The Gorge

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

Clara awoke in utter darkness, or maybe she wasn’t awake and this wasn’t darkness, but a new state of being.

Maybe she hadn’t slept at all. Or maybe she’d always been asleep and the dream merely changed phases.

Hands crawled the length of her belly, and she wondered if it was Ace, wanting some hurried, empty, dry intercourse. She slapped at the hands, though her arms felt heavy, full of sand. The grogginess of dreams infected her and slowed her movements. She felt as she had one night at Radford, when the philosophy professor had drugged her with Rohypnol, the date-rape drug, despite her being a willing partner in perversity. The drug had not been used to ease her pain, for the good doctor knew they both enjoyed the sensations too much to dull any of its sharp edges.

No, the drug’s sole purpose had been to erase her subsequent memory of the event. To this day, she had never been certain of the doc’s exploits, only that she’d bled from her vagina and rectum for a week, bruises mottled her breasts, and her back and buttocks had been covered with welts. The doctor called a few weeks later and asked if she had enjoyed it. She answered in the affirmative, and even saw him on several other occasions, though the doctor must have used up his entire bag of tricks, because she quickly grew bored with him.

Perhaps because he knew the limits and had observed them. Not just his own limits, whether moral or physical or legal. No, he’d been reined in by a social order that promised freedom, shouted it as a slogan, and sold it like a commodity, but when real freedom opened up the possibilities before its believers, they turned their cowardly faces away.

She had known limits. Ace’s cold, slick hands could fondle and penetrate her, but they would never touch her. None of them had ever touched her, not even those who had punished her the most deeply or hit her the hardest.

“Don’t, Ace, I’m sleepy.” Her tongue was thick, and the words slurred.

Ace wasn’t giving up. You had to give it to the human cockroach, he was persistent. The Bama Bomber had a “never say die” attitude, a “can do” spirit, a “kill them all and let God sort them out” mentality.

Even if he was a lousy lay.

The hands moved over her belly, up to her swollen nipples. They pinched gently, and she felt her nipples grow larger. Shit. Ace had hit her weak points. She moaned, despite her discomfort.

She was on her back, lying on something hard. She recalled Ace’s quick screw by the river, just before they’d hijacked the rafting expedition, how he’d derived pleasure in the slap of her bare flesh against unyielding granite.

She laughed. She’d been hit harder by better. Her new motto.

The hands- Jeez, had he grown an extra pair in the night? — now went along her legs, caressing the insides of her thighs. Gentle, soothing, arousing, the sharp fingernails tracing along her flesh, applying just enough pressure to mark the skin.

As if Ace had found an instructional manual on foreplay.

She moaned again, and Ace’s tongue flicked across her lips. Then at her belly button, then both at the same time.

Two tongues?

If not Ace, then who?

The group of rafters?

No, they were probably all dead by now.

Dead by now…

As full memory and awareness came flooding back, she tried to sit up, but the hands confined her. Besides, she was languid and exhausted. The hands were gentle, soothing.

Not hands… claws.

She remembered glimpse she’d had of their gray, knotty power, as one of them carried her into darkness. She was in their lair.

She cringed, waiting for the hands to squeeze her, the teeth to sink in, the blood to flow.

No.

These creatures weren’t going to kill her, or they would have already done so.

They wanted something.

She fought for control, pushed at the claws that felt along her belly.

They wanted Little Ace.

A liquid flush erupted from deep in the bowels of the lair. The claws hesitated, and unseen wings flicked uneasily. The fluid rumble sounded again, and the stone vibrated beneath Clara’s back. Something heavy fell, followed by a splash.

Splash?

Another rumble, and the claws left her, the air filled with rustling and stirring, leathery tongues licking parched, swollen lips. She could feel the wind of their wings, and the air of the confined space had taken on a damp quality. The flushing sound was rivaled by a rushing hiss far away.

Rain. Outside. Wherever “outside” was.

She let her arm flop over the side of the stone. Her hand dipped into frigid liquid.

The water was rising. The lair, or cave, or hole in the ground, wherever they had taken her, must be connected to the river. The creatures had gone to high ground like rats.

Well, not like rats, because they’re flying.

And when the waters receded, they would return and take her baby.

With all the control she could muster, summoning back all the parts of her soul she had given up over the last few years, she raised her arms and reached for her head.

The helmet. She tugged at the restraint strap with fingers like cold snakes.

Once the helmet was free, she laid it beside her on the stone. The air was alive with rustling wings and the skee, skee, skee of creatures soaring above her. She shifted and wriggled her sodden sandbag flesh until she was at the rim of the stone. She fumbled for the flashlight switch, flicked it on, and rolled off the stone and face-first into the shocking swirl of water.

The chill revived her, shaking the lethargy inflicted by the creatures’ infectious hands and tongues. She drew air and submerged, her skin tightening, her limbs aching to the bone. But a golden warmth emanated from her center, in the place where promise was born.

Ace was right. Unborn life was life after all, and still sacred.

Maybe not worth killing for, but worth living for.

Clara gripped the large stone, letting her feet dangle until they touched bottom. She lifted her head from the water, expecting one of the creatures to yank her out by the hair. The flashlight, its bulb weak, revealed little about the space, and offered only the slightest shifting of shadows above. She didn’t know in which direction to swim.

Okay, Ace Jr., Mom’s going to have to pick a horse and ride it. Eeny-meeny-miney “Clara,” Ace called, causing the creatures to scurry in frantic arcs overhead.