Hush (41 page)

she held the cold metal tightly and watched his arms straighten under all that

pressure. The hand she'd bitten was the first to start to give.
"Die, fucker, die," was her only thought. "Die, fucker, die," an obscene mantra

that she chanted over and over. She wanted to force him down with the rats

forever.
She watched him slip from one set of knuckles to the next, and the next, until

he held on with only the tips of his fingers.
Die, fucker, die. Diefuckerdie. She longed to see his hands slip away

completely, and she concentrated on this to the exclusion of every other

possibility; and there were many of them, even now. Celia's focus was so narrow

that she saw very little: the part in his hair shifting spastically under the

pressure of the water, the coronas of spray lit up by the flashlight lying on

the ground, and those fingertips clinging with simian strength to their last bit

of life.
When he started to reach up, she scarcely believed he could do this. No, she

thought, you can't, you can't. "No!" she screamed, but still his hand rose

slowly, defying her words with yet another drumbeat of threat. It was the one

she'd bitten, and she saw the white spongy skin flapping from the force of all

that ricocheting water. He was reaching for her, and when she finally pulled

away from his grasping claw she stumbled and landed on her side. The stream bent

one of the fir trees along the driveway, and Celia felt the hose trying to rip

right out of her hands. She fumbled with it before hugging it tightly to her

chest. She looked back and saw that he was pulling himself out of the tank. He

had a knee up on the housing, and his head and chest were rising. A new wave of

horror threatened to overwhelm her.
She struggled to her knees. The still wildly pulsating hose throbbed in her

hand, as if it were about to rip free; and when she saw him starting to stand

she was tempted to drop it and try to flee. She had weakened, and it was all she

could do to hold the nozzle. She aimed again. The stream moved in an arc that

caught and stunned him. But the arc passed, and so did another precious second

before Celia could re-aim. He stumbled forward as she wrestled with the hose. He

had traveled about four feet when the flow found its target. It hit him in the

chest and lifted him right off the ground. He looked like a man taking a shotgun

blast: His arms were spread out in front of him, as though holding desperately

to an invisible rail; his trunk was bent inward from the force of the water; and

his legs were apart as he flipped backward into the tank.
Celia inched toward the wide dark hole. She saw him treading water as she had

been not so long ago. He was in the middle of the tank, several feet from the

intake line and close to Jack's body. She pointed the nozzle at Boyce's head and

forced him under. Every time he started to come back up, she drove him back down

again. For a minute or two his arms flailed as he fought his way to the surface,

but soon there was only his inky outline rising and falling to the rhythm of the

hose. The tank water boiled in the milky moonlight. It churned and seethed and

slapped the black walls, and then she saw the rats. The tank was thick with

them. They bubbled up around the two lifeless bodies. It was as though Celia had

whipped up all the dead that had ever died there. She tried to drive the rats

down too, but there were so many of them that as soon as she hit one, another

would rise to the surface.
She was still gripping the nozzle tightly when the gas ran out. The engine died

as it had come to life with a few putt-putts.
The last of the water dribbled out. She heard the plop-plop-plop of the final

drops, and the muffled noise when one of them fell onto matted fur, or hair. The

broad night fell quiet. She tried to get a good look at him but the moon had

moved above her and the nighttime shadows were shifting, chasing the darkness

they held so dear.
She walked around the tank and picked up the flashlight lying on the ground. It

was still on, though its beam had grown weak and yellowish, and its reach could

have been measured in inches.
A chill wind ruffled the pines, and the air felt icy against her wet skin. She

staggered as quickly as she could back to the house. He had left the door open,

and she never stopped to close it. She reached for the phone. Weeping with

relief, she dialed 911. Nothing, no ring, no busy signal, nothing.
The phone was dead.
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Celia gripped the edge of the kitchen sink and breathed rapidly. She tried to

calm herself. "He's dead," she kept repeating, he's dead. You killed him. But

nothing had ever been certain in her life, except that uncertainty would

prevail.
*
"How would you girls like to go to Disneyland?"
Her mother smiled broadly as she stood by the table in the small kitchen, and

her daughters looked up and yelped in anticipation. "Yes, Mommie, yes. Oh,

please."
Disneyland. Celia could hardly believe it. She'd seen the Magic Kingdom on TV

but it was like Never-Never Land, not a place that she could actually go to. To

think that she would! Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, Snow White and the Seven

Dwarfs, and all those fireworks and the parade down Main Street. And the Teacup

Ride, spinning around and around, getting dizzier and dizzier. She tingled with

anticipation.
"Well, so would I, but we're not." Her mother's smile vanished and her voice

grew loud. "You think I like working all the time? Don't you think I'd like a

vacation for once in my life? Don't you think I'd like to have some fun?"
She turned back to the sink, and her three girls sat in the horror-struck

silence. A moan soon rose from one of them. Celia wasn't sure which one, maybe

all three of them had moaned. Her mother whipped around with the wooden spoon.

"Who said that?" She hovered above the table, the foot-long spoon waving in the

air. "Who said that?" she demanded. "Tell me right now or all three of you will

get it."
And then the panicky finger-pointing began, along with Celia's sense that you

could count on no one, not your mom, your sisters, not even yourself; because

while Marion and Sharon had pointed at her, she had been pointing at them.
*
Celia grabbed a glass and turned on the faucet. She gulped the water and

exhaled. Jesus, I've got to get out of here. She slammed the glass down so hard

it shattered. She barely noticed.
The car, where are the keys? Then she remembered that he'd slashed the tires— on

both cars. Jack had told her never to drive on a flat tire.
So what? her inner voice raged, and she yanked her shoulder bag off the

breakfast bar. The keys jingled when she picked them up, and as she hurried to

the door she also heard the invasion of night noises: the rustle of the pines;

the distant clicking of the engine cooling; and the cicadas, their belly

membranes beating madly.
She climbed into her Honda and checked the locks and windows on all four doors.

The motor started with only a little reluctance, and she hit the high beam. The

transmission slipped smoothly into drive.
WUMP, WUMP, WUMP.
The flat tires flopped against the ground. She didn't care, she didn't care if

she drove on bare steel as long as she made it to Bentman alive.
WUMP, WUMP, WUMP.
She drove as fast as she dared, which wasn't very fast at all. With two good

legs she could have beaten the Honda in a race. It just plodded along.
WUMP, WUMP, WUMP.
But driving was a lot safer than trying to walk or run, and less painful too.

She was glad her car had an automatic transmission. When she had eased herself

into the front seat, her knee had ached severely. She couldn't imagine using a

clutch pedal.
She drove toward the county road with a gritty urgency, gripping the steering

wheel tightly as she passed the tank off to her left.
WUMP, WUMP, WUMP.
She watched the ruts in the road and listened to her small car strain. The soft

sounds of rubber turned sharper, and she guessed that one of the tires had just

slipped off the wheel. No matter, keep going. She felt protected in her car, and

wanted nothing of the world outside. The night was a pestilence that had crawled

out from under the sky.
In this wobbly manner she drove down the driveway to the entrance to their

property. That's where the Honda high-centered. The ruts were too deep for a car

without tires. She gunned the engine, but the wheels spun uselessly. Her neck

muscles tensed, and the pain slinked down her spine.
Shut off the lights.
She did this quickly. And then she turned off the engine too. She didn't want to

make any more noise than was necessary.
Don't just sit there.
But the idea of unlocking the door felt horrible. Go out there? For what? Her

car now blocked the driveway, and even if she did get out and walk back for

Jack's truck, she couldn't go anywhere. She shook her head. No way, I'm not

touching that lock. But she also knew it could be days before someone came up

here, and it could be him.
No, not him, she promised herself. It can't be him. He's dead.
But she saw him anyway, bashing her window, reaching in, dragging her out of the

car, beating her senseless. She saw all this in the theater of her fears, big

screens, one for every wall.
So with a swallow, a breath, and a stomach-clenching move, she opened the door.
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Celia tried hopping on her right leg, the good one, but after all she'd been

through she didn't have the strength to do this for more than a minute, so she

weighted her bad knee as little as possible and dragged her foot along the

gravel road. It worked, in a fashion. And it hurt, a lot.
In a couple of miles she'd be at the shepherd's campground. She'd have to sneak

by that creep. Jack had said something about a fight, so it would be best to

avoid him. Jack...she saw his body floating facedown in the tank and realized

that she'd just thought of him as a living, breathing man. But he's not, he's

not. She felt such a breathless absence of emotion that it shocked her; but

she'd had no time to grieve, and still had so far to go. She looked down the

darkened road and forced herself into the present. The shepherd, you were

thinking about him. He's up by the meadow, but once you get past him it's all

downhill to Bentman. She figured it might take all night to get to town but at

this point she didn't care, as long as she got there in one piece. And who

knows, come morning she might run into one of the loggers. They always seemed

friendly enough.
She took two more steps before she heard a rustle in the forest off to her left.

Faint, barely audible, but something— or someone— had definitely moved back in

there. She stiffened and thought of the twigs snapping at dusk by the meadow;

but this noise sounded different, more like the crackling of a fire as it starts

to build. It grew louder still, and Celia was seized with the certainty that it

was Boyce.
He's alive.
No, he's not, she reassured herself. He's with the rats. But reassurances

counted for little on a night like this. She tried to hurry and swore quietly at

her pain. Her movements were excruciating, and she felt herself slowing down

even as the thrashing forest sounds closed in. She knew she'd never outrun

whatever it was and decided her only hope was to hide. She looked ahead,

searching for the towering pine that marked the intersection with the overgrown

logging road. She'd use the plan she came up with just before she climbed into

the tank, when Boyce had begun walking down the driveway with the flashlight.

She could burrow into the brush and eventually take the logging road to town.
She limped and listened and looked everywhere for that tree. Maybe it's not

there, maybe they cut it down. She wasn't sure of anything anymore and stumbled

along for another eternal minute before she saw it rising above dozens of

others. It loomed up ahead on her left just as she had remembered.
The crackling in the forest drew closer and closer, like a fog that sweeps along

the currents of the land, and she heard a horrible snorting and knew it was him.

She choked down her fear and tried one more time to run but her sliced-up knee

made her want to scream, and that's when she realized it was her own hot breath

that stalked her so.
Before turning by the big tree she looked over her shoulder. She saw nothing but

moonlight on the county road. Maybe it's not him. But the comfort of this

thought did not stop her from rushing headlong into the branches and bramble.

She pushed them aside, plunged forward, and smashed her swollen knee into the

corner of an open tailgate.
She almost fainted. She tried to swallow her sobs and all but crumpled to the

ground. For at least ten seconds she could do nothing but absorb more pain than

she'd ever known. She hunched over and held her arms and face close to her

battered knee, as though embracing it gently might ease the agony. It didn't.

She wept silently.
When the pain lessened she hauled herself along the sides of the truck bed to

the door. It groaned loudly when she opened it, and the dome light turned the

cab into a beacon. The moment was also charged with a revelation: Davy was

rubbing his eyes and waking up. Seeing him confused Celia, but not enough to

slow her down. She was, in fact, a good deal more distracted by the dome light,