Drawn Into Darkness (14 page)

He scared me. I very nearly peed my pants.

Wait a minute. He hadn't scared me that much. I just needed to go.

“Stoat,” I said equably, “lookie here.” I stood up, came around the table so he could see me, and toed my unlovely sneakers off. Standing on my bare, blistered feet, I said, “Please let me go to the privy like this. You're a fair man and you've got good sense. You don't want me stinking up this shack and you know I'm not going to run away in this swamp without any shoes.”

I'm sure the “fair man” and “good sense” flatteries were key. Stoat hesitated, staring at my toes as if he found them repulsive, but finally he growled, “Fine. Just take them smelly shoes away from me.”

“Okay!”

“Say, ‘Yes, sir.'”

“Yes, sir!”

“Say, ‘Thank you, sir.'”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Go.”

I picked up my much-abused shoes and placed them against the wall farthest from Stoat, where he could see them. Then I started toward the door, but I felt something whiz past my backside and turned to look. Stoat had thrown his big, vicious knife at my shoes. If he had double vision, like he said, it didn't seem to be slowing him down much. His knife had gone right through one sneaker and pinned it to the floor.

“Bring my buck knife back,” Stoat ordered, but I headed out the door, pretending not to have heard.

“I said bring it back!”

The tone of his command stabbed me in the gut, and I knew he would kill me if I didn't obey. I scuttled back inside, yanked the knife out of my sneaker, and returned it to him, all the time trying to muster the will and strength to kill him with it instead. But I couldn't. Because I badly had to go pee. How humbling is that?

Finally out the back door, picking my way carefully toward the privy, I nevertheless cut my foot on something sharp hidden by old live oak leaves. It bled a little, and hurt. But not as much as my heart. How could I possibly survive Stoat? And what had become of Justin?

S
eated beside his brother on the flight to Tallahassee, Forrest looked at Quinn and asked, “The iPad, is it really for work or just to keep me from talking at you?”

“Both,” Quinn replied at once, without looking up from the tablet, but divulging just a hint of a smile.

“So what exactly is it that you don't want me to talk at you about?”

Quinn actually turned his head to answer. “Forrie,” he chided, very dignified in his three-piece suit, “where's your grammar? You mean, ‘What is it about which I do not wish you to talk?'”

“‘That is the sort of pedantry up with which I will not put,'” retorted Forrest promptly, quoting Winston Churchill. Both brothers enjoyed their verbal sparring, although it had been a lot more serious in their teen years, all about sibling rivalry—well, mostly on his part, Forrest admitted to himself. As always younger, shorter, chunkier, and grungier than his very successful brother, Forrest sat next to the Suit, wearing khakis and shirtsleeves, uncomfortable in the airplane's narrow seat and also within himself. “Are you going to answer my question?”

“What do
you
think?” Quinn parried.

“I think, as usual, you do not want to talk about the dysfunctional family.”

“You mean Jeb and Derry?”

“Them too.” Their perennially married grandparents were at least as dysfunctional as their divorced parents. “What did they say?” Quinn had been the one to phone them.

Quinn looked away, checking out the cloudscape. Of course he had the window seat. All Forrie could see from his seat was a rather murky horizon.

Finally Quinn gave an oblique reply. “I think they're still mad at Mom.”

Her own parents. Bummer. “What do they think is going on with her?”

“They have no clue and neither do I.”

“And they don't care.”

“They didn't say,” Quinn hedged. “They're happy to leave it up to you and I.”

“Grammar, Quinn.” Forrie pounced on this unexpected opportunity. “Objective case.”

Obedient to their longtime rules of verbal engagement, Quinn corrected himself. “Okay, they're happy to leave whatever's going on with our mother up to you and me.”

“And what the heck
do
you think is going on with Mom?”

“It is a capital error, my dear Watson,” lectured Quinn, waggling his eyebrows, “to theorize with insufficient data.”

“Suit, come on.” Tired of the game, knowing damn well Quinn used it to keep his family at a comfortable emotional distance, Forrest gave Quinn a long, level look that would not let go. “What do you think, really?”

“Hell, I don't know!” Quinn broke eye contact, studied his manicured cuticles, and said to his hands, “Maybe an irate neighbor shot Schweitzer because of his constant barking, and Mom lost it somehow, and—I just don't know. What's the worst that could have happened?”

“She could have murdered whoever shot Schweitzer.”

“If she hasn't killed Dad by now, she's not likely to murder anybody.”

This was a joke; therefore, Forrest answered it soberly. “True,” he admitted. But something about his face or tone made Quinn laugh, and Forrest had always loved to laugh; he joined in.

“The real capital error,” he told Quinn, chuckling, “is to try to figure out Mom.”

“And yet we do.”

“Yeah, well, how about those Yankees?”

An excellent diversion. A subject fascinating to both of them. One of their few mutual interests. Quinn put away his iPad and willingly discussed the Yankees during the rest of the flight to Tallahassee.

Deplaning took as long as ever, but lugging his carry-on duffel bag through the Tallahassee terminal, Forrest, to his surprise, saw the light of outdoors ahead. This was not as large a terminal as he had expected. A moment later they checked in at the one and only rental car desk, then stepped outside. Forrest looked back at a single brick building flanked by tall pine trees.

“This airport is tiny!”

“For a state capital, yes. There's our rental.” Quinn stopped rolling his carry-on leather suitcase, tucked away its handle, and lifted it into the car's trunk. “Dorothy, we're not in Kansas anymore. Would you like to drive?”

“Sure, but don't call me Dorothy.”

“I'll navigate.” Belted into the passenger seat, Quinn deployed his iPad and pulled up a map app. “I'm hoping we can get to Mom's place before dark.”

During the two-hour drive on I-10 that followed, Forrest found himself and his brother in heartfelt agreement on a couple of sentiments not involving the Yankees. One, a Chevy Aveo had to be the Worst Rental Car Ever. “It was all I could get on short notice,” Quinn said, genuinely apologetic. Two, the Florida Panhandle was the most alien place either of them had ever seen outside of a sci-fi movie. Miles and miles of nothing except tall forest standing in dark water. A road-killed bristly bloating black pig on the shoulder. At a rest stop, a hillbilly with a long beard that looked entirely too much like Spanish moss—only he couldn't rightly be called a hillbilly, because there were no hills in this flatland. Call him a swamp denizen, selling watermelons and boiled peanuts.

Adding to the surreal feel were Stetson-shaped billboards advertising a Western-wear outlet, and others, normal in their rectangular shape but not so normal in content: “Learn to Fly at Wiregrass Aviation,” “Camp at Sinkhole Springs,” “Enjoy Family Fun at Possum Park.” Forrest slowed down to look at that last one.

“Dancing possums?” he reported doubtfully. “Tempting tasty possum soup?”

“Not in my lifetime.”

Another billboard that caught their attention advertised Bucky Bob's Bait and Live Oyster Bar.

“I like oysters,” Quinn mused aloud, “but not when they've been rubbing elbows with night crawlers.”

“Since when do oysters have elbows?”

“Shut up and drive.”

Late in the afternoon they exited I-10, and once they got past the small cluster of motels, gas stations, and fast-food restaurants by the interstate, they left behind civilization as they knew it. The rudimentary road on which they drove was a pencil-straight line punctuated by a few trailer parks and several small frame houses painted in rainbow colors. When they reached an ornate but faded sign,
THE CHURCHES OF MAYPOP WELCOME YOU
, Quinn told Forrest, “Keep going to the third traffic light, which happens also to be the last traffic light.”

“Why does that not surprise me?” Forrest had slowed down not so much in obedience to the posted speed limit as to gawk at what might as well have been a Midwestern not-quite–ghost town with false fronts.
PAWN SHOP, WE BUY GOLD. CHECK CASHING
. Then he did a slight double take and read aloud, “‘Best Pharmacy and Hunting and Fishing Supplies. Gun Sale.'”

“Eek.” Quinn gave an exaggerated shudder. “I'd be scared to go in there for Advil.”

“Look what's right next door. ‘Snell Furniture and Undertaking, Family Owned for Three Generations.'”

“We're in Oz, Forrie. Look over there at Cutzit Hairstyles.”

“You've got to be kidding.” But Forrie could see all too clearly the beauty salon's window display of conditioners, curling irons, and chain saws.

“If there's a doctor, I suppose they're also the vet.”

“Why isn't there anybody on the sidewalks?” Forrest complained. “Is this a movie set for a bad Western?” The buildings, venerable but undistinguished, bothered Forrest; the way they stood scattered, oddly spaced, made no sense to his urban eyes. “Why is there a horse in a pasture right behind the People's Bank of Maypop?”

“Never mind the horse. Have a look at the church.”

Forrest looked. “Holy crap.”

“Yes, and a lot of it, I would say.” Even with its rather squatty steeple, a concession to hurricane country, the church loomed by far as the most imposing structure in Maypop.

“Third light ahoy,” said Quinn.

“First cypress swamp to the right and straight on toward Mom's place.”

The swamp quip turned out to be prophetic, but Forrie saw that he should have added cotton fields, a dairy farm, several ponds, numerous pinto horses, and a scattering of very modest houses.

After a few miles, Quinn started watching the numbers on the mailboxes. “We're getting close.”

Quinn sounded tense, and Forrie noticed because he felt tense. More than tense. Worried. Scared. What the heck was going on with Mom?

Trying to lighten the mood, he remarked, “Do you think she was serious when she said it was pink?”

“I'd say.” Quinn pointed.

“Whoa!” Forrest pulled the rental car off the road, stopped it, and stared. Nestled amid clouds of fluffy pink mimosa blossoms glowing in the sunset light, Mom's shack looked like it belonged in a fuchsia fairy tale.

Quinn concurred with Forrie's unspoken sentiment. “That is so Mom it is eerie.”

“I expect her to come flying out on her broom at any moment.”

“Don't we wish.” Quinn unbelted his seat belt. “Turn this pitiful car off and let's go see what's what.”

A smell diametrically opposed to that of mimosa blossoms assaulted their nostrils the moment they got out of the car. Wordlessly they exchanged a shocked look. Forrie stared straight ahead and let Quinn lead the way to the back door. Pinching their nostrils against the stench, they let themselves inside.

It seemed much darker there. Who could think anything so aggressively pink could be so dark? Forrest groped for a light switch, but when he found one and flicked it, he wished he hadn't. It would have been better not to see what the maggots were doing to Schweitzer.

Quinn made a retching noise, U-turned, and rushed out back to lean against Mom's car for support. Forrest retreated there too, staying a safe distance away from his brother. Quinn had not actually vomited—yet—and Forrest didn't want him to in case his own stomach responded accordingly. Grabbing Quinn's elbow, Forrest said, “Come on. Fresh air,” and tugged his brother toward the portion of the yard farthest from the house. There, under the lovely low branches of a mimosa tree, both stood and breathed deeply.

“My God,” Quinn burst out as if he had just that moment realized how seriously screwed things were. “My God, where the hell is Mom?”

•   •   •

Those good ol' boys drinking whiskey and rye in the “American Pie” song, singing “This'll be the day that I die!” had no idea what they were talking about. But I couldn't get that plangent song out of my head as I brought Stoat tepid water, drank some myself, offered to put a wet cloth on his face, and got no answer except the mean stare of his one eye and the even meaner twofold regard of the business end of his shotgun.

Fighting to remain conscious and in control of me, Stoat did not eat. Because I needed to stay physically strong, I made myself eat stuff out of cans, using my fingers as knife, fork, and spoon. Cold baked beans. Ick.

Very icky, because Stoat waited for that moment to pick up his big buck knife again and point it at me to gesture:
Come here.
Every movement cost him a gasp of pain, and he panted so badly that pity helped me overcome my fear. But as soon as I reached the picnic table bench where he sat, I was sorry. He grabbed me hard by one arm while he stretched his other hand up to my shoulder.

Golly gee whiz, had he put down his shotgun?

Golly gee nothing. I stopped trying to joke with myself when I felt Stoat place the edge of his knife against my neck.

“Help me up,” he ordered, his voice thick. I wondered whether his tongue had swollen along with the purple half of his pockmarked face. I also wondered where the heck he thought he was going, but with his buck knife nudging my neck, I wasn't about to ask.

Making very sure to keep my hands above his waist and below his neck, I helped him up. With both of his arms on my shoulders he leaned on me hard, shuffling toward the front door. To the van?

“Where are we going?” I blurted.

He gave a single snort of ugly laughter. “Stupid bitch, you ain't the only one that's got to pee.”

Oh. Great. Was he going to need me to help him unzip?

Of course he did, because he couldn't hold the knife on me and take care of himself at the same time. I tried not to look, but of course I saw glimpses. I tried to tell myself that nurses dealt with this kind of thing every day. I tried to tell myself it was just another wanker, but its proximity made my stomach spasm, threatening vomitive convulsions—not good, especially not while a snakebitten pervert held a big knife to my throat. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.

“Shake it off,” Stoat ordered, “and put it back.”

It's fair to say that was the low point of the day, and things didn't get any worse once I had zipped Stoat up and helped him back to his seat, even though he took to throwing his knife at the knotholes on the wall and having me bring it back to him, over and over again, at gunpoint. Every time I fetched the knife, I felt like using it on him, and I knew he knew how I felt, and he was just daring me. He would have blown me full of buckshot the instant I made a wrong move.

Eventually, somehow, day turned into twilight, and Stoat ceased his knife play. Once it got pretty dark inside the shack, I asked Stoat whether he wanted me to light candles.

“Hell, no.”

“Well, could I light one—”

“I said no!” His short temper was no act put on to keep me in line. It was real. Parts of his swollen face were starting to turn black, as if they would die and fall off. If that were happening to me, I would be cranky too.

“Permission to speak, sir,” I said as lightly as I could. “I need the candle to find my way to the privy. You know I'm not going to run off barefoot at night, right? When I get back in—”

“Goddamn shut your mouth and just go!”