Drawn Into Darkness

by Nancy Springer

  He saw something trying to rise up from the shadows like a wounded bird trying to lift its wings.

  Lee!

  Time focused like a laser; everything Justin had ever been or could be was now, that moment as Lee rolled sideward with an arm swinging out like a scythe to snatch Stoat around his cowboy-booted ankles, attacking with all her wounded strength.

  Stoat leveled his shotgun just as he staggered.

  He started to topple.

  The shotgun blasted fit to earthquake the house down. Justin did not just hear it fire; he felt it shake him to the bone, and bits of white ceiling snowed down on him from where the blast had struck. Yet he remained standing while Uncle Steve—while Stoat the Goat fell.

  Justin did not wait until Stoat hit the floor, or the floor hit Stoat. He lunged to hit him at the same time and grab the shotgun when Stoat lost his grip.

  Only the damn creepy strong pervert didn’t lose his grip, didn’t let go, not for an instant. Justin smelled his so-called uncle’s hot and furious breath in his face as he tried to wrench the weapon away from him, but goddamn—no, there was no God and Stoat the pervert was still master, still stronger, still doom, getting the better of Justin—

  Wait. Someone was helping. Justin saw someone hammering Stoat across the knuckles with a jack handle and somebody else wrestling Stoat’s hard old arms away from the shotgun before he completed the thought, Quinn, Forrest. With the death weapon, the shotgun, in his possession, Justin stood up and stepped back while Stoat still lay sprawled on the floor.

  Forrest and Quinn left him there, both of them hurrying to tend to their mother. Lee lay far too still, and standing there with the shotgun heavy in his grasp, Justin heard Quinn and Forrest saying to her, “Mom? Mom?” but he did not hear her answer. Unconscious? Dead? God, please not dead, and he wanted terribly to see whether she was breathing, to go to her like her sons, yet some dark instinct made him glance at Stoat still lying dazed on the floor—

  No! Stoat was sitting up, and all in one quick motion he pulled his knife out of his pocket, opened the blade, lifted the weapon—

  Justin did not wait to see whether Stoat intended to throw the knife at Quinn, at Forrest, at Lee, or at him. Without wasting time putting the shotgun to his shoulder, he aimed it and pulled hard on both triggers, God help them all, please let there be a round left in one of the barrels—

  The concussion smothered the sound of his scream.

  Stoat’s chest exploded, spraying the room with red.

  With the shotgun still hanging in his hands, Justin stood dazed by the din of the gunshot ringing and echoing in his mind, by the spectacle of his all-powerful captor splayed like roadkill before him, by a sense of all solid footing falling away from underneath his sore, sneakered feet. He balanced on a knife-edge of time. His future uncertain, fearsome, the specter of prison bars looming. His recent past gone in a burst of red. He had killed—

  Killed Stoat?

  “Is he dead?” Justin whispered to the shifting cosmos, shifting between man and boy, the man declaring, Yes. Yes, it had to be done, and the boy begging, No, no, please, I didn’t mean it, not Uncle Steve—

  Lee’s voice said inside his head, He is SO not your uncle.

  “He was going to throw the knife,” Justin said a little bit louder. And what Stoat had done to Lee—would she be all right?

  With a sense of tension stretching, then snapping, a bond breaking, Justin shifted his stare from Stoat to Lee and her sons. Forrest knelt beside his mother holding her hand and whispering to her, although she appeared not to hear him. Quinn stood at a window talking rapid-fire on his cell phone. “. . . already on their way? Good, but we need an ambulance also. My mother. Yes, she has a pulse and she’s breathing but she’s unconscious. No, I can’t stay on the line. There are things I have to do.” He snapped his phone shut.

  Justin heard this without much comprehension, as if it were background noise, because his ears were still ringing and his mind clamoring. He watched without really seeing as Quinn lifted his mother’s feet to place a sofa pillow underneath them, then ran to the bedroom and returned with a blanket, which he spread over her. “Trying to keep her from going into shock,” he told his brother, his voice stretched thin.

  Forrest turned on him, shrill. “Kind of late, aren’t we? She moves down here all alone and we act like we don’t care and now—” He choked, trying to control tears.

  “Forrie, we can’t help it that we’re a pair of jerks too much like our father.”

  “But Mom!”

  “I know. I wish—I want—I hope to God she’ll be all right.”

  “She will. She’s got to.”

  “Mom, stay with us, okay, please?” Quinn crouched by Lee Anna’s head, stroked her hair, and said tenderly to her still, silent face, “Mom, we’re idiots, we—” His voice hitched. “We need you.”

  “We love you,” said Forrie, very low. “Hang in, Mom.”

  Mom. Justin heard the word profoundly, and something free-floating within him began to connect, react, and magnify like yeast rising in homemade bread until its warm swelling filled him and displaced all else. He had no room in him for hesitation, none for shame or fear, and no need for a weapon. He let the shotgun drop to the floor with a thud. Startled by the noise, Quinn and Forrest looked at him.

  “Could I borrow a phone, please?” asked Justin.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Supper, London broil with potatoes and asparagus, had been a strain for Amy, who had gotten out of the habit of cooking. But she had done her best not to let Chad know how stressed-out she felt, because she had made up her mind that Chad’s reconciliation with his father could only be good for him and Kyle and Kayla. And maybe even for him and her—but, loading the dishwasher, she did not yet dare to hope, or even think about his idea of going away together—

  The phone rang.

  “I’ll get it,” Amy yelled, heading toward the kitchen. Kyle and Kayla knew better than to answer the phone when it might be about Justin, but Amy didn’t want Chad and his dad, who were chatting in the living room, to be interrupted. “I’ll get it,” she repeated as she plucked the wireless from its cradle on the kitchen counter. “Hello?”

  A youthful, husky male voice with a hint of burr in it said, “Mom?”

  Amy’s body knew that voice, responded to it, as vibrant as a tuning fork: My child. Yet her quibbling mind could not believe, only question. She whispered, “Justin?”

  “Yeah, Mom, it’s me.”

  Amy screamed, a lovely, musical scream of sheerest soul-piercing joy. “Justin!”

  The conversation in the living room abruptly stopped.

  Amy heard Justin say, “Listen, Mom, are you listening?”

  At the same time she cried, “Justin, are you all right?”

  Chad came running into the kitchen with his father lagging a bit behind. Ned stopped at a polite distance. Chad grabbed Amy, putting an arm around her. This seemed so natural to her that she barely noticed, even though it had not happened for months.

  “Son, are you okay?” Chad yelled, although Amy still had the phone.

  Justin said, “Not really. I just killed somebody.”

  Amy gasped. Chad demanded, “What is it?” Amy could not answer.

  Justin kept speaking, his voice flat with shock. “I killed . . . him. You know, the one who took me. He had his knife out to throw. I killed him with the shotgun. I don’t know whether I’m in trouble.”

  “Justin, where are you?” Chad demanded, his face next to Amy’s, his mouth close to the receiver.

  “Maypop.”

  “Maypop,” Amy repeated for Chad. As her mind started to function, she clarified, “Justin, do you mean Maypop, Florida?” A small town they passed through on their way to Panama City.

  “Yes.”

  “We can be there in an hour,” she said to Chad.

  But Justin was the one who responded. “Please. The police are coming for me. I hear the sirens. I’d better go.”

>   Amy’s voice rose an octave. “No, Justin, stay on the line!”

  But only a click and silence answered her.

  She tried to put the phone back in the cradle, dropped it instead, and clung to Chad for support, feeling his arms tight around her, so natural she decided to forget that comfort had ever been gone, withheld. His embrace strengthened her.

  “Take a deep breath, honey,” he said. Honey. And he sounded as if he needed a deep breath too.

  “Oh, my God,” Amy said against his shoulder. “Oh, my God, I can’t believe it.”

  Without letting go of Chad, she was aware that Ned picked up the phone she had dropped, found the most recent number on its screen, and pressed the green Talk button. He listened, then shook his head.

  “Justin shut the phone off?” Chad demanded hoarsely.

  “Somebody did, or else somebody’s using it.”

  Amy let go of Chad and stood not quite steadily on her own.

  Ned said, “What are you waiting for, you two? Get going. I’ll take care of things here.”

  • • •

  Bernie Morales arrived first on the scene, in large part because he knew exactly where it was. As he got out of his cruiser in front of the pink house, a man opened the front door and beckoned to him urgently. “Bernie!” the man called. “Thank God!” and not until then did Bernie recognize him as Forrie Leppo. It was as if Forrest had been to war overnight, the past day had changed him so much. He looked steelier, sharper, like he’d been in combat. Even his voice had sharpened. “We need an ambulance!”

  “Coming right behind me.”

  Without answering, Forrest disappeared from the door. Heading inside, Bernie put his mind in first-responder mode to memorize the moment like a movie still. Forrest on his knees beside a woman lying under a blanket on the floor: his mother? Bernie didn’t ask, because he could see she was alive and being cared for, while the other person bleeding into the carpet looked very dead and that was a more serious matter. Bernie framed a mental snapshot of the guy’s face—what the hell was wrong with it?—and the bloody mess where his chest had been and the potentially deadly knife close to his slack right hand. He leaned down to touch one of the man’s wrists, checking the condition of the body—no pulse, but still warm. Then he straightened up and took in the rest of it: shotgun on the floor, boy sitting on the sofa looking stunned. Quinn sitting beside him, intent on a cell phone.

  It was not Bernie’s job to ask too many questions; that was for the detectives to do. He walked closer to Quinn and waited.

  Quinn held up the cellular, one of those smartphones that might as well have been a computer. He presented the screen for Bernie to see. Bernie wondered why he was looking at a photo of Justin Bradley. He remembered the case, a heartbreaker across the state line in Alabama, boy abducted in broad daylight, not found yet.

  Then he looked at the kid sitting next to Quinn. The kid faced up to look back at him, his eyes dazed, terrified.

  Bernie said, “Holy shit.”

  “Justin Bradley, meet Deputy Morales,” said Quinn.

  “Stoat had me,” said Justin Bradley hoarsely, looking at the body on the floor as if checking; was it still dead, or would it stand up and attack him?

  “Stoat!” Bernie exclaimed. “Is that him?” He stared at the swollen, discolored face that had been ugly enough to start with.

  The boy said all in a rush, “Yes. He was beating Lee, um, Miss Lee Anna with the shotgun. We got it away from him, but he was going to kill somebody with the knife. So I shot him.”

  “Bernie,” Quinn said urgently, “Justin’s parents are on their way, going crazy to have him back.”

  Another siren sounded, and more wheels pulled in, crunching the sand. Bernie parted the window drapes to look. “State police,” he reported.

  And the ambulance had arrived, apparently, because medics were swarming into the house with their equipment bags, pushing Forrest away so they could all crouch around the victim.

  “I have to get back to Mom.” Quinn sounded stretched pretty tight. “Bernie, Justin killed Stoat in self-defense. The creep was going to knife us. Does Justin have to stay here, or can he go to his parents?”

  “Is he a minor?”

  “Yes.”

  Sounding only a bit shaken up, Justin said, “Quinn, go on, take care of your mom. I’ll be okay.”

  “Justin, you’re the best.” Getting up, hasty and awkward on his long legs, Quinn thrust his cell phone at Justin. “Call your folks back and have them talk with Deputy Morales. Bernie, do you think you can work something out here?”

  More vehicles had pulled in, and Bernie caught a peripheral glimpse of his chief walking in the door. He knew better than to make any promises, although he badly wanted to. In Florida, the fact that the boy was underage did not mean he couldn’t be questioned. But it did mean he could be released into his parents’ custody if Bernie could keep him off the chief’s radar long enough. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  • • •

  I had become so accustomed to things being surreal that waking up in a neck restraint under intensely white lights amid medical equipment and people wearing scrubs seemed like just another phenomenon in the Stoat experience. Pain, yes, pain in the head and one arm and various parts of my midriff, definitely Stoat-related pain. Firmly in Stoat-Stoic mode, I accepted that there would be more of the same, and I took in my view of the ceiling and people’s heads without much curiosity until I saw a face, no, two faces almost hidden behind the others that jolted my heart even though I thought I must be mistaken, because it couldn’t be Quinn in a dirty shirt and beard stubble, or Forrest with a pale, strained face instead of a smile.

  Yet it was. My entire battered being knew, despite the objections of my brain; I experienced marrow-deep recognition to the extent that I snatched off my oxygen mask and tried to jump off the emergency room bed, screeching, “Forrie! Quinn!”

  Many hands restrained me, and many voices told me to lie still, but I paid attention only to the sound of Quinn’s voice telling me, “Chill, Mom,” and Forrest saying, “Relax, Mom, we’re right here,” and then the touch of their hands, awkward and gentle. They stood beside my bed stroking my shoulder, my face. “You’re in a hospital,” Quinn said as if I were senile. “You got hurt.”

  “Of course I got hurt! Stoat—”

  One of the medical professionals, a short, balding man in a white coat, interrupted. “Mrs. Leppo, do you remember how you were injured?”

  “Stoat clobbered me with his shotgun butt, trying to kill me! Where is the bastard?”

  Everyone ignored my question. “She remembers. That’s good, isn’t it, Doctor?” Forrest asked the medico.

  “It would seem to indicate a lack of concussion.”

  “So she has no brain injury after all?”

  “It’s too soon to be sure. No two brain injuries manifest in quite the same way.”

  I considered that I had acted brain-injured for most of my life, so what difference did it make? “Where,” I demanded more loudly, “is Stoat?”

  Quinn iterated, “Chill, Mom.”

  And Forrest. “Relax, Mom. You don’t have to worry about that Stoat dude anymore.”

  I was becoming almost as irritated at the pair of them as I was glad to see them. “Is Stoat in jail?”

  Without replying, my sons looked at each other, consulting.

  “He’s dead?” Forget being stoical; I felt suspense in the most literal way, as if I might lift right off the table.

  The doctor tried to intervene. “Now, Mrs. Leppo—”

  “Yes,” Quinn told me, “Stoat is dead.”

  “The cops killed him?”

  “No. Justin did.”

  “Justin!” Implications hit me one after another, whacking my brain with almost the same dizzying effect as Stoat’s shotgun butt. Justin was alive! Did his parents know? Justin had good reason to kill Stoat, but I knew him; he probably felt awful. Was he in trouble with the law? Or within himself? W
ho would help him? Would he have the good sense to call his parents? He was such a messed-up kid he might not. I had to do something.

  “I have to get out of here.” Again, I tried to sit up. Annoyingly, my sons helped hold me down.

  Quinn said, “Mom, you’re not going anywhere except to intensive care.”

  The doctor tried again. “Mrs. Leppo—”

  “Clymer,” I snapped at him. “My name is Clymer. Miss. I’m not married.”

  “She’s upset about Justin.” Forrest explained what he apparently considered my rudeness to the doctor.

  “Damn straight I am!” I could not seem to stop becoming unhealthily wrought. “Where’s Justin now?”

  “We don’t know, Mom. We left him at the house with the cops and came in the ambulance with you.”

  Cops?

  I wanted a lot more answers, but the people in scrubs began to roll me away somewhere. To my astonishment, Quinn kissed my cheek. I felt the prickle of his chin stubble on my skin. “I love you, Mom.”

  This astonished me so much and felt so good that I floated in time for a moment in which there was no Georg, no divorce, no Stoat, and no victim of Stoat. I was loved.

  Forrest prolonged the moment. “I love you, Mom.” He squeezed my hand.

  Then he had to let it go as nurses wheeled me off to an elevator. He and Quinn had to stay behind for some damn bureaucratic reason. But I felt only the warmth of their love all the way.

  • • •

  Maypop, Florida. Too damn apt. I may pop to pieces, Amy thought, because just the restraint of her seat belt felt unbearable. She felt swollen almost out of her skin by nebulous, shifting emotions, a cloud of anguished feelings that fogged her to her fingertips, even to her eyes, closing her in like the nightfall darkness pressing against the windows of the car.