The Woman Read online

~ * ~

  First things first, Chris thought. He dialed Betty’s number from the kitchen. Betty was his paralegal, his office manager, his secretary. And she never minded him calling on a Sunday.

  She had caller ID and picked up on the second ring.

  “Hi, Betty,” he said. “Just want to run a few things by you, okay?”

  It was okay. It was always okay.

  Betty was a treasure.

  “I won’t be in until after lunchtime tomorrow. If at all,” he said.

  Anything wrong? she said. Real concern in her voice, bless her. No, there was nothing wrong, nothing at all.

  “Just some business I need to take care of here. We’ve got the Oldenberg will and power of attorney ready for her signature, right? And she’s due in at ten. Good. We’re also expecting the police report on that Blakely business. That kid’s gonna be the death of his poor parents. One more thing. Give Dean Bluejacket a call. He’s supposed to come in tomorrow morning to talk to me about his property. Tell him I’m tied up here and I’ll meet him for lunch on Tuesday, say noon. Then if the phones are quiet you can put the machine on and take off early. How’s that sound?”

  It sounded good.

  “’Night, Betty. You have a good one.”

  He heard a shrill scream from outside and the screen door flew open and suddenly Darlin’ was hugging his leg for dear life. And there was Brian behind her holding a small, very dead brown mouse by the tip of its tail. He dangled it into her sightlines, grinning. She squealed and giggled and buried her face in his pants leg.

  But then she couldn’t resist. She peeked up at her brother.

  He opened his mouth and pretended he was going to eat it.

  “Eeeeewwww!” she said.

  Chris smiled at his son and shook his head. Kids.

  “Burn barrel,” he said.

  And remembered he was supposed to baste that damn ham.

  ~ * ~

  Chris was late for dinner. Baked ham, corn on the cob, baked green beans and mashed potatoes. Everybody seated around the table except him. Brian was mowing the food down. He’d want seconds. Peggy was barely picking at it. Darlin’ was swirling it around into a big goopy mess with her fork. It was Belle’s turn to sigh.

  What the hell was Chris doing out there?

  He was acting very strange.

  He’d taken down the 5’X 9’ authentic wide-mesh fishing net off the west wall of the living room and denuded it of all its ornamental starfish and shells, folded it and taken it out to the fruit cellar. Then she’d heard him on the stairs just now and looked out from the kitchen to see him carrying four of Brian’s plastic-coated hand-weights, which the boy never used — the weights were a total waste of money — across the foyer and out the door. She crossed to the dining table and through the window in front of it saw that the weights were going into the fruit cellar as well. By then the food was already on the table.

  She opened the window and leaned out.

  “Chris!”

  “Be just a second, hon!”

  She closed the window and sat down to eat with her kids. She buttered and salted her corn. The corn was good this year.

  Finally the front screen door slammed and Chris was at the table, smiling at them. He sliced a piece of ham and cut it into pieces. Tasted it. Chewed.

  “Good,” he said. “Um…a little cold.” Like he was surprised.

  She almost laughed. What did the man expect?

  “Want me to zap it for you?”

  He handed her the plate.

  ~ * ~

  She didn’t know whether it was the hammering or the dogs that woke her.

  She rolled over into his empty space and switched on the standing bedside lamp he would read by with its too-expensive pale silk lampshade and filled the room with sixty watts of light. She got out of bed and found her robe and belted it around her waist. The hammering stopped. Then continued.

  She padded barefoot down the hall to the stairs. She had nearly fallen down this staircase once when she was six months pregnant with Brian riding delicate in her womb so that now as ever since her hand went automatically to the railing.

  At the bottom she walked to the front door and looked out the window panel. The hammering had stopped again.

  The door to the fruit cellar was flung wide and she could see his shadow moving below in the flickering light.

  “What’s he doing?”

  She jumped at the voice and then had a single strange moment of utter disorientation. Sitting on the couch in the dark in the palest shaft of moonlight, staring out the window, her bathrobe pulled tight around her, arms crossed beneath her breasts, Peg might have been a younger Belle, the Belle of twenty years ago, a slim young woman sitting alone on that very same couch in just that pose and bathed in just that light of the waning moon, wondering. Wondering had she done the right thing.

  Marrying him.

  “Damn, Peggy. You scared the hell out of me.”

  “Sorry. I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Well, try. School in the morning.”

  “What’s dad doing?”

  “We’ll find out tomorrow. Go to bed, Peg. It‘s late.”

  She watched her daughter place one bare foot on the floor and pivot her weight off the couch in a single smooth motion, tighten her belt and move gliding to the stairs. Again she had the uncanny sense that she was seeing herself giving in to the necessities of life in some other distant time.

  Belle had been a soft and pretty woman then just like her daughter.

  Now she was all angles.

  “’Night, mom,” she said.

  “’Night, Peg.”

  When she was gone and Belle heard her bedroom door click shut and saw the shaft of light disappear from under her door she peered out the window again and heard the dogs barking and then went to where she and her daughter had sat upon the couch.

  It was still warm.

  SIX

  She awakens before dawn, before the gulls and the terns. She hears only the gentle susurration of the waves. In the dim last moonlight she inspects her wounds. Her eyes need little light. The wounds are puckering, knitting, a wide purple bruise surrounding each and connecting at her side as one.

  She stretches on all fours like a cat, tailbone high, working out the soreness the hastily fashioned browse-bed and damp night air have left throughout her body. The fire has fallen to ashes now. Beside them lie the blackened bones of wolf and fish.

  She crouches down at the entrance to the cave. She studies the dawn. The graying sky. The first gull-cry.

  It is time to depart this place. She is still not far enough away from where she left her family and the others cold and dead. She has cut a wide pouched sling from the pelt and in it she now places the wolf’s left rear thigh. All that is left of him. She drapes it over her shoulder. Across the other shoulder, the remainder of the pelt. It will be colder to the north.

  She belts the knife and steps outside.

  ~ * ~

  Cleek has drenched the net in water overnight and attached Brian‘s weights to the corners at either end. The net doesn’t so much drop over her as it plummets over her. The woman has fallen to her knees instinctively, twisting furiously inside it. Raging, howling.

  He’s got to be fast.

  He half-jumps, half-slides down the path from the grassy roof of the cave to the entrance, the Remington over his shoulder. The woman has her knife free and she’s standing, slashing. Had she not gotten so tangled up at first she’d be out by now. Free. And that’s a goddamn chilling thought.

  She’s roaring something.

  “Deamhan! Sainmahiniu liom fuil! Deamhan!”

  Whatever the fuck that is.

  ~ * ~

  The pelt has twisted in the net in front of her. To slash through to him it seems she must slash through the pelt. The man stands in front of her and she can smell his fear and can smell his excitement. The man wants to go to her. The man does not.

  “Devil! I’ll drink your bl
ood! Devil!”

  Her arm rises, falls. Her arm speaks her desire.

  Kill.

  The man dares a single step closer. Her own legs are entangled in his web. She cannot free them without doing herself serious harm. She slashes forward instead through the pelt and through the net and feels her arm finally come free of him, this extension of him, this man-thing. She lurches forward.

  Falls.

  ~ * ~

  He sees murder in her eyes. Or worse.

  “Deamhan!”

  Cleek stands over her. Not too close. She’s still got that pig-sticker of a goddamn knife well in hand. And god, he thinks, look at those teeth! But she’s tangled up pretty good now. Only that one arm free. That’s free enough.

  “I’m afraid I can’t understand a fucking thing you’re saying, lady.”

  The butt-end of the Remington makes a satisfying thunk against her thrashing head. So that then she stops thrashing altogether.

  Cleek allows himself to breathe.

  ~ * ~

  The really hard, nervous part is untangling her. He has no choice but to do it right then and there in front of the cave because there’s no way in hell he’s going to drag a sodden net with eighty pounds of weights attached — not to mention the woman herself — all the way back to the Escalade. He uses her own knife. He tests it with his thumb and it’s far sharper than his own. Carbon steel honed to a feather-edge with a bolted wooden handle. His best guess was that it would date back to the 1930s or 40s. A real antique.

  They made these things better then.

  But he has to use both hands to cut her free, particularly her legs and that means putting the Remington aside and though he’d hit her pretty hard he doesn’t like to think what she’ll be wanting to do to him when she wakes. Even unconscious she looks formidable. Easily as tall as he was, maybe taller. Scarred, heavily calloused hands with long thin fingers. Powerful back, thigh and shoulder muscles. Cleek thinks of Olympic swimmers. Washboard stomach. In fact it looks to Cleek like her large-nippled breasts are the only fat on her body anywhere.

  There are scars all over her.

  Where the hell has she come from? he thinks.

  And where the hell has she been?

  As he pulls her free of the net he sees that he’s neglected to remove a single small brown ornamental starfish from within its folds. He’s overlooked it. He shakes his head.

  With her it will be wise to overlook nothing.

  He digs the plastic cable ties out of his pack and binds her feet together and binds her hands behind her back. Her skin is surprisingly warm and pleasing to the touch. As though she burns at some slightly higher temperature than he does.

  He unpacks and spreads out the beach towel that said TIME FLIES WHEN YOU’RE HAVING RUM and rolls her onto it and starts dragging.

  Twenty minutes later with several stops for his Evian bottle he has her up and into the back of the Escalade. It’s only then that she stirs.

  He uses the Remington on her forehead before she comes fully awake.

  She’d have one hell of a headache. But he doesn’t want her awake for quite some time yet. Though the prospect of that time thrills the hell out of him.

  He puts the car in gear and heads home. The Escalade purrs.

  In his mind, so does Cleek.

  SEVEN

  Monday morning and nobody home, just as he knows it will be. The kids at school. Belle and the ladies of the Rotary Youth Exchange at their weekly tea-and-coffee klatch over at Trudy Forget’s place. He has the house to himself. And the cellar.

  Like his father before him Chris has always been a handy kind of guy. He can cane a chair, replace the drive belt on a lawn mower, paper a wall or fix your plumbing like a pro. So outfitting the fruit cellar has hardly been a challenge at all.

  The only question in his mind is, will she stay out or will he have to whack her once again.

  He hauls her up over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and then eases her carefully down to the lawn while he opens the cellar door. Hauls her up again and walks her down the stairs. Damn! this lady stinks! First thing he is doing to have to do is wash her down. With extreme prejudice. And he is going to need a shower himself just as soon as this is over.

  The entire south side of the cellar is clean save some empty one-by-twelve pine shelving starting midway up from floor to ceiling. He sits her propped against the wall. Stands back a moment. Catches his breath. Watches her.

  She doesn’t move. Good.

  He takes two cable clamps from the shelf behind him — self-locking, polymer and stainless steel — kneels down and slips her wrists into them. From these depend a pair of high-tension tow cables threaded through sturdy eye bolts in the wall above her head. These he’s fastened to a single cable which connects to a hand-cranked winch bolted to the wall beside him.

  Cleek walks over to the winch and ratchets her up.

  When she’s upright in a standing position he adjusts her legs so that they conform to the pair of clamps bolted to the wall behind her, slips her ankles inside and tightens the nuts with his crescent wrench.

  He smiles.

  She hangs there like a rag doll.

  His rag doll.

  Now that he can safely risk it he decides she demands closer inspection.

  He checks her hands. Calloused beyond belief. Nails thick and cracked and yellowed. They’ll need some trimming. Her toenails too.

  He runs his hand over the matted poultice at her side. Get rid of that. Fix it up with Bacitracin and a proper bandage, first thing.

  Then her collarbone, her breastbone, covered with scars old and new, large and small. He traces the smooth wide white scar from breast to hip. The scar above her eye that ran through the blasted eyebrow to her ear.

  The scars are a roadmap of rough living.

  She’s been through lord knows what.

  What he has here is a survivor. That means she is going to be…very interesting.

  ~ * ~

  The Woman slinks awake.

  Perhaps it is his hands upon her that have awakened her, she doesn’t know. But she is very aware of them now. They sweep across her belly, her breast, her neck. They are not hard hands but they’re not soft either. She doesn’t move a muscle but she does take stock. She is in a cool damp room. Metal encases her wrists and ankles. There is strain in her arms. Her head hurts badly.

  The man touches her face, lifts her chin. Drops it. She lets it drop, slack, to her chest. He lifts her chin again and then with the fingers of his other hand pries open an eyelid. The eye does not so much as twitch. He is not aware of this but she sees the man quite clearly. His face is soft. Shaven. His hair is thin and slick to his scalp. His eyes squint with…what? concern? Does he fear he’s hurt her too badly?

  He hasn’t.

  ~ * ~

  Cleek is looking for dilation of the pupils. A sign of brain trauma. He doesn’t see it. She’s just out, that‘s all. He continues his inspection.

  There’s a new purple bruise along her cheekbone. He didn’t put it there. He’d hit her on the forehead.

  The woman is fascinating.

  Her upper lip is scarred like most of the rest of her. The lower lip has fallen open.

  He wonders about the teeth. Her breath is foul.

  He lifts the left side of her upper lip as though checking out a dog’s mouth or a cat’s. The teeth range in color from brownish yellow to a kind of mossy green — they clearly haven’t been brushed in years, if ever — and the wisdom tooth on this side has gone to black. The canine almost looks to have been filed sharp. Certainly it’s jagged. The gums, though, are a healthy pink.

  On the right side the wisdom tooth is completely missing. And now he can see definite signs of rough filing, not only on the canine but on the incisor too. It dawns on him exactly what this indicates, exactly what he’s seeing.

  It dawns on him too late.

  The woman’s head whips suddenly to the right. The jaws snap down.

  The t
ip of his middle finger! Jesus christ it’s missing! It’s gone!

  The finger gouts blood all across her chin, her neck and breasts. He waves the hand as though he’d hit himself with a hammer, hit his thumb hammering in a nail, shakes it to negate this pain which burns and throbs and runs right up his arm, shakes it to make it go away. This impossible sudden thing. His blood sprays him too. His face, his shirt.

  “Ahhhhh! Fucking bitch!” he screams.

  He takes a shaky step backward and almost stumbles. Rights himself.

  “Bitch!” he screams again. His voice sounds wrong to him. A huge hoarse bellow. The kind of sound his goddamn father might have made.

  His eyes lock with hers. A hint of a smile in her eyes. She’s smiling. The cunt is smiling! He watches her — hears her chew. Teeth against bone. His bone. Once. Teeth grinding. Twice. Three times.

  She swallows.

  ~ * ~

  The Woman has tasted him. His flesh is hers. His blood is thick and as sweet on her lips as honey. So that it does not matter what comes after, doesn’t matter when he comes at her with his fist flailing, when her lips split and the pain rages through her head again far worse than when she woke. It doesn’t matter because she has warned this man and he has taken note and she has taken his measure.

  She has tasted him.

  ~ * ~

  Cleek hits her again and again. He’s savage. He’s every bit his father now. She’s bleeding from the mouth and one eye is shot with blood but she won’t shut her eyes and that smile won’t go away and he realizes he’s screaming, spitting like a snake and blood is flying from her mouth, both of them painting the cellar floor a spackled red until finally at the brink of his own exhaustion the damned eyes close and she hangs limp in front of him.

  He backs away, dazed by what he’s done and what’s been done to him.

  And what he says next will make no sense at all to him an hour later.

  And an hour after that, it will.

  “That’s just not civilized behavior!” he shouts.

  It is exactly then that the pain truly washes over him. Not only from his bloody hand clutched tight in the other but, he thinks, from every bone and muscle in his body. His lungs are burning.

  He has one more look at her, blood dripping from her mouth to the dusty floor.