"I've no memory at all of how I left the cottage, maybe through the front door, maybe through a window, but the next thing I knew, I was on the beach in the storm. I went to the edge of the water and washed my hands in the surf. The breakers weren't huge. They seldom are, there, except in a hurricane, and this was only a tropical storm, almost windless, the heavy rain coming straight down. Still, the waves were bigger than usual, and I thought about swimming out into the black water until I found an undertow. I tried to persuade myself that it would be all right, just swimming in the dark until I got tired, told myself I would just be going to God."
Ariel's hands appeared to tighten on the drill.
"But for the first time in my life, I was afraid of the sea-of how the breaking waves sounded like a giant heart, of how the nearby water was as shiny black as a beetle's shell and seemed to curve up, in the near distance, to meet a black sky that didn't shine at all. It was the endlessness and seamlessness of the dark that scared me-the continuity-although that wasn't a word I knew back then. So I stretched out on the beach, flat on my back in the sand, with the rain beating down on me so hard that I couldn't keep my eyes open. Even behind my eyelids, I could see the lightning, a bright ghost of it, and because I was too scared to swim out to God, I waited for God to come to me, blazing bright. But He didn't come, didn't come, and eventually I fell asleep. Shortly after dawn, when I woke, the storm had passed. The sky was red in the east, sapphire in the west, the ocean flat and green. I went inside, and Anne and Woltz were still asleep in his room. My birthday cake was on the kitchen table where it had been the night before. The pink and white icing was soft and beaded with yellowish oil in the heat, and the eight candles were all cockeyed. No one had cut a slice from it, and I didn't touch it either Two days later, my mother pulled up stakes and carted me off to Tupelo, Mississippi, or Santa Fe, or maybe Boston. I don't remember where, exactly, but I was relieved to be leaving-and afraid of who we would settle in with next. Happy only in the traveling, gone from one thing but not yet arrived at the next, the peace of the road or the rails. I could have traveled forever without a destination."
Above them, the house of Edgler Vess remained silent.
A spiky shadow moved across the cellar floor.
Looking up, Chyna saw a busy spider spinning a web between one of the ceiling joists and one of the lighting fixtures.
Maybe she'd have to deal with the Dobermans while handcuffed. Time was running out.
Ariel picked up the power drill.
Chyna opened her mouth to speak a few words of encouragement but then was afraid that she might say the wrong thing and send the girl deeper into her trance.
Instead, she spotted the safety goggles and, making no comment, got up and put them on the girl. Ariel submitted without objection.
Chyna returned to the stool and waited.
A frown surfaced in the placid pool of Ariel's face. It didn't subside again but floated there.
The girl pressed the trigger of the drill experimentally. The motor shrieked, and the bit whirled. She released the trigger and watched the bit spin to a stop.
Chyna realized that she was holding her breath. She let it out, inhaled deeply, and the air was sweeter than before. She adjusted the position of her hands on the workbench to present Ariel with the left cuff.
Behind the goggles, Ariel's eyes slowly shifted from the point of the drill bit to the keyhole. She was definitely looking at things now, but she still appeared detached.
Trust.
Chyna closed her eyes.
As she waited, the silence grew so deep that she began to hear distant imaginary noises, analogue to the phantom lights that play faintly behind closed eyelids: the soft solemn tick of the mantel clock upstairs, the restless movement of vigilant Dobermans in the night outside.
Something pressed against the left manacle.
Chyna opened her eyes.
The bit was in the keyway.
She didn't look up at the girl but closed her eyes again, more tightly this time than previously, to protect them from flying metal shavings. She turned her head to one side.
Ariel bore down on the drill to prevent it from popping out of the keyway, just as Chyna had instructed. The steel manacle pressed hard against Chyna's wrist.
Silence. Stillness. Gathering courage.
Suddenly the drill motor whined. Steel squealed against steel, and the sound was followed by the thin, acrid odor of hot metal. Vibrations in Chyna's wrist bones spread up her arm, exacerbating all the aches and pains in her muscles. A clatter, a hard ping, and the left manacle fell open.
She could have functioned reasonably well with the pair of cuffs dangling from her right hand. Perhaps it didn't make sense to risk injury for the relatively small additional advantage of being free of the manacles altogether. But this wasn't about logic. It wasn't about a rational comparison of risks and advantages. It was about faith.
The bit clicked against the keyway as it was inserted into the right manacle. The drill shrieked, and steel jittered-spun against steel. A spray of tiny shavings spattered across the side of Chyna's face, and the lock cracked.
Ariel released the trigger and lifted the drill away.
With a laugh of relief and delight, Chyna shook off the manacles and raised her hands, gazing at them in wonder. Both of her wrists were abraded-actually raw and seeping in places. But that pain was less severe than many others that afflicted her, and no pain could diminish the exhilaration of being free at last.
As if not sure what to do next, Ariel stood with the drill in both hands.
Chyna took the tool and set it aside on the workbench. "Thank you, honey. That was terrific. You did great, really great, you were perfect."
The girl's arms hung at her sides again, and her delicate pale hands were no longer hooked like claws but were as slack as those of a sleeper.
Chyna slipped the goggles off Ariel's head, and they made eye contact, real contact. Chyna saw the girl who lived behind the lovely face, the true girl inside the safe fortress of the skull, where Edgler Vess could get at her only with tremendous effort if ever.
Then, in an instant, Ariel's gaze traveled from this world to the sanctuary of her Elsewhere.
Chyna said, "Nooooo," because she didn't want to lose the girl whom she had so briefly glimpsed. She put her arms around Ariel and held her tight and said, "Come back, honey. It's okay. Come back to me, talk to me."
But Ariel did not come back. After pulling herself completely into the world of Edgler Vess long enough to drill out the locks on the manacles, she had exhausted her courage.
"Okay, I don't blame you. We're not out of here yet," Chyna said. "But now we only have the dogs to worry about."
Though still living in a far realm, Ariel allowed Chyna to take her hand and lead her to the stairs.
"We can handle a bunch of damn dogs, kid. Better believe it," Chyna said, though she was not sure if she believed it herself.
Free of manacles and shackles, no longer carrying a chair on her back, with a stomach full of coffeecake, and with a gloriously empty bladder, she had nothing to think about except the dogs. Halfway up the stairs toward the laundry room, she remembered something that she had seen earlier; it had been puzzling then, but it was clear now and vitally important.
"Wait. Wait here," she told Ariel, and pressed the girl's limp hand around the railing.
She plunged back down the stairs, went to the metal cabinets, and pulled open the door behind which she had seen the strange pads trailing black leather straps with chrome-plated buckles. She pulled them out, scattering them on the floor around her, until the cabinet was empty.