by Jack Ketchum
She wiped her eyes. I heard her sniffle.
“I think because … Ruth,” she said. “Ruth … touches me. Down … you know … down there. And once she … she made me bleed. And Meg … I told Meg … and she got mad about it … real mad and she told Ruth she knew and Ruth beat her again, beat her bad with a shovel from the fireplace and…”
Her voice broke.
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it. She should have gone! She should have! I didn’t mean for her to get hurt. I couldn’t help it! I hate it when she touches me! I hate Ruth! I hate her. And I told Meg … I told her what she did and that’s why they got her. That’s why she came for me. Because of me, David. Because of me!”
I held her and it was like rocking a baby she felt so frail.
“Shhh. Easy. It’ll be … okay.”
I thought of Ruth touching her. I could picture it. The broken, helpless little girl, unable to fight, the woman with the empty glittering eyes like the surface of a fast-running stream. Then I blocked it from my mind.
After a long while she subsided.
“I have something,” she said, sniffing. “I gave it to Meg. Reach over behind the far leg of the worktable. Past where Meg is. Feel around.”
I did. I came up with a pack of matches and the two-inch stub of a candle.
“Where’d you … ?”
“I rooked it off of Ruth.”
I lit the candle. Its honey glow filled the shelter. It made me feel better.
Until I saw Meg.
Until we both did.
She lay on her back, covered to the waist with an old thin dirty sheet they’d thrown over her. Her breasts and shoulders were bare. She had bruises everywhere. Her burns were open, liquid oozing.
Even in her sleep the muscles of her face pulled her skin tight with pain. Her body trembled.
The writing glistened.
I FUCK FUCK ME
I looked at Susan and could see she was going to cry again.
“Turn away,” I said.
Because it was bad. All of it was bad.
But worst of all was not what they’d done to her, but what she was doing to herself.
Her arms were outside the sheet. She slept.
And the dirty jagged fingernails of her hand worked constantly and deep against her left elbow all the way down to her wrist.
She was tearing at the scar.
Tearing it open.
The body, abused and beaten, was turning finally against itself.
“Don’t look,” I said. I took off my shirt and managed to bite and rip my way through the seam. I tore two strips off the bottom. I moved Meg’s fingers away. I wrapped the shirt tightly twice around her arm. Then I tied it off top and bottom. She couldn’t do much damage now.
“Okay,” I said.
Susan was crying. She’d seen it. Enough to know.
“Why?” she said. “Why would she do that?”
“I don’t know.”
But I did, in a way. I could almost feel Meg’s anger at herself. For failing. For failing to get free, for failing herself and her sister. Maybe even for being the sort of person this could happen to in the first place. For allowing it to happen and thinking she’d get through it somehow.
It was unfair and wrong of her to feel that way but I thought I understood.
She’d been tricked—and now that good clear mind was angry with itself. How could I have been so stupid? Almost as if she deserved her punishment now. She’d been tricked into thinking Ruth and the others were human in the same way she was human and that consequently it could only go so far. Only so far. And it wasn’t true. They weren’t the same at all. She’d realized that. Too late.
I watched the fingers probe the scar.
There was blood seeping through the shirt. Not too much yet. But I felt the strange sad irony of knowing I might have to use the shirt to tie her up again eventually in order to restrain her.
Upstairs, the phone rang.
“Get it,” I heard Ruth say. Footsteps crossed the room. I heard Willie’s voice and then a pause and then Ruth’s voice, speaking into the phone.
I wondered what time it was. I looked at the tiny candle and wondered how long it would last.
Meg’s hand fell away from the scar.
She gasped and groaned. Her eyelids fluttered.
“Meg?”
She opened her eyes. They were glazed with pain.
Her fingers went back to the scar again.
“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t do that.”
She looked at me, not comprehending at first. Then she took her hand away.
“David?”
“Yes. It’s me. And Susan’s here.”
Susan leaned forward so she could see her and the corners of Meg’s mouth turned upward in the palest ghost of a smile. Then even that seemed to pain her.
She groaned. “Oh God,” she said. “It hurts.”
“Don’t move,” I said. “I know it does.”
I drew the sheet up to her chin.
“Is there anything … anything you want me to … ?”
“No” she said. “Just let me … Oh God.”
“Meg?” said Susan. She was trembling. She reached across me but couldn’t quite reach her. “I’m sorry, Meg. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, Suz. We tried. It’s okay. It’s …”
You could almost feel the electric pain run through her.
I couldn’t think what to do. I kept looking at the candle as though the light would tell me something but it didn’t. Nothing.
“Where … where are they?” she said.
“Upstairs.”
“Will they stay? Is it … night?”
“Almost. Around dinnertime. I don’t know. I don’t know if they’ll stay.”
“I can’t … David? I can’t take any more. You know?”
“I know.”
“I can’t.”
“Rest. Just rest.” I shook my head.
“What?” she said.
“I keep wishing there were something …”
“What?”
“… to hurt them with. To get us out of here.”
“There’s nothing. Nothing. You don’t know how many nights I …”
“There’s this,” said Susan.
She held up the arm brace.
I looked at it. She was right. It was lightweight aluminum but if you took the pole end and swung the jointed brace you could do some damage.
Not enough, though. Not against Willie and Donny both. And Ruth. You couldn’t underestimate her. Maybe if they were nice enough to come in one at a time with a couple minutes’ breather space in between I might have had a shot but that was damn unlikely. I was never much of a fighter anyway.
All you had to do was ask Eddie.
We’d need something else.
I looked around. They’d removed mostly everything. The fire extinguisher, radio, the food cartons, even the alarm clock and air pump for the mattresses were gone. They’d even taken the lengths of clothesline they tied us with. All we had was the worktable—almost too heavy to move alone much less throw—the mattresses, Meg’s sheet, her plastic drinking cup and the clothes on our backs. And the matches and candle.
And then I saw a use for the matches and candle.
At least we could get them down here when we wanted them and not whenever they felt like it. We could confuse and surprise them. That was something. Something.
I took a deep breath. An idea was forming.
“Okay,” I said. “You want to try a couple things?”
Susan nodded. Weakly, so did Meg.
“It may not work. But it’s possible.”
“Go,” Meg said. “Do it.” She moaned.
“Don’t move,” I said. “I don’t need you.”
“Okay. Just do it,” she said. “Get them.”
I took off my Keds high-tops and pulled out the shoelaces and tied them together. Then I took off Susan’s shoes and tied their lac
es to my own so that I had about twelve feet of line to work with. I slipped one end around the lower hinge of the door and tied it off tight and ran the line over to the first of the four-by-four support beams, and tied it off there about three inches from the floor. It gave me a tripwire running at a slight angle from door to beam, cutting off about a third of the lefthand side of the room as you entered.
“Listen,” I said. “This is gonna be hard. And dangerous. I mean it’s not just gonna be them. I want to build a fire here. Right over there in front of the table just short of midway through the room. They’ll smell the smoke and come down. And hopefully somebody will hit that line there. Meantime I can stand on the other side over by the door with one of Susan’s braces.
“But there’ll be lots of smoke and there’s not much air. They better come fast or we’re in trouble. See what I mean?”
“We’ll yell,” said Susan.
“Yeah. I hope that’ll do it. But we’ve got to wait a little while so they smell the smoke. People get panicky around fire and it’ll help. What do you think?”
“What can I do?” said Susan.
I had to smile. “Not too much, Suz.”
She thought about it, the delicate little-girl features very grave.
“I know what I can do. I could stand over here by the mattresses and if anybody tries to come by I can trip ’em!”
“Okay but watch yourself. No more broken bones. And make sure you give me plenty of room to swing that thing.”
“I will.”
“Meg? Is this okay with you?”
She looked pale and weak. But she nodded.
“Anything,” she said.
I pulled off my T-shirt.
“I’ll … I’ll need the sheet,” I said.
“Take it.”
I drew it carefully off her.
She moved her hands to cover where they’d burned her. But not before I saw the black-red glistening wound. I winced and Meg saw me and turned her face away. Through the shirt she started working on the scar again. I didn’t have the heart to stop her—to call attention to what she was doing.
And suddenly I couldn’t wait to use that brace on someone. I bundled up the sheet and placed it where I wanted it in front of the table. I placed my T-shirt and socks on top.
“Mine too,” said Susan.
They wouldn’t make much difference but she needed to help so I took them off her and threw them on too.
“You want the shirt?” said Meg.
“No. You keep that.”
“All right,” she said. The fingernails kept digging.
Her body looked old, the muscles thin and slack.
I took the brace from Susan and stood it against the wall by the door. Then I picked up the stub of candle and walked over to the pile.
My stomach knotted with fear.
“Let’s go,” I said and brought the candle down.
Chapter Forty-Four
The fire burned low but there was smoke all right. It plumed to the ceiling and billowed outward. Our own mushroom cloud, inside the shelter.
In seconds it filled the room. I could hardly see across to Meg lying on the floor. Our coughing was for real.
As the smoke got thicker so did our shouting.
You could hear the voices up there. Confusion. Fear. Then the tumble of footsteps down the stairs. They were running. They were worried. That was good. I held tight to the brace and waited just beside the door.
Someone fumbled at the bolt. Then the door flew open and Willie stood in the light from the cellar swearing while the smoke washed over him like a sudden fog. He lurched inside. He hit the line of shoelaces and stumbled, fell and skidded across the floor into the pile headfirst, screaming, flailing at the rag burning on his cheek and the sizzling greasy flattop that was melting down his forehead.
Ruth and Donny pushed in shoulder to shoulder, Donny closest to me, trying to make out what was happening through the smoke. I swung the brace. I saw blood fly off Donny’s head flecking Ruth and the doorway as he fell, grabbing for me. I brought the brace down like an ax but he pulled away. The brace crashed to the floor. Then suddenly Ruth was darting past me heading for Susan.
Susan. Her pawn. Her shield.
I whirled and swung the brace and caught her across the ribs and back but it wasn’t enough to stop her.
She was fast. I was after her, swinging the brace up from the floor like a backhand shot at tennis, but she reached for Susan’s scrawny chest and pushed her against the wall, then reached into her hair and jerked it back. I heard a thump like a dropped pumpkin and Susan slid down the wall. I whipped the brace across Ruth’s lower back with everything I had. She howled and fell to her knees.
I saw a movement out of the comer of my eye. I turned.
Donny was up, coming at me through the thinning smoke. Then Willie.
I whipped the brace back and forth in front of me. They moved slowly at first, carefully. They were close enough so I could see how Willie’s face was burned, one eye closed and streaming tears. There was blood on Donny’s shirt.
Then Willie came in low, rushing me. I swung the brace and it slammed across his shoulder, ran up and clattered to a jarring stop against his neck. He screeched and fell.
I saw Donny lurch forward and pulled the brace around, I heard a scrabbling sound behind me.
Ruth hurled herself at my back, clawing at me, hissing like a cat. I stumbled under the twisting weight. My knees buckled. I fell. Donny moved forward and I felt a sudden searing pain across my cheek and my neck snapped back. I suddenly smelled of leather. Shoe leather. He’d kicked me like you kick a football. I saw a blinding light. My fingers tried to tighten against the brace but it wasn’t there anymore. It was gone. The bright light faded fast to black. I scrambled to my knees. He kicked me in the stomach. I went down, gasping for air. I tried to get up again but my balance was wrong. I felt a wave of sickness and confusion. Then someone else was kicking me too, my ribs, my chest. I pulled myself into a ball, drew my muscles tight and waited for the dark to clear. And still they were kicking me and swearing. But it was beginning to work, I was beginning to see, finally enough so that I knew where the table was so I rolled to it, rolled beneath it, looking out and up at Ruth’s legs and Donny’s in front of me—and then I was confused again because there were another pair of legs standing where Meg should be, right where Meg should be lying on the mat.
Naked legs. Burned and scarred.
Meg’s.
“No!” I yelled.
I moved out from under. Ruth and Donny turned, moved toward her.
“You!” Ruth screamed. “You! You! You!”
And I still don’t know what Meg thought she was doing, if she actually thought she could help—maybe she was just sick of this, sick of Ruth and sick to death of the pain, sick of everything—but she should have known where all Ruth’s fury would go, not toward me or toward Susan but straight to her like some evil perfect poison arrow.
But there wasn’t any fear in her. Her eyes were hard and clear. And weak as she was she managed one step forward.
Ruth rushed against her like a madwoman. Grabbed her head between both hands like an evangelist, healing.
And then smashed it against the wall.
Meg’s body began to tremble.
She looked at Ruth, straight into her eyes, and for a moment her eyes held a puzzled expression, as though even now she was asking Ruth why. Why.
Then she fell. Straight to the air mattress like a boneless sack.
She trembled a little longer and then stopped.
I reached for the table for support.
Ruth just stood staring at the wall. Like she didn’t believe Meg wasn’t still standing there. Her face an ashy white.
Donny and Willie were standing too.
The silence in the room was sudden and immense.
Donny bent down. He put his hand to her lips, then onto her chest.
“Is she … breathing?”
I’d n
ever heard Ruth so small.
“Yeah. A little.”
Ruth nodded. “Cover her up,” she said. “Cover her. Get her covered.”
She nodded again to no one in particular and then turned and walked across the room as carefully and slowly as though walking through broken glass. At the doorway she stopped to steady herself. Then she walked away.
And then it was just us kids.
Willie was the first to move. “I’ll get some blankets,” he said.
He had his hand to his face covering his eye. Half his hair was burned away.
But nobody seemed angry anymore.
In front of the table the fire still smoldered, sending up wisps of smoke.
“Your mother called,” Donny muttered.
He was staring down at Meg.
“Huh?”
“Your mother,” he said. “She called. Wanted to know where you were. I answered the phone. Ruth talked to her.”
I didn’t have to ask what she’d told her. They hadn’t seen me.
“Where’s Woofer?”
“He ate at Eddie’s.”
I picked up the arm brace and brought it over to Susan. I don’t think she knew or cared. She was looking at Meg,
Willie came back with the blankets. He looked at each of us a moment and dumped the blankets on the floor and then turned and went out again.
We heard him trudging up the stairs.
“What are you gonna do, Donny?” I asked him.
“I dunno,” he said.
His voice seemed flat and unfocused, stunned—as if he’d been the one kicked in the head instead of me.
“She could die,” I said. “She will die. Unless you do something. Nobody else will. You know that. Ruth won’t. Willie won’t.”
“I know.”
“So do something.”
“What?”
“Something. Tell somebody. The cops.”
“I dunno,” he said.
He took one of the blankets off the floor and covered her as Ruth had told him to. He covered her very gently.
“I dunno,” he said. He shook his head.
Then he turned. “I gotta go.”
“Leave us the work light, huh? At least do that? So we can take care of her?”
He seemed to think a moment.
“Yeah. Sure,” he said.
“And some water? A rag and some water?”