THE TRAP

by Tabitha King

  Rand rolled against the wall and pushed himself into a sitting position. He shook his head to clear it, but it still hurt fiercely where the lamp had broken. He applied his teeth to the knots in the ties. The woman had been too hasty; he was out of his bonds in half a minute. He scrambled to his feet and loped to the living room to snatch up his snowsuit and boots. Carrying his boots, by their strings, in his teeth, he kept moving as he dressed, so he had his legs in his snow pants and camouflage jacket and was half-zipped up by the time he hopped to the back door. She had not closed it. The snow was blowing into the house in cold little puffs. He stopped on the porch to pull on his boots. Looking quickly at the sky, Rand could see it was not that it was still snowing all that much, but the wind was blowing erratically, spraying the light dry granules in all directions. The tracks she and the boy had made were still discernible, but they wouldn’t be for long. Bare-headed, Rand plunged into the woods after them.

  Behind him, The Poor stepped delicately through the open door, onto the path beaten through the snow on the porch. She watched the man hurrying into the woods. He kept his eyes on the ground, following tracks. Curious, she began to stalk him, bounding lightly in his bootprints.

  Gordy crouched next to Ricky’s body, sniveling. In a few minutes, he began to feel the cold. It came to him he ought to get help. He peered around, staring at the lake, at the woods, at the fringe of orchard he could see, mounting the hill behind Miss Alden’s house. Her driveway that snaked down the hill from the cottage road was buried beneath the snow. Rand was closest, back at the Russells’ house. Probably fucking that woman again. Rand would be very angry if Gordy interrupted him, and he was going to be even angrier when he found out Ricky was dead. But there was no getting around it. He would have to know about it, and so would daddy and mum. Maybe no one would blame him. He was already hurt. Maybe they would all say “Poor Gordy.”

  Gordy hauled himself up on the porch railing. He did not think at all about Ricky. It had not occurred to him yet that Ricky’s petty torture and molestation was at an end. He didn’t think about covering Ricky’s body, or moving it out of the weather. Dead was dead. The body was gruesome, yes, but otherwise of no interest. He understood only vaguely that Ricky had tripped some kind of trap, without wondering who had set the trap or why. It was no more than he and Ricky and Rand and daddy had done to hundreds of animals over the years, and he no more wondered about who and why than did those animals in their death throes. He wiped his mouth with the back of his mitten. The wind blustered down the lake in a long shriek. Gordy suddenly felt wet and realized he had peed himself. Again. His face went hot with shame. Now he was really in for it. He started to cry. The hot tears stung his cheeks and reminded him he was very cold. He shivered and turned instinctively toward the shelter of the house. But Ricky’s body lay between him and the threshold. He stared into the interior twilight of Miss Alden’s house. At first there were just shapes and shadows, but suddenly he saw, with instant recognition of its significance, the gleam of light in the lucite circle of the telephone dial. He could call Rand. Eagerly, he stepped over Ricky’s body. Then he remembered Rand had torn out the telephone line at the Russells’ house. This was disheartening, and Gordy started to turn away. Something in the slow-workings of his brain turned, too, and reminded him that he could call daddy. Clumsily, he trod on Ricky’s hand, turning himself around. But he was grinning as he stepped over the threshold. It came to him he had stepped on Ricky’s hand, and he felt a fresh rush of embarrassment, mostly at his clumsiness. It was not very different from what he would have felt if Ricky were still alive and had sworn at him for the transgression. It was better inside, where the wind didn’t cut right through him or throw gritty snow in his eyes, but it was gloomy and he had to wait a few seconds for his sight to adjust to the semidark. The light from the open doorway helped a little. He stepped forward, and felt something brush his arm. Someone quicker might have stepped back reflexively. But Gordy wasn’t that quick. What he was, was hurting from the burns on his legs. He staggered, and the second shotgun blast shattered his right arm. He drew in his breath instinctively, and passed out from shock before he could let it out in a scream.

  Liv heard the second shotgun blast from inside the gingerbread house-studio. She had opened the kiln door; it was large enough for both herself and Travis to hide in the firemouth, but first she had to remove the racks and saggers, the forms that held the greenware while it was being fired.

  The sound of the shotgun froze her. All at once she realized their tracks led directly to the studio and stopped there. She didn’t need to look around to realize the studio was a trap, one door in, no place inside that wasn’t visible through the windows, and no way out. All Rand would have to do is torch the place. If he didn’t just break in and start throwing open cupboards and doors.

  She grabbed Travis by the hand and hauled him toward the door. No time even to tell him what she was doing. They plunged out the door and into the snow.

  Rand erupted out of the woods. He shouted in triumph. They both saw the glint of the gun in his hand.

  She and Travis sprinted into the woods. She heard Rand laugh, and yell, but the wind took his words away.

  They did not hear the shot until it pinged into a tree trunk just ahead of them. The wind shrieked distantly, and snow whirled around them. Travis’ short legs could not keep up with her. His weight strained her arm from its sockets as she dragged him. She zigged and zagged, using the trees and brush for cover. In the brief silences when the wind caught its breath, she could hear Rand behind them, panting and gasping, in counterpoint to her own desperate breathing, and Travis’. Like them, he was forced to slog through the deep snow, not running so much as climbing it. It slowed and tired them, yielding niggling returns for their effort. She prayed for a great wind, a whirlwind to blind him, and to cover their path.

  Who was firing the shotgun, and at what or whom? Friend or Foe? Was it someone who would help them?

  They went downhill, because that was the lie of the land. It was not a direction they chose so much as they were driven to it. She knew Ricky and Gordy had gone to Miss Alden’s. That was also the direction the shots had come from, she was sure of it, hearing the second one. It was closer, and so were she and Travis, since the studio lay on the path to Miss Alden’s. Was it too much to hope that fate had brought Miss Alden to her house, that she had stood off Ricky and Gordy, perhaps even wounded or killed them, and that there might be shelter there for Travis and Liv, shelter from Rand? Otherwise, she and Travis were being driven into a trap, right into Ricky and Gordy’s collective arms. She decided she and Travis would go, if they could make it that far, close enough to Miss Alden’s to look. If they crept through the woods and the orchard, cautiously, they might be able to tell what had happened. In any case, they couldn’t go home again.

  Travis staggered and fell. His hand slipped free of Liv’s. She cried out in exasperation and fear.

  Looking back the way they had come, she saw Rand’s dark shape among the trees. At the same instant he saw her and dropping to one knee, took aim.

  Seizing Travis by the armpits, Liv picked him up. His weight nearly unbalanced her. She staggered backward.

  The bullet Rand fired passed downward along its already distorted trajectory and clipped her right knee. The thick snowsuit further slowed and deflected it, and then kept the bone splinters tight against the bone, and began to absorb blood. She fell, letting Travis go. At once, she picked herself up, grabbed Travis by the hand, and dragged him onward. Blood spattered evergreen needles and juniper bushes, and the snow. Even if we get out of his sight, she thought, he’ll be able to track us now. Just looking for blood.

  She and Travis reached Miss Alden’s boundary line before she stopped. Rand was somewhere behind them, but they had somehow, miraculously, gained ground. They knew these woods a little better than he did, maybe. She pushed Travis under bushes, whipped off her scarf, and tied it around her knee. A glance around, then she dove
back through the snow to a huge old hemlock that overhung their passage through the woods. She could hear Rand now. Liv grabbed a low-hanging branch of the hemlock and hauled it back, wrapping it backward, so both she and it were hidden by the trunk. She held her breath and hugged the rough bark. Rand plunged into view, along the pathway she and Travis had made. He held the gun in his hand. She let him almost reach the hemlock before she let go. It whooshed out of her hand. Snow exploded from the whipping branch. Rand yelped when it caught him in the face and knocked him backward. The gun flew from his hand into the snow. He lay flat on his back, the wind knocked out of him, blinded by the needles that had slammed into his face.

  Travis literally flew through the air as Liv hauled him out from under the bushes. His first step in the snow was a running one.

  Rand lay stunned for precious minutes. Gradually his vision cleared, and as he stared up into the branches of the hemlock overhead, the cat suddenly materialized there, squatting in the tree like a malevolent bird, staring down at him. The cold and the snow spitting in his face spurred him to move. But when he did, his head ached fiercely. He hunkered in the snow, holding his head and shivering. Snow whispered down the back of his neck. He wiped his running nose on the back of his hands. His ears burned with the cold, and so did his fingers. His own body heat was melting the snow in his hair so his head was damp. Melted snow trickled along his temples and in front of his ears into his collar. He blinked away droplets from his eyebrows. The world around him was abruptly silent, as the woman and the boy slipped beyond his hearing. He poked desultorily in the snow for the gun, but it was gone.

  He tried to think over the roar of anger that possessed him. The woman had knocked him on his ass twice. She had escaped. Behind him he had left clear, convicting evidence for Walter McKenzie to find any time now: his snow machine. Somewhere out there the woman and the boy were living witnesses. She would have him charged with rape, assault, breaking and entering, enough felonies to put him in Shawshank until he was a fat cockless old man like his father. The best he could hope was that she would run right into the open arms of his brother Ricky. Ricky was out there, with Gordy. But so was someone with a shotgun, and they had used it twice. The gunfire had come from the direction of Miss Alden’s. He would be kidding himself not to assume that Ricky and Gordy had had the ill-luck to surprise the old dyke herself, and that she had succeeded in defending herself and her property. If Miss Alden had taken Ricky and Gordy out, that meant the woman and the boy had a chance of reaching safety with the formidable old bitch. And if he could figure that out, so would the woman. She was undoubtedly headed toward Miss Alden’s. At least he knew where she was going. No need to track her. He could go back and get his machine and ride over there. Give her time to get nervous about where he was or maybe make the mistake of thinking he had given up.

  It was enough to make him smile. He hauled himself to his feet and set off, a little unsteadily at first, the way he had come. Behind him, the cat dropped out of the tree, landing neatly on all fours according to folk wisdom, and leapt away, over the snow, in the same direction, but not following him, merely using his tracks, in the time-honored, practical way of cats.

  At some point, Liv stopped thinking. She just kept moving. Once in a while she came down on her wounded knee just right and staggered as it punished her. It only took happening once for her to learn to favor it. That was not enough, in their rough passage, to forestall all discomfort, but she had painkillers in her system, and a degree of shock to help her onward. There was an instant of relief when she realized she and Travis were now struggling steeply downhill, the way the land tilted abruptly toward Miss Alden’s house. Seconds later, they broke out of the woods onto the slope they had been sliding on yesterday. Just below them, Miss Alden’s house, the old Dexter place, still stood, thick-walled as a fortress. The shutters were closed and there was no smoke from the chimney. It looked as empty and lifeless as it had the day before. The driveway remained unplowed; there was no car, or four-wheel-drive vehicle visible. That small hope that Miss Alden was there, defending her property, faded and Liv felt more than a little heartsick. She wondered if the wind had played a trick on her, distorted the sound of the gunshots so they had only sounded as if they had come from this direction.

  She held her fingers to her lips, signaling Travis to keep quiet. He could not have said anything if he wanted; he was out of breath, all but done in.

  It didn’t matter, Liv decided, if Miss Alden was there with a protective gun or not. If the two of them could get into the house, they could hide there. They would be safe, until Walter found their own house empty and in disarray and came looking for them. That could not be long now. She did not think about her knee. There was nothing she could do about it. She had to think about where Ricky and Gordy might be, how close Rand was to them.

  “Travis,” she whispered. “We’re going to be commandos.”

  He nodded. The old familiar game.

  They crept from tree to tree in the orchard, until they were close to the house. Liv kept glancing back at the woods, but Rand did not appear, nor did she hear anything to suggest he was at hand. Ahead, in the house, there were no sounds of habitation or battle—only the wind, which seemed to want to pick them up and blow them against the side of the house. They put their backs to the stone walls and began to sidle toward the corner. Liv peeked cautiously around it.

  She could see the length of the back porch. She could see someone lying there, in front of the door. The snow was feathering long fingers over him. She could see the straw-colored hair, and the pink hue of the snow on his unmoving, disturbingly ragged chest. Ricky, she knew at once, was dead. She felt suddenly faint. She drew back and sank to her unwounded left knee. The right she held straight but let slip to one side a little, so it was for a moment bearing none of her weight.

  Travis crouched beside her. “Mom?” he whispered.

  She covered his mouth gently with her hand. She drew a deep breath. “Stay here,” she whispered.

  She dragged herself on the one good knee to the corner of the porch. From there she could see the yard. There were snowmobile tracks coming up from the beach, fast disappearing under blowing snow. She crept around the corner and came to a stop, hunkered down below sight of anyone in the house.

  Gordy sat on the top step. His arm hung in tatters at his side. His snowsuit was soaked with blood from his collar to his boots. His eyes were closed.

  Liv scuttled back, and gestured to Travis. He scooted around the corner. She stopped him and hugged him.

  “There’s a body,” she whispered, “and one of them’s badly wounded. Don’t look if you don’t want to.”

  Travis squeezed her hands.

  She leaned on him a little as they approached the steps together and was surprised at the degree of support he seemed willing and able to give her.

  But he moaned involuntarily at the sight of Gordy.

  Liv held on to him tightly.

  Gordy opened his eyes.

  She gasped and Travis grabbed her leg tightly, making her wince.

  Gordy’s eyes rolled. He tried to focus them. He pushed himself forward, and slipped down to the next step, with a thump. He grinned at her. He found the porch railing with his good hand and hauled himself, face a rictus of effort, to a standing position. He staggered to the next step, and then to the last. He let go of the railing and stood, weaving before them.

  Liv and Travis stepped backward.

  Gordy held out his good hand, and then pitched forward onto his face into the snow.

  Liv dropped down next to him and turned him over, as gently as she could. He grinned at her. He moved his good arm in the snow, up and down, making a one-winged angel. He looked up at her.

  “Ol’ bitch,” he said. “Trap.”

  He seemed to giggle and then Liv realized he was choking. She lifted his head, so his mouth dropped open. Using her teeth to snatch off her glove, she thrust her fingers into his throat. The tongue was slippery;
it was like trying to get a grip on a piece of raw liver. But she did, and pulled it out. He lay gasping and heaving like a dying fish. She felt a wave of revulsion and wiped her fingers compulsively in the snow. She sighed, and let his head down again gently on the cold pillowing snow. She placed her bare fingertips on his carotid artery. The pulse was slackening and distant. Looking at the state of his arm, she thought he was bleeding to death, might already have bled too much to be saved, even if rescue were at hand.

  Travis stood next to her, staring at Gordy.

  “He said trap, didn’t he?” she said. It was the first time they had spoken above a whisper since they had left the house. She hoped to distract Travis, but she wanted more than that to alert whoever was in the house that friends and no foes had come on the scene.

  Travis nodded.

  “Maybe there’s more,” she said. “We’ll have to be careful.” She looked up at Travis and took his hand. “We can’t do anything for him, Travis,” she said.

  Travis blinked away snowflakes. “Maybe Walter will check here soon. In time to help.”

  Liv nodded. She knew Walter didn’t check this house. But, of course, he could arrive at their house anytime now. He might be in time to help them. She didn’t think there was a chance in hell he would be able to help Gordy.

  She led Travis up the porch steps, keeping her body between him and the house. Showing herself. They stopped to look at Ricky.

  Liv shuddered, and Travis twined his mittened hands through hers. Through the broken door, they could see very little of the dark interior of the house. They paused and there was no sound or signal from within.