Dark Places

but no time to think, got to keep going, and now light was illuminating the basement, Diondra and Crystal were coming and I shut the door behind me and stepped into the narrow room, more stuff stored there—old record players, a crib, a mini-fridge, all stacked to the sides, not much more than another twenty feet to run, and behind me I could hear more of the junk pile collapsing in front of the door, but that didn’t help much, they’d be through that in a few seconds.

“Just shoot that way, she’s got to be that way,” Crystal saying and Diondra shushing her, their feet heavy on the last stairs, taking their time, Diondra kicking things out of the way as they moved toward the door, closing me off like I was a rabid animal that needed to be put down, Diondra not even all that focused, saying suddenly: “That pot roast was too salty.” Inside my little room, I noticed the faintest light in the corner. Coming from somewhere in the ceiling.

I pushed toward it, stumbling over a red wagon, the women laughing when they heard me fall, Crystal yelling, “Now you’re going to have a bruise,” Diondra knocking things away, and I was underneath the light, it was the opening of a wind turbine, the ventilation shaft for the tornado shelter and it was too small for most people to fit but not me, and I started piling things to reach it, to get my fingers to the top so I could pull myself up and Diondra and Crystal were almost past the debris. I tried to stand on an old baby buggy, but the bottom gave out, I ripped up my leg, started stacking things: a warped diaper table, and then some encyclopedias, and me on top of the encyclopedias, feeling them want to slide away, but I got my arms up through the shaft, breaking through the slats of the rusty turbine, one big push and I was breathing the cold night air, ready for the next push to get me all the way out and then Crystal was grabbing my foot, trying to pull me back down, me kicking her, scrambling. Screams beneath me, Shoot her! and Crystal screaming I got her, and her weight pulling me down, me losing leverage, half in and out of the ground, and then I gave one good kick with my bad foot and jabbed my heel right in her face, the nose going, a wolf-wail beneath me, and Diondra yelling Oh baby and me free, back up, my arms bearing deep red scratches from the top of the shaft, but up, over and onto the ground and as I was heaving for air, breathing in the mud, I could already hear Diondra going, Get up top, get up top.

My car keys were gone, lost somewhere inside, and so I turned and ran for the woods, a limping trot, like something with three legs, one sock on, one sock off, mucking through the mud, stinking of manure in the moonlight, and then I turned, feeling almost good, and saw they were out of the house, they were behind me, running after me—white pale faces each leaking blood—but I made it to the forest. My head was whirling, my eyes unable to hold on to anything: a tree, the sky, a rabbit spooking away from me. Libby! behind me. I went deeper into the woods, about ready to pass out, and as my eyes started going dark, I found a gargantuan oak. It was balanced on a four-foot drop-off, gnarled roots radiating out like the sun, and I climbed down in the dirt and burrowed my way into an old animal den, under one of the roots as thick as a grown man. I dug into the cold, wet ground, a little thing in a little hollow, shivering but silent, hiding, which was something I could do.

The flashlights came closer, hitting the tree trunk, the women clambering over me, a flash of skirt, a glimpse of one red freckled leg, She has to be here, she can’t have gone that far, and me trying not to breathe, knowing if I did it would be a gulp of air that would get me shot in the face, and so I held my breath as I felt their weight nudge the tree roots and Crystal said, Could she have gone back to the house, and Diondra said, Keep looking, she’s quick, like someone who knew, and they turned and ran deeper into the woods and I breathed into the ground, swallowed earthy air, my face muffled against the dirt. For hours, the woods echoed with their screams of outrage, frustration— this is not good, this is very bad—and at some point the screaming stopped and then I waited more hours, til dawn, before I pulled myself out and hobbled through the trees toward home.

Ben DayJANUARY 3, 1985

2:12 A.M.

Diondra was still perched on Michelle’s body. Listening. Ben sat in a bundle, rocking himself while from the hallway came sounds of screaming and cursing, the axe hitting flesh, the shotgun and silence and then his mom going again, not hurt, maybe not hurt, but then he knew she was, she was making gibberish sounds, whhllalalala and geeeeee, and she was banging into the walls, and those heavy boots came walking down the hall, toward his mom’s room, and then the horrible sound of small hands trying to gain purchase, Debby’s hands scraping along the wooden floor and then the axe again and a loud release of air, and then came another shotgun blast, Diondra flinching on top of Michelle.

Diondra’s nerves showed only in her hair, which twittered around her head in those thick curls. Otherwise she didn’t move. The steps paused outside the door, the door Ben had shut after the screaming began, the door he was hiding behind while his family lay outside, dying. They heard a wail—goddammmmm it— and then the steps ran, heavy and hard out of the house.

Ben whispered across to Diondra, pointing at Michelle, “Is she OK?” and Diondra frowned like he’d insulted her. “No, she’s dead.”

Ben couldn’t stand up. “Are you sure?”

“I’m totally sure,” Diondra said, and unstraddled her, Michelle’s head lolling to the side, her open eyes on Ben. Her broken glasses lay next to her.

Diondra walked over to Ben, her knees in front of his face. She held out a hand to him. “Come on, get up.”

They opened the door, Diondra’s eyes widening like she was looking at a first snow. Blood was everywhere, Debby and his mom in a pool of it, the axe and shotgun dropped along the hallway, a knife farther down. Diondra walked over to look more closely, her reflection dark in the pond of blood that was still flowing toward him.

“Holy shit,” she whispered. “Maybe we really did fuck with the Devil.”

Ben ran to the kitchen, wanting to vomit in the sink, the heaving feeling comforting, get it up get it all up, the way his mom used to say, holding his forehead over the toilet when he was a kid. Get all that bad stuff out. But nothing happened, so he staggered toward the phone and there was Diondra, stopping him.

“You going to tell on me? For Michelle?”

“We need to call the police,” he said, his eye on his mom’s stained coffee cup, some Folgers still at the bottom.

“Where’s the little one?” Diondra asked. “Where’s the baby?”

“Oh shit! Libby!” He ran back down the hallway, trying not to look at the bodies, pretending they were just obstacles to jump over, and he looked inside his mom’s room and felt the chill, saw the breeze fluttering the curtains and the open window. He came back to the kitchen.

“She’s gone,” he said. “She made it out, she’s gone.”