Dismember

TWENTY-EIGHT

Zach caught just a glimpse of the place through the trees before they turned onto the driveway. He shivered. The barbwire fence along the road was in shambles, some of the wooden uprights rotted completely through and in pieces on the ground, sections of wire loose and coiled like rusted robot snakes. Zach didn’t know what the fence was originally intended to keep in (or out), but it did nothing now except make the place ugly.

It became obvious very quickly that the owners of this property weren’t especially concerned with either upkeep or looks. The mailbox looked about a hundred years old, though Zach wasn’t sure people had mailboxes a hundred years ago, or mail for that matter. The driveway was gravel, like his own, and Trevor Pullman’s, and most of the driveways this far into the mountains, but in this case the rock was spread too thin, leaving bare patches of ground in which weeds and grass thrived. Zach would have thought the passage of the truck would keep the vegetation down, but maybe Crazy Dave usually left the property from a different access point, or maybe he didn’t leave much, maybe he was one of those hermits Zach had read about, the kind of weirdo who lived off the land and hardly came into the real world.

The truck jounced along the uneven ground, its headlights lighting the shack of a house at times, at other times the sky or the ground or the encircling trees. Zach and the Pullman boy, Trevor, both sat up in the truck’s bed, but the dog—Zach guessed he’d have to call the animal Manny, for lack of a legitimate name—lay flat on his belly, sniffing occasionally and whimpering.

Smells something bad, Zach thought. He knew dogs had a fantastic sense of smell, that they could detect odors from a great distance that humans couldn’t smell from right up close, like sickness or a coming storm.

Manny whined again and buried his head beneath his paws.

“You think he lives here?” Trevor whispered.

Zach nodded, watching the ramshackle dump as the driveway curved toward it and smoothed out so that the headlights quit their erratic bouncing. The small front porch, hardly wider than the entry door, had two weathered columns. Zach thought you called a little porch like that something else—a covered stoop?—but wasn’t sure. Unpainted shutters hung from the window frames; in some cases they had disconnected completely and fallen to the dirt beneath. From one of the windows drooped a flower box that appeared to have held nothing but weeds for many years.

The truck circled around the house and came to a stop in the back yard. Not that you could really call it a yard. The back dirt patch might have been a better name. They’d stopped with the front bumper almost touching a tree-stump chopping block from which an ax stuck out at an angle, but Zach could only just make out the thing from his place in the truck bed and lost sight of it altogether when the pickup’s headlights flicked off.

“I’m scared,” Trevor said to him.

Zach said, “Me, too.”

Manny panted and let out a little woof, as if not wanting to be left out.

“Do you think he’ll kill us?” Trevor asked, still holding the bloody shirtsleeve to his forehead.

He looked away, couldn’t bear to see what he’d done to the poor little kid. “No,” he said, “not if we kill him first.”

The truck’s door creaked open, and they went silent.

“Boys?” The man’s voice sounded strange somehow, as if he was a little scared himself. But why should he be scared? Zach wondered.

Neither of them answered, though the dog panted a little and then sneezed.

“I don’t want to ever have to hurt you again,” the man said. “So don’t go and do anything stupid, okay?”

Silence.

“Okay, Georgie?”

Zach thought it might be easier—and safer—to respond. “Fine.”

“Okay, Davy?”

Zach elbowed Trevor in the ribs and whispered, “I think that’s you.”

“Oh,” Trevor said. “Uh, okay.” He waited for a while before adding, “Sir.”

Beside the truck, Dave smiled. Zach saw it with his adjusting eyes and shuddered.

“Georgie, you open up the tailgate and get out with Manny. Go straight inside. And don’t think I haven’t forgotten what you did.”

Of course, Zach’s first thought was that he should jump out of the truck, go directly to the ax, pluck it free like King Arthur’s sword from a stone, and swing it into Dave’s head. Except too many things could go wrong with that plan. He might twist his ankle jumping out of the truck, he might not manage to get the ax free, or he might get it free only to swing it accidentally into Trevor or himself. Dave said he hadn’t forgotten what Zach tried to do, but neither had Zach forgotten what he had done: cracked Trevor in the head with a nail-studded club. Luckily, the nail had missed the other boy. If you could call that luck. He might not be so lucky a second time.

He decided to follow the maniac’s instructions. They would have other chances to escape, better chances.

He hoped.

The handle felt rough beneath his fingers, maybe with rust or maybe only with wear and tear. The tailgate squeaked open and fell from his grip, thudding to a stop at an angle almost level with the truck bed. The dog started to rush off the pickup, but Zach grabbed him by the collar and quickly snapped the leash, which he’d removed during their ride, back into place.

“Good,” said Dave. He waited until they’d gotten to the back door and opened it before he said, “Now you, Davy.”

Zach stepped into the dark room wondering what the deal was with all the names. Hadn’t this guy said he used to be Davy? Zach couldn’t pretend to know what was going on and wasn’t sure he’d have known if the kidnapper sat them down and explained it for an hour. You couldn’t understand crazy if you weren’t crazy yourself, could you? He didn’t think so.

He heard the tailgate squeak back into place, and the leash went suddenly lax when the dog stopped ahead of him.

“It’s okay,” said Zach. “It’s just the truck.” He reached down to pet the dog’s head, a barely visible gray spot in the dark. Manny relaxed somewhat at Zach’s touch, swished his tail a few times across the floor.

Dave brought the smaller boy into the room with them and flipped on an overhead light.

Zach saw the dining room table first. It was larger than their own table back home, but a little more worn, the legs curved and uneven. Zach could tell it was the kind of table that wobbled if you placed something on it, or bumped against it, or maybe even if you looked at it funny. The seats of the chairs bowed, and some of the spindles making up their backs were splintered or missing altogether.

The linoleum was cracked in some places, bubbled in others, as if things had been buried beneath and a few of them had escaped. The walls had floor to ceiling vertical stripes every couple of feet that might have been old glue, like maybe wallpaper had hung there at one time.

The man brushed against Zach, and the dog jumped up to its feet, tail motionless, tense. Then Trevor was beside him and taking his hand the way only small children will: without hesitation or embarrassment. Zach squeezed the younger boy’s fingers tight and wanted to whisper something reassuring, but he dared not speak. Talking in this place would have been like talking in church, but different in a way Zach couldn’t quite put into words.

“This way,” Dave said, and he led them into a second dark room, not bothering with lights.

Zach thought this guy must have night vision goggles for eyes.

He sensed more than saw the hallway ahead, imagined it closing in around him as if he were trying to push his way through a small tunnel rather than an average-sized corridor. Except nothing touched him, nothing but the floor against his clapping sneakers and Trevor’s sweaty hand and Manny’s dog leash wrapped around his other set of fingers. The dog whined hard now, and Zach smelled something rotten, something like road kill.

“I’ve got it all set up for you,” Dave said. He led them another few paces. Zach heard a loud clack and a click and then the sound of a door swinging open. He would have thought that in this sort of house, where everything seemed to be falling to pieces, all the doors would have creaked, but this one didn’t. It swung open almost silently.

Trevor’s hand tugged on Zach’s. Zach tugged Manny’s leash, and they all moved forward until a sudden bright light blazed from inside the room. Zach supposed it probably wasn’t as blinding as he thought, that it was just a regular bulb in an overhead socket, but except for the truck’s headlights, he hadn’t seen a regular light bulb since Trevor Pullman’s porch, and looking into the room now, he might as well have been staring straight into the sun.

“Don’t worry about the window,” Dave said, “You won’t have to deal with it for long.”

Zach looked at the bare, windowless walls. A pile of blankets lay on the floor, and a second door to the right probably led into a small bathroom or a closet. A dirty glass beside the bed held an inch or so of some clear liquid that might have been water. In the corner of the room, a cracked and discolored bucket sat on the floor, surrounded by water rings and what might have been spots of rot. Zach wondered if the stink was coming from there but didn’t think so.

“Either of you have to go potty?” Dave asked.

Trevor let go of Zach and raised his hand like this was school.

Zach didn’t have to go, although he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been to the restroom. He hadn’t had much to drink today, and not anything since Dave had kidnapped him. This realization led to thoughts of food, and his stomach suddenly growled.

“Okay,” Dave said to Trevor. “Make it quick.” He opened the bathroom door for the boy, and they waited in silence until the toilet flushed and a burst of water sounded from the sink.

“I guess you feel almost at home here,” Dave said quietly, and Zach wasn’t really sure if the man had spoken directly to him or not. He didn’t reply.

“It’s not a family home,” Dave said and stared at the ceiling. Zach couldn’t tell if he was planning something or remembering.

Trevor came out of the bathroom, wiping his wet hands on his khaki shorts.

“Your towel was icky,” he said, and the man stared at him for a long time. Manny whined a little, maybe impatient to be let off the leash, or maybe still worried about the stink.

Finally, Dave turned away from Trevor and ushered the two boys into the lit room. “It’s bedtime,” he said. “Better give me the dog.” He held out his hand, and Zach let go of the leash.

Dave swung the door shut on the two children while Manny stared in at them with huge, sad eyes. You’d have thought he was on his way to the killing room at the local pound. For all Zach knew, that wasn’t too far from the truth.

“How about some food?” Zach said, thinking this might be his last chance to ask for God knew how long and that he probably ought to eat something whether he felt like it or not.

Dave didn’t answer, just let the door click shut. Another sound had followed, a clacking Zach had heard when the man first opened the door, and he suddenly understood: the lock. Crazy Dave had just locked them inside. And with no food. And maybe for the rest of their lives.