The Town

by Bentley Little

  The café appeared to be closed, and she had no problem finding a parking place in the front. The door was unlocked, though, and she pushed it open, walking inside.

  It hit her all at once. She had not really had time to grieve, had not allowed herself the luxury of experiencing the feelings she needed to experience, but entering the closed café, seeing the fallen lights and the destroyed stage, the mess that had not been cleaned up, it was as if an emotional tidal wave slammed into her, crushing her. Her family’s dissolution, Deanna’s death, Gregory’s growing distance. The cumulative weight of all that baggage came crashing down on her head, and the walls she’d set up to deal with it, the barriers she’d erected to keep the feelings at bay and allow her to think and act clearly until she had time to sort through the emotional wreckage, came tumbling down. She was very close to tears, very close to complete paralysis, when she heard Paul’s voice from somewhere across the darkened room. “Deanna?”

  She squinted, her eyes adjusting. “Paul?” she said gratefully.

  He walked over, across the floor toward her. “He didn’t come home last night, did he?”

  Julia shook her head, wiping away the tears that were threatening to spill onto her cheek.

  “He was at a bar most of the evening—and most of the day—with Odd, both of them just sitting there and getting plastered. And then he went home with Odd, spent the night at his place.”

  “He was at Odd’s?”

  Paul nodded.

  “I called there and no one answered.”

  “Maybe they were passed out. Or maybe they just didn’t want to pick up the phone.”

  The fear and uncertainty were replaced swiftly with anger. She felt her strength coming back. “He could have called. He could have let us know he was all right.”

  “He should have.”

  At least it wasn’t another woman, she thought. At least he was alive.

  But, damn it, how could he be so inconsiderate? Paul was almost up to her, but he kept coming closer, showed no sign of stopping. She felt nervous all of a sudden, and then he reached her and put his arms around her shoulders, hugging her.

  They had never touched before, and she felt uncomfortable with this close contact. This was no doubt a friendly hug, a chaste and harmless gesture of support, but she wasn’t one of those touchy-feely people who went around hugging everybody in sight, who squandered personal contact on virtual strangers, and this sudden intimacy not only surprised her but made her decidedly ill at ease.

  The hug continued a beat or two longer than it should have, and she tried to casually pull back, to move out of his grip in a way that seemed natural and inoffensive, but though he shifted position, let his left arm fall away, his right arm remained around her shoulder.

  “Maybe he’s still there,” Julia said. “I should see.” Paul stroked her hair. “He doesn’t treat you the way he should.”

  She wanted to back away, wanted to tell him to stop . . . but she didn’t. She felt dizzy, almost light-headed, and she didn’t know why she was letting him do this, but she said nothing as his hand roamed from her hair to her shoulders, rubbing over her breasts.

  What was going on here? She was not at all attracted to Paul, and he had never indicated that he was remotely interested in her. Perhaps, she rationalized, it was Deanna’s death that was the impetus behind this inappropriate behavior.

  What was behind her acquiescence? She knew that what he was doing was wrong, and she told herself she wanted it to stop, but she made no real effort to end it or to move away from him. It felt good to be touched again, felt good to have a man’s hands on her in this way. And Paul was right. Gregory had been a jerk lately and he hadn’t treated her the way he should. She deserved better.

  Paul proceeded slowly, and she let him unbutton her pants, let him slide his hand down her panties. His fingers felt strong and sure, and she gasped as he cupped her, as his middle finger slipped easily and gently inside her.

  And then Gregory walked into the café.

  Time stopped. She was suddenly aware of everything: the ticking of the clock across the room, the sound of a pickup passing by on the street outside, the far-off cry of a hawk, her own pounding heart, and the silence as she held her breath. Her senses were heightened, and she felt with extraordinary sensitivity Paul’s hand pulling out from her underwear, saw too clearly the blank expression on Gregory’s red face, heard her own huge exhalation as though it were the sound of a monsoon.

  What happened next seemed surreal and not quite believable. There was no argument, no fight, no histrionics. Paul simply turned and walked back across the café to his office and Gregory held his arm out silently. She buttoned up her pants and took his hand. She still felt light-headed, and she wanted to apologize, wanted to explain, but her thoughts were foggy and couldn’t seem to make the trip out of her brain and down to her mouth.

  Gregory held out his hand for the keys, she gave them to him, and, still not speaking, they walked out of the café to the van.

  He didn’t hit her until they got home.

  The house was empty. Gregory’s mother was gone, the kids still in school, and the two of them walked silently inside. They had not spoken once during the entire trip home.

  She looked around the empty house. They never kept track of anything anymore, she thought. They used to know where everyone in the family was at all times, but like the rest of the supposedly stable building blocks that had been the foundation of their relationship, that had broken down here, too, and now they’d reverted to a more primitive monitoring system, noticing only whether someone was present or absent, not knowing or caring about anything in between. Even after Adam’s arrest, they had not kept the close tabs on him that they’d promised him and themselves.

  They walked into the living room, Gregory carefully closing the door behind them.

  He slapped her.

  It was a hard slap, straight across the face, and Julia was almost knocked off her feet by the force of it. Blood started pouring out of her nose, and she held a hand up to it to stem the flow, tilting her head back.

  Gregory punched her in the stomach.

  She went down.

  She had never really been in a fight before—even as a child, she had avoided physical altercations—and though she’d seen plenty of them in movies and on television, she did not really know how to defend herself and did not seem to be able to think fast enough to keep up with the action. Gregory kicked her in the breast, and by the time she thought to roll away, out of his reach, he was grabbing her arm, yanking her back up, kneeing her in the crotch.

  The pain was unbearable. She felt like vomiting, could not catch her breath. The sharp flashes of agony that accompanied each of his blows spiked deep into her body. It felt as though bones were breaking, organs were rupturing, and as he continued to pummel her, she wondered if he was going to kill her, if she was going to die.

  And then he stopped.

  He’d said nothing the entire time, and he was still silent now as he let go of her arms and allowed her to fall back onto the floor. Her first instinct, a purely animal reaction, was to curl up and protect herself, but he had stopped attacking, at least for now, and she tried to stand, couldn’t. He stood above her, arms folded, staring blankly, and though the pain was tremendous and each slight movement brought fresh tears to her eyes, she managed to crawl to the stairs and start the slow, arduous trip up, one hand on the posts of the banister, the other supporting her weight on the steps.

  He followed her, stood directly behind her. She kept waiting for another kick, kept waiting for him to throw her back down the stairs, but he did nothing, just stared.

  After what seemed like an hour, she reached the top and managed to crawl into the bedroom. She was barely able to close and lock the door. Crying from the pain and the effort and the emotional toll, she pulled herself onto the bed and lay there, grateful for the soft blankets and mattress.

  He was smart, she thought. Aside from that first s
lap, he hadn’t hit her in the face, hadn’t hit her where it would show. It was what she’d heard about chronic wife beaters, the way they hid their violence from friends and family, and it was this bit of circumspection that most frightened her. It meant that this might go on for a while. It meant that he intended to do this again without letting anyone know.

  It meant that he intended to stay.

  He intended to stay.

  That lay at the heart of her fear. For it was as if this entire situation had been specifically arranged in order to keep her here: the scene with Paul, Gregory’s discovery of them, the beating. She remembered the fogginess in her mind at the café, the blank expression on his face as he attacked her, and she wondered if that was not exactly what had happened. It was too convenient, she thought. Gregory had been played like a puppet, used by whatever lived in this house to make sure that she and the kids did not leave town.

  There was a loud smack against the door, and Julia jumped, her ribs hurting. “You stay in there!” he ordered. “You come out and you’re going to get the beating of your life, you fucking slut! And I hear you say one word of this to Mother or the kids, and you won’t be the only one punished!”

  Julia held her breath, did not reply, terrified that he would break down the door and come after her again, but he did not. Soon she heard him walk away, heard his footsteps head down the hall.

  There was an unfamiliar series of loud noises after that—clatterings and slammings—then she heard him upstairs, in the attic, rummaging around.

  She listened to the noises until she fell asleep.

  Sometime later, the kids came home from school. He was back downstairs again, and though the sounds were muffled, she could just make out their voices. She heard him lie, heard him tell the kids that she was sick and needed her rest and couldn’t be disturbed, but one of them, Teo probably, tried the knob anyway a little while later, and she was grateful for that stubborn spirit of disbelief. She said nothing, however, gave no indication that she was awake, believing Gregory fully, knowing that he would make good on his threats. She didn’t want anything to happen to the kids.

  You won’t be the only one punished!

  His mother came home soon after, and he fed her the same line, but Julia could tell that Agafia didn’t believe it. Their conversation was polite, but there was a stiltedness to it, an undercurrent of formality, an obvious discomfort on both their parts. Gregory’s mother seemed afraid of him, and Julia thought that the old woman was her last best hope. Agafia could obviously sense that something was wrong, that there was something amiss here, and she said nothing to her son about Julia’s plan to take the kids and get out of town.

  Agafia would figure something out, she knew. The old woman would find some way to help her, to get them all out of this.

  She fell asleep thinking of plans for escape.

  In the morning there was a knock at the bedroom door, and then he walked in. “I need clothes,” he said shortly.

  She’d locked the door. She knew she had. But Gregory had somehow opened it anyway, striding in, ignoring her and taking a pair of jeans from the closet and an old Yes T-shirt from the dresser. He threw off his dirty clothes, tossing them in the direction of the hamper, and put on the clean ones.

  He looked at her disgustedly. “Get your lazy ass out of bed,” he said. “Your children need breakfast. Do something useful for once in your miserable life.”

  It was an order, not an observation, and he stared at her as if he meant to be obeyed. Julia rose painfully. She had not changed out of yesterday’s clothes, and now she left her jeans on—it hurt too much to try to take them off—but she removed the blood-spattered blouse and replaced it with a loose-fitting red shirt.

  “Wash your face off,” he said. “Then get downstairs.”

  He left the room, and she shuffled slowly across the carpeted floor into the bathroom. Her face was indeed a mess, smeared with dried blood, but it looked worse than it was and after two minutes with the washcloth she looked almost normal.

  This was her chance. If Agafia was downstairs and Gregory left them alone for even a minute, they could talk, figure something out, formulate some sort of plan.

  The stairs were difficult, and Julia held tightly to the banister, walking down one step at a time, stopping on each, like someone handicapped. Once on the first floor, she hobbled to the door of the kitchen that opened onto the hallway, and her heart sank as she saw the kids seated in the breakfast nook, Gregory pouring himself a cup of coffee at the counter next to the sink—and no sign of her mother-in-law.

  The Gregory from upstairs was gone, and in his place was a falsely cheerful Stepford husband. “Mother already left for church,” he said, as if reading her thoughts. He smiled brightly at her. “Feeling better, dear?”

  Adam and Teo both looked worried, and she wondered how much they knew, how much they suspected.

  Julia looked from their drawn faces to Gregory’s beaming visage, and she forced herself to nod. “Yeah,” she said. “I’m feeling better.”

  Eighteen

  1

  Frank Masterson gunned his Jeep and sped down the winding dirt trail that led to transformer 242. The sun was setting, and he was anxious to get this problem settled before nightfall. For one thing, he hated to work in the dark. And he and Shelly had tickets for tonight’s Garth Brooks concert. The concert didn’t start until eight, and there was an opening act, so Garth probably wouldn’t go on until nine, but it was still a two-hour drive back to Tucson, and if he had a hope in hell of making it on time, he had to make it to the transformer, fix whatever was wrong, and start back within twenty minutes.

  Shelly had predicted this would happen, and he hated it that her prediction was confirmed. He’d never hear the end of it. She’d bitch and moan all night, and the concert would be ruined. Then they’d fight over that and the whole thing would spill over into the weekend.

  If he was lucky, it would be nothing. Those computers down at the office weren’t worth shit in his book, and nine times out of ten the problem turned out to be not with the transformer or relays but with some glitch in a computer program. The company had spent millions of dollars over the last two years, upgrading their system, but it still wasn’t half as efficient as the old one. Give him a good old-fashioned low-tech, labor-intensive human monitoring system any day of the week.

  He picked up the phone from its cradle beside him, checked in again. “Frank here. I’m almost to 242. Any change in the readings?”

  The voice on the other end was barely audible through the static. “Nope. 242’s still offline and needs a reset, copy.”

  “I’ll get back to you in ten.” He replaced the phone in its niche. If it wasn’t a computer error and the transformer simply needed to be reset, that wouldn’t take long. He’d be in and out in five minutes. If it was anything else, though, he was screwed. He would have to call the office, have them patch him in to home, and lay out the situation for Shelly.

  God, he hoped he didn’t have to do that.

  The trail wound out of the hills and led over a flat section of desert, ending up ahead at what looked like an iron scrap yard fenced in with chain-link and barbed wire. Lines and cables emerged from this mess in two directions, climbing up to lie in the arms of the monstrous metal power towers that had always reminded him of Japanese robots and that marched to the west and to the north across the open land.

  He stopped the Jeep, hopped out and unlocked the padlocked gate. The sun was a brilliant orange half-globe on the edge of the horizon. To the east, he could see the coming night.

  He had to hurry. Frank swung open the gate and jumped back into the Jeep, gunning it and braking to a sudden halt just before the blocky transformer building. From the rear of the vehicle, he grabbed his tools, diagnostic equipment, and a flashlight, just in case. He popped open the door of the building, flipping on the lights and walking inside, and headed immediately to the control panel, installed in a series of metal cabinets and insulate
d wall units at the opposite end of the room. Checking all of the appropriate gauges, he frowned. There was nothing wrong here. Everything was running smoothly. Everything was as it was supposed to be. He turned around—

  A shadow flitted past the door.

  Frank practically jumped out of his boots.

  The movement had startled him, but that was not what scared him. Or it was only the start of it. For there was something strange and unnatural about the shape he’d seen, some sense he’d gotten from that fleeting glimpse that whatever was inside the gates here with him was . . . not right.

  Evil.

  That was the word that was echoing in his mind, and while he wasn’t a churchgoer like Shelly, while he thought he’d left all that fire and brimstonery back in his mama’s house, he offered up a quick prayer. He was smart enough to know that there were things he didn’t know, and right now, out here in the middle of nowhere, that sense of ignorance seemed particularly strong. He was trying to hold on to some half-baked notion that this was an animal or a homeless man, but his emotions, his brain, and his gut instinct told him otherwise, and he wished to Christ they’d sent Tyler out on this call instead of him.

  There was a pounding on the roof.

  He glanced again at the instrument panel, saw that nothing was wrong, and thought that whatever this creature was, it had caused the system anomalies they’d recorded back at the office and had purposely tried to make them think there was something amiss.

  But why?

  Maybe it wanted to lure someone out here.

  For what?

  He didn’t even want to think about that.

  From his tool kit, he withdrew his heaviest socket wrench. He didn’t have a hammer with him—it was back in the Jeep—but this would do in a pinch, would enable him to fight off whatever came at him until he could get to the Jeep.

  Outside, the light was failing fast. Already, the sun had dropped below the horizon, leaving only an orange glow where its specific shape had been. The lights in the transformer room made the dying light outside seem even darker.