The Dead Place (9 page)

It was unusually quiet in the house. Grace was sleeping over at a friend’s. A year ago that would have meant uncharacteristic freedom with sex. They could do it in the living room if they wanted to, in front of the fireplace like a bad romance.

In the way that he seemed to have of reading her thoughts, Ian tugged at Kate’s hand, pulling her into an embrace. “I was checking you out at the party,” he murmured in her ear, stroking her hair. “You’re looking pretty hot, woman.”

He kissed her neck, a small butterfly kiss that she shivered under but didn’t pull away from. His lips moved upward to her jawline, then her mouth.

She let her lips part and took him in, willing herself to taste only him. They moved together into the room, though she didn’t know until he pushed her back that they’d reached the sofa. She landed among its cushions and he came with her, his hands unbuttoning her blouse, his lips coming back to rest on hers and then parting again to plant rapid kisses along her collarbone, and then dipping lower to the triangle of flesh between her breasts.

When it changed she didn’t know, just that it became not Ian above her, but the stranger, and that the couch was the hard edge of her studio table. She didn’t stop him, she couldn’t find the words, but something must have changed, something must have signaled her distaste to him, and he pulled back.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” But she couldn’t meet his eyes.

“I’m not him. I’m not the guy who attacked you.”

“I know that.”

But when he moved to kiss her again, she couldn’t help her involuntary flinch. Ian reeled back and clambered off the sofa, rubbing at his face.

“Wait.” Kate sat up, reached for him, but he pulled away. “I’m sorry.”

He stood with his back to her, breathing hard, and she watched him press a hand against his head in a gesture reminiscent of her own.

“I didn’t mean—” she began, but he cut her off.

“It’s okay.” He sighed, a long, shaky sound, and then he turned to her. “I know, Kate, it’s okay.” He sank down on the sofa next to her and reached for her hand. “Maybe it’s time to get some help.”

She pulled her hand away. “I’ve already done therapy.”

“Maybe another therapist—somebody different, somebody you’d like better.”

“No! It’s not like it didn’t help, Ian, it just doesn’t change overnight.”

“Maybe medication then—”

“I’m not going back on the pills! They make me dopey. I couldn’t paint, I could barely stay awake. I’m not going through that again!”

“Well you need to do something!” he shouted. Fists clenched, face red, Ian looked capable of violence, and for one awful moment Kate thought he was going to hit her. Her hands flew up to block his fists, and Ian’s face drained of color.

“Oh, God.” He backed away, hands falling loose at his sides. “I wouldn’t hurt you. You know that, right? I’d never hurt you.”

“I know, I know.” She stood up and reached for him, to show him that measure of trust, to reassure the man that she’d held and loved for so many years that it was all going to be okay. Only she couldn’t tell him that because she didn’t know if that was the truth anymore.

They were cautious around each other getting ready for bed, like strangers in their courtesy, deferring to each other near the closet and in the bathroom. She caught him watching her several times as she hung up her clothes and brushed her teeth, but whatever he was thinking remained locked inside him.

They lay next to each other in the vast bed, the sheet a weight on this hot night, but she pulled it up anyway, covering the lower half of her body. She didn’t want to think anymore about sex and the lack thereof in their marriage.

They read instead, clutching their books like life-lines, until it was past midnight, when by unspoken agreement they set their books aside and turned off the lights. Ian fell asleep quickly as he always did. Stress never seemed to follow him into sleep and Kate envied that.

Tired but overwhelmed by what he’d said, she lay awake thinking about what she could do. She’d done therapy, as much of it as she could bear—the stupid concerned look on the woman’s face and the special, muted tone adopted for talking to people in crisis. She couldn’t stand it.

Maybe it was her Yankee forebearers, but she had a deep and instinctive dislike of discussing her personal problems. She’d always poured those feelings into her art, and now she didn’t have that; all that had been taken away in twenty minutes. Twenty horrible, time-dragging minutes, but still just twenty of them. It was such a blip and yet it had taken over everything.

So she’d sat through hours of therapy divided into fifty-minute chunks. It was all so strange, to sit there and pour her heart out to a stranger. She had no idea if Dr. Bennett was married or in a relationship or had children or grandchildren. She knew she’d graduated from Boston University because of the diploma hanging on the wall. Otherwise, the office was curiously devoid of personal effects. And despite the cozy setup of couch and armchairs and warm rug, strangely sterile.

For fifty minutes every Tuesday, she sat and talked to Dr. Bennett, who listened and took notes on a legal pad and occasionally asked how she felt about whatever it was she’d just said.

What had she learned? That her pain was normal, that the only way past grief was through it, that it would take time for the nervousness to go away. That medication could help the agoraphobia.

So she’d dutifully started a course of the recommended medication because at that point she was desperate about painting again and anything that promised to restore her art was a positive.

Only it didn’t work, not entirely. It had helped somewhat with the anxiety. She hadn’t flinched at doors slamming or jumped when Ian or Grace came into a room suddenly. But it made her tired and it didn’t help her paint, and once she’d had an embarrassing crying jag in the coffee shop closest to their apartment because she’d forced herself to make the trip only to discover that they were out of her favorite blend. That was the day she decided to go off the medication—it wasn’t worth it.

Not long after that, she stopped seeing the therapist, too. She’d gathered all the information she could on how to survive life after assault, and now it was just a matter of time. Only, Ian didn’t understand that. He thought therapy and medication were magic bullets that would fix his wife.

Not that she blamed him for that. She’d certainly hoped for that result, too, but it didn’t work that way. It was like smoking pot in college, how you could get a nice little buzz going but the paranoia came later to bite you in the ass. Everything came at a cost. What she resented was how he didn’t care that the cost was her sense of self, as long as she wasn’t freaking out. What she resented was how he expected it all to be gone by now because on his timetable eight months was long enough to deal with having been sexually assaulted. And then he acted as if she somehow wanted to be agoraphobic.

At some point in her worrying, she drifted off.

She was in her studio again, hearing the clang of the battered metal door closing behind her, moving toward her work and registering too slowly that she’d left the blinds open and now they were closed. She thinks, that’s odd, and then suddenly he’s there, a silhouette in black stepping from the shadows, the silver glint of his knife. She screams and he shoves a dirty rag in her mouth to stifle her. She chokes on the taste of linseed oil as he slams her back against the table, his hands tearing at her clothes.

Brutal, efficient, he strips her bare like ripping leaves from a tree. His voice crawls over her skin, a vicious whisper, promises of what he’ll do with the knife if she looks at him. She struggles anyway and he hits her, a gloved fist against her face. Stars explode in her eyes, she swallows blood. He pries her legs apart and forces his way in, ripping against the dryness. The fast, painful thud of his body slamming against hers. Thud, thud, thud, and she can smell blood, feel its trickle down her legs. She turns her head and sees Lily Slocum spread out on the chaise surrounded by flowers. Lily’s eyes pop open and she smiles.

Kate woke in a sweat with the sheet knotted around her leg. Ian stirred and mumbled something, but he didn’t wake up. She sat up and untangled the sheet, hands trembling and heart pounding in time with her head.

She needed Advil, but there was none in the bathroom cabinet. She padded down the stairs to the kitchen to get a glass of milk and some pain relievers. Glancing out the kitchen window, she was surprised to see that the light was on in Terrence Simnic’s basement. The clock on her stove said that it was almost three a.m. Weird.

Standing at the window and sipping her milk, she watched for any sign of odd Mr. Simnic, but other than a moment when she thought she saw a dark shadow, there was no movement of any kind.

Kate noticed that all the windows in the house were covered. Had it always been that way? She had a sudden vision of hulking Mr. Simnic hunched over a workbench in the basement, his large hands cradling the head of an empty-eyed porcelain doll.

A sudden chime startled Kate. Milk splashed from her glass onto the counter as the sound came again. She steadied her hands and took a deep breath. It was only the clock in the living room.

During the day she was barely aware of the noise, but at night it seemed very loud. Everything seemed heightened at night. When she looked back at Terrence Simnic’s house, the lights suddenly went out.

The reverb from the sound system followed Elizabeth Hirsh out of the party and onto the back porch of the old house on Hampton. A couple deep in an embrace stood in a corner, pressing hard against the wooden railing.

The slap of the screen door behind her startled the guy, who pulled back, detaching with a sound like a suction cup from the mouth of the girl. He frowned at Elizabeth, but the girl merely glanced around at her, giggling, and then tugging at his hand, led him down the cracked concrete steps and into the darkness of the garden below. The sound of her giggling faded away.

Elizabeth leaned against the railing and drank in air free of the smell of cigarettes, beer, and sweat. It was still warm outside, but cooler than the crowded house. Her head ached. She didn’t know why she came to these things. It wasn’t like she could have any conversation, not with the mammoth speakers someone always set up, and it wasn’t a lot of fun for people like her who didn’t smoke and could nurse the same beer for an hour or more.

She picked at the chipping paint on the rail and thought about what she could be doing instead. It wasn’t as if she had a boyfriend, not anymore. A year ago she might have enjoyed snuggling up with Joel on one of the saggy couches, content to watch him play beer pong with his buddies.

Not anymore. They’d broken up in May and she hadn’t even heard from him over the summer. Until tonight, when he waltzed in with Stacy Levy in tow, both of them all dressed up as if they’d come from somewhere far more interesting. And then he had the audacity to come up, all smiley and happy, and talk to her as if there was no shared history.

Elizabeth felt like leaving after that, but she’d come with Brooke, who was clearly having a good time. When Elizabeth had gone looking for her, she’d found her sitting on the stairs deep in conversation with two guys who definitely looked like engineering or science majors. They were probably all discussing the latest news on global warming. Brooke had woken her up just that morning to see if she wanted to watch some show on PBS about it.

All Elizabeth wanted to do was eat her Cocoa Krispies in peace without having to listen to any talk about the state of the planet, refined sugar, and why the milk she was pouring on her cereal was bound to kill her.

Still, Brooke could be sweet when she wasn’t all crunchy granola, and she was the ideal roommate in one respect: reliable. She paid her rent on time, she cleaned her dishes, she didn’t run up the phone bill. Unlike Stacy Levy, who had been the heavy partying slut, come home and vomit in the trashcan, and pull all-nighters even if you share a small dorm with someone sleeping less than four feet away type of roommate.

Elizabeth knew what Joel saw in Stacy. Hell, what Stacy had to offer was readily apparent to anybody who looked at her. A walking, talking little Barbie wannabe in clothes too tight and too short, with a pert little nose, perky boobs, and floss-blond hair. Watching her hang on Joel was sickening. Elizabeth had fought the desire to walk up to them, point at Stacy’s various parts, and say, “Bobbed, implanted, bleached.”

Not that Joel was any great shakes. His hairline was already creeping back and he had the beginnings of a beer gut. He thought he was hot shit, with all his talk of going to Harvard or Stanford for law. Give him ten, maybe fifteen, years and he’d be just like his father: a fat, balding ambulance-chaser kicking back in a Barcalounger in some suburban rec room, watching all the sports he never had the talent to play.

The screen door whined and Elizabeth turned around. It was another couple, two guys this time, one of them with his hands stuck in the other guy’s jean pockets. They pulled apart when they saw her, one of them blushing, and the three exchanged nods before the two guys vanished down the steps in the same direction as the first couple.

Elizabeth sighed. Who was she kidding? She missed Joel, missed being part of a couple, missed the cachet of being able to show publicly that at least one person on the planet found her desirable. And hadn’t she come here tonight hoping that she’d find someone new?

Suddenly, all the posing she’d done in the mirror before leaving seemed ridiculous. She wanted to go home and peel off these jeans that made her butt look great but were sticking to her, rip off the dual T-shirts she’d taken such care to layer casually, and kick off the stupid platform sandals. They gave her much-needed height and the soles were cork, but they might as well have been made of lead, her feet hurt so much.

She stepped back into the noise of the house, walking quickly back through the sticky kitchen, past the crowd in the living room, and toward the front door. She caught sight of Brooke still on the steps, but couldn’t catch her eye. No problem. Brooke was a big girl; she’d find her way home. Joel and Stacy were intertwined on the couch, and she was batting at one of his hands that was creeping up under her shirt. They were both laughing.

Looking the other way, Elizabeth pushed past some students swaying to the thud, thud, thud coming from the speakers, and then she was out the front door and alone again.

It wasn’t until she was half a block away, and the music had faded to a distant heartbeat, that Elizabeth realized just how late it was and how many blocks she had to walk, alone, to get back to her apartment.

The streetlights seemed spaced too far apart. There was more than half a block between each one, and that left long stretches of shadowed sidewalk between small circles of light.

She looked back once, but there was no way she could return to that house and let Joel see her. It would be okay. She hurried along, trying not to notice the sound of her own rapid breathing and the way the slightest thing, the distant slam of a car door or the lonely meow of a cat, made her jump.

As she passed beneath the branches of an old oak tree, something fluttered above her head, and she looked up in time to see a cluster of small bats rise into the sky, flapping wildly away.

Her heels clopped loudly on the sidewalk. She had to watch to make sure she didn’t get a toe caught in the many dips and cracks in the cement. The houses sat back in the shadows, most of them dark, a few with lights on somewhere inside, the windows glowing orange like jack-o’-lanterns in the blackness.

A car came screaming around the corner, the sudden loud noise making her jerk and knocking her off balance. She caught herself against a lamppost, hands smacking hard against the metal pole, heart racing. The group of guys crowded into the car screamed something unintelligible at her out the window.

They vanished in a cloud of exhaust and then she was alone again. Clop, clop, clop. She hated these sandals. There was a blister forming on one ankle near the strap; every step rubbed against it, a little sore that would grow in pain. If it hadn’t been so dark, she might have taken them off, but then she could cut herself on something unseen. She just had to keep going.

At least six, maybe seven, more blocks to go. It had seemed so much shorter when she and Brooke walked it. She wished she’d stayed with Brooke. Fuck Joel and Stacy. Who cared what they thought of her? She almost turned back, pausing to think about it and rest her feet for a second, but it was a long way back and what if Brooke had gotten a ride with one of her geeky friends and was, at this moment, opening the door to their apartment and wondering what had happened to Elizabeth.

The sound of another car startled her. This one was moving slower, purring along somewhere behind her. Elizabeth started walking again, glancing back once to see the glow of headlights coming toward her. There was no point in turning back, she just had to keep going. Lily Slocum popped into her head and her stomach took an uneasy dip. Hadn’t Lily been walking alone when she vanished? And that hadn’t even been at night. Elizabeth picked up her pace, ignoring the pain in her ankle.

A four-door sedan, brown or black, drove slowly past. She looked over but couldn’t see who was driving. Whoever he or she was, they braked at a stop sign up ahead and Elizabeth watched the rear brake light click on and off, on and off, a fiery red glow.

The car didn’t move. Elizabeth’s steps faltered, then slowed. Why didn’t the car turn? Fear acted like a ratchet, tightening every muscle in her body until she was sure she could feel each individual vertebra. Her steps became mincing, childlike. Move, car, move. Click, click, click, she could hear the noise of the light and the soft rumble of the engine. Waiting. Was the driver watching her?

When Elizabeth was very little, she’d had a habit of clutching her crotch when she was frightened, cupping her vagina with both hands as if that somehow protected her. It had been embarrassing, but involuntary, like the time at Larry Gable’s birthday party when he showed the kids the dead rat floating in a corner of his family’s pool. She’d been frightened then, clutching so hard that she wrinkled the skirt of her party dress, so that the kids stopped pointing at the rat and pointed at her instead. They’d laughed and made rude noises until the parents came running, and she could still remember the look of horror on her mother’s face and how hard she’d tugged at her arms, hissing, “Stop it, Elizabeth! Stop it!”

Even now, her hands were inching forward. She jammed them in her pockets to stop herself and bumped against something, fingers skittering away before she realized it was just her cell phone. Phone! She’d forgotten all about her phone!

She pulled it free of her pocket, and just then the engine gave a soft roar and the car glided around the corner and vanished.

Elizabeth stared after it, feeling foolish, but she kept the phone in her hand, turning it over and over like it was a yin-yang ball, her palm sweaty around it.

She walked faster, crossing the street where the car had been, shooting a fast glance down that long empty street before stepping up on the curb of the next block. Her feet ached, the spot on her right ankle stung, but she didn’t slow down.

The next block marked the perimeter of a neighborhood park. When Elizabeth and Brooke had been on their way to the party, kids had been climbing on the jungle gym, their parents lounging on benches nearby. It was dark now, deserted.

As she neared the swings, Elizabeth could hear them creaking, but it was only a breeze. That was a shadow on the last swing, not someone sitting there swaying back and forth, waiting for her.

Sweat pricked along her hairline and trickled into her cleavage. The raw spot on her ankle was actively bleeding now, she could feel the squish of it under her heel, but she didn’t stop.

Her skin crawled with the sensation of being watched, and she turned back at the edge of the playground, but there was no one there.

Except a car.

It was back at the beginning of the park. Sitting there along the curb. She hadn’t noticed a parked car. Definitely not. She would remember if she’d seen one.

As she stared, the car pulled slowly away from the curb and headed toward her with a familiar purring sound. Jesus, was it the same car?

Elizabeth broke into a run. It was more of a trot, really, full step with her left foot and half step with her right. Hobbling forward as fast as she could go. The car was coming. The engine noise grew stronger, she imagined she could feel the heat of the motor. It approached in darkness, no headlights.

No longer caring how it would look, Elizabeth punched in 911 on her cell phone and continued to run while holding it against her ear. Only it didn’t ring. She looked at the screen and saw zero coverage. She was in a dead zone.

The car rumbled closer. The edge of the park was coming. All she had to do was get past it and there’d probably be reception. Elizabeth counted as she took the steps past the edge of the baseball diamond.

The car was at her back, then it pulled alongside her, moving so slowly that she knew the driver wanted her to know that she was being watched. She kept her focus ahead of her, blinking back tears and clutching the phone like a lifeline.

The car moved past, pausing at the corner before turning left and slipping away into the night. A half block. A quarter. The perimeter of the park was a stand of soaring pine trees. All she had to do was get past them and she’d have coverage. But getting past them meant arriving at the street where the car had turned.

Something was wrong with the streetlight on that corner. It flickered on and off, on and off. As she approached it, the light went out again. She glanced at her phone. No coverage yet.

She didn’t see the gloved hand come out of the darkness until it settled on her wrist. The phone dropped, forgotten, onto the street. She screamed once before the other hand closed over her mouth.