No Sanctuary

by Richard Laymon

So she stood motionless, left foot braced on the branch, arms and legs hugging the trunk. Hearing Holden’s approach, she pressed herself more tightly against the trunk. She wished she could sink into it and disappear.

  The sounds of the rushing footsteps stopped.

  Near the place where the rope had landed?

  He knows he’s lost me, Gillian thought. He doesn’t see me anywhere ahead, doesn’t hear me running. He’s starting to suspect I’ve tried to hide on him. He’s trying to figure out where.

  Her heart thudded wildly. Calm down, she told herself. Pretend we’re playing hide and seek.

  Pretend, hell!

  Strange. She’d spoken so fondly of playing hide-and-seek to Jerry. Just yesterday.

  And here I am now, playing it for keeps.

  She wondered if she had ever tried hiding in trees. And then she remembered that she had—many times. She remembered standing on branches high up, clinging as the tree swayed in the wind, staring down as the kid who was “it” searched the yard and never looked up. The thrill had been like a giggle trapped in her throat.

  Had she ever been found when she was hiding in a tree? She didn’t think so. They found her when she hid in bushes, under stairs, in window wells, but not when she climbed trees.

  Maybe that’s the real reason she had decided to climb this one.

  The forgotten trick of a kid game.

  It worked then, she told herself. It’ll work now.

  It better.

  What’s he doing?

  For the past minute—maybe longer—Gittian hadn’t heard a single footstep. He’d been panting for air when he arrived, but that had stopped very quickly.

  If he left, she thought, I would’ve heard him. He must just be standing there, looking around, listening, waiting. Maybe he thinks I’ll decide the coast is clear and come out of hiding.

  Maybe he did leave.

  That’s what he wants me to think.

  I’ll stay here all day. All night. Whatever it takes.

  Footsteps rushed toward her tree.

  Gillian’s heart lurched. She jerked her face back from the trunk and looked down.

  Holden scurried under the hanging limbs, stood and gazed up at her.

  Her breath blasted out as if she’d been punched in the stomach.

  Holden’s knife was lashed to the end of a stick—tied there with the rope she had thrown to lead him astray.

  The stick was six feet long.

  Before Gillian could move, he jabbed upward with the makeshift spear. Its point sank into her right buttock. Yelping, she reached down for the knife. It pulled out of her and slashed at her hand, but missed.

  She tugged the belt from her teeth and twisted herself away from the trunk. She pivoted, her right leg swinging backward through the air, foot kicking at the shaft of Holden’s knife-spear, then finding its way onto the same branch as her left foot.

  The maneuver had turned Gillian around. She no longer had her back to Holden. She hugged the trunk with her left arm. Her right arm swung, whipping at the knife with the buckle-end of the belt.

  The knife circled on the end of its stick. The lashing belt did little to keep it away. It slashed and thrust. Sometimes it got her. It poked the side of a calf. It nicked a hip. It sliced a thigh. It cut a half-inch slit across the top of her pubic mound.

  Gillian knew he was toying with her. If he wanted, he could hack her to pieces or bury the blade in her. Instead, he tortured her with shallow stabs and slices.

  He stared up at her with wide, eager eyes. His lips were a straight line. His tongue slid out between them as he made a hard sweeping slash at Gillian’s belly. The blade missed her by no more than an inch. As it passed, she struck it with her belt. The end of the belt wrapped the wooden shaft and she tugged. Holden tugged at the same instant. The belt jerked from her hand. Holden’s lips curled into a smile. He shook his spear. The belt slid down its shaft and dropped to the ground.

  Gillian unhooked her arm from the tree trunk. As she sidestepped carefully, Holden jabbed the blade at her face. She flinched and nearly lost her balance. Her right arm waved. Her left hand grabbed an overhead branch. The knife point stung her left armpit, then scraped along the underside of her breast. The blade moved up between her breasts and turned, its edge pressing into her right breast.

  She darted her right arm in, grabbed the shaft just below the knife handle, thrust it away from her body and leaped.

  Leaped forward, diving, clutching the spear with her other hand as she flew.

  Flew over Holden’s head.

  Insane, she thought. Like diving into an empty pool.

  She kept her grip on the spear as she crashed headfirst through a tangle of limbs that beat against her falling body. A branch pounded her hip, throwing her over. Then her back struck the ground.

  She raised her head. Her skin was a maze of welts, scratches, and bleeding cuts. They itched and burned. But she couldn’t worry about that now.

  The dive had carried her through the wall of foliage surrounding the pine. The spear was still in her hands. It had snapped in the fall, leaving only a few inches of shaft jutting out below the knife’s handle.

  But she had the knife!

  Gazing between her feet, she saw Holden scuttling through the shadows under the tree.

  She gasped, rolled over, pushed herself up and whirled around to face him.

  He held the rest of the spear—a long crooked pole. The break had left it with a point. He walked toward Gillian, both hands on the pole, shaking it at her. “Gonna shove it up your ass,” he whispered. “Gonna make you a scarecrow.” .

  I’ve got the knife, she thought. But his words sent ice through her bones. He seemed so sure.

  He lunged forward, driving the pole toward her belly. Gillisn slashed at it. The heavy blade knocked it aside. She threw herself at Holden, swinging the knife in a backhand stroke. He hurled himself out of its path and the blade cut only air. She glimpsed a blur of streaking pole and cried out as a blast of pain shot up her arm. Stunned, she saw the knife fly from her hand.

  Holden turned, watching the knife, and started to go after it while it was still falling.

  Gillian whirled around and ran.

  It’s over, she thought.

  Christ, I had the knife.

  She sprinted.

  It’s over, but I won’t make it easy for him.

  Her arm throbbed. Her wounds burned. She felt blood and sweat sliding down her skin. Branches whipped her. Her feet snagged on something and she fell and skidded and scurried up again and kept on running.

  In the distance ahead, the forest shadows were broken by brightness.

  Another clearing? she wondered.

  Maybe a lake!

  If it’s a lake up there, I’ll dive in and swim. Maybe Holden can’t swim!

  She glanced back.

  Holden was racing after her, no more than twenty feet away. He had the pole down at his side, clutched in his left hand. His right hand held the knife.

  Gillian dashed out of the trees.

  Clear open space ahead.

  Rocky ground for a few more yards.

  But no lake.

  A valley.

  Gillian tried to stop.

  GOD, NO! was her 6na1 thought before she stumbled off the edge..

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  This is it, Gillian thought as she plummeted.

  Her feet hit rock. Her knees shot up, one striking her chin like a pitched hardball.

  She was lying on the beach. She could hear the nearby surf. Her skin was sizzling.

  I’m going to have a doozy of a sunburn, she thought.

  I’d better roll over.

  She couldn’t move. The sun seemed to be pressing down on her, holding her motionless.

  If I don’t roll over ...

  A kid ran by, kicking up sand. Grains of it flew into Gillian’s open mouth. She started to choke.

  Coughing, she raised her head and pushed herself up on her elbows. The s
ight of her naked, battered body destroyed the dream. She coughed and spat. Blood sprayed her chest. So did bits of something—not sand, though. Chips of broken teeth? Her vision darkened and swam. She twisted quickly onto her side and vomited.

  When she was done, she squirmed away from the mess. She rolled onto her back and her right leg slipped into emptiness. With a gasp of alarm, she jerked it up and crossed it over her other leg. Her pounding heart sent waves of pain through her head. She patted the ground and felt an edge of rock no more than two inches from her side.

  Carefully, she sat up. She looked around, forcing her head to turn on her tight neck.

  She was sitting on a shelf of rock that jutted out no more than five or six feet from the sheer face of the mountain. It was less than four feet wide. The center was depressed slightly, and as sandy as a beach.

  She started to look down, felt a swell of panic, and scooted cautiously until her back pressed the solid wall of rock. There, she gripped the edge beside her right hip. She took deep breaths. She shut her eyes, but snapped them open, fearful of falling. Too close to the edge. She eased herself closer to the middle.

  What am I doing here?

  She tried to think back. Her brain pulsed and burned with the headache. Her memory seemed scattered.

  She remembered a fall—from a diving board. At Jerry’s swimming pool. But that was a long time ago.

  At least I remembered it, she thought. A place to start.

  The board had torn off her bikini pants. Jerry gave her a robe to wear. She wore it next door, to the place she was staying. That was a house she’d broken into. She must’ve been on one of her adventures, her intrusions.

  She’d gone back to the house. She remembered opening the drier to put the robe in, and ...

  The scrapbook.

  Fredrick Holden.

  She suddenly remembered. She skipped her mind over the nightmare that started with her capture, touching on bits and pieces of her ordeal, and found the part she needed to remember.

  The last seconds.

  Holden had been chasing her through the woods. She’d rushed right up to the edge of a cliff, tried to stop, teetered for a moment, then fallen. She’d expected her body to be dashed apart on the rocks far below.

  By some miracle, she was still alive.

  By the miracle of landing on this, she thought, looking at the small shelf surrounding her.

  She couldn’t remember landing. She must’ve been knocked senseless by ...

  Holden!

  Wincing, she twisted her head and looked up the mountain.

  Holden was nowhere in sight.

  The wall looming above her was nearly vertical. She couldn’t see the top.

  From what Gillian could see, however, she guessed that her perch must be well below the edge.

  She realized she would have a better view if she crawled out to the end of the shelf and turned her back to the open space.

  No way.

  Instead, she raised her knees. Her right knee was stiff and swollen, and hurt when she bent it. But she kept it bent along with her left, to hold her feet away from the edge when she scooted forward. With her back a few inches from the wall, she looked over each shoulder and scanned the area above her.

  She still couldn’t see Holden.

  Still couldn’t see the top.

  But she saw that the rock face was slightly concave. Though the angle was so slight that the mountainside didn’t appear to overhang her, there was enough tilt to prevent Holden from climbing down to her.

  Unless he had a good long rope.

  There was no mountain climbing rope in the trunk of his car, that she knew. And she would bet he didn’t have one in the front, either.

  Only one way he’ll get down here, she thought. The same way I did.

  He’s a fucking lunatic, but he’s not suicidal. Nobody would jump off up there on the chance of landing the way I did. Not even me. I would’ve let him catch me before I would’ve jumped. Maybe.

  If he tries it, he’ll miss.

  If he lands here, I’ll kick him off.

  He won’t try it. Not a chance. He cares a hell of a lot for his own hide. Here’s a bastard who goes out ofstate to do his killings, who drove me hundreds of miles just so my body wouldn’t turn up near his neighborhood. He’s a bastard who loves himself and wants to live so he can go on torturing and , murdering. No way is he going to jump off a goddamn cliff.

  But he can’t let me live. No way is he going to drive away and leave me breathing.

  Gillian slid backward until she was safely against the wall again.

  Maybe he thinks I’m dead, she told herself.

  He must have gone to the edge of the cliff and looked down. If he did that, he saw me. I was out cold for a while. Was he still looking when I woke up and tossed my cookies?

  Maybe, maybe not. Maybe he does think I’m dead.

  I must’ve looked dead. Gillian straightened out her legs, moaning at the pain in her knee. Yeah, she thought, I look messed up pretty good.

  Her skin was shiny with sweat, glowing from the sun, streaked and smeared with blood and dirt, cross-hatched with fresh welts, scratched and scraped, split in six or eight places from knife wounds that looked raw but no longer bled. There were swollen patches of red, a deeper hue than the sun had caused, that would turn into bruises. There were even purple-gray marks left over from the beating at his house like an undercoating of old hurts. Gillian touched her face. She felt dry, puffy lips, a knot on the point of her chin, a left cheek that seemed like twice its normal size. She could actually see a slope of cheek below her eye.

  She ran her tongue gently along the broken edges of her teeth.

  And started to weep.

  Cut it out, she told herself. I’m alive. •■•■»

  My dentist is gonna love me.

  Couple months, I’ll look good as new.

  If I’m still alive. If I make it out of here.

  Holden, he’s not gonna leave till he’s sure I’m dead.

  Maybe he does think I’m dead, she told herself again.

  A guy like him, how come he didn’t drop some rocks on me? When he saw me down here, he could’ve bombed me till he crushed my head. How come he didn’t?

  Maybe he fell.

  The thought struck her like a promise of life. She wiped the tears from her eyes.

  What if Holden came running out of the trees, full tilt, the same way I did? What if he couldn’t stop in time, either, and went right over the edge?

  She whispered, “Jesus,” through her broken lips.

  Then she crawled forward on her hands and knees. When • she neared the edge, a falling sensation forced her to lie down flat. She squirmed a few more inches forward, then peered down over the rim.

  A short distance below her perch, other rocks protruded from the mountain wall. None were large enough to break a fall. The slope was still nearly vertical for fifty or sixty feet. If Holden went off the cliff, he would’ve dropped that distance, then crashed onto the boulders that were heaped at the foot of the wall.

  Gillian didn’t see his body.

  Doesn’t prove anything, she told herself. The body , might’ve gone down in between the rocks.

  Some were the size of refrigerators, others the size of cars. They were all tilted and tipped every which way, with big shadowy gaps between their edges. A body could fall into one of those crevices, Gillian thought, and never be found.

  She felt a trickle of joy.

  But over the years she had lived like a thief in sixty-six houses and she had never been caught until this time. Luck, she knew, had been a factor in that. But the main factor was her mind. She’d gotten away with her intrusions because she was smart. She didn’t let herself run on luck, hoping for the best. She studied the possibilities, foresaw the dangers, took precautions, and was always creative and quick enough to keep herself safe.

  So now, in spite of her thrill at the thought that Holden lay broken and lifeless among the rock
s below, she warned herself not to count on it.

  You don’t see his goddamn body. Therefore, he isn’t dead.

  If he isn’t dead, what’s he doing?

  For some dumb crazy kind of reason—why, at a time like tbis?-she was back in the white stucco house on Silverston. The deco place. If ever she made it back to LA in one piece, which, let’s face it, doesn’t seem too likely, the memory of the hot tub she’d taken that day would live on in her mind forever.

  What happened afterward, though, in number 1309, almost put paid to her illustrious career. Of intrusions, house-sittings, that is. ,

  Finito. Full stop.

  She wished that it had. Then she wouldn’t be here now, halfway up this bastard mountain, bare-ass naked and a murdering psycho after her hide.

  Back to the house that time forgot ...

  She’d lain there, soaking up the sheer luxury of that tub, breathing in lilac perfume, like she was in some mystical Garden of Allah.

  Then the bathroom door blew ajar. That’s right, a puff of wind opened the door.

  She remembered thinking, Holy shit ...

  And sitting up with a start, arms wrapped around her breasts, shivering in the cold draft. Faint, familiar music wafted through the door. So faint, it was hardly there at all.

  Then, the weirdest thing. She’d had this powerful urge to get up out of the tub, wrap herself in one of those thick white towels hanging over the towel rail and walk out the door.

  Leaving a trail of wet footprints behind her, she padded across the marble landing. No ideas as to where her feet were taking her. In a kind of dream, she let them have their lead. They took her to a white door which had the name A-L-I-C-E printed on it in silver letters. ALICE?

  Alice who?

  Looking at those letters made her feel like she’d stumbled across somebody’s private place. Somebody’s very private place.

  A special place.

  The old familiar buzz tugged at the pit of her stomach. It melded into an ache, setting her mons alight with longing.

  “Here goes,” she breathed. She’d invaded a lot of private space in her time. One more wouldn’t hurt.

  Her breath came out in huffs, quick and shallow. Not knowing what she would find behind the door, she opened it, slowly, and peeped into a tiny room that was straight from the past.