by Blake Crouch
In downtown Statesville he picks up Highway 64 and speeds east through the piedmont of North Carolina and the catatonic towns of Mocksville, Lexington, Asheboro, and Siler City.
The sky stretches into infinite blinding blue.
Near Pittsboro, 64 crosses the enormous Lake Jordan, its banks bright with burning foliage. Luther cannot remember ever being so joyful.
By midafternoon he’s hungry again.
At a Waffle House in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, he orders his new favorite dish: hashbrowns, triple scattered all the way, and a cold vanilla Coke. Through the window his view is of a tawny field turned gold by the leaves of soybean plants.
Halfway through lunch it dawns on him.
He was careless at the Worthingtons.
He left something behind.
16
WHEN Beth awoke she thought she was dead and gone to hell but it wasn’t the inferno she expected. The image of hell she entertained derived from a painting she’d seen recently at the North Carolina Museum of Art.
The 1959 painting was called Apocalyptic Scene with Philosophers and Historical Figures, an oil on Masonite board by the Reverend McKendree Robbins Long.
The painting depicts a cavernous chamber and a legion of hopeless souls being herded by demons toward the obligatory lake of fire. Among the philosophers and historical figures are the faces of Einstein, Freud, Hitler, Stalin, and Marx. Others cling horrified to the rocky bank, still in their eveningwear, as if seized from a lavish ball. A horde of men and women fall naked from the ceiling toward the burning lake and in the unreachable distance, visible to all, two luminous angels hover around a white cross—a constant torturous reminder of the love the damned have spurned.
My hell is worse, Beth thought, because it’s real.
Her head ached terribly in this empty darkness and she possessed no recent memory. The faces of Jenna and John David flashed in her mind and as she pictured the three of them lounging on the pier, something shattered inside of her that could not be reassembled.
She sat up suddenly, smacked her forehead into the soundproofing, and fell back onto a limp hand.
“Who’s there?” she shrieked.
Nothing answered.
She located the hand in the dark and squeezed it.
“Do you hear me?” she whispered, thinking, If that’s a corpse I’ll fucking lose it.
A half-conscious female voice mumbled, then gasped, jerked away from Beth.
“My name is Beth. Who are you?”
A voice croaked back, “Karen.” It sounded as if she spoke through clenched teeth.
“Is this hell?” Beth whispered.
“It’s the trunk of that psychopath’s car.”
Everything came rushing back in a fury of consciousness.
“Where are my children?” Beth asked.
“Your children?”
“Did he hurt them?”
“I don’t know.”
Crying now, Beth tried to shove the fear down in her craw, into that calloused niche she’d found when her husband was murdered.
He only took me. That animal did not hurt my children. Please God You did not let that happen.
Lying on their sides, facing each other in absolute darkness, the women held hands. They could each feel the exhalations of the other—warm comforting breath in their faces.
The car was in motion again and the force of inertia tossed them about in the dark at the slightest change in speed or direction. As the pavement screamed along beneath them they snuggled closer. Karen stroked Beth’s hair and wiped her wet cheeks. She wished she’d just lied and said that her children were safe.
Hours later, the car came to a stop, the engine quit, and the driver side door opened and closed.
Karen strained to listen.
Footsteps faded.
As she held Beth she concentrated on the scarcely audible sounds beyond their black cage—the distant continuous slam of car doors, the starting of engines, crying children, and the unmistakable squeak of shopping cart wheels rolling across pavement.
“We’re in a parking lot,” Karen whispered.
Three doors slammed nearby.
A voice came through: “Shannon, quit primping, you look fine.”
“She doesn’t want to disappoint Chris,” another voice taunted.
“Fuck you and fuck you.”
“Help!” Beth screamed. She jerked away from Karen’s embrace and put her lips against the foam. “Help me! PLEASE!”
“Be quiet!” Karen hissed. “He’ll kill us if we—”
“PLEASE! PLEASE! MY KIDS NEED ME!”
Karen wrapped her arms around Beth, put her hand over the woman’s mouth, and pulled her back onto the filthy carpet.
“It’s okay, sweetie. It’s all right,” she said, Beth shaking violently in her arms. “It’s gonna be all right. But you can’t—”
The voices passed through from outside again.
“There is nothing in that trunk, Shannon. You’re crazy, come on.”
“It sounded like a dog barking. What kind of sicko leaves his dog in the trunk?”
“Who cares? Chris is waiting.”
Beth elbowed Karen in the ribs, broke free, and screamed through the soundproofing until she thought her larynx would rupture.
When fatigue finally stopped her, all was silent again save her frenzied panting and the shudder of her heart.
17
LUTHER dislocates a buggy from a caterpillar-like row and rolls it past the enfeebled greeter of the Rocky Mount Wal-Mart.
“How are you today, sonny?” the blue-vested old man asks him.
“Pretty fucking great.” And he is. He adores Wal-Mart.
Luther heads first to the CANDY/SNACKS aisle where he places ten bags of Lemonheads into the buggy. Tearing open one of the bags he drops three yellow balls into his mouth and begins to suck. On average he consumes two to three bags per day. The way he eats the candy is to suck off the tart lemon coating and spit out the white pit.
His teeth are rotting out of his head.
The candy is all he really came for but it occurs to him that a digital camera might be a fun way to memorialize what he’s going to do with Karen. So Luther pushes the buggy into ELECTRONICS.
Against the back wall two dozen televisions of varying size show the same muted cartoon. He is overstimulated with a din of obnoxious sound: bland sedating elevator music pours throughout the store from speakers in the ceiling; a rap song blares from a nearby display stereo; explosions, machinegun fire, and screams of suffering emanate from a videogame.
Luther stops to examine the face of the small boy who holds the controller and stares at the images of gore and violence onscreen. The boy plays the game with rapt engagement and the glaze in his eyes reflects a mix of concentration and awe.
Leaving his buggy in the CD aisle, Luther walks over to the counter. He kneels down and peers through the glass at several digital cameras.
After a moment he rises, clears his throat.
The salesclerk sits on a stool, a telephone receiver held between his shoulder and ear. According to the nametag on the blue vest his name is Daniel. Daniel is tall and thin with short bleached-blond hair and slim black sideburns.
“I’d like to see the Sony Cybershot P51.”
Daniel closes his eyes and holds up one finger.
Luther waits.
He begins to count silently.
When he reaches sixty he says again, “I’d like to see the Sony Cybershot P51.”
“Megan, could you hold on a sec?” Now holding the phone against his chest: “Sir, could you just hold your horses there for a minute?”
“I’ve already held my horses for a minute, Daniel. I’d like to see that camera right now.”
Luther feels the blood of humiliation coloring his face. Daniel brings the receiver to his ear again, steps down off the stool, and turns his back to Luther.
“Megan, I’m gonna have to call you back. I’m sorry… Yes, I
do think Jack is being unreasonable, but—” Daniel laughs. “I do, yes.”
Daniel continues to talk.
Luther again counts to sixty.
Then he returns to his buggy and pushes it out of ELECTRONICS. He rolls the buggy outside without paying through the chromed brilliance of the crowded parking lot to his gray Impala. He loads his bags of candy into the backseat and climbs behind the steering wheel. From a notebook in the passenger seat he tears out a clean sheet of paper, on which he scribbles OUT OF ORDER: DO NOT ENTER! Then he takes a roll of Scotch tape from the glove compartment, crams several handfuls of Lemonheads in his pocket, and walks back into Wal-Mart.
Luther arrives at the service counter in SPORTING GOODS.
The clerk is a stodgy woman with black-rooted red hair.
“Babs, I’m in the market for a baseball bat,” he says.
“Oh, I’m sorry, honey. We don’t carry those cept in summer. But we just got our huntin’ merchandise in if you’re—”
Walking away, Luther pulls his hair into a ponytail and takes a camouflage baseball cap from an aisle of hunting apparel in case the cameras are watching.
For the next two hours he loiters on the outskirts of ELECTRONICS watching Daniel flit around ignoring customers, sucking through Lemonheads until he has a chemical burn on the roof of his mouth.
Daniel finally leaves ELECTRONICS and ambles to the front of the store.
Luther follows him outside where Daniel leans against a Sam’s Choice drink machine and smokes two cigarettes while staring contemplatively out across the parking lot. It’s six o’clock in the evening and the light is bronze. Luther stands near the automatic doors, his attention divided between Daniel and the red sunset.
He feels an erection coming.
By the time Daniel reenters Wal-Mart, Luther is swollen. He follows the clerk to the back left corner of the store, then down a bright empty corridor. Daniel digs his shoulder into a door and disappears into a restroom. Luther reaches the door, pulls the sheet of paper from his pocket, and tapes it over the man symbol.
Luther enters.
Three stalls, two urinals.
Dropping to his knees, he sees the pair of legs in the last stall and smiles.
They are alone. He could not have planned this any better.
Luther walks into a vacant stall. He reaches down, lifts the right leg of his gray sweatpants, and unbuttons the strap of his leather sheath. After setting the knife on the toilet, Luther takes off his sneakers and socks, pulls down his gray sweatpants, his underwear, and removes his sweatshirt and T-shirt.
This is going to be messy and walking through Wal-Mart in blooddrenched clothes is not a wise thing to do.
Taking the knife, he emerges naked from the stall and turns the two faucets wide open. The soft roaring echo of water pressure fills the room. He flushes the urinals, the toilets in the first two stalls, and starts both automatic hand dryers. Finally he flips off the light and opens and shuts the bathroom door as though the janitor had left.
Daniel curses, the toilet paper dispenser barely audible over the babble of running water and rushing air. The blackness is complete except for a razorthin line of light along the base of the door.
Luther stands beside the light switch stroking himself.
He inhales deeply, at home in darkness.
Daniel’s toilet flushes and as the zipper on his jeans ascends Luther grips the knife.
He would have preferred to spread Daniel’s brains across the wall with a Louisville Slugger, one judicious thwack. But the blade will do. In the car he settled on a name for his knife: Zig, short for Ziegler, Andrew Thomas’s middle name.
Luther hears the creak of the stall door swinging open.
Hesitant footsteps approach and eddies of Daniel’s cologne sweep over him.
He feels Daniel beside him now, the clerk’s hand on the cinderblock wall, groping for the light switch.
The knife feels coldly sublime in his palm.
Suddenly the restroom is awash in hard fluorescent light.
Daniel’s eyes register first bewilderment, then terror.
The blade moving, two graceful strokes—one to silence, one to open.
Daniel sits in a warm expanding puddle, fingering the gorge in his abdomen, unable to make utterance.
“Now you sit there and think about what customer service means.”
Luther reenters the stall and quickly dresses.
Then he hits the light and is out the door, one more cairn for this trail he’s blazing.
18
UPON regaining consciousness, Karen’s first thought was that she was no longer in the trunk. Though she couldn’t see, her present blindness owed to the blindfold tied around her head. She felt a cold wind in her face and an erratic source of light struggled through the oily-smelling cloth that masked her eyes.
Karen did not remember being moved. For all she knew she was dreaming again though the chill metal against her cheek seemed convincingly real. She tried to move but could not, her hands and feet now bound with thick rope. The numbing grogginess of thirst weighed down her head.
Footsteps approached, the tip of a boot now inches from her face. She smelled the grass and dirt that clung to it—raw and earthy.
“You’re conscious, I see.”
The voice contained no reverberation. She was outside.
“Where am I? Please take off the blindfold.”
“We better leave that on for now. I tell you, you’re a heavy gal. If I sound winded, it’s because I just carried you up two hundred fourteen steps.”
A prickling crawled through Karen’s spine. “Where is this?” she asked.
“Don’t you see the light? Even through the blindfold I don’t know how you could miss it.”
“I don’t under—”
“That light is magnified by a First Order Fresnel Lens, operational since October First, Eighteen Seventy-two. Karen, let me quell your fear.” The man sat down beside her. “I brought you here to let you go.” Karen began to cry, filling with the purest relief. “But I have to hold on to the Widow Lancing. You remember her from the trunk?”
“Yessir.”
“See, the only reason you’re being released is because I flipped a coin. You were heads, it landed on heads, you get to live.”
“Why are you doing this?”
She smelled his lemony breath in her face and his words came very even and very quiet.
“You think this is all about you you arrogant twat?”
“No, I—”
“I only took you and Elizabeth Lancing to get someone’s attention. Can you guess who it is?”
“I don’t know.”
“You should know. You’ve fucked him. Well, I’m just making an assumption there but—”
“I don’t know who you’re—”
“Andrew Thomas.”
“What do you want with him?”
“Seven years ago, Andrew shot me, left me to die in a snowy desert.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“No, don’t be. What I’ve got planned for him is going to make it all worthwhile. One last thing. Think hard before you answer. Do you believe you’re an evil person?”
“No, I’m—”
“Why not?”
Her captor’s breath warmed her mouth as she thought of all the charitable acts she’d performed in the last year—Wednesdays in the soup kitchen on 54th, the new writers she’d guided to publication, the angel tree at Ice Blink.
“I’m a decent person,” she said.
“And me? From what little you’ve seen. Am I evil?”
“No sir. I don’t believe you are. I don’t know you. I don’t know what sort of parents you come from. I don’t know if tragedies have happened to you. I’m sure things have caused you to behave…”
“Destructively.”
“Yes.”
“Is anyone evil, Karen?”
“People get damaged. They malfunction. But no, I don’t believe in evil.
”
“I see. Thank you for talking so candidly with me.”
The blindfold was removed.
Karen stared through iron bars across a half mile of pines and marshland and dunes to the Atlantic. From this height and distance the ocean was mute though in the light of the yellow moon she could make out the ragged thread of surf extending for miles down the coastline.
Her captor was gone.
She managed to sit up and saw that she occupied a small observation deck encircled by iron railing. At her back a ladder climbed the last six feet of the tower up to the lantern room of the Bodie Island Lighthouse.
Its beam was blinding. It flashed on for 2.5 seconds. Off 2.5 seconds. On 2.5 seconds. Off 22.5 seconds. This rhythm repeated, dusk to dawn, and she could not behold the mighty lens as it magnified its 160,000 candlepower beacon out to sea.
Karen strained against the rope but the knots held. As she dragged herself around the platform, her eyes followed the ribbon of Highway 12 as it skirted beach and marsh and finally, three miles south, traversed the troubled waters of Oregon Inlet onto Pea Island. From there it would be sixty miles of desolate sound and seashore and tiny beach communities and then Cape Hatteras and Ocracoke and the Core Banks.
But she didn’t know place-names.
She didn’t even know she was in North Carolina or that her captor had cut two locks with a bolt cutter in the oil room and carried her up a rickety spiral staircase to the top of this 131-year-old lighthouse.
How the hell am I gonna get down from here? Fuck it, I’ll find a way. Flag down a car. Get to an airport. Call Scott Boylin, have him wire some money. It will feel so sweet to be back in my apartment again. First thing I’ll do is listen to Ashley Chambliss and drink an entire bottle of that chardonnay and I won’t even feel guilty about it. Everything will be different now. I’ll be a better person. Publish better books. Stop living on autopilot. This experience might actually turn out to be a—
Rounding the base of the lantern room, she froze.
Oh God, why is he still here and squatting over a pile of rope?
The man with long black hair looked over his shoulder and smiled.
“Be right with you, Karen.”
