Hush (42 page)

the pain raging in her knee, and the question of the key: Is it here? She found

it in the ignition, and the truck started right up. She closed the door, and the

darkness returned.
For the briefest division of time she considered backing out to the county road,

but shivered at the prospect of rolling toward the very sounds she'd been

running from all night. She knew right then that she'd take the logging road.

The rivers, the streams, these old roads, they all flowed to Bentman. Right?
She searched wildly for the gearshift. Her right hand swept over the floor

before she realized that the shift lever stuck out from the steering column. She

had never driven a truck this old and had to guess at the transmission pattern.

The clutch pedal tortured her wounded leg when she pressed down on it, and as

she eased it out they bucked backward and stalled. She had guessed wrong.
"Shit."
She turned the ignition key again and tried pulling the shifter toward her and

down. When she let out the clutch the truck moved forward, and the pain in her

knee lessened slightly.
The lights, the lights. Branches raked the sides of the cab as they drove

through darkness. Twice the truck bounced over fallen logs as she grappled with

knobs all over the dash. The headlights came on as the radio blasted, "KLOG,

where every day is Earth Day." She shut it off. The pickup listed to the

driver's side as they rolled over a rotting stump, but up ahead Celia could see

that the dirt road widened enough to avoid most of these obstacles.
Davy looked at her, and she reached across and patted his leg. She didn't know

what to say to him, so she didn't say anything at all.
She checked her rearview mirror and saw nothing behind them but the night. Her

only thoughts were on making it to the sheriff 's office in Bentman.
63
Celia negotiated the dark logging road with great care, avoiding the forest

debris wherever she could, bouncing along as she scanned the cab nervously and

checked on Davy. He was sitting bolt upright, as if he shared her horror. An

eerie greenish light fell across the boy's face; and she found the source in the

instrument panel, which glowed brightly, as if the dash had been dabbed with

radium. She noticed the gas gauge, an eighth of a tank; enough, she thought, to

get them to town.
Every few seconds she also studied the rear view mirror, convinced that Boyce's

dark eyes would soon stare back at her; but the mirror revealed only the flat

nothingness of the night, and she drove on. Still, the uneasiness persisted. It

felt like a cold breath on the back of her neck, a ghostly presence that drifted

along on the fog of fear, and she turned around fully, no longer trusting the

mirror to give life to the world. See, he's not there, she comforted herself.

Thank God. She turned her attention back to the road, and relaxed her neck by

rolling her head. And that's when she saw him break out from behind a bush no

more than twenty feet away. He glared at her, drenched with water and rigid with

rage.
Celia jammed on the brakes, understood immediately that this was a mistake, and

tried to run him over. But the distance was too short, and she couldn't get the

old truck to accelerate quickly enough. As the pickup neared him Boyce stepped

neatly to the driver's side and jumped onto the running board. She watched him

grab for the door handle, and saw that she'd neglected to lock the cab. She

pounded down the button and felt her heart totter on the edge of shock.
Chet pressed his face close to the glass. His mouth moved but she could not hear

him. Her hands choked the steering wheel as he threw himself onto the hood and

stared at her. He beat the windshield with his fist, and she had to move from

side to side to see past him.
He climbed onto the top of the truck, forcing her to look through the smears he

left behind with his wet boots. She heard his body scraping against the metal

inches from her head, and then he pounded the roof so viciously she could feel

it vibrating right above her.
A thump shook the pickup as he jumped into the bed. Now she did see his dark

eyes staring at her in the rearview mirror, and despite clear evidence to the

contrary she believed he'd been there from the very beginning. He pressed both

hands against the glass, and she had to struggle to keep from hyperventilating.
Davy turned around in his seat and recoiled visibly at the sight of his

stepfather. Celia checked his door lock, saw it sticking up, and in the ungodly

glow of the cab reached across him and pounded it down.
She also had enough presence of mind to turn the boy back around to spare him

the bizarre sight of his stepfather, but it was too late. Davy had seen him, and

he had seen that look on his face. Davy was terrified.
Never before.
Chet spit out more of that rat water and tried to catch his breath. His throat

burned. So did his nose.
Never again.
He coughed and fought off a stomach spasm. She'd forced water down his nasal

passages and into his gut. Rat-fucking water. She'd held him down for almost two

minutes at one point, and he'd felt those foul rotting bodies whirl around him,

tails and teeth and claws. Her goddamn husband too. Worst of all, she'd made him

play dead, and he loathed her for that, for reversing their roles, for making

him act like some goddamned girl.
You don't play dead.
But he had, goddamn right he had. Because of her. She'd done that to him. But

there was one big difference, one huge fucking difference, and he savored this

knowledge even now: He would've made damn sure she was dead, picked up the

biggest goddamn rocks he could find and caved her fucking skull in; but she had

walked away. Big difference, the difference between life and death.
His and hers.
Never again.
He repeated these words to himself like a penitent in a pew, and when his lips

no longer moved he watched her drive and nodded his head. The forest was his. He

knew it well. He'd bushwhacked through acres of brush and trees, and now was

eager to ride.
Deeper. Deeper.
Simple thoughts— no more sentences for him. Simple words— breaking loose like

blood clots— here, there, and everywhere.
Celia's eyes captured the mirror briefly. Boyce kneeled so close and the window

was so thin. Old glass, as old as the truck. She trembled at the possibility of

it breaking, and imagined his fingers reaching around her neck. She scooted so

far forward that her body pressed against the steering wheel as she drove. Don't

stop, she told herself, whatever you do, don't stop.
The forest thickened on both sides of the logging road, and it towered above

them. She longed for the valley floor, its level roads and stable lives. She

tried to will them there. Down, she insisted, to the town, people. She wanted no

more of the ridge.
But they didn't descend. They began to climb a hill, and she had to press harder

and harder on the accelerator. She looked at the gas gauge again and was aghast

to see that the needle had dropped to almost empty. She swore silently. She had

an impulse to roll the truck and send Boyce flying, crush his body with the

weight of all this metal.
She tried in her terror to weigh the risks. Old truck— no seat belts. No way to

protect him. Her eyes flashed at the boy. And what if it starts on fire? What if

we're trapped inside? What if the son of a bitch survives? Celia was plagued by

"what ifs"and abandoned any thought of rolling the truck.
She turned and saw his face still staring at her from behind the glass. He

hadn't moved an inch in all that time. How much time? she wondered. Five

minutes? Fifteen? She hadn't a clue.
They drove through a clear-cut ravine. Stumps rose along both sides of the

truck, startling her with their brutal appearance: All this life, all this

death.
And then the road began to narrow as they reentered the woods. Once again

branches smacked the fenders and windshield. She saw the suffocating density of

trees and roots and felt clammy perspiration reappear on her body as a cold

mist. She also saw how the road was likely to end: as a wedge pounded into the

heart of the forest, with the truck squeezed into its very tip. She heard limbs

snapping against the cab, horrible popping sounds that rattled her nerves as

much as the entangling forest rattled the truck. It looked as if the trees had

legs, and as she drove forward they marched beside her in tighter and tighter

formations.
The logging road faded quickly into two ghostly tracks. Open up, open up, open

up, she begged. She wanted nothing so much as she wanted the ceiling of this

forest to yield to the brilliant cathedral of night: the stars, the heavens, the

neat blazing orderliness of the universe above.
But the ceiling never lifted. It remained shut, sealed as firmly as a coffin

lid. Not even the cloak of moonlight could warm the dark limbs that enveloped

them.
They bounced over the rotting remains of fallen trees, and branches bashed the

truck repeatedly. The cab shook as if it were about to fall apart.
A fat limb struck the windshield and revealed a tightly spun web of cracks. It

was as though they had been there forever, sleeping peacefully in the glass

until awakened by this blow. Dozens of jagged angry arms reached out from the

milky center. Celia thought if she could focus on a single piece she might make

out where they were going, but focusing proved difficult and she drove on almost

blindly. She tried looking through a long slim section just above the dashboard

and managed to see the closing ranks of all these trees. The wedge— she shook

her head— the wedge was choking them to death.
In seconds the trail disappeared entirely. The dense forest soaked up their

headlights and left them in darkness. She looked out the side window and saw the

shadowy crush of trees. They horrified her. The forest she had loved was

betraying her at last, turning to final blackness. She felt its long arms

reaching out, taking hold of her, slowing her down.
Boyce shifted his weight. She felt his motion, looked back, and saw that he had

become a lumbering shadow. They now traveled at a speed at which most people

walked. The truck jumped over another log. Within seconds she would see that it

marked a boundary for all of them, from where they'd been to where they were

going. Celia felt the truck slowing even more. She heard the front and side

windows battered and scraped by branches and bushes she couldn't even see. The

sounds were frightening: scratching that grew louder and louder, as if the

forest were a gigantic black cat tearing at the cab with its claws, and they

were its prey huddling inside. The pickup ground to a halt.
She stomped down on the gas pedal. The engine screamed. The tires spun. The

truck shuddered, and Celia felt her anguish like a whip. Here in the deepest

darkness, where life teemed with tentacles of trunks and vine and branch and

bough, she would die. She ground the ball of her foot into the accelerator, and

her leg froze in this position. She heard a loud clump— one of the tires caught

something solid— and they were propelled forward.
The truck rolled onto what might have been road. Celia saw moonlight again and

thought they had come, finally, to the open night of Bentman. She peered through

the cracked windshield as the truck slammed to a stop. Her chest hit the

steering wheel, and she reached for Davy to check his forward motion. She saved

him from the dash and yanked him back onto the seat. When she looked at the boy,

stumps appeared in the window behind him, thousands of them stretching over an

endless hillside, each one rising as a tombstone in a vast cemetery. The logging

road ended here, in this place of graves and rotting roots and severed tree

trunks that poked the eyes out of the night with a cool gray indifference. This

was what had stopped them, the final remains of a giant clear-cut. They paused

at its very threshold.
The rear window exploded. Glass rained on them, and Celia instinctively covered

Davy's head with her hands. She turned and saw Boyce standing above them in the

bed with a large, heavy-looking object in his hands. He pulled violently on a

rope. His chain saw roared.
Celia shoved Davy down to the seat and worked the column shifter. She popped the

clutch, and the pickup bounced in place before the tires grabbed the earth and

started steaming backward.
Boyce teetered with the weight in his hands. He overcompensated for the reverse

thrust of the truck and stumbled forward. Celia saw the steel edge— blurred by

the screaming chain— lunging toward them. She slid down in the seat and once

more pinned the gas pedal to the floor. Boyce missed his target and struck the

roof with his saw. Brilliant sparks exploded off the metal surface, and the

smell of burning oil tainted the air. He recovered, reared back, and rammed the

long vibrating blade into the cab. He grazed Celia's ear before burying the

steel tip in the dash. The saw shut off automatically.
A breath later the rear of the wildly careering truck crumpled as it struck a

huge pine. The sudden stop slammed Celia and Davy's heads into the back of the

bench seat and hurled Boyce into the thick trunk. She had backed into the

forest.
Celia looked at the dark figure sitting in the bed of the pickup. No glass