“Got ya!” Roy shouted triumphantly behind him. “Got ya, damnit!”
Before Colin could throw off the two locks on the door, he felt something cold and wet pouring down his back. He gasped in surprise and turned to Roy.
Lighter fluid!
Roy squirted him again, drenched the front of his thin cotton shirt.
Colin shielded his eyes with his hands. He was just in time.
Flammable liquid splashed over his forehead, over his fingers, nose, and chin.
Roy laughed.
Colin couldn’t breathe. The fumes choked him.
“What a popper!”
Finally the can of lighter fluid was empty. Roy threw it aside, and it clattered along the hardwood floor of the hallway.
Coughing, wheezing, Colin took his hands from his face and tried to see what was happening. The fumes stung his eyes; he closed them again. Tears oozed from beneath his eyelids. Though darkness had always terrified him, it had never been so awful as it was now.
“You stinking bastard,” Roy said. “Now you’ll pay for turning on me. Now you’ll pay. You’re gonna burn.”
Gasping for breath, barely able to get any air at all, temporarily blinded, hysterical, Colin threw himself toward the sound of the other boy’s voice. He collided with Roy, clutched him, and held on.
Roy staggered backward and tried to shake loose, as if he were a cornered fox wrestling free of a determined terrier. He put his hands against Colin’s chin, tried to force his head up and back, then grabbed him by the throat and attempted to strangle him. But they were face to face, and much too close for Roy to get sufficient leverage to be effective.
“Do it now,” Colin wheezed through the acrid fumes that filled his nose and mouth and lungs. “Do it… and we’ll … bum together.”
Roy tried again to throw him off. In the process, he stumbled and fell.
Colin went down with him. He held tightly to Roy; his life depended on it.
Cursing, Roy punched him, pummeled his back, slapped him alongside the head, pulled his hair. He even twisted Colin’s ears until it seemed that they would come out by the roots.
Colin howled in pain and tried to fight back. But the moment he let go of Roy in order to hit him, Roy rolled away. Colin grabbed for him and missed.
Roy scrambled to his feet. He backed up against the wall.
Even through the veil of stinging tears brought on by the fumes, Colin could see that the lighter was still in Roy’s right hand.
Roy snapped the flint wheel with his thumb. It didn’t spark, but it surely would the next time or the time after that.
Frantic, Colin launched himself at the other boy, slammed into him, and knocked the lighter out of his hand. It flew through the open archway, into the living room, where it banged against a piece of furniture.
“You creep!” Roy shoved him out of the way and ran after the lighter.
Having imbibed nothing more than the reeky air around him, Colin staggered drunkenly to the front door. He threw off the deadbolt lock with no difficulty, but then he fumbled with the stubborn security chain for what seemed like hours. Seemed. But of course couldn’t be. Probably only a few seconds. Or maybe even just fractions of a single second. He had no real sense of time. He was spinning. Floating. High on the fumes. He was getting just enough air to keep from passing out but not one whiff more. That’s why he was having so much trouble with the security chain. He was dizzy. The security chain seemed to be evaporating in his fingers, just as the lighter fluid was evaporating from his clothes and hands and face. His ears were ringing. The security chain. Concentrate on the security chain. Second by second, his coordination was deteriorating. Getting sloppy. The damned security chain. Sloppier and sloppier. Sick and burning. Going to bum. Like a torch. The goddamned, fucking security chain! At last, in a burst of concentrated effort, he tore the chain out of its slot and opened the door wide. Expecting flames to explode along his back at any second, he ran from the house, down the walk, across the street, and stopped at the edge of the small park. A wonderfully sweet wind washed over him and began to scour the fumes away. He drew several deep breaths, trying to regain a measure of sobriety.
On the far side of the street, Roy Borden came out of the house. He spotted his prey at once and loped to the end of the walk, but he didn’t cross the roadway. He stood over there, hands on his hips, staring at Colin.
Colin stared back at him. He was still dizzy. He still had difficulty drawing his breath. But he was ready to scream for help and run like hell the instant that Roy stepped off the curb.
Realizing that the game was lost, Roy walked away. In the first block, he looked back half a dozen times. In the second block, he glanced over his shoulder only twice. In the third block, he didn’t look back at all, and then he turned the corner and was gone.
On the way into the house, angry with himself, Colin stopped at the redwood planter and took the key from its place under the ivy. He was amazed that he had been so unthinking, so stupid. He had brought Roy to the house half a dozen times during the past month. Roy had known where the spare key was kept, and Colin had been careless enough to leave it there. From now on, he would carry it with him; and hereafter, he would maintain his defenses with considerably more diligence than he had shown to date.
He was at war.
Nothing less.
He went inside and locked the door.
In the powder room at the end of the hall, he stripped out of his saturated shirt and threw it on the floor. He scrubbed his hands vigorously, using lots of perfumed soap and hot water. Then he washed his face several times. Although he could still detect the fumes, the worst of the stench was gone. His eyes stopped tearing, and he was able to breathe normally once again.
In the kitchen he went directly to the telephone, but he hesitated with his hand on the receiver. He couldn’t call Weezy. The only proof he had that Roy attacked him was the soaked shirt, and that was really no proof at all. Besides, by the time she got home, most of the lighter fluid would have evaporated, leaving no stains. The empty can was on the floor in the hallway, and Roy’s fingerprints probably were all over it. But, of course, only the police had the equipment and expertise to test for prints and to prove whose they were, and the police would never take his story seriously. Weezy would think he had popped pills and hallucinated the whole thing, and he would be in trouble again.
If he explained the situation to his father and asked for help, the old man would call Weezy and demand to know what was happening. Pressed for an explanation, she would tell him a lot of silly stories about pills and pot and all-night drug parties. In spite of the fact that everything she would have to say would be clearly absurd, she would convince Frank because that was the kind of thing he would want to hear. The old man would accuse her of neglecting her duties as a parent. He’d be very self-righteous. He’d use her failure as an excuse to bring in his pack of hungry attorneys. A telephone call to Frank Jacobs would lead inevitably to another custody battle, and that was the last thing Colin wanted.
The only other people to whom he could turn were his grandparents. All four of them were alive. His mother’s folks lived in Sarasota, Florida, in a big white stucco place with lots of windows and shiny terrazzo floors. His father’s people had a small farm in Vermont. Colin hadn’t seen his grandparents in three years, and he’d never been close to any of them. If he called them, they would call Weezy. His relationships with them were not such that they would keep a secret for him. And they certainly wouldn’t come across country to take his side in this little war, not in a million years; that was a pipe dream.