Deadly Offer (11 page)

She approached the first window. The glass pane lifted quite easily and stayed up. Leaning out of the tower, Althea took hold of one outside shutter.

It was made of wood. Paint flaked off even as she grabbed the rim. The wood felt punky and rotten under her fingers, and when she dug her nails into it, she knew she was leaving half moons of anger in the wood. The shutter whined on its hinges, as if calling out to the hemlocks.

But the sun shone on, and the shutter turned in.

Gripping the shutter with one hand, Althea reached for its mate. It did not move as easily. She had to lean way far out of the window. She was on her tiptoes now, her center of gravity off, her stance no longer safe.

How high she was.

Below her was not grass, but stone.

Far below.

If someone gave me a push … thought Althea. She swallowed, wet her lips, and leaned even farther out, grabbed the opposite shutter, and pulled. It took all her strength to bring the shutters together, but they were only wood, and she was more than that.

Her fingers were cramped and raw from hauling on the splintery, paint-peeling rims, but at last she brought their edges together. She swung the heavy metal clasp on the left shutter and shoved it through the iron circle sticking out of the right shutter like a black wedding ring, and the first pair of shutters was closed.

The louvers of the shutters were fixed, slanting down, and no sun penetrated at that angle.

Now the tower room was darker by a third. The dust seemed to lie more heavily on the floor, and the echo of her footsteps seemed quieter and less important.

Althea turned to approach the middle window. The air in the room thickened and became a wall. She had to lean against it, throw her weight as if against a great invisible wind. Turning sideways Althea hurled herself like a linebacker through the air of the tower room and reached the middle window.

The window refused to lift.

She fought with it. She could jiggle it a little, but not open it.

From somewhere outdoors, through the thin old pane of glass, she heard a laugh, like the sound of dry leaves rustling on pavement.

Althea yelled at him, “Laugh all you want! I’m closing these shutters, and when I’m done with that, you are done, too! You are finished! You are history!”

Like Celeste, thought Althea. Like Jennie. Like Becky. History. They had laughed once. Had fun and friends once. Now they don’t.

Well, he had freedom once, because I opened his shutters. And now he won’t. So there.

But even so, she was afraid. Afraid of how high up she was. Of how height meant nothing to him. Of what would happen next.

Don’t be a weakling, Althea said to herself.

She wrapped her arm in her sweater and punched the window. The glass shattered with a crystalline cry and fell to the stones below. Vicious triangles of windowpane remained in the wood. They glittered in the sun, like vampire teeth.

“You’re nothing but glass,” Althea whispered to the shimmering fangs. “Nothing but glass.”

The window gave up its fight and let itself be lifted easily and quickly.

And the outside shutters, as if not wanting to be destroyed, submitted to her reaching fingers and let themselves be swung inward, and allowed their clasp and ring to meet, partners forever joined.

The tower room was much darker now. The remaining window faced north. No rays of sun ever came in that window. A little daylight filtered through, but when Althea stood in front of this last window, there was not even enough light to cast her shadow.

It weakened her, as if without a shadow she were without soul as well, without courage and without hope.

After a terrible silent struggle, the third window submitted to her. She did not have to shatter it. For the third time, she thrust her body out to grab a shutter. Leaned way out over the hard stone, tilted dangerously to grasp the wooden rim. The temperature outdoors had dropped severely. She was chilled, her fingers cold to the bone.

These shutters seemed positively eager to close, almost slamming her fingers between them. These shutters want to be shut, thought Althea, and her hair crawled.
Why?
Did the shutters themselves have a scheme in mind? Had they plans? Plans for Althea?

Darkness was deep.

Only the door to the tower room let in any light, and that was from the ceiling fixture in the downstairs hall. She faced the door, trying to gain strength. But it was electric light, manufactured light; it lacked the power of the sun to nourish life; it gave Althea nothing.

That’s all right, she thought. I have enough. I will finish this.

She surveyed the tower. The glass was black now, backed with the closed shutters. But there were three more sets of shutters: the inside shutters. And they were the ones that counted.

The chill and the foul-smelling damp that was the vampire swirled around the room, like invisible dervishes spinning, knowing time was up, knowing they would fall to the floor and never spin again.

“I have you now,” said Althea. She was triumphant: rich and solid with victory.

She swung the first inside shutter to its closed position.

But it would not go all the way. It resisted. With muscles of its own, it pushed Althea back into the center of the empty room.

The six inside shutters regarded her with their dozens of louvered eye slits.

She threw herself at a different shutter and pushed with all her might. To her surprise it closed without a murmur. She reached for its companion shutter to bring that to the center and bolt them; they were to be coupled by long, thin, black bolts, but when she touched the second shutter, the first returned to its open position against the wall.

Althea’s arms were not long enough to reach both shutters at once.

There was no way for her to slide the bolt that would hold a pair down.

The slats of the shutters curved upward into catlike smiles of contempt.
You can’t close us,
said the shutters to Althea.

She threw herself at first one shutter and then another, one window and then another—but she could not close a single pair.

A laugh like broken glass spun out of the tower room, through the door, into the hall …

… and the tower room door, the door that led away from the attic and down the stairs, closed by itself.

Closed tightly and forever.

Her exit was gone.

She had planned to shut the vampire in the tower room.

It had never crossed her mind that he might shut
her
in the tower.

A
LTHEA STOOD VERY STILL.

Nothing but stone, granite, and slate had ever been so still. There was no breath in Althea, no pulse. She was frozen in space and in time.

Is this my choice? she thought. Am I frozen in order to think more clearly? Or because I am so afraid that there is nothing left of me to move?

Her feet were part of the floor, as if nailed to the boards. Her hands hung motionless in the air, as if her bones and tendons had become oxygen and nitrogen.

Or, she thought, has the vampire frozen me? Is this his choice? Is he about to take … the next step?

She felt the mold and the fungus of him closing in on her.

What did it feel like?

Would she know when it began and when it was over?

She tried to remember the world. She tried to think of sunshine and falling leaves, of laughing cheerleaders and peanut butter sandwiches.

How tired Celeste and Jennie and Becky had become. How tired they had stayed. Not just their bodies, but their souls, the exhausted skeletal remains of the girls they had been.

Not me, thought Althea. Please, not me!

She knew now that Celeste and Jennie and Becky had felt fear. That they had smelled him, and tasted him, and been sick with nerves from him. She knew now that Celeste and Jennie and Becky had tried to fight back, had put up their hands, as if ten little human fingers could fend off a vampire. She knew now that their hearts had beat with terror, that their lungs had heaved with horror.

I did that, thought Althea. When he said, “They’ll just be a little tired,” I let myself believe that. I guess you always want to believe that violence will really be gentle. That you aren’t really doing anything wrong. That it will all come out happily in the end. Nothing to fret about, especially if you are the winner.

I am the winner, she thought, hysterical with self-loathing. This is what I have won. The chance to be alone with a vampire in a tower of black.

Her thoughts grew as dim as the tower room itself, as if her brain had softened and darkened, and she said to the vampire,
All right. Come in. I accept.

She felt her hair lift. An odd sort of breeze cooled the back of her neck. Spin around, she told herself. Raise your fists! Strike out and beat off the attempt.

But something had happened when she closed the shutters. She had closed off a part of herself. All that was strong in her, all that was determined, perhaps even all that was good, had been shuttered away, in some distant and unreachable compartment.

Did I ever have anything good in me? she thought. Will I ever have it again? Or has the goodness of me died inside?

Althea felt movement now, and it was herself.

She was sagging.

Leaning.

Tipping.

I feel awfully tired, she thought.

She yearned to sit. It seemed very important to sit down. Perhaps to lie down.

I need rest, she thought. What time is it? Is it nighttime? Is it bedtime ? Is it tomorrow already? Who even cares ?

In the tower room, there was no time. There was only dark.

She felt the foil of his fingertips on her skin.

I am letting it happen, Althea thought. I am giving in. It seems that I
have
made a choice.
I have chosen to surrender.

She tried to see what was happening, but there was nothing to see: nothing but dark …

… darker …

…
darkest …

A
HORN HONKED.

A vehicle had pulled into the driveway below.

How twenty-first century! The horn’s call pierced the tower room as sunshine could not. Where light cannot travel, sound can.

How beautiful is sound! The driver leaned again on his wheel, and the glorious scream of a car’s horn penetrated the tower. No louvers or shutters, no dust, no vampire could stop sound.

Althea smiled into the dark, and immediately the dark was less. A smile, she thought. Happiness. Another weapon. I must remember all these. Sound and joy: They obliterate the enemy.

She straightened. She flung back her hair and opened her eyes wide. It was still dark, but now the dark was curiously friendly. Who had said to Althea that he thought of the dark as a friend?

She waited a moment, hoping her brain would sort out the voices of the week and remember.

Her feet moved; the nails that had held her to the wooden boards had evaporated. Her hands moved; the paralysis was gone. She walked forward in the dark, encountering nothing, until she touched the wall, and it was only a wall. Plaster. Her hands scrabbled outward until she had found the first window.

Don’t drive away, whoever you are, she thought. UPS, FedEx, distant relatives. Stay in the drive.

She lifted the glass without a struggle. The window squeaked slightly, as if relaxing, as if it had wanted to be open. And the iron pins that trapped the outside shutters—they slid up as if just greased. The shutters, too, yearned to swing open.

Throwing them apart, Althea leaned out the window for the second time that day …

… and it was Ryan.

He’s the one to whom the dark is a friend, thought Althea. And now he has saved me from the dark.

Sunshine poured over her, like orange juice from a pitcher. She bathed in its warm yellow liquid. It was so welcome, so delightful, Althea felt as if she could get quite a tan, even though it was winter. She smiled at the sun, and then she laughed, and the vampire was driven away.

“Hey, Althea!” Ryan yelled.

Wait, she thought, don’t talk to me yet; I almost understood. It crept partly into my mind. What was it? What did I half know about the vampire and about me?

“Ryan! What are you doing here? I’m so glad to see you!”

“I was just driving by, and I felt this overpowering desire to stop in. You know how it is.”

No, I don’t know, thought Althea. What overpowered him? What desire was it? “What car are you driving?” she yelled. “It looks like a car with four working doors.”

“My father’s. I’m running an errand for him. I’m supposed to be getting sandpaper from the hardware store.”

“You’re miles from a hardware store,” she said. I’ve lost it, she thought. Whatever I nearly understood, I’ve lost.

“Yup. I’m taking advantage. When you have a car, you have to do your own errands as well. You’re in the tower room! Can I come up? I’m dying to see that room.”

Not a good choice of words. She shook her head. “Stay there, Ryan.”

“Aw, come on, Althea. Why are you so stingy with visiting hours?” He had to shade his eyes to see her.

Stay in the sun, she thought. It’s safe in the sun. “It’s not night, and you don’t have your telescope.”

“I always have my telescope!” yelled Ryan, brandishing it. He was not wearing a jacket, although it was cold. She imagined that she could see his muscles under the dark crimson sweater that covered his arms.

Muscles, she thought. What door could stand up to Ryan? He could probably break a lock by turning the handle.

“The sun is shining too brightly, Ryan,” she said. “You won’t see any stars.”

“But I can get oriented,” he said, “and figure out what I’m going to see when I do see it.”

He could close the shutters.

That was the answer. Together they would shut the vampire out forever. Or in. Whichever it was. What if I do it wrong? thought Althea. What if I accidentally lock the vampire out of doors forever? And he’s free to attack forever? I don’t know which side of the shutters he has to be on!

The sun vanished beneath a cloud.

The smile on her face was replaced by fear.