Hush (33 page)

It wasn't supposed to be like this. It never had been. Jesus fuck, his hand

throbbed.
Less than a minute later Celia stopped kicking. She had to catch her breath, she

couldn't help it; and that's when he seized her other foot and started pulling

her toward him. She was sliding backward on her belly. She dug her fingernails

into the carpet and felt them bend and break. She heard him grunting and that

carpet noise too, the dull hideous scratching when the knap peels open, like

rows of wheat in a windstorm.
He let go of her left ankle and clamped down on her calf. He repeated this to

her right leg. He was crawling up her body, and she shook uncontrollably. She

felt his hand— wet, bloody, sticky— by her nightgown. He reached up under the

hem, and she screamed, "No," and tried to kick again; but he was kneeling on her

feet and calves and crushing them with his weight. He grabbed her left buttock

so hard the muscle burned with pain, and she tried to buck him off. He tore at

her gown and her head snapped up off the floor as the neckline caught around her

throat. Celia choked and gasped for air; and her head twitched violently when he

yanked on the fabric, like a horseman trying to control his mount.
Ride 'em, cowboy. You gonna buck like a bronc, I'm gonna ride you like one. Chet

loved the way her head whipped around, and he really liked those choking sounds.

He kept the pressure on while he slid his right knee up between her legs. Then

he threw the gown up over her head and heard her face hit the carpet.
This time she didn't scream. She hadn't the strength. She coughed twice and

closed her eyes. Her arms trembled, and her legs twitched like the limbs of a

lab animal suffering a slow dissection.
He could see her defeat before he touched her, and when he grabbed her hips to

lift them, she was limp. But so was he. The struggle had cost him his erection.

No matter. He wasn't worried. He'd get hard; he always got hard. He took out his

razor and looked at all that creamy whiteness she kept hidden away. Already, he

felt himself rising, the blood that rules, that rushes down and lifts him up. He

poised right above her secret circle, and watched as more of that silky semen

spread its web. He was sure his cock was like one of those flowers on a nature

show where they speed up the film till it looks like the petals are reaching out

to fuck the sun. He was just like that, growing larger and larger until it

touched her crack. He got so excited he squeezed his muscles and made it bob up

and down, over and over. Each time it rose it slapped his belly and an arc of

semen flew loose, and each time it fell it struck her bottom and dampened her

rigid flesh.
Celia had stayed still for what seemed like hours. He had spread her thighs open

with his knee, and she had felt him growing in the dim light. There had been the

brush of flesh against the inside of her leg, and the way the wet tip had come

to rest on the warm space between her cheeks, like some animal finding its

perch. Then he had started this...this insane game with his member. It smacked

her over and over and made a dull wet sound.
It stopped moving as suddenly as it began. He let it rest there, in that place

he preferred. His hands spread her cheeks open, and he started to press forward.

She knew what he wanted and knew, too, that he'd tear his way in to get it. A

horror deep and primitive overcame her, a fear much greater than herself, and

she rammed back into him. His penis bent painfully before it sprang aside, and

he reeled slightly as she rolled over and started kicking fiercely. She pulled

her gown off her face and felt bone beating against bone— her heels, shins, and

knees hitting those hard undaunted places on him— but she barely noticed the

bruising contact. She pumped her legs madly and got lucky: her left foot struck

him squarely on the throat, and she heard a harsh wheezing sound. His hands

retreated, and she saw his chin drop to his chest. But she saw very little else

because she was scrambling across the carpet and staggering to her feet. She

made it to the bathroom and lashed at the door to try to shut it. It slammed

with a shout— though whether from herself or the walls she could not tell— and

then she fumbled away precious seconds trying to get it locked. She succeeded,

but the lock wasn't much— a spring mechanism built into the handle itself— and

she had no faith that it would hold.
49
Jack sat on the side of the bed and stared glumly at the floor. He'd promised

Celia he'd call, so he called, but it didn't even ring, just a recording saying

the phone was out of order. That didn't make any sense. They'd lived up there

six years and they'd never had any problems with the phone.
Helen cuddled up to him and ran her fingernails down his back. He found her

touch so irritating that she might just as well have been running them across a

blackboard.
"Please stop." He shrugged her hand away.
"What's the matter?" she taunted. "She's not home and you're all worried?"
"No, it's not—"
"She's a big girl. Maybe she's having some fun of her own."
He turned around and offered Helen a pained look.
"I don't think so."
"That's probably what Ralph would say right now if someone asked him, and look

at me, just full of your joy juice."
She lifted the sheet and exposed herself.
Jack turned away. "That's not it. I'm getting a recording saying the phone's out

of order." He picked up the receiver. "I'm calling the operator."
Helen sat up and watched him with a bemused expression.
"Yes, operator, could you check 427-8053. That's right, Bentman."
He cupped the mouthpiece.
"I've got to know if something's wrong."
"You know what I think? I think you're feeling guilty now that you've had your

fun."
He held up his hand to shush Helen and spoke to the operator.
"When can you get someone out there? No sooner? Okay, thanks."
He put the receiver down and massaged his brow. Helen squeezed his thigh.
"I've got a plan to take your mind off the old homestead."
He stood up and took a step away from the bed.
"No, please, let me think."
"Sure, sweetheart, go ahead, but don't think too much because the night's just

begun."
She slid her hand up the back of his legs, and he jumped as if he'd been goosed.

"Stop that!" He turned to face her. "I'm going back. Sorry."
"What!" She sat up.
"We've lived up there without any problems, and now we've got some jackass

shepherd who's been making threats, and all of a sudden the phone stops

working." He started to pace. "I'm telling you it doesn't feel right."
"So you're going to drive all the way back because of some stupid shepherd?"
He was already pulling on his shorts and pants. "You make it sound like a trip

to the North Pole. It's only forty minutes, faster if I hurry."
Helen covered her breasts with the sheet. "I don't know if I'm going to be able

to get away again anytime soon."
"I'm sorry." Actually, he was elated to hear this. "But I'd never be able to

forgive myself if something was wrong up there."
"There's nothing wrong at your house, Jack, but there's definitely something

wrong up there." She pointed to his head.
"What do you mean?" he said as if he had no interest whatsoever in her answer.
"You never really wanted to come here in the first place, and now you're using

any excuse to leave."
"It's not an excuse." He recoiled when he heard the pleading tone in his voice.

"I really want to make sure she's okay."
"See you Monday," Helen said curtly as she lay down and turned her back to him.
"Fine," Jack snapped. He grabbed his suitcase and rushed out the door, never

pausing, not even once, over the woman— or the safety of the world— he was

leaving behind.
50
Celia leaned against the full-length mirror hanging from the door and listened

to Chet struggling to breathe. She felt no victory, only a penetrating sense of

his revenge:
You hurt me, so I'll hurt you.
It was written all over him, in everything he had done and in everything he

would do. She knew this as she knew the panic of this never-ending night.
But once more she'd found refuge, however slight, in a bathroom. As a child it

had been the one place in the house where she could free herself from her

mother's frightening outbursts, though she hadn't been permitted to lock to the

door.
"No, you may not," she'd told Celia. "If I want to come in and see what you're

up to, I better not find that door locked. You hear me?"
But curiously, she hadn't come in. Oh, like any warder she'd jiggle the handle

as she walked by, but even that stopped after a couple of weeks. Perhaps the

prerogative alone had been enough to satisfy her.
Celia had always scheduled her solitude with care, preferring the afternoons to

the mornings and evenings when her two sisters and mother busied themselves with

the toilet and vanity. And if the rental had a second, less desirable, bathroom,

she'd make certain to use it.
She would sit on the commode cover and read for thirty, forty minutes at a time,

escaping the censorious comments of her mother; or worse, her cruelly

inquisitive ones: "You think you're learning something I don't know? Don't kid

yourself, dearie, there's nothing in those books of yours I haven't seen before.

Nothing. What's this? What are you reading now?"
Celia would hand over the book dutifully, she wouldn't have dreamed of doing

otherwise, and her mother would glance at the cover, maybe read a sentence or

two from whatever page she had opened to.
"Good God, not another one of your ballerina stories. Don't you ever get tired

of this crap?" She'd thrust the book back into Celia's hands. "Go ahead, finish

it. Just don't go getting any ideas. You're already a little prima donna."
Celia lost herself in the childhoods of other girls, the ones who came to life

page after page and who appeared far more inventive than she, for they always

found a way out of their difficulties while Celia remained trapped year after

year.
But as she grew older and her tastes in literature changed, she discovered ever

more complex stories about grown-up women. In many of their troubled tales she

found striking similarities to her own life; and for this she was grateful, to

find reassurance and kindness in the company of strangers.
The bathroom had once been her sanctuary, inviolate and benign. Now it held her

prisoner and thundered in silence.
With her legs still shaking, she searched for the light switch and flipped it

on. The overhead made her squint, and she felt an almost blinding pain in her

frontal lobes. She stood still until the pain began to fade, then turned around

and faced the room, careful the entire time to keep her body pressed against the

door. The coolness of the mirror came to life on her shoulder where her gown had

been torn.
The shade over the tub window snagged her attention, and she thought about how

he could break the glass and climb in after her. She remembered throwing the

lock, but thought little of its protection now.
Her hands hung by her sides, and she reached back with her fingertips to touch

the door, as if to steady what could shake and shudder and suddenly split apart.

She sensed him slouching toward her, and she listened carefully for those rough

choking sounds that had escaped his throat after she'd kicked him.
Nothing. He was quiet now. Was he still there, or had he slipped outside to find

the window? She looked back at it. No face stared in. Not yet. She turned just

enough to place her ear against the mirrored door when another chilling thought

announced its rude arrival: he might also be listening, his horrible face a mere

inch or so away. Nothing but the door separated them, and she knew it was

piteously thin. It was a door, not a barricade, and what was a door? An

illusion, a silly belief that you could close yourself off, that you and you

alone could define what was yours. This was a lie, had always been a lie, and

now stood as an invitation to mortal violation. There was no private domain.

There was only invasion: first of space, then of self.
She heard him moving, a rumbling low and relentless. His assault had just begun.

He would not stop until he'd destroyed and defiled everything she had ever

honored. Celia knew this as glass knows stone in the moment that explodes

between them.
She swallowed with difficulty. Her throat did not want to work. She felt rigid,

but not like rock, like ceramics— clay sculptures of club-footed creatures that

stand for ages in dark corners and shatter to pieces in the frazzle of a single

moment. The room turned small and suffocating. She'd locked the door, she'd

locked the window, and now as she leaned stiffly against the mirror she realized

that the very fear she had known earlier in the evening had come to pass: She

had become a prisoner in her own bathroom, much as Davy was a prisoner in his

own home. The saint for whom she'd been named— Saint Cecilia, the patron saint

of music— had been sentenced to die in a bathroom for refusing to deny her

faith. But she escaped, Celia reminded herself, she got away. Only to die—

that's right— at the point of a sword.
Celia knew she would die before she'd let this man, this beast, take her in hand

one more time.
*
Chet's jeans were down around his knees, and he almost tripped before he could

pull them back up. His throat still hurt like hell, but nothing had been broken