_Inside_.
She closed her eyes, willing herself not to be overwhelmed by the fear.
"Get out of my house," she ordered. Her voice was wavering,unforceful . "Get out of here now!"
"You want it," he said, his voice coolly unperturbed. "You know you want it."
"Get the fuck out of here!" she screamed. "I'm calling the police."
His voice dropped an octave to a tone of low insinuating intimacy. "Do you like your mail delivered at the back door?" he asked.
"Help!" she screamed at the top of her lungs. She meant for the scream to be loud and piercing, a cry of terror and rage, but the shout was almost a sob, desperation eating away at its edges, and she abruptly fell silent, unwilling to let the mailman sense her weakness, the stubbornness within her unwilling to concede anything to the monster outside the door.
"Do you like blood?" the mailman asked in that same low intimate tone. He was right next to the crack of the door; she could hear the sound of his dry lips pressing together as he spoke. "Do you like warm, thick, salty blood?"
"Help me!" she cried, and this time it really was a sob. She heard the mailman's low answering chuckle.
And the sound of a zipper being pulled down.
"You know you want it," he repeated.
She held her breath.
There was the quiet slapping sound of skin against skin.
He was playing with himself.
"Billy likes his mail delivered upstairs and at the back door."
That gave her the strength that had been eluding her. White-hot anger coursed through her veins. "You son of a bitch!" she screamed; "Don't you dare touch him!"
From outside the house, from the rear, she heard Doug's voice. "Trish!"
Again: "Trish!" He was running; the amplification of his words came at a pace much faster than it would have had he been moving more slowly. Something had happened. She could hear the fear in his voice, and the burning anger. Something had happened.
But she was just thankful to hear his voice at all. She was saved.
Whatever else had happened, he was here to save her. "In here!" she yelled as loud as she could. "I'm in the bedroom!"
She had not heard the mailman leave, but from the silence on the other side of the door she knew he was gone.
There were heavy running steps on the porch. "Trish!" Doug called frantically. The screen door slammed shut.
"I'm in here!" She fumblingly opened the bedroom door and flew out of the room, sobbing. "I --"
Her sobs stopped when she saw that Doug was carrying Billy into the living room. She stopped breathing. Time stood still. The boy's unmoving body was draped limply over his father's outstretched arms, and for one sick second she was reminded of a scene from _Frankenstein_. She had to will herself into action. She snapped out of her trance and ran forward, putting an ear to her son's chest. "What happened?" she demanded.
"I found him in The Fort." Doug's voice was a shocked emotionless monotone. "The mailman found him first."
Tritia noticed for the first time that Billy was wearing no pants.
Doug placed his son carefully on the couch. Billy's skin was grayish, pale. His lips moved silently in unbroken fever sentences. Tritia could not make out what he was saying.
"When we get to the hospital, I'm calling the police," Doug said in the same flat tone. "And if they won't go after him, I'll kill him myself."
Tritia felt Billy's forehead with a trembling hand. "What happened?"
"I don't know. He was lying in The Fort like this. His pants were off and his underwear was bloody and there was a . . . a wedding dress next to him."
Tritia put a hand to her mouth. "Oh, my God."
Doug felt the hot tears spilling onto his cheeks. His voice cracked. "I
think he was raped."
"We have to get him to the hospital. I'll call the ambulance."
"Fuck the ambulance. There's not enough time."
Tritia cradled her son's head in her arms.
"No," he murmured. "No I won't. No. No. No. No . . ."
"Let's go," she said.
The thoughts that ran through Doug's mind as the Bronco sped over the rough dirt road were fragmented, disjointed: what he should have done, what he could have done, what he did wrong, what he would do over again if given the chance. Billy moaned in the back seat, a muffled delirious sound followed instantly by Tritia 's soft soothing. Doug cursed himself for not living closer to the hospital.
They sped past the trailer park and bumped onto paved road. The shock had left him, had disappeared as quickly as it had come, and had been replaced by a seething bottomless anger that could be assuaged only by revenge. Once Billy was okay, he would go to the police. And if the police refused to do anything, he would go after the mailman himself. There was no way in hell he was going to get away with this.
Willis Community Hospital was a low white brick building located off the main road in the center of town. It was situated between the Presbyterian church and a short row of tract houses, the model homes from one of the town's aborted real-estate developments. Although the hospital was the newest and best-equipped medical facility in the county -- it even had its own heliport for the transporting of serious cases to Phoenix or Flagstaff -- it now seemed to Doug small and seedy and hopelessly out of date. He wished they lived in a metropolitan area with access to state-of-the-art medical technology.
They pulled into the emergency loading area, and Doug ran around the back of the Bronco to open the passenger door. He let Tritia out, and she ran into the hospital to explain the situation while he carefully lifted Billy from the back seat and carried him into the building.
A doctor, an orderly, and two nurses were already wheeling out a gurney, and Doug placed his son gently down on the crinkling sanitary paper that covered the gurney's thin mattress. The doctor introduced himself as Ken Maxwell, and he fired off questions one after another as they headed through the double doors and down the hall, asking a follow-up before Doug or Tritia had time to adequately respond to its predecessor. The pinched-faced woman at the admissions desk tried to insist that someone had to stay and fill out forms, but the doctor snapped at her, telling her to shut up and leave it for later as he followed the orderly pushing the wheeled stretcher through the corridor. The two nurses had already hurried ahead to prepare the examination room.
The gurney was pushed next to a stationary operating table in the center of the room, and the doctor helped the orderly shift Billy onto the raised platform. He listened with a stethoscope to Billy's chest, checked his eyes with a pen-light. His hands expertly prodded and probed the boy's prone form, but Billy noticed nothing. He neither moved nor flinched, and he kept up the low insistent words he had been repeating since Doug found him.
Doug licked his dry lips. The doctor was busy. This would be a good time to call the police. He caught the eye of the orderly. "Is there a phone around here?" he asked. "I have to call the cops and tell them what happened."
"There's one out in the waiting room."
The doctor finished his external examination of Billy's body and said something to the nurse nearest him. He looked up at Doug and Tritia . "I will have to give him a thorough examination," he said. "And I'll have to take some X
rays, perform a few standard tests." The nurse handed him a pair of clear rubber gloves taken from an unopened package. "As you're his parents, you may remain here if you wish, but it may be a little rough to watch." He pulled on the gloves and picked up his penlight. Both nurses carefully rolled Billy over onto his stomach. Doug could see the smeared dirt on his son's buttocks, and he turned away.