“That’ll do just fine,” Riley said.
* * *
Lane waited in the car while Riley went back inside his home. A few minutes passed. Then he came out and climbed into the passenger seat. “I told the old lady we’re going to a matinee.”
Lane took the paper out of her blouse pocket. She checked the second address.
“What’s that?”
“It’s where Kramer lives.”
“All right.”
She put the paper away and started to drive.
“I’ve got something for him,” Riley said. He tugged up a cuff of his blue jeans, reached down and came up with a knife. Lane glanced at it. The thing looked wicked. Its blade must’ve been eight inches long.
“Here’s how we’re gonna work it,” he said. “You keep the motherfucker covered with the gun. I’lldo him. Don’t you go shooting him up unless he makes a break for it.”
“We’ll be each other’s alibis,” Lane said, her voice shaking.
“Fuck alibis. I don’t care if they get me for it.”
“I do. And I’m sure your mother does. If we’re caught, we might not get charged with anything, or end up with suspended sentences. I mean, I don’t think a jury’s going to put us away for this. But let’s try to work it so the cops don’t come looking.”
“Oh yeah? How do you figure we can manage that?”
“Why don’t we make it look like suicide?”
“Fuck that. I’m gonna cut his dick off. I’m gonna cut his head off.”
“Maybe we can make him write a suicide note. Make him confess what he did to Jessica. On paper. Then we hang him. Right there in his house.”
“You read too many fucking books.”
“It’s worth a try.”
On Kramer’s street, two blocks from where his house should be, Lane swung the car to the curb. She faced Riley. He had the knife in his right hand, rubbing its blade along the leg of his faded jeans.
“Why don’t we walk from here?” she said. “That way, nobody’s likely to connect the car with what happens to Kramer.” She paused and tried to catch her breath. She hadn’t been doinganything, but she felt as if she’d just finished dashing up a few flights of stairs. “I’ll go on ahead first. Give me a couple of minutes head start.”
“You’ll be alone in there with him.”
“Don’t I know it,” she muttered. She lifted the bag onto her lap and dropped the keys inside. After a quick look around to make certain no one was in sight, she took out the revolver. She set the bag on the floor. Leaning back against the seat, she untucked her blouse, lifted its front, and slid the muzzle under the waistband of her skirt. It only went down an inch before pushing against her pubic mound. Lowering the blouse, she held the gun against her belly. She opened the door and climbed out.
“Good luck,” Riley said.
“Thanks.” She shut the door. Facing the car, she slipped the revolver farther down until it was snug between her skirt and body. She glanced down at herself. The hanging front of her blouse concealed the bulges.
The back of the blouse was glued to her skin. She peeled it away, but as soon as she let go, it stuck again.
There was no sidewalk in this neighborhood, so she walked along the edge of the road. The barrel pressed her groin. The front sight sometimes scraped the inner side of her left thigh, so after a while she nudged the gun butt sideways. Then the muzzle was stroking her right thigh with each step she took. But it was smooth, and didn’t scratch her the way the sight did.
She remembered last night with the bottom of the crucifix stuffed in her jeans.
Last night, a cross. Today, a revolver.
It’s a weird damn world, she thought.
She glanced back. The Mustang was a block away, Riley still in the passenger seat.
She kept walking.
A mortal sin, she thought. I’ll be risking Hell, murdering Kramer. Even if it’s Riley who does the dirty work. I’ll be just as guilty as him in the eyes of God.
What am I supposed to do, let Kramer go on raping me? Let him kill Mom and Dad?
It’s self-defense. Lane didn’t know a lot about Church policy, but it seemed like allowances were made for killing people in self-defense, war, that kind of thing. She sure hoped so.
At the next corner she took the paper out of her pocket. She unfolded it. Squinting as the white paper glared sunlight, she read the address again: 838.
She looked back. Riley was out of the car.
She put the paper away. She rubbed a sleeve across her face to dry the sweat. She continued walking. The sun felt like a hot blanket on her back. She wanted to reach around and pluck at the seat of her panties, but Riley was sure to see her do it.
The house to her right was 836.
Next door was Kramer’s. A small, adobe house with a picture window. Its driveway was empty.
Gasping for breath, heart slamming, leg muscles feeling as soft as pudding, she walked up the driveway.
No garage. A carport instead.
The station wagon wasn’t in the carport.
It wasn’t anywhere in sight.
He’s not home!
After all this, she thought, he hasto be.
She mounted the front stoop. She rang the door bell, and heard quiet bells from inside the house.
She waited.
She wished she could catch her breath.
She slipped a hand under the front of her blouse and wrapped sweaty fingers around the grips of her father’s revolver. The barrel moved, nudging her groin. She thought about Kramer’s mouth down there.
“Come on, you bastard,” she muttered.
* * *
They found his station wagon fifteen minutes later in the crowded parking lot of the marina.
The chain-link gate, which had been locked last night, now stood open. Lane didn’t pass through it. She stood there, alone, and peered at Kramer’s deserted slip.
Then she went back to the car. She opened the door, pulled the revolver up high enough so its barrel wouldn’t dig into her, then slid into the driver’s seat.
“He’s out in his boat,” she said.
“Shit.”
“God, I don’t know. Maybe it’s just as well.” She took the gun out of her blouse and stuffed it into her denim bag.
“Just as well, my ass.”
“Would’ve been tough getting away with it here. Awful lot of people around.”
“Yeah, but we could’ve deep-sixed him in the river.”
“I know.”
“Shit,” Riley said again.
“There’s nothing we can do about it. We’ll have to figure out something else.”
“Like what?”
Shaking her head, Lane backed up the car. She drove toward the parking lot exit. “He’s gonna want me again. He said Monday or Tuesday. He’ll probably want me to meet him someplace. Someplace where we’ll have privacy. Maybe I can let you know ahead of time. You can be waiting.”
“Sounds good.”
Lane steered onto Shoreline. “Want to go to the mall?”
“Okay with me.” He gave her a strange look. “Do you?”
“Yeah, I think so. It’ll give me time to calm down.”
“You forgetting who you’re with?”
She glanced at him. “Riley Benson. Tough guy. Just don’t try getting tough with me, okay?”
“Not with you,” he said. Then he added, “Lane.”
Forty-three
During the day, Uriah stayed in a dry wash some distance from the road.
He had tried to eat jerky that morning, but found that he couldn’t chew it without sending horrible pulses of pain through his jaw and cheeks. He was able to drink water, though some dribbled out through the holes in his face. And he was able to sleep.
He dreamed the vampires got him. He recognized all of them. All were demons he had slain, but they were slain no longer. They came shrieking at him through the desert sunlight. They brought him down. They stripped off his a
nimal skins. They took the hammer and stakes from his pack. Holding him down, they pounded the wooden spikes through his hands and feet. They nailed him to the ground. Crucified him. As he writhed in torment, one ripped the patch off his eye. He looked up out of the depths of the socket, thinking, How strange! He could see with both eyes. The vampires were all around him, down on their knees, hunger and delight in their eyes, drool spilling down their chins. Their hands moved over his body as if trying to awaken his lust. Horrified, he realized they were succeeding. I must resist, he thought. I am God’s warrior. The faces lowered onto him. He felt their mouths all over. Sucking him. Instead of pain, he felt ecstasy. This is wrong! Lips pressed against his mouth. A tongue thrust in. Other tongues slithered through the holes in his cheeks. Another pushed into his anus. As he wondered how that was possible, flat on his back the way he was, a tongue entered the tip of his penis and snaked in deep and he squirmed. Another slid into his empty socket. He realized he was not pinned to the ground by stakes. The wooden shafts had turned into vampire tongues that writhed inside the holes in his hands and feet. Then tongues were sliding into his body where he had no openings, melting in through his flesh, filling him.
Uriah twisted and bucked in an agony of exquisite pleasure and woke up as pain flared in his right cheek. He found the tip of his forefinger inside the bullet hole. Wincing, he eased it out. He sat up and gently held both sides of his face.
Night had come.
In the frenzy of his dream he’d tossed his blanket away. He dragged it toward him and clutched it around his shoulders. But he couldn’t stop shaking.
Satan had visited that dream upon him. Trying to tempt him. Trying to weaken his resolve.
I amGod’s warrior, he told himself. I won’t fail.
He got to his feet, picked up the satchel that held his weapons and useless food wrapped the blanket around himself, and climbed the loose gravel wall of the wash.
Soon he came to the road. He looked both ways. There were no headlights.
During the whole of the night, as he made his way toward Mulehead Bend, Uriah encountered no headlights. Not once was he forced to flee from the road and hide. He made good time.
When the horizon began to go pale, he climbed to the top of a bluff. From there he could see the Colorado River in the distance — a broad, twisting ribbon of slate bordered by lights like hundreds of stars that had fallen to the desert near its shores.
Streetlights. A few slowly moving headlights. Porch lights. Maybe even lights from the windows of homes where people had already started their day or spent a sleepless night.
Uriah wondered which of the lights might be glimmering from the lair of the vampires.
Maybe none.
Tomorrow night he would be in among those lights. He would sneak into the lair and put Satan’s children to rest.
Forty-four
A hand gently shook Lane awake. “Time to rise and shine, honey,” her mother said.
Monday morning.
Her stomach clenched.
“Okay,” she muttered. When she was alone, she rolled onto her side, hugged her belly and drew her knees up.
I can’t go to school, she thought. I just can’t.
I’ve got to.
Yesterday she’d told Riley that she would talk to Kramer after class and arrange to meet him.
But that was yesterday. It was easy to make brave plans when you were safe with someone else and talking about tomorrow. Now she was alone and this was the day she had to do it. Not quite the same. Not the same at all.
Curling up more tightly under the covers, Lane pictured herself in sixth period. Sitting at her desk. Right next to Jessica’s empty desk. Right in front of the table where Kramer always perched when he talked to the class. He would be sitting up there, all smug and handsome, acting as if nothing had happened. But sneaking glances at her. Calling on her sometimes. And all period long he would be thinking about how she looked naked, remembering the things he’d done to her, daydreaming about what he would do the next time he got her alone.
I can’t go, Lane thought. I can’t sit there in front of him. Not for an hour, not for a second. I’d go crazy.
So don’t.
Right away she felt better.
Uncurling, she rolled face down. The mattress pushed against her bruised body, but didn’t hurt very much.
The pressure against her breasts reminded Lane of opening her blouse for Riley yesterday. She felt the heat of a blush spreading over her skin. She hadn’t been embarrassed at all when she did it, but now she could hardly believe she’d shown herself to him. Right by the street in broad daylight. It seemed as if someone else had done that. A different Lane.
The same, different Lane who’d walked up to Kramer’s door with a gun shoved into her skirt.
I must’ve been crazy.
What if Kramer’d been home? What if we’d actually murdered him?
Didn’t happen, she told herself.
Her breasts were starting to ache now, so she rolled onto her side, pushed away the covers and sat on the edge of the bed. She’d worn a jersey nightshirt instead of a nightgown, just in case Mom or Dad should see her without a robe. The gowns were either low-cut or diaphanous, or both, and no good for concealing her injuries. The crew-neck jersey hid everything. Though not at the moment. Her rump was bare from scooting across the mattress, and the nightshirt was rumpled on her lap.
Lane glanced at the closed door, then peered down at herself. Her thighs were bruised, but some of the areas that had looked chafed and red now seemed okay. She pressed the gathered fabric to her belly and leaned forward. The edges of her vulva no longer looked raw. She lifted the nightshirt above her breasts. They were looking better, too. The bruises weren’t so dark. They’d changed from deep purple to a greenish-yellow color.
A few more days, Lane thought, I’ll be good as new.
On the outside.
Next time, maybe he won’t hurt me.
There won’t be a next time!
She let the nightshirt drift down to her waist, raised herself off the bed for a moment while she pulled it beneath her, then sat again and spread the fabric snug against her thighs.
There has to be a way out of this, she told herself.
Yeah, kill him.
Yesterday she could’ve done it. Or helped, at least.
But now the idea of murdering Kramer seemed so much bigger. Enormous. She felt as if it would cast a black cloud over her life that might never go away.
I can’t kill him. I can’t tell on him. I can’t let him get me again.
I could kill myself.
The idea shocked Lane, sent a sickening flood of heat rushing through her body.
If I kill myself, he won’t have any reason to go after Mom and Dad. But it’d ruinthem. I’d burn in Hell, for sure. And everything...
Fuck that.
She stood up quickly, walked to the closet and put on her robe.
There hasto be a way out.
Yeah, stay the hell home from school. That’s a way out, at least for today. Worry about tomorrow tomorrow.
Maybe Riley’ll take care of him without me. If I just stay out of it long enough. If Kramer doesn’t come after me in the meantime.
Lane stepped into her slippers. She left her bedroom, made a quick trip to the toilet and relieved herself, then headed for the kitchen. Mom, unloading the dishwasher, looked around at her. “You’re not dressed.”
“I’m really feeling rotten today,” she said, giving her voice a low, groany tone.
“What is it?”
“You name it. Cramps, a headache, the trots. I’ve got it all.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, honey.”
She shrugged and frowned. “I’ll live, I guess. But I don’t think I’m up for school.”
“What about Henry and Betty?”
Lane grimaced. She’d forgotten about them. About George, too. She’d phoned George yesterday after coming back from the mall, and he’d sounded eager to
ride with them. “I guess I could go ahead and take them, and then just come home.”
“No, if you’re not feeling good enough to go to school... I suppose I can pick them up. Just this once. Since they’re expecting you.”
“That’d be great.”
“They have other ways of getting home, don’t they?”
“Oh, yeah. They can always work something out. There’s a guy named George, too. We got to know each other at the play. I was going to give him a ride today.”
Mom nodded. “All right. Well, get me their addresses and I’ll take care of it.”
“That’s wonderful. Thanks a lot, Mom.”
“Would you like me to make you something before I go?“
“I don’t feel much like eating. I’ll come out when I get hungry, okay?”
“Well, suit yourself. You’ll feel better, though, once you have some food inside you.”
Lane poured herself a mug of coffee, then went into the living room. Dad was in his usual chair, dressed in the sweat clothes he usually wore after getting up, a mug in one hand, a paperback in the other.
“Morning, sweetheart,” he said. “How’s it going?”
“Not so hot. I’m staying home sick. Mom said it’s okay.”
“A touch of the flu?” he asked.
“Something like that, I guess. Anyway, I feel rotten. I’m going back to bed pretty soon.” She took a sip of coffee. “Are you all excited about tonight?”
He wrinkled his nose. “I don’t know whether I’m excited or just scared.”
“If it bothers you, why not skip it?”
“Not that simple,” he said. “What would I do about the ending of my book?”
“That can be the ending. You make an ethical choice, or whatever, not to meddle with the thing. Let sleeping dogs lie. That could be the theme of the book.”
Nodding, he laughed softly. “Not a bad idea. Do youthink we shouldn’t take the stake out?”
“Hell, I wouldn’t have brought any corpse home in the first place.”
“I wishwe hadn’t. God knows.” He shrugged. “But now that she’s here...”
The Stake Page 38