The basement is cold-the concrete floor is uncarpeted. She’s resting in the corner with her hands tied behind her and her feet tied ahead of her. There’s a coil of rope wrapped around her body. It holds her against a large drum that she prays isn’t full of human body parts or the acid to dissolve them. Maybe that’s the smell she can’t identify. Tossed over her is a blanket from which she can draw no warmth.
She starts struggling again, twisting her hands and wrists, the rope biting into them. She can feel blood. Are there any rats down here with her? The scent of her blood will have them creeping along, creeping along, their noses twitching and their tiny paws scratching at the concrete. Any second now whiskers are going to brush against her hands, little claws will dig into her legs, small teeth will chew at her fingers, gnawing away skin, tearing through flesh. .
No. There are no rats down here. The house is too modern. The garage too tidy. The only messy thing down here is her. She’s still wearing Landry’s jacket and Landry’s pants, and her underwear is still a little damp, but it did dry out a bit in the car. She squeezes her eyes shut, she forces herself to think of Charlie, to forget about the rats, to forget about Cyris.
She focuses on the ropes. She tries not to focus on what may happen over the next few hours. She keeps twisting her wrists and tries not to think about the blood and the pain as the tiredness and exhaustion start to creep in.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
I wake up in the afternoon into a dark world full of sunshine and without the aid of ghosts. My room is stuffy with stale air and my head is full of bad dreams. I can’t believe I’ve slept so long. There is a second-maybe even two-where everything is as it should be. That honeymoon moment where you wake up and all the bad shit doesn’t exist, and then the honeymoon ends and you remember your wife has been kidnapped, you saw a man shot apart the night before by a shotgun, a cop tried to kill you, and you spent an hour burying a dead woman’s breast while talking to a ghost that isn’t really a ghost, but a manifestation of your guilt.
I climb from beneath the blankets. The cold hot water bottle is on the floor. I have slept on a bed that less than a day ago held a body part. The storm has passed and when I look out my window it’s as though it never happened. I wish I could say the same thing about everything else in my life. I stare out at the warm day and wonder how much longer summer can really last. Maybe we can bypass autumn and go straight to winter. For that matter, maybe we can bypass winter too. And spring.
My body feels okay until I try to walk. When I do, my jaw starts throbbing. I can barely turn my head, my neck is so stiff. Yesterday I looked and felt like I’d been hit by a car. Now it feels like I’ve been hit by a bus that has reversed back to hit me again. Every muscle in my arms, legs, and chest is tender. I turn on the radio and tune in to a news bulletin. Some woman talks about the police investigation, but she says nothing new. The same old guy who gave yesterday’s weather report comes on and says it will be fine all day. I wonder what he means.
I stagger through the house and head for the bathroom. I stand in the shower for twenty minutes trying to loosen up. I’ve been spending way too much time lately showering. Too much time in the woods. Too much time bitching about why life can’t be better, why the Real World must be so Goddamn real. I study myself in the mirror when I get out. My jaw is puffed up and swollen. My neck is dark blue on the left. My eyes are bloodshot. The bump on my forehead isn’t looking any smaller. I study the back of my head with my fingers. Several valleys and mountains there from my journey down Cold River. It’s like following a map to hell.
I’m looking at a man who has been both beaten up and beaten, but enough is enough, and that’s where I am right now. Somewhere deep inside I’ve just pulled a giant lever, not so much an on and off switch as a one-armed bandit and five bars with the word hate have all landed in a row. I hate that I can never be the same Charlie I was a week ago, and that saddens and scares me. I hate Cyris, and I wonder what I’m capable of doing about that. Murder? I close my eyes and pull the giant lever inside my mind. Bells and whistles and alarms all start going off inside of me. Yeah, murder is now within my capabilities. Murder will be as easy as riding a bike. I sense other things are within my ability now too, but I’m too scared to keep pulling on that lever to find out.
The beaten man stares back at me and what seems like pity fills his eyes. The man looks like he isn’t sure what I’m going to do. He looks concerned for me as though he’s worried I might start screaming and take my rage out on the world. He offers no answers, but he looks ready to start laying blame.
“I’m no longer going to be the victim,” I tell him.
He nods. He must think that’s a good thing.
I get dressed. I walk through the house, opening up the rooms and staring out windows as if all the answers lie outside in the fresh air and warm sun. My study is still a mess, broken parts still forming piles around the room. Ideas of what to do next start firing at me from dark corners of my mind. I keep following them, one in particular is starting to take shape. More than one, actually. Each minute that goes by is a minute Jo has to spend with Cyris. Each minute that goes by is another one in which she could be dying.
Beneath my computer desk is a small set of drawers, three in total, all still intact. The bottom is a filing drawer. I pull it open and start flicking through the partitions. It takes some time to find the one for my bank. They’re all out of order. Cyris has gone through them as I figured he had: this is where he got the idea of the forty thousand dollars from.
The whole concept of a revolving mortgage is simple. It’s basically an overdraft where you can draw out the money you’ve paid in. I’ve paid forty thousand dollars off my mortgage and that’s how much I can now access. I bought this house ten years ago. When I met Jo and we began living together, I kept my house and put it up for rent. I had one family living here for five years until they moved out, and another family was here for two years until I asked them to move out because I needed to move in.
I push the statements aside. It doesn’t matter how much money I have. Money can’t buy you happiness. It can’t buy life. And no amount will stop me from killing the son of a bitch.
It is after three o’clock and the sun has peaked in the sky and is starting its long, slow spiral down toward a new day on the other side of the world. Ideally I’d like to be there to see it, there with Jo.
Okay, Action Man, it’s time to act.
I find my wallet and everything inside it is wet. I take out my credit cards and my driver’s license. I use a hand towel to dry them, then leave them on the bench in the sun. I go into the bathroom and do what I can to turn the broken Charlie Feldman into one who will fit back into society. I smile a pained smile then add some cologne and some hair gel. I load my wallet back up and head outside.
The day is even better now that I’m out in it. I think that Landry probably would have liked it. I wonder what he’d be doing right now if he weren’t dead and pinned up against a log in the river, and then I feel a pang of guilt thinking about his last act, which was to save us. It’s possible he wasn’t such a bad guy. Possible under other circumstances I might have liked him. And probable he’d still be alive if I’d taken care of Cyris on Monday morning. Landry would have liked today. I’m sure of it. The bright sun, the warm wind, the essence of calm. Barely any traces of cloud adorn the sky. Long twin white lines float a few thousand feet high above me from a fast-moving jet. It’s a great day, the type you always want to wake up to. At least it would be if I’d stabbed Cyris in the heart and not the stomach.