Full Dark, No Stars

  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 you're dead. It's your only chance.

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

  Because he's 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: It's over. I'm 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 it's like to be dead.

  Then she registered hands beneath her--big hands, his hands--and the barbwire circlet of pain around her throat. He hadn't 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 didn't 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 I'm dead? He can't think I'm dead. I'm 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 who's 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.

  Now he'll kill me for sure. And at least I won't have to listen to any more of his awful singing. It's the beauty part, Ramona Norville would say.

  "Hey girl," he said in a kindly voice.

  She didn't reply, but she could see him bending over her, looking into her half-lidded eyes. She took great care to keep them still. If he saw them move, even a little... or a gleam of tears...

  "Hey." He popped the flat of his hand against her cheek. She let her head roll to the side.

  "Hey!" This time he outright slapped her, but on the other cheek. Tess let her head roll back the other way.

  He pinched her nipple, but he hadn't bothered to take off her blouse and bra and it didn't hurt too badly. She lay limp.

  "I'm sorry I called you a bitch," he said, still using the kindly voice. "You was a good fuck. And I like em a little older."

  Tess realized he really might think she was dead. It was amazing, but could be true. And all at once she wanted very badly to live.

  He picked her up again. The mansweat smell was suddenly overwhelming. Beard bristles tickled the side of her face, and it was all she could do not to twitch away from them. He kissed the corner of her mouth.

  "Sorry I was a little rough."

  Then he was moving her again. The sound of the running water got louder. The moonlight was blotted out. There was a smell--no, a stench--of rotting leaves. He put her down in four or five inches of water. It was very cold, and she almost cried out. He pushed on her feet and she let her knees go up. Boneless, she thought. Have to stay boneless. They didn't go far before bumping against a corrugated metal surface.

  "Fuck," he said, speaking in a reflective tone. Then he shoved her.

  Tess remained limp even when something--a branch--scrawled a line of hurt down the center of her back. Her knees bumped along the corrugations above her. Her buttocks pushed a spongy mass, and the smell of rotting vegetable matter intensified. It was as thick as meat. She felt a terrible urge to cough the smell away. She could feel a mat of wet leaves gathering in the small of her back, like a throw-pillow soaked with water.

  If he figures it out now, I'll fight him. I'll kick him and kick him and kick him--

  But nothing happened. For a long time she was afraid to open her eyes any wider or move them in the slightest. She imagined him crouching there, looking into the pipe where he'd stashed her, head to one side, tilting a question, waiting for just such a move. How could he not know she was alive? Surely he'd felt the thump of her heart. And what good would kicking be against the giant from the pickup? He'd grab her bare feet in one hand, haul her out, and recommence choking her. Only this time he wouldn't stop.

  She lay in the rotting leaves and sluggish water, looking up at nothing from her half-lidded eyes, concentrating on playing dead. She passed into a gray fugue that was not quite unconsciousness, and there she stayed for a length of time that felt long but probably wasn't. When she heard a motor--his truck, surely his truck--Tess thought: I'm imagining that sound. Or dreaming it. He's still here.

  But the irregular thump of the motor first swelled, then faded off down Stagg Road.

  It's a trick.

  That was almost certainly hysteria. Even if it wasn't, she couldn't stay here all night. And when she raised her head (wincing at the stab of pain in her abused throat) and looked toward the mouth of the pipe, she saw only an unimpeded silver circle of moonlight. Tess started wriggling toward it, then stopped.

  It's a trick. I don't care what you heard, he's still here.

  This time the idea was more powerful. Seeing nothing at the mouth of the culvert made it more powerful. In a suspense novel, this would be the moment of false relaxation before the big climax. Or in a scary movie. The white hand emerging from the lake in Deliverance. Alan Arkin springing out at Audrey Hepburn in Wait Until Dark. She didn't like scary books and movies, but being raped and almost murdered seemed to have unlocked a whole vault of scary-movie memories, all the same. As if they were just there, in the air.

  He could be waiting. If, for instance, he'd had an accomplice drive his truck away. He could be squatting on his hunkers beyond the mouth of the pipe in that patient way country men had.

  "Get those panties down," she whispered, then covered her mouth. What if he heard her?

  Five minutes passed. It might have been five. The water was cold and she began to shiver. Soon her teeth would begin to chatter. If he was out there, he would hear.

  He drove away. You heard him.

  Maybe. Maybe not.

  And maybe she didn't need to leave the pipe the way she'd gone in. It was a culvert, it would go all the way under the road, and since she could feel water running under her, it wasn't blocked. She could crawl the length of it and look out into the deserted store's parking lot. Make sure his old truck was gone. She still wouldn't be safe if there was an accomplice, but Tess felt sure, deep down where her rational mind had gone to hide, that there was no accomplice. An accomplice would have insisted on taking his turn at her. Besides, giants worked alone.

  And if he is gone? What then?

  She didn't know. She couldn't imagine her life after her afternoon in the deserted store and her evening in the pipe with rotting leaves smooshed up into the hollow of her back, but maybe she didn't have to. Maybe she could concentrate on getting home to Fritzy and feeding him a packet of Fancy Feast. She could see the Fancy Feast box very clearly. It was sitting on a shelf in her peaceful pantry.

/>   She turned over on her belly and started to get up on her elbows, meaning to crawl the length of the pipe. Then she saw what was sharing the culvert with her. One of the corpses was not much more than a skeleton (stretching out bony hands as if in supplication), but there was still enough hair left on its head to make Tess all but certain it was the corpse of a woman. The other might have been a badly defaced department store mannequin, except for the bulging eyes and protruding tongue. This body was fresher, but the animals had been at it and even in the dark Tess could see the grin of the dead woman's teeth.

  A beetle came lumbering out of the mannequin's hair and trundled down the bridge of her nose.

  Screaming hoarsely, Tess backed out of the culvert and bolted to her feet, her clothes soaked to her body from the waist up. She was naked from the waist down. And although she did not pass out (at least she didn't think she did), for a little while her consciousness was a queerly broken thing. Looking back on it, she would think of the next hour as a darkened stage lit by occasional spotlights. Every now and then a battered woman with a broken nose and blood on her thighs would walk into one of these spotlights. Then she would disappear back into darkness again.

  - 9 -

  She was in the store, in the big empty central room that had once been divided into aisles, with a frozen food case (maybe) at the back, and a beer cooler (for sure) running the length of the far wall. She was in the smell of departed coffee and pickles. He had either forgotten her dress slacks or meant to come back for them later--perhaps when he picked up the nail-studded scrapwood. She was fishing them out from under the counter. Beneath them were her shoes and her phone--smashed. Yes, at some point he would be back. Her scrunchie was gone. She remembered (vaguely, the way one remembers certain things from one's earliest childhood) some woman asking earlier today where she'd gotten it, and the inexplicable applause when she'd said JCPenney. She thought of the giant singing "Brown Sugar"--that squalling monotonous childish voice--and she went away again.

  - 10 -

  She was walking behind the store in the moonlight. She had a carpet remnant wrapped around her shivering shoulders, but couldn't remember where she had gotten it. It was filthy but it was warm, and she pulled it tighter. It came to her that she was actually circling the store, and this might be her second, third, or even fourth go-round. It came to her that she was looking for her Expedition, but each time she didn't find it behind the store, she forgot that she had looked and went around again. She forgot because she had been thumped on the head and raped and choked and was in shock. It came to her that her brain might be bleeding--how could you know, unless you woke up with the angels and they told you? The afternoon's light breeze had gotten a little stronger, and the ticking of the tin sign was a little louder. YOU LIKE IT IT LIKES YOU.

  "7Up," she said. Her voice was hoarse but serviceable. "That's what it is. You like it and it likes you." She heard herself raising her own voice in song. She had a good singing voice, and being choked had given it a surprisingly pleasant rasp. It was like listening to Bonnie Tyler sing out here in the moonlight. "7Up tastes good... like a cigarette should!" It came to her that that wasn't right, and even if it was, she should be singing something better than fucked-up advertising jingles while she had that pleasing rasp in her voice; if you were going to be raped and left for dead in a pipe with two rotting corpses, something good should come out of it.

  I'll sing Bonnie Tyler's hit record. I'll sing "It's a Heartache." I'm sure I know the words, I'm sure they're in the junkheap every writer has in the back of her...

  But then she went away again.

  - 11 -

  She was sitting on a rock and crying her eyes out. The filthy carpet-remnant was still around her shoulders. Her crotch ached and burned. The sour taste in her mouth suggested to her that she had vomited at some point between walking around the store and sitting on this rock, but she couldn't remember doing it. What she remembered--

  I was raped, I was raped, I was raped!

  "You're not the first and you won't be the last," she said, but this tough-love sentiment, coming out as it did in a series of choked sobs, was not very helpful.

  He tried to kill me, he almost did kill me!

  Yes, yes. And at this moment his failure did not seem like much consolation. She looked to her left and saw the store fifty or sixty yards down the road.

  He killed others! They're in the pipe! Bugs are crawling on them and they don't care!

  "Yes, yes," she said in her raspy Bonnie Tyler voice, then went away again.

  - 12 -

  She was walking down the center of Stagg Road and singing "It's a Heartache" when she heard an approaching motor from behind her. She whirled around, almost falling, and saw headlights brightening the top of a hill she must have just come over. It was him. The giant. He had come back, had investigated the culvert after finding her clothes gone, and seen she was no longer in it. He was looking for her.

  Tess bolted down into the ditch, stumbled to one knee, lost hold of her makeshift shawl, got up, and blundered into the bushes. A branch drew blood from her cheek. She heard a woman sobbing with fear. She dropped down on her hands and knees with her hair hanging in her eyes. The road brightened as the headlights cleared the hill. She saw the dropped piece of carpeting very clearly, and knew the giant would see it too. He would stop and get out. She would try to run but he would catch her. She would scream, but no one would hear her. In stories like this, they never did. He would kill her, but first he would rape her some more.

  The car--it was a car, not a pickup truck--went by without slowing. From inside came the sound of Bachman-Turner Overdrive, turned up loud: "B-B-B-Baby, you just ain't seen n-n-nuthin yet." She watched the taillights wink out of sight. She felt herself getting ready to go away again and slapped her cheeks with both hands.

  "No!" she growled in her Bonnie Tyler voice. "No!"

  She came back a little. She felt a strong urge to stay crouched in the bushes, but that was no good. It wasn't just a long time until daylight, it was probably still a long time until midnight. The moon was low in the sky. She couldn't stay here, and she couldn't just keep... blinking out. She had to think.

  Tess picked the piece of carpeting out of the ditch, started to wrap it around her shoulders again, then touched her ears, knowing what she'd find. The diamond drop earrings, one of her few real extravagances, were gone. She burst into tears again, but this crying fit was shorter, and when it ended she felt more like herself. More in herself, a resident of her head and body instead of a specter floating around it.

  Think, Tessa Jean!

  All right, she would try. But she would walk while she did it. And no more singing. The sound of her changed voice was creepy. It was as if by raping her, the giant had created a new woman. She didn't want to be a new woman. She had liked the old one.

  Walking. Walking in the moonlight with her shadow walking on the road beside her. What road? Stagg Road. According to Tom, she had been a little less than four miles from the intersection of Stagg Road and US 47 when she'd run into the giant's trap. That wasn't so bad; she walked at least three miles a day to keep in shape, tread-milling on days when it rained or snowed. Of course this was her first walk as the New Tess, she of the aching, bleeding snatch and the raspy voice. But there was an upside: she was warming up, her top half was drying out, and she was in flat shoes. She had almost worn her three-quarter heels, and that would have made this evening stroll very unpleasant, indeed. Not that it would have been fun under any circumstances, no no n--

  Think!

  But before she could start doing that, the road brightened ahead of her. Tess darted into the underbrush again, this time managing to hold onto the carpet remnant. It was another car, thank God, not his truck, and it didn't slow.

  It could still be him. Maybe he switched to a car. He could have driven back to his house, his lair, and switched to a car. Thinking, she'll see it's a car and come out of wherever she's hiding. She'll wave me down and t
hen I'll have her.

  Yes, yes. That was what would happen in a horror movie, wasn't it? Screaming Victims 4 or Stagg Road Horror 2, or--

  She was trying to go away again, so she slapped her cheeks some more. Once she was home, once Fritzy was fed and she was in her own bed (with all the doors locked and all the lights on), she could go away all she wanted. But not now. No no no. Now she had to keep walking, and hiding when cars came. If she could do those two things, she'd eventually reach US 47, and there might be a store. A real store, one with a pay phone, if she was lucky... and she deserved some good luck. She didn't have her purse, her purse was still in her Expedition (wherever that was), but she knew her AT&T calling-card number by heart; it was her home phone number plus 9712. Easy-as-can-beezy.

  Here was a sign at the side of the road. Tess read it easily enough in the moonlight:

  YOU ARE NOW ENTERING COLEWICH TOWNSHIP

  WELCOME, FRIEND!

  "You like Colewich, it likes you," she whispered.

  She knew the town, which the locals pronounced "Collitch." It was actually a small city, one of many in New England that had been prosperous back in the textile-mill days and continued to struggle along somehow in the new free-trade era, when America's pants and jackets were made in Asia or Central America, probably by children who couldn't read or write. She was on the outskirts, but surely she could walk to a phone.

  Then what?

  Then she would... would...

  "Call a limousine," she said. The idea burst on her like a sunrise. Yes, that was exactly what she'd do. If this was Colewich, then her own Connecticut town was thirty miles away, maybe less. The limo service she used when she wanted to go to Bradley International or into Hartford or New York (Tess did not do city driving if she could help it) was based in the neighboring town of Woodfield. Royal Limousine boasted round-the-clock service. Even better, they would have her credit card on file.