Once I’m past the furnace I can lift my arm and aim the flashlight into the back of the cave. Past the pipes and wires, toward the bottom of the wall, there’s an opening maybe two feet high. The crawl space Mattie mentioned, only you’d have to be a midget to crawl in there. I shine the flashlight into it and the beam catches the glint of eyes. Big, wide, scared little-boy eyes.
“Oh, baby,” I say, crouching down, “how’d you get yourself into such a mess? Here, give me your hand.”
He sobs. Shit. Oren never cries. I put down the flashlight and flatten myself on the cold, wet ground, reaching into the dark. “Take my hand, baby.”
His hand clasps mine. It’s so cold it scares me. How long has he been lying here?
“I’m so sorry, baby,” I say. “I’m sorry I yelled, I’m sorry I didn’t get you away sooner. I promise it will be better from now on. I’m gonna take care of you.”
He squeezes my hand and I feel something cold and hard press into my palm. And then his hand is gone. It’s not like he’s let go; it’s like his flesh just melted away.
“Oren?” I scrabble closer to the hole and sweep my hands inside. There’s nothing there. Could he have crawled in even deeper? I inch back, find the flashlight, and aim it into the hole. The light shines onto a stone wall two or three feet in. I crawl farther in, feeling every inch of the wall for an opening Oren could have slipped through, but there’s no way out of this hole.
In fact, I’m not 100 percent sure I can get out.
Fighting off rising panic, I push my way back. Then I search the rest of the alcove for Oren, but he’s not here.
Maybe I imagined him.
Or maybe that wasn’t Oren.
Suddenly I can’t stand another minute here. I squeeze myself past the furnace and into the basement.
“Did you find him?” Mattie asks. “Is he stuck back there?”
I don’t know what to tell her. Instead I hold out my hand and open it, palm up. Mattie shines her flashlight on my hand and plucks up the cold hard thing he—it?—pressed into my grasp. I had been holding it so tightly that it’s left a pattern imprinted on my flesh, some kind of complicated seal like you see on old buildings and stamped on official papers. It looks kind of familiar. It must be to Mattie too. She’s looking at it like it’s a puzzle piece.
“Where’d you get . . . ,” she begins, but her words are drowned out by a loud grating noise coming from the slanted doors on the other side of the basement. We both turn our flashlights on them in time to see the doors fly open. Snow comes pouring in, then a man’s booted legs appear.
Mattie grabs my hand, pushes me to the side of the stairs, and turns off her flashlight. I turn off mine too, but not before I see Mattie take a gun out of her sweater pocket. As the man comes down the stairs, shining his own flashlight in front of him, Mattie raises the gun over her head. She waits until he reaches the bottom step, then brings the gun down on his head with an audible crunch.
The man falls to his knees, arms flailing, flashlight flying. I hear a thump and a groan, and I thumb on my own flashlight to see Mattie sitting on top of the man, one knee pinning down his right shoulder while she struggles to pull his left arm behind his back.
“There’s a roll of electrical tape on that shelf over there,” she shouts at me.
I find the tape and try to unpeel it, but my hands are shaking too hard. The man is moaning and bucking under Mattie’s weight. Any second now he could get free and come at me. And then what? When Davis hit me I froze. I’d crawl into a ball and pray for it to be over. But here’s middle-aged soft-hearted Mattie fighting like a hellcat.
I force my hands to work and unpeel the dusty end and hand it to Mattie. She wrenches the intruder’s hand back and uses, like, half the roll of tape to wrap both wrists together, then pulls out a knife from her sweater pocket to cut off the tape.
“Do you have an Uzi in there too?” I ask like a smart-ass, trying to sound less scared than I really am.
She barks a laugh and then eases her weight off the man. “Help me roll him over.”
We shove him over like a sack of potatoes. His face is smeared with blood, but I see to my surprise that it’s not Davis. “I could’ve sworn it was Davis in the study,” I say.
“You weren’t wrong, darling.”
The voice—his voice—curdles my stomach. I look up and see Davis on the stairs at the other end of the basement. He’s got a flashlight in one hand, a gun in the other, and a smug, satisfied look on his face.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Mattie
I START TO reach for the gun, which I’d lain down on the floor, but I hear the click of a hammer being pulled back along with a soft tsk.
“I wouldn’t do that, darling, unless you want me to put a bullet through your head.” The man comes down the stairs, aiming the revolver straight at my forehead. I force myself to look away from him, glancing at Alice to see her staring at him with sheer hatred. Ah.
“Davis, I presume,” I say, turning my attention to the man’s face. He’s slight, in his mid-thirties, with feathery brown hair and a wispy goatee, wearing jeans and an unbuttoned flannel shirt over a Nirvana T-shirt. He looks like half a dozen interns I’ve trained over the years.
“No shit,” he snarls. Then he points the gun at Jason. “Who’s this asshole?”
The asshole himself answers. “Hey, man, this nosy bitch got up in my face defending a towel-head at the Stewart’s. She’s one of those nosy social workers. I came out here to teach her a lesson.”
“That so?” Davis asks, kneeling to pick up the other gun from the floor. He slides it into his back pocket, then pokes his gun in my face. “Is that what you get off on, bitch? Defending women from nasty men? Is that what you’ve been doing with my Allie? Cuddling her to your bosom?”
When he says bosom he moves the gun to my left breast. My skin crawls.
“Aw, you’re blushing! Have I figured out your big secret? As if all you ‘domestic abuse’ sob sisters”—he makes air quotes with both hands—“weren’t just dykes out for some damaged pussy.”
He points the gun at Alice’s groin and I can feel her tense beside me. He’s groping us with his words, and he’s had a lot of practice at it. But I’ve had practice dealing with this kind of man. “You sound like you’ve had experience with domestic violence services before,” I say.
He tilts back his head, revealing a scrawny neck pitted with acne, and laughs. “If by ‘domestic violence services’ you mean the legion of feminazis who like to butt their fat asses into a man’s business because they’re jealous they don’t have a man, then yes, I’ve encountered my share.”
I’m tempted to point out the inconsistency in his characterization of social workers as lesbians being jealous of not having a man, but I hear Doreen’s voice in my head suggesting I listen for the emotions beneath the words. “I can hear a lot of pain and loss in your voice,” I say.
He’s dead quiet for a moment, and I think maybe this could work. I’ve been trained to talk to people in crisis, after all. I just have to keep him talking until Frank gets here—
Then Davis swings back his arm and hits me on the side of the head with the butt of the gun. As I go over I hear Alice shriek and Jason snicker. A darkness swells in my head, black satin spreading over my eyes, and suddenly I’m in that basement cell at Hudson where they sent the bad girls for punishment. I can smell piss and mold and fear. I can hear the steps of the guard on the stairs, feel his arm on my arm—
No, please, I plead.
What’s the problem, sweetheart? This is what you were sent here for. I read your file. Making out with your boyfriend in the backseat of his daddy’s car. Little slut—
“No, please.” It’s not me pleading now; it’s Alice. I can’t make out all her words over the ringing in my ears but I hear the fear and desperation in her voice. It’s my voice all those years ago, pleading with the guard not to hurt me. But it didn’t work then and it won’t work now. Men like that guard an
d Davis feed on the powerlessness of women and children because they need to feel better than someone else. Someone made them feel weak once, and the only way they can make that feeling go away is by hurting a weaker person.
I open my eyes and try to focus on a spot ten inches in front of me, which turns out to be Jason’s ear. So he came out to teach me a lesson, did he? I bet he didn’t bargain on getting involved in this shit storm.
Jason looks back at me, then flicks his gaze up and down rapidly. I follow his downward movement to his waist and glimpse a wood-grained handle protruding from his pocket. A knife. I give Jason a terse and tiny nod, then inch my hand steadily toward his pocket.
As the ringing in my ears abates I can make out more of what Davis is saying now, something about how Alice has alienated his son’s affections and is a lying no-good cunt that he should never have taken in. Poor Alice is crying.
“You’re right,” Alice chokes out between sobs. “I made Oren come with me. It was all my idea. Just leave him alone.”
Poor Alice. She thinks she can protect Oren if she sacrifices herself.
“Where is the little shit, anyway?” Davis demands.
Where indeed? I wonder as my fingers touch the knife handle in Jason’s pocket. Hiding, I hope, in the old back stairs. Lucky I pushed back the boxes in front of them. Maybe he’s gotten up to the attic. A smart little kid like Oren could make himself vanish up there. Caleb always could. When my father was on the warpath Caleb could vanish for days. I used to worry that he would starve to death before he came out.
I curl my fingers around the knife handle—and realize as I do that I’ve still got that button Alice handed me. I’ve been gripping it in my clenched fist so tightly that it sticks to my palm even as I grab the knife. There was a design on the button that had jarred some memory, but I can’t think what now and it isn’t important. Still, I keep the button in my hand as I slip the knife out of Jason’s pocket and slide both knife and button into my own.
I hold my breath for a moment, afraid to look at Davis, praying that he didn’t see me take the knife. But no, he’s too busy berating Alice.
“. . . and I should have known that a piece of foster-care ass would have no respect for blood. Did you think you could be Oren’s mommy? That it didn’t matter that he’s my son?” Out of the corner of my eye I see Davis thump his chest with the same hand that’s holding the gun. “My son,” he says again, pounding his chest. “Mine.”
I’ve heard this before too, abusive men storming Sanctuary, demanding to know what we’ve done with my children, my wife, my family. I’ve stood my ground while they spit in my face. I’ve even felt a sliver of sympathy for them. They may have once loved that woman, those children, but something twisted inside them—some thread that got tangled in their own childhood, usually—and turned that love into a need to control. Now it’s all unraveling.
When they’re done yelling Doreen will step in and offer the men a cup of coffee. If they’ll sit down with her she’ll tell them about our anger management group. She’ll talk about the steps that might lead them back to their families. Most of the men tell her to go fuck herself, but a few have sat down with her, and one or two have actually joined the group and recovered.
No one is irredeemable, Doreen likes to say. I wish she were here now. She’d know how to talk to Davis.
“Tell me where he is,” Davis is yelling.
“Alice doesn’t know where he is,” I say, interrupting him.
Davis snaps his head around to me. “What did you say, bitch?”
“Oren is hiding,” I say, trying to keep my voice even like Doreen would. “There are dozens of places in this house where a smart kid like Oren could hide. He won’t come out as long as you’re yelling. If he sees that you’re calm, that we’re all sitting around peaceably—say, in the kitchen—he might come out.”
Davis cocks his head to one side as if he’s considering what I’ve said. “Oh, really? What if I yell real loud like this: HEY, OREN!” He presses the barrel of the gun to my temple. “I’M GOING TO SHOOT THIS BITCH IF YOU DON’T COME OUT RIGHT NOW.”
“I don’t think that will work,” I say, praying it’s true. Hoping Oren doesn’t come out of hiding to keep Davis from shooting me. “That’s only likely to make him more scared. But if we go upstairs to the kitchen—”
“What’s in the kitchen you want so much?”
Nothing, I think, wishing I’d hidden the gun there. “Just a pot of chili, candles and oil lamps, a woodstove. This house will get pretty cold soon without the furnace working. We’re all stuck here tonight. We could make a fire in the woodstove, heat up that chili, show Oren that everything’s okay.”
“Why, you make it sound real cozy,” Davis croons.
The thought of sitting around the woodstove eating chili with this asshole turns my stomach, but I swallow my own bile. “The alternative is freezing to death,” I say as flatly as I can.
“Hmm.” Davis looks around the basement, taking in the cold furnace, the shelves, the boxes—his eyes go right past them, I’m relieved to see—and light on the still-open Bilco doors. “Well, that’s not going to help any. Hey, asshole.” He nudges Jason with the barrel of the gun. “Is that how you got in?”
Jason nods. “Yeah.”
Davis strolls over to the Bilco doors, the gun dangling loosely from his hand, and reaches to pull them closed. If I could hit him over the head . . . I try to sit up, but my head swims. Jason hisses, “Cut my hands loose and I’ll jump the sonofabitch.”
Alice clutches my arm, digging her nails into my flesh. “He’ll kill us,” she rasps in my ear.
Davis turns back to us and grins. “Don’t think I don’t hear you guys whispering.” He waves the gun at us. “Mattie, darling, are you telling me you just left these doors unlocked? That’s plain careless. That shows an utter disregard for your own life, which I wouldn’t mind so much except that you had my boy under your care. Now let’s see . . . there must be a way to secure this entry . . .” He looks around and plucks a short board from a shelf, then shoves it between the handles on the Bilco doors, effectively sealing them from the inside. Satisfied, he walks back to us and points the gun at Alice. “Help her up,” he barks, directing the gun toward me. “And don’t even think about trying anything, bitches, or I’ll put a bullet in both your brains. We’re going to do as our hostess suggests and have a cozy meal by the fire upstairs. Then we’re going to have a little talk.”
Alice helps me up. As I clutch her hand I press it against the knife in my pocket so she knows it’s there. I see her eyes widen. Davis has shifted his gaze to Jason, though, so he doesn’t notice.
“Should I help him up, too?” Alice asks.
He cocks his head, considering the man on the floor. “Nah,” he says, “too much trouble.” Then he shoots Jason in the head.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Alice
BLOOD SPRAYS ON my shoes and over my legs, and a smell like copper pipes hits me in the back of the throat.
“Why’d you do that?” I cry.
I’m not sure if I’m going to throw up or pass out. Mattie squeezes my arm so hard that the pain helps keep me from doing either. I look at her and see that she’s pale but her jaw is set and she’s staring at Davis like he’s a science experiment.
“Too much trouble to keep track of the three of you,” Davis says, his mouth stretched into something between a grin and a snarl. “Besides”—he looks up, his eyes glittering like he’s got a fever—“he was gonna mess with you. You two should be thanking me. And you can start by getting me something to eat and a nice cold beer. Woo-hee! Killing’s thirsty work!”
My stomach turns. Davis looks like he does when he’s playing World of Warcraft. The reek of blood hits my throat again and I gag.
“Let’s get upstairs,” Mattie says, propelling me forward. “There’s nothing we can do for Jason.”
“You sound almost sorry for him,” Davis says as he follows us up, holding the gun to
my back. “Maybe the idea of a man breaking into your house turns you on. Maybe that’s why you leave all your doors unlocked. I mean, when was the last time you got laid?”
Mattie flinches and I instantly regret that I wondered the same thing when I went through her bedroom. The thought that living with Davis for two years has made me anything like him sickens me almost as much as seeing what happened to Jason. Only Mattie’s grip on my arm keeps me moving up the stairs.
Davis holds the flashlight so we can see our way but the beam is dim and flickering. At the top of the stairs he moves the beam over the darkened kitchen and I catch a flicker of movement in the doorway leading to the front door. My heart stops at the thought that it could be Oren, but Davis keeps moving his flashlight over the kitchen counters so he must not have seen what I did.
“We need to get a fire going in the woodstove,” Mattie says. “It’s right over there.” She points at the corner opposite to where I saw the movement. Maybe she saw it too and wants to make sure Davis doesn’t.
“Okay,” Davis says. “Here’s the plan. Allie and I are going to sit down here at the kitchen table while you get that stove going and warm us up something to eat.” He pulls out one chair with his foot and pushes me toward it, then sits in the one next to it. As soon as I’m seated he presses the cold barrel of the gun to my forehead. “If you do anything stupid I’ll blow her brains out. Understand?”
Mattie turns to Davis and looks him straight in the eyes. Her face looks awful in the beam of the flashlight—haggard and old—but she doesn’t look afraid. She looks pissed. “Yes, I understand,” she says. “I just need to get those matches on the table by your elbow.”
Davis switches the beam to the table to find the matches. As he looks away from Mattie she reaches behind her to the counter and slips something into her pocket. Another knife, I’m betting. Now she’s got two.
The Night Visitors Page 15
