Drawn Into Darkness(70)

With what goal? That whimsical idea coaxed my eyes open to see whither was I spinning. I caught a glimpse of a shadowy lair where Stoat’s booted foot could not reach me, and with more instinct than thought, I uncurled to scoot under the bed like a coachwhip snake.

“Hey!” I heard a clatter as Stoat dropped his shotgun, felt his fingers trying to grab my fleeing ankles, and it was my turn to kick, hard. I think I connected nicely with one heel, and it seems to me that I hit him on the swollen side of his face. I felt him let go of me, howling. “Bitch!” he yelled. “Now look what you done. It’s bleeding!”

He said a great deal more, of course, cursing me vehemently and brilliantly, mingling the scatological, the profane, and the obscene. Huddled under the bed with the dust bunnies sticking to my wet clothes, skin, and hair—so much for feeling clean again—I listened to his virtuoso performance with shock and awe.

A moment later the bedclothes were jerked away, and I got an unnerving view of his grotesquely distorted face, black-and-blue and now red with blood, as he got down on his hands and knees to peer at me, positioning himself to see me with his good eye. Luckily, because this room of my pink shack was so small, I’d tucked my full-sized bed into the corner, jammed against the wall, and now I’d jammed myself there also. Stoat couldn’t reach me. Dripping red spots onto the linoleum, he did not look pleased. Indeed, the expression of his single slitty eye gave me new insight into the meaning of the word “ugly.”

Rather too softly he told me, “You get your goddamn lard ass out from under there.”

My only answer was not to move.

“I’m telling you, bitch, get out from under that bed and clean up this mess.”

I almost smiled. Stoat, neat freak, unable to stand the mess his blood was making on the floor, what a crazy—yes, crazy. Viscerally in that moment I understood for the first time that Stoat’s obsession with tidiness was not a harmless quirk, but an extension of his need to control. Not just normal control: Stoat needed to control everything. Quite aside from any practical considerations of not wanting to go to jail, he had to control Justin even if it meant—

Goddess damn the pervert to hell.

Abruptly I asked him, “How did you kill Justin?” With the knife, he had said earlier, but I wanted to see what he’d say now.

“The way I’m going to kill you, asshole! With this gun.” One way or the other Stoat was a liar, but he gave me no time to appreciate this. He shoved his shotgun under my bed. No doubt about it, Stoat couldn’t reach me but his artillery could.

“Not a good idea,” I said.

Paying no attention, he said louder, “And if you don’t get your fat butt out from under there right now, I’m going to make it hurt.”

“Whoever those people are across the road at your place, they’ll hear a gunshot right away,” I continued as if with sincere concern for his welfare. “Just like I did when you shot Schweitzer.”

He started to edge the gun into position, but then, in a delayed reaction, he heard what I had said. I saw common sense kick him in the face. He demanded, “Are they still there?”

“How should I know?”

“Who are they? Cops?”

“How should I know that either?”

He swore himself silly, and if my position was undignified, well, so was his. I could almost see capital-C Control clashing against capital-R Reality within his underdeveloped mind.

Finally his eyes snapped back to me and he yelled, “I’ll use a silencer! A pillow!”

“You expect me to hold it for you?”

Checkmate. I watched him take it in. It’s pretty impossible for a person with only two hands to aim and fire a shotgun while pressing a pillow to the muzzle at the same time.

I added, “Besides, if you kill me, who’s going to clean up the mess?” And now that he was no longer ordering me to move my lard ass, perversely I began to wriggle out from under the bed.

I did this because, having had his rant and rave, Stoat might be comparatively harmless for a while now, judging by my experience of him. Actually, I felt not at all sure he wouldn’t still shoot me—or, as a more silent measure, knife me—but I couldn’t stay under the bed forever. I scrambled out from under its foot, stood up, and brushed dust off myself. Parts of me, where Stoat had struck or kicked me, hurt considerably, but I ignored them.

Standing a few feet away from me, Stoat kept the shotgun aimed at me.

I looked at him and felt only annoyance, which I did not allow to show in my face. I said, “What does a person need to do around here to get into some dry clothes?”