Full dark,no stars (21 page)

She heard an indifferently muffled engine approaching, turned, and saw an old white van come around the curve that had done her in. On the side was a cartoon skeleton pounding a drum kit that appeared to be made out of cupcakes. Written in drippy horror-movie script above this apparition (much more peculiar than a fan foto of Richard Widmark on a librarians office wall) were the words ZOMBIE BAKERS. For a moment Tess was too bemused to wave, and when she did, the driver of the Zombie Bakers truck was busy trying to avoid the mess on the road and didnt notice her.

He was quicker to the shoulder than Tess had been, but the van had a higher center of gravity than the Expedition, and for a moment she was sure it was going to roll and land on its side in the ditch. It stayed up-barely-and regained the road beyond the spilled chunks of wood. The van disappeared around the next curve, leaving behind a blue cloud of exhaust and a smell of hot oil.

Damn you, Zombie Bakers! Tess yelled, then began to laugh. Sometimes it was all you could do.

She clipped her phone to the waistband of her dress slacks, went out to the road, and began picking up the mess herself. She did it slowly and carefully, because up close it became obvious that all the pieces of wood (which were painted white and looked as if they had been stripped away by someone in the throes of a home renovation project) had nails in them. Big ugly ones. She worked slowly because she didnt want to cut herself, but she also hoped to be out here, observably doing A Good Work of Christian Charity, when the next car came along. But by the time shed finished picking up everything but a few harmless splinters and casting the big pieces into the ditch below the shoulder of the road, no other cars had come along. Perhaps, she thought, the Zombie Bakers had eaten everyone in this immediate vicinity and were now hurrying back to their kitchen to put the leftovers into the always-popular People Pies.

She walked back to the defunct stores weedy parking lot and looked moodily at her leaning car. Thirty thousand dollars worth of rolling iron, four-wheel drive, independent disc brakes, Tom the Talking Tomtom and all it took to leave you stranded was a piece of wood with a nail in it.

But of course they all had nails, she thought. In a mystery-or a horror movie-that wouldnt constitute carelessness; that would constitute a plan. A trap, in fact.

Too much imagination, Tessa Jean, she said, quoting her mother and that was ironic, of course, since it was her imagination that had ended up providing her with her daily bread. Not to mention the Daytona Beach home where her mother had spent the last six years of her life.

In the big silence she again became aware of that tinny ticking sound. The abandoned store was of a kind you didnt see much in the twenty-first century: it had a porch. The lefthand corner had collapsed and the railing was broken in a couple of places, but yes, it was an actual porch, charming even in its dilapidation. Maybe because of its dilapidation. Tess supposed general store porches had become obsolete because they encouraged you to sit a spell and chat about baseball or the weather instead of just paying up and hustling your credit cards on down the road to some other place where you could swipe them at the checkout. A tin sign hung askew from the porch roof. It was more faded than the Esso sign. She took a few steps closer, raising a hand to her forehead to shade her eyes. YOU LIKE IT IT LIKES YOU. Which was a slogan for what, exactly?

She had almost plucked the answer from her mental junkheap when her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of an engine. As she turned toward it, sure that the Zombie Bakers had come back after all, the sound of the motor was joined by the scream of ancient brakes. It wasnt the white van but an old Ford F-150 pickup with a bad blue paintjob and Bondo around the headlights. A man in bib overalls and a gimme cap sat behind the wheel. He was looking at the litter of wood scraps in the ditch.

Hello? Tess called. Pardon me, sir?

He turned his head, saw her standing in the overgrown parking lot, flicked a hand in salute, pulled in beside her Expedition, and turned off his engine. Given the sound of it, Tess thought that an act tantamount to mercy killing.

Hey, there, he said. Did you pick that happy crappy up off the road?

Yes, all but the piece that got my left front tire. And- And my phone doesnt work out here, she almost added, then didnt. She was a woman in her late thirties who went one-twenty soaking wet, and this was a strange man. A big one. -and here I am, she finished, a bit lamely.

Ill change it forya if you got a spare, he said, working his way out of his truck. Do you?

For a moment she couldnt reply. The guy wasnt big, shed been wrong about that. The guy was a giant. He had to go six-six, but head-to-foot was only part of it. He was deep in the belly, thick in the thighs, and as wide as a doorway. She knew it was impolite to stare (another of the worlds facts learned at her mothers knee), but it was hard not to. Ramona Norville had been a healthy chunk of woman, but standing next to this guy, she would have looked like a ballerina.

I know, I know, he said, sounding amused. You didnt think you were going to meet the Jolly Green Giant out here in the williwags, didja? Only he wasnt green; he was tanned a deep brown. His eyes were also brown. Even his cap was brown, although faded almost white in several places, as if it had been splattered with bleach at some point in its long life.

Im sorry, she said. Its just that I was thinking you dont ride in that truck of yours, you wear it.

He put his hands on his hips and guffawed at the sky. Never heard it put like that before, but youre sort of right. When I win the lottery, Im going to buy myself a Hummer.

Well, I cant buy you one of those, but if you change my tire, Id be happy to pay you fifty dollars.

You kiddin? Ill do it for free. You saved me a mess of my own when you picked up that scrapwood.

Someone went past in a funny truck with a skeleton on the side, but he missed it.

The big guy had been heading for Tesss flat front tire, but now he turned back to her, frowning. Someone went by and didnt offer to help you out?

I dont think he saw me.

Didnt stop to pick up that mess for the next fellow, either, did he?

No. He didnt.

Just went on his way?

Yes. There was something about these questions she didnt quite like. Then the big guy smiled and Tess told herself she was being silly.

Spare under the cargo compartment floor, I suppose?

Yes. That is, I think so. All you have to do is-

Pull up on the handle, yep, yep. Been there, done that.

As he ambled around to the back of her Expedition with his hands tucked deep into the pockets of his overalls, Tess saw that the door of his truck hadnt shut all the way and the dome light was on. Thinking that the F-150s battery might be as battered as the truck it was powering, she opened the door (the hinge screamed almost as loudly as the brakes) and then slammed it closed. As she did, she looked through the cabs back window and into the pickups bed. There were several pieces of wood scattered across the ribbed and rusty metal. They were painted white and had nails sticking out of them.

For a moment, Tess felt as if she were having an out-of-body experience. The ticking sign, YOU LIKE IT IT LIKES YOU, now sounded not like an old-fashioned alarm clock but a ticking bomb.

She tried to tell herself the scraps of wood meant nothing, stuff like that only meant something in the kind of books she didnt write and the kind of movies she rarely watched: the nasty, bloody kind. It didnt work. Which left her with two choices. She could either go on trying to pretend because to do otherwise was terrifying, or she could take off running for the woods on the other side of the road.

Before she could decide, she smelled the whopping aroma of man-sweat. She turned and he was there, towering over her with his hands in the side pockets of his overalls. Instead of changing your tire, he said pleasantly, how about I fuck you? How would that be?

Then Tess ran, but only in her mind. What she did in the real world was to stand pressed against his truck, looking up at him, a man so tall he blocked out the sun and put her in his shadow. She was thinking that not two hours ago four hundred people-mostly ladies in hats-had been applauding her in a small but entirely adequate auditorium. And somewhere south of here, Fritzy was waiting for her. It dawned on her-laboriously, like lifting something heavy-that she might never see her cat again.

Please dont kill me, some woman said in a very small and very humble voice.

You bitch, he said. He spoke in the tone of a man reflecting on the weather. The sign went on ticking against the eave of the porch. You whiny whore bitch. Gosh sakes.

His right hand came out of his pocket. It was a very big hand. On the pinky finger was a ring with a red stone in it. It looked like a ruby, but it was too big to be a ruby. Tess thought it was probably just glass. The sign ticked. YOU LIKE IT IT LIKES YOU. Then the hand turned into a fist and came speeding toward her, growing until everything else was blotted out.

There was a muffled metallic bang from somewhere. She thought it was her head colliding with the side of the pickup trucks cab. Tess thought: Zombie Bakers. Then for a little while it was dark. 6 -

She came to in a large shadowy room that smelled of damp wood, ancient coffee, and prehistoric pickles. An old paddle fan hung crookedly from the ceiling just above her. It looked like the broken merry-go-round in that Hitchcock movie, Strangers on a Train. She was on the floor, naked from the waist down, and he was raping her. The rape seemed secondary to the weight: he was also crushing her. She could barely draw a breath. It had to be a dream. But her nose was swollen, a lump that felt the size of a small mountain had grown at the base of her skull, and splinters were digging into her buttocks. You didnt notice those sorts of details in dreams. And you didnt feel actual pain in dreams; you always woke up before the real pain started. This was happening. He was raping her. He had taken her inside the old store and he was raping her while golden dust motes twirled lazily in the slanting afternoon sun. Somewhere people were listening to music and buying products online and taking naps and talking on phones, but in here a woman was being raped and she was that woman. He had taken her underpants; she could see them frothing from the pocket in the bib of his overalls. That made her think of Deliverance, which she had watched at a college film retrospective, back in the days when she had been slightly more adventurous in her moviegoing. Get them panties down, one of the hillbillies had said before commencing to rape the fat townie. It was funny what crossed your mind when you were lying under three hundred pounds of country meat with a rapists cock creaking back and forth inside you like an unoiled hinge.

Please, she said. Oh please, no more.

Lots more, he said, and here came that fist again, filling her field of vision. The side of her face went hot, there was a click in the middle of her head, and she blacked out. 7-

The next time she came to, he was dancing around her in his overalls, tossing his hands from side to side and singing Brown Sugar in a squalling, atonal voice. The sun was going down, and the abandoned stores two west-facing windows-the glass dusty but miraculously unbroken by vandals-were filled with fire. His shadow danced behind him, capering down the board floor and up the wall, which was marked with light squares where advertising signs had once hung. The sound of his cludding workboots was apocalyptic.

She could see her dress slacks crumpled under the counter where the cash register must once have stood (probably next to a jar of boiled eggs and another of pickled pigs feet). She could smell mold. And oh God she hurt. Her face, her chest, most of all down below, where she felt torn open.

Pretend youre dead. Its your only chance.

She closed her eyes. The singing stopped and she smelled approaching mansweat. Sharper now.

Because hes been exercising, she thought. She forgot about playing dead and tried to scream. Before she could, his huge hands gripped her throat and began to choke. She thought: Its over. Im over. They were calm thoughts, full of relief. At least there would be no more pain, no more waking to watch the monster-man dance in the burning sunset light.

She passed out. 8 -

When Tess swam back to consciousness the third time, the world had turned black and silver and she was floating.

This is what its like to be dead.

Then she registered hands beneath her-big hands, his hands-and the barbwire circlet of pain around her throat. He hadnt choked her quite enough to kill her, but she was wearing the shape of his hands like a necklace, palms in front, fingers on the sides and the nape of her neck.

It was night. The moon was up. A full moon. He was carrying her across the parking lot of the deserted store. He was carrying her past his truck. She didnt see her Expedition. Her Expedition was gone.

Wherefore art thou, Tom?

He stopped at the edge of the road. She could smell his sweat and feel the rise and fall of his chest. She could feel the night air, cool on her bare legs. She could hear the sign ticking behind her, YOU LIKE IT IT LIKES YOU.

Does he think Im dead? He cant think Im dead. Im still bleeding.

Or was she? It was hard to tell for sure. She lay limp in his arms, feeling like a girl in a horror movie, the one whos carried away by Jason or Michael or Freddy or whatever his name was after all the other ones are slaughtered. Carried to some slumpy deep-woods lair where she would be chained to a hook in the ceiling. In those movies there were always chains and hooks in the ceiling.

He got moving again. She could hear his workshoes on the patched tar of Stagg Road: clud-clump-clud. Then, on the far side, scraping noises and clattering sounds. He was kicking away the chunks of wood she had so carefully cleaned up and thrown down here in the ditch. She could no longer hear the ticking sign, but she could hear running water. Not much, not a gush, only a trickle. He knelt down. A soft grunt escaped him.