Primal (25 page)

What he wanted back then: to kiss Heather, to punch out Mr.
Caughey, to be believed, all contributed drops to the groundwater of his
character. Tonight, reminded of his basic self, he feels stripped of the
trivial desires that grew up untamed like ivy on the inside of him. What made
him want so many things? Was it the television? His friends? Did it invade like
a virus from the outside, or were all these wants something that grew naturally
within. He rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling. The moon is bright
and throws its pasty gaze in through the window. Lying here, he realizes how
much he truly does not want and he lists them: he does not want a bigger house,
or a new car, or a 55” flat screen TV. He wants his wife, his son, and everyone
healthy. Everything else is profoundly inconsequential. Everything else is
negotiable.

For five hours, Hank lies in bed and lets his mind wander
like this. He tries to find relief in happy memories but nothing has been able
to distract him. The discomfort in his mind has become physical. The mattress
is lumpy, the sheets are scratchy, and the room feels excessively hot. The
digital minute hand flips and the clock now reads 3:16 a.m. He turns over and
looks at his son deep in sleep beside him. Do all parents think their children
are beautiful, or is Jimmy really as beautiful as he seems? Hank feels envious
of the peaceful sleep of children, the sleep that comes when nothing is your
responsibility. He reviews the steps that led him back to his childhood home
and he is suddenly certain that running out like that was wrong. It was just
wrong. I know some of this is my inability to deal with the situation. She
needs me. It’s Alison. It is my Allie. What if leaving sent her over the edge?
What if she’s crying, or hysterical? What if she hurts herself? They have each
been forever changed, and they need to adjust to this new world. He and Jimmy
have been face-to-face with evil. It was an experience they shared on the floor
that night, but it must have been easier to be together, to at least have had
each other. Neither of them really knows what it was like to be Alison, to stand
alone, to understand that it is kill or watch your family die, to stand in
abject terror in the icy rain feeling the responsibility for all those lives,
and to know you are their only hope of survival. How many other people would
have been paralyzed? How many would have just hid behind a rock in the dark
woods and wept? Is there some relief in being the helpless ones? What does it
do to a peaceful spirit like hers to plunge a knife into the flesh and organs
of another human being? Of course, she is stuck in that horror. How could she
not be? He has not tried hard enough to save her. He has only wanted it all to
go away, but there’s no blood on his hands. By her side is where he belongs.
Those were the vows they took and she is his partner for life. No matter how
hard. Bile in his stomach backs up and burns his throat as disgust overwhelms
him, how could he have left her that way? Cautiously, he slips out of bed,
careful not to wake Jimmy. He pulls on his worn jeans and Zeppelin sweatshirt.
He grabs his socks and sneakers and silently leaves the room. He tiptoes across
the hall to his mother’s room and enters.

“Mom?” He speaks in a loud whisper.

She rolls toward him, “Henry?”

“Jimmy’s asleep. I’m going home. I shouldn’t have left her.”

“Good. You two go work it out. I’ll take care of Jimmy.”

Hank sits down on the floor near the front door to put on
his shoes and socks. His fatigue dissipates. Energy surges through him. He is
certain where he needs to be. Jesus, I should not have left her. He pulls on
his sneakers without untying them, grabs his car keys, and bolts out the front
door. It only takes a few minutes of driving through the deserted suburban
streets to hit the highway ramp. He considers calling Alison, but decides that
she may have taken sleeping pills and have fallen asleep. He will be quiet so
as not to wake her when he gets home just in case. And if she is asleep, he
thinks, I will crawl in next to her and hold her safe until morning, and then I
will get her the help she needs, and I will never desert her again.

In her bedroom, Alison is soaked clean and velvety and warm
in the arms of her feather comforter. The scalding shower reached into her soft
tissues and unwound her knotted tendons and muscles leaving her deliciously
limp. She had taken the time needed to do everything: cream rinse in her hair,
shave her legs. The skin on her calves is smooth and slick and so her legs are
slippery inside the threads of the fresh flannel pajamas. She turned off the
bedside lamp not long after she began reading and promised herself tomorrow she
would read more. She rolled over onto her side, pulled her legs up toward her
chest, burrowed in like a furry rabbit and then without the help of pills and
deep in a down-filled palm of comfort she drifted to sleep. Inside her mind,
she is aware that she is sleeping and it feels glorious. She is finally on the
path. In her dream, she is half-floating, half-skating over a glass-smooth
frozen pond. She is wearing chiffon and it billows out behind her in gentle
waves. She glides free of gravity and spinning with her arms up over her head
in praise of the movement and the beauty of the pond all around her. She hops
onto one foot and raises her back leg in an arabesque. Balanced, she leans her
face forward into the cool breeze created by her own movement. And then she
takes off on a spin so slow and so graceful that she feels it…clink...her
eyelids spring open. What was that? The clink of the metal tongue of the front
door knob as it opens. Someone has opened the front door. Or not. Or maybe not.
Or maybe it was only part of my dream. The clink of the metal blade of the ice
skates. Of course. It is only part of my dream. I will not be tormented by my
imagination any longer. Only crazy people let crazy thoughts ruin their homes,
steal their families. I am more resilient than that. I am smarter than that. I
have too much to lose to allow this disintegration into madness. It has been
remarkably easy to give in to the lunacy. How many times have I passed
disheveled people on a public street, seen them talking to themselves, and
never realized how thin the line is between them and me? I am ready now to take
back control of my life. Damn it I am safe in my bed in the home I love. I will
rise above this. No one is in my house. She smiles to herself and sinks her
face into the soft forgiving cotton of her pillow. No one is in my house. She
can feel there has been some kind of turning point and she is grateful. Her
thoughts drift to Hank as she tumbles back toward sleep. How hard this must have
been for my dear husband. How over the edge I must have been for that man who
has loved me all of my adult life to walk out like that. I can’t imagine it now
that my feet are back on solid ground. And look, miraculously, instinctively,
my sweet husband did exactly what I needed. It was the proverbial slap across
the face and it worked. I feel the dread that has been lying like dead weight
on my chest has lifted. I can take a full breath of air without that
constricted sensation. I needed another shock. I needed a serious shock like
when they shock someone’s heart and it comes back to life. That is what
happened to me when Hank and Jimmy walked out that door. Tomorrow will be a
special day. And her thoughts are interrupted by the smallest sound, the tiniest
nearly imperceptible creak from the loose floorboard, the floorboard in the
foyer immediately to the left of the thin-legged side table. She knows exactly
which board. She has wanted to have that fixed, wanted to get it nailed back
down. She knows the sound of a foot on that board. She has heard that sound a
thousand times. She knows it well, too well to pretend she did not hear it.
With slow intensity, she rises up to sitting in her bed. Her ears are trained
because she knows precisely where the next floorboard will sound. She waits for
it. Nothing. Perhaps it is the house settling, one of the various innocent
noises made by homes every day, like when the windows make a snapping sound as
the bright sunlight hits them. Houses make noises: wood and glass expand and
contract. This is fundamentally true. She knows this is fundamentally...creak -
there it is. Her eyes narrow in on the bedroom doorway. Yes, she is sure. She
is completely awake. She waited for a particular sound and that was it. Someone
is slithering up the stairs taking care to be very quiet. Her heartbeat pulses
in her throat. The dread hits her chest like a baseball bat knocking the wind
out of her. He waited. Of course, he watched and he waited until she was alone.
She slides her legs silently out from underneath the bed covers and she slips
her body down onto the carpet. He is here. Where can she hide? Should she hide?
He will find her. He will smell her like a beast. She reaches under the bed for
the rifle. Where is it? She throws both her arms under the bed and sweeps them
around frantically. Where? Panic clutches her and she begins to tremble! She
remembers. The rifle is leaning up against the wall near the door to the
hallway where Hank stashed it as Jimmy came up the stairs. She looks. Yes, she
can just make out the shape of its outline in the dark. On her hands and knees,
she scurries over to it while he takes the stairs one-by-one to the second
floor cautious not to wake her. Fear strips away her pretense of sanity. She is
an animal again. Her skin becomes damp as her heart races. Her breathing puffs
staccato. Her eyes dart back and forth calculating her options. The comforter
on the bed looks bunched up. That’s good because it looks like someone is
sleeping there. That will give her an added second or two. In a quick blast of
motion, she crawls over to the opened door to the Jack-n-Jill bathroom, which
links her bedroom with Jimmy’s. She positions herself crouching to the side of
the door. She lifts the rifle aiming exactly chest-high at the open doorway to
her bedroom. She rests her elbows on her thighs and takes a secure and steady
position. Ready. She’s going to blow him away. Time slows and the waiting feels
endless even though she knows it takes only seconds to climb the stairs to the
second floor. There! The dark silhouette of a man appears in the doorway. The
figure takes a step toward the bed. The body is exposed. It is a clear shot.
She’s got him. She begins to pull back on the trigger. Stop. She freezes.
Disoriented. Wait. Is this real? Is it her husband? Inside, she screams at
herself, don’t shoot! It’s Hank! Oh my god, and a split second before firing,
in horror she puts the rifle down on the carpet.

“Oh, god!” She shoves the rifle out of reach with her feet.
“Oh god! Hank? You came back.”

He turns toward her. He sees her crouching in the bathroom
doorway. “Of course I came back,” Ben says with a smile. “You knew I would. We
have unfinished business.”

What’s real? Wait. Is she still in a dream? He’s dead. Ben’s
dead. It’s Hank. I need to see that it is Hank! Ben raises his handgun aiming
at her head and she reacts reflexively. Using power from both her legs, she
launches herself backward into the bathroom as he fires! The sound of the
gunshot thunders out piercing the serenity of the neighborhood and then she
knows. I am not dreaming! I am not imagining! I am not crazy! I have been right
all along. She scuttles across the bathroom tile, which feels hard on her
knees. The bathroom still smells of the lavender soap and citrus shampoo she
lathered on in sweet luxury earlier. I’m glad I’m clean, she thinks in a
passing second. I’d hate to be found dead and dirty, too, a last humiliation.
I’ve been dirty, I’ve been soaked in mud and covered in blood and I really do
want to die clean. Does this explain why we clean a body before we bury it? She
feels oddly peaceful about that even as she realizes it is such a strange thing
to be pleased about. And no matter how this ends, at least it will end and that
is something to be thankful for she tells herself. She scrambles into Jimmy’s
room.

Ben walks after her following with the ease since he is the
greater more powerful predator. He will do this deliberately. He has a right to
enjoy this. She killed Theo. He steps into the bathroom and glances into the
shower stall - empty. She killed Kent. He steps toward the other bathroom door,
which leads to Jimmy’s room. She killed Gravel. Bitch! He wants her suffocating
in fear. He is excited by her terror and thrilled to see her crawl. He has been
patient for this moment. Now, he owns her and all the waiting is worth it.

Alison rolled to the left as she scurried into Jimmy’s room
and so now she is trapped. She must get across to the doorway that leads to the
hall and the stairs. Moonlight streams in white through Jimmy’s bedroom window.
She wedges up against the side of his dresser trying to calculate her chances
of making it to the door. She is only partially hidden. She has seconds - only
seconds to decide but time stretches as her brain works at peak efficiency. To
get out and into the hallway she must cross the bathroom door opening. Stupid,
stupid, she scolds. I should have gone the other way! Crossing the door now
will expose her to him as he walks through the bathroom. It would put her
directly in his line of fire. What? What to do? Too late. Ben emerges from the
bathroom into Jimmy’s room. He turns toward her. He has her. There is nowhere
to go. She reaches for the remote on Jimmy’s dresser and presses it. Bells!
Whistles! Lights! Ben twists around startled as Jimmy’s robot bursts to life
nearby and walks toward him. “What the fuck!” He fires at it! He’s never seen
anything like it. Alison uses the one instant of his distraction to cross
behind and at a dead run she escapes the bedroom. With big strides nearly
flying she heads for the stairs. The Mossberg, she thinks. I need the Mossberg
in the basement.

Ben smiles at his reaction and surprise. She tricked him,
very funny. She is so inherently competent. He takes off after her with huge
powerful strides and complete confidence.