The Shore (Leisure Fiction)

And his eyes gleamed like candles.

XXVII

Awareness filtered in: it butted against...then receded from the pain, and in those first moments, she understood the cellar of the Chandler house to be her punishment. The rats. She understood that she lay in the fetid dark while the vermin advanced, scuttling forward then retreating only to ebb closer, and as she squirmed helplessly, they began to nibble with crimson snouts, tiny paws digging delicately into her flesh. No! She shuddered into consciousness, and pain flared.

Beyond her eyelids, the world dipped and rolled, then a chair beneath her stiffened. Where am I? Something bit deeply into the flesh of her wrists, and a moment later she knew the burn for ropes that pinned her arms behind her. Not that cellar at least. Lifting her head, she blinked at the bursting waver of the room. Though the dream of the Chandler house dissipated, the chittering of the rats grew louder, and confusion warred with misery as she coughed, sucking in air thick with the smell of mold and brine. Where...? The scuttling slither swelled into a roar.

Fear erupted from her with an ugly snarl. A clinging film seemed to hang in the air, densely redolent of perfume and some underlying rankness. It stung her throat and rose smarting to her eyes, softening her view of the cramped space. But her gaze drilled into the shadows, drawn to the source of soft moans--feeble as the sighs of a dying infant--and discovered random spasms of movement on something like a cot.

In the corner, a form twitched on the bedding. An arm flailed, and one leg hung over the edge, kicking spasmodically as though from electric shocks.

'Who is that?' Kit strained against the ropes.

With infinite slowness, heavy-lidded eyes drifted open, and a slack face turned toward her.

'Are you all right?' Kit could see blood on the blanket, and a large bruise bloomed across the girl's cheek. She's alive anyway. Is she drugged?

The girl groaned, twisting to the side. '...you can't I don't want you please untie me oh help he's coming have to get away somebody...' Her battered head jerked back and forth, the broken words chattering out of her.

Kit couldn't make sense out of even what she could hear above the thunder that filled the room. Shadows and dimness swirled, then coalesced: an agony of brightness erupted. She closed her eyes until the roar diminished.

The girl spoke clearly, perhaps not for the first time, for the words somehow seemed an echo. 'Does he? Does he love you too?'

'My head. Something's wrong with my head.' Kit seemed to fall into the rumbling hiss that surrounded her.

'...that now we were like married.'

'What the hell is this place?' The cloud of pain dissipated, and though she could discern more of her surroundings now, she comprehended less. The warped and darkly colorless boards--this chamber must be part of her nightmare--sticky black dirt, the stench of the kerosene heater and the way it threw giant shadows of switches and mechanisms. These shadows stirred. So did the room. It swayed, vibrating with the rat noise, and parts of the dream seemed to liquefy...in the corners...down near the floor strewn with broken boards and splinters where the rushing grew loudest. Melting. She tried to force her mind to clarity. I'm not crazy. I'm not. I've got to remember what happened.

Her thoughts probed back beyond the pain in her skull. The station house. Yes. From outside, the explosion of glass and that deep, terrible man's scream. Yelling for Steve, she'd rushed outside, waving her gun. Like an idiot. The pain had erupted shatteringly in her skull. Worst cop in the world. He must have been crouched on the low roof of the station, poised to jump, and she wondered what he'd hit her with. Points on her ribs still burned. When a shudder passed into her bones from a thrumming deep beneath the floorboards, she raised her head.

From the cot, the girl stared back at her. Different shades of ash, the long and tangled hair clung to the dampness of her forehead. The rough cot had marked the flesh of her face. Her skin looked unwashed, grublike, and a greenish vein pulsed at her temple. She might have been about seventeen, but as with the boy, the feverish pallor made her look older. In other circumstances, she might have been pretty, but the dark blotches and the bruises beneath the dirt made it difficult to imagine. Then her mouth went slack, and her head jerked to the side.

She's in shock. Maybe dying. I've got to help her. The room swam in a deep murk, but isolated details focused. Damn it, I've got to figure out where I am. Books on a raw plank shelf had long ago swollen to burst their covers, and paperbacks without covers rotted on the floor around a barrel, around a lumpish roll of decaying carpet. It was mold on the walls, she realized, not gray paint. Again, the edges of the room seemed to liquefy as the sea entered freely through cracks near the floor. A boat, it must be...

'...did?' The girl's eyelids fluttered.

'What?' asked Kit. 'What did you...?' But the girl slumped out of consciousness again as she watched. The walls seemed to bow inward, and the girl's eyes twitched open. Kit watched her jerk almost into a sitting position, tossing her head with a childlike gesture. 'Stella?' Kit forced the words out steadily. 'That's your name, isn't it?' She tried for a smile, her face rigid from the pain and the cold. 'Are you listening?' She tried to hold the girl's gaze. 'No, stay awake. Look at me. Where's your brother, your brother Ramsey? Is he here somewhere?'

With a wobbling movement, the girl slid back down on the cot.

'You're not tied, are you, Stella? Can you stand?'

The girl hunched forward into a fetal posture, and she began to rock with her arms clasped around her knees. It would have looked like a trance if not for the furious rolling motion beneath her eyelids.

'Stella, listen to me. I'm a police officer. I can help you. But first you have to help me. You have to get up. You have to untie these ropes before he comes back.' She shuddered as another fragment of memory plummeted into place--a voice at the station house screaming for the keys, the keys that Steve had taken with him. A bellow of frustrated rage as he dumped out the desk drawers. So big, so much stronger, he'd knelt crushingly on her chest, trussing her with the cord he'd ripped from the lamp. He'd taken her gun and gone off to try and reach the boy, and she'd heard shots. Then his kicks exploded on her sides, and he'd crashed something wooden again and again into the wall, until the pounding roar had faded.

The ocean thundered.

'Stella, please, can you hear me?'

The girl writhed.

'You have to...'

Wind knifed through the room. 'Have you figured out where you are yet?' The moist, gravelly voice seemed to come from all around; then the door banged, and he rose up against the wall like a shadow.

The breath froze inside her. His head seemed to block the light, and for a moment, she thought some dead thing lumbered toward her. All heat left her body as she twisted against the ropes.

The thin, dripping hair slicked down to a glistening forehead, pale as the belly of a shark, and the heavy eyelids lifted slowly to afford her a glimpse of the red-rimmed blaze beneath. With difficulty, she recognized the thick expression as a smile. '...such a miracle really, that we should have survived this. Wouldn't you concur? So near the inlet. But the rocks always did protect this section of the boards. Daddy owned these rides, you realize. Strange to think of it, I must admit. He owned the whole amusement park once but sold it off one piece at a time. Now, of course, even the gears are rusted stiff. You see? These particular levers once operated the Ferris wheel.' He raised a lantern from the floor and jogged it a little to hear the gurgle of fuel, then peered into the shadows. 'Aren't you fascinated by the history of the town?' The lantern rocked, and a gleam swayed up the wall and down.

She couldn't seem to control her breathing. The monster. Locks of his pale hair seemed longer than others, possibly the result of a self-administered haircut, giving his head a bizarrely ragged look. No, not a monster. A man. A killer. I've got to hang on, got to watch him, figure out his weak spots, find a way to...

'...only appropriate that it should be all that remains intact of the town, though it will do my sentimental old heart good to see it wash away finally. Only the rocks left. Finally clean.' Even in the cold, he blinked constantly