Blink & Caution

by Tim Wynne-Jones

  Something is wrong.

  Kitty is almost out of the rain, under wide eaves. Now she slides her back down the log wall of the lodge. She didn’t like having her back to the clearing while she was looking through the window. She is afraid. That look on Niven’s face: what did it mean? Have they killed Blink? She can’t believe that — won’t believe that. The Moon came down from upstairs. Maybe Blink is up there somewhere?

  She dashes out from under the eaves and tries to see if there is a light on upstairs, forgetting that the windows are all boarded up. There are several gables. The place is huge, which is both bad and good. Bad, because he might be anywhere; good, because she might be able to get into the place and look around undetected, assuming there are only the two of them inside. She looks again through the downstairs window and is shocked to see the Moon’s broad back less than a foot away. She makes an involuntary gasp and is glad that the clattering of the rain will have masked the noise. But she reminds herself to be way more careful.

  The width of his back makes her shudder. She doubts he’s fast, but she has witnessed firsthand how stealthily he moves, closing a gap of ten meters without Blink ever being aware of this giant bearing down on him.

  She clears the wet hair from her face, wipes the rain out of her eyes, and risks a peek inside, more carefully this time. The Moon has been busy. Busy loading a rifle.

  The room at the dead end of the hall is cold and sad. You stand under the peak of the roof, which slopes down to the left and right. There’s a narrow bed with a black sleeping bag and a single thin pillow lying upon a thin mattress. There’s a heavy-looking chest of drawers against the far wall and no other furniture. You stare at the only touch of color in the place, a small rug braided out of rags. It reminds you of the rug Nanny Conboy had woven for the guest room at the cottage in the Beaches. You would stay with them in that tiny cottage to give your mother and father a break.

  Granda was a storyteller. He worked for CN Railway as a baggage handler, and he’d tell you tales that even as a little squirt you only half believed. Truth wasn’t the point of the exercise. You liked them, Nanny Dee and Granda Trick. Why didn’t you go to them, Blink? Were you just too angry at your father? Or now that you think about it, was it just that you were too frightened they would turn you away? “Ah, Brent, love, it’s good to have you for a weekend now and then, but look at this tiny home — a cottage, lad, little more. You go back to your mother; there’s a good lad.” Did they say that, or did you just imagine they would? Hardly matters now.

  “It’s not much,” says Wallace, “but it’ll have to do.”

  You’re not sure what he’s talking about. The money? Your life? No, of course not. He’s talking about this bare room.

  It smells of dust and mothballs and wet wood. It feels small with the rain just overhead, battering down, holding you in. Is she out there? you wonder. Has she gone for help? It’s hard to really believe she even exists. You knew her for twelve hours. When you try to summon her up, all you can see are those gray eyes.

  There is a large gabled window on the lake side, but you don’t see night through it. You walk over and lean against the sill. Through the glass you see black-painted wood shutters, closed tight, and whatever holds them shut is on the outside. The window itself is the kind divided in half midway up, with sash cords in grooves on either side to help raise the lower half of the window. Except that this window hasn’t been opened in a long time. It’s been painted over, who knows how many times. Painted shut.

  “I need the outhouse,” you say.

  “There’s a potty,” says Wallace, standing by the bed. He touches it lightly with the toe of his boot.

  “Yeah, but I need to go bad,” you say. “Really bad.”

  Wallace looks hard at you. He’s backlit, Frankenstein’s monster. You can only see half his face, but he’s frowning.

  “I won’t try nothing stupid,” you say.

  He looks up. The peak of the roof is just above his head. The rain is not hard but steady.

  “It’s urgent,” you say.

  You come out of the outhouse, and he’s waiting there for you, a rain jacket draped around his shoulders. There are five LED lights attached to the underside of his baseball cap. Your cap’s the same. The grass feels cold against your naked ankles. Your shoulders are soon damp. You draw them in, shivering. As you near the house, you look up at the lodge, shining your light on shuttered windows upstairs. The light catches a glimmer of metal on the nearest shutter; the fasteners, two of them, as far as you can tell, one high and one low, each of them S shaped, an S turned on its side.

  “What about a light?” you say to Wallace, when you are once more at your bedroom door.

  “I don’t smoke,” he says. “Might stunt my growth.” It’s a joke.

  “I’m”— act like it’s embarrassing —“I’m afraid of the dark.” Wallace rolls his eyes. “Seriously. I’ll be screaming all night.”

  He comes toward you, lays a big hand on your shoulder. “Oh, no you won’t,” he says, and his meaning is clear.

  “Really, man. Just a flashlight. Please?”

  He stares hard into your eyes, like he’s looking for something in a stuffed closet, but he doesn’t want to start searching for fear of causing an avalanche. He relents. He gives you a flashlight as thin as a Magic Marker. But its beam is bright.

  “Thanks.”

  He shakes his head. He’s been good, all things considered, but he’s had about enough of you.

  “Sweet dreams,” he says. Then he starts to pulls the door shut. He stops. “I’ll be sleeping next door,” he says. “I’m a light sleeper.”

  You get the message. Now he closes the door and locks it from the outside with the padlock Tank just put on. There’s only a hook and eye on your side of the door. You lean your ear against the door and listen to Wallace’s footsteps recede and then clump downstairs. Now the only noise is the rain on the roof. You wish it were louder.

  You go straight to work. You dig out the Swiss Army knife from your moccasin and head to the window. You set up the flashlight on the top of the sash of the lower window and you start chipping away at the paint. Paint falls like cream-colored snow at your feet.

  Chip, chip, chip.

  It’s Tank you’re most worried about. You get the feeling he’d have been happy to wring your scrawny neck and dump you in the middle of that unnamed lake. A “deep-six holiday” your stepdaddy liked to call it — liked to promise you if you didn’t smarten up.

  Chip, chip, chip.

  The paint flakes off in cream, then blue, then green. You are an archaeologist, Blink, chipping your way down through years and years of slapdash upkeep, and even if you get this window open, there’s still the shutter, and beyond that a steep roof and a rainy night.

  Chip, chip, chip.

  It’s hopeless, and yet it is all there is. You never really got the knack of hopeless. You’re too greedy for life to give up on it, aren’t you, boy? Always wanting a little bit more.

  You press your body against the cold glass. It wobbles under the weight of your shoulder; the sash shifts in its frame. You push up and it squeals a bit in resistance, so you stop and catch your breath and listen and try again. Bit by bit it lifts and lets in the coldness that seeps through the crack between the shutters. You shiver, but it is a good feeling. The more of a crack there is between the shutters, the more room you’ve got to slip the blade of your knife into it and try to loosen those outside fasteners.

  Which is when you hear footsteps clattering up the stairs.

  The sound is so sudden and so urgent, you jump back and the window slides down — barrels down — and you only just catch it at the last instant before it slams shut. You scrape your knuckles on the sill, sliding your hands under the falling window, pinching your hands under its weight. The steps are coming nearer, someone in a hurry. They’ve heard you somehow, even from downstairs. You scurry to your bed, but before you get there, the door next to yours opens. You go o
ver to the door and lean against it.

  Niven’s voice calls from downstairs. “You find it?”

  “Yeah,” booms Wallace. “I’ll be right there.”

  Then Wallace is in the hall again, closing his door after him.

  “What’s going on?” you call through the door.

  “Get to sleep,” he says.

  You slam your hands against the door. “Tell me!”

  The footsteps stop and return. “It’s nothing to do with you,” says Wallace outside your door. “Just another fire to put out.”

  “Fire? Get me out of here!”

  “Not that kind of fire. Now shut up and get to bed.” He goes, then he stops and comes back again, his footsteps heavy. It was stupid of you to talk to him. What if he comes in? What if he sees the mess you’ve made on the floor? “We’re going to be gone for a bit,” he says, “so your friend Tank is moving into my room to keep you company.”

  “No way, Wallace! He’ll kill me.”

  “Okay, then. How about I kill you right now so you don’t have to worry about it?”

  “Wallace,” shouts Niven from downstairs. “For God’s sake, let’s get going.”

  And that’s it. Next thing you know, you hear a vehicle outside. Is it just arriving? Yes, must be. You hear the engine cut off and a single door open and shut. One person. But Wallace said they were leaving. Then you hear a car door open and slam shut again. Is it a second person who had been waiting in the car and is only now getting out? Then another door slams and another. Three people leaving: Jack and Wallace and who else? You try to put together this arithmetic of sounds. Someone came and is taking Niven and Wallace away. That’s what you figure. Leaving you with Tank.

  But not just Tank. Kitty is out there somewhere. You want to believe it — have to believe it.

  There is also another presence: the Captain is back. He is howling. Someone has locked him in his cabin, and he is beating on the door and bellowing your name, damning you and blaming you for everything — everything.

  Shut up. Shut up. Shut up!

  You’re breathing hard now, trying to get ahold of yourself. There are footsteps on the stairs. If it’s Tank, he’s in no hurry. He’s probably enjoying the apprehension, the terror his slow approach must arouse in you. You’ve met his type before; they’re all about arousal, intimidation: the slap, the punch, the knee to the gut — all a kind of letdown compared to the torment leading up to it.

  The steps are in the hallway now. You beam your flashlight on the mess you’ve left by the window. There’s nothing you can do about it. You race barefoot back to your bed. You climb into your sleeping bag, open your knife, ready at your side.

  He knocks. Three times. “Ready for your kiss good night, Sunshine?”

  You squeeze the knife tight.

  “Hey,” he says, knocking again. “I’m talking to you, kid. Don’t you know it’s rude to ignore your elders?”

  The zipper of the sleeping bag is open all the way down to your feet. You plan it out. You’ll wait until he’s directly above you, then fling back the top, drive the knife home, and slide out of the bed onto the floor.

  “I think I’ll just check this old key to see if it works good,” he says.

  You hear the key enter the lock, turn, click it open.

  He’s standing there, backlit like Wallace was, and though he is half Wallace’s height, he is even more intimidating, for you can almost feel the hatred rolling off him.

  “I could just kill you and make it look like you tried to escape,” he says.

  You don’t say anything.

  “Huh?” he says. “Was that the sound of you pissing your pants?”

  You try to control your breathing. Use it. Use it to your advantage.

  “I’ve got this real fine rifle here, all loaded up and ready for bear,” he says. “I could just let you make a run for it and — kapow! — get you in the back. How’s that sound to ya?”

  He listens, hoping for a whimper, but what he gets is the even in and out of someone sleeping. It doesn’t sound all that convincing inside your head, but it’s going to have to do. Murdering you in your bed will probably not pass muster with his boss. So he’s going to have to wake you up if he wants to kill you. That gives you at least some kind of chance.

  You can hear him growl, low in his throat. He’s not the kind of bully who likes to think he’s wasted a perfectly good threat. “You ain’t asleep,” he says. And you know what’s going to happen next — he’ll come to check. But just then you hear the tinny sound of a cell phone ringing, playing some rock riff.

  He swears and answers the call. He does a lot of “yes, boss-ing” and then closes your door and locks it, with the call still in progress.

  Saved by the bell.

  You wait for his return, dying to get up and get at the shutters that stand between you and the outside, and yet afraid to move. It seems an eternity before you hear him coming upstairs again and the door next to yours opening and closing. Tank has taken over Wallace’s room — just one thin wall away.

  I am his guard, she thinks. I am his guardian angel. And like a guardian angel, there is little I can do, thinks Kitty. Just be here. That’s all.

  She had defined her job as learning the lay of the land, learning as much as she can, not getting caught. Along the way she has added to this the job of making things difficult for Blink’s captors. But now her job has changed to just being here. Bearing witness. She must see what happens and faithfully record it.

  This boy. He is ten months younger than she is, but he seems so much younger sometimes. So open — she’d seen that in him at first glance. She could recall him in the emptiness of Union Station waiting to buy his train ticket, pulling out that fistful of bills, his palm flat, unrolling the needed amount. He might as well have had a SUCKER sign on his back. All she’d needed to do was create a situation where he would expose himself like that again.

  But there is nothing else weak about him, she thinks. He is bold — reckless, perhaps — but full of this crazy kind of certainty that is like a tonic to her. In his determination to turn things to his advantage, he seems invincible in a way. Somehow he’d convinced her, against her better judgment, to join in on this whole scheme. So she feels guilty for knowing better and yet falling for it. Falling for his eagerness, the way it lights up his eyes.

  She owes him, she thinks. She robbed him and then let him rob her of her own good sense. Good sense? What a laugh! She’d spent most of the year flaunting her complete lack of good sense. A death wish? Yes. Probably. And then this desire, every bit as overwhelming, not to die. Was that what happened to her Wednesday morning? Waking up like that with this grand scheme to collect money from Drigo? And is this what she has collected? Or had the desire to stay alive come with this brave and foolish boy?

  She remembers something Wayne-Ray said about it being okay to be numb. That being numb gave the body a chance to recover. She isn’t numb anymore. Blink Conboy has woken her up. If she was his guardian angel, she’d been asleep at the wheel. That wouldn’t happen again.

  She makes herself as comfortable as she can under the eaves. At the darkest corner of the lodge. She is more or less dry, but shivering with a cold that has winter written all over it. Her new denim gaucho jacket is too short and not at all warm. She had chosen it because it showed off her figure. She wanted him to like her.

  The rain picks up, gusting off the unseen lake, black and shifting, playing the bass note to the wind’s lead. She had placed herself in the lee of that wind. She begins to think about the sheds across the clearing. Perhaps there is somewhere inside one of those small outbuildings where she might curl up small, like a sow bug under a rotten board. When the lights go off in the lodge maybe. When everything settles down. But, no, she will stay here. It’s not like punishment. Not really. She wants to stay here because of the boy inside who needs her.

  She must have nodded off, because suddenly she is awoken by a clatter across the yard and an almighty sh
out of pain.

  She half suspects a bear, until the swearing starts. A string of curses no bear would be likely to use. Apparently Tank has stumbled across her trap.

  She can’t resist the urge to sneak to the corner of the lodge to see him, in the light spilling across the yard from above the doorway. He appears, swearing and hobbling, rain streaming off his ball cap. Limping badly.

  The Moon opens the door. “What’s all the racket?” he asks.

  “My foot!” yells Tank. “A fucking nail.”

  Kitty makes her way back to her safe corner and only makes it just in time, because lights suddenly appear in the woods, like a false and hurried sunrise. It’s a car coming. She dives into the bush as the vehicle enters the yard, its headlights raking the back wall of the lodge as it turns around.

  It’s a black SUV. A man jumps out and runs, covering his head, toward the door. He’s lanky. So is this the Snake at last?

  He enters the lodge, slamming the door behind him, but almost right away returns to the vehicle, followed by two more figures: the Moon and, under a black umbrella, Jack Niven, a briefcase in his hand.

  Kitty waits, fearfully, expecting Tank to appear next with Blink all trussed up and gagged. There will be nothing she can do. Create a diversion? Throw herself in front of the SUV? Or drive the ATV like crazy back to the Jeep and pursue them? But considering the speed at which the Snake pulled into the yard, the SUV will have put many miles between her and them by the time she would be able to follow.

  Her horrifying speculations arise and are resolved almost instantaneously. No sooner has the car door shut on Jack Niven than the SUV wheels around in the yard and takes off up the road.

  So, as far as Kitty knows, there is just Tank left now — Tank with a wounded foot. Better odds, she thinks.