Chill Waters (30 page)

“Look, maybe you feel I haven’t paid you enough for your work. And you’re probably right. Whatever you think I owe you, I’d be glad to…” She stopped abruptly, not quite believing the drivel that insisted on coming out of her mouth. Fear must be scrambling her brain cells. He cocked his head like a dog tuned to a sound only it can hear. “Owe me?” he repeated, incredulously. “Owe me? How much do you think fifteen years living in a cage might be worth, Marie?”

“I am not your sister returned from the grave, dammit,” she cried. Rage flashed in his eyes. Oh, God. She couldn’t have said that. The cabin was growing smaller, the walls closing in on her. Her own primal senses seemed to heighten her terror. She could detect the smell of blood. The dark energy that lingered in the room. She thought of the seagull. What manner of violence had occurred here? She remembered the boot in the closet. Willed herself to breathe normally. “I’m sorry that bad things have happened in your life, but it has nothing to do with me. My name is Rachael Warren. I don’t even know anyone named Marie.” Like I didn’t know anyone named Charlie, except for the mailman back in Deering.

For a moment, she saw confusion in his eyes, uncertainty, and dared to hope. Had she pushed a button of sanity in some corner of his mind? However tenuous her advantage might be, she snatched at it. Willing firm resolve into her next words, she said, “I have to go now, Charlie.” She dared a step toward him, was surprised when he moved aside to let her pass. But when she tried the door, it wouldn’t give. It was locked. Of course. What a fool she was to think she would get away so easily. Once more she turned to face him, her mind working feverishly for a way out of his nightmare. “I’m not your sister,” she repeated emphatically. “I may bear some resemblance to her when I was her age, people often do resemble one another. It’s not that uncommon. But I am not her.”

He was watching her the way a callous hunter might watch a rabbit in a trap struggling to free itself. Which was exactly what she felt like. She steeled herself for the aftermath of what she was about to say, knowing that she was facing a massive pit bull on a very short chain. It wouldn’t take much for the beast to snap it. Yet he was also a man in control of that leash, at least for the moment.

“Your sister is dead, Charlie. She’s been dead for seventeen years. I read the newspaper clippings. You remember, don’t you? It was the night of her prom. You waited for her to come home. You were very angry with her…”

“Shut up!” he bellowed, freezing her to silence. A dark flush had risen in his face. “You think I’m some damn pervert to have sex with my own sister. I was adopted. We were not blood-related.”

My God! He’s more concerned with people thinking him guilty of incest than he is about being a murderer. He spoke in the past tense. He knows you are not Marie.

“But you know that,” he said, chuckling as though she had tried to play a joke on him. One that almost worked. “Yes, you do. You’re lying. Sheyou were the one who told me, Marie. I remember your words exactly. “I hate you, Charlie,” you said, he mimicked his sister, but in a child’s voice this time. The sound was chilling. “Mommy and Daddy hate you, too. I heard them talking, Charlie, and they said the only reason they ‘dopted you was because they thought they couldn’t have their own little baby.”

“I’m sorry,” she breathed, remembering having read the mother’s cruel words in the article, knowing what he said was true.

“Oh, you were mad at me when you told me, you even tried to take it back. And I admit it knocked the ground from under me at first. But then it all began to make sense. I understood everything then. You told me the truth, Marie. Maybe that’s part of why I have always loved you.”

He smiled tenderly and touched a hand to her face. She recoiled instinctively and he withdrew his hand, hurt coming into his eyes. He searched her face. “You really are not her, are you?”

“Oh, please. “No, I’ve been trying to tell you. I’m Rachael. I…”

“You’re lying,” he cut in calmly, extinguishing any hope that this might be over. In some compartment of his mind he knows I am not Marie. Yet he needs me to be her so that he can play out this dark obsession in his mind, bring it to its final conclusion.

She didn’t have to think too hard to know what that final conclusion would be. Fear clamped a vice-grip around her heart and lungs. She fought back the panic. There had to be some way out of this.

The back door. Unwittingly, she darted a look behind her to gauge the distance, foolishly tipping her hand even with cards not all that promising to begin with.

Charlie grinned. “You might make it. You’re a pretty good runner.” But she knew she wouldn’t. No matter how fast she was, he would be on her in an instant.

He had madness on his side.

Thirty-Seven

He was watching her, alert to any sudden movement she might make. Rachael knew that on one level, this was a game to him. A game of cat and mouse.

“I wasn’t going to run,” she said reasonably. “I thought I heard something outside.”

“Not even a good try. You disappoint me.”

She forced herself to meet those chilling eyes squarely. “What happenedafter she told you you were adopted?”

The flicker of uncertainty again. “Why?”

“I just wondered…”

“You’re all the same,” he said, his voice much softer now, far more terrifying to her than his blatant anger. “You tease, you run away. You’re all whoresflirting, smiling, promising. Well, there are some who aren’t smiling anymore. And soon, neither will you be.”

He moved so fast there was no time to react other than to cry out as his hand gripped a handful of her hair, twisting it until she was sure it would rip from her scalp. He slammed her down into a chair so hard it nearly toppled with her in it. She shot back up, tried to run but he caught her in his powerful arms. She struggled to free herself, but she might have been a child trying to fight him.

Suddenly, Rachael sensed something change within the struggle, a shift of focus. He was breathing hard and pressed her against him, his mouth open on hers, crushing. His thick tongue forced her lips apart, thrust into her mouth, triggering a gag reflex. She jerked her head to one side. “Don’t … please…”

“You want me. I know you want me.” His eyes were glazed with lust as his mouth tried to find hers again. His rough hand was moving under her sweatshirt, squeezing her breast. She cried out in pain.

Pulling one of her hands free, she raked his face with her nails. He let out a curse and slammed her back into the chair. She was still struggling to get away when suddenly the point of the blade was pressing against the soft flesh of her throat, its sharp, cold sting, paralyzing.

“Be still. Or I will make you still.”

Taking a roll of duct tape from his back pocket, he bound her wrists. He worked fast and sure, knotting, yanking, sometimes gentle when she whimpered, as if he had not really meant to hurt her. Merely an accident, unavoidable, his expression told her. And as he himself had said, her own doing.

Blood trickled from the deep scratches on his cheek, giving her a semblance of satisfaction. He wiped at the blood with the back of his hand, succeeding only in smearing it across his face. She would pay for doing that. As she would pay for every injustice he had suffered in his life, real or imagined.

He shoved a fist in her face, and she cowered in the chair, braced herself for the blow.

“Don’t be silly. I’m not going to hit you. I just want you to see what you made me do last night when you drove off with your new boyfriend.”

She’d seen that his knuckles were bloody, beginning to scab over. She hadn’t known what from.

“I punched a tree. Childish of me, wasn’t it? Though I don’t want to mislead you about the fate of the one who called himself your husband. A man can only stand so much, Marie. Let’s just say, I don’t think he’ll be bringing you any more flowers.

The rose petals in the snow. Oh, Greg.

Now that she was tied and bound, he knelt before her like an adoring suitor. With the back of his index finger he stroked the curve of her breast through her jacket and sweatshirt. The very pores of her skin closed in revulsion. His tenderness was almost harder to bear than his rage. She quivered in fear and revulsion as his fingers traced the line of her chin, like a blind man intent on memorizing every feature through touch. Tears streamed down her face. She could their heat on her skin.

He stopped, smiled. “Are you afraid of me?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Yes, I can see that you are. I really do love you, Marie. It could have been so wonderful.”

Charlie carried her, chair and all, to the broom-closet. Ignoring her muffled pleas, he closed the door, abandoning her to total darkness. He would have to wait until night to carry out his plan. But then he was well schooled in the art of patience.

Fishing his pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, he half-laid on the cot. It groaned under his weight. Stretching out his legs, he leaned his back against the rough wall, soundlessly tearing a spider web that spanned two studs. He lit a cigarette and sucked the smoke deep into his lungs. His mouth formed an ‘0’ and he blew a slow, perfect ring at the rafters, watched it floating there, expanding, dispersing into the shadows.

Each time Charlie brought the cigarette to his lips, smoke curling up past his slitted eyes, and the fanged, hooded cobra tattooed on his upper right arm bulged like a thing alive.

Charlie butted his cigarette into the overflowing sardine can, with its jagged lid pulled back. In the gathering darkness that entered the cabin, he was all but oblivious to the thumping noises inside the closet. He was instead imagining her facethose eyes looking at him as if he were something vile. Just as they always had.

No, not always, Charlie. Remember. Once she followed you around like a puppy, looking at you with adoring eyes whenever you came into a room where she was. No matter how much you ignored her.

She’d been running after him that day, calling his name, dark curls bouncing in a frenzied dance about her sweet face as she tried to catch up with him. “Wait for me, Chowie. Wait for me. Mawie come wiff you.”

He had yelled at her to go home, called her a nuisance, but she just kept coming. So he picked up a handful of rocks and whipped them at her. One struck her face. And his heart. He turned away. When he looked back, she was still standing there looking after him, crying. She looked so small and forlorn in that pink frilly dress (The kind Ruth always made her wear) that he’d wanted to wail in shame, to run to her and beg her forgiveness. But he did none of these things. And, as he stood there something that had been metamorphosing within him for a long time completed its process, all of an instant. Not that that was the moment when the beast gasped its first breath. But it was the moment when he began to give it its head.

“You’ve got to control that beast inside you, Charlie,” Doctor Whittaker had told him.

Last night, he’d stood at the edge of the woods watching them drive away, the nerve in his jaw twitching and jumping, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. His fury too great to contain, he’d let out a primal wail that ripped the dusky silence and sent a rabbit scurrying into the underbrush, and slammed his fist into the tree. Lightning fire had flashed the length of his arm into his shoulder.

He’d sucked at his torn, bloodied knuckles, almost welcoming the distraction of physical pain. Why was she doing this to him?

Just like before. Stomping on his love. Painted up like a whorefor someone else. Always for someone else. Hadn’t he been patient? Hadn’t he waited for her?

Outside the cabin window, the light of day was fast fading.

Sitting in the palpable darkness, bound and gagged, her tongue probed the raw place inside her mouth where he’d gripped her jaw, squeezing until her teeth cut into the soft tissue. Her head hurt where he had grabbed her hair. Her backed ached and her legs were prickly from lack of circulation. To add to that, she had to pee. Badly. Hitching the chair toward the door, she bumped it with her shoulder. And again. Oh, God, someone help me. He’s crazy.

…
thump…thump…

She wanted out. Yes, he thought. It was time. Getting up off the cot, he pulled the cardboard box from beneath it and took out the blanket. He thought about how he’d damned near frozen to death his first night in this cabin. He’d considered lighting a fire in the stove, but decided it was too risky. Someone might have seen the smoke. Instead, he had settled for this blanket. Threadbare and stinking as it was, it had been warm enough to let him sleep.

They’d come across from Harding in a rowboat Jimmy Ray had stolen from some old fisherman he knew.

“
You’re sure that’s the house?” Charlie asked as they drew nearer the beach.

“
Sure I’m sure. Jeez, man I used to live there, didn’t I? I oughta know, huh?” Jimmy had shivered in the faded denim jacket, hugging it to his bony frame.

“
You won’t be sorry, Charlie. Didn’t I say I’d make it worth your while? I wouldn’t screw you around, man.”

“
I surely hope not, Jimmy boy. I surely do.”

Jimmy had tried to smile. “Hey, I told you that old bastard kept money in the house, and a helluva lot of it too. I just couldn’t ever find the real motherlode, that’s all.”