The Edge of Normal

by Carla Norton

  She weighs less than he would have thought, small and feather-light.

  He sets her down on the cot, stretches her out, and begins to undress her. He pulls off her black sweater and black bra and tosses them on the floor.

  He studies her skin. Her nipples are the color of milk tea, topping firm, small breasts veined with pale blue. Her skin is etched here and there with the pink-white memories of old mutilations. His fingers touch the round, crenulated burn marks that dot her forearms, and then linger over the matching, whorled spots on her shoulders where she was electrocuted by Daryl Wayne Flint.

  He murmurs to himself that virgins are overrated.

  She moans as he removes her boots and socks and slips off her jeans and panties. He admires her there, small and feminine and spread-eagled on the mattress. Reverently, he traces the strange, shiny scallops on both thighs. Bite marks, he decides. He examines the rings of scars around her ankles.

  He flips her over and admires the pattern of scars on her back, long, feathery strips left by a whip, no doubt. He pictures a fresh pattern of burns on her buttocks, now unmarked.

  With effort, he restrains himself from unzipping to explore the deeper contours of her body. Later, when she’s alert and frightened, it will be so much better. And afterward, when he’s ready to go again, he’ll take his time adding his own marks to the map of scars on her skin. But not now, not when her eyes are rolling back in her head. Fucking a girl in this state is akin to masturbation, barely better than fucking a dead whore. He likes to watch the fear light up their eyes.

  He handcuffs her to the bed frame, noticing the fine scars that bracelet both wrists. He stares at her for a long moment, imagining what he’ll do when she wakes, and then he closes the door.

  He gets a bathroom towel, cleans up the spilled cocoa in the hallway, tosses the towel in the laundry hamper.

  He carries the mugs back to the kitchen. The one she threw is chipped.

  The house has slipped deeper into darkness. He turns on lights, sets the mugs in the kitchen sink and fills them, along with the pan from the stove, with soapy water.

  As he squats to gather up the items spilled across the floor, his jeans constrict painfully and he jumps to his feet, cursing. His leg is bleeding. He’d nearly forgotten about the knife wound. Spying the knife, he snaps it up with a grimace and tosses it into the sink.

  Duke heads to the bathroom to tend to the cut. It surprises him that she managed to stab through his jeans, but it’s not a deep cut. He wipes off the blood, and it takes only a minute to clean and bandage his wound. Satisfied, he zips up his jeans and returns to the kitchen.

  He cleans the blood off the tip of the blade and slips the knife back into its slot, shifting the heavy knife rack farther away from the counter’s edge.

  He lights a cigarette and moves to the side of the house, where he stands at the window and smokes while gazing out. He studies the Jeep, still visible in the deepening twilight. He has already figured out how to dismantle and dispose of it. He’ll have to cut off the roof and hood with a torch before whittling the body down to manageable chunks. Then he’ll sink every last bit—windows, bumpers, chassis, every nut and bolt—deep into the river, piece by piece.

  But he’ll keep the battery. And the tires.

  It will be an interesting project. How long will it take? Five or six days? It doesn’t matter. Nobody’s going to look for it here.

  Besides, didn’t his new pet just announce to the whole, television-viewing world that she wants to disappear? A smile twitches at the corners of his mouth. He loved seeing that particular clip on the evening news. What a bonus. And now Reeve’s disappearance is well under way. He has prepared just the spot for her final vanishing act.

  Before Montoya’s body was cold in the morgue, Duke was wrapping a chain around an old tree stump not a hundred yards from his house. He hooked the chain up to the Chevy Tahoe’s tow hitch, locked the hubs, revved the engine, and yanked the stump out of the soaked earth. Now it rests on its side, mud-caked roots clawing the air, balanced on the lip of a deep, new cavity. A very convenient grave. In a couple of days, when he’s finished with her, he will dump her body in, hook up the chain again, and yank the old stump back into place.

  The cold weather will hide the stink of decomposition, and by spring, she’ll be nothing but compost.

  He inhales deeply and savors his own brilliance.

  When things calm down, even before the New Year, he will have his next girl in place, locked in the newly prepared basement. But this time, the search for a target will be carried out in a different state. No more tedious monitoring of local family dramas and dull suburban chitchat. Targeting a runaway eliminates so many problems. Some anonymous girl, with no history, no melodrama, and no family crying to the cops.

  Thanks to Duke’s innate talent for long-term thinking, his new keeper, Fitzgerald, is already in place. He’s a better selection than the others, carefully vetted, an ex-con who is steady about keeping appointments with his parole officers. A smarter man than Vander-dolt. A more reliable man than Pelt. A more hardened criminal than Orr, who wasted far too much time coddling his girl. As a bonus, this new keeper has had a recent visit from the sheriff’s department, so now he’s clean and forgotten and off any list of suspects.

  The next abduction will be trickier, more of a challenge, but perhaps that will be a nice change. He and Fitzgerald will drive up to Oregon together—in separate vehicles, of course—to scout out the appropriate victim. Fitzgerald will handle the part with the most risk, the actual kidnapping, and then smuggle the new girl south, where the new house is ready and waiting, bought using a different phantom corporation, a different attorney, and a fresh ID.

  Duke takes a deep drag on his cigarette. His plan is nothing short of inspired. It’s flawless.

  Something streaking across the back yard catches his eye. He scowls out the window, watching as that same damn yellow tomcat slinks out of the bushes, shoots through the rain to the carport, and stops on the dry concrete beside Reeve’s Jeep.

  The cat pauses to lick its fur before boldly striding up to the front bumper, where it sniffs the vehicle’s tires. It rises up on its hindquarters and places its big front paws just above the hubcap, as if intending to climb the tire. Then it drops to all fours, and in one smooth bound it’s atop the hood.

  Duke clenches his jaw, watching the cat lower itself and settle onto the warmth of the Jeep’s hood. He glances behind him. His air rifle is just where he left it.

  Keeping an eye on the cat, he steps backward, reaching for the gun, and is slightly off balance as the soles of his boots come down on the slew of colorful beads that scattered across the floor during his fight with Reeve. He scrambles, boots kicking underfoot, rolling and sliding off the beads as he struggles to regain his footing, but he’s a tall man who slips and topples hard, banging the floor with his skull.

  SEVENTY-SIX

  In her dream, Reeve is holding a big, black pistol, struggling to shoot Daryl Wayne Flint, but she’s so tired and weak that she can barely lift the heavy gun.

  It explodes in her hands and she’s awake.

  Her hands hurt. She’s groggy and the room is spinning. She’s lying on a hard mattress. How long has she been asleep?

  Her aching arms are stretched above her head, and the moment she tries to move she feels the cruel bite of the handcuffs and knows that she’s been recaptured by Daryl Wayne Flint. A hot, liquid panic swims through her. She wrenches vainly against the cuffs and gags on the realization that she is naked. Stripped. Handcuffed. How many times have her nightmares returned to exactly this?

  Something oily rises in her throat and she knows she’s been drugged.

  She clenches her fists and moans, then bends her knees and digs her heels into the mattress, shoving her head toward her hands, bending her arms, pulling and pushing until her hands touch her face. Her eyes roll. The room tips woozily.

  She angles her mouth toward her hand and jams her fingers do
wn her throat until she gags. Her stomach retches but comes up empty. She tries again. Her stomach knots and spasms and expels a warm liquid that soaks into her hair.

  She coughs and lies there, panting, fighting for clarity. She dully remembers the man and everything shudders into place.

  She takes a deep breath, forces her eyes open and tries to focus. She inhales, exhales, testing her ribs. Her tongue explores her sore cheek, her split lip. She stretches and flexes. No broken bones, no obvious wounds.

  Her hands are cuffed tightly, the chain looped through the metal bed frame, but she has some mobility. At least she isn’t fully restrained.

  She stares wildly around the room, which is small and spare, with no furniture other than the bed. Everything appears dusted in a gray, dim light spilling from the window above the bed. There are no bars.

  She sees her clothes wadded on the floor, her sweater, her bra and panties and jeans. Her boots. An impossible distance.

  She lifts her legs over her head, folding at the waist until her bare toes touch her fingers, and her mind grasps at a single hope.

  In one smooth move, she swings her legs off the bed, rolling and flipping over onto her stomach, and manages to kneel on the cold floor with her arms pulled taut above her head. Her wrists twist painfully against the unforgiving cuffs.

  She grunts as she scoots away from the bed on her knees. Angling toward her clothes, she lifts up on her toes, straightens out horizontally, and stretches as far as she can, reaching blindly with her feet. She grits her teeth, yanking against the cuffs, and barely touches denim with the big toe of her right foot.

  She stretches and grits her teeth, trying to grip the fabric with her toes. Her muscles quiver and she collapses in frustration, panting. Maybe another approach, maybe …

  She twists her hands in the cuffs and firmly grips the bed frame. Bracing herself on the floor, she strains, trying to move it.

  It doesn’t budge.

  She wrenches harder, swallowing tears.

  Nothing. It’s bolted to the floor.

  Exhausted, she flips over and sits on the hard floor, calculating the tantalizing distance between her and her target. She takes a deep breath, extends her arms flat on the bed, puts her weight on her shoulders and lifts up, straight as a plank. She walks out on her heels as far as she can, stretching, her arms straight and rigid as she reaches out and traps the hem of a pant leg under one heel.

  She drags it toward her, muscles burning. It comes slowly, the cuffs biting into her wrists as the jeans gradually unfold.

  She sits briefly to ease the strain, swallows, repositions. When she lifts up again, she clamps both heels on the pant leg, traps the fabric, yanks once, and collapses.

  The pants are closer now, and from a sitting position she can stretch out and pull the denim with her feet, tiptoeing along the seam, dragging her jeans toward her with small steps. The jeans come inch by inch, spreading out until the waistband snags, catching on one of her boots.

  This will be tricky. She licks her lips and pulls gently, using her jeans to drag the boot toward her. Slowly … slowly … until the boot falls over with a muted clunk, the sole facing the wall.

  Muttering please please please, she keeps pulling … and the jeans keep inching toward her.… Then the boot sticks to the floor. She groans, but the jeans come closer, dragging along a single black bootlace.

  Her eyes water. She flips over, stretches out straight again, grunting as she reaches vainly with her toes for the bootlace. Rigid and shaking with effort, she crabs sideways and touches the lace, stabbing at it with her big toe. She has it, then it’s gone, then has it again.

  Her palms are slick as she grips the bed frame and her muscles burn as she drags the lace toward her, but then the weight of the boot resists and she realizes with alarm that she cannot let the lace snap away. Carefully, she eases off.

  Holding her breath, she repositions again so that—yes!—she grips the lace with her toes and steadily pulls the boot toward her. Slowly, slowly … it makes a small scraping sound on the floor.

  Eyes clenched shut, she pulls steadily with her right foot until she feels boot leather brush against her left shin. She collapses and sucks in air. Quickly, she flips over and sits on the floor. Then, carefully cupping the boot with both feet, she bends at the waist, lifting the boot over her head.

  Her legs quiver. She feels the tickle of a bootlace on her forearm, cranes her neck back to watch. Carefully lowering the boot, opening her palms, crunching her abs, lowering the boot toward her grasping fingers—Now!—she drops the boot into her open hands and clamps tight.

  Gasping, she struggles back onto the bed. Her wrists suffer her weight, the handcuffs biting as she clutches the boot and scoots up, up, up to the head of the bed, maneuvering on her back until her face is angled toward the toe of the boot. She wriggles into position, opens her jaws wide, and clamps the boot solidly between her teeth.

  The fingers of her right hand crawl up the laces to the boot tongue, searching awkwardly for the rigid place and the slit. Focus. Locate the spot. Her fingernail touches metal. Carefully, she pries and wiggles the handcuff key. It loosens. She tugs at it slowly. It comes free, she has it, but then it slips and she cries out, fumbling to catch it, clasping at it, pinning it tight with the little finger on the numb edge of her damaged left hand.

  Her skin is slick with sweat. She coughs, but manages to hold the key still.

  Concentrating hard, she shifts the key bit by bit until she manages to reclaim it with the fingers of her stronger hand.

  Carefully, she nudges the key around, maneuvering it until it seems to be pointing in the right direction. Sweat drips into her eyes and she holds her breath, straining her wrists into position, squeezing the key in place, intent on not letting it slip away as she gets it lined up with the keyhole. With effort, she slides the tiny bit of metal forward and inserts it into the lock. Then, wrenching her wrists awkwardly, she turns the key … more … a little more … and feels the small metallic hiccup as the cuffs click free.

  SEVENTY-SEVEN

  Duke stands over the kitchen sink, seething with an anger so intense he can scarcely think. He presses a bag of frozen peas to the swelling lump on the back of his head, feeling that he has lost track of time, wondering how long he was out. One thing is crystal clear: He will make her pay for this. For this, and for every single minute of trouble she has caused, and worse. He’ll make her pay for everything. For those stupid beads, which caused him to fall. For Vanderholt’s idiocy. For the loss of Tilly and Hannah and Abby.

  And most of all, for stabbing him in the leg and making him bleed.

  His head fills with cold calculation as he catalogues all the implements of pain he has waiting in his control room, stashed in his box of toys. What can be horrible enough for this interfering little twat?

  And there it is, right before his eyes: The rack of knives. Sweet.

  He tosses the bag of frozen peas in the sink and pulls the largest knife from the rack. Yes, won’t this terrify her, this big carving knife? He will become her worst nightmare. He thumbs the sharp blade and places the long knife on the counter.

  One more? His fingers move from one handle to the next, and then he selects the smallest. He pulls it out and turns the wicked blade in the light: An efficient tool, sharp as a scalpel, with which he’ll turn her skin to scrimshaw.

  He carefully wraps the smaller knife in a kitchen towel. Then he grips the impressive knife in his hand, feeling its balance and weight, and carries both knives from the kitchen.

  He goes to collect the rest of his gear, imagining how this girl’s past tortures will pale in comparison, how anything Daryl Wayne Flint devised will seem like a childish game in the face of the pain he’ll inflict.

  He can hardly wait to hear the screams he’ll carve out of her.

  * * *

  Reeve sits on the bed, rubbing her wrists, feeling small and exhausted and woozy. The horror of her situation wavers before her for a moment be
fore the certainty that the man will return knots in her stomach. She forces herself upright.

  She tries the door, but it’s locked, of course. She breathes in and out and tries to focus. There’s no water, no toilet, no bedpan. He’s not intending to keep her here long term. Her mouth goes dry. How long until she’ll be missed? Two hours or two days, it makes no difference. No one will look for her here, no one will connect her to this man.

  Who is he?

  She pushes the thought aside. Concentrate!

  The room has a sinister familiarity, yet feels less oppressive than a basement.… It’s above ground.… The window! She scrambles up on the cot and finds the window framed in place, without a latch. Her fist pounds the glass once in frustration before she stops herself, afraid of making noise.

  Her heart thrums in her ears. She hears something and freezes. His footsteps clomping down the hallway, closer.

  Think!

  She can see nothing but night outside the rain-spattered window. She searches the room for a weapon, her head swimming. A boot? The handcuffs? What does she have now that she didn’t have in Daryl Wayne Flint’s godforsaken basement?

  The footsteps turn and fade as she scrambles off the cot and assesses each item: a window, a sheet, a mattress. A door opens and closes. Muffled noises come from somewhere deep in the house, something heavy thuds.

  Hurry!

  Seizing on a plan, she drops to the floor, assessing the cramped space beneath the cot. This could work. She pushes her clothes under it, placing her bra where it will be handy.

  The sheet comes off the cot in one swift movement as she rises. She drapes it over her shoulders, then snatches up her boots and climbs back atop the mattress. Bracing herself, she raises one boot above her head, aiming the heel, bringing it slowly to the window, gauging the distance. She swallows, turns her face away, raises the boot high, and swings it hard and fast, smashing through the windowpane, which shatters in a hail of splintered glass.