WIDOW

by Billie Sue Mosiman

  Shadow sighed, suddenly tired, the night closing down for those hours before dawn, her inner clock ticking slower and slower, her eyelids drooping even as she finished off the shortcake and licked the spoon clean. “We better hit it,” she said. “The dessert was great. Thanks for the calories, kid.”

  Charlene took the saucer and spoon to the kitchen, a sincere and courteous “You're welcome,” trailing behind her.

  Together they turned out the lights downstairs, checked the door one last time (Charlene did, just to be sure, she said), and went up the stairs to the bedrooms. Charlene turned to the left of the staircase, Shadow to the right.

  “Goodnight,” Shadow called.

  “Goodnight,” Charlene echoed.

  Soon there was darkness in all the mansion and outside the fog moved conspicuously in waves and eddies against the barred glass.

  ~*~

  Charlene swam from the black dungeon of sleep, where nothing disturbed her, to the shoals of wakefulness, just on the brink where reality was whatever she thought it might be.

  His hands.

  Bringing down the sheet, letting in the cool night to her uncovered arms and legs.

  His fingers.

  Lightly touching her gown, molding the cotton material against her breasts.

  Her legs.

  Pushed apart, the gown lifted, the air stirred by the balloon effect so that she shivered and swam closer to the surface where life might or might not be dangerous.

  And then the weight!

  And his breath staggering her senses, covering her mouth with a rough hand so that she was forced to breathe him in, his sweat and old-clothes smell.

  Charlene woke completely into terror, frozen on the bed, someone, SOMEONE on top of her body, pressing at her.

  His voice.

  Shushing her. Quiet, quiet, he said, I can kill you if I want to, if you scream, if you move, I can take your eyes, I can break your neck, I can strangle you in a second, quiet now, still, lie still, I won't be long . . .

  A total frenzy. Charlene coming apart. Flying apart like shattered glass. Splintering with a scream that drove his hand down her cheek to her neck where it tried to hold her fast to the bed. But she was too insane for him, too scared to care if he killed her, too willing to die rather than let him take her as she'd been taken before.

  The scream was a long interminable screech from one dying, and grateful for it.

  His hand slipped, sweaty, from the meat at her throat and plunged down into the pillow behind her head. He tried pinning her down again with his hips, his knees on either side of her, but she was wild with panic, driven to an explosion that made her physical form twisty as a snake, whipping back and forth to dislodge him, to shatter his existence. He lurched forward and down, forehead striking her teeth, blood from the gash spraying out over her face in the dark. His hat flew from his head, was lost; one of his shoes was knocked from his foot and clattered with a bang onto the floor.

  She wouldn't stop screaming, the screaming filled the world and set off red blossoms of fear in his head.

  But the fire that pierced his back between his shoulder blades caught him by surprise and it was that fire that made him rise up over the woman in the bed, grab awkwardly behind him, then plummet sideways to the hard marble floor, his head cracking, his consciousness spinning through a vortex sparkling with bursts of starlight, fading.

  ~*~

  “Stop it!” Shadow slapped Charlene across the face in an effort to bring her from the madness that had claimed her.

  Charlene's scream died so suddenly that the resulting silence was as loud as crackling from a stadium microphone.

  “I think he's dead.”

  Charlene lifted herself from the bed, her hair all in her face and standing out like a gray halo. She looked at Shadow in the dim lamplight coming from the bedside and said, “Who's dead?”

  Shadow pointed to the body of a man lying in a pool of blood on the floor. He looked like a common middle-class working man—a salesman for an electronics store perhaps, a librarian, a bookkeeper. But his hair was sparse and blood-flecked, and his head was turned too far back. Much too far.

  “What's he doing here?”

  “Charlene, are you all right? Listen to me closely now. Remember telling me when I came home that you saw someone skulking around the house?”

  “I said that?”

  “Well, you were right. I thought I saw someone too, when I drove in, but I wasn't sure. Then I heard you screaming.”

  “Did he . . . did he . . . ?” Charlene looked down at herself as if just discovering she was a human with a body. Her gown was torn. And bloody near the neckpiece, the lace there a muddy red. And still wet. “Sticky,” she said, feeling the material between her fingers.

  “He was trying to rape you.”

  “Did he?”

  “No. I ran for the kitchen and found a knife. I need to see if . . .” Shadow dropped to the floor onto her knees and tentatively reached one hand to the man's neck to feel for a pulse. The handle of a knife stuck obscenely from his shoulders, the blade buried to the hilt.

  “He's dead.”

  “Oh God, oh God . . .” Charlene was off the bed in a second, rushing past the body and out the door into the dark hall of the mansion.

  “Charlene!”

  Shadow raced after her and took a hairpin turn through empty moonlit rooms to where Charlene ended up in the ballroom. Standing in a corner, talking to the wall.

  “Aw, Charlene, come on now, it's all over, I didn't let him hurt you.”

  “. . . in the twilight of the last day there will be men running swords through the children . . .”

  “Charlene, honey, don't.”

  ”. . . when the bugle call sounds the dead will rise up to avenge their murderers . . .”

  It was babbling. Eerie disjointed talk. Scarier than the man who had attacked them in the night.

  “Oh, Charlene, it's all right, you're all right now. Nothing's going to hurt you, I promise.”

  She led the woman from the corner, through the stippling of moonlight, across the wide-open ballroom floor. She shushed her, holding tightly to her arm, whispering close to her face.

  Outside, the fog had shredded away, washed out to sea or inland, but gone. It was still dark and Shadow said, “I have to call the police.” But Charlene began that scream again, the one that was like a siren full blast, and Shadow grabbed her arms and shook her quiet then said, “All right, no cops. I'll take him out in the motor boat. Before light. And dump him in the bay, the motherfucker.”

  And that is what she did. No regrets.

  Fourteen

  Nobody right. Nobody wrong.

  As Charlene helped her carry the rapist's body across the catwalk and down the stairs to the back exit of the mansion, Shadow listened as those words circled through her brain. Nobody right. Nobody wrong.

  They were black-vulture words. The kind that scavenged over morals, picking and choosing the tastiest bits.

  Shadow had heard them in a song played by the DJ of the club where she danced. She didn't know the song's title or the singer, but the words came back to her when she lifted the rapist, holding him under the armpits, Charlene taking up the legs.

  She thought she might have said it out loud to soothe Charlene's hysteria. “Nobody's right here, nobody's wrong. This guy took a chance to do what he wanted to do and he lost. I had to kill him, Charlene. He might have strangled you if I hadn't.”

  What she neglected to say was that there had been a surprising lift when she sank the blade into the intruder's back.

  When Charlene had first screamed, Shadow flung off sleep as if it was a shawl; her mind clicked into fast-time, time that ran faster than real-time. She dashed to the kitchen, found the knife in the dark, the drawer pulled from the cabinet, and dropping with a teeth-rattling clatter to the floor. One reel later and she was at the door to Charlene's room, bursting in, flying effortlessly across the floor to the figure humped over her friend
, and it was . . . it was natural. It was easy to bring the arc of her arm down with all her strength.

  Nobody right. Nobody wrong. The rapist should have died for his sins, therefore he did. Shadow was no more than a conduit of justice. She served it quickly, thoughtlessly. Execution was not so bad when it was done right.

  “Do you want me to go with you?” Charlene had on her gray baggy sweater over the stained and torn nightgown. She stood twisting both ends of the sweater into knots.

  Shadow thought it more hazardous to take her. “Stay here. Go back into the house and lock the doors again. I can do this by myself.”

  “What if he's not dead?”

  “He's dead.” Shadow untied the boat from the short pier's mooring.

  “If he's not dead, he'll drown.”

  “I don't give a fuck if he drowns. But he won't. He's dead.”

  “You'll come back?”

  Shadow paused before stepping into the bow of the small boat. She looked down at the sack of human excrement she must keep company into the dark waters of the bay.

  “Charlene,” she said, “I'm your friend. I'll never leave you to fend for yourself. You saved me once. I saved you tonight.” She looked from the corpse to the other woman. “We're like sisters. I'll come back, I promise.”

  Charlene nodded her head, accepting this as truth. Then, as Shadow watched her ravaged face, the tears formed two steady streams that flowed unimpeded down her cheeks. She cried silently, gaze locked on the pearl light creeping from the distant horizon of the sea.

  Shadow felt the rage she hadn't acknowledged when murdering the intruder. It made her want to kill him all over again, in a slower, more torturous way. To stop those tears of hurt from Charlene's eyes at that moment, she thought she would have gladly skinned the rapist inch by inch, even if it took a week to do it.

  She stepped away from the boat and put her arms around her friend. “Don't think about it. Put it out of your mind. Pretend it never happened. It was a nightmare.”

  “I never know when they're coming,” Charlene said in a ragged breath that was hardly more than a whisper. “They come out of nowhere and they hurt me. I don't know how to protect myself . . .”

  “Hush, hush now. You don't have to. I'll protect you.”

  Once beyond the breakwater and rolling with the waves of the bay, the distant shoreline a row of lights strung through darkness, Shadow found herself —another surprise—talking to the body.

  “You made a big mistake, pal. You picked on the wrong women, you slack-mouthed bastard. Didn't you know there were two of us? If you'd come for me, it might not have ended this way. You might have scared me into submission, but not Charlene. She's damaged so bad, she didn't care what you did, all she wanted was to have it over and done forever.”

  She shut off the boat motor and let the waves push them back and forth, flotsam in the Gulf waters.

  “You don't weigh so much. You can't overpower any more defenseless women now, can you, you fuck?”

  First, she lifted his feet, shoes intact, and dropped them from the knees over the side of the boat. Then she moved cautiously down his body to his head and shoulders. That area of his body was soaked. She made a mental note to clean out the boat when the sun came up.

  “I get you out of here, I don't want you coming back.”

  She heaved, the muscles tightening in her arms, and her neck tensing as she got his torso onto her outstretched legs. He felt like an unwieldy laundry bag. She realized how much strength she'd gained from all her exercise. But was it enough?

  “I fall outta this motherfuckin' boat with you, I hope to God you come back to life and die all over again! Get out.”

  She had one of his arms over the side. The boat shifted perilously. A cold sweat broke out on her face. She smelled his blood, a strong scent she couldn't disregard even when she turned aside her head. She wanted to gag, but fought down the urge with pure mental determination.

  She pushed and he went over head first, the other arm dragging along behind at his side. His hips rose up and over the boat edge, his body not even producing a splash as he slipped under the water.

  “Go, you piece of shit. Go to the bottom and feed the crabs.”

  She hung over the water, swallowing hard. She washed off her hands, her arms. It was cold this far out. A fish flipped, surfacing near her, and Shadow flinched, for one moment imagining the dead man revived by the sudden shock of the water and coming up for air.

  She saw it was a fish. She laughed. Even to her ears the laugh sounded too high, too out of control. Too crazy. She put a hand over her mouth, watching all around for his body. She saw him floating face down, his big coat billowing out like a dark parachute around him.

  She felt the laugh die. She took his floppy hat and threw it out after him.

  “There,” she said, with finality. “Now you have everything you deserve.”

  When she returned to the pier, she was relieved to see Charlene had obeyed her and was in the house. She saw a light shining from one of the side front windows. The kitchen?

  She secured the boat and climbed out. The pearl light in the sky had changed to a muted yellow the color of the dead lawns of October. No sun yet, but soon.

  She saw the front of her knee-length white satin gown was blotched red with his blood. The satin stuck like glue to her breasts, her stomach.

  She looked around quickly, but the mansion stood on its own piece of three-acre property. For anyone to see her, he'd have to have binoculars. At five o'clock in the morning. Not likely.

  She hurried through the garage, took the wrought-iron spiral stairs to the back-section second floor, ran across the ringing catwalk calling out, “I'm back! I told you I'd always come back. Charlene? I'm here now.”

  Charlene appeared at the other side of the catwalk still dressed in her bloody nightgown. She did not smile or speak or raise a hand in greeting. But she was also not weeping. Shadow considered that victory enough.

  ~*~

  Shadow's thoughts were on the details of the work she had done putting in a new deadbolt lock on the door leading from the garage into the interior of the house. The door with the broken lock where the rapist had entered.

  Mad asked, “You don't date men?”

  The DJ had the music cranked about ten decibels too high. The dressing room walls vibrated to every bass beat. Shadow adjusted the red, white, and blue stage outfit and said offhandedly, “Not much.” She hoped Mad wasn't making a pass. In some way she needed to get across her sexual preference to the bi's, like Mad. Might as well state it, meet the old red-eyed monster head on.

  “They call you the Ice Queen.” Mad leaned over and lifted her tits into the French-cut bra so they stuck out more on top. She rounded them, the way Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind rounded the mashed potatoes.

  “Do they?”

  “You don't go with customers. And we never seen a boyfriend.”

  Shadow thought of the man in the floppy hat riding Charlene and suddenly the term “boyfriend” made her frown.

  “Well?”

  “What?” The blade sinking through tough skin and muscle . . .

  “Hey, where are you? You on something?”

  Shadow looked in the wall of mirrors at the reflection of Mad's inquisitive face. It was a young face, too young to be hardened and aged in this place. “I don't do drugs.” She hoped that didn't sound judgmental. She didn't care one way or the other what the rest of the girls were into. Prostitution, drugs, who cared?

  “So, you straight or what?”

  “Oh. Yeah, I'm straight. I was married.” Hell. She never wanted to talk about that. Her husband had killed. Now she had killed. Why didn't this similarity worry her?

  “Divorced?”

  Shadow blinked back memories. “Dead.”

  “That's too bad. Sorry I asked.”

  “No problem. It was a long time ago.” Only two years, you liar. Before that you were an ordinary housewife. A living cliché.
Look at you now. White thigh-high stockings, blue garter belt and panties, red bra. A Looker. A teaser on the professional level.

  “What song you doing in that outfit?” Mad asked, her curiosity taking the conversation in a new direction.

  ‘"American Woman."'

  “Way cool.”

  “You dance for the money?” Shadow used her little finger to take off a smudge of eyeliner from the corner of her dark eyes.

  “Well, I tried waiting tables, but you get the same hassle from men so I figured why not, right? Now, though, I think I'm hooked on something else besides the money.”

  “What's that?”

  “The excitement. It's like a new adventure every night, isn't it?”

  Shadow didn't answer. She thought maybe the girl wasn't looking deep enough. But then how deep did you perceive things when you were eighteen years old? Mad hadn't mentioned how addicting it was to have men adore your flesh. If that was adventure, so be it.

  Mad wasn't the only young girl working the club. More than half of them were between eighteen and twenty. The remaining females were women like Shadow—older, although most of them weren't in the excellent physical condition that she was. Some of them had baggy breasts that looked like paper bags with an orange in them, or they were overweight, rolls of cloud white flesh hanging over their G-strings.