hand.
Leigh rushed outside and dodged just in time to avoid a collision with Mary Jo. “Sorry,” she muttered.
The girl narrowed her eyes, stepped past her, and went through the doorway.
“Are you all right?” Mike asked.
“Yeah, fine.”
“You look a little shaky.”
She shrugged.
Before climbing into the car, she glanced over her shoulder. No one came out of Jody’s. She didn’t look again. Safe between her aunt and uncle, she gazed at the dashboard. The car bumped over ruts, then moved along the smooth pavement of the road and soon rounded a bend.
She felt frightened, violated.
When Mike turned his head slightly to check the rearview mirror, Leigh twisted around and looked back. A pickup truck was close behind them. Reflections on its windshield prevented her from seeing inside. The pickup swung into the other lane, gaining speed. Her stomach tightened. As the truck pulled alongside their car, a young woman nodded a greeting through the passenger window. Leigh glimpsed the driver, a heavyset man in sunglasses, wearing a ballcap with its bill tipped up. She settled back into her seat as the pickup sped by. A safe distance ahead, it eased back into the northbound lane.
“Something wrong?” Jenny asked.
“Just that guy back where we got the gas. He gave me the creeps.”
“You and me both,” Jenny said. “Not that he did anything in particular to deserve it.”
Oh no? Leigh thought.
“Too much isolation,” Mike explained. “It has a way of warping the mind.”
“He was warped, all right,” Leigh muttered.
“I feel sorry for his daughter,” Jenny said.
“Who?” Mike asked. “Mary Jo? What makes you think she’s his daughter? She and her folks stopped by for gas last summer. Ol’ Jody bashed their heads and planted ’em out by the woodpile, kept the girl.”
“That’s not very funny, Mike.”
“I guess not. You’ve got to admit, though, some pretty weird goings-on go on around this neck of the woods.” He glanced at Leigh. “There was a fellow a few years ago, Ed Gein—”
“Don’t get into that,” Jenny warned.
“Well, I don’t want to frighten you, Leigh.”
“Then don’t,” Jenny told him.
“But I want you to keep your eyes open while you’re staying with us. Just because you’re not in the big city, don’t let your guard down. We’ve got our share of weirdos.”
Mike was Dad’s brother, all right. This lecture had a very familiar ring to it.
“Mike is right about that,” Jenny said. “We’ve never run into any problems, ourselves, but…”
“I wouldn’t exactly say that.”
“Nothing serious. But you do want to be careful, especially if you go around anywhere by yourself.”
“I will be,” Leigh assured them.
As she gazed at the tree-shadowed road ahead, her mind traveled back to Jody’s. The guy there had wanted her to see what he was doing. That’s why he spoke to her as she was leaving, so she would look at him, see his overalls sticking out like a tepee. His hand in there. Moving around. Rubbing himself. While he stared at her.
Mike’s story took hold. She finished in the bathroom and opened the door, and stumbled over Mike’s body. Jenny was sprawled atop the lunch counter, screaming as the man plunged a hunting knife into her belly again and again. He stopped. He turned to Leigh. His face was splattered and dripping blood.
“Now you’re all mine, sweet thing.”
Licking blood off his lips, he stepped toward her. The knife in his left hand carved slow circles in the air. His right hand tugged his zipper down, reached inside, and freed his huge, engorged penis. He slid his hand up and down, slicking his shaft with blood.
I’d bite it off for him, Leigh thought.
No, I’d make a break for it.
She pictured herself whirling around and locking herself inside the bathroom. He kicked at the door. Her only escape was through the window. A tight squeeze, but maybe… She boosted herself up. Started squirming out. And saw the girl, Mary Jo, standing in the weeds below with an ax in her hands. “Oh no you don’t,” the girl said, and grinned. “We got her cornered, Pa!” she yelled.
Leigh’s heart was thudding. Her mouth was dry. How in hell would she get out of
Don’t worry, she told herself. It didn’t happen, and it won’t. He’s a goddamn pervert, but we’re out of there. We’re all in one piece.
If he had tried something, Mike would have fixed him.
Unless he took Mike by surprise.
Don’t get started again.
Why did Mike have to tell him where we’re going?
He
He could leave Mary Jo behind to pump gas, run the grill, and look after the shop. Take a gun and knife out to his pickup truck.
“You goin’ after that gal?” Mary Jo asked.
“Prime stuff, weren’t she?”
“Well, bring some back for me, Pa. You know how I like gizzards.”
Good Christ, Leigh thought. I must be going nuts, thinking up this kind of garbage. “Hey,” she said, “maybe we ought to sing something.”
“Great idea,” Jenny said.
“Do you know ‘Waltzing Matilda’?” Mike asked.
“Just the refrain.”
“Well, you’re with a couple of teachers.”
“Yep,” Jenny said. “We’ll teach you the words.”
“Singing’s dry business,” Mike told her. “Better break out some brews.”
TWELVE
Her experience at Jody’s stayed in Leigh’s mind like a spider huddled in a ceiling corner—a black speck, always there and vaguely disturbing, but not much of a threat. So long as it didn’t start to travel.
During the first few days at Lake Wahconda, Leigh watched for the man. She went nowhere by herself. She knew he would not show up. But he might.
Even if he didn’t, Leigh had no guarantee that someone with a similar warp might not be lurking in the woods.
The western side of Lake Wahconda was fairly well populated: a vacation camp with a lodge and a dozen small cabins near the south shore, and a chain of eight or ten cabins and A-frames, with a good deal of woods between them, extending up to the north shore. The nearest island had a large stone house on it. The rest of the islands were uninhabited.
It was as if civilization had captured the western shore and the single island, then ventured no farther. Except by boat. Out fishing with Mike and Jenny, Leigh sometimes saw rickety docks, ancient rowboats, cabins and shacks hidden among the trees. She occasionally heard wood being chopped, a distant crack of gunfire. People lived along these shores. A few, anyway. But Leigh didn’t spot any of them; she didn’t want to.
As the specter of the man from Jody’s diminished, Leigh began to take the canoe out by herself. She enjoyed the peaceful solitude, the feel of her working muscles, the challenge of making the canoe glide over the water. But there was something more—a sense of anticipation. Alone on the lake, paddling the length of its western shore, she
