The Night Parade(20)

“We go straight to the car,” David said, gripping the doorknob. He already had the car keys in his other hand at the ready. “Go to the driver’s side and then slide over. You understand? I don’t want you separated from me and going around to the other side of the car. Not for a second.”

Ellie nodded, her expressive eyes mostly shaded by the brim of her ball cap.

“Okay,” he said, licking his lips. “Okay. Okay.”

He swung the door wide and charged out into the daylight. Somewhere off to his right, the sobbing woman made a hitching sound, then went instantly silent. David didn’t want to look, but he couldn’t help himself—he stole a quick glance over his shoulder just as the woman was turning to look at him. The back of her T-shirt had ridden up, exposing a single pale buttock. There was an ugly bruise there, mean and purple with a greenish border. Glancing up at her face, David could see the blood spilling from her nose and mouth, black as motor oil. Her eyes possessed the distant gaze of the legally blind.

David yanked the car door open. “Go,” he said to Ellie, shoving her forward with one hand. “Get in.”

Ellie quickly got into the car, the suitcase banging against the door frame, careful not to crush her shoe box.

“Hey,” the woman said, her voice so unexpectedly calm, almost childlike, that it caused David to look in her direction again.

She stood facing him, her head cocked curiously at an angle now. Despite the blood that trickled from both nostrils and spilled down over her chin, hers was an expression of utmost serenity. Yet there was the foggy detachment in her eyes that immediately chilled David to the core, reminding him of Deke Carmody’s similarly detached stare. It was as if she was looking right through him and at something visible only to her on the horizon.

“Hey,” she said again . . . and took a step in his direction. A bare foot scrudded over blacktop gravel. In the motel room behind her, the drapes over the window twitched.

“Daddy,” Ellie said from inside the car.

“Please,” the woman said. “Wait a minute. Please . . .” There was agony in her voice now.

David shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“I need help.” She took another step toward him. “I’m hurt. I need help. He won’t . . . he won’t . . .” She glanced briefly over one shoulder, at the window where the drapes continued to twitch and move. For a second, a man’s wide, ghost-white face peered out before receding back into the darkness a moment later. David had time to glimpse a brutish, Cro-Magnon forehead and dark rodent eyes.

David switched his gaze back to the woman. He shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

“Daddy,” Ellie said again. She was leaning halfway out of the open door, watching the woman.

“Please,” the woman said, the word whining out of her as she proceeded to sob again.

David quickly got into the car and immediately slammed the door.

“Daddy, what’s—”

The woman was at his window before he got the key in the ignition. Ellie cried out, startled.

“Please!” the woman shouted on the other side of the glass. When she slammed one palm against the window, David jumped and Ellie let out a strangled whimper. “I need help! Why won’t you help me?”

“Daddy—”

“Please!”

David threw the car in Reverse and stomped on the accelerator. The Olds lurched backward, jerking David’s head on his neck. Sharp, hot pain blossomed at the base of his head. David spun the wheel until the tires squealed and the whole car seemed to groan in protest. Then he dropped it into Drive. The car shuddered before its tires found purchase on the asphalt. David sped straight across the parking lot, daring to glance up at the rearview mirror only once. The woman had collapsed to the pavement and was rapidly shrinking as he put distance between them.





11


They had driven several miles before David realized he had the duffel bag in his lap, wedged between himself and the steering wheel, making it difficult to steer.

“Help me with this,” he said, shoving the duffel bag over his shoulder and into the backseat. Ellie reached over and lent some assistance without uttering a sound. Once his heartbeat slowed, David eased up on the accelerator and glanced over at his daughter.

She was staring at him, her face emotionless. Based on the whimpering sound she had made as they fled the parking lot, he assumed she’d been crying, but she wasn’t. She was stoic. Unmovable. He felt colder for looking at her.

“Are you okay?” he said.

Her eyebrows ticked together, a movement so subtle it was nearly undetectable. She glanced toward the windshield.

“Ellie?” he said.

“Why didn’t you help that woman?” She was sitting ramrod-straight in the passenger seat, which looked very unnatural to David. As if she might launch herself at the windshield at any moment.

“There was nothing I could do.”

“She was hurt. She was bleeding.”

“I saw, Ellie.”

They merged onto the highway. David felt about as conspicuous as someone driving around with a missile strapped to the roof of his car, even with so few vehicles on the road. When he looked to his left, he noticed the woman’s bloody handprint on his window, stark as an accusation. He quickly rolled the window down, flooding the car with a cool wind.