In the Night Season (29 page)

“I’m not cooperating anymore until my son—and—until my family is let go. You tell that to Reuther. We’ll go to the place, I’ll get
the chips and give them to you and Reuther, and you’ll both disappear for fucking ever. But not until my child and my mother and father are let go.”

His smile went away. “I told you, we can’t trust Reuther. We can’t bring the fucking chips to the lake.”

She was quiet.

He stared. He seemed to be trying to gauge what she might have been able to glean from what he had said about a lake. She strove to keep her face as expressionless as possible.

“Shit,” he said abruptly. “We can’t stay here. I don’t like the way this feels. I’ve got the key. I know where the shit is.”

“It’s past eleven o’clock,” she said.

He took hold of her once more. “We’re gonna get these lights turned out.” She did not resist. They went upstairs, retracing her path through the house, putting it back in darkness. There was no other sound now except their clumsy movement along the wood floors, her small gasps of pain from the cut sole of her foot and from the bruising of her upper arm, where he still grasped it tightly. She wanted to be still, to catch her breath, but he pulled her along with him. The sense of herself as being controlled, helpless against him, filled her with a tidal anger and loathing. She understood that she would gladly shed his blood, would cheerfully kill him, slowly and with pain. They almost fell on the stairs. He had turned everything off except one lamp in the living room, where he sank down on the sofa, still gripping her arm, and forced her to sit as well. She saw that she had left a trail of blood drops on the carpet.

“I’m bleeding,” she said.

“Where’s your shoe?”

“I don’t know.”

He stood. “Shit.”

“I’m going to kill you,” she told him. “I’ll find a way.”

He sat down and took her face into his hands. “What’ll happen to your little boy?” He let her go, pushed her a little, then sat forward—it was as if something had occurred to him. He had one hand up, a warning for her to keep still.

She breathed a long, blood-weary sigh. “What?”

“Listen,” he said.

She heard it now, too. A footfall on the porch. Someone out there. Travis sprung across the room soundlessly, ducking into the hallway. He waved at her with the hand that held the pistol. “Answer it.”

She limped to the door and opened it the thinnest sliver, feeling the cold on her face.

“Sorry,” Shaw said. “I hope I didn’t frighten you.”

She felt a surge of nearly uncontrollable frustration and anger. “I’m fine,” she muttered.

“May I—come in?”

“What’re you doing here, anyway? I told you everything I know.”

He waited a moment. “Mrs. Michaelson, are you all right?”

“I’m sick,” she said. “Remember?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Now, please.”

“Will you call me, Mrs. Michaelson, the minute you hear from your son?”

“Yes.” She had opened the door a little more, and he shifted, half-turning. She saw that he was shivering. “I’m cold,” she said. “Okay?”

“Yes, ma’am. I was in the area and saw your lights. When you started turning them off, I knew you were up, and I did say I’d check in.”

“I’m going to bed now,” she told him, narrowly managing to keep the tremor of fury out of her voice.

“Well, good night,” he said.

She closed the door on him and limped back to the sofa.

Travis remained in the hall, in that pose of wariness, listening. They heard the car pulling away. He put the gun in his belt and walked across the small space to where she sat on the couch. “It’s time for bed.”

She said nothing.

“Well?”

“Why don’t you say what you want me to do,” she told him.

“Really? What if I said I liked the offer you made earlier and that I’ve decided to accept it.”

She waited a few seconds. Then: “You can’t be serious.”

“I wouldn’t joke about a thing like that.”

“No,” she said. “You need me to get into that storage company for you.”

“You’ve been lonely,” he said.

“Fuck you.”

He slapped her.

She said it again.

And again, he struck. Then he leaned in, all power, coiled to unleash. “You made the offer,” he said.

Exhausted, she simply returned his gaze. She had gone over some line in herself, some border beyond hope or care for herself.

“I like the trade,” he said. “And I will get your boy back for you.”

“No,” she said. “You won’t.”

He leered at her. He had taken the exhaustion in her voice as desire. She knew this somewhere in the pit of herself, the moment that he grabbed her. He pulled so that she was standing. He put his mouth on her neck, gripping her upper arms. She went deeper into the almost catatonic space she had entered, watching it happen. His arm came around her, tightening at her waist, and he put his face on her chest, the other hand pulling at her blouse, tearing it. She had no weight, had been pushed back against the sofa and down. She couldn’t get any leverage. He had torn the blouse and was working at her abdomen, slobbering, moving down, pushing her legs apart. She lay back, looked up into the dark, giving way inside, sinking even deeper into the abyss that had opened in her soul. But then, as his hands fumbled with the top of her jeans, the physical reality of it brought her back as if out of a sleep, and she began working toward the surface, a drowning someone swimming toward light. She could calculate now. She put one hand in his hair and caressed, as he moved still lower, tearing at her, and she heard
him murmur something, some phrase of his assumed power over her, his knowledge, all the time, that she wanted him. On the coffee table was the small statuette atop its wooden base. A smooth, delicately carved cherub, sitting languidly on a small marble pedestal. The thought occurred to her that it could do no real damage, wasn’t heavy enough, but she reached for it anyway, as he pushed in with his tongue, slavering over her, his hands on her thighs. The cherub was too far away. She moved her hips, moaned. “Let me.” He pulled back, was undoing his belt buckle. “Don’t stop yet,” she said to him, shifting her weight, allowing him to move down on her again, and now she took the cherub in her palm, held it up, looking along her body at the crown of his head where he licked and sucked, and with all the strength she could muster she brought it down. It left her hand, and while he dropped to the floor and screamed she frantically sought it out in the weirdly displaced cushions; he was roiling, swinging at her, and she got hold of the statue; it was in her fist as she swung it downward at the white shouting face. She struck. He sat down on the floor, and she got to her knees on the sofa and struck again, across the side of his head. He cursed and rolled over, and she stood, half in, half out of her jeans. She tried to run and fell, and his hand took her wrist. She swung again, flailed at the shape of him, hit bone, and the cherub went flying across the room. He let go. She crawled crying and gasping to the other side of the room and picked up the statue. Scrambling to her feet, she leaned against the wall and pulled her jeans back on. He was still, but she could hear his tattered breath, knew he was fighting back to consciousness. She looked around the room for something else to hit him with, but it was all a blur of shadow-casting objects and angles. He had risen to all fours, his head down; he was bleeding into the carpet. She took a step toward him, and threw the statue.

It hit him in the forehead and he went down again and lay still.

She heard herself, the desperate groaning sound she made, the only sound in the rooms now. She gasped for air, terrified that she might pass out. She made it into the kitchen, opened the utility
drawer, rattling the knives and eating utensils there. It was a confusion of metals and plastics and gadgets. She pulled out a pasta fork, a spatula, a corkscrew. She found a paring knife, too small. She threw it and reached in again, stirring everything, and at last she had a butcher knife. Behind her, it was quiet. Nothing seemed to be moving—but she had made a lot of noise in here, and in the interval he could have come to. She held the knife with both hands and started back to the living room. It was dark. This came to her in a white-hot rush. The living room was dark. She got to the entrance of the kitchen and, gripping the handle of the knife, crept to the hallway wall and flattened herself against it. Silence: her breathing, the uncontrollable sobbing. The place where he had lain was empty. She saw the blood-spattered floor there.

Something broke in the bedroom behind her. She ran to the door, feeling the sting of the wound in her foot. For a terrible few seconds she fumbled with the knob. The blood on her hands made it slippery; it wouldn’t turn. He was coming. She heard him in the hall, groaning, muttering, and then abruptly he was nowhere, everywhere.

She waited, perfectly still, listening. There was nothing. She started for the stairs, and he leapt out of the darkness of the hall, knocking her to the floor. She had dropped the knife; it went clattering off in the dark. She got up and limped after it, reached the bottom of the stairs before he had her again. He’d got hold of her foot.

“Gonna hurt you now,” he said. It came to her in a ragged whisper.

She lay on her side, reaching through the bars of the stair railing for the knife, which was visible, lying on the floor out of reach: her shoulder stopped her. She stretched, screaming. He had hauled himself forward, head drooping, still holding on to her foot. When she looked down at him she couldn’t make out his face for the blood. He lay his head on the side of her leg—it hit her like a falling stone—and a cough issued forth from him. His other hand went against the wall for support. Then she saw he was reaching for the gun. It went off once, the flame-end blasting out from his belt, the bullet shattering the window. She kicked at him with her hurt foot,
hit something, shrieking, and now he was pulling her away from the stairs. He had got to his feet and was dragging her across the floor. She made one hopeless thrashing try with both hands for the knife and watched it glide away as the stairs receded. But something caught at her side, and she realized, just in time to catch it, that it was the little statuette. Still being dragged across the floor, she had it locked in her fist, and when he let go of her, turning to face her, mouth agape, gasping for air, his face covered in blood, she got up to her knees and struck him in the groin so that he dropped, squalling. His face was before her for another instant, and she struck again, with everything. The statuette went flying from her hand, and she began crawling toward the knife, in the shiny distance, on the floor next to the stairs. She felt her strength leaving her. But she made it to the knife, picked it up, turned herself, and sat against the bottom step.

Travis lay in a heap on the floor.

She tried to stand, but her legs wouldn’t work. The substance of things around her had thinned out. The room was in shadow, colors fading into colors, sounds blending into the one sound of her sobbing. She held the knife and heard glass breaking. It seemed to come from a distance. Travis was still. She watched him, then thought of rising, getting the gun from him. But someone else was in the room now, a shadow on the wall, not Travis. She gathered herself, keeping the knife ready.

“Mrs. Michaelson.”

She flailed with the knife, screamed.

“Mrs. Michaelson, it’s me, Phil Shaw.”

By slow, wary stages, she relaxed her grip on the knife, crying, breaking down. He had knelt beside her and put his hand gently but firmly on her wrist.

“It’s all right,” he said. “It’s over.”

But the words drifted to her from far away. She was trying to tell him about Jason. She was telling it, everything, but the phrases flew off like thoughts, and the field of her vision was opening out, including too many images, all tilting and circling. Faces, unreal,
elongated, curious and intent, watching her trying to speak, trying to shout through the exhaustion and the loss of blood and the shock. From someplace, from her failing consciousness, she hurled one last scream, one last helpless word, then lapsed back into the silent dark.

J
ASON SKIRTED THE LAKE IN SLOW
stages. At times it was as if he were treading helplessly without moving. He pushed through the dry, tall grass at the edge of the partly frozen water. The light he was moving toward receded before him, and he began not to believe in it anymore. He understood, without words, that he must not lie down. The cold whipped at him, and the greatest urge was to get away from it, out of the encasing sting of it. At one point he fell. He looked along the uneven, grassy line of the ground to where the light seemed to fade. Someone was walking there, along the edge. He saw the thin shadow cross the diminished border of light.

He got to his feet, unable to decide about being quiet or calling out. The night sky reeled; the ground tilted. He dropped to his knees again. The light was lost. Shapes moved in the darkness, prodigious folds of something shifting, and abruptly he recognized the moon, a faint shimmer spreading widely beyond the massive snarls of drifting cloud. He was lying on his back. Something touched his face, a chilly point of sensation, and another, and then another. He sat up, gasping, afraid of sleep. It had begun to snow. The snow came fast, seemed thrown out of the area of sky where the moon had intricately broken
through. But then the moon was gone, and there was the steady fall, the silence, no wind stirring. The ground had already begun to whiten.

Jason struggled over onto all fours, then with great effort rose to one knee, straining inside himself, straightening, coming to stand. The snow lay in tufts on the grass; it had already covered the ground. He looked back through the trees, confused, frightened of heading the wrong way. Before him, the water had taken on a deeper blackness, and the light he had been trying to reach shone again, far beyond the swirl of flakes. He took a step toward it, remembering the shadow, holding the knife still, surprised to find it in his hand, crying again, thinking of his mother. He must find a way to get home. He would know what to do when he got there, though he did not know what he should do now. He put his hand down to where the gun had been and realized, to his horror, that it was gone. Carefully, he made an attempt to retrace his steps, looking for it. He was freezing. The cold would kill him before he found the gun or wended his way into the light. The gun was gone. He turned and kept on, keeping the light before him, and then slowly he realized that he wasn’t moving, that he was lying on his back again, being buried by the snow, in the utter dark. He tried to raise his head, to find the black circumference of the lake. The lake was small in the distance, but it dissolved, and elongated, and came toward him. It walked up out of the vast, rapidly settling whiteness and loomed above him. Jason held the knife tightly, but he couldn’t lift his hand. He thought of Travis.

A voice spoke. “Hey.”

He tried to move. The tall blackness of the lake bent down and became the face of a man.

“What’re you doing here?”

“Help,” Jason said, or thought he said. “Don’t hurt me.”

“Hurt you?”

He opened his eyes wide into the heavy turmoil of snow, and the figure before him came close. The face of someone old, a lined, calm face. “Help,” Jason said. “Please.”

“You’re lost, too,” the face said.

“Lost?”

“I’ve been walking around here for a couple hours, feels like.”

The boy believed now that he was dreaming.

The other seemed to sniffle, then ran his forearm across his nose. “You hurt?”

“Yes.”

“Where’s your coat?”

“I left it,” Jason said.

“Well, here.” The man reached in and lifted him, opened his heavy coat and wrapped him in it. “That better?”

The boy began to cry again. In his mind he had begun to tell it all, he was saying it all out, everything. But the other did nothing, and Jason searched for the sound of his own voice. Nothing would come.

“Cold,” said the old man from somewhere above him.

Jason shivered and wanted to nestle into the warmth. The urge to sleep came back, almost too strong to resist.

“I don’t think I can carry you.” The voice broke in on him.

“I can walk,” Jason said, or tried to say.

“You know where you’re going?”

Then he
had
managed to speak. He tried again: “No.”

“That makes two of us.”

He put his face down in the fold of the coat and breathed his own warmth back.

“I knew a couple of hours ago,” the other said. “I think. Just can’t—can’t seem to decide which way’s best. You know? That ever happen to you?”

“No.”

“Guess not.”

“Someone tried to hurt me.” Jason stumbled over this. The urgency of getting to his mother before the night ended caused him to push away and try to stand.

“You got an idea?” the old man said.

The boy held on to him. His ankle felt broken. The cuts on his hand and lower leg had frozen and were tingling. A numbness was
leaking into his bones, and it filled him with dread. “Help me,” he said. “Please.”

“Hey, you cut yourself?”

“Help me,” Jason said. He had got to his feet.

“I’ll try,” said the old man, reaching to put the coat around him again. “I don’t really know where…” The two of them stood there in the wind-driven snow.