The Summer House(3)
Two windows. One with an air-conditioning unit that’s not running.
The other leading out to safety.
Lillian gets to the window, yanks at the bottom.
It won’t move.
“Please, please, please,” she whispers.
She yanks again.
Nothing.
She senses the man with the gun is nearing the top of the stairs.
Lillian is too scared to turn around, dares not turn around.
Another tug.
A squeak.
It moves, just enough for her to shove her fingers in between the window and the sill.
“Please, please, please,” she prays, whispering louder.
She gives the window a good hard shove, leveraging her weight, her shoulders and arms straining from the attempt.
The window grinds open.
Fresh air flows in.
Lillian bends over, ducks her way through, as she hears the other bedroom door slam shut.
He’s nearly at the top of the stairs when he hears a window slide open, and then he gets to the landing.
Room to the left, room to the right.
The door is open to the right-side room. The other door is closed.
He looks back at his squad, gestures to the nearest two behind him, points to the left door, and they nod in acknowledgment.
He steps into the room on the right.
Empty.
Trashy, of course, but there’s no one he can see.
The window is wide open.
He’s focused on clearing this room, but he can’t help but hear the door to the other room open, a woman scream, and a man call out, “Hey, hey, hey—” followed by the friendly thump of a pistol firing through a sound suppressor.
Then a sentence is uttered, and two more thumps wrap up the job.
He moves through the room, dodging piles of clothes and trash. An overhead light from the top of the stairs gives him good illumination.
The closet is empty.
Fine.
He goes to the window, leans over, peers out.
Lillian is biting her fist, trying hard not to breathe, not to sneeze, not to do a damn thing to get noticed. She’s under one of the two unmade beds in this room, trembling, part of her ashamed that she’s wet herself from fear.
There are slow and measured paces of someone walking through the room, and then going over to the open window.
She shuts her eyes, her mother’s voice whispering to her from more than twenty-five years ago: There’s no such thing as the bogeyman, she would say. Just close your eyes and pray to Jesus, and everything will be all right.
Oh, Mamma, oh, Jesus, please, please, please help me.
He leans out the window, lowering his night-vision goggles to take in the view. More trees, more scrub, and a collapsed small wooden building that looks like it was once an outhouse.
Possible. This place is so old it would fit right in.
He looks closer to the side of the two-story summer house.
He’s up about six or so meters. Hell of a drop.
And what’s below here? Two rusty fifty-five-gallon oil drums, a roll of chicken-coop wire, and a pile of wooden shingles and scrap lumber.
All resting undisturbed.
He flips up the night-vision goggles, ducks back into the room, sees his squad mates have joined him. He holds a finger to his lips.
Moves across the room.
Lillian is still praying, still trembling, still biting into her fist when a strong hand slides under the bed and grabs her ankle, dragging her out.
She shrieks and rolls over and puts her hands up and says, “Please, please, please, no, no, no!”
Someone grabs her shoulders, holds her down. Another man—the one who just shot Gordy—drops to one knee and looks down at her. Lillian takes a deep breath, hoping it will calm her.
It doesn’t.
The man has military-type viewing equipment on his forehead, he’s wearing military fatigues with some sort of harness and belts, and over one pocket where there should be a name tag is a strip of Velcro, meaning the name tag has been stripped off so he won’t be identified. The ski mask from before is pulled up, revealing a friendly and relaxed face.
“Please,” she whispers.
“Shhh,” he replies. “Just a few questions. I promise I won’t hurt you.”
Lillian just nods. Answer him, she thinks. Don’t ask questions. Just answer.
He says, “There was a man in the bedroom on the other side, with a woman and a child. Downstairs there was a woman and two other men. Is there anybody else here?”
“No,” she says, her whole body shaking, the hands of the man holding her shoulders down firm and strong.
“Are you the owner of the Volvo?”
“Yes.”
“Did you come down here alone?”
“Yes.”
“Is anyone expecting you to return in the next few minutes?”
She doesn’t process the question until it’s too late, for she answers truthfully, automatically, and hopefully and says, “No.”
The man stays quiet for a few long seconds and then lifts his head to nod to the man behind her. When he removes a hand from her shoulder and she feels the cold metal of a pistol barrel pressing against the side of her head, Lillian knows her mamma has always been wrong, that the bogeyman does exist.
Chapter 3