IN THE DARK, page 20
Uh-oh.
Her eyes sprang open. She flipped onto her back, glimpsed a stained and tattered ceiling, then snapped her head from side to side.
She was lying in the coffin.
“Oh,” she murmured.
Shoving at its padded bottom, she raised herself to her elbows. She muttered, “Oh, my God,” at the sight of her negligee. She couldn’t believe she was wearing such a thing. It had no more substance than mosquito netting. And it was twisted crooked, leaving her bare below the waist.
Through the transparent red material, Jane watched her skin darken to a deep shade of scarlet as she remembered that Brace had seen her dressed this way.
Worse. I even took it off.
The memories of last night began pouring into her. Though the morning air felt cool, she soon was dripping with sweat. Bad enough that Brace had found, caught her in the coffin with nothing on except this poor excuse for a nightgown. But the horrid things she’d said to him! How could she have said such things? And acted that way?
I even hit him!
What was I, nuts?
None of it would’ve happened, she told herself, if Brace had stayed away. It was really all his fault. He followed me, snuck up on me, looked at me. Shone that damn floodlight on me and saw everything, the dirty…
Saw all my wounds, too. And saw me before I could get back into decent shape.
Well, that’s the last he’ll ever see of me.
Pushing at the bottom of the coffin, she sat the rest of the way up. She looked around the room to make sure she had no visitors.
Nobody here.
Except maybe for Mog at a peephole or something—who knows with him?
The place was a mess. It looked a lot worse in daylight.
“What doesn’t?” she muttered, casting a glance at her awful nightie and all it exposed of her scratches and bruises and places that clothing was normally meant to hide.
He never should’ve seen me in this, she thought.
I’m the one who put it on.
But he wasn’t supposed to show up, damn him!
Forget it, she told herself. Doesn’t matter. It’s all over.
Leaning forward, she reached to the timer between her feet and picked it up. It was silent, the pointer on the zero.
Did I forget to set the thing? Jane wondered.
No. She could remember thinking, Here we go again, while she’d turned the dial to the thirty.
I slept through the bell, that’s all. Hardly surprising.
It had been after four in the morning by the time she’d set the timer for her second try. Four thirteen, to be exact; she could remember glancing at her wristwatch.
After being escorted home by Brace, she’d watched him drive away. Then she’d turned off the lights and waited just in case he was only pretending to leave.
Soon, she’d decided it was pointless to wait any longer. Even if Brace was keeping an eye on her, he probably wouldn’t dare confront her again.
So she’d hurried out to her car and returned to the house, parked behind it like before, and rushed upstairs.
This time, there’d been no hesitation.
She’d hopped into the coffin, stripped, slipped into the negligee, sat down on the bottom of the coffin, set the timer for thirty minutes, then stretched out and shut her eyes.
She hadn’t fallen asleep immediately.
She could remember thinking, I might be a lot of things, Brace old pal, but I’m no quitter.
And she was pretty sure that, just before falling asleep, she had called into the silence of the dark house, “Hey, Mog, I’m back!”
Jane put the timer down. She looked at her wristwatch.
Nine thirty-five.
Fine. No problem. Plenty of time to drive home and shower and grab a bite to eat before going to work.
Now if I can find the envelope…
Jane got to her feet. Standing on the smooth satin pad, she stretched and moaned. Then she took off the negligee. She rolled it into a small bundle, planning to take it home with her, certain that Mog meant for her to keep it.
She knew that Mog might be peering at her. She supposed it didn’t matter, though.
Squatting, she set down the negligee. She reached under the pillow, found her pistol and put it on top of the gown. It mashed the bundle almost flat. Her flashlight was beside the pillow. She slid it closer to the other things.
Unable to spot her switchblade knife, she remembered that she’d left it in the pocket of her cords.
That’s everything, she thought, and stood up.
Again, she yawned and stretched. She felt awfully good.
Muscles a little sore, but taut. The softness of the breeze.
I ought to be feeling miserable, she thought. All that with Brace… But I’m okay. I feel better than okay.
Maybe because I had the guts to come back. And it’s a wonderful morning. And I’m free. And I’m about to lay my mitts on gobs of money.
Hands on hips, Jane turned slowly, scanning the room for the envelope.
“I came through for you, Mog,” she said. “I hope you held up your end of the deal.”
A few moments later, she said, “You’re gonna make me search for it, huh?”
Kneeling, she reached over the side of the coffin. She gathered the piled clothes between her arms, lifted them, turned, and brought them in with her. As she lowered them, they brushed against her thighs.
And something scratched her skin.
For an instant, she wondered if her knife had once again sprung open on its own.
She placed the bundle of clothes in front of her knees, glimpsed the thin pale mark on one leg, then reached down and found a stiff point of something between her folded corduroy pants and her shirt.
Not the tip of her knife, at all.
The sharp corner of an envelope.
“All right!”
She slipped the envelope out. And there was her handwritten name.
This envelope felt twice as thick as the last one.
Jane tore it open and pulled out a thick stack of bills wrapped in a single sheet of lined paper.
She ignored the note.
All the bills were hundreds. She counted them.
Sixty-four!
Jane let out a whoop of joy. Which sounded horribly loud, and made her cringe.
She glanced at the two windows overlooking the graveyard. The panes of both were shattered, of course.
Her delighted shout could’ve carried down to the cemetery.
What if a grounds keeper had heard it? Or grave diggers?
What if a graveside funeral service is going on down there and everyone heard it?
Fast as she could, she slipped into her shoes. She leaped from the coffin and ran for the nearest window. Wary of being spotted, she hunkered down at the last moment. Then she straightened up, raising her head above the sill.
Nobody seemed to be down there.
But she wanted to make sure, so she stayed at the window and kept on looking. She could almost feel someone down there.
Maybe the creep who threw the dog…
It’s probably just my imagination, she told herself. From this height, she could see the entire cemetery. The distant parking lot was empty. Nobody was mowing the grass, or tending to flowers, or visiting the grave of a loved one. Nobody was there at all, unless they were hidden from view behind a monument or vault or bush or tree.
Or hiding at the bottom of that hole way over there by the corner of the fence.
Not a hole, Jane thought, a grave. An open grave. Which must mean somebody’s getting buried today.
I’ve gotta haul my butt outa here!
She hurried back to the coffin. She didn’t step in, this time, but stood beside it and ducked down to pick up her clothes. When she was dressed, she stuffed the pockets of her corduroys with the pistol, flashlight, and thick wad of cash.
Six thousand, four hundred bucks, she thought. Incredible.
Next time, it’ll be twelve thousand, eight hundred.
God knows what he’ll make me do for that kind of money.
Reaching into the coffin, she picked up the note and the empty envelope. She had already decided not to read Mog’s message until she got home.
Whatever it might say, she wasn’t ready for it.
She slipped the note and envelope into a pocket of her shirt.
Then she reached into the coffin and took out the negligee.
A souvenir of my most humiliating experience, she thought.
A souvenir of the night I lost Brace.
She was halfway down the stairs when she suddenly unfurled the garment and, making whimpery noises and grunts, tore it to shreds.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Dearest Jane,
You’re far better off without the insufferable lout. Who needs him? Am I right?
We have each other.
We have the Game.
Who could ask for anything more?
I will be in touch. In the meantime, rest and heal.
Love,
MOG
P.S. I kissed you as you slept, my sweet,
In the casket in my lair.
I kissed you here, I kissed you there—
I kissed you almost everywhere.
She had planned to save the note and read it after her bath. Pulling out the envelope while emptying her pockets in the bedroom, however, she had changed her mind.
Stunned, she read it twice.
She thought, I can’t handle this. Huh-uh. No way.
She dropped the note and it drifted to the floor.
Then she took a bath. Sprawled in the hot water, she rubbed herself thoroughly with a bar of soap.
Did he really do it? she wondered. Kiss me? Here and there and almost everywhere? Maybe he’s just kidding about that. But he sure had the opportunity. He did sneak over to the coffin while I was asleep. That’s how the envelope got there. So maybe he really kissed me. Here and there and almost everywhere. While I was zoned, dead to the world.
What else did he do to me!
Probably nothing else, or he would’ve bragged about that, too.
But it sickened her to think that a stranger’s mouth had been on her while she slept.
You sure Mog counts as a stranger? she wondered. We’ve never met, but we’ve sure been in touch…
He’s been in touch with me.
And touched me, unless he’s kidding about that.
So we aren’t exactly strangers.
Sure. Right. He’s been kissing me all over the place and I don’t even know what he looks like. I don’t know if he’s handsome or repulsive. For all I know, he might be a skulking horror with rotten teeth and runny sores.
And even if he’s the best-looking, most wonderful specimen of man to ever stride the Earth, he’s got no business messing with someone who’s asleep.
Sick. Perverted.
Perverted? Give me a break, bucko! This is the guy who set a Rottweiler on you and made you stretch out damn near naked in a coffin that looked a hell of a lot like a USED coffin and it’s coming as some sort of big surprise to you that he might be a bit of a pervert? Get real. If you’re very lucky, maybe he did nothing worse than stick his tongue in you.
And I asked for it, she told herself. What does that say about me?
Says I’m either stupid or crazy.
Brace was right—I didn’t know where to draw the line. Which still didn’t give him any right to interfere.
“You really blew it,” she muttered.
Done with her bath, Jane considered phoning Don to tell him she was too sick to make it in for work today. This being Saturday, with the library closed on Sunday and Monday, she would be giving herself a three-day weekend.
Three whole days for doing only what she wanted.
She wanted only to go to bed and stay there.
Wanted to sleep and forget about everything that had happened with Brace and with the dog and with the bums by the creek—sleep and stop worrying that the Game might be over.
The note had said, “I’ll be in touch.” Sounded a lot like a brush-off. Maybe Mog ran out of money, Jane thought. Or maybe he got tired of playing… or tired of me.
Or the Game simply ended—ran its course, whatever that might’ve been, and came to its natural conclusion.
If it’s over, why didn’t he just say so?
Who knows?
It probably isn’t over. “We have each other. We have the Game. Who could ask for anything more?” That doesn’t sound like a guy calling the Game off.
This is just an intermission.
He wants to give me a night or two off, that’s all.
Knows I’ve been through a lot. Knows I need to rest and heal.
I can use it, she thought. I can really use it.
Since Mog apparently wouldn’t be sending her on a mission tonight, Jane decided against calling in sick. She would go to work as usual, then come straight home after closing the library, and hit the sack, and not have to be back at work until noon on Tuesday.
She still had time for a meal before getting dressed and heading for work, so she went into the kitchen. She planned to make coffee, bacon and eggs, and toast.
She made only the coffee and two slices of toast.
The rest seemed like too much effort.
After buttering her toast, she didn’t even feel up to bothering with jelly.
Without jelly, the crusts were too dry. She ate only the centers of her toast. They were soggy with butter and tasted very good.
Jane’s day at the Donnerville Public Library was marked by all that didn’t happen.
She didn’t pull out of the daze that made her feel dull in the head and body.
A surprise envelope from Mog didn’t appear.
She didn’t get any sleep, even though she tried during her lunch hour, shutting the office door and closing the blinds and putting her head down on her desk.
Brace didn’t phone her.
She didn’t eat.
Brace didn’t show up.
She didn’t phone him.
She didn’t ask Don to keep her company when it came time to go upstairs and close the stacks.
All alone in the gloom of the stacks, she didn’t feel afraid.
On her way home from work, Jane stopped at the drive-up window of the Jack in the Box and ordered three tacos.
When she got home, Brace wasn’t there.
She searched her house, looking for an envelope from Mog.
She changed into her robe, took a beer out of the refrigerator, and sat down on the living room sofa to watch TV and eat her tacos.
She could only eat one taco. It seemed dry and tasteless, and she had trouble swallowing it at all.
She doubted very much that it was the taco’s fault.
She took the two remaining tacos into the kitchen and put them in the refrigerator. While there, she grabbed herself another beer.
She drank a total of four beers, and woke up to find herself sprawled on the sofa, all the lights on, a movie on the TV that she recognized as The White Zombie with Bela Lugosi, her neck stiff, her head splitting, her blood vessels buzzing, her bladder feeling huge and about to burst.
The way her bladder was, she couldn’t stand up straight. She could hardly walk.
But she made it to the bathroom, finally, in time to save herself.
When she finished on the toilet, she found herself to be wide awake. She looked at her wristwatch as she staggered to the sink.
This time last night, she’d already been caught by Brace and was on her way home.
She wondered what Brace was doing right now.
Probably sleeping, if he’s got any sense.
Maybe Mog is sleeping, too. That could be the real reason he called a stop to the Game—he needs some rest, himself. Even God rested on the seventh day.
On the other hand, this is Saturday night. Well, Sunday morning by now. Maybe the fellas are out on the town with dates, or something.
“Both my guys,” she said to herself in the mirror, and shook her head. “Former guys,” she corrected. “Brace and Moggie, gone with the fucking wind.”
She washed her face. She brushed her teeth. She swallowed two Excedrin PM tablets with a fizzy glassful of Alka-Seltzer, then made the rounds of the house to turn off the TV and lights.
Can’t make a habit of this crap, she told herself as she headed for her bedroom. I’ll turn into a drunken old sow.
So who cares, anyhow?
She flicked off her bedroom light. Halfway across the dark floor, she shrugged off her robe and let it fall. She crawled onto her bed and clawed the covers down.
Between the sheets, she sighed.
“Ain’t life grand,” she muttered.
But she had to admit that it was good to be back in her own bed. It had no satin sheets, but it wasn’t a coffin.
She woke up Sunday morning sprawled on top of the sheets with sunlight shining on her from the window beside her bed, and a breeze caressing her like feathers. She had no headache. She felt very fine until she remembered about Brace.
This was the day she and Brace had planned to spend together.
Would he do anything about it? Phone, or maybe come over?
He might.
He probably will. He’ll apologize and I’ll forgive him, and we’ll take it from there. Maybe we’ll go on a picnic.
Feeling good again, Jane got out of bed.
Her robe lay in a heap on the floor. She picked it up, put it on, then checked its pockets in the hope of finding an envelope from Mog. The pockets were empty.
So she searched through the house.
She started in her bedroom, then went out into the hallway and checked the closets and bathroom before heading into the living room. She crouched, stood on tiptoes, searched on shelves and cupboards. Looked for an envelope from Mog in the very same sorts of places where, as a child an hour’s drive from here, she had searched on Easter Sundays for the treats hidden about the house by the Easter bunny.
She never failed to find loads and loads of candy eggs and bunnies.
This morning, she had no success at all in finding an envelope left by Mog.
Probably because he didn’t leave one, Jane thought.
Still hopeful, she went outside. The sun felt hot, but a nice breeze was blowing and it made her robe slide softly against her skin. She hadn’t put on shoes. The concrete stoop and driveway were hot under her feet. The grass was cool and still wet from last night’s dew.
