Shut The Fuck Up And Die! (10 page)

“
Let’s get ‘er done.” Earl
grumbled.

He opened the door and frigid air gusted into
the cab as if it had been pressed against the other side and
awaiting an opportunity to pounce. The sudden drop in temperature
tingled Daryl’s neck with a shiver as he clutched the flashlight to
the point that his gloved knuckles throbbed; taking a deep breath,
he closed his eyes for a moment and concentrated on the cool air
that ballooned his chest. He could do this: he had his Mag Lite,
the truck’s headlights were still on, and his brother would be
close by. All he had to do was step out of the truck.

“
You comin’ or what?”

Earl’s voice was muffled by distance and
snow. It sounded so soft that it was almost overpowered by the
grating of the chain against the bed liner as the man pulled the
frosted links of metal to him. There was a slight clinking, a sound
like a moan as the wind passed through the trees that clustered
around the road, the ticking of the engine as it cooled . . . there
was nothing to be afraid of. Nothing out there was going to hurt
him.

After all, he was the one with the
power wasn’t he? He was the one who caused grown men to openly weep
as their knees trembled and pleas for mercy gurgled from their
mouths. He was the one who caused women to shiver as he approached
and who sparked dilated eyes with glints of terror.
He
was the giver of life or death,
whichever he saw fit . . . and there was nothing in the darkness
that could possibly take that away.

Opening his eyes, Daryl slid out of the
truck. The darkness seemed to close in around him like the coils of
a constricting serpent, squeezing tighter and tighter with each
step he took. He could feel a tremor in the pit of his stomach and
his mouth was so dry that it felt as if he hadn’t had a drink of
water for days; but still he forced himself to exhale slowly. His
breath formed a plume of vapor that conjured images in his mind of
a fierce and powerful fire-breathing dragon and he tried to cling
to this picture like a drowning man grasping at a life
preserver.

There was nothing to fear.

He was like a god, really.

His feet crunched through the snow and he
could hear Earl cursing under his breath as his brother tried to
loop the chain around the frame of the little car. Metal rasped
against metal and there was a series of dull thuds.

He could do this.

“
Foreign piece of shit. I swear t’ God,
they deserve to die just for buying . . . .”

Daryl played the beam of the flashlight over
the hatchback of the car, watching the way shadows seemed to flee
across the accumulated snow from the sweeping shaft of light. Earl
was lying on his back beneath the car and Daryl took care not to
trip over the man’s beefy legs as he stepped forward. With a swipe
of his arm, he cleared a swath of snow from the smooth glass and
shone the light inside the darkened car. The beam splayed across
suitcases and duffel bags that looked as though they’d been thrown
up in the air and allowed to fall into patterns of disarray.

‘
Fuckin’ cock-knockin’ son of a bitch .
. . .”

The vehicle rocked slightly and the
suspension creaked as Earl struggled to secure the chain beneath.
This slight movement almost made it seem as if the pools of
darkness and shadow were leaping away from the light like cloaked
vampires fleeing from the sun. Slipping one hand into his hip
pocket, Daryl heard a slight jingle and remembered the keys they
had taken from the unconscious man .

“
Oughtta make your skinny ass get down
here and do this shit.”

Fishing the keys from his pocket, Daryl
allowed them to dangle in his hands for a moment, enjoying the way
the beam of the flashlight gleamed on the shiny metal. But then his
eyes returned to the car again, taking in the scattered pieces of
luggage tucked safely away in the hatch.

He slid one of the keys into the keyhole and
heard a soft click as he turned. The pneumatics sighed as the
hatchback lifted ever so slightly and Daryl glanced over his
shoulder as if half-expecting someone to be standing just behind
him. But there was only the darkness waiting just beyond their
little island of light, waiting for the moment that it could rush
in and . . . .

You just stop that right this minute you
hear? Ain’t nothin’ gonna hurt ya out here. Nothin’ at all.
Besides, look at the sky. It’s almost morning. Fifteen, twenty
minutes more and the sun will be up.

He lifted the hatchback until it was fully
open and leaned so far forward that it almost looked as if he were
about to crawl into the back of the car.

“
What in tarnation are you doin’ up
there anyways?”

“
Goin’ through their shit.” Daryl
answered. “Might have somethin’ good. Be a shame to burn something
that might be worth a lot.”

He flicked open the latches on the suitcase
and, with his free hand, began pulling clothes from its confines
like a magician with a never-ending scarf. Bras, panties, jeans,
sweatshirts: all were strewn about the interior of the car in a
blizzard of cloth. But, by the time the satin lined bottom of the
case had been revealed, there was nothing to show for the flurry of
activity other than a mess that looked like a wardrobe had thrown
up. Undaunted, Daryl pulled a pink duffel bag to him and tried to
get a grip on its zipper with fingers made bulky by his gloves.

“
About fuckin’ time. I got the damn
thing, little brother.”

He could hear Earl wiggling through the snow
as the zipper finally came undone. At first, it seemed as if the
bag simply contained more of the same. The top was stuffed with
piles of underwear, some loose tampons that rattled in their
plastic wrappers, a sheer nightie that smelled lightly of some
exotic perfume . . . .

But then Daryl saw it. It looked to be
a photo album, or maybe one of those scrapbooks Mama was always
putting together. The brown, leather cover was faded and scuffed
along the edges as if it had been opened and thumbed through so
many times that erosion had finally taken its toll. But what really
caught Daryl’s attention was the note card set in the center of a
brass frame attached to the cover of the album. In flowing,
feminine script were the words
Mona’s
Secret Delights.

Thoughts of the darkness were pushed from
Daryl’s mind as he imagined what lay hidden within those pages:
there would be naughty pictures of the dark-haired woman with her
boobs hanging out, snapshots of her legs spread wide, maybe even
her soft lips wrapped around the base of . . . .

His hands trembled as he flipped the cover
open and, despite the stinging bite of the wind, his face somehow
felt so warm that it almost made him lightheaded. A grin spread
across his face at the thought of uncovering this most private and
intimate collection and he felt just like he had that time he’d
found those magazines tucked under Earl’s mattress when they were
kids.

The grin, however, faded as quickly as snow
on a warm windshield. At first, Daryl’s brow was knitted in
confusion. He held the book at different angles as if a new
perspective might help clarify exactly what he was seeing; but
within seconds even this expression disappeared as the color
drained from his face.

“
What the fuck you lookin’ at,
retard?”

Daryl stood as motionless as the dark trees
surrounding them as snowflakes swirled in the beam of the
flashlight.

“
What the hell is wrong with
you?”

Daryl gulped hard as he spun around to face
his brother.

“
We gotta get home.” He blurted. “We
gotta get home
now
.”

Daryl’s mouth hung open as he struggled to
find more words, but somehow they just wouldn’t come. His stomach
felt as something had just squeezed it in an icy grip and every
breath seemed to take an act of will; but even then his mind still
rebelled against what he was seeing. Surely it couldn’t be . . .
no, it had to be something else . . . he had to be mistaken . . .
.

But part of him knew he wasn’t. And it
was the same part that whispered in the depths of his mind that
something was horribly,
horribly
wrong . . . .

SCENE EIGHT

The rising sun cast a warm glow upon the room
and glinted off the blade held at Matt’s throat. Mary had pressed
it into the skin deeply enough the trickles of blood streamed down
his neck and her eyes narrowed behind her spectacles. Her right arm
tensed as she prepared to pull the knife across the flesh, severing
tendons and arteries in its wake.

“
Bleed for Mary, boy . . .
.”

At that moment, however, there was a sound
from somewhere within the house that caused Mary to freeze. At
first, Mona couldn’t quite place what it was: it sounded hollow and
insistent, almost like a woodpecker tapping through the bark of a
tree. But that was silly . . . there wouldn’t be a woodpecker in
the house, would there? No, it had to be something else. And it was
familiar, damn it . . . something that, if not for the haze of
confusion still roiling through her brain from the drug the old
woman had knocked them out with, would have been immediately
recognizable.

Mary, on the other hand, apparently had no
trouble identifying the staccato repetitions. Rather than slashing
her knife across Matt’s throat, she pulled it away and slid it into
the pocket of her dress so quickly that her hand was nothing more
than a blur. There were a few seconds of silence as she shuffled
across the room and then the noise repeated again. Opening the
drawer on a desk piled with reams of multicolored card stock, glue,
and what looked to be albums and photographs, Mary rummaged around
until her hand came out holding two red balls. On either side of
each ball was a black strap and she hurried back to the bound
newlyweds, continually glancing over her shoulder as the sounds
from downstairs grew louder. And Mona was sure it was downstairs,
now. Things were slowly coming together, her rational mind
reasserting dominance over the dazed puzzlement she’d been mired
in.

The old woman tried to shove one of the red
balls into Mona’s mouth but the younger woman thrashed her head to
the side like a dog shaking an injured rabbit. Mona’s lips were
closed so tightly that her mouth was nothing more than a thin, hard
line.

“
Get . . . the fuck . . . away . . .
from her.”

In normal situations, Matt’s voice would have
boomed out like God issuing proclamations from the Mount. However,
his words were still thick and slurred. Rather than resounding
through the small room with the force of a thunderclap, they were
nearly lost beneath the continued noise from downstairs.

Undaunted by his order, Mary pinched Mona’s
nostrils between her fingers and waited. Within the span of a
minute, Mona’s mouth gasped open as she sucked in a lungful of air;
and, at that moment, Mary plunged the ball into her mouth so
forcefully that it almost seemed as if the old woman were trying to
cram it down her throat. Her wrinkled fingers fed the straps
through a series of buckles and she yanked hard as the taste of
rubber flooded Mona’s mouth. Pleased with her handiwork, the old
woman walked to Matt and repeated the same process with him.

“
Mary!”

The voice was muffled and filled one of the
silences between the series of rapping sounds.

“
Mary Gruber!”

“
Keep your britches on.” Mary yelled.
“I’m a’comin’.”

With those words, the final piece of the
puzzle clicked into place. Knocking. The sound had been someone
pounding on the front door.

“
Now, you two don’t go nowhere . . .
I’ll be back quicker than a duck on a Junebug.”

Mary shut the door behind her as she left the
room and the couple heard a soft rattle and click as if, perhaps,
the old woman had taken the time to lock the door. Then her
footsteps padded down the stairs, leaving the two newlyweds staring
across the room at one another.

Though the gags kept the couple from
speaking in anything other than garbled vowels, the expression in
Matt’s eyes told Mona everything she needed to know: they were
getting out of this. No matter what it took, they were
not
going to die in this dusty old
house in the middle of nowhere.

As if in response to this unspoken
conversation, Matt squirmed in his chair. He tried throwing his
head and shoulders back in the hopes that me might be able to make
the chair rock. If he could just make it topple backwards with
enough force, perhaps the old wood would shatter when it hit the
floor. He knew it was a long shot but, if he were completely honest
with himself, it was probably the only chance they had. So he
continued thrusting as much of his weight backward as he possibly
could. If his ankles hadn’t been tied so tightly to the chair’s
legs, it would have been a hell of a lot easier; in that situation,
he probably would’ve been free almost before Mary had even finished
locking the door. This, however, was not the case and Matt had to
force these thoughts from his mind. Dwelling on what could have
been, instead of focusing on the here and now, would only compound
matters: he would grow frustrated and that frustration would
further impede his ability to think clearly. So, no . . . he simply
had to work with what he had at hand and do his best to ensure that
he and his wife made it out of this room in one piece.

While Matt grunted into his gag, Mona tried a
different tact. Closing her eyes, she took a breath through her
nose, held it, and then clenched her hands into fists so tightly
that her fingernails bit into the palms of her hands. Then she
relaxed for a second, exhaled, and repeated the entire process.
Breathe, hold, clench, release . . .breathe, hold, clench, release
. . . .