IN THE DARK, page 26
“Thanks. You’ve been an excellent master. And you make good popcorn.”
She followed Clay to the front door, and he opened it for her. She turned and face him. “I was awfully worried about all this,” she said.
“You had every reason to be.”
“The chances were about one in a million that I’d actually run into a man who didn’t want to… mess with me—or worse. Especially with Mog picking the guy.”
“He might’ve sent you here without knowing anything about who’s in the house.”
“Maybe.”
“And I don’t think it’s as bad as one in a million.”
“I do. Anyway, I sure am glad he sent me to you.”
“Me, too,” Clay said.
“Hey, maybe he did know what he was doing.”
“Sent you here because he knew you’d be safe with me?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t bet on it. He couldn’t know me that well. I don’t know myself that well. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but it was never a sure thing. When you raised your arms like that for me to search you…” He shook his head. “Plenty of other times, too… It was close. It might’ve gone the other way.”
“But it didn’t.”
“Guess I’m a wonder of self-control,” he said, then smiled. “You should see yourself blushing.”
“It’s nice to know… that I wasn’t easy to resist.”
“Incredibly difficult.”
“Good.” Looking into his eyes, she stepped toward him.
He gripped her upper arms and stopped her. “You’d better go,” he said.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Just… Come back some time after you’ve finished your game with Mog. If you want to.”
“After it’s finished?”
“Yeah.”
“But that might not be for… I don’t know, weeks, months. Who knows?”
“It’ll only go on as long as you’re willing to play.”
My God, she thought, he sounds exactly like Brace.
“The game’s crazy,” Clay said. “But you’ve already figured that out, I think.”
“Maybe. It might be crazy, but it’s lucrative. And it gives me something to do.”
“Well, I don’t want anything else to do with it.”
“Including me?”
“I’m afraid so. The way I see it, you’re playing Russian Roulette and this Mog fellow—he’s the gun. I don’t want to fall for you any more than I have already and then stick around while you blow your brains out.”
“It’s not like that,” Jane said.
“Well, that’s sort of how it looks. Anyway, you know where to find me.”
“Okay.”
“Be careful, all right?”
“Okay.” She offered her hand. “You can shake, can’t you?”
“Sure.”
He took her hand gently, and shook it.
Jane murmured, “See you.” Then she hurried away.
That wasn’t so bad, she told herself. It really couldn’t have gone any better. What the hell was Mog thinking, sending me to a guy like Clay?
Probably a mistake. He probably goofed with the address, or something.
Don’t cry!
She could feel it coming.
Don’t!
Maybe that’s his game, trying to make me cry. Well, I’m not going to do it. Not this time. He threw me against Clay just to show me what I’m missing out on. I’m not falling for it.
Anyway, Clay’s probably a bastard underneath it all. He can’t be as nice as he seems. Nobody is.
Brace sure proved that.
“Who needs either one of ‘em,” she muttered.
When she opened her car door, she found an envelope on the driver’s seat.
“Thank you, thank you,” she said, picking it up.
She sat down and locked her door, then turned on the overhead light and tore open the envelope. The stack of hundred dollar bills seemed twice as thick as the bunch she’d received that morning.
She figured there should be two hundred and fifty-six of them.
Not bad pay for two-and-a-half hours entertaining a fellow who didn’t really want anything out of you except maybe some companionship. Better than ten thousand bucks per hour.
If Mog keeps this up, she thought, I’ll be able to spend my old age in the lap of luxury.
Might be the only lap I get.
“Ha ha,” she muttered, and drove away without reading Mog’s note.
CHAPTER THIRTY
My beauty,
Tomorrow night, 901 Mayr Heights for a gala time.
In the meantime, don’t feel lonely. You have me. I shall come to you tonight.
No need to wait up.
Love to my lovely
hot wet wench,
MOG
Hot wet wench. Why did he have to be crude like that?
He wouldn’t be Mog, she told herself, if he weren’t such a crude, nasty creep.
Part of his charm.
Yeah, right.
She’d first read the note after returning to her house, just before hiding the money. Now, in her pajamas and sitting on the edge of her bed, she read it again.
Not only crude, she thought, but arrogant. Like he’s under the impression that I just can’t wait for him to show up.
“I’ve got a secret for you, Mog,” she said. “It’s no big deal to me whether you show up or not. You know what I mean? I never get to see you, anyway, so who cares?”
Maybe this time, she thought, I really should try to stay awake for him.
Won’t work. The guy’s like Santa. He won’t come while I’m awake.
Why don’t I try leaving him a message again?
Her heart beat quicker.
I shouldn’t make a habit of this, she thought.
She slipped off her pajama top and went to the dresser where she’d left her marking pen. She stepped close to the mirror. On the stretch of lightly tanned skin below her breasts and above the waistband of her pajama pants, she wrote:
WAKE ME
SHOW YOURSELF
PLEASE
In the morning, Jane found written on her back:
GREAT TIME
TOO BAD YOU SLEPT
THROUGH IT ALL
“Right,” she muttered. “What’s your idea of a great time, Mog? Practicing your penmanship?”
If it’d been much more than that, she told herself, I wouldn’t have slept through it.
Don’t be so sure. It might’ve been a lot more than that.
So what else is new? she thought. He can do whatever he wants—and probably has been doing exactly that. No way to stop him.
Not that I’ve tried.
Pretty much the opposite, comes right down to it.
Tipping back her head, she said to the bedroom ceiling, “The least you could do, Mog, is wake me up next time.”
Mog, of course, didn’t answer.
Jane dropped her pajama pants and inspected herself carefully. The writing on her back seemed to be the only evidence of Mog’s visit.
After starting her coffee, Jane took a shower to wash off the messages. As usual, they needed a lot of scrubbing. When she was done, she put on her bikini. She carried a cup of coffee and her book outside to enjoy the morning sunlight for a while.
She drank two cups of coffee. Then she brought her weights out of the house, took them to her blanket on the grass and worked out until she was dripping sweat, huffing for breath, and worn out.
Back in the house, she took another shower. Near the end, she made the water chilly and stood beneath it, rigid, her teeth clenched. She didn’t stay in the shower for long. Time was getting short, and she didn’t want to be late for work.
Still dripping, she hurried out of the bathroom with her towel. She was mostly dry by the time she reached her bedroom.
As she stepped into her panties, she decided to go ahead and wear her denim culottes and a good, short-sleeved blouse—the sort of outfit she usually wore to the library—and go straight to the Mayr Heights address after work.
It’s probably a house, she thought.
Mog had written about a “gala time.” Which might mean there would be a party.
Right, a party of two like last night.
On the other hand, suppose he means it this time?
The “Heights” in the name of the street sounded ritzy. What if this turned out to be a fancy section of town, and she was expected to participate in an actual party of some sort?
Not awfully likely.
The place might just as easily turn out to be a filthy old ruin like the creephouse by the boneyard.
It might be just about anything.
So I ought to be ready for anything, she told herself.
Ten minutes later, dressed and groomed and ready to go, Jane left the house with a paper sack in each hand. Stuffed into one were blue jeans, a chamois shirt, and a pair of running shoes. In the other sack was a pair of blue pumps and a neatly folded evening dress that the filthy son-of-a-bitch Ken had bought for her to wear to a dance at his parents’ country club.
Two weeks ago, the gown wouldn’t have fit her.
But she’d tried it on quickly before putting it into the sack, and the fit had been fine.
In the mirror, she’d looked smashing.
Hard to believe, though, that she had actually gone to a dance wearing a garment like this. Elegant, but terribly clingy and revealing. Of course, Ken had insisted.
He was always insisting on something.
She could remember protesting, “I can’t wear this. My God, everybody’ll stare at me.” To which Ken had replied, “I want ‘em staring at you, babe. I want ‘em drooling. What’s the point in having you if I can’t show you off?”
And I’m going to take this with me tonight? she’d asked herself.
Why the hell not? I look great in it.
Besides, it’s my only good gown. And the chances of having to wear it are slim to none.
As she carried the two sacks out to the driveway, her purse swung by her hip. It was heavy with her flashlight, knife, pistol, and box of ammunition.
She put the sacks into the trunk of her car, then drove to work.
A dead end?
“Great,” Jane muttered, and slowed down as she drove past the sign.
The last address she’d been able to spot, some distance back, had been in the seven hundreds. Now, all of a sudden, Mayr Heights was planning to pull a disappearing act?
What the hell happened to 901?
The road seemed to continue for a while, though. Maybe she would find 901 before it ended.
No such luck.
The road curved to the left, and her headlights illuminated the barricade. She drove closer to it, wondering if this might mark an interruption, not an end.
Off beyond the barricade, the hillside seemed to drop away.
She reached for the map on the passenger seat, then changed her mind. There was no need to check. What did it matter if the road resumed somewhere else? This was the section where 901 should be.
She must’ve simply missed it.
She’d seen no houses at all on Mayr Heights. Apparently, they were hidden on the wooded hillside and you could only find them by venturing onto those awful little driveways. She’d seen plenty such driveways—if that’s what they were. Narrow lanes, paved but dark, bordered by thick bushes and trees. Often, they’d seemed to be unmarked. No visible mailbox or address. No clue at all as to where the things might lead.
One of them, she supposed, must go to 901. I probably drove right past it.
“Terrific,” she muttered.
She made a U-turn near the barricade, and drove slowly back the way she’d come.
From the few addresses she’d been able to find on the way up, she at least knew that the odd numbers were over to her right. The house she wanted would be uphill. At the top of one of those nasty little driveways.
But which one?
Check them all. Stop and get out and look.
The third time she climbed out of her car to study a small, paved gap in the roadside foliage, she found a redwood mailbox buried in the bushes. Carved into the side of the box was the address, 901, and a name, S. Savile.
“Yes!” she gasped.
She shone her flashlight up the driveway.
The concrete was cracked, crumbling in places, with small weeds growing out of the fissures. Bushes pressed in close on both sides, so that the lane resembled a very narrow tunnel—a tunnel up an awfully steep grade. Near the far reach of her flashlight, where her beam faded to a hazy glow, the driveway curved out of sight.
“Yuck,” Jane muttered.
Sure I’m gonna drive up that thing. When I get done, I’ll try walking blindfolded up some rollercoaster tracks.
She felt a little cowardly as she headed back to her car.
Driving up there would be stupid, she told herself. Forget how creepy the thing looks, it’s one way. What if I run into another car on my way up?
Better yet, what if I run into one on my way down?
I’m not gonna let myself get trapped. No way.
S. Savile might be a perfectly nice fellow—like Clay last night. But he might not be. The way Mog is into word games, it’s probably significant that name has “vile” in it.
Back at the car, she climbed into the driver’s seat. She moved the car a good distance past the driveway entrance, then pulled as far off the road as possible.
Now that she faced a hike to the top of the steep driveway, she knew for sure that she wouldn’t be wearing the party gown. She considered her jeans and chamois shirt. Protective clothes, but heavy. And hot. She would be a lot more comfortable if she stayed in her culottes and light blouse.
But who knows what’s at the top? she thought. Maybe I’d rather cook in my jeans and shirt than end up having bare arms and legs in a bad place.
She hurried to the trunk and opened it. No cars were coming. No house was in sight. From all she could see and hear, nobody seemed to be nearby. So she undressed at the rear of her car and quickly got into her jeans, running shoes, and chamois shirt.
She shut the trunk.
Standing by the driver’s door, she took what she needed from her purse. She slipped the keys and knife into the front left pocket of her jeans. The pistol went into the pocket on the right. She opened the box of ammunition, filled her hand with cartridges, dumped them into the right front pocket of her shirt, then returned the box to her purse. She clamped the flashlight under her left arm.
Then she tucked her purse under the passenger seat, locked and shut the door.
She headed for the driveway.
As she walked, she felt the weight of the extra ammo dragging at her pocket, swinging under her breast.
It had surprised her a bit when she’d decided to take more ammunition. She hadn’t planned to do that. She’d briefly considered it earlier in the day, but hadn’t made up her mind.
The business of Mog’s about a “gala time,” that’s what had made her think of it in the first place.
He isn’t sending me to any party.
In the library that afternoon, a bit of poetry had crossed her mind: “Lo, ‘tis a gala night.” And then it had crossed again and again. She hadn’t been able to get rid of it.
The opening of “The Conqueror Worm,” by Poe.
She knew the poem well. Too well. Back in junior high school, she’d memorized it for a Halloween presentation. She could still recite it—and often did, usually late at night, usually half drunk, and always to the annoyance of her friends. Oh God, how the language slithered and rolled off her tongue! “It wriiiiithes! It wriiiiithes with mortal pangs! The mimes become its food!”
What a fabulous, gross poem.
But it wasn’t something you wanted in your head when you were planning to visit a stranger’s house late at night.
Vermin fangs, in human gore imbued.
Charming stuff.
Mog’s “gala time” had snapped it all into her mind and kept it there. And made her think that extra precautions might be in order.
Maybe take along a few more bullets?
And then to see that the resident of 901 Mayr Heights was someone by the name of Savile.
Change one letter, you’ve got “So vile.”
I’m probably just going paranoid in my old age, she thought.
Better safe than sorry.
If I really think I might need the gun—much less a pocketful of extra ammo—I shouldn’t be going up there at all.
The same old tune, she thought. A tune that doesn’t mean a whole lot, anymore, now that the stakes are up to fifty thousand bucks.
More like fifty-one thousand, something, she corrected.
She began to trudge up the driveway. She couldn’t see much of it: a strip of gray speckled only here and there by moonlight, with darkness on both sides. Though she held the flashlight in her right hand, she kept it off. Better to stumble along in the dark than to make herself conspicuous with the light.
Her leg muscles, still a little stiff and sore, ached at first. Soon, the aching faded.
In spite of the many curves in the driveway, the climb was steep, and hard work.
Gasping for air, drenched with sweat, she stopped to rest.
No sign, yet, of an end to the driveway.
What if it goes on for miles?
It won’t, she told herself.
She fluttered the front of her shirt, and felt cooler air from the outside come in and buffet her hot skin. The back of the shirt was clinging to her. So was the seat of her panties.
Hope the house has air conditioning, she thought. Or a pool. Wouldn’t it be great to leap into a cold swimming pool about now!
She fluttered her shirt again, took a very deep breath, then resumed her trek.
And suddenly found herself at the top of the driveway.
The dim strip of moonlit pavement stretched across an open field to the garage of the house at 901 Mayr Heights. There were a few lamps on posts along the sides of the driveway. They looked like old-fashioned gas lamps. Not one was lighted, though.
The front porch of the old, two-story house was dark.
