She looked at his face, but saw only the bright glint of eyes through the hood’s opening. He wore some sort of ski mask beneath the hood.
Her free fist pounded his back. She may as well have been punching a sack of mud.
The Creep hissed under his breath, a harsh, evil sound. “Bitch!”
He wrenched her shoulder until she was flat on her back, his palm crushing her lips. The elbow on her chest pressed harder, and Julia thought her ribs would crack. Then the pressure eased and the arm moved away and Julia heard the sound of a zipper.
She wedged her knee toward his crotch. No good. She couldn’t even turn her head away. All she could do was close her eyes, run for the long darkness inside.
Surrender.
Just like always.
The Creep forced her dress up, exposing her panties.
Gloved fingers tugged at the elastic.
No. Surrender isn’t an option this time.
She wriggled, grappling for the edge of the mattress, the headboard, even a pillow. His odor came again, the offal of his lurid excitement. Pungent sweat and–
And cologne.
Jovan Musk.
The brand she’d bought him for Christmas.
Mitchell?
She glanced at the gap of skin between glove and sleeve and saw the Rolex.
Oh my God, it’s MITCHELL.
Mitchell, who could have his pick of smartly dressed, curvaceous beauties, who could go down to his country club in Colliersville and have a woman undressing within the hour. Mitchell, who could afford the highest class of call girl if he wanted to get his rocks off.
Mitchell.
A Creep.
Mitchell must have seen the recognition dawning on her face. She couldn’t disguise the horror, no matter how deeply she fled into the inner darkness. And her anger fueled her, allowed her to twist beneath him, get one knee planted, and simultaneously drive up and away from him.
He bellowed in rage as she slipped from his grasp, her blouse ripping and a button popping free. The slack gained by the torn cloth allowed her to reach the nightstand and grab the neck of the heavy wooden lamp.
Betrayed.
Always goddamned betrayed.
What had she ever done to deserve betrayal?
Easy. She’d opened the door and let someone into her heart. Trust was a sucker’s game.
But her heart was cold now, and so was her nerve.
She slammed the lamp against him, the awkward swing knocking the lampshade against his head and swiping back his hood. The blow stunned him more than hurt him, but Julia seized the opening and spun to her feet, the lamp raised like a club.
You’re throwing a curveball but I’m knocking this bastard out of the park.
This seemed like the absurd but logical conclusion to their eight-year relationship. The final swing in the bottom of the ninth. Bases loaded. And the game was over.
Not from blushing, fumbling first kiss to cold, uncaring abandonment. Rather, the end would be a farewell of malice, a last touch that left scars.
A good-bye that bled.
Mitchell shoved himself to the far side of the bed, perhaps recalling the power of her tennis stroke, or maybe just considering how a bruised face might look in the courtroom next week. She stared into those specks of light that marked his eyes.
Julia worked her jaw sideways, scraping her tongue against her teeth to remove the bitter taste of leather.
“Why?” she asked, not allowing the lamp to dip an inch though it quivered in her anger.
He batted the gray hood back and jerked the ski mask off his head. His always-perfect hair now stood like a shock of dark cornstalks in a field. He rubbed his face in his hands.
“Is that all you ever wanted, you bastard?” she said.
A tremor ran through Mitchell’s muscular shoulders, and she was afraid he was going to renew his attack. Julia thumped the base of the lamp against the mattress, her force punctuating the pain she was ready to deliver. The wood was heavy enough to break bone. She grinned at the thought, and perhaps that scared Mitchell more than the weapon.
When he finally spoke, it was as if he were addressing someone outside the room, some all-hearing ear, though his words were cat quick and mouse quiet. “I just…I can’t afford to lose you.”
Julia made no attempt to cover herself. “You’d rather keep me broken?”
“I’m sorry,” Mitchell said, keeping his gaze on his feet. “After yesterday….”
Julia glanced at the floor. The contents of her purse had spilled across the carpet. The wooden box was plainly visible, the carving of the pentagram delivering a hundred and ten volts to the chest.
The skull ring.
Mitchell’s voice rose, the quick mood shift catching Julia by surprise. “Why did you have to go out there? Why the hell can’t you just forget it all? You’re mine, Julia. You belong to me, not the past and those damned hooded people.”
He lifted his face. Tears welled in the corners of his eyes. But Julia felt no sympathy, only a shudder of revulsion that she had ever let this pathetic specimen of the male gender hold and kiss her. To think that she had nearly married this creature and spent a life with him.
“I’ll never be yours,” Julia said, surprised by the chilly strength of her words. “Do you want to know why?”
Mitchell looked like his own evil twin, hair wild, fly open, eyes red. Or was this the real Mitchell Austin? The one that hid inside the power suits and lurked behind the smug mask of self-righteousness, a control freak who couldn’t even control himself?
His lips moved like those of a hooked fish gasping on a riverbank. Finally, he managed to answer. “Why not?”
“Because there’s no room inside your house, Mitchell.”
His mouth fell open. He didn’t speak, but his eyes said, “What the hell?”
Julia got to her feet, pulled her blouse closed and smoothed down her skirt. “You’ve got your house stuffed so full of yourself, there’s no room for anyone else. And I’m not going to live in anybody’s basement.”
Except my own. In that place where bones are buried. But that has nothing to do with this jerk.
Mitchell backed away as if she were the Creep. He zipped himself and tried to gather his slick judicial composure. “Listen, you’re not to going to press charges, are you? I’ve got a lot of friends in the D.A.’s office. You’ll be smeared until you won’t even be able to recognize yourself in the mirror.”
Julia pictured herself filing a report, talking to the police. Sure, she had physical evidence of an assault. Bruises, torn clothing, maybe some DNA evidence under her fingernails. But assault cases where the rapist was engaged to the victim, where the pair had a long sexual history together, were practically impossible to prosecute.
Her word against his.
Mitchell looked her fully in the eyes and gave a smile that would chill a cobra’s blood.
Because they both knew the truth. Julia’s behavioral disorder would end up on trial, not Mitchell. He could afford the best in criminal defense, and in the end, Mitchell would walk out of the courtroom laughing while Julia dripped into a black puddle of miserable self-loathing. The defense would have its psychological “experts” prod and poke her brain until she finally convinced herself that the attack was her fault, that she’d staged the whole thing because everybody knew that crazy people did crazy things.
Of course. What jury would convict an upstanding, respectable citizen solely on the wild accusations of a person known to be unstable? She could picture the defense attorney now, giving a sermon during closing arguments, the High Church of Reason against the damned and doomed who had the temerity to be less than perfect, those oddities who “saw psychologists,” who “received therapy,” who “had been diagnosed.”
Oh, yes. She would be crucified, her own fears used as the nails, her own frail attempts at recovery serving as the wood.
And Mitchell would be not only her Judas and her Pilate, he would also be the Roman
soldier with the hammer.
She brushed past him, stooped, and gathered the box and her purse. “Get the hell out,” she said, dead inside.
“If it weren’t for the money, I’d have been out of here years ago,” he said, cocky again, untouchable.
“The money?” she asked his retreating back.
“We could have done it the easy way,” he said, brushing his hair back into place. “Now it’s going to get messy.”
The door to the hotel room closed with a whisper, but the door to the house in her head closed with a great groaning of hinges, the rattling of chains, the rusty screams of deadbolts being driven forever home.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The sun was sinking when Julia reached Elkwood. The mountain ridges glowed with autumn, as if capped by molten gold. The sienna and ochre of the changing leaves covered the slopes, the darker greens of balsam and spruce dotted the higher elevations. Shadows filled the long valley where the Amadahee River ran through the center of town, carrying its rich September smells of salamanders and mud.
By the time Julia had turned her Subaru up the hill toward Buckeye Creek Road, the anxiety that had nearly consumed her on the flight home was all but forgotten. The tall trees comforted her, and she was relieved to see again the pastures with their leaning locust poles and rusted barbed wire, the farmhouses set well away from the road, the cows attacking the grass with dull persistence. Here and there the tips of granite slabs protruded through the soil like great rocket ships preparing to blast into the heavens.
Though she had only lived in Elkwood for four months, this place had become home. When she’d first moved, it had been a desperate escape. Mitchell had simultaneously driven her away while demanding that she stay in Memphis. Dr. Danner had suggested this mountain town as a nice place to meet the future, and the referral to Dr. Forrest had been like a shipwreck victim pushed by waves onto the saving shore of an island.
Now the future was clearer even though the past was stranger and scarier than ever.
Now her future didn’t revolve around Mitchell and the caged security he had offered. Funny that he had turned out to be more unstable than she. Tomorrow she would return his two-carat diamond via registered mail. The memory of the assault was buried inside, waiting, a nest of snakes. She didn’t dare deal with it alone. The breakdown would have to wait for the chair in Dr. Forrest’s office.
Julia hadn’t yet decided when to tell Dr. Forrest about the skull ring. Perhaps next week. Right now, she had plenty enough memories and emotions to sort out. The immediate past left the freshest bruises. The healing would have to begin from the outside in.
Mrs. Covington’s house was dark as Julia drove past, the windows like slate. The apartments stood quiet across the road, spears of light cutting between drawn curtains. The Subaru’s headlights swept over Julia’s house as she pulled up, and she felt a rush of ownership. Despite its disreputable history, she felt comfort behind its walls. She decided she would talk to George Webster about purchasing it.
The door was solid, the windows cold and empty. Behind that door were her computer, her clothes, her books, Mr. Ned the stuffed turtle. She thought of the baseball cards Walter had given her, left spread across the coffee table, and smiled. Such a small kindness became magnified by the comparative horror of her visit to Memphis.
This was a new past she was building, and the realization warmed her heart despite all the nasty mental baggage she had yet to unpack. She thought of that gospel song, “One Day at a Time, Sweet Jesus,” and figured the past need only extend to that morning’s awakening and the future was no more than the remaining hours until dark. She eagerly went up the walk, her purse clutched in front of her. She was so glad to be home that she barely glanced at the shadowy spaces between the trees, at the vast forest where crickets chirped and the nocturnal animals began their nightly scrabbling. What formerly had filled her with shivers of dread now seemed to offer more comfort than threat.
She drew a deep lungful of the Blue Ridge air that was moist and tangy with pine. She fumbled in her purse for the key, silently cursing herself for not leaving on the porch light. Her fingers brushed across the wooden box in her purse. She had carried a piece of the past here, a piece of Memphis. Maybe that had been a mistake. But she could worry about that tomorrow.
One day at a time….
As she searched for the key, out of habit she tried the knob.
It turned easily in her hand.
The latch clicked back like the hammer of a gun, like the final beat of a heart.
Had she forgotten to lock the door, even after that first scare with Walter?
Impossible.
One thing Julia Stone never failed to do was to lock the door. That was Rule Number One for keeping Creeps out of the house. Unless, of course, they snuck in behind you, as Mitchell had.
Or were already inside.
Julia stood, frozen with her hand on the doorknob.
She replayed the scene in her mind of leaving for the trip. Suitcase at your feet, slam door, insert key, turn, click. Check to make sure.
Yes, she had locked it.
Walter could be inside, doing some kind of repair.
Or it could be The Creep. The one who may have left a row of wooden blocks across the coffee table a few days ago.
Because you KNOW you didn’t put them there, don’t you?
Don’t you?
The autumn wind rattled the undergrowth. The branches that had been comforting moments before were now like the gnarled arms of wooden witches. Julia fumbled for the mace on her key ring, fingered the spray nozzle. If a rapist were waiting inside, she would give it to him full in the eyes, give him all the punishment she should have dished out to Mitchell. If it happened in the bedroom, she had the Louisville Slugger under the bed.
Or….
She glanced longingly at her car. She could get in, drive away, call the cops from the safety of a gas station.
And maybe Lieutenant T.L. Snead would get the dispatcher’s call. The Snead of unsolved cases, the Snead of coincidence.
No. She would not run this time. She would not let someone invade her house. Or mind.
She pushed the door a few inches, and it creaked like the lid of a wooden coffin. Fine hairs twitched like electric wires on the back of her neck. She tried to inhale but couldn’t concentrate on a relaxing breath.
Sweating in the chill night, Julia peered through the narrow crack.
Nothing but dark inside. Deep and endless dark, the kind of dark that jumped out and sank its claws into you, sharp dark, the kind that–
Stop it, Julia.
Her hands trembled.
A phone rang in one of the neighboring apartments. It purred faintly six times and stopped. Someone revved a car engine in the housing development that stood behind the wall of woods. A dog’s bark echoed across the black hills. The sounds of normal life.
She gripped the mace and shoved the door open with her shoulder, half-expecting the flash of an arcing blade. With her left hand, she reached across her body and raked her fingers across the wall switch. The lights burst to life like exploding stars.
The room was empty.
Julia went around the hall, her purse against her side, one hand holding the spray can of mace, the other clenched into a fist. Nobody in the kitchen. She kicked open the bathroom door.
Movement erupted along one wall. Julia’s forefinger tightened on the mace nozzle. A grunt died against her teeth before it became a scream.
Just her reflection, in the mirror above the sink.
Julia flipped on the light, eyed the shower curtain. No Creep would be that unimaginative, would he?
She reached out, touched the plastic, yanked it across the rod, mace poised. Nothing but the fiberglass stall.
Heart racing, Julia spun and returned to the hall. Only one room left to check.
Of course. Her bedroom.
The ultimate violation, that of the inner sanctum.
The door ope
ned with a whisper. A breeze blew across the room. The window was open.
Go back now, girl. It’s okay. No one can blame you for being scared. This isn’t just your disorder speaking. It’s ME.
Sure, she could flee. She could surrender.
Just like always.
She clenched her jaw and stepped inside. The first thing she saw was the clock, numerals blazing like the reddest of hellfire against the darkness.
4:06.
If she were holding a gun instead of a spray can of mace, she would have emptied the cartridge into that digital demon to exorcise the obscenity of its frozen time.
She could no longer fool herself that no one had been here, that she’d only forgotten to lock the door and left the window open and, gee, what an absentminded little thing she was.
No, some Creep had waltzed in, removed the clock from her trash, restored its strange programming, and left it as a message to Julia.
A message that he could get in any time, no matter how many locks she held keys for.
Why would a Creep advertise? If he wanted to jump her, he could wait in the dark wings for his moment and reach out like the long fingers of the past. Just as Mitchell had done.
The memory of her fiancé’s attack flooded through her, made the room grow fuzzy, and she almost lost her balance. Then she shook her head clear. If the Creep were still here, she wasn’t going to make it easy for him.
Julia eased into the room, elbowing the switch up and blinking against the sudden light.
Her room looked the same, except for the clock. The bed not quite neatly made, Mr. Ned and some CD’s on her shelf, the Jefferson Spence paperback parted open on the bedside table. The window screen was gone, and the lace curtains shifted in the breeze like uneasy ghosts.
Julia crossed the room and closed the window, sliding the latch into place. Walter was right, the windows were of solid construction. She saw no scars in the frame that might indicate a forced entry. Either she’d overlooked a lock, or some Creep had access to a copy of her house key.
Without looking at the clock, Julia grabbed it, yanked the plug free of the wall, and tucked it under her elbow. She wondered if, even powerless, the clock’s digits still blazed.
Mystery Dance: Three Novels Page 45
