Drawn Into Darkness(11)

With his arm still around the boy, Stoat left the room and flicked off the light.

When people say they spent a sleepless night, usually they’re exaggerating. Usually they have at least dozed a little.

I spent a sleepless night, no exaggeration. The dark hours became one long panic attack. My heart raced, and my mind, and I ached all over with sheer helplessness.

But I, myself, was not the only one I felt helpless about.

Of course I felt terribly afraid as the captive of a psycho. I didn’t want to die. I needed to escape. But even more urgently I needed to rescue Justin.

• • •

Sometime in the dead of night—that’s what they call it, the dead of night, uncomfortable thought—I thought I heard stealthy movements somewhere in the house. Holding my breath to listen, despite the blathering of summer insects all around the shack, that plus the pounding of my own pulse in my ears, I sensed someone was awake and up to something. Stoat, probably, paying me a visit to—rape me, kill me, the devil knew what. I would be too proud to cry out, but he would make me cry out anyway. Unmistakable soft footsteps approached my room. I tried to lie still and not tremble—

It was Justin.

I knew it the moment he reached the door, even though I could barely see a thing, with only a whisper of starlight coming in the windows. Maybe I recognized him from that awkward, ardent pubescent-boy smell I knew so well from my sons, a whisper of scent just at the edge of my conscious awareness. Or maybe my primal mothering instinct knew him, or maybe there is a sixth sense. Somehow I could tell that the shadow entering my room was youthful, frightened, and wretched and brave, trying to—atone?

He sat on the edge of the bed—I felt the mattress sag—and he fumbled at my face to find the gag and pull it out of my mouth. “Shhh,” he told me in the softest of exhalations, and he reached for something and fumbled again to find my mouth, pressing what felt like wood shavings against my lips. But my nose told me otherwise. Cornflakes. I opened my mouth.

The cornflakes tasted sugary. Frosted Flakes. When I had chewed and swallowed, I opened my mouth again, waiting like a baby bird for Justin to feed me.

After a short while, however, my stomach started to rebel, and I closed my mouth, turned away, and shook my head.

“Eat,” Justin whispered so softly I could barely hear him.

“Can’t,” I whispered back.

“Drink?” he asked. “Milk?”

I knew I should try to stay strong and hydrated. “Okay.”

He slipped one hand under my head and lifted it in the cradle of his elbow. With the other hand he guided a glass to my mouth, tilting it until I tasted milk. I sipped a few swallows of it, then pulled away.

He took the hint, laying my head back on the mattress. “How about some more cereal?”

“No, thanks.”

As if I might change my mind in a few moments, he stayed where he was.

“Go back to bed,” I whispered, “before that pervert wakes up and wonders where you are. He makes you sleep with him, doesn’t he?”

Justin might have nodded, but I couldn’t tell. I felt his body sag heavy on the mattress, saw him, or the dark shape that was him, curl up and slump over.

“Better go,” I breathed.

Without a good-bye he got up and left me.

I looked up into darkness and tears ran down across my temples and trickled into my ears. My stomach hurt, trying to process food amid bile and stress, but that wasn’t the cause of my tears. Nothing Stoat could do to me would ever make me weep; I promised myself that. I had a great deal of useless pride, even after the divorce had flattened me. Especially then. But Justin and a few Frosted Flakes made me want to bawl like a baby.

I shied away from thinking the word “kindness.” It was treacherous. Even Stoat could be kind.

He demonstrated that in the morning. Striding into my room—my prison—he said, “Hey, there,” just like a truly nice guy, pulled the gag out of my mouth, and asked without a hint of sarcasm, “Did you sleep well?”

His gently smiling face astonished me so much that instead of glaring at him, I gawked.

“You ain’t speaking to me?” His smile waxed even more saintly. “I can understand that. Come on and use the bathroom.” He released my feet first, and I could have kicked him in the head, but I just stared. After he released my hands, he did draw his omnipresent handgun from his waistband as I struggled to get up from the bed, but he stood back and gave me all the time in the world to get my stiffened body up and walking.

Oddly, his unexpected patience made me more afraid of him, not less. In the bathroom, even after I had pulled my pants back up, I still felt trembly all over. I took my time washing my hands and trying to finger-comb my hair, at which point I realized I had somehow become reluctant to look at myself in the mirror. I could not meet my own eyes.