IN THE DARK, page 24
What about a walk?
Yeah, she thought. Right. A, I’m way too tired. B, what if I run into that creep from last night, Scott? C, if I go out, I’ll probably sneak over to Brace’s place, or something, and make more trouble for myself.
D, all the above.
She wanted to do nothing except go to bed.
She put on her new pajamas. They were royal blue, shiny as satin, and felt slidy against her skin. In front of her bedroom mirror, she unfastened the top button. Then she brushed her hair.
Don’t forget your lipstick, honey.
Yeah, right, she told herself. This hasn’t got anything to do with Mog. If it was for him, I’d put on a see-through nightie or nothing at all. And I always brush my hair at night so it won’t be knotty in the morning.
Like hell you do.
I do when I think about it!
She left her bedroom window open and lay on her bed with the covers down. Hands folded beneath her head, she closed her eyes.
She wondered what time Mog would come.
Late. Very late, probably.
Maybe I should try to stay awake, she thought.
I’d never make it. Way too tired.
What if I set my alarm to wake me at midnight?
She considered it. With a couple of hours of sleep, she could probably stay awake for hours. Play possum and wait for him. Be wide awake when he arrives.
It seemed like a good idea.
But she didn’t have the energy to roll over and reach out to set her alarm clock.
In the morning, she woke up feeling wonderful. She was sprawled on her back, uncovered, arms and legs out as if she’d awakened from a dream of floating on the warm surface of a lake.
She heard birds twittering, the sputter of someone’s lawnmower, the faraway sound of Garth Brooks singing “Unanswered Prayers.” The air smelled sweet. She could feel it blowing softly across her from the window.
A great morning.
But then a shadow of unease began creeping toward her.
Brace.
Don’t think about him, she warned herself. He’s history. Nothing but a filthy…
The way the breeze felt, she suddenly realized her pajama shirt was open.
Mog came!
Shoving her elbows at the mattress, she raised her head and gazed down her body.
Except for her arms and shoulders, still covered by the shirt, she was bare to the waist.
Her skin was still slightly pink where the sun had been on it. The bruises were vague yellow-green patches, nearly gone. Little remained of the scratches.
Nobody had left a message on her chest or belly.
Sitting up fast, she popped open the snap at the waist of her pajama pants.
But found no writing.
She flung off her shirt and stood up. The pants dropped around her ankles. She stepped out of them and hurried to the full-length mirror.
She inspected her front. Turning around, she gazed over her shoulder at the reflection of her back. She even stood on one leg at a time to check the bottoms of her bare feet.
She found no writing anywhere on her body.
She found no sign of any kind that Mog had visited her overnight.
It’s all right, she told herself. Maybe he had other things to do.
But she couldn’t help feeling just a bit abandoned.
Done with breakfast, Jane still had a couple of hours before it was time to leave for work. She put on her bikini, took her book outside, spread her blanket on the grass, and read in the sunlight. Then she exercised and lifted the weights until she ached all over. After that, she took a shower, got dressed, and drove to work.
She tried not to think about Brace or Mog.
But she thought about them a lot.
She supposed it was partly her fault that things hadn’t worked out with Brace. He’d wanted her to quit the Game, and she’d lied to him, then gone on a rampage against him when he showed up at the creephouse.
Bastard sure was quick to find himself a replacement.
We might’ve patched things up…
Still could.
Yeah, right. Forget it. Not after what I saw him doing to that bitch.
He’s gone, kaput, outa here.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
But what the hell happened to Mog? she wondered. Has he dropped me, too? Maybe he pulled Brace’s stunt and found himself a new gal to play with.
Then where’ll I be?
Alone.
Big deal. I’ve been alone before. I can handle it. I can get along quite nicely, thank you, by myself.
After work that night, Jane changed her clothes and went running. She ran away from downtown, away from the campus. Her muscles ached a little, but she felt stronger than ever. She poured on the speed, pumping her arms, swinging her legs out with long quick strides, feeling the caress of her shorts and top, feeling the warm breath of summer blowing against her bare skin, filling herself with the sights and aromas of the night, the freedom of fast moving.
She ran until she couldn’t run any more.
Then she walked home.
She took a long, cool shower.
In her pajamas, she carried a glass of ice water into the living room and flopped on the couch. She stretched out her legs, bare feet on the coffee table. Pointing the remote control through the space between her feet, she thumbed the TV on.
The clock on the VCR showed 11:12.
Why am I even bothering? she wondered. Everything’s already started.
She was sure to find movies on the higher channels, though. There would be something she’d already seen, an old film she could watch for a while until she’d fully recovered from the running and was ready to turn in.
As she made her way up the channels, she stopped at every station to take a brief look.
When she saw the front of a B. Dalton bookstore on the screen, she quit changing channels.
It looked like the one at the Donnerville Fashion Mall.
They all pretty much look alike, she thought. But it might be…
“… seen Monday night when she left her job as a sales clerk at this bookstore. Young Gail Maxwell never made it home.” The view of the bookstore was replaced by a photograph of the missing woman. A brunette, probably no older than Jane. The photo stayed on the screen as the newswoman kept on talking. “Her car, a white Toyota, was found abandoned early yesterday only two miles from the mall where she worked.”
“She’s a gonner,” Jane muttered.
And quickly left that channel behind.
I was at that bookstore on Monday. If that’s the one at the Donnerville Mall.
Probably isn’t.
But… No, the face in the photo hadn’t looked familiar.
Hope to God it wasn’t Donnerville. That’s just what we’d need, some sort of maniac out there…
Jane flipped back to the station that had carried the story, but now there was footage of a protest march, the Rev. Jesse Jackson in the front row walking arm-in-arm with activists for some cause or other.
She shut off the television.
And wished she hadn’t turned it on in the first place.
Switching channels at any time of the day or night, you could hardly fail to bump into a news broadcast, and the damn reporters were always eager to fill you in on something that you’d rather not know about.
Maybe I’d better quit running at night, she thought.
Screw that. I’ll just start carrying my gun. Anybody tries to put the snatch on me, I’ll blow their brains out.
Yeah, sure.
She turned off the living room lights. She made a stop in the bathroom to pee and brush her teeth. Then she went into the kitchen. She opened the “junk drawer” where she kept a collection of rubber bands, tape, glue, paper clips, small tools, string and writing implements. After a quick search, she located her blue, felt-tipped marking pen.
She carried the pen into her bedroom.
She took off her pajama shirt, tossed it onto the bed, and stood in front of her mirror.
Carefully, glancing from the mirror to her own body, she drew a broad M underneath her right breast.
In the mirror, it appeared to be under her left.
Confusing.
While considering her plan earlier in the evening, Jane had wondered whether or not to write her message backward. Maybe Mog could only read things spelled out that way. An eye disorder, some sort of dyslexia, who knows?
But Mog most likely had a normal ability to read.
She’d made her decision to write from right to left, not reversing the letters, so her message would be legible to someone looking straight down at her while she slept.
She no sooner started to write than she discovered that the trick was to avoid looking at the mirror, keep her eyes on herself, concentrate on how the letters should look upside-down, and watch her hand guide the pen over her skin.
After finishing, she clamped the pen between her teeth and pushed in her breasts and bent down and tried to proof-read her message.
It seemed okay, but…
She raised her eyes to the mirror and saw crooked lines of gibberish.
Then an idea struck her.
She fetched a hand-mirror from the top of her dresser. Twisting herself and adjusting angles, she managed to find the big mirror’s image of her torso in the glass of the small mirror.
Reversed twice, the message she’d scrawled on her skin was crooked and sloppy but legible.
MOG,
Please come back
and tell me
what you want
me to do.
I’m ready.
She’d had to lower her pajama pants just slightly to fit in “I’m ready.” There’d been no room for adding her name.
I could write it where he wrote it, she thought.
No. That would be going too far.
And this isn’t?
Anyway, it doesn’t need to be signed. Mog is fairly sure to know who wrote this.
She decided not to bother putting her shirt back on.
She turned off the lights and went to bed. She lay on her back, arms up, hands under her pillow, and stared at the ceiling. She felt edgy, excited.
A very long time passed before she was able to fall asleep.
In the morning, she hurried to the mirror and found Mog’s answer written on her back:
My Dear,
I am delighted
by your eagerness
and taste.
The Game will resume.
Not yet, butt
Soon Soon
Mog had penned one “soon” on each of her buttocks.
“Real cute,” Jane muttered.
And what’s that about being delighted by my taste? she wondered.
Face it, the guy definitely has a crude side to him. But at least he came through. He answered. And he says we’ll get back to the Game soon soon.
That night before going to bed, Jane wrote on the clean slate of the skin:
MOG,
When???
In the morning, she found written beneath her navel:
EAGER
She tugged her pajama pants down to find the other half of his message:
BEAVER
When she saw that, she muttered, “Asshole.”
Though not really expecting to find any more remarks from Mog, she turned her back to the mirror and looked over her shoulder.
The message there began between her shoulder blades and worked its way down:
Honey
Sweetness
Light of my life
Guess who is the
MASTER
around here
ME MOG
“Guess we can add surliness,” she muttered, “to your list of sterling qualities.”
When she went out to the driveway that morning, she found an envelope taped to the windshield of her car.
He came through!
But why did he have to put it there, of all places?
No doubt because he finds it amusing to remind me of the dog attack and how I murdered the thing.
“You’re a real creep, Mog,” she said.
Bending down, she peered into the window on the driver’s side. Then she sidestepped and looked through the back window.
She saw nothing inside her car that shouldn’t be there.
She glanced up and down the street in front of her house, scanned the sidewalks and the neighboring houses. Nobody seemed to be approaching or spying on her. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
She took a few steps backward, then got to her knees and looked underneath the car.
Nothing there.
So she opened the trunk.
No surprises there, either.
She unlocked the door on the driver’s side and stepped backward again as she pulled the door open wide. Standing motionless, she waited and watched and listened.
He must’ve booby-trapped the car somehow, she thought. That’s how he operates. Wouldn’t be any fun if he couldn’t pull a stunt on me.
She half expected to see some small, unpleasant creature crawling on the seat or floor.
Or squirming.
She listened for rattlesnakes.
Nothing.
As a final precaution, she opened the back door and inspected the rear seats and floor.
Okay, she thought. Maybe this time he didn’t leave me a nasty surprise.
Leaning into the driver’s side, she reached over the steering wheel and dug her fingernails under the tape at the top edge of the envelope.
The envelope was fat.
“Oh, man,” she whispered.
She tore it from the windshield.
It seemed like a very long time since she had held an envelope from Mog in her hand.
Not since the coffin.
Stepping back a safe distance from her car, she ripped open the envelope. Inside, two sheets of lined paper were wrapped around a thick stack of bills.
She pulled out the bills.
All hundreds.
She began to count them, but her mind strayed and she lost track somewhere in the sixties. She thought about starting over.
No need to bother, she told herself.
She knew how many there would be. God knows, she had thought about it often enough during the past few days—and wondered if Mog would ever come through with it.
One hundred and twenty-eight hundred-dollar bills.
Which added up to $12,800.
Taking so much money to the library didn’t seem like a good idea, so Jane went back inside her house. She put it with the rest.
For a grand total so far of $25,350.
Minus what she’d spent at the mall on Monday.
Still, a lot of money. One hell of a lot of money.
“Now, let’s see what the catch is,” she muttered. With a mixture of fear and excitement, she unfolded the two sheets of paper. She read the one on top:
Surprise!
You’re invited to a party, Jane!
Where: 482 Chestnut Street
When: tonight, 9:30 p.m.
Why: just because.
B.Y.O.B. (Bring Your Own Body)
R.S.V.P. not applicable. I have every
confidence that you’ll be there.
Special Instructions: At the door, present
your host with the enclosed note.
Jane read the enclosed note, shook her head, and muttered, “What the hell are you trying to do to me?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Parked in her car half a block from the party house, Jane once again read the note she was supposed to present to her host:
My Friend,
I will never be able to thank you properly for what you’ve done. Please greet my servant, Jane.
She is yours to use as you please until midnight. Your wish is her command.
I have already seen to her payment.
Enjoy.
Gratefully yours,
MOG
She folded the note and dropped it onto her lap.
All day, she’d wondered if she would have the nerve to follow through. She’d never really doubted it, though.
Not much I won’t do, comes right down to it.
Not with more than twenty-five thousand dollars at stake.
When I get that, I’ll have over fifty thousand bucks. Fifty thousand.
She took a deep breath. She was shaking badly. Otherwise, she felt all right: alert and strong.
This won’t be so bad, she told herself. Whatever happens between now and midnight, it can’t be much worse than what I’ve gone through before.
Anyway, she thought, nothing happens without my say-so.
Reaching into her purse, she found her pistol.
Before leaving for the library that morning, she had inspected the weapon to make sure it hadn’t been tampered with: looked it over carefully, unloaded it and dry-fired it. It had seemed fine. The ammo had seemed okay, too.
Just to be on the safe side, however, she’d stopped by a gun shop on the way to work and bought a fresh box of ammunition. She’d emptied the magazine and refilled it with brand new cartridges.
The pistol went nicely into the big, loose pocket on the right front of her culottes.
She dropped her switchblade knife and car keys into the left front pocket.
After tucking her purse under the passenger seat, she picked up Mog’s note and climbed out of the car. She locked the door before shutting it. Then she walked slowly up the street until she came to the house at 482 Chestnut Street.
It came as no great surprise that the place wasn’t brightly lit, noisy with music and laughter, and swarming with merry-makers.
This, after all, was a party devised by Mog.
A surprise party?
With probably no one being more taken by surprise than its host.
Don’t be so sure about that, Jane thought. The host may be none other than the Master of Games, himself.
