He'd strayed down the cereal aisle to get a closer look at a box with a swooping Batman or Spiderman while she searched for an undented can of green beans. It took only three or four seconds for her to look up, realize he was missing, and whip around the corner to find him all but salivating over the combination of sugar and superheroes. But in those few ticks of the clock, her heart must have beat about a thousand times.
Now, standing motionless in the middle of the overflowing food court, smelling the juxtaposed odors of fried fish and chocolate chip cookies, hearing but not listening to the chattering shoppers and the carousel's souped-up elevator music, Libby felt the old chest pump beating its way to an all-time record.
If her fingers hadn't instinctively tightened around the soda, she surely would have dropped it onto the tile between her feet and ended up standing in a yellow puddle looking like she'd wet herself. But as it was, she managed to hold on long enough to move a few steps to her left and plop the cup onto the corner of the nearest table, where an elderly couple looked up only long enough to eye her suspiciously.
While her heart continued shooting adrenaline through her body like bullets from a rattling machine gun, Libby wove her way through the tables and chairs toward the spinning carousel and its crowd of would-be riders.
She'd left her bags under her chair, and although she realized this somewhere deep in the back of her mind, she didn't care. Until she had her arms cinched around her son's narrow body, there would be room in her head for only one thought: find him.
Walking past the table where they had shared their early dinner, Libby looked for the group of girls Trevor had been charming before she'd gone to get her refill.
Jesus, if I lose him over sixteen ounces of Mountain Dew, I'll never ever forgive myself.
The girls clustered together near the back of the gathered onlookers, shuffling their feet and biting at their lips but looking otherwise undisturbed. One of them would have screamed if someone had jerked Trevor right out from under their noses, wouldn't they? Kids these days weren't that desensitized. She pushed through the crowd, ignoring half a dozen varying degrees of protestation, and grabbed the shoulders of the first of the girls she reached.
"Please." The word came out like the hiss from a broken steam pipe. "Where did he go?"
The girl's eyes bulged. "Wh...who?"
"Trevor." Libby gave the girl a quick shake and heard a woman somewhere behind her gasp. "My son." Shake. "Trevor." Shake shake. "You were just talking to him."
Libby looked left and then right, ignoring the non-responsive girl, staring past hairy legs and grungy sneakers to see if maybe her son had simply fallen or was kneeling on the ground and out of immediate sight. "Trevor!"
One of the girl's friends, a blonde-haired pixie, stepped forward and plucked Libby's hands off her friend's shoulders. "He left, ma'am."
It wasn't only the ma'am that got through to Libby, it was the calm and rational authority in the girl's voice. For a moment, Libby was looking at a negotiator or some sort of diplomat, a future world leader; then the girl said, "Just chill, okay," and the moment passed. Libby ran her hands through her hair and gave the doe-eyed girl a quick apology before turning back to the pixie.
"Did you see where he went? Any of you?" She scanned the rest of the girls and the crowd around them. "Somebody must have seen."
They shook their heads, all mute and sorry looking.
"There's a candy shop up that way a ways," the pixie said, tilting her head away from the carousel. "He coulda gone there."
Libby's gaze flicked in the direction the girl had indicated, and she shook her head. "But you were talking to him. He just got out of line and headed off without saying a word, and none of you looked to see where he was going?"
The pixie shook her head and said only, "I'm sorry."
Libby wanted to scream. She'd had her back turned for a few seconds, maybe five, surely not long enough for Trevor to meander his way out of the crowd so casually that no one even noticed which direction he'd gone.
At least nobody grabbed him---somebody would have noticed that. But she was hardly relieved. Kidnapped or simply wandering, Trevor was still gone, and she had an idea finding him this time would be harder than turning into the cereal aisle.
She hurried away from the girls and the rest of the unhelpful crowd, too worried about her son to let the scene she'd made or the pity-filled eyes tracking her progress embarrass her.
Libby rushed toward the candy store. Trevor wouldn't have disobeyed her so deliberately, but she had no idea where else to look or what other alternatives to pursue. She'd come close enough to smell the licorice when another option, as sometimes happens, presented itself. The barrel-chested man standing stoically beside the cell phone kiosk cocked his head, and for the first time since setting down her soda, Libby felt her heart slowing down and her brain speeding up.
Thank God. She turned away from the candy store and hurried instead for the cross-armed security guard.
FIVE
DAVE MOVED TOWARD the small house. You might have called it a lumber if he hadn't been so surefooted, so eerily quiet. He stepped over the discarded tennis ball and across a long length of garden hose that had all but disappeared beneath the tall grass like a scar beneath an untrimmed beard. He'd never come this close; on his previous visits, he'd kept to the woods, stayed hidden even during nighttime hours, when it would have been easy enough to spy on the boy and his mother through their drooping window curtains. The place was even shabbier than he'd realized. Scaly paint hung from the siding like loose, dead skin, and a ring of grass and dirt stains around the perimeter spoke of careless weed-whacking and untreated rain and snow damage. Dave climbed a pair of craggy steps to the back door. The weeds growing from the cracked concrete exemplified the home's pitiful landscaping.
His own home wasn't exactly a paradise, wasn't really a home at all (over time he'd gone from thinking of it as a prison to considering it a sort of base of operations), but that was different. This house was meant for a family. Dave had no family. Not anymore. Not yet.
He pulled on the screen door first, spied a simple disengaged hook and eye closure and reached for the knob of the inner door, which was likewise unsecured.
He slipped inside. The knife in his right cargo pocket thunked against the doorframe, but the sound was faint, nearly inaudible even to Dave himself. His footsteps weren't much louder. A two-person dinette set occupied a shadowy alcove on his left, the table covered in papers and bills, the front leg of one of the chairs splintered so badly it couldn't possibly have supported an adult. From his place just inside the back door, he saw a sofa and one arm of a recliner in the adjoining living room, but he didn't give any of those things much more than a casual glance. The dark-haired woman stood at the kitchen sink, not ten feet away, and he'd made it halfway to her before the muscles in her back so much as tensed.
She'd been washing her hands. The splashing faucet sprayed the dish-cluttered sink and most of the countertop around it. A worn washer ring. Dave could have fixed it in a couple of minutes.
The boy must have been somewhere deeper in the house, his bedroom or maybe a bathroom. Dave stopped in the center of the kitchen and watched the woman shut off the water and dry her hands on an incongruously fancy dishtowel. He hadn't closed the door behind him---the wind blew it all the way open now, and it knocked against the wall with a single sharp tap.
Whether the woman was responding solely to that sound or had also somehow sensed his presence, Dave wasn't sure, but he watched her spin toward him with ravenous anticipation. He'd never come so close to her, never seen her face from less than a hundred feet away. He'd sometimes wondered if she would be clear skinned and beautiful, or heavily wrinkled and haggish. Blue eyes or green? Brown? He almost licked his lips.
Her nose was a finely shaped wedge, pert with a pair of inconspicuous nostrils, like something out of a fairy tale, elfish. There had been fairy tales when he was very young. They were one of the things he remembered. One of the things he'd been allowed to remember.
If she had kept her mouth shut, Dave would have gone to her for a closer look at the perfect little nose, might even have given it a friendly kiss.
Instead, she screamed.
Her mouth might have been the entrance to a strange miniature cave, her teeth pale, blunt stalactites and stalagmites, her scream the shrill squeal of a million flitting bats. Startled, Dave almost took a step back, but a more basic instinct took quick control, and he stepped forward instead and punched her in the eye.
He'd meant only to shock her into silence, maybe knock her off balance a little so he could sweep in and steady her, soothe her, but his fist seemed to have the effect of something fired from a cannon, and she crumpled to the floor. Her head bounced twice on the cracked linoleum and then lolled. Dave heard footsteps and heavy breathing behind him and turned far enough around to see the boy, standing frozen in the doorway leading into the living room.
"Hello, Georgie." Dave smiled at the boy and knelt on the floor beside the temporarily silent woman. "Don't you worry about me and Mommy---we're just having a little talk."
The boy opened his mouth in an almost exact imitation of his mother, but the sound that came from his little cave was very different: a single short squeak like the hinge on a rusty gate. On the floor, the woman had come to and gotten herself up on her elbows.
"Run." She didn't scream it, just said it flatly, the way she might have told him to finish his broccoli.
"Hey now," Dave said, "let's not---"
The boy made a single clumsy move to the right, but Dave flew across the room in two giant steps and caught the kid by his slender bicep before the boy could do much more than shift his footing.
"Zach!" The woman scrambled on the floor, trying to get to her feet, but Dave had definitely done more damage than he'd intended---she got halfway up twice and fell back onto her rear end both times.
"I'm not going to hurt you," Dave said to the boy, talking quickly, wanting to get the words out before the woman could stand, wanting him to understand. "I'm here to help you. I promise I'll save you. I swear."
The look the boy gave him might easily have been confused for fear, but Dave recognized it for what it must really have been: awe.
He led the kid into the kitchen, to the spot on the floor where his mother still lay squirming like a flipped turtle. "We're all going to be all right now."
On the floor, the woman said something Dave couldn't quite hear.
"What's that?"
"My husband." She spit the word at him. "Husband...in the other room. We've got a gun. He'll---"
Dave smiled and shook his head. "Oh, Mommy. We all three of us know that's an outright lie." He waggled his finger at her, still smiling. "If there was a husband," he continued, "you wouldn't need me here at all."
The woman stared at him blankly for several long seconds and then turned to her son and repeated, "Run," this time with a little more conviction.
Dave tightened his grip on the kid before he could think about obeying and frowned down at the woman. "I don't think you understand what's happening here," he said.
From the way she looked back up at him, Dave wondered if maybe she really didn't.
"It's my birthday," he said, shifting his gaze back and forth from mother to son, wanting to hug the both of them to his chest and weep into their hair. "Time to take my place. I'm going to make you whole."
The woman shook her head. The boy went suddenly slack, and Dave had to look to make sure he hadn't fainted. Except for his single squeak, the boy hadn't made a sound. He wasn't a mute, Dave knew. He'd heard him mumbling to himself in the back yard many times, eavesdropped as he called in to an imaginary airfield from the corner of his tree house while he pretended to pilot his way to earth, listened to him back-talking invisible foes between jump kicks and punches. He looked away from the kid. He'd talk when he was ready.
"I know you wish I could have got here sooner," he said to the woman. "I'm sorry I couldn't. I had things to do first. I needed to be ready."
He let go of the boy and reached down to take the woman's trembling hand. The flesh around her eye had already darkened and puffed. She squinted at him.
"It's okay," he said.
"Who---" She coughed, shook her head a little, and tried again. "Who the hell are you?" His fingers brushed against her knuckles, and she pulled her hand away as quickly as if she'd stuck it into a blazing fire.
Dave chuckled a little at this and leaned forward. He caught her fingers in his own and gave them a little squeeze. "You know who I am."
She stared and didn't try to pull her hand away again.
"I'm Daddy."
Something behind him moved.
"Mom?" A soft voice, almost girly.
Dave looked over his shoulder, saw the boy backing toward the cabinets, and started to say something to him, but a sudden, stinging pain on the left side of Dave's face cut him off. His hand darted to his cheek and came away covered in shiny red blood. The woman's hand streaked up for another blow, but Dave caught it deftly in midair despite blurry vision and pain so agonizing he wanted to scream. She'd scratched his eyeball, but she hadn't blinded him. Not quite. Blood slid over his lips and onto his chin. It sprayed across her face when he said, "Why would you do that?"
Her fingernails jutted from her hand like the talons of some wild animal, dripping his blood, the smallest of them broken off just above the cuticle but the rest still wickedly sharp and gleaming. He squeezed her wrist hard, heard breaking bones and squeezed even harder. The boy screamed now in a way that made it seem as if he'd been doing it all along. Dave let go of the woman long enough to punch her in the face again. This time, his fist connected with her perfect elf's nose and drove it into her skull. Dave couldn't hear the crunching cartilage over the boy's continued shrieking, but he felt it. Her blood gushed across her cheek and mixed with the sprayed droplets of his own. He grabbed hold of her broken wrist again and used his other hand to reach into his cargo pocket.
He wouldn't tolerate disrespect like that. No, sir. Not for one second. He wrapped his fingers around the rubbery grip and brought out the first of his weapons.
The woman opened her mouth. Beg, Dave thought, now she'll beg. He would have. But when she spoke, she did so in a heavy gurgle that reminded Dave of a character he'd seen in a movie years before, a movie he could no longer quite remember, and she uttered just a single word.
"Rnnnnnn," she said, both her good eye and her bad rolling into the back of her head. "Rrrnnnnn." The word was no more articulate the second time. She coughed out a blood-tinted wad of phlegm and then screamed, "RUN!"
Behind him, Dave heard the back door slam. He ignored it. He knew where Georgie would run, and he could deal with him later.
He held the knife between her face and his own, twisted it through the air like a hypnotist trying to put her under. "I don't know what kind of a relationship you think we're gonna have," he said to her, still spinning the knife, "but if you think I'll let you act that way in front of our son, you're dead wrong."
She groaned and looked squarely into his eyes. "Fug you," she said and spit into his throbbing eye.
Dave grabbed hold of her by the blouse with his free hand and lifted her to her feet. The movement momentarily sandwiched her broken wrist between the two of them, and she howled even after Dave had pushed her far enough away to relieve the pressure. Blood, spittle, and sweat dripped into a puddle on the floor between their feet.
"I was wrong about you," Dave said. He wrapped his fist up so tightly in her shirt that two of its buttons popped off and fell into the mess on the floor. "I thought if the boy was right, you'd have to be right, too."
He held the knife up again and contemplated the perfectly honed edge. "You're not," he said, looking back at her dripping face. He saw the fear in her eyes, but also the respect hiding somewhere deep behind. She was right to respect him. He'd earned it.
He pushed her to arm's length with his clutching fist and jammed the hunting knife high into her midsection, just below her sternum. He twisted the blade once, forcefully, and then drew the knife down her abdomen to her pelvis. The mess of innards that came spilling across his hand felt warm and sticky and smelled like shit.
She hadn't screamed again, this woman whose name Dave didn't know, but when he pulled the knife free and stepped back from her, she did make a long guttural sound in the back of her throat. Dave thought she would vomit, but instead she let loose a strange kind of snort that clouded the air around her face with a faint pink mist.
The woman dropped to her knees and slid a little on the newly expanded mess. She clutched feebly at her eviscerated organs but succeeded less in reclaiming them than in tearing them to shreds with those razor-blade fingernails. Dave watched her struggle. This wasn't quite the same as gutting a deer or a rabbit, where the thing was dead before you did your slicing and dicing. He stepped to the woman, grabbed hold of her hair, and wrenched her head back until she was staring up past his face and at the ceiling. She grabbed the cuff of his shirt with one of her wet hands, but then lost hold and slid again in the mound of her intestines.
Dave swung the knife, cut halfway through her neck, pulled the weapon free and swung again. This time it came out dripping on the other side, and the woman finally dropped dead to the floor.
Backing away from the carnage, Dave looked down at himself. Christ. He'd ruined his clothes. That would teach him not to change into his good duds before he knew for sure the bloodshed had ended. Wishful thinking, he supposed. He wiped the dirty blade on his already soiled pant leg and deposited it back into his cargo pocket.
He had been stupid to take the woman for granted. He saw that now. He'd been too focused on the boy, too single-minded. In the end, he guessed, this had all turned out for the better. A boy couldn't grow up with such a disobedient harpy for a mother. Dave had come to save the boy; he hadn't realized until now just how much he would be saving him from.
He moved to the counter beside the sink and picked up the towel on which the woman had dried her hands for the last time. He swabbed the bulk of the blood from his hands and then rubbed at his face. The claw marks on his eye and cheek burned, one spot in particular near the corner of his mouth. He probed tenderly at the area with his fingertips and found something small and hard buried in his flesh. He pulled it free. Round at one end, jagged at the other, painted a subtle white: the woman's missing fingernail. He dropped it to the floor and used the towel to stop up the freshly welling blood.
There was no sense in getting completely cleaned up yet---that would have to wait until after he'd secured the boy---but he wanted to clear off at least the runny stuff. The feel of the stinking gore dripping down his face and neck sickened him. It felt like he'd been sprayed by a dying skunk. He ran his hands across his face one last time, decided he'd done what he could for now, and dropped the crusty towel on the floor beside the body.
Before he left, he found a clean towel in one of the drawers and laid it on the counter where the old one had been. Perfect.
His footsteps echoed through the stillness as he left the kitchen, so much louder now than when he'd padded his way inside. He passed the questionable dinette without paying it any attention and let himself out the back door. Behind him, a line of red footprints led directly from the body to the exit, showing no deviation and no hesitation.
He stepped over the garden hose again, passed by the tennis ball and strode toward the woods, where he'd hid less than fifteen minutes before. The fork-trunked oak was the largest tree on the property, its lower limbs wide enough around that they nearly could have been trees of their own. Dave had never had a tree house himself and hadn't seen enough of them in his life to fairly rate this one, but he could say with a hundred percent certainty that, as a kid, he would have given just about anything for this sort of hideaway. He could just imagine sitting in the shadows of a hundred breeze-blown leaves, sniffing the fresh air and listening to the birdsongs. It would be heaven to a nature-loving kid. Or at least it would have been to Davy. Maybe still would.
Except if Dave had built himself such a getaway, he never would have made the same mistake the maker of this particular one had: he wouldn't have made it adult accessible.
Standing with one foot on the ground and the other on an exposed root, he gripped the rung closest in height to his chest in both hands and yanked at it with all his might. It didn't budge. Holding on to the next highest one, he did a partial pull-up, not quite enough to get his chin over the board but enough to test whether it would hold his weight. Solid. He stepped onto the first rung and climbed.
The ladder didn't lead straight up the trunk but spiraled around it instead. Knots and branches occasionally provided natural, supplemental footholds. Dave eased his way up, eyes on the hatch in the fort's floor, constantly expecting one of the rungs to break off in his hands or splinter beneath his scrambling feet despite their apparent sturdiness. He winked his scratched eye every ten or fifteen seconds, trying to keep it moist and fend off the worst of the pain. By the time he got his head through the access hole, he was sweating. The wounds on his face throbbed in time with his heartbeat, and a series of tears dripped from his injured eye down the side of his nose and across his pressed lips.
If Dave hadn't slipped a little at the last second, the rock would have hit him square in the teeth. Fortunately for him, he did and it didn't. His head dropped just beneath the platform's surface not half a second before the stone went sailing by, and he listened while it crashed through tree limbs and into the underbrush below. Rather than wait for another rock, he lunged up and into the tree house. The boy sat in the corner with his arm flopped out in front of him.
"Trying to bean me?" Dave said, pushing himself into a sitting position, not wanting to advance any farther until the boy seemed ready for him to do so.
"I---"
Dave waved a hand unconcernedly and forced out a little laugh. "Forget it. Georgie would have done the same thing."
The kid said nothing. He looked away from Dave and over the edge of the platform. Thinking about a jump, Dave figured. The fall might leave him with a broken leg or a fractured skull, but it was a reasonable consideration. Dave wouldn't have blamed him a bit. He remembered the way the kid had looked coming down from this tree earlier, like a bird gliding to earth. After such a display, it wouldn't have surprised him much if the boy hit the ground running or flew off through the trees like a whooping crane.
He pulled another toothpick from his breast pocket and flipped it into his mouth. He wasn't sure where he'd lost the first one, but it didn't especially matter. He had plenty. He looked for a replacement twig while he waited to see what the kid would do.
After what must have been a full minute, the boy looked back up at Dave and slumped. It was perhaps the most physical and obvious act of surrender Dave had ever seen, and done without a single spoken word---but Dave wasn't about to let down his guard. He'd seen plenty of opossum, had played it once or twice himself.
"You know," Dave said after plucking the pick from his mouth, "that rock near knocked my head off. You ever play much ball?" He closed his good eye, saw the world momentarily through a watery haze.
The kid looked at the weathered boards between his legs.
"Georgie never played except for a year of tee-ball. Would it be all right if I called you Georgie?"
No response, but the boy did take another quick peek over the edge. Dave had to admire his pluck.
He started to reinsert the toothpick, then jammed it into the crease of his ear instead and folded his hands in his lap. "There's something I guess you ought to know." He waited for the boy to look at him but finally continued when he didn't. "That woman inside there." He nodded his head toward the house, though the boy still wouldn't look. "I guess she's dead."
Finally, some life from the boy. His head jerked up, and the muscles in his body flexed and jumped. His eyes bore into Dave, showing first anger, then fear, and finally misery, the transitions between each lasting for only a blink apiece. The kid had gone from slack into an almost immediate hunch and now resembled a field cat ready to pounce. Dave didn't move or react. He knew better than to show any fear.
"You---" The boy was almost shaking. "You lie."
"Nope." Dave shook his head once, slowly, to the left and then back to center. "I stuck her with a knife." Dave pulled out the front of his shirt and looked from it back to the boy, saying here's the evidence without saying anything. "But there's something else."
"No." He shook his head, twitched a little, and shook his head again.
"There's something else," Dave repeated. "She wasn't your mommy any more than she was my missus." He took the toothpick from his ear. "She was a liar, Georgie, and she was all wrong." He popped in the unchewed end and chomped down.
The boy changed position a little, got his feet behind him. No longer a hunched cat; now a sprinter waiting for the flat crack of the starting gun. "You're lying," he said in a voice much deeper and manlier than the one he'd used in the kitchen.
"Nope. Daddies shouldn't ever lie to their boys. But I promise you this: we'll find you your rightful mommy. I will make things right."
On some level, he'd expected what happened next all along. The boy charged. Dave scooted sideways at the last second and reached out a hand. If he hadn't moved quickly enough, the kid would undoubtedly have toppled over the railing and onto the forest floor below. Might even have brained himself on the very rock he'd tried throwing at Dave. Instead, Dave wrapped his hand around one of the boy's flailing ankles and held on tight.
The boy flew forward, not getting his hands out in front of him in time, hitting the two-by-four guardrail forehead first before dropping with a groan to the platform beside Dave. The crack of wood came at some point during the commotion, but Dave couldn't pick out exactly when it happened or where the sound originated. It could have been the rail or one of the floorboards beneath them, or even one of the supporting tree limbs. Regardless, Dave wanted to get them down from there as soon as possible. He flipped the boy onto his back and pushed his hair away to examine the damage.
The abrasion just above the left eye looked bad but not dangerously so. The kid (Georgie, Dave thought, he's Georgie now) had his eyes closed and wasn't moving, but Dave felt his heartbeat and saw the rise and fall of his chest. Just stunned, more than likely. Dave got onto his hands and knees, moved to the hole, dropped down to the first rung and dragged the child after him. Gritting his teeth, he wiped a fresh bout of tears from his tortured eye. He climbed down far enough to give himself some room and pulled Georgie onto his shoulder, crumpling a little at the added weight but able, just barely, to manage the load and keep hold of the tree at the same time. He spit his toothpick past the trunk, took a deep breath, and began the arduous descent.
SIX
"FIRST THING IS I need you to relax, okay?" The guard uncrossed his arms, and one hand dangled by his utility belt as if preparing for a quick draw, though the item positioned where a normal policeman carried a holstered gun was, in this man's case, only a two-way radio. He reached his other hand out to Libby's shoulder in a comforting gesture but made no actual contact. "Now tell me again. Slowly."
Libby sighed and rolled her eyes so drastically that her head rolled a little bit with them. This was ridiculous. By now Trevor could be gagged and duct-taped into the trunk of some pervert's car, the two of them already headed for Wyoming while she stood here flapping and re-flapping her gums.
"His name is Trevor. Pullman. I gave him five dollars to ride the carousel," she said. "He didn't want me to wait with him. I stayed at the table." Short, quick sentences. Just the facts, ma'am. "I got up to refill my soda. I turned around, and he was missing."
"Uh huh," the guy (S. Tucker according to his name tag) said, sounding less like a law enforcer than an urging psychiatrist. "And then?" He was massive. Maybe he sprinkled steroids on his breakfast cereal instead of sugar or took a raw egg break while his fellow guards sipped their coffees. If his face hadn't been so meticulously razored, she'd have sworn she was standing here talking to a grizzly bear.
"I'd seen him talking to a group of girls," she said, trying to stand still but not able to keep herself from fidgeting. "I asked if they saw where he went." She shifted her weight from her left foot to her right. "They said no." She crossed one hand over her abdomen just beneath her breasts and scratched at the elbow of her other arm.
Tucker, who'd been leaning forward a little, returned to his normal standing height, which seemed to Libby no more than a few inches shy of ten feet, and retracted his beefy arm. He stuck his thumbs under his belt and rocked once, almost imperceptibly, from heel to toe. "Well, I'll tell you what," he said. His voice was as pumped up as the rest of him, deep but smooth, a little like James Earl Jones's. "In my experience, nine times out of ten, a parent loses her child and he turns up in the toy store checking out the action figures or the Lego sets. You say you gave him five dollars?"
"Yes, but---"
"And I think that carousel ride is about a buck and a half, am I right?"
Libby shrugged. She had no idea how much the mall charged, which was why she'd given Trevor the five in the first place. "I guess you'd know better than me. But who cares how much the ride costs, I---"
"Hold on, now. If you were...how old did you say your boy is? Six?"
Libby nodded.
"If you were a six-year-old boy with all that cash burning a hole in your pocket and in a place where there was nothing to do but spend it, how long would you wait in line?"
"He never put it in his pocket," was all she could think to say, though she knew how idiotic it must sound. "Anyway, Trevor wouldn't do that. Not after he promised to stay where I could see him. He's...he's just not like that. He's a good boy." Libby wanted to grab hold of the guard by his belt and drag him with her down the hallway. With his Mufasa's voice, he could have drawn Trevor's attention from halfway across the complex.
"Oh," Tucker said, grinning now. "I'm sure he's as good as any of the rest of them. But, fact is, little boys are ornery. They wander where their noses lead them. Like untrained puppies."
Libby wasn't sure she cared much for that particular metaphor. If Trevor was the untrained puppy, that made her the inept master, and she'd be damned if she would stand here and let some khaki-clad mountain criticize her parenting skills.
"Listen," she said, pointing a finger that was a jointed twig compared to his enormous logs. "If there's something you can do, do it. Please. After that, if you want to stand here talking to yourself for the rest of the night, that's fine by me. But I'm going to look for my son now, while there's still a chance of finding him."
She spun around and stormed away from the kiosk without waiting for a response. As she moved, arcing around a distracted-looking man pushing a twin stroller with a full load of two wiggling boys, she heard the guard activate his radio and mumble something between bursts of static. Maybe he was calling for help; maybe he was just sharing a laugh with one of his buddies. Who knew? She wanted to believe the former, didn't want to succumb to cynicism, but she also knew she couldn't let herself count on any forthcoming help. Not for sure. For now, she could rely only on herself.
She prowled the passageway, two simultaneous thoughts driving her: I will find him and I am not a bad mother. Part of her wondered if she really might catch him in the toy store or the arcade or standing at a shop window drooling over some comic book superhero the way he'd drooled over that box of cereal at the supermarket, but another nightmarish part of her expected to encounter some gangly fiend instead, with a trussed-up Trevor under his arm and a maniacal cackle bubbling out from between his lips.
She found nothing in the candy emporium, nothing in the bookshop or the sports center, where she knew he sometimes liked to look at trading cards. She had nearly made it back to the food court, head over her shoulder, looking at a boy who almost could have been Trevor if his hair had been a shade lighter and his ears about three sizes smaller, when she ran over the stranger and bounced back with a grunt.
"Hey," the guy said, moving toward her. For a second, she thought about ignoring him, pushing past without saying a word and continuing her search, but then she got a look at his face and stopped. The man was no stranger, and she didn't think she'd ever been so glad to see him.
"What's going on?" Mike asked her, frowning. "Where's Trevor?"
SEVEN
MIKE PARKED THE truck at the far end of the lot not because he couldn't find a space closer to the food court entrance, but simply because he always parked at the far ends of lots. He wasn't afraid the pickup might get dinged by a careless door opener or a runaway shopping cart---at this point, the truck couldn't have looked much more battered if you'd taken a grenade to it---he liked the outskirts. That was all. After being folded into the cab of his truck for any uncomfortable length of time, he was usually ready to stretch his legs and get his blood pumping. It was one of the things Libby had loved to tease him about and one of the eccentricities he no longer had to try to defend.
He left the windows down, as was also his policy, so that the cab might be reasonably cool when he and Trevor returned. He had half a dozen ancient cassette tapes in the truck's glove box, each worth nothing and thus more valuable than the vehicle itself. Even with the engine running and the doors unlocked, he figured the thing most likely to get nabbed would be his copy of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
He passed through the farthest section of the lot, stepping over a curbed area of grass that acted as a traffic regulator in a way painted yellow lines never seemed to manage in the parking lots of the world. Pasted against the far side of the small island was a pile of windblown refuse comprised mostly of damp newspaper and flyers, an abstract mess of dirty papier-mâché.
Litterbugs. The mountains had their share too, of course, but somehow the grime always seemed thicker down here, less manageable. You got the impression that with a lot of dedicated cleanup you could eventually scrub those mountain roads clean but that the stains here in the lowlands were permanent.
Mike imagined a team of boy scouts with buckets and sponges going to work on the access road to his property and grinned sardonically as he stepped through the doors of the Mountain View. Upon seeing the grand carousel and the converging throng around it, however, his mind quieted, and his eyes bulged.
Jesus. A fake Santa Claus at Christmas was one thing, but the shopping mall had really gone all out with this one. Except for the music, which seemed to come from aftermarket loudspeakers inconsistent with the rest of the ornamentation, this thing was the real deal. A craftsman himself, he could appreciate the time and manual labor that had gone into the creation of such a masterpiece. In today's pre-fabricated, cookie-cutter world, things like this carousel were remnants of an era gone forever by the wayside.
A trio of teenage girls in ripped jeans and too-tight tshirts bumped him from behind, striding in through the doors with their heads held high and their shoulders pulled back, a royal entourage from some universe gone terribly wrong. Mike tried hard not to stare at the exposed slices of flesh through the tears in the seats of their pants.
He stepped deeper into the mall and out of the path of any future entrants. Libby had said she'd meet him in the food court, but she hadn't specified where; Mike had counted on her finding him, maybe flagging him down or shouting his name from wherever she and Trevor might be. But he guessed she probably hadn't known about the carousel when she'd suggested the meeting place. Keeping Trevor away from that ride would undoubtedly have been harder than keeping a hungry dog from a steaming t-bone. If Mike knew his son, there was only one place the two of them could be.
Mike walked casually past food-court diners, not in any rush. A quick look at his watch told him he'd actually arrived a few minutes early, despite the truck, and the line for the carousel was extensive. If Libby and Trevor were among that crowd, none of them would be going anywhere for quite some time anyway.
Walking closer to the waiting crowd, Mike let out a little whistle of disbelief. Two hundred people must have been standing in line, many of them children and young teenagers. Mike didn't think he'd had that much patience as a kid. Hell, he wasn't sure he had it now.
He moved around the perimeter of the crowd, always more comfortable away from the center of activity, scanning the field of hair, looking for Libby's distinctively sleek do. Her hair. He'd always loved it, from the day they'd met, and he hadn't grown so bitter that he couldn't still see it for what it really was.
Her hair wasn't there. He made a second lap around the crowd to double check, but he didn't see her, and he was pretty sure he would have managed to pick her out. Trevor, being so small, might have disappeared beneath the surface of the crowd, but not Libby. Mike frowned and turned away from the carousel. Short of bulling his way through the line and screaming out their names like a rescue worker tearing through the wreckage of some collapsed building, he wasn't sure what more he could do.
He supposed he ought to head back to the tables, see if somehow he'd passed them by. About to move in that direction, he happened to catch sight of a woman zigzagging her way down the corridor.
"Libby?" He said it quietly, could barely hear the word himself over the music coming from the loudspeakers behind him. Standing with his head cocked, he raised a hand to draw her attention, but she was looking at something behind her shoulder and didn't seem to be aware of him at all.
He started to say her name again, but then decided he'd better move out of her way instead before she mowed him down.
He wasn't fast enough.
He'd played football in high school, had been plowed over many times by linebackers and linesmen and once by a rival school's mascot on a particularly embarrassing play, but that had been many years ago, and he hadn't expected his ex-wife to come charging into him like a blitzing defenseman on an adrenaline high. He stumbled half a step back and grunted out, "Hey," before reversing direction as quickly as he ever had in his gridiron days and moving to catch Libby before she could rebound onto her ass. He needn't have bothered. She caught herself and seemed to consider hurrying past him without acknowledging his presence, but then she looked directly at him for the first time and stopped.
"What's going on?" he asked her, peering into eyes maybe one blink away from a torrential tear storm. "Where's Trevor?"
He leaned to the left and glanced around her waist, as if the boy might be hiding there. Of course, no Trevor. No Trevor anywhere, and Mike knew without Libby saying a word what had happened.
You lost him, he wanted to say, but he couldn't phrase it that way, couldn't make it an accusation even if he'd wanted to. She'd obviously been through enough.
"Missing," he said simply, and Libby nodded, still not crying but looking close to it.
"I let him wait in line for the carousel," Libby said, searching the area immediately around them with her eyes while she spoke. "He wanted to wait alone, didn't want me---" She laughed a little in a way that made Mike cringe. "Didn't want me cramping his style, I guess. And I got up to get a refill, and when I turned around, he was just gone." She stopped talking long enough to crane her neck over a group of baggily dressed boys before continuing. "I talked to the girls he'd been standing in line with and a security guard and then looked in every shop I could think of but he---"
"Okay," Mike interrupted. His natural instinct was to pull her to him and give her a big hug, maybe calm her down a little, but they were long beyond the days of such intimate contact. He settled for clutching her shoulder. "Don't worry, okay. We'll find him."
"I don't know where he could have gone." Libby was understandably antsy, shuffling her feet, moving her fingernails toward her mouth.
"Let's walk and talk," Mike said, knowing she couldn't stay still for long.
"He promised he'd stay where I could see him," Libby said and hurried off down the corridor, leading Mike, though only barely. "I can't believe...I thought maybe somebody grabbed him."
Mike glanced at the carousel crowd. Children swayed slowly on their feet, bored. Little boys danced from foot to foot and...
"You were getting a refill?" Mike asked after a sudden inspiration.
"Yeah, so? I don't---"
"You ate supper?"
"Oh," she said, "yeah. I didn't know if you had plans."
"No, it's not that. But I think I might know where he went."
Mike took hold of her by the upper arm and led her only long enough to be sure they were heading in the same direction; then he let go of her bicep, and they rounded the uncrowded side of the merry-go-round together, back toward the eateries and the munching customers. He didn't come to the mall any more often than anyone else, and certainly far less often than many people, but he knew his way around well enough.
"Where are we going?" Libby's flats clacked against the floor. Dressed in well-worn sneakers, Mike had the grace of a cat burglar in comparison, though he chugged along just as swiftly.
Mike let her question go unanswered. Just a few more seconds and she'd see for herself.
Between the Orange Julius and the Chick-fil-A stood double doors slathered with a flat gray paint and sporting bulky push bars that would have made them look unappealing, almost off limits, if they hadn't been propped most of the way open. Shoppers might still have confused them for fire exits if not for the belying placards screwed into the drywall overhead. Two icons; probably some of the most universally recognized in the world: little stick man, little stick woman.
The restrooms.
Mike and Libby stepped side by side through the two openings, moving together though momentarily separated by the thick steel jamb between them.
The acoustics here were very different, probably designed to spook you and get you back out into the mall where you could spend, spend, spend. The sound of their footsteps echoed off the walls. The music from the carousel ricocheted into the hallway after them.
The plain, white walls held no pictures or advertisements to draw the eye and should have been almost blindingly bright, but something about the quality of the light made them seem darker, more depressing. The way Mike imagined halls might look in a mental institution.
Still hurrying, almost jogging, they turned a corner to find the entrances to the facilities. Mike moved to the right-hand doorway, the men's entrance, and sensed Libby surging along behind him; he stopped and held his hands out in a halting gesture.
"Whoa. Where are you going? Don't you think maybe you ought to wait out here?"
"To hell with that," she said, never slowing.
Grinning just a little, Mike followed her into the men's room. "Just watch out for yellow puddles," he said.
One look at the floor proved that to be a wise bit of advice. A second, equally important suggestion might have been: hold your breath. Mike didn't think Libby would have any problems figuring that one out on her own.
At the second of the three urinals, a rotund man in a wrinkled shirt glanced from Libby to Mike and then quickly back to Libby. It was cinematic, the kind of double take a guy only did when he was an actor and he'd read it in his script. Mike expected him to shout out something like, Get outta here, lady, this is the men's, but instead he zipped himself up prematurely and waddled away from the unflushed urinal with a quarter-sized wet spot to one side of his fly. He didn't stop at the sinks, just rubbed his hands on the sides of his pants.
Mike shuddered and reminded himself never to touch anything in public again.
Libby moved to the first of the stalls. "Trevor, hon, you here?"
Mike wouldn't have chosen the word hon to address someone as likely to be a horny biker with a bad case of constipation as their son, but he held his tongue.
A brief hesitation followed, and Mike had time to wonder if there was anybody in the room besides Libby and himself, and then a single-word response floated out to them from behind the closed door of the last stall: "Mommy?"
Libby's body slumped. It was like every tensed muscle relaxed at once. She let out a little gasp of a cry. "Trevor. Thank God!"
They walked together to the locked door. "Hey, bud," Mike said, standing close to the one-inch gap between the door and the frame but not looking in, wanting to give his son at least a hint of privacy. "You okay in there? Didn't fall in, did you?"
"Daddy?" Trevor sniffed, and Mike realized the boy had been crying. "I...messed myself."
Mike shared a sympathetic look with Libby, trying to think of some way to respond, but Libby beat him to the punch. "Hey, that's no problem. Happens to the best of us. We're gonna get you fixed up good as new. Okay?"
Another sniff. "Kay."
Mike had to admire her. She was probably still upset with Trevor for wandering off, and maybe more so with herself for losing sight of him, but with just a mouthful of words she'd shown that her compassion outweighed her anger and that she could put Trevor's feelings ahead of her own.
"But my shorts," Trevor said. "They're---"
"Never mind those," Libby said. "You stay here and let your daddy help you get cleaned up, and I'll go get you some all new ones."
Mike looked at her approvingly, but she didn't seem to notice.
"Push your dirty clothes out here, and we'll take care of them," she said.
A pair of elastic-waisted jean shorts slid under the door. Spiderman undies followed, and Trevor admitted in a trembling voice, "I got some on my socks and shoes, too."
"Give em up," Mike said. Libby scooped the soiled garments from the floor with no hesitation despite the streaking veins of fecal matter. Not so long ago, they'd changed his diapers for him; Mike supposed his poop was probably about the same now as it had been then, and they'd spent most of the first three years of Trevor's life covered in it. What did a little more matter?
The first shoe rolled out to them and landed upright, the laces loosened but still knotted. The second ended up beside it on its side. Trevor had rolled the socks up inside.
While Mike examined the sneakers and the socks, Libby took the shorts and underwear to the trashcan, balled them up and tossed them in. At home, Mike knew, she'd have dropped them in the washing machine instead---neither of them had ever been rich enough that they could afford to throw out perfectly good, if temporarily soiled, clothes---but in these circumstances, Mike didn't blame her a bit. He sure as hell didn't want to haul the outfit through the busy food court.
He took the socks to the trash and dropped them in among the other clothes, but he thought he could probably salvage the shoes.
A crackling voice come down from speakers somewhere in the ceiling.
"TREVOR PULLMAN, IF YOU CAN HEAR THIS, PLEASE COME TO SECURITY. YOUR MOTHER IS LOOKING FOR YOU. TREVOR PULLMAN, TO SECURITY, PLEASE."
The voice cut out with a click, and Mike said, "The security guard?"
"I guess so."
He smiled a little. "Better late than never."
Libby didn't respond---or smile.
"Mommy?" Trevor sounded both scared and a little confused.
"Never mind that," Libby said. "I'm gonna get you some new clothes now, okay? Just stay here with Dad and I'll be right back."
"Kay."
Mike pulled his wallet from his back pocket and fished through the bills inside. "Here, let me give you some money. I'll see if I can't get these shoes fit to be seen while you're gone."
"No," Libby said too quickly, "I can pay for---" She patted her right shoulder, then gave Mike a look he hadn't seen often in all the years they'd been together. A look like she'd forgotten to turn off the stove or left the garage door open, a combination of forgetfulness and stupidity. He half expected her to slam her palm into her forehead. She didn't.
"My purse."
Mike didn't have time to respond. She was halfway out of the bathroom, tossing the crumpled paper towels into the trashcan like an NBA player banking an easy lay-up. He followed her to the exit.
She spun around and saw him watching her. He thought from the look on her face that she might ask him a question, but instead she said, "Thanks. For helping me find him."
"No problem." He leaned his shoulder against the white block wall.
"But I would have found him on my own."
Mike crossed his arms over his chest and said seriously, "I know you would have." He meant it and could tell she knew.
"Back in a jiff." And then she was around the corner and gone.
Mike uncrossed his arms, pushed himself away from the wall, and reentered the bathroom to help his son.
EIGHT
DAVE CARRIED GEORGIE half a mile through the woods before the kid began to gasp and sputter and generally wiggle about. He stopped beside a dead tree and lowered the boy. The kid flopped back against the scarred trunk and breathed so shallowly and raggedly that Dave wondered if he might have asthma.
"You---" the kid started but never finished.
Dave would have added bastard, but he was glad Georgie hadn't. He didn't want to have to punish him.
Dave reached for the boy's forehead. Georgie tried to pull away, but Dave grabbed hold of the side of his face and took another look at the wound above his eye. It had bled freely for a while, the blood running into the boy's hairline while he hung from Dave's shoulder. A dried clot reached from his hair down to his eyebrow like an unfortunate birthmark. Dave would wash it clean later. Didn't want to risk infection. Daddies knew better than that.
His own wounds still throbbed. He reached an exploratory hand to his cheek, pulled it away, and looked it over. Blood, and plenty of it, but none fresh. It caked under his fingernails and packed into the creases and wrinkles like dried paint. He wondered if an artist felt this way, stained by his chosen medium.
For a while, he said nothing, just stood and waited for the boy's breathing to return to normal. Finally, he asked his question: "Do you have asthma?"
Georgie looked at him strangely and said, "No, I...no."
Good, Dave thought but didn't say. Asthma would have meant medicine and doctors, maybe hospitals with questioning nurses and forms to fill out in triplicate. Dave would take care of his boy, but he didn't want to deal with those kinds of complications if he could avoid them. Nodding satisfactorily, but not enough to worsen the pain in the gouges on his face, he curled the tips of his fingers upward a couple of times and asked the boy to stand.
"No, I don't want to," Georgie said in a tone that could hardly have been more impudent. The boy wriggled back on his butt a little, straight back, though he had nowhere to go but up the tree.
Dave grabbed him by his armpits and jerked him to his feet. "Don't ever tell me no," he said. He didn't raise his voice, didn't even really change his tone, but thought he managed to convey a sense of authority regardless.
He would get the hang of this.
The boy sighed, nodded, and acquiesced when Dave told him to get moving.
They followed an old game trail through a dense section of forest---a trail Dave had found and taken advantage of many times in the last few months. The tracks in the mud consisted mostly of deer prints. At points, the path narrowed to almost nothing, but it never completely disappeared. Even if it had, Dave would have managed to pick it up again. He wasn't an expert tracker, probably couldn't have followed a chipmunk from California to Maine on a two week delay, but he could sure as hell keep his eye on a deer-wide rut. To a woodsman (and Dave considered himself one), this path might as well have been a newly paved interstate.
Dave walked behind the boy, nudged him in the back when he slowed or seemed to get confused about which way he was supposed to go, wiped occasionally at his eye. The sneakers on the kid's feet were well tied (of course) but otherwise cheap and worn; one of the soles flapped and smacked against the shoe's upper with every step the boy took. Dave hadn't noticed the damage before, so it must have happened only recently, perhaps during the kid's unsuccessful rush in the tree fort. The shoes showed no brand name, only an icon he didn't recognize. He'd have to get Georgie some decent hiking boots.
They continued to move, and Dave wondered if he should have spent a little more time inside the house, gotten some of the kid's clothes and maybe some food. Might have made the transition a little easier, both on Georgie and on himself. It wasn't too late to go back---he doubted anyone had heard the woman scream, and there wasn't a husband to come home early---but the house was the kid's territory. He might know of another hiding place back there, or of a weapon to use against Dave. Dave didn't want to chance anything like that, not when he could just as easily pick up some boots off a back stoop or a porch somewhere along the way. Or he might find something back at Mr. Boots's house, something left over from his own boyhood. He had a few outfits at least and maybe some toys (or toy-like objects anyway). It was his job to provide now. And he would.
They crossed a narrow stream, Georgie slipping once but catching himself in that acrobatic way of his, Dave never missing a single step. Once he'd reached the other side successfully, the boy said, "My mom---"
But Dave cut him off. "Don't worry, we'll find her," he said. The boy meant his old mother, of course, and Dave knew it, but he didn't want to risk a conversation about her. Not now or ever.
"Why are you doing this?"
Dave nudged him again. "No more questions," he said, still keeping his voice perfectly cool and level. "Georgie never asked so many stupid questions."
"I don't know who Georgie is," he said. "My name is Zach."
Dave smiled and nudged him forward. "Used to be. You used to be Zach, I used to be Davy, everybody used to be somebody."
The boy didn't respond to this. He pushed on, warding off a low-hanging tree branch with one arm and letting it swing back when he'd moved out of its way. He didn't look back to see if it had hit Dave (which it had not), and Dave was glad. He didn't want to think Georgie had tried to hurt him on purpose, although at worst it would have thwacked him in the chest and maybe given him a little welt.
The trees thinned ahead. Not far from where they walked, sunlight cut through the canopy in wide swaths. The road beyond was really more of a gravel walkway that had once been wide enough to allow a vehicle passage to a pair of cabins in the mountains above. The cabins had burned a long time ago, and nature had crept in to reclaim what had been leveled, but Dave had managed to get his truck most of the way up the forgotten road and knew he could get it all the way back down. He'd done it before.
The underbrush grew less dense here, and the trail widened until it became almost indistinguishable from the rest of the forest floor, though Dave could still see it clearly where it hit the road and make out the spot on the other side where it continued.
He'd parked the truck just downhill from that point, and though it seemed the boy had still not spotted it---had, in fact, strayed in the opposite direction---Dave saw the sunlight reflecting off the windshield and just a hint of blue from the hood. He touched Georgie's shoulder and steered him in the right direction, like a shepherd with a single lamb. In a lot of ways, he supposed that was exactly what a daddy was supposed to be.
They walked through the last stretch of forest side by side, Dave's footsteps hardly louder than the rustle of pine needles beneath them, the boy's sounding like a slow applause as his damaged sole continued its clapping.
They reached the overgrown road. Dave didn't see the boy speed up, but he heard it. Clap, pause, clap, became clap clap clap. And then the boy was running.
He ran uphill---his first mistake---and stayed on the road, opting for a clear path ahead rather than the possibility of cover, which made sense to an extent but was, in all the ways that mattered, very dumb. Dave was more ashamed than upset. He supposed he needed to understand that, despite Georgie having always loved the outdoors, he hadn't had a chance to grow up in them yet. Dave had a lot to teach him.
Although the boy was graceful in some regards, he was a gangly runner, all legs and arms and flailing elbows. Dave barely had to do more than walk to catch up with the scrambling boy. Just a little bit of movement, but enough to restart the throbbing in his face and eye. Damn bitch, he thought, glad he'd gutted her, wondering how he could ever have thought she'd be an acceptable choice.
Ahead, the road curved sharply, cut uphill through a grove of thick trees and led at last to the two cabins, which Dave had investigated only once on a rainy night that spring. From the place where he overtook Georgie and latched on to the back of his t-shirt, Dave couldn't make out the two ruined homesteads, but they were up there, hidden in the trees, home now to only the birds, the bugs, and the burrowing animals camped out beneath the rubble.
Georgie whipped around so furiously that a chunk of shirt almost ripped off in Dave's hand, but the man twisted his fingers into the material until he had a good enough hold to make sure the kid wasn't going anywhere. Dave saw the grass-covered stone on the road before the boy did and kicked it out of the way just as one of Georgie's hands dipped in its general direction. Dave didn't flip Georgie around, didn't say anything, just turned back toward the truck and dragged the writhing child behind him.
Out here in the open, the sun baked Dave's head and face. He'd spent so long hiding in the shade, he'd almost forgotten it was summer. A bead of sweat dripped down his cheek, hung for a moment from the tip of his chin, and then fell to the dirt below.
The boy's thrashing had almost stopped, which seemed strange to Dave. His fits of rebellion came in spurts. Throw a rock here, run away there, but never an all-out fight for his life.
Only after he'd pushed Georgie in through the passenger-side door and buckled him into his seat did Dave say calmly, "Doesn't make any sense to run away, does it?" He pulled the belt tighter and wrapped it once all the way around the boy. Not exactly handcuffs, but it kept him from making any sudden moves, and that would have to do for now. Eventually, Dave knew, Georgie would settle down. He was a good boy. "I'd find you, son," he said, liking the way that last word sounded. "I'll always find you."
He slammed the door and circled around the front of the truck, looking once at the forest around them, not expecting to see anything or anyone, just looking, remembering. He doubted he'd ever return to this particular stretch of the mountains. He wondered if the boy had already come to the same realization.
Smiling, the birthday boy dropped into the truck behind the steering wheel. He'd started the engine and slipped the transmission into reverse, about to back his way downhill when he noticed the thing hanging from the rearview mirror. A flower-scented air-freshener. His air-freshener. He rolled down his window and ripped the thing from the rearview.
"He always liked lilac."
The boy looked at him, said nothing.
Dave flicked his wrist and sent the air-freshener spinning out the window. It didn't fly far before making a strange dive through the air like a wing-shot bird and landing with a soft rustle in the weeds beside the road.
"Won't need that anymore," Dave said, wiping his bloodstained hand on his pants as if, by touching the air-freshener, he'd only now gotten the hand dirty. "This is my truck now. Mine and yours." He rooted around on the floorboards, found an old gas receipt, and poked it onto the rearview's adjustment lever to replace the air freshener. Then he propped his arm on the back of the seat and backed slowly down the mountain road.
The truck bounced over large rocks and pitted areas where the road had partially washed away. The few tools in the truck's bed---a shovel, a rake, a toolbox full of old wrenches and screwdrivers---clanged and clattered while the truck continued its bumpy ride. Dave turned on the radio, which never worked well, and got no reception; the static whispered from the speakers, sounding almost peaceful, like a bubbling brook or the wind through overhead tree limbs.
Dave reached a spot in the road wide enough to turn the pickup around and did so. When they were pointed front forward and rolling along once more, Dave said, "The family truck," as if he'd been thinking it all along.
NINE
TREVOR SAT ON the toilet in the far stall looking down between his bare, thin legs at his dangling thingy and at the poo smeared across the cracked toilet seat. He'd almost made it, had been within four or five steps of the stall when the final cramp hit him and the back of his pants just about exploded. It wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't been runny. Trevor hated runny poo, hated the way it splashed up from the toilet water and the way it got all over the place so that you couldn't hardly ever get it all wiped off.
Of course, it was worse when it happened in your pants.
He grabbed another handful of toilet paper from the roll on the wall beside him, lifted his leg, and tried again to clean off the back of it with a series of awkward swipes.
Just a few more steps, or maybe if he'd just left the line for the merry-go-round one minute earlier. Except he hadn't had to go one minute earlier. The urge had hit him all at once, like it sometimes did, and he hadn't even had enough time to go back to the table and get his mommy. In fact, for one scary moment he'd thought he would unload right there in the middle of the waiting crowd. In front of those girls. Jeez. If that had happened, he probably would have curled right up in the puddle of his own stinking mess and died.
So yeah, at least it hadn't been all bad. At least he'd made it into the bathroom and most of the way to the toilet before the gunk had run its way out of his shorts, down his legs, and onto the floor. He'd even gotten some of it into the toilet bowl---the last few squeezes, at least.
Plus Mommy and Daddy had found him. Somehow. He still hadn't quite figured that out, but he was glad as could be. Here he was with both his mommy and his daddy taking care of him, when he could just as easily have been crying in front of a bunch of poo-covered girls and trying to explain to them that it hadn't been his fault, that it had happened all of a sudden, that it had been the runny kind.
He dropped the dirty wad of toilet paper into the toilet and reached over his shoulder to pull on the flusher. Beyond the stalls, he heard his daddy at the sink splashing water and scrubbing at something. Probably his shoes. Trevor didn't think he'd gotten them very dirty, just a few smears down the backs, and he was glad the shoes wouldn't have to get trashed, too.
Stupid. He couldn't believe how stupid he was. What kind of a kindergartener pooped his pants at the mall? Not even a kindergartner. Just a few more weeks and he'd be in the first grade. If any of his classmates found out what had gone on today, he'd be the laughing stock till the end of time. Maybe longer. They'd give him a nickname like Diarrhea or Number Two and hide toilet paper and diapers in his desk.
At least he was pretty sure his name didn't rhyme with any of the many kinds of poop. Last year, Scotty Peterson had gone an entire morning with a booger on the tip of his nose. Ms. White had cleaned it off with a tissue before the class went to lunch, but by then Scotty had already become Snotty Peterson, and that had been the least of his troubles.
Trevor thought he was probably safe. Only his parents knew what had happened, what he had done. And why would they tell anybody? If he didn't let it slip, Trevor didn't think his accident would ever come back to haunt him.
He hopped off the toilet, grabbed another handful of toilet paper and twisted around until he could see the top of his naked bottom. So much poo. He thought all his insides must have been completely filled with the stuff. He doubted even an elephant could have made this much of a mess. Maybe a dinosaur. If it was sick.
"Dad," he said, trying not to sound too pathetic, too babyish.
A few footsteps, and then, "You doing okay in there?"
"I think I got most of it," Trevor said, "but I can't reach everywhere."
"Okay, give me a sec and I'll finish up for you."
Trevor heard some more splashing and the sound of paper towels being pulled from the dispenser. When his dad knocked on the door, he unlocked it and made a half-hearted attempt to cover his privates. His dad had seen him naked lots of times, he guessed, he shouldn't have been embarrassed, but he was just a little all the same.
And besides, you never knew when someone else might come wandering in. He definitely didn't want to flash his thingy at some stranger.
The towels in Daddy's hands dripped and bubbled.
"You got 'em soapy," Trevor said.
"Mm-hmm," Daddy said, spinning Trevor around and scrubbing at the backs of his legs and his bottom. "Gotta get you sparkling."
Trevor waited patiently while his dad finished cleaning him and wiped up the remaining mess on the floor. "Dad," he said when it appeared he was finished. "I'm sorry."
Dad waved his hand. "As far as the mess goes, forget it. I've seen much worse. But you know you really should have told your mom where you were going. She was worried crazy."
"I know," Trevor said. "But I had to go real bad. I didn't want to go number two out there with all those people." He lowered his voice conspiratorially. "There were girls out there."
"Were there?" Dad said, smiling just a little. "Pretty ones?"
Trevor rolled his eyes. "Dad."
"Well," Dad said, "I guess I can't blame you too much. Now go ahead and lock this door until your mom comes back."
"Kay." Trevor grabbed the edge of the door and swung it most of the way shut. "Hey," he said, peeking through the opening.
Daddy raised his eyebrows, waiting.
"You wouldn't ever tell anybody, would you? At school, I mean. I don't want them to call me Diarrhea or Number Two."
Now Dad smiled for real and pretended to zip his lips shut and lock them tight.
"Thanks," Trevor said and closed the door.
TEN
AS THE TRUCK drove over the gravel roads, Zach bounced on his seat and thought about his pants pocket. The seatbelt pinned his arms to his sides, and although he thought he probably could have gotten them out with a wiggle or two and a couple of bent elbows, he left them where they were and pretended he was bound up tight. He still wasn't sure just exactly what was happening to him, what the rules of the situation were---more importantly, what he could get away with and what might get him killed. He wanted to reach for his pocket, see if the object that had been there earlier was still there now---all he'd have to do was bend forward a little and stretch out his fingers---but he didn't dare. Not yet.
The truck hit an large dip in the road, and Zach bounced so high he thought his head would slam into the ceiling. It didn't, but he did land on his left leg in an awkward way that pinched the skin just behind his knee. He hissed. The man behind the wheel looked at him, but Zach didn't look back, pretended nothing had happened. He wouldn't give this psycho the satisfaction of watching him squirm.
The man (Davy was the only name he'd mentioned, though he'd actually said he used to be Davy, a comment Zach hadn't really understood) came almost to a stop at the next intersection and took a left without using his blinker. Zach slid sideways in his seat until his body pressed against the door. He felt the lump in his pocket dig into his right thigh and bit his lip to keep from whooping with joy. Still there. Thank God. He only wished he'd remembered it earlier, when he could have used it.
As they moved, Zach watched for road signs, looking for some indication of where they were going. His head ached where he'd hit it on the tree fort's railing, and sometimes his vision swam a little, though only briefly. If he could remember a few landmarks, maybe a couple of road names, he could get help later, could tell them how to come and save him. The problem was, he didn't see any signs or markers, and the only junctions were with unmarked dirt roads that looked almost exactly the same one after another. The back road led through trees and trees and then finally some more trees; Zach didn't think anybody could rescue him with directions that referred only to the differences between the passing foliage.
The radio sputtered like a broken water faucet. Zach didn't understand how the guy could drive with all that meaningless noise when it made Zach so totally crazy. He wanted to reach up a foot and kick at the radio's dials until it shut the crap up. But of course he wouldn't, and he wouldn't say anything because he had no way of knowing if it might set the lunatic off. What seemed like a perfectly reasonable request to Zach might be an insult to the whacko. Zach might end up with a fist to the temple, or the guy might push him out the door as they rounded a sharp curve and send Zach rolling down a rocky incline. Or maybe he'd just pull out a gun and blow off Zach's head. Zach hadn't actually seen a firearm, but that didn't mean there wasn't one around, and until he knew for sure one way or the other, he would expect the worst. Which meant that currently he was picturing his brains dripping down the windshield and thinking he could probably put up with a little white noise.
The man spun the steering wheel and turned onto one of the unmarked dirt roads, whistling something that sounded similar to the theme from the Superman movies. Almost, but not quite, like the man had gotten Superman and something else crossed up in his mind and turned the two of them into something all his own.
Zach ground his teeth and prayed he could get out of the truck. He'd almost stopped noticing the smell of blood, but he didn't think he'd ever get used to the man's blood-streaked face or his wide, maniacal eyes. He didn't want to get used to them. If he ever thought these kinds of things were normal, he'd be crazier than the kidnapper.
Kidnapper. The word entered Zach's mind for the first time, although it was clearly the perfect word for the situation. He'd been kidnapped, and the whistling, bloody weirdo who claimed to have killed his mother was his kidnapper.
Zach could blink back the tears at the thought of his mother only because he didn't really believe she was dead, despite the blood and the man's claims. He couldn't believe it. He wouldn't. Hurt, maybe, but not dead. After he got help, they'd go and they'd find her and she would be fine. Just fine.
The pain above his eye flashed. He risked a glance at the driver, whose eerie whistling had quieted a little but hadn't stopped. The long sweaty lines down the sides of his face made him look scarred. Zach wished he could scar the guy. Scar him or worse.
He never should have run. His mom was back home right that minute, bleeding and hurt. Maybe hurt bad. He shouldn't have run. He should have stayed and fought the guy, grabbed a knife from the drawer or a frying pan to bash in his head. Something. And he definitely shouldn't have gone up to his tree fort. God, that had been such a stupid move; he'd treed himself like an idiot raccoon. Although he wasn't sure how the guy could have known it. Zach had watched him leave the house and come straight toward him, not looking around, not searching, just flying right at him like he'd had Zach on his radar the whole time.
They made another left, and Zach felt the thing in his pocket punch into his leg again. It was his mother's, really---Zach had gone back to her bedroom to get it for her before any of this mess had started---and he couldn't wait to give it back to her, but for now he needed it more than he'd ever needed anything in his life.
He only hoped she'd set it to silent, or at least vibrate---otherwise one mistimed call might ruin everything. He still had a chance, if the guy didn't check his pockets when they stopped, and the cell phone got reception wherever they were going, and, of course, the guy didn't kill him somewhere between here and there.
Ignoring the hiss from the radio and the whistling that sounded as if it had come from the soundtrack to the kind of late-night horror movie he was never supposed to see, Zach continued watching for road signs. He wouldn't give up until one of the two of them was dead.
ELEVEN
"I GUESS YOU found it."
Trevor heard his daddy's voice from out by the sinks, where he'd blow-dried the shoes with the automatic hand dryer.
"Not only was it still there," said Mommy. Trevor hadn't heard her come in, only realized she had when she responded to Daddy. "There was a woman guarding it for me. Eating a slice of pepperoni and waiting for me to come back. She said she knew I wouldn't get far."
Trevor had returned to the toilet seat not because it was any cleaner than standing on the floor, but just because he was tired of standing.
"---left in the world," his daddy finished. Trevor missed the first part.
"Yeah," Mommy said, and then there was a crackling like someone digging through plastic bags. Trevor wondered if there were any other boys out there (besides his daddy, anyway), and what they thought of a girl in their bathroom. Sometimes his mom could be pretty silly.
Daddy brought him the clothes, along with his cleaned sneakers, and he accepted them through the cracked stall door while keeping one hand cupped over his thingy. He guessed Mommy had seen him naked just as much as Daddy, but Daddy had already seen all that Trevor planned to show today, and that was enough peeping.
Mom had gotten him a pair of brown shorts and some underwear that were plain and white and boring. He didn't consider them a very good trade for the clothes he'd ruined, but he wouldn't say anything. He knew they didn't have a whole lot of extra money. Sometimes his mommy couldn't pay the bills on time and she got charged latefees. Trevor didn't know what latefees were exactly, but he knew they were bad and that they meant spending more money. In Trevor's mind, latefees was almost a curse word, and he never said it out loud.
The Gohan action figure he'd gotten at the toy store had already been a good surprise, and now he'd gotten new clothes on top of it. He didn't know for sure how much those sorts of things cost, but he did know it was something, and that something was more than nothing. He put on the new clothes with mixed feelings. While he was ashamed at what he'd done and felt more than just a little guilty about the spent money---even if he didn't totally understand things like bug jets---he was also happy to be getting into a clean pair of shorts. Standing around half naked in a mall bathroom wasn't exactly his idea of comfortable.
The new socks, like the undies, were simple white things without even a red stripe at the toe, but Trevor didn't care too much. Socks were socks. They kept your shoes from getting extra stinky and the chiggers from biting your ankles in the summertime, but otherwise they were worthless.
His dad had done a pretty good job wiping the poop off the floor around the toilet, but the stall was still nowhere near clean. Trevor didn't want to move around any more than he had to until he'd gotten his shoes on, didn't want to get his new socks dirty whether they were worthless or not. He'd noticed a wad of yellowed toilet paper in the corner beside a spider's web when he tried to clean himself earlier. It was still there, along with a sticky-looking puddle of goo that looked like part potty, part spit, part blood, and all gross.
He slipped into the sneakers, and although he was not yet an expert lacer, he managed to tie himself a nice pair of looping knots that he figured were far from failures. Daddy had held the shoes under the hand dryer for a long time and gotten them mostly dried out, but they still squished a little when Trevor moved. No big deal. At least he was cleaned up. Who cared if he walked around sounding like the Swamp Thing?
He turned the latch on the stall door and exited with his head hanging. When his mommy ran to him and cupped his chin, lifted his face to hers and gave him a slobbery kiss on the nose, he couldn't help but smile. She hugged him so tight it hurt, but he didn't push away or tell her to take it easy because it also felt good.
Only after she'd finally let go of him, looking happy but also a little wet eyed, did Trevor finger the sides of his new shorts and say, "What do you think?"
Daddy said, "Sharp."
And Mommy said, "As a razor."
Trevor didn't get it, but the two of them shared a smile, which was good. There had been enough yelling between his mommy and daddy to last Trevor a lifetime. He was always glad for the smiles.
His t-shirt had a pocket on the front---a nerd pocket is what some of his friends at school would call it---but Trevor had always liked extra pockets. Batman had a whole belt full of pockets, and something neat inside each one, and nobody called him nerdy. Trevor reached into the pocket and pulled out the crumpled five-dollar bill his mom had given him earlier. The shirt pocket had been the first one Trevor found when he'd scrambled for someplace to stash the bill on his desperate dash to the bathrooms. He hadn't forgotten about it. The five had been his money for the merry-go-round, which he'd been looking so forward to riding.
But he didn't think his parents would still let him go on the ride, and he certainly wouldn't ask. He smoothed the bill out the best he could and offered it to his mommy.
"What's this?"
Trevor pushed the money closer to her, but she didn't take it, didn't reach for it at all.
"I shouldn't have asked to ride the merry-go-round," he said and waved the bill, desperate for her to take it from him. "You should use this for the new shorts you had to buy."
Mommy's mouth came open like she was going to say something, but at first she didn't. Instead, she dropped to her knees and pulled him in for another long hug. "Oh, hon," she said finally. "You don't need to worry about that kind of stuff." She ran a hand through his hair and gave the back of his neck a gentle squeeze. Daddy stood by and said nothing, looked down at him the same way he had when Trevor had brought home the report card with all S's, which was the best you could get in kindergarten.
"I'm sorry I scared you." He wrapped his arms around his mommy's neck and kissed her hard on the cheek.
She smiled with half her mouth, the way he'd always liked, and then patted him softly on the chest. "Come on," she said. "Let's get out of here before the bathroom police catch me."
"Kay."
"And then," she said, standing, "we're all three of us going to ride the carousel together. How's that sound?"
Trevor nodded. He moved between his mommy and daddy and held out a hand for each of them.
"Sounds good, Mommy," he said. And it was.
TWELVE
THE TRUCK SKIDDED to a stop, and Zach looked around apprehensively, part of him thinking they'd gotten to their final destination and another part believing this was the spot where he'd die. When the kidnapper got out of the pickup and circled to Zach's door, Zach briefly considered letting himself out of the belt, scooting across the seat, and shooting through the driver's side door. He could run again, like he had at home and back on the mountain road before the man had loaded him into the truck, but he didn't think it would do any good. Last time, he hadn't gotten more than a hundred feet. If he'd been a little faster maybe, or had longer legs, but it was useless, almost stupid. Tempting as it might have been, he wasn't going to get himself out of this situation by running.
The man wrenched open the door, and Zach craned his neck around, looking for any signs of civilization.
Nothing.
Just more stinking trees. The road ahead crested and then disappeared, running downhill into whatever unseen territory lay beyond. The road behind was still half obscured by settling clouds of dust and the smoky gray exhaust from the pickup's tailpipe.
Zach allowed the man to unwind the seatbelt, not doing anything to help, not leaning forward when the guy yanked the belt out from behind his back. The kidnapper formerly known as Davy finally got Zach free, grabbed him under the armpits, and pulled him from the cab.
"Can't leave you here," the Davy man said, answering a question Zach hadn't asked. "I don't know enough about you yet."
You don't know anything about me, you freak show, Zach wanted to say, but he stayed quiet. When Davy set him down, the sole of Zach's sneaker bent underneath him and he almost went sprawling, probably would have if the guy hadn't grabbed him by the back of his shirt and pulled him upright. The collar of his t-shirt dug into his neck a little, and Zach choked like a hanged man.
Davy let him go. Zach tugged down the front of his shirt until it was no longer strangling him and lifted his shoe so the sole could flip back up into its regular position.
Now that he was loose, he raised his hand to his head, not expecting blood, but touching the wound with the tips of his fingers and examining them just to be sure. No blood, as he'd guessed, but the pressure from his probing fingers had brought back the pain. He wiped his hand on the side of his shirt, though he had nothing to wipe off, and sighed.
Where were they heading? Would this guy tell him to get down on his knees and then shoot him in the back of the head like the gangsters in the television shows his mom didn't want him watching? Or was there, somewhere in a dark grove, a shallow grave just long enough and deep enough for the man to bury Zach alive?
No. Zach wouldn't let himself think that way, wouldn't give in to panic.
He waited a moment to see what would happen. The man took off for the trees, and Zach followed without being asked, looking all the time for something he might use as a weapon or a hidey-hole into which he could crawl. Maybe a forest ranger would suddenly appear and whisk him off to safety, or maybe a pack of wolves would leap onto this Davy guy from out of nowhere and rip out his throat.
Yeah, right.
Zach saw the game trail before he actually stepped foot on it, but not by much. For just a moment, he thought they must have driven in a big loop and come back to where they'd started, but then the illusion ended and he realized these woods were not only much hillier than those around his house, but also rockier and less dense. Not to mention they were now moving toward the sun, and not away from it, which would have been the case on the trail back home.
Just how many secret paths did this guy know?
The hem of Zach's shirt caught on a thorny branch and ripped. Zach pulled away from the snag and moved closer to the center of the trail.
"Your brother's been missing you, you know," Davy said, not turning around.
As with most of this lunatic's statements, Zach didn't understand. He had no brothers. Or sisters, for that matter. His mom and dad hadn't thought they could have kids until Zach came along. Then Dad had died and...well, that was that.
"Been missing both of us. He's waited a long time for today." He pushed aside a tuft of tall weeds and continued to follow the trail. "A long time."
Zach followed, his clapping shoe almost more annoying than the truck's hissing radio had been, wondering if he should respond or if Crazy Dave was talking mostly to himself.
They topped a small rise and wiggled between two closely growing trees. Davy led him off the trail at that point, onto a narrower path that seemed exactly the width of the man's hips. They pushed through one last pair of overlapping bushes, and then they were there.
Zach let out a breath he felt he'd been holding in since getting out of the truck.
Not an unmarked grave, not a pile of corpses awaiting the addition of one scared boy. Just a house.
They'd come upon it from behind. Although the trees didn't end at any sort of a yard, but continued right up to the edge of the structure so that many of their limbs actually overhung its roof, the property was clearly distinguishable from the surrounding woodlands by its lack of undergrowth and carefully trimmed tree limbs. A tire swing hung from a high, thick branch to the left and lolled in the late afternoon breeze, and Zach knew at once that this was not the kidnapper's house. This was a real home, a place where normal people lived.
Davy waited at the edge of the property, watching the house, head moving slowly back and forth. Zach guessed he was looking to see if anyone was home, though he couldn't see the man's eyes and didn't dare try to get into his head. Davy held out his arm to keep Zach from rushing on ahead, though Zach had made no movement to pass him. They stood that way for a long time, the man cocking his head sometimes, maybe listening to some distant sound.
It gave Zach a chance to check his phone. He couldn't use it, of course, not until he got alone somewhere, but he could at least check to see if he had any reception and set the thing to silent if it wasn't already. Staring at Davy, who was so close Zach could have kicked him in the butt, Zach snuck his hand into his pocket and eased out the cell. Still watching Davy's back like his life depended on it (which it probably did), Zach tilted the phone's screen toward him and searched it for a reception bar or two.
There were none. The word Searching... flashed across the screen, and Zach tried extending the antenna, but it was no good. Rather than set the phone to silent, Zach held down the power button until it shut itself off, unable to remember if it made any sounds when shutting off but plastering his palm against the small speaker just in case. If he didn't get service up here on the high ground, he probably wouldn't get it anywhere else in this area either. Better to save his battery for when he could use it. Besides, he'd been awfully worried the phone would beep or squawk and give him away; there was no chance of that now.
He returned the powered-down cell to his pocket and tried to put it out of his mind, at least for the time being.
While he waited for something to happen, Zach noticed a patch of grass and weeds that had been beaten down almost to the dirt behind a row of nearby bushes. Maybe an animal had scratched out a place to sleep, or something or someone had been walking around the area over and over for a long period of time. He looked closer and saw a small pile of splintered wood partially hidden beneath one of the nearby bushes.
Toothpicks. It took him a minute to see them for what they were, but they were toothpicks all right. Chewed up and spit out like sunflower seed shells or bits of fingernail from a nervous finger chewer.
"Where are we?" Zach finally dared to ask, whispering like they were in a library or a graveyard. He rubbed at his head, which still hurt and now pounded a little, wondering when he'd have the chance to get his hands on some Tylenol.
"Shh." The man waved his arm backward, signaling the boy to keep his distance.
Zach listened but heard nothing except the very faint barking of dogs, which might have been coming from a neighboring property or from a mile away. Sound carried up here in funny ways sometimes.
He waited.
The house wasn't exactly a mansion, but Zach thought it might be a pretty comfy place to live. A deep, furniture-covered porch wrapped all the way around the place, its boards and railings looking well used but not abused. No fallen leaves or windblown tree limbs in sight, which meant the porch surely hadn't gone more than a day or two without a good sweeping. In one of the back corners, Zach could just make out a small grill and a bag of charcoal beside it.
At the porch's other end, a pair of bikes leaned up against the side of the house. One big, the other small and with one of those rubber horns attached to the handlebars. Zach had owned a similar bike when he was younger, had ridden it until he got too big for it and had never gotten another.
He took a quick look at his captor, who appeared lost in thought, the wrinkles on his forehead so deep and bunched that they looked almost fake, like a movie prop or a mask you wore on Halloween.
Zach turned away.
A small garage, set apart from the main structure, opened away from the two of them and onto a gravel driveway that curved around a stand of trees in the distance and disappeared. Zach wondered about that garage, about what kinds of things might be inside. Shovels, rakes, brooms, the same kinds of things Zach and his mom had in their own garage, probably, but maybe also something more useful. An ax, or (dare he hope?) a machete or even a shotgun. He knew lots of people in these parts kept guns around the house. The mountains had bears, mountain lions, wolves---you had to be prepared, or at least some people thought you had to. Whether or not Zach could have pointed a gun at anybody and pulled the trigger, he had no idea, but he guessed if there was ever a time to find out, this was it.
He chewed his lower lip. If he could just get a look inside. Maybe he'd find nothing more helpful than a spare tire or a box of old clothes, but you never knew.
He formed half a dozen plans in his head but eventually gave up on them all. Each required the ability to outrun the maniac, and Zach had already proved himself unable to do that on more than one occasion. He didn't see any way around it; unless and until the situation changed, the garage was simply off limits. He'd have to wait.
Davy made a grunting sound, and although it sounded like the kind of noise you made if you were upset about something, the look on the man's face seemed more like confusion.
What a weirdo.
Zach didn't exactly have telescopes for eyes, but when eye exam time rolled around at school, he could always read every letter of the bottom line without squinting or anything. One of the nurses had told him he had a pilot's eyes, and Zach had thought that was pretty cool. But despite his amazing peepers, through the reflected daylight and from such a distance, Zach couldn't be sure if the windows were curtained, and he certainly couldn't see into them. Still, although it was mostly just a feeling, Zach didn't think anybody was home.
Funny. He wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad one.
The limb supporting the swing to his left creaked, and the tire beneath it continued to sway. Zach listened to it, then listened past it and heard singing birds, chirping crickets, and those dogs in the distance still woofing away at one another.
He shuffled his feet, and the sole of his ruined shoe filled with dust and pine needles and one sharp twig. The twig stabbed through Zach's sock and into the webbing of skin between his first two toes. He growled.
"Hush it," the man said, sounding honestly angry for the first time.
Zach lifted his shoe until he could reach the toe, like he was doing stretches in gym class, then flipped back his sole and let the junk inside pour onto the forest floor below. He rubbed at the sore spot through his sock and wondered if he was bleeding. Have to check later, he guessed.
If there was a later.
Shoe back on the ground, mind already drifting again, Zach almost didn't notice Davy dropping his hands to his thighs, patting at his bloodstained cargo pockets, and heading out from cover and across the manicured forest surrounding the house. For one second, Zach thought about turning the other way and running, but he'd already tried that. He had nowhere to go, nowhere but forward, into whatever nightmare this man led him.
They didn't go straight toward the house, but circled around the side instead, following a route Davy seemed to have already mapped out in his head. A weathered picnic table sat among some cedar trees at the far edge of the property, and fifteen or twenty feet from that, a hammock spanned the space between two large oaks.
Comfy, Zach thought again while jogging to keep up with Davy's long strides. How strange it was to be here, kidnapped and still able to rate the comfort levels of other people's homes.
The sheers over the windows were drawn, but the drapes weren't, and from this close Zach could see vague shadows inside the house, probably furniture and bookshelves, those kinds of things, but maybe people inside too, despite Zach's previous impression that the place was empty. He had what might be a dangerous idea but went through with it anyway after a cursory glance at the man ahead. As Zach moved, he waved his hands at the windows and repeatedly mouthed the word help. If someone was inside and could see him, that person might think he was just some trespassing nut, but maybe he or she would understand the situation for what it was and help him. Just a chance, but he had to take it.
He continued waving his hands, feeling ridiculous, like he was doing jumping jacks, but not stopping until Davy turned the corner. He dropped his arms and turned away from the windows, trying to act as if he'd been following along normally the whole time.
They continued around to the front of the house, Zach huffing a little. A bluebird took flight from the porch railing just beneath an old wind chime. The bird's sudden movement set the chime fluttering, and it tinkled. On another day, in other company, it might have sounded nice; but trailing behind his gore-streaked abductor, Zach thought it sounded ghostly and cold. Like Hell's bells.
They reached the porch steps, and Davy stopped and stared at the front door for a long time. He touched his cargo pockets again, and Zach wondered what he had inside them. Davy turned to Zach and looked at him for the first time since stepping out of the untrimmed forest.
"---truck," Davy whispered, shaking his head as if confused. "Should be here."
Zach waited.
"You're gonna knock on the door," Davy said suddenly. "If they answer, get them out onto the porch." He motioned for Zach to join him on the porch steps, and Zach reluctantly obeyed.
When Zach had planted his first foot on the riser, feeling like a caged animal even out in the open, Davy grabbed him by the shoulder and squeezed him tight.
"No funny stuff," he said, and then let go.
The man dropped onto his hands and knees and pressed himself up against the side of the porch, still visible from Zach's position on the steps but probably out of view from the door and the house.
This might be his chance to run. Once on the porch, Zach could sprint down the floorboards, vault the railing, and rush into the garage before the man with the little boy's name knew anything was happening. But Zach worried about what might be in Davy's pockets. The man might not catch him if Zach got a head start, but a bullet sure as heck could.
Zach walked across the porch feeling like a remote-controlled toy.
The door was solid wood. No window. No peephole. Zach couldn't warn anyone coming to the door, couldn't mouth help again or yell for them to stay back, or to grab their guns and come out firing. He couldn't do anything.
Except....
Zach reached for the doorbell, actually let the pad of his thumb brush against the cool plastic, but didn't push in. Instead, he waited for what he hoped was a good thirty seconds and said over his shoulder, "I guess there's nobody home."
"I didn't hear you knock," the man hissed.
"I rang the bell," Zach lied. "Twice."
"Knock," Davy said simply, in a way that seemed both commanding and instructional.
So much for that. Zach knocked.
After another thirty seconds, no one had come to the door, and Zach turned around. "There's---"
"Again," Davy said coolly.
Zach turned back to the door and knocked again.
He'd been right. Nobody was home. He took a long breath, closed his eyes. He wasn't sure what exactly he had just avoided, but he didn't think it could have been anything good.
Davy stood now, looking perplexed, as if he hadn't expected this at all.
In the distance, one of the dogs barked again. Davy tilted his head and smiled.
"Of course," he said, though not to Zach. He straightened his head and walked back in the direction from which they'd come. When Zach didn't follow, he stopped and turned to face him through the porch railings.
"Let's go," he said. "My timing was all wrong."
Zach didn't ask him to clarify, but Davy went on just the same.
"The dog," he said. He looked at Zach expectantly. "Remember, Georgie?"
"Umm," Zach said, not knowing whether a lie or the truth would put a quicker end the conversation.
"Come on, let's go," Davy said, relieving Zach of the need to decide. "I was all backwards."
Before Zach left the porch, he noticed a small wooden plaque hanging from an angled nail beside the front door. He hadn't spotted it earlier, though he must have been looking right at it.
PULLMAN, it read. Underneath, someone had shallowly carved an addition:
Trevor & Daddy
The porch steps groaned as Zach descended them. He hurried after Davy and had another idea, this one no less dangerous than his earlier attempt at flagging down someone inside. He went through with it anyway, not because he thought it had much chance of working out, but because two additional people had now become involved. Strangers, people he'd never met, but people all the same, and he had to do whatever he could to warn them.
Trailing Crazy Dave, Zach dragged the toe of his good shoe across the forest floor, letting his other shoe continue its now-familiar clappity clapping. The trench he made wasn't deep, and it disappeared in a few places where he had to pick up his foot and run to catch up, but it was visible and obviously out of place. He wasn't so stupid that he thought either of the Pullmans would understand the sign, would know from a simple track in the dirt that a psycho kidnapper had been stalking their home, but if they saw it (which was no guarantee), it might at least, as his mom often said, get their hackles up. He could hope, anyway. At least he would know he'd done something, hadn't simply run away like before.
When they'd pushed back into the woods once more, Zach picked up his foot and resumed a normal trot. His scheme hadn't drawn Davy's attention. At least he had that.
Wondering who and where Trevor Pullman was, Zach hurried after Davy. Stay away, kid, he thought, dodging an especially wicked-looking briar. Stay far, far away.
THIRTEEN
DAVY HAD BEEN there for just over a week, and he'd almost gotten used to the little windowless room. The two-gallon bucket in the corner stank of his potty big and potty little. Sometimes, if he laid flat against the ground, the woodsy smell of the floorboards almost covered up the bad potty smell. Almost.
His bed was actually a pile of four blankets, the topmost a heavy bedspread he covered himself up with at night while he slept. It provided enough padding that he didn't wake up too sore in the mornings, but it was so much worse than the race-car bed he had at home, which was marshmallow soft and covered with comfy pillows.
His pillow here was not much thicker than a folded-up t-shirt, and it had yellow and brown stains and no pillowcase. Davy lay in the dark with his head on the pillow and tried not to think about it.
At home, he had a dozen different pairs of jammies to choose from. His favorites were the blue footsie pajamas with the button-up hatch in the back his mommy and daddy had gotten him the year before for Christmas.
He had no jammies here, had to sleep in his day clothes, or in his undies if it got too hot, which it did sometimes without air-conditioning or a fan or even a cool breeze from a window.
Davy missed his bedroom windows. They looked out onto the back yard where Manny liked to play, where his and Georgie's swing set waited for them to use it again and again. He missed watching his daddy push the lawnmower all around back there, missed the scent of the cut grass and even the smell of his daddy's sweaty armpits after he finally finished and came inside.
His daddy was dead now. They were all dead.
As dark as the room was, Davy's eyes had still opened up wide enough to see a little. He stared at the ceiling overhead, which dripped sometimes when it rained real hard. In the light, the ceiling was white with little bumps, cottage cheesy, but right now it looked like nothing, just a big gray shadow that might have been eight feet away or a billion miles.
Sometimes he wished he were dead, too. It might be better that way. Maybe, wherever his family was, he could be with them. But dying was scary. What if he didn't get to be with his family? What if he just died and everything was dark and cold and empty?
He heard boot-steps coming down the hall. The man who always wore flannel shirts also always wore boots. Big clunky boots caked with mud and rocks, boots that Davy could barely pick up with both hands, although he'd only tried once.
The boot-steps stopped outside Davy's door. The knob rattled, and then---
clack click.
Davy rolled onto his side and shut his eyes tight. Sometimes, at home, he pretended to sleep when it was time for school or church, but whether Mommy or Daddy came to get him, they always knew if he was faking, always yanked off his blankets and tickled him on his sides and told him to Get up, silly goose.
Mr. Boots didn't always know. Sometimes Davy faked him out. Except for with his mommy and daddy, Davy had always been good at pretending.
He lay very still, facing the wall, seeing only the insides of his eyelids and trying to breathe the way a sleeping boy would: slow, steady.
Mr. Boots's real name was Simon, but Davy never called him that, never called him anything but Sir. Except in his head, where he was always Mr. Boots.
Davy sensed him standing there, smelled the stink of his sweat, which was the opposite of his daddy's lawnmowing sweat, and heard the sound of air coming in and going out of his nose, a sound that was a little bit like Darth Vader but a little bit more like a rodeo bull.
Davy didn't know what time it was, didn't know for sure if it was night or day. He hadn't been in the room for the whole seven days, but he'd been there for most of it, and time had gotten funny, the way it did in school when they were learning about math and the teacher said it had been an hour but it seemed closer to a month and a half.
If it was daytime, Mr. Boots might think he was taking a nap. Davy continued his sleep-breathing and waited.
Mr. Boots stood there for a long time, stinking and breathing---maybe waiting for his eyes to adjust the way Davy's had---the floorboards sometimes creaking beneath him. He stood there until Davy wanted to scream and finally took one heavy boot-step toward him.
Smack.
Davy stopped breathing now, knowing it was a mistake but unable to control himself.
Smack smack.
Davy tensed the way somebody must do when he's about to get punched in the mouth or shot up by the firing squad, but what he got instead were a pair of slimy lips worse than two wet slugs on the very tip of his exposed ear.
The smack of the kiss was louder than an exploding bomb, or at least louder than the bombs on TV, and the moment Mr. Boots's mouth was gone, Davy wanted to reach up with both hands and rub at the slime it had left behind until his skin came off.
Hardly moving, he forced himself to take a few more slow breaths, though less steadily than he might have hoped, and though the smell of Mr. Boots up close was even worse than the stink coming out of his bucket right after he went potty big.
Mr. Boots chuffed in a way that reminded Davy of Manny, a sound Davy had always thought sounded funny coming from the dog but was just a disgusting, hacking cough from Mr. Boots.
Breathe. Slow. Steady. Don't gag.
Davy sensed the man backing away from his makeshift bed, his boots, for whatever reason, sounding much quieter in reverse. He remained tensed, his muscles almost quivering like he'd stayed out in the snow too long. But he didn't feel a bit cold, was actually almost sweating.
Mr. Boots stood at the doorway again. After a minute, there came another loud smack, and Davy's scream was so close that he actually felt it in his throat. But there was only that one step, and then finally Mr. Boots turned out of the room and closed the door behind him.
Davy's hand shot up to his ear and rubbed until he thought he really had taken off a layer of skin. He waited for the clacking sound of the door's lock, but it didn't come. For a week, Davy had heard the same two sounds: click (the door latching) and clack (the lock). They always came paired together, like Bert and Ernie or ice cream and hot fudge. Click clack or clack click, depending on whether Mr. Boots was coming or going. Only this time there had been only the click, and that was wrong.
Davy rolled onto his other side, facing the door and still rubbing at his ear.
Maybe it was a trick. Maybe Mr. Boots was standing on the other side of the door with his doubled-up belt in his hand, ready to spank Davy's bottom till it bled, grinning through those slug-like lips of his. Or maybe he really believed Davy was asleep and didn't think it mattered if the door was locked or not, that Davy would never know the difference.
Davy pushed himself up on his hands and knees, listening. He heard only the blankets rustling beneath him and the thunderstorm that was his heartbeat.
He didn't stand up but crawled to the door instead, a trickle of sweat running down his spine until the waistband of his shorts soaked it up, his hands and knees slapping softly against the hardwood. When he got to the door, he dropped flat and tried looking out through the slim space beneath.
It was dark in the room, a little brighter in the hall, and if someone had been standing outside the door, Davy thought he'd have seen him. Especially if his boots were as big and dirty as a dinosaur's feet.
He watched for another minute or two anyway, as if Mr. Boots might suddenly appear from out of nowhere.
Pushed against the wall beside the door was a metal bowl that Davy had eaten tomato soup from earlier. Beside it, resting in a congealed puddle of that soup, was a giant metal spoon that had been too big for Davy's mouth but that he'd finally managed to sip from the way a grownup might have sipped from a shovel blade. The bowl didn't look like any soup bowl Davy had ever seen. To Davy, it looked like the dish they used for dog food back home. It was heavy, its bottom weighted to keep it from tipping over. Davy picked it up, leaving the spoon where it was, and swung it through the air. It whooshed, and Davy smiled just a little.
If Mr. Boots was on the other side of the door, at least Davy would have something to use as a shield, or maybe even a weapon. He hefted the bowl and took a deep breath.
Davy reached for the doorknob still expecting a trick, a trap, half assuming he would be electrocuted when his fingers wrapped around the metal, but the doorknob felt cool in his hand. The room in general was hot, and the knob shouldn't have been any different, but it was. Davy twisted it slowly, hearing the creaking from within, the click when the door unlatched from the frame and swung toward him.
The hinges creaked. Davy grimaced and waited for the pounding boot-steps to come down the hall, for Mr. Boots to discover and punish him.
No boot-steps. No Mr. Boots.
He retightened his grip on the bowl and swung the door in fast, thinking one quick squeak was better than a whole bunch of little ones. He kept hold of the door so it wouldn't slam into the bedroom wall and took his first quiet step into the hallway.
His bare feet padded across the floor. His sneakers were somewhere else in the house. Mr. Boots had allowed him to wear them once, when the two of them had gone into the back yard to chop firewood, which had seemed to a sweating Davy like the most unnecessary chore ever, but then he'd taken them away again and left Davy barefoot.
Davy padded farther into the hall, looking back over his shoulder, then forward, and then back again so fast he almost lost his balance and fell. The bathroom---the real bathroom with the running water and the toilet paper and the sink, which he had still not been allowed to use---was behind him. Mr. Boots's bedroom was ahead on the right, his door closed and no light coming from underneath.
Davy almost tiptoed. He walked with his arms held up in the air at his sides the way he'd seen cat burglars do in the cartoons.
The bowl was too heavy to lift for long, and once Davy had passed the dark bedroom door, he lowered his arms and continued. The bowl brushed once against his knee and felt popsicle cold.
Now that he had left his room, he could tell it was night. The single hallway window, which had no curtains or shades or blinds or anything, might as well have been painted black. If Davy hadn't known better, he'd have thought the whole house was buried way down deep in the ground, like one of those nuclear bunkers movie people sometimes used to hide away from whatever war they happened to be in. But it wasn't totally dark. A light shone somewhere on the other side of the house, in the kitchen or the dining room maybe, and Davy could just make out the floor ahead of him and the few pictures hanging on the hallway walls to either side.
The place wasn't huge. Besides the two bedrooms and the bathroom, there was only a small kitchen, a dining room (not much bigger than the breakfast nook they had back home and nowhere near the size of their dining room), and a living room with a sofa and a couple of stinky old armchairs that might have come from a dump or the side of the road.
There was no television set and no telephone. The fridge was a rusty thing similar to one his grandma and grandpa had, what they called an icebox, and must not have kept food very cold. At least, nothing Mr. Boots had ever served Davy had been any colder than room temperature, and he had yet to find a single piece of ice in his water, which was the only thing he'd had to drink since being brought here.
He missed soda, missed milk, even missed the tomato juice his daddy sometimes drank, though Davy thought it tasted like drinking metal. If he got out of here, the first thing he'd do was get a great big bottle of Dr. Pepper and suck it down to the very last drop.
He moved through the shadowy living room and into the dining room, which was almost filled by a warped wooden table and a pair of chairs that weren't anything close to matching. The light came from the kitchen, through a doorway on the other side of the table, but Davy didn't go that way.
Still holding the bowl, holding it more out of habit now than out of any fear he might need to use it in a fight for his life, Davy headed for the back door. It was the door he'd gone through when they'd chopped wood that day, a door with a whole mess of glass all separated into teensy panes by crooked, chipped strips of wood. Davy would have rushed right out into the dark night, although he couldn't see through the glass in the door until he'd practically pressed his nose up against it, but before he could let himself out, something on the floor caught his attention.
He bent down, placed the bowl softly on the linoleum so it wouldn't make a sound, and picked the thing up. A flashlight. He flicked the switch to see if it worked and was almost blinded by the dazzling ray of light that shot into his face.
He squeezed his eyes shut and blindly flipped off the light, but for a long time afterward, bolts of purple lightning streaked across his vision like something out of a science fiction rainstorm. Stupid, Davy thought, knowing he should have been prepared for the shock of the light after so much time in the dark and that he should at least have pointed the flashlight away from himself before turning it on. He blinked his watering eyes and waited until the lightning storm died down.
Okay, Davy thought. He left the bowl on the floor, deciding he probably wouldn't need it anymore, and kept the flashlight instead. It seemed a little strange, Mr. Boots leaving the flashlight on the floor that way, where it could get kicked and maybe broken, but Davy guessed Mr. Boots wasn't any sort of normal. He let himself out of the house, a rectangle of light and his own long shadow beating him through the doorway.
Since the car crash, Davy's back had been a little sore when he twisted it too much or tried to move too fast. The wood chopping, which for Davy had actually consisted mostly of carrying armload after armload of quartered logs from the chopping block to the wood pile along the side of the house, and endless hours spent lying on the skimpily covered floors probably hadn't helped. As he moved through the back yard, Davy felt the twinge just above his bottom and tried to ignore it.
He stepped out of the pooled light and into the darkness, flipping on the flashlight again, not looking directly at the beam this time, pointing it ahead of him, into the woods. The ax jutted out from the tree stump where Mr. Boots had left it. Beyond stood a wheelbarrow that might not have been used in a million years, its front tire flat and almost completely hidden by the grass grown up tall around it. Davy passed these things without a second thought and hurried into the trees. Whenever his beam of light found a sharp rock or a pointy-looking stick on the ground, he moved carefully around it, mindful of his bare feet.
He hadn't paid much attention when they'd come to the house for the first time, had been worrying more about the stranger with the wormy lips than about which direction was which or where they'd left the truck. Now, hurrying deeper into the woods, Davy wasn't really sure where he was going, but it didn't matter. Even if he'd known where the truck was, he couldn't drive it. He was just a kid, with legs so short they wouldn't have reached to the pedals, and he didn't know the first thing about driving except that it was something mommies and daddies did. Not little kids. He'd never planned on heading for the truck. The first thing to do was get himself far far away from Mr. Boots. Then he'd worry about roads and directions.
He stepped up onto a fallen tree. The crumbling bark shifted beneath his feet, and for a second, it almost felt like walking through sand at the beach, until he stepped off again and onto hard dirt, pine needles, fallen leaves, and low-growing brush. His flashlight danced in his hands, shining from tree trunks to the ground ahead, from the limbs above to those low-hanging ones that tried to smack him in the face.
Once, he thought he saw a pair of glowing eyes tracking him from the shadows, but when he turned his flashlight in that direction, the eyes were gone and he told himself they'd probably never been there at all. He heard some sounds he knew, hooting owls and croaking frogs, and others he didn't.
It was August, almost Davy's birthday, as a matter of fact, and although it had been warm inside the house, it was a little nippy out here in the mountain breeze. Davy wished he'd changed into a pair of pants and maybe a long-sleeved shirt, but he hadn't exactly had a lot of planning time. And if he was wishing for things, he might as well wish for a pair of shoes too, and hey, why not a laser gun and a team of trained tigers so he could run at the house instead of away from it and shoot Mr. Boots into a thousand little screaming pieces of tiger food?
The flashlight shone on the white trunk of a gnarled birch, and for a second Davy thought he was looking at a ghost. He flinched away and stepped on something sharp that cut the heel of his foot. He slid to a stop, flicked the flashlight's beam to the white tree again to be sure it really wasn't a ghost, set the flashlight down on the ground, and rubbed at his stinging foot.
If he hadn't stopped just then, he might never have found the clearing, might have kept on running until either some dark woods monster got him or he found someone to help him and bring him away to safety.
After rubbing at his sole enough to cake dirt into the wound and stop the bleeding, he let go and stepped down. The foot throbbed a little, but Davy thought he'd be able to go on. He reached for the flashlight but didn't pick it up right away. The beam shone just past the birch and into the empty space beyond.
Davy stared.
He guessed these woods probably had a lot of clearings, although he hadn't really thought about it until just that moment, had pictured himself wandering deeper and deeper into the forest with endless trees stretching out in every direction except behind, where Mr. Boots slept in his sprung cage.
Davy would have picked up the light and continued his escape, except he thought he saw something there beyond the ghostly birch, something unnaturally shiny. He grabbed the flashlight and pointed it in that direction. The light came back to him from the many shattered pieces of what first appeared to be a broken mirror.
Davy moved closer, the flashlight poked out in front of him like a gun or a sword, his cut foot burning with every step. Not until he'd passed the twisted, white tree did he realize what was really out there in that otherwise empty space, and by then it was too late to unsee it.
The station wagon had taken quite a beating during its run in with the moose and the roadside trees, so much so that it hardly looked like a car anymore. Davy had gone with his mommy once to an art show at the college downtown and looked at a room full of things she'd called apstract sculpsure, or something close to that, things that had looked trashy to Davy but that he'd pretended to be interested in because she'd brought him down there without Daddy or Georgie for a fun mommy-son day. The station wagon looked like one of those pieces of art to Davy, something somebody might have made out of a bunch of broken pieces of washing machines and toasters and lawnmowers.
He stood looking at the car for a long time, wanting to go over and peek inside but wanting at the same time to run away as fast as he could. Eventually, curiosity won out, and Davy limped across the clearing.
Overhead, the moon shone out from behind a bank of wispy clouds. It was just a thin thing, pale, a fingernail clipping. Without the canopy overhead, Davy could almost see without the flashlight, but he left it on just the same and watched his reflection swim across the surface of the station wagon's intact windows.
They were all inside. Davy swung the beam from the front seat to the back, then to the ground, and he threw up his tomato soup. The vomit was red, bloody looking; Davy wiped away the last dangling strand and dared another look into the car.
More windows were missing than were left, and the smell from inside was worse than the potty bucket and Mr. Boots's armpits combined. If Davy hadn't thrown up before gagging on the horrendous stench, he certainly would have after.
Daddy. Mommy. Georgie. Manny was in there too, his bloated head twisted to the side and his tongue sticking out from between his teeth, so thick and gray it might have been a piece of uncooked sausage. Davy's stomach twisted again, but there was nothing left inside to come out, and he ended up coughing hard and spitting up nothing more than a mouthful of saliva.
Mommy and Daddy sat in the same seats they had during the crash, their bodies strapped in place by their seatbelts, but both leaning inward so that Mommy's puffy head almost touched the empty bowl where Daddy's brain used to be. One of Mommy's eyes was twice the size of the other and about to pop out, and although Davy tried not to look at it, he couldn't seem to turn away.
This was his mommy, the same mommy who'd taken him to the apstract sculpsure show, the same mommy who tickled him when he pretended to sleep and called him a silly goose. He retched again, but his mouth had gone completely dry, and this time he spat out nothing but stinky air.
He shone the trembling light into the back seat across the bodies of his brother and his dog. Manny lay up against the backrest, his too-big head and sausage tongue in Georgie's lap. Georgie, his mouth open wide and full of flies and wriggling maggots. Georgie, whose t-shirt and flesh punched out in the middle of his tummy where he'd been pinned to the tree that rainy night a week ago.
Spread throughout the car were the remains of their camping supplies: a sleeping bag (the one he'd peed in?), a skillet, torn clothing and toiletries---everything covered in blood and mud and insects.
Davy hadn't realized he was crying until the sopping neck of his shirt slid down his chest. He dropped into a sitting position, pressed his back against the car's wrinkled back door, pulled his knees to his chest, and sobbed.
His family. All gone. Left in the car to rot, all gross smelling and icky looking and dead.
Dead.
And Davy knew what worms-for-lips, gap-toothed, boots-wearing monster had left them there. He slammed his fist into the ground beside him and wiped his eyes and running nose with his shirtsleeve.
He thought about the things he'd lost: his family, his real life, his freedom.
Except...no, he hadn't lost that last one. Not yet. He'd gotten his freedom back, hadn't he? He'd escaped.
Davy, still crying but gaining control of himself, pushed away from the car and up onto his feet. He walked away from the station wagon without looking back. The moon above him disappeared for a second behind an especially thick cloud, then reappeared and shone its sputtering candle's light.
Davy had almost reentered the woods when the beam from his flashlight arced across the birch once more, showing him again the ghost's face he'd thought he'd seen earlier. Except this time the face wasn't in the tree, it was in front of it, and it wasn't a ghost at all.
Mr. Boots uncrossed his arms and smiled.
Davy wasn't sure how long he'd been standing there and watching, and he guessed it didn't really matter. He couldn't run away now, barefoot and still feeling sick to his stomach; he wouldn't get twenty feet.
The flashlight. He realized too late that it had given him away, that he might as well have been running through the forest shouting at the top of his lungs and covered in glow-in-the-dark paint. He could try turning it off, or throwing it in one direction and then running in the other, but he didn't think that would fool Mr. Boots for very long, and probably not at all.
Instead, he gave up. Mr. Boots was a grownup, and Davy was just little. He didn't know how he'd thought he could get away in the first place. He walked to the man with his head hung low and handed over the flashlight.
Mr. Boots took the light and tapped it against his pants leg like maybe he was thinking about something---maybe about smacking Davy in the head. Mr. Boots stared, the light swinging back and forth across his leather footwear, reflecting off the mud in a way that almost made the boots look like they were on fire.
Davy waited, half ready to pull back if a punch was thrown, half wanting to stand there and take it like the man he wasn't. Maybe the punch would kill him, and he could be with his family after all.
Mr. Boots finally made a strange clicking sound in his mouth and stopped tapping the flashlight. He said, "Well, I guess I'd of done the same thing." Then he nodded, as if happy with what he'd said, and motioned for Davy to lead the way back toward the house.
Davy did so, but not before taking one last look at the station wagon.
He knew that someday he would become a man very unlike Mr. Boots, and when that day came, it would be his responsibility to fix what had been wronged. His responsibility.
When the time was right, Davy would be ready.
He walked through the woods without bothering to dodge the sharp rocks and sticks, and by the time they reached the house, the bottoms of his feet were just about slimier and grosser than Mr. Boots's cracked lips.
FOURTEEN
BETHANY WINSTON SAT on the concrete patio behind her house, playing fetch with Alfred while the sun set and occasionally staring down at the pair of nubs under her t-shirt.
She was twelve years old, headed for the seventh grade, and still stuck with the training bras she'd had since she was nine. If she didn't grow something down there soon, she thought she might as well run off with the circus and star in her own freak show.
Alfred trotted up to the patio with the oversized tennis ball in his mouth, his tail wagging so hard he was wagging most of his back end with it. Beth took the ball from his mouth and flung it across the yard for what must have been the thousandth time in the last half-hour.
Her mom had told her it was totally normal, that she herself hadn't started to develop until after her freshman year of high school, but her reassurances hadn't comforted Beth. Especially not after last weekend, when she'd heard a couple of boys snickering about her at the pool while she'd lounged on her towel and pretended to nap.
Alfred caught up with the ball before it stopped rolling and almost slid in the grass in his excitement to turn himself around and hurry back to the patio. Earlier, he'd spent a good five minutes exchanging barks with another dog somewhere off in the distance---Ms. McCormick's collie, Jade, probably, though Beth hadn't really known for sure---but whether it had been Jade or one of his other canine companions, Alfred had forgotten about it now and was engrossed in the game of fetch. Beth held out her hands.
Sissy Brown was two months younger than Beth, and her boobs had grown into full-fledged knockers. She already wore a bra size bigger than Beth's mom, and the boys at school were all over her.
Beth took the ball from Alfred again, but this time she flung it in the opposite direction, aiming it for the small doghouse where Alfred liked to laze during the hottest part of the day. The ball came within a foot of bouncing into the doghouse door, but ricocheted off the front instead and came straight back at a fully sprinting and suddenly surprised Alfred.
Beth didn't get too upset about the lack of attention from boys, because in her opinion most guys were jerks, but she did wonder how her breasts would feel, if they would jiggle like a couple of water balloons or be something closer to flexing muscles. She hadn't asked Sissy or her mom, though either of them could have told her. She wanted to find out for herself. Hopefully sometime before she turned thirty.
Alfred chugged back to her no less energetically than he had after the first time she'd thrown the ball; the remaining daylight reflected off his golden fur in a way that made him look not only golden colored but actually made of gold, like some kind of moving statue.
He was a Labrador, more or less full bred, and had ears so floppy they almost belonged on a rabbit. Beth couldn't remember a time when Alfred hadn't been around. Her parents had gotten the puppy on Beth's second birthday; the two of them had grown up together. Alfred was the closest thing to a brother Beth had ever had and the closest thing she ever would. Beth's mom had confessed last year that she'd had her tubes tied, which meant Beth would forever be an only child.
She took the ball from Alfred's mouth but didn't throw it again until after she'd given the dog a good head scratching and at least a full minute's worth of petting. Her dad was working late, and her mom had made a trip into town for some groceries, leaving Beth temporarily alone, something she wouldn't have done a year before. Beth guessed she should have felt honored that her mom trusted her to stay by herself, but all she really felt was lonely.
Except for Alfred. She gave him a big kiss on the top of his head and ruffled the fur around his floppy ears.
Alfred accepted the attention happily, but Beth felt the tense muscles beneath his coat and knew he wasn't finished fetching. She scratched him one last time under his chin before throwing the ball with all her strength. It sailed through the air, hit a tree limb and bounced higher, and finally dropped. Alfred had really torn after this one and almost reached it before the ball hit the ground. He caught it on the first bounce and seemed to grin when he hurried it back to his mistress.
Beth clapped for him and giggled. "Good boy," she said and accepted the damp toy. "How bout this time you throw it to me?"
Alfred wagged his tail and continued smiling at her, but a hungry eagerness had entered his eyes. Come on, he might have been saying. Ball. Throw it. Throw the ball.
Beth wondered just how long he would go on. If she stayed out here for a week straight, gave up bathing and eating in order to endlessly toss her dog his oversized ball, would Alfred ever tire? Alfred was more than ten years old---seventy in human years---and still he often acted like a great big puppy.
We must be feeding him some kind of atomic dog food, Beth thought and threw the ball again. Alfred took off, and Beth considered going inside for a sweatshirt. The day had been warm, but the heat never lasted long up here. In another hour, full dark would arrive and she'd be shivering. It was one of the things she liked about living in the mountains. She could open her bedroom window at night and snuggle up under a pile of warm blankets, wear thick socks around the house and never get sweaty feet, or fix herself an evening cup of hot chocolate in the middle of the summer. It was great. They said you couldn't handle the cold as well when you got older, which explained why so many fogeys ended up slinking down to Florida; Beth planned to enjoy the cool while she still could. With any luck, she'd be an exception to the fogey rule and could spend the rest of her life with thick socks and mugs of hot chocolate and mounds of cozy blankets.
Beth watched Alfred and pulled herself up from the patio. The dog stopped halfway to her, cocked his head, then dropped the ball and let out a single loud bark.
Beth said, "Oh relax, you big furball, I'll be right back."
Alfred barked again, louder this time, and turned his head toward the northern end of the property. His tail had stopped wagging. Beth frowned and walked across the yard to where he'd stopped. She heard what she first thought was the distant grumbling of an engine and moved right up next to her dog. He was trembling.
Not an engine, but a growl, and coming from Alfred.
Beth almost backed away but instead turned her head to see what was worrying him. The only movement came from the leaves on the trees and the clouds in the sky above.
Alfred's growl picked up a notch, and for just a second Beth had the crazy idea that maybe he'd gone rabid, that any minute he'd foam at the mouth and bite into her face like she was nothing more than a juicy hunk of meat. But then she saw something else, a shape within the trees.
A man. Splatters of something dark covered his shirt and pants and even his face---motor oil maybe, or paint---and there was a boy who looked about her own age with him. The boy walked a step behind the dirty man and seemed to tug on his sleeve like he was trying to hold him back.
Beth touched Alfred's neck and felt the vibrations coming off him like electricity. She thought about taking Alfred into the house and locking all the doors, but by the time the thought was fully formed, it was too late. The man ran at her, boy in tow, and she was too dumbstruck to move.
FIFTEEN
LIBBY PULLED THE Honda into the garage and shut it off with a slow turn of the key. For a while, she simply sat there, leaning back in her seat with her eyes closed, listening to the car's engine click as it cooled. She and Trevor had left the house that afternoon around one, and although it was just past seven now, it seemed she'd been away for days. She thumbed the button on the remote clipped to her visor and waited until the garage door had rolled all the way down to the concrete and thumped in place before letting herself out of the car.
She considered leaving her shopping bags in the trunk---she could always come out and get them later---but then she remembered the books she'd picked up and her earlier thoughts of slipping into a nice warm bath, glass of wine in one hand and a paperback in the other, maybe with some music drifting in from the stereo in the bedroom.
Yes. Throw in some bath salts and a few unscented candles, and she'd have herself the perfect evening.
Libby jammed a key into the trunk and popped it open, reached inside for her bags and pushed the lid shut again.
Except she didn't think wine would cut it. Maybe she'd bring up a bucket of ice and beer instead. She had an untouched six-pack of Corona in the back of the fridge and thought there might also be a lime in the bottom drawer with the apples and oranges. If there had ever been a night to indulge in a little heavier-than-usual drinking, surely this was it. Although at one point during the day she'd intended to come home and put in a couple of hours of work, she'd already been second guessing the idea before she'd lost Trevor. She'd decided on the drive home that any work she did now would have been worthless anyway and that she might as well go ahead and take off the whole day.
She let herself into the kitchen through the connecting door, shut off the garage light behind her, and deposited the shopping bags on the counter beside the half-full sink of dishes. She'd have to run the dishwasher soon, but that could wait for later, too. She hung her keys on the hook beside the fridge and carried her purse with her into the living room, where the newly repositioned leather sofa waited like an open-armed lover.
Libby dropped face first onto the cushions and let out a long, tense sigh. The sofa sighed back, the cushions compressing beneath her and making a low burping sound when she turned lazily onto her side. To think, none of this mess would have happened today if she'd just let Mike come and pick up Trevor, if she hadn't been so afraid of what he'd think of her redecorating.
Way to go, she thought. She let her purse drop from her fingers to the floor beside the couch and reached up to give her face a slow massage.
She hadn't turned on the living room lights. As the daylight filtering in through the windows continued to wane, the room dimmed around her. The couch was so soft and the lighting so relaxing that Libby almost fell asleep right there and then, forgoing the bath and the beer and the paperback, would have fallen asleep if not for a car whizzing by outside and the glare of its headlights coming in through the living room windows.
Libby groaned, pushed herself into a sitting position, and finally stood.
On her way upstairs, she found a pair of Trevor's action figures pushed to the edge of one of the steps. She'd told him a hundred times not to leave his things on the stairs, that someone might trip and really get hurt, but she guessed little boys just weren't programmed to remember certain rules no matter how many times you told them. It would be one thing if he'd disobeyed her on purpose, but she was sure he'd just forgotten. Despite what had happened at the Mountain View, she knew Trevor was probably a better boy than most moms could ever expect to have, and not, as the mall security guard had suggested, an untrained pup.
Besides, at least he'd pushed the toys to the side, where they were unlikely to get underfoot. Libby reached down to pick them up and carried them with her to the second floor.
Trevor's room wasn't exactly spic and span---rumpled bed sheets covered the mattress, a pile of his clothes filled one corner, and several of his coloring books and his tub of crayons lay on the floor where he'd left them---but neither was it a total pigsty. Although she and Mike had always tried to instill a sense of cleanliness in their son, neither of them had ever been obsessive, and they hadn't wanted to bring up Trevor like a couple of museum curators, making him afraid to touch anything and uncomfortable in his own room. They'd always believed a house was for living in, not for displaying, and if that meant the occasional coloring book on the floor or the previous day's outfit piled in the corner, so be it.
She arranged the action figures on top of Trevor's bookshelf, which was mostly filled with magazines and comic and coloring books, along with several first-and second-grade readers. Trevor had mastered his reading skills very early, much sooner than many of his classmates, and although he was only headed for the first grade come fall, he now read at a third-grade level. The school had talked about skipping Trevor a grade, but Libby suggested they wait at least another year. Trevor liked school, had made some good friends, and she didn't want to push him too fast. Besides, although he'd shown a talent for reading, she knew it was something that simply came easily to him and not a sign that he was trying to surge his way through the school system any faster than the rest of the kids. She was also well aware that he still preferred the pictures in his comic books to anything Dick, Jane, and their dog, Spot, had to offer.
Libby had gotten one of the action figures into a standing position, but the other didn't want to stay upright. After only a second try at getting the uncooperative toy to balance, Libby gave up and let the little guy rest on his back. Five minutes after Trevor came home, the thing would be in the bathtub or the laundry hamper or back on the stairs again anyway.
Smiling, she returned the coloring books and the crayons to the bookshelf, took the pile of clothes from the corner of the room, and headed for the utility room.
She came to the open door of her dark office, looked inside. Her laptop's power light pulsed, which meant it was not off but merely asleep. Work was only the flip of a lid and a few keystrokes away, but she resisted the urge to enter the room.
Besides her website work, she also did some occasional consulting for a graphics firm based out of Denver. When helping out with one of those jobs (designing a law firm's new letterhead or a company's revamped logo), she often had deadlines to meet and customers to please, but none of her current projects were in any dire need of attention, and she'd already decided to let it go. At least for tonight.
She moved on to the utility room, threw Trevor's clothes on top of the washer and promised herself she'd get to them later. Like the dirty dishes. Like her work.
The master bathroom called to her.
She turned on a bedroom lamp and sorted through the stack of CDs on top of the dresser until she found the new Paul McCartney album, which she inserted into the stereo and set to repeat. The music came softly from the stereo's small speakers, mellifluous and perfect for her current mood. She turned it up just a notch, loud enough to hear from the bathroom, but not so loud that it would disrupt her reading once she'd gotten into the bath.
She crossed the room, the hardwood floor cool beneath her bare feet, slipped out of her pants and tossed them gently on the unmade bed.
She smiled. A coloring book or two and a couple of action figures and she'd be worse than her son. She left her shirt on for the time being, readjusted the waistline of her bikini briefs, and moved onto the bathroom tile, which felt noticeably cooler than the hardwood.
She wasn't normally much of a bath person, though mostly because she rarely had time for such niceties. A quick run through the shower was usually about the best she could expect, and even then she sometimes had to simultaneously brush her teeth and shave her legs to get everything done in the available timeframe. She had expected the tub to be too dirty to use, covered in soap scum and strands of shed hair, but it actually looked surprisingly clean. She gave it a quick wipe down with a hand towel, just to be sure, and then plugged the drain and started the water. After fiddling with the knobs until she'd gotten the temperature just right, Libby wiped her hands on the towel and went in search of bath salts.
She found Epsom salts and some kind of eucalyptus beads she didn't remember buying under the sink and decided to use a handful of each. She sprinkled them through the rising bathwater and dipped in a hand to double check the temperature.
Just right.
Before leaving the bathroom to fetch the rest of her bath-time goodies, Libby paused in front of the mirror to give herself a quick once over.
Fastened to the back of the bathroom door, the mirror gave her a full-body view. She stood with her back to the door and looked at her reflection from over her shoulder. Her legs looked long and trim, her bottom firm beneath the thin panties. She turned sideways and lifted her shirt. Stretch marks crisscrossed her tummy, left over from her fluctuating weight during and after her pregnancy, but the belly itself was flat and well muscled. Libby stepped closer and studied her face. The bags under her eyes were noticeable, but not outrageously so, and although it could have used a trim, her hair was as silky and sleek as it had ever been.
All in all, not bad. She might not be nineteen anymore, but she wasn't exactly falling apart either.
She posed like a swimsuit model at the end of the runway, then pouted and blew herself a kiss.
Behind her, water bubbled. The tub was a quarter full already. She'd have to hurry or risk it spilling over the rim. It was an old tub with no overflow safety feature.
She ran through the bedroom, barely hearing the ex-Beatle end one song and begin another.
In the kitchen, she grabbed the beer, a lime and a paring knife, and the least-suspenseful-looking book of the three she'd brought home. She sifted through the junk drawer until she found a box of unused tea light candles and another box of matches.
Libby guessed that would do it. She juggled the items and walked out of the kitchen, not wanting to drop anything but also not wanting to dawdle. She heard the bath still running upstairs and knew it had to be getting awfully close to full. She didn't want to spend her evening cleaning eucalyptus-scented water off her bathroom floor. The purpose of all this---the bath, the beer, the book, the music---was to relax, not add stress to an already stressful day.
She'd moved through the dark living room and up the first five stairs when the doorbell chimed behind her. She stopped mid-step and frowned.
"Hold on," she said, setting the beer and the rest of her armload onto the stairs from which, not long ago, she'd removed her son's toys. "Be right there." She couldn't answer the door without shutting off the faucet upstairs, and she definitely couldn't answer dressed the way she was. Unless it happened to be her gynecologist at the door, she was showing just a little more crotch than was generally considered polite.
She ran to the master bathroom and shut off the water with what couldn't have been more than a few seconds to spare. Before she got into the bath, she'd have to let some of the water drain out, but she'd worry about that later.
In the bedroom, she found a pair of scrub pants and slipped into them. The doorbell rang again, and Libby huffed. She'd said she'd be right there, hadn't she? Jeez.
In her rush to get to the door, she almost forgot about the discarded items on the stairs. She'd have ended up with a foot in the ice bucket if she hadn't seen it at the last second and avoided it with a carefully timed jump down two of the risers. She hit the landing beneath the stairway awkwardly, and the joints in her left ankle tensed.
The front door had a group of three windows set just above eye level, and through them Libby saw the very top of someone's head bobbing in and out of view. Before opening the door, she engaged the security chain and hid most of herself behind the door so that only her eyes and the top of her own head would show through the narrow gap. Such measures were probably unnecessary and wouldn't have done her much good if the doorbell ringer had been a shotgun-wielding maniac intent on blowing her away, but they made her feel safer just the same.
The man on her front stoop wasn't a shotgun-wielding maniac, but Libby wasn't sure he was much better. Seeing her through the opening, he smiled brightly and pushed forward a bouquet of wilted daisies.
"Hey," he said. "Just thought I'd drop by."
Libby closed the door and undid the chain, but before she opened up again, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
Why tonight?
Wondering how in the hell she'd get rid of him this time, she opened the door without smiling, accepted the flowers reluctantly, and motioned him in.
SIXTEEN
MIKE NEVER PARKED the pickup in the stand-alone garage. He'd allocated that space for his workshop, and it had been one of the reasons he'd purchased the property to begin with. Separated from the house, the small building provided the perfect space for working late into the night. When Trevor was here, Mike could run his table saw or his router, his drill press or his lathe without ever having to worry about keeping his son awake. And the nearest neighbors lived a mile away---able to hear the sound of his machinery, maybe, but not likely to be bothered by it.
Different lengths and sizes of wood he needed for his projects filled the workshop to the ceiling. He'd stocked a utility shelf with wood stain, lacquer, and glue, a sorting bin with dowel rods, and a chest with handles and hinges and the other bits of hardware he required for many of his pieces. The tools spread over the room's many work surfaces, most of them loose and unplugged, but others, like the drill press, bolted permanently in place, easily accessible. He had installed heavy-duty work lights overhead and added an industrial-sized fan to use during the hottest parts of the day. Likewise, he'd brought in a space heater for the winter months, though his fear of accidental fire kept him from using the heater in all but the most extreme conditions.
He parked the truck in the driveway just shy of the garage-turned-workshop and shut off the lights. It hadn't grown entirely dark yet, but he'd gotten into the habit of leaving his lights on all the time while traversing the mountain roads. You never knew when you might alert an oncoming motorist to your presence from around a blind curve or a switchback, when the use of your headlights might be all that stood between you and a head-on collision.
Trevor unbuckled his safety belt and popped open his door. He had a new action figure and had spent a good part of the drive testing the limits of its articulation. More than once, Mike had looked over and seen the boy bending back an arm or a leg so far he was sure it would pop right off the torso, but the little guy held together. Mike guessed they made toys a lot more resilient now than they had when he'd been a kid. He vaguely remembered one of his transformers breaking apart in his hands as if it had been made of wet sand.
The garage doors were shut, but not locked. This far into the mountains, Mike didn't worry much about thieves. He also wasn't worried that Trevor would wander into the shop unattended. Back home, Mike had worked out of the corner of their garage at a group of tables Trevor passed by almost every day of his life. Trevor had long been familiar with both the workings and the dangers of Mike's many tools. He'd been in and out of Libby's garage as often as any other room of their house and was in no more danger now of doing something foolish (sticking his hand beneath the chop saw or playing guns with the battery-powered drill) than he had ever been. But although Mike hadn't actually banned him from entering his new workshop, they had an unspoken agreement that he should not go in alone.
The fact was, he had no reason to go in. In the garage back home, a deepfreeze held not only meats, frozen pizzas, and bags of fruits and vegetables, but also something like ten lifetime supplies of popsicles. That alone had kept Trevor sneaking into the garage at every opportunity. There was, however, nothing similar here. If Trevor had thought Mike was hiding something from him, he'd have snuck into the garage the first chance he got---Mike still remembered being six---but Mike didn't think the boy had once set foot in the workshop without Mike there to watch over him.
Occasionally, he'd come out to watch Mike work through a pair of oversized goggles that made his face look like a headhunter's shrunken trophy, but he never stayed for long, and Mike got the impression Trevor considered the work a little dull. To a six-year-old, Mike supposed it probably was. Although Mike felt entirely satisfied with his craft, it was sometimes slow going and tedious. It certainly didn't have the action-packed appeal of Trevor's anime cartoons or his superhero comics, and they wouldn't mass-produce a furniture-making action figure anytime soon.
Trevor took Mike's hand, and they walked together to the house. Although his son did it naturally and unthinkingly, Mike knew the days of holding hands with Trevor were probably limited. He couldn't remember holding hands with his own dad, must not have done so much beyond the age of four or five. He'd remained more affectionate with his mother, at least until his teenage years, but only slightly so. Of course, most of that distance had been his parents' fault. Though not exactly unloving, Mike's mother and father hadn't been swoop-you-up-and-hug-you-till-it-hurts types either. Mike had tried to succeed where his own parents had failed, had tucked Trevor in at bedtime every chance he got, had always returned the boy's kisses with more of the same, and had attempted to give Trevor at least ten hugs for every one he'd gotten during his childhood.
A few strides short of the porch steps, Trevor let go of Mike's hand and bound up to the front door.
The door, like the garage, was unlocked, and Trevor only had to twist the knob to let himself inside. Mike hurried after him, instantly chilled by the air escaping through the open door. He'd turned up the air-conditioning earlier, when it had still been muggy outside, and had apparently forgotten to turn it back down before leaving for the mall.
"Brr," Trevor said, somehow managing to rub his upper arms without letting go of his action figure. "It's freezing."
Mike said, "Yeah it is," and hurried to the thermostat. Under his shirt, his nipples had become two little flesh BBs.
Shivering, he returned to the front door and opened it wide. The arctic air rushed past him. Mike shivered and followed the breeze onto the porch. It was warmer outside, though by no means toasty. "Hey," he called back to Trevor, who was on his way out to join him, "guess what I forgot?"
"What?" Trevor asked through clenched teeth.
"I'll give you a hint," he said. "It comes in little white envelopes."
Trevor brightened. "Can we go get it now?"
Mike nodded. He hadn't actually forgotten the mail, had noticed that the mailbox's door was slightly ajar when he drove past on his way out earlier that afternoon, but he knew Trevor enjoyed the long walk to the mailbox on the main road, and on the days Trevor stayed with him, he left the mail until they could go and get it together.
He hadn't planned on taking the trip to the mailbox right away, and might have waited until the next day and gotten two day's worth in a single excursion, but the house needed a chance to warm up, and the walk would not only provide the necessary time, it would also give him a chance to stretch his legs and get his blood flowing again. The drive up from Foothill had taken no longer than usual, but as had been the case when he hiked across the Mountain View's parking lot, Mike was ready for the exercise.
Trevor reached out to close the door, but Mike told him to leave it open, and Trevor obeyed unquestioningly.
"You gonna bring your little friend with us?" he asked, indicating the action figure.
Trevor nodded and said, "Yeah. He wants to see where we live."
"Ah," Mike said simply. He wondered how it felt for his son, having two homes, two bedrooms, two toy boxes into which he had to split his belongings. Couldn't be easy. He'd often wondered if he and Libby should have toughed it out for Trevor's sake, wondered if they were inflicting permanent psychological damage. Trevor flew his toy through the air, smiling, and Mike guessed he didn't have it too bad off.
With night drawing ever closer, they walked together away from the house. The trip to the mailbox and back, normally about a thirty-minute ordeal, at least by foot, was prolonged by Trevor's constant stops to retie his shoes. Mike could have offered to help, could have double-tied the sneakers so they never came undone again, but Trevor obviously took pride in his impending mastery of the task, and Mike would never have dreamed of taking away his son's confidence.
Trevor's new shorts, still pleated where they'd been folded on the shelf in the mall, poked out from his thighs as if they'd been starched. Mike reminded himself to run them through the washer back at the house. Although Trevor had a decent supply of outfits here, most of his clothes stayed at Libby's house, where he spent the majority of his time.
They collected the mail in the last of the day's light, and Mike squinted at the return addresses. Circulars, credit card advertisements, and bills, some of which he'd have to deal with eventually, but nothing exciting. He handed the stack to Trevor, who clutched it to his chest like it was found treasure. Later, at home, he would go through the pile one piece at a time and ask Mike exactly what they were. It was a kind of ritual they had. Mike wasn't sure why the mail held so much fascination for Trevor, but he always indulged the boy's questions, sometimes marveling at his seemingly endless curiosity.
For part of the walk back, Trevor skipped, humming a song under his breath that Mike thought he recognized---might have been the theme to one of the Saturday morning cartoons---but couldn't place for sure.
Halfway back to the house, Mike's stomach growled. Libby said she and Trevor had already eaten an early dinner, but Mike hadn't had anything since lunch, which had itself been only a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a handful of tortilla chips, and although his left wrist was bare, he knew from the setting sun that it was about eight o'clock.
"You hungry, bud?" he asked.
Trevor shrugged and then said, "I guess not. But maybe later we can make some popcorn and watch a movie."
"Yeah, sounds good." Mike kicked at a rock. It was stupid, and petty, but he wished Libby had waited so he could feed Trevor himself. They didn't get a chance to have many meals together.
Although, to be fair, he hadn't exactly planned anything; he wasn't sure what, if anything, he had in the cupboards. Some soup, maybe a can of chili, and he was pretty sure there was half a pack of hot dogs. No buns, though. If he made some for himself, he'd have to use regular bread.
Mike sighed softly and kicked at another rock.
Back at the house, Trevor hurried in to check the temperature.
"Tons better," he announced from inside.
Mike smiled and reached through the door to activate the porch lights. When he'd moved in, there had been only a single bulb over the front door and another in the back, where a second set of porch steps descended into the back yard. He'd added track lighting along all four sides of the house along with floodlights to shine out across the property. With the porch lights switched on, the place was brighter than an airport runway, although thankfully much quieter. Sometimes Mike came out onto the porch at night to sit in the dark, listen to the sounds of nature, take it easy, but the rest of the time he liked to see where he was going and what he was doing.
He circled around the side of the house to the back corner of the porch, where the grill sat covered but otherwise ready to go. The charcoal was of the lighter-fluid-already-added variety, which Mike found well worth the extra money; he dumped in a load of the briquettes and tossed lit matches onto the pile until it caught. He licked his lips. He had ketchup and mustard in the fridge and maybe a small jar of dill relish. Even on regular bread, a couple of over-cooked dogs would really hit the spot.
From behind him came the sound of a sliding window. His son peeked out from behind the screen, the curtains framing his face like wisps of ancient, whitened hair.
"Sure you don't want a hot dog?"
"Nah." Trevor pressed his face against the screen until his nose was almost perfectly flat. "I'm gonna watch some TV, okay?"
"Sure," Mike said. "Just don't wear out your eyes before movie time."
"Kay." Trevor disappeared behind the curtains as they drifted back together. He'd left the window open, which was fine.
Inside, Mike heard him plop down on the sofa and flip through channels. He knew before he heard the telltale sound effects that Trevor would end his search on the Cartoon Network. He replaced the grill's hood and slid the vent on the top to allow the fire a little oxygen. In the living room, Trevor giggled, and Mike found the sound heartening.
Although Mike had always been a loner, a bit of a recluse, he'd never imagined he would spend his life alone. A wife, a couple of kids---that had always been his dream. Just a small group of immediate family with whom he could share himself and his life.
Now that Libby was gone and Trevor along with her more often than not, he sometimes got lonely in a way his younger self never would have imagined. Trevor's laughter lifted his spirits, reminded him that he hadn't lost his dream of a family altogether.
With the charcoal flaming in front of him, he wouldn't have seen much beyond the porch railing, but the fire was hooded now, and Mike was backlit. The side yard came slowly into focus, and something out there in the periphery of his vision grabbed his attention.
He couldn't identify it at first. He focused but still couldn't quite make it out.
Inside, Trevor's cartoon segued into a commercial, and the boy took the opportunity to re-familiarize himself with his new toy. Mike heard him drop off the couch and onto the floor, pictured him sitting there cross-legged and puffing out his cheeks to make the explosion sounds that always seemed to come, whether the action figures were fighting or not.
Mike looked out at the yard again, seeing the fractured line and thinking it might have been something on his eye, a scratch or a hair. He blinked twice, but whatever the thing was, it was still out there.
This side of the porch had no stairs, but he was still spry enough to hop the railing and land on the other side without doing more than jolting himself a little. He did so, and his shadow floated across the ground in front of him as he moved.
What the hell is that? He stepped over to the narrow trench and prodded it with the tip of his shoe. Looked like something had been dragged through here, though what it had been and who had done the dragging Mike didn't know.
Weird. He kicked at the track again, then shrugged and turned away.
Inside, the cartoons had restarted. Mike followed the sound. He could check out the yard tomorrow in the light. For now, he was hungry, and the hot dogs smelled delicious.
SEVENTEEN
DAVE ABBOTT HADN'T bothered to go back for the truck. As with the rest of his stops that day, he'd visited the neighboring property more than once during the last several months, and he knew the quickest way there was straight through the woods.
Although he hadn't found himself a convenient path in this particular stretch of trees, he picked his way through the dense vegetation with only a few minor detours. Behind him, the sometimes-graceful Georgie bumbled along. He'd slipped and fallen twice, had cut his knee open on a moss-covered outcrop of rock just after they'd left the Pullman residence, and had avoided tripping face first into a patch of poison ivy by only a couple of inches.
Although there was still some sunlight in the sky, it might as well have been night within the woods. Dave had fantastic night vision, but Georgie had no such advantage. Despite the urge to hurry onward, Dave limited himself to a brisk walk. He didn't want to lose Georgie in the woods, didn't want to have to go back in and look for him later after he'd taken care of the Manny situation.
He touched rough bark and maneuvered easily around the tree, watching over his shoulder to see if Georgie did the same. The boy bumped his shoulder into the trunk but didn't fall.
Dave hadn't exactly planned it this way. By now, he'd expected to have both boys and the woman, had figured that adding Manny to his collection would be the mission's last step, but he wasn't frantic. Everything would turn out all right. He'd get Manny and then go back for the Pullman boy. The woman had proved to be a disappointment, and Dave had already mentally chastised himself for not having a backup, but he would find a way to fix that, too. He was in charge now. It was his responsibility. He wouldn't fail.
Up ahead, he caught sight of the dog. The light shone brighter out there---though some trees still grew in the yard, as with the Pullman place, it was far more open than the woods they'd just been through---and Dave could clearly make out Manny trotting toward a little girl on the back patio. Although he had seen the girl before, he didn't know her name. Manny carried a ball almost too big for his mouth, and Dave wondered why the girl hadn't gotten him something more fitting.
He guessed the answer was simple enough: she was a stupid little abusive bitch.
The dog stopped moving and looked at the section of forest from which Dave now emerged. Dave slowed, waited until Georgie walked into him from behind, and then watched the girl walk over to Manny and follow the dog's gaze.
From behind him, Georgie seemed to have seen what was happening.
"No," he said, "leave her alone." He grabbed the sleeve of Dave's ruined blue shirt and gave it a tug. Though not a weak gesture, it wasn't enough to bring Dave to a complete stop. He continued moving.
Her, he thought. What exactly did the boy think was going on here? He grabbed hold of Georgie's wrist, saw the instant fear in the young eyes, and ignored it. He picked up his speed, then picked it up again, and before long he was sprinting. The land sloped down from the woods to where the girl and her dog crouched, a long, open, dandelion-covered hill. Dave's legs pumped and flexed beneath him. He trampled flowers and grass, kicked up clouds of dust and small pebbles, dragged Georgie along behind him. He couldn't have covered the distance any faster if the incline had been covered in snow and he'd been on a pair of skis.
And there was Manny. The Manny of his childhood had been smaller, a little tubbier. His replacement was a much sleeker, more distinguished-looking animal. Dave heard the dog bark before he heard the girl scream. Georgie hung onto his sleeve, doing his best to slow Dave, but Dave wouldn't have stopped now if he'd had a grand piano chained to his wrist. He ran right up to the huddled figures, wrapped his hand in the girl's hair, and jerked her away from the dog.
She toppled away, and Manny pounced. His front paws hit Dave in the chest and started scratching, as if the dog were trying to dig a hole through Dave's chest. The claws didn't get through Dave's shirt, much less the skin, but they did rip off his front pocket. Dave's toothpicks and the few small replacement twigs scattered, some of them sticking into the dog's fur until Manny's wild thrashing shook them free. Dave let go of Georgie's arm and got a good hold on Manny's collar before the dog could lash out and chew off a hunk of his flesh.
"Easy," he said, straining to control the quaking animal. "Easy, Manny. Quit it."
The girl had landed hard on the ground but had hopped back up with the kind of elastic resilience that seemed to be the exclusive domain of young, slim children. Her hair looked wild where he'd grabbed her, twisting away from her head like she'd just gotten up from a long night of restless sleep. She took a step away from the commotion, glanced over her shoulder like she was thinking about running for the house, then came at Dave instead and kicked him hard in the shin.
Dave saw it coming but was too entangled with the dog to pull away. He yelped and lost his hold on Manny's collar. The dog backed away a few steps and shook himself. He bared his teeth again and crouched, looking less like the distinguished show dog he'd first appeared to be and more like a wolf or a hyena. Spittle flew from his lips, and the muscles beneath his hide flexed and twisted; he looked like a burlap bag full of snakes.
The girl bared her teeth too, though she looked more like a poorly groomed monkey. Dave sensed Georgie circling around behind him and marveled at how quickly things had gotten out of his control.
Easily solved, he thought. He reached into his pockets and drew out the twin blades. Both Georgie and the girl stopped, she wilting and looking close to tears, he simply ceasing his clandestine movements. The dog was not as impressed. He continued to growl, his big ears pulled back and flat against his head, his hindquarters low to the ground, preparing for another leap. Dave would have to keep an eye on Manny; the poor thing didn't recognize his own master.
Behind him, Georgie said a single word, and Dave tensed.
He said it the same way his mother had in their kitchen back home, not out of control or hysterical, but in an almost frighteningly matter-of-fact tone: "Run."
The girl looked away from the knives and past Dave.
"Run," Georgie said again. "Get into the house and call---"
Dave swung around and nailed Georgie on the side of the head with the blunt end of one of his knives. Georgie, who'd obviously expected something of that nature, had raised his hands up to protect himself, but the strike came before he could get them any higher than his belly button. Georgie dropped to the dirt, scrambling and holding himself while blood poured from the new wound on his already injured head, and for a second Dave simply stared at him.
What did you do? An image of heavy boots flashed in Dave's head, and he quickly looked down at himself, sure he'd find the things laced to his feet, but he saw nothing down there but his own pair of shoes. Okay, but something still feels wrong here. I would never hurt Georgie. Would I?
He felt the sudden weight of the dog on his back and the animal's hot breath on his throat. He whipped around, managed to fling Manny away from him and onto the ground beside Georgie. Then he dove at the girl and grabbed her arm, pinching the knife between his palm and her bicep but not cutting her. Not yet.
"Okay," he said and felt he'd managed to regain at least some control of the situation. He backed a few steps away from Georgie and Manny. The girl reached over and scratched him on the back of his hand, and he did nothing, though the attack brought back painful memories of the crummy kitchen where he'd killed Georgie's old mother.
"Cut out the shit," he hissed at her, "or I'll cut out your eye." He flicked the knife in front of her face for emphasis, and she went deathly still.
"Georgie."
The boy had both hands plastered to his face and rolled back and forth on the ground.
"I'm sorry," Dave said. "I shouldn't have hit you---daddies don't hit their boys---but if you don't stop your mewling and get up and help me, I will hurt the little girl."
The girl, who had already tensed, now became so rigid she might have been carved from marble. The dog growled, moving uncertainly from side to side, but no closer to Dave. That was good, a situational step in the right direction.
Georgie took one hand away from his face and lifted his head to look at Dave. His scalp had split just beside the abrasion he'd gotten in the tree fort earlier in the day. The blood had run horizontally across his forehead and now caked in his eyebrows and down the ridge of his nose.
"You wouldn't hurt her," he said, sounding pained, but obviously trying not to show it. "You'd better not."
Dave raised his eyebrows, looked down at the girl's face, and brought the knife up in a long, sure swing. Like chopping off the last quarter inch of a snowman's carrot. The tip of the girl's nose arced up through the air and then fell to the earth. It bounced once and rolled for about a foot. When the little button of skin and cartilage came to rest, it didn't look like anything that had ever been attached to a human body.
The girl's first shriek, one of surprise at the crude plastic surgery, the nose job from Hell, ended when the pain, which had to be tremendous, kicked in. Her shriek became an ear-piercing wail. For a second, the blood didn't drip, it poured, as if Dave had opened some ghoulish faucet on her face. The girl reached her free hand to the stub, probably meaning to hold in the blood, but ended up brushing against the raw wound and only hurting herself worse.
Georgie screamed too, and Manny had gone crazy. He hopped from side to side, a nonstop stream of barks pouring out of his muzzle while the blood continued pouring similarly from his former mistress.
Dave looked at Georgie and didn't have to say anything.
"Oh my God," Georgie said, "I'm so sorry."
Dave couldn't tell for sure but thought the kid might be crying. Just a little. Dave knew the words weren't directed at him, that Georgie was apologizing to the girl, and that was just about enough to make him want to knock him down again, but he played it cool. "Apology accepted. But you'd better start helping me out here, bud, or it'll be more of the same."
Georgie glared at him, and Dave knew the look well. If Georgie'd had a weapon, he'd have used it on Dave, would have used it to the death if it came to that. After this was all over, Dave and Georgie would have to do some serious talking. He didn't want Georgie thinking he was the bad guy. He was only doing what was necessary. Surely Georgie would see that once they had a chance to sort it all out, but Dave didn't have time to explain anything now.
"You wearing a belt?" he asked.
Georgie shook his head.
"Hey, girlie." He shook the girl and turned her partway around so she could look into his face. "You got any kinda leash inside?"
The girl wouldn't look at him. She'd quit screaming but started bawling. Her mouth opened wide, and the blood from her nose dripped into it, across her teeth and the tip of her tongue.
Dave shook her again and sensed Manny's charge soon enough to pull himself out of the way like he was his own matador's cape. The dog flipped over in the air and landed on his side in the dirt. He scrambled back to his feet and resumed his bark-a-thon, but he didn't try another rush.
"Get inside the house," he said to Georgie. "Find a hunk of rope or something. Anything. Take the sheets off their bed if you have to. I want Manny tied up until we can get him calmed down."
Georgie stood still, but Dave didn't think he'd dare defy him for long, and he was right. Still holding his head with one hand, Georgie gritted his teeth and moved.
"I know you're still a touch confused," Dave said, "but don't you go thinking anything stupid inside that house. Get me? If you're not back in five minutes, I'll start with the rest of her nose."
The girl wiggled in his grasp, and he squeezed her that much more tightly, his second knife still sandwiched between his hand and her arm.
Georgie limped past him, shoe clapping, and Dave grinned.
Manny whimpered. He was a good dog. Dave couldn't blame him for what had happened here today. After all, they hadn't seen each other in twenty-three years. He'd get the dog some good snacks---maybe a steak or a roast---and they'd be buddies again before the next afternoon.
The hand the girl had scratched tingled a little. He looked down at it---red but not bleeding---and wondered about his face.
It wouldn't especially matter if he had scars, he guessed, but that didn't mean he wanted them if he could avoid it. Vitamin E was supposed to help. He remembered that from his mom, who'd always kept a bottle of the capsules in the cabinet over the fridge. Dave had no vitamin E now, but it wasn't exactly plutonium, he'd get his hands on some sooner or later.
Manny quieted but continued to stare at Dave and his hostage. The dog's eyes glowed a little, reflecting light from somewhere, though Dave didn't know enough about such things to tell from where. The stars maybe, or the couple of lights on in the house? Who knew? Regardless, the glowing eyes creeped him out. Dave tried to remember if the original Manny's eyes had done the same thing but couldn't.
"It's okay, buddy," he said. "I'm here to take you home."
The dog cocked his head and bared his teeth, but only for a second. The girl's sobs intensified.
"I'll get you a ball that fits your mouth," he said, frowning at the girl.
He looked at the house. Georgie should have returned by now. He readjusted his grip on both the knife and the girl and touched the point of the blade to the girl's throat.
"Scream," he said.
She sobbed and tried to say something Dave couldn't make out.
"Don't talk," he said, poking her hard enough to draw a bead of blood. "Just scream, or I'll give you something to scream about."
He expected something pathetic, a croak or a soft moan, but what he got instead was the product of what had to have been the most powerful set of lungs in all of existence. The screech exploded out of the girl's throat, and after a second, the echo came rippling back at him from the distant mountains.
Not bad, he thought but didn't say. He removed the blade from her throat.
Georgie tore out of the house, a long red cord dangling from his fist. He ran at them fast but slowed when he got close enough to see Dave had inflicted no further damage.
"I found a leash," Georgie said angrily. "Now let her go."
Dave remembered the way the boy's voice had sounded in the kitchen that afternoon: high-pitched, girly. He didn't sound that way now. His voice was as low and commanding as Dave's own.
"Put it on the dog," Dave said, not letting go of the girl's arm.
Georgie did, and Dave was thankful Manny didn't fight him, didn't try to pull away or snap at Georgie. In fact, the dog almost seemed happy about the leash, associated it with going on walks probably.
"Wanna go for a walk?" Dave asked, inspired, trying to sound like the good guy he was.
Manny's tail wagged so slightly that it was almost impossible to see. Dave guessed that neither the girl nor Georgie saw it at all with their comparatively poor eyes.
"Yeah," Dave said. "We're going for a nice long walk."
He let go of the girl, and so much visible tension left Georgie's body that the kid almost appeared to have fallen asleep standing.
"We're gonna need a head start," he said, looking carefully at Georgie. "I don't suppose you cut the phone lines for me in there."
"Uh, ye---" Georgie started but then seemed to think better of it. "No," he admitted.
"Didn't think so. Then I guess this is your fault." And without warning, he whacked the girl in the back of her head. She dropped flat on her face, still breathing but otherwise motionless.
Manny barked, and Georgie screamed, "No!"
"Come on," Dave said. "Lead us back where we came from. The night's not over yet." He could tell Georgie wanted to disobey, wanted to hurt him, but the boy finally clutched the leash and walked away from the fallen girl. Dave slipped his knives back into his pockets.
Manny didn't want to leave at first, fought hard to get back to the spot where his former mistress lay, but Georgie finally got him moving, and the three of them walked up the dandelion hill together.
---:---:---:---
Beth opened her eyes some time later. Dirt filled her mouth, muddied by the blood still oozing from her savaged nose. She spat and tried scraping her tongue on her shirt, but the taste remained. Sitting up, she looked at the trees where the man and the boy, Georgie, had come from. They had disappeared, and Alfred with them.
More tears came, but she fought them. She had to get help first. It might not be too late. She would have time for crying later.
Straining only a little, she got onto her feet and hurried into the house.
Before she reached the kitchen phone, she noticed the wooden block where they kept their knives. It was tipped onto its side, and one of the slots, the biggest one where the butcher knife should have been, was empty. The phone lay on the counter, the cord curling back up to the base, which was screwed to the wall. The phone beeped a disconnected signal.
He tried calling for help, she thought. Probably didn't get through before that maniac made me scream for him.
She picked up the phone, tapped the disconnect switch to get a dial tone, and then poked at the keypad.
While she waited for someone to pick up on the other end, she moved to the sink to wash the gore from her face. A woman's voice came on the line and asked her what her emergency was. Beth spoke, and the words poured out of her mouth like blood from a whittled nose.
EIGHTEEN
DAVE STOOD OVER the chopping stump, halving logs and then quartering them. Mr. Boots sat on a pile of already-split wood with a burlap sack between his feet, watching, silent. Dave wasn't sure what he had in the bag, but it was moving.
Chop. Chop. Chop.
Dave had been counting the number of logs. He was up to forty. If he got to fifty and Mr. Boots hadn't told him to quit, he'd ask if he was done. He might get smacked in the head for it, but he might also get a smack if he didn't ask. With Mr. Boots, it was always hard to know the right thing to do.
Chop. Chop. Chop. Forty-one.
Chop. Chop. Chop.
"That's enough," Mr. Boots said. He got up and helped Dave stack the new wood with the rest. He left the squirming bag in the dirt.
When they had stacked everything Dave had split, Mr. Boots stood with his hand on the boy's shoulder and stared off into the woods, sometimes stroking his beard, sometimes only breathing heavily and blinking.
After five years, Dave had learned not to interrupt these silences. He might have to stand here for an hour, tired from the chopping and ready to collapse but too scared to move. Moving too soon would mean a lashing.
"You reckon there's anything worse than death?" Mr. Boots finally said.
Dave didn't remember everything from his old life, but he was sure there hadn't been these kinds of questions, these kinds of tests.
"I don't know." It was his usual answer.
Mr. Boots turned his attention from the woods to the boy. "There is," he said. "There's plenty of worse things."
"Okay."
Mr. Boots took his hand off Dave's shoulder and picked up the burlap sack. He untied a length of twine from the bunched top and reached inside.
The rabbit he pulled out looked like it should have been dead. One of its hind legs was gone. The ragged, gaping wound where it had been dripped blood and strings of fatty tissue. Its eyes were black, unreadable. But it wasn't dead; it was foaming at the mouth and trying to bite and scratch at Mr. Boots's hand and arm.
"What happened?"
"Dunno," Mr. Boots said. "Found it like this. Maybe a coyote."
Dave wasn't sure he believed that. He gulped.
"You think Mr. Bunny wants to live this-a-way?"
I don't think he can live like that, Dave thought. Not much longer anyway. But he didn't say anything, only shook his head.
"This right here is worse than death. We're gonna help this creature best we can." He nodded his head toward the ax.
Dave said he understood and went to get the ax. He pulled it out of the stump and held it out to Mr. Boots.
Mr. Boots smiled. "No, boy. You're gonna do it."
"Wha...me?"
Mr. Boots nodded.
"Can't you? Please? I don't want to."
"I know you don't." He laughed, brought the animal to the stump, and pressed it against the scarred wood.
"Don't try nothing funny," he said. "If I catch you eyeing my arm instead of this thing's neck, that wood won't be the only thing gets split today."
Dave closed his eyes and shook his head. "Please."
"Trust me now," Mr. Boots said. "If you don't do this, you'll be all kinds of regretful." He nodded toward the squirming animal and made a chopping motion with his free hand. "Let's go."
Dave stepped up to the stump. The animal writhed, scratched at the wood with its remaining hind leg. It turned its head toward him. Its black, tar-drop eyes flicked back and forth, not seeming to see anything at all.
"It's hurtin'," Mr. Boots said. "See that?"
So you left it tied in a bag all this time?
Dave raised the ax over his shoulder.
Mr. Boots nodded.
Kill him. Forget the rabbit. Kill Mr. Boots.
Dave considered it, but the idea of swinging the ax into Mr. Boots's neck made his hands tremble. He wasn't sure he could pull it off. And if he tried and failed...well, he couldn't risk it. He wasn't sure what Mr. Boots would do to him, but he knew what the man had done for much less severe disobediences. Knew. Remembered. Sometimes cried about.
And although the thought of slaughtering the animal was repulsive, disgusting, wrong, Dave was also a little curious. What would happen when he cut off the thing's head? Would it die immediately? Or would it hop and kick and squirm until the blood drained out? Would it scream? And what if he chopped only partway through? Or wiggled the ax back and forth through each bone and strip of sinew? Slowly. Carefully. What if he really savored it?
Savored? Seriously? What's wrong with me?
He closed his eyes and shook his head. "I can't," he said.
And before he could open his eyes, Mr. Boots had wrapped a hand around his throat and started squeezing.
"You can," he said. "And you'd better."
His fingers flexed, squeezed, choked. Dave's throat burned, and his eyes watered, and when he dropped the ax and tried to pry the fingers loose, he found he couldn't move them an inch. He opened one eye, saw Mr. Boots still holding the rabbit against the stump.
"kkkkkkkkkkkkkk"
"What?" Mr. Boots squeezed harder before finally loosening his grip. A little.
"O...okay," Dave said. His voice was a frog's croak of a thing.
Mr. Boots let go and said, "Pick up the ax."
Dave grabbed his throat, sucked in three or four agonizing breaths, doubled over and coughed. And picked up the ax. What choice did he have?
Mr. Boots kneeled by the stump and pressed on the animal. It thrashed. One of its back claws caught Mr. Boots's forearm, but he didn't seem to notice. Or care. Blood oozed into the crease of his elbow and from there to the dirt below.
He nodded toward the stump.
Dave coughed again, hacked out a wad of phlegm, and lifted the ax over his shoulder.
Better do it. If your choice is killing a half-dead rabbit or getting choked to death, that's not really a choice at all, is it?
The rabbit's side vibrated. It was practically hyperventilating.
This is your fault, he thought at the rabbit.
But how could that be true?
He didn't know. And no longer cared.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, wondering if he really was, and swung the ax.
The ax head thunked into the wood. It was a perfect chop. The rabbit's head slid down the stump and into the dirt. Mr. Boots let go of the animal's body. It did keep kicking for a few seconds, but then it flopped off the stump and into the dirt beside the decapitated head, pumping gory juices across the ground before finally stilling.
Warm blood dripped down Dave's face and shirt. He let go of the ax handle and turned away from the kill.
Mr. Boots got up and put a hand on his shoulder. "It was the right thing, don't you guess?" he said. "The only thing."
A tear slid down Dave's cheek, but the corners of his mouth curled up just a little. He felt like he had no control over his face whatsoever.
"Killin's a chore," Mr. Boots said. "Why don't you go for a walk. Clear your head."
Dave frowned. "A walk?" The words burned their way out of his throat. He coughed again and wiped tears from his eyes.
"Sure," Mr. Boots said. "Clear your head."
Dave turned to face him. "Walk where?"
"Wherever you want."
What kind of trick was this? He thought maybe he could choke out one more word: "Wherever?"
"Sure," Mr. Boots said again. "I trust you." He flashed his gap-toothed grin.
Dave raised his eyebrows.
"Yep." Mr. Boots nodded. "I do. Because I know that you know that if you ran, I'd find you. And if I didn't find you---which I would---I'd just find another boy to replace you. And that would be on you. And I know that's nothing you wanna live with."
Dave stared, said nothing.
"So, go on. Take a walk. Think about why what you just did was nice and righteous."
Dave took a few steps away. When Mr. Boots didn't follow, he turned and ran.
---:---:---:---
After plenty of running and scrambling through the undergrowth, he reached a road. He'd never been this far. Not since...before. He stopped and wondered how long it would be before someone drove by. If someone would drive by.
Does he really think I won't run?
Who cares what he thinks. This is your chance. Finally. The best chance you've ever had.
He touched the sides of his throat. It felt like there were still fingers there choking the life out of him. He gritted his teeth and thought about walking up the road. But he was tired from chopping, from running, from choking. He decided to wait.
There were no cars for fifteen minutes at least, judging by the sun. When he did eventually hear an approaching motor, he wasn't sure if it was a hundred feet away or a mile. Hard to tell. Sound had a funny way of carrying up here.
He'd been sitting with his back to a tree. Now, he got up and hurried onto the road. He stood there with his hands over his head, ready to wave down the motorist, ready to scream for help as loudly as his throbbing throat would allow and beg for a ride to the nearest police station.
I'd just find another boy, Mr. Boots had said.
Dave lowered his hands. He imagined a station wagon with two small boys in back. He imagined Mr. Boots grabbing one of the boys and dragging him back to the room with no windows, tossing him on the not-bed of blankets, pressing his wormy lips against the boy's ears and...
No. You can't think like that. It's not your problem. You've got to get while the getting's good.
Dave thought he might be able to live with himself if he ran, might be able to pretend Mr. Boots would never find himself another boy, that the authorities with their guns and their handcuffs and their sharp-toothed dogs would hunt him down and lock him away.
Yeah right. If you run, he'll be long gone by morning. He'll find a new place to hole up, find a new boy, a new choke toy.
Or maybe not. Maybe he'd be too busy hunting Dave down, peeking in windows and picking locks.
And that was what Dave was really afraid of: spending the rest of his life looking over his shoulder, jumping at shadows, screaming anytime anyone closed a door or put on a pair of heavy boots.
What choice do you have? It's either run and be scared or stay and be terrorized. Lose lose.
Dave rubbed his throat.
I'd just find another boy, he'd said, to replace you.
The car was getting closer. The buzzing of its motor became a grumbling. Dave looked toward the trees, up the road, back at the trees.
He remembered another car. A station wagon. He wanted to run down the road, meet the approaching car, see if it was his mom and dad and brother and dog. But then he remembered the moose, the crash, Mr. Boots. And he remembered the rotting corpses.
Replace you.
The grumbling became a roaring. The car couldn't have been more than a couple of bends away. Dave started to raise his arms again, but then he growled and ran and dove into the bushes, screaming at himself to go back, screaming at himself not to. He dropped to the ground and watched the vehicle pass.
You idiot. Get out there. This is your chance.
No, it wasn't. He had a chance to do something more than just escape. He had a chance to make things right. He wasn't exactly sure how yet, but he was beginning to get an idea.
It was an old truck. Dusty. From his position, he couldn't see into the windows, couldn't see much more than the spinning, dirt-kicking tires.
He closed his eyes and waited until the sounds of the motor had disappeared altogether, and then he got up and turned back toward the house.
He wondered what kinds of sounds Mr. Boots would have made if it had been him under the ax instead of the rabbit. He wondered if he would have screamed.
And then he thought he heard something move in the woods. He spun around and stared at a spot between two thick trees.
Was that a flannel shirt?
Even squinting his eyes, he wasn't sure. Maybe it hadn't been anything.
Or maybe it was.
He imagined Mr. Boots lying in the bushes, holding a riffle or a bow and arrow.
Don't be ridiculous. You really think he followed you all the way out here?
Yes, of course he must have. He wouldn't have let Dave go. He was crazy, but he wasn't stupid. If Dave had tried to flag down the truck, how long would it have been before he felt a tug in his chest and looked down to see an arrow punched through his shirt or a bullet's exit wound dripping blood and shredded innards.
He stood still for a long time and waited for another sound or flash of movement. When nothing happened, he said as loudly as his throat would let him, "I'm going back now."
There was no response.
He waited another few seconds, and then headed back the way he'd come.
As always, he couldn't say whether he was doing the right thing or not.
NINETEEN
MARSHALL WORE A three-piece suit too warm for the season and too dressy for what he claimed was a casual visit. Libby wondered if he'd been at a meeting or a party and hadn't bothered changing before stopping by, or if he'd put on the suit specifically for her. To impress her. Normally her thoughts didn't tend toward such vanity, but in Marshall's case, it wouldn't be the first time he'd done such a thing. She couldn't help but pity him.
Libby searched the kitchen for a vase despite an urge to run the daisies he'd brought down the garbage disposal. She peeked occasionally back at Marshall, who was wandering through the living room staring at the pictures on the walls and the knickknacks on the shelves. He'd visited the house once before, but for only a minute, not long enough to do much snooping. "I hope this wasn't a bad time," he said, moving from his investigation of the mantle to the bookshelf where Libby kept her paperbacks.
Libby let an uncomfortable silence draw out before saying, "Well, actually, I wish you'd called. I...this wasn't the best day. I think I'd rather be alone tonight."
She peeked again, saw Marshall pull a book from the shelf, skim the back cover, and return it.
She wiped her hands on a dishtowel and waited for him to say What happened? or Tell me about it, but instead he answered, "Oh, come on. You've got time for a little visit, don't you? I drove all the way over."
Libby rolled her eyes and brought the vase of flowers out from the kitchen. Marshall turned and smiled at her while she set them down on an end table. He shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked a little on his feet. The gesture reminded Libby of the security guard at the Mountain View, who had done the same damn thing. Except Marshall looked nothing like that hulk of a man. He was small, maybe an inch taller than Libby and certainly no heavier than a hundred and fifty pounds. Although a relatively young man, thirty-two if Libby remembered correctly, his hair had already thinned and made him look middle-aged. He had thin lips, not so thin glasses, and a red, Irish complexion, though he'd told her on their first and last date that he didn't think any of his ancestors had ever been to the land of ire, wording it just that way and laughing as if he'd said something witty.
"You want a beer?" she asked.
Marshall seemed to consider before replying, "No thanks. I don't suppose you've got any coffee perking."
Perking, Libby thought, what century does he think this is?
"I guess I could brew a pot," she said, trying not to overemphasize the brew. "But then you've really gotta go, okay?"
Marshall didn't respond. He followed her into the kitchen and eyed the shopping bags on the counter while she searched for a filter. He poked his finger into the open end of one of the bags and peeked inside.
"Uh oh," he said, withdrawing the two paperbacks Libby had left when she'd picked out her reading material for the bath. "You've been cheating on me." He held out the books and smiled.
Libby thought, Jesus, but forced a smile. "I was at the mall." It was as much of an excuse as she would give. Marshall was a clerk at Dog-Ears, a downtown bookshop she frequented. She'd seen him in the store many times, exchanged a few polite conversations, every one of which had ended with some sort of advance on his part. He'd never been rude about it, never pushy, but he had been persistent. So much so that she'd finally agreed to dinner just to get him off her back. She hadn't been interested romantically, of course, but she'd thought maybe they could talk books, have a few laughs, that it might be fun in an entirely platonic kind of way.
It wasn't.
Marshall had spent most of the date ogling her. And although she had her back to him, she could sense him doing the same thing now.
"Listen," she said suddenly, turning away from the cupboard and crossing her arms over her chest. "I'm not finding any filters."
"Oh, that's okay." Marshall waved his hand. "Maybe I'll have that beer after all."
"No, I think I'd rather you left. No offense, but I'm just not in the mood for company tonight." Especially your company, she wanted to add.
Marshall's smile dropped away. "You're kidding me."
Libby said, "No," and shook her head definitively.
Marshall looked at the books in his hand and then tossed them on the counter. The cover of one bent in half, and the other dropped into the sink, where it soaked up some of the water Libby had splattered while filling her vase.
Libby gaped, more outraged by the battering of the books than by Marshall's sudden show of anger. She wasn't a book collector, did not consider novels investments the way some people did, but she'd always tried to keep her paperbacks in decent shape. Mostly so she could read them again later if she wanted and not have to worry about them falling apart.
"What did you do that for?" She hurried over to the sink and pulled the second book from the basin before it could become completely waterlogged.
Marshall huffed. "They're just books."
"And you're just an asshole," Libby said, wiping the water from the cover of the book with the hem of her shirt. "I want you to leave right now."
"Jesus," Marshall said, looking nonplussed. "I'm sorry."
Libby softened only a little. "Just please go. I'll see you at the store sometime."
"Wait," he said and took a step toward her.
Libby stood her ground. Marshall wasn't exactly a muscle-bound intimidator.
"Let's have that beer. Then I'll go. I promise." He reached out to take her hand. "I drove all the way here. I brought you flowers."
Libby jerked her hand from his grasp and shook her head. "So what? I guess you think that means I owe you something."
Marshall didn't respond.
Oh my God, she thought, that is what he thinks.
She tried to move out from between him and the sink, but it was too late. Before she knew it, he had his hands around her waist and his lips all over her face.
TWENTY
TREVOR SAT ON the sofa and watched his daddy smother the two hot dogs with ketchup and mustard. He wrinkled his nose.
Daddy looked up at him, licking a yellow gob from the tip of his finger. "What's the matter?"
"You're stinking up those hot dogs," he said, plugging his nose with his fingers.
"You think so?"
Trevor nodded vigorously. "Uh huh. They taste way better just plain."
"Well," Daddy said, "you might not always feel that way." He bit a mouthful from the end of one of the dogs and munched.
"Yes-huh," Trevor said. "I wouldn't ever eat those. Not for a million dollars."
"Your loss." Daddy ripped off another giant bite with his teeth, and a big fat drop of orange goop splattered onto the plate in his lap.
Trevor mimed gagging and then pulled away in real terror when his daddy leaned toward him, holding the half-eaten hot dog in one hand and making scary ghost sounds.
"Quit it," he said, giggling now that he was out of range.
Daddy set the dog on his plate and wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. "You got a movie picked out?"
Trevor shrugged. "Nope." Out of the corner of his eye, he peeked at the pile of forgotten mail on the coffee table.
Daddy turned sideways in his seat to look at the small bookshelf where they kept their few videos and DVDs. Trevor would never tell his daddy, but sometimes he liked it better at Mommy's house. She had lots more movies, and more books, and her sofa was soft and huge and comfy. Daddy's sofa was hard, and if you sat on it wrong you sometimes felt the springs poking you in the bottom.
Daddy looked over the movies and smiled. On the other hand, Trevor guessed DVDs and couches didn't really matter. If his daddy had been there, Trevor would have spent the weekend in a cardboard box.
Besides, Mommy didn't do the mail thing with him, and she didn't like to ride bikes, and her yard was so small you could hardly play in it without the neighbors coming out to shoo you away.
"How bout Back to the Future?" Daddy said.
That was one of Trevor's favorites. He thought he must have watched it about a zillion times, and he wouldn't mind watching it again tonight. But not yet. "Daddy," he said.
Daddy looked back at him.
"Can we do the mail first?"
"Ohhh," Daddy said, slapping his leg. "I almost forgot." He picked up his hot dog again, jammed the chewed end between his lips, and waved his hand in a way that Trevor knew meant he could go ahead and start.
Trevor leaned over and took the stack of mail in both hands. Trevor had let Daddy think the mail thing was just a game, something fun to do, but to Trevor it was more serious than that. It gave him a chance to practice reading hard words---not the easy ones like dog and cat and run from his readers---but it wasn't only the reading. The mail game, really, gave Trevor a chance to see if Daddy got the same kinds of latefees Mommy did.
He mouthed the words in the top-left corner of the first envelope for a few seconds before saying, "Discover Card."
"Credit Card Junker," said Daddy, which was part of the game Trevor had let him create. Credit Card Junkers were immediately crumpled into a ball and tossed into the nearest trashcan. Trevor squeezed the envelope between his hands until he'd turned it into a wad about the size of a baseball and threw it one-handed toward the trashcan beside the television on the other side of the room.
"Swish," Daddy said and put down the hot dog long enough to give Trevor a quick little clap. "Next."
Trevor recognized this one. It was from Chase.
When Trevor read off the name, Daddy said, "Bill," and Trevor blew a raspberry at the little plastic window on the front. Just another part of the game. He handed the bill to his daddy, who tossed it unopened onto his side of the coffee table.
The next was a catalog from Victoria's Secret, which Trevor used to think was a kind of comic book for grownups. Victoria's Secret, he knew now, was an underwear store for mommies. The catalog went in the trash too, and Trevor knew he shouldn't look inside it because it wasn't nice to look at other people's mommies in their underwear. He threw it at the trashcan but missed by a mile.
"Oops," said Daddy. "Airball."
Trevor hopped off the couch and picked up the catalog. In its trip through the air, the cover had flopped open, and before Trevor could get it closed again, he saw a blonde-haired lady with no bra, covering her upstairs privates with her arm. Her strange pink undies reminded him of the holey, spiderweb-like things his mom called doilies. Did his mom wear these kinds of undies? He didn't know. Anytime he'd ever accidentally seen her in her underwear, they'd been the regular kind, similar to his own except smoother and without the pictures. He guessed maybe Daddy knew, but he didn't ask.
There was one more bill, another catalog (this one from a hat store, which seemed silly because his daddy never wore hats), and two more Credit Card Junkers. Trevor threw away all but the second bill, missing the trashcan only once more. As far as he could tell, there had been no latefees, and that was good.
Daddy had finished his first hot dog and started on the second. He had some ketchup on the dip between his bottom lip and his chin, which was icky and funny at the same time. Daddy bit into the second dog, and Trevor realized he was maybe a little hungry, too. Not for ketchupy, mustardy hot dogs, of course---he'd rather eat boogers---but they'd talked about popcorn earlier. Some hot, buttery popcorn sounded tasty and a half.
While his dad finished eating, Trevor took the Back to the Future DVD from its case and inserted it into the player on the shelf beneath the television. While the menu screen loaded, he went into the kitchen and pawed through the cabinet beside the stove until he found the half-full box of popcorn. Butter-flavored, which he liked, but not the movie-theater kind, which he liked more. Still, his mouth was watering already. He took a single pack and pushed the rest of the box back into the cupboard, accidentally knocking a can of olives off their shelf and into a frying pan. The can clanged against the pan and rattled to a stop.
"Everything okay?" Daddy asked from the living room.
"Yes." He re-shelved the can and ripped the plastic off the popcorn.
"Let me know if you need some help," said Daddy.
But Trevor didn't need any help. It was just popcorn, and he wasn't a little baby. He stood on his tiptoes to stick the bag in the microwave and pushed the button marked with the steaming popcorn bag. One nice thing about Daddy's house was that the microwave was extra easy to use.
He was watching the microwave door when the face popped into the window on the other side of the room. He saw it only as a reflection, the way you saw yourself when you were brushing your teeth in the bathroom, but somehow that made it even scarier. For one terrible second, he thought he would make another mess in his pants. He had just enough time to think how bad that would be, twice in one day, and then the window broke and he was screaming.
---:---:---:---
Dave crept across the porch feeling like he'd stumbled into a tanning salon.
What was with all the lights?
On the floorboards around him, a splotchy, black puddle of shadows spread like spilled ink. His shadows, all starting at his feet and leaking away from him in different directions. Dave wondered momentarily at the physics of being at once both bathed in light and steeped in shadows, but gave up on the thought after very little real consideration. He didn't care about the damn shadows, he just wanted the boy, and the lights meant the Pullmans had finally come home.
Things might not be working out as he'd originally intended, but he was making due.
He felt heat at his back and found red-hot coals in the grill pushed to the corner of the porch. Dinnertime. Hot dogs, from the smell of it. Little bits of meat still sizzled on the blackened grill.
Georgie and Manny stood in the grass on the other side of the porch railing. Dave looked at the boy and motioned for him to stay put. Georgie said nothing, made no returning gesture, only stood there with the leash twisted around his fingers and wrist and his hair blowing in the night breeze. His head had stopped bleeding, but his forehead and nose had turned black with the blood he'd already spilled. Dave wondered if he had any antiseptic back home. He'd have to get the boy thoroughly cleaned up.
On the grass beside Georgie, Manny looked from Dave to the boy before plopping down on his belly.
"Good boy," Dave whispered and turned back to the house. He pulled one of the knives from his pants.
Dave pressed his face up against the nearest screen window, feeling the mesh material rub away at the caked blood on his nose. Inside, the boy stood in front of the microwave and watched popcorn through the small viewing window.
Dave watched Davy, thinking how strange it felt to spy on yourself, to see your replacement before he knew that's what he was.
He could have stood there and watched for hours---it wouldn't have been the first time---but his watching days had ended. He slammed the butt of his knife into the glass, and it tinkled across the kitchen floor inside.
Davy screamed. Dave smiled. He used the business end of the knife to cut out the screen and brushed away the remaining shards of glass. He hoisted himself up and through the shattered window and past the billowing curtains.
Where was the man? Daddy Pullman? Dave moved to grab the boy before things could get complicated, but the little sucker moved fast, and Dave slipped on the mess of glass with his first attempted step. If he had fallen, he might very well have impaled himself on his knife, ended everything right then and there when he was only halfway done, but he managed to throw out his hands and catch his balance. The glass beneath him cracked, crumbled, as if he were walking across the surface of a mostly frozen pond.
The smell of popcorn filled the small kitchen. The microwave whirred and kernels popped. He turned his head just enough to see the collection of crayon drawings on the refrigerator. He'd made those. Or rather, the new him had.
In the other room, he heard frantic scrambling, the sound of some heavy piece of furniture scooting across a bare floor. Tearing his eyes away from the drawings and cursing himself for losing his concentration, he pulled out his second knife and hurried into the doorway between the two rooms.
The Pullmans were gone.
---:---:---:---
Mike had never believed in the kind of instinct you read about in books and saw in the movies. In his football days, he'd learned to go with his gut, to dive right when he sensed the ball might head that direction, or to jump just before an opposing player dove for his legs, but that had been a cause-and-effect thing, reflexes more than instinct, movements he could perform only because he'd honed his body and his senses, but more importantly because he'd been a kid---sixteen, seventeen years old---and in his prime.
You sensed things, you reacted. Nothing more.
But on that night, hearing the sounds of breaking glass and Trevor screaming, Mike was on his feet and alert before his brain could possibly have registered the oncoming trouble, as if he'd been granted the temporary gift of precognition.
Trevor scurried into the room like he was on the run from a pack of wild dogs, and Mike didn't hesitate. He pushed the coffee table out of the way, almost knocking over the TV, which wobbled dangerously before coming to rest pointing off at an angle. He was already running when he jerked Trevor off his feet and squeezed him to his chest. Behind him, whether because it had come unplugged or simply broken, the TV darkened, the Back to the Future menu fading into nothingness like a DeLorean doing eighty-eight miles an hour.
Mike carried his still-screaming son out of the living room and down the hall to his bedroom, the only room in the house with a lock. Trevor's arms clutched Mike's neck so tightly that for a second he couldn't breathe. He reached up a hand and clamped it over Trevor's mouth, not really understanding why, just wanting to keep the boy quiet, keep him from giving away their position.
Giving away their position? The thought was crazy. They weren't at war. Yet still Mike ran, closing the bedroom door quietly behind them.
Locked inside the room, temporarily safe from whoever or whatever had invaded the house, Mike pried away the boy's arms and sucked in a long breath.
Whoever was in the house? Whatever? What was wrong with him?
Maybe he had gone crazy. Couldn't it have been a bird or a bat breaking through the window? Trevor had freaked out a little, and Mike could understand that (he probably would have done the same thing), but surely they'd overreacted a bit, the two of them locked in the bedroom and hiding from some unseen presence like a couple of idiot characters in a horror movie.
Except, as his brain caught up with his body, he realized he wasn't crazy, that he'd simply reacted to something he only just now fully registered: footsteps.
Someone (or maybe more than one someone) had broken into the house, and he or she or they were moving this way.
Trevor whined, and Mike shushed him more harshly than he'd intended. Before the boy could start crying, Mike took him by the hand and led him to the other side of the room, to the window.
"Listen," he said. He grabbed Trevor's shoulder and used his other hand to hold the boy's chin, making sure he was looking at him. "I want you to go to my workshop, okay? Don't turn on the lights. Just go inside and wait for me to come get you." He waited for some sign of understanding. "Okay?"
Finally, Trevor nodded.
Mike opened the window and pushed the drapes aside. The screen came off easily enough, but Mike didn't bother easing it out of the frame, chose instead to simply kick it free. He could deal with the repairs later. Right now, he had more important things than window screens to worry about.
He lifted Trevor through the window, leaned his head out after him, and whispered, "The garage. Go now."
For a moment, Trevor simply stood there, not moving, maybe in shock, maybe confused, certainly scared.
The footsteps came to the door and stopped just outside.
"Trevor, please." Mike reached out a hand and prodded his son in the back.
After one last second of uncertainty, Trevor looked back at Mike and ran.
Behind Mike, the door burst open.
---:---:---:---
Zach considered letting the dog go. If he did, at least the animal would have the chance to return home, to run back to the girl whose nose the crazy guy had ruined. But Zach had no way of knowing what the dog would do. What if it ran into the house instead? And what if Crazy Dave realized something was going on before Zach could sneak up behind him? He couldn't risk that, so he tied the dog's leash to the porch railing with a good strong knot, promising him it wouldn't be for long.
"We'll get you home," he said. "Just be quiet for me, okay?"
He didn't expect the dog to understand, fully prepared himself for a barrage of barking the second he'd gone out of sight, but the dog almost seemed to comprehend the situation. At any rate, he didn't bark, and Zach scrambled onto the porch and into the kitchen through the broken window still owning the element of surprise.
The kitchen smelled like popcorn, and Zach's stomach growled against his will. He'd hardly eaten all day, couldn't remember what, if anything, he'd had for lunch. He resisted the urge to open the microwave door, though the popcorn smell was obviously coming from inside, and it wouldn't have taken him long to swallow a couple of mouthfuls. He had a chance to end this, to save himself and possibly others. He looked away from the microwave.
He moved as quietly as he could, for the most part dodging the scattered chunks of glass underfoot.
When he'd taken the knife from the girl's kitchen, he'd tucked it into the waistband of his pants with the handle jammed between his buttocks and the wide blade flush against his spine. Now, walking through this second kitchen, he could have kicked himself.
A mile through the dark woods, a butcher knife centimeters away from shredding his innards, and for what? He could have grabbed a knife from one of these drawers just as easily .
But, of course, he'd had no way of knowing that. At the time, grabbing the knife had been a last-ditch effort at some kind of backup plan. For all he knew, it might have been the last time the psycho left him alone for days, or weeks, or ever.
If only someone would have picked up the dang phone. I was so close to getting real help.
He pulled up his shirt far enough to remove the concealed weapon, pulled the knife free and held it out in front of him with both hands like it was some sort of huge, heavy sword rather than a simple kitchen utensil. Where was everyone?
He stepped into the living room. The coffee table was pushed away from where it should have been. A couple of envelopes lay crinkled on the floor, a dirty shoe print on one and what could have been bright blood on the other.
He heard a loud bang from the other end of the house and thought, gunshot. At this point, he was pretty sure Davy didn't have a gun, but maybe this Pullman guy had surprised Davy with both barrels of a shotgun. Could his abductor be lying gut shot right now against a hallway wall?
Probably not.
Zach's sweaty hands slid around the knife's handle, so slippery he was sure he'd drop the thing before he could ever use it. He moved from the living room to the narrow hallway leading off it. Splintered wood littered the floor ahead.
"Ggaahhhhh."
Somehow, although it was just a strange sound that could have come from anyone, Zach knew it had not come from Davy. Screwing up what courage he had left, he ran for the doorway, holding the knife out in front of him, screaming a war cry and not even realizing it.
---:---:---:---
Dave's foot tingled as the door flew open, and he had enough time to wonder if maybe he'd broken a toe.
The man at the window turned to face him, his eyes wide and his whole body trembling.
The boy was gone.
Dave saw the open window and rolled his eyes. Didn't anybody ever just give up?
"Where'd he go?" he asked and advanced on the man with the knives pointed out from his hips like a pair of revolvers.
Pullman said nothing, but when Dave came close enough, the man threw a wild punch that hit Dave right in the space between his eye and his ear. Light flashed in Dave's head, and for a second he thought he was back out on the porch. He shook himself and growled. Then, before anything worse could happen, he growled and plunged one of the knives into Pullman.
---:---:---:---
The blade ripped into Mike's side just above his left hipbone. He felt heat and electricity, as if he'd been wounded not by a hunting knife but with some futuristic ray gun. The intruder pulled the knife back, grinning. It dripped Mike's blood.
He tried to stay on his feet, but the combination of shock and agonizing pain brought him to his knees.
So this was it. The man swung the second knife into view, and Mike wondered how many cuts it took before you stopped sensing the pain.
When the slender young boy came running through the door with his own gleaming blade poked out in front of him, Mike wanted to scream, No. Get away, Trevor.
Except he wasn't Trevor. He wasn't his son. Mike didn't know who in the hell he was.
---:---:---:---
Zach felt the butcher knife glance off Davy's rib and knew he'd screwed it up.
Davy still screamed, but when Zach tried sticking the man with the knife again, Davy knocked the knife out of Zach's hand and grabbed him by the front of his shirt.
---:---:---:---
Mike screamed.
---:---:---:---
Dave screamed.
---:---:---:---
Zach screamed.
---:---:---:---
And that's when things got really crazy.
TWENTY-ONE
LIBBY WASN'T EXACTLY petite, but Marshall still had an inch or two on her and at least twenty-five pounds. Unfortunately for him, what he also had was a weak spot, the same weak spot every man had, a weak spot that didn't currently realize it was weak and jutted into her hip instead of retreating turtle-like into Marshall's pelvis like it should have.
Libby rammed her thigh into the man's crotch so hard it hurt her; the ensuing crunch sounded very much like what you get when you stomp a cockroach.
Given the way Marshall had pawed at her breasts and dry-humped her leg, someone who'd missed the blow to his testicles might almost have confused the look on his face for one of orgasmic pleasure. His mouth opened into a wet, perfectly round O, and his eyes rolled up into his head as if looking for his own brain.
Nothing up there, Libby thought and pushed the pervert away.
Marshall stumbled back, and his facial features drooped to reveal the pure agony hiding behind the mask of ecstasy.
"Hhhhnnnnnn," he said, rasping harder than an octogenarian. His hands found his groin and cupped it gingerly. He shifted from side to side, looking less like an old man than a little boy who needed to use the restroom, and although she would rather not have associated thoughts of her son with this disgusting situation, she couldn't help but think of Trevor. Is this how he'd looked during his dash to the Mountain View restrooms? Had he danced uncomfortably before rushing away from the carousel?
Libby moved away from the counter, still holding the water-damaged paperback, feeling better, safer, though still not safe enough. She wiped a hand across her face and felt Marshall's sticky saliva. Although he was no longer standing within arm's reach, Libby still felt the man's fingers on her breasts, his erection on her hip, his tongue in her ear and probing her lips. This sort of thing had never happened to her until today. Before Mike, she'd only ever kissed two other men (two other boys), and since the divorce nothing had gotten that far. No one in her life had more than looked at her inappropriately. Nausea, fear, and fury combined to create a single, horrible sensation. Her heart thumped more wildly than it had when she'd lost Trevor, and she had trouble breathing with any sort of regular rhythm.
Marshall had stopped his dancing but still clutched at himself and gasped. Libby circled around behind him. She'd had a scary thought. She'd hit him hard, but how hard? What if some of this was just an act, a ploy to lower her defenses while he prepared another attack? She'd never hit anyone in the crotch, except maybe for a cursory bump or two in the marital bed, and really wasn't sure how much it might hurt. She'd seen a guy take a football to the groin on TV, had once heard a secondhand story from an elementary school friend who'd accidentally pushed her little brother into a doorjamb, but she'd never been there, never heard the groans and seen the doubling over and the swaying.
She wouldn't take any chances. She sidled over to the knife drawer and slid it open far enough to get her hand inside, never taking her eyes off Marshall, simultaneously expecting him to stay where he was and preparing for him to spin around and lunge at her.
She cut the first knuckle on her index finger, then the tip of her pinkie, both shallow wounds hardly worse than paper cuts, before finding one of the knives' handles and wrapping her hand around it. The drawer slid out another couple of inches when she pulled her fist through the opening, bumping into her rump and startling her. She almost dropped the thing in her hand, which turned out to be, much to her dismay, not a knife but a potato peeler.
Marshall turned around, and whether he'd exaggerated his injury or not, he'd apparently recovered fast. He had one hand still cupped around his dangly bits and an incongruous grin on his face. His glasses had slipped down to the tip of his nose, but rather than reach up and straighten them, he simply peered over the tops.
"You cunt," he said, and coming from his lips, the word sounded almost unbelievably wrong. In his slightly rumpled three-piece suit and thick glasses, he looked like a university professor or a used car salesman, not like someone who assaulted you and then called you a cunt.
When he saw the things in Libby's hands, his grin expanded, and he said, "What are you gonna do, read me to death or peel me?" He took a step in her direction.
Libby considered tossing the peeler back in the drawer, replacing it with something at least semi-dangerous, but she knew if she did that Marshall would be on her in a second. The potato peeler had a pointed tip at least. If nothing else, she could jam it in his throat.
She held the makeshift weapon between her breasts, felt her fluttering heartbeat against her clenched, white-knuckled fingers. He lunged at her one-handed, never letting go of his groin, and she moved without thinking. She twisted her body to the side, dropping the book on the floor at her feet, and although it would have been a simple thing to ram the peeler into his exposed temple, maybe get a little bit of brain, she used her elbow instead, clipped him on the back of the head and sent him flying into one of the cupboard doors.
The door was solid wood. So when she heard breaking glass, she knew it must be his glasses and hoped against all common decency that he'd get an eyeful of shards.
Not that Marshall deserved any decent thoughts. No, he deserved to be blinded so that he could never ogle another woman in his miserable, disgusting life.
Libby backed away, not wanting to, wanting to rush him and stab him and kick him in his thing again but unable to control her legs. Marshall turned to her and glared from behind fractured eyepieces. Despite the cracked lenses, Marshall's eyes looked fine. Wide, angry, almost predatory, but uninjured.
His nose, on the other hand, was a disaster. It only made sense, she guessed. Unless you were moving backward, your nose would always be the first part of your face to arrive, even if you were headed flat into the door of a kitchen cabinet. Especially if. Marshall's nose favored his right side by about half an inch, and the bridge had become red and distorted. He'd bled a little, just a trickle that ran to his lip and then down the lip's upper rim.
"You're a worthless tease," Marshall said, sounding like he was in the middle of a two week cold. "I never should have come here."
No shit, Libby thought, but she said, "Leave. Right now." She hefted the potato peeler, and Marshall grinned. He moved, not toward her but in the direction of the door.
"Cunt," he said again and hobbled out of the kitchen.
Libby wanted to stay where she was, or maybe drop onto the floor and cry, but she had to be sure he was actually leaving, watch the door slam behind him with her own two eyes, otherwise she'd never feel comfortable at home again. Thoughts of a bloody-nosed Marshall leaping out at her from a dark closet while she changed her clothes or from behind the shower curtain while she sat on the toilet sent shivers through her body, and she hurried to the doorway.
She caught just a glimpse of his inappropriate suit when he exited the house, but that was enough.
Before she let herself do anything else, Libby took a tour of the house, potato peeler still in hand, locking all the doors and windows and pulling the drapes tight. By the time she'd finished, her heart had slowed to normal speed and she could breathe regularly again, but she still felt dirty and more than a little scared.
Stupid. She had nothing to be scared of. He hadn't actually done anything except slobber and feel her up a little. Besides, she'd fought him off, kicked him in the nuts and broken his nose, for God's sake. If anything, she should have felt powerful, proud.
She didn't.
In the kitchen, she replaced the unused potato peeler and retrieved the water-damaged book from the floor where she'd dropped it. Later, she could press the book under some heavy dictionaries and blow dry it to keep it from warping too badly, but it would never look quite normal again.
Hopefully, she thought, neither will Marshall.
She wondered why he'd done it, what he'd actually expected to happen. Marshall had always seemed a little strange in a nerdy sort of way, but until today she'd thought of his sometimes-odd behavior as eccentric, unconventional. She'd never realized he was crazy. Did he think he'd woo her with his cheap flowers and his rumpled suit or win her over with his use of archaic coffee terminology? Maybe he'd been on drugs.
Libby shivered and returned to the staircase where she'd left the beer and the rest of her bath gear. The ice in the plastic bucket had melted a little, but not as much as she would have expected. How long had Marshall been here? It seemed much longer than it probably had been, seemed like hours.
She wasn't sure she still wanted the bath. How could she ever expect to relax after what had just happened? But at the same time, she needed the bath. She felt like she'd swum through a sea of slugs and dried off with a couple of dirty diapers. Plus, her body was still tense from her experience at the mall.
God, what a day.
She gathered her book, her candles, and her beer and climbed the stairs. From the bedroom, Paul McCartney sang a love song, and although it should have seemed ironically inappropriate, Libby found it soothing.
She hurried toward the music and away from any thoughts of what had happened downstairs.
TWENTY-TWO
TREVOR HAD JUST locked himself in his daddy's workshop when he heard the screaming. Long, terrible screams. Like somebody had just dumped a truckload of bowling balls into a room full of people with no shoes on. On top of that, the barks, almost as loud, coming from what sounded like a pretty big doggy.
Trevor wondered if he should go back, maybe take one of his daddy's tools and use it to attack the man who'd come through their kitchen window. But he knew if his daddy was hurt, he wouldn't want Trevor to come back, and he wouldn't want him messing with his tools. Trevor would probably only end up cutting off his own hand or shooting a nail into his head, and what good would that do?
He would stay, obey Daddy, and try to pretend the screams weren't happening. Only he wished he knew why he couldn't turn on the lights. It was so dark in here, darker than under the covers with the lights turned off and your eyes closed, and tables and machines and bits and pieces of Daddy's furniture were all over the place. He walked with his hands held out in front of him, the way the zombies and the mummies did on the late-night movies his daddy sometimes let him see, although Mommy said they would warp his mind. He wasn't exactly sure what it meant to get your mind warped, but he was pretty sure his was still in its regular shape because his head hadn't changed at all, and how could your mind warp if your head stayed the same?
A teeny bit of moonshine came in through one of the garage windows---one of the only ones not covered all the way up with Daddy's things---enough light that Trevor could eventually make out some of the shadowy shapes. He found the table where his daddy put holes in the furniture pieces and crawled underneath. Sawdust covered the floor, and although it felt soft under his hands and knees, it also made him sneeze and got into his mouth. Trevor wanted to spit the stuff out, except then he might crawl into his own loogie, which would only make things worse. Instead, he settled for pulling his shirt away from his neck and licking his tongue across the inside. It didn't get off all the dust or all the bad taste, but it was a little better at least.
He tried to flip himself into a sitting position and ended up bumping his head on the bottom of the table. For a second, bright sparks flashed in his head, and he thought someone must have turned on the lights after all, but then the lights disappeared and Trevor realized they were only the pain lights you saw in the cartoons, except not in the shapes of stars or little birdies.
He rubbed his head, which felt worse than the time he'd fallen out of the tire swing in the back yard, scooting deeper beneath the table as he did so and feeling the sawdust slide beneath his bottom.
Would the man in the kitchen window warp his mind? He didn't know. The movies hadn't done it, but the kitchen man was a lot scarier than the zombies or the mummies or the werewolves.
Trevor heard another bark and jumped.
Maybe the guy was a werewolf, come to bite him and turn him into a werewolf too, or maybe just use him for food, eat out all his guts. Trevor wrapped his arms around his knees and waited for something to come crashing in after him, probably with long furry arms and claws for fingers and his daddy on its breath.
---:---:---:---
Dave kicked the boy's knife across the room. It slid beneath the bed frame and clinked against the baseboard on the bed's other side. The knife wound in his chest wasn't bad---he could tell just from the feel of it---but it might require some self-applied stitches later and would certainly sting for a while. Still, he supposed the boy could have found a gun.
He turned to Georgie, surprised to find him standing fully erect, his fists at his sides and his chest puffed. He would have expected crouching and crying, blubbering, streamers of snot dangling from the nose. He supposed by now he should have counted on more from the boy, although he wondered if the original Georgie would have done the same thing. A small boy against a grown man with two wickedly sharp knives. He supposed Georgie would have---otherwise, how could this one be his replacement?
Still, Georgie wouldn't have stabbed his daddy. Georgie loved Daddy, and Daddy loved him back.
He stared Georgie down for another few seconds, not knowing what to think, and then made a sudden decision.
At the girl's house, where he'd been boarding Manny, the hostage ploy had worked like a charm. It was funny what some people would do to save the lives of perfect strangers. Funny and sad. And pathetic.
Dave hurtled himself at Georgie, circled around behind him before the boy could blink, wrapped an arm around his chest, and brought one of the knives to his jugular.
The man at the window, Pullman, holding his hip and grimacing, threw out a splay-fingered hand and groaned. As if he could reach us, Dave thought, grinning at the helpless helping hand.
"I know you don't know this boy," Dave said, though he actually knew no such thing, only assumed. "But I also know you don't want his blood sprayed across your bedroom and his guts in a puddle at your feet."
"Leave him alone," Pullman said, almost whispering, and dropped his outstretched hand like he'd used up the last of his energy.
Georgie squirmed, and he pulled him in tighter. "Tell me where the boy went, and I won't hurt a one of them. Promise."
The man said nothing.
"But if you don't," he said, "you'll pray for me to butcher them both, just to quit their screaming." He flicked the tip of the knife enough to get Georgie's attention, and the boy squealed.
Blood oozed from Pullman's hip, but not enough, not much more than bled from Dave's own wound. He raised his hand again, but only about a foot before letting it flop back onto the ground. "Let him go. I---"
"Which," Dave said, and Georgie squealed again. "Way."
Pullman twisted his wrist to point. "Neighbors," he said. "I sent him to the neighbors, you son of a bitch."
Dave smiled and loosened the knife a little. "Liar."
At this word, Georgie tightened. It was funny the way they did that, got all tight when they thought they were going to take a knife to the throat. Funny ha ha. As if Dave would actually kill him, as if he hadn't gone through so much to save him in the first place, and as if flexing his muscles would do anything to protect him from a well-honed knife if Dave did start slicing.
Pullman shook his head, or tried to. "No. I sent him over to---"
"No you didn't. There aren't neighbors that way for five miles. If you sent him anywhere, it woulda been the little girl's house." Dave shook his own head, looking ashamed. "But I reckon he's still here, hiding, and you just killed yourself two little boys."
What he did with the knife, he did too quickly for anyone but himself to see: he drew the blade across Georgie's throat from ear to ear and then lifted the knife high into the air, the way a magician will do with his wand after he's just completed a magic trick. The boy fell away from him, and the man pulled himself to his feet and charged, just how Dave had thought he might, moving low to the ground like a tackling football player.
Dave shot a well-aimed foot at Pullman's face and caught him right on the chin. A loud clicking of teeth and a woof of air followed, like the man was really just a man-shaped balloon and Dave had popped him. He fell to the floor and didn't move. Stunned, or maybe unconscious, but out of action either way.
On the floor, Georgie grabbed at his throat, wheezing and flailing and making such a spectacle of himself that Dave had to chuckle.
"Come on," Dave said and prodded him a little with the same foot he'd used on the Pullman man's face. "You're not cut."
Georgie's flailing continued. He either hadn't heard, or hadn't understood.
"You're not cut," Dave repeated. "I only got you with the dull side." To prove it, he held out the knife for Georgie's inspection. Except maybe that hadn't been such a good idea. Georgie saw the knife and screamed. Dave looked at it himself, confused about what he was seeing until he remembered the blood dripping from the weapon had come from Pullman's hip.
Dave shook his head and pocketed the blade. He didn't bother saying anything else, just reached down, scooped up the uninjured (or at least not recently injured) boy, and flung him over his shoulder. Below, Pullman might as well have been one of the floorboards. Dave walked across him and carried Georgie through the open window.
Dave moved along Pullman's supernova of a porch, Georgie beating on his back with his fists. The blows almost felt nice, the way Dave imagined a massage might feel. Personally, he'd never gotten so much as a foot rub except from himself and Mr. Boots, who'd sometimes rubbed more than that.
No, Dave told himself, don't think about that. His breathing had become suddenly heavy, and he realized he was squeezing Georgie much more tightly than was probably safe. Just forget it.
He trudged to the corner of the porch and stared through the darkness at the disconnected garage.
Yes. Of course.
On the other side of the house, the dog barked up a storm. Dave wondered if dogs ever got sore throats, if they made doggy throat lozenges or cough syrup. Surely not, but you never knew. People got a little crazy sometimes about their animals---he'd once watched a woman slather sunscreen on a thin-haired cat. He'd been fifteen at the time, and had giggled so loud he thought the woman almost noticed him in his hiding spot. Later, he'd caught the cat and slow roasted it over a campfire before bringing it back in a paper sack and leaving it on the woman's front steps with a note reading: must not have used enough sunscreen.
The cat had died hard, yowling until long after the point at which it should have quieted, but Dave hadn't felt especially bad about it. He'd never been much of a cat person.
Georgie had gone into another one of his periods of silent motionlessness. Dave removed him from his shoulder, lowered him into the grass on the other side of the porch railing, and then hopped over the barrier himself, the stab wound burning with every move he made, every breath he took. Once beside Georgie, Dave pressed his hand between the boy's shoulder blades and steered him toward the property's smaller structure. Their shoes slapped against the dewy grass, and they both shivered, Georgie a little more so than Dave.
Manny barked again, a series of three yelps followed by another pair, and Dave could only assume the boy had tied him up somewhere. They didn't sound like the barks of a happy dog. To Dave, those barks said, Let me loose, let me go, I wanna play, too.
Dave reached up and touched his chest, pressed in on it but didn't rub. Rubbing only would have worsened the pain, torn the hole bigger and maybe loosened whatever thin membrane held in the rest of his blood. He'd killed the kid's old mother for much less, but that had been different. She was an adult, and a woman, and should have known better. Georgie had just done what any kid would do. He couldn't kill Georgie. He wouldn't. If he did, everything else would be pointless, and he'd never have another chance. Today was the day. His most important birthday ever.
He pushed the boy to the large rolling door and reached down to grab the handle.
Locked.
He yanked at it harder, trying to pop it open. Considering the flimsiness of their locks, some of these garage doors might as well have been held shut with scotch tape, but this one held tight, didn't even rattle. If there had been windows, Dave would have pressed his face against them and peered inside, but the door's series of solid panels completely concealed the interior.
Dave told Georgie to lead him around the side of the garage, and the boy obeyed.
If the new Davy was hiding inside, he'd hear them out here, would probably be scared, but that was okay. By the end of the night, little Davy would be safer than he'd been in a long, long time.
Georgie led him past two small windows, both covered from the inside. They circled around the back of the garage and found the regular-sized door on the other side. Dave eased Georgie aside and tried the knob. Locked. Without stopping to think, he swiveled and kicked the door just beside the knob. The wood cracked, but nothing else broke. Dave kicked again, and this time two cracks followed: first the door exploding inward and then it rebounding off a desk or shelf halfway through its swing. Dave could have seen the splintered doorjamb by only the light of the moon, but with the added illumination from the porch, it might as well have been the main attraction in a jeweler's display case. He grinned at it and walked by.
Georgie didn't follow him, which was good. In his state of confusion, the boy might have thought about grabbing something and using it against him. Dave didn't want to consider what he might do if that happened. Anyway, the boy wasn't exactly a cheetah; if he ran, Dave would hear him in plenty of time to catch up.
He smelled cut cedar and pine, the thicker scents of paint, glue, and machine grease, but saw none of it. Not yet. He didn't know where the light switch was, or if there was a switch at all. For all he knew, you controlled the lights in here with a pull chain or a breaker on a panel board. He'd watched the main house plenty, had entered it several times when the Pullmans were away, but he hadn't bothered investigating the workshop. He'd peeked in one time, just a perfunctory look through the only bit of unblocked window he'd found, took in enough to realize it was a workshop and not a garage, seen the tools and the wood and the half-formed furniture. But he hadn't studied it, hadn't thought he needed to. Now, despite all the planning he'd done, he wished he'd done a little more.
Still, his eyes adjusted abnormally fast, and it didn't take long for him to spot the tips of two sneakers trembling in the sawdust beneath a table to his right.
"Hey," he said and bumped purposefully into the corner of the table, feigning blindness. "You okay in here?"
The shoes stopped trembling and became very still.
"It's okay to be scared," he said. "I would have been." He took a step forward. "Which means it would be wrong if you weren't."
The shoes pulled back and disappeared from Dave's sight, but he didn't worry. Where could the boy go?
Nowhere, of course. Pullman would have been better off if he had sent him to the neighbors.
Dave stooped, then knelt, bending until he could peek beneath the table's surface and into Davy's hiding spot. He imagined the boy triggering a drill and jamming it into his eye, or coming at his throat with a pair of utility knives, but no attack came. The boy sat hugging his legs, wide eyed, looking as if he'd planned only on staying hidden forever and ever. Dave thought that was probably the smartest thing he could have done.
Dave had expected violence today---had, to some extent, been looking forward to it---but now he'd had enough. He'd been punched, kicked, scratched, stabbed, had rocks thrown at his head and a dog's teeth inches away from the softest parts of his neck. He deserved a break.
He was half tempted to knock the kid out, not give him a chance to fight back, but he knew he couldn't bring himself to do that. The kid was him, after all, or soon would be.
Instead of grabbing for the child, Dave dropped into a sitting position and folded his hands in his lap. "You like dogs?" he asked. He didn't need to ask, because he knew he liked dogs, remembered liking them despite the way their breath sometimes stunk when they licked your face.
Davy looked out at him, looked right into his eyes, as if he had Dave's own superb night vision. "Where's my daddy?"
Dave had answers all ready for these types of questions, though he had hoped the mention of Manny would divert the boy's attention. "I'm going to take you to him," he said, which was true in some ways and only a slight stretch of the truth in others. "He's hurt." This was a fact no matter how you looked at it.
"You hurt him." It wasn't a question, but neither was it an accusation.
"Not exactly," Dave said, "but I am going to fix m...your daddy all up. Promise."
Davy didn't move, smile, or blink. Dave heard rustling from outside, but not running, and wondered what Georgie was up to.
"What do you say?" He focused on the boy beneath the table and smiled, not knowing if Davy could make out the change in his facial features or not. "Georgie and Manny are waiting. We'll all go find your daddy together. Don't you want to be with your daddy?"
"Yes," Davy said, though he still appeared uncertain. "He's not...dead?"
"Heaven forbid," said Dave. "Now come on out of there."
And after only a few more seconds of leg-hugging and frowning, Davy did. He got onto his hands and knees, paying extra close attention to the tabletop above him, and crawled out across the sawdust. Dave didn't try to help him because he knew doing so would only scare Davy. Young children were sometimes that way, like wild animals. If you stood still, didn't give them any reason to fear you, they'd eventually relax, but the second you inched in their direction, they were a mile away before you knew they were gone.
Dave waited for Davy to get to his feet, brush the dust off his shorts, knees, and palms, and move between Dave and the door. Only then did he stand. The boy walked toward the broken door, and Dave watched him closely, especially his hands, still expecting him to pick up a screwdriver or a hammer or a saw. When the boy ran instead, Dave sighed and shook his head.
Why me?
---:---:---:---
This was his fault. All of it. Zach sat against the outside of the garage, so chilly now his teeth actually chattered.
Obviously, his crappy line in the dirt hadn't been enough. He'd gotten another kid kidnapped and the kid's dad maybe killed because he hadn't been clever enough to think of some other way to warn them. Whatever happened to the two of them, and whatever happened to Zach himself, would be as much his own fault as the psycho's.
He pulled at a tuft of weeds growing along the garage's foundation; something pricked his finger, a thorn or some sort of insect, he assumed. Did bees come out at night? He didn't know. He looked at his finger, saw a droplet of blood, and sucked it clean before he pawed through the area again, more carefully this time.
If he'd caught a thorn or a rock, it probably wouldn't matter, but the prick could also have been a spider's bite. Those things could be dangerous, deadly. Not that he guessed he could do much about it anyway. It wasn't like Crazy Dave would bring him to the hospital. But maybe, if it had been a spider, he could at least try to suck out the poison. Could you do that with spiders, or was it only snakes?
He pushed aside the weeds he'd picked at. Beneath them, a long, sharp piece of metal pointed up at the sky. A nail. He tugged at it and ended up with a two-foot chunk of wood. Someone had pounded the nail through the wood at an angle, and the wood itself was a weird size, maybe excess cut from the rafters when the garage was built and lost here among the grass and weeds ever since. Who knew?
Zach swung the piece of scrap material through the air. It whizzed, and though it seemed a little flimsy, he thought it would last for at least one good, solid swing. Maybe that was all he'd need.
He heard movement inside and hurried to his feet. He was a natural righty, but he couldn't swing right handed without moving across the open doorway, which might ruin whatever chance he had. Scrambling, he got into position on his side of the door and raised the club over his shoulder. Never in his life could he have hit a baseball like this, but tonight's baseball would be six feet tall with a head almost the size of home plate, and if he couldn't manage that, he might as well take the kidnapper's knife and kill himself. He tensed his arms. When the guy came running through the doorway, he swung his hardest, swung so hard it tingled all the way to his shoulders.
Except it wasn't the guy.
The other boy stumbled forward and came to rest on his back in the grass, the stripe across his forehead bright red and already bubbling blood. The stick in Zach's hands had broken clean in half.
---:---:---:---
Dave saw what happened but thought for a second the kid must have hit his head on the doorjamb, that maybe he hadn't seen where he was going and walked face first into the splinters of ruined wood Dave had left when kicking his way in.
He followed Davy out of the garage and saw Georgie standing there with the broken piece of wood in his hand; he didn't know whether to clout the boy or shake his hand. He settled on neither.
The mark on Davy's head was so well defined that Dave could almost see the wood grain stamped into his skin. It bled, but a little pressure would stop it up easily. He yanked at the sleeve of his shirt three times before it ripped free, then pulled it down over his hand and folded it into a small rectangle.
"Georgie."
The boy stared, mouth opened so wide Dave thought he could have stuck both fists inside.
Dave pressed the pad to Davy's head and waited for a response. None came, and he picked up the smaller boy and cradled him to his chest. "We'll talk about this later," he said. "Go get the dog from wherever you tied him. We're going home."
Georgie didn't move until Dave took a step toward him; then he turned and ran through the grass, pine needles, and fallen leaves.
Clap clap clap.
Dave held the boy to him with his still-sleeved arm and kept the compress tight against his head with the other.
Davy, his Davy.
And only then did Dave realize what had happened. He'd gotten Davy, he'd replaced himself. His name had been Davy, and then Dave, but now it was neither. He was Hank Abbott. And he was Daddy.
---:---:---:---
Fifteen minutes after the intruder absconded with his son, Mike Pullman jerked on the bedroom floor and opened his eyes.
The lower portion of his face felt raw and broken, like he'd tried to eat a land mine. He reached for it, his finger pulling back once before he'd made contact and then a second time after a poke so gentle he wouldn't normally have felt it at all.
Tonight, the soft touch was like a full-body tackle without pads or a helmet. He winced, and the movement of his head hurt him that much more.
In addition to the pain in his face, his hip throbbed where the lunatic had stuck him.
He tried to scream his son's name despite the agony in his jaw and cheeks but couldn't get past the first syllable. He flipped onto his hands and knees and finally wobbled to his feet.
He didn't normally keep a phone in the bedroom, but he'd brought the cordless in from the living room the previous night while making pick-up plans with Libby; it was still here, lying on the bedside table and blinking red.
Low battery.
He tried walking to it, ended up going about forty-five degrees in the wrong direction, and stopped. On the second try, he made it to the phone.
He pressed the talk button with one hand and grabbed his hip with the other. He brought the phone close enough to hear the dial tone but not close enough that it made contact with his face.
Had to hurry before the battery went out on him. He dialed 9-1-1, a service they'd only recently gotten out here in the boonies, which was good because he had no idea what the local number for the sheriff's department might be and didn't want to have to bother with the operator. He waited for someone to pick up. Waited. And waited.
He collapsed on the bed before the woman's voice came onto the line and dropped the phone on the bedspread beside him.
"---emergency---"
It was the only word he heard. "Hemp," he said and then tried again: "Heelmp ee. Help---"
Beep. Beeb beeb.
The phone had gone dead. Mike thought he might as well have joined it.
TWENTY-THREE
LIBBY HAD SCRUBBED her face, ears, and hands three times before stripping, draining an inch or two of water, and lowering herself into the tub. She could have cleaned herself in the bathwater just as easily as in the sink, but she hadn't wanted to soil it. Washing off the creep's saliva and then lounging in the water with it floating all around her naked body would have been like taking a bath in a giant, unflushed toilet. Maybe worse.
The water hadn't yet cooled, which seemed wrong, impossible. In all that time downstairs, her search for the coffee filters, her struggle with Marshall, her frenzied door and window-locking session, the water hadn't cooled a bit. Not that she minded; the bath-salted water was heaven in a tub.
She lit one of her candles, left the others with the book and the matches on the wide ledge between her head and the bucket of beer, and lolled in the water for a long time with her eyes closed, half asleep and savoring the warmth in her back and legs. Almost half an hour passed before she opened her first beer.
From the bedroom, Paul sang on. The CD had started over at least once and maybe twice since she'd put it on. She hadn't heard the album enough times to memorize the track listing, didn't know where in the mix she was, but she knew for sure she'd heard this particular song once already.
For her first beer, she didn't bother with the lime. She wasn't going to savor it, though she probably should have. No, this first one was for chugging. If she got one drink in her system fast, she might relax enough to really enjoy the rest.
Images of Marshall pushed their way into her forethoughts, and despite all her mental attempts, she couldn't shove them all back down into her subconscious. She saw brief glimpses of his shattered glasses and the red mark across his broken nose. She saw the paperbacks fluttering out of his hand like clumsy birds and landing wounded on the countertop and in the sink. She saw the bulge in his pants, which had been surprisingly large, saw the way it throbbed and shifted when he got his hands around her waist, like it was alive down there, trying to chew its way through his trousers.
She took a long swallow of beer, closed her eyes and urged the alcohol to never mind with her liver and kill her brain cells already.
His tongue on her face---she still felt it working its way from her lips to her earlobe and leaving behind a wide, sticky trail.
Oh God. Maybe she should have shoved the potato peeler into his brain while she'd still had the chance. Or maybe she should have shoved it into her own once he'd left. Anything to avoid these god-awful memories.
She finished the beer and tried unsuccessfully to suppress a burp worse than any you'd hear at a Friday night frat party, not that she'd been to any of those in years.
She mentally excused herself before letting loose a second, only slightly less garish belch.
She set the empty bottle down beside the tub. It clinked on the tile. Before she let herself have the second, she lit the rest of her tea lights and distributed them around the tub. She cut into her lime, both the air and the water around her flickering like she was in a pool of molten gold. Lime juice dripped from the fruit as she sectioned it and landed on the unsubmerged slopes of her breasts. She looked down and saw something near her nipple that she hadn't noticed before. A bruise, long and curved around the contour of her chest, finger shaped. Libby shuddered.
The last thing she needed was a visible reminder of the attack, something she would see every time she changed clothes or took a shower, when she was naked and already feeling her most vulnerable. She grabbed a washcloth from beside the bar of soap on the ledge and draped it over the offensive mark. The damp material clung to her chest, its weight comforting. She hadn't realized her breasts were sore until the washcloth began to ease some of the pain.
She opened another beer and twisted one of the lime slices through the mouth. Juice sprayed her check and dribbled down the side of the bottle, but most of it stayed inside the bottle's neck and fell down into the beer along with the misshapen piece of fruit. Libby took a sip and set the bottle on the tub's ledge.
Eyes closed, she leaned back in the water, let her head dip underneath until nothing remained above the surface but her flaring nostrils. Her hair floated up and tickled at her ears, and though she still heard the music from the bedroom, it was muffled and nonsensical. She breathed slowly and reemerged only after the bathwater tried to eek its way into her ear canals. As she broke the surface, the water sluiced off her face, out of her hair, and down her neck to the concealing washcloth. She opened her eyes and sighed.
She hadn't yet opened her book, a mystery by an author whose novels she'd recently discovered---actually more of a comedy than a mystery, if it was anything like the previous volumes in the series---but now she thought a little fiction might do her some good, get her mind off what had happened to her today in the real world.
She'd forgotten to bring a towel to dry her hands, but the bathmat beside the tub lay within reach. She flapped an arm over the edge and brushed against the empty beer on the floor before finding the shaggy mat and grabbing hold of it. She pulled the thing close enough to dry both hands, careful not to get it near any of the open flames, and let it fall back to the ground in a heap when she was through.
The book was a little on the slim side, maybe two or three hundred pages, and the cover felt slick against her fingers. She skipped the reviews and the author's note and the rest of the junk and jumped straight into the action. Thirty pages in, she'd finished her second beer, and the bath had finally begun to cool. She thought about adding a little more hot water and reading another couple of chapters but decided maybe she'd had enough. The bath had been nice, had relaxed her muscles a little and given her a chance to escape, but tempting though it might be, she couldn't spend the rest of her life here, if only because she didn't want raisins for fingers and a belly as scaly as an alligator's.
She didn't have a bookmark, but she abhorred dog-earing, so she committed the page number to memory instead, closed the book, and set it on the floor beside her two empty beers.
She unplugged the drain with her toes and waited for all but the last few inches of water to disappear before sitting up and blowing out her candles.
Thoughts of Trevor popped into her mind. She thought about his dirty shorts and underwear and the embarrassment in his voice when he'd told them he'd messed himself. Then she remembered the carousel, the classical music, the way they'd all ridden together, smiling and laughing. At least their trip to the mall had ended well.
She wondered what her son was up to now, probably playing a board game with Mike or watching TV, maybe sitting in front of an open comic book and studying the pictures. Trevor always studied the comic books, never simply glanced at them. After closing the back cover of any particular issue, he could tell you everything about any character in any frame, right down to the details of their costume. He almost seemed to have a photographic memory, though he'd never shown such ability in any other aspect of his life.
Libby frowned. She'd been looking forward to a night by herself, but now she found herself missing Trevor and, to a lesser extent, Mike. It would have been nice to spend a little time together as a family, even if they weren't exactly a family anymore.
She'd left the towel by the sink while washing the Marshall slime off her face. Now, in order to get to it, she had to traipse across the floor, leaving wet footprints behind her, her still-sore breasts bouncing. She dried herself off at the sink and then wiped at the floor, getting most of the moisture and leaving the rest to evaporate or seep into the grout or whatever it was water eventually did.
She thought she'd call Trevor before he went to sleep, tell him goodnight and blow him a kiss through the mouthpiece. Sometimes, when he was home, she snuck into his room to watch him sleep, tucked him in tight and kissed him on the top of his head before crawling into bed herself. She couldn't do that tonight, but at least she could hear his voice and tell him she loved him.
She wrapped her towel around her body and tied it in a knot near her armpit. She hadn't looked for the bruise, had purposefully looked everywhere except her chest, and now she wondered how long she could pretend the mark wasn't there. Tonight at least, she hoped, please God don't let me dream about that pervert and his wandering hands or about that throbbing mound in his pants. She could have gone the rest of her life without remembering the feel of his stubble on her cheek, but she was afraid both Marshall and his rough face would haunt her dreams for weeks to come. Or months. Hell, she might have nightmares about tonight for the rest of her life.
Bastard. She could only imagine how she'd feel if he'd actually gotten what he came for.
She remembered the daisies, still in their vase in the kitchen. At least she would get some satisfaction when she stomped on the things until they were nothing but green goo running in the indentations of the linoleum.
She took her book with her to the bedroom but left the candles and the remaining beers. She might come back later for another drink, and she might not.
The CD had just restarted itself. Libby walked to the stereo and shut it off before plucking the phone from its base and dialing Mike's number.
The phone rang five times before someone picked up.
"Pullman residence," said an unfamiliar voice.
Libby frowned. If the stranger on the other end had answered with only hello, she might have thought she'd dialed the wrong number. But he'd said Pullman.
What's going on?
"Who is this?" she asked, not able to keep a certain amount of sharpness out of her voice.
The man who responded sounded something like John Wayne, or the way Libby thought John Wayne was supposed to sound---she'd never actually seen one of his movies. "May I ask who's calling?"
"Where's my son?" Libby said loudly, ignoring the question. "And my husband? What's going on there?"
The word husband only barely registered. She hadn't meant to say it.
"Miss," the voice said, "please identify yourself."
"Why don't you identify yourself?" Libby said, not in the mood for another strange man trying to take control of the situation.
"Ma'am," the stranger said, "I'm afraid---"
Libby cut him off. "Give me Mike right now." Her first thought was that both Mike and Trevor had been in a car accident. She'd hated that pickup of Mike's since the day he bought it. It was untrustworthy, dangerous. If her website business had been any more lucrative, she'd have bought Mike a new vehicle herself and torched that truck until there was nothing left but a foul stench in the air and a mound of ashes on the ground.
Although she hadn't actually expected it, Mike's voice came onto the line. "Lib?"
"Mike. What's going on?"
"I was about to call you. You need to come up here," he said.
"Why? What's happening?" A tear splashed against her wrist, and she realized she'd been crying.
"It's Trevor," he said, and before he could go on, Libby dropped the phone and began pawing through her closet. She loosened the towel and let it drop to the floor, then stepped into a pair of panties and some jeans. She pulled on the first blouse she found.
Trevor, she thought, wondering how much anguish a parent could possibly endure in any given day. She slipped on a pair of running shoes, skipped the socks. From the bed, she heard a squeaky voice. She hurried over and picked up the receiver.
"I'll be there in thirty minutes," she said, knowing it was a forty-five minute drive. She hung up without waiting for a response and then ran.
TWENTY-FOUR
A DEPUTY STOOD in the kitchen, peering at the broken glass like a mystic studying tea leaves, as if he thought he might divine some clue from the shape of the mess alone.
A man in jeans and a t-shirt, who might have been a cop or a doctor or a lumberjack for all Mike knew, swabbed the knife wound in Mike's hip. "You're very lucky, Mr. Pullman," he said in an almost nonexistent accent that might have been British or Irish. "Something like this could have been much more serious."
It's just a booboo, Mike expected him to say, No big deal. Let's get you a Big Bird bandaid.
Mike sat on the couch with his pants around his ankles, his underwear pulled just beneath his thatch of pubic hair but still covering his penis and testicles. Barely. He looked at the third man across the room, the quiet, bearded deputy with the inch-long scar just beneath his eye who had answered the phone when Libby called. "Listen," he said, "isn't there something else we can be doing? I mean, that asshole's got my son. We're not gonna find him sitting around my living room playing doctor."
The man hovering over Mike's lap huffed.
Rather than answer Mike's question, the bearded deputy, Willis, asked one of his own. "This man you say took your son, did he have a dog with him?"
Mike shook his head, though not in answer to the question. "First of all, I don't say he took my son, he did take him. They're gone, and getting farther away every second. Did he have a dog? How the hell should I know? What kind of question is that? He had a knife and he had a foot the size of Texas. How's that? Maybe if you get a sketch artist up here we can figure out what kind of sneakers he was wearing."
The bearded man stared through the living room window and never turned to Mike. "We think he might have had a dog," he said to the window, "and if you would answer my questions, we'd be that much closer to finding your boy." He seemed focused on something outside.
Mike sighed and rubbed his face while the man on his knees before him continued his ministrations.
"Okay," he said after a minute. "I think I might have heard some barking, but I never saw a dog. I'm not even a hundred percent sure about the barking. With all the stabbing and kicks to the head, I might have been out of it a little." Mike saw the deputy's face reflected in the window, looking transparent, ghostly. The lawman smiled.
"Of course, Mr. Pullman."
"What's the deal with the dog?" Mike asked. "How does that help us?"
Willis finally turned away from the window and came across the room. "Do you know a Bethany Winston?"
"Beth---" Mike started and then nodded. "Yeah, I guess. She lives just down that way." He gestured with his head. "Why? Did something happen?"
Willis sat down on the edge of the coffee table, his holstered gun tapping against the tabletop and the leather of his utility belt creaking. "Bethany Winston was attacked earlier tonight," he said simply and crossed his arms over his chest. "Guy stole her dog and cut her up a little."
"Cut...my God," Mike said. "Is she okay?"
"Will be," Willis said. "She said the guy had a boy with him; little boy about her age."
The second deputy came in from the kitchen, looking unsatisfied, thumbs tucked into his belt and chewing at his bottom lip.
Mike said, "Yes, that's what I'm telling you. Skinny kid, maybe eleven years old. He attacked the guy in my bedroom. I don't think he was exactly here voluntarily."
"No," said the deputy.
The doctor, if he was one, poked at Mike, who hissed. "Easy," he said. He turned back to Willis. "So what? You're saying there's two kidnapped kids?"
The lip-chewing deputy, whose name Mike had already forgotten, opened his mouth to say something, but Willis held up a hand to him. "I'm not saying anything," Willis said to Mike, "but that's one possibility."
Mike didn't want to ask about the other possibilities---he could figure those out for himself---but he did say, "Isn't there something else we could be doing right now? If he's out there, if my son is with that lunatic and there's another boy with him, shouldn't we be doing something?"
"Trust me," the deputy said, "we're doing everything we can."
TWENTY-FIVE
LIBBY RACED THE Honda down Mike's driveway; it kicked up gravel and slid across the loose rocks for almost two feet after she finally applied the brakes. The car skidded to a stop beside and slightly behind a Ford Explorer emblazoned with the county name and the sheriff's department's emblem. Just one cruiser, no ambulances or fire trucks or any of that, but one was enough to mean something had happened.
Libby slipped the car into park, pulled the keys from the ignition, and threw open her door so quickly she felt like she'd done all three things simultaneously. Halfway to the house, she noticed she'd left her headlights on and didn't bother to go back. She had to get into the house, had to know what had happened to her baby.
Her hair had dried funnily on the trip up, and it blew unevenly around her head, most of it on her left side and the top, only a few strands on the right and across her face. There was still beer on her breath, though the adrenaline pumping through her body seemed to have cancelled out the alcohol's effect. She smelled the lingering bath salts on her skin and in her hair, but another smell hid just beneath, the smell of sweat and panic.
On the porch, she didn't bother knocking or ringing the doorbell but simply let herself in through the front door as if it were her own house and she had every right to do so---which in her mind, she did, given the circumstances.
First she noticed the uniform: brown pants, khaki shirt, tie and hat to match the trousers, utility belt with holstered gun. The guy was Indiana Jones without the leather jacket or whip. At least outfit-wise he was. His face was bearded and scarred and a little pudgy.
"Ms. Pullman?"
Libby nodded and hurried into the room. Mike sat on the sofa beside a second deputy who held a pad of paper and a pen. The two of them looked up at her, and then Mike stood.
His face was puffed and bruised, especially around his chin. He looked like he'd been in a barroom brawl.
"What is it?" Libby asked him. "Where's Trevor? What happened to your face?"
Mike looked like he wanted to hug her, but she hoped he wouldn't. She'd had enough undesired physical attention today. Right now, she needed facts, not hugs.
Mike stayed at the couch, maybe seeing something in her eyes or her stance that told him to keep his distance. He said, "He, uh...Trevor's---"
"Your son has been abducted," the bearded deputy said from behind her.
Libby turned to him. "What do you mean? Like by aliens?" It was a stupid question, and she hadn't meant to ask it. She was barely thinking.
The deputy smiled just a little, though he obviously tried not to, and said, "No, not by aliens. Your son has been kidnapped." He added, "By a man."
Libby stared at him. Somehow, she hadn't expected this. She'd thought Trevor had been the victim of some kind of accident, a fire, a brain aneurysm, maybe a bad fall. She'd never considered kidnapping.
"What man?" she said and turned to Mike. "Who was it? Why would somebody take Trevor?"
Mike shook his head. "I don't know who it was or why he did it. He had another boy too, and a dog. You know Beth Winston?"
Libby shook her head.
"Well, she's the neighbor girl downhill a ways. Apparently this same guy attacked her and stole her dog."
"What? He...why would he do that? Who's the other boy?" she asked the room in general.
The smaller deputy on the couch said, "We're not sure yet. From what the Winston girl and your hu...ex-husband have told us, we suspect he might have been another kidnap."
Libby moved to the coffee table and plopped down on the edge of it, her hair flapping against her neck. "I can't believe this."
"Ms. Pullman," said the bearded deputy whose name tag Libby had not yet bothered to read, "I know this is all a little much, but I have a couple of questions to ask you."
"Me?" Libby looked at his name tag now. It read L. Willis. "What kinds of questions?"
Rather than answer, Willis said, "Have you been seeing anyone recently, Ms. Pullman?"
Libby gawked at him. "Have I...no, I haven't. What's that matter?"
"No one?" Willis asked. "No regular boyfriend?"
Libby thought of Marshall, who was most definitely not a regular boyfriend, who had started as a pity date and turned out to be a lecher. "No," she told Willis. "There hasn't been anyone since---" She trailed off and didn't look at Mike.
"I see," said Willis. "I only ask because sometimes, when there are divorced parents involved, a kidnapped child turns up with one of the two of them."
"You think I have him?" Libby leaned to get up from the coffee table, but Mike put a steadying hand on her shoulder.
"Hold on a second," he said. "I told you who took him. It was this guy with the boy."
Willis ignored Mike. To Libby, he said, "You never mentioned something to, say, a friend? Maybe that you wished you saw more of your boy? Or that you didn't like him being up here."
Libby didn't appreciate the way he'd said the word friend, wasn't sure what, if anything, he was implying. "No." She looked at the other deputy, who was writing on his pad again. "No, I never said anything like that." Her fists clenched, and she forced her fingers to loosen.
"You don't wish you saw more of your boy?" Willis asked.
"Well, of course I do. You're twisting this all around. I love Trevor, but Mike is a good daddy to him, and I'd never try to take him away from here."
Willis nodded. "Okay." He turned to Mike, his attitude changing so suddenly he seemed to be a different person. He said, "We've got additional units heading up right now. They'll search the woods around your property and between here and the Winston's place. But I have to be honest with you both. Until this guy calls, there's not a lot more we can do."
"Calls?" Mike said. "What do you mean? Why would he call?"
"Ransom," said Willis. "We should assume he might call wanting money."
"We don't have any money," Libby said.
"And even if we did," Mike added, "I don't think he wants it. If he wanted a ransom, he wouldn't have tried to kill me."
"What?" Libby spun toward him.
Mike said, "I...got stabbed."
Libby stared.
"It's nothing bad," he said quickly. "Doctor fixed me up right here, didn't have to take me to the hospital or anything, just told me to watch it for infection."
Libby's head suddenly overflowed with questions. The first one to spill out was, "What doctor?"
"He's gone," Mike answered, and Libby could tell from the tone of his voice that he'd explain it all to her later, that they had more important things to discuss now.
"Well, then, you're right," said Libby. "He doesn't want money."
"We don't know that," Willis added. "And if this isn't a ransom situation, we're going to have a tougher time finding Trevor. We'll do what we can, of course. Prints, blood work, all that, and we'll get you down to the station tomorrow to look through some mug shots," he said to Mike. "Of course, this could end up in the hands of the state police, or with the feds if we find out Trevor's out of the state. Things could still get a lot messier. Best thing we can do right now is wait and see what happens."
"That's it?" Libby looked from man to man to man, saving Deputy Willis for last. "Can't we bring in the dogs? Something like that?"
"The sheriff's department doesn't have any dogs. By the time we could coordinate with the police to get some up here, it'd be too late. It's probably too late already. Our guy didn't go far on foot, probably had transportation waiting somewhere nearby. I'd guess he was already on the road by the time you got to your phone," he said and looked at Mike. "To get a search party up here would take hours and be more expensive than it was worth. We'd barely be getting here ourselves if we hadn't already been practically next door."
"That's reassuring," said Libby.
Willis said, "That's just the truth. We've got a lot of area to cover up here and not a lot of deputies to cover it. It's better for everyone if we keep things realistic. But I promise you I will personally do everything in my power to make sure we bring your son back. Okay?"
Libby wondered if Mike felt as helpless as she did. Trevor was gone. Again. And this time they wouldn't find him in the restroom. If Libby had believed in fate, she might have thought she was meant to lose Trevor today. Except she didn't, and fate hadn't stabbed Mike and cut up a little girl and stolen two boys.
"Once we've finished collecting our evidence and gone," said Willis, "I'd suggest you two get some sleep. For the next couple of days, you're going to need all the rest you can get."
Yeah right. You think I can curl up and take a nap while my baby is missing?
Mike returned to his seat on the sofa and fingered his bruised face. After eight years of marriage, Libby had learned to read his body language and often knew his thoughts without him saying a word. Right now, she guessed he was wondering the same thing she was: while they waited, what might be happening to their son?
TWENTY-SIX
IN THE BACK of the bouncing truck, Trevor lay against the whining dog, facing the other boy, Zach.
"Where's he taking us?" Trevor asked.
Zach shook his head. He didn't know.
"How long has he had you?"
Zach said, "Just since today. I was at home this morning."
Trevor held the shirtsleeve to his forehead, trying to keep the button on the cuff from pressing into his wound. The dog's tail wagged against his bare legs, his fur warm but the breeze from the movement chilly.
"How did he catch me? Did you see?" The last thing Trevor remembered was hiding in Daddy's workshop. He'd decided to run for the house, get to his daddy so they could fight off the bad guy together. But one second he'd started to run and the next he'd found himself in the back of the truck with a dog and a boy he'd never seen before.
Zach looked at him a long time, so long Trevor thought he either didn't know or didn't want to answer, and finally he said, "He ran after you. He caught you and spun you around and busted you on the head with some stick."
Trevor said, "He musta busted me good." He shifted the pad a little and pressed down hard again.
"Yeah," said the other boy.
The truck slowed, and Trevor heard the blinker. He tried to sit up, to see what lay ahead, but the motion of the turn sent him tumbling back to the truck's bed before he could get his head up more than just a little.
Zach had something small and plastic in his hand. Trevor had only just noticed. "What's that?"
Zach had been staring intently at the thing. Now he looked up at Trevor. "My mom's cell phone," he said. "But there's no service. I've been checking it every once in a while. No luck so far." He pushed on one of the phone's buttons until it beeped, then flipped the thing shut and shoved it in his pocket. "Dang it."
"Maybe later," Trevor said.
Zach only shook his head.
Trevor tried to think of something else to say. "What's the doggy's name?" he finally asked, shivering from the breeze blowing across the open top of the truck bed and down among the three of them.
"He calls him Manny," said Zach, "but I don't think that's really his name."
"Why not?"
Zach shrugged. "He calls me Georgie. He said I used to be Zach but now I'm Georgie. He's crazy."
Trevor nodded. He turned onto his other side and petted the dog's head. Slow, friendly petting. The doggy accepted it with another wag of his tail and leaned over to lick Trevor on his ear.
"Good doggy," Trevor said and smiled. Behind him, Zach said something he couldn't hear. He flipped over again. "What?"
"---said maybe we should try and jump out," Zach repeated, the words gobbled up by the sound of the truck only a little this time.
Trevor shook his head. "We'd get killed," he said. "For sure. I saw this movie once where a guy tried to jump out of a car to save himself but he got killed instead." He continued shaking his head. "Plus, what about the doggy?"
Zach frowned and looked over Trevor at the dog. "I guess," he said. "You really saw a movie like that?"
"Yeah. But I wasn't supposed to," he admitted. "Daddy thought I was sleeping and flipped to the channel, but I was only pretending."
Zach lay on his tummy with his arms under his head. Even in the dark, Trevor saw the blood on him and the ripped clothes and that one of his shoes was all messed up. Trevor's head seemed to explode when they hit a big bump in the road. While he held the bloody rag to his sore spot, he thought of what his favorite comic book heroes might have said: Yeeoooowww or oouuchhhhhhhh or grrrnnnnn. Trevor said none of these things; it hurt too bad for him to do anything except squeeze his eyes together and wait.
"What was that?" Zach said.
"What?" Trevor looked at him, felt the dog shift against his back and heard the scrape of claws on metal.
"Look." Zach sat up, pointing at a sign on the side of the road behind them. The sign was shadowy and disappearing fast, but they both read it in the glow of the truck's taillights. It said:
Entering Arapaho Natl Forest
His daddy's house was right by the Arapaho forest---Trevor knew because for a while he'd called it the A-wrap-around Forest---and he'd seen this sign before. There were lots of the Arapaho signs scattered all over the place, but he remembered this one in particular because of a bunch of teeny holes in one corner that Daddy had told him probably came from a shotgun blast. He couldn't believe any hunter would ever think a sign was a deer or an elk and accidentally shoot it all up. Too silly.
"I was looking for signs before," Zach said. "I thought maybe I could tell where we were going."
Yes, Trevor thought. If he paid enough attention, he might remember how they'd gotten to wherever they were going. He blinked back another burst of pain in his head and watched the road. Studied it. Remembered.
TWENTY-SEVEN
LIBBY HAD EXPECTED a CSI team and a photographer and a whole slew of miscellaneous law enforcers, just like you saw on TV, but no one else arrived. The two deputies, who had apparently done most of the evidence-collecting themselves before she got there, also finished by themselves, bagging individual items, Willis taking a few last pictures with a small digital camera and his partner writing things down in his notebook. Mike remembered and told them about a knife under his bed, and they seemed to bag it a little more carefully than they had the rest of the evidence. Libby didn't know enough details of tonight's fiasco to guess why the knife might be of any particular importance, but she was glad they weren't lackadaisical about everything. She guessed they were probably doing everything they could, but to her it still didn't seem like enough.
After their little powwow disbanded, she'd gone out to turn off the Honda's lights and then come back inside to make herself a cup of tea. Fully caffeinated with a little sugar and milk. While she boiled the water, Mike came in and took two mugs from the cabinet.
"Better make it two," he said, and she took another teabag from the jar beside the microwave.
The deputies hadn't told them whether or not they could clean up the mess in the kitchen yet, and so they left it, stepping around the shards and busying themselves with the tea.
They'd only just finished steeping their bags when the two lawmen called them into the living room to tell them they were done. Libby didn't think they'd been at it nearly long enough, didn't understand how they could possibly have collected all the evidence already, but she said nothing.
Willis gave them a business card with his number and extension at the sheriff's department in addition to the numbers for both his home phone and his cell. He told them to call him first thing if anything else happened, not to worry about the hour, and Libby felt a little better. The four of them exited the house and stood in a cluster on the over-lit porch.
In the light, Willis's beard blazed. He said, "And you might see some more deputies here and there, until they're finished canvassing the area. More than likely they'll leave you alone---unless they find something---but don't worry if you hear a knock on the door in the middle of the night. Well, maybe worry a little, I don't want you letting your guard down, just in case, but don't go blowing any holes in the doors, okay?"
"I don't have a gun," said Mike.
"Good. It's better that way."
Libby thanked him half sincerely. Mike shook hands with both deputies and crossed his arms over his chest. They stood side by side on the porch until the sheriff's deputies had gotten into their Explorer, turned the vehicle around, and disappeared around the bend in the driveway; then they reentered the house.
---:---:---:---
They cleaned the mess up like a couple of mindless robots, sipping their tea between chores. Mike duct-taped a piece of cardboard to the outside of the kitchen window while Libby swept the broken glass, and then they reorganized the living room together. The bedroom doorjamb had broken beyond repair, but Mike said he had the materials to make himself a new one later, after things had settled down, speaking automatically, as if not totally aware of what he was saying. He'd have to replace the ruined kitchen window screen, but the bedroom window's was only bent. Mike managed to pry it back into its original shape, or at least close enough that it fit into the window frame. Libby wiped up the blood on the bedroom floor and scrubbed the area with a hardwood cleaner Mike got her from the workshop. She cleaned up most of the mess, but some had seeped deep into the floorboards, which must not have been well sealed.
It wasn't that she wanted to clean, but anytime she stopped, she felt herself getting hysterical. So she kept going. And kept going. And kept going.
"Don't worry too much about that," Mike said. "I'll have to sand down the floors and then refinish them. Even if the stains were barely noticeable, I don't think I could sleep in here every night knowing they were there."
"Speaking of which," said Libby, sitting on her bent legs, wiping a strand of hair from her face, "would you mind if I stayed here? There's no way I'll ever fall asleep, but maybe I could camp out on the couch, wait for the phone to ring."
"Are you kidding? I wouldn't let you leave if you wanted to. I'd go crazy if you left. Probably will anyway."
Libby smiled despite the handful of bloody rags. "Thanks."
"You should be here if anything happens. If they find him, I mean." He stepped to his bed, which the deputies had moved to get to the knife, and pushed it back against the wall. Their tea sat on the nightstand. Mike picked up the mugs and handed Libby hers.
"You really got stabbed?"
Mike shrugged. "I guess technically." Libby was still sitting on the floor, and Mike eased onto the edge of the bed. "Actually, I'm surprised it wasn't worse. He really jabbed me good."
Libby swallowed a mouthful of warm tea and shivered anyway. "Are you sure you shouldn't be in the hospital?"
Mike shrugged again. "No, but I don't think their doctor guy would have been so casual about it if he thought there was any chance it might turn worse. The way he talked, you'd have thought I just stubbed my toe."
"I guess that's lucky." She shifted her legs beneath her so she sat cross-legged.
Mike raised his eyebrows, and Libby guessed lucky wasn't the word he'd have picked.
She said, "I still don't understand this. Why would anybody take Trevor? Some random psycho just wandered onto your property?"
"I don't know." He rested his mug on his leg. "You sure you didn't hire out one of your boyfriends to do it?"
She frowned. "That's not funny."
He raised his hand in apology, smiling a little. "Sorry. Just a tease. I know it's nothing like that."
"I want to know what happened. Those cops weren't exactly chatterboxes when it came to details."
"Let's get more tea first," Mike said, "and then I'll tell you."
They did, and then they sat together on the couch and Mike talked for a long time.
TWENTY-EIGHT
ZACH CAUGHT JUST a glimpse of the place through the trees before they turned onto the driveway. He shivered. The barbwire fence along the road was in shambles, some of the wooden uprights rotted completely through and in pieces on the ground, sections of wire loose and coiled like rusted robot snakes. Zach didn't know what the fence was originally intended to keep in (or out), but it did nothing now except make the place ugly.
It became obvious very quickly that the owners of this property weren't especially concerned with either upkeep or looks. The mailbox looked about a hundred years old, though Zach wasn't sure people had mailboxes a hundred years ago, or mail for that matter. The driveway was gravel, like his own, and Trevor Pullman's, and most of the driveways this far into the mountains, but in this case the rock was spread too thin, leaving bare patches of ground in which weeds and grass thrived. Zach would have thought the passage of the truck would keep the vegetation down, but maybe Crazy Dave usually left the property from a different access point, or maybe he didn't leave much, maybe he was one of those hermits Zach had read about, the kind of weirdo who lived off the land and hardly came into the real world.
The truck jounced along the uneven ground, its headlights lighting the shack of a house at times, at other times the sky or the ground or the encircling trees. Zach and the Pullman boy, Trevor, both sat up in the truck's bed, but the dog---Zach guessed he'd have to call the animal Manny, for lack of a legitimate name---lay flat on his belly, sniffing occasionally and whimpering.
Smells something bad, Zach thought. He knew dogs had a fantastic sense of smell, that they could detect odors from a great distance that humans couldn't smell from right up close, like sickness or a coming storm.
Manny whined again and buried his head beneath his paws.
"You think he lives here?" Trevor whispered.
Zach nodded, watching the ramshackle dump as the driveway curved toward it and smoothed out so that the headlights quit their erratic bouncing. The small front porch, hardly wider than the entry door, had two weathered columns. Zach thought you called a little porch like that something else---a covered stoop?---but wasn't sure. Unpainted shutters hung from the window frames; in some cases they had disconnected completely and fallen to the dirt beneath. From one of the windows drooped a flower box that appeared to have held nothing but weeds for many years.
The truck circled around the house and came to a stop in the back yard. Not that you could really call it a yard. The back dirt patch might have been a better name. They'd stopped with the front bumper almost touching a tree-stump chopping block from which an ax stuck out at an angle, but Zach could only just make out the thing from his place in the truck bed and lost sight of it altogether when the pickup's headlights flicked off.
"I'm scared," Trevor said to him.
Zach said, "Me, too."
Manny panted and let out a little woof, as if not wanting to be left out.
"Do you think he'll kill us?" Trevor asked, still holding the bloody shirtsleeve to his forehead.
He looked away, couldn't bear to see what he'd done to the poor little kid. "No," he said, "not if we kill him first."
The truck's door creaked open, and they went silent.
"Boys?" The man's voice sounded strange somehow, as if he was a little scared himself. But why should he be scared? Zach wondered.
Neither of them answered, though the dog panted a little and then sneezed.
"I don't want to ever have to hurt you again," the man said. "So don't go and do anything stupid, okay?"
Silence.
"Okay, Georgie?"
Zach thought it might be easier---and safer---to respond. "Fine."
"Okay, Davy?"
Zach elbowed Trevor in the ribs and whispered, "I think that's you."
"Oh," Trevor said. "Uh, okay." He waited for a while before adding, "Sir."
Beside the truck, Dave smiled. Zach saw it with his adjusting eyes and shuddered.
"Georgie, you open up the tailgate and get out with Manny. Go straight inside. And don't think I haven't forgotten what you did."
Of course, Zach's first thought was that he should jump out of the truck, go directly to the ax, pluck it free like King Arthur's sword from a stone, and swing it into Dave's head. Except too many things could go wrong with that plan. He might twist his ankle jumping out of the truck, he might not manage to get the ax free, or he might get it free only to swing it accidentally into Trevor or himself. Dave said he hadn't forgotten what Zach tried to do, but neither had Zach forgotten what he had done: cracked Trevor in the head with a nail-studded club. Luckily, the nail had missed the other boy. If you could call that luck. He might not be so lucky a second time.
He decided to follow the maniac's instructions. They would have other chances to escape, better chances.
He hoped.
The handle felt rough beneath his fingers, maybe with rust or maybe only with wear and tear. The tailgate squeaked open and fell from his grip, thudding to a stop at an angle almost level with the truck bed. The dog started to rush off the pickup, but Zach grabbed him by the collar and quickly snapped the leash, which he'd removed during their ride, back into place.
"Good," said Dave. He waited until they'd gotten to the back door and opened it before he said, "Now you, Davy."
Zach stepped into the dark room wondering what the deal was with all the names. Hadn't this guy said he used to be Davy? Zach couldn't pretend to know what was going on and wasn't sure he'd have known if the kidnapper sat them down and explained it for an hour. You couldn't understand crazy if you weren't crazy yourself, could you? He didn't think so.
He heard the tailgate squeak back into place, and the leash went suddenly lax when the dog stopped ahead of him.
"It's okay," said Zach. "It's just the truck." He reached down to pet the dog's head, a barely visible gray spot in the dark. Manny relaxed somewhat at Zach's touch, swished his tail a few times across the floor.
Dave brought the smaller boy into the room with them and flipped on an overhead light.
Zach saw the dining room table first. It was larger than their own table back home, but a little more worn, the legs curved and uneven. Zach could tell it was the kind of table that wobbled if you placed something on it, or bumped against it, or maybe even if you looked at it funny. The seats of the chairs bowed, and some of the spindles making up their backs were splintered or missing altogether.
The linoleum was cracked in some places, bubbled in others, as if things had been buried beneath and a few of them had escaped. The walls had floor to ceiling vertical stripes every couple of feet that might have been old glue, like maybe wallpaper had hung there at one time.
The man brushed against Zach, and the dog jumped up to its feet, tail motionless, tense. Then Trevor was beside him and taking his hand the way only small children will: without hesitation or embarrassment. Zach squeezed the younger boy's fingers tight and wanted to whisper something reassuring, but he dared not speak. Talking in this place would have been like talking in church, but different in a way Zach couldn't quite put into words.
"This way," Dave said, and he led them into a second dark room, not bothering with lights.
Zach thought this guy must have night vision goggles for eyes.
He sensed more than saw the hallway ahead, imagined it closing in around him as if he were trying to push his way through a small tunnel rather than an average-sized corridor. Except nothing touched him, nothing but the floor against his clapping sneakers and Trevor's sweaty hand and Manny's dog leash wrapped around his other set of fingers. The dog whined hard now, and Zach smelled something rotten, something like road kill.
"I've got it all set up for you," Dave said. He led them another few paces. Zach heard a loud clack and a click and then the sound of a door swinging open. He would have thought that in this sort of house, where everything seemed to be falling to pieces, all the doors would have creaked, but this one didn't. It swung open almost silently.
Trevor's hand tugged on Zach's. Zach tugged Manny's leash, and they all moved forward until a sudden bright light blazed from inside the room. Zach supposed it probably wasn't as blinding as he thought, that it was just a regular bulb in an overhead socket, but except for the truck's headlights, he hadn't seen a regular light bulb since Trevor Pullman's porch, and looking into the room now, he might as well have been staring straight into the sun.
"Don't worry about the window," Dave said, "You won't have to deal with it for long."
Zach looked at the bare, windowless walls. A pile of blankets lay on the floor, and a second door to the right probably led into a small bathroom or a closet. A dirty glass beside the bed held an inch or so of some clear liquid that might have been water. In the corner of the room, a cracked and discolored bucket sat on the floor, surrounded by water rings and what might have been spots of rot. Zach wondered if the stink was coming from there but didn't think so.
"Either of you have to go potty?" Dave asked.
Trevor let go of Zach and raised his hand like this was school.
Zach didn't have to go, although he couldn't remember the last time he'd been to the restroom. He hadn't had much to drink today, and not anything since Dave had kidnapped him. This realization led to thoughts of food, and his stomach suddenly growled.
"Okay," Dave said to Trevor. "Make it quick." He opened the bathroom door for the boy, and they waited in silence until the toilet flushed and a burst of water sounded from the sink.
"I guess you feel almost at home here," Dave said quietly, and Zach wasn't really sure if the man had spoken directly to him or not. He didn't reply.
"It's not a family home," Dave said and stared at the ceiling. Zach couldn't tell if he was planning something or remembering.
Trevor came out of the bathroom, wiping his wet hands on his khaki shorts.
"Your towel was icky," he said, and the man stared at him for a long time. Manny whined a little, maybe impatient to be let off the leash, or maybe still worried about the stink.
Finally, Dave turned away from Trevor and ushered the two boys into the lit room. "It's bedtime," he said. "Better give me the dog." He held out his hand, and Zach let go of the leash.
Dave swung the door shut on the two children while Manny stared in at them with huge, sad eyes. You'd have thought he was on his way to the killing room at the local pound. For all Zach knew, that wasn't too far from the truth.
"How about some food?" Zach said, thinking this might be his last chance to ask for God knew how long and that he probably ought to eat something whether he felt like it or not.
Dave didn't answer, just let the door click shut. Another sound had followed, a clacking Zach had heard when the man first opened the door, and he suddenly understood: the lock. Crazy Dave had just locked them inside. And with no food. And maybe for the rest of their lives.
TWENTY-NINE
DAVE WOKE UP that morning knowing this would be the best birthday of his life. He'd hung his new outfit from a crooked nail on the back of the door. The blue button-up shirt had a few wrinkles on the front, but nothing anybody would ever notice. The neatly folded cargo pants hung over an old wire hanger.
The clothes were for later. Right now he wore only his too-tight underwear, his penis bulging against the thin material and one of his testicles peeking a little from between the seams. He was not exactly a muscle man, would never have been cast as the lead role in a film biography of Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone, but he was trim and well proportioned. At least, he thought so. He was certainly in better shape than Mr. Boots, who had a paunch and jowls and a pair of weak ankles.
Before pushing himself off the pile of blankets, he stretched and twisted until his spine let out a series of rapid-fire cracks. He hadn't gotten an especially sound night's sleep---he hardly ever did---but he had spent his last night ever on the floor of the windowless room, and that made it all worthwhile. By the next morning, everything would be different.
It felt early, and although he had no way of telling the time, no watch or direct sunlight, his mental clock was usually pretty accurate. He moved to his door and listened for snoring. He heard it, coming from across the hall through two closed doors, soft and unhealthy sounding. He smiled and turned to the closet. Inside hung both his current wardrobe and the outfits he'd worn over the years, some so small he couldn't believe he'd ever fit inside. He guessed he could have thrown something on, one of the sets of clothes he no longer cared about, but this morning's chore would be just as easy to do in his skivvies. He did, however, remove the item he'd hidden in the corner of the closet the week before.
The long blade had little light to reflect, but it seemed to glow nonetheless. Dave resisted the urge to give it a practice swing. He'd practiced for two hours the day before, when Mr. Boots had been away, and a couple more swings this morning would only waste time and possibly give old Boots some early warning. He settled for squeezing the grip and smiling conspiratorially at the sword.
He returned to the door and twisted the knob gently. The last time he'd tried to get away, he'd been twenty years old. Since that attempt, he'd pretended Mr. Boots's mind games had sucked him in, pretended the idiot had brainwashed him, pretended and pretended and pretended. Years of good behavior had paid off: about a year ago, Mr. boots had stopped locking the door. Dave guessed he thought he had replaced the physical lock with a mental one, and Dave had been happy to let him believe it. It made his preparations much, much easier. As long as he was home by the time Mr. Boots woke up, home and pretending to be the dutiful son/captive, he was free to do pretty much whatever he wanted. Whatever he needed.
If he'd wanted to run away, he supposed it would have been easier now than ever, but he'd long since given up the hope of a simple getaway. Maybe Mr. Boots would catch him, maybe he wouldn't, but it was too much of a risk. Dave had plans more important than mere escape. Plans that made it worth living in this prison of a home for just a little longer.
With the long weapon swinging beside his hairy leg, he let himself into the hall. He'd taken it from a basement display case nearly a month earlier, along with a pair of twin knives. The basement had been a veritable armory, with guns of all calibers and blades ranging in length from several inches to nearly five feet in the case of one long, arced, decorative sword bolted to the wall. Dave had also found a single grenade, though he hadn't known if it was usable or not. He'd left it only because it had been in a locked display case and he'd been pressed for time. Same with the guns, though he would have left those regardless of how secure they were. Up here, guns were easier to come by than pinecones, and if he'd wanted one he'd have had it a long time ago.
The blade nicked him just a little on his right calf, enough to make him wince but not enough to maim him, maybe not quite enough to get him bleeding. He didn't bother checking. The floorboards bent a little beneath his weight but creaked only occasionally and not nearly loud enough to compete with the snoring coming from the second bedroom.
Dave stood outside Mr. Boots's room for a long time, forcing himself to breathe slowly, to stay calm. He'd planned this day for almost ten years (maybe as long as twenty-three years, depending on how you looked at it); he couldn't let a little nervousness ruin it. His muscles flexed beneath his tighty whities, and the sword grip shifted within his fingers.
Twenty-three years of Mr. Boots. Ten years of serious planning. Only this one chance to get it right.
He listened to be sure the snoring hadn't stopped and then eased his way inside the bedroom.
Mr. Boots slept with one leg sticking out of the covers, the limb a little pink and covered with curly salt-and-pepper hairs that gave the whole thing the appearance of a spiced ham. The blankets were not stretched out smoothly across the rest of his body but heaped on top of him. His face lay buried in the pillow so that, besides the head of gray hair, only one closed eye, an ear, and a little bit of beard were visible. Dave moved to the foot of the bed and rested the sword on his shoulder, a cross between a ninja and a big league slugger. Mr. Boots snored on.
Dave had, of course, considered killing Mr. Boots hundreds or thousands of times. Probably, he'd had at least one homicidal thought about the man every single day since falling into his grasp. On more than one occasion, he'd stood in this very spot, holding one weapon or another, thinking about how the blood would smell splattered across the room, how the brains would look sliding down the wall and piling on the floor below. But he'd never gone through with it. In the beginning, he guessed he'd been too scared, too much of a sissy kid---he was adult enough now to admit it. In recent years, however, only his certainty that it wasn't yet time, that he wasn't ready had held him back. He'd needed to wait until he was prepared to step into his new role, and he'd finally realized that being ready was really only a matter of mathematics.
Thirty years old. His birthday.
He circled the bed and stopped near Mr. Boots's head. His naked leg stood only inches from Mr. Boots's own, which gave him a sick sensation in his stomach and a bad taste in his mouth and, for some reason, a slick feel on the tip of his ear. He cocked his head and stared at the old man one last time, and then he swung.
The sword was a fine tool: light but not in a toyish way, maybe stronger than an ax or a baseball bat, and honed to a wicked edge. Mr. Boot's leg came free from the rest of his body as if he were made of nothing more solid than mud. Blood sprayed across the room, the bed, and Dave, making different sounds when it splattered against the various surfaces but sounding in all cases a little like a lawn sprinkler. The leg slid first away from the body and then off the bed, its progress marked by a wet, dragging rasp. Mr. Boots's sudden, confused screaming almost completely drowned out the thud of the dismembered appendage.
Dave leveled the sword at the old man's head, and when Boots turned to face him, Dave jabbed the weapon forward. It entered the man's eye, which promptly disappeared, replaced by a streamer of vitreous fluid that oozed down his cheek like an overgrown tear. Dave moved, the other man's spilled blood dripping down his naked chest and onto his underwear, across the flaccid but still bulging mound of his groin, along the contours of his thighs, knees, and shins, and onto the tops of his feet.
Dave swung the sword again, this time over his shoulder like an axman splitting a log, and in a move that could not have had any thought behind it, Mr. Boots reached up to stop it with his hand. The sword descended between two of the man's splayed fingers and sliced most of the way through his palm before it hit a tendon or a muscle or maybe a bone and stuck fast. Dave tried to jerk the blade free, but at the same time Boots pulled back his arm, wailing an old man's gravelly scream, and the bloodied weapon slipped out of Dave's hand.
Mr. Boots stared at the sword with his remaining eye as if he had never seen such a thing. Perhaps he hadn't. Dave reached for the sword's handle, but Mr. Boots spun away, taking the weapon with him. His leg stump flapped across the bed sheets, still spraying blood, and Dave couldn't believe the man was conscious, let alone fighting. Mr. Boots rolled out from under the bed covers, completely naked. His wrinkled skin twisted and folded, his flabby muscles wobbled. Suddenly, Dave wished he'd put on a set of clothes. He didn't want to be naked with Mr. Boots, or even close to it, but it was too late. He had to end things now.
Dave hopped onto the bed and kicked the old man hard in the side of the head. Mr. Boots turned back toward him, screaming and flailing, the sword still stuck in his hand and everything covered in blood. Dave reached for the handle again, got a grip on it this time, and stepped on the old man's chest. He jerked, and the sword came free with a plop, bringing one of Mr. Boots's fingers with it, curled around the blade like a skewered shrimp.
This time, Dave didn't swing, he chopped, over and over again, not aiming at anything in particular, just bringing the sword down and down again until Mr. Boots looked less like a man than a pile of raw ground chuck and the sound of the impacting weapon went from thumping to squishing to splashing.
The blood seeped through the shredded sheets and into the mattress below. Dave stood there for a long time, breathing heavily, drenched in gore, the sword clenched in his hands, it's blade quivering. Though not the first time he'd killed, it was the first time he'd killed a man, and it was not at all how he'd imagined it would be. He'd thought the smell would be similar to old, wet pennies, like when you cut your lip and couldn't get it to stop bleeding, but this was thicker than that, more intense, and combined with the foul odors of feces and urine and vomit. He didn't remember throwing up, nor did he think Mr. Boots had. Maybe the smell was simply spilled stomach juices, or maybe it wasn't vomit at all but some similar-smelling combination of bodily fluids. Who knew? Who cared?
Dave dropped the sword on the bed beside the vaguely humanoid pile of meat and looked at his crimson hands. He smiled.
But he couldn't let himself bask in the glory of his success for too long. He had a long day ahead.
Dave crawled off the bed, stepped over Mr. Boots's leg, and backed across the room. Today he was thirty years old, the same age his daddy had been on that rainy night twenty-three years ago. Today, Dave was the new Daddy, and he had a family to save.
He left the bedroom and headed for the showers, thinking: Happy Birthday to me.
THIRTY
TREVOR SAT ON the pile of blankets with his arms wrapped around his knees, watching Zach go through the clothes in the closet and occasionally touching his forehead, which had finally stopped bleeding but still hurt worse than any headache Trevor had ever had.
"Anything good in there?" he asked.
Zach shook his head. "Some of this stuff looks like it's a million years old." He pulled out a funny looking shirt with stripes. A boy's shirt, but too big for Trevor. Maybe it would have fit Zach. Trevor wondered if there was a kid living here with the crazy man, if maybe he had a son or a little brother or something.
"Old clothes aren't gonna get us out of here," Trevor said and frowned at the shirt.
"Nope." Zach returned the shirt to the closet and closed the door.
"Maybe you should try your mommy's phone again."
Zach looked like maybe he thought that was kind of a dumb idea, but he reached into his pocket for the phone and pulled it out anyway. It was as red as a dodge ball or Superman's cape. Zach turned on the phone and stared at the screen. The phone beeped once, and Zach's eyes opened wide, but then it beeped again, and he frowned.
"I had one bar for just a second," he said. "It's gone now." He watched the phone's screen for another minute, then held the power button again until the phone shut off. He flipped it closed and returned it to his pocket.
"Maybe we should try and get outside," said Trevor.
"You think?" Zach said, rolling his eyes.
"No," Trevor said and touched his head. "I mean maybe the phone might work better outside."
"Well, yeah, it usually does." Zach came over and sat down on the blankets near Trevor. "But how are we supposed to get out there? We're locked in here, and there's no window."
Trevor nodded and sat quietly for some time. "I'm hungry."
"Yeah, me, too."
"I never got my popcorn," Trevor said. He didn't want to cry about some stupid popcorn, but he could almost feel it happening anyway.
Zach didn't say anything, just reached up and touched himself on the forehead.
Trevor leaned back a little, thinking, staring up at the ceiling, and suddenly his eyes widened.
Once, at Daddy's house, there had been a dark spot on the ceiling in his bedroom, a spot his daddy said was from water damage. His daddy said he was going to fix the spot, but one night, before he could, Trevor was sleeping and some of the ceiling fell down on his toy box and got gray powder gunk on his action figures. Daddy had gotten the mess all cleaned up and the ceiling fixed, but first Trevor had touched the gunk in his toy box, and he still remembered how soft it felt, like wet sand or cookies that were old but not real old. There was a similar spot on the ceiling now.
"I have an idea," Trevor said. He got off the pile of blankets and moved to the closet.
"There's nothing in there," said Zach. "We already---"
Trevor flapped a hand at him. "Just wait." The closet door swung open, and he smelled old clothes, the smell of garage-sale boxes full of other people's old, used-up shirts and pants. He reached in and tugged on the first thing his hand touched, a plain blue sweater with a torn sleeve that looked almost big enough for a grownup but not quite. The hanger holding the sweater slipped off the wooden closet rod, and the sweater fluttered to the floor by Trevor's feet.
"What are you doing?" asked Zach from the blankets.
Trevor said, "Help me," and pulled down another piece of clothing, this time a pair of denim cutoffs, the fringed bottoms of which Trevor could only just reach. Zach joined him at the closet door, and together they took down the rest of the clothes, making a pile on the closet floor that came up past Trevor's knees. When the last item was off the closet rod, Trevor asked Zach to push up on it.
"Why?"
"Just see if it's loose," Trevor said, head aching. "We might be able to use it."
Zach did, and the rod popped out of the plates nailed to the wall on either side of the closet. Zach fumbled with the rod for a second and nearly dropped it, which might have made the bad man catch them, but then he got a real good hold of it and took it out of the closet.
"Okay," said Zach, "so what are we going to use this for? Bash the guy's brains in? Ram the door?" He held the wooden pole at his side; it was just a little taller than he was.
Trevor shook his head and said, "Come here." He led the bigger boy to the other side of the room, to an area just beneath the dark spot on the ceiling, which was a couple of ruler lengths across. "See that?" He pointed up.
Zach looked at the water damage but didn't seem to understand. He eyed Trevor as if he thought this was some kind of joke, then looked up again. "What?" he finally said. "That stain?"
"It's not a stain," Trevor said, meaning that it wasn't just a stain. "Try poking it with the pole."
Zach raised the closet rod and touched the gray area with the tip. Some of the ceiling in the middle of the spot flecked away and fell down on the two boys' heads. Trevor smiled. Then the whole section began to crumble, and it came down on them like dirty, heavy snow. Trevor managed to get his arms over his eyes and mouth before the bulk of the mess came down, but Zach kept his hands wrapped around the closet rod, and he ended up with a whole face full of the crud.
Trevor brushed dust out of his hair and looked worriedly at the door. The falling ceiling hadn't made a loud sound, but it hadn't exactly been quiet either. Trevor expected the crazy man to come bursting in, maybe with a chainsaw.
But nothing came. No stranger. No chainsaw.
He turned to Zach and asked if he was okay.
"Not---" Zach spit on the floor. "Really." He let go of the pole with one hand to wipe at his dusty eyes. He looked like a ghost, all covered in gray, but Trevor wouldn't think about that. Ghosts were dead, after all, and Zach wasn't. Not one bit.
Trevor looked up at the hole they'd made. It was about the size of those holes in the street the Ninja Turtles used to get to their home in the sewers. Above it were two wood boards and some clumps of yellow stuff. For just a second, Trevor imagined he was seeing the hairy bones of some sort of attic monster, and then he shook his head.
Zach was still trying to get the gray stuff off his face. He finally leaned the closet rod against the wall and went to work wiping at his face with both hands.
"What is this stuff?" Zach said, pawing furiously. "I hope it's not asbestos."
"What's that?"
"Never mind." Zach leaned over and brushed at the top of his hair. The ceiling powder came pouring off and piled on the floor below.
"I think," Trevor said, "I could get through that hole and in between those boards." He looked at Zach. "If you lifted me."
Zach spat again and looked at the hole himself. "I'll try. But it's awful high."
If he could get through the hole, maybe he could escape and try Zach's mommy's phone outside. Maybe he could get them help.
"Let's try," said Trevor. "We have to."
Zach wiped one last time at his face and moved back beneath the water-damaged section of ceiling. There should have been more of the yellow stuff up there, Trevor knew. His daddy had told him all about houses and how to build them, and he knew that yellow stuff was probably old insulation. He saw right through the yellow stuff to the roof above, but it was so dark up there he couldn't really see much more than the darkness itself. It looked scary, and he thought about bugs and bats and spiders, but he had to try, had to help himself and Zach. He had to.
"Okay," Zach said, cupping his hands and holding them low so Trevor could step up into them. "Let's give it a whirl."
"Give me your phone first. I'll try to call for some help."
Zach straightened, took the phone out of his pocket, and looked at it for a long time. Trevor thought he was probably remembering his mommy and wondering when he would see her again.
"Be careful with it," Zach said. "Have you ever used one of these before?"
Trevor frowned at him and said, "I'm not a baby. I know how to use a phone."
Zach said, "Yeah, sorry," and handed over the cellular. Trevor slid it into his shirt pocket, where he'd stored the five dollars earlier that day when he'd messed his pants. Thinking about that worried Trevor. Could he really expect to get out of this room, out of the house, and call for help if he couldn't manage to potty in the toilet like a big kid?
Just an accident, he thought. Happens to the best of us. His mommy had said that, and although he knew she was just trying to make him feel better, that she probably never pottied her pants, that Daddy never did either, he did feel better. He could get them help. He would.
Zach cupped his hands together again the way you do when you're drinking from the faucet, and he hunched over. "Okay," he said and lowered his hands. Trevor slid one foot into the finger cup, thinking about the poo on his shoes that morning, wondering what Zach would say if he knew he was touching poo shoes. He grabbed the older boy's shoulder.
"Kay."
Zach lifted, making a soft groaning sound. Trevor wobbled, and the two of them started to tip over. He grabbed Zach's other shoulder and tried to balance. He looked up to the ceiling, and it still seemed a very long way away.
"Hold on," Zach said. He stood up as tall as he could now, raising his arms almost in slow motion. Only Trevor knew he wasn't going in slow motion, that he was trying his hardest and only just barely making it. Trevor reached for the hole in the ceiling, stretching his fingers until they trembled, wishing he could fly, the way Superman and some of the X-Men did.
Zach groaned again, louder this time. Finally, his shaking arms stopped moving and he said, "You're going to have to climb on my shoulders. But you gotta hurry. I can't hold you up much longer."
Trevor looked into the other boy's scrunched-up face and bit his lip. "Okay," he said, "I'll try."
He stepped up onto Zach's upper arm. The bigger boy winced, and Trevor whispered an apology, but he didn't stop moving. With one hand still on Zach's shoulder and the other on the top of his head, Trevor pulled a knee onto Zach's collarbone.
"Good," Zach wheezed, "but hurry, please." Zach pushed on Trevor's bottom until Trevor had both knees on Zach's shoulder, then held him steady while Trevor regained his balance.
Trevor had gotten closer to the hole now, could smell the old, dusty smell coming from the space above, but he still couldn't reach the boards, what his daddy called joists. He looked down at Zach, who was also staring worriedly at the hole.
"You'll have to stand on my shoulders," Zach said.
"I don't want to hurt you."
Zach shook his head. "Just do it. All that matters is you getting out. I'll be okay. But do it now." Without waiting, he grabbed Trevor's legs and started forcing him higher. Trevor got both hands in Zach's hair and boosted himself up, feeling wobbly, like he was trying to stand one-footed on the top of an extra-tall pole. He knew he would fall over any second and break every bone in his body. He straightened up slowly, letting go of Zach's head and coming so close to falling that he imagined he felt his face bashing against the floor.
He touched the ceiling. The edges of the gray spot crumbled. He couldn't pull himself up on that stuff, but if he could just get a hold of the boards above...
"Can you boost me a little more?" he asked, knowing Zach was probably only seconds from dropping him.
"Step on my hands," the other boy said, and Trevor did. Zach thrust him the extra few inches, and Trevor clamped his hands onto the wood like a mountain climber on the edge of a really tall cliff. Except, Trevor thought, dangling from the joist, mountain climbers have rope and helmets and pads and things. Trevor had only Zach below to break his fall if he happened to slip.
"Now just pull yourself up," Zach said.
Trevor didn't look at him, didn't want to look down. The hole wasn't huge, but neither was Trevor, and he thought he had enough room to pull up one of his legs and wrap it around the board. That was how he climbed trees. First grab onto the branch, get your leg around it, then swing yourself up.
He tried.
He failed. His leg bumped against the edge of the hole in the ceiling and never made it to the wood.
He tried again, but this time he managed to get the very tip of his knee onto the joist. He quickly dragged the rest of his leg and his foot over the board, careful not to kick through the ceiling on the other side. Yellow fuzzy stuff tickled his nose and got into his mouth. He didn't think that stuff was very good for you, but he guessed just a little bit wouldn't kill him. Trevor pulled himself up into the dark space and heard Zach cheering quietly below.
Something tugged at the front of his shirt. For a second, he thought it must be a spider or a bat or some other kind of attic creature, but then he remembered the phone and reached for the pocket just in time to keep the cell from slipping out and falling to the floor.
"---kay," Zach was saying below. "Get out of here."
Trevor waited.
"Oh, and if the phone won't work right outside, get to higher ground. Sometimes that helps."
"Okay," Trevor said. He made sure to push the phone deep into his pocket before moving. He couldn't lose the phone. He'd watched the way they'd come and knew they were in the middle of nowhere. An escape would be worthless without the phone. He'd have been better off escaping a spaceship without an oxygen suit.
He crawled along two of the wooden boards, a hand on each, his knees following right along behind them. The first few crawling steps into the darkness were scary and the next were scarier than the first, but it didn't matter. He would get out of the house, and he would save them. It was his responsibility. He wouldn't fail.
THIRTY-ONE
DAVE/HANK ABBOTT, WHO still hadn't entirely accepted his success, who considered himself some sort of combination of the boy he had been and the man he had become, sat on the edge of the bloody bed and looked down at the mess. He held the severed leg by the ankle and thumped it occasionally against the caked gore. In the corner of the room, Manny cowered and whined, his snout buried in his forepaws.
"Shut up," Dave/Hank said and thumped the leg again. On the bed beside the body was the sword, which jumped a little with every whack of the dead leg. Dried blood had dirtied the blade, but parts of it still glimmered. Dave/Hank smacked the bed again, trying to build up some momentum, and the sword flashed light at him.
His eyes drooped. His muscles were half stiff as rock and half wobbly as jelly. The claw marks on his face, the bruise on his shin, and the stab wound in his chest all throbbed. If the bed hadn't been covered with Mr. Boots's remains, the soft mattress and the puffy pillows would have tempted him, made him unable to resist the urge to lie down for a short nap. Part of him was tempted anyway. Except he couldn't take a nap. He had to take care of the body, had to put it where it belonged while he still had the time.
He thumped the leg one last time and placed it on the bed beside the rest of the corpse. Before rolling up the body in the bedding, he plucked the sword from the mattress and leaned it against the bedroom wall. Then he untucked the fitted sheet from the bed's corners and went to work.
It wasn't easy. The sheets were torn and stiff, the body rigid though he thought he had practically liquified it, but he finally got the thing rolled up in the sheet and rolled up again in the blanket. He looked around for something to tie the bundle but found nothing. He supposed he could have gone into Mr. Boots's dresser, gotten some belts or suspenders that would do the job, but he decided it probably didn't matter. He could hoist the body without ties.
When he first got the roll over his shoulder, the weight of it almost knocked him off balance. Mr. Boots had been a large man, even in his old age, and his corpse seemed almost heavier than his live body must have been, despite a good deal of it being sprayed across the room and not rolled into the package in Dave/Hank's hands. Dave/Hank shifted a little and managed to stay standing, but the weight became nearly too much to bear. He wished he'd taken care of the task that morning, when he'd still had some energy, but he'd been eager to get to the boys and he'd had a lot of other things to take care of first. Just cleaning himself up had taken several hours. Blood didn't exactly wipe off like rainwater---you had to scrub.
In the corner, Manny got to his feet, growling and baring his teeth.
"I know," said Dave/Hank. "He was a bad man. You stay here."
Manny didn't stop growling, but he stayed in his place.
Dave/Hank carried the body out of the bedroom and closed the door behind him. He stopped in the hall for a few seconds and listened for movement in the second bedroom, but the boys were quiet in there. Maybe sleeping already, although if the rest of the day was any indication, they were probably planning an escape. They would have to have a serious family meeting after tonight, lay down some ground rules, re-familiarize themselves with the group dynamics. It would all take time.
He hefted the bundle and wished he had a toothpick. His pocketful probably still lay spread out across the little girl's back yard---wet, dirty, ruined. Dave/Hank lugged Mr. Boots down the hallway, through the living room, and into the small dining area, where he deposited him onto the wobbly table. There was a fresh box of picks in the kitchen cabinet. Two or three would get him through the night.
At the kitchen counter, he pushed aside expired spices and half a bag of flour, found the toothpicks, shook half a dozen out of the box and slipped all but one of them into his pants pocket. Better to be safe. He poked the last pick into his mouth and chomped down.
He shouldn't have bothered with the things. They wore at his teeth, sometimes left sores on his gums when he accidentally poked himself, but he loved the woodsy taste. Like autumn in your mouth.
The body on the table looked like a giant cocoon, except the thing inside was not exactly a worm and would never be a butterfly. Shifting his pick from one side of his mouth to the other with his tongue, Dave/Hank moved back to the table and recollected his former tormentor. He immediately wished he'd never put him down. Lifting the body the second time was harder than it had been the first, almost impossible. He strained. A streamlet of sweat dribbled down from his hairline across his temple. He knew the house was cool, even felt a bit of a draft on his skin, chilling the sweat before it dripped to his jaw line, but the sweat kept coming. He thought of broken faucets, specifically of the broken faucet in Georgie's old kitchen, and then of Georgie. Continuing to struggle with his load, he wondered what the boys were up to, whether they would cause much more trouble. He sucked the toothpick another couple of centimeters into his mouth and bit down. The bundle folded over his shoulder, and he eased himself around to face the back door.
Above him, the ceiling creaked. He stopped, listened. Wind probably, or maybe a bird or a rat. No more sounds followed, and he let himself forget about it. He had to get this body off his shoulder before he strained something or simply collapsed. He twisted the knob, and the door swung open. As he moved, he heard dripping behind him. He didn't look back. Although he'd thought the body was mostly dried up, he supposed some pockets of wet stuff could still be hidden beneath and that the body might drip more now. He flipped off the light with an elbow and hurried out of the house.
Outside, a light breeze blew and refreshed him a little. He moved around the parked truck and the scarred stump holding the ax, shuffled to the rusty wheelbarrow, which had been a fixture of the yard ever since he'd arrived here. He dropped Mr. Boots's body inside without ceremony and took a deep breath. His muscles tingled. His arms twitched and threatened to cramp. He waited to see if his body would betray him and then looked down at the wheelbarrow's new front wheel. He'd replaced the old, flat wheel that afternoon, a chore that had taken almost an hour and involved much scraping away of rust and more than a little cursing. He'd known he'd need the thing for Boots's body at least, if for nothing else, and was glad he'd planned ahead.
The wheel came from a new wheelbarrow in the unlocked garage of a distant neighbor; Dave had taken it almost a year ago, wrapped it in a rag and hidden it beneath the kitchen sink until today. It had been one of the earliest steps of his plan, one of the baby steps.
He grabbed the wheelbarrow's handles and gave it an experimental push. It slid a foot forward, wobbling just a little. The wheel seemed to hold up fine, despite the weight, and Dave/Hank guessed that the barrow itself would probably fall apart before the wheel betrayed him.
From the house, he heard a bark. He could almost imagine Manny scratching at the bedroom door, eager to get away from the smell of the blood and probably hungry, too. He hoped the dog wouldn't pee on the bedroom floor and then realized it didn't matter.
He tried pushing the wheelbarrow first, before spinning it around and pulling. He liked the latter arrangement better and proceeded toward the woods, tugging the body behind, still pulping the toothpick between his teeth.
During his years here, he'd been through most of the woods surrounding the property, but he'd avoided one particular path since he was a very small boy. It was this path down which he pulled the wheelbarrow now, a path that was not a trail but simply a series of half-remembered twists and turns, a path only in that it was the path of least resistance. He jerked the barrow over a mound that may have been a fallen log at one point and around a group of close-growing trees. The contraption bucked and swerved behind him, and more than once he had to stop and straighten out the cart before it tipped over and dumped his load. His muscles screamed for mercy, and he ignored them. Once he'd finished, he would take a hot shower, but until then his body would just have to tough it out.
The ghost tree appeared ahead as if it really were a ghost, something that could materialize out of thin air, glide down from the sky above, or float up from beneath the ground. Dave/Hank brought the body to the tree and tried not to look into the field beyond. He hadn't been here since he was six years old. At this very spot, Mr. Boots had caught him and led him back to the house, barefooted and miserable. Dave/Hank looked at the heap in the wheelbarrow and punched it suddenly, as if it would do something besides sting his hand. He brought his fist up for another blow but then blew out a long breath of air around the toothpick and swatted the body instead.
Asshole, he thought, both at himself and at Mr. Boots.
Looking first from the corner of his eye, he peeked past the trunk of the pale tree. The space beyond was dark, but he saw the car, in the same place it had been twenty-three years before, now partially hidden behind overgrown grass and weeds but still there. He turned to face it fully. The station wagon with its crumpled hood. Dave/Hank remembered the moose, remembered the way it had killed his daddy/him. He carted the wheelbarrow past the tree and through the weeds, sweating, panting.
The wheelbarrow jerked, bounced over molehills or stones or who knew what. Moving so slowly, Dave/Hank saw the skeletons long before he reached the station wagon. Their sun-bleached skulls all pointed in different directions. The one in the passenger's seat was aimed directly his way, grinning, eyes pulling on him like black holes. He hadn't known whether the bodies would still be here or not, had thought maybe the animals would have crawled in through the broken windows and snatched away the bones one at a time. But either the bodies had been too hard to get to, or the animals simply hadn't been interested, because from what Dave/Hank could see, the skeletons remained mostly intact. Even the dog's bones were there. He spat out the mangled sliver of wood.
Bits of memory came to him. He remembered a bloated tongue, though he couldn't remember to which body it had belonged. He remembered a gaping chest wound and thought it might have been Georgie's. So long ago. He supposed he'd repressed the rest of it.
The wheelbarrow tilted to one side, and he applied enough pressure to keep it upright. The body shifted and thumped against the side of the basket. He moved again, pulled the wheelbarrow around the back of the car to the unoccupied side of the back seat. He wouldn't let himself think about the bones in the car. The bodies inside weren't his family, not anymore. His family had returned from the dead, and he was their savior.
On the other side of the car, he dropped the handles and took a second to stretch his shoulders. His left bicep burned, but a few quick flexes brought the pain down to a tolerable level. He reached for the back door and tried the handle. It didn't budge. He yanked on it harder but with no more success. It had rusted shut.
Oh well. The window was gone. Tiny triangles of broken glass poked up from between the cracked rubber weather strips like monstrous teeth from between dead lips. He looked back at the body, telling himself this would be the last time he would ever have to lift it. He allowed himself a thirty-second breather before reaching into the wheelbarrow.
The bedding stunk. He supposed the stench wasn't any worse now than it had ever been, but somehow, as he lifted the body to the empty window frame, it seemed to have taken on a whole new odor. Dave/Hank poked one end of the roll through the window and shoved. It was like trying to push a socked foot into a shoe that was already laced. He groaned and leaned on the bundle, pushed on it from different angles and punched at the protruding mounds, some of which were probably body parts.
The body finally popped into the car. Dave/Hank heard rattling bones and rasping cloth, but he didn't look inside at the damage he'd done. His business here was done forever. The car had its full load---it could finish its trip to Hell.
Dave/Hank thought about bringing back the wheelbarrow but decided to leave it be. He didn't want to have to mess with dragging it all the way back to the house, wrenching it over fallen trees and through prickling bushes. If he needed it that badly, he could always come back, but he didn't think he would. The wheelbarrow and its stolen tire had served their purpose.
Hank Abbott rubbed his hands together, blew out a long exhalation, and walked away from the station wagon, looking at nothing but the path ahead.
THIRTY-TWO
LIBBY SAT ON Trevor's bed. She had one of his action figures, a cartoony looking guy with red skin, pressed between her hands. Mike had stayed in the living room by the phone, but she'd wanted to get up and stretch her legs. She'd ended up here, looking through Trevor's things, thinking about him and crying.
She twisted the action figure around and found a hole on his back probably meant to connect with some accessory, maybe a jet pack or an extra set of bendable arms. She wasn't sure, couldn't remember buying this particular toy. Mike had probably gotten this one for their son on one of their weekends together.
Not for the first time, Libby thought about how strange it was that Trevor's life contained portions to which she was not privy. He spent whole days away from her, doing things she didn't know about (though he often told her of the days' events in extreme detail), having conversations she wasn't a part of. She supposed it was the same when he went to school. Him with his little friends, talking about comic books and superheroes, television shows and movies. But it wasn't the same. The time Trevor spent in this house, away from her, was the result of her and Mike's failed marriage. It was her fault. Every kid went to school, but not every kid's parents split up. She dropped the toy onto the X-Men pillow beside her and rubbed her face.
No more police had arrived, no knocks on the door, no check-up calls, which she took to mean no progress. If they'd found Trevor somewhere in the woods, they'd have brought him directly home. Surely. She tried to imagine where Trevor was but quickly shut off her imagination when the images took a nasty turn. It was better to sit here and play with his toys, to try not to think about what was happening to him, to wait.
She plucked the action figure from the pillow and flew him lazily through the air. When the phone rang, she dropped the toy on the mattress, and looked toward the living room. Part of her didn't believe it, thought it must be her mind playing a trick on her. Another part recognized the sound as reality but didn't want to know what news the phone call might bring. What if they'd found Trevor's body? What if the kidnapper wanted a million dollars they didn't have?
She hopped off Trevor's bed. Although she felt like she'd hesitated forever, she entered the living room before the phone could ring a third time.
---:---:---:---
At the mall, Mike had wanted to blame Libby for losing Trevor, had wanted to scream at her, but now it was his fault. He'd done what he could, but it hadn't been enough. He'd failed. Trevor was gone because of his inadequacy as a father.
He leaned back on the couch and wiped a tear from his cheek.
He wondered about Trevor and the other boy, if they were safe, if they were still alive. He didn't want to think those kinds of thoughts but couldn't help it. Libby had always been good at controlling her thoughts, but he had not. His mind went where it wanted---he simply tagged along. Sometimes he chalked it up to artistic tendencies, but right now he cursed his overdeveloped imagination.
He looked toward the hallway. He didn't know for sure, but he thought Libby had probably gone to Trevor's bedroom. They could have sat together and talked, had another cup of tea, but once they'd exhausted their conversation about Trevor, things had gotten a little awkward. Mike hadn't wanted their conversation to get too deep, too emotional, because he thought it might make her uncomfortable, but you could only go so long on small talk, especially on a night like tonight, when already mundane topics like weather and work seemed all the more unimportant.
He thought about the kidnapper. Why would he take Trevor? He'd asked himself the question a hundred times, and he still had no answers. Had he gotten the wrong kid---meant to get some rich, spoiled brat and taken Mike's precious Trevor instead? Maybe, although Mike couldn't imagine anyone coming into this house and thinking they were rich or even well off. It could have been a random act of violence, but that didn't make sense either. Nothing about the kidnapper had seemed random. He'd come into the house purposefully, come straight to the bedroom and gone after Trevor with only a single attempt to wound Mike. If he'd been after meaningless violence, Mike would have been the more accessible target. Besides, if it had been for the money, they'd have gotten a phone call, and if it had been pure aggression, the guy would have killed both Mike and Trevor on the spot, not taken the boy with him. Something else was going on here, something he didn't understand.
From the table beside the couch, the phone rang. He'd put it on the charger after the cops left.
He looked at the phone but didn't move to answer it. What if Deputy Willis had called to tell him they'd found Trevor's body stuffed into a drainage ditch or spread across the highway? He didn't know how he would handle that, if he could handle it. Surely, if he heard such a thing, his heart would simply stop beating and he'd drift off to wherever it was dead people went, to wherever Trevor had gone.
He reached for the phone and held it in his hand, not pressing the talk button, watching the fluttering light and trying to hope.
Libby came into the room looking worried and ten years older than normal. She opened her mouth to say something, but before she could, Mike punched the talk button and pressed the receiver to his ear.
"Yes?" he said. "Hello."
THIRTY-THREE
IT HAD TAKEN Trevor a long time to move across the crawlspace above the ceiling. The yellow stuff (or at least what he hoped was the yellow stuff, what he dared not let himself think might be the cobwebs of giant vampire spiders) kept getting on his face and in his hair and itching him. The ceiling joists sometimes bowed and tilted at crazy angles. He almost slipped a couple of times, and although he didn't know if he was heavy enough to break through sections of ceiling that didn't have water damage, he didn't want to test it.
He crawled in the dark until he thought he'd gotten to the other side of the house, where, if he remembered right and hadn't gotten himself all turned around, the kitchen was. Once there, he waited, listening for sounds from beneath, for some sign that he'd been caught and that the crazy man was waiting for him to show himself.
The only sounds he heard were his heartbeat and sometimes a creaking board from behind him, which was scary because it sounded like a monster chasing after him but also okay because he knew it was really just the house settling. Houses settled down and made funny sounds sometimes. His daddy had told him all about it.
After repositioning himself so he was straddling one of the boards, his feet splayed and resting on the joists to either side, Trevor felt for the lump inside his chest pocket. Good, he thought, still there.
Holding tight to the board beneath his bottom, he lifted one of his feet and tapped it against the ceiling between the joists, moving by feel alone, everything black blurs on blacker blurs. He'd expected the ceiling to be hard, like rock, but to his surprise, it cracked and gave way easily. Trevor kicked a little harder, and his foot went right through.
The yellow stuff tickled his exposed leg just above his sock, and he heard something clap against the floor in the room below. He pulled his foot out of the hole he'd made and tried to look through it.
He saw nothing below. The hole was gray, lighter than everything else up here, and he saw it all right, but he had no idea which room lay below. If it was a room at all. Maybe he'd kicked his way into a closet or a dead space between rooms. Or maybe Trevor had gotten all mixed up and come back to where he'd started, maybe he was staring down into the windowless room and Zach was just below, staring up, wondering how he could be so unlucky, how he could have gotten stuck with a doofus like Trevor.
No. That didn't make any sense. There were lights on in the windowless room. Unless Zach had turned the lights off---and Trevor couldn't think of any reason why he might do such a stupid thing---this was someplace different.
He kicked again, and the gray hole widened. Another chunk of ceiling smacked against the floor below.
Still, no sounds came from the house other than those he was making himself, no cries of Hey, what do you think you're doing up there? and no blasting guns trying to turn him into Trevor jelly. He wondered if the crazy man had left, or if maybe he wasn't very good at hearing. He guessed if he hadn't gotten caught yet, he probably wouldn't, so he poked his foot through the ceiling again and kicked his leg back and forth until he thought he'd made a hole big enough to fit through. Bits of ceiling rained against the ground, and Trevor felt the dust---and of course the yellow stuff---on his bare leg.
He leaned over and squinted through the darkness.
The kitchen.
A dark and shadowy kitchen, but a kitchen for sure. The half-full package of bread on the counter beside the sink proved that. The refrigerator was right beneath him. Or almost right beneath. Close enough he thought he could swing through the hole and onto the top with only a teensy chance of falling to his death. He held a hand over the phone and leaned closer to the hole.
The refrigerator hummed. On top of that sound was the chirping of crickets, though Trevor didn't know if he was hearing them through an open door or window, or simply through the roof. He wriggled even closer to the hole and positioned himself for a swing onto the fridge.
His arms wobbled, tired---he supposed all of him was tired, but his arms especially. He poked his tongue from the corner of his mouth and went for the fridge anyway. If he fell, at least he could say he tried.
He swung from the space above the ceiling like a monkey from a tree, his body starting off all squeezed together but ending up fully stretched. His toes slid across the top of the fridge, and he let go of the joist. The escape, the chance for a phone call, his life---although it all could have ended right there, Trevor wound up doubled over on the top of the fridge with one arm dangling over the side and his legs folded against a pair of cabinet doors.
He scrambled for a better position and ended up sitting atop the fridge with both legs flung over the front and across the freezer door. The kitchen was dark, but not as dark as it had been in the crawlspace, and his eyes sucked up what little light there was.
The pile of powdery, broken ceiling lay on the floor just beneath him, although in the dark it could have been a pile of sawdust or snow or boogers and Trevor wouldn't have known the difference. Once the crazy man saw that pile, he would know what happened. There was no way to hide it now, no way for Trevor to fix the ceiling, although he thought his daddy could have done it.
No, the only thing to do now was get outside and make his phone call. And fast.
The fridge was pushed against a wall on one side; there was a countertop on the other. Trevor backed off on the countertop side and slid down the refrigerator until his shoes connected with something solid. He sat down again, flipped around, and this time backed onto the floor beside the pile of ceiling. The phone bounced in his shirt, smacked against his chest. When he moved out of the kitchen, the shirt swayed in front of him, the weight pulling it down in front so that his collar rubbed uncomfortably against the back of his neck. He plucked out the phone and squeezed it between his fingers. His shirt shifted back into place, and the bad feeling on his neck eased.
It had been warm above the ceiling, but it felt better down here, not cold but cool, comfortable. Trevor realized they must be pretty high in the mountains still, like at Daddy's house. It was summer, after all, and should have been hot. At Mommy's house, it was hot all through the night---at least, it was hot outside where there wasn't any air conditioning. Trevor didn't mind the cold, actually liked it a little. It made him think of snow, fires in the living room, and Christmas.
Last year, Daddy had come back home for Christmas, had brought a bag full of presents and stayed the whole day. Trevor wondered if he would do the same thing again this year, or if he would have to have two Christmases at his two different houses with two trees and two Christmas dinners.
If I make it to Christmas at all.
He walked through the dining room, staying close to the wall so he wouldn't accidentally bump into the table or the chairs and make a loud noise. He concentrated on Zach's mommy's red phone the way he did a new toy, thinking he couldn't wait to get it open and see what it did.
When he got to the back door, he half expected it to be locked like the bedroom, or to find bars on the windows, or for the knob to be electrified, a reverse booby trap that kept the good guys in instead of the bad guys out, but there was none of that. The knob twisted in his hand, and the door swung open.
Trevor hurried out of the house, flipping open the phone as he moved. Once he'd made it a few long steps away and stood near the front bumper of the bad man's truck, he stopped and squinted down at the keypad. Zach had turned off the phone before handing it over---otherwise the numbers would have been lit up, and Trevor could have seen them fine. He found the power button and held it until the phone beeped. The welcome screen flashed, and the cellular began searching for service. Trevor pulled the antenna all the way out, not knowing if it mattered.
The screen read: Searching...
Trevor watched and waited.
Still Searching...
When the screen changed and Trevor saw the first little bar in the corner, he almost cheered. But then the bar disappeared, and Trevor frowned. The searching started again.
Trevor looked at the truck and then at the phone. Not bothering to shut it, he stuffed the cell into his shirt pocket and hopped onto the truck's bumper. He scrambled up the windshield onto the top of the cab, pulled the phone out again, and waited.
Searching...
One bar.
No bars.
Searching...
In another corner of the phone's small screen, the picture of the battery went from half full to only filled a little. Trevor groaned.
Come on, he thought, please.
The single bar did not return.
Trevor finally closed the phone and crawled off the truck.
Higher ground, Zach had said. Trevor looked around the property, saw nothing but trees and shadows. Which way was higher ground? Most of the land appeared to slope down. It was the kind of yard where you wouldn't want to play catch, where a ball could roll away for a long time if it happened to go sailing over your head.
He supposed he could have climbed a tree, squirreled his way up to the very top and tried the phone again, but what if he fell? What if he cracked his head open and his brains fell out and he died? Or what if he was okay but he landed on his pocket and the phone snapped in half? He couldn't risk that. Zach was counting on him. Trevor was counting on himself.
He looked around again and decided he really only had one choice. The trees directly behind the house seemed level with where he stood now, which meant at least they weren't downhill. Whether the ground got higher beyond the trees or not, Trevor couldn't tell. For all he knew, there might be a cliff or a gully, a river or a lake. He might walk through the trees and end up slipping into a mudslide and zooming over the edge of a waterfall like something from an action movie. Who knew?
Trevor shrugged his shoulders a little and started for the woods.
He walked with the phone open and held out in front of him, watching the screen for a bar and using the itsy bit of light coming from the thing to help guide his way, pressing the Back button every once in a while to keep the light from shutting off. It was dark inside the trees, almost darker than it had been in the crawlspace above the ceiling. When things clung to his face here, he couldn't pretend it was the yellow stuff, could only brush it out of his face and hair as quickly as possible and go on.
He did seem to be climbing a little, though more slowly than he'd have liked. Crickets squawked, and owls hooted. Trevor listened for a howling coyote, the growl of a bear or a mountain lion, but if there were things more dangerous than crickets and owls in these woods, they stayed quiet.
Trevor didn't like that. If something was going to try to gobble him up, he wanted to know it was coming. Maybe, he thought, the wild animals aren't sneaking around all quiet like, maybe there just aren't any. Maybe they're sleeping. He could hope.
Trevor pushed through brush and dead thickets, got smacked in the face by a low-hanging branch and swatted at it angrily. He should have paid closer attention to where he was walking, but his eyes stayed glued to the phone's screen.
Searching...
He stubbed his toe on a rock or a tree stump and hissed.
Searching...
He circled around another tree and found himself at the bottom of a little hill. He climbed.
Searching...
One bar.
He stopped. The bar didn't disappear. He climbed a little farther up the hill, and the bar stayed there.
Alright!
Holding the phone in one hand and poking at it with the other, tongue in the corner of his mouth, Trevor keyed the seven digits that had been his phone number since before he was born but that he had only recently forced himself to memorize. He hit Send and pressed the cellular to the side of his face.
It rang. And it rang again.
Answer, Trevor thought. Oh please.
His mommy's voice came on the line, and Trevor smiled, but then he recognized the words and realized he was hearing their stinking answering machine, hearing his mommy's voice but not really his mommy while she talked about her computer job and all sorts of things he didn't understand. He waited for the beep and said, "Mommy? Are you there?"
No mommy. He waited a second and said, "Mommy?" one last time before pulling the phone from his face and stabbing the End button with the tip of his finger.
Where could she be? Sleeping? Going potty? He guessed she might be doing either thing. Maybe if he waited ten minutes and tried again, she'd be there. But what if she was gone? Or what if she was watching a late movie on TV the way she and Daddy used to do, with a big bowl of popcorn on the sofa beside her and the ringer turned off so nobody could interrupt the show?
It didn't matter. He couldn't wait ten minutes. Zach was still inside, and the bad man was wandering around somewhere, maybe hunting after Trevor at that very moment.
Something moved in the bushes.
Trevor squatted down a little, as if the something might come flying at his head. Another rustling followed, and a small and furry creature waddled out into the open. A raccoon. Trevor shook his head and straightened.
The raccoon moved along, not looking at Trevor, not seeming to notice him at all, and Trevor returned his attention to the cell phone.
He knew only one other number. He tried it. The phone rang again but then beeped at him. Trevor peeked at the screen. The battery icon flashed.
Oh no. He chewed on the inside of his cheek like it was bubble gum. Please please please please, he thought, please answer please please please answer please.
"Yes?" said a voice that sounded like a scared-little-boy version of his daddy, "Hello."
When Trevor talked, he did so as fast as he could. If the phone's battery died before he gave his daddy the directions he'd memorized, he would never have another chance.
The phone beeped mid-sentence, and Trevor somehow managed to talk a little bit faster.
---:---:---:---
From his place in the bushes, Hank watched the raccoon cross the bare patch of land and reenter the undergrowth on the other side. He wanted to jump out and stomp it to the ground. A raccoon was a troublesome, dirty little thing.
And so was the boy.
No, wait. That wasn't right. Davy was a good boy. Davy was a perfectly fine little boy.
The child worried over the phone and then pressed it to his ear. Upon hearing Davy's awkward progress through the woods, Hank had originally intended to move directly to him, snatch him up and drag him back into the house, but now he thought he'd wait. He wasn't sure how the kid had gotten loose in the first place. He knew he'd locked the door---the key was in his pocket. Davy was clever, he guessed. Davy couldn't be chained. He wanted to see what Davy did next.
The boy talked, and Hank extracted a new toothpick from his pocket. The tip slid between his lips and poked him in the gums, but he didn't care.
His plan had not been perfect, especially the part involving Georgie's mother, but now, listening, he thought maybe things hadn't gone as badly as he'd first thought, that his scheme might still be falling into place in an unexpected but wonderful way.
The kid was giving directions, leading somebody here. Good directions, easily followed, though he seemed to babble like a brook. Hank would have been worried, would have thought maybe the kid was yakking to the cops, except for one word the boy had let slip, a word that was so gaspingly magnificent.
The word was Mommy.
THIRTY-FOUR
LIBBY WANTED TO rip the phone from Mike's hand, talk to her son and make sure he was okay, but Mike seemed to be listening very intently, and she didn't want to interrupt something important, something that might save her boy.
She stood at the end of the couch, shifting uncomfortably.
"---with a shotgun," Mike said. "I remember." He sat there and listened for a long time and then said, "Yeah."
Libby moved closer, her ear pointed at the phone but still unable to hear more than the occasional word, things like road and tree and over, bits and pieces that were all but meaningless out of context.
"I know where that is," Mike said and then listened again.
Libby watched, wouldn't let herself blink. Trevor was alive. She wasn't sure what was happening, how he'd gotten to a phone, but he was alive, and that was enough for now.
Escaped, she thought. Maybe Trevor had gotten free. She didn't want to let herself believe that, didn't want to get her hopes up, but she couldn't help it. Escaped.
"Mommy's here with me," Mike said. He turned to face Libby, looked her in the eyes. He said, "Okay."
Libby mouthed, what?
Mike ran a hand through his hair and turned away. "Just hold on, okay, bud. We both love you so...Trevor?" He turned the phone to look at it, then stuck it back against his ear. "Hello? Trev?"
Libby waited for what felt like a very long time before saying, "What is it? What happened?"
Mike looked at the phone's indicator light, which was green. "I don't...I guess his phone died."
"What did he say? Where is he?"
Mike shut off the phone, tossed it onto the couch, and said, "He said he loves you. I'm supposed to tell you that."
Libby didn't move, didn't speak. Tears she didn't remember shedding flowed down her cheeks. Mike was pulling something off the table beside the couch, a small white rectangle, but Libby's vision was too blurred to make any sense of it. Mike retrieved the phone and dialed a number, referring back to the blurry white thing after every two or three numbers. He crossed his free arm over his chest, squeezed it into his armpit, and paced. Libby wiped at her cheeks, rubbed her eyes with the backs of her hands, tried to say something and only sobbed.
"Hello," Mike said, "Deputy Willis?"
Still crying, Libby moved to the couch and plopped down on the edge.
"I just got a call from my son," Mike said, "gave me about the best directions you ever heard. I can lead you right to him." He turned around, walked past Libby, and then turned again. "Do you have a pen?" Turn. Walk. Turn. Walk. "What do you mean?" He stopped pacing.
Libby watched him, the tears finished now, the front of her shirt damp but not soaked.
"Well, when will that be? My son needs help now." Mike was getting red, the way he always did in those rare instances when his temper got the better of him. "That's bullshit," he said. He dropped onto the couch beside Libby, his leg not quite touching hers. Libby wondered why Mike hadn't called 911 instead of the deputy and realized that wouldn't have done any good. As small as the sheriff's department up here probably was, Willis might have been the only deputy on duty anyway, and this way Mike hadn't needed to re-explain the entire situation.
"No, I won't calm down," he said. "I've got a fucking map to the bad guy for you and you're telling me there's nothing you can do?"
He had gone beyond red. Libby heard his teeth grinding. Not knowing what was going on, she didn't know whether to try to calm him down or join him in his fury.
She settled for waiting.
---:---:---:---
In the blood-spattered kitchen of one Ms. Harriet Anne Thompson, Deputy Sheriff Lester Willis listened to the cursing and the screaming without flinching. He'd heard worse.
"Listen," he said during a break in Pullman's tirade. "I can't just leave a crime scene. I've got a dead body here and a partner already gone home for the night. Can you understand that?" He looked at the woman's corpse again and shook his head. "But if you'll give me those directions, I'll get on the phone to the dispatcher and get every available deputy and emergency responder out to your boy as soon as possible." He walked alongside the trail of maroon footprints, staying far enough away that he wouldn't contaminate them. He pulled a pad of paper and a pen from his pocket and wrote, holding the cell phone to his ear with his shoulder.
"Yeah," he said. "A left and then a right." He knew the general area Pullman was describing and sketched a little map beneath the written directions. He said, "Okay, then what?"
Silence on the line.
"Mr. Pullman?"
Nothing.
He glanced at his phone. It had disconnected. He flipped through the notebook, found Pullman's number, which Deputy Grey had dutifully written down, and dialed it. The phone rang. Ten times it rang. Twelve. He ended the call and sighed. He'd have to call into dispatch, get somebody up to Pullman's place to see what was going on. They might have to pull a couple guys out of bed, but hell, if Willis couldn't sleep, why should any of the rest of them?
He turned back to the body, to the puffy face and the throat slit so deep the head was almost completely disconnected from the body. The neighbor who'd called this in, a neighbor Willis would have to interview (and maybe interrogate) later, had said there was a boy, a son. Kid by the name of Zachary Thompson.
Willis wondered what the chances were that Zachary Thompson was the same kid Pullman's abductor had been dragging along. Probably, he guessed, the chances were pretty damn good.
He would have to take some pictures, make a sketch of the scene. Eventually, they'd have a whole team up here, but he'd do what he could until they arrived. But first, he'd make the call into HQ. At least two kids were in some serious trouble, and now it looked like their kidnapper might be more of a murderer.
He only hoped someone would get to them in time.
Damn mountains. You might as well try to fight crime at the bottom of the sea.
Willis walked out of the kitchen to make his call, away from the stench of death, thinking about upset parents and a girl without the tip of her nose, thinking about little boys taken away from their families and trying hard not to think about their corpses.
---:---:---:---
Mike stared open mouthed at the phone. The indicator light was dark, dead. He said, "Oh my god."
"What?" Libby stared at him.
Mike let out a single, short laugh. It was dry, more of a rasp really, the kind of sound Libby thought a movie mummy might make.
Mike said, "Now my phone's dead." He pressed the buttons on the handset but received no response. He might as well have held a brick.
"I thought you plugged it in."
"I did." He pushed the phone into the charging cradle. Nothing happened. He scooted the table away from the wall and she saw the plug on the floor beneath the outlet.
"It must have only charged a little bit. Come unplugged when we were moving furniture," he said and punched at the floor. "Stupid."
"You don't have another phone?"
"You know I don't."
Actually, Libby hadn't known, but it wasn't a point to press. "Isn't there a speaker phone on the base?"
"Nope, nothing that fancy."
"Then plug it in," she said. "It can't take that long to charge."
Mike did but said, "It doesn't matter. Even if I could call him back, there's nothing he can do. Says he's at a crime scene and can't leave. He promised to send everyone he could, but there's probably nobody else within thirty minutes of here. By the time they get to Trevor, he could be dead."
Libby thought about Trevor in the bathroom stall, thought about the announcement that had come too late: TREVOR PULLMAN, IF YOU CAN HEAR THIS, PLEASE COME TO SECURITY. YOUR MOTHER IS LOOKING FOR YOU. "So what do we do?"
Mike didn't answer. He hurried out of the living room, down the hallway, into his bedroom. Libby followed. In his closet, he rummaged through clothes and pulled out a pair of jeans and some old boots. Without looking back at Libby, he pulled off his lounge pants and replaced them with the jeans. He found some dirty socks, yanked them on (one of them inside out) and stepped into the boots.
"Mike?"
He turned away from the closet. "It might be hours before anyone gets to him. I can't risk that. He needs help now."
"So what are you going to do?"
Mike frowned at her like she'd just asked him the stupidest question he'd ever heard. "I'm going to save him." He opened the nightstand drawer and pulled out a set of keys and his wallet.
Libby stood, grabbed his arm. "You're taking me with you."
"Like hell," said Mike. "Stay here and wait for the cops. I only got halfway through the directions. They'll probably come here first."
"No," said Libby. "I'm not asking, I'm telling. We're going together. Don't try to force me on this." She thought about Marshall, thought she'd kicked enough balls today and hoped she didn't have to kick any more.
TREVOR PULLMAN...YOUR MOTHER IS LOOKING FOR YOU. How long would she have waited if she'd stayed with the security guard? How long before somebody found Trevor sobbing in the bathroom with a pair of dirty pants?
"I'm going."
Mike sighed. "Let's hit the workshop on our way out," he said. "Grab something we can use for weapons."
Libby nodded. "And let's take the Honda. I don't trust that truck."
Without hesitation, Mike said, "Okay."
They left the house together.
THIRTY-FIVE
HANK WATCHED THE boy flip the phone open and closed several times before sticking it into his breast pocket. He hadn't said goodbye, seemed to have been cut off mid-sentence. Lost his connection, Hank thought. It surprised him that the kid had managed to make a call from way out here in the first place. Of course, he didn't know much about all these newfangled electronics. Maybe they had special phones for country folks, better antennas or something. He waited for Davy's reaction.
The boy only stood there looking clueless, staring at the sky as if he thought he could fly away. Hank wished he could tell him there was no place to go, that if there had been he'd have gone himself, but that was something the boy would have to learn on his own.
Tell Mommy I love her, the boy had said.
Hank had smiled at that. The logical thing for the Pullmans to do, of course, was call every cop in the state and send them Hank's way with a gun in each hand and a grenade pin between their teeth. But it was hard to be logical when you thought your little boy was in trouble. Hank knew. They'd call the authorities, of course---any good parents would---but they wouldn't be able to stay put afterward. They'd come. They'd both come. And long before the cops. Fate wouldn't screw him over a second time. Not today. It just wasn't possible. Hank pushed out from his hiding spot feeling like he'd won the lottery. His toothpick bobbed, and he flipped it around with his tongue.
Davy didn't see him at first, but when he did, he jumped back and fell onto his rear end, screaming and looking like he might wet his pants. Hank wouldn't have been surprised---Davy didn't exactly have the best control over his bladder. Not that it was the kid's fault, of course.
"You're a sneaky little guy, aren't you?" Hank closed in on the boy, who had stopped screaming, who stood stiller than a headlit animal in the middle of the road. Hank shuddered a little and wasn't quite sure why. "How in the world did you get out?"
Davy had his hand on his breast pocket, as if the phone might still do him some good.
"Hand it over," Hank said and flapped his fingers. The toothpick slid from one side of his mouth to the other.
The kid pretended not to know what he was talking about, and Hank could admire him for that, but he wasn't in the mood for playing games. He rushed the boy, pried his hand away from his pocket, and pulled out the cellular phone.
Although Hank was in most ways glad for the phone call Davy had made, he couldn't let it show. Fathers had to maintain a certain level of respect. He spun around and whipped the phone at a nearby tree. It spun through the air three times and smacked. Hank was no Nolan Ryan, but he'd definitely gotten some heat on the throw, and he hit the tree dead center. The cell phone exploded. One second it was a high-tech piece of equipment, the next a plastic cloud raining down springs and hinges and shards of cheap casing.
Hank turned back to the boy. "What about Georgie?" he said coolly, as if the phone-throwing outburst hadn't happened at all. "He loose, too?"
Davy shook his head.
"Good." Hank chomped his pick. He didn't especially believe Davy, but he touched the boy's shoulder, gripped it but didn't squeeze it, and said, "Let's get back," as if everything was hunky dory and they were at a father-son picnic headed for the three-legged race instead of in the woods at night, Hank covered in blood and Davy nearly stiffer than the severed leg in the station wagon back yonder.
"Wait," Hank said. "First, you need a replacement."
"A what?"
Hank didn't respond. He found a thick piece of bark on the ground and handed it to Davy. "Here."
"What---"
"Put it in your pocket. Where you had the phone."
"Why? I---"
"Just do it!"
Davy cringed but took the bark and slipped it into his pocket.
"Okay," said Hank, "now move." And for a wonder, Davy did.
---:---:---:---
Trevor let himself be led back through the woods. He'd done what he could, and although he would have preferred to stay away from the bad man until help came, he guessed he could tough it out a little longer. It wasn't like the guy was hurting him, really, just squeezing his shoulder. Trevor guessed he'd bring him back to the room with no windows, back to Zach, lock him up again, and that was fine. When they came to rescue him, a locked door wouldn't keep them out. They'd get the key, and if not the key then they'd break the door in, and it would THWACK against the wall just like in one of his comics.
He saw the house through the trees, the parked truck and the chopping block. Trevor wished he were a big guy, a grownup. He'd have knocked the bad man to the ground, punched him in the face until he bled, then gone back to the house alone and rescued Zach and the doggy both. He could have driven them away in the truck and been the hero. He looked up at the man beside him and knew he could punch his very hardest without doing more than tickling the guy.
They crossed the yard and reentered the house.
When they'd come the first time, Trevor had been scared. This time, although still scared, he also felt a little proud. He'd done it, after all. He might not be a hero, but he'd made the phone call, had crawled through the crawlspace above the ceiling with all the yellow stuff and the spiders and bats, had gone into the dark woods until the red cell phone got a signal. That was something at least.
It was darker inside than out. They passed the kitchen, where Trevor had left the pile of ceiling in front of the refrigerator, and sped down the hallway to the locked door. Trevor stayed behind the crazy man, trying not to bump into anything, wondering how the man kept from hitting furniture or smacking into walls.
Light shone beneath the door, enough for Trevor to see the bad man's shoes and his own, but not much else.
Clack click.
The door swung open, and Zach looked out at them from the pile of blankets.
"Georgies are supposed to watch out for their Davys," the man said.
Before Zach could respond, the man shoved Trevor into the room and re-locked the door. Trevor squinted, held his hands in front of his face to keep away the worst of the light.
"What happened?" Zach whispered. "Did the phone work?"
"Yeah," said Trevor, but in a distracted way. He looked at the floor beneath the hole in the ceiling, which the man either hadn't noticed or hadn't said anything about. "Where's the mess?"
On the pile, Zach smiled. He lifted up the corner of the blankets and showed Trevor the gray gunk. "I thought if I hid it he might not notice our getaway hatch. At least not right away. Guess I was right."
"You think you can get me up there again?" Trevor asked.
Zach got up and rubbed his hands together. "I can sure as heck try."
---:---:---:---
In the bathroom, Hank stood in front of the sink. He splashed water on his face, washed the blood and the dirt and the sweat down the drain. He ran wet fingers through his hair and tried to get the worst of the gore out of there, too. He found an especially thick wad of blood behind his ear and scratched at it with his fingernail.
He wasn't normally an overly hygienic person, sometimes went two or three days between showers, but these were special circumstances, and if he'd known the bloodshed was over, he'd have taken his second shower in less than twenty-four hours, which would have been a record. He settled for washing his face, his neck, and his hands. He took off the button-up shirt and tossed it onto the floor by the toilet, where his most recently chewed toothpick floated like the miniature timber from some shipwrecked model boat. The shirt was ruined, as were the pants. A perfectly good birthday suit. What a waste.
Hank turned up the water. The soap was an old, graying bar of Irish Spring. He scrubbed his skin with it until he'd covered his top half with a thin, bubbly film, then washed off the suds and repeated the process. When he was finished, he only looked a little better, but he felt like a new man.
He dried off with a pink towel that had started the day white and left the bathroom.
It would be a while before anyone came for the boys. In the meantime, he needed to rest. Not nap---there wasn't time for that---but rest, sure. He considered Mr. Boots's bed, but only briefly. He couldn't rest where that monster had slept, couldn't lay his head down on the old man's drool-crusted pillow. There was a sofa in the living room. Not a comfortable piece of furniture, but not exactly a bed of nails either. It would do for a short rest.
He made his way into the living room, sat down on the springy sofa, and paused only long enough to kick off his shoes before lying his head on one armrest and propping his feet on the other.
Thirty seconds later, despite his intentions, he was asleep.
When he woke, the whole world had gone crazy. That was, the whole world but him.
THIRTY-SIX
MIKE TOOK A sharp curve, and something in the back seat fell to the floor. Libby reached around to pick it up. It was the cordless Dremel rotary tool, a thing that looked a little bit like an industrial-power toothbrush, loaded with the sharpest bit Mike had been able to find. Libby returned it to the back with the rest of their makeshift arsenal. In addition to the Dremel, they had a ball peen hammer, a cordless drill, and a foot-long steel chisel that wasn't razor sharp at the end but that would put somebody down if you swung it hard enough. Pretty mediocre firepower, but better than nothing.
Mike watched Libby and the tools from the corner of his eye and through the rearview. He was driving too fast, almost dangerously, and needed to keep his face pointed forward, his eyes on the road. It felt strange driving the Honda, not only because he hadn't been behind its wheel for almost a year, but because the car was technically Libby's now and not his. He shouldn't have felt awkward or guilty---it wasn't as if he'd forced his way into the driver's seat without her permission. They'd agreed he should drive. Trevor had given him the directions, after all---if Libby had gotten behind the wheel, he'd only have spent the whole time navigating.
"You know," Libby said, facing forward again, "maybe the cops or the deputies or whoever they are, maybe they're already there. Maybe they've got the guy in cuffs or a body bag."
"Yeah," said Mike, though he didn't believe it. "If we're lucky."
"What do we do if we get there and he's got a gun or a crossbow or something?"
"A crossbow?"
Libby shrugged. "I don't know. Weirdo like this guy, he could have a cannon for all we know."
"He doesn't have a cannon," Mike said, shaking his head.
She said, "That's not the point. All this stuff we brought, it could barely get us through hand-to-hand combat. If he's got a gun, we're screwed."
Mike took his eyes away from the road just long enough to scoff at her. "Hand-to-hand combat? You've been watching too many Rambo movies."
"But what would we do?"
"We'd do whatever it takes," he said, knowing it was vague, not really an answer at all, but also knowing it was what she wanted to hear. "We're going to get him back. I promise."
Libby looked at him for a long time. He sensed her eyes on him but didn't return the look. He eased the car around another tight curve, and Libby finally looked away. She stared quietly through the window, chewing at her lip and twisting her fingers.
---:---:---:---
They found the place just like Trevor had said, right down to the dilapidated fence at the front edge of the property. Of course, Trevor hadn't used the word dilapidated---falling apart, he'd said. Not that he would have needed to know about the fence anyway. Something was wrong with this place, something heinous in the air around it, something Mike could physically feel, like nervousness in the stomach only higher up, butterflies fluttering around his heart.
"Do you feel that?" Libby asked.
Mike nodded. He turned the car into the driveway and shut off the lights. This wasn't exactly a stealth mission---they would have to go in strong---but he wouldn't give the guy any extra warning if he could avoid it. The Honda bounced over the rough ground, tall weeds and grasses scraped against the undercarriage, and for a second Mike had the vague impression that some thing lay underneath, trying to claw its way in.
Stop it, he thought. He couldn't let himself get too freaked out. It wouldn't do Trevor any good.
As they approached the dark house, Libby reached into the back seat, took the four tools-turned-weapons into her lap, and waited.
Mike followed the driveway past the front of the house and stopped. He started to shut off the Honda but didn't. They might need to get out of here in a hurry. The last thing he wanted was to die because of a stubborn ignition or a flooded engine. He looked at Libby. She handed him the drill and the chisel, kept the Dremel and the hammer for herself.
"Ready?"
She unbuckled her seatbelt and nodded. Mike let himself out of his own harness and said, "We need to split up. You go in the back, I'll take the front. If one of us runs into the asshole, at least the other will be able to get to Trevor."
"And the other boy," she said.
Mike nodded. "And him."
They got out of the car, stood on either side of the rumbling engine. Mike motioned for her to follow the driveway to the back of the house and started for the front.
"Mike," she said.
He turned to her.
"Good luck."
He smiled. "You, too."
They turned from each other then, clutching their poor excuses for weaponry, and went their separate ways.
THIRTY-SEVEN
THE SECOND TRIP across the ceiling was better than the first had been. Trevor knew which joists to avoid, which were extra bowed or twisted, and although he encountered just as much of the spider-webby yellow stuff, it seemed less itchy. Maybe he'd gotten used to it the way he got used to his bathwater when it was too hot, or maybe he was moving too fast for the stuff to catch him. He'd practically crept along the crawlspace his first time through. Now, he hustled.
The other side of the house seemed to come up awfully fast. Could the place have shrunk since the last time he'd been here? In the dark, it took him a minute to find the hole he'd kicked for himself earlier, but it was still there. Of course it was still there. Ceilings didn't grow back like cut skin, silly.
Trevor lowered himself through the hole, hung from the same joist he had the last time and kicked out for the top of the fridge. His feet found the slick surface, and he dropped.
And dropped.
He landed not on the top of the fridge, but on the pile of ceiling on the floor six feet below, and not on his feet, but on his butt. Trevor's bottom and back throbbed. He saw blurry red light and wondered if his brain was bleeding. The broken pieces of ceiling had softened his fall a little, but not enough to save him from the terrible pain sneaking up into his shoulders and neck. He felt like he'd just been spanked with a bulldozer.
He heard a squeak and a groan from somewhere close, maybe in the living room. The bad man, he was sure, but he wouldn't wait to see. Trevor hopped to his feet and ran to the back door as fast as his aching heinie would allow. If he'd been the bad man, he'd have locked the back door just in case he, Trevor, got loose again, but the man must not have been worrying about that, because the door opened wide.
Trevor escaped the house for the second time that night. He was about to head for the trees again, a different section of woods than he'd gone into last time, when he ran into the woman hurrying around the corner of the house.
And not just any woman.
His mommy.
---:---:---:---
Hank woke to the sound of something exploding. Or so he thought. Maybe he'd been dreaming about war or mail bombs or the Fourth of July. There was no smell of smoke and no fire as far as he could tell, but the sound had come from nearby.
He sat up and rubbed his eyes. They adjusted to the low light in their usual way, as if they'd been designed for nothing else.
The back door slammed, and he knew at once what had happened. The boy. Davy. He didn't understand how the kid kept getting out of the room. It was goddamn locked. He was sure of it.
He stood up to go after the boy but then heard another sound, something softer and continuous, something coming from outside the house and sounding a little like a purring kitten.
Must not have used enough sunscreen, he thought and grinned.
Except it wasn't a cat outside, it was something else: an engine.
He heard a creak on the front porch and stood very still, listening.
Another creak.
The boy could wait. Hank hurried out of the living room and down the hall. The thing he needed now was still in the bedroom, leaning against the bloody wall.
---:---:---:---
Mike crept to the front door and tried the knob.
Locked.
Cobwebs and dust filled the little stoop, as if no one had used the front entrance in years. In fact, the whole place looked abandoned, unoccupied for months, years. Rustic wasn't the word for it, because rustic implied quaintness. This place was a shack.
He guessed he could turn around and search for an open window, but that might be fruitless. For all he knew, the kidnapper had the whole place boarded shut from the inside like something out of Night of the Living Dead. Mike thought about trying to pry open the door with the chisel. He'd never used the tool in such a way, had never broken into a house at all, for that matter, but he guessed it might work. The chisel was really more of a pry bar anyway. He knelt down to examine the knob.
It was a cheap thing, hardly more secure looking than a closet doorknob. Mike thought he just about could have ripped it loose with his bare hands. He brought the chisel up to the plate between the door and the jamb, wiggling it in until it would go no farther and then shoving on it.
The door flew open, and for a second he thought he must have had some magic breaking-and-entering ability, but then a man came rushing through the opening. The kidnapper. He was carrying a sword, and he was screaming.
---:---:---:---
"Mommy!" Trevor ran to her and wrapped himself around her neck so tight he might as well have been a scarf.
Libby swept him into her arms, careful not to gouge him with the tools in her hands, and slathered his face with her tears and her kisses.
From the other side of the house, Libby heard a pair of screams. She put Trevor down and said, "The other boy, is he inside?"
Trevor nodded. "And the doggy, too. We have to save them. Where's Daddy?"
Without answering, Libby took Trevor's hand and led him back into the house, still sniffling. "Where are they?"
Trevor stepped ahead of her and said, "I'll show you."
It was a dark night, and although Libby had managed to make her way around the house without falling flat on her face, she was totally blind inside. Trevor seemed to know where to go, but he moved very slowly, maybe with his free hand out in front of him like a blind man, obviously not familiar enough with the layout of the house to navigate sightlessly.
She heard a clang from the front yard and tried to hurry Trevor along. She banged her hip into a wall and heard Trevor bump into another wall beside her. She let go of his hand and felt around the area long enough to realize they'd reached the head of a hallway.
"Look for a light switch," she told Trevor. "Feel along the walls."
As it turned out, she found the switch herself. The light in the hallway was a single bare bulb overhead, not much brighter than a flickering candle but enough to see by.
"Here," Trevor said after the light flickered on. He hurried past a slightly ajar door to another, closed door at the end of the hall. He twisted the knob. It didn't move. "Zach," he said.
From behind the door, Libby heard the other boy's response: "Yeah?" He was older than Trevor from the sounds of it, maybe ten or eleven. It was hard to tell through the fear in the kid's voice.
"They're here," Trevor said. "We're rescued."
The child, Zach, said, "Who? The police?"
Trevor looked at Libby, confusion in his face. "Are there policemen coming?"
Libby wanted to say yes, a whole S.W.A.T. team was on the way---Trevor was so sure he was saved---but she couldn't lie, couldn't get either boy's hopes up.
"Maybe eventually," she said. "But hopefully we'll be long gone by the time they get here." She looked at the locked doorknob and then at the hammer in her hand. "Stand back," she told Trevor.
He did. Libby raised the hammer over her head and swung it down as hard as she could. The doorknob clanged like a muffled cymbal and dropped to the floor below. She looked at it, a little shocked. She'd been prepared to beat the crap out of the thing, swing the hammer until nothing remained of the knob but dust. She supposed your luck couldn't be all bad all the time.
Her hammer hand throbbed. She shook it the way you do a body part that's fallen asleep and said to the boy on the other side of the door, "Try opening it."
The door rattled but didn't budge. Trevor looked up at her worriedly.
"Okay," she said. "Stand back." She waited for a second. "Are you back?"
"Uh huh," said Zach, his voice muffled and trembling.
The inner workings of the doorknob seemed so strange, intricate. She wondered if she could use the second tool to tear them apart, but she didn't really know how to use the thing and didn't have time to learn.
She swung the hammer.
It clanged off the door, and a thump came from inside the room.
"The doorknob fell off," said Zach, sounding distant, as if he were in another dimension and not simply on the other side of the room.
"Stay back." Libby swung again, and metal screeched. Another swing. The sound this time was a pop, the sort of cracking that came from an especially stubborn knuckle.
Her hand felt like a fireball attached to her wrist, but she swung again anyway, not caring if she damaged her hand permanently, not thinking website design might be a little tricky with only a left paw and a mangled claw. The door popped open, and Trevor clapped.
A slender, brown-haired boy caked in dirt and blood came tentatively into the hallway. He looked first at Libby, then at Trevor. "You did it," he said to her son.
Trevor nodded.
Zach broke out into a huge smile, and the two boys high-fived.
"Let's---" Something wet touched her on the back of her knee. She screamed and spun around with the hammer.
The dog whined and backed away just in time to avoid losing the front half of his snout. The hammer whizzed by with what couldn't have been more than two inches to spare, and the movement almost sent Libby sprawling to the floor.
"No!" Trevor ran to the dog and wrapped his hands around its neck in much the same way he'd hugged her only minutes before. It was a beautiful animal, if a little grimy. The dog shifted and licked Trevor's face. Trevor said, "You almost killed him."
Libby's hammer hand sagged, and she took a deep breath. "Sorry, buddy," she said, addressing both Trevor and the dog. She turned to the second boy and stared into his wide eyes, wondered how long it took for a kid to get over the kinds of things he must have been through.
"Okay," she said. "Let's get out of here." She hurried down the hall swinging the tools at her side, the three evacuees trailing behind.
---:---:---:---
Mike thought of Peter Pan fighting Captain Hook. His short chisel poked out in front of him, a makeshift dagger no match for the other man's wicked sword. The kidnapper made a long, arcing swing that Mike sidestepped narrowly. He tried triggering the drill, which he'd managed to hold on to, and jamming it into the guy's side, but he wasn't quick enough.
They'd descended the porch steps and now circled around each other in the gently sloping front yard. The swordsman stumbled forward a few steps before spinning back into the fray. He grinned. His naked, hairy chest flexed rhythmically, like his whole torso was a giant, beating heart. A short black line, which Mike guessed would have been red or at least reddish in the light, marked the place where the boy had cut into him earlier that night. Mike was glad to see it. It proved the man wasn't invincible.
Seeming to read his mind, the kidnapper said, "I cut you once tonight already."
As if Mike might have forgotten. Searing pain throbbed in his hip with every step he took. He held the chisel out in front of him and moved a little to the left, wincing but not wanting to stay still and provide the lunatic an easy target.
He thought of Libby saying the guy might have a crossbow, thought about the way he'd immediately dismissed the idea. There hadn't been a crossbow, but now here Mike stood facing a ninja's sword. If that didn't beat all.
The kidnapper thrusted the weapon out in front of him and charged. Mike managed to get himself out of the way again. He swung his chisel almost reflexively, and it clanged against the broad side of the blade.
The man cut to his right and circled back to his original position. He looked from Mike's face to his feet, and his smile faded.
"You," he said. "No. I don't...I killed you."
Mike eyed him suspiciously, wondering if this was some kind of ploy, a trick meant to divert his attention so the psycho could run him through. He stood his ground, finger on the drill's trigger, opposite hand wrapped around the chisel.
The kidnapper looked back into Mike's face and said, "I should have known."
Mike kept moving, shuffled his feet. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, Muhammad Ali had said, and Mike didn't think he'd ever heard a better bit of advice.
When the kidnapper came at him this time, he did so with a low, grunting wail. The man held the sword in both hands and had it pulled back over his shoulder. Mike didn't sidestep this time but moved forward instead, the cordless drill whirring in front of him and the chisel swinging up from his side and aimed at the man's face.
The drill hit the kidnapper's midsection, digging into his abdomen. The chisel bounced harmlessly off his shoulder. The sword hit Mike in much the same place the chisel had hit the other man, only it was sharp and far from harmless.
Mike's arm went suddenly numb, and the drill died and fell to the ground between the two men's feet. Mike dropped the chisel, too, and reached up for his shoulder. The kidnapper took a step back and hefted the sword, which dripped fresh blood.
"I can't let you do it again," the man said.
Mike dropped to his knees, groaning, trying to make sense of the man's words, unable to think anything except that his arm was killing him but that the man with the sword would probably kill him faster. He tried to steady himself, ended up on his rump in the dust. His blood poured out of the wound in his shoulder, cold somehow. The stuff running over his fingers might have been ice water instead of blood.
"You should have just let us be this time, old man," said the kidnapper. He pulled back the sword.
Mike could do nothing but sit and groan and watch the blade advance.
---:---:---:---
Inside the living room, Libby watched through a dusty window, squinting.
At first, she didn't believe what she was seeing, thought the thing in the kidnapper's hands must have only looked like a sword but been something else entirely---maybe a pipe or a broom handle. When the weapon slid into Mike's stomach and reemerged from his lower back, however, she could no longer pretend.
Mike's scream was the worst thing she'd ever heard in her life, a sound she was sure she'd remember until the day she died, a wet, gurgling bawl that didn't seem muffled by the walls or the door or the windows. Libby thought that scream might have gone straight from his mouth to her brain, some strange sort of telepathy.
She sensed Trevor coming to join her at the window and turned immediately to keep him away.
"What was that?" he said.
Libby flipped him around and pushed on his back. "Through the back door," she said. "We have to get out of here."
Trevor didn't want to go at first, but Libby kept pushing. She heard Zach and the dog padding along ahead, heard a strange flapping sound like someone walking through mud.
"The car's around the side of the house," she said. "Get in back with the dog and wait for me."
They found the back door and exited the house. "Hurry to the car," she said, looking at the back of the boys' heads. Part of her wanted to follow them, needed to follow them, knew it was the smart thing to do, but Mike might still be all right. She couldn't leave him there to die. She'd loved him once, maybe loved him a little still. She couldn't leave him.
When she saw the boys moving in the right direction, she cut around the truck and found the ax in the tree stump. She'd noticed it on the way in, before running in to Trevor. It wasn't as good as a shotgun, but it was a damn sight better than a hammer. She dropped Mike's tools in the dirt at the stump's base and grabbed the ax with both hands.
It didn't come loose easily. She had to wrench it back and forth five or six times before it finally unstuck.
She thought about Marshall, thought she'd gotten herself out of that situation fairly well, almost entirely unharmed physically despite the mental trauma. Carrying the ax back to the house, she told herself she wasn't a pushover, that she wasn't a victim.
---:---:---:---
Hank jerked backward on the sword, and the man fell onto his back.
Mr. Boots, he thought, staring at the man's footwear. He should have expected this sort of thing.
Mr. Boots flailed a little, and Hank stabbed him again, this time higher up on his stomach, closer to his heart. "Guess you thought you'd do it again, huh?" He twisted the sword. "Kill us all off and take the boy for yourself. But it doesn't work that way." He leaned on the sword's handle, listened to Mr. Boots groan. "You never killed me. It was the moose. Everything's different this time."
He pulled the sword free again and grinned.
Stupid son of a bitch, he thought and jabbed the sword into the old man once more.
---:---:---:---
Trevor helped get the leashed doggy into the back seat but didn't climb in after him.
"What's wrong?" Zach asked.
"I have to find my daddy. Wait here." Trevor turned away from the car and hurried around the front of the house.
---:---:---:---
Libby burst through the front door. In the yard, the kidnapper hovered over Mike's slumped body. She charged him.
The ax was heavy, not the kind of plastic-handled thing you bought at Wal-mart, but an old wooden tool with a head that felt like it must have been made of lead.
She was ten feet from her target when Trevor came at her from around the side of the house.
"No," she said, though she'd meant to scream it. She twisted his way at the last minute, meaning to push him away from the bare-chested stranger, but she was moving awkwardly and ended up tripping over her own feet.
The ax fell on the ground beside her. Trevor approached from one direction, and the man from the other.
Run, she wanted to say, get away. But she couldn't speak. Something smacked the side of her head, and she had time enough to realize it was the man's fist before unconsciousness took her and everything was lost.
---:---:---:---
Hank loaded Lori into the passenger's seat and strapped her into her belt. He'd gotten the boys in the back where they were still huddled, the dog between them and whimpering again. He'd tied the kids' hands with their own shoelaces and knotted Manny's leash to the headrest. Later, if everything went well, he could let them loose. But for now, he had to drive and couldn't risk any of them trying something stupid.
He ran a hand through Lori's hair and kissed her softly on the forehead, sorry he'd had to hurt her but knowing he could make up for it later. She was a beautiful woman---a fine wife---and he knew she'd be a good mother to their boys. He closed her door and circled around the front of the car to his own side.
After finding the gearshift and studying the car's controls for just a moment, he shifted into reverse, backed partway down the driveway, and then turned the car around and drove away from the house.
As they moved, he looked into the rearview mirror and thought, Goodbye forever. The house and the body in front of it grew smaller until, finally, they were gone.
THIRTY-EIGHT
MIKE HAD CRAWLED halfway along the front of the house, dragging himself with his good arm and trying to ignore the pain just about everywhere else.
He coughed once and tasted blood sliding over his teeth.
The monster had taken his family, had loaded them into the car and stolen them away.
Mike crawled another foot. There was a truck in the back yard. He'd seen its rear bumper when they arrived. If he could get to it, and if the keys were inside, he could go after them, rescue them.
He coughed again, and something thick flowed across his tongue. Maybe vomit, maybe more blood, or maybe some of his internal organs, cut loose and floating freely through his insides. He didn't know. He spit out the wad and dragged himself farther.
He'd gotten almost to the corner of the house when everything blurred. He tried to shake his head to clear it but only made the dizziness worse. He closed his eyes, tried taking deep breaths, then coughed and dropped flat to the ground, still at least fifty feet from the truck and the chance to be the hero.
---:---:---:---
When he heard the siren, his eyes opened, and he didn't know how long he'd been out. He hadn't died, though he thought he must be only a few breaths away. The man standing over him wasn't Deputy Willis, nor was it the thinner man who'd been with him at the house.
Mike tried to gesture to him, point in the direction the Honda had gone, but he could move only his pinky finger. Still, he did what he could, pointed with the tip off his littlest digit and blinked at the looming lawman.
"---try to stay still," the man said, and Mike found that pretty funny.
Against the man's ridiculous suggestion, he used the last of his strength to lift his hand and point after the missing car.
The deputy grabbed Mike's hand like he thought he wanted to shake. "Hold on, buddy. We've got paramedics on the way."
But Mike couldn't hold on. He felt the breath coming out of him like air from a punctured tire. He tried to suck in a little more but didn't think it got much farther than the back of his mouth.
Family, he tried to say, but it came out as a soft groan. It was the best he could do. He dropped his head to the ground but let the deputy hold on to his hand. It felt good to be touched. He didn't want to die alone.
---:---:---:---
Deputy Ben Moore leaned close to the bloody man and let go of his hand. He touched the man's neck. Nothing.
He wasn't sure if this was the guy they were looking for or another one of his victims, hadn't actually been sure they were at the right house until he stumbled across the crawling mess of a guy and the trail of blood behind him. He shone a flashlight back along the streaked gore and found a sword lying in the grass beside the house's foundation.
I'll be hanged, he thought. He didn't guess he'd ever seen a sword like that before. Not in real life.
He moved away from the body and back to the patrol car, where Hollis Breckmore was yakking into the radio. He opened the door and said, "We're looking at a DB here. Better call in for some backup. I'm gonna take a look around."
Breckmore nodded, and Moore shut the door. He'd made it halfway around the house, hand on his holstered pistol, when the patrol car's headlights shut off and he heard the passenger's door slam. He looked back. Breckmore hustled after him, his flashlight and his gut both bobbing.
Breckmore paused at the corner of the house to have a look at the corpse before hurrying to catch up with his partner.
"That's a mess," Breckmore said.
Moore nodded and told him it sure was, and then the two of them walked around the back of the house together.
ON THE FIRST night of the rest of his life, Hank Abbott drove out of the mountains in a silence broken only by the sound of gravel ricocheting off the undercarriage of the Honda and the occasional groans and bursts of rustling from his newfound family. Lori sat slumped in the passenger's seat with her cheek flattened against the window, her lips parted, her breath frosting the glass. George and Davy sat tangled around the dog in the back seat, looking scared though Hank knew what they really felt was relief.
The clock on the dashboard went from 11:59 to 12:00, and Hank realized it was no longer his birthday. But that was all right---he'd gotten everything he wanted.
Their trip out of the mountains had been twenty-three years in the making, but late was better than never at all. Hank watched the sides of the road carefully, looking for glowing eyes or dark-brown blurs. He couldn't make the same mistake twice. This was his family, after all, and he loved them.
He piloted the car around a sharp curve and thought to himself that this had been one hell of a vacation. As the road straightened out ahead, Hank guessed he didn't care if he never saw the mountains again.
For my blood brother, Enoch, who helped me point my career back in the right direction.
IT'S FUNNY WHAT you hear when your house shuts down, when the heater stops coughing air through the vents and the television ceases spewing out its nonsense. As she stood at the kitchen sink, her hands wrist deep in sudsy, too-cold dishwater, Tess listened to the logs burning in the living room, the water heater kicking on, and (loudest of all) the ice-laden wind blowing against the western side of the house.
She grabbed the last dish (a yellowed mug that had started life as white as fresh snow) from the sink and cleaned it the old-fashioned way: rubbing, frowning, cursing. After she'd rinsed and dried the mug with a rag so threadbare you could see right through it, she put it in the cabinet and glared at the dishwasher. As if the outage was the appliance's fault.
She dried her hands, cupped them around her mouth, and tried to breathe some heat back into them. She felt the air slipping past her lips, but there was no warmth to it. Not even a tiny bit. If she didn't get back into the living room and spend some quality time in front of the fire, she was afraid her outermost bits might freeze right off.
The water heater turned off. The fire continued to crackle. Besides the sounds in the house, she heard Warren in the shed out back, sifting through wood, loading it onto the sled, heard him through the wall and across at least a couple hundred feet of snow-covered yard.
Never mind what you can hear. Pay attention to what you can feel. Which is going to be just about nothing if you don't get yourself back to that fire.
She was about to do just that when she heard another sound, a kind of tinkling almost like breaking glass. Only slower, raspy. She turned her head, trying to pinpoint the source of the noise. For a second, she thought it must be coming from the fire, an air pocket in one of the logs or something, but after listening a little longer, a little harder, she decided it might actually be coming from outside.
The wind? More snow?
She returned to the sink and leaned toward the window just above it. She parted the curtains, leaned closer, frowned.
Normally, she'd have been able to see the mountains through the window, the highest of the towering Rockies. Although their property officially stood 6,961 feet above sea level, she and Warren lived nowhere near the top of the world. Sometimes she would stare out at those peaks and marvel at their beauty, their magnitude. As far as views went, it wasn't the worst. Today, however, a sheet of frost covered the glass and made it all but impossible to see through. Still, she thought she could make out something moving toward her, a blurry shadow of a thing. She squinted and moved her face so close her nose almost touched the glass.
The slow crackling got faster, louder. The shape---whatever the hell it was---came closer, and Tess almost thought she could---
The shape pressed against the frosty pane, just inches from Tess's face. Still blurry, still unrecognizable, but definitely there.
The shape smacked the window, and the glass cracked. Just a single fracture at first, starting in the upper-right corner and running toward the center of the window. But then the shape smacked against the pane again and the single crack became a spiderweb of short, jagged breaks. Almost before Tess knew what was happening, the window blew in against her face, showering her with tiny shards of freezing glass.
She thought: was that...a hand?
It couldn't have been, but she didn't have time to think about it. She was too busy bleeding. And screaming.
WARREN HADN'T WANTED Bub to come with him. Not because he didn't enjoy the Lab's company but because Bub had started to limp. It hadn't been much of a thing at first, just a hop in his step---Warren had blamed it on a thorn or a muscle sprain---but over the last few weeks, the hop had become much more noticeable, almost a lurch. Warren knew he should have brought the dog to the vet days ago, but he'd kept telling himself it was nothing, just sore muscles, that Bub would be fine. And then the snow had come and...well, he'd had other things to worry about.
So Warren had tried tricking him into staying inside---the cold couldn't be good for him, would only zap what strength he had left and put more strain on his leg---but Bub was having none of it. Warren situated the dog bed by the fireplace and put a fresh blanket inside; Bub circled it once, obligingly, but then limped to the kitchen door, tail wagging. Warren found an old rawhide in the treat basket in the pantry and placed it on the living room floor; Bub sniffed the treat, licked it, and then turned away, pointing his nose at the kitchen door and the back door beyond, still wagging his tail.
"You sure?" Warren had asked. "You don't want to stay inside by the nice, warm fire?"
Bub barked and grinned, as if to say, nice try, old man.
Except, of the two of them, Warren wasn't exactly the old man anymore, not once you'd done the old dog-years-to-human conversion.
"Oh, just let him go," Tess had said from the kitchen. "He might not have many more chances to play in the snow."
Warren hissed. "Hush your mouth. He can hear you."
In the kitchen, Tess had laughed.
If Bub did hear---of course he did; he wasn't deaf---he didn't seem to care. He'd kept right on wagging that old butt fan of his and grinning his furry, lopsided grin.
"Fine," Warren had said. "You wanna go for a walk?"
And, of course, Bub did.
Now, here they were, gathering wood in the shed, Bub sitting on the dirty concrete floor in the corner beside an old, discarded wood stove---his tail clearing a spot in the dust behind him---panting and watching Warren dig through the logs as if it was the most exciting thing he'd ever seen in his life. Warren worked his way to the far end of the woodpile, looking for perfectly seasoned wood, logs that would burn through the night without sputtering and dying on him.
He lifted the tarp at the end of the stack and pushed a few of the topmost logs out of the way.
Outside, gusting wind blew against the shed. The wall creaked in one spot, then in another, as if the wind was testing it, looking for a way in. Warren ignored the sounds and moved aside another pile of wood.
"Here we go." He turned to Bub. "Can you say 'mother lode'?"
Bub cocked his head and woofed.
Warren smiled. "Exactly."
He took an armful of quartered logs from the pile and loaded them onto the old sled. Whether the sled had been his or his brother's once upon a time, he could no longer remember. Either way, it had seen its fair share of winters and had been through more than a few hillside crashes. One of the runners had a warp to it that made the sled wobble even on the smoothest of snow, the old planks were cracked and bowed, and the paint had worn away so completely it no longer looked as if it had ever been painted at all.
Warren bent over to pick up a chunk of wood that had bounced over the edge of the sled and then returned to the woodpile for another load. Outside, the snow seemed to have picked up considerably. Warren heard it rattling against the shed, felt the freezing air seeping in through the thin walls. Despite the thermal undies, the snowsuit, and the heavy-duty coat, he shivered.
Most of the wood in the shed would have been fine for a normal fire---one of those hour-long blazes you sat in front of with a cup of coffee or a glass of wine---but now that he, Tess, and Bub were relying on the wood to keep them from freezing to death, Warren wanted to be more selective. He rolled a few too-green logs from the stack and found another bunch of winners. He'd curled the first few pieces up in his arm and was turning back to the sled when he heard the screaming.
He dropped the wood, barely missing his toes (his boots were good enough but probably wouldn't have done much to spare his little piggies from a falling hunk of heavy wood). Bub had gotten to his feet in record time, bad leg or no. The dog looked from the shed's door to Warren and then back to the door. He whined. Warren heard it even over the sound of the buffeting wind.
Bub took a step toward the door, looked back at Warren, whined again. Louder this time.
Come on. Let's go. Come on. Go, go.
Warren did. He hurried to the door and jerked it inward. Cold air and gusts of snow blew across them. Bub didn't slow down, rushed across the threshold and into the snow, and Warren followed. The wind hit him in the face, blew sleet up his nose and into his mouth. As he shuffled through the snow, he pulled up his scarf.
The screaming had stopped. Not died down but stopped completely, which scared Warren even more than the shrieking had. He ducked his head and tried to hurry across the yard.
But hurrying wasn't easy. Even in the low spots, the shallow valleys between the drifts, there were at least sixteen inches of snow on the ground. Warren's boots weren't snowshoes---they weren't even really winter boots, just old leather things that got wet and dyed his socks brown when he wore them out in bad weather---and although the snow was pretty dense, it wasn't even close to packed enough for him to walk on top. He had to trudge through instead, like trying to walk through water.
And, on top of that, walking toward the house meant walking into the wind and snow, which had been picking up all day but seemed to have gotten especially bad just during the few minutes they'd spent in the shed. Hard bits of icy snow peppered his face if he looked up and to a lesser extent even when he kept his eyes pointed straight down at his unseasonable footwear.
Despite his limp, Bub was having more luck. He weighed less, of course, and sank only partway into the snow, and he didn't have all the layers of extra clothing restricting his movements. He hurried on ahead and stopped a couple of times when Warren lagged too far behind. During each of those delays, he stared toward the house, toward his mistress, and whined. The wind brought the sound back to Warren, almost seemed to amplify it. Once, Bub snarled in a way that gave Warren the chills. Chills on top of chills. Swirls of snow billowed around the Lab, not obscuring him (they weren't that close to a whiteout...not yet anyway), but giving his already pale yellow coat a smokey, ghostly look.
When they were close enough he thought he'd be able to make himself heard over the wind, Warren yelled for his wife.
No answer.
He pulled down his scarf and tried again: "Tess!"
Another cloud of snow blew against his face, into his mouth, and nearly choked him. Tess still didn't respond.
Bub barked and limped on. Warren followed him to the back door.
He almost didn't see the broken window at first, might not have seen it at all if the curtains hadn't billowed and caught his attention.
He didn't know what the broken window meant (if it meant anything at all) and didn't care. All that mattered was getting to his wife. Finding out what in the world had made her scream like that. Making sure she was okay.
Bub leapt over the single step leading to the back stoop. Under the snow, you could hardly tell the step was there---in fact, the whole stoop had just about disappeared under the drift that had formed against the house. Warren kicked around under the snow until he found the riser, then followed his dog up to the door and jerked it open.
Bub nosed his way inside as soon as the opening was wide enough, barking, scurrying. Warren watched him slip on the linoleum. Then the dog was around a corner and gone.
Again, Warren followed.
Snow fell from his boots, and he slipped twice as he hurried down the narrow back hallway.
He found Tess on the kitchen floor, her face a bloody mess. For a second, Warren was sure she was dead, that she'd fallen into the window and slit her jugular and bled to death right there, alone. His heart pounded; a sob rose halfway up his throat and stopped there, choking him. But then she moved, looked up at him with bloody, teary eyes, and said his name.
Bub had already gotten to her. He licked her hands and face and neck. Warren moved to pull him away, but Tess wrapped her arms around the dog's neck and pulled him against her.
"I'm okay," she said. "It's okay. I'm okay." She said it several more times, maybe trying to convince herself as much as Bub and Warren.
Warren stood there for a second, stunned and confused, before dropping to his knees beside her and lifting her chin to get a better look at her face. His heart had slowed somewhat, but he still couldn't seem to breathe. He didn't think he'd ever had to work this hard to get his body to do the things it was supposed to do on its own.
He unwound his scarf and dropped it to the floor between them. "What happened?" He tried to ask it as calmly as possible but wasn't quite able to keep the hitch out of his voice.
Dozens of cuts lined her face. Beads of blood seeped from the wounds and ran down her cheeks and neck. One long cut arced from her forehead back to her ear. It was bleeding worse than any of the others but not exactly gushing. She'd grabbed a dishtowel from somewhere and must have been using it to wipe herself up. The towel was covered with red splotches. Broken glass littered the floor behind her and the counter around the sink.
"I..." She shook her head, and fresh blood welled in her wounds.
"I don't know. I mean, the window broke, but..." She shook her head again, more softly this time. "You tracked snow into the house."
He looked back at the mess of tracks he and Bub had left on the floor and then returned his focus to his wife.
"It's okay," Warren said. "I think it's going to be okay. Most of these cuts don't look bad---or not too bad. I'll warm up the truck. We'll get you to the hospital."
"Just to be safe?"
He kissed her bleeding forehead. Her skin was freezing. "That's right. But first, let's go in and sit by the fire, warm you up. I'll find some tweezers and pull whatever shards I can. No sense taking a long, bumpy drive with your face still full of glass." Again, he thought he managed to sound much calmer than he felt. They'd both had their fair share of accidents, and he guessed they were lucky this had been the worst of them, but it was impossible to look at Tess's bleeding face and think anything about the situation was lucky.
"Do you think we can?" She squeezed the rag with her bloodstained fingers. She looked down and wiped absently at the back of her hand.
"Sure," he said, trying not to look at the blood, afraid he might break down. "The bigger chunks anyway. I---"
"No, I mean get to town? Do you think the truck will make it?"
Cold wind and swirls of snow blew in through the broken window. Warren looked at her for a second, watched the blood welling in her wounds, saw the dazed look in her eyes. "Definitely."
In truth, he wasn't sure at all. The truck had good snow tires on it, and it was a reliable vehicle, but there was a lot of snow out there. They'd have to make it down their mile-long private drive before they hit the nearest mountain road, and even if that road had been plowed (which it almost certainly hadn't), it would still be all kinds of slick and nasty.
"I don't think so," she said. Her eyes were clearing. "I'm okay. It's not worth risking our lives." She tried to get up, slipped, and fell back onto her butt.
Warren steadied her. "Easy. Let me help you up."
She wrapped her arm around his neck, and he pulled her to her feet.
"It's riskier if we don't go," he said.
She gave him her infamous don't-be-stupid look. "It's not that bad. Seriously."
"No offense, hon, but you're not exactly a doctor. You could have glass in your eye and go blind. Or you might have swallowed some. You could be bleeding internally right now and not even know it."
"I thought you said it didn't look bad."
He led her toward the living room, Bub right behind them.
"Yeah, I did. And it doesn't. But what do I know? I'm not a doctor either."
Warren ignored the sofa and the recliner, which were on the side of the room farthest from the fireplace and looked dark, cold, uninviting. They'd moved two armchairs next to the hearth on the first night of the power outage, and that was where he led Tess. She dropped into the nearest chair and leaned her head against the tall backrest.
The fire hadn't died down completely, but the single remaining log was half gone and wouldn't last much longer. Warren took two logs from the pile in the corner of the room, the pile he'd gone out to replenish, and placed them in the fireplace. It took them a moment to catch, but when they did, fresh waves of heat came rolling out.
Bub moved beside the chair and looked up at Tess. When he whined, she patted his head and scratched him under his chin.
"I'll be fine," she told him. "Why don't you lay down on your doggy bed."
He didn't. Instead, he sat down and rested his face on the arm of her chair.
She smiled and told him he was a good boy.
Warren took a deep breath, and his body eventually calmed down. He used the poker to scoot the two new logs closer together until the flames had risen and the fire was roaring. In all his winter garb, he was getting hot. He pulled off some of the layers but then remembered he'd be going back out again soon enough. He turned away from the fire instead to go looking for some tweezers and antiseptic.
"Hey," Tess said.
He stopped and turned around.
"I need to tell you something."
He raised his eyebrows.
"Before the glass broke, I thought I saw something. Something..." She looked down and scratched Bub's head again.
Warren waited.
"Something like a hand," she finally said, speaking the words so quickly they were practically one, somethinglikeahand.
"A hand?"
She nodded.
"Like a human hand?"
Now she looked up at him. "I don't know. The glass was frosty. It was just a shape. But it hit the window twice, and...and it looked like a hand."
Warren ran his fingers across his mouth. "I was just out there, and I didn't see anything. Definitely not a person."
"I know it sounds crazy."
He sat down in the other chair. "You might be a little stressed out right now, maybe even in shock, but I don't think you're crazy. If you say you saw something, I believe you did."
She chewed at her lower lip.
"I doubt it was a person," he said. "It was probably just a bird or a clump of snow blown out of a tree, but when I go out to start the truck, I'll look for prints. Okay?"
She nodded and grinned.
"What?"
"Nothing. Just, if this was a movie, you wouldn't have believed me. You'd think I was out of my mind until some psycho broke in in the middle of the night and raped us both to death."
The fire crackled, and Warren let out a short huff of a laugh.
"First of all," he said, "what kind of porno snuff films have you been watching?"
She gave him a ha-ha-very-funny half grin.
"And second, this isn't a movie. If it was, I'd look like Robert Redford."
Tess smiled, reached over and grasped his hand. "Redford's got nothing on you."
"That's just the trauma talking."
She patted his hand. "Probably."
He shook his head, got out of the chair, and went looking for some medical supplies.
WHILE SHE WAITED for him to come back, Tess curled her legs under herself and watched the fire.
She hadn't taken off her apron after the
(accident? event? phenomenon?)
incident in the kitchen, but she did so now, balling it up and tossing it in the empty chair.
She leaned over and kissed the top of Bub's head. "Do you believe me, too?"
Bub stuck out his tongue and licked the back of her hand.
"Well, I'm glad the two of you do, because I'm not so sure I believe myself."
Bub said nothing.
"I was just imagining things, right? It was just snow or a bird. Like he said. Right?"
Still no comment from Bub. He left his chin on the arm of the chair and panted.
The fire hissed, popped, and...tinkled?
Tess frowned and stared at the flames.
The noise came again, fluctuating tones like the ringing of a cheap wind chime. But the sounds weren't coming from the fireplace.
She turned toward the kitchen.
Footsteps on broken glass. There's someone in the kitchen!
"Warren?"
Bub looked up at her, whined.
It wasn't Warren in the kitchen. She knew that. She could hear him in the bathroom on the opposite side of the house, rummaging through drawers, looking for tweezers.
The tinkling sound came again. Bub lifted his head off the chair, turned toward the kitchen, and growled.
"Warren?"
"Just a second," he said. "I can't find the damn things...are you...wait, here we go."
Bub's growl had become a full-fledged rumble. His muscles rippled from his shoulders to his limp, unmoving tail and then tensed. For the first time ever, she was almost afraid of him. When she looked at the dog, she saw not a domesticated animal but a wild beast, a savage, wolf-like creature. She thought if she reached out and touched him, he might whip around and bite her hand clean off.
"Warren!"
"I'm coming," he said.
Except he wasn't. Not yet. She heard him returning items to the bathroom drawers, shoving them in all willy nilly probably, not that she cared about that right now.
Something moved in the kitchen. She watched it edge around the doorframe. Not a hand or an arm or any other body part, but a chunk of ice, like a horizontal icicle, forming on the trim while she watched.
No, that's not real. You're imagining that. Warren was right: you're hurt worse than you thought. A chunk of that glass went up through your tear duct and into your brain. Like an accidental lobotomy. Close your eyes and it'll go away.
Except, if she was imagining it, what was wrong with Bub?
He's picking up on your emotions. Dogs do that. You know it.
The icicle on the doorframe elongated, thickened. The tinkling sound got louder than ever.
Tessa Marie! You close your eyes. Right now!
She did. She squeezed them tight and counted to ten. The fire crackled and blazed. Fresh waves of heat billowed out.
When she opened her eyes---first one and then the other---the icicle was gone and Bub had calmed down. Somewhat anyway. He still faced the kitchen, and he still had that tenseness in his back, but he'd stopped growling. When she put a hesitant hand on his back, he turned around and (instead of biting it off) gave it a quick lick.
"It's okay," she said. "It was nothing. I'm sorry if I scared you."
Bub turned back to her, licked her hand again, and dropped onto the doggy bed between the two chairs. He let out a stinky little fart and closed his eyes.
When Warren came into the room, Tess blew out a long breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.
"Is everything okay?" he asked.
"I don't know." She thought maybe that was the most honest answer she'd ever given.
He dropped a bag of cotton balls, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, a small bottle of liquid bandaid, and a pair of tweezers onto the chair beside her apron and gave her a concerned look.
"I'm just...freaked out," she said.
He nodded. "Of course. Taking a broken window to the face is definitely freak-out worthy." He bent down to pet Bub but then turned and headed for the kitchen instead.
For a second, Tess wanted to scream at him to stop, to stay out of there. But what was she afraid of? Ringing sounds? Imaginary icicles? Even if what she'd seen had been real, it was nothing to be afraid of. An icicle in the middle of the house was weird, but nothing to freak out about. There was a blizzard outside, after all. There was ice all over the place.
Yeah, but growing horizontally out of the doorframe so quickly she could actually see it forming?
It doesn't matter. It wasn't real. You were imagining it.
Warren had disappeared into the kitchen. "I'll have to cover this," he said from around the corner. "Not that there's a lot of heat in here to get out, but this place will be an icebox when we get back if I don't at least tape a trash bag over the hole."
"Yeah," she said. But she wasn't thinking about the heat. She was thinking about the shape smacking the glass, cracking it, and about the icicle growing out of the doorframe like some sort of twisted, Tim Burtonesque stop motion.
Quit it. You're going to drive yourself crazy.
Warren came back into the room, kneeled beside her chair, and put his hand on her chin. His skin was rough, calloused, but his touch was as soft and caring as ever. He turned her head to the left and the right and then grabbed the tweezers.
"Again," he said, "this is my one-hundred-percent-non-medically-trained self talking, but I really think you got off lucky. There's one piece here."
He lifted the tweezers to her cheek, pinched them together, and pulled out a small chunk of glass. The extraction hurt just a little bit, like getting stung by a bee in reverse.
"And here."
He pulled the second piece from her jaw and one more from just beneath her left ear. None of the shards were any bigger than a fingernail clipping.
Warren patted her leg. "There might be more beneath the skin, but that's all I can see."
"Okay. Thanks."
He used a peroxide-soaked cotton ball to dab at her face, wiped a few spots a second time, and then sealed some (but not all) of the cuts with the liquid bandaid.
"No point in getting any but the deepest ones." He chewed his lip and squinted as he brushed the liquid into her cuts, like a painter adding the last fine details to a canvas. He spent the most time on a single wound that ran down from her forehead and must have been several inches long at least.
"The rest have stopped bleeding," he said. "For the most part anyway." He closed the liquid bandaid and tossed it back onto the other chair. "I'll get you a fresh towel. In case any of these others start dripping again."
"Okay. But not one of the good ones."
He smiled, took her hand in both of his, looked her in the eye, and said, "I love you."
She opened her mouth to respond but couldn't find the words. Warren was a caring, loving man, and a fantastic husband, but he rarely let the "L" word pass his lips.
"I...love you, too." She said.
He smiled, gave her a quick kiss, and stood up.
"I'll be back in a sec."
She nodded. When he was gone, she stared back into the fire and tried to think of anything but broken glass, ice, and shadowy, smacking hands.
HE GRABBED HER a fresh towel (one of the least grungy-looking rags from the drawer beside the sink) and stoked the fire. When he was sure she was comfortable---at least for the moment and as much as you could expect given the circumstances---Warren left Tess in her chair and hunted down his keys.
After the power went out, they'd talked about driving out of the mountains and into town, but in the end they'd decided against it. They didn't have money for a hotel, and they didn't know any of the townies well enough to ask for a spare room. They'd have ended up sleeping in their car or some kind of homeless shelter, which wasn't any better than making due in their own home, power or not. They had enough food to last them several weeks and wood to keep themselves warm, so they'd agreed to hunker down and wait out the storm. After all, it couldn't snow forever, right?
Warren found the keys on the dresser in their bedroom and stuffed them into one of his snowsuit's side pockets. He found a snow shovel and an ice-scraper in the hall closet and brought them into the living room. There was probably already a scraper in the truck, but he couldn't remember for sure and didn't want to trudge all the way out there only to come up empty. And he'd need the shovel for sure. The truck was half buried in the snow. He'd have to do plenty of digging before he'd have any kind of chance of driving it farther than a couple of inches.
You really think you can get it down the mountain anyway? Seriously?
He wasn't sure. Although Tess seemed to be okay, there was a chance she wasn't. Scary, unfair, but true. He couldn't just sit here and hope there weren't shards of broken glass shredding her innards to pieces.
That's probably an exaggeration and definitely a little morbid.
Maybe, but sometimes life is a little morbid. Like it or not.
He retrieved his scarf from the kitchen floor and wrapped it back around his face. When he told Tess to sit tight and moved to the front door, Bub started to get up off his doggy bed.
"No," Warren said. "You stay here." He said it in his most masterly voice, and Bub dropped back onto his belly with a huff that was eerily human.
Warren stuck the scraper in his pocket, took a long breath of semi-warm air, opened the door, and stepped back out into the storm.
The wind and snow surged when he moved through the doorway, as if it had been waiting for him. For a second, he couldn't breathe---the wind had jerked the breath right out of him. He lowered his head and gasped.
They hadn't used the front door in a couple of days. If it had opened outward, or if there had been a storm door or a screen door that did, he might not have been able to get out that way. The snow hadn't drifted against this side of the house as badly as it had in the back, but it was still at least a foot and a half deep. Snow spilled in through the entryway and onto the hardwood. He used the shovel like a walking stick to help himself climb out onto the snow and pulled the door closed.
The truck sat in the driveway beside the house. Not that you could see the driveway. Or much of the truck, for that matter. The snow had drifted against the cab and the tailgate and left only a few bare patches of paint and glass. Warren hefted the shovel, ducked his head, and shuffled toward the vehicle.
They had a garage---a detached structure someone had added on after the home's original construction---but although Warren had promised himself he'd get the storage boxes and junk organized before winter came that year, he hadn't gotten around to it, and there was barely room to park a bike inside the space, let alone a honking GMC. He wasn't sure if he'd call his failure to clean up lazy or absentminded (he didn't like to think of himself as either), but he guessed it didn't matter; if the truck had been tucked into the nice, dry garage at that very moment, he'd probably still have had to dig a ramp in the snow to get it anywhere.
One more time: you really think you'll be able to get it anywhere anyway? In this mess? You're kidding yourself. You'd need a monster truck with ten foot wheels and a snowplow mounted on front.
Pushing his way through the blizzard, it was hard to argue with that thought, but he still had to give it his best shot.
Warren wasn't sure how long it took him to get to the truck---several minutes at least, although it felt like much longer. The storm had taken a turn for the nasty, and the snow smacking him in the face wasn't the least bit soft or fluffy. Bits of ice rained down on him and into him, seeming to come from every direction at once. He used the shovel to brace himself when the wind gusted or he came across an extra slippery patch of ground, and although he nearly fell once or twice, he managed to avoid it. Barely.
He circled the GMC to let himself in through the passenger-side door. The snow hadn't piled up as badly on that side, had come up only to the wheel wells, in fact. Once Warren used the ice-scraper to chip away most of the ice holding the door shut, it opened with relatively little fight. He leaned the shovel against the truck and crawled into the cab.
Out of the wind, the storm didn't seem quite so bad. Cold, sure---disgustingly cold---but no colder than it had been a million times before. He sat there for a moment, unable to see out through the snow-covered windows, wisps of smokey breath drifting out of his mouth, feeling claustrophobic but happy to have escaped the swirling snow and biting ice. At least for a minute.
But he couldn't stay still for long. As his body relaxed, the warmth seeped out and the cold snuck in. He felt it around his neck and in the cuffs between his gloves and sleeves, felt it wrapping itself around him, squeezing, like a snake.
He shivered, rubbed his arms, and reached for the keys.
He couldn't find them at first; for one frightening moment, he thought he must have dropped them somewhere between the house and the truck. If that had happened, he might never have seen the things again. But the keys were there, tucked so deep in the pocket of his snowsuit that he couldn't get to them without taking off his glove and going in barehanded. He pulled the ring out, poked the GMC's key into the ignition, and twisted.
Nothing.
He frowned and tried again.
Twist.
Nothing.
Turn.
Bupkis.
He put his glove back on and stared at the dashboard. As if a warning light might come on and tell him what had gone wrong.
Could cold weather keep the truck from starting? He wasn't sure. He'd never pretended to be a mechanic. He knew how to fill the vehicle with gas and which of the pedals was the brake, but he was pretty clueless otherwise. He could admit it and wasn't ashamed. Not everybody could know everything about everything. Engines had never been one of his specialties.
Still, expert or not, he knew he'd started the truck when it had been this cold before. Colder even. He tried the key one more time and shook his head when nothing happened.
He wondered if maybe he ought to look under the hood.
What good would that do?
At least he could see if there was something obviously wrong. A broken hose or a corroded battery.
Do you remember the snow? There's at least a foot of it out there on that hood. You're going to shovel it all off for what's bound to be a useless look at the engine?
Yes, he was. Tess had been in an accident. His wife had been in an accident. He wasn't going to risk complications to her condition to avoid some manual labor. What kind of sorry excuse for a husband would?
He left the keys in the ignition and let himself out of the truck. The storm hit him harder than ever. The wind had stopped gusting and seemed to be blowing with a constant intensity Warren had never experienced, the kind of thing you might see in news footage of a hurricane. He ducked his head, grabbed the shovel, and went to work.
It was hard to judge how long it took to clean off the hood. Partly because his watch was on the nightstand in their bedroom, but mostly because he had to pause so often to huddle against the blizzard. By the time he'd finished, cleared off all but the last few patches of ice (and the new snow already covering up what he'd just cleared off), he felt cold, sore, and beaten. Like he'd been raped by a yeti.
He ducked back into the GMC's cab, popped the hood, and then worked on prying the thing up. Thanks to his clumsy, gloved fingers, it took much longer than it probably should have, but he didn't dare take the gloves off, even for a second. In this weather, that would have been an open invitation to a nasty case of frostbite.
When he wedged the ice-scraper beneath one side of the hood and finally levered it up, it popped and crunched and cracked. But it opened. Sure enough.
He lifted the hood and ducked his head beneath.
No. That's not possible.
The engine was a ruined mess. Chunks of ice hung from tattered rubber hoses and poked out of cracked fluid reservoirs. Warren wasn't sure exactly what he was looking at, which was the oil tank and which the wiper fluid reservoir, whether that hunk of metal in the middle was the starter or the alternator. Cracked metal casings bulged in places they shouldn't have.
Could ice have gotten into the engine? So much ice that it distorted steel? Was that even physically possible?
He recognized the battery (although it was encased in a block of thick ice and distinguishable only because of the red and black cables jutting from the top), a thing he'd managed to jump once or twice over the years, and he knew the coiled apparatus in front was the radiator, but it also had jags of ice that shouldn't have been there---that couldn't have been there---and cracked bulges with veins of frost running into (or maybe out of?) them.
He shook his head.
This didn't seem possible, but what was he going to believe, common sense or his own damn eyes? He knew only that the engine was useless like this, completely worthless. Whether they wanted to or not, whether there'd ever been any kind of chance of driving out of the mountains anyway, he and Tess weren't going anywhere now.
He shut the hood and climbed back into the cab for the keys, but what good were the keys? The truck wouldn't be moving from that spot until long after the storm ended, until they could get a tow truck up here to drag it back to town. Might as well leave the keys there; one less thing to keep track of, one less thing to lose in the storm.
So he turned back to the house instead and trudged through the snow.
What if Tess takes a turn for the worse? What exactly are you going to do then?
What could he do except hope it didn't happen? If they'd had a phone, maybe he could have called for help---although the chances of an emergency vehicle making it up the mountain were even worse than their chances had been of making it down, and no helicopter would have dared this weather, not even for the worst kind of emergency, let alone a broken window and a few cuts---but they had no phone; there were no cell towers this far up the mountains, and although their landlines were partially buried, there were still stretches of above-ground lines, and they never lasted long in a bad storm. Warren had tried the phone on the first day of the blizzard and got nothing but silence.
He stepped through a drift with his shoulders hunched. Around him, the blizzard blew its freezing breath, wheezing at him.
Laughing at him.
IN THE BACK yard, in a furrow between two drifts, the wind blew across a patch of bluish-white snow. Loose powder drifted across the top, but there was only solid ice beneath. The wind gusted, and the ice trembled. A section of ice broke loose from the rest---now less solid looking, almost mushy---and rose into the air. It was long, cylindrical, finger like. Only longer. Tentacle like. The wind blew harder still, and the tentacle curled into a stumpy question mark of a thing.
When the wind died down, the curl of ice stayed where it was for a moment, but then it drooped, twitched, and finally stilled.
Fresh snow fell and hid any signs of the movement.
THERE WAS A problem. Tess knew it immediately. Warren had never been any good at hiding his emotions. Even with half his face buried in his scarf, Tess knew he was worried. She saw it in his eyes, in the slump of his shoulders.
She didn't say anything until he'd made it all the way inside and shoved the door closed. It took him two tries to do this; the snow had spilled through the doorway and formed a kind of wedge, and he had to push on the door with his shoulder to get it to latch.
Bub got up from his bed and limped over to Warren, and Warren scratched him on the head before pulling off his outerwear.
"Too much snow? Are we stuck?"
Warren wiped layers of melting snow and ice off his face and flicked the mess to the floor. "I don't know. Probably, but I couldn't even get the truck started to find out." He unwound his scarf, dropped it to the floor, and pulled off his cap. His hair---almost entirely gray now, but still fairly thick---had matted and taken on an oily, unwashed look, although Tess knew he'd showered just that morning. She'd picked his damp towel off the floor.
"What's wrong with it?"
He turned his palms up and raised his eyebrows. "You know me. I normally don't know a cracked block from a loose fuse, but I took a look under the hood, and..."
"And what?"
He stepped out of his boots and joined her at the fire. He moved the items from the second chair to the floor and sat down with a huff. Bub followed him, circled the area in front of the fire for a second, and then curled up at Warren's feet.
"Have you ever heard of an engine freezing?"
Tess shook her head, felt a twinge in her neck, like a cut opening back up, and decided to try moving as little as possible. "No," she said. "Like the gas?"
"Not the gas. I think it has to get a lot colder for that to happen. I mean the actual engine. The mechanical parts. Like the battery and the fuel injector and whatever the hell else is in there."
"No, I've never heard of anything like that. Is that what happened?"
He rubbed his hands together and held them toward the fire.
"Honestly, I don't know what happened. There was ice everywhere in there. The tubes were cracked and broken, the fluid tanks were destroyed. If I didn't know any better, I'd think the thing had been...sabotaged."
"Sabotaged? With ice? Who would do that?"
He looked at her and took a deep breath. "Outside of a bad Batman villain, I have no idea, which is why I don't think that's what happened."
She twisted in her chair, leaned toward him. "Hold on a second. What if someone did. For whatever reason. I know you don't believe I saw a person through the window, not really, but what if there was someone out there? What if they're still out there? Did you check for footprints?"
He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. "No, I forgot. I'm sorry. But I can guarantee you there's no one outside. It's nasty out there. I mean really nasty. Almost unbearable. No one could last more than a few hours in that mess without freezing to death. Maybe not even half an hour."
"Then maybe they haven't been out in it the whole time. Maybe they've been hiding in the shed."
He shook his head. "I was just in the shed. Nobody's been out there but me and Bub."
"The garage then."
He turned his chair to face hers and leaned forward on her knees. "But why would anybody do that? Break the kitchen window? Freeze---somehow---the truck engine? Why not just break in and rob us or kill us or whatever it is they have in mind? Why just...mess with us?"
She turned back to the fire. She didn't have an answer to that one.
"Plus," Warren said, "there was snow on the hood."
"Huh?"
His eyes were wide, like he'd just solved some kind of problem.
"Yeah. Snow on the hood. A lot of snow. And no footprints anywhere around it. Whatever happened to the engine, it happened before the snow started. Or at least before the storm really got going."
"That was four days ago."
He nodded. "Exactly. Nobody would have frozen the engine and then waited around for four days to break the kitchen window just to...what, scare us?"
Tess said, "Nobody sane anyway."
He nodded his head and flapped a hand at her, a gesture that said, I'll give you that one.
"So what do we do now?"
Warren sat back and folded his arms over his chest. "It's getting dark out," he said. "I don't think there's much we can do except cover the kitchen window, put an extra blanket on the bed, and try to stay warm until morning."
"And then?"
"In the morning, I'll check around the house and in the garage, make sure there's not some psycho stalking the place."
"And then?"
He laughed. "Let's get to tomorrow first and go from there."
Before she could say anything else, Warren got up and put another log on the fire. The flames wrapped around the new wood, flickering, licking. Tess sat still and enjoyed the heat.
"I'm going to tape up the window," Warren said. "Back in a jiff."
When he was gone, something slid down the side of her face. At first, she thought it must be a tear---although she wasn't exactly teary---but when she reached up and wiped it away, her finger came back with a smear of red on it.
Blood.
One of her cuts had reopened.
She wiped up the blood with the towel Warren had brought her earlier, folded the towel in half, and then folded it in half again, hiding the blood from sight, pretending she'd never seen it at all.
YOU KNOW THE feeling you get when someone shoots you in the back with a cannonball? Warren had it.
He should have known shoveling the snow off the GMC after hauling around firewood after fighting his way through snowdrifts all day would take its toll, but he hadn't felt the muscle twinges until he came inside and warmed up. Maybe the pain was just now setting in, or maybe the blizzard had numbed him to it. Either way, it was here now, coming in long, agonizing waves.
When he found an old piece of cardboard in the utility room, he decided to go with that over the trash bag. It would be harder to fit into the window without some cutting, but it had some kind of slick coating on one side and would probably hold in more heat and hold out more cold, wind, and snow. He took it and a roll of duct-tape into the kitchen and went to work.
He didn't believe there was someone outside---it was just too...well, unbelievable---but as he cut the excess from the cardboard and taped the square to the frame over the broken pane, he thought he heard something in the snow beyond. Something like a voice, like a whisper, calling his name and chuckling.
Except that was just the wind. Of course it was.
Ice and snow blew against the cardboard, a thousand tiny drumbeats. Warren doubted the cardboard would hold up for long, but a little while was better than nothing. He was pretty sure he had some plywood in the garage. In the morning, if the cardboard was showing a lot of wear and tear, he'd go out and cut a wooden replacement.
He applied one last layer of duct-tape, smoothed it down, and dropped the rest of the roll on the strips of cardboard he'd cut off. Pain crept up his back, starting just above his butt and ending beneath his ears. Part of him wanted to twist and try to stretch the muscles, but he knew if he did that he might throw out his back, and this would be the worst time for that to happen. He had to be there for Tess, ready to re-bandage her wounds if need be, ready to hold her if the pain got worse.
It won't. Quit thinking the worst.
It probably wouldn't, but it might.
Either way, he was no good to her with a ruined back, lying in bed like some bedridden old geezer, so he kept himself as straight as possible, didn't do any unnecessary twisting or stretching, left the cardboard scraps and the watery mess of snow and ice that had blown inside right where they were. Cleanup would have to wait for later.
In the living room, he found Tess hunched over the fire with the poker in one hand and a piece of wood in the other. Bub sat on the floor beside her, his tail wagging, his tongue lolling from the side of his mouth.
"I know this probably isn't what you want to hear right now," Tess said. "But this is the last piece of wood."
The wood. Crap.
Warren sighed, drooped. "I forgot," he said. Just thinking about going back outside zapped the last of his energy. He imagined the freezing wind blowing more ice and snow against him, trying to blow its cold air right through him.
"I could get it," Tess said.
"I'm sure you could, but there's no way I'm going to let you."
"I don't mind. I---"
He put up a hand and shook his head. "You're hurt. You need to save your energy."
"I know, but you've already been out there twice now." She pushed the last log into the fire and positioned it with the poker.
"It's okay," he said. "One more trip won't kill me."
"It won't grant you eternal life either."
He laughed and gave her a quick kiss on the lips. "You stay here and keep warm. If I'm going out into that mess again, I'm going to need you to warm me up when I get back."
She pulled him close and gave him her own kiss, this one longer and much wetter than his had been.
"Maybe I will," she said, her eyes narrow, coquettish.
He laughed again. "Aren't you in pain?"
"Just a little. And nowhere that counts." She took his hand and guided it up her inner thigh.
"You perv," he said. But he gave her a squeeze and smiled at her surprised yelp before he took his hand back.
He found his snow gear strewn across the floor by the front door and pulled it on. It was cold and damp and nasty feeling.
"This isn't exactly high up on my list of favorite days ever," he said.
"Mine either."
He told her again to stay put, stay warm, and then he left the house through the back door, thinking of warm, moist places and trying to carry the thought with him through the chilling wind.
ON THE SOUTHERN side of the house, Warren had buried a yardstick in the snow to measure the accumulation. He hadn't been around to see it in over a day, and he wasn't here now, but as the sun slipped behind the mountains (not that anyone could have seen this happening through the blizzard, of course), a fresh batch of snow blew in and covered the 24" mark.
An outdoor thermometer hung from a nearby tree, angled so you could see it from the house. The storm had covered it with uneven layers of ice, but the dial was still barely readable. If you'd looked closely right then, and for long enough, you could have seen the needle slide past the -10 degree mark (not labeled, but there all the same, a thick, black line between the 0 and the -20) and toward the negative teens.
In the branches above the thermometer, a cloud of snow lifted into the air and wafted away from the tree, floating improbably against the wind. Chunks of ice slid across the branches and the trunk, melting, re-solidifying, forming long, serpentine tendrils. Some of these appendages wrapped around one another, braiding together, melding into larger, thicker structures. One of these larger tendrils pulled away from the tree, wavered for a second, and then whipped out and knocked the thermostat from the tree. The instrument fell to the snow below, sent up a puff of white powder. Two small tendrils slithered down the tree after it. They fell on the dial like predators on injured prey. One of the things lifted into the air and slammed back down into the thermostat's face, cracking the plastic and burrowing into the space beneath. Several more tendrils dropped out of the tree and joined the first two in their attack.
When they had all but pulverized the thermostat and most of the pieces of plastic had disappeared beneath the ongoing snowfall, the tendrils slid back up the tree and merged together. A mess of protrusions formed at the end of this new grouping, like a dozen jointless fingers. They clacked against one another, snapped and clicked and cracked. The tentacle curled up on itself, sprang into the air, and grabbed hold of a branch higher up the tree. It curled around this branch and stayed there for a long time. When another tendril slid out the branch to join them, the larger tentacle grabbed it and crushed it into a dozen little bits.
These shards of ice fell to the snow below, writhed there for a moment, and then stilled.
The tentacle above wrapped itself back around the branch.
And waited.
WARREN MANAGED TO bring two loads of wood from the shed to the house without throwing out his back. The first load wasn't so bad, but by the time he dragged the sled across the yard for the second time and transferred the firewood into the house, every muscle in his body seemed to be aching. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been this sore. He guessed it was possible he'd never been this sore.
It just about made him wish he'd shelled out the money for a gas-powered furnace or a backup generator. They had the gas stove and the hot water heater and kept a decent supply of firewood, and he'd always thought that would be enough for emergency situations. He guessed it was. As long as you were willing to do plenty of work.
He left the sled in the snow drift by the back door, shut himself inside the house, and leaned against the wall until his body went from aching to merely throbbing.
"That you?"
Tess's voice sounded a mile away, and Warren realized he was still wearing his hat. He took it off and hung it from a series of hooks mounted beside the back door.
"Who else would it be?" he called back.
Except, of course, he knew exactly who she might think he was: the stranger she was convinced was out there in the blizzard, stalking them, toying with them.
"It's me," he said.
He took off his boots and his snowsuit, shivering the whole time, rubbing at his body. His breath plumed out from between his lips and floated toward the ceiling.
He eyed the pile of wood he'd carried in. It would be enough for tonight and tomorrow, and maybe even tomorrow night, depending on how well it burned, but then he'd have to go for some more.
Maybe it will have stopped snowing by then. Or at least stopped blizzarding.
He could only hope.
He picked up two of the larger logs and carried them into the living room. He found Tess arranging blankets on a mattress in the middle of the floor.
Frowning, he put the logs on the floor a few feet from the hearth. He said, "What...is that the mattress from our bed?"
She nodded.
"How'd you get it in here?"
She rolled her eyes. "I'm not a muscleless blob."
He moved to help her smooth out the topmost blanket, but she had already finished. "I know, but why did you bring it in here?"
"I thought it would be warmer. For...you know."
"Our raucous lovemaking?"
She laughed. "Yeah, that. If you still want to."
He moved to her and took her in his arms. "Just give my extremities a chance to warm up and I'll be all over you like stink on a monkey."
She laughed again. "Sadly, that might be the most romantic thing you've ever said." She kissed him once, playfully, and then again, more slowly, and parted his lips with the tip of her tongue.
When she pulled away, he said, "Are you sure you're up for this?"
"I am if you are." She patted the front of his pants and grinned.
He took her hand and led her to the mattress. Although kneeling and crawling under the blankets pained just about every joint and muscle he had (hadn't he always said they should have bought a couch with a pull-out bed?), he managed in the end. Tess crawled in after him and gave him another long kiss.
"Bub is watching," she said.
And he was. From his doggy bed between the two chairs.
"Turn around and watch the fire," Warren said.
Bub panted and grinned his old, familiar grin, but he didn't turn around.
"Feel like putting on a show?"
Warren ran a hand through her hair and caressed her jaw the way she liked. "Do I ever."
She unbuttoned his pants and her blouse, and they did.
LATER, AFTER WARREN had fallen into a deep, postcoital sleep, Tess slipped out of bed and hurried over to the fireplace. She was naked, and the fire had died down to almost nothing. She walked with her arms wrapped around herself, rubbing at her biceps.
She used the poker to stir the coals. The fist-sized chunk of wood left on the grate caught fire again, but it wouldn't last long; she'd need to grab more logs from the pile Warren had brought in. She looked at the heap of clothes on her side of the bed, considered getting dressed, and decided not to mess with it. Better just to hurry up and get the fire going again so she could crawl back beneath the covers and against Warren before the cold had a chance to work its way into her.
She rushed through the kitchen, which was cold, and down the back hallway, which was colder still, barely tolerable. Her breath floated in front of her face like smoke, her nipples were stone-hard, and her toes and fingers had started to go numb. She didn't bother picking through the logs but grabbed the first three she could wrap her fingers around. She tucked one of the chunks under her arm, and cradled the other two against her belly like a baby. The bark dug into her skin, scraped her, but she hardly noticed; compared to an exploding window to the face, a few scrapes were nothing.
As she brought the firewood into the living room, her breasts swayed (much closer to her belly, she was sorry to admit, than they'd been thirty years earlier) and her nipples still jutted. She hopped from foot to foot, trying to stay warm, aware that she probably looked ridiculous but not worried about it because there was no one around to see but Bub and Warren, who were both sleeping and snoring almost in unison.
She dropped two of the sections of wood on the coals and used the poker to scoot them together. Fresh flames curled up the sides of the logs, orange and almost unnaturally bright in the otherwise unlit room. The blizzard continued, blowing snow and ice against the house, shrieking and moaning, sounding like a tea kettle one second and a ghost the next.
When the logs looked like they would stay lit, Tess turned around and snuck past Bub.
Something vibrated in her chest, like the beginnings of a deep cough. She stopped, placed a cold hand between her breasts, and held her breath, willing herself not to cough and wake everyone up.
For a second, she thought the sensation had passed, but then the vibration came again, a tickle deep in her lungs. She coughed once---a tiny, almost polite cough---and then again, more loudly this time. Warren sniffed and shifted on the mattress but didn't wake up. Bub never moved at all. Tess felt another cough coming on and hurried out of the room before it could escape her.
Halfway between the living room and the bathroom, in the narrow hall where she'd hung their portraits and shelved the cheap knickknacks they'd picked up over the years, she stopped, doubled over, and let loose a series of loud, hacking coughs that left her gasping and teary eyed. A string of spittle dripped from her bottom lip and fell to the floor. She listened to see if she'd woken Warren.
No sounds from the living room.
Her chest vibrated again, and she hurried into the bathroom at the end of the hall. With the door closed, she couldn't see anything at all. Their only flashlight was on the mantle in the living room. They'd brought a box of candles and matches into each room when the lights went out, but before she could fumble around for them, another long cough rumbled its way out of her chest and throat. Thick, warm liquid flowed past her teeth, over her lips, and down her chin, and she felt her way to the toilet. The next cough brought another stream of liquid, but this time she managed to spew most of it into the commode. When her coughing finally let up, she reached blindly for the toilet paper, found it, and used a handful to wipe the gunk from her face.
What the hell was that?
It had felt almost like throwing up. She knew she should light a candle and see what exactly had happened, but she was afraid. What if the candlelight revealed a toilet bowl full of blood and hacked-up innards?
It's probably just barf. You can't cough that hard and not vomit a little bit, too.
Maybe. But what had caused her to cough like that in the first place?
She stood up and ran her hands over the vanity. She thought she remembered putting the candles beside their toothbrushes, but when she felt around the area, she found nothing but the toothpaste.
Warren was in here, remember? Looking for tweezers. Who knows where he put the damn things.
She slid her hands around the sink and found the box of tapers pushed into a corner of the countertop. She grabbed a candles, found the smaller box of matches, and lit one. Even before she touched the flame to the candle's wick, she saw the streaks of red on the floor and down the sides of the toilet. She gasped and almost dropped the candle. It looked like someone had died in here. Swirls of thick, dark blood floated in the toilet bowl, and a mess of red footprints and knee prints surrounded the toilet.
She turned to the mirror, and a bloodied, zombified version of herself looked back at her. The red stains running down her face and chest made the rest of her body look pale, ghostly, lifeless. Her drooping boobs swayed as she sucked in one long breath after another. The sight of all this blood made her want to puke, but she didn't dare if she could help it. She was afraid she'd hack out another pool of blood.
You swallowed some glass. Or breathed it in. That's the only explanation.
Okay, fine, but what was she supposed to do about it?
Wake up Warren. Tell him.
But what could he do about it? The truck wasn't going anywhere; he'd said so himself. And they had no way to call for help. Not that help would have had a chance of making it up here anyway. And it wasn't like he was a doctor or anything, not like he could cut her open and do some exploratory surgery.
You're bleeding. Badly. You have to wake him up and tell him. Right now. Don't be an idiot. Maybe he can't do anything, but two minds think better than one.
She felt that tickle in her throat again and leaned over the sink, ready to puke out another helping of gore, but the tickle never worsened, and after a few seconds, it went away altogether.
A drop of wax dripped off the taper and onto Tess's hand. She hissed and dropped the candle into the sink. It sputtered but didn't go out immediately. Before it did, Tess turned away from her reflection and walked to the living room, holding her hand between her breasts again, trying to be careful, not wanting to dislodge any bits of glass that might be floating around her lungs or throat.
Warren lay spread-eagle on the mattress, his head buried between their two pillows and one of his feet sticking out of the covers. Tess hurried to him, grabbed his shoulder, and shook him.
He grumbled, turned away from her, and curled into a ball on his side of the bed. She rolled her eyes and shook him again.
"Warren." She whispered it but realized there was no reason to be quiet and said his name again, louder this time. Between the chairs, Bub lifted his head from the doggy bed and looked over at her, but Warren still didn't open his eyes.
"Warren!"
He turned, blinked his eyes, and rubbed his face. "Huh? What's wrong?"
"I don't know. I'm bleeding."
He pushed himself up on his elbow. "What? Your cuts?"
She shook her head. She'd done her best to wipe the blood off herself, but she hadn't gotten it all. At first, she didn't know how he'd missed it, but then she realized she was kneeling between him and the fire, which meant she was backlit, and he'd just woken up. She was probably nothing more than a blur to him right then.
"No, not my cuts. Or at least not just my cuts. I coughed up some blood."
Now he sat up all the way. She saw the fire reflected in his eyes. The blanket dropped around his waist and revealed his lean, not-quite-bony torso.
She said, "Not just some blood---a lot of blood."
He opened his mouth but didn't say anything for a long time.
"Are you okay now?" he finally asked.
She started to say something, maybe I don't know or I'm not sure or some other worthless non-answer, but before she got out a word, that tickle came again. The cough came quickly this time; before she could turn her head, a streamer of blood came shooting out of her mouth and hit Warren right in the center of his chest. It splattered there, ran down his belly and splashed up against his chin. It rebounded off of him and onto the sheets, bedspread, and pillows. By the time she turned away, Warren looked like something out of a horror movie, like Carrie at the prom. She spat the last mouthful of blood on the floor between her legs, but Warren had gotten the bulk of it. The blood dripped down his belly and into his lap.
Bub whined, got to his feet, and inched over to them. Tess reached out to comfort him, to tell him it was all right, but before he got within reach, he bowed his head and shied away from her. She realized her hand was covered in blood. Bub looked from her to Warren and whined again.
Warren ran his hand across his chest and stared at his bloody fingers. "My god," he said. "We...I have to get you some help." He pulled her to him, either forgetting about the mess or ignoring it, and hugged her tight. "It's going to be okay."
Tess wasn't sure how it could possibly be okay---she'd already lost a disturbing, surely dangerous amount of blood---but in his arms, with him whispering reassurances in her ear, she couldn't help but believe his lies.
WARREN'S FIRST THOUGHT was that he needed to clean himself off before he left. No time to take a shower, but he could at least towel off most of the blood. He pushed himself off the mattress, bundled up the sheets and the comforter to keep the blood from soaking through, not thinking about it, just doing it because it seemed like the only thing to do. And then he walked naked through the living room and toward the bathroom at the end of the hall.
Tess followed him. "What are you going to do?"
He didn't answer, not because he was purposefully ignoring her but because he wasn't sure what to say, wasn't sure what he was going to do.
Bub followed them out of the living room but stopped only a few feet into the hallway, sat down, and whimpered.
Warren decided to ignore him for now, stepped into the bathroom, and reached for the light switch, forgetting about the blackout, forgetting about everything except the blood geysering out of Tess's mouth. He flipped the switch half a dozen times before he remembered and shook his head.
This is no time to go senile. Tess needs you to think straight. Pay attention.
He clenched his jaw and remembered the box of candles.
"Don't light a candle," Tess said from behind him. "You don't want to see this."
And, of course, he didn't want to see it, but he needed to see it. He swept his hand across the counter until he found the box of tapers and matches. He lit one, and when he saw the
(slaughterhouse, bloodbath, crime scene)
mess that had once been their ordinary bathroom, he almost choked on a sob. Bloody streaks ran down the sides of the toilet. A wad of toilet paper floated in the toilet, watered down and pink instead of red but still undeniably horrific. Smears of blood covered the area around the toilet and the floor between there and the doorway. He guessed there were probably some in the hallway, too, although he hadn't noticed them. There were a few splashes of blood all the way back to the hamper and even the shower curtain beyond.
"Jesus, Tess. This is..." He was thinking, This is very, very bad, but he couldn't say that. For her sake. For his own. So he said, "This is going to be okay." He turned to her, grabbed her shoulder with his free hand. "Okay?"
She nodded. By the glow of the candle light, she looked worse than before. The darkish bags beneath her eyes had become bottomless chasms; the streaks of blood on her face and body looked darker, thicker, more fatal.
Don't think like that.
Except how the hell else was he supposed to think? His wife was coughing out blood; she'd lost what seemed like a bucketful. In the bathroom. In the living room. All over him and herself.
She stood there in the flickering light, looking into his face, looking a little faint and a lot worried.
"Come on," Warren said. He'd decided cleaning off the blood had been a stupid thing to worry about. "Let's go get your clothes on. You must be freezing."
As if him saying it had made it true, she began to shiver. She wrapped her arms around her quivering breasts and shut her mouth when her teeth chattered.
Warren lowered the candle and ushered Tess back down the hall. Bub got up before they reached him and led them into the living room, limping. He looked back at them once and wagged his tail a single time, to the side and back to center, as if asking if everything was okay.
"It's okay," Warren said and thought he'd been saying that a lot lately. He guessed that's what you did when bad things happened: assure your loved ones everything would be okay until either it were or it weren't. "It's going to be fine."
He brought Tess to the bare mattress and grabbed her clothes from the floor. They had a few splatters of blood on them, and he guessed they'd have to throw them away when this was all over, but they were fine for wearing, for keeping warm.
"Here," he said and handed her her undergarments. "Turn around; I'll help you."
She shook her head. "I can do it." She stepped into her panties and slipped her bra straps over her shoulders.
"So what are you going to do?" She reached around to hook her bra. She struggled for a minute, sighed and ripped the bra off.
Warren reached down to pick it off the floor and help her back into it, but she told him to leave it be and give her her shirt.
"I can go braless. I don't feel like something squeezing me around the chest. Makes me feel coughy."
He handed her the shirt and waited until she'd pulled it over her head.
"I think there's only one thing I can do," he said. "I've got to go for help."
"Go how?" She took her pants, a stretchy pair of pajama bottoms, and pulled them on.
He circled the mattress, found his own clothes, and started dressing.
"The Young place is only about three miles down the mountain." He tugged his shirt over his head. "If they're home and their phone is working, I'll call for help."
"You're going to walk?"
He raised his eyebrows and tried to smile. "I don't think I have a whole lot of options."
"What if they're not home? Or their phone isn't working? Or they don't answer the door?"
"You think they'd leave me out in the cold?"
She shrugged. "We barely know them."
"They'll let me in," he said. "And if they don't..."
"What?"
He buttoned his pants and sighed. "I don't know, but I'll figure out something. If they're not home, I'll break down the damn door."
"Three miles is a long walk on a nice day," she said. "It'll take you hours in this storm."
He nodded. "At least. It's still dark out there, too. It won't be easy going."
A pair of tears dripped down the sides of her face, and he wished he hadn't said that last part.
She said, "Don't do it. You'll freeze to death. I'll be fine. Promise. You don't need to go, okay?"
"I won't freeze. I've got enough warm clothes to keep me cozy in the worst blizzard you could ever imagine."
"I don't think I could imagine one worse than this."
He couldn't argue with that.
"I have to go. Okay? You're coughing out blood and need help. This is the only option left."
She tried one more time: "Even if you get there, and they let you in, and their phone is working, no one is going to send an ambulance or a helicopter in this weather."
"If they won't send help, I'll borrow the Youngs' car and come back up here for you myself."
"But---" She pressed her palm against her chest, and Warren hurried around the mattress. She held out a hand, stopping him halfway there, clutched her chest for another second, and then said, "I'm okay. It's nothing."
He rubbed her shoulder and kissed her lacerated face. "I don't know how or when or who or what," he said, "but I will find a way to help you."
Or die trying, he thought but wouldn't say.
He put on the rest of his clothes, grabbed the flashlight from the mantle, and went into the bedroom for another layer of clothing. Tess didn't follow him this time, and when he came back, she'd added another log to the fire and plopped down in one of the chairs. Bub lay at her feet. When he saw Warren, he gave him a worried look and then laid his head on Tess's foot. Warren didn't think he was going to have much trouble getting the dog to stay put when he left this time.
"It's going to take me a while to get down there," Warren said.
"I know."
"This is going to sound all kinds of motherly, but try to relax while I'm gone, okay? Stay close to the fire and try not to move much."
She gave him an exasperated look.
"Hey, I said it was going to sound motherly. But I'm serious. Whatever's going on in there, I don't want it to get any worse." He went over to her, kneeled on the floor by Bub's head, and took her hands. "I'm not gonna say anything like 'I'll be back before you know it' but I promise I will go as fast as I can."
"Only as fast as is safe," she said and squeezed his hands. "Promise?"
He did.
He brought three armloads of firewood from the back hall, his back muscles aching the whole time, before putting on his final layers of outerwear and lacing up his boots. He knew the flashlight wouldn't do a lot of good out in the blizzard, but he put it in his pocket anyway.
Before he left, he kneeled on the floor beside Tess again. She kissed him once on the forehead and once more on the lips.
"Take care of her," he told Bub. The dog looked up at him, wagged his tail, and pressed himself more firmly against Tess's legs.
Warren kissed Tess's hand, but neither of them said another word. He took the flashlight out of his pocket, turned it on, opened the door, and stepped into the storm.
ONE OF THE mostly formed things lay in the truck's bed, which was now just a depression in a pile of snow and no longer really part of the vehicle. The monster writhed and bucked as its limbs formed themselves from the surrounding snow.
If you'd been there to see it, you could have watched Warren exit the house and trudge right past the monstrosity. Until he had passed, the creature lay still. You might have expected it to get up and attack, but maybe it wasn't ready for that yet, wasn't developed enough. For whatever reason, it let Warren go.
When it was alone again, the creature continued its slithering formation. After the last coil of ice had slid into place, the thing lifted its head and looked down at the man's tracks. You could see them there, running alongside the snow-covered truck, already disappearing in the ever-falling snow.
The thing looked toward the house and then at the tracks again. Back toward the house. Tracks. House. It cocked its head and flicked a frozen tongue over its teeth. It slid out of its depression, rolling across the snow, picking up bulk as it moved. Curls of ice formed ahead of it, melded with it as it rolled and slithered across them; the tendrils curled around its many appendages, froze into place.
When it reached the bottom of the mound that had once been a truck, it stopped moving and basked in the blizzard's swirling winds. It stared at the house for a long time before making a gurgling noise that sounded almost, but not quite, like insane laughter.
BEFORE HE'D GOTTEN as far as the truck, Warren began to wonder if he was going to make it. The storm seemed to be getting worse by the minute. Despite the layers of clothing, he felt every gust of wind. His scarf was moist over his mouth and nose, and his eyelashes were already collecting snow and ice. He had tried using the flashlight, but it was worthless. The reflected light disoriented him. He could see more clearly without it. It was night, but not completely dark; ambient light reflected off the ground, the falling snow, and the white sky. He still couldn't see much more than a few yards ahead of himself, but he wasn't totally blind. If he could stay close enough to it, he thought he'd be able to follow their fence down the long private drive to the road beyond, but once he reached that, he wondered how he'd ever be able to find the Young place.
You won't. This is suicide. When this is all over, they'll find you frozen to death less than half a mile from the house. Count on it.
No. He wouldn't give in to that kind of thinking. The Youngs had a big metal mailbox at the head of their driveway; he'd passed it plenty of times driving into town. If he followed the tree line down the side of the road, he'd find the mailbox and go from there. He might not see the thing until he was a few feet away, but he would find it. Probably.
Maybe.
From a distance, the snow-covered fence was barely distinguishable from the rest of the landscape, but once Warren found it, it was easy enough to follow. He took a few shuffling steps through the snow, looked up to be sure he hadn't wandered off in the wrong direction, and then took a few more steps. Repeat and repeat again. It was slow going, but the wind was blowing at his back, which was lucky. He wasn't sure he'd have had the energy to walk through the snow drifts and into the storm.
How long would it take him to get to the end of the drive? He wasn't sure. It was about a mile long. On a nice day, he might have been able to walk the distance in fifteen or twenty minutes. Tonight, he guessed he'd be lucky to make it there in an hour. He considered counting his steps, but he wasn't sure how many steps there were in a mile, and trying to count would only discourage him. Not to mention that, in this case, a step was more of a shuffling, irregular lurch. Instead, he decided to lower his head and just keep on keeping on.
What about frostbite? You think you're going to make it through this without having to sacrifice a few fingers or toes?
He wasn't so worried about his fingers---his gloves were keeping his hands surprisingly toasty---but he guessed his toes probably were in some danger. His boots weren't lined or waterproof. Maybe he should have worn a few extra pairs of socks, but even that might not have been good enough. He had to admit there was a chance he'd lose some toes, but if that was the price for keeping his wife alive, he'd pay it. Gladly.
His back twinged, and he stopped for a second to try to massage it through his layers of clothing. Throwing his back out earlier might have been inconvenient, but now it would be deadly. He didn't want to stop any longer than he had to, but he promised himself he wouldn't push his back to the breaking point. He twisted from side to side; his muscles burned and throbbed. He stretched forward and backward and then sideways again. Although his back was still sore (and likely would be for the next few days or weeks), it no longer felt like it was going to go out on him.
He shuffled forward a few more steps and looked up at the mound of snow that was the fence.
Something sped through the snow beyond.
What the hell was that?
He stopped and squinted. It had looked like something biggish, almost human sized, but that couldn't be, could it? He was sure he'd just imagined it; or maybe he'd seen a clump of ice on one of his eyelashes and thought it was something farther in the distance. Whatever the case, the movement didn't come again. He stared at the empty space beyond the fence for another second, then lowered his head and moved on.
You're not even out of pissing distance of the house and this storm is already driving you crazy.
He staggered on, one step, two, trying to ignore everything except the movement of his legs and the ground just ahead.
When he looked up the next time, he saw movement again. This time, he was sure of it. The shape was just a blur hurrying across the road ahead, but it was definitely there. Not ice on his lashes. Not his imagination.
What then?
He stopped again and cupped his hands around his mouth. "Hello?"
He waited to see if the shape would move again. When it didn't, he called out a second time: "Hello? Is someone there?"
Although he was screaming with the wind, his voice didn't seem to carry. The falling snow muffled it, dampened it. It was like trying to scream through a pillow.
"If there's someone there," he said, "show yourself."
Nothing. No movement, no return call. Warren considered turning around and going back to the house. But that was stupid. There was nothing out there. He was imagining it. He'd seen a swirl of drifting snow and nothing else. Besides, what would he tell Tess? Sorry, I couldn't go for help because I got scared of the snow? That was crazy. Cowardly.
He glanced back at the fence, made sure he was still heading the right way, and shuffled on.
He didn't see any more movement, but he got the distinct feeling there was something out there. Watching him.
Crazy? Of course. But he couldn't shake the sensation.
He remembered what Tess had said earlier, that she thought she'd seen someone's hand breaking the glass. He'd told her she probably hadn't seen what she thought she'd seen, and most of him still believed it, but what if there had been someone? What if he was wrong? What if there was someone out there right now, watching him, stalking him, hiding in the blizzard?
That's insane. No one's out here but you, and you know it. You're trying to trick yourself into going back, getting out of the cold. It's a survival mechanism. Nothing else.
Warren guessed it didn't matter either way. He wasn't going back. Freezing cold or not. Crazy blizzard stalker or not. Turning back wasn't an option.
He tucked his head even lower and tried to move a little faster.
"I CAN'T TAKE this," Tess said.
Bub looked up and cocked his head. It was funny how human he looked sometimes, how much he seemed to understand.
"I can't just sit here worrying," she told him. "You understand that, right?"
He wagged his tail.
"You'd understand if I got up and made myself some tea or something, right? Kept myself busy? My mind busy?"
Bub wagged his tail harder and panted.
Are you kidding? Are you seriously going to pretend to take advice from a dog? Don't you move an inch. You could dislodge something. You could make a bad situation terrible.
"More like a terrible situation fatal," she said. And yet she still wanted to get up. She hated this. Warren couldn't have been gone for more than an hour, but it felt like days. Bub looked at her, unblinking, waiting.
Are we getting up, he seemed to be saying. Gonna go for a walk?
"Never mind," she told him. "Lay back down."
He did. Good old Bub.
She supposed she'd have to get up eventually to tend to the fire, but anything more would have been stupid. She couldn't let stir craziness get the best of her.
In the fireplace, the logs crackled and burned. Bub rolled onto Tess's feet. Outside, the blizzard continued. She wondered how much accumulation there was now. Two feet? Three? How was Warren going to get anywhere out there? Judging from the sounds of the snow and wind, if it wasn't a total whiteout, it was close. What if he got lost and froze to death? Hell, even if he didn't get lost, how long could he survive? Didn't he say something earlier about no one being able to survive more than an hour or two out in that weather? Sure, he'd been trying to placate her, but she didn't think he'd been flat out lying. And the storm was worse now than before. At least it sounded worse.
He'll make it. It's not him you need to be worried about. How much blood do you think you lost tonight? How much more can you lose without passing out? Will one more coughing, vomiting fit do it? If not one, two for sure. The blood loss alone might not kill you, but if you lose consciousness and don't keep up the fire and Warren doesn't make it back in time, you'll freeze to death. That's a fact.
That was all true, but she'd already decided to stay put. What more could she do? Worrying about it wasn't going to help anything. She watched the flames and tried to think about something else.
But before she'd had a chance to search her memory banks for some happy recollection, the tickle in her chest returned. It wasn't much of a thing at first, barely noticeable, but before long her entire torso was vibrating and she was rocking back and forth in the chair, trying to will the cough away, praying it would subside and not turn into another violent burst of vomiting.
A single cough escaped her. It was small, but it burned her throat. She braced herself for more blood, but it didn't come. No blood, and no more coughs. The vibrations died down, and her body stilled. Bub got up, put his head on her knee, and whined.
She waited a full minute before she did anything. Didn't talk, didn't move, tried not even to breathe. When she thought it might be okay, she drew in a slow, tentative breath, closed her eyes, and exhaled.
No cough. No blood. No vibration.
"I think it's okay," she told Bub. "It's okay for now." She scratched him between his ears and gave him a kiss on his snout.
That was when she heard it: a second window breaking. This time it came from the end of the house opposite the kitchen, either from the bedroom or the bathroom.
Bub stood up, tensed, took a few limping steps toward the hallway and growled.
"It's okay, boy. It's just a broken window. Probably just a tree limb or a chunk of ice."
She realized how much she sounded like Warren right then. But with him gone, she guessed it was up to her to be the sensible one.
"Relax, okay?"
But Bub didn't relax. He took another step toward the hallway and barked. The sound was so sudden and ferocious that Tess jumped back. She'd never heard Bub bark like that (he wasn't much of a barker in general, as a matter of fact), wasn't sure she'd ever heard any dog bark that way. She thought again of wild beasts, of wolves and jackals and hyenas.
"Bub?"
And then she heard it. A thump. Like a low drumbeat.
A second thump followed, louder than the first.
Not drumbeats, of course. Footsteps.
There was someone in the house.
WHEN WARREN REACHED the end of the driveway, he almost didn't believe it.
He couldn't possibly have made it to the road already, could he? How long had he been walking? Half an hour? Forty-five minutes?
He wasn't sure. He hadn't brought his watch, and he'd been concentrating so hard on not thinking about the time that he'd lost all sense of everything but his thumping heart and his aching legs and back.
His heart hadn't slowed, and his muscles still burned, but for the first time since leaving the house, he thought he might have a chance. He'd made it to the road, right? That was a third of the trip. Maybe more.
Of course, the road hadn't been plowed. That would have been too much to ask for, and he'd never really been expecting it. Plowing a rarely-used road in the middle of a blizzard would have been a moronic waste of resources. Someone would drive a plow down the road when this was all over, but not for several days at least, maybe even a week. Finding a plowed road tonight would have been a miracle. He thought (and not for the first time) that he ought to get a plow for the GMC. Or a small snowmobile. Or both. For emergencies.
Isn't this enough of an emergency to last you the rest of your life?
It definitely was. But when it came to disasters, the universe didn't exactly hand them out evenly.
The first stretch of road leading away from their driveway was the steepest and usually the slickest when the weather turned bad. He'd driven up and down this particular hill during many bad storms.
Yeah, but this is beyond bad. You've never driven in anything like this. And walking isn't driving. Don't think you're going to be able to anticipate any of the upcoming terrain.
He shuffled forward, testing his traction, ready to lean back and catch himself if he started to slip. The deepest layer of snow here was much less icy than he'd expected. His boot slid into the snow and found quite a bit of traction. He pushed his foot all the way down and shuffled his other boot forward to meet it.
The wind was coming at him from the side now. If he looked forward, the sleet pelted the side of his face, so he walked with his head turned to the side. No other choice really. It made it harder to see where he was going, but it was better than trying to bear the onslaught. His breath wafted away from him, carried along with the wind, white upon white. He shuffled forward, took a quick look to make sure he hadn't wandered off the road and into the trees, and turned his head back to the side. It was like the fence all over again: take a few steps, get his bearings, repeat, repeat, repeat.
When he got closer to the Young place, he'd walk along the side of the road, watch for their mailbox, but until then, he figured he might as well try to aim for the middle of the road. Less chance of tripping over a rock or a log.
You're lucky this is a a relatively safe road, not one of those half-width numbers cut into the side of a mountain with a three-hundred-foot drop off one side.
Very true. There were plenty of those kinds of roads up here. In comparison, this one might as well have been a Kansas interstate.
He shuffled forward a few more steps, stopped to get his bearings again, and thought he saw the bottom of the hill, a switchback that cut into the trees to the left.
Better be sure. If that's not the road, if it's just an opening in the trees, you could get very lost very quickly.
Except he couldn't be sure, could he? Not when he could see only a few yards ahead of himself and the distinction between the road and the surrounding forrest had become a whole lot of white nothing. He'd have to rely on his memory and the few surroundings he could make out.
He shuffled to the bottom of the hill and stopped for another look around. He turned only his head, not wanting to move his body, afraid that might disorient him. He saw what he thought was a familiar pair of trees to his right, which would mean he'd been right about the switchback, but he was also almost sure he saw something ahead, right in the middle of what he thought should have been the road.
The thing ahead moved. One second it was there, and the next it had zipped away, not trudging through the snow but seeming to glide on top of it or maybe even float above it.
What the hell was that? An animal?
He didn't think so. It had been too big to be a rabbit or a fox or even a wolf. It had been almost bear sized. But nothing that big would have been able to move so quickly. Not in this weather and through this much snow. Maybe not at all, even on flat, dry ground.
So what does that leave? A fucking cross-country skier?
Warren had no idea. He thought the most likely answer was that he'd imagined it. Or that he was going insane, that the cold had gotten into his brain.
The thing---or maybe another thing---moved again, this time to his right, near where he thought he'd seen the two trees. Through the snow, from this distance, Warren couldn't make out anything but the shape: a kind of amorphous blob that seemed to be rolling across the drifts like a snowball. It moved deeper into the blizzard, and Warren lost sight of it again.
"Hello?" The wind and snow beat his word to the ground, turned it into a whisper, a non-word. The wind gusted and blew a thick sheet of snow into his eyes. He looked down at the ground and reached up to wipe the mush off his face.
Something moved just ahead of him. He could hear it now, a kind of hissing ring, like music just barely breaking through the static on a cheap radio. Something about the sound made his stomach churn. A wave of adrenaline flooded through his body. His muscles twitched, and the blood pulsed through his temples. He pulled his glove away from his eyes and looked up slowly.
The creature stood a few feet in front of him, big and looking even bigger standing on top of the nearest drift. It was covered in snow and ice, or maybe even made entirely of ice, although that didn't seem possible.
Are you kidding? None of this is possible. You fell and hit your head. You're dreaming. Wake up and open your eyes before you freeze to death.
Warren wished he could believe that, but this was no dream. No dream in the history of dreams had been this vivid. He could hear the blizzard blowing around him, feel the cold sneaking in through the gaps in his clothes, smell and taste the damp, nasty wetness of his scarf, and of course see the thing in the snow ahead. His senses were working overtime, and that didn't happen in dreams. At least not in his.
The creature had dozens of tentacle-like appendages, each one tipped with clacking digits that were at once both finger like and entirely alien. It looked something like a frozen, upside-down tree. Except none of its limbs stayed in place for long. One tentacle detached itself from the body, slithered up around the thing's bulbous head, and then re-attached itself on the other side. Another limb moved to replace the empty spot the first had left. And so forth.
Warren couldn't see any eyes on the monstrosity, but it seemed to be staring at him all the same. It had no neck---its jagged protrusion of a head rested directly on top of its center mass---but it sure as hell had a mouth: it opened and closed the hole once, twice, revealing multiple rows of shark-like teeth, and a frosty, wriggling tongue.
Seriously, wake up. For the love of God, please wake up!
He sucked breath after breath through his musty scarf, afraid he'd start to hyperventilate but unable to do anything about it.
The thing slid off the top of the drift and closer to Warren. Warren had never seen anything like it and still couldn't quite understand what he was seeing despite looking right at it. He tried to turn away, to run, although he knew he had no chance of escaping, but he couldn't move his legs. It felt as if his boots had gotten snagged on something under the snow. He jerked his legs up as hard as he could, but they didn't move. The creature came closer still---it was composed entirely of ice and snow, Warren could see that now, in places it was see-through---and with nothing else to do, Warren covered his torso and face with his arms, cowering.
The thing chomped its teeth. Bits of ice, tips of jagged fangs, broke off and fell to the snow below. New teeth, sharp and glistening, formed to replace the broken ones. It made a sound (Warren guessed you'd call it a growl, although it really sounded more like a low, reverberating whistle) and swung a tentacle at Warren's head.
Duck!
But even as he thought it, he brought his arm up instead, shielding his face. The icy limb struck him somewhere between his wrist and his elbow, breaking his arm with a loud, gunfire-like crack. The creature's arm broke, too---the tip of it flew into the snow and lay there slithering for a second before burrowing under the snow and out of sight---but another coil of snow and ice was already snaking its way down the limb to replace the missing bit. It melded into place and curled into the air like a cat's tail.
His arm drooped and throbbed. Hot white pangs pulsed through his forearm and into his chest, belly, and head. He screamed. A puff of white exhalation floated past his eyes, obscuring the monster for a moment. He tried to curl his arm against his stomach, but moving the arm at all was horrendously painful. He was afraid if he tried to move it again he'd pass out. And be at the mercy of this unthinkable, impossible beast.
The thing pulled back the tentacle for another swing. This time, Warren did duck. The limb swung over his head, whooshing through the air, and continued swinging until it had wrapped itself around the creature's body. It melted into the thing's torso, and another limb grew in its place.
Warren tried pulling his feet free again. He let his arm dangle at his side, but the movement brought fresh pain nonetheless. He hissed and did his best to ignore it. His boots wouldn't move, felt frozen in place, but he thought he could feel his feet pulling free, right out of the footwear.
One of the creature's tentacles shot straight at Warren. He tried to dodge it, but it was much quicker than he was and hit him square in the shoulder. It knocked him back, right out of his boots, and sent him flying through the air.
He was weightless for a second, floating through the falling snow, and then he hit the ground and the air woofed out of him. He lay there for a second, trying to find some oxygen to breathe, trying to turn his head out of the falling snow but finding only more snow to either side. He coughed and finally caught his breath. He gasped and scrambled backward through the snow with his good arm, but it was too late, and he was far, far too slow.
The creature slid across the snow, moving effortlessly, its body crackling and ringing. It leaned over him.
Warren's hand found a clump of hard snow. He gripped it as best he could with his thick glove and hurled it at the creature's head. The clump hit the thing in the face but didn't affect it at all.
Of course it didn't. Are you kidding? You're trying to fight off an ice monster with a goddam snowball?
The creature chomped its teeth together again, raised a tentacle, and swung it into Warren's head.
For a moment, Warren felt the snow continue to fall into his face, but then he felt nothing at all.
And the freezing white world became cold black nothingness.
"IS SOMEONE THERE?"
Tess had gotten out of her chair and turned toward Bub. The fire blazed, warming the side of her body, almost burning it. She took a step away and called out again. Bub looked over his shoulder at her for a second before turning back toward the hallway.
The intruder didn't respond. Of course not. Tess trembled. Her heart rattled. She felt lightheaded, like she might faint.
Don't you dare. Pull it together.
She should run. That seemed like the only option. Get Bub and run away.
Except where was she supposed to go? The truck wasn't drivable, and they had no other means of transportation. They could try to run, but without warmer clothes, without a coat and gloves and (most importantly) some shoes, she'd freeze to death before she could get half a mile from the house. She wasn't even wearing a bra for crying out loud. If someone had come into the house, she was going to have to face him. That's all there was to it. Fight or flight got a whole lot simpler when flight was no longer an option.
You really think you should be fighting? Or even moving? What if whatever's lodged down there in your chest breaks loose and slices up your insides even worse than it already has?
She'd just have to hope that didn't happen. It was either that or sit here like a helpless idiot and wait for the intruder to find her. Hurt her. Kill her. She looked around for something she could use as a weapon.
The fireplace poker. It was a heavy-duty thing made from a single piece of wrought iron. It was no 12-gauge shotgun, but it was better than nothing. She picked it up, swung it once experimentally, and then wrapped both hands around the handle and took a deep breath.
She thought of the hand smacking the window, trying to scare her, playing with her before sending a shower of glass into her face. It had been a hand---that seemed obvious now---the hand of some lunatic who'd been sneaking around their property in the middle of a blizzard since at least last night. And now he was in the house, doing who knew what in the bedroom, maybe waiting for her to make the next move.
"Whoever's back there," she said, proud of herself for sounding somewhat threatening, "I have a gun."
And I know how to use it.
It sounded like a stupid movie line, but she said it anyway, "And I know how to use it." She doubted the fictitious gun would send the intruder running even if he believed she had it, but it might at least scare him a bit, give her some sort of momentary advantage.
Still no response from the bedroom. Bub looked at her again, turned back to the hallway, growled, barked. Tess hefted the poker and moved beside him.
Wait. If there is someone back there to fight, you're going to need to see to do it.
Yes, true, but Warren had taken the flashlight, and she wasn't going to be able to hold on to a candle during any kind of altercation.
She hadn't heard any more footsteps, although she could hear gusts of whistling wind and the hissing crackle of falling snow and ice outside, a sound that, for just a second, sounded almost identical to the crackling fire.
It's got to be a candle. What other choice do you have? Even if you end up dropping it, some light at first is better than none at all.
The candles were on the other side of the living room, on an end table beside the sofa. She got one, but she didn't have anything to put it in, so she looked for something to wrap around the bottom. There was a pile of magazines on the arm of the sofa; she picked one up, ripped out a page, and wadded it up around the base of the candle. It was a makeshift holder if ever there had been one, but it would keep most of the wax from dripping on her hand. She lit the candle. The flickering flame rose, died down, settled, and Tess padded back to Bub.
"Follow me," she whispered and stepped past him.
He didn't follow but limped at her side instead, brushing against her leg. They entered the hallway and crept toward the bedroom. Tess had eased the door most of the way shut after she took the mattress to the living room, hoping to contain the heat in the part of the house they were using. Now she wished she'd left it open. An intruder in the room at the end of the hall was scary enough, but an intruder in a room behind a closed door was scarier. Almost unbearably frightening. Her heart fluttered. Her hands shook. Not that it was easy to tell. This far away from the fire, most of her was shaking.
She stopped at the threshold and held up the poker to her chest. Bub stopped beside her, stiff looking, growling, his teeth bared. Wax dripped down the candle and onto the crumpled wad of magazine paper. A few drips rolled from there to Tess's wrist, but she hardly noticed.
She imagined the intruder in there sifting through her underwear drawer, looking for valuables, a hairy, wild-eyed, homeless-looking man with snow in his beard. Or maybe not looking for valuables, maybe just looking for the undies, wanting to sniff them. Then she imagined the psycho standing just inside the door, imagined running in and stabbing the poker into his gut, imagined him looking up at her with confused, accusatory eyes.
Quit it. You're going to drive yourself crazy.
She looked down at Bub once more, took a long, shaky breath, and slid her foot toward the door. Her next movement was actually a series of movements all carried out almost simultaneously: she kicked open the door, angled the poker in front of herself like a lance, and rushed into the room, trying to keep low in case the loonie had a gun and started firing. Bub stayed right at her side, hurrying despite his limp. She watched him from the corner of her eye, careful not to step on him or trip over him. He growled, and saliva dripped from his exposed gums and teeth.
Tess got two steps into the room and stopped dead. She screamed and tried to stop her forward momentum. What she found by the window was so utterly different from anything she'd imagined that her mind couldn't quite register it. It was like a blur, or an empty space in reality.
Except it wasn't a blur. And it wasn't empty space. She had no idea what in the world it was.
She fell back on her ass and dropped the poker on the floor. Although it probably should have been the first thing she let go of, she managed to hold on to the candle.
The bedroom was as cold as a walk-in freezer. Colder maybe. The floor felt like steel instead of wood. Tess's teeth chattered, and her nipples hardened.
Bub stopped just beside her. He didn't seem as surprised as she felt. Maybe he'd been able to smell this...this thing. Or maybe his instincts had taken over. Or maybe he was just a hell of a lot gutsier than she was. He scurried in front of Tess, crouched there, and barked at the monstrosity standing just inside the broken window.
Monstrosity. That was the word. Tess had never seen anything like it, not in real life, not on TV, not even in her nightmares.
The creature looked like a mound of frozen snakes, some of which crawled around the body, seemingly unattached, while others whipped around the bedroom like octopi tentacles. Most of the limbs had clumps of finger-like protrusions sticking out of the ends, which clicked together as it moved. It had a stubby head with a jagged fissure of a mouth, which it opened, revealing a whole mess of icy, wickedly sharp-looking teeth. It stood in a puddle. Ice and snow blew in through the window and beat against its back, but it didn't seem to notice or care. Candle light reflected off its frozen, faceted body, making it look like the ugliest piece-of-shit jewel that had ever been pulled from the ground. It leaned forward and roared at her.
Except it wasn't a roar. Not like a lion's roar or a bear's. It was more like a long crack and crunch, like someone breaking through a thick sheet of ice. And although she never would have guessed such a sound might scare her, it did. Goosebumps broke out on her already-cold arms, and her lungs burned. She realized she'd been holding her breath but couldn't seem to do anything about it. Trying to breathe in felt like trying to inhale a bowling ball.
This isn't real. Not even a little bit. Remember the icicle you thought you saw earlier? This is the same thing. Only times a billion. You have brain damage and you're hallucinating this whole thing. Close your eyes. Close them, and when you open them again, this will all be gone.
She closed her eyes and counted to five. But when she looked toward the window again, nothing had changed. The creature was still there. One of its appendages detached from its body and joined a smaller tendril to form a single, enormous tentacle. It opened its jagged maw and roared at her again.
Bub widened his stance, lowering himself, and let out a series of deep, reverberating barks. The creature unfurled one of its upper tentacles and swung it at the dog. It did this slowly, almost lazily, the way you might shoo a fly, but the tentacle was as thick as a baseball bat and hit Bub with a solid thunk. Bub lost his footing and slid across the cold floor with a single, short yelp. He hit the wall beside the dresser and lay there motionless.
"Bub!" The word came out with a puff of white breath.
She started to get up, to hurry across the room after her dog, but before she could get to her feet, the creature swung another tentacle at her. This time, the swing had more umph to it. Tess just barely ducked beneath the attack; the glistening appendage sailed over her head with a whooshing sound and dripped freezing water across her head and shoulders.
Go. Run. Get out of here!
No. She wouldn't go without Bub.
He's dead. And you have to get out of this room before you are, too.
The creature attacked again, this time whipping its tentacle instead of swinging it. Tess twisted to the side, and the writhing icicle of a limb glanced off her hip, leaving a freezing wet streak down the side of her pajama bottoms and smacking into the floor by her foot.
She heard a sputtering sound and realized she'd somehow managed to hold on to the candle. It had gotten wet but hadn't gone out. Her hand shook, and the flame flickered. She turned away before her ragged breath could blow it out. Fresh white exhalations drifted away from her face.
Against the wall, Bub moved. He turned his head and looked at her through watery, dazed eyes.
He was alive! Surely hurt, at least a little, but alive. He got to his feet and shook. Water flew off his fur and onto the wall and dresser.
Tess didn't know what to do, doubted there was any kind of self-defense playbook for this sort of fucked-up situation, so she did the only thing she could think of: she turned to the monster, pulled back her arm, and hurled the candle at the thing's head.
The creature moved, but not quickly enough. The candle hit it on the side of the face (if you could call that cracked slab of ice a face) and slid down to its torso and the mess of writhing tentacles. The beast shrieked a high-pitched, broken-glass shriek and pulled all of its limbs in on itself, wrapping itself up like a mummy. The candle hit the floor, smoking but no longer on fire, and the room darkened.
"Bub! Run!"
She turned toward the door and heard him right behind her. As they hurried into the hall, she grabbed the knob and pulled the bedroom door shut. She had no idea if the creature would be able to open the door, if it would be able to follow them, but a closed door would at least slow it down for a second.
Just as the door hit the jamb, something pounded against it from the other side. The knob shook in Tess's hand. The whole wall seemed to shake.
The whole wall? More like the whole damn house.
She backed away, and Bub backed up right beside her, limping worse than ever, never looking away from the door, never losing contact with her leg. Tess put a hand on his head, trying to reassure him as best she could. Or maybe trying to reassure herself. Her teeth continued to chatter. The cold seeped into every last one of her muscles and bones.
The thing struck the door again.
BAM.
Tess realized it wouldn't need to know how to work the doorknob. Before long, it would break right through the door. Their doors weren't cheap, contractor-grade things, but they weren't exactly stone solid either.
She turned around and led Bub into the living room.
What are you going to do? What can you do?
She ran to the fire and huddled in front of it, shivering. The logs burned and sent waves of heat out across her chest, arms, legs, and face. Bub sat down beside her, shaking, whining. She put her arm around his neck and tried to think.
You have to go on the offensive. If you wait for it to come to you, it will. It will come, and it will tear you to bits.
She stared into the fire. The creature had seemed terrified of her little candle. What if she brought something bigger this time?
The thing smacked the bedroom door again. The sound boomed through the hallway and into the living room. Tess jumped, and the muscles in Bub's neck tightened.
She started to tell him it would be okay, but before she could so much as open her mouth, something thudded in the kitchen. Tess looked up, and the piece of cardboard Warren had taped over the window slid across the linoleum. It had a thick sheet of ice and snow on it and a crater in the middle where it looked like something had kicked it in.
Another series of thuds echoed through the kitchen and into the living room. Like footsteps. Except she didn't guess you called them footsteps if the creature making them had no feet.
The thing in the kitchen let out a long, hissy shriek.
Tess looked down at Bub.
They were surrounded.
FOR A SECOND, Warren didn't know where he was. It was worse than wake-up-in-the-wrong-bed disorientation. More confusing. More impossible. Because he wasn't in a bed at all, wasn't even in a room. Torrents of icy flecks rained onto his face, and biting wind blew across his body. He thought this might be the furthest from a warm, safe room he'd ever been.
He felt himself sliding on his back through the snow, felt some thick coil of something wrapped around his leg and dragging him up one drift and down another. And then, suddenly, he felt his broken arm flapping along behind him, bumping up and down as he slid along. He screamed, squeezed his eyes shut, and tried to ignore the pulses of pain coming from the limb, but ignoring them was impossible. Every bump in the ground brought fresh, white-hot agony. He tried to flip the broken arm up onto his chest, but he couldn't seem to move it. Couldn't seem to move either arm, for that matter, or much of the rest of his body.
Paralyzed?
No, probably not, or not completely anyway---if he was, he wouldn't be able to feel the pain in his arm, would he?---but definitely numb, stunned. He lifted his head, and new pain racked his body. He remembered the tentacle swinging into his face, remembered the wet smack of impact. He had lost his scarf, and he thought he felt something sticky on his cheek, maybe blood, or maybe just a smear of mushy snow. Still, he could move his head, despite the pain. He opened his eyes and blinked through the blizzard at the creature ahead.
It had him by the ankle, its tentacle looped around his leg twice. He saw the tip of his sock and suddenly remembered his boots were still back in the snow; the creature had knocked him right out of them. From the looks of it, the tentacle was squeezing so tightly it had probably cut off circulation to Warren's foot, but he couldn't tell one way or the other. There was no sensation down there. He felt only the pain in his arm and head. Pain and a whole lot of cold.
The creature rolled on, moving smoothly over the snow but jerking Warren unevenly, as if purposefully trying to make the ride as rough and painful as possible.
What is this thing? What does it want with you? Where's it taking you?
Of course, Warren had no idea. No kinds of answers. He was just happy he wasn't dead, that the thing hadn't pulverized him back there in the snow, eaten his brains and laid its eggs in his corpse (or whatever the hell it planned to do with him). For now, he was alive, which meant he still had a chance to get away. A good chance? Who knew? But Warren would take a bad chance over no chance at all.
With the sheets of snow flying into his face and more of the stuff puffing up around him as the monster dragged him along, it was hard to see much of anything, but Warren did his best to make out where they were, where they were going. He thought he saw a few trees to one side and then a few more to the other, mostly obscured in the storm. The creature didn't seem to be doing any weaving back and forth, so Warren guessed they were still on the road. And going down. Despite his remaining disorientation, he could feel the slight pull of gravity. They were heading down the mountain.
Warren laid back against the snow. It was a far damn cry from comfortable, but his hood did cushion his head somewhat, and it was less painful than trying to keep his neck craned. Anyway, he didn't see what other option he had. He could barely move and definitely wouldn't be able to fight his way free, not the way the thing had its tentacle wrapped around his leg. Until some opportunity presented itself, he figured he might as well lay as still as possible and try to keep his arm from bouncing all over the place.
The creature moved forward, jerked Warren, moved forward, jerked Warren. Every yank sent another explosion of pain through his body. Warren didn't think he'd be able to withstand the agony much longer, thought he'd faint and wake up two days later in this thing's den with bits of his body chewed off. Or not wake up at all. Maybe these were the last minutes of his life, just a few more moments of hellacious existence.
(sliiiiiiiide jerk)
He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on staying awake, staying alive, and eventually he got used to the movement, to the rhythm: pain, less pain, pain, less pain. He couldn't ignore the aching throbs entirely, but he got to a point where he could at least think around them.
(sliiiiiiiide jerk)
Not that the thoughts were especially worth thinking: you failed Tess. You were supposed to get her help, you were supposed to save her, but what's she supposed to do now?
(sliiiiiiiide jerk)
If this thing kills you, how long will she last?
(sliiiiiiiide jerk)
He imagined her sitting by the fire, coughing into her fist, taking the hand away and finding it covered in thick, dripping blood. And then he had an even worse thought: what if this creature dragging him down the road wasn't the only one of its kind? What if there were more of them at the house, terrorizing Tess, dragging her out into the snow and dismembering her? What if her cough was fine but the house was overrun by monsters?
(sliiiiiiiide jerk)
He wanted to tell himself that wasn't possible, that she was fine, that there was no way there were more of these things at the house. But who was to say what was possible? After tonight, after getting attacked by this icy snake-pile of an abomination, wasn't just about anything possible?
He gritted his teeth and grunted his way through another slide and jerk.
How much farther?
(sliiiiiiiide jerk)
How could he possibly tell? He had no idea where they were going. Maybe into the woods, maybe into town, maybe into a field full of the beasts for a good old-fashioned game of tug-of-Warren.
(sliiiiiiiide jerk)
(sliiiiiiiide...)
They stopped. Warren tensed, sure the thing was just playing with him, waiting for him to let down his guard before it yanked him forward again, but when they still hadn't moved after another few seconds, Warren opened his eyes.
The thing stood between two shallow drifts of snow, its tentacles undulating but not writhing about as intensely as they had been earlier. The creature had no eyes or ears that Warren could see, so it was hard to tell what it was doing, what it was looking at or listening to or smelling, but it seemed to be leaning slightly in one direction, toward the barely visible trees along the side of the road. From the looks of it (he still couldn't feel anything but his arm and his freezing face) the monster hadn't relaxed its grip on his ankle, but Warren thought this might be his best chance to escape. His only chance.
He prepared himself, took a deep breath, tensed his muscles, and was just about to give his leg the world's almightiest tug when a burst of blinding light filled the air between him and the monstrosity.
A wave of heat rolled over his face, and the monster screeched its ringing, broken-glass scream. Warren tried to blink away the light and the heat, but what he saw next was mostly a blur of black and white, like an old, out-of-focus film: the monster brought its limbs (all of them) up to its head, screeching all the while, letting go of Warren in the process. Something flew through the blizzard, and although Warren couldn't tell what it was at first, he made it out just before it struck the creature.
A glass bottle. Flaming at one end. There was a name for a thing like that, something Russian sounding, although Warren couldn't remember it at the moment. He guessed it didn't matter.
The bottle hit the monster halfway up its body and exploded in another burst of bright light. Warren closed his eyes and turned his head away. The heat of the explosion warmed the side of his face, and the thing shrieked louder than ever. When he looked back up, half the creature's body was just gone. Its tentacles slithered around the ground and over one another, spasming, sometimes thumping into the ground with soft thuds. Some of the tendrils lay in the snow, separated from the body, glistening at the end where they'd melted away. The thing had a deep crater in its torso and was using its tentacles to pull snow from the surrounding drifts, trying to fill in the hole.
A third flaming bottle arced through the air. Warren couldn't see the thrower, but whoever it was, he or she had some great aim. The bottle hit the creature dead on and exploded.
This time, the thing's scream had a different sound to it, a kind of gurgle, like a draining bathtub. Streamers of water ran down its body, and it doubled over (or melted in half, really; it seemed to have lost control of itself). It continued pulling snow onto and into itself, but more slowly now, less accurately. Clumps of snow rolled across the beast's body, flew into the air and came back down with muffled plops.
Two blurs moved through the snow beyond the creature. Two people, it looked like. The first had another flaming bottle. The person widened his stance, and the bottle flew through the air. It landed in the snow just shy of the writhing creature. For a second, nothing happened, but then the bottle exploded. A cloud of snow puffed up from the ground, and something whizzed past Warren's face.
Glass probably. After four explosions, he was shocked he hadn't gotten a shard or two in the face. No doubt his layers of snow gear had absorbed at least a few bits of shrapnel.
This thought, of course, brought memories of Tess, of her lying on the kitchen floor amid the broken glass, of her poor, lacerated face and the mess of blood all over the bathroom and living room.
Please let her be okay. Please, oh please, oh please.
The two shapes moved closer. The second held another flaming object. Warren thought it must have been another bottle,
(Molotov cocktail)
but as the couple moved closer, he saw it was actually a small butane torch, blue and cylindrical, the kind of thing a plumber uses. The torch carrier (both people wore scarves over their faces, and Warren couldn't tell for sure, but he thought this second one had a woman's build) hurried over to the creature and lowered the torch's flame to its head. The thing started to wrap a tentacle around her legs, but before it could tighten its grip, the limb went limp. The monster gurgled one last time, shuddered, and then stilled.
Warren pushed himself up on his elbows and fell back into the snow screaming when he accidentally put pressure on his broken arm. The bottle thrower hurried over to Warren, leaned over him, asked if he was okay. The voice was a man's and familiar.
Warren tried to answer, tried to tell the guy about his broken arm, but he couldn't find the words. Every time he opened his mouth to speak, he wasn't able to produce anything but unintelligible sobs.
"We need to get you away from here," the man said, yelling it over the wind.
And Warren remembered where he'd heard the voice before. It made sense once he'd forced the information through his dazed mind. Up here in the middle of nowhere, there was really only one person (or two people, he guessed) he'd had any chance of running into: the Youngs.
Mr. Young (Rick, he was pretty sure the guy's first name was Rick) had a faint New England accent. You could hear it in his missing Rs: heah instead of here.
"My wife," Warren said. "I...I have to..." He tried for the next word. And tried again. But his mouth and throat wouldn't cooperate.
"Jan," Rick yelled through the storm, "come help me get him." He bent down further and dug into the snow under Warren, getting his arm around his back. Warren winced but managed to grab Rick's neck with his good arm. He wanted to resist, to insist he had to turn around and go back for his wife, but he just...couldn't...do it. Every last one of his body parts was shaking, and his lips might as well have been frozen together. Maybe they were.
"My arm," Warren managed. "Broken"
Rick helped him into a sitting position and touched his limp arm gingerly. "We'll have to get it into a sling," he said. "Can't just leave it like that. I'm going to unzip your snowsuit."
Warren nodded.
Rick managed to remove the upper half of the snowsuit without causing Warren a lot of pain, although Warren could tell he was fighting the urge to hurry, to get out of here.
Jan made it over to them. She'd turned off the torch and stuck it into the side pocket of her snowsuit. She knelt in the snow by Warren's legs.
Rick took off his scarf, tied it around Warren's neck, and made a makeshift sling. He and Jan helped Warren ease the broken arm into the loop of fabric.
"It's not perfect," Rick said.
Warren thanked him anyway, and the three of them worked together to get his snowsuit back on, letting the now-empty sleeve hang to the side.
They stood. Warren put his good arm around Rick's neck, and Jan curled her arm around Warren's waist. Warren's socks did nothing to protect his feet from the snow. They were wet, clinging. But his arm and head hurt too much for him to worry about his feet. The arm was better in the sling, curled up in the snowsuit, but not by a lot.
The three of them shuffled past the dead creature. Many of its parts were still intact, piled on top of the melted jag of ice that had been its torso and head. Sleet fell all around them, stinging Warren's face, obscuring the world.
The Youngs helped Warren along for what seemed like a long time; then something appeared in the snow ahead. Not another creature, although that was Warren's first terrified thought, but a squat, rectangular object that turned out to be a small snowmobile.
A snowmobile? Wouldn't you have heard the engine?
He doubted it. He'd been unconscious, then dazed and still very out of it.
The vehicle had a compartmentalized box strapped to the back with a pair of bungee cords. Most of the compartments held glass bottles with strips of fabric hanging from the mouths. The Molotov cocktails, a makeshift arsenal. There was a second butane torch among the bottles, and although Warren didn't think it was probably a good idea to keep those items in the same box, he didn't say anything, was too tired to say anything.
"Get on," Rick yelled. "It'll be a tight fit, but the three of us should be able to squeeze together and get to town."
Town? No, you can't do that, you can't leave her behind.
Warren tried one more time to stop them, to tell them about Tess, to convince them he needed to turn around. He tugged Rick's sleeve and opened his mouth, but a flurry of icy snow hit him in the face, choked him; he coughed and spat out the slush.
"Get on," Rick repeated. He had three heads now, all slithering around one another like a snow monster's tentacles.
Warren started to laugh and sobbed instead. "House," he said, barely managing to mumble the word.
Rick shook his heads. "Can't. We just barely got out. Place is overrun with those bastards."
His heads rotated, spun, blurred into and out of existence.
He's talking about his house. He doesn't understand. Of course he doesn't. How can he when you barely do.
Rick guided him toward the snowmobile. Warren tried to turn out of his grasp, but he couldn't do it. The world had become a white whirlpool of a thing. He only just managed to stay on his feet.
Jan got on the vehicle first, Warren slumped down behind her, trying not to sandwich his broken arm between them but unable to avoid it, and Rick sat down in the back. He wrapped his arms around Warren and his wife, holding the three of them together. They had to intertwine their legs to keep them from dangling to the sides.
"Let's go," Rick yelled.
Jan attached a strap to her wrist (some kind of kill switch, Warren guessed), pulled the start cord until the engine caught, and twisted the throttle to give it some gas. Warren lowered his head and tried to stay conscious as they took off into the blizzard.
They hadn't gone far when Warren heard the still-bizarre but now all-too-familiar breaking-glass roar of one of the creatures.
The next thing he knew, he was flying off the snowmobile and through the air.
TESS REALIZED SHE'D left the poker on the bedroom floor. There was still a pair of tongs and a broom and shovel set dangling from the tool holder beside the fire, but none of those things would make good weapons.
Those aren't the kinds of weapons you need anyway. Remember the candle? You've got everything you need burning right there in the fireplace.
In the kitchen, something thumped. She looked that way. A frosty tentacle curled around the doorway, and the wood seemed to freeze where the limb touched it. A layer of ice spread down to the floor and halfway up the frame, but the creature didn't advance any farther.
Bub whined and barked and then whined again.
She grabbed the tongs, poked them into the fire, pulled out a flaming log.
"You ready for this?" she asked Bub.
He looked up at her and whined again.
"Yeah, me either."
She twisted the tongs, turning the log sideways so it would be less likely to slip out. The wood was flaming, but it wasn't exactly a fireball and wouldn't stay lit forever.
Go!
She carried the log toward the kitchen. Bub limped beside her. On the other side of the house, the creature in the bedroom smacked the door again, and the cracking sound of splitting wood got Tess moving a bit faster.
She still couldn't see much of the thing in the kitchen other than that bit of tentacle curled around the doorframe. She aimed the tongs at the ice and inched closer. When she'd gotten within a foot, the tentacle began to glisten and drip; it curled up on itself like the witch's legs in The Wizard of Oz and pulled back into the kitchen. The creature squealed. It sounded like a car crash, like breaking glass and crumpling metal and screeching tires. Tess hurried after the retreating limb, not wanting to give up any kind of advantage she might have gained. Bub followed.
The thing in the kitchen was actually two things. The first was refrigerator sized; its head almost touched the ceiling, and its squirming limbs stretched from one side of the room to the other. The other monster was much smaller, not a lot bigger than Bub, really. It scampered across the counter, knocking over the block of knives and the roll of paper towels. When the larger creature saw Tess (or seemed to see her; like the thing in the bedroom, as far as she could tell, it had no eyes), it opened its mouth and screamed. It held out the melted tentacle, as if saying, Look what you did, you bitch!
The smaller monster screamed, too. It had fewer teeth in its mouth but still looked plenty deadly.
Wind and snow blew through the broken window. Strips of broken wood hung from the frame, and some of the tiles on the wall around the window had cracked and fallen to the counter below. She couldn't see from this angle, couldn't see around the monster, but Tess guessed the sink was probably full of debris from where the big creature had forced its way in.
Although she was less than a room away from the fire (and only a couple of feet away from the burning log in the tongs), she felt no warmth. Her hands shook, and she forced them to still. The last thing she wanted was to drop the wood. Without the fire, she'd be totally defenseless.
Bub hunkered and barked. The sound echoed through the kitchen, sounding to Tess at least as ferocious as the creatures' screams, although the monsters barely seemed to register the sound.
The smaller creature slid toward the edge of the counter, and the big one knocked it back with a quick flick of one of its tentacles. The little monster flipped over, its tendrils flapping through the air, and then regained its balance. It screeched at the bigger creature, which gurgled something back. A warning? An admonition? A meaningless noise?
When the small monstrosity moved to the edge of the counter again, Tess turned and thrust the fire at the thing. It skittered back, its small tentacles wriggling beneath it. For just a moment, she had a sense of victorious accomplishment, and then the larger creature whipped a limb at her arms and knocked the tongs out of her grasp.
The tongs hit the floor, and the log popped out and rolled across the linoleum. It hit the utility room door on the other side of the room and stopped. Tess stared after it for a second, wondering if the fire would spread to the door and set the entire house on fire, but then she turned her attention back to the creatures.
The big one had raised another tentacle. It swung at her, moving the limb low along the ground, maybe trying to sweep her feet out from under her. She jumped. She hadn't been especially athletic even in her younger days and couldn't remember the last time she'd jumped (which was strange if you thought about it, but true), but she managed to get clear of the sweeping tentacle.
Unfortunately, jumping was the easy part. It was the landing that did her in. The kitchen floor was more than just a bit slick. It wasn't flooded exactly, but damp, like a condensed window. When her bare feet hit the linoleum, they slid out from under her and she tumbled back onto her rear end. The jolt knocked the breath out of her, and she bit her tongue. She tasted blood and saw a bright flash of light.
Although her vision was blurry, she sensed something moving through the air and rolled out of the way just as another tentacle slammed into the floor where she'd been sitting. The soreness in her butt worsened as she moved. She didn't think she'd broken her tailbone, but the pain was incredible. She'd bruised herself at least. No doubt about that.
She shook her head, tried to clear her vision. Bub scurried around the large creature's gyrating legs, and then the smaller beast leapt off the counter and onto Bub's back.
Bub yelped and rolled on his side. The creature wrapped its tendrils around his neck and held on like a cowboy on a bull. Bub got back to his feet and turned in a circle, biting at the monster but unable to reach. The creature opened its jag of a mouth and chomped into Bub's neck.
Bub howled.
The creature jerked its head left, right, and back, taking a hunk of flesh and fur. Bub howled again and limped toward the doorway into the back hall, probably not sure where he was going, only trying to move, to buck the creature, to do something. Before he turned the corner and Tess lost sight of him, she saw a wash of glistening blood run down his fur and onto his leg. So much blood. She thought of the scene in the bathroom, of the hot gunk streaming out of her mouth and splashing into the toilet. How could there be so much blood loss in a single day? How was it any kind of fair?
Before she could decide whether to go after Bub or stay there and face the larger creature, the big monster swung another limb at her, hit her in the chest, and knocked her to the floor. She landed beside the tongs, saw them from the corner of her eye. Behind her, the crackling log continued to burn.
Get up. Get the fire. Attack!
The creature still hadn't moved farther into the room. Maybe it couldn't. Maybe it had to stay close to the snow, to the cold.
But the little one didn't seem to have a problem. How do you explain that?
She couldn't, of course. She couldn't explain a damn thing about any of this. Maybe the monster couldn't come any deeper into the house, or maybe it just didn't want to, didn't think it needed to. It had already proved its tentacles reached plenty far enough.
Before it hit her again, she reached over, grabbed the tongs, got to her knees, and crawled across the room to the firewood. Her chest throbbed where the thing had hit her, and she was having trouble breathing, but she supposed it could have been a lot worse. At least the thing hadn't given her a heart attack, and it didn't seem to have jarred lose the shards of glass in her lungs (or throat or stomach or wherever else they might have lodged).
Something hit the floor behind her. Cold water splashed her ankles and lower legs, and she looked back to see the tip of the thing's tentacle wiggling across the floor between her feet, its stiff fingers clacking together. She jerked her legs away before the creature could grab hold of her and scurried the rest of the way to the utility room door.
In the hallway, Bub squealed again, and a series of thumping sounds followed. She tried not to think about it, not to let her heart break. She'd help him when she could, if she could.
On the other side of the house, the first creature smacked the door again. She guessed it had probably been doing it all along, but she'd stopped noticing, had tuned out the sound, had focused her attention on the problem at hand. She noticed it now, however. The sound of cracking wood this time lasted much longer. She imagined the thing squeezing through the splintered doorway, dragging its tentacles along behind and leaving a wet, sluggish streak on the floor as it came after her. She might still have some time before any of that happened. Or she might not.
You have to do this now. Right now. Get the fire. Fight back.
She opened the tongs, gripped the burning wood, and squeezed the handles to pinch the log in place. When she was sure she wouldn't drop it, she spun around and lunged toward the creature.
She had expected it to swing at her, to try to knock the wood loose again. Instead, it flipped a pair of tentacles behind her back and drew her closer to itself. Her thin shirt did little to insulate her from the freezing limbs. Where they touched her, her skin tightened and her muscles flexed. She thought she would surely drop the fire, and, in fact, the tongs did start to slip out of her grasp, but she managed to hold on to them and lifted the log to the creature's head. Doing it took every last bit of her strength, although she doubted the firewood weighed more than a few pounds. Her arm muscles had loosened, turned to worthless jelly around her bones. But she did it in the end, raised the tongs up over her head and forced the wood into the creature's growling mouth.
The monster reacted in two ways: first, it squeezed her against itself, cutting off her oxygen and forcing her face to within inches of the burning log. She tried to turn her head away, but the fire burned the skin on the side of her face. The smell of smoldering hair filled the room, and she screamed. The other thing the monster did was bite down. It hissed and squealed all the while, but it chewed into the flaming log and broke it in half. One half of the wood slid down the thing's body, leaving a wet streak in its frosty hide, but the other half lodged between the creature's teeth. It opened its mouth wider, probably meaning to spit out the wood before it melted off its face, but Tess saw a chance and took it: she balled up her fist, swung it, and knocked the chunk of wood into the creature's gullet.
She felt heat on her knuckles and guessed she'd burned the skin there, too, but that was nothing compared to what happened to the monster: the wood burned its way down the thing's throat. The creature's body distorted the light, refracted it in a way that made its head look like some kind of misshapen disco ball. Tess watched the flame slide down into the monster's innards, sure the melting water would put it out soon enough but hoping it would do plenty of damage to the creature first.
The tentacles around her squeezed harder for a second, and Tess was sure they were going to crack her ribs. Or worse. Maybe snap her right in half. But when it seemed like the pressure couldn't get any worse without killing her, it finally let up. Just barely at first, but then some more.
The creature chomped its teeth together, made a series of wheezing sounds that might have been gags. As if it were trying to hack the piece of wood back out.
When the tentacles loosened enough, Tess pulled free and backed across the kitchen, still holding the tongs.
The chunk of firewood had stopped halfway down the thing's body. If it had any kind of anatomy, maybe that was its stomach. Regardless, you could see the wood in there, a dark spec within the semi-opaque layers. Wood, but no flames. The fire had gone out.
Parts of the creature had caved in, cratered and cracked. It ran its tentacles and its icicle fingers across these depressions the way a person might finger fresh wounds. It hissed, and although it looked wounded, it was far from dead. She expected it to lunge at her, to wrap its limbs around her body and squeeze her to a pulp. Instead, it turned, stuck its head through the window, used its tentacles to push off the floor and the counters (snapping one cabinet door right off its hinges in the process) and wiggled its way back out into the blizzard.
Tess gaped, not sure what had happened, why the thing hadn't retaliated.
Maybe it's hurt worse than you thought. Or maybe it went out for reinforcements.
Didn't matter. Whatever the thing was doing, and for whatever reason, she needed to take the opportunity to regroup.
In the hallway, Bub continued struggling with the other creature. She heard the two of them in there, hissing and barking and bumping into the walls. And she heard the first creature in the bedroom, still battering the door. She couldn't believe it hadn't gotten into the rest of the house yet. Maybe their doors were tougher than she thought.
Forget about that. Save Bub. It's not too late.
The half of the log the creature hadn't swallowed lay on the kitchen floor in a pool of water. It wasn't going to do her any good, but there was still another log crackling in the fireplace.
She hurried into the living room, swinging the tongs at her side. The chunk of wood on the fireplace grate wasn't much of a log anymore. It had burned down to the size of a softball and was really more of a coal. But it was bright red, and the little creature in the back hall wasn't the behemoth its partner had been. This would be enough. It had to be enough.
She poked the tongs into the fireplace and gripped the piece of wood, careful not to squeeze it too hard, afraid she might break it into a dozen worthless pieces if she did. The wood smoked, but it was already losing some of its color.
Hurry!
She ran through the living room, through the kitchen, into the hall.
She found Bub on the floor in a puddle of gore. The creature stood over him, blood running out of its mouth and pinkening as it ran down the beast's wet body. Tufts of yellow fur poked out from between its teeth. It had a pair of tendrils wrapped around Bub's neck, and the dog's tongue lolled.
"No!" She jumped at the monster, aiming the tongs and fiery coal at its head. It started to move, to dodge, but it was too late. Tess pressed the wood into the side of its head and held it there until the thing let go of Bub and backed down the hall.
Not that there was anywhere for it to go. It backed up to the door and crouched there, flailing its limbs, trying to knock the tongs out of Tess's hands as she advanced on it again. Most of the side of its head had melted away. Even with its mouth closed, you could see into its maw, see those pointed rows of bloodstained teeth.
The wood seemed to have lost most of its heat, but she jammed it against the thing again anyway. The creature screamed and wrapped its tentacles around the tongs and as far up Tess's arms as it could reach, but although the snaking tendrils were freezing cold, there didn't seem to be much strength in them. Tess grabbed one, broke it off, and flung it at the monster.
When the coal stopped smoking, she pulled back the tongs, let the chunk of cooled wood drop to the floor, and swung the empty tongs. They thunked into the creature's head, and a long fissure opened up in the ice, running from the impact point to the middle of its mouth, breaking its head almost in two.
The thing reached up for the tongs again but couldn't seem to find them. Its limbs curled, whipped, and waved from one side to the other, searching, reaching, finding nothing.
Tess lifted the tongs over her shoulder and swung them into the monster again. The tongs hit the creature right in the split running down its face. If she'd been chopping wood, it would have been the perfect swing. And really, she guessed this was basically the same concept. The tool thunked into the thing's wound, widening the gap, pushing the two halves of its head farther apart. Before the monster could pull free or try to tug the tongs out of her hands, Tess gripped the handles and jerked them apart. The end of the tongs spread, the creature shrieked and shuddered. A long, wet cracking sound came from somewhere in the vicinity of the thing's neck (or where's its neck would have been if it'd had one), and then one half of its head broke clean off. The chunk of ice slapped against the wall, broke in half again, and fell. The creature let out a wet, guttural sound, something almost like a burp, and toppled to the floor.
Tess didn't wait to see if it was still alive; she grabbed the other half of its head with the tongs, squeezed the handles, twisted, and decapitated the little son of a bitch. Then she smashed the remaining torso and tentacles into slush.
From the other end of the house came the loudest cracking sound yet. A thump followed, then a series of scrapes and a triumphant-sounding roar.
Tess dropped to her knees beside Bub.
His eyes were closed, his fur covered in blood. She slid her hand under his head and cupped the side of his neck, feeling for a pulse, not sure if that even worked for a dog. She felt nothing.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm so sorry." And then she was crying. Tears ran down her cheeks and into her mouth, hot and salty. Snot dripped over her upper lip and from there to the floor. She wiped her face with her arm and cried harder still.
Quit it! Get out of here now and mourn later, or stay here and die beside him.
She wiped her face again and took a few long, gasping breaths.
Where was she supposed to go?
She heard the monster sliding through the house, heard the taps and bangs she guessed were its tentacles hitting the floor and the hallway walls. She thought the fire might keep it at bay, at least for a while, but then remembered there was no fire. Not anymore.
You've got to go. Go, go, GO!
She pulled her hand out from under Bub, still crying. She guessed she had two options left: stay here and fight the thing with nothing but the tongs and her bare hands (which wasn't an option at all if she wanted to live past the next five minutes; she'd been lucky so far, but she was no kind of monster slayer) or go out into the storm. Out with no warm clothes. Out to where the larger kitchen monster had fled, to where there might be dozens more of the things. Out to almost certain death.
It's certain either way, and you know it. That bedroom monster has cut you off from the rest of the house. You can't go around it, and you can't stay here and fight it. Going out into the storm is a sucky option, but it's the only option.
She stood up and reached for the door.
And Bub moved.
No, you imagined that.
She wiped more tears from her eyes and looked again.
Bub's back leg flinched, and he opened his eye.
Tess huffed out a sound: half laugh and half disbelieving sob. She dropped back to her knees and ran her hand down Bub's side, trying to avoid his wounds. He lifted his head an inch or two off the floor, whined, and then lowered his face back into the pool of blood beneath him. Tess thought he'd died for real that time, that those few movements had been his last, his death throes, but then she noticed his side. It moved up and down. Shallowly but surely.
Help him. You have to try to help him.
The sounds coming from the other end of the house had gotten louder, and Tess thought the creature had made it out of the hallway and into the living room. It didn't seem to be moving very quickly, definitely wasn't rushing the way you expected nightmares to do, but the house wasn't huge, and it would get here soon enough.
She slid both hands under Bub's side, trying not to think about the blood oozing between her fingers.
"Come on," she said. "You've got to get up. We have to go."
Bub turned his head toward her, but he didn't try to get to his feet. Or at least it didn't seem like he was trying. Tess guessed it was a miracle he was alive at all. She could hardly expect him to jump to his feet and run circles around her. She tried lifting him, but he was a big dog and she'd already used up most of her energy.
"Please! Help me out here." She lifted again and let out an exasperated groan.
Something crashed in the living room; it might have been the sound of a chair falling over.
Try again. You can do it. You have to do it. It's either that or leave him here and let that thing tear him apart.
She wondered if maybe that would be more merciful. Attempting to move him might cause him agonizing pain. The monster would kill him, no doubt about that, but it would probably be quick about it.
You're not seriously considering that. Leaving him here to die? You really think you could live with yourself?
No, she knew she couldn't.
She tried to lift him one more time, strained until she was afraid she'd pop a blood vessel or throw out her back. She got him partway up, but he was practically deadweight
(don't think that)
and didn't do a thing to help. She lowered him back to the ground, changed position, wrapping her arms around his torso from above, and tried dragging him.
This worked better. She was able to move him anyway. And the blood on the floor lubricated the process, which simultaneously disturbed and relieved her.
From the sound of it, the monster had made it to the kitchen doorway. More wood cracked, and ice tinkled; she imagined the thing pushing its way through the threshold, grinning its wet, toothy grin.
She'd pulled Bub to the door. She let go of him just long enough to reach around and twist the doorknob. As soon as she'd opened the door, the wind blew it in. The knob hit her on the hip hard enough to spin her halfway around, and for a second she'd was afraid she'd slip in the blood and fall over Bub, but she kept her balance. The door pushed the half-melted pile of slush that had been the small creature against the wall, and freezing wind and clouds of icy snow blew in through the doorway. Tess gasped. On some level, she had realized it would be colder outside than in, but she hadn't been expecting the sudden blast, the unbelievable coldness.
She leaned down, wrapped her arms back around Bub, and pulled him into the blizzard.
THE FIRST THING Warren thought when he opened his eyes was that someone had found his scarf and wrapped it back around his neck. He lay on his back, his face exposed to the falling snow and ice, freezing. He reached up with his good arm to touch the scarf and found something cold and sticky instead. He held his glove in front of himself, blinking away snow. A mess of red frost stuck to the glove's fingers.
What the hell?
He reached for the object again and pulled it off his neck. It came unstuck like a huge bandaid, and Warren had to look at it for a long time before he realized what he was seeing. It was the hair that gave it away, the little black curls growing out of the thing from one end to the other. In the center was a bald patch, and in the center of that, a long, white scar.
It was a flap of skin. Ripped right off someone's leg. Complete with a scarred knee.
Warren screamed and tried to throw the strip of flesh away, but it clung to his glove and swung back into his face. The already-freezing inner tissue hit him across the mouth, stuck there. He pulled it away again, turned his head, spat into the snow, and gagged.
Instead of trying to throw the skin a second time, he lowered it to the snow, held it down with his leg, and pulled his glove free.
He touched his broken arm through the snowsuit but felt almost no pain. He didn't know whether to enjoy the momentary lack of agony or worry about it. He settled on not thinking about it either way and lifted his head to see where he was.
In the trees ahead, barely visible in the snow, one of the ice creatures had Jan Young wrapped in a tentacle as thick as a fence post, squeezing her arms against her sides. From where Warren lay, it was hard to see what was happening, but it looked like one of her hands was free and that she was trying to pull the blue plumber's torch out of her pocket.
Between her and Warren, spread across the snow in streaks and piles of cooling meat lay what Warren could only assume had once been Rick Young. Intestines and other, unrecognizable innards littered the ground. Torn bits of clothing blew in the wind. A single boot stood in the center of the mess, a stub of a leg poking out of it and pointing to the sky.
The snowmobile lay on its side to Warren's right. It looked dented in a few places and plenty scratched but not ruined.
Jan was yelling something at the creature and sobbing. The wind carried her words away, and Warren couldn't quite make them out, but he supposed he had a good enough idea of what she was saying.
She jerked her arm, and although the creature held on to her, she was able to pull the butane torch out of her snowsuit. The wind died down then, and Warren was able to see the flick of fire coming out of the torch's nozzle. He also saw another of the creature's tentacles swinging around toward Jan's head.
"No!"
Jan turned toward him. The tentacle hit her on the temple and all but decapitated her. Something (maybe her spine) cracked with a sickening crunch, and her head snapped back. Her throat ripped open, spraying blood across the creature and the snow beneath, and her stocking cap came off, freeing her long blonde hair. The hair blew in the wind, collecting flakes of snow for just a second before the creature wrapped another limb around her forehead and jerked her head the rest of the way off. It dropped the body part in a nearby drift.
The creature grabbed each of Jan's limbs and, with a single movement, pulled her to pieces. The torso dropped, but the creature held on to the limbs, raising them into the air and shaking them like some kinds of trophies. It turned its mouth to the sky and screeched.
For a moment, Warren was too shocked to do anything, to think anything, but then his brain kicked back on: it'll come after you next. You've got to get away. Run.
But he couldn't run, probably couldn't even walk. He had another idea.
While the monster rammed a tentacle into Jan's stomach and pulled out long, dripping loops of her guts, Warren forced himself to his socked feet and shuffled to the snowmobile. He remembered the box of bottles strapped to the back. The snowmobile had crashed in snow and not on concrete or dirt or some other hard surface. There was a chance some of the bottles might have made it through. He'd need only one. He hoped.
As it turned out, there were six bottles left. The bungee cords had come undone and the box lay upright in the snow a few feet away from the snowmobile. Most of the Molotov cocktails had shattered or disappeared, probably thrown out during the crash, but half a dozen of the bad boys were right there in their individual compartments. As was the torch, the twin of the one Jan Young had died holding.
Warren glanced back at the creature and scanned the rest of the surrounding area, looking for more of the monsters, unable to see anything but a few trees and all that swirling white nothing. He took one of the bottles from the box. Although the bottle was intact, some of the liquid (gasoline, from the smell of it) had leaked out. The wick was soaked. He'd have to throw it fast or risk setting himself on fire.
And how exactly do you expect to do that with only one good arm?
He didn't know, but he'd figure something out.
The creature had dropped Jan's limbs and was concentrating on digging into her corpse. Its tentacles punched and ripped and scrapped, its clacking fingers audible despite the wind. Blood and bits of flesh flew. Warren expected the creature to take a few big bites of the body (that's what wild things did with a fresh kill, right?), but it seemed more interested in shredding the remains than eating.
He turned away. If he made it through all this, he thought memories of the massacre would haunt him for the rest of his life.
Whether he watched or not, he could still hear the attack: cracking, splashing, squishing, all backdropped by the wind and falling sleet.
It knows you're here. It'll come for you next. Once its bloodlust subsides. If you're going to do something, you better do it now.
He set the bottle in the snow and pulled the torch from the box. He wrapped his gloved finger around the trigger and pulled, half expecting it to be out of fuel or for the ignitor not to work. A narrow blue flame shot out of the nozzle, and Warren let out the small breath he'd been holding.
He let go of the trigger, knelt by the bottle, and pointed the torch at the wick.
Don't mess this up. If you miss, you probably won't get a second chance.
Warren activated the torch again. When the wick caught fire, he dropped the torch, grabbed the bottle, and flung it into the blizzard before it could explode in his hand.
The throw wasn't perfect, but it was good enough. It exploded just before it hit the creature (or looked like it; maybe it had actually hit one of the tentacles), and the burst of fire engulfed the thing's head.
It screamed and wrapped its bloodstained limbs around itself, but the explosion had melted away most of its upper body. Even as it tried to pull new snow onto itself, it collapsed, twitching and looking mostly dead.
Finish the job. Bring another bottle over there and blow a crater in its goddam corpse.
Warren considered it but decided to leave it alone. He thought he had surely disabled the creature long enough to escape, and that was all he needed. There was no guaranteeing another burst of fire would kill it anyway, and he might need the other makeshift grenades if he ran across more of the creatures. He turned to the snowmobile and righted it.
He'd driven similar vehicles before, but never one exactly like this, and never one handed. How had Jan started it? He remembered her pulling the start cord. And he remembered
(oh no)
the key. She had attached it to her wrist with some kind of safety strap. More than likely, she'd pulled it loose when they crashed (that was its exact purpose, after all, and the reason the snowmobile hadn't ended up lost in the woods half a mile away). Which meant before he could go anywhere, he was going to have to go sift through her body parts.
If you're going to go over there, better bring another bottle.
He took one of them out of the box and slipped it into his hip pocket. Then he found the torch in the snow and wrapped his finger around the trigger. He wasn't sure how much fuel the thing held or how much Mr. and Mrs. Young might have used already, but he felt better having it. It was no flamethrower (and oh what he would have given for one of those), but it was better than his bare hands.
Hand.
Right. Just the one.
He shuffled toward the pile of ice that had been the creature, trying not to look at the other mess, the colorful bits in the snow. His broken arm had started to ache again, and he thought every last bit of warmth he might once have had had seeped out. Without shoes, his layers of clothing seemed useless; he might as well have been walking through the storm naked.
When he got within reach of the tentacles, he hefted the torch and eyed the creature. The snow continued falling as hard as ever, but nothing else seemed to move.
Maybe that's what it wants you to think. Maybe it's just waiting until you get closer before it grabs your leg, pulls you in, and rips you into a dozen gooey pieces.
Didn't matter. Without the snowmobile, he'd never get away from any other monsters that might be out there. He needed that key.
Shivering, teeth clattering, he turned away from the creature and looked for Jan's arms.
He found the first one half-buried under one of the monster's outstretched limbs. He propped the torch up in the snow and dropped to his knees. He had to dig the ice out from around the arm to pull it free, and he hated being so close to the creature's tentacle. The thing had proved what it could do with those appendages (as biologically impossible as it seemed), and every time Warren thought he saw the thing twitch, he just about screamed.
But he did get the arm free, and although he was sure he saw the creature's tentacle move at least twice, it didn't attack. Jan's arm was covered in icy blood and bent ninety degrees the wrong way at the elbow. He gripped it with his knees, grimacing and holding back the urge to barf, and pulled down the sleeve to check for the strap.
Nothing.
He dropped the arm. Before he hunted down the second one, he buried the first in the snow. It was probably a stupid thing to do, a waste of time---the falling snow would cover it before long anyway---but he didn't feel right just leaving it there.
He found the second arm not far away. He pulled back the sleeve, sure the key wouldn't be there, that it was buried in the snow somewhere and he'd never find it.
But it was there, wrapped around her forearm halfway between her wrist and her elbow. He'd barely been able to pull the sleeve back far enough to reveal it.
Okay, you found it. Great job. Now get the hell out of here.
He buried the arm first. As he was patting the last bit of snow in place, something wiggled out from under the creature's remains.
It was a tendril of ice, about as thick as a thumb. It slithered out of the rubble, raised its head like a cobra, and then slid toward him.
Warren reached for the torch and realized he'd left it near where he'd found the first arm.
Never mind that. It's just a little wisp of a thing. You don't need anything more than the heel of your boot.
Except he wasn't wearing boots, and he didn't think he could get his foot far enough out of the snow to stomp on the thing anyway. He decided to grab it and break it apart in his hand instead.
When it got close enough, he spread the fingers of his glove and reached for it. Instead of slithering into his hand, it leapt out of the snow and hit him in the chest.
Warren fell back and grappled for it. He got his fingers around the thing's tail (or maybe it was its head; it looked the same on both ends), but it was too slippery to hold on to.
It jerked out of his grasp and slid toward his neck.
It's going to choke you.
But it didn't. Instead, it slithered into his mouth.
And so Warren did the only thing he could think to do: he bit down.
The length of ice in his mouth wriggled around, clacking against his teeth and trying to wrap itself around his tongue. The remainder of the tendril curled up, sprang off his face, and slipped away.
Warren chewed the ice, breaking it in half and then breaking each of the halves in half. He crushed it, liquified it, and spat out the mouthful before he swallowed any. He didn't think swallowing would have hurt him, turned him into some kind of monster like in a bad science fiction movie, but he wasn't taking any chances.
Before any more bits of the creature could come back to life---if that was in fact what had happened---he retrieved the butane torch, and shuffled through the snow toward Rick's body. He doubted his feet had much chance of surviving any of this, but he didn't think it would hurt to put on the other man's boots.
If he could find them.
One of them was easy enough to see; it was right in the middle of the whole mess. He managed to pull the foot out of it and fumbled it onto his own with his one hand.
It took him a few minutes to find the other one, but he eventually saw it poking out of a snow-covered evergreen bush. It was torn and covered in blood, but he put it on anyway. And then he shuffled back to the snowmobile, feeling like a thief and a scavenger.
He slid the box with the remaining Molotov cocktails across the snow and managed to strap it back in place with his good arm and a series of careful, almost acrobatic moves.
He thought he heard a distant, ringing roar and told himself to ignore it, to concentrate on getting the snowmobile started.
He strapped the key to his wrist, stuck it into the ignition, and turned the snowmobile on. He dropped onto the seat and grabbed the starter cord.
It won't start. The engine will be flooded and you'll have to hoof it.
But it did start. And on the first try. When the motor turned over and kept turning, he pumped his fist and grabbed the throttle. He wouldn't be able to control the brake (it was on the left handlebar, on his broken-arm side), but he didn't think that would be a problem. As deep as the snow was, if he wanted to stop moving, he'd need only to let go of the throttle and let the snowmobile coast to a stop. If he'd been headed downhill, toward town, running the thing at full speed, he guessed it would have been another story.
He turned the snowmobile back onto its own tracks, hoping he'd be able to follow them back to the road, hoping he'd know the road when he saw it, and gave the machine some gas. It didn't move for a second, but then the treads caught and he slid through the falling snow.
He thought of Tess and Bub, hoped they were okay, hoped he'd get to them in time if they weren't.
The snowmobile bumped over a drift, and his broken arm slapped against his belly. He shut his eyes against the pain and forced himself to reopen them immediately.
Don't you dare crash. No matter how much it hurts. Don't you dare let it end like that.
Something moved ahead. Not a monster, just a tree swaying in the wind.
Snow and sleet blew into his face, and he wished he hadn't lost his scarf. He'd be lucky if he didn't lose most of his face to frostbite.
When he found what he thought was the road, he gave the snowmobile more gas, and headed up the mountain.
THE COLD WAS unbelievable. She'd never felt anything like it. She was surprised she wasn't freezing solid right then and there. The wind and snow blowing into her barely clad back and the crumbling powder and ice beneath her bare feet were so cold they seemed almost hot. She knew that couldn't be a good sign, that even if she lived through this she was going to suffer some serious physical damage.
Whether it was the drastic change in temperature, nerves, or just a residual effect from her fight with the monsters, she felt like she was going to be sick. She doubled over, still holding Bub, leaning past him, and a gust of wind hit her back, chilling her further still. But the nausea passed without any actual vomiting. And it was a good thing, too. She was sure anything she'd thrown up would have been mostly blood.
She gripped Bub tighter than ever and kept pulling.
When she'd dragged him far enough into the snow (leaving a pink trail of blood across the ground and trying hard not to look at it), she let go of the dog and reached back inside to pull the door shut. The creature had made it through the kitchen and almost into the hall. A pair of its tentacles wrapped around the doorframe. Dozens of fingers gripped the wood and the sheetrock. A third tentacle poked through the doorway and turned toward her. She jumped back but shouldn't have bothered. The limb wasn't even close to reaching her. She wrapped her fingers back around the doorknob and pulled the door shut.
When she got back to Bub, he looked up at her and barked. It was a sad sound, barely audible, but Tess was glad to hear it. If he could bark, maybe he could live.
So, what now? You escaped the monsters, at least temporarily, but what next?
She turned around, surveyed the blizzard. She couldn't see more than halfway across the yard, and what she could make out wasn't anything more than a swirl of meaningless white. If there were more monsters out there, she couldn't see them.
If? There's at least one out here. You know it.
Maybe, but the kitchen monster had been injured. There was a chance it had died.
You wish.
It didn't matter. Until they ran across another creature, she had other things to worry about. If she didn't get Bub and herself out of this weather soon, they'd both die. Monsters or not. Simple as that.
She couldn't go back into the house. Not through the back door and probably not through the front. The fire had gone out and there was nothing else to use as a reliable weapon.
So what does that leave?
And then she knew. It was an obvious solution, and although her mind had been understandably distracted, she couldn't believe she hadn't thought of it sooner: the shed.
She supposed the garage was also an option. It was detached, after all, but it was also full of junk and had three windows, which would make it almost impossible to defend. The shed surely wasn't any more structurally sound, but it had only the one point of access, a door at least as sturdy as the doors in the house. Unless the monsters tore down the whole building, they'd have to come through that door, and judging by how long it had taken the first creature to break out of the bedroom, Tess thought hiding in the shed might buy them at least some time. If nothing else, it would be warmer.
Assuming she could make it there.
Assuming she could drag Bub that far.
Assuming they both didn't freeze to death first.
She turned back for Bub, checked to make sure he was still breathing (he was, barely), wrapped her arms back around his body, and saw the sled in a drift of snow beside the house.
The blizzard had almost covered the thing. If she'd come out fifteen minutes later, she might never have noticed it. She let go of Bub and shuffled over to it, her bare feet tingling, stinging, her mind screaming at her that she had to get out of the cold immediately.
She dug the sled out of the snow with stiff, almost useless fingers, and slid it over to Bub. The blizzard had already started the job of covering him up, of burying him. She did her best to wipe the sleet off his fur. When she rolled him out of the snow and onto the sled, she saw the icy bloodstain he'd left behind. It seemed like a lot of blood, especially combined with what he'd lost in the hall, and she told herself he might not make it, that she ought to prepare for that possibility.
Bub didn't move much as she centered him on the sled, but he did stick out his tongue and lick her hand when she got near his head. His tongue stuck to her skin, and she had to pry it off.
"You'll be okay," she promised him and patted him on the head.
By the time she got him situated and turned the sled away from the house, she couldn't feel much of her body. Snow covered her clothes, packed into her hair, thickened her eyelashes. Her body shook violently, and her mind started to shut down. As hard as she tried to concentrate on the task at hand, she couldn't seem to focus. It felt like going to sleep after a very long day, like wanting nothing more than to lie down and take a nice, long nap.
She moved, took a few sweeping steps through the high snow with the sled's frayed rope wrapped around her numb fingers. The world spun. Hard little pellets of icy snow hit her in the head and body. She looked down, trying to keep the wind and sleet out of her face, but the movement made her dizzy. She stumbled forward and barely caught herself.
And then her face hit the snow and she realized she'd fallen after all. As far as she could remember, she'd gone from standing to lying instantly. Like a mini blackout.
Get up. Pay attention. Get up and get to the shed. Focus on that. Don't you dare give up.
She pushed herself to her feet and looked toward where she thought the shed should be, but she couldn't make it out. She turned back toward the house and realized she hadn't moved more than a few yards. Half a dozen shuffling footprints and a short pair of sled tracks marked her progress from the back stoop.
Don't think about that. And definitely quit thinking about the cold. Think about the shed. The shed. The shed and nothing else.
She'd dropped the sled's rope. When she'd picked it up and wrapped it back around her unbending fingers, she told Bub once more that it was going to be okay, that they'd make it to the shed, not sure if he could hear her, not even sure if he was still alive to hear anything, and then she resumed her trip across the yard.
As she moved, she glanced left, right, left again, looking for any sign of the creatures, not sure what she would do if they attacked but wanting to be ready for them anyway. The sled hit a drift and she jerked to a stop. She looked back to make sure Bub hadn't slipped off; he was already mostly covered in snow again. He moved his head, which was proof enough he was still alive, but seeing him like that made Tess want to cry. Again.
You're still thinking. Stop thinking and move.
She tugged the sled over the drift and trudged on, no longer able to feel her feet at all. She looked back once to see if she could still see the house, but it had disappeared in the storm. She knew this was the most dangerous part of the journey: nothing to see in any direction, nothing for her to use to orient herself, the point at which it would be oh so easy to get lost.
Wouldn't that be the perfect ending to this hellish mess, to get lost halfway across her own back yard?
She moved on, toward where she thought (hoped) the shed would be.
The wind gusted and brought a long, ringing shriek. One of the monsters.
No, it's just the wind.
She didn't believe that, wouldn't dare believe it. She pulled the sled's rope over her shoulder and pulled harder than ever.
Something loomed ahead. She started to scream, to turn around and shuffle back in the opposite direction as quickly as she could, but then she realized the shape in the snow ahead wasn't one of the creatures. A door, a snow-covered roof. She'd made it. Believe it or not, she'd gotten them to the shed.
Another shape moved to her right, too far into the blizzard to make out, just a flickering shadow and then nothing at all. And although she couldn't see it, she sensed how fast it was moving, slipping through the storm, speeding through. The things in the house might not have been especially zippy, but out here, in what she guessed was their natural habitat (as if there was anything natural about them), they seemed to be lightning quick. Or at least this one was. Another icy roar echoed through the air, and Tess let out a short, fearful squeal. Fighting the dizziness, the fatigue, the raging cold, she lowered her head and shuffled forward, eying the shed, imagining slipping through the door into semi-safety.
When she saw the creature the second time, it had moved to her left and slid into her path. Or maybe this was a second creature. She imagined a whole pack of the things converging on her, slinking through the snow, baring their teeth and curling their tentacles, clacking their jointless fingers as they reached for her.
The creature ahead lifted two of its tentacles, punched them into the nearest drift, and pulled a sheet of snow up onto itself. When it dropped the limbs back to its sides, the snow drifted off its body and clouded around it, obscuring it momentarily. The gesture reminded her of a gorilla beating its chest, some kind of sign of aggression. She couldn't tell for sure, but she thought it might be the same creature she'd fought off in the kitchen. If so, maybe it was saying, We're on my turf now. It wasn't standing directly between her and the shed, but it was close enough. There was no way she was going to get past it. The thing had every advantage over her: size, strength, speed. She guessed the only reason it hadn't ripped her to pieces already was that it was playing with her, taunting her.
She turned back to Bub. He lifted his head, shook just enough to clear some of the piling snow off himself, and huffed out a wheezy breath.
"Bub," she said. "Get up! Run!"
She knew he couldn't do it, that he was probably using every last bit of his strength just to stay alive, but she repeated it one more time anyway: "Run, Bub!"
He lifted his head an inch or two, kicked one of his back legs, like maybe he might try to do it, to obey, to be a good boy. But then his leg stilled, and he lowered his head again.
He wasn't going anywhere.
Tess turned back to the creature. It did its snow-to-chest thing again, shrieked, and then moved toward her. It moved like a skier, sliding down one drift and up another, barely making tracks in the snow despite its size. Tess couldn't begin to imagine how such a thing was physically possible.
She widened her stance and tried to make fists, but her fingers wouldn't bend. She supposed she looked like the most vulnerable, pathetic prey this thing had ever seen. She supposed she was. The thing slid closer, licking its teeth and the lower portion of its face with its long, watery tongue.
Part of Tess wanted to run, some instinctual part of her that didn't care about leaving Bub behind, didn't care about the logic or that she had no hope of outrunning the creature, a part of her that wanted only to live a few seconds longer. In the end, she ignored the instinct. If she was going to die, she wanted to do it on her feet, facing her killer with whatever shred of dignity she had left.
She sucked in deep, uneven breaths, trying to ignore the snow and the ice and the cold. The creature lifted a tentacle, grinned at her.
Tess raised her arms to block the attack and tensed, but the blow never came. She waited a second, lowered her arms.
The creature stood perfectly still. It had lowered its tentacle and seemed to be looking at/listening to/sensing/whatever something other than her.
Tess turned to see if she could tell what had drawn the thing's attention. She saw nothing but white, heard nothing but the falling snow, the wind, and her own ragged breathing.
Except, no, there was something else. A distant buzz, like an insect.
The creature turned back to her, growled,
(oh how she hated that crunching-gravel, glass-in-a-blender sound)
and turned back toward the buzzing.
It raised one of its limbs again.
Okay, here it comes.
She fought the urge to close her eyes, worked up a mouthful of saliva and spat it at the creature.
"Fuck you."
The thing lowered its tentacle again, not because of what she'd said (of course not), but maybe because the buzzing was getting louder and it couldn't seem to ignore it.
What is that? A motor? Warren?
The monster turned to her one last time, then spun around and slithered away. Snow fell and seemed to close in around it, like a sheet. Then it was gone.
If it's Warren, you've got to warn him.
But how was she supposed to do that? She could barely move, couldn't scream over the storm, and had no kind of signal. All she could do now was get into the shed while she had the chance and try to warm up before she died.
She reached for the sled's rope but couldn't wrap her fingers around it. Her hand was a lifeless lump. Gusting wind blew sheet after sheet of snow into her, and she was sure she was going to black out again. When the wind let up for a moment and she was still standing, she used her teeth to pull the rope over her arm, clutched it with her armpit, and pulled Bub the last few yards to the shed.
Either Warren had left the door open or the wind had blown it open. She stared through the narrow gap and into the dark space beyond.
What if there are more of those things inside?
She doubted it. They couldn't have known she'd come out here, and they seemed much more at home in the blizzard. Still, these things were more alien than anything she could have imagined, and it didn't make sense to try to pretend she understood anything about them. She moved beside the doorway and reached over to shove it open, keeping her body protected from a direct attack if something did come bursting out.
The door swung in and banged against the wall.
Nothing came out.
She peeked around the corner and scanned the small space. As far as she could tell, there was nothing inside but a lot of wood and a few bits of old junk.
The buzzing sound in the distance got louder still, and although she still wasn't sure what might be making the sound, she was more and more convinced it was some kind of motor, smaller than a car's, something more like a motorcycle's.
Please be Warren. Maybe on some kind of snowmobile. Please be him and don't let those things get him.
She stepped into the shed, still holding the rope with her armpit, and pulled Bub inside with her.
The poor dog looked frozen, and she was sure when she reached down to touch him she'd find him finally dead. But when she brushed the snow off his body, his legs, and his snout, he moved. He breathed. He lived.
Snow and sleet angled in through the door, landing on the both of them. Tess moved to close the door and couldn't quite get it shut. The storm had blown a small drift through the open gap. She'd have to shovel it out of the way before she could close the door.
In the storm, something moved.
Warren?
No, it was another creature, this one even bigger than the monstrosity in the kitchen. It slid through the snow, coming right for her.
She forgot about the wedge of slush and tried slamming the door. It came within inches but was nowhere close to latching. She opened the door again and reached down to scoop up some of the snow, unable to grip the stuff with her half-frozen fingers but using her hands like spades. She threw handful after handful back out into the blizzard, sure it was useless, like trying to bail out a boat with a ladle.
The monster was getting closer. It rolled up a drift, down, up, down. Tess threw out another few handfuls of snow and tried closing the door again. It almost made it, almost latched. She pressed her shoulder against the door and shoved as hard as she could.
The latch clicked into place.
A second later (no, a microsecond, a nanosecond), the thing outside hit the shed with a thunderous BANG!
The door shook. The whole shed shook.
Tess shivered and backed away. She knelt beside Bub and listened to the creature slam its tentacles against the structure. The door was holding for now, but it wouldn't last forever.
Tess grabbed a tarp off the woodpile, curled up beside Bub, and pulled the plastic over the both of them. Like a blanket. A thin, cold barely-blanket.
She wished she had a lighter or a match, something to light a small fire. But she had nothing.
You did what you could. More than most people probably could have managed. If that is Warren out there, hope he finds you, and hope he brought some kind of help.
She wrapped her arms around their dog and did.
IT'S FUNNY WHAT you think about when you're snowmobiling through a blizzard with a broken arm, frozen blood (only some of it your own) on your clothes, and a pack of hellish ice creatures on your tail. As he drove up the long private road leading to their house, Warren remembered the first time he'd seen Tess, the summer dress that had clung to her in a way that seemed almost risqué at the time, the daisy pinned in her hair that might or might not have been real. Warren had never found out, had never asked. In his mind, it had been real; she'd picked it that morning while walking along the riverbank.
He'd always liked that image, real or not, and held on to it now as he approached the house.
He thought he'd found their driveway twice before he actually did. The first time, he'd turned the snowmobile into a clearing in the woods and then turned right back around. No harm, no foul. But the second time he'd almost driven down a steep embankment and narrowly avoided a crash that almost certainly would have killed him.
After that, he'd been doubly careful. When he thought he'd found the driveway for real, he eased onto it a few feet at a time, giving the snowmobile short bursts of gas, waiting until he saw bits of their fence poking up through the snow before accepting that he'd made the right turn.
The trip back up the mountain hadn't taken as long as the trip down, of course, but the wind and ice blowing against his face made it seem much more tortuous. The snowmobile had a short windshield, and Warren tried to drive with most of his head hidden behind it, but the thing was covered in ice, opaque, and he ended up having to keep most of his face above it in order to see where he was going. In the places where he could still feel it, his face stung and throbbed. Plus, steering one handed had left the muscles and joints in his good arm aching, burning.
When he saw the GMC buried in the snow ahead, he barely believed it. He hadn't thought he would make it back.
He drove toward the front door, watching for more monsters. When he got close enough, he let go of the throttle and let the snowmobile coast to a stop. Except it wasn't exactly a coast. The front of the machine hit a drift near the front door and came to a sudden halt, throwing Warren into the handle bars and the small windshield. He hit the safety glass with the top of his head and sat there for a long time, dazed.
Shake it off. Unless you're dead, you need to keep moving and find Tess.
He pulled the key out of the ignition, transferred the torch and the sloshing bottles from the box on the back of the snowmobile to his pockets, pausing once when his vision blurred and a bout of dizziness almost overtook him, and then shuffled to the front door. When he opened it, snow cascaded through the threshold and he went in after.
"Tess!"
It was dark inside, and cold. The fire had gone out, and, of course, there was still no power. There was also no answer from his wife.
"TESS! BUB!"
Nothing.
His throat closed and his stomach churned. He tried to breathe and couldn't.
You're too late.
No. It couldn't be. They were in the kitchen getting something to eat, or moving firewood from the back hall to the living room, or maybe in the bathroom. They couldn't hear him, that was all.
You know that's not true. Tess wouldn't let the fire go out.
He massaged his throat until he worked out the lump and screamed for Tess again.
Still nothing.
He stepped farther into the room, tracking snow, not caring.
Something crashed at the bedroom-end of the house.
"Tess?"
He moved through the living room and into the dark hallway. There was some ambient light in the house, but he could still barely see where he was going. Of course, he'd just spent who knew how long driving face first into a blizzard. He'd be surprised if he was ever able to see properly again.
He took off his glove, pulled the torch out of his pocket, and wrapped his finger around the trigger. Just in case.
In the hallway, despite the gloom, it was easy enough to see the shredded remains of the bedroom door. He stepped over and around the mess and walked through the bedroom doorway with the torch held out in front of himself.
The bedroom was empty, but something had demolished the window. The ragged hole in the wall where it had been let in billowing snow and gusts of cold air. A slick of ice covered the floor from the hole to the bed. The fireplace poker lay on the floor closer to Warren.
What happened?
As he turned out of the bedroom, something else crashed. Not in the house this time. Outside.
The snowmobile.
He ran through the house, back to the front door. He hadn't closed it, probably couldn't have even if he'd remembered to. Beyond the doorway, two of the monsters circled the vehicle's ruined remains. One of them held the handlebars in its tentacles. The other was busy ripping apart the treads.
Shit. There goes your escape plan.
Warren backed away from the door as quietly as possible. The creatures either hadn't sensed him there or were too busy destroying the snowmobile to care. Either way, he wasn't going to stay and see how long the destruction kept them occupied.
Something moved in the kitchen. A rasping, slithering sound. He turned away from the front door, tightened his grip on the torch, and moved across the living room.
He approached the kitchen and saw a square of icy cardboard on the floor. He supposed it was the same piece he'd taped to the broken window earlier. He heard the wind and snow blowing into the kitchen. The same sound he'd heard in the bedroom, the same sound he'd been hearing for days now in some form or another.
He considered throwing a flaming bottle into the room, a sort of preemptive strike, but what if the sound hadn't come from a creature? What if it had been Tess or Bub making the noise? Or what if it had been a creature, but Tess and Bub where in there with it?
Too risky. He'd have to go in first, or at least poke his head around the corner, see what he could see.
But before he could, an icy tentacle popped through the doorway and curled around the frame. Warren didn't hesitate to trigger the torch and attack. The fine blue flame etched a line in the limb, and the creature in the kitchen withdrew it.
Score one for you.
He screamed his best war cry and rushed in with his finger still squeezing the torch's trigger.
He didn't see the next tentacle until it was too late. It hit the torch and knocked it out of his hand. The blue cylinder flipped up into the air and landed on the floor by the stove. The creature wrapped its tentacle around Warren's arm, dragged him the rest of the way into the kitchen.
The monster was huge. Bigger than any of the others he'd seen. Its head brushed the ceiling. If it had slid forward, it would have destroyed the room's only light fixture (not that that would have made any kind of difference right then).
Warren tried to pull his arm out of the thing's grasp, but it held on tight. He'd managed to stay on his feet, but the floor was iced over and he couldn't get any traction; the creature pulled him easily along.
As he moved, he couldn't stop thinking about Jan Young coming apart at the joints, about her blood---and her husband's---about the body parts littering the snow. Here, now, the creature opened its mouth and ran its bluish tongue across its rows of teeth. It slid him in an arc across the floor, toward itself but also toward the stove and the torch, either not realizing it was moving him within reach of his only weapon or not caring.
It wasn't much of a chance, but Warren took it: he kicked back, let his feet slide out from under him, and landed on his broken arm. The fresh burst of white-hot pain was almost unbearable. He screamed and started to flip onto his back.
But he couldn't do that; he had to deal with the pain or he'd miss his only opportunity. He forced himself back onto his belly, onto his broken arm, and reached out for the torch, not able to move his good arm much because of the ice wrapped around it but still able to wiggle his fingers and bend his hand at the wrist. The monster didn't sense what he was trying to do, or didn't think the torch was much of a threat; it swung him right to it.
Maybe it wants you to get it, wants you to put up a fight. Maybe it likes to earn its kills.
Warren's fingers brushed against the canister. For a second, he thought he'd missed it, but then his pinky caught the trigger and pulled the torch forward. He got hold of it, spun it around so the nozzle was pointed at the coiled tentacle, and pulled the trigger.
The creature screeched and let him go.
Ignoring the waves of pain pulsing through most of his body, he pushed himself back to his feet. He slid on the ice and came close to falling back to the floor, but he caught himself on the oven instead.
He looked down at the appliance and had an idea.
Before the creature could grab him again, he put the torch down on the stovetop and turned on all the burners. They didn't light---the starters were electric---but that didn't keep the gas from hissing out. He triggered the torch and waved it across the stove. The burners ignited with soft whumps.
The creature squealed and wrapped its tentacles around itself. Warren dropped the torch, and pulled one of the Molotov cocktails out of his pocket.
He guessed it would have been a perfect time for some kind of action-movie line, but he couldn't think of one, and so he said nothing as he touched the bottle's wick to one of the rings of fire and flung the bottle at the creature.
The flaming bottle hit the thing right beneath its head, burst, and engulfed the creature in a fireball that blackened the ceiling and the surrounding cabinets. The monster flapped its limbs. The fingers at the ends clacked together and scraped the floor. The creature's torso melted, thinned, and finally disappeared altogether, leaving only the mess of legs.
Warren lit a second bottle and tossed it into what was left of the thing. He worried the erupting fireball might burn down the house, but everything flammable seemed to be covered in enough ice and water to keep it from catching fire. Most of the rest of the creature melted away, and the flames died down again, and that was that.
Warren took a long breath, backed toward the doorway leading into the back hall, and leaned against the jamb.
He stayed there for a long time with his eyes closed, catching his breath, trying to ignore the pain in his arm, and listening for more of the creatures. When he opened his eyes, he looked down the hall instead of into the kitchen and saw a mess of ice and something dark that might have been blood on the floor beside the pile of wood he had brought in a million years ago.
There was almost no light in the hallway. He remembered the flashlight and searched his pockets for it. He found it nestled next to another of the Molotov cocktails, pulled it out, and used his mouth to twist the end and turn it on. It still worked.
He pointed the flashlight at the mess down the hall. The thin beam of light turned the dark patch red. Definitely blood.
Tess. Bub.
He went into the kitchen, turned off the stove, put the torch back in his pocket, and returned to the hall.
It seemed like a lot of blood, but it was more of a layer than a pool. It didn't necessarily mean anyone had...
He shook his head. He didn't want to finish that thought.
If Tess or Bub had gotten into trouble back here, maybe they'd gone out the back door. Maybe they were still okay.
If they went outside, they're almost certainly not okay.
He went to the door and pulled it open. Wind and snow blew into his face, and he gasped. He'd have thought he'd be used to the cold by now, but maybe it was something you never got used to. Maybe if you got used to it, you were dead.
He found more blood in the snow just outside the door. It seemed less serious than the smear in the hall, but he supposed the snow had probably covered a lot of it up. And blood loss was still blood loss and never a good thing.
A ragged furrow led away from the blood. Tracks. As deep as the snow was, and as quickly as the blizzard was covering over the tracks, it was impossible to tell if they were Tess's or belonged to one of the things, but they looked like they headed toward the shed (not that Warren could see the structure in all the falling snow), and he decided to follow them.
He exchanged the flashlight for the torch and shuffled off the porch and into the back yard.
He expected one of the creatures---or maybe a whole group of them---to attack him at any second, but nothing came. Maybe they were still busy tearing apart the snowmobile, or maybe they'd heard the screeches from the kitchen and run away scared.
You wish.
Didn't matter. They weren't here. Not yet anyway.
He trudged across the yard, his breath pluming out in front of him, what seemed like a solid sheet of snow falling and falling and falling ahead.
The tracks did lead to the shed. Right up to the door, as a matter of fact. He turned the knob, let himself in, and stepped on the crinkled corner of a tarp.
Something beneath the tarp moaned, and Warren lifted the plastic to see what lay beneath: Tess and Bub, both of them looking about as close to death as you could get. She was wearing only her pajamas, and the skin on her feet, arms, and face looked blotchy, frostbitten.
Tess looked up at him, said, "You." Her teeth chattered.
"It's me." He dropped to the ground beside her and hugged her as well as he could with his good arm. Her skin was ice cold.
"Jesus," he said. "We've got to warm you up."
She smiled, as if she had some funny response to that, but then mumbled a nonsensical affirmative.
Warren closed the door
(should have done that first thing, idiot)
and went to the woodpile. He picked up a few of the logs and shoved them into the old wood stove in the corner. He stripped the bark off a couple of other logs and tucked that into the center of the pile for kindling.
Unless you want to kill yourself and Tess and Bub, too, you better vent that thing.
The stove's pipe jutted up and angled into the room. He found a pair of hedge trimmers in a bucket of old, rusty tools and used them to cut a jagged hole in the wall. He turned the stovepipe toward the wall and pushed it through the hole. It wasn't perfect, but it would do.
He started the fire with the butane torch, waited for it to catch, and then lay down on the floor beside Tess and Bub. The dog hadn't moved since Warren came in, but he was breathing. His side rose and fell. Rose...and fell.
The shed warmed up, and although some smoke lingered and swirled around them, most of it seemed to find its way through the stovepipe and out of the shed.
"You're alive," Tess mumbled after awhile.
"Barely."
"You lit a fire."
He agreed.
"Aren't we leaving? Getting away?"
"We can't," he said. "Not yet. We're going to have to wait out the blizzard."
"Can we do tha---" She coughed and spat something on the floor. When Warren looked, he saw a slick of dark blood. She tried again: "Can we do that?"
He reached over, wiped up the blood, and rubbed it on his pants, out of sight. Then he looked at the massive pile of firewood, although he knew that wasn't what she meant. "I don't know." It was the only honest answer he could think of.
"Okay."
He kissed her on the cheek and said, "It can't snow forever."
He snuggled closer to her, ran his hand down Bub's side, trying to give the two of them any warmth he had left, and hoped that was true.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
THANK YOU FOR reading Mountain Madness. I hope you enjoyed it.
In this new era of digital book buying, word of mouth and online reviews are becoming an increasingly important way for writers to find new readers (and vice versa). So if you have a few minutes to write a quick review, I'd love to hear what you thought.
Of course, if you're not the review-leaving type, I'd still like to hear from you. You can always drop me a line at daniel\_pyle@mac.com.
Until next time, take care. And happy reading!
DP
ALSO BY DANIEL PYLE
Daniel Pyle is the author of Dismember, Down the Drain, Freeze, the upcoming Man vs. Himself, and many short stories. He is also the editor of Unnatural Disasters and an Active member of the Horror Writers Association. After studying creative writing at Amherst College, he moved back to his hometown of Springfield, Missouri, where he now lives with his wife and two daughters. You can visit him online at www.danielpyle.com.
PRAISE FOR DANIEL PYLE
DISMEMBER
Dismember's a fast-paced grindhouse-movie of a book with plenty of unexpected twists and turns and a fresh new crazy for a villain. The late Richard Laymon would have been grinning ear to ear.
---Jack Ketchum
With Dismember, Daniel Pyle joins the select group of authors who can provide real chills and genuine surprises. Taut, weird, and intriguing.
---Jonathan Maberry, multiple Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Dragon Factory and The Wolfman
The tourniquet-tight plot and constant suspense keeps the pages flying. A solid, suspenseful thriller that enables readers to envision the movie it could become.
---Publishers Weekly
DOWN THE DRAIN
Pyle's tight little monster tale packs a nasty wallop.
---Michael Louis Calvillo, author of I Will Rise and As Fate Would Have It
Horror should be fun. Scary, of course...but above all, it should be fun. Too many people seem to have forgotten that. Well, Daniel Pyle has not forgotten. With his novella, Down the Drain, Pyle has crafted a tale that evokes all the eye-popping strangeness and excitement that got me into horror in the first place. I loved it, and I can guarantee you'll never look at your bathtub the same again.
---Joe McKinney, author of Dead City and Apocalypse of the Dead
Mountain Madness is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons---living or dead---events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Volume Copyright © 2011 by Daniel Pyle
Dismember Copyright © 2009 by Daniel Pyle
Freeze Copyright © 2011 by Daniel Pyle
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechinical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
Blood Brothers Publishing
www.bloodbrotherspublishing.com
Printed in the United States of America
Cover Artwork Copyright © 2011 by Enoch Pyle
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First Edition
Table of Contents
Part I: Twenty-three Years Later

