Dismember

THIRTY-SEVEN

The second trip across the ceiling was better than the first had been. Trevor knew which joists to avoid, which were extra bowed or twisted, and although he encountered just as much of the spider-webby yellow stuff, it seemed less itchy. Maybe he’d gotten used to it the way he got used to his bathwater when it was too hot, or maybe he was moving too fast for the stuff to catch him. He’d practically crept along the crawlspace his first time through. Now, he hustled.

The other side of the house seemed to come up awfully fast. Could the place have shrunk since the last time he’d been here? In the dark, it took him a minute to find the hole he’d kicked for himself earlier, but it was still there. Of course it was still there. Ceilings didn’t grow back like cut skin, silly.

Trevor lowered himself through the hole, hung from the same joist he had the last time and kicked out for the top of the fridge. His feet found the slick surface, and he dropped.

And dropped.

He landed not on the top of the fridge, but on the pile of ceiling on the floor six feet below, and not on his feet, but on his butt. Trevor’s bottom and back throbbed. He saw blurry red light and wondered if his brain was bleeding. The broken pieces of ceiling had softened his fall a little, but not enough to save him from the terrible pain sneaking up into his shoulders and neck. He felt like he’d just been spanked with a bulldozer.

He heard a squeak and a groan from somewhere close, maybe in the living room. The bad man, he was sure, but he wouldn’t wait to see. Trevor hopped to his feet and ran to the back door as fast as his aching heinie would allow. If he’d been the bad man, he’d have locked the back door just in case he, Trevor, got loose again, but the man must not have been worrying about that, because the door opened wide.

Trevor escaped the house for the second time that night. He was about to head for the trees again, a different section of woods than he’d gone into last time, when he ran into the woman hurrying around the corner of the house.

And not just any woman.

His mommy.

Hank woke to the sound of something exploding. Or so he thought. Maybe he’d been dreaming about war or mail bombs or the Fourth of July. There was no smell of smoke and no fire as far as he could tell, but the sound had come from nearby.

He sat up and rubbed his eyes. They adjusted to the low light in their usual way, as if they’d been designed for nothing else.

The back door slammed, and he knew at once what had happened. The boy. Davy. He didn’t understand how the kid kept getting out of the room. It was goddamn locked. He was sure of it.

He stood up to go after the boy but then heard another sound, something softer and continuous, something coming from outside the house and sounding a little like a purring kitten.

Must not have used enough sunscreen, he thought and grinned.

Except it wasn’t a cat outside, it was something else: an engine.

He heard a creak on the front porch and stood very still, listening.

Another creak.

The boy could wait. Hank hurried out of the living room and down the hall. The thing he needed now was still in the bedroom, leaning against the bloody wall.

Mike crept to the front door and tried the knob.

Locked.

Cobwebs and dust filled the little stoop, as if no one had used the front entrance in years. In fact, the whole place looked abandoned, unoccupied for months, years. Rustic wasn’t the word for it, because rustic implied quaintness. This place was a shack.

He guessed he could turn around and search for an open window, but that might be fruitless. For all he knew, the kidnapper had the whole place boarded shut from the inside like something out of Night of the Living Dead. Mike thought about trying to pry open the door with the chisel. He’d never used the tool in such a way, had never broken into a house at all, for that matter, but he guessed it might work. The chisel was really more of a pry bar anyway. He knelt down to examine the knob.

It was a cheap thing, hardly more secure looking than a closet doorknob. Mike thought he just about could have ripped it loose with his bare hands. He brought the chisel up to the plate between the door and the jamb, wiggling it in until it would go no farther and then shoving on it.

The door flew open, and for a second he thought he must have had some magic breaking-and-entering ability, but then a man came rushing through the opening. The kidnapper. He was carrying a sword, and he was screaming.

“Mommy!” Trevor ran to her and wrapped himself around her neck so tight he might as well have been a scarf.

Libby swept him into her arms, careful not to gouge him with the tools in her hands, and slathered his face with her tears and her kisses.

From the other side of the house, Libby heard a pair of screams. She put Trevor down and said, “The other boy, is he inside?”

Trevor nodded. “And the doggy, too. We have to save them. Where’s Daddy?”

Without answering, Libby took Trevor’s hand and led him back into the house, still sniffling. “Where are they?”

Trevor stepped ahead of her and said, “I’ll show you.”

It was a dark night, and although Libby had managed to make her way around the house without falling flat on her face, she was totally blind inside. Trevor seemed to know where to go, but he moved very slowly, maybe with his free hand out in front of him like a blind man, obviously not familiar enough with the layout of the house to navigate sightlessly.

She heard a clang from the front yard and tried to hurry Trevor along. She banged her hip into a wall and heard Trevor bump into another wall beside her. She let go of his hand and felt around the area long enough to realize they’d reached the head of a hallway.

“Look for a light switch,” she told Trevor. “Feel along the walls.”

As it turned out, she found the switch herself. The light in the hallway was a single bare bulb overhead, not much brighter than a flickering candle but enough to see by.

“Here,” Trevor said after the light flickered on. He hurried past a slightly ajar door to another, closed door at the end of the hall. He twisted the knob. It didn’t move. “Zach,” he said.

From behind the door, Libby heard the other boy’s response: “Yeah?” He was older than Trevor from the sounds of it, maybe ten or eleven. It was hard to tell through the fear in the kid’s voice.

“They’re here,” Trevor said. “We’re rescued.”

The child, Zach, said, “Who? The police?”

Trevor looked at Libby, confusion in his face. “Are there policemen coming?”

Libby wanted to say yes, a whole S.W.A.T. team was on the way—Trevor was so sure he was saved—but she couldn’t lie, couldn’t get either boy’s hopes up.

“Maybe eventually,” she said. “But hopefully we’ll be long gone by the time they get here.” She looked at the locked doorknob and then at the hammer in her hand. “Stand back,” she told Trevor.

He did. Libby raised the hammer over her head and swung it down as hard as she could. The doorknob clanged like a muffled cymbal and dropped to the floor below. She looked at it, a little shocked. She’d been prepared to beat the crap out of the thing, swing the hammer until nothing remained of the knob but dust. She supposed your luck couldn’t be all bad all the time.

Her hammer hand throbbed. She shook it the way you do a body part that’s fallen asleep and said to the boy on the other side of the door, “Try opening it.”

The door rattled but didn’t budge. Trevor looked up at her worriedly.

“Okay,” she said. “Stand back.” She waited for a second. “Are you back?”

“Uh huh,” said Zach, his voice muffled and trembling.

The inner workings of the doorknob seemed so strange, intricate. She wondered if she could use the second tool to tear them apart, but she didn’t really know how to use the thing and didn’t have time to learn.

She swung the hammer.

It clanged off the door, and a thump came from inside the room.

“The doorknob fell off,” said Zach, sounding distant, as if he were in another dimension and not simply on the other side of the room.

“Stay back.” Libby swung again, and metal screeched. Another swing. The sound this time was a pop, the sort of cracking that came from an especially stubborn knuckle.

Her hand felt like a fireball attached to her wrist, but she swung again anyway, not caring if she damaged her hand permanently, not thinking website design might be a little tricky with only a left paw and a mangled claw. The door popped open, and Trevor clapped.

A slender, brown-haired boy caked in dirt and blood came tentatively into the hallway. He looked first at Libby, then at Trevor. “You did it,” he said to her son.

Trevor nodded.

Zach broke out into a huge smile, and the two boys high-fived.

“Let’s—” Something wet touched her on the back of her knee. She screamed and spun around with the hammer.

The dog whined and backed away just in time to avoid losing the front half of his snout. The hammer whizzed by with what couldn’t have been more than two inches to spare, and the movement almost sent Libby sprawling to the floor.

“No!” Trevor ran to the dog and wrapped his hands around its neck in much the same way he’d hugged her only minutes before. It was a beautiful animal, if a little grimy. The dog shifted and licked Trevor’s face. Trevor said, “You almost killed him.”

Libby’s hammer hand sagged, and she took a deep breath. “Sorry, buddy,” she said, addressing both Trevor and the dog. She turned to the second boy and stared into his wide eyes, wondered how long it took for a kid to get over the kinds of things he must have been through.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.” She hurried down the hall swinging the tools at her side, the three evacuees trailing behind.

Mike thought of Peter Pan fighting Captain Hook. His short chisel poked out in front of him, a makeshift dagger no match for the other man’s wicked sword. The kidnapper made a long, arcing swing that Mike sidestepped narrowly. He tried triggering the drill, which he’d managed to hold on to, and jamming it into the guy’s side, but he wasn’t quick enough.

They’d descended the porch steps and now circled around each other in the gently sloping front yard. The swordsman stumbled forward a few steps before spinning back into the fray. He grinned. His naked, hairy chest flexed rhythmically, like his whole torso was a giant, beating heart. A short black line, which Mike guessed would have been red or at least reddish in the light, marked the place where the boy had cut into him earlier that night. Mike was glad to see it. It proved the man wasn’t invincible.

Seeming to read his mind, the kidnapper said, “I cut you once tonight already.”

As if Mike might have forgotten. Searing pain throbbed in his hip with every step he took. He held the chisel out in front of him and moved a little to the left, wincing but not wanting to stay still and provide the lunatic an easy target.

He thought of Libby saying the guy might have a crossbow, thought about the way he’d immediately dismissed the idea. There hadn’t been a crossbow, but now here Mike stood facing a ninja’s sword. If that didn’t beat all.

The kidnapper thrusted the weapon out in front of him and charged. Mike managed to get himself out of the way again. He swung his chisel almost reflexively, and it clanged against the broad side of the blade.

The man cut to his right and circled back to his original position. He looked from Mike’s face to his feet, and his smile faded.

“You,” he said. “No. I don’t…I killed you.”

Mike eyed him suspiciously, wondering if this was some kind of ploy, a trick meant to divert his attention so the psycho could run him through. He stood his ground, finger on the drill’s trigger, opposite hand wrapped around the chisel.

The kidnapper looked back into Mike’s face and said, “I should have known.”

Mike kept moving, shuffled his feet. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, Muhammad Ali had said, and Mike didn’t think he’d ever heard a better bit of advice.

When the kidnapper came at him this time, he did so with a low, grunting wail. The man held the sword in both hands and had it pulled back over his shoulder. Mike didn’t sidestep this time but moved forward instead, the cordless drill whirring in front of him and the chisel swinging up from his side and aimed at the man’s face.

The drill hit the kidnapper’s midsection, digging into his abdomen. The chisel bounced harmlessly off his shoulder. The sword hit Mike in much the same place the chisel had hit the other man, only it was sharp and far from harmless.

Mike’s arm went suddenly numb, and the drill died and fell to the ground between the two men’s feet. Mike dropped the chisel, too, and reached up for his shoulder. The kidnapper took a step back and hefted the sword, which dripped fresh blood.

“I can’t let you do it again,” the man said.

Mike dropped to his knees, groaning, trying to make sense of the man’s words, unable to think anything except that his arm was killing him but that the man with the sword would probably kill him faster. He tried to steady himself, ended up on his rump in the dust. His blood poured out of the wound in his shoulder, cold somehow. The stuff running over his fingers might have been ice water instead of blood.

“You should have just let us be this time, old man,” said the kidnapper. He pulled back the sword.

Mike could do nothing but sit and groan and watch the blade advance.

Inside the living room, Libby watched through a dusty window, squinting.

At first, she didn’t believe what she was seeing, thought the thing in the kidnapper’s hands must have only looked like a sword but been something else entirely—maybe a pipe or a broom handle. When the weapon slid into Mike’s stomach and re-emerged from his lower back, however, she could no longer pretend.

Mike’s scream was the worst thing she’d ever heard in her life, a sound she was sure she’d remember until the day she died, a wet, gurgling bawl that didn’t seem muffled by the walls or the door or the windows. Libby thought that scream might have gone straight from his mouth to her brain, some strange sort of telepathy.

She sensed Trevor coming to join her at the window and turned immediately to keep him away.

“What was that?” he said.

Libby flipped him around and pushed on his back. “Through the back door,” she said. “We have to get out of here.”

Trevor didn’t want to go at first, but Libby kept pushing. She heard Zach and the dog padding along ahead, heard a strange flapping sound like someone walking through mud.

“The car’s around the side of the house,” she said. “Get in back with the dog and wait for me.”

They found the back door and exited the house. “Hurry to the car,” she said, looking at the back of the boys’ heads. Part of her wanted to follow them, needed to follow them, knew it was the smart thing to do, but Mike might still be all right. She couldn’t leave him there to die. She’d loved him once, maybe loved him a little still. She couldn’t leave him.

When she saw the boys moving in the right direction, she cut around the truck and found the ax in the tree stump. She’d noticed it on the way in, before running in to Trevor. It wasn’t as good as a shotgun, but it was a damn sight better than a hammer. She dropped Mike’s tools in the dirt at the stump’s base and grabbed the ax with both hands.

It didn’t come loose easily. She had to wrench it back and forth five or six times before it finally unstuck.

She thought about Marshall, thought she’d gotten herself out of that situation fairly well, almost entirely unharmed physically despite the mental trauma. Carrying the ax back to the house, she told herself she wasn’t a pushover, that she wasn’t a victim.

Hank jerked backward on the sword, and the man fell onto his back.

Mr. Boots, he thought, staring at the man’s footwear. He should have expected this sort of thing.

Mr. Boots flailed a little, and Hank stabbed him again, this time higher up on his stomach, closer to his heart. “Guess you thought you’d do it again, huh?” He twisted the sword. “Kill us all off and take the boy for yourself. But it doesn’t work that way.” He leaned on the sword’s handle, listened to Mr. Boots groan. “You never killed me. It was the moose. Everything’s different this time.”

He pulled the sword free again and grinned.

Stupid son of a bitch, he thought and jabbed the sword into the old man once more.

Trevor helped get the leashed doggy into the back seat but didn’t climb in after him.

“What’s wrong?” Zach asked.

“I have to find my daddy. Wait here.” Trevor turned away from the car and hurried around the front of the house.

Libby burst through the front door. In the yard, the kidnapper hovered over Mike’s slumped body. She charged him.

The ax was heavy, not the kind of plastic-handled thing you bought at Wal-mart, but an old wooden tool with a head that felt like it must have been made of lead.

She was ten feet from her target when Trevor came at her from around the side of the house.

“No,” she said, though she’d meant to scream it. She twisted his way at the last minute, meaning to push him away from the bare-chested stranger, but she was moving awkwardly and ended up tripping over her own feet.

The ax fell on the ground beside her. Trevor approached from one direction, and the man from the other.

Run, she wanted to say, get away. But she couldn’t speak. Something smacked the side of her head, and she had time enough to realize it was the man’s fist before unconsciousness took her and everything was lost.

Hank loaded Lori into the passenger’s seat and strapped her into her belt. He’d gotten the boys in the back where they were still huddled, the dog between them and whimpering again. He’d tied the kids’ hands with their own shoelaces and knotted Manny’s leash to the headrest. Later, if everything went well, he could let them loose. But for now, he had to drive and couldn’t risk any of them trying something stupid.

He ran a hand through Lori’s hair and kissed her softly on the forehead, sorry he’d had to hurt her but knowing he could make up for it later. She was a beautiful woman—a fine wife—and he knew she’d be a good mother to their boys. He closed her door and circled around the front of the car to his own side.

After finding the gearshift and studying the car’s controls for just a moment, he shifted into reverse, backed partway down the driveway, and then turned the car around and drove away from the house.

As they moved, he looked into the rearview mirror and thought, Goodbye forever. The house and the body in front of it grew smaller until, finally, they were gone.