Bones by the Wood (41 page)

Since then, she’d found out that the man she’d loved was a self-confessed murderer, not that it had been a surprise exactly, but what he’d done during the lockdown seemed to be in abstract to her.  He’d gone to wherever, done whatever, and come back to her.  She imagined that must be a little like a husband going off to work, closing a big deal and coming home for dinner.  Not beyond the realms of possibility, but not of her sphere.  Finding out that he’d been responsible for the death of someone that she had been physically close to had brought his life, the violence of it, the violence in him, into stark relief.

And as if that point needed driving home, she’d found herself in the alternate universe that was the nightmare of Saturday night.  And that was a big problem, because she hadn’t been alone.  That nightmare had bled all over Josh.

She had vowed to Dizzy that she wouldn’t leave him.  She’d agreed to take his ink, the sign to the world that they were together.  She’d committed to him.  And now she would walk away, because being with Dizzy had endangered the only thing she cared about more than life itself.  What she had with Dizzy paled in comparison to the love she felt for her son, and the responsibilities she had towards him.

She needed to keep Josh safe, and nowhere in her mind did Dizzy now fit into that plan.  He had promised her that they would be safe, had given his word.  But they hadn’t been safe.  It was insane how wrong he’d been.  It was almost impossible to comprehend how close they’d come to... torture, to death.  Even having endured those horrific hours, having witnessed what she’d seen, even with the bruises still showing and the missing molar that left its own throbbing ache in her jaw, even with all that, the concept of almost having been tortured to death was abstract to her.

No, she was not safe with him.  She was a target because she was with him.  Her son was a target because she was with Dizzy.  The decision was logical.  She could not be with Dizzy and keep her boy safe.  And she couldn’t be with Dizzy and stay in Ravensbridge.  First thing in the morning, she intended to start looking for a way to get them moved, across state, across many states, across the fucking continent, she didn’t care. 

For now, she needed to rest.

It was late.  It had been mid-afternoon by the time she’d managed to get her and Josh away from the Louisiana clubhouse.  She’d expected to have to run a gauntlet of patches, and that had nearly been the case.  But either Samuel understood, or Dizzy had sent word, because the patches of the mother charter had held Dizzy’s brothers back.  But Samuel had not made any effort to hold his wife back.

Moira hadn’t actually spoken one word.  She hadn’t lambasted her, as Thea had feared she would.  She’d done the opposite and refused to speak to Thea at all.  But the way she’d looked at Thea had spoken volumes.  Only the day before, she’d asked Thea if she could cope with the outlaw life, and Thea had replied that she could.  But as far as Thea was concerned, they’d been talking in terms of Dizzy possibly being sent to prison, not in terms of who the fucking hell knew what had happened to her and her kid.  As far as Thea was concerned, unless Moira could claim to have been a similar situation, she could stick her opinion up her ass.

Now Thea needed to sleep.  She’d only booked to miss the Saturday shift, and she’d gone and missed Sunday’s and Monday’s as well.  And she couldn’t very well tell Dwight the real reason why.  The best she could do was turn up to her Tuesday night shift as she was supposed to.  She’d already had to endure a terse and humiliating phone call with her boss. 

She would have offered to work double shifts, but she couldn’t leave Josh with Clarice for so much of the day.  It would be hard enough to explain why he was as he was.  It would be hard enough to deflect the questions about why her own face was battered.  She’d come up with a story about having had a near miss on the highway, some sudden braking and her head hitting the steering wheel.  It was the best lie that she could come up with and she was going to stick with it.

Thea tucked Josh into her bed and crawled in with him.  She couldn’t leave him.  He woke up screaming for her in the night.  She would not force him to wake up alone, even in his own bed.  She pulled the comforter over them both, put her arms around her boy, and prayed for a dreamless sleep for them both.

~o0o~

A week after their abduction, Thea realized that reality was not making room for them, and they didn’t have the energy to force their way into the continuing rotation of the world.

Both she and Josh were plagued with nightmares.  She still hadn’t made him go back to his own bed, but now she’d had to add a plastic sheet to hers, because when he woke up screaming Josh generally also lost control of his bladder. Trips to the laundromat were becoming a daily ritual.

Josh had only spoken once to her about the content of his night terrors.  They were always the same.  Over and over he was reliving the moment that she’d been dragged away from him.

Thea felt sick with helplessness.

Her own nightmares were a spectacular twist on that horrific night.  She saw everything exactly as it had happened, but instead of Dizzy being strapped in the chair, battered, burned and bleeding, she saw Josh.  And she was forced to watch as the torture took its course, until she too woke up screaming.  Between the two of them, they weren’t helping each other, but Thea didn’t know what else to do, where else to turn.  It wasn’t as if there was anyone she could go to for help.  Neither of them could explain their predicament to a doctor or a therapist without indicting the Priests.  Thea might not want to be associated with them anymore, but neither did she want to be on the receiving end of their anger.

Tonight, as every other night, she was working.  Dwight had taken to coming in at random times during her shift.  She knew he was checking that she was actually there.  It was humiliating, but she almost couldn’t blame him.  From his point of view, she’d been the worst sort of employee lately.  Tonight’s visit had been made even worse by Dizzy walking in while Dwight gave her his usual condescending lecture about employee responsibility and corporate image.  Given the neglected state of the store, that was almost laughable, but Thea hadn’t laughed.  Dizzy must have heard every patronizing and sarcastic word that had dripped from her boss’s mouth.

Dizzy hadn’t been in the store all week, at least not while she was working.  To see him now meant only one thing to Thea; he wanted to corner her so that he could speak to her.  He’d obviously been quite capable of taking care of his grocery needs at other times during the day.

“Good evenin’, Thea.”

She’d been right. At least he’d waited until Dwight had gone to come over to the counter.  He wasn’t even making a pretence of buying anything.

She was momentarily at a loss for words.  She looked at him and saw everything that they could have been.  No greeting seemed adequate.  “Hey, Dizzy.”

“You havin’ some difficulties there?”  He tilted his head towards the store doors, indicating the recently departed manager.

“Nothin’ I can’t handle.”  She really didn’t want him offering to jump in and fight that battle for her.

“How’re you and...”  He paused and ran his hand through his hair.  He wasn’t wearing his hat.  Thea remembered what it was to feed her fingers into those strands and hold him close.

“Thea, I miss you and Josh.”

There was no doubting the emotion in his voice, but she didn’t know what to do, what path to take, other than the one that kept her son as far away from any danger to his life as possible.

“Dizzy... I can’t.  I just... can’t.”  The words were physically painful for her to say.

“Sweetheart, I don’t know what else to say.  I’m sorry, so sorry.  I’ll fuckin’ beg if I have to.”  He looked up at the camera that was fixed to the wall high over her shoulder.  “And you’ll have it all on tape.”

She was fairly certain that she was going to throw up, but she couldn’t be less than honest.  “I miss you too, Dizzy, but don’t you see?  It’s not you I blame.  It’s me.” 

In the days since that awful night, Thea had turned all her fear and blame into self-loathing.  She had felt it happening and been unable to stop it.  It had eaten away at her dignity and self-respect, at her courage and strength, like a cancer.  The more times she relived that night, the more she realized that Dizzy had fought for them before he’d been subdued.  He had tried to protect them.  He’d ridden out from the ranch and tried to kill those men before they’d gotten too close.  It was she that had failed Josh, by getting too close to Dizzy in the first place.  She should have had the foresight to see that no good would have come of it and ignored the handsome bastard from the time she first laid eyes on him.

The evidence of how much he’d tried was still plain to see.  The shirt he was wearing covered most of his arms, but there were the remnants of bruises on his face and scabbed lines that had been splits through his lips and cheeks. Her own face was a wonderful concoction of greenish yellow and blue.

There was also a new addition to Dizzy’s wardrobe.  On his left wrist was a black, leather cuff that covered most of his forearm.  His sleeve was pushed up over the top of it to make way for the wide band of calfskin.  The white gauze of a bandage peeked out of the top and bottom of the cuff.  She knew what was under that cuff, or at least, she remembered what the wounds had looked like when they’d been fresh.  There had been a series of burns, his skin had been charred and raw.

“None of what happened was your fault, Thea.  Jesus Christ, you couldn’t be more wrong.”

“I’m not wrong, Dizzy.  You need to leave me be.  You have to let me look after my boy the best way I know how.”  She tried to be resolute, but her voice was dangerously close to breaking.  She would not cry; she was so lonely, so alone in this hell, but she would not cry and she would not compound her mistakes by throwing Josh back into the bear pit.

Her resolve must have shown, somehow.  Or maybe he just didn’t think the fight was worth the effort, because he turned and walked out of the store without another word.

~o0o~

Thea had managed to wrangle her shift for Thanksgiving so that she was working during the day.  She didn’t want to intrude on Clarice’s evening meal.  At least one of them should have the opportunity to celebrate a little.  Val had been only too happy to have an excuse to get out of her house while Norm was drinking a little harder, a little longer, in celebration of the holiday.

Val and Clarice were both worried about her and Josh.  They had carefully voiced their concerns, but Thea would not speak to them on the subject.  She deflected, or just outright ignored, their questions or observations.

It had been two weeks since the night they had fallen through the gates of hell, and neither she nor Josh were getting any better.  They’d both dropped weight that they couldn’t afford to lose.  They looked like walking zombies.  Their hair was lank, their skin was pale and lifeless and they both had dark circles ringing their eyes.  They were the walking dead, going through the motions of their lives.  Thea saw it happening to her boy and didn’t have a clue how to stop it.  She felt so helpless, so alone and so helpless.

She’d picked up some food from the store after her shift. They were having sandwiches, very basic sandwiches, because she was down on funds for the bills with all the shifts she’d missed.  Their poor diet wasn’t helping either of them much, she knew that.  They usually had a few little traditions for the holiday that she and Josh adhered to.  They weren’t much, just cozy, fun things that meant the world to both of them and didn’t cost the earth, a bag of party poppers, a particular brand of pie, small things.  She had never been able to afford to make mush of a fuss, but even those tidbits were beyond her reach this year.

She let herself into her apartment.  She’d barely gotten the door unlocked when she was assaulted by the sound of Josh screaming.  It was the middle of the day, he must have fallen asleep having been exhausted after a disturbed night.  Clarice had said that he’d been awake most of the night before.  There was no one in the main living area.  Thea rushed into her room, to find Clarice half sitting, half lying on the bed, trying to shake a thrashing Josh into wakefulness.  For the first few nights, Thea had tried to not touch Josh when he was in the throes of his terror, it only made it worse. But he was always so deep in the nightmare that no matter how much she yelled, he couldn’t hear her, he couldn’t wake up.  So she had to shake him, had to become part of the fear, until he awoke and she could hold him and comfort him.  And every time she had to become the thing that scared him more, a small piece of her soul withered and died.