The Binding (29 page)

I didn’t do this
, he said to himself.
I’m just a guilt-feeling creature who takes too much to heart.
He checked his hands. No blood. Of course not.

He took a few spasmodic breaths. Then he looked up in won
der, again studying the body.

Oh Lord
, he thought.
Not Elizabeth.

He thought of calling 911. Or building security. Or running out to the street and flagging down a cop. Anything to settle his nerves. He took a step, pulling the brass knob behind him. Suddenly, he stopped, hand still on the cool metal. He listened into the room. Nothing stirred. He could hear the industrial ventilating system kick in and begin to suck the air out of the room, but no footsteps of a killer.

Jimmy looked at Elizabeth again. His gaze roamed over her body. His eyes dropped to the desktop, and suddenly he saw a wink of light near her elbow. He stepped closer. It was a scalpel, one from the examining table’s stock, sitting on the desk right next to her elbow. The murder weapon. The tip still had a smear of blood on it, just thickening now as the cool air brought its temperature down.

His eyes went back to Lizzie, to her neck. Then they drifted down to her bra.

She’s gone
, he thought.
Soon I’ll never see her again.
He drew his lips tight against his teeth.

I can get the cops later
, he thought.
There’s just a few minutes now for us.
He took two more steps and was next to the body. He would just take a look at her, up close.

He breathed out and in again. His hand, seemingly of its own accord, reached out and cupped her left breast.

Jimmy made a sound in his throat and walked back to the door, pushed it shut, then moved quickly to the far side of the desk. As he approached, his eyes never left the dead woman’s face, which rotated in the golden light of the lamp as he went around. He stood where she’d been sitting. Her chair was tipped back on the floor a few feet from the edge of the desk.

Jimmy looked down at Elizabeth. She was wearing a knee-length black skirt. It was hiked up slightly from the struggle she’d
been in before she died. Little specks of blood dotted her flesh-colored panty hose.

Jimmy studied her midsection just between the round little breasts. Her bra had a clasp on the front. Above it, the red of her savaged neck gleamed in the overhead lamp.

Now he bent to her.

“Elizabeth?” he said quietly.

He reached his right hand up and brushed her hair back. It moved in a wave as he pushed his index finger through it. As he did, he had the oddest impression. It looked to him for just a second like the woman’s right eyelid had twitched the tiniest bit.

Postdeath something or other, they called it. Dead bodies will twitch and burp for hours after death, he knew.

“I wonder who did it,” he said, feeling strange talking to a corpse but quickly getting over it.

He glanced around the room again, the rows of metal shelving full of manila files, the water cooler to the right, the door that led to the lockers, then back down to Lizzie. He could still smell a trace of flowery scent on the air.

He reached down to the desk to steady himself and accidentally touched Lizzie’s left hand. Smiling, he took the hand and pulled her lank arm up and placed it over her chest, where it flopped and landed with a soft thump. Jimmy took a deep breath.

He bent over her, studying her eyelids. What color were her eyes?

“Blue,” he said. “Your eyes were blue.”

He laughed softly to himself.

Suddenly, Jimmy grew still. He cocked his ear away from Lizzie’s body.

He swore someone had just whispered something in the
darkness. A scratchy, thin voice. Was it his imagination, or was the sound still hanging in the dark room? He felt a cold terror grip his stomach.

It was something
like . . .

Let him . . .

It couldn’t be. Nothing moved in the room. The aisles between the metal shelves were deep in shadow, but nothing stirred there. The air suddenly felt heavy, tense with expectation. Fear ran in Jimmy’s veins like a surge of electricity.

“Mind is playing tricks on me,” he said, laughing awkwardly.

He leaned down to give Lizzie a little kiss. He stopped just before touching her pale lips.

“You’d like that?” he whispered. “Would you like me to kiss you?”

Jimmy swayed a little over the recumbent corpse.

Then the whisper again.

. . . join us.

Suddenly he felt something grip the side of his shirt.

“Wh-what the he—”

He reared back. A voice boomed in the corner.

LET HIM
JOIN
US.

Elizabeth Dyer’s eyelids opened lazily on two black orbs. Her right hand was gripping his shirt and pulling him into a tight embrace.

“God—!” he cried.

His heart was beating, and a shriek—his own—filled Jimmy’s ears as he pulled away from the body that was rising up off the desk, but Elizabeth’s grip was horribly strong. Panic closed his throat as he heard the clatter of her nails on the wood—the other hand, he knew, grasping for the scalpel. The blade winked as she brought it up, and he bellowed in terror, her face looming up to his, the mouth opening wide as if for a ravishing kiss.

Her eyes. Oh God, her eyes were so dark.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

C
harlie’s eyes fluttered open. The room was dark. Something had woken him up; he listened for its echo. He hadn’t heard the sound so much as he’d felt it through the air in his mouth, like the bubble there was a little container of quiet that had been . . . upset. Something had made the air in his mouth shake.

He listened. The faucet in the kitchen was dripping.
Drip, drop, drip . . .

There, he heard it now. A dull bang that seemed to shiver up the walls of the house and shake them ever so slightly.

His eyes wide, Charlie reached his hand out in the dark to the wall by his bed. The paint was cool. The wall wasn’t moving. Was the noise real? Was someone really trying to knock the house down?

Silence. The hiss of the heat from the vent. Charlie stared at the rug, and suddenly it seemed like a million miles away and scary and the cold light on it was like the light on the moon.

Toom.
Charlie’s hand came away from the wall as if it had been burned.

He’d felt it. Something was in the house.

Run to Daddy’s room? It was so far away. The light shining on the rug was cold and unforgiving. Maybe the thing shaking the house would snatch him before he made it.

He put a bare foot out of his bed and hung it there. The toes tingled, but nothing grabbed them or bit him. After three seconds, it seemed the right amount of time for something to seize
the toes if it was there, and Charlie dashed out of the bed, feet making thumping noises on the floor as he ran for his father’s room.

Dark, snow through window, lamps and pictures, he saw them all in the corners of his eyes, but it was the gap of his father’s door that he aimed at. Once you’re in there . . .

He was through.

. . . you’re safe.

He looked at Daddy’s bed, and his throat closed with terror.

The room felt cold. The blankets on the bed were all pulled up and twisted, but his daddy was big and he wasn’t in that bed.

Toom.
A little louder. Charlie felt it in the skin of his bare feet on the wooden floor. The tiniest shiver.

It was coming from the basement.

Charlie hugged himself. He didn’t want to go to the basement. He
couldn’t
go. But now the thought:
What if the something has my daddy down there? What if it’s shaking him? What if he needs help?

Charlie scooted to the door and peeked around it down the long hallway. The basement door was a dark rectangle at the end of the hall. The sound came again, and he could feel it move through the air.
Too-oom.
The tiniest bit louder.

Charlie walked toward the basement door.

Dadddyyy!!!
he wanted to scream as he ran for the door. He tore it open but couldn’t move another inch.
What if it’s chopping off Daddy’s head? What if it’s stomping his face and making it bloody?

The dark rectangle of the doorway seemed to shiver with the sound. It was definitely down there. Was Daddy down there with it? Did it have his daddy?

He closed his eyes, then opened them. Who could he run for? The Kittingers? No, he didn’t want to go outside. He could
call his mommy, but she was a thousand miles away.

Charlie took a step toward the stairs and touched the doorway. He leaned into the darkness. There was no light down here, just the wooden stairs going down into blackness and the glow from the old heater thing in the corner, which threw an orange glow over the edges of things.

TOOOOM.
A big one. Charlie stepped on the first stair and bent over, trying to listen for his father.

One step, two. Charlie was shaking. He didn’t want to hear the noise again. But he knew it was coming and then it shivered the air again. The sound moved through him and he thought he would drop to the floor. It was coming from somewhere behind the stairs. Back where he couldn’t see.

What was back there? Daddy’s set of weights. An old exercise bike. And the laundry room.

Three steps. Four. There were only two left, then the cold concrete floor.

“Daddy?” he said to himself. “Who has you?”

The floor sent a shock of cold up his feet. His mouth was open now. He started to turn.

TOOOOOOMMMMM.

He came around the stairs slowly. The orange glow lit up the arms of the weight bench, but the bench was empty. No one was killing his daddy with one of the barbells. The sound was coming from the door to the laundry room.

A door Charlie had never thought of before, but now his eyes strained in the darkness toward it, hard to pick out on the blank wall.

TOOOMMM.
Oh God, it was loud. The noise made the lock rattle. There was something in the room. Trying to get out.

Charlie turned. If he could dash back up the stairs, he could run to Mrs. Finlay’s house three doors down in a minute. But she was old and weak. He couldn’t leave Daddy alone.

Charlie began to walk past the weight bench. His foot knocked against something metal, and his lips curled over his teeth in a silent scream. He paused for a second, his eyebrows arched in pain.

Slowly, Charlie reached out a hand, and it shook as he approached the door knob to the laundry room. It was gold and black. He ducked his head down and crouched over, in case the door opened and something jumped out.

He touched the door knob.

TOOOOOOOMMMMMM.
The door shook and rattled in his hand.

Charlie pulled as far away from the door as he could, turned his face away and put his hand on the knob. The door squealed as it came open. He was shaking, but he had to turn and look. Had to help . . .

Charlie swiveled his head, his mouth open in horror.

Standing in the doorway was his father. His forehead was bleeding, and his eyes, oh, they were dead.

His daddy was all alone in the room. There was no monster. Daddy was banging his head on the door. But why?

There was nothing in his eyes. He looked at Charlie.

Charlie was too scared to run to him—his father’s face was like a mask, it didn’t move, just the eye. Charlie reached his fingers out for his father’s hand. He would lead his daddy upstairs, and they would lie in his bed and get warm.

His father’s hand reached out and Charlie felt himself begin to cry. His father had been stuck in the room and now Charlie had saved him. He just wanted to be back in bed with Daddy holding him.

But the hand didn’t reach for his hair, to rub it the way Daddy always did. It reached to the left and it grabbed the handle of the
door, and with his head wobbling with terror, Charlie watched as his daddy, his eyes staring at the opposite wall, pulled the door of the laundry room shut, leaving Charlie outside.

TOOOM.

Charlie stared at the golden door knob as it shook in the door. His mouth worked, but only a thin whine of terror came out.

CHAPTER FORTY

N
at walked down the stairs of the Prescott house and got into the Saab. His face was grim and drawn. He drove through the Shan over to State Street and parked his car in front of the squat granite building off the old town square that Becca had stared at yesterday with such hatred in her eyes. He paid two dollars on the muni-meter for an hour’s parking before he realized it was Sunday night and he’d just wasted his money.

He’d been inside this granite building a half dozen—no, a full dozen times—all during his school years. He’d tramped to the Northam Museum with his parents every Fourth of July weekend for the parties given to celebrate the double holiday that all Northam people took pride in. He could practically hear the speech of the museum’s curator, Mr. Atkins, a cynical plain speaker whose only joy in life was the history of the small city. Atkins spoke before they served the punch and the chocolate chip cookies on the waxy red, white, and blue paper plates.
This city was founded the same year as our country, 1776, and we are here to celebrate the establishment not only of our national home but of our little community of Northam, too.
(Small applause.) Then some patriotic songs, ice cream, and, when the sun had sunk below the western hills, fireworks.

When he was twelve, Nat had felt up Joanna Christien in the backyard during one of those fireworks shows, and she’d pressed her hand on his swollen crotch with promises of more to come, and that was his best memory of July Fourth at the Northam Museum.

He hadn’t been inside for twenty years. It wasn’t the kind of
place you brought visiting friends to unless they were amateur history buffs, and Nat didn’t know any of those. Atkins was too hard-core for the casual visitor.

As he walked up the stone steps, he performed a little mental health self-check.
Are you, Nat Thayer, experiencing delusions? No. Paranoid much? No more than usual. Sleeping well? Not really, but that’s not new.