Hush (36 page)

reads the clouds for the disposition of the sky. All of this came into focus as

she stood bent and bleeding on the long dirt driveway, for she wondered if the

battering she'd suffered as a child had made tonight inevitable, had hung an

invisible sign on her back that said, "Go ahead, hit me, beat me, fuck me, kill

me."
Maybe it had been so from the start. Maybe her father had indeed raped her

mother and left that pathetic woman stewing in his sweat and semen. Conceived in

violence, destined for murder. Celia saw the abysmal symmetry and shuddered

because it suddenly made perfect, perverse sense. If there was such a thing as

fate, then she would die tonight. Raped, beaten, murdered. She understood the

truth of this even as the air cooled her skin, the blood clotted her wounds,

even as that flashlight carved up the darkness. But she also knew that more than

anything she wanted to live, and that she had to think clearly.
She figured that from where he stood Boyce could see the two obvious directions

in which she could have fled: down the driveway— the path she had chosen— or

toward the woodshed to the right of the house. That's where she and Jack had

stacked the red fir, and where, she remembered, the small ax for kindling lay

buried in a log. For several seconds she wished she'd run to the weapon. She

even imagined using it on him, but she knew better than to believe in her

revenge. The ax would never have yielded to her anger, for that would have meant

closing in on him, gripping the handle tightly, and driving the sharp edge into

his skull; and she knew she couldn't do that. All she wanted was to get away

from him. She was so thankful that she'd retreated from the house that she

performed a ritual she hadn't thought about in twenty years: she blessed herself

with the sign of the cross. Her gesture was so reflexive that she didn't realize

what she was doing until she had done it. All those Saturdays in the

confessional—Bless me, Father, for I have sinned— and all those Sundays at

communion—In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost— had made their

presence known.
Through the thick tangle of trees she saw the beam moving, scanning, and knew

without question that it was better to flee than to fight.
She decided that if he did walk toward the woodshed, she would start hiking to

town on an old logging road about a quarter of a mile away, the first of many

dirt roads back in the hills and forests to the north of their house. It was

terribly overgrown, crowded along both sides by dense vegetation, and the

drought had parched much of it, but if she remembered correctly the trees and

bushes would be thick enough to hide her. A huge pine marked the point where she

could find her way onto the road. She doubted it had been driven in years, and

wasn't entirely sure she could find her way to town once she entered its

labyrinth. But that should be easy, she told herself. Just keep going downhill.

Everything flows to town— the rivers, streams, even the roads. They must. Right?
But what if he comes this way? She posed this question as she eyed the distant

flashlight. Then what? She didn't have a ready answer. The very thought of him

walking toward her almost froze her with fear. Maybe the logging road anyway. If

I can disappear onto it before he gets to me. But she had serious doubts: her

feet had been shredded by the broken mirror, and her knee throbbed. She touched

the deep gashes and realized they'd always be there, hard ridges of scar tissue

in the shape of a cross. You should be so lucky, she said to herself. And she

knew this was true: the cuts on her knee would mean little if she could survive,

nothing more than small scars in a life that now knew much bigger ones.
She tried flexing her leg but shooting pains made her stop almost immediately.

She kept it straight and tried weighting it. There, that's better. At least I

can move. But can you run? She considered this question for no more than an

instant before knowing that she could not.
Yet she remembered running from the house, and realized that only the anesthesia

of fear had made this possible. Better to drag her leg into darkness than ever

to know that kind of terror again.
But you're getting ahead of yourself, she thought. Let's see what happens. Just

wait and see.
She didn't have to wait long.
The flashlight bobbed as he stepped off the deck. She heard a loud hissing

sound, almost a whistle. Then another, and another. Finally a fourth before she

understood that he'd slashed the tires on her car.
He took a few steps and stopped. She held her breath. "The woodshed," she

whispered to herself, "go to the woodshed." The flashlight moved back and forth

as if he couldn't decide, and then he started down the driveway. Oh Jesus. She

took three limping steps and knew she'd never make it to the logging road. Now

that he was walking toward her, it seemed miles away. And he'll hear me. She saw

how her bum leg would drag on the gravel as it had here in the brush.
She looked around, painfully aware of the spot of light growing larger and

larger, shifting from side to side as he searched, and searched, and searched.

For her. She could almost hear his footsteps. She didn't know what to do. Her

head twisted everywhere at once, and that's when she spotted it no more than

fifteen feet away. It sat in the moonlight like a dark lesion in the earth.
No, she shook her head. No way. I can't.
But the flashlight now threw a bright beam. She saw it penetrating the night,

peering here and peering there, pausing as he stared at a branch or behind a

tree, and continuing on. She imagined the light shining on herself in another

minute or two. His footsteps became clearer. He was closing in. When she could

delay no more— when it might have been too late already— she limped through the

moon shadows, lifted the heavy wooden cover, and slipped quietly into the tank.
53
When Celia closed the cover, a thin slice of moonlight penetrated the tank just

enough to let her see the dark surface of the water, which appeared flat,

unruffled by the lumpy dead rats they'd discovered two weeks ago. She found the

water surprisingly cold considering how warm the days had been, and she shivered

as she pumped her arms and legs to stay afloat. She also felt uneasy and exposed

when her gown drifted up around her bottom.
She listened constantly for him, but mostly she was so relieved to have found a

hiding place that it was only after she'd been in the tank a minute or two that

she wondered how she'd get out. She'd had to let go of the housing to slide in,

and now she wished they'd been patient enough to fill the tank all the way up.
She was thinking about this when a claw brushed her ankle. She jerked her foot

away so fast that a piercing pain shot through her knee. Then a tail slithered

like an eel across her instep, and she took a sharp breath— the rats! Oh Jesus,

they're here, the rats!
She was afraid to move, but had to tread water. And her knee hurt. God, did it

hurt. Seconds later her big toe struck a bloated body. The fur gave under the

impact, and she touched bone, the hard parts that had not rotted. She moaned—

she could not help herself. Another rat slid across her bottom like a snake and

settled against the crack of her behind. She squeezed her buttocks together and

turned in the water. She felt its snout bump against her hip. As she pushed it

away, its hard little head struck her elbow and she shuddered. They're attacking

me. They're attacking me! She remembered how horrible those creatures looked

floating in the water, their bloated bodies, tiny teeth, and long naked tails,

hairless stringy things that trailed through all the dark dirty places where

they lived and ate and dribbled their waste in sour little bundles.
No, they're not attacking you. They're not. They're dead. She ordered herself to

breathe. Breathe. She used the same techniques she'd taught the children at the

Center: I am breathing in. I am breathing out. Breathing in. Breathing out. In.

Out. But she couldn't stop thinking of the rats. They were down there. All of

them. Somewhere. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Waiting for her.
And he was waiting too. Out there. She saw his face, the way he'd looked at her

through the hole in the door, how he reached for the razor she'd dropped and

twirled it around his fingertips, then held the blade straight up so she

couldn't help but see its sharp shiny edge: the cruel manner of a man who knows

how to play with panic.
She heard his footsteps and listened intently as they grew louder, though they

weren't very loud at all, a crunch-crunch-crunch that told her he was still

walking down the driveway. She caught a blink of the flashlight beam in the

corner of the tank, but it disappeared and the moon's milky rays returned.
Celia heard his footsteps grow softer, and she breathed more easily. Her chest

had been as tight as baling wire. She had just begun to worry about the rats

again when he called out her name:
"Mrs. Griswoooold."
He sounded as if he was really enjoying himself. She guessed he was at least

forty or fifty feet away, somewhere down near the entrance to their property.

His voice turned even more playful now:
"Come out, come out, wherever you are."
Celia shook her head and continued to tread water, but her legs slowed from the

effort. They felt weighted, and her knee still ached as if it were filled with

venom. The real possibility of drowning stabbed at her through all this darkness

and all this fear.
But she wouldn't let him do that to her. Fuck him. Fuck him!
It was bad enough that he'd forced her into this filth but she'd be damned if

she'd let him kill her. There had to be a way out of here. She pictured the tank

in daylight. The last time she'd been out here was that Sunday two weeks ago

when she'd tried to seduce Jack. She remembered how he'd rebuffed her when she

peeled down her shorts to show him her sexy new panties. She'd been so ready,

ovulating— she'd taken her temperature for months, seen it dip and seen it rise

and kept the charts just as she was supposed to— and he'd been no more

interested in her than the beautiful young men of the Portland Gay Men's Chorus.

Last weekend she practically had to drag him into bed, and for what? One of the

clumsiest sessions they'd ever had. His half-baked hard-on flopped out of her

twice before he finally managed to come. What an ordeal. He'd worked so hard and

for so long that she'd honestly feared he'd have a heart attack. He'd been in

what she privately dubbed his "major concentration mode," no longer kissing and

caressing her but gripping her buttocks like life preservers and straining like

a man more apt to give birth himself than to deliver a spoonful of semen. She

wondered what went through his head at times like that. Did he even think about

her, or was it a kind of masturbation, with her body providing little more than

the lubricant (and scant amounts of that by the time he was through)?
And then, as she treaded that dark dirty water, a staggering possibility struck

her: she might be pregnant. Jack had, after all, climaxed; and she'd been

careful to lie on her back for a full hour, determined to soak up every bit of

that hard-earned seed. No period yet, either.
Pregnant? Jesus!
That possibility flooded her with renewed determination. At this time in her

life she wanted nothing more than to be a mom, and she could be well on her way;

but if that bastard out there got his hands on her she'd never even have the

chance to find out.
"No way, no way," she repeated breathlessly as she pumped her legs. She recalled

what Renata had said at the workshop on protecting yourself. She'd told them to

avoid retreating whenever possible, and then she'd wanted to know how many of

them skied. Most of them had raised their hands, including Celia. Renata had

said that dealing with angry clients was just like hitting the steeps: you had

to stay forward and attack the mountain. "You've got to take control." She'd

said that two or three times. Also, "Work with whatever you've got," and "Get in

their face."
Okay, okay, thought Celia, chilled and tired, but what do I have to work with in

here? And how the hell am I going to get in his face?
She shook in frustration, and listened as Boyce began to retrace his steps.

Again the crunch-crunch-crunch as he drew nearer. Again, her legs treaded water

that felt thicker and thicker. The rats had floated away, maybe from her

efforts, but she was growing colder and weaker by the moment. She recalled that

hypothermia made you stupid before it killed you— drained blood from your brain

just as fear did— and she worried that she would make some simple-minded mistake

that would reveal her hiding place.
Her hands searched the slick plastic wall for something to hold on to; her

leaden legs needed a rest. But she couldn't find purchase anywhere. She tried to

reach up to the housing, but it was at least a foot beyond her outstretched

hand, and as her arm came down she slipped under the water for the first time.

She had to fight back to the surface and found herself desperately short of

breath and gasping for air. Maybe that's why it took her a full second to feel

the dead weight of the filthy beast draped over her head, and the naked tail