Praying for Sleep

30

Trenton Heck lapsed into and out of consciousness. Lis tried to find his pulse and couldn’t, though when she rested her head on his chest his heart seemed to beat stridently.

“Can you hear me?” she shouted.

Like a sleepwalker he muttered unearthly sounds. He hardly responded to what must have been excruciating pain when Lis pressed the towels firmly against the ragged black-bordered hole in his stomach.

Portia sat in the corner of the living room, her arms folded around her knees, her head down. Lis stood and walked past her. Standing in the dark kitchen she looked out over the yard, and saw no sign of Hrubek, who had ceased calling to her. Still, the macabre sound of his voice, chanting her name, resonated in her mind. She felt tainted, abused. Oh, please, she thought, despairing. Just leave me alone. Please.

For a long moment Lis stood at the window. Then she turned to her sister. “Portia.”

The woman looked at her and began shaking her head. “No.”

“Put this on.” Lis handed her the bomber jacket.

“Oh, Lis, no.”

“You’re going for help.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.”

“I’m not going out there.”

“You know where the sheriff’s department is. It’s on-”

“The car’s stuck.”

“You’re going to take the deputy’s.”

Portia gasped. “No. He’s in it.”

“Yes, you are.”

“I’m not going. No. Don’t ask.”

“A left out the drive. A mile and a half down Cedar Swamp you come to North Street. Another left, then drive about six miles. The sheriff’s on the right side of the road. Cedar Swamp’ll be washed out, parts of it. You’ll have to go slow till you get to town.”

“No!” Portia’s face was awash with tears.

With fingers white from the rain and red from a man’s blood Lis seized her sister’s shoulders. “I’m going to put you in the car and you’re going to drive to the sheriff ’s.”

Portia’s eyes flicked to the crimson stains on the sweater. Her voice cracked as she said, “You’re getting his-”

“Portia.”

“-blood on me! No!”

Lis pulled the blue-black gun from her pocket and held it in front of her sister’s astonished face. “Don’t say another word. You’re going to climb into that car and get the fuck out of here! Now let’s go!”

She grabbed Portia by the collar and thrust her out into the rain.

With their arms around each other’s shoulders, they stumbled toward the car. The ground was so marshy that it took them five minutes to get to the cruiser. The muddy water that surrounded the garage now was approaching the bend in the driveway, four feet deep. Soon the deputy’s car too would be submerged.

Once, they lost their balance and fell into the muck. Lis’s knee stuck in the ooze and Portia actually had to pull her out with both hands. Foot by foot they made their way through the grimy sluice of water toward the car.

Twenty feet to go.

“I can’t look,” Portia whispered.

Lis left her at the edge of the driveway and struggled to the squad car by herself. The rain was still heavy but there seemed to be a faint illumination from somewhere in the sky-though it was too early for dawn. Perhaps, Lis thought, her eyes had simply gotten used to the darkness. All her senses seemed honed, like an animal’s. She was attuned to the falling temperature, the smells of rain, smoke and compost, the slickness of the mud and pages of wet leaves beneath her. She was poised to attack anyone who might slip into the field of this blood radar.

Reaching for the door handle she looked back at her sister. What is that? she wondered, looking over Portia’s shoulder. A dozen yards away a large cloud seemed to form, slowly growing blacker than the surrounding haze of rain. It floated forward unsteadily in their direction.

And finally stepped clearly into view. Michael Hrubek waded toward them, one arm outstretched, the other dangling, apparently injured. In the damaged hand hung a pistol, dwarfed by his fingers.

He was staring directly at Portia.

“Lis-bone… Lis-bone…”

The young woman spun around and screamed, falling backwards into the mud.

Lis froze. Oh, my God! He thinks she’s me!

Hrubek reached toward her. “Eve…”

Lifting the dark Colt Woodsman with both her hands Lis pulled the trigger, once, twice, more perhaps. She yanked the sharp tongue of metal so hard she nearly broke her finger. The bullets zipped into the night, missing Hrubek by inches.

He howled and, covering his ears, fled into the brush. Lis ran to her sister and pulled her to the car.

Portia was limp with fear, her head lolling. Lis thrust the gun at her. She took it and stared at the black barrel while Lis reached into the police car, grabbing the beefy deputy by the shoulders. With a huge effort Lis pulled him out of the car and dropped him irreverently into the mud then reached inside and started the engine. She snatched the Colt away from Portia, who started to back away. Lis closed her tough hands on her sister’s arms and shoved her into the front seat. Easing into the pool of blood, Portia cringed as if the liquid seared her thighs. She was sobbing, quaking. Lis slammed the door. “Go.”

“I… Get his legs… Get his legs out!” Portia wailed, gesturing down at the deputy, whose knees were directly in front of the rear tires.

“Go!” Lis shouted and reached through the window, pulling on the headlights and dropping the gearshift into drive. As the car jerked forward, the side mirror knocked into Lis. She slipped on a layer of wet pulverized leaves and fell to the swampy ground. Slowly the police car drove over the deputy and into the driveway. Portia gunned the engine. With a panicked spray of mud and marble chips the car sped forward. It vanished, sashaying down the long driveway, sending up plumes of dark water in its wake.

Lis clambered to her feet, blinded for a moment-the rear tires of the squad car had sprayed her with mud. She leaned back, letting the downpour clean her face, flushing her eyes. When she could see once more, she noticed that Michael Hrubek was wading toward her again, cautiously, churning through the water, already halfway across the yard.

Lis slapped her side. The gun was gone. When she’d fallen, it had slipped out of her torn pocket. She dropped to her knees and patted the sticky ooze around her but couldn’t find the pistol. “Where?” she cried. “Where?” Hrubek was just thirty feet away, advancing slowly through the waist-high flood surrounding the garage. Finally she could wait no longer and fled into the house, slamming the door behind her.

She double-locked it and from a wooden block took a long carving knife. She turned to face the door.

But he was gone.

Stepping cautiously to the window she surveyed the backyard carefully. She couldn’t see him anywhere. She stepped away from the glass, fearing that he might suddenly pop into view.

Where? Where?

His absence was almost as frightening as watching him stalk toward her.

Hurrying from the kitchen into the living room, she knelt and checked on Trenton Heck. He was still unconscious but his breathing was steady. Lis stood and gazed around the room, her eyes looking at but not really seeing her family’s pictures, the porcelain-bird collection, the Quixote memorabilia her father had brought back from Iberia, the chintz furniture, the overwrought paintings.

A crash outside. Breaking glass. Hrubek was circling the house. A shadow fell across a living-room window then vanished. A moment later his silhouette darkened another curtain and moved on. An unbearable minute of silence. Suddenly a huge kick shook the front door. She gasped. Another kick slammed into the wood. A panel broke with a resounding crack. He kicked it again but the wood held. She saw Hrubek’s bulk move past the narrow door-side window.

Her head swiveled slowly, following his circuit of the house. She heard him rip open the toolshed door then slam it shut.

Silence.

A fist rapped on a bottle-glass window in the far guest room. The pane broke but she heard nothing else and guessed the windows were too high and the lattice too solid for Hrubek to climb through.

Silence again.

Then he howled and pounded on a wall, ripping cedar shakes from the side of the house.

As she scanned the rooms, her eyes fell on the basement door. My God, she thought suddenly. Owen’s guns. His collection was downstairs. She’d get one of his shotguns.

Yet as she took a step toward the basement she heard a crash from outside. Then more-powerful blows that seemed to shake the foundation of the house. Wood splintered. And with a huge bellow Hrubek kicked his way through the outside basement entrance. The padlock on the door had stopped him for all of thirty seconds. His feet scraped on the concrete floor. A moment later the stairs began to creak, the stairs leading up to the hallway in which she stood.

Oh, Christ…

The door to the basement was dead-bolted but the fixture was thin brass, more cosmetic than substantial. She looked for something with which to wedge the door closed. Just as the knob started to turn, she lifted a heavy oak dining-room chair and shoved it into the hallway, wedging the door shut.

The knob turned sharply. She leapt back, wondering if he could still shatter the door, just kick his way in. But he didn’t. After a minute of playing with the knob-almost timidly-he started back down the stairs. The blanket of silence returned, broken by an eerie laughter and the sound of his feet scraping on the basement floor. He muttered words she couldn’t hear. After five minutes, even these stopped. Was he still there? Would he set the house afire? What was he doing?

She heard no other sound from downstairs. Or from outside either, other than the steady patter of rain. Michael Hrubek had vanished again. Holding the knife in one hand and leading Heck’s hound with the other, Lis Atcheson walked into the greenhouse and sat in a dark corner to wait.

The rain clattered like marbles on the greenhouse roof. Portia’d been gone twenty minutes. It was only eight miles or so to the Sheriff ’s Department but the road might now be completely impassable. It could take her an hour or more to get through. Yet as the time passed and she heard nothing more of Hrubek, she began to relax. She even let herself wonder if maybe, just maybe, he’d fled. She felt a glow of euphoria and reflected that perhaps this was all that comfort ever was: believing that we’re safe despite the clear and unobvious dangers from which we’re protected by nothing more than single-strength glass.

She found herself wondering about Owen. She refused to think the worst. No, no. He was fine. With so much flooding he’d probably ducked into a garage or house to wait out the worst of the storm. She looked up at the black sky above her head and uttered a short prayer for dawn-exactly the opposite of what she usually prayed for, lying in bed, trying so desperately to sleep.

A prayer for light, for morning, for rampaging red and blue and white lights atop approaching cars.

She smelled a rose, whose scent now wafted past her face. Only twenty minutes more. Or nineteen. Or fifteen. Help will be here by then. Surely Michael Hrubek was lost in the forest. Surely he’d fallen and broken his leg.

Lis scratched the dog’s ears. “It’s all right, your master’ll be all right,” she said to him as he tilted his head. Lis put her arm around the drooping shoulders. The poor thing. He was as nervous as she-his ears were quivering and his neck was a knot of muscle. Lis eased back and looked at him, the folds of skin and bored-looking eyes. His nose was in the air and his nostrils began twitching. She smiled. “You like roses too, boy? Do you?”

He stood. His shoulder muscles tensed.

An unearthly growl rumbled from deep in his throat.

“Oh, my Lord,” Lis cried. “No!”

He sniffed the air hard, his legs eager, his head lifting and falling. He began to walk quickly back and forth over the floor. Lis leapt to her feet and grabbed the knife, looking around her at the misted glass of the greenhouse. She couldn’t see through it. Where was he?

Where?

“Stop it,” she shouted to the dog, who continued to pace, sniffing the air, growing more and more frantic. Her palms were suddenly slick with cold sweat and she wiped them and gripped the handle of the knife once again.

“Stop it! He’s gone! He’s not here anymore. Stop howling!” She was turning in circles, looking for an enemy only the dog could detect. The growling became a bay, a banshee’s wail, ricocheting off every inch of window.

“Oh, please!” she begged. “Stop!”

And he did.

Silently the hound spun around and ran straight to the lath-house door-the one Lis recalled she’d been on her way to check when Heck had arrived.

The door that she’d forgotten completely about.

The door that now burst open and struck the hound in his ribs, knocking him down, stunned. Michael Hrubek stepped into the greenhouse. He stood, dripping and huge and muddy, in the center of the concrete floor. His head swiveled, taking in the gargoyles, the flowers, the mists-all the details-as if he were on a garden-club tour. In his hand was the muddy pistol. Seeing Lis, he called her name in an astonished whisper and his mouth hardened into a smile-a smile that arose from neither irony nor triumph nor even mad humor, but was instead reminiscent of an expression one might find upon the faces of the dead.