A Face at the Window

by Sarah Graves

  The thought sent fresh alarm coursing through her, but the machine's rumble, she realized suddenly, had been stopped for a little while, now. She tried listening for footsteps but couldn't hear any.

  "Hey! Hey, Campbell! I know it's you.…Hey, what's the point of this?"

  Because he'd said he wanted something—but there was no answer from out there now, and little sense using up her energy by shouting. Struggling to keep her thoughts ordered, she turned her mind to more immediate concerns:

  The car battery wouldn't last forever so she couldn't keep the dome light on, and she didn't want to waste the flashlight's juice, either. She shut them off, along with the fan, thinking phone, where is it, I'm going to die without that.…

  But all right, now, calm down, she instructed herself. She would find it. Also on the plus side, the more time that passed with only silence from outside, the more it seemed likely that her attacker had gone away. If he hadn't, even after she escaped this makeshift tomb she'd still be up the creek. But not quite as far, and to find out, she'd need to achieve that escape.…

  Gravel covered the doors, holding them shut. The car was an economy model, though, so it had crank windows she could roll down. There might be several feet or more of gravel between herself and the outside, enough so she couldn't push her way out a window and basically just swim up through the stones.

  But maybe there was only an inch. She couldn't tell. Enough to shove through, or enough to hammer her flat and press all the breath out of her: which? If she cranked one of the windows down a little, she might be able to tell. If she could shove her hand through, into the air…

  Well, then she could try to get out. If not, she would have to think of something else; find that cell phone, probably, and call someone on it, even though not having found it so far was making her feel more uneasy with each passing instant.

  Waiting for rescue didn't seem like a viable option, since the gravel pit might be visited again later tonight, first thing in the morning, or not until next week. And even if someone did come, there'd be no way for them to know she was here. But that line of thought was for later.

  For now…Try. Just try something. Sliding behind the wheel since that side of the car angled upward, suggesting that it was less buried, she sucked a few deep breaths in and switched the dome light back on. Still no phone anywhere; she shoved her hand into each upholstery crevice without success. Pale illumination flooded the car's interior with an illusion of safety. Until…

  Uh-oh. In the few minutes since she'd last seen it the whole windshield had begun bulging inward, its expanse crazed whitely with the hundreds of impacts it had suffered. If it hadn't been for the first hard smack from that big rock…

  But there was no sense worrying about that, either. It had happened, popping out a small hole at the center of the starred area and weakening the windshield's structure severely. Now greenish fragments puddled from small sections that were already beginning to let go.

  From underneath the car came groaning and cracking sounds; sliding across the seat had been enough to shift whatever balance the car had found, apparently. So it was moving again, and tipping.

  Or sinking. Biting her lip, she reached out and carefully rolled the window down a fraction. Gravel scraped the glass as it moved, but nothing else happened; she let out the breath she hadn't known she was holding. Now all she had to do was open it a bit more, enough to shove her hand through…

  With a hideous metallic groan the car settled suddenly half a foot or so, the lurching jolt forcing a squeak of fright from her and popping more glass pebbles from the sagging windshield.

  A sharp pain brought her hand to her forehead. Warm and wet; a flying glass bit must've struck her, and the glass heaps on the dashboard were a lot bigger. Also, the holes in the windshield were enlarging, their edges curved raggedly inward like punctures in a cloth tent.

  At last the groaning sounds stopped. Cautiously, she turned the window crank another fraction. Ideally she needed enough room to get her arm out, all the way to the elbow. But the moment she put her hand through, a lot of gravel began pouring in around it.

  And then a lot more, surging like water…hastily she rolled the window back up, holding the invading stones back with her arm as best she could, frantically poking the last few from the gap between the window and the frame with her fingers before sealing it tight.

  Now what? If she saved the car's battery tonight, tomorrow when people were likely to be around she might be able to honk the horn for a while. That might bring someone.

  Or it might not. Simply starting the car and trying to drive it from beneath the gravel was an attractive thought, but it was not really an option; for one thing, it was unlikely to work, and for another, that windshield was obviously ready to fail.

  A half-bottle of orange juice had been lying on the floor when she got into the car; it was still around here, somewhere. And in the glove compartment…she fumbled for it and opened it, grateful for the glow of the tiny bulb inside.

  And for the unopened packet of peanut butter crackers Helen had stashed there, emergency rations, no doubt, in case one of her young charges got hungry and cranky. Jake ate one of the crackers and drank some juice, put the rest on the passenger seat.

  For later. Because there must be a way out of this, but it might not be fast. Or safe. The car might shift again, or—

  A deep, rolling rumble came from outside and above the car, followed by a heavy drumming noise…thunder. And rain, heavy by the sound of it. Gingerly she touched the fractured windshield.

  Wet. She hadn't been paying any attention to the weather but the storms that had been looming out over the bay had approached just the same, and now they were here. She turned the flashlight on again, saw to her horror the trickles of water dripping steadily in through the crazed glass. Her chances of surviving this night had just dropped a lot, she realized bleakly, for in addition to water's other undesirable qualities-

  It was cold and unbreathable, and in a massive downpour, why shouldn't the buried car just fill up?

  —water was heavy. A pint is a pound, Bella Diamond would say. So waiting for morning no longer seemed practical, either. Outside, thunder rumbled and the rain fell harder; the trickles through the windshield freshened to torrents.

  Don't panic. But without wanting to she began wondering how many pints of water per minute were pouring into the pit, anyway, and about how long they might keep on pouring…

  Her cell phone rang. Startled, she nearly screamed, scanning around wildly—oh, dear God, there it was, on the floor wedged up under the gas pedal somehow, she must've kicked it there…

  "Hello? Whoever this is, I need help—"

  "Jake?"

  "Ellie! Oh, my God, Ellie, listen to me—"

  "Jake? Are you there?" The connection was crystal clear, as if Ellie were right outside the car.

  But she had to be in an airport somewhere, or in a plane on her way home. "Jake, what's happened? Is Lee okay? We got a call from Bob Arnold, I mean a message, but I don't understand, we've been calling and calling, and…"

  Her voice faded; Jake found her own. "Ellie, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, I don't know, everyone's trying to find her, but—"

  A piece of gravel popped through the windshield and struck her cheek. "Ellie, I'm in trouble. I need you to call Bob and—"

  "Jake?" Tinny and mechanical, now, Ellie's voice came back briefly. "Say it again, please, I can't…"

  Fighting panic, Jake recited her location and asked Ellie to call Bob Arnold, tell him where she was and that she needed help right away. But she didn't know if Ellie heard, and the lighted bar display on the phone dropped to nothing before she finished.

  She stared at it for a moment. Surely the battery couldn't be failing, not now on top of everything else. She pressed the Off button, tried to connect again as a massive boom of thunder shook the car, sending yet another heavy slide of gravel rattling and thudding. Then the center of the bulging windshield ruptured abrup
tly with a sound like cloth ripping, a fist-sized gout of stones poured in over the dashboard ledge, and the rest of the windshield sagged, beginning to tear away from the frame.

  This is ridiculous, she thought, her heart hammering; things like this just don't happen to people.

  But the gravel said otherwise. The gravel said it was coming in, now, so if there was anything she wanted to think about, any particularly bad deed she wished to say an act of contrition for, or some pleasant moment she wished to review…

  Whatever it was, she'd better take care of it, that gravel said. Because it was coming in, ready or not.

  The phone chirruped again. She snatched it up and gasped into it. "Ellie? I'm not kidding, you've got to—"

  With a loud, wet r-r-ri-iip! the windshield tore in, letting an enormous wave of stones pour through. Scrambling sideways, she lost the phone and found it again.

  "Can you hear me? Ellie, I'm in a—"

  The gravel just kept coming, hissing and banging, piling up on the seat as if it would never stop.

  But then it did stop. Or maybe just paused…"Ellie?" she whispered, pressed against the driver's-side door, staring at the ragged spot where one edge of the windshield was still attached to the frame.

  Only…the edge was moving, slowly but surely separating from the windshield mount, bit by tiny—

  "Ellie!" No answer. Until…

  "Hello, Jacobia," a man's voice said clearly.

  Not from the phone. Slowly, she closed the instrument.

  "Goodness, what a predicament," said Ozzie Campbell.

  Right outside, only a few feet away.

  Standing by the buried car. "Don't you hurt her. Don't you hurt that little girl, you son of a bitch," she shouted.

  Knowing he could hear. That he was out there, laughing and waiting. "What do you want with her, you psycho?" she demanded.

  But there was no answer, and there kept on not being one.

  Minutes passed, then half an hour with no sound from him.

  Longer. She held her breath; nothing. Maybe he was gone.

  Maybe not.

  When Anthony Colapietro returned to Marky Larson's old blue Monte Carlo after muscling Helen Nevelson into the woods, first Marky wanted his gun back right away and then of course Anthony got stuck having to take care of the little kid in the backseat.

  Luckily she was still hung over from the tincture of opium they'd given her, a pharmaceutical mixture that Marky had scored from a guy he knew who worked in a drugstore. Do not kill the kid, the guy who'd hired them had told Marky very seriously, and Marky had conveyed this instruction to Anthony, as well.

  Thus Anthony had been careful, dosing more of the brown, licorice-smelling stuff out in stages while the baby-sitter was still out cold, until the kid conked out, too. So when they got back to the hideout—

  That was how he'd begun thinking of the big house in the woods, as a hideout, and himself as a sort of custodian of it and of this whole situation—

  The kid was awake, sitting up. "Mommy?" she said, and then louder: "Mommy!"

  A lot louder, and sounding pretty ticked off. Marky glowered into the rearview at the kid, then at Anthony. "Yo, do something about her, would ya? I'm tryna’ drive, here, for freak's sake."

  "Yeah, okay," said Anthony. If Marky hadn't taken the kid's rag doll and pitched it, maybe Anthony would have a better chance of quieting her down. But Marky would never think of something like that. Let Anthony handle it, was Marky's strategy, and if it doesn't go right, bitch Anthony out so you can feel better. That was Marky's whole plan, as far as Anthony could see.

  Still, this was no time to complain. Get back home, get his money, after that maybe Anthony could develop his own inkling of what to do next. A new angle; heavy-equipment theft, maybe. That no-key-needed thing sounded good. Or maybe just plain old theft.

  Robbery, even. Because he wasn't afraid of guns. He just had the idea that he might like choosing his own target for a change. And it had already occurred to him that he might need to, because Marky had started eyeing him as soon as he got back to the car, after dragging the girl into the woods. To see, Anthony supposed, whether killing somebody had taken the piss out of him.

  Which it hadn't, but not for the reason that Marky thought. It was because Anthony had put a pair of bullets into a tree trunk instead of the girl's head.

  Heck, the shape she was in, she probably wouldn't make it out of the woods anyway. And even if she did, they'd be long gone by the time she emerged. She'd seen their faces but not the plate on the Monte; Anthony had muddied it up before they grabbed her, cleaned it off again afterward so as not to get pulled over by some random cop who happened to pass.

  Better make sure, Marky had probably been thinking. But he'd also been thinking about something else, Anthony knew: that pulling the trigger on the girl was the he-who. That's what they called it in the juvie home, as in, he who did the deed took the punishment.

  Like for instance if a kid there just suddenly snapped and beat another kid nearly to death with a metal chair leg, even if the other kid started it by saying the first kid's mother wasn't really dead. That she'd dumped him in the home, didn't even try to get him off the bogus burglary charge he was here for, ‘cause she was sick of him, sick of his stupid face.

  That she was a doper and hooker who'd run off with some man and wasn't coming back, and that's why she never visited him. He wasn't orphaned, he was abandoned, the soon-to-be-beat-up kid had gone on nyah-nyahing tauntingly at Anthony. That he tried to act so tough, but everyone knew his mom had kept him locked in a—

  Quit it, Anthony told himself, yanking his mind back to the important thing: that he who pulled the trigger got prison time, maybe even a needle. He didn't know whether Maine had capital punishment, but whatever they had, he knew he wouldn't like it.

  So screw Marky, Anthony thought rebelliously again as he leaned over the backseat. Marky thought he had all the angles figured. But what he didn't know wouldn't hurt him. "Hey, kid," Anthony said, putting his hand out to the little girl as Marky pulled the car up to the house in the woods.

  No lights, but they'd left it that way on purpose. Anthony had finally gone down into the cellar and solved the electricity mystery by flipping a half dozen circuit switches and pressing a button marked On. The power in the house, he had gathered from the markings and instructions on the equipment down there, came from solar panels.

  In other words, from the sun. He'd seen this before, when he was out with the working stiffs, so it wasn't even a new concept for him. The collection panels were outside somewhere; the cellar room held a wall-mounted control box with digital readouts on it, an exhaust fan that went on when he pressed the On button, and a dozen golf-cart-sized storage batteries.

  "Took you long enough," had been Marky's only comment when Anthony got back upstairs. "So where's the coffee?"

  As if somehow Anthony was in charge of keeping Marky fed and comfortable. Like he was running this hotel.

  But to his surprise Anthony had found he didn't mind that assumption; for one thing, anything he did to keep Marky happy he could also do for himself.

  Besides…well, he wasn't sure exactly what else he didn't mind. Being in charge of this kind of nuts-and-bolts thing might help him, that was all, somewhere down the road.

  "Hey," he repeated now to the kid in the backseat, as Marky got out and strode away. She seemed unharmed by the tincture of opium he'd given her, forcing her to drink the first big dose but putting the rest in a juice box he'd grabbed in the house that they'd taken her from, a few hours earlier.

  Marky had pooh-poohed it in his usual sarcastic, you-idiot way, but Anthony remembered from the juvie home how children had to be tricked into taking medicine. Now the kid eyed Anthony's hand mistrustfully but didn't start howling or anything.

  And that was good. That was progress. Maybe this whole I'm-in-charge-of-the-kid thing wouldn't be so bad. Keep Marky out of his hair, anyway. Marky hated kids.

  Anthony tried
touching her on the chin, maybe get her to smile a little. But instead with a lightning-fast move she ducked her head and sank her teeth into Anthony's knuckle.

  "Ow! Hey, let go, you little—"

  Anthony yanked his hand back, trying to get his finger out of the kid's mouth. But she wouldn't give it up.

  "Ow, ow, ow!" Halfway over the seat, he grabbed the straps of her overalls, trying to pull her off him. But the harder he pulled, the harder she bit.

  Marky yanked the back door open and the dome light went on. "Hey, what're you, tryin'a’ wake up the freakin’ dead out here?"

  Then he saw what the problem was. "Oh, jeeze. You're lucky she didn't getcha by the balls, you stupid punk. Here, lemme."

  Marky reached into the car, conveying by his manner that he knew just how to handle this. Anthony thought right then that the kid was history, and never mind what the guy who hired them might say about it. But instead of making quick work of her as Anthony expected, Marky just grabbed her by the nose, squeezing it.

  "Here, ya brat, how d'ya like this, huh? You like this, a little a’ your own medicine?"

  The kid's eyes widened and her mouth dropped open abruptly. Anthony yanked his finger out and put his bleeding knuckle into his own mouth, tasting licorice-flavored orange juice. "Jeeze," he mumbled around it.

  Marky glared scathingly at him. "You're useless, you know? Freakin’ useless." He walked toward the house.

  "Now get the kid outta there," he called over his shoulder. "Get her inside, then find us some freakin’ food. I'm starvin,’ for freak's sake."

  Helen woke up hurting. Her head, her jaw. Her throat raw and aching. Everything just hurt so bad.

  And scared. Oh, Jesus God so scared. But alive.…

  Alive. The guy had shot her, held the gun to her head and shot her, and that was the last thing Helen Nevelson remembered.

  The only thing, really. Dying. But now…

  The rest all came back in an awful rush, being at the house, them showing up, getting shoved roughly into the car, and—

  Lee. What had they done with her? Helen began to cry, tiny whimpers that hurt worse than anything she'd ever felt before. Curled in a ball on the cold, wet ground, her hands tied before her, she lay in the darkness where she'd fallen and wept for the baby she'd been supposed to safeguard.