Ask the Dark (16 page)

After a few minutes he turned into some backroads that go into the woods if you stay on’m long enough, up near Robert E. Lee Park, top’f the avenue. All the while he’s looking forward out the windshield paying no mind to me, and I see he got a smile on his face, all sort’f crimped’n sneaky-looking, and now’n then his cheek jerks almost like he’s talking, like he got a voice running on in his head.

This ain’t the way to go, I says.

It ain’t? he says.

No, it
ain’t,
I say.

I thought it’s pretty early, he said. Let’s drive some-where. We’ve never hung out before. You’ve never even driven with me. It’s time you did.

Where we goin’? I said.

Let’s go to the park, he said. Let’s catch a buzz!

This last he said not like he was offerin’, but was something he hisself was looking forward to.

He keeps going. Don’t turn. Finally we go down a long hill through trees with leaves all wet and drippy and then onto a dirt trail with busted timber at the sides and the road all gone to mud, and from how I sat I could feel the tires digging in but not deep enough to stall us. We went far down the trail, all the way to that watershed place where boys take their girlfriends and there’re all sorts of ghost stories about.

He pulled into a quiet little lane near where you could see the concrete wall of a power plant, and then he stopped the car and turned the wipers off too. Me, I’m looking over at him. He reaches in ’s pocket, takes out a baggy full of weed, and fills a pipe he got out the dashboard ashtray.

I watch him.

I don’t smoke none of that, I say. Never did.

No? he says. Grins at me, then flicks the lighter he got, and the smoke rises from the little metal pipe sticking out his mouth.

Yeah, I got work to do today, I say. If you ain’t gonna take me home I oughta walk. I’m in a hurry. Can I get out?

I reached for the door lever, thinking that when he’d turned off the car it’d opened the locks. But right then he flicked that switch on his armrest and locked my door again, and there weren’t no button to pull for me to open it.

He don’t look at me. But he says, No, you can’t get out.

In one big huff he smokes that bowl, then taps it out in the ashtray, holding the smoke in a long while. Then he lets it go with a bigger huff and looks at me, his eyes all full’f questions.

He said, Why are you following me around, Billy? Why are you spying on me?

I ain’t, I say.

He breathed out, kind’f long and impatient, and looked ahead, and looked back at me, and smiled then, and laughed without laughin’, ’cause the sound it made was all anger.

You know, I asked around about you. I had to find out who you are. The other boys say you do a lot of fucked-up things. They don’t like you much. They say their parents hate you and you can’t go in their houses . . . So first I thought maybe you were just fuckin’ around with me, breaking my stuff and wanting to rob me like you do to everyone else. But that’s not right, is it? I heard what you said to my aunt. You said I do bad things. What bad things, Billy? And you said you found things to prove it. What? You
know
something about me. What do you know?

I’m looking up out the window. Rain’s come again and it’s splashing down like hose water, jiggling the leaves. I’m gettin’ antsy lookin’ at’m, the jiggling leaves, I mean, and I start shoving at the door even though I know I can’t open it and he sees me plain as day.

Let me the fuck out’f this car! I say.

I start yanking at it and real fast he reaches at me and puts a hand on my shoulder’n shoves me. I jump my ass back on my side and stare at the fucker.

I said somewhere I was scared. Think I said that. But it ain’t so. There ain’t no word for what I was.
Scared
is maybe when a rabid dog comes up and barks and you gotta run your ass away, and it chases snapping at your ass and maybe it gets you or maybe it don’t. But that ain’t what I was. I was a thousand times more. Best I can put it was like holding a live wire, the current running through you so hard you can’t move or think and can’t even piss your pants, ’cause it ain’t electricity coming through you but terror itself. You know, like little kids? I was like a little kid who screams when you hurt’m, screams with crazy terror, even though I weren’t screaming just yet. But even a little kid got a brain, but it was like I didn’t have one, and so was more like a cat you got chased in a corner and’r whacking at, and it’s all arched up with something more than terror and the look in its eyes is like it sees right into hell.

That’s how I look. And I gotta say he was surprised. For a second he smiles, saying,
Relax,
Billy! I’m not going to
hurt
you.
Nothing’s
happening.

For a minute I said nothing. Big brown leaves lay flat on the windshield, rain running round’m. Fucker’s getting weird on me, his face all googly and wild, starin’, and gettin’ shaky.

He says, Why are you following me around?

I
ain’t,
I say.

Tell me, Billy.

I ain’t! I yell, looking at’m.

Do you want to get out of this car?

Yes!

Then tell me!

I sat dazed and staring and then I mumbled something ’cause I’m dumb enough to think maybe he really meant what he said. But he don’t hear me, so he says, What’s that, and I yell,
To see what the fuck you was doin
’
!

He says, What
was
I doing?

I say, Nothing.

He goes to reach for his lighter again, but instead he sort’f lurches over. He beats my face against the window and I scream loud. In a second he grabbed me, smacked me on the door. Lay hard on me, face up close.

Listen, you little shit, tell me what you’ve seen. I’ll make you!

After that I can’t get straight anything. I had blood in my eyes and mouth and up my nose and I was crying. He was shaking me real hard, thumping me, and my head was knocking everywhere. I’m crying and yelling and he’s yelling, asking what I seen, what I know about’m. And then he sits up and lights another bowl of that weed and lets me lie there. I try to talk but my voice won’t let me. I was crying like a kid and sort’f begging, and I said,
Let me out and I’ll tell.
Said it over and over.

And when he said he would I told him.

I don’t know if it made sense to’m, and I can’t remember how I went at it ’cause I was blubbery with blood and snot and my face all wet, but I told how I was in the house when he was there, how I found the mittens, saw the boxes, messed his car, everything, even about Tommy Evans and the paper piece, I told it all. I didn’t look at’m and he didn’t move.

His face sort’f emptied. Went plain. Nothing at all. But such rage in his eyes. I ain’t never seen it before. And he’s pulled away from me like what I’m saying has been hitting against him, pressing him back against the door on his side, his arms out and his hands all spidery, grabbing the seats, ’cause me, I’m scaring the shit out’f him, and he don’t know yet what to do.

Then he says, sort’f stutters, his eyes all splintery, Who else knows, Billy?

I cried,
Nobody!

He laughed at that, looked real happy. Said, You haven’t
told
anyone?

I can’t think and I’m crying. I yell,
I told my daddy, I told my daddy!

All this time I’m looking round the car. Trash is everywhere. But I didn’t see no pens or pencils, nothing sharp. There ain’t nothing made of glass, nothing made of metal.

He’s saying I didn’t tell but I yell I did, that I told Daddy to call the cops if I ain’t back soon. I couldn’t really talk ’cause I hurt so bad, and I was confused ’cause I was also trying to look all round the car, down near my legs and feet to see what might be lying there.

I told my daddy! I told my daddy! I yell.

No, you didn’t, Billy, he says.

I’d hit the dashboard when he smacked me around, and the glove compartment fell open. Right inside it in a mess of papers I see a screwdriver.

I was shaking and he saw it. He smiled, leaning at me.

I couldn’t move. Turned my eyes to’m.

How did you find out, Billy?

I yelled.

I yelled as long and loud as I could, right in his face, and he jerked back, looking like I’d shot him. Then I jammed forward, tore at the glove compartment, and ripped through faster than I ever done. Right then like a miracle I had that screwdriver in my hand, and I was leaning over at him, jabbing it at his eyes.

He caught my hand and tore it lose. Then he looked at me his face all horrible and yelled,
YOU LITTLE SHIT!

I felt the first time my head hit the doorjamb, but not all them other times.

Chapter Twenty-Five

I woke up sitting on a chair in a dark room. My head hurt and for a while I couldn’t open my eyes, and I just sat there. I was crying, I could feel that. And my pants was wet. I pissed’m, ain’t sorry to say. Didn’t know where the fuck I was, scuze my language. All I knew was that my arms and legs hurt because I was tied to the chair, and the rope was biting real deep into my wrists and my legs. I could tell my face was all fucked up, not just ’cause it hurt, but I could feel it all swollen, like a dough lump sitting on my face, kind’f stretching it over, know what I mean? And all round my mouth was tape, prob’ly duct tape, wound round maybe four/five times, so I couldn’t make a sound.

I couldn’t just remember all what happened. Last thing that came to me was walking down to Gurpy’s house, but then slowly in my head it all came back, and I could see myself at the table with’r, and Hodsworth showing up, and us in the car, and him talking and hitting. But after that it weren’t so clear like I say, ’cept I knew I’d told him everything.

I got an eye open. What I could see, sort’f half-see ’cause my eye would only go half-open, was my lap and the floor, just a brown, bare wood floor. But there was so much blood on my lap I started to cry again.

How the fuck had this happened to me?

Scuze my language.

I think a minute passed, more like five or ten. Though it hurt a lot I raised my head and got both eyes open. Room was dark. There was a bed there, almost behind me, I could just barely see it. Windows were covered, some sort of wood sheet, nailed up. A closet, and a box of drawers, one drawer open, empty. That was it. Like a house nobody lives in.

Downstairs, I ain’t said this but it’d been happening all along, was noises. Somebody was creeping around. Moving things. I heard the wood creak like it does in empty houses made of wood, and them creaks went everywhere, creaking the ceiling and the walls, too, ’cause there weren’t nothing to muffle it, no carpets. Made me glad I hadn’t moved. ’Cause I thought it was prob’ly the fucker downstairs, Hodsworth, I mean, and I’ll be damned if I wanted him to hear me.

Now I’ll say what happened next. There was sound on the stairs, foot stomps. Then in the hall outside, I figured it was a hall out there, and it was, I seen later.

Then the door banged open.

I let my head drop. I can’t tell you how I felt. You can’t know. But what happened, all that happened, was the fucker came crost the floor, grabbed ahold my hair, the front of it, and jerked my head up. Like I said, my eyes was closed, and no matter that it hurt so much, I did not move a muscle, and didn’t make a sound.

Fucker could’f punched me and I wouldn’t’f moved.

That’s how scared I felt.

But none of that mattered. Fucker thought I was dead, is what it was. Looking back now I know he did.

I thought he’d slit my throat, and for some reason in my head I was saying,
Go ’head, fucker, go ’head, fucker,
over’n over, not ’cause I wanted it, but thinking that made me brave.

But all the fucker did, once he thought I was dead, was drop my head and go back out the door. It shut and I heard him lock it. I still didn’t move or open my eyes, even though I heard him going back down the stairs. But then I heard something good, the front door slam way down there, and then a minute later a car start.

I couldn’t fuckin’ believe it.

He was
gone!

I looked over best I could, and from out the corner of my eye I saw there was a blanket piled on the bed. And right there, ’cause I could see better now, was a boy’s hand sticking out under it.

There was a boy on the goddamn bed!

I didn’t fuckin’ move, and then, though it hurt like hell, I tried to jerk around.

But nothing budged.

I looked round the room again. Looked at everything. I was waiting. In my head I felt cold, don’t know how else to say it. Had to feel cold. Was the only way to get out of there. My eyes went skimming over the door, the closet, the crisscross of shadows on the floorboards. I was looking for something I knew would be there. I was waiting to see it. Waiting for it to come along.

And even though I had that tape crost my mouth, I laughed.

I was done pissing my pants and crying, and I kept looking around and I was thinking. Thinking cold, because I knew what he was gonna do. I was thinking that the motherfucker thinks he’s smart ’cause he tied me to a chair and there ain’t no lights and the window is boarded, but the motherfucker didn’t think of who I am. He didn’t think how a boy who spent half his life busting in houses sure as hell could bust his way out, and thinking that and just about laughing at the fucker, ’cept maybe I was still crying, I was looking around to see what I could use to get the fuck out of there.

And then I seen it.

A nail poking up out the floor, its shadow crossin’ the lines of the floorboards, making a neat little X. Not no regular nail, neither. Big nail, one of them flooring nails, big fuckin’ hunk of steel.

It took me a minute to knock myself over, but with jerking my shoulders I went down with a big crash. And when I did that, the chair broke. Chair back broke off the seat. Fucker hadn’t counted on that! And that made the ropes a little loose on my legs, ’cause they was tied around the chair legs, which had shifted. So what I did then, by sort of churning my ass, was get over to that flooring nail.