The Taking

47

CROUCH, PIVOT, POINT, SQUEEZE, ALL IN ONE FLUID action: Molly did the first three, checked herself halfway through the trigger squeeze, and did not shoot the woman.

Clarinetist, lover of swing music, waitress at Benson's Good Eats, twentysomething, dark-haired, gray-eyed, Angie Boteen stood in the receiving room, naked, holding a broken Corona bottle by the neck.

"Always been squeamish, especially about knives, razor blades… broken glass," Angie said.

She sounded like herself, yet didn't. She looked like herself, yet wasn't. Anxiety in her voice made it real, but at the same time she seemed to be dreaming on her feet, detached.

"I need to be cut, I want to be cut, I want to obey, I really do, but I've always been afraid of sharpness more than anything."

Relying on the candles, Molly shoved her flashlight under her waistband, in the small of her back, freeing both hands for the gun.

"Angie, what the hell happened here?"

Ignoring the question, as if she didn't hear it, Angie Boteen appeared to have stepped out of the dance of life, out of the still point, and stood in the past:

"When I was six, Uncle Carl, he cut Aunt Veda 'cause she cheated on him, slit her throat. I was there, saw it."

"Angie-"

"She lived, croaked when she talked, scar on her throat. He went to prison, and when he got out, she took him back."

Molly felt as naked as Angie, exposed, standing in this doorway with the basement stairs at her back.

"After prison, people treated Uncle Carl different. Not worse. More careful, more respectful."

Reluctant to look away from Angie Boteen, Molly nevertheless glanced back, to her left, and down. No one on the stairs.

Refocusing on Angie and on the jagged bottle, she discovered that during this moment of distraction, the woman had taken a step toward her.

"No closer," Molly warned, thrusting the pistol at arm's length, in a two-hand grip.

In the globes on the floor, inconstant candle flames leaped, languished, and leaped, fattened and thinned, so upward across the woman's face flowed light, flowed shadow, continuously distorting, making it difficult for Molly to read her expression.

"So then what happened," Angie said, "is I hook up with Billy Marek, he's been in trouble with knives, cut some people, done time."

Under the appearance of a trance, repressed emotions tore at the woman and could be detected in her voice. Anguish. Anxiety. Wild terror on a choke chain. But what other sensibilities did the fluctuant candle flames disguise? Psychotic needs? Anger? Homicidal rage? Hard to tell.

"I know he'll never cut me 'cause I'll never cheat, but people respect him, so they respect me."

Although Molly had a moment ago checked the stairs, already she imagined an ascending presence. Maybe it wasn't imagined. Maybe it would be real this time.

"He cut someone for me once," said Angie. "I wanted it done, and Billy did it. I felt bad later. I was sorry later. But he did it. And he would've done it again if I asked, and that made me feel safe."

Molly eased out of the doorway, to the left, her back against the wall, putting distance between herself and the naked woman but also between herself and the stairs.

"If he was here," Angie said, "I'd ask him, and he'd cut me, Billy would, he'd cut me just right, not too deep, so I wouldn't have to do it myself."

Molly could almost believe madness was in the air: contagious, carried on dust mites, easily inhaled, following a path of infection straight from lungs to heart to brain.

Reminding herself of her purpose, trying to get control of the situation, she said, "Listen, there was a little girl here earlier. Her name was Cassie."

"I want to obey, I really do, I want to obey and satisfy like the others. Will you cut me?"

"Obey who? Angie, I want to help you, but I don't understand what's going on here."

"The cuts are an invitation. They cluster at the cuts. They come in through the blood by invitation."

Fungus, Molly thought. Spores.

"Thousands of them," Angie said, "coming through the blood. They want to be in the flesh, in the live flesh for a little while, before I'm dead."

Even if the bolero of shadows and candlelight had not flung distortions across Angie's features, the woman's dementia would have prevented Molly from reading her emotions and inferring her intentions.

"Angie, honey, you've got to put down the bottle and let me help you." Molly didn't have to fake compassion. In spite of her fear, she was shaken by sympathy for this distraught and confused woman. "Let me take you out of here."

This offer was met with agitation, anxiety. "Don't bullshit me, you bitch. That's not possible, you know it's not. There's nowhere for me to go, nowhere to hide, nowhere, ever. Or you, either. You'll be told what to do, you'll be told, and you'll do it or suffer."

The cold concrete wall against Molly's back pressed its chill through her clothes and into her flesh, her bones, brought winter to her spirit. She was shivering and couldn't stop.

"I've got to obey." A long harrowing groan came from her, and she struck her breasts with one fist. "Obey or suffer."

With growing desperation, Molly tried again: "Cassie. A nine-year-old girl. Blond hair. Blue eyes. Where is she?"

Angie glanced toward the basement stairs. Her voice was sharp, urgent: "They're all below, they made the invitation, they cut, they cut, they opened their blood."

"What's happening down there?" Molly demanded. "Where will I find the girl if I go down there?"

Holding out her left hand, palm up, Angie said, "I bit. I bit so hard, and there's blood."

Even in the shimmering deceptions of candlelight, the teeth marks were clearly visible in the meaty part of the woman's hand, and thick clotted blood.

"I can bite, but I can't cut. I can bite, and there's blood, but that's not acceptable, because I was told to cut."

Stepping between the candle globes, she moved toward Molly, and Molly backed off, circled away.

Offering the broken bottle, the jagged end still first, Angie said insistently, angrily, "Take this and cut me."

"No. Put the bottle down."

Sorrow welled in those mad eyes. A warm salty tide brimmed, spilled. Anger instantly became despair and self-pity. "I'm running out of time. He's going to come up those stairs, he's going to come back for me."

"Who?"

"He rules."

"Who?"

Her eyes burned red in scalding tears. "Him. It. The thing."

"What thing?" Molly asked.

Hot tears washed years off Angie Boteen's face, and rendered it the countenance of a terrified child. "The thing. The thing with faces in its hands."