by Nevada Barr
A black-gloved hand, clutching a small flashlight, pokes out through the narrow opening. The beam probes the porch roof. Pushing her heels tight against the house, Rose makes herself as thin as she can.
The beam scrapes blue from the shingles, working closer to her toes. For Rose it holds the deadly fascination cobras are rumored to have for mongooses. Pressing her body so hard against the wall that the brick bites through the cotton of her tunic, she dares not blink or breathe.
The streak of light wavers, appears to lose interest, then is snatched away. Monster Man is not going to risk busting out the window. Rose lets her breath out in a silent sigh.
Heavy footfalls retreat. Muscles Rose didn’t even know she had, let alone could clench, loosen. No helpless elderly lady to rape and terrorize, surely the intruder will take what he can, depart, maybe stop for a six-pack of Coors Light, then go home, watch some porn, and call it a night.
Loud crashes string her muscles back to rigidity. Rose imagines the Incredible Hulk on steroids rearranging furniture with all the finesse of a tornado. Let the beast take his rage out on things, she thinks. Things can be replaced. Abruptly, the furniture tossing ends. Rose listens for the sound of his footfalls leaving the room.
The shrieking of metal slices into her waiting ears. He has thrown the king-sized mattress and bedstead from where he’d upended it against the wall, clearing a path to the side window. Of course the window he chooses opens without a hitch. Rose remembers she never really liked this house. A pig-like grunt comes from the far side of the porch. He is coming out onto her porch roof.
Images flash through her mind. Squeezing back through the window she’d scraped out of, rabbiting down the stairs. Him grunting in pursuit. Boxes and blackness and locked doors; penlight stabbing her in the back shortly before his bulk slams into her.
No, Rose thinks, no stabbing and slamming. She’d rather risk falling and shattering her bones on the concrete.
Noiselessly, she creeps to where the roof ends above the driveway. Here the main roof swoops down until it meets the porch at a shared rain gutter. The roof is about a forty-five-degree angle and covered with asphalt shingles. If she slides off, there is nothing to break her fall.
Grabbing tightly to the edge of the steep-angled roof, her chest pressed against the shingles, Rose inches one foot out along the rain gutter, fighting the urge to look down. The gutter seems relatively stable. She doesn’t weigh much, but she weighs more than a rain-soaked leaf.
Right hand splayed on the shingles like a starfish, the left white-knuckled on the edge, she works belly, chest, and one thigh onto the roof. Blowing out her breath, as if that will make her lighter, she gingerly lifts her remaining foot from the porch and drags her toes into the rain gutter. It holds her weight—sort of; she can feel it straining outward. Undoubtedly it is plastic. Whoever remodeled this house left no corner uncut.
Flattening her body against the slope of the roof, she inches away from the porch. The asphalt shingles sandpaper the skin on her cheek and palms. Her feet scuffle in the uncleaned gutter. Chunks of old leaves are bulldozed up and fall in hushed plops on the gravel below. Hoping the racket is louder to her ears than to those of the monster, she shuffles inch by inch until she is far enough away that a big man, with long arms, cannot reach out and grab her.
Rose is motionless and silent. In several seconds the noise from the monstrous intruder’s egress through the window ceases. Rose prays his racket deafened him to hers.
Grating of rubber soles mincing heavily over shingles lets her know he is out and is coming around to the front. Rose wishes she’d experimented with bashing his brains out via the bed stand. She resists the urge to turn her face in the opposite direction. Some things have to be faced. Death is one of them.
The sound of steps stops. The light beam traces the edges of the porch roof. Rose breathes in through her nose and silently out through her mouth, willing her body to relax, to melt into the shingles, to become as thin and attached to the roof as wallpaper to plaster.
A sandy scuff of shoes lets her know Monster Man is moving away, going back the way he came. He thinks the house is unoccupied. Few people would believe a grown person—even one as motivated as Rose—could squeeze through that narrow window opening. Rose hadn’t believed it herself until she’d done it.
That, or he believes the occupant has gotten off the roof somehow and is running for the police. Whatever he believes, he seems anxious to get offstage; the front of the house is spotlighted by the streetlamp.
More piggy grunts. He is back inside the bedroom. Rose can feel a slight shuddering of the house as he stomps through the bedroom and down the stairs. Under her feet the plastic guttering moves half an inch, cracking faintly.
An unmistakable crystal cacophony of breaking glass reaches her ears. For some reason, he has exited the house through the patio doors, then stopped to break out the glass. Why break the glass on his way out? He’d not needed to break it to get in.
Shoes on gravel. He has given up. He is leaving.
Rose lets out a sigh of relief and sends up a nondenominational prayer that she and the rain gutter have enough strength remaining to get her back to solid footing.
A sharp snap, like the breaking of a twig, is followed by the gutter moving outward. Rose slides down a few inches, fingernails raking the shingles. Metal straps holding the guttering to the eave groan and screech in protest.
The gravel crunching ceases abruptly.
Rose no longer breathes. She squeezes her eyes shut. Her muscles are reaching exhaustion, thighs twitching as if touched by a cattle prod, fingers losing sensation.
Silence from below.
And silence.
And such a long silence, Rose begins to hope the monster has slunk quietly away while she was busy being scared out of her mind.
“Huh!” whuffs up from below like the snort of an interested grizzly. Crunching recommences. The intruder is trotting back toward the rear of the house. He thumps up the wooden steps to the deck. Broken glass creaks in the metal slide as he yanks open the door.
The time for silence and hiding is at an end. As quickly as she dares, Rose shuffles one foot, then the other, in the failing gutter, moving herself farther from the porch roof. With each shift of weight the gutter wrenches away from the eave.
Rose fixes her eyes on the bedroom skylight where it bulges through the dark roof, a rectangular plastic bubble four feet long and fourteen inches wide. Rose knows this because the skylight was one of the few features of the house she had liked.
With a whine, the gutter separates from the eave, the loosed portion levering the rest free. Screws squeal as they pull from the wood. Rose uses the last of her footing to propel herself sideways over the skylight. It’s not a big leap; still, it taxes Rose’s depleted strength.
Spread-eagled on the plastic, hands firmly clamped over its upper edge, she gasps for breath. Sweat drenches her tunic, the wet fabric dragging on the plastic as she wriggles into a more secure position.
Face mashed against the skylight, she looks into the bedroom. The furniture is broken. On top of the pieces, the mattress leans against the closet doors in a tangle of sheets and blankets. Splinters of wood as long as her arm stick like knives from the ruined doorframe.
As she watches, a white beam of light pries apart the darkness, nosing through the debris. Following it, dimly silhouetted, is a great, lumpish, ape-like creature. Ape-like, it moves over the obstacles with great dexterity. At the side window, it straddles the sill, preparatory to ducking out onto the porch roof. Rose can see him clearly in the glow from the streetlight. Not his face—a ball cap’s brim throws that into shadow—but his body. It is thick: Thick arms muscle out of a short-sleeved black T-shirt; legs like fire hydrants stump out of knee-length black shorts. His gut is a classic beer belly. He oofs as he bends over to get his head outside the window. On his feet are deck shoes. They offend Rose. A man ought not to set about murdering a person while wearing deck shoes.
It is as if he doesn’t take killing her seriously.
Rose doesn’t have the upper body strength to remain on the skylight, splayed like a cat on a screen door. Her fingers are growing numb where they clutch the edging; they are losing their grip. Before the proverbial hit the fan, she remembers, she did three sets of ten men’s push-ups every night after yoga. Now she doubts she could do five girl’s push-ups.
She kicks off her shoes. Fixing the old, strong Rose firmly in her mind, she pulls up as hard as she can. Nice and sticky with sweat, feet and toes scramble monkey-like against the roof, helping her ascend. With a final surge, she gets her forearms onto the shelf where the skylight is seated into the roof.
No longer is she in danger of an imminent plunge to the ground.
She is in way more danger than that.
Light pierces her left eye. Monster Man is leaning around the edge of the roof, eyes hidden in the cap’s shadow. He holds the flashlight in his left hand. In his right is a knife, a big knife. Probably he has watched Crocodile Dundee one too many times.
“I’ll scream,” Rose whispers.
He puts the flashlight into his pants pocket. Then he puts the knife in his teeth. Rose has seen that in cartoons, but didn’t believe anyone actually did it.
Hands free, he throws himself upward onto the roof in a bouncing belly flop. One hand makes the ridge, then the other.
The sight of the knife pries the last ounce of adrenaline from Rose’s glands. It gets her to the top of the skylight. From there she is able to straddle the ridge of the house. Weight off her arms and legs, for an instant she feels as if she could levitate into the stars.
Bending her knees and moving her heels toward the ridge, she clasps the opposing sides of the roof with her thighs until she is stable. Seven or eight feet away, limp as a flag on a windless day, Monster Man hangs from the ridge.
Emitting a porcine grunt, he moves his right hand six inches toward Rose. Then his left. If one counts one’s life in six-inch increments, Rose has about fourteen remaining.
Craning her neck, she glances over her shoulder. The far end of the roof is shrouded in darkness, trees blocking the light from the next street. She could scoot back. To do what? Be pushed from the peak to the deck instead of from the gutter to the gravel?
Thirteen increments left. His arms are strong. He moves more quickly than she’d believed he could. Had it not been for his enormous gut, he would have gotten his feet up and straddled the ridge. Rose is grateful for beer and McDonald’s.
Once he reaches the skylight, he will do as Rose did, and use it to climb up. Monster Man must not be allowed to gain the stability of the ridge.
This, then, is where Rose will make her stand.
Whatever that entails.
For a moment she is overwhelmed with helplessness, so much so, it dizzies her. To this hulk she is as a duckling to a bobcat. Everything about her is soft and harmless: canvas shoes, flowing harem pants, thin cotton tunic, wee bony fists, blunt bovine teeth, legs the monster could probably close one fist around.
Rose orders her mind back into the moment. Be here. See here.
Piggy oink by piggy oink, he works his bulk to less than five feet from her.
“Come any closer, and I really will scream,” Rose whispers.
The brim of the ball cap lifts. Dark wet eyes glitter at her from the shadow. The lower part of his face registers as one huge knife, the hilt a black bar against his cheek.
Rose won’t scream. He must have figured that out. Had she wanted to call down the attention of the neighbors, she would have been screaming her head off for the last five minutes. She guesses that is about the amount of time that has elapsed since she heard him in the downstairs living room. The rest of her life might not last much longer than that.
Why not scream? Hadn’t she decided to go back to Longwood anyway?
She had.
The man with the slashing smile has changed her mind. Monster Man is not a burglar. Not a rapist. Monster Man is an assassin. He is here to kill Rose Dennis. Longwood no longer wants her back. Longwood knows that without the red capsules, her mind has returned. Longwood wants her dead.
Rose narrows her eyes and studies the knife wielder.
Would she rather die than face going back into the control of people who have an interest in maintaining her dementia?
Darn tootin’ she would.
Barnacle eyes fixed on her, knife cutting an obscene silver grin in his face, the intruder humps his belly sideways. Four feet from her perch. If he gets a hand on the skylight, she is toast.
Oink. Hump.
Three feet.
“Who sent you?” she hisses. “Someone at Longwood?” A grunt and a hump and a black bar of shadow beneath the cap brim are her only answer. With the blade in his teeth, he can’t talk. It would be like talking to the dentist when the drill is in one’s mouth.
Rose steadies her breath and clears her mind. She suspects she is in no way spiritually prepared for the moment of death. In the bardo of transition, her slippery little drift of energy will attach itself to the first thing it sees, be it tomato worm, opossum, or paramecium.
Now she sees, really sees, the knife: the slight rise to a point on the back where it pushes into the man’s cheek, the drop of sweat on the shiny blade, the delicate swoop of the serrations on its cutting edge, the haft wrapped in dark tape or leather, the strip neatly overlapping itself up to where it stops at the wider, thumb-shaped end.
Folding down over the ridgeline in an extreme Child’s Pose that would impress her yoga instructor, Rose reaches out, grabs the haft, and jerks.
“Whoa!” she mutters as it comes free with a crack.
Monster Man is as surprised as she. “Hey!” he says stupidly. Recovering himself, he spits something at her. A solid speck stings her chin, then falls between her thighs, hitting the roof with a pathetic click.
He snarls. Half of one of his front teeth is broken off at a sharp angle.
Now she has pissed him off.
A nuclear brand of fear starts up her throat, cold enough to freeze her brain. Rose shivers, shaking it off.
Okay, Monster Man is mad.
So is she.
Vocalizing something very like the snarl of a large canine, he moves his gloved hands another foot toward her. The glittering dark eyes never leave her face.
Rose clutches the knife in her left hand, the blade pointing away from her. She passes it to her stronger hand, then wraps the other fist around it in a two-handed grip lest tremors or sweat loosen her hold. The roof is dark. The gloves are black. Rose’s hands have little strength and no steadiness. She aims for the nearest sausage-sized finger. Tentatively, she stabs. The blade strikes something and sinks in a creepy quarter of an inch. Her stomach twists.
No sound, but fury fires the intruder’s small eyes. Too quick for Rose to see, much less react, he lets go of the roof ridge. Clamping his hand around her left wrist, he pulls. Rose pulls back, but it is no contest.
Rose opens the fist she has gripped around her knife hand and lets the arm go limp. The sudden loss of opposing energy jolts him off balance. He nearly yanks Rose’s arm out of its socket as he slips down the shingles. For a horrific moment she can see herself and the man and the knife cartwheeling off the roof together.
A curse and he steadies himself. No longer is he dragging her from her perch, but he still keeps a crushing grip on her wrist.
Knife in her right hand, Rose leans perilously far out over the ridgeline. Panicked, she stabs at his far hand as if she is tenderizing beef in one heck of a hurry.
Stab, stab, stab. Maybe the knife hits his fingers, maybe it hits the shingles. Delicate differences are lost to Rose. “Get off my roof!” she spits. Stab, stab. “Pig face.” Now she is practically growling. Stab. “Dog vomit.” Spittle flies from her lips. Stab.
The paw manacling her wrist opens. She laughs with freedom. Then he grabs. Black leather-covered fingers, like those of a bull ape, close over her thigh jus
t above the knee.
With the squeak of a terrified rodent, Rose plunges the knife through the black hand and deep into the flesh of her thigh, pinning her and the monster together. That flash of the blade, like a giant tooth biting down, releases her last lost memory. Rose knows how Harley died; her beloved’s god-awful tabloid marvel of an exit from this plane of existence. Hysterical laughter forces up from her belly. Tense muscles in her throat strangle it into a high-pitched giggle.
The man’s eyes go wide, then narrow to mere slits, as if he sees her differently now that she’s snickering.
Rose has frightened a hit man. That scares her quiet. Still, he flinches back, and his hand slides free of the glove skewered to her leg. Blood, dark as ink, splatters over her thigh. “You are one crazy bitch,” he says as he tucks the injured hand to his chest and curls protectively around it.
This is a mistake. Rolling like a sow bug, he tumbles down the roof and over the edge.
Rose hears a sound like a giant sea lion, dropped from a helicopter, hitting the tarmac.
The glove remains, spiked to her leg by the oversized knife. Wide-eyed, she looks at the enormous blade protruding from her flesh.
“Don’t you dare faint,” she tells her body. “Not after all I’ve done for you.”
CHAPTER 12
The sight of the knife protruding from her flesh breaks some inner dam and releases the pain. Quite a lot of it. In a sickening tide, it rushes through her belly to explode in her head. Vision swims; bile fills her throat. For a long moment Rose holds on to the ridge with both hands to keep from toppling off.
The internal shriek subsides to a thin scream. Rose takes a deep breath and listens. From below comes not a sound. Fervently she hopes the intruder is dead, head crushed like a melon, spine shattered, neck snapped.
“No,” she murmurs. “Not dead.” Dead would be rotten. Her karma would reek for a thousand incarnations. In relative truth, the man needed killing, but in absolute truth, there is no excuse. Worse would be the instant karma. Karma now. She’d have to drag the great lumpish intruder into the backyard, excavate a shallow grave with a serving spoon, then roll him in. She really would be a criminal, complete with a decomposing corpse buried in the backyard. Add that to assaulting a health worker, and Rose would be deemed criminally insane and locked up for a long, long time.