The Wreckage

28

Late evening, the weather has turned. Wind thrashes branches against the sides of houses and rattles rain against the windows. Keeping to the shadows, he approaches the house from the darkest end of the street, using the trees to shield himself. Rain sluices off the brim of his baseball cap as he studies the rear facade, noticing the downpipes and windows. There is a light on in the upstairs bathroom, a woman moving behind the frosted glass. Steam rolling across the light, fogging the mirror, condensing on the tiles.

Leaves cling to his wet shoulders, making him look like an extension of the hedge, more plant than animal, more animal than human. He doesn’t like the set-up. He prefers long-range targets viewed through the scope of a rifle.

She has read her little boy a story. Put him to bed. Brought him a glass of water.

Peering through a downstairs window, he looks for the security panel on the wall. It’s not armed. The broken window did its job.

Gloves on. The key. Upstairs.

Elizabeth soaks in the bath, her eyes closed, her head resting on a towel. She hears something outside and holds herself, listening. The wind and rain are like watery insects in her ears. A car engine starts then disappears down the street.

When the water begins to cool she pushes herself up, wrapping a robe around her body. She pauses at the fogged mirror, rubbing a hole to examine her face. There are lines she hasn’t noticed before. Delicate cracks like soft pencil marks.

Pulling on a nightdress, she crawls into bed, asleep almost immediately, dreaming she can feel North’s warm body next to her. In the early years of their marriage, before Rowan was born, North would sometimes wake her in the middle of the night, kissing her nipples and stroking her stomach and thighs. She would moan and smile with drowsy expectation, her legs opening almost instinctively.

At some point she wakes. The wind seems to breathe through the upper windows, locked open a few inches to create a cross draught. Rowan is snuffling on the monitor. He snores like his father, only softer.

“Hello, Elizabeth,” rasps a voice.

Her eyes are wide open now. She looks around the room.

“Can you hear me?”

It’s coming from the monitor; from lips pressed against the plastic microphone.

“Such a fine-looking boy, he sleeps so peacefully.”

Out of bed she crosses the floor, running along the corridor. Rowan’s bedroom door is open. The nightlight casts a soft yellow halo. Her eyes search for him. They open to someone else.

A gloved hand covers her mouth and nose, warm and hard against her lips and teeth. He wrenches her head back into his own, drawing her body into his loins, a belt buckle hard-edged against the small of her back, his unshaved jaw scraping like emery paper across her cheek.

He drags her along the corridor into the darkness of her bedroom, throwing her on to the mattress, where he presses the gun to her temple.

Elizabeth pulls the bedclothes around her.

“Please don’t hurt us. Take whatever you want. My purse is over there, but I don’t have any money.”

“You utter another sound and you die here and now.”

She nods. The cold ring of steel is pressed above her left eye. His face is covered in a handkerchief like a cowboy. His sodden black shirt is molded to his chest.

He twists the gun into her temple. “Who else is in the house?”

“Nobody.”

He presses the barrel to her mouth, forcing it between her lips, into her throat, making her gag.

“Who else is in the house?”

Her lips move around the barrel. She shakes her head, pleading with her eyes.

Pulling the gun free, he wipes the barrel on the bedding.

“Are you afraid?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“Of what?”

“Of you.”

Elizabeth can see into his eyes. Empty. Bottomless. They remind her of something from her childhood-an old abandoned well in the garden, covered up and sealed with a metal grate. She would lie upon the cover and peer into the blackness, feeling the updraft as if the hole was breathing like the nostrils of a sleeping giant.

“You have some photographs.”

She shakes her head.

“You know the ones I mean.”

“In my handbag… on the dresser. Take them.”

Tucking the gun in the waistband of his jeans, he searches the bag. Finding the photographs, he folds them roughly and stuffs them inside his shirt.

“Where are the rest of them?”

“That’s all.”

“You’re lying to me.”

“No.”

“Do I have to bring your boy in here?”

“No. Please.”

“Your husband had a notebook-where is it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“What about the girl he brought home?”

“I don’t know who she is.”

The Courier sits on the bed. The sheets are knotted in Elizabeth’s hands and drawn up beneath her chin. He traces the barrel of the gun down her cheek across her lips, over her chin to her neck. Lower still… between her breasts… brushing against her pregnancy.

He reacts as though scalded, rearing backwards and pointing the gun at her stomach. Elizabeth lowers the bedclothes. Her nightdress is bunched between her closed thighs. He’s staring at her pregnancy as though witnessing a miracle.

“Turn around. Face down. Hands above your head.”

“Do you know where my husband is?”

“Count to a thousand.”

“Please tell me where he is.”

“Louder! I want to hear the numbers. If you call the police, if you tell anyone, I will come back and cut your baby out of your womb. It will be the last thing you see before you die.”

Elizabeth begins counting slowly, her mouth almost too dry to make the words. The room is quiet. She stops. Listens. Rain gurgles in the downpipes. Wind shakes the trees.

Crawling out of bed, she goes to Rowan’s room, placing her hand upon his chest, feeling for his heartbeat. Then she slips into bed next to him, placing her arms around his sleeping form, protecting him from the monsters.