The Siege (19 page)

“You’re goddamned crazy, you know that?” she said at one point.

From up ahead, Hocker suddenly stopped whistling and shouted, as loud as he could, “You’re goddamned right I am! I’m crazy as hell!”

VI

“W
ell,” Donna said, letting amusement warble her voice, “that about does it. You’ve seen all the nightlife Dyer, Maine, has to offer.”

She and Dale were sitting in Dale’s car, parked at the top of the hill in Brooklawn Cemetery. It was the best place around town she knew to go “parking.” Right now, there were no other cars there. They joked about how kids these days probably couldn’t be bothered by the discomfort of trying to get a little sex in the back seat of their car. Say good-bye to a great American tradition lost because of small, imported cars!

The cemetery hill overlooked the whole town. Over the cityscape of tombstones, they saw the lighted windows of homes, most of which flickered with the pulsating light of a television. A fat, round moon was rising in the east, casting long shadows from the tombstones. Stars sprinkled the sky, and for the first time in a long time, Dale noticed how the Milky Way actually resembled a streak of milk in the sky.

For a while they played the radio, but every signal was weak. The radio rose and faded with an irritating static, so they turned it off and talked. To cut the chill in the air, Dale kept starting up the car and turning on the heater for short bursts. Donna opened her side window a crack before lighting a cigarette but only smoked half of it before crushing it out. Dale told her she should try to limit her smoking; for the first time in a long time, he felt tempted to start smoking again.

What they talked about ranged over a whole variety of subjects, starting with what they remembered about Larry Cole and then leading around to aspects of their own lives. After a while, both of them found they were revealing pieces of their lives they normally kept concealed.

Dale told Donna about Natalie’s death, and about the turmoil and questions and doubts that nagged at him over the years, and about how he had finally got over his grief. When Donna asked him point-blank if he had started dating yet, he told her no. She fell silent, finding it unnecessary to point out that his grieving wouldn’t truly be over until he started dating again. He didn’t tell her that being with her for—what? Only a couple of hours now?—made him think for the first time that he could once again feel something for someone else. It unnerved him that he felt instantly and intensely drawn to her. It also felt good.

Donna, for her part, told Dale all about Brad Phillips, and how he dumped her to go back to his wife. She had felt such anger, betrayal, and hatred then. And as she told him about the parties and the yacht cruises and the weekends in fancy hotels and restaurants, it all for the first time actually started to sound shallow. She began to see herself in a way she didn’t like: as a jaded and superficial bitch. When she said so out loud, Dale surprised them both by cupping her chin with his hands and kissing her firmly on the mouth.

That kiss led to what they later jokingly referred to as some “heavy petting,” and if it hadn’t been for the cramped quarters of the car and the chill on the grass, they would have “gone all the way!” They had to settle for hugging and kissing, and the desperate grasping of two people whose lives seemed to be swirling in the back-eddies of a river totally out of their control.

At one point, locked in a deep kiss, Donna suddenly jerked away, and her eyes widened with fear. “What was that?” she said as she sat up and looked around.

“What was what?”

“I heard something,” she said. Her voice edged up the register. “A thump sound.”

Dale pulled back and casually glanced out his side window. “I think I might’ve kicked the floor. God!” He laughed and straightened up in his seat. “You’re acting like a nervous high school girl, afraid the cops or your parents are going to catch you necking.”

Donna looked at him but didn’t laugh. Her face was grim as she peered out the side window over the moonlit landscape. “No, it sounded like something hit the side of the car.”

“Well, I’m not about to get out and check,” Dale said. He put a false nervous edge to his voice and widened his eyes as he looked out over the cemetery. “I don’t want to meet up with The Hook!” He made a sudden, lunging grab at Donna, who held him back at arm’s length.

“Maybe we’d better leave,” Donna said, still not laughing.

“Before we go too far? Is that what you’re afraid of?” Dale said, leering at her. He knew his humor wasn’t getting to her, so he started up the car and backed around. He had just shifted into forward when both of them heard and felt a solid thump on the side of the car. The shock absorbers gave a high-pitched squeak, but that was soon lost beneath Donna’s shrill scream.

“What the…?” Dale muttered, looking around quickly. He reached past Donna and snapped down her door lock, then his own. He stepped on the brakes so the red taillights would illuminate whatever was behind them. “Maybe I bumped one of the gravestones, backing up,” he said. But he knew it wasn’t a gravestone. The bump on the side of the car had sounded soft, as though he had hit a person. The impact had that solid, yet yielding sound. It was the same sound he remembered when, last spring, he had hit a skunk in the middle of the road.

“I don’t see anything,” he said, searching the red-lit grass. Looking ahead, at the far reach of the headlights, he could see a mound of fresh-dug dirt, and he realized that was where the cemetery workers had excavated Larry’s grave. A cold chill splashed his stomach.

“Let’s get going,” Donna said, her voice a nervous warble.

Dale took his foot off the brake, but then, as the car started moving forward, they heard the sound again. It was a solid
thwonk
, and this time it definitely came from under the car.

“Maybe I’ve got a flat tire,” Dale said. He was about to shift the car into park when Donna screamed and practically jumped into his lap, between him and the steering wheel. Dale’s eyes widened when he saw, looming out of the darkness and into the headlights, the slouching figure of a man.

“I didn’t hit him, did I?” Dale shouted.

Donna ignored him. She was too busy shaking his arm, trying to get him to drive away.

The man looked at them, staring straight into the harsh light. His figure was sharply lit against the black backdrop of the night. The light bleached his face to a snowy white, as his eyes stared wide open. What struck Dale as really weird were the man’s pupils. Even in the full force of the high beams, they were almost fully dilated, twin bullet holes of black, glaring at them. The man’s thin, pale lips were moving, but nothing intelligible came out, only a muffled garble as he raised his arms and lunged forward at the car.

“Drive!
Drive!
” Donna shouted as the man made a grab for the car. He stumbled and fell forward, glancing off the side of the car. “He isn’t hurt!” Donna cried. “Come on! Let’s get the hell out of here!”

Dale shook her away from him, gripped the steering wheel tightly, and turned hard to one side; then he stomped the accelerator. The tires screeched, kicking up dirt and grass that splattered against the underside of the car as it fishtailed left and right, then straightened out. The brightly illuminated man, struggling to stand upright, disappeared off to the side, winking out in the darkness as suddenly as he had appeared.

Glancing in the rear view mirror for just an instant, Dale’s breath caught in his throat. In the glow of his taillights, he could saw a dark, bulky shape lying in the middle of the road.

It was another person!
his mind screamed. Had there been someone else behind them? He pushed that thought aside and concentrated on his driving.

It wasn’t a person back there, lying in the road!
he told himself.
It couldn’t have been!
He hit one of the trashcans that line the cemetery road, or maybe backed over a large floral display that had been left on a grave.
It couldn’t have been another person!

Dale’s foot barely tapped on the brake pedal as he pulled out of the cemetery and onto Main Street. His pulse was hammering so hard in his ears, his vision bounced back and forth with each beat. He realized he was holding his breath, and as he slowed down, he let it out with a long, whistling sigh.

“Who in the name of Christ was that?” he said, glancing over at Donna, who sat huddled by her door with one hand covering her mouth. Her eyes were two wide orbs, glistening in the light from the dashboard.

Shaking her head abruptly, she looked at Dale, her mouth struggling to form words. “I have no idea,” she said. Her voice was low and gravelly.

“Well, we must’ve disturbed someone. Maybe it was someone sleeping out there in the cemetery,” Dale said, as his pulse gradually dropped and he regained his self-control. “Probably a drunk or something,” he added lamely.

“I don’t know,” Donna said, her voice still shaking. “I didn’t recognize him. But it all happened so fast.”

Dale nodded. “Yeah, well, I guess that’ll teach us to go parking in the cemetery.” He decided it best not to mention to her what he had seen in the rear view mirror. It couldn’t have been a person!

Donna forced a little laugh and said, “You bet. I’m gonna be a good girl from now on!” This was obviously the climax to the night, and any thoughts of inviting Donna back to Mrs. Appleby’s with him had dried up and blown away. They said very little as he drove back to the parking lot behind Kellerman’s where Donna had left her car.

“Do you want me to follow you back to your sister’s?” Dale asked. “You know, just to make sure you get home okay?”

Donna had the car door open, one foot already out on the asphalt. She still felt a tingling all over and, quite honestly, wouldn’t have minded not only having Dale follow her back, but also having him slide in between the old sheets with her, too. She knew he’d have a great time explaining that to Angie in the morning!

“I’ll be all right,” she said. She leaned across the seat and planted a warm kiss on his lips. “Don’t worry.”

Dale smiled tightly and nodded. “Yeah, well—umm, give me a call in the morning, all right?”

“Sure,” Donna said.

“Oh, and another thing,” Dale said. “You said you were thinking about going to go to Larry’s funeral. Are you?”

“Sure,” Donna said. “We can talk tomorrow and make plans.”

“I was wondering if after the funeral, you might do me a favor.”

“That depends,” Donna said, smiling slightly.

Dale was glad to see her sense of humor return after the scare in the cemetery, but what he had to ask made him feel somber. “I was wondering if you’d come with me out to the accident site out at Casey’s Curve.”

At first, Donna didn’t say anything as her eyes flickered back and forth, looking out at the parking lot illuminated by Dale’s headlights. She had to fight hard to control the flood of panic that rose in her whenever she recalled that man’s face, looming at them out of the darkness. She shivered and hugged her shoulders tightly. “It’s not exactly my idea of a fun time, you know,” she said, her voice lowered almost to a growl.

“I know, I know,” Dale said, “but I just—I feel as though I owe it to Larry to take a look around. Somebody’s got to do at least that much for him.”

Donna’s lips tightened into a hard line, but she slowly nodded her head. “Yeah. Okay, I guess. Tell you what. I’ll give you a buzz in the morning.”

“‘Night,” Dale said, as Donna got out and shut the car door. He waited, his car idling, while she got her car started. As she drove away, they gave each other quick little beeps on their horns. Feeling an odd mixture of elation and sadness, he drove back to Mrs. Appleby’s house, wondering how and why, when he was in this town for the funeral of his closest friend, he had found someone who had made him feel deep stirrings that he hadn’t felt since Natalie died. They were feelings he had thought he would never feel again.

Funny
, he thought,
how life can be like that
.

VII

I
t surprised Tasha how fast the woods got completely dark. Not even the light of the nearly full moon was enough to light up her way. Even Hocker’s whistling up ahead began to get lost to her sense of direction, and at times, in a fit of near panic, she had the sensation that the shrill notes were coming from behind her, from the left, from the right from all around her! The bouncing of her backpack in the small of her back didn’t help her attitude any, either, but she struggled ahead through the undergrowth, hoping it would come to an end soon.

Suddenly, Hocker stopped in his tracks. Tasha didn’t know this until she walked smack into him, almost knocking him over.

“For Christ’s sake!” she wailed after regaining her balance. “Will you at least give me a warning?”

“Sorry,” Hocker said. The unusually subdued tone of his voice tipped Tasha off that something was wrong.

“Wha… what’s the matter?” she whispered, groping in the dark until she found his arm and squeezed it tightly.

“Shit!” Hocker said, and she could hear him stomp his foot heavily on the ground. “Goddamn!”

“Don’t tell me you’re lost,” Tasha said, feeling tension winding up in her gut.