Nightwitch (16 page)

She stopped in front of the place where Arty had crawled into and stared at those bushes like she knew someone had gone in there. Gibson felt cool, salty sweat run into his eyes. He tried to brush it out with the back of his palms, but he only drove the stinging sweat in deeper.

“
How we gonna do it?” Oxlade asked again and Gibson turned to look at him. His fists were clenched. He was flexing his muscles. The man was pumped. Maybe he’d misjudged him.

“
We grab the purse and run,” Gibson said, abandoning his idea of taking off and leaving Oxlade behind to take the rap.

“
What if she sees us?” Oxlade said.

“
It’s dark. She’s old. I don’t think it’s a problem,” he whispered. Why was she staring at those bushes? Why wouldn’t she come closer? He wanted to get it over with.

“
I think we should waste her,” Oxlade said and Bill Gibson felt like he’d been hit on the side of the head. He’d never done anything like this before. He could see grabbing an old lady’s purse and making a run for it. Chances are they’d get away with it. Hell, with all the crime these days, the police wouldn’t want to be bothered. But murder—he hadn’t even thought about hitting her. Just grab and run.

“
You gotta be crazy.”

“
Who’s chicken now, Billy Boy?”

“
What are you talking about?” It was like Oxlade had been reading his mind.

“
I know what you was thinking. He don’t wanna do it no more. He’s yellow. I’ll show him. I know you, Billy Boy. I know you worry about folks thinking you’re yellow.”

“
How could you?” But he knew as soon as the words left his mouth. Lucy, his one true love.

“
That’s right, Billy Boy,” Oxlade said, reading his mind again. “You talk too much and she tells me everything. I know every little thing there is to know about you. You think our meeting in that pissant little bar was an accident?”

“
Why?” he asked with his eyes on the old lady, still staring into the bushes.

“
You got something I want.”

“
What?” he asked looking as deep into Oxlade’s eyes as the night would allow. What could he possibly have? He was as poor as dog shit.

“
Your boy.”

“
Arty?”

“
I don’t want him for keeps. Just bring him over on Friday after school. You can have him back on Sunday morning. Plenty of time for him to do all his chores.”

“
Why would you want Arty?” he asked. Then he knew and he was repulsed. He might be a coward at heart, and he knew it. He might light into his wife and boy a little too often, but he wasn’t a fucking pervert. Arty might be a fat little hog, but he was his boy.

“
Little harmless fun. Who knows, the boy might even learn to like it.”

Bill Gibson stared at Oxlade. All his life he’d been a coward. And the hot, green jungle came screaming back. He was lying in the wet, being pelted by rain. “Cover me,” the sergeant had said, before he charged across the clearing to get the wounded man, but he froze, and the sergeant was cut down while he watched, kept quiet and didn’t give himself away. And nobody knew what a coward he was. Nobody except Lucy, because when he was with Lucy he drank too much and he talked too much.

But what Oxlade was asking was out of the question. Even if he told everyone down at the bar and the bowling alley and the whole damn town. He’d sooner live with that, then turn his boy over to a pervert. So he looked Oxlade square in the eye and did the only brave thing he’d ever done in his whole miserable life. He said, “No.”

“
What?”

“
No.”

And she started to come closer.

Oxlade turned away from him and said, “Okay, after we finish this we’ll see where we stand.”

Gibson wanted to get up and take off, but something held him in place. It was out of his control, he told himself. An insect landed on his hand and he brushed it away. He felt another on the back of his neck, weaving its way through raised neck hairs. He squashed it with his thumb. He had to piss so badly his thighs were quivering. Another insect landed on his neck, but he was too absorbed with the frail figure moving toward them to notice.

She moved slowly, without grace. A passerby or someone looking out of their front window would pass their eyes over this old black woman and not see her. She was remarkable only in the fact that she wasn’t remarkable. She was old and slow, that was all. Nothing to remember and nothing to be afraid of.

She stopped and raised her head slightly. She folded her hands, as if in prayer, and sniffed the night. She stared again at the space between the two houses.

Gibson wondered what she was doing, then she turned back toward them and he pulled back between the cars. He felt the new insect threading its way through the hairs on the back of his neck. He felt the sweat trickle under his arms. He felt the pain caused by a decaying tooth. His dirty skin itched. His bladder was about to burst. He wanted to jump up and run. He wanted it over and he wondered if Oxlade would go through with it and if she would scream.

But he knew Oxlade was going to do it. He wondered if he’d be quick. He forced himself to wait. Only a few more seconds, he told himself, then it would be over. Then he noticed that she didn’t have a purse. That meant Oxlade would have to go through her pockets. It would take longer.

What if she didn’t have any money, he thought, and then he mentally answered himself. It didn’t matter—Oxlade didn’t care.

The old woman unclasped her hands and faced forward again. The wind dropped and silence reigned. She stood still, a statue in the night. Gibson willed her to turn away, to go back the way she’d come, but she didn’t. She resumed her shuffle down the sidewalk.

Two houses away and she stopped again. And the wind picked up again, blowing from her to them. She farted, he both heard and smelled it. A fart yes, but there was something more there, putrid and vile—a smell that screamed, get up and run, get away, get far away. He might have done it, but Oxlade sensed his cowardice and grabbed him by the arm, holding him in place.

He wanted to scream out to her to turn and flee, but the words were dead in his throat. He shook loose of Oxlade’s grasp, but he didn’t move as she resumed her slow walk toward them. He choked back his fear and tightened his resolve. He wished he had stayed home.

When she was one house away, he thought he heard a low laugh, more like a cackle. She moved a few steps closer and the laughter came on the breeze like a full frontal assault. He couldn’t move. It was like he was hearing loud laughter with the volume turned down low. Laughter meant only for him.

Oxlade didn’t seem to be bothered.

She came closer and Gibson was numb.

Oxlade jumped from behind the pickup, blocking her path. She whipped a clawed hand around, grizzly-quick and took his face off. No doubt about it, he was dead before his body slumped onto the sidewalk.

The coward in Gibson said run. All he wanted was for her to keep going, to pass on by and never know he was there. To take that fart smell and that loud, quiet laughter away. I’ll be good Lord, he prayed. I’ll never even think a bad thought.

Then she was standing there, facing him as he cringed on the wet pavement, paralyzed. He urinated as she glared at him, the wet soaking through his pants and dripping onto the pavement. The splashing drops the only sounds out and about in the neighborhood.

Instinct overcame his fear and he started to get up. She let him rise. He turned to run, but was blinded by a light that hit him white hot between the eyes. He collapsed, face up, twitching on the ground.

He could see, but he couldn’t move his head. He felt something wet on the back of his skull and hoped it was water from the street, but was afraid that it was his own blood. He moved his eyes around. The old woman was gone. For a second relief flooded through him. Then he heard a low growl and felt something clamp onto his twitching, jerking leg.

He was unable to see it. He was being dragged. His head bounced on the curb as he was pulled up onto the grass and then he saw it. Only for an instant, but it was the longest instant of his life.

Chapter Ten

Sarah downshifted into fourth, thrilling as the RPM surged. No more old, yellow, bell jingling Beetle for her. She raised her foot from the gas, letting the car slow as she approached the off ramp. She loved driving with the top down, her hair whipping in the chill winter breeze, her heart racing with the speedometer, her body singing with the night.

She gave it a little gas, punched the clutch, and dropped it into third. She shivered as the Corvette bucked, registering its displeasure. The car wanted to go fast. She jumped back on the clutch and shoved it into second. The tires chirped and the RPM soared against the lower gear.

She went off the ramp, in second gear, at sixty miles per hour. The engine screamed as the RPM redlined. She left rubber all over the pavement as she swung off the ramp onto Solitude River Road, but she was an excellent driver. She was in no danger.

But the old woman caught in her headlights was. When Sarah barreled down the ramp, there was nothing ahead of her but open road. Then out of nowhere, there she was, skinny, frail and blocking the way. She panicked and stabbed the brakes, locking the wheels.

The old woman stood her ground. Sarah caught a glimpse of a weathered black face, caught in the headlights, as the car went into a spin, roaring past the woman. She thumped harder on the brakes. The car whipped around and she was going backwards, with the car continuing its rubber-burning-sliding spin off the road.

She screamed as the Corvette’s wheels threw dirt into the air, praying as brush scrapped and screeched along the side of the car. Then it was over. The car came to a sliding halt, dying before she had a chance to get the clutch in.

“
Damn.” She turned around to see if the woman was all right. There was no one there.

She sat in silence and took in the sky, cloudy toward town and the ocean, clear overhead. Her heart was running flat out, pumping like the well would never go dry. She was on an adrenaline high and reveled in it. The old woman was out of her memory. Forgotten. Like she’d never been there.

“
Damn,” she said, again, “I loved it.” She leaned back and faced the Big Dipper and was rewarded with a shooting star cutting across the heavens. She remained in her euphoric trance for about ten minutes, daydreaming and drinking in the night. She felt like she should be in the lotus position. She felt like she’d just had a religious experience. And she was getting cold.

“
Home,” she told the night. She turned the key. The car roared to life, like the thoroughbred it was. Then it died. She turned the key again.

Nothing.

She thought about walking over to the motel and asking him for help, but decided against it. She would wait and let the car cool down. It would start then. It was brand new. It couldn’t be anything major.

A spasm knotted her neck. She massaged it, rocking her head back and forth. That’s when she saw something. Out back, behind the motel, looking in one of the bathroom windows—a peeping Tom. She was quite a distance away, but it was a clear night and floodlights in the parking lot were on. It was the woman, the old black woman.

Her first impulse was to shout, but she didn’t—she watched. Her second was to mind her own business, but she was fascinated. Her third was to get out of the car and to spy on the spy. She was just too curious. The peeping woman moved around to the other side of the building and Sarah gave in to her curiosity.

She felt a school-girl-first-date thrill run through her as she opened the door and stepped out of the car. She walked toward the building, counting her steps. She’d always been a counter. She counted everything, from the floor tiles in the Greyhound bus station to the number of steps between the bank and the beauty parlor. It was habit.

At ten steps, she wondered why nobody came rushing from the motel when she went squealing off the street. Then she remembered that the straight stretch of road, from the motel to where Solitude River Road started curving along the river toward Tampico, was used by the kids as the local drag strip. Her screeching tires probably didn’t sound out of place.

At twenty steps, she began to wonder about the old woman. How and why did she vanish so fast?

At thirty steps, she thought about him.

At forty steps, she’d covered half the distance and began to question the wisdom of what she was doing. That wolf was still around somewhere. It didn’t make sense to be sneaking around like last night had never happened.

At fifty steps, she slowed down and at step sixty-one, she stopped and listened to the soundless night.

The lights from the motel suddenly sent goose bumps running up her arms. She took two steps back. Stopped. Listened to her heartbeat and the silence. She heard the buzzing sound of a big rig eating up Highway 1 off in the distance. She stayed rock still, till the buzzing turned into a roar. She covered her eyes, as the big truck’s brights sliced through the night.

She stayed that way, tall and still, her hair wisping in a slight breeze, till the truck was again only a buzzing in the distance. Maybe the woman was gone, she thought, but maybe she wasn’t. Who was she and what was she up to? She had to know.

She inhaled the night air. No more counting. She jogged the remainder of the way to the motel, not stopping till she reached the asphalt parking lot. She stopped by a white Toyota, to catch her breath, when she heard a noise around the side of the motel. The woman? She darted to the side of the building and scurried along the wall. She was a spy after a secret. She felt like a teenager. Her blood started delivering more oxygen to her brain as her heart accelerated. She was exhilarated. Excited. Nothing should come in the way of a secret.