Drawn Into Darkness(86)
“He’ll get away!”
“I got the back door; you got the front. Hurry up!”
Quinn gave a wordless, agonized gasp, turned, and ran back toward the car. Forrest stayed where he was.
The light in the bedroom suddenly died.
Forrest stiffened, trying to watch the back door he could now barely see in the twilight.
Something moved. Shadows? Wind. No. Forrest saw the back door opening.
There was no time to think, only to react. Forrest sprinted forward, ready to fight Stoat with his bare hands.
The slim person in the doorway startled so hard he let whatever he was carrying thump to the floor, then stood rigid in the doorway. Forrest saw his pale, youthful face seemingly floating in nightfall’s shadows.
Quinn’s voice said, “That’s not Stoat.”
Forrest said, “It’s sure not,” as his brother stood beside him, improvised weapon in hand.
“Who the hell are you?” the boy challenged.
“Who the hell are you?” Quinn returned sharply, all New Yorker.
But Forrest’s eyes had adjusted to the dim evening light; he could see the boy’s face in more detail, and he recognized him now, even though the kid’s face was murky with dirt and scratches and his blond cornrows were gone. “Quinn,” he said, “it’s him. The one on the tapes.”
“Quinn?” echoed the boy, his face transformed with excitement. “Quinn and Forrest?”
• • •
Justin had felt lower than a cockroach, sneaking out of the fishing shack while Miss Lee was asleep, but what else was new? Aside from the single day of freedom he had just spent, he could barely recall a time when he hadn’t felt worthless. He accepted the soreness of his body, especially his bare feet, as what a piece of shit like him deserved. Limping up the weedy lane in the dark, he wasn’t more than halfway back to the dirt road before he blundered into Spanish daggers and cut his shins. He could feel blood trickling down his legs as he stumbled on his way, and weirdly he felt better. Pain on the outside took away from pain on the inside.
I HAVE A PLAN, said the note he’d left, and he did. He planned to go hide out with his grandfather, his father’s father, whom he’d liked the one time he’d met him. So the old guy was a drunk? Good. That and the way he’d stayed away most of Justin’s life told Justin he didn’t care too much, which was fine, because Justin wanted to be let alone. Not forever. Just until his bruises faded and his hair grew back and some other parts of him healed. Then maybe he could face—no, Christ, he didn’t see how he could ever face his family, since he’d betrayed them by staying with Stoat when he should have, could have, told a teacher or somebody. . . . He couldn’t explain why he hadn’t spoken up, because he didn’t understand it himself. But that was only one of the embarrassing questions he didn’t want anybody asking him, only one of the reasons he didn’t want to be in the news or on TV or, worst of all, testifying in a courtroom. He had bad dreams sometimes about being questioned by a stone-faced district attorney:
“What happened after you regained consciousness, Justin?”
And forced by the paranormal power of the law, Justin was compelled to say far too much truth: “Mr. Stoat told me to come up and sit in the front seat of the van and stop crying or he’d give me something to cry about. I wanted him to take me home, but I already knew it was no use. I said I had to go to the bathroom, thinking maybe he’d let me out of the van and I could run, but he told me he wasn’t a fool. After we got to his place, then he let me go to the bathroom, but the window was all boarded up and there was no lock on the door.”
“Go on.”
“Um, he watched.”
“Go on.”
“He yanked all my clothes off and pushed me into the bathtub and told me to take a shower. I felt sick. I couldn’t get the water temperature right. I was still messing with it when he came into the shower with me. He had all his clothes off too, and—I was so scared I just froze.”
“What happened then?”
“He pushed me into the water and washed me all over with soap. He held on to me hard with one hand and—touched me—”
And then generally, before the worst of it, he woke up. But thinking this, already awake in the sodden chill of a swamp night, Justin made the nightmare stop by sheer force of will. No. NO. I’m not telling. Never.
When his sore bare feet found the sand road, he knew which way to turn. Seeing the sun set had helped him to figure out which way was home. Not sweet home Alabama, but his more recent home, Stoat’s home. Justin knew Lee would think he was crazy to head back there, but to him it felt right. Anyway, he needed shoes and socks and fresh clothes and some money—he knew where Stoat kept the jar full of spare change—and he would grab something to eat before he thumbed a ride in the back of somebody’s pickup truck, got to a town, took a bus to Birmingham, where his grandfather lived. It wouldn’t be too hard to do this and avoid Stoat. He would watch the house and let himself in when Stoat went to work or whatever.