The Hidden

by Bill Pronzini

  Under the circumstances the safest thing for him to do was to pull over and let the idiot pass. But there was no place to do that here, on a twisty section hemmed in by trees on both sides. Increasing his speed slightly didn’t get the other vehicle off his tail, either.

  Half a mile of this, the constant crowding, started to piss him off. He thought about slowing down to twenty-five or so, making a challenge thing out of it, and he might have done that if the road hadn’t straightened out as he came through a tight curve. Double yellow line, no passing, but that didn’t stop the other driver; the glaring headlights swung out and around, the dark shape of a pickup roared by and then cut in in front of him, not quite close enough to force him to brake. One of the pickup’s taillights was out; the other flashed like a bloody eye and then began to dwindle as the driver gathered speed.

  His first impulse was to give chase, catch the bastard, force him off and confront him and then terminate him. But an impulse was all it was, intense for a few seconds, then overcome and gone. Giving in to road rage was foolish, dangerous. The pickup’s driver had committed a stupid traffic crime, but that wasn’t sufficient cause for him to take action. Crimes against nature were the only cause for him to use deadly force. Today, or at any time, ever. If he started eliminating individuals who were guilty of other crimes, that would make him just what society believed he was—an out-of-control avenger, a vigilante playing God.

  He slowed down, relaxing again, recapturing the good feeling he’d had before the tailgater showed up. The radio was playing a Willie Nelson song, something about blue eyes crying in the rain. Not exactly cheerful, but he liked it anyway. He liked Willie’s music. Mostly gentle, meaningful songs about love and loss, happiness and sadness, sin and redemption—genuine human emotions. Old Willie had a reputation for being an outlaw, but he really wasn’t. Any more than he himself was an outlaw. That was something the two of them had in common—mislabeled outlaws.

  The fog kept thickening, feelers of dark gray wrapping themselves around the pines. The way it was doing that reminded him of the Christmas trees his mother put up in their house when he was a kid, the same blue spruce with the same decorations every year. Tinsel … she loved that glittery silver tinsel. Garlands, too, white garlands. Silver and white woven through and around the thick-needled branches. And blue lights and blue ornaments, she never wanted any other color but blue.

  Once, when he was nine or ten, he’d brushed against the tree accidentally and knocked off some tinsel and a blue sparkly bell, one of her favorite ornaments, that shattered when it hit the floor, and she heard the noise and came running in and screamed at him, “You clumsy little shit. Why can’t you watch where you’re going? Well? What’s the matter with you, standing there like that? Clean it up! How many times I got to tell you to clean up your messes?”

  Bad memory. He didn’t like thinking about his mother, long dead and gone and unmissed. Or any part of growing up in that hardscrabble West Texas town. He’d come a long way since he left when he was eighteen to join the army and he wasn’t ever going back, not for any reason.

  The highway straightened again into a long reach. Ahead on the seaward side, the land stretched out to a wide, flat-topped promontory like a fat handless arm reaching into the ocean; a ribbon of blacktop traced over to a parking area and lookout, and there was a sign at the intersection that said Scenic Point. He’d gone out there a couple of times. Nice view from the lookout; you could see the contours of the shoreline for quite a distance in both directions, and just offshore a massive hunk of shale shaped like the prow of a ship reared up out of the sea.

  A car was parked on the lookout, facing seaward. Tourist taking in the view? Not too likely, this time of year and this late in the day. Somebody with car trouble, maybe. If that was it, he might be able to help. He braked and turned off onto the blacktop.

  Low-slung sports car, he saw as he neared. Porsche, looked like. He didn’t much care for cars like that, or the kind of people who drove them. Too fast and reckless, no regard for anybody else’s safety, like that asshole tailgater. This one was black and had familiar lines, but there were a lot of them like this zooming up and down the coast highway.

  His headlights washed over the other vehicle; the driver seemed to be the only occupant. Sitting there quietly—looking, waiting? Or doing something else, like swilling booze, getting ready to smash a bottle on the asphalt or the rocks below or throw it at a sea creature like that drunken motorcycle rider on the Navarro River?

  Friend—or enemy?

  He pulled up a few yards away, transferred the 9-mil Glock from the glove compartment to his coat pocket, and went to find out.

  E L E V E N

  NIGHT.

  A martini for Shelby and half a glass of wine for him while good jazz played soft in the background—Macklin’s CD choice this time, Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue. Crab salad, leftover sourdough, half a bottle of chardonnay. One of the DVDs from Ben’s collection, his choice again—a farcical boy-meets-girl comedy that was watchable if not particularly funny. Quiet time again, more wood on the fire, the last of the wine from dinner in Shelby’s glass.

  The combination of heat and music and food had relaxed him for the first time in days. Again he watched the firelight play over the smooth contours of Shelby’s face, the familiar curves of her body. Tenderness welled in him. And, inevitably, desire.

  He said, “Remember that trip to Big Sur right after we were married? The cabin in the woods?”

  “What made you think of that?”

  “Sitting in front of the fire like this.”

  She was silent.

  “That’s not all we did in front of the fire,” he said.

  Still silent.

  “There’s plenty of room in front of this one, too. I could go get a blanket from the bedroom …”

  “No,” she said.

  “Just like that? No?”

  “Not tonight, Jay. I’m not in the mood.”

  One of the burning logs dropped off the grate, sending up a shower of sparks that glowed bright red before winking out; his desire died just as quickly. “Seems like you’re not in the mood a lot lately. It didn’t used to be like that—you used to be horny all the time.”

  “A lot of things used to be different.” She stirred out of her chair. “I think I’ll take a hot bath.”

  “You don’t have to lock the door,” he called after her. “I won’t come in and try to wash your back.”

  Bed. Shelby turned away from him, the cold, rhythmic sound of the rain on the roof adding to his feeling of loneliness. Sleep was a long time coming.

  And when it did—

  Dark place, warm, safe. Sleeping.

  Not sleeping anymore. Listening.

  What’re those noises? Loud, weird.

  Thump. Grunt, slurp, screech, squeal. Thump thump thump.

  Something’s out there.

  Something … terrible.

  I have to find out what it is. But I don’t want to. I’m afraid.

  Squeal, howl, slurp. Thump thump thump thump thump.

  Oh God, what if it tries to hurt me?

  Stay here, don’t move.

  No, I can’t, I have to find out what it is—

  Dark place, cold. Walking.

  Long tunnel, shadows crawling on the walls, faint glow from somewhere that lets me see where I’m going. The floor feels like it’s made of ice, I start to shiver from the chill. Walking straight, turning right, walking straight, turning left—

  Light ahead, so bright it hurts my eyes. The noises come from behind it—grunt, slurp, thump thump squeal thump. I want to stop walking toward the light, I’m afraid of what I’ll see, but I have to find out what’s making those sounds.

  Closer. And into the light, through the light.

  No! No!

  Monster.

  Horrible, hairy thing and what it’s doing, what it’s doing—

  Slurp, thump, slurp slurp.

  It’s feeding!

/>   I make a sound, I can’t help myself, and the thing rises up from the carcass of whatever it’s eating, its open mouth and yellow-spike teeth dripping crimson. It looks around at me, then lets loose an ear-splitting roar and leaps up with long sharp claws slicing the air and comes lurching toward me spitting fire.

  Run! Hide!

  And I run out of the light into the shadows, run through the tunnel, I’ve never run faster … but I can’t run fast enough, the thing is close behind me, I feel its fire breath and hear the pounding click of its claws—

  Dark place again, and I’m down on all fours crawling into another dark place. Trying to make myself smaller, squirming like a worm into a hole, hide, hide!

  Too late.

  The thing is there, looming over me, I see the awful twisted shape of it as it bends down and … oh Jesus it wraps a claw around my arm and yanks me upward. Pain erupts, then wild panic as it drags me close to its red drooling mouth.

  It’s going to eat me!

  But first it shakes me, hard, my teeth rattle like bones, I smell the hot stink of its breath in my face. Spiraling terror makes me pee on myself. The thing roars again and shakes me harder, and then it—

  —rips my arm off and hurls it on the floor—

  —and rips my head off and hurls it on the floor—

  —and my head rolls into the wall, wobbles and stops, and my eyes stare up, stare up—

  —and I’m looking at my wriggling mutilated body wet all over with piss and blood—

  —and the creature’s mouth opens wider, yawning like a cavern, and from the floor I hear it booming out words in a voice loud as thunder but I can’t understand them, the words somehow fall like whispers against my ears—

  —and in horror I watch my headless body being stuffed inside its gaping mouth—

  —and then the yellow spikes gnash down and the chewing starts, and I scream and scream and scream—

  Macklin was awake now, shaky and bathed in sweat, his breath coming in short grinding gasps. Another nightmare ride, the same every time in every detail, ending when the imaginary monster begins to eat his headless body and he screams himself out of it. Shelby was alert beside him in the dark bedroom, trying with hands and words to calm him. He heard himself say, “I’m all right, I’m all right,” but he wasn’t. His heart felt as if it would burst. One of these times it just might.

  She said, “Lie still, shallow breaths,” and got out of bed and hurried into the bathroom.

  He lay still, willing his pulse rate to slow. He’d been having the nightmare for so long he couldn’t remember when it first started. Until his life had degenerated into the string of failures, he’d gone as long as two years without a replay; since Conray terminated him it came more frequently. He didn’t understand it, didn’t have a clue what it meant or what triggered it. Some deep-rooted fear … the fear of death? He just didn’t know.

  Shelby came out with a wet towel, sponged the sweat off his face. Better now, with the towel draped across his forehead. The tightness still felt like a closed hand inside his chest, but the blood-pound in his ears had lessened and he was breathing more easily. He’d be okay.

  Until the next time.

  She said, “It might help if you’d tell me about it.”

  He couldn’t. He’d never told anyone. A kid’s fantasy monster nightmare … stupid, too embarrassing to talk about. But real—so bloody real.

  “No, it wouldn’t,” he said. “Don’t keep asking me, okay?”

  It was an hour or more before he slept again.

  T W E L V E

  ANOTHER GRAY, GLOOMY, WINDY day. The rear deck, the grassy slope, and the side patio were all wet with dew. Shelby stepped outside for a few seconds to see how cold it was. Damn cold—the wind slapped at her face like a frostbitten hand, the sharp smell of ozone pinched her nostrils. There’d be more rain pretty soon, probably another storm.

  The cold and damp were in the cottage, too. Jay had turned on the baseboard heater when he got up and it had been going for half an hour now, but the moist chill was still in the air. How could that happen overnight in a place as well built as this one? One of the joys of oceanfront living in the dead of winter, she thought. Goose bumps and sniffles to go with the whitewater views and invigorating sea breezes.

  The place was already beginning to give her cabin fever.

  Jay made buttermilk pancakes for breakfast, his special recipe that included bananas and nutmeg and some other kind of spice. They were good but she only picked at the ones on her plate; she didn’t have much appetite. For the food or for the conversation he tried to make. Small talk as usual. Not a word about the nightmare, or about anything else that mattered to either of them.

  Finally she said, “I don’t think I can just sit around here another day. Let’s go for a drive.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. Fort Bragg’s not far, is it?”

  “Twenty miles or so.”

  “You sound hesitant.”

  “No, it’s just that …”

  “Just that what?”

  “There’s another storm coming,” he said.

  “Surprise.”

  “No, I mean a big storm, worse than the one on the way up. High winds, heavy rain.”

  “How do you know? The car radio?”

  “The woman in the Seacrest grocery store.”

  “And you didn’t tell me until now?”

  “I guess I just forgot.”

  You guess you just forgot. Bullshit, Jay.

  She said, “When is this big storm supposed to get here?”

  “Sometime this afternoon.”

  “Then there’s still time for a drive to Fort Bragg.”

  “If you really want to go.”

  “I really want to go.”

  “Okay, then.” He reached across to touch her hand; she resisted an impulse to pull it away. “We’ll leave right after I clean up.”

  “Cleaning up can wait until we get back. I’ll do it. You don’t always have to be maid as well as cook.”

  “Just trying to make things a little easier for you.”

  Five minutes later they were in the car. She felt better being out of the cottage, moving again. The highway to the north was full of loops and twists, but she had to admit the scenery was impressive. Ocean views, wooded areas, a long sweep around the mouth of a river, hamlets and rustic inns and B&Bs. Wind gusts buffeted the car and the sky was a sullen chiaroscuro, but the windshield stayed dry.

  Jay kept trying to make conversation, but it was all small talk and she was sick of small talk. They were passing by the picturesque bluff-top town of Mendocino when he said something about it looking so much like villages in Maine, the producers of the TV show Murder, She Wrote had passed it off as Cabot Cove for the duration of the series. More small talk, trivial and meaningless.

  Enough, she thought.

  “Jay,” she said, “talk to me.”

  “I am talking to you. I said—”

  “You didn’t say anything. You haven’t said anything I really wanted to hear in so long I can’t remember the last time.”

  She saw the muscles along his jaw clench. “That’s not fair, Shel.”

  “Fair? My God, fair?”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “What you’re thinking, what you’re feeling.”

  “You know how I feel about you. I love you.”

  “That’s not what I mean and you know it. Half the time you talk to me as if I’m a casual acquaintance instead of your wife. Never about anything that really matters to you. Stop hiding from me.”

  “I’m not hiding from you,” he said, “I’m … I can’t always express what I’m thinking or feeling …”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “It’s hard, that’s all. I’m just not wired the way you are, I’m … I have this … oh Jesus, do we have to get into this now?”

  “If not now, then when?”

  “When we’re back home. There’
re some things … I’ll tell you then.”

  “Why can’t you tell me now?”

  “I just … I don’t want to spoil our last couple of days up here.”

  “Spoil them by clearing the air?”

  “When we get home—that’s a promise.”

  “Another promise you won’t keep. You’ll go right on hiding in that private cocoon of yours.”

  “No, I won’t. Not this time.”

  Useless. Like beating her head against a stone wall.

  The fantasy came over her again. He seemed to waver in her vision, turn shimmery, lose definition; for a second or two it was as if she could look right through him. The illusion was almost frightening this time.

  She closed her eyes to shut it out, shifted over close against the door and laid her head against the seat back. The silence that rebuilt between them was like a weight. A frustrated anger simmered in her, but it didn’t last. In its place was a small, cold emptiness.

  And she thought again: Enough.

  T H I R T E E N

  MACKLIN’S MOOD MATCHED THE sullen, cloud-heavy morning as they approached Fort Bragg. Little confrontational scenes like the one he’d just had with Shelby always left him feeling depressed. Powerless, too. Not against her, but against himself and the intractable compulsion to hold back. She didn’t ask much of him, and the one important thing she did ask he seemed incapable of giving her. It made him dislike himself all the more.

  Scared him all the more.

  The thought of what lay ahead fretted him again, brought that closed-fist feeling back into his chest. The coming year would likely make the last few seem happy by comparison. He was pretty sure he knew how Shelby would take the news and just what she’d say, the same thing she’d said at the other crisis points in their life together: “We’ll get through it.” But would they this time? He didn’t see how it was possible, not in the long run. This was so much harder to take than the other setbacks, ongoing and irreversible.