Possession (21 page)

"I don't know why—" She stopped and tried to find words that fit together correctly. "When I was little ... you know, when I was a little girl, I always needed to know that. There were so many tall people, but that's only because I was so small, and they talked to me as if they knew who I was—probably because of Doss. But you don't know Doss, do you? Never mind about that. The thing is I had to know if they knew who I was because I was frightened. I'm very frightened now, you know, and you're very large and you don't know me and I'm afraid you are going to hurt me."

"No." He was talking to the child, very softly. "No, I wouldn't do that." 151

"Is Danny really—oh, I don't want to say it. Is he really?" "I'm sorry."

But he wasn't sorry; the edges in his voice told her that. He was glad.

"You killed him, didn't you?"

He walked back to her and knelt on the ground in front of her, taking her chin in one hand. "Of course not. But you can't understand now. You mustn't think about it. You're very tired now, and you're in shock and I need to take care of you."

The tree-green and the color of his eyes blended together and spun around like a kaleidoscope picking up black particles until there was only black on black on black. An instant before she fainted, a little door in her mind shut tight and locked the horror behind it because it could not be dealt with. She did not feel him as he picked her up in his arms and carried her farther into the woods. She breathed and her heart beat on, but her mind was hiding somewhere back in the black.

He looked down at the white face bouncing against his chest, at the delicate, veined eyelids, and the mouth with the vestige of vomit dried in the corners. He smiled tenderly. He had told her all that she would have to know.

Her husband was garbage now, and she belonged to him, and they were all alone in the woods. He couldn't have planned it better if he had set out to have it this way. He'd had to tie up some of the others and gag them and rough them up, and even when their bonds were loosened, they'd cried and fought him.

She wasn't fighting him now. Maybe she already knew who he was. Maybe she only realized that she had no way out without him. It didn't really matter because he would have her with him when it was dark, and she would do anything he wanted. This time, she wasn't going to go away and leave him.

He smiled down at her. This part, the first part, was almost his favorite part of the game.

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Joanne had lost all measure of time and place; she was only vaguely aware of being carried. She could feel her arms around a strong neck, and feel the slight shock as step, step, step hit the earth. For the briefest moment she thought she was a little girl again, back in Doss's arms being carried from the old '47 Studebaker to her warm little bed. Then the picture disappeared. That was wrong. She was someplace else, moving through the fading light of another day. Was it still Sunday, still the endless day she clung to the tree? Or was it a long time after?

She seemed to remember following the big man through the forest for a long time, and then waking from a drowsy shock-sleep from time to time after that to find that he was carrying her, not through the trees but along a lake shore edged with thin ice. It was dusk now, but which dusk? And which meadow was this?

She caught a whiff of a metallic smell, and saw his shirt against her cheek, its hardened, crackling surface stiffened by something dark red. She moved in his arms and looked up into his shadowed face. She closed her eyes and opened them quickly so she could see clearly. He looked exhausted. She thought it was good of him to carry her because she must have been injured by something she couldn't recall. Danny should carry her for a while and let the other policeman rest. She remembered that Danny couldn't do that but the fuzziness in her head prevented her from understanding why. It was peculiar, this blankness where she lost whole segments of recent memory and yet still sensed something just beyond her thoughts, something better not pursued. She would think of it later.

"You can set me down. I can stand."

He lowered her carefully to her feet, but she couldn't stand; her knees buckled and she knelt in the long grass and alpine asters, surprised to find the ground still warm below

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the chilled air. He shrugged off the backpack he had carried for all her lost time. He kneaded his cramped shoulders and swung them in arcs to bring back circulation, grunting.

"Do your arms hurt?" she asked finally. "Did you carry me a long way?"

"Not that far. You're not that heavy anyway."

"Are we going back to the lodge?"

He shook his head.

"We must be. I think I remember this meadow. I think this is where we sat yesterday."

He stared over her head, sweeping the forest beyond them with his eyes.

"We can't go back to Stehekin. I couldn't risk it."

"No, you see . . ." It was so difficult to talk to him. She was so tired.

"No, it wasn't that steep; the trail was safe."

"I didn't mean the trail."

"Then, why?"

"She might still be waiting—the grizzly. Some of those animals are cunning. They set their own traps."

Her mind focused on the terrible knowledge. She moaned.

"Where's Danny?"

"You remember. We had to leave him."

"But I didn't want to."

"But we had to. You mustn't cry again. You cried for a long time this morning, and it made you sick."

"Did I talk to you after? I remember the tree and then the woods."

"We're safe here for a while. Tomorrow, we'll go up over Bowan Mountain and then down toward the Pacific Trail."

"Danny said that was what we were going to do; so that's good, isn't it? That's what he'd want me to do. He always knows what to do."

Her constant harping on the other man irritated him, and he had to remind himself that it had only been eight hours, that she would forget soon enough. He turned away from her to unroll the sleeping bags.

"What's your name?"

"Have you forgotten again? It's Duane. Duane Demich.'' 154

"Why did I think it was David?" "Beats me. They both start with D."

"So does—did—Danny. Which is it?" "That was his name." She hadn't moved from her kneeling position, and she swayed as if she had lost her center of balance.

"Why couldn't you have saved him? Did you really try to save him?" He moved to her and let her rest her head again on his shoulder, feeling her whole body vibrate with fatigue and shock. Then he held his right arm up for her to see the long deep scratches that ran from his wrist to his armpit.

"I almost had him free of her. She like to took my arm off and I had to back off. Somebody had to come back for you. You would have been all alone up here and you couldn't have survived. I had to make the choice between letting her kill both of us and your survival. He would have wanted me to take care of you." She nodded against him. "Can you eat?"

She gagged and turned away from him at the thought, and then slowly stood up. Her bladder was bursting, and she wondered how bodily functions could go on when nothing mattered any longer. What was she going to do? She was terrified of going into the dark trees alone, but she couldn't urinate with the stranger nearby. "I have to go to the bathroom," she said softly. "Do you want me to go with you?" "Oh no!"

"Then go on over there behind those larch trees. You'll have your privacy and you won't have to go far in."

She walked carefully away from him, aware that his eyes followed her, and she went deeper into the blind of trees than she wanted to to get away from his watching. It was so dark now, and she could make out only pillars of black as if the sun had never penetrated the spaces between them at all. She wondered how far he had carried her away from Danny. Maybe only a little way. There was still a chance she could get back to him, find him waiting for her to come and

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help him because it was not possible for him to be truly dead. Danny was too strong to die in a few minutes.

But there were no trails; if she tried to find the way back, she would be lost forever on the mountain and ferns would grow through her skull when spring came. She crouched and emptied herself. Something nearby scuttled through the dry leaves, but she couldn't tell if it was coming toward her or going away from her. She held her breath and listened for its breathing. The creature too had suspended breathing, waiting as she was.

She had hated the big man before—yesterday? Today? And she wished herself away from him forever. She wasn't strong enough. There was fear here and fear ahead of her and fear back with him, all around her, waiting for her in the darkness. He seemed the least of it.

He held the sleeping bag for her to crawl into it, and she was so cold, deep into the insides of her bones, dead cold where sleep might promise no awakening. She did sleep, almost immediately, tumbling into a pit of nothingness where even dreams had no substance and spun themselves out before she could catch them.

When she woke, her eyes snapped open and she felt her heart beating too fast. She had forgotten again where she was, but the image of death consumed her and she reached above her head to touch the cover of her casket to see if she had been buried alive. Her hands rose high, touching air, and she could see stars and an opaque slice of moon behind clouds. She heard a man breathing next to her. Thankful that the nightmare was over, she reached out to touch Danny.

Then her hand froze in mid-air as she remembered.

My husband is dead.

She accepted it with complete lucidity, with such a pang of hopeless loss that she felt her heart break.

The man—the stranger—David?—no, Duane—caught her hand and held it fast. She thought he had done it in his sleep, and she tried to pull free, but he would not let her go.

"What is it?"

He didn't answer.

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"Please let go."

She could not tell if he was awake or asleep still, but his breathing was different, faster. She tugged at her trapped hand, and his whole body rose up and he rolled on top of her. She tried to squirm out from under him, and he drove the lower half of himself against her and pinned her to the ground.

His eyes were wide open, light and luminous as a fox's. Crazy eyes.

"What?" she whispered. "What's wrong?" But she knew.

"No!"

"You belong to me now."

"Please—"

It was no good talking to him. She began to cry because she couldn't help it.

"Don't do that. You're going to enjoy this. You're going to like being fucked. Say it."

•What?"

"Say 'I want you to fuck me.'"

"No."

"I want you to say it."

"No—"

He hit her in the face so swiftly that her head twisted and smashed into the ground. She tasted blood in her mouth.

"Say it."

She spat at him and he smiled while her spittle ran down his cheek. Then he slapped her again, holding her chin with one hand so that she couldn't roll away from the force of the blow.

"Say it."

"I... want. . ."

"That's good. I knew you wanted it. Say it real nice for me."

"I want you ... to ... fuck . . . me."

"That's better. Now, I'm going to touch you all over, and I want you to keep telling me how much you like it. See, like this—" He rolled off her, lay beside her, and unzipped her

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sleeping bag. Freed to run, she scrambled away from him, but he caught her with one leg and held her in a scissors hold.

"Don't try to fight me. It only makes me angry. I don't want you to make me angry. If you do, we'll have to start all over again or something bad might happen to you. Can't you understand that?"

"I'm so cold. My teeth are chattering."

"I'll make you warm. See? Doesn't that feel good?"

His hand moved over her skull first, and she thought he could crush it if he chose to. Massaging fingers poked into her ears and around the edges, and then over her eyes, her nose, and into her mouth. He did not kiss her; his fingers touching her teeth, her tongue, were worse than his mouth somehow.

She stiffened as he trailed over her throat with his huge hand, encircling it and squeezing, testing to see how much pressure it took to make her cough.

"Your air even belongs to me. Say that. You can't breathe unless I say so."

"My air belongs to you."

"Let me see your breasts. I want you to show me."

"Oh . . . Please—"

He pressed her throat and took away her air. "Show them to me."

She could not feel her own fingers, but somehow she managed to unbutton her shirt, her eyes closed so she could not see his own glitter above her.

The hand on her throat moved down and yanked at her brassiere. She felt it rip and fall away, and then the hand circling and massaging her nipples, kneading, flattening, playing with her. He buried his face between her breasts and wallowed there, licking her with his tongue so that the air chilled his saliva. She shivered.

"You like that, don't you?"

She shook her head, but he wasn't paying attention; his control was sliding away, and he nibbled at her in a frenzy, hands and mouth moving over her breasts and down her

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belly. He crooned and growled and sighed. He was going to devour her.

"Do you feel me, Joanne?"

". . . yes."

"See how hard you make me? See what I've been saving for you? You must be so happy. Touch me." He released her to expose himself. She lay still, her hands across her breasts.

"Touch me."

She couldn't do that. She could not touch him.

"I said touch me. See how big I am. Put your hands on my dick." She rolled and managed to get on her hands and knees and crawl before he snaked out a hand and grabbed her ankle. He flipped her like a wrestler would and nailed her hands to the ground, his weight on her wrists so that she could no longer move at all. She thought he would kill her now, but he only smiled at her as if she had somehow pleased him. He seemed to enjoy playing with her, letting her crawl just far enough away so that she thought she might be able to run into the trees, and then drawing her back to him and laughing. There was no way to escape him.