Transcription (35 page)

“Do you need help with that bed?” Geoffrey asked.

“No, thank you,” she said.

He approached slowly, as if she were made of ash, and any air current would topple her.

Sweet didn’t move slowly. She dropped the sheet and bolted for the window. She would take her chances with the rocks. She barely got it halfway open before he pinned her arms to her sides from behind. Those soft fingers were cruel and surprisingly strong, but she already knew that.

“You’ve already cleaned the windows,” he said. His face was so close that she could smell his breath. “Now it’s time to look after the bed.”

CHAPTER 29: CABIN

“W
AIT
! W
AIT
!” D
ANIELLE
SAID
.

Bo opened his eyes again. The man was still in the same spot on the ground. The trigger remained a fraction of a millimeter from firing. He dared another look behind himself and saw the shapes of Chloe and Danielle in a tussle.
 

“Bo!” Chloe yelled. “Shoot him.”

Bo nearly did. His brain decided on the action, but his finger wouldn’t execute.

“Shoot him. Shoot James,” Chloe said.

He couldn’t make sense of what she was saying. Did she think that James was the man outside? When the closet door opened, and candlelight spilled out from the small space, Bo understood. He looked back through the window and saw the man in the same position on the lawn. He relaxed his finger and the trigger slipped back out, away from the brink.

Danielle held Chloe back while James emerged from the closet. He held a stack of paper in front of him.

“It will work,” James said. “I think it will work.”

Chloe relaxed in Danielle’s arms as she realized that James didn’t yet appear to be a murderous lunatic. Bo thumbed the safety on the shotgun.
 

“Red, you’re dead,” Bo whispered. He looked at the man in the lawn again. He was perfectly still. He had probably lost a lot of blood and was in shock. Who knew how long he would survive if they left him out there in the lawn, unattended.
 

Bo exhaled a deep sigh.

BOOM!
 

The front door exploded into splinters that scattered into the living room.
 

Someone kicked open the remnants of the door. Bo whipped back around in time to see the man from the lawn spring to his feet and run at him. He had time to click the safety off and then the man crashed through the window, shoving the shotgun up and away. Bo felt neither fear nor panic. He was simply shocked. Time slowed down, but his hands moved like they were coated in molasses. He couldn’t bring the shotgun back down to point at the man. Instead, it was knocked from his hands.

The other man—the one who had kicked his way into the living room—raised his own gun and fired again.

CHAPTER 30: STORY

H
IS
SOFT
FINGERS
DUG
into her flesh as he spun her around, putting her back to the bed.

“I’ll scream,” she said. “Someone will hear.”

He reached inside his jacket and withdrew a long knife in a leather scabbard. He slid it from the sheath and let her witness its keen edge. A knife like that had no utility other than killing. It was designed for nothing else.

“You screamed last time,” he said. “I enjoyed it.”

Sweet backed up until she felt the bed pressing against her legs. She had run out of room to maneuver. Her hand went to her side. She had screamed last time, and he had cut her for it. She had no desire to relive either of those memories, but here they were, rushing towards her at an incredible speed.

Geoffrey stepped on the sheet she had dropped. The expensive threads of the sheet nearly shined, and the doubled-over fabric was as slippery as ice. Geoffrey’s foot went out from under him. His sly smile turn to panic as his body flipped in an effort to catch himself.

Before Sweet could understand the mechanics of what was happening, Geoffrey was on the ground. Or, he was hovering just over the ground, holding himself up with one arm. He didn’t move.

Geoffrey made a strange sound, like he was trying to lift a heavy weight. He sucked in air between his teeth.

Sweet took a step to the side. She expected his hand to shoot out and grab her ankle, but it didn’t. Her foot hit something. She looked down and saw that she was standing on the key to the door. It had flown from
 
his pocket during his fall and landed in her possession. She bent and picked it up. That’s when she saw more of the story.

Somehow, on his way to the floor, Geoffrey had lost control of his knife. It had landed first, and he had landed on top of it. The blade was stuck through his hand.

Sweet leaned down even farther to see the rest.

With the blade stuck through his hand, it pointed straight up, right at Geoffrey’s throat. In fact, the tip of the knife had already made a tiny puncture in Geoffrey’s skin. The blood from his neck dripped down to mingle with the blood from his hand.

His other hand was the only thing holding him off the blade. The wall blocked him from rolling away from the knife. His arm was already trembling with the effort of holding up his body.

Sweet imagined the future. As soon as Geoffrey sank another quarter of an inch, the knife would cut his neck and he would begin to bleed. With his strength ebbing, nothing would remain to keep his body from collapsing on the point. Sweet would unlock the door, go out to the dooryard, and drop the key in the well. Then, when she returned upstairs, she would scream, having discovered the body of the man of the house. Nobody could accuse Sweet of overpowering the man. She would be exonerated by her frailty.

The knife nicked his skin and Geoffrey found the strength to lift himself a tiny bit higher. His leg kicked in an effort to gain his freedom, but it found no purchase on the sheet. As a result, he slipped back down and the knife threatened to cut again. Geoffrey grunted with his labor.

Sweet crouched there, looking at him. Geoffrey couldn’t meet her eyes. He was supplicated to her. She settled in to enjoy the drama. She had wished him dead so many times in the months and months since that night. Back in December, when she felt his seed growing inside of her. In February, when her body, wracked with cramps, had expelled the lump of flesh and all that blood.

That unformed baby never grew large enough to take on his devious face. Sweet wanted a child eventually, but not like that. Still, she had mourned that fetus.

A strange vision occurred to Sweet as she watched Geoffrey’s head dip again. He had once been a little baby, swaddled in white cotton, and pressed to his nurse’s breast. In a flash, she saw his childhood. Sweet saw how he’d been reared at arm’s length in a basinet, and pinched whenever he cried. He had been dressed in miniature versions of a man’s clothes, and scolded whenever he played and got his clothes dirty. He had been held underwater in the tub whenever he wet the bed or messed his pants.

With absolute certainty, Sweet envisioned his entire formative life. It was a series of tortuous events, designed to form him with minimal effort from all involved. He was humiliated, reduced, and then allowed to grow malignant.

She saw the boy inside the man’s body.

Sweet found empathy for him.

The majority of her wanted to see him die. She stood up and looked at the key in her hand. There was no risk in letting him perish. Nobody would ever suspect her complicity. The risk would be to help him live. Then, she would potentially suffer his retribution. If he lived, he might even seek to attack her again in the future. There was no sense in granting him mercy.

Even Geoffrey seemed resigned to his fate.

He slipped a little lower and the dripping blood became a small trickle. Soon, it would be a flood.

He was a terrible man, but that was no conscious decision. He had been formed by his circumstance.

Sweet stepped to him, reached down, and put her hand on his neck. With the slightest pressure, she would hurry his death. With a lift, she would rescue him.

She pictured him once more as a baby, and compared that to the memory of her own miscarriage.

She imagined him being scrubbed in a tub of cold water after a childhood accident, and she remembered how her mother had made her wash herself after her menarche. He was not a monster. He was human. So was she.

She felt the power of her compassion. More than her ability to snuff his life, her capacity to accept his human frailty was her true strength.

Sweet grabbed him by the collar and lifted.

CHAPTER 31: CABIN

T
HE
FLASH
FROM
THE
gun nearly blinded Bo as he wrestled with the man who had crashed through the window. The man was bleeding from the glass. His skin was both sticky and slick.
 

After missing with his first shot, the man who had busted through the front door ran towards Danielle and Chloe.

With all the blood, Bo’s wrist slipped from the injured man’s grip. His elbow caught the man right on the chin and the man sagged. His strength had been sapped by the blow. Bo followed with a shove and managed to get himself out from underneath. Pieces of glass tinkled to the floor and crunched underfoot as Bo rose up. He aimed a kick at the shadow on the floor. The man grunted when Bo’s foot hit his midsection. Bo kicked again and his shin connected with skull.

He turned to see the door-busting man raise his rifle at Danielle and Chloe. He was so close. He couldn’t possibly miss again.

“Stop!” James shouted.
 

Something sparked in his hand and a yellow flame sprouted from a lighter.
 

“Heh,” the man said. He returned his attention and his aim to the women.

James brought the lighter to the stack of papers. The room came alive with the light from the burning papers. Smoke billowed from James’s hand.
 

Danielle and Chloe were frozen, afraid to move with a gun pointed at them.

Bo reached for the shotgun, but knew he wouldn’t reach it in time. Any second, the report of the rifle would spell doom for either Danielle or Chloe. There was no way to stop the inevitable. It was written in the dancing shadows of the man’s face. James dropped the papers as the flames consumed them. They fluttered to the floor, shifting the shadows that ran up the walls.
 

Instead of firing, the man slowly lowered his rifle.
 

Bo’s hand found the shotgun and he lifted it to the man. This time he would kill. He wouldn’t hesitate.

Somehow between having that thought and bringing the shotgun up to his shoulder, Bo’s resolve evaporated. The man with the rifle dropped to his knees and let his gun fall.

A second later, as the smoke from James’s fire reached him, Bo understood. He understood how impossible it would be to shoot Danielle, or Chloe, or even the man with the rifle. Even the notion of pointing a weapon at them was insane. They were people. Their struggle was his own.

“We don’t have much time,” James said. The flames were dying out and the light was extinguished with them. James crossed to Chloe and grabbed her shoulder. “We all have to write.”

“What?” Chloe asked.

Danielle seemed to understand. She pushed her friend towards the closet. James was already back inside. He came out with a candle and some paper. James lowered himself to the floor and began writing.

“I don’t understand,” Chloe said. “What’s happening.”

“We’re going to copy what James writes,” Danielle said. “Is that it?”

James nodded and waved.

Danielle positioned herself over James’s shoulder and began watching the words flow from his hand.

“What about him?” Chloe asked. She pointed at the man who had laid his rifle on the floor. He was sobbing into his hands.

“He’s fine,” Danielle said. She took a second sheet of paper and began to copy James. “That’s not what I wrote,” she said to him

“Close enough,” James said over his shoulder.

Chloe brought two more candles out from the closet, and Bo was able to see the man at his feet.
 

The window glass had cut his arms and face. He was bleeding and trying to rise. Without thinking, Bo reached down and helped him up to his knees. The man didn’t try to attack again. He nodded to Bo and settled back to a seat on the floor.

Bo dragged the shotgun over to the others. He gestured to the sobbing man. “Can you go over there and sit with your friend?” Bo asked.

The man nodded and began to crawl. He left his rifle behind. Bo picked it up. Before taking a seat on the couch, Bo walked to the front door and pushed it shut with his foot. It didn’t latch, of course, but at least it was closed.

A little war fired off in Bo’s synapses. On one hand, there was no way to be sure that the threat was over. The intruders had been disarmed and appeared to be docile, but what if there were others out there? On the other hand, it felt like the danger was over. He had no urge to do anything more than sit and rest. Panic had pushed his body to the edge, and now he needed a moment to let everything calm back down.

“Bo, keep your eye on them,” Chloe said.

“Yes,” Bo said. He sat on a chair and rested the guns at his sides.

Behind him, he heard paper fluttering as it was passed from James to Danielle.
 

“Don’t just read it,” Danielle said to Chloe. “Copy it down.”

“Okay,” Chloe said.

#
 
#
 
#
 
#
 
#

They left the men behind in the cabin. The door-busting man had stopped sobbing long enough to tend to the other one’s wounds. Danielle clutched the copies to her chest and walked behind James, who wrote as he walked.

Bo drove through the dark.