A Face at the Window

by Sarah Graves

  The cliffs, they were taking Lee to the…Gagging at the pain rocketing through her, Helen struggled through thick brush. Behind her, Mr. Harriman yelled for her to stop and fought his way into the brush, too. But pretty soon, he gave up.

  Hadn't he? Or maybe he was sneaking up on her. Shivering, she crouched in the mucky hollow between a rock and an old stump. If she moved even a muscle he might hear it and pounce on her…

  But in a few minutes she heard his truck start, then peel out onto the highway with a clattering of its old engine. So he was gone. She struggled achingly upright.

  He could drive up and down the road scanning for her, and he might. So she'd have to keep out of sight; meanwhile, Eastport was twenty miles south of here; no way she'd be able to walk that far, but she could get herself away from where Mr. Harriman might be on the hunt for her. If she could find an old trail or logging road paralleling the highway, she could stay even better hidden.

  He wouldn't call the cops. His boozy outrage wouldn't help him with them, especially since he was driving. And he would know that; drunk guys generally did.

  So she was on her own. A motorcycle sped by in the dark, its insect whine rising to a roar and fading again. If she could flag down one of those…

  Her feet were so swollen that even in the too-big, stolen shoes, they felt like a pair of blood-blisters. The ringing in her ears was a lot louder now than it had been, and she had a bad feeling that the darkness all around her wasn't entirely on account of the endless-seeming night.

  That she was fading in and out. Clumsily she blundered into a patch of stinging nettle, backed out of its fiery clutches, and altered her course a fraction. After another unmeasurable stretch of slow going, she stumbled onto a track. Two ruts, humped down the middle and padded with grass at the sides…

  Every so often a car sped past nearby, so she knew she was close to the road. There were things about what she was doing that didn't make sense. But she knew one thing:

  She had to get back to Eastport, find Bob Arnold, and tell him about the awful men who'd taken Lee, and…God, what was the other thing she'd known about them only a minute ago?

  Fright stabbed her as she wondered if the memory, whatever it was, would ever come back. But—

  Keep moving. Keep the paved road on your left. Put one foot in front of the other.

  With these words echoing in her head, she tripped hard into a mess of vines and fell sprawling into them, hauled herself to her knees and sat back, panting, then fought the rest of the way up. A hoarse snort from somewhere very nearby froze her blood for a moment. But from the rustling and crunching that came with it, Helen realized it must be another moose.

  At her next step, a snake slithered thickly from under her right foot; jumping back with a shriek she slammed her head into a tree trunk. The impact sent stars rocketing around behind her eyes; staggering, she lost the road, and for a while didn't know where she was at all.

  But then just by luck she heard cars going by once more, and another truck. Faint with relief, she left the trail, angling her steps closer to Route 1 so she wouldn't lose it again. Make sure I can hear it, maybe even see headlights, because if I get lost out here again.… She put a foot out blindly, expecting it to come down on rough earth, fallen branches, and uneven stones.

  But instead she stepped off an embankment, plummeting with a breathy shriek of surprise. Tumbling and bouncing, she felt her skull smack something hard at the bottom.

  Oh, she thought mildly. A car went by, and another. But the ditch at the foot of the embankment was too deep for them to see her where she lay, half in and half out of a drainage culvert.

  From somewhere above her came a slow plonk-plonk of dripping water, like a dull gong being struck. She rolled over to get her face out of a puddle.

  But that was as far as she could go. She wanted to go on, but she couldn't. Maybe she could stay here a minute, and rest.

  Sleepy. Just for a minute … As Helen lay there, it started to rain again, a steady, soaking downpour that fell off the ledge in foamy runnels, streaming down the embankment.

  After a while, the culvert began filling.

  At the Jiminy Point house, Jake sat waiting in the living room under the newly repaired lamp. Outside, it was beginning to get light; Lee lay peacefully in her arms, asleep.

  A squall swept over the bay, rain hitting the windows in fat spatters and slashes. It paused, then poured straight down for a while before ceasing altogether.

  The men were out in the kitchen, Marky in charge of whatever they were doing together there, his voice hectoring, criticizing and complaining. She wondered how Anthony stood it, especially when the sound of a slap rang out and no protest followed.

  "Do you hafta question every little thing?" Marky demanded. "For freak's sake, I don't know why we gotta do it this way. We just do, that's all. Maybe," he concluded, " ‘cause by now all the roads are full of cops. You ever think a’ that?"

  Her leg was asleep. She tried moving Lee, but at the tiniest change in position the little girl's eyelids flickered warningly And under the circumstances, Lee asleep was best; for the moment, anyway, and the present moment seemed all that Jake could manage.

  "Why do I have to do all the thinkin’ around here?" Marky demanded.

  Jake wondered again what they were doing, decided it didn't matter as much as finding a way to escape them. The deck outside the sliding glass doors, she'd already discovered, was twenty feet off the ground; even alone, she wouldn't have tried jumping. But with Lee in her arms there'd be no sense to it at all; from that height, it was a cinch neither one of them was exactly going to hit the ground running.

  And running was what she needed. Now that she had Lee, there was no point to seeing Campbell. Getting away was her best chance to save Jody Pierce, too—if he was still alive—and to find Helen Nevelson. But the men out in the kitchen had a clear view of the only other exit whose location she knew.

  "Get up, we're going," said Anthony, coming into the living room. Pain and fatigue marred his face, while in the hall, Marky hauled something heavy.

  "Where?" she asked. Lee turned in her arms, whimpering.

  "Never mind. We're going, that's all. You want to make him mad?" He raised his bloody arm toward Marky's complaining voice.

  "He's pretty hard on you," she ventured. And when that got no reaction: "Look, before we go you might just want to let me do something about that bandage. It's—"

  "Shut up." He didn't look at her. "You'd better be on your feet when he gets in here."

  Then Lee woke, whining uncomfortably. "Hey, baby," Jake crooned, smiling down into the child's flushed face. Then with a spike of alarm she took in the perspiration beading the little girl's hairline.

  "What did you give her?" she demanded of Anthony, suspicion piercing her suddenly.

  Anthony looked away again. "Nothing," he mumbled. But even allowing for her exhaustion, Lee had fallen asleep too easily and deeply, as if she'd been…

  "Tincture of opium," Anthony admitted, his guard dropping briefly. Astonishing, she thought; he wants to be liked. "It's okay, though, Marky got it from a pharmacist he knows back in—"

  But then he crumpled with a cry. Behind him stood Marky, who'd slugged him in the kidney. Anthony straightened, gri macing.

  "I got a freakin’ schedule to keep," said Marky. "Starting now, anyone who gets in the way of it gets a bullet." He punched Anthony again, this time in the shoulder of his bloody arm. "You got that, you worthless little sack of—"

  He kicked Anthony. "Answer me, you freakin’ idiot, you're so friendly, gettin’ ready to tell Little Miss Moron here all about where we're from and what we're all about. Do. You. Got. That?"

  He delivered another kick, harder. "Yeah," Anthony gasped. "I got it, Marky."

  "Good." He pulled his gun from his jacket. "Now let's just cut the crap and get out of here."

  "Where?" Jake repeated. Lee had fallen asleep again. Or lost consciousness. Marky regarded her coldly.
r />   "You'll find out when we get there," he said.

  Anthony hoped his kidney wasn't ruptured. Maybe it was only bruised. Either way, too bad; now Marky wanted him to haul the little outboard engine from where they'd found it in the utility room, so Anthony went outside.

  The rain had stopped, and the outboard sat on the steps where Marky had dragged it. But when Anthony tried to lift it his wounded arm screamed in protest, warm blood coursing down it.

  He flipped a switch by the garage door. As he'd hoped, light flooded the driveway; at the edge of it he spied a large garden cart someone had left tipped up against a pile of dirt. Ignoring the man's body still lying there motionless where it had fallen earlier, Anthony dragged the cart to the house, manhandled the engine into it despite shrieks of agony from his arm, and began muscling the loaded cart clumsily downhill toward the water.

  The pistol he'd taken from the guy in the driveway was in his waistband, tucked in against the small of his back. Marky didn't even know it existed because Anthony had gotten to the guy after Marky shot him, and snatched it before Marky noticed.

  Lucky, he thought; and lucky, too, that its hiding place had escaped Marky's kicking foot. But that was all the good fortune Anthony expected. The rest he would have to arrange for himself.

  At the foot of the hill a short, sharp drop led down to some flat boulders. He got in front of the cart, holding it back with his weight, and held the engine steady while the cart bumped down hard. Finally he was on the beach, his bleeding arm pulsing like a gangbanger's boom box, thumping with pain.

  The gun bit into his back as he worked to get the cart over the stony beach to where the boat lay rocking in the small waves. Marky wanted him to put the engine on the boat, too.

  Sure, Anthony thought bitterly, even though he'd never done it and wasn't sure he could figure out how. But try telling that to Marky, right? Talking sense to that guy was like talking to a wall, with the added attraction that when you were done, the wall would drop a few of its bricks on you.

  To hurt you, because it could. Because it liked to. That, he realized as he pondered the problem of getting the outboard onto the boat, was the good part of all this for Marky. Not the money, although of course Marky wanted some of that, too.

  But hurting people and making them take it was what Marky got off on. And probably just some of the money wasn't what he was after, either. In fact, it was dawning on Anthony that no matter what happened, he probably wouldn't be riding back to New Jersey with Marky in the Monte.

  That instead, Anthony and the fishes swimming around out there in the water would be getting acquainted. Thinking this, he finished hauling the cart, then examined the engine once more. He guessed the propeller must hang out over the outside of the boat— Wow, he heard Marky commenting sarcastically in his head, what an Einstein—and there were a pair of C-clamps he imagined must get tightened at the back, there, to clamp the engine on.

  A cord with a handle on it hung off the engine, which he knew must be to start the thing. There was a choke lever, too, and a throttle on the handle.

  In the gathering gray light he could make out white notched lines on the handle, for speed, forward, and reverse. Drop it to idle, probably, to shift gears. Ignoring the pain it cost him, he muscled the engine around, set the clamps properly—he hoped— and began tightening the screws down.

  But in the midst of this he stopped, something about his surroundings making the outboard engine seem wrong, maybe even dangerous. Calm, silent, the sky now very slowly changing from slate gray to a rich, dark blue, the heavily saturated color of brand-new blue jeans…

  He'd washed new jeans with his underwear at the laundromat, once, and gotten a load of blue skivvies as a result. But this mistake, whatever it was, was going to be a lot worse if he didn't figure out what the hell was bothering him so much—and then suddenly he had it:

  The silence. It was morning now, so early that even the people around here weren't up yet, most of them. The ones who were, though, would know as naturally as breathing what went on, out on this water. The daily routine: who went where, who they went with, what they were doing and why.

  Like cops, knowing the usual on their beat. And the outboard engine in the silence … it was going to be loud.

  Across the water, a few more lights had gone on even as he stood there, like eyes opening one by one in the dark. Probably they couldn't see him yet, but they would soon, if he gave them any reason to look.

  But if he told Marky so, Marky would reject the idea just because it was Anthony's. Then Anthony would be screwed.

  Which he was anyway; as far as he could see now, the only way to not get killed by Marky was to kill Marky first. And out on the water was the place to do it, definitely. Hit him in the head, dump him over the side.

  The water was calmer than it had been the last time Anthony was down here, but he could see from the small moving ripples on top that it still ran fast, speeding one way hours earlier when the tide was coming in, the other way now, when it was going out.

  Which meant Marky's body would float away somewhere, carried by the current. Too bad about the money, of course; if he got rid of Marky, Anthony would never get any of that. But just like with the girl in the woods, earlier, he had no choice.

  What he would do about the woman and kid, he wasn't sure. But right now, the swift current was giving him yet another idea: that the outboard shouldn't start until Anthony wanted it to, a situation he thought he could arrange without much trouble.

  Because air-conditioner repair wasn't the only trade they'd tried teaching him, back in the juvie home. They'd thought he might be good at lawn care, too: cutting grass, blowing leaves, crap jobs like that. So he'd worked a summer edging sidewalks in the public parks in Parsippany, which was how he'd learned in the ninety-degree heat while running a gas-powered trimmer that spewed foul smoke and stalled every five minutes that he'd rather earn his pay biting the heads off live chickens.

  And how he'd happened to learn about spark plugs.

  Choking, Helen Nevelson lurched up. Her head hit something above her that rang with a dull clang. Spewing water from her nose and mouth, she realized she was lying in it, and that she was in a tunnel. A metal tunnel…

  Confused, she scrabbled painfully on hands and knees until she spotted the culvert opening, a round hole of not-quite-pitch-black. Then she remembered; she'd fallen, and crawled in here to hide. But from what? The opening she could see was far away, and there wasn't room enough inside the culvert to turn around so she backed out, trying to keep her head down.

  She smacked it again, anyway, but the pain hardly penetrated through the other pains now awakening, too, her jaw throbbing massively like a sledgehammer with a spotlight attached, thudding and flaring with her pulse. She'd turned her ankle, and the gash in her arm from the glass at that awful guy's camp-She froze at the thought. Then the rest of it came back in a rush: the men, the kidnapping, thinking that one guy was going to shoot her, finding the cabin, then jumping out of the truck…

  And Lee. She turned her head suddenly to the side, vomited. Lee was with the men, and only Helen knew where they were going: to the cliffs. And why would terrible men take a little girl like Lee to the cliffs, unless…

  She pushed herself up as another eighteen-wheeler roared by, its running lights turning the gathering dawn fiery orange and its tires spewing water that flew sideways, drenching her again. But she was up now, and she mustn't go back down.

  Slowly, gripping one handful of grass after another, Helen hauled herself up the embankment toward the edge of the pavement. When she got there, she stood swaying, thinking about something Jody had told her.

  She remembered it well; they'd been setting out on the first truly long paddle she'd ever taken, right after he'd made her capsize in the kayak so she'd be safe. She'd been wearing a ball cap, sunglasses, a life jacket, a long-sleeved cotton shirt over her swimming suit, and flip-flops.

  Also, she'd been coated with enough suntan lotion
and bug repellent to choke a moose; the combined stink, like cheap perfume mixed with weed killer, made her feel sick to her stomach. And on top of it all, she didn't want to go.

  It was just too much. He was always doing things like this, making her try things that got her scared, and even when she got through them she always ended up with sore muscles and blisters, when she could've been doing things with her own friends or even just doing nothing. And even if nothing terrible happened on its own, he'd make something happen, set some obstacle up she would have to overcome, just so she could learn some new stupid lesson. So she'd begun to cry, sitting there in the kayak looking across at the far side of the lake, several miles distant.

  "It's too far," she'd complained, sobbing. "Don't you get it yet? I hate this," she'd screamed at him, not caring who else was on the lake, listening. She hurled the kayak paddle at him.

  "I hate it, it's too far, it's too hard, I can't do it."

  Because she'd thought he might give up, that maybe a tantrum of that size would convince him. That he would let her out of the kayak, load her into the truck, and take her home, never to try making an outdoorswoman out of her ever again.

  That she would be rid of him. But Jody had only maneuvered his own kayak to her thrown paddle, returned it, then leaned in toward her. "Helen, you stick that damned paddle in the water and take one stroke. After that, you can quit if you want to."

  So she had, and the one stroke had felt silly, so she took another. And then one more…

  It took nearly two hours to complete just half of the kayak trip. On the way they saw a beaver working on his lodge, swimming toward it with a yellow-white peeled birch log in his teeth. A bald eagle flew over, so low she could hear the heavy whoosh of its enormous wings. On the far shore they ate a lunch of salami, homemade bread, pickles, and beer.

  It was delicious. The whole day was, and all because of that one stroke. Now she put her hand up to wipe the truck-sluice from her face, her fingers in the growing light coming away dark with blood.