He shut his eyes. He tried to journey to another place. He worried about freeing himself after they were gone. It could be days until someone else came by.
And what then? What could he do about this robbery? Call his friends at the police station?
What happened when the thieves didn't find anything worth taking? What if they were messed up on drugs or something? What if they came back in here pissed off and wild? All they needed was one of these pillows. Hold it over his head, and in a minute or two he would be on to the next life. He was utterly vulnerable.
Panic rising, he started rocking himself. He wasn't even aware at first, but then he began to rock in earnest, desperate to get his face off this soft comforter. His arms were numb and aching at the same time, almost like phantom limbs, as he tried to get some back-and-forth momentum.
He got too much. He rolled onto his arms and his tied-back feet, arching his belly, then tumbled off the bed, landing hard on his side with an
He was sucking for breath when he realized the rummaging had stopped.
Footsteps now. Leaving the bathroom, coming around through the hallway.
He regained his breath with a great and awful groan, lying there facing the underside of the bed, where his fireproof safe was.
The footsteps were in the room now. He could feel their weight on the floor. They were going to be pissed off. They were going to break his arms.
'I'm sorry,' Frond said. 'I fell. I just fell. I'm sorry. Take anything you want.'
Silence. Maybe it was better not to hear the intruder's voice. Good that he was facing away from the door.
'I know it's not much. I don't have much. Some cash in the creamer in the downstairs cupboard. I gave away everything when I moved up here.'
Waiting.
Nothing.
But in the awful silence, huge in the room, like an enormous bell without a clapper?something about the intruder's malevolent presence, his barely heard breathing, gave Frond a sudden, terrible insight.
'Bucky Pail?' he said.
The footsteps moved. Coming toward him. Whispering on the maple floor, sneakers.
'Wait. Listen, Bucky. You wanted me out of town?I'll go. Now. I swear, I'll leave tonight. Not a word to anyone, I'll just go?'
Hands seized his bent leg, smooth-fingered, almost without texture, dragging him from the bed.
'I promise,' Frond pleaded. 'I'll never tell anyone.'
His sweaty flesh squeaked against the floor varnish, creating a friction burn, until he bumped up over the raised threshold of the doorway onto the rough carpeting of the upstairs hall. The strange hands were dragging him to the top of the stairs.
'
The dragging stopped. Frond was on his belly, the hands moving to his arms now. He was staring down the curving wooden stairs.
'But they never did! Don't you see? They did nothing. It all came to nothing, and I?I was wrong. It was a stupid, stupid thing to do. Just please let me go, and I promise I'll never say?
The stairs upended, rushing at him, tumbling, pummeling. Unable to protect his head or his neck or any part of him, he fell like a screaming human football, the blows coming faster and faster until they stopped.
Frond faced the bottom step. He tasted blood and rug and his neck was wrenched, his breath groaning through it.
Footsteps again. Coming down.
Frond had a fun-house angle on the curved staircase and the man descending them. Black sneakers. Black pants, black shirt. Black hair, wild and long.
But his face. Mashed and deformed, nearly inhuman?yet, somehow, horribly familiar.
Frond tried to scream as freakishly smooth hands reached for his head.
PART II
OVERKILL
19
TRACY
SHE WAS GREEDY FOR HIM. The rum and the foreplay made Tracy greedy, and she had been naked so long she was beyond willing, beyond desire, she wanted more more more now now now. She wanted it all at once. Everything. Right now.
She gripped his sides, pulling him closer to her and pushing him away at the same time. A fight she wanted to lose. Wanted so desperately to lose.
She bit down on his shoulder, but still he did not stop. He did not seem to mind it at all, so she bit down again and sucked on the hard ropy muscle until his hand reached for her neck. He forced back her open mouth, his fingers remaining at her jaw.
She swallowed so that he would feel her throat working under his hand. Feel her vulnerability, her trust. She gave him her throat as she gave herself to him, willingly. But still he refused to remove his tongue from her nipple.
Her bare heels dug at the mattress. His other hand teased the insides of her thighs and she grabbed it and pushed it where it needed to go. For a moment he obeyed her, and her hips jolted to the touch. Then his hand slid back along her leg. She tugged again at his wrist, and he lingered longer this time, but only enough to disappoint.
That hand tugged on hers. He wanted her to do it. Guiding the pads of her own fingers to her trimmed hair.
What he had wanted all along.
Her to do it herself.
She did, and finally he stopped at her breast. He watched.
Closing her eyes was a concession to the pretense that pure momentary ecstasy guided her fingers in their firm, circling touch?not years of shameful practice.
She reached for him, and he was so hard, and she was so proud, guiding him in, lifting her hips to meet and take him.
She held tight. She held on so tight. She was leaving her body, she was going off to that place.
That place.
Right there.
That place that place that fucking place
He pulled out as he came, and she held him to her until he sagged. He lay at her side, breathing hard, and she looked down at his puddle in the bowl her belly made, dipping her fingers to feel the honeyness of him.
Him and the future of him. All his secrets.
Could it be her future?
His breathing evened out as he lay beside her. She knew she didn't want anyone else, ever. But what he wanted, she still did not know.
A COLD NIGHT in the dark month of February.
Tracy had gone out driving, her only getaway from the monotony of the farm, playing CDs in a portable player hooked up through the cassette slot in her truck, singing along when the mood struck or else just letting the music take her away.
The blue lights behind her brought her back fast. A woman knew not to get out of her car for a Black Falls cop. Tracy was in the hills a long way from the center of town.
She pulled over, watching the cop's shadow come out of the headlights. She rolled her window down just a crack. He shined his flashlight inside the car.
She didn't know him. She had heard that there was a new one in town.
'You follow me,' he told her, through the window, then returned to his car.
She tailed him back to the center of town, to the police station driveway. She waited inside her car while he took her license and registration and ran them through the computer inside.
He returned and fed her identification back to her through the sliver of open window, along with a speeding ticket for $115.
Tracy was out of her truck in a flash.
'A hundred and fifteen dollars!' she said. 'Do you know how much it costs to feed a llama?'
He stopped halfway back to his car, turning in surprise. 'No,' he said. 'I don't.'
The anger in his voice startled her. She turned to see the steam of the word dissipating around his head.
'Consider that the price of good advice,' he said. 'Don't go out driving around town alone. Especially at night.
