The Darkest Place
Page 22
In his tired mind Kane saw an apartment—above a pharmacy maybe, in some town out west—with a lock on the door, a bed under a window, a second way out if someone came knocking, a second chance at a second chance. He didn’t want to look away from it, didn’t want to break the sense of simplicity this imagined way of life promised.
Finally, though, he looked at Colette. She was watching him closely. The sorrow was still deep in her eyes. But Kane saw something else, too. Something he wouldn’t mind seeing on a regular basis. A look of understanding. Acceptance, maybe. Recognition.
“What do you think?” she said softly.
“Exile sounds pretty good to me.”
“We’ll have plenty of time to talk about it when we get back. Well, all day, anyway.”
They waited a moment, looking at each other. Neither said anything more. Finally they left the room together and walked down the hallway to the back stairs. It was already too light out, but there wasn’t anything they could do about that. Ty wasn’t at his post at the bottom of the stairs, but Colette didn’t seem at all alarmed by that. She told Kane that the bar had closed two hours ago, everyone had gone home. Kane saw that the door below was dead bolted from the inside, a heavy-duty metal bolt. Not even Dean could make his way through that, Kane thought with a degree of relief.
He held on to the railing tightly as he followed Colette down. The railing was loose; one good yank by someone even just a little bit stronger and it would tear free. At the bottom of the stairs Colette pulled back the bolt and pushed the door open. She only opened it a foot or so, just enough to look outside. The parking lot was in front of the building, around the corner from this side door. They couldn’t see the lot from where they were, only the cluster of trees that crowded this side of the building, making a kind of natural fence. Good for people wanting to make discreet exits, Kane thought. Better for anyone who wanted to ambush them. Kane wanted to ask if there was another way out, something more private. There had to be, right? But before he could say anything, Colette pushed the door open the rest of the way and led him out into the brutal cold. The door swung shut behind them, made a loud banging noise as it slammed against the metal doorframe. They then hurried around the corner to the front. There were no spotlights illuminating the parking lot, just the distant streetlights up on Montauk Highway. They glowed weakly in the gray light. Kane and Colette walked close to the front of the building, staying as near to it as they could for as long as they could. Then they hurried out into the open morning air, walking past the three cars still parked in the lot. So not everyone had left, Kane thought. Someone was still inside, in one of those rooms down the hall, or maybe in one of the rooms on the floor above. He felt an odd kind of desperation for whoever was in there, man or woman. Trapped by need, trapped by greed—whatever the reason, trapped, with no easy escape for either.
They reached Colette’s Cherokee. The sky was still dark enough directly overhead for some stars to show through, but at the horizon stretched long bands of pale blue. There was just enough emerging light for Kane to see his own shadow. He was looking at it, faint, stretched out on the ground in front of him, when he heard a noise coming from somewhere behind him.
He didn’t see what made the noise, didn’t really know exactly what that noise was. But he didn’t need to. When the two giant hands grabbed his jacket, grabbed him with the force of machinery, he knew exactly what was going on, and what he was in for.
It happened with the terrible swiftness of an auto accident. Kane felt himself being lifted off his feet and flung forward, as if caught by a wave, and then slammed hard into the side of Colette’s Cherokee. There was nothing he could do, couldn’t even brace himself for impact, it was all just too fast. He sensed immense power and weight behind him, like a racing city bus about to run him down, then felt that combined power and weight crash into him an instant after he was slammed into the steel fender. He was crushed, and his spine bent the wrong way for an instant, bent farther than he would have thought was possible. His limbs went limp, and then everything halted and he felt breath on the back of his neck, felt it moving past his left ear. Nothing for a moment, for a second or two, and then suddenly he was pulled backward, hard, and flung forward again, flung like he was nothing, a rag caught in the workings of some automated industrial machine. He crashed into the side of the Cherokee again, and this time what smashed into him an instant later was specified, not along the length but localized in one place. It was, of course, a blow, the hard bone of a kneecap striking him in the lower back. He felt his kidneys shift in their sockets, his head fly back as if it was being yanked off. The blow landed again, and then a third time, his entire body rattling. After that he felt himself pulled backward again, then spun around, as if in the grip of some carnival ride gone wildly out of control. He was airborne then, nothing at all beneath his scrambling feet, cast into a wild, terrifying flight. He came crashing down after a long moment, just a bag of bones scattering across the frozen dirt.
He heard shouting, scuffling. Colette’s voice, and the giant’s voice—Dean’s voice. Deep, like something coming up from the bottom of a dark well. Colette was screaming, not from fear, not helpless, but angry, hateful. Kane was facedown, forced himself to roll over and look toward the noise. It was all he could do at that instant, all he could manage. Helpless again, just like in the chapel. He hated himself, saw Colette and Dean standing face-to-face, Dean holding her by her wrists, his hands the size of oven mitts, Colette’s arms raised and held out in front of her, awkwardly, like an old-fashioned boxer. She was trying to pull away from Dean, they were shouting at each other, but Kane couldn’t make out what was being said. There was ringing in his ears, the long, steady drone of a hundred tuning forks. He tried to breathe, couldn’t without sharp pain. It took him a second, but he found what he needed to sit up, did so slowly, then got to his feet, crouching like an old man who had spent too long in a soft bed. Dean was shaking Colette now, forcefully, yelling at her. She was yelling back, angrily. Kane’s legs were shaking, and he rose to an upright position, or as close to it as he could get. He started toward them, his eyes locked on them. His vision was blurry, he wasn’t thinking, didn’t care about thinking, was past fear, running on adrenaline and shame and the desire—deep in him, wild in him, reckless—to never feel again the way he had felt back in the chapel.
He cared only for that.
He threw himself into Dean, back into the wave. It was like tackling a thick tree, and the impact of Kane’s attack barely moved Dean at all. Dean let go of one of Colette’s wrists, holding the remaining one tighter. Colette screamed out, in pain this time, Kane could tell that much in the rush and confusion. With his free hand, Dean grabbed Kane by the collar of his jacket, pulled Kane forward again, sharply, and lifted his knee, driving it into Kane’s gut. Kane folded, then was airborne once again. He landed this time on his back, looked up through blinking eyes and saw the still-mostly dark sky above him, the last remaining pale stars, and his own breath, like white smoke, rising above him and then dissipating into the cold air, gone for good.
He lost track of time, of everything but what he could see above him and the feel of the stone-hard earth along his back. But when his senses returned finally, in a rush, Kane lifted his head in time to see Colette let her knees buckle slightly and drop suddenly, lowering her center of gravity just a little. They were back as they had been before Kane’s useless attack, face to face, Dean holding her by her wrists, her arms stretched out before her. As she lowered herself, putting her center of gravity below his, Dean leaned forward a little and tried to pull her toward him, like a parent about to lift a resisting child. It was instinct, any man would have done that, would have fought such resistance with brute strength. But the instant she sensed that he was off balance just a little, pulling at her as she pulled away, she stopped resisting, straightened her dancer’s legs suddenly, and sprung upward and toward him. Her right hand was open, her fingers grouped together and extended, and though
he was still holding her wrist, she was able to use his own force against him and fling a jab up through his centerline and into his left eye.
He shouted, angry, caught off guard. His hand came up to his eye, instinctively, and she broke her right hand free and lowered herself again, like a boxer on the inside, like an infighter, and launched a swift open-handed uppercut into Dean’s balls, striking him hard. He recoiled, shrunk a little, folding like Kane had, and grunted once as he dropped to his knees like a building going down. He still had Colette’s other wrist, but she wasn’t done. She reached for his face then, with both hands, dug into his skin with her nails, tore long divots from his flesh. This was just enough damage, done swiftly enough, for her to break free of his grip and rush straight to Kane. She knelt beside him, told him to get up, pulling at him with both hands, trying to drag him to his feet. It took all they both had to get Kane just to sit up. She told him then to stand, that they had to go. Her words, the urgency with which she spoke, were all he could hear, all he needed to hear. Somehow he got his feet under him, got himself into a crouch, his heels against the hard ground. Colette took his right arm and wrapped it around her neck and pressed upward with her legs, lifting him. Suddenly he was standing, they were moving though he had no idea in which direction. He had to concentrate just to put one foot in front of the other, had to stare down at his own feet. He and Colette had taken a few steps, toward the Cherokee, Kane assumed, when their forward motion was suddenly interrupted. Dean collided into them both, coming out of nowhere, hitting them hard. Kane didn’t know from which side he had been hit, only that he had been torn violently from Colette’s embrace and sent flying again, alone again, made helpless again.
It all went to hell from there, happened even more quickly than before. Kane was adrift in space for a while, then finally realized that he was stretched out on his right side on the ground. He could hear screaming, far off, but he knew that was just a trick of his mind. Colette and Dean weren’t more than a few yards from him. Then suddenly the screaming stopped. Kane thought maybe this was another trick his senses were playing on him, that his hearing had gone out again, or that the ringing of tuning forks had returned to drown everything out. But it wasn’t ringing that drowned out the sound of the screaming. It was yet another sound, this one not inside his head but outside of it, reaching his ears from somewhere beyond the parking lot, the sound of an engine, from up on Montauk Highway maybe, roaring, like someone had gunned it, had pushed down hard on the accelerator. But Kane ignored that sound—what could he do about it, what did he care about that now?—and strained to find Colette in the confusion. He could barely lift his head now, felt the cold around him, felt it swallowing him. He saw Dean and Colette face-to-face yet again, but Dean wasn’t holding her wrists this time. Both his hands were wound around her long throat, his thick fingers clasped together at the back of her neck, his thumbs pressing so hard against her windpipe that his arms trembled. Kane couldn’t see Colette’s face, but he saw Dean’s, saw it in the early morning light, saw that it was indeed ugly, deformed even, made all the more so by the collision of rage and hate and fear upon it.
Colette was holding Dean’s thick wrists, trying to pry free of his grip. But she didn’t have anywhere near the strength. She reached out for his face again, tried to gouge at it like she had before. But this only made Dean even more angry. Kane, trying to stand, trying to break free of the invisible weight that seemed to press down on him now, press him against the cold ground, saw the emotion cross Dean’s face like the shadow of a winter cloud. Dean leaned his head back, moved it as far as he could, putting it almost beyond Colette’s reach. Her straining fingers reached him but could find no target, nothing to dig into. He was fast choking the fight out of her. Kane didn’t hear the engine anymore, didn’t hear anything but gagging, Colette gagging. He thought of the threat Dean had made back at the chapel, felt a swelling inside him, a rush of adrenaline. He wanted to get to his feet but was too weak, had taken too much. He hated himself, hated the uselessness, his weakness. Panic broke through him, rushed into his heart, but it did nothing to help him. All he could do was witness what happened next.
Colette, desperate now, searched for another way to hurt Dean, hurt him enough to break free. He was holding her too close for her to be able to knee him in the groin or kick him, so instead she stomped down on the top of his foot with her heel. But that did nothing. Dean’s eyes had narrowed to hateful slits now, his mouth drawn tight like a trap that had sprung closed. He was seething, staring at Colette’s face, seeming almost captivated by what he saw. A part of him did seem to wish he could stop. There was something about his face that made him seem like a man who was just a little baffled by himself. But if a part of him did want to stop, it went ignored. His mouth drew even tighter, the corners of it turning down sharply, like hooks, and he dug his thumbs into Colette’s throat, dug with everything he had. Colette struggled against him, but Dean only pressed harder still. There was no gagging now, no sounds coming from her at all. She had long since run out of air, he had long since crushed her fragile windpipe. It was just a matter of her dying now.
She clutched at his wrists. There was nothing left for her to do. But gradually her struggle grew more and more feeble, till suddenly her body went rigid and she grabbed at his wrists with a burst of strength. She must have known it was almost over, that her life was almost over. Her brain, deprived of oxygen, must have been able still to grasp that. It was then that her nervous system took over and she began to shake violently, involuntarily, like a hanged man at the end of his rope. It was grotesque, a wild, vulgar twitching, not at all elegant. It seemed to go on forever. But then finally Colette went limp in Dean’s hands, her head suddenly lifeless, hanging to one side as if it had been all but ripped off. Just like that she was dead, and Kane screamed. It was all he could do. The scream, hot with hate and anguish, burned his throat like vomit. He watched as Dean let her slip to the ground with a strange gentleness, watched as she lay at his feet in a heap, empty as an old coat. Dean let go of her finally, let her slip completely from his grip, and stood over her like a tower, looking down at her. He seemed almost surprised, maybe even conflicted, as if he couldn’t believe what he was now seeing, as if he had nothing to do with it, had just himself come across this horrible scene. After a long moment he lifted his head and looked toward Kane. He hadn’t heard Kane’s scream, or had only just now heard it, had a delayed reaction to it. He looked at Kane with a kind of disbelief, a kind of pleading. There was silence now, no ringing of a mass of tuning forks, no gunning of an engine, just a spreading winter dawn with only the two of them under it, only the two of them left in the world.
Kane lay where he was, staring at Dean, waiting. There was no point in trying to stand now. It was too late to do anything to save Colette, not that he could have done anything. A new wave of self-hatred ran through him, and suddenly, he didn’t care what happened to him, he didn’t care if Dean walked over and stomped him to death. A part of him wanted that, wanted his life to end, wanted the shame and the sorrow, all of it, to end. He could see nothing beyond this, nothing at all, didn’t care about anyone or anything. He’d been stripped to the bone one last time, had lost all that he could bear to lose. Enough was enough. He would die with Colette, die thinking of their one night together, her hands finding him in the darkness, her breath on his face, the soft sounds they each had made . . .
For a moment, a long moment, Dean did nothing, just stood there, staring at Kane. He seemed helpless, too, in his own way. But after that moment something clearly clicked in Dean’s head, Kane could see it, see the sudden difference in Dean’s expression. Dean moved suddenly, took a step toward Kane, one purposeful step, and then another, and then a third. Kane could tell that whatever confusion had clouded Dean’s mind, had interrupted his rage, had passed. Dean stepped with force onto the hard earth, and Kane knew it was just a matter of seconds now before those feet would be crashing down onto his broken body again.
There was nothing for a time, just stillness, and then suddenly someone was beside Kane, had rushed there, and was pulling Kane up off the ground. Kane looked for a face, couldn’t focus at first, there was too much movement, everything was blurry, jumpy, but then he managed to lift his head enough to see the person who was beside him. He looked, concentrated as best he could, but didn’t recognize him at all. Some kid with dark hair and a square face. He was being pulled along by this kid, held up by powerful arms. The kid had wrapped Kane’s arm around his neck like Colette had, was carrying Kane, who could barely stand, along. He was big, this kid, bigger than Kane, and walked quickly despite a noticeable limp.
Kane said Colette’s name. He had no idea where she was, where he was now in relation to her body. He didn’t want to leave there. That was his only concern now. But her name came out in broken syllables. Each step they took together jarred Kane, made breathing evenly, let alone speaking, all but impossible. The kid said nothing, maybe didn’t understand what Kane had meant by the incoherent sounds he uttered. The kid only cared about moving Kane along, getting him out of there. They stopped abruptly, and Kane heard the sound of a car door being pulled open. He felt a hand on the back of his head, pushing against it firmly. Kane couldn’t have resisted if he tried. He was bent forward, pushed through the car door, fell in and lay across a back seat on his right side, his head pressed against the soft leather.